Teenage Wasteland Aftermath - Doug and Marie-Ange (backdated)

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Backdated to January 15th. After showering and shaving at Wade's urging, Doug comes back to the office to do work, and manages to have an actual conversation with Marie-Ange, that results in a tentative truce.


After Wade had broken into his office by the window and they'd shared food and alcohol (and trauma), Doug had finally left his office, returned to his apartment, and showered and shaved. All things that he still didn't really have the energy for, but he'd made himself do it anyway. Now he was all clean and dressed in new clothes, and had managed to get at least a little bit more sleep than he had snatched in his office, even if it had failed to be very restful. But at least he looked presentable. Now all the things he was struggling through dealing with were just internal and no longer reflected in his appearance. That was something, right?

He walked into the office, carrying his usual 'as much espresso as you can legally sell me' that he'd wheedled out of the coffee girls. He knew even they probably had enough experience at this point with the Snow Valley employees to tell what that meant, and he hadn't missed the sidelong glances. But again, he couldn't really bring himself to care. He walked with slightly dragged feet past the door to Marie-Ange's office on his way to his own, and even though he hadn't made any noise, she happened to look up and meet his eyes just as he glanced into the room. He smothered an internal sigh and turned to enter the room, because just ignoring her would have been rude.

"I guess we know now who's to blame for the breakup," he said dryly and self-mockingly, referencing the conversation they'd had while they were sixteen. At a loss for whether or not to sit down, he stood just inside the door and took a long sip of his coffee while he waited to see what she would say in reply.

For a moment Marie-Ange narrowed her eyes, a little disbelieving that Doug would just walk in and snap at her like that, and then she shook her head. She was not going to let him keep starting fights, it just made both of them miserable, but she was not going to sit there and let him blame her either. "I am all too aware of whose fault it is. I would have apologized if you had not kept trying to start fights like you are now."

Doug blinked in shock, his coffee still up at his mouth. That wasn't what he'd...wait, Marie-Ange was blaming herself? He slowly lowered his coffee and shook his head. "Huh? I meant me." He was the one who'd gone and made it so that she felt like she couldn't trust him...

"I was the one who left." Marie-Ange said, as though Doug were a very small child. "With just a note for you to find. It is not as though I explained very much to you." She couldn't have explained, but it still was a terrible thing to do to someone that you had said "I love you" to.

"I'm the one who made the decision that made you move in with Amanda because you couldn't trust me anymore." Doug finally uncoiled his arm, but it just sort of hung there, like he wasn't sure to do with his coffee now. And he couldn't quite bring himself to sit down. Of all the things for them to be fighting over, now they were arguing over which of them should take the blame for the breakup? And not even in a normal way, no, they were each convinced that they were the problem.

Marie-Ange blew out a sigh that pushed her hair away from her face, and then shoved her chair out from her desk. "Doug, I was angry at you, yes, but I was only going to stay away a few days until I realized my nightmares had nothing to do with Selene!" She waved her hand a a row of sketchpads on one of her bookshelves, newly organized. "Why on earth would I be angry at you for making a hard decision?" She gave him a sheepish smile. "I do try not to be a hypocrite sometimes."

"But." Doug didn't really manage anything other than the single word. Maybe because he wasn't sure how to address that, how to sort out the jumble of sentences that all started with 'but' crammed in his head. But everyone in the office had treated him like a pariah for far longer than 'a few days'. But she hadn't bothered to say that before she'd left for New Orleans. But he didn't know how to feel about her anymore, because of the complete lack of closure her departure had left him with. But, but, but.

"Am I happy about the decision? No. Do I understand, not entirely." Marie-Ange shook her head slowly. "I shot Cammie, Doug. With your gun. I would've had you shoot Mister Barnes daughter." She would've left Remy, if she thought it might cost the team, but she was not about to say that out loud. Not quite anyway. "I sold out how many of our contacts in Russia?"

And there was that 'but' again, and the host of sentences starting with it warring to get out. But she had precognition on her side. But all of her decisions had turned out to be the right ones. But she seemed so much more sure of what she needed to do.

Doug's eyes were looking more and more haunted, and if you knew him well enough, which Marie-Ange did, it probably looked like he might almost cry if the wrong thing was said. "Look...I know..." he said hesitantly and haltingly, trying to find words to express himself. Which made him feel even more like his sixteen year old self despite having gotten all his memories back. "I know that...I'm the problem right now," he finally managed, waving a hand between the two of them to somehow encompass every awkward interaction they'd had since her return. Because he knew that his own complicated and unresolved feelings for her were what kept coming between them. "I just...I can't...I don't know how to..."

To say that patience was not always Marie-Ange's strong suit was an understatement. It took a little more than considerable effort to not snap at Doug that his share of the problem was that he kept acting like he was sixteen and either storming off or being pathetic or stammering like he did not know how to put sentences together. The least he could do, she thought was to stop and put an entire sentence together before he opened his mouth, but she'd decided she was not going to make this any worse, and she would be nice, even if it made her want to scream a little bit. "Stop, please, Doug. Figure out what you want to say, and then say it, because it is hard to understand what you mean when you keep stopping and starting and starting over and over."

Doug nodded. She was right. She wasn't inside his head, privy to all the conflicting thoughts rattling around inside it. All she had to go on was the fits and starts and half sentences he was managing to get out. He took a deep breath. "I know that I'm causing most, if not all, of the problems between us right now." He took another deep breath and blew it out slowly. "But recognizing that isn't the same as knowing how to fix it." If it could be fixed at this point. "I can't just wave a hand and change my brain."

"Can we start by declaring a truce?" Marie-Ange asked. "You are not causing all the problems, and you should not blame yourself, but I think first, a truce." A flash of something - shadowy and moving too fast to clearly see clouded her vision for a second and she shook it off.

"It's kind of hard for me to believe that," Doug said, "but yes, I think a truce sounds like a good idea." He would like to be able to talk to Marie-Ange like something resembling normal, or at least without degenerating into yelling within five minutes. That would be nice.

"We managed a whole double date without fighting even once." Marie-Ange pointed out. "Even when it turned into planning how to stop a bank heist. I think we can manage to not try to beat each other over the head with the past, yes?"

And what about beating himself over the head with the past? Doug didn't say that, though. "I think we can manage that," he said with a nod. "Well," he gestured with his coffee cup, "I probably ought to get to work. Um, bye?" This was going to take some work.

The vaguely imperious wave of Marie-Ange's hand was matched with a shake of her head. "Doug, you look terrible. Go home and go to sleep. Remy is not going to be back for a few days, and all your work backlog can be done from your sofa." She caught his skeptical look and made a shooing motion. "I have my very own office now, it means I can tell people what to do."