Terry and Doug - Wordplay and Pints at the Pub

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Terry goes to Finnegan's to bury herself in work, comfort food, and a pint. Given where she's at, it's not all that surprising that her old bandmate happens by.


Sometimes, burying oneself in work or booze or comfort food just isn't enough. So, why not try all three together? Terry had heard of this pub frequented by her associates, and taken up camp in a corner table surrounded by a basket of chips, a pint of bitters, and a few reams of paper.

Finnegan's was indeed frequented by Terry's old classmates, and so when Doug came in for a late lunch and possibly a pint of his own, he noticed her as he made his usual scan of the place from the entrance. He wandered over to the table quietly, and slid into the booth opposite her with a smile. "Hello there, copper," he said in a faux gruff tone, letting her decide whether he was using the slang for policeman, or referring to the brassy red of her hair.

Terry swiveled her eyes up from the paper to settle on the newcomer, making no other moves to lift her head from it's resting place on her palm. "Guard. The term is guard, bucko," she murmured, trying to pinch back the smile that creeped onto her lips.

"Well, en garde, then, milady," Doug replied with a twinkle in his eye, enjoying the word play. Suiting action to the warning, he reached deftly across and filched a 'chip' from the basket and
dipped it in the small ramekin of ketchup before popping it in his mouth.

"Blackguard, you mean," Terry retorted, pronouncing it 'blaggard' with the full force of her accent, and slapped at his retreating hand. "Go on with your thievin' self."

"You wound me. I am a white knight, not a blackguard," Doug protested, swatting at Terry's hand in turn. "Besides, stolen food always tastes better. It's a proven scientific fact," he claimed as the server came by to take his order. Of course, now he was well aware that he had opened himself up to his old bandmate stealing -his- food, but that was fine with him.

Terry snorted, finally lifting her head so she could fold her arms on the table and lean toward the technophile."Is that so? Tis too bad then," she said, shaking her head sadly. "We Irish were not terribly impressed with knights, if I am remembering m' history. Too shiny and pure. We /liked/ our blackguards."

"Says the lady whose job it is to track them down these days?" Doug asked with a raised eyebrow, flicking his hand toward the stack of files on the table. "And I suppose how 'white' a knight I am depends on who you ask." The distrust from his coworkers over his membership in the Hellfire Club still stung.

Some of the glibness faded from Terry at the hand flick, and she followed his gesture with her eyes and frowned. "To be sure," she murmured and glanced back at him. "Does the armor chafe, Dougie?" she asked, a gentleness replacing the banter.

A quick and glib reply was on Doug's tongue, but then he heard the shift in Terry's tone, and he remembered the vicious look on his sister's face just before Emma had gone in to wipe her memory of the things that had happened. "Yeah," he said roughly.



"Sometimes the thing we wanted is not the thing we needed," Terry said wryly, dipping her fingers into the chips basket to retrieve a rapidly cooling fry and dunked it into the vinegar bath coating the bottom of the basket. She popped the fry into her mouth and licked her fingertips.

Something in Terry's tone and expression pinged Doug's mental antennae, and he cocked his head. "Talking from experience?" he asked, concern coloring his voice.

Terry blew out a breath and gave him a sheepish smile before she nudged the basket toward him. "Better than talking out m' arse, isn't it?" she asked, trying to climb back to the level of levity they had before she divebombed it. She wrapped her fingers around her glass and lifted it in his direction in a toast. "Tell me all about the trial an' travails o' one Douglas Ramsey, and I will match you story for story, pint for pint."

Doug's pint was set on the table a few moments later, and he took a sip from it and leaned back, marshaling his thoughts. "You've been gone for almost two and a half years, lady." He set the glass down and pulled his hair back, affecting his best wild-eyed Nicolas Cage impression. "Gosh, kind of a lot's happened since then," he quoted. "Where should I start?"

"Just means there is a lot of matching to be doing," Terry said, propping her head up on her hand and running a finger around the rim of her glass.

Doug's fingers drummed against the surface of the table. Keeping secrets was second nature to him at this point, but he also felt the need to lay out the things that had happened to him, and perhaps achieve some kind of catharsis. "Well, to start with, there's kind of a price on my head. Which is related to how Marie-Ange left me a 'dear John' letter and went to New Orleans for about six months..."

"How much o' a price?" Terry asked, immediately segueing into a flippant question. "Is it enough to cover our bar tab? Because I may be tempted, I am warning you..." She lifted her glass and took a drink, eyes widening over the rim at him before she set it back down again and leaned forward to continue listening.

"A lot more than our bar tab." Doug raised an eyebrow at the suggestion that Terry might turn him in to cover their drinking. "It got put there by the New Orleans Thieves Guild when the Hellfire Club installed Belladonna Boudreaux as the Black Queen. And it's been tried to get collected on at least once."

