xp_logs | Log: Doug and Maya

xp_echo posting in

Backdated waaaaaay back to within a few weeks of Maya's initial arrival at the mansion.

Maya comes looking for Wade and ends up with a Doug instead, things go interestingly. Maya once again proves she's really bad at meeting new people

The Ice Cream Eating guy video :D

Maya knocked on the door to Wade’s suite – fidgeting as she waited for him to answer the door.

She wanted to know if he’d heard anything from her father or Grandparents this week.

Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly ill at ease at the mansion, she wondered if they’d ever be safe. Even if they found out who had put the hit out on her father, she wouldn’t be able to go back home. Not until she could fully control whatever it was that she could do.

Right now they’d narrowed it down but she couldn’t consistently make anything happen, it was frustrating to say the least.

Doug was actually lounging about in Wade's common area - he and the mercenary had been hanging out and playing video games before Wade had gone off to do...whatever it was, he wasn't actually sure. Maybe fetch more snacks or something, it had gotten a little vague with all the trash talking, elbowing under the ribs and general shenanigans. "It's open," he called, not really feeling like getting up from his sprawling position on the couch.

Maya opened the door, looking around curiously until she saw Doug sprawled on Wade’s couch. Her expression soured, shoulders going almost imperceptibly stiff as she glared at the man, seeming to blame him for merely existing in the same space as herself.

“Where’s Wade?”

Almost imperceptible didn't mean much when you were in a room with someone who read body language instinctively. Doug looked up and his eyes narrowed slightly, wondering what had brought on the shift in mood in the teenager. "Not a hundred percent sure, I think he went to get snacks." He waved a hand negligently. "Maya, right? Any particular reason you were looking for him?" Maybe a bit of small talk would draw her out.

“You often ask people about their personal business?” Maya asked. She glared at him as she moved into the room and flopped down with a mulish expression. “He’s my guardian, I need to talk about stuff. Who are you anyway?”

Doug kept his expression studiously neutral in reply to Maya's mulishness and confrontational tone. "Just making conversation, if it was urgent I could try and call him or something." He shrugged. "I'm Doug Ramsey." If she objected to people asking her about personal business, he could play that game too.

“Are you?” Maya replied, kicking her shoes off to curl her legs under her on the couch. She could wait for Wade to get back, it wasn’t urgent enough to summon him from wherever he’d gone off to. “And here I thought you were human.”

Doug raised a deadpan eyebrow and held his hands up, palms outward. "Negative, I am a meat popsicle." Deflect with humor and movie references - he could do this all day, if Maya was going to be that standoffish.

“Whatever you say, Korben,” Maya replied, lips twitching upwards for a moment before she schooled her expression back into casual indifference. “Would’ve pegged you for more of a ‘Tears in the rain’ style reference though, being old and all.”

"Oh, I've seen things you wouldn't believe," Doug agreed, doing his best to mimic Rutger Hauer's dramatic delivery. "More than one movie, even some of that newfangled television. I contain multitudes."

The accusation of being old just caused him to smirk a bit rather than take offense.

"Just don't spit pea soup at me," Maya replied with a smirk of her own. If he wanted to talk in movie quotes, she'd match him quote and reference.

Her father had been a fan of movies of all sorts, and it had been an easy thing to bond over given that he couldn't be there for her day to day like her Grandparents could. The fact that she hadn't been able to see the most recent spate of sci-fi/fantasy movies with him just made her feel even more lost then she normally did.

Doug chuckled. "Did you know that in order to make the reaction more real, they didn't tell him he was going to get the soup to the face?" He'd fallen into the Cracked rabbit hole one day, and read an entire article on jump scares like that and the one in Alien.

"So...what're you doing here?"

Maya's expression had lightened slightly as they talked, the closed body language relaxing from completely closed to suspicious but at least not ready to bolt.

Doug shrugged. "Hanging out with Wade." They spent a fairly equal amount of time in his suite, Marie-Ange's suite, and Wade's suite. A definite upside of communal living.

"That a euphemism for something I don't want to know about?" Maya asked, eyebrows jerking slightly upwards.

"You often ask people about their personal business?" Doug volleyed back with her earlier question and a single raised eyebrow of his own.

"Always," Maya replied with a smirk. "People are interesting."

"They certainly are." It amused Doug, the way she was trying to engage in conversational judo with him, press him on things while saying as little as possible about herself. It was like watching a tiny baby porcupine try to look intimidating. But pinching her cheeks would just be insulting. He flicked his fingers at the controllers on the table. "Video games, if you must know." Not that it couldn't have been a euphemism, but they wouldn't have been doing that out in the common area where a teenager could come wandering in willy-nilly. But he wasn't going to volunteer that.

“Now we’re talking,” Maya replied with a quick grin, finally relaxing fully - she could dig someone who wouldn’t react to her needling. “What kind? You look like an RPG fan, but you might surprise me.”

"Why limit yourself to one genre?" Some things appealed more to him than others, but as far as Doug was concerned, if a game was good, it didn't really matter what category people tried to put it in. "Right now, though? Smash Brothers." Wade had a definite weakness for cartoony violence sometimes.

“Eh, it’s alright,” Maya opinioned, wrinkling her nose. “I’m more into the new Tomb Raider games right now, although the new Doom game looks like something I should check out.”

"The Tomb Raider franchise is kind of hit or miss for me," Doug mused. "Then again, lots of franchises are. I mean, let's not get started on a Metroid game where Samus basically needs her boyfriend's permission to level up." He made a disgusted noise. "I've been hearing good stuff about Doom, though, yeah."

"Look it you, with all the right words," Maya sneered, eyeing him suspiciously. She hated white knights, men who basically thought they needed to protect women, as if they couldn't protect themselves. This Doug wasn't going to score any 'I'm awesome' points with her just because he knew feminist talking points. "You get that disgust out of a Wheaties packet or you actually believe what you're saying?"

"Well, I guess this is a turnaround, the Fake Geek Boy getting quizzed on his bona fides?" It didn't matter much to Doug, and the more suspicious Maya's body language got, the more relaxed and slightly amused his got. He'd known coming into this conversation that the girl had a rather big chip on her shoulder.

“Well, what are they?” Maya asked, unperturbed by his complete no-sell of her accusation, her body language did suddenly relax however, an unconscious mirroring of his own. “Unless you’re scared, of course.”

"I'm curious, what would you do if some Comic Book Store Guy started asking if you were scared?" Turnabout, fair play, et cetera. "I mean, if you want to borrow my XBox library, you could just ask."

“Probably show him the ice cream misandry .gif.”

Maya smiled at him, and shrugged as if she didn’t really care whether he offered her a look at his Xbox library or not.

"I'm more of a Sophie Turner sitting on the Iron Throne sort myself."