xp_logs | Doug and Jubilee

Doug goes out to drink away his sorrows at Finnegan's, and Jubilee finds him there, and decides to keep an eye on him.

Silver was where Doug went to socialize, Finnegan's was where he went to drink. Even with his coworkers still upset with him, and Finnegan's being their usual watering hole, Doug didn't exactly feel like disappearing to somewhere else would be very productive. Besides, he was in something of a self-flagellatory mood this evening. So he ordered another rum and coke and knocked it back.

"You realise that drinking away your sorrows is so totally last century, yeah?" Jubilee noted, slipping into the seat opposite of Doug, her own drink, while clear and carbonated was for once non-alcoholic in nature. She'd decided recently that it was time for her to go on the wagon for awhile, for the rest of the year if she could deal with it, at the least.

"I suppose I'm in an archaic mood, then," Doug said in reply. He wished he could say he was on the way to feeling no pain, but alcohol only did so much to blur the memory of that crisp businesslike letter that had been left in...well, he supposed it was just his apartment again. Not that Remy seemed inclined to let him spend all that much time in it lately, what with piling additional responsibility on him. He supposed it was part distraction and part attempt to keep him from wallowing in his jumbled feelings, but just like the alcohol, it all only went so far.

"Hmm," Jubilee replied, taking a sip from her drink. Far be it from her to stop someone doing anything; that would make her a bit of a hypocrite. But she could at least keep him company, and make sure he got back to his place okay at the end. "What exactly are you drinking?"

"Rum and coke," Doug replied, waggling the glass in his hand. "And I know that 'hmm', Jubilee," he told her. "I'm fine. I'm not about to turn into some raving alcoholic just because my girlfriend left me."

And if he coped with that by alcohol and various...other distractions, that was his business.

"Right," Jubilee noted, taking another sip and giving him the raised eyebrows of 'Who, me?' "Far be it for me to tell you how to deal, Dude. I'm just here all compassionate like to make sure you don't aspirate in your own vomit at the end of the night."

"I'm not going to drink that much, Jubes," Doug replied with a frown. "I've learned my lesson from the couple of brutal hangovers I've had. I'm not itching for a repeat performance there."

Not that he wouldn't mind a repeat of the other events that had happened the last time he'd gone on a bender. But it would certainly have to be with someone else, since Amanda was still massively pissed off with him at the moment.

"Awesome, means less work for me," Jubilee noted, reaching over and gathering up a handful of nuts from one of the complimentary bowls. She munched on a few before giving Doug an enigmatic look. "So, you gonna tell me about it?"

"About what? Marie-Ange leaving me a 'dear John' letter?" Doug's voice roughened in a reflection of his mood. "I already told the team when Remy announced she was leaving. She broke up with me in a letter, she left, she went to New Orleans. What's to tell about?"

"You tell me, dude," Jubilee noted, leaning back against her chair and munching on a few more peanuts. "I would figure that someone at peace with themselves and what's going on around them, wouldn't be sitting in a bar alone."

Doug took another long sip of his drink and grimaced. "I never said I was at peace with myself or what's going on around me. You just said 'tell me about it' like there's some big mystery behind why I'm drinking here by myself this evening. Which, y'know, not so much with the mystery."

"Sure I know that," Jubilee noted, taking a sip of her drink and munching on some more peanuts before she slouched down again. "But facts aren't all there is, you know that. When I asked if you were gonna tell me about it, I wasn't asking about Slot A to Tab B. Talk to me, dude. Tell me if I can help, or to fuck off, whatever you need."

"I have no idea what I need right now," Doug admitted, the surly 'armor' dropping slightly. Jubilee had refused to take 'fuck off' for an answer before, and if he was honest, he didn't really feel like giving that answer to her again.

Jubilee ate a few more peanuts, and took another drink before she said anything. Firstly, it gave her a chance to think about what Doug had said, and secondly it gave her time to observe him a little before she answered.

"You're staying at my place tonight," she stated eventually. "Or I'll stay at yours, whatever. Namely, I'm not leaving you alone tonight, and no arguments."

Doug took another sip of his drink. He wasn't completely plastered, but he was drunk enough that his brain-to-mouth filter wasn't quite engaged. "Are we talking staying over, or 'staying over'?" he asked with a grin.

"Well, you might get spooning if you're really lucky, but I don't do the whole sex with workmates thing, dude," Jubilee noted, grinning back. " This is strictly comfort, ya know? It's hard gettin' used to sleeping alone when you've been sleeping next to someone for ages."

"No? Why not?" Okay, maybe that had been just a touch plaintive, but Doug shrugged. He'd cheerfully hop in the sack with Jubilee if it was offered.

"Because you're my friend, and I actually care about you. Same way as I care about everyone at the Brownstone." Jubilee noted, raising her eyebrows. "It's not that you ain't attractive, Doug. I just try not to take advantage of people I actually care about."

Doug shrugged. "Is it taking advantage if I'm perfectly willing?" He held up a hand. "And no, I haven't had enough to really impair my judgment," he forestalled what would probably be her next protest. "Besides, it's kind of funny, I have kind of the opposite thought about coworkers. I mean, you're the only ones I don't have to worry about letting slip any of those thousand or so little details about what we really do out with."

"That's probably because you actually talk to the people you fuck," Jubilee replied wryly, rubbing at the back of her neck as she let out a small sigh.

It was tempting, it really was. She hadn't had sex in at least three weeks, not since she'd made a vow to herself to stop acting like such an idiot. No drinking, and no sex, complete cold turkey till she could trust herself not to use it as a way to forget.

She'd taken up origami again, just as a way to pass the hours till she could finally fall asleep.

Doug could read the sigh and the hand at the back of Jubilee's neck quite well. That was temptation. And he wasn't feeling very much like a shoulder angel these days. "It tends to make things kind of nice. You might try it sometime?" he asked, part jokingly, but also an undercurrent of concern for his teammate's well-being in the question.

"Hmm," Jubilee hummed noncommittally, giving him the once-over, her body slightly less relaxed now as she considered things. "You realise every single time I've let the gates down I've been screwed, yeah?"

Doug leaned toward Jubilee, cocking his head towards her to create a greater sense of intimacy. After all, he didn't just read body language, he also understood how to use it. "I'm your teammate, Jubes," he said just loudly enough for her and nobody else to hear. "The Hellfire Club thing aside, I'm not looking to screw you." He grinned wickedly. "Well, in the 'letting you down' sense, anyway."

Well, that was entirely an unfair advantage, and she could totally see through it anyhow considering how well Remy had trained her. Not that she was protesting, of course, far from it.

"Do you snore?" she asked finally.

Doug sensed victory. Not that he wanted to win for its own malicious sort of reasons, but he usually did like getting what he wanted. And right now what he wanted was Jubilee. "Nope. Do you?" he replied, taking out his wallet to cover his tab.

"Loudly, like I do everything else," Jubilee noted with a suddenly flirty grin. "Or so I've been told."

Later that night, Doug wakes up to find that Jubilee is awake and dealing with the aftermath of a panic attack, so it's his turn to talk and be reassuring.

Jubilee had for the most part always taken the path of least resistance when it came to decision making. It was a process that had seen her in some of the hottest water of her life, and in the past few years she'd been making the difficult but necessary changes that would make her, if not a fully functional, at least a useful member of society.

As she looked down at the cup of tea held tightly in her hands, she couldn't help wonder what sort of decision the one she'd made earlier was, the easy or the difficult path. She had a feeling that it was the latter, an act of trust in a colleague, it was after all why she hadn't simply left. Not that sitting in Doug's kitchen at stupid o'clock instead of still being asleep in the very nice bed beside him was really any better. It was just that she wasn't used to sleeping beside anyone, there were space issues and she'd had to get up or suffocate.

Doug was strangely used to rolling over in the middle of the night and not feeling the presence of the person who'd gone to sleep next to him. So when he rolled over and his arm unexpectedly hit the bed, he blearily woke up more completely and threw the covers back and got up to wander into the kitchen. "Couldn't sleep?" he asked Jubilee as he rummaged in the cupboards for a cup of his own.

"Something like that," Jubilee replied, pushing out on of the chairs in front of her with her foot. "Sorry if I woke you up."

"Nah, it's okay. I don't sleep as deeply these days as I used to." Between dating Marie-Ange, and his own various nightmares, especially since being absorbed by Ignatova, Doug tended towards being a much lighter sleeper than he had been. "Anything on your mind?"

"Dude, what isn't on my mind?" Jubilee asked with an amused smirk. "But specifically I'm currently wondering why waking up next to you made me go into a panic attack of surprising proportions. You're hardly that scary."

"Panic attack?" Doug asked with a concerned note in his voice. "At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, have you considered that it has nothing at all to do with me in particular, and I'm just the trigger?" He sat down across the table from Jubilee.

"No shit, Sherlock," Jubilee noted, then smiled wryly. "Sorry, Dude. Didn't mean to be rude, you're my team mate, yeah? I trust you guys with my life daily, so it ain't you that's giving me the willies. I think maybe it's just how normal shit is; I keep expecting the other shoe to drop. Every time I've let my guard down, it's always gone wrong."

"You mean like the time you were in handcuffs when I came down here?" Doug kept the tone light and teasing. "I'm not going to go sideways on you, Jubes. Promise."

Jubilee leaned back in the kitchen chair and rested her feet on Doug's thighs. "Handcuffs guy was nothing; I've been through a lot worse. I don't know, dude. I don't think it's any specific incident, just a whole mess of them all together stewed and fermenting in my subconscious. I'm not doing too badly though, fighting it and all. I didn't blow up the building, so that's always a plus."

She poked at his chest with one of her toes, grinning at him for a second.

"I know you ain't gonna go sideways on me, I think you guys are probably the closest to trustworthy and non-judgemental I've had in, well, ever."

Doug grabbed playfully and tweaked Jubilee's big toe. "I think I'm very glad you didn't blow up the building. For one, I'm rather fond of my skin." He shrugged. "If the other shoe ever drops, I'll be there."

Jubilee pulled her feet away, standing up as her grin turned decidedly predatory. "Let's go back to bed, shall we?"