Doug, Amanda, and Marie-Ange - Detox

[xp_cypher]

After a night out partying and gathering intel, Doug needs a safe place to land, detox, and recover. In the process, he and Amanda clear the air a bit from their mutual awkwardness, and Marie-Ange pokes them both, as she does.

(Trigger warning: discussion of drug use)


Doug leaned against the doorframe of Amanda and Marie-Ange's suite. He honestly wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten himself safely back to the mansion - he was in that heady blend of mania and exhaustion that was just barely being held off. And he couldn't think of anywhere else with people who might understand what he was going through. So despite a niggling thought that perhaps he shouldn't, he lifted his hand and knocked several times.

The following pause was long enough to create doubts as to whether someone was actually home, but eventually the door opened. Amanda was wearing one of her old punk band shirts and underwear, with her hair in a loose braid - it was obvious she'd been sleeping. "Doug?" she said, peering at him owlishly. "'S something wrong?"

"Why would anything be-" He couldn't quite make himself finish the euphoric boast, knowing it to be a lie. But it was definitely hard to do, especially since his brain then slid into wanting to perform the introduction to the song Surface Pressure from Encanto. Then he took a moment to consider that there were a lot of ways that you could tell those songs were written by Lin Manuel Miranda... Right. Amanda looking eepy. "Sooooo I had that thing with getting the info from the finance bros about Midland Circle. And why is it always finance -bros- anyway. I mean, I know the answer, institutional sexism. But seriously, it's always bros, and it's always cocaine." He stopped his fingers from drumming on the door frame. "There was cocaine. A -lot- of cocaine. And I was schmoozing, sooo yeah."

The sleepy expression left Amanda's face as he rattled on, replaced by more sympathy than she'd shown to him in a long time. "Get in here," she instructed. "No point waking up the whole mansion while you're coming down." She opened the door wider and ushered him in. "I'd say take a seat, but you're not going to be able to do that for a bit, so feel free to walk around in circles while I get my potion on."

The real problem with mania for Doug is that it also meant that his power was in high gear, so the shift in Amanda's body language was like flashing neon, and his mood swung hard for a moment to regret in waking his friend, with a heavy helping of missing when there hadn't been an enormous unspoken distance between them. The energy swung back to its previous intensity, but now he felt much more brittle, suggesting the comedown was already close at hand. "I could've had the friendos filter things, but-" But then he would have almost certainly had his crash behind the wheel, or in the backseat of his Uber instead of in front of Amanda (and Marie-Ange, if she was in). And in that moment, unable to keep himself from anxiously pacing, he wasn't sure which would be more awkward.

If Amanda had an issue with Doug having his crash in their living area, she didn't show it. Instead she bustled into the kitchen in her business-like way, filling a small pot with water and putting it on to heat, reaching up to take some jars out of a cupboard, sprinkling their various contents into the pot. Glancing up, she paused to grab a sports drink out of the fridge and hand it to him. "Here, you'll need to hydrate. Also, it's good to wash down the potion, since it tastes like all potions, bloody awful." To punctuate her words, a most unappetising smell was coming from the pot.

"Pretty sure I fucked a Hellfire contact for this, too," Doug continued, his mania manifesting in a sort of brutal self-analysis. "Not -fucked- fucked," he clarified with a small shudder. "I try really hard not to put my dick anywhere near finance bros with really sketchy connections, Knight or no." He uncapped the sports drink and started downing it without even really paying attention to it. "But I got the info we were looking for, and I'm not exactly going to shed any tears if that dude turns up with a bad case of 'my sketchy connections decided I was a liability'." The scent of the potion overpowered the unnaturally blue beverage he was drinking and he swallowed heavily. "I'm going to barf blue," he observed.

Amanda frowned at the mention of Doug's Hellfire title, but continued her work. "You spew on the rug and it's Angie you'll answer to, no matter what colour it is," came the unruffled response, swiftly followed by the witch herself with a steaming mug in one hand and a bucket in the other. "Sit, drink this and hold it in as long as you can. But if you can't, use the bucket."

"If you're going to spew, spew into this?" Doug quoted wryly. But he still dragged the bucket over to put at his feet as he sat down. "I made it weird, didn't I. By trying so hard to -not- make it weird. Stay professional, compartmentalize." Doug's analysis was always most cutting when he turned it on himself, after all. "This sucks," Doug commented as he took a long drink of the potion. "I miss...I mean, not 'being friends', because that implies we aren't anymore? But I miss friendship being less, I dunno, fraught." He finished the potion and leaned back, looking at the ceiling and deliberately slowing his breathing to try and avoid what was going to be an absolutely epic bout of nausea.

She took the empty mug out of his hands, but rather than bustling back to the kitchenette, she paused, biting her lip. Then she sat on the edge of the coffee table opposite him. Her eyes were on the mug she was turning around in her hands as she slowly spoke: "The thing is..." She sighed and started again. "I'm fucking stubborn. Always have been. And I've spent the last... what's it been? ten years? more? I've spent all that time reminding myself that I hate the Hellfire Club and everything it stands for. And everyone involved." Now she met Doug's gaze. "But it's not fair. On you, on Clea. Even on Emma. You've all proved you're trustworthy, that you're loyal to the team and to the rest of us. So maybe it's time I tried letting go of that grudge. A little, any way."

