Doug and Marie-Ange
Jun. 15th, 2019 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsDoug and Marie-Ange have a rather freewheeling conversation about what they are without Wade or Laurie, prophecy, obligation, the status of Doug's blood curse, and Marie-Ange engaging in 'automatic texting'.
Doug spent a lot of time in the common area of Marie-Ange and Amanda's suite, curled up on the couch doing work, or watching television, or having a snack and kind of half-napping. It was easy, just being in the same space as his...he cocked his head abruptly and sat up, shifting his laptop.
"What...are we?" he asked slowly, turning to face her.
"Ah..." It was rare that Marie-Ange was taken aback, and she blinked at Doug several times before cocking her head. "Is this from a movie, or a very real question?"
"No, this is real," Doug replied. "I mean, we were..." Damn, trying to find words for this was hard. And he couldn't very well be stopping every five words to make vague hand gestures to try and convey complicated ideas. "We dated, then we were apart, then we were dating other people, and then we were part of..." How to describe the strange four-way relationship they had had with Laurie and Wade... "...a group, but then Laurie decided she was done, and Wade went off to do whatever it is he's doing...and we never really established what any of that means for the two of us individually?" He scrubbed his face. "If that makes any sense at all." He wasn't sure if it did.
"Do we need to find words for this? Does it need a label?" Marie-Ange unfolded from her pile of paperwork and endless coloured pens and notes that she could have taken on a laptop but she always made connections better on paper and sat down on the sofa across from Doug, feet reaching out to tuck under his blanket. "I know, you like words, but does it require them?"
"Wel-l-l..." Doug drew out the word and scrunched his face. "The last time around, half of our problem was that we weren't talking about important things? So maybe we could, um, try and be more adult and mature about things this time?" The fact that he was uptalking just about every single sentence probably said something about how nervous he was bringing this up.
Marie-Ange poked a toe into Doug's ankle. "And the last time we clung to labels and did not talk about anything else, so maybe we should just reverse that. Talk about important things, and not so much about what label we have to put on a relationship?"
Doug nodded. "That's fair. I just...want to make sure we don't fall back into old habits along the way." He burrowed under his blanket a bit more and dug his toes under Marie-Ange's leg in an attempt to get warm.
A long, slow inhale, and then Marie-Ange closed her eye, and set her hands in her lap. "There is no chance of us avoiding talking about serious matters. You know as much as I do, that is something we cannot afford to do." She shifted, and settled herself closer to Doug, letting him dig ice-cold toes into her legs. "We have bargained far too much, all - both of us, and I am not going to permit us to be silly about it."
"Look at us, using our big kid words and everything." Doug's eyes twinkled in amusement. "I'm...glad to have another chance at this, now that we've figured some things out and all." He blew a long sigh. "This blood thing, on the other hand, I could have done without." Not that he would have done anything differently.
"When is your next doctor visit?" Marie-Ange could've done with one more eye back in her head, but at least she'd known it was going to happen eventually. She had a lot more lead time to get used to the idea. "Do they have any more ideas to try?"
Fishing out his phone, Doug tapped at his calendar app. "A couple days from now, actually." Coincidence? He rather doubted it. He'd stopped believing in it after such long experience with Marie-Ange's precognition. "I think they want to do about a billion blood tests and see what they can come up with."
Marie-Ange's laugh was undignified and snorty. "You have enough blood for them to do that? I thought this whole problem was "Doug does not have any spare blood." She patted at his foot, and pulled her own phone. "Send me the appointment details. You share yours, I will share mine." A few taps and the 'plastic surgery consult' and 'prosthetic design' items popped into his calendar. "I am probably going to keep the eyepatches but I like to keep my options open."
"I mean, I think Odin looks more dignified than Mad-Eye Moody, but I guess maybe you could go full cyborg replacement parts if you wanted." Doug chuckled. "You want to go through my Shadowrun sourcebooks for inspiration?" Knowing Emma, Frost Industries would probably throw buckets of money at the project if Marie-Ange wanted.
"Doug." Marie-Ange said, voice completely flat. "Do you really want to continue this particular line of possibility, given... " She raised the unscarred eyebrow. "Given everything about you, all of it, everything you are."
"And when have you ever known me to deal with uncomfortable situations in a way that -didn't- involve inappropriate marginally self-aware humor?"
---
Doug blew out a sigh approximately heavy enough to propel a small sailboat as he came into the room and laid down on the couch, dropping his feet in Marie-Ange's lap and covering his eyes with one arm. He had just come from an appointment in the Medlab, and... "That was not the result I was hoping for," he announced. "Not that I really expected science to be able to cope with a magic curse, but still."
"I thought you had decided magic was science that science cannot explain." Marie-Ange said, picking up one of Doug's feet and then the other to slide a knit blanket between them and her lap. "Your feet feel like you have been visiting Robert Drake, not one of our medical staff. I am buying you better socks I do not care if it is summer." She settled the blanket down, and wiggled herself back into a comfortable position. "So what next for you?"
"Obviously, get some thicc socks," Doug muttered. Yes, he was deflecting. "Or maybe some of those ones with the individual toes on them." He yelped as Marie-Ange poked his instep - she'd clearly recognized the defense tactic as well. "Okay, okay. Sharon Friedlander had a few ideas for things to up my red blood cell count, but those are more temporary in-the-moment things, not a permanent solution." Especially since his research on EPO indicated that it was considered a doping substance in professional sport circles. "So..." He really didn't want to say it. He'd spent so long working to keep himself at peak performance so that he -wouldn't- be the geek in the van. "Probably means I need to ride the pine. Run comms from the rear."
"I take everything I said about wanting to know things back." Marie-Ange said darkly. "I assumed you would be off most field work but I do not like it being confirmed." She bunched the edge of the blanket in her hands and then flattened it out again. "I can work with this but your next assignment is to get a list of options you have not tried yet. Broaden the parameters, magic, medicine, technology. I want details. If there are temporary solutions that will not kill you, I want them on the table so I can put you in the field in an emergency."
He had to snort a little bit at the idea of Angie actually not wanting to know something. That was part of what they had in common, even if they came at it from different directions - a sometimes overwhelming need to know as much as possible about as many things as possible. Doug shifted and fished his phone out of a pocket, and tapped a few times to send a document over wifi to Marie-Ange's phone. "There's everything Sharon found and suggested, as a starting point."
Marie-Ange's breath came out in a huff. "Medical is at least started then. Technology... ?" She didn't wait for Doug to acknowledge the question, she knew his answer. "The blood problem is magical, and Amanda has already delved into it herself. Perhaps it is time for outside consultants..."
"Seems logical to me. So...where do we start?" Doug worried at his thumbnail with his teeth before venturing a tentative "New Orleans?"
"Stop that, they are already fragile." Marie-Ange tugged Doug's thumb away from his mouth. "Only in a last resort, I do not trust myself all the time to go there for magic."
Doug nodded. "That's fair, I figured I'd check." What with them actually talking about things and not avoiding hard subjects. "I suppose we could ask the Ancient One and all the people there who can't stand us." He twirled a finger, managing to infuse the gesture with a solid helping of sarcasm at the thought.
"Can I make a horcrux from one of them?" Marie-Ange shot back. "I think for this, we go to the experts and that means Topaz and Amanda giving us a list of people they know. Topaz has her internet forums, Amanda has so many contacts. Perhaps Wanda too, she knows everyone."
"-Yeah- she does." Doug was pretty sure that the only person around the mansion with more contacts in more obscure places was Kevin, and that only by virtue of him having been around longer. "I mean, she knew people who got her stuff unfucked. Sadly they couldn't extend their mojo to me, though." He shrugged. "Hell, I'd even give la hechicera a listen if she thought she could fix it. Not that I'd -trust- her, but still."
Marie-Ange shook her head sharply. "Already crossed her off my list. No way to contact her type of people safely and too much risk of, ah.." Well, if Doug was going to be coy about names, and he was probably right to do so when talking about this much magic. "Le menteur... And past that we get into dangerous territory. I lost my eye in the same fight as your curse, I ... do not hold much hope that I could get answers from anyone in Asgard."
"Just more ravens." Doug snorted in disdain at the thought of Odin actually doing something besides apparently sending all sorts of cryptic omens to Marie-Ange. "Oh, uh, speaking of which, I did some digging and I figured out who's been sending you those pictures of ravens." He paused, schooling his features. "So, yeah, just when you thought this couldn't get weirder or more disturbing...turns out you were sending them to yourself via a burner phone."
"What." Marie-Ange said flatly. "I thought that the damned automatic writing was over, and now this?" She opened her mouth several times as though she intended to say something and then finally made an exasperated huff. "Where did I even get those photos?"
Doug pulled up the data and parsed through it. "According to the metadata, some art installations at one of those little neighborhood-style museums. I'm guessing the automatic writing turning into automatic photography probably means some kind of escalation." Of course, that raised a hundred different questions in response. Such was trying to make sense of Marie-Ange's precognition.
"I am going to guess that those museums are in proximity to the events of late, with hammers, yes?" Marie-Ange scooted across the sofa to look at Doug's tablet. "Make that big, let us see if we can predict any more locations from my self-texting."
