I know it keeps you healthy.

[underachievement]

WHO: Jessica Jones
WHERE: outskirts, Forest
WHEN: August ~8
OPEN TO: Frank
WARNINGS: alcoholism, language, bozos with trauma, vague cult allusions, AU history

The party was a competent distraction for a night, and shockingly, they're not rounded up the next day with the fountain pouring fruit juice. Life resumes as normal but without the unrelenting rain. Jess wonders if it wasn't the storms that drove the wendigo out of the forest. She wonders at the wendigo over Peeta because even she knows it's disrespectful to project her guilt onto his death. Yet she's tempted to do it all the time, of which there's too much in a day, especially for an insomniac.

After a lot of lying awake and doing nothing, she finally pulls her focus back to what circumstances she can control. Raising her alcohol tolerance, if she can first figure out how much is too much. She keeps overshooting it. Chugging moonshine before sleep drowns the nightmares dead, except Jess wakes up puking every time. That takes a toll on your esophagus, it turns out, and constant drinking takes a toll on your entire body when you left your suped up metabolism in your other dimension. She didn't think she had much muscle on her when she got here but she's definitely gotten weaker. She punches a pillow and the mattress barely yields under it.

She already knew she posed no threat to a wendigo, but right now, she'd barely dent a porcelain-skulled, pasty-faced limey prick. And that can never happen.

Jess isn't interested in learning the proper technique or, [gagging sound effect], sparring. She tries some stretching, the kind she hasn't done since high school, but feels ridiculous, since she has no idea if she's stretching the right things. Committed to doing this alone and not bothering Danny, she decides to just start running, and she'll figure out what she needs to prep next time based on what hurts, and what makes it feel better. That's probably how the ancient Greeks learned to jog.

She gets winded within minutes, then taking minutes to get her breath back and to talk herself into continuing. Running is a life skill and one she doesn't want to find herself lacking when inevitably she needs it. Even though many of the less traveled or more forest covered paths are still strewn with natural debris, it works for Jess, who takes breaks as she needs them. At each stop, she is freshly amazed by the foresight she had in bringing a bottle of water. She rinsed it, too, so there's almost no rotten vodka aftertaste. Almost. Jess is coming around to it by the time the bottle is half-empty and she's somewhere outside the village, sitting on the trunk of a well aged, recently fallen tree.

Comments

[oorah]

It's early, too early to wake Karen to steal Aretha and way too early to wake Kamala. Frank doesn't have Fight Club here aka a dozen or so ladies and other superhero types to line up and take turns handing him his own ass. He's hiking nearly every day, but it's not the same, and it still leaves him with too many hours unoccupied. No sand path maintenance, no patrolling, well. He still patrols even if he tells himself he doesn't, but that really isn't the point. The point is... cardio. His actual nemesis. Frank concedes that the basketball shorts he was gifted at the party are actually decent for running, even if the Jordans are a ridiculous pair for them. He puts on a plain t-shirt and takes to the outdoors. It's already warm though the Sun's barely up and he finds himself missing the more moderate climate of France though he's just as quick to shove the thought away.

Frank starts up along the path, a slow but persistent pace, it's much easier to run when no one's out here to distract him. People don't stop him like they used to anyway, and he touches his bracelet once like it can lend him strength before working up to a slow run. It feels like bootcamp and he hates how fast his heart goes, feeling like it's going to explode. He forces himself through it and around the time it starts feeling OK and he starts resenting no longer wanting to die, he has the idea to jog out to the outskirts of the villages instead of looping back around the way he might usually. It's a random whim, but one he doesn't fight against, especially since his instincts had been sharper than ever since this stupid teal communicator came affixed to his other wrist.

By the time he's just out of sight of the last house on the path, Frank doubles over his knees to take a well-earned breather and to realize he hadn't thought as fore since his water is most likely still sitting on his kitchen counter at home. Oh well, it's about time to head back anyway, he reasons, that is until the familiar hair-raising sensation of his spidey-whatever has him holding back a shiver in the morning heat as he glances around for what he could be reacting to. He notