Angelo and Amanda, Monday morning

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They wake up after she looked after him last night, and she dispenses rather a lot of good advice.



It was still early morning when Amanda woke up. She glanced over at Marie-Ange's bed and saw the French girl was still out doing X-Men training or whatever it was she did at horribly stupid early hours. Then she looked over her shoulder - Angelo was still asleep. Good. He needed it. And she needed a shower. Carefully she wriggled out from under the arm he'd slung around her waist, replacing herself with a handy pillow, and headed for the bathroom, grimacing at the whole slept-in feel of her clothes.

She was still in the shower when Angelo stirred and started to wake, a few minutes later. There was a brief few moments of disorientation while he came fully awake and remembered where he was, and then he heard the shower running and some off-key singing of the Buzzcocks, and knew where Amanda must be. So he just waited for her to come back.

It wasn't a long wait, although Amanda realised that she'd forgotten to bring clean clothes into the bathroom with her and had to come out wrapped in her towel. There was something different about her - Angelo blinked, realising the scars on her legs were gone. "Heya," she said, smiling at him as she hooked a pair of sweatpants from off her desk chair and began shrugging them on. "Sleep all right? You were havin' bad dreams at one point so I sort of... well, kept you company."

He gave her a faint smile, sitting up against the headboard. "Not too bad. Had worse nights, anyway."

"Well, I might've given the potion a bit of a nudge..." she admitted, looking momentarily guilty, but only momentarily. Angelo had _needed_ the sleep. She began to drop the towel to put on her t-shirt, realised what she was doing, and turned around. "We've got some breakfast stuff in the suite, if yer hungry..."

He nodded, nothing but quiet gratitude in his eyes for her "nudging" of the potion, and pushed the covers aside to get out of the bed. "Bit hungry, yeah..."

"The kids've probably scoffed all the sugary stuff..." The expression on Amanda's face said she didn't consider it a bad thing. "But there's a couple of cereals they won't touch 'cause they're actually healthy, and Rahne usually makes oatmeal." She gave Angelo's dishevelled appearance a look and grinned. "Tho' you staggerin' out of here first thing in the mornin' lookin' like that ain't gunna do my rep any good at all, you realise."

He shrugged with a wry grin. "Could always go get Clarice to 'port me out. 'f we explain a bit, she won't say anythin'."

"I was just jokin'. Anyone has a problem, sod 'em." She looked him over critically, seeming to make a decision. "Tea. You definitely need tea." Her tone brooked no argument.

He raised an eyebrow, but with no real conviction. Tea did sound good. "What kind?"

"My kind." She grinned and tugged him out into the common room area of the suite. "Sit," she ordered, pushing him in the direction of the couch before moving to turn on the kettle and find clean mugs and bowls. And spoons. Luckily there was milk left - she hated dry cereal, and the bread was beginning to evolve. Everyone had been horrendously busy that week.

He sat obediently and waited for her to finish making the tea, pulling a slight face at what he saw of the bread before she threw it away. "Thanks", he said quietly, after a while. "For all this."

"Any time, Ange." Amanda came back with two mugs, handing him his before curling up on the couch next to him. She gave him a slightly shy smile. "I like helpin'. An' you do all that an' much more for me. I like t' be able t' do the same for you."

He took the mug before wrapping his other arm around her for a sideways hug. "You did. Yesterday. You really did."

"I hope so." She leaned her head on his shoulder, glad to see him obviously doing better. At least she'd been useful to _someone_.

"I'll be okay", he said softly, not sure if it was intended more to reassure her, or himself. "It'll all work out, somehow."

"It will." Amanda sounded more sure of that than him. Far too comfortable to actually get up and make breakfast, she decided to practice that fine control Nathan had been showing her, using the telekinetic spell to pour cereal into bowls, grab the milk, float the whole lot over, sans spoons... Those being metal, she had to focus on them separately. Their path was far more wobbly, but she managed it. "What made you... why that?" she asked during all this. "Hell of a thing t' spring on someone."

