xp_logs | Doug and Nathan, Saturday evening (Reply)

A much calmer Nathan goes to thank Doug again for his help with Domino the previous night and insists on doing something for Doug and Angie in return.

Doug flopped on the couch with the remote, a bowl of buttered popcorn, and a cold can of soda. Various events of the previous week had stretched him a little thin, and he was making an attempt to recenter himself. Hitting the remote, he cued up the Matrix trilogy DVDs that he had put in the player and settled back, prepared to enjoy several hours of mind-blowing special effects.

Nathan stopped in the doorway of the rec room, unable to help a smile at the sight of Doug flaked out in front of the television. "Mind if I join you?" he asked. "Popcorn smells good..."

Doug looked up and smiled. "Hey, boss man. Help yourself," he mumbled around a mouthful of popcorn, making a vague motion at where the bowl rested on the coffee table with one hand as he took a sip from his soda. "How's Dom?" he asked quietly as Nathan took a seat.

"Back in Berlin," Nathan said, sitting down on the couch and reaching out for a handful of popcorn. "Rather cranky about the fact that Alexey's doctor friend decided it was necessary to pump her stomach, but I'm afraid I didn't feel particularly sorry for her. GW claims he's reading her the riot act for both of us."

Doug grimaced. "Yeah, well, she'll probably get it again in person the next time she's here, I think," he replied. "She really was worrying the crap out of me. Knowing her, she'll probably brush it all off, but..." He shrugged.

"I still haven't told Amanda yet," Nathan said with a sigh. "Don't mention it to her, okay?" He shook his head. "You'd never guess Dom spent too many of her impressionable years around me, would you?"

Doug chuckled. "From the little I know, I think Dom might have turned out worse without you to help her along." He carefully didn't use the phrase 'dead in a ditch', but he was thinking it, especially after worrying about the way Dom had mixed vodka and painkillers the previous night.

Nathan grimaced a little. "You've got to understand, Doug, that Dom's powers make her even a little more reckless than someone with her background and experience would generally be." He tried some of the popcorn, deciding that it wasn't bad for what was probably microwave popcorn. "It's not a good trait, and God knows it's one I've tried to train out of her, but I haven't had much luck." He stopped, blinking at his own unintentional pun.

Doug bent over snickering at the pun, then lay back as he crammed another handful of popcorn into his mouth. Chewing on it slowly, he thought for a minute. "Doesn't make it any less worrying from this end, though, does it?"

"Not for a second," Nathan said, then sighed again. "I worry about her working solo every time she does," he confessed almost impulsively. "Even now."

Doug shook his head in an attempt to shake off his morose mood. "Well, at least she's safe and sound now, whatever her opinion of us. Glad I could help with that."

Nathan mustered a smile. "And I'm really grateful for your help, Doug. I know I told you that last night, but I think we were both pretty distracted at the time. Seriously, I'm in your debt, and I'm not saying that as Nathan the often-flaky language teacher. I might be more or less out of the life at the moment, but I still take debts like that to heart." He couldn't stop his smile from growing a little more as Doug flushed. "So let me do something to thank you properly? Send you and Angie out for the evening or something, maybe?"

Doug flushed a bit more. The idea of Nathan owing him for something seemed a bit ludicrous, and almost emabarassing. "Um, an evening out with Angie sounds nice," he managed. Of course, the nice things Nathan was saying were probably the exact opposite of whatever Domino might have to say the next time he spoke to her. If she felt like speaking to him...

"Good," Nathan said as briskly as he could manage. "Then leave it to me, and I'll plot something suitably entertaining. You both need to get away from things that cause you headaches," he proclaimed and couldn't help a bit of a flinch, thinking of Angie's email about seeing him in her dreams. He had meditated for almost two solid hours, and while he was a lot calmer, it wasn't a 'cure'. Just a temporary fix until the next development blew in and knocked him off his feet again. It was all very tiring, he thought with a flicker of ironic humor.

Doug looked at Nathan, seeing the flinch and worrying. "Nathan? Is something wrong?" It probably wasn't anything to do with Dom, considering she was safe in Berlin. Which meant it was probably something else.

Nathan bit his lip, then realized he was just giving away even more with his body language. "Angie's precognitive episode last night was about me, apparently," he said quietly, figuring that Doug would probably hear about it from Angie at some point anyway. "Or at least, I was in it."

Doug carefully looked at Nathan, worried by the way his voice sounded, as well as the way his body language looked. "I take it it wasn't a good one?" he asked.

"I think you could safely say it was about as ominous as a precognitive vision involving me could possibly be," Nathan said, forcing himself to smile, although the expression probably looked moderately ghastly. "And I'm not sure you should tell Angie I said that. I don't want her overdoing it."

Doug shrugged. "She's likely to do that all on her own, boss man," he said wryly. "I try to keep her from working herself to the point of exhaustion, but she often feels like, because she has a power that can be so useful, it's her job to try and prevent anything and everything that might be bad, especially for those of us she cares about."

"She's given me further confirmation of something I already suspected was going to happen," Nathan said uneasily. "I told her to tell me if she saw anything like it again, but she doesn't need to go digging for details. I don't want any of you involved with these people--" He cut himself off sharply but then shook his head, going on more quietly. "In any way. At all."

Doug looked at the nervousness and tension in Nathan's body language and hazarded an educated guess. "This wouldn't have anything to do with your former bosses, would it, Nathan?" he asked tentatively.

Nathan winced, then nodded. "It's nothing either of you need to worry about," he said doggedly. "I'm handling it. With help, Doug, so don't worry about me pulling a Dom, either."

Doug chuckled. "That's good. Oh, I'll still worry, but at least now I don't have to worry quite as much." He grinned. "Now, what do you say I grab us a couple more sodas, we stop talking about things that are stressing us out, and enjoy some good old-fashioned sci-fi/action brain-numbing?"

"The Matrix?" Nathan asked, noticing what was on the TV for the first time since he'd sat down. "Heh," he said, actually managing what Moira would probably have called a goofy grin. "I can do the jump thing, you know."

Doug snickered. "That's because you have telekinesis, so you can cheat." He grinned and looked mischievously at Nathan. "The real question is, do you know kung fu?"

"Not kung fu per se," Nathan temporized, shaking his head as he thought of the mishmash of fighting techniques he'd been taught at Mistra. "But definitely, a thousand and one ways to kick a person's ass."

Doug grinned as he levered himself up from the couch to run to the kitchen for sodas. "Good enough," he replied.