xp_logs | LOG: Terry & Doug, January 22

Backdated to January 22

Terry demands to know why disappearing act on email, and they both make a confession.

You had to wonder how hard Doug might have made it to find out where he lived, but with a few skills honed on the job (aka asking around to anyone from Xavier's), Terry had an apartment number. It was late in the day when she arrived at the brownstone, went upstairs, knocked on his door, then hoisted her shopping bags up and kicked at it, saying loudly, "Douglas Ramsey. I will sit on this bloody step until you open up or come home." She took a breath and added, purely for the neighbors' benefit, "Unless you are talking to Jubilee, and by talking I mean shagging. In which case, just bang on the wall."

Okay, Doug clearly hadn't thought the whole avoidance thing through by going back to his apartment after putting up his 'out of office' auto-reply. But to be fair, he wasn't thinking all that well in general with regards to just about anything, he was just reacting, like he'd said to Terry in email. And now the problem was that none of his reactions to Terry being in the hallway of X-Force's brownstone were very palatable.

He briefly pondered pounding on the wall to imply that he and Jubilee were indeed 'shagging', but the likelihood of Terry just stubbornly waiting until the sex that he wasn't actually having was over was pretty good. He could leave via the fire escape, but given Jubilee's tendency to view their entire building as an oversized jungle gym (after all, when she came down to his apartment, nine times out of ten it was via the fire escape), he ran the risk of running into the girlfriend he was still kind of avoiding.

With feigning a tryst and escaping via the fire escape eliminated, Doug's options reduced to essentially either trying to wait Terry out, or to give in and let her in his apartment. (Though burning down the entire building as a distraction was a strong minority opinion in the back of his brain.) And Doug knew better than to bet against Terry being more stubborn than him. Besides, while the brownstone was almost completely filled with the members of X-Force, there was also Mr. Barnes to deal with, and he wasn't sure how the older man might react to a loud Irishwoman in the hallways.

So he sighed and opened the door, leaning against the jamb and eyeing Terry, at a complete lack for anything to say other than a weak "Hey."

Loud and stubborn. Doug knows her so well. As soon as the door was opened, Terry stuck her foot in the crack, then hip bumped the door further open. "Hey yourself," she replied, forcing her way in past him and finding the nearest surface to put her bags on. She was quiet only as long as it took her to rummage in one of the bags to pull out a small package and toss it to him. It was a cheap cosmetic line's liquid eyeliner in smoky black. "I didn't know if you were stopping on the way home from the office for that, but just in case," she said, folding her arms in front of her and cocking her head as she looked him over through narrowed eyes.

Doug's expression was vaguely amused despite his mood. He supposed he had to file the eyeliner under things that he'd brought on himself, as well. After all, he had been the one to make the joke in their email conversation about it. "I suppose next I'll need to grow out my hair so I can comb it into my eyes," he joked, ruffling a hand through his short curls. "That may take some doing, though, not sure I've got the right hair for it."

"We can be dying it black in the meantime. Powder your face too," Terry deadpanned, her nose crinkling when she added with mock-consideration, "Not that you need it much." She turned back to the bags and started emptying them. There was a disturbing lack of sophistication to their contents-microwave kraft mac and cheese, beer, really cheap icecream. Doug might be able to take comfort in the fact that if she was there to seduce him over dinner, she wasn't trying very hard. There was an edge to her movements, boxes and cartons slapped down harder than strictly necessary. "Have any milk?"

Doug eyed her, debating flat out asking what was going on, because her body language was definitely...odd. Like there was something eating at her. "I do," he replied, his expression softening a bit from the defensive shell it had been when he'd opened the door. "I also have a lot of food in my pantry to make if you want something a bit more upscale than mac'n'cheese. Or, y'know, delivery," he said, waving a hand at the various brightly colored flyers stuck to his refrigerator with magnets.

"This is fine. You want some?" Terry offered, then moved toward the kitchen to raid his refrigerator and microwave. And cabinets too. She opened one after the other until she found a bowl to mix the powder and noodles together in without once looking back at him.