Doug's breathing skipped a bit at Amanda's admission, and he swallowed heavily at the combination of emotional turmoil and the physical turmoil starting to happen in his esophagus. His gaze was still elevated over Amanda's head - eye contact would make this way more difficult for both of them, he suspected. "You're not the only stubborn one in this friendship," he offered with a companion sigh of his own. "Not like I haven't been defensive as hell about it for the same amount of time."

"I attack, you defend." Amanda gave him a small grin. "Sounds like back when we were in high school. Besides, it's a bit fucking hypocritical of me to give you shit about being part of the HFC after Roma's fake reality. There I was, front and centre for the Black Queen. But for the grace of whatever and all that. So yeah, I don't like being a hypocrite, even more than I hate the whole HFC concept."

"I've come to realize something. Maybe it's maturing-" Doug retched as the potion twisted in his stomach. He panted, holding back vomit by stubborn willpower. "...maybe not. In an argument, at least with people you care about, you can either be right, and try your hardest to make the other person acknowledge your rightness." He shook his head. "Or you can actually spend your effort trying to fix things."

"I'm tired of trying so much to be right all the damn time." He lay back in his seat, all of his energy gone. This was definitely the crash.

The bedroom door opened, and Marie-Ange padded out in sleep pants and a t-shirt, absolutely stolen from -someone- male because it was too big and had pulled low on one shoulder. "'why're you both..." she rubbed her face a little, and then stopped to look at Doug - at Amanda - and then back at Doug.

Dark suit pants, wrinkled shirt half-unbuttoned, hair an absolute mess - and as she came into the kitchen, she could see how bloodshot Doug's eyes were, the way he kept wiping his nose on the shirt sleeve, and Marie-Ange stared up the ceiling for a burst of irritation. "If you throw up from your cocaine withdrawal I am not cleaning it." - and backed away for a moment into the bathroom to get a wet washcloth to toss at him. "Can you not just - " she made a gesture at his nanite arm. "I thought we talked about how you had to talk them into letting you feel caffeine because the amounts you drink are inadvisable?"

Doug groaned as he tried not to move at all. "The friendos are currently in 'we're not mad, we're just disappointed' territory." Sweat was gathering at his temples, and he couldn't decide whether to wipe it away or if that much motion might trigger vomiting. "I think they're starting to curate a list of which 'bad things' are worse than others, and using that to decide if they feel like helping me." Such was the problem with having a semi-sentient entity sharing his body, it had its own sometimes strongly-held opinions.

"You stole my witch from my bed and now you are going to throw up in our rooms." Marie-Ange said - not asked - she'd seen Doug throw up before, too many times. He was probably a few minutes from losing whatever bad food decisions he'd made into the bucket. "If I pretend to have predicted this can I go back to bed? I overheard entirely too much emotional maturity for three am."

"I didn't mean to wake you up," Doug said quietly, feeling just a little bit stung. He supposed it was fair, he had woken them both up, after all, but he definitely was struggling with Marie-Ange's teasing. "Why don't you both go back to bed, I can-" he shook the bucket to indicate he wouldn't get any on their floor and made like he was going to stand and leave.

"Sit down and stop being a plonker," was Amanda's response, rolling her eyes. "Angie's just taking the piss. You can crash on the couch with your new best friend Mr. Bucket and I'll make sure you have water and aspirin for the morning." She'd already gotten up and disappeared into the spare room, coming back with a blanket and pillow. "We'd offer the spare bed, only there's books all over it."

Doug shuffled over to the couch and sank into it with a sheepish look on his face. It was a mark of just how exhausted he was that he meekly accepted the direction from Amanda along with the pillow and blanket. That last bit of stubborn pride was all he had had remaining. He felt an urge to apologize, but he recognized that came from feeling sorry for himself, so instead he just said a quiet "Thank you" to her and Marie-Ange as they headed back to their bed.

Anyone else Marie-Ange would've muttered something in French and hoped they did not understand. For Doug - she puffed her bangs off her face. "I have spare pajama pants for you, if you can avoid throwing up for five minutes I will put them in the loo." She paused. "I was poking you, because you are pokable. Get some sleep, and listen to your arm robots, stop doing coke with finance bros." Which did reveal she hadn't been woken up abruptly - and had certainly heard more of that conversation than she'd first admitted to. "I'll toast you a waffle in the morning. Garrison brought real maple syrup, it will help get the hangover taste out of your mouth."

Comments

[xp_dominion]

Do you want to build a snowman?

Nice log guys, lots of fun interaction.

[xp_cypher]

YES

but we CAN'T!

[xp_banshee]

Ooooh, dealing with some tough topics - I like how they handle the drug use for work deal, obvs, but more than that I really like how their decades-long friendships come through despite recent developments/distance.

Great log, guys!