"Work, work." Doug did his best impression of a put-upon Warcraft orc peon. But he was already levering himself up off the couch to go find an actual computer capable of correlating the pictures with the locations they were taken at.
Doug spent a lot of time in the common area of Marie-Ange and Amanda's suite, curled up on the couch doing work, or watching television, or having a snack and kind of half-napping. It was easy, just being in the same space as his...he cocked his head abruptly and sat up, shifting his laptop.
"What...are we?" he asked slowly, turning to face her.
"Ah..." It was rare that Marie-Ange was taken aback, and she blinked at Doug several times before cocking her head. "Is this from a movie, or a very real question?"
"No, this is real," Doug replied. "I mean, we were..." Damn, trying to find words for this was hard. And he couldn't very well be stopping every five words to make vague hand gestures to try and convey complicated ideas. "We dated, then we were apart, then we were dating other people, and then we were part of..." How to describe the strange four-way relationship they had had with Laurie and Wade... "...a group, but then Laurie decided she was done, and Wade went off to do whatever it is he's doing...and we never really established what any of that means for the two of us individually?" He scrubbed his face. "If that makes any sense at all." He wasn't sure if it did.
"Do we need to find words for this? Does it need a label?" Marie-Ange unfolded from her pile of paperwork and endless coloured pens and notes that she could have taken on a laptop but she always made connections better on paper and sat down on the sofa across from Doug, feet reaching out to tuck under his blanket. "I know, you like words, but does it require them?"
"Wel-l-l..." Doug drew out the word and scrunched his face. "The last time around, half of our problem was that we weren't talking about important things? So maybe we could, um, try and be more adult and mature about things this time?" The fact that he was uptalking just about every single sentence probably said something about how nervous he was bringing this up.
Marie-Ange poked a toe into Doug's ankle. "And the last time we clung to labels and did not talk about anything else, so maybe we should just reverse that. Talk about important things, and not so much about what label we have to put on a relationship?"
Doug nodded. "That's fair. I just...want to make sure we don't fall back into old habits along the way." He burrowed under his blanket a bit more and dug his toes under Marie-Ange's leg in an attempt to get warm.
A long, slow inhale, and then Marie-Ange closed her eye, and set her hands in her lap. "There is no chance of us avoiding talking about serious matters. You know as much as I do, that is something we cannot afford to do." She shifted, and settled herself closer to Doug, letting him dig ice-cold toes into her legs. "We have bargained far too much, all - both of us, and I am not going to permit us to be silly about it."
"Look at us, using our big kid words and everything." Doug's eyes twinkled in amusement. "I'm...glad to have another chance at this, now that we've figured some things out and all." He blew a long sigh. "This blood thing, on the other hand, I could have done without." Not that he would have done anything differently.
"When is your next doctor visit?" Marie-Ange could've done with one more eye back in her head, but at least she'd known it was going to happen eventually. She had a lot more lead time to get used to the idea. "Do they have any more ideas to try?"
Fishing out his phone, Doug tapped at his calendar app. "A couple days from now, actually." Coincidence? He rather doubted it. He'd stopped believing in it after such long experience with Marie-Ange's precognition. "I think they want to do about a billion blood tests and see what they can come up with."
Marie-Ange's laugh was undignified and snorty. "You have enough blood for them to do that? I thought this whole problem was "Doug does not have any spare blood." She patted at his foot, and pulled her own phone. "Send me the appointment details. You share yours, I will share mine." A few taps and the 'plastic surgery consult' and 'prosthetic design' items popped into his calendar. "I am probably going to keep the eyepatches but I like to keep my options open."
"I mean, I think Odin looks more dignified than Mad-Eye Moody, but I guess maybe you could go full cyborg replacement parts if you wanted." Doug chuckled. "You want to go through my Shadowrun sourcebooks for inspiration?" Knowing Emma, Frost Industries would probably throw buckets of money at the project if Marie-Ange wanted.
"Doug." Marie-Ange said, voice completely flat. "Do you really want to continue this particular line of possibility, given... " She raised the unscarred eyebrow. "Given everything about you, all of it, everything you are."
"And when have you ever known me to deal with uncomfortable situations in a way that -didn't- involve inappropriate marginally self-aware humor?"
---
Doug blew out a sigh approximately heavy enough to propel a small sailboat as he came into the room and laid down on the couch, dropping his feet in Marie-Ange's lap and covering his eyes with one arm. He had just come from an appointment in the Medlab, and... "That was not the result I was hoping for," he announced. "Not that I really expected science to be able to cope with a magic curse, but still."