"...sure?" Doug was getting more and more confused by the way Terry was acting, and it showed in the hesitance and questioning tone in his voice. "I mean, if that's what you want?" He crossed to his refrigerator and freezer, placing the beer and ice cream in them in an attempt to be quietly helpful and let Terry work through whatever was the problem.

Bowls were in the microwave before Terry turned around and leaned back against the counter, arms folded in front of her. She lifted her eyes to look him over, then said flatly, "Confession time, boyo. Why the disappearing act?"

And just like that, the bit of softening up Doug had shown reversed, and his shoulders looked tight enough to bounce a coin off of. His eyelids fluttered closed a bit, and a very skittish expression came over his face. His brain was racing. "Why am I always the one confessing?" he asked nervously, trying to think of a response that wasn't likely to get him hit. The truth -certainly- wasn't an option.

"Because I was not the one who threw up an out of office message in the middle of a conversation and ran home t' hide, and for no reason I can fathom at all, at all!" Terry retorted, temper flaring suddenly. Color sped to her face and she hunched her shoulders up to her ears.

And Doug once again found himself backed into a corner (metaphorically, at least) by his decisions. Now that the subject had been placed right out there, his choices were essentially to either tell the truth, and admit that he was having the kinds of thoughts he probably shouldn't have been having about a woman who wasn't his girlfriend, not to mention also another man's wife. Or he could try and weasel out and blow Terry off with a lie and run the very likely risk of completely destroying their renewed friendship.

And since the second option was a lousy, shitty thing to do to a friend, and not something he could ever really bring himself to do, he was left with the very awkward truth. "So. Um," Doug began haltingly, his fingers flexing with nervous energy. "You know how I was all 'I don't think of you as maternal or sixteen', and you said not to tell you if it was bad, and I said it wasn't bad, just awkward?"

Terry sighed a harsh note and turned back around to watch the microwave count down. "Was a joke, Doug. If it's going to be that awkward, save it. I'd rather not send you into a tailspin over something so... so stupid," she said flatly. She reached up and grabbed the handle, flexed her fingers, then yanked the door open before the chime can ring. "I just was wanting to talk t' someone. That's all."

"Dammit." When Doug saw Terry's head turn back towards him, only then did he realize that bit of self-loathing internal commentary had actually been external. He briefly wondered what it was with the redheads in his life, and realizing that the problem was him and his thoughts and feelings. "I ran away because I was having...thoughts," he began quietly. "Thoughts that I felt like I shouldn't have. About you. Because I have a girlfriend." Who's not you. "And you have a husband." Who's not me.

And there it was. There was still a fair possibility that he'd just ruined their friendship by admitting it, but at least he'd managed to be honest. "Sorry."

Surprise bleached out the color in Terry's face, though guilt and understanding nipped on its heels as well. "Oh, Jayzus, Doug," she breathed, holding onto the bowl a few seconds longer than she should have. She dropped the ceramic to the counter top with a clatter and started to blow on her fingertips. The tears starting to shine at the corner of her eyes weren't entirely a result of the burn either. She had known she was playing a dangerous game, but she had assumed it was a game on his end too. Or at least, she had been counting on it. "I do not have a husband," she said quietly, then moved to the kitchen sink to turn a stream of cold water on.

That quiet revelation at the end caused Doug to blanch approximately the same shade that Terry had, even as he was getting a towel and rummaging in the drawers for burn cream, if she should need it. He'd known that he'd been playing with fire as well, but he'd thought the problem lay solely with him and the temptation he'd been feeling. The way Terry had said 'jayzus' and the set to her shoulders said that maybe it -wasn't- just him. He wasn't sure if that made things better or worse. "I knew there were problems, but..." he said just as quietly.

"He's going to the West Coast Annex. We're filing the paperwork for separation," Terry said baldly, sticking her fingers under the stream and watching the water splash over them. Her disappointment in the failure was still too fresh and raw to make light of without the intermediary of a screen. She collected herself and turned the water off with the heel of her hand. Doug had been right. This was awkward, but with everything else unraveling, she didn't want to let another thread go. "I'm sorry. I should not have been flirting like I was. I would never... I mean, I would, but not... /Jubilee/."