Terry didn't appear to be in any hurry to collect, but you can never trust a redhead. She made a little choking sound deep in her throat at his information and twisted her lips into a thoughtful purse. "Glad to know they sent their b-listers then. Jaysus, Dougie. I may be welching on that story for story bit."

Doug's lips twisted. "And then there was the guy who tried to use my sister as leverage against me when she decided to come to Columbia for college..." It was a tossup as to whether Marie-Ange's abrupt departure or his sister's hatred of him hurt more.

Terry pushed her glass toward him, a grimace fixed on her face as she watched him. "And now? How're things standing now?"

Suddenly it struck Doug how much he was dumping on a friend, it was probably quite a bit to take after over two years of being away. A flash of guilt stole across his face, and his eyes flicked off to one side. "Well enough."

Terry barked a laugh, short and as sharp at the gaze she leveled on him. "Oh, sure, well enough. Don't we all do 'well enough'?" She made a face and blew out a breath, feeling the weight of of those two years. "M'sorry, Doug. I wish I had been here. I should have been here," she said, low-voiced but emphatic.

"Thanks, Terry," Doug said quietly. "And hey, at least you're not Jamie. I don't think he and I have said five words to each other since I went to work for the Snow Valley Centre."

"Jamie has his own set o' issues then, and you are not responsible for them," Terry said, slapping the table lightly with her opened hand and straightening in her seat. She shot him a narrowed, green-eyed look as she signalled to the server and placed an order for another round, with water this time too.

"You're gonna have to pour me into bed at this rate," Doug observed. Even if they matched pints with equal amounts of water, this was still shaping up to be a rather epic bender.

"Aye, and me right alongside you," Terry said with an indifferent shrug, and only seemed to realize how it sounded after the words were out. She blushed and widened her eyes a moment before looking anywhere but at him. She finished off her glass instead.

The brassy, unflappable Terry, former lead singer of People Covered In Fish, blushing at a bit of unintended double entendre? Doug raised an eyebrow. He put her behavior, some of her remarks from earlier, and the fact that she was doing paperwork at a pub together. Granted, the beer made the mental arithmetic take a bit longer than usual, but then a concerned look came over his face. "Everything okay, Terry?" he asked. He'd dumped quite a bit on her, it was only fair to see if she needed the same in return.

She'll save the intentional unintentional hitting on for the next time they meet up. She's not the kind to flirt with a guy right off. Unless she'll never see him again. Or just thinks he's hot. or... Okay, never mind, maybe she was acting out of character. Terry sighed and slumped back down in her seat and pursed her lips a moment before she opened her mouth, looked at him, closed her mouth and shook her head. "What? Cannot guess?"

"I'm not a mind-reader, rua," Doug told her gently, drinking more of his pint. "I mean, I can make a few guesses, but it's not like I can know what's eating at you without asking. Work? Family?" Those were probably the most likely, especially since he'd just spent a fair amount of time telling her about his problems in those two areas.

"Thank the saints," Terry breathed fervently, giving him a twisted grin. "I think I would be giving you a headache if you were." She pushed back up in her seat and started fidgeting with the papers scattered around the table. "All of the above? One has affected the other, and the other has made the one untenable," she said with prim crypticness. "I am here now, and do not know where that is, exactly." She stopped and shook her hair back from her face, scrunching it up into a grimace. "M'sorry, Doug. Not being very clear, to be sure. To be honest, I'm a frustration."

"Not to me, you're not," Doug said with a smile for her. "I mean, hell, you were just willing to sit and listen to me vomit two and a half years of drama bomb all over the table, what kind of friend would I be if I weren't supportive of you in return?"

"One I did not have to be explaining my madness to?" Terry teased, rocking forward onto her elbows and pulling her foot up under her to give herself a little leverage in her seat. "And here I have been trying to /avoid/ talking about meself by encouraging your vomit." She stuck out her tongue at him and crossed her eyes.

Doug tapped the side of his nose and chuckled. "Distracting me won't actually work. I tend to be...whatever the opposite of selfish is when it comes to my friends and their problems. So you're not going to get me to talk about myself the whole time."

"Oh, aye. I have not forgotten, white knight," Terry said, her mouth twisting into a wry grin at him, brows lifting. "Can I get you to talk about something else?" The way she asked was mostly teasing, undercut by a faint thread of reluctance.

Doug wasn't the sort to push, though his concern for Terry was obvious. "Sure, if that's what you need," he told her with a bit of a half-shrug. He could see the defensive way she had drawn her leg up, and the way she fidgeted with her papers, as if to give her hands something to be doing. He covered one of her hands with his and squeezed. "I'm here if you need me."

Terry turned hers up under his and returned the squeeze. "Sure, until I am showing up on your doorstep needing a place to stay for a night or two and never move out again," she laughed, releasing his hand and using it to shove her hair back again. "How about starting with helping me finish some o' this food before I get fat on top o' drunk."

"Long as you can deal with my coworkers and our cranky older neighbor who's a bit too quick with the pepper spray, all you have to do is call."