"I thought you had decided magic was science that science cannot explain." Marie-Ange said, picking up one of Doug's feet and then the other to slide a knit blanket between them and her lap. "Your feet feel like you have been visiting Robert Drake, not one of our medical staff. I am buying you better socks I do not care if it is summer." She settled the blanket down, and wiggled herself back into a comfortable position. "So what next for you?"
"Obviously, get some thicc socks," Doug muttered. Yes, he was deflecting. "Or maybe some of those ones with the individual toes on them." He yelped as Marie-Ange poked his instep - she'd clearly recognized the defense tactic as well. "Okay, okay. Sharon Friedlander had a few ideas for things to up my red blood cell count, but those are more temporary in-the-moment things, not a permanent solution." Especially since his research on EPO indicated that it was considered a doping substance in professional sport circles. "So..." He really didn't want to say it. He'd spent so long working to keep himself at peak performance so that he -wouldn't- be the geek in the van. "Probably means I need to ride the pine. Run comms from the rear."
"I take everything I said about wanting to know things back." Marie-Ange said darkly. "I assumed you would be off most field work but I do not like it being confirmed." She bunched the edge of the blanket in her hands and then flattened it out again. "I can work with this but your next assignment is to get a list of options you have not tried yet. Broaden the parameters, magic, medicine, technology. I want details. If there are temporary solutions that will not kill you, I want them on the table so I can put you in the field in an emergency."
He had to snort a little bit at the idea of Angie actually not wanting to know something. That was part of what they had in common, even if they came at it from different directions - a sometimes overwhelming need to know as much as possible about as many things as possible. Doug shifted and fished his phone out of a pocket, and tapped a few times to send a document over wifi to Marie-Ange's phone. "There's everything Sharon found and suggested, as a starting point."
Marie-Ange's breath came out in a huff. "Medical is at least started then. Technology... ?" She didn't wait for Doug to acknowledge the question, she knew his answer. "The blood problem is magical, and Amanda has already delved into it herself. Perhaps it is time for outside consultants..."
"Seems logical to me. So...where do we start?" Doug worried at his thumbnail with his teeth before venturing a tentative "New Orleans?"
"Stop that, they are already fragile." Marie-Ange tugged Doug's thumb away from his mouth. "Only in a last resort, I do not trust myself all the time to go there for magic."
Doug nodded. "That's fair, I figured I'd check." What with them actually talking about things and not avoiding hard subjects. "I suppose we could ask the Ancient One and all the people there who can't stand us." He twirled a finger, managing to infuse the gesture with a solid helping of sarcasm at the thought.
"Can I make a horcrux from one of them?" Marie-Ange shot back. "I think for this, we go to the experts and that means Topaz and Amanda giving us a list of people they know. Topaz has her internet forums, Amanda has so many contacts. Perhaps Wanda too, she knows everyone."
"-Yeah- she does." Doug was pretty sure that the only person around the mansion with more contacts in more obscure places was Kevin, and that only by virtue of him having been around longer. "I mean, she knew people who got her stuff unfucked. Sadly they couldn't extend their mojo to me, though." He shrugged. "Hell, I'd even give la hechicera a listen if she thought she could fix it. Not that I'd -trust- her, but still."
Marie-Ange shook her head sharply. "Already crossed her off my list. No way to contact her type of people safely and too much risk of, ah.." Well, if Doug was going to be coy about names, and he was probably right to do so when talking about this much magic. "Le menteur... And past that we get into dangerous territory. I lost my eye in the same fight as your curse, I ... do not hold much hope that I could get answers from anyone in Asgard."
"Just more ravens." Doug snorted in disdain at the thought of Odin actually doing something besides apparently sending all sorts of cryptic omens to Marie-Ange. "Oh, uh, speaking of which, I did some digging and I figured out who's been sending you those pictures of ravens." He paused, schooling his features. "So, yeah, just when you thought this couldn't get weirder or more disturbing...turns out you were sending them to yourself via a burner phone."
"What." Marie-Ange said flatly. "I thought that the damned automatic writing was over, and now this?" She opened her mouth several times as though she intended to say something and then finally made an exasperated huff. "Where did I even get those photos?"
Doug pulled up the data and parsed through it. "According to the metadata, some art installations at one of those little neighborhood-style museums. I'm guessing the automatic writing turning into automatic photography probably means some kind of escalation." Of course, that raised a hundred different questions in response. Such was trying to make sense of Marie-Ange's precognition.
"I am going to guess that those museums are in proximity to the events of late, with hammers, yes?" Marie-Ange scooted across the sofa to look at Doug's tablet. "Make that big, let us see if we can predict any more locations from my self-texting."
"Work, work." Doug did his best impression of a put-upon Warcraft orc peon. But he was already levering himself up off the couch to go find an actual computer capable of correlating the pictures with the locations they were taken at.