Doug had a clean dry towel ready, and he took Terry's hands in his own through the towel, blotting the water away and looking to see how bad the injury might be. It brought them closer, almost uncomfortably so given the weight of their conversation. Doug could see by the downward flick of her eyes and the hitch to her breath that Terry was aware of it too. "You shouldn't only blame yourself," he told her gently, ironically remembering how Marie-Ange had said the same thing to him about their breakup. "I played my own part in...whatever this is." And that was the crazy part of it, nothing had actually happened between them aside from teasing on email and the journals.

Her fingertips were red, but only one looked like it might raise a blister. No permanent damage, unlike the risks of this conversation. "This is nothing," Terry muttered, shaking her head and trying to pull her hands out of his. It was something, though. Something possible, if not actual. She felt like a hypocrite, pushing him to open up without wanting to do so herself.

"You don't really think that any more than I do," Doug said, his voice still gentle. He wanted to keep holding onto her hands, but he also didn't want her to feel trapped, so he let her pull backward. He squeezed them softly through the towel one more time as Terry looked away. "It's something. A possibility of something, at least. At least, that's how I've seen it, the way we've been flirting, even if I maybe didn't want to admit it to myself. Or you."

"Possibilities are not certainties, and it willnae be, Doug. I may be screwed up relationship-wise, but I'm not so far gone as to want to be the excuse for your conflicted rebound," Terry retorted hotly. "I do not want to be doing that to /any/ of us." The emphasis she placed added Jubilee's spectre to the conversation again. And just as quickly as her temper flared, it cooled again and she reached up to clasp the side of his jaw and look into his eyes. "I do care, and I have appreciated your friendship. Fuck, I have /needed/ it, and still do. I will not lie and say I would not consider it either. But we /both/ have enough of a bloody mess to clean up first."

Doug's first reaction was defensiveness at Terry's hot 'rebound' accusation. After all... "I've already done 'conflicted rebound'," he told her after she finished and he'd had a moment to cool from his own instinctive urge to snap back. "That's part of why the way we've been going has been so tempting," he admitted. "Because I realized that I wasn't happy, and I needed something more than just a rebound jump in the sack." He nodded and leaned into the touch of her hand. "You're right, that we both have a lot of mess to clean up before we'd consider anything." He and Jubilee would have to have a pretty uncomfortable conversation, certainly. "But...it helps to know that it's not just me? If that makes any sense at all."

"Aye," Terry admitted with a sigh, her hand dropping away. "It does." She suddenly looked tired and worn out, the effort of keeping personal issues at bay and from bleeding into professional life taking a toll. She stepped sideways, moving back to the counter and microwave where two bowls of cheap cheese were congealing. "Should I... go, or..." she asked.

Doug knew that look, that exhaustion from the bleed between personal and professional, all too well. He'd spent several months feeling it after the mess with Belladonna and the Black Court. To turn Terry out at this point would be like taking a prized toy away from an already crying child, and then shoving it to the ground for good measure. And he couldn't do that. Not when he'd needed the same sort of comfort himself before. "No, you stay, mo chara," he told her softly. "But how about we get something a bit more appetizing than those for dinner?" he asked with a nod to the bowls.

"I like it," Terry protested weakly, sounding just like that child. And then she laughed and shook her head, peeking up at him from behind a bit of hair fallen in her eyes. "But if you cannot be handling the gourmet taste," she joked, reaching to draw a semblance of levity between them like a curtain over their vulnerabilities.

"Comfort food is comfort food," Doug agreed. "Not going to argue with you. Just...let me do something nice for you?" he asked. She seemed like she could use it. And if there was booze with dinner, she was sleeping on his couch. He wouldn't brook any argument there. If it led to any uncomfortable conversations, so be it.

"Never let it be said I turned down free food," Terry said, her smile wan but sincere. She wasn't the only one who could use companionship, no matter how frought it might be. And it's amazing how much easier take out and a movie can make spending a couple hours without much in the way of conversation.