Nolan House of Fandom Refugees, Tuesday Morning

[bitten_notshy]

Jack let himself sleep late Tuesday morning. Saying goodbye to children who didn't exist -- whom he had thought could never exist -- was strangely draining. Sleep was the best medicine for that.

After he finally woke up, he let Emma rest while he went on a long ramble through town. He fortified himself with a chocolate cruller along the way, and came to a decision about his future. The real one, not the fake ones the island kept letting him glimpse.

Now he just needed to see if the lady would agree.

"Emma?" he called into the room they'd been sharing. "Are you busy just now?"

[OOC: For she who is named in the post!]

Comments

[icecoldfrost]

"Depends," came the answer, and Emma looked up from her Evolutionary Biology text book - yes, she'd brought it along to study - still rumpled from sleep and her glasses perched precariously on her nose. "What is it, Jack?"

[bitten_notshy]

Why was he so nervous?

Though the glasses and the choice of reading material made him smile, at least.

"I was thinking," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "We've been trying this ... friends and sometimes more thing practically since I graduated, haven't we?"

[icecoldfrost]

"More like since that first disaster of a kiss the first time we got hit with the pollen and I overloaded on other people's hormones," Emma quipped, underlining something in her text. "With a few bouts of 'more' rather than 'friends' in there. Why?"

[bitten_notshy]

Jack groaned at the mention of their first kiss. "In my defense, that kiss was a very strange week," he said. "And why, well ... because I think it might be time for it to change."

[icecoldfrost]

"Oh?" Emma's inquisitive tone didn't change, but all her emotional walls were closing up. "Don't tell me the triplets traumatized you enough that you want to swear off sex with me, darling. I thought they were delightful, once I realized it wasn't a batch of prank-calls."

[bitten_notshy]

"The other way around, goose," Jack told her gently, irritated at himself for not being clearer. "I love you, I've been in love with you for approximately a hundred years, and we've seen bits of at least three futures where I never stop loving you. Pretending we're friends who sometimes sleep together is getting a bit foolish."

He didn't know how this would work, any of it. He just knew he wanted to say it.

[icecoldfrost]

"I'm a little iffy on your math and how it adds up to a hundred years, but I'll take your word for it," Emma answered, trying to keep her tone light. "I do hope that's not a proposal; I'm in school, and you, well," she shrugged one shoulder. "And you're suggesting we, what? Date?"

[bitten_notshy]

"More or less," Jack said, then shook his head. "No. It's not a proposal but yes, I want us to date, though I don't like that term. I want us to be together. Officially. Without either of us giving up our worlds just yet. Have you objections?"

He would not be surprised if she had a thousand.

[icecoldfrost]

"Where do you want me to start, Jack?" she sighed, closing her book and rubbing at the bridge of her nose. "You're barely healed from the physical events of Paris, and I've been doing my best not to peek or poke at the mental wounds."

"I don't want to be some half-stop relationship in your life until Sebastien decides to wander back in again. I'm not willing to come in second anymore."

[bitten_notshy]

"That's about where I figured you'd start," Jack admitted, raking a hand through his hair. "I can't change Paris, Emma. Even if I could, there will always be some stupid trauma one or the other of us is getting over."

So he wanted to ignore that, yes.

"Sebastien..." he drew a breath to steady his next sentence. "It's over. Wherever he is, he's not in my life now. If someday he deigns to return it would be as a friend, no more. For one, I've gathered it's not generally considered good practice to have sex with your proteges -- even if they ask nicely. I want you for you, not because he isn't here."

It had taken three years, but he could say that much honestly.

[icecoldfrost]

"You want me for me?" she asked, a bit of a sad smile playing about her lips. "Are you sure you really understand what that means? I'm not a nice person at heart or anything like that, darling."

"I can be manipulative, spiteful, and downright cruel at times. Not because I'm human - because I'm not, and I never will be, - but because it's part of who I am. The ice queen doesn't necessarily have a heart of gold underneath it all."

[bitten_notshy]

Jack gave her a slanted look.

"When did I ever give the impression I was looking for a lover of sterling moral character? Besides, I lie, I'm petty, I manipulate, and I'm a monster -- and not in any pretty turns-into-a-diamond way. If either of us should be warning the other off, it's me."

[icecoldfrost]

"I'm already your lover, Jack," Emma pointed out. "You said you want a relationship, and they're not the same thing."

She tapped the side of her head wryly. "And I can speak on rather good authority that what someone wants in one of those is not necessarily desirable for the other."

[bitten_notshy]

Jack almost smiled at that, and rested his chin on a hand.

"All right, what do you want us to do?" he asked. "I don't think you're wrong on the last point, but you haven't said anything yet to change my mind."

[icecoldfrost]

"I don't know," she admitted. "I wasn't exactly expecting to wake up and change my relationship status on Facebook or anything like that."

"Why now, anyway? What brought this on?"

[bitten_notshy]

"Well, if you won't put it all over the Internet, I've changed my mind," Jack joked. Because he cared so much what Emma did on Facebook.

"It's been some time coming," he said more seriously, "But the girls brought it on. Not that I want them anytime in the immediate future -- but it sounded like they were from a good world. Like we were happy. I like the idea of that."

[icecoldfrost]

"Don't get your hopes up, Mr. Priest. I don't intend to give up this fantastic figure for children anytime soon," Emma replied dryly. "If ever, even as darling as the girls were."

"But you want to try this? It's rather the epitome of a long-distance thing."

[bitten_notshy]

"Believe me, I'm in no rush to support a family," Jack said firmly. "Maybe years and years from now, when we're far older and more settled."

But just seeing the triplets had been a relief, because he had half assumed werewolves couldn't have children -- if they could, he'd imagined they wouldn't have gone extinct. Clearly he had been wrong.

He leaned back, considering the rest of what she'd said. He saw no easy solution to their dimensional quandry, which weighed on him a bit. He never liked situations he couldn't find a way around.

"I can't solve the long-distance part," he admitted. "We can manage a weekend or two a month together, at least. But I still feel safer in my world, and I know you have things to do in yours. Can we decide that one as it comes?"

[icecoldfrost]

"The correct answer to that would have been, 'why yes, Emma, you do have a fantastic figure, let me show you how much appreciate it while I woo you into a slightly different version of our obnoxiously label-defiant relationship," Emma teased. "Although I'll accept the answer you submitted, too."

"So a weekend or two a month together, and getting a larger calling plan for my phone," she continued. "Which isn't too different from before, just...together?"

[bitten_notshy]

"You have a wonderful body which I am quite fond of, but you know that much already," Jack said. Occasionally he tried not to feed her vanity.

"And ... yes. I wouldn't object too strongly if you called me your boyfriend to make things easier for other people, though."

He was generous like that.

[icecoldfrost]

"Wait a moment," Emma said, holding up a finger. "I do believe I just heard Hell freezing over. Jack Priest wants me to call him my 'boyfriend.'"

"In all seriousness though, Jack. I'm not unwilling to try, but--" Emma chewed on her lower lip absently as she thought. "I'm not good at emotional things. I do better with facts, data I can analyze, things like that. I don't know if it's a failing on my part, or a trait all telepaths have, but I don't..."

Why was this hard? "Quite frankly, darling, I care about you very much and right now I'm terrified of letting you down if I fail miserably."

There. A bit rushed, and possibly said without breathing, but Emma managed to do it verbally and not telepathically. SHE WAS TRYING.

[bitten_notshy]

"Only because titles might make things easier to explain," Jack protested. "Hell's just ... a bit chilly for this time of year. A touch of frost got in."

Once he was done punning, he looked steadily at her. “I’m not so easy to wound,” he promised. “And I wouldn’t be asking if I thought you would fail miserably. Right now I want this, and I think being happy now is worth the chance of some pain in a year or five or twenty. Besides, it’s not as if I’d have a soft life if I just cut you off.”

“How does that fit into your logic?”

[icecoldfrost]

"My logic says that if you ever make that pun again, I am legally allowed to kill you," Emma deadpanned. "That was horrible, darling, utterly horrible."

[bitten_notshy]

"I could come up with much worse ones," Jack pledged. "Anyhow, it's my third language. I make better puns in Czech."

No, he didn't.

"Does that mean you're done telling me why this is a horrible idea that will ruin us both?"

[icecoldfrost]

"No you don't." Sorry, Jack, hazards of dating a telepath.

"And yes, I'm done for now." She dimpled at him sweetly. "If nothing else, it will be easier to break the hearts of the ESU football team."

[bitten_notshy]

"You can't understand what I'm thinking in Czech," Jack scoffed. "And now I feel the oddest wave of sympathy for the ESU football team."

His tone was lighter. He'd said what he had to say, and nothing disastrous had happened. he had few complaints about the world just then.

[icecoldfrost]

"You forget, darling, I can always download your lovely language abilities. I could be fluent in Czech, and you wouldn't even know," Emma threatened, but there wasn't any heat behind it. She didn't generally go digging, and they both knew it.

"Now stop gloating about getting your way, and come kiss me before I change my mind."

[bitten_notshy]

//Myslím, že těhotné holky jsou horké. Měli bychom mít trojčata hned,// Jack thought at her as a test. Emma was cool, but she'd react to that if she understood it at all.

... possibly by hitting him, but he liked to live dangerously.

And then he obeyed instructions and went to kiss her.

[icecoldfrost]

Emma understood about...five words of that? But his intent was clear, and she grabbed a pillow to wack at him.

"No! Bad Jack!"

[bitten_notshy]

Jack laughed, grabbing the pillow before it made contact.

"Can you blame me for the test?" he asked. "Here. Kiss me and I'll stop thinking terrible things at you."

[icecoldfrost]

"I can blame you for a lot of things, darling, and I probably will when this blows up spectacularly," Emma teased, leaning in to nip playfully at his lower lip. "But don't fib; you never cease thinking terrible things."

Just usually different sorts of terrible for different people.

[bitten_notshy]

"It's a damned lie," Jack alleged, and then kissed back in a way that suggested he didn't mind being lied about in this way at all.

"And at least if it blows up, we'll know we tried." This was much like his justification for going to war months before; Jack hoped Emma wouldn't realize that.

[icecoldfrost]

"Last time you told me that, you ended-up a werewolf," she growled disapprovingly, matching him kiss-for-kiss. "Stop talking before you change my mind."

...Hopefully Ronan knew them well-enough that he had already magically sound-proofed the room?

[bitten_notshy]

Jack thought of reminding her he had come back, but it seemed a good way to ruin a perfectly nice -- better than nice --- session of kissing.

He closed his eyes and gave himself over to it.