Angelo was watching the breakfast things fly with some interest, having not realized she was capable of that. "I... we'd talked about it before, a bit, an' I know she wasn't mad keen then, but... I don't know. It was... I was tryin' to tell her, show her, I wasn't goin' anywhere. Ever. Didn't really have my head on straight, though..."

"I don't think either of you did, but that's understandable considerin' the circumstances." Amanda nudged his shoulder with her head, before sitting up a bit more upright so she could grab breakfast. "I think she'll understand, once she calms down a bit," she said at last, mouth full of cereal. "If you explain it..."

Angelo nodded a little unhappily, and by no means convinced. "I hope so. Not sure she'll want to see me right now, though."

"I didn't say right now, I said after she calms down a bit," Amanda said, swallowing her cereal so he could understand her. "Ange, her other boyfriend just blew up an' no-one knows what shape she's in. Yer pushin' things too hard, her an' you."

He gave her another nod, more than a little self-deprecatingly. "Yeah, I know. Just... like I said, I wasn't thinkin' straight. D'you think... I should let her come find me, or what? I wouldn't know how long's right to leave it..."

Amanda had to resist rolling her eyes at that. "This is Paige we're talkin' 'bout here. Queen of Denial. If you leave it t' her, you'll be waitin' a long bloody time, 'cause she'll just pretend she's fine an' there's nothin' t' talk about. Give her a day or two. Maybe write her a letter, let her know yer wantin' t' talk, but you ain't pushin'. But for fuck's sake, don't leave it longer 'n a couple of days."

He nodded uncertainly. "That's... a good idea. Thanks. If I wrote it now, would you look it over for me? I've never... done this stuff before... Never been in a place where I've needed to."

She _did_ roll her eyes at that. "An' I have? Actually, I have. Well, Manny has, an' he usually manages t' say the right thing eventually..." She put her bowl down on the coffee table half-turned so she was facing him, and gave him a serious look. "Paige loves you, Ange. An' she ain't gunna run away every time you do somethin' wrong. You have t' trust her, stop bein' so damn scared of losin' her all the time - 's insultin' t' her as well as bein' hard on you."

"But I've never done anythin' wrong to her before", he objected. "Not like this. I do trust her, but... well, yeah. Like you said, this isn't gettin' fixed by just trustin' her not to run away. Not without doin' somethin' about it." He sighed slightly. "An' as for the scared... this is the first time I've had anythin' this good. Part of me still isn't used to the idea that it isn't goin' away, even after all this time."

She laughed aloud at that, and when Angelo gave her a hurt look, she made the effort to contain herself and took his free hand in hers. "'M not laughin' at you, Ange - well, not like that. 'S just... I'm so there. I know exactly where yer comin' from, an' I seem t' remember you tellin' me that sometimes you have t' trust other people, believe in the good stuff when you have it." She squeezed his hand. "Paige loves you. So much she was drivin' herself balmy because she felt she had t' choose between you an' Jono an' she wouldn't do that. Yes, you fucked up an' hurt her, but you have reasons for that, an' she ain't completely unreasonable, especially with you an' him. Write t' her, give her a couple of days' space, see if we don't get some news 'bout Jono, an' then talk t' her. She ain't goin' anywhere. You just need t' believe that."

He nodded, taking a breath and squeezing her hand back. "I think... I think maybe part of me's always gonna be waitin' for the other shoe to drop. It's been over a year now... but that don't mean I have to let it win. So. Help me write the letter, or look it over for me at least?"

"I'll look it over," she promised, and then grinned. "Me written expression's still much better when it's not English."

He grinned back, ruefully, reaching for a convenient pad and pen lying on the table. "Could write it in Spanish, but Paige doesn't speak it."

"~I speak a little,~" she said, in that language, the accent definitely Castillian. She shrugged. "Manny's teachin' me, an' it's got a Latin base, so it ain't that hard."

He looked at her quickly, turning his attention from the barely-begun letter with a faint impressed smile. "Pretty good. How long've you been learnin'?"

"A couple of months. Somethin' that came out of that whole mess with me an' Manny - I started learnin' Spanish an' he started askin' 'bout the magic." She gave him a wry smile. "See? Good stuff can come of all the shite."

He returned it. "Yeah, I guess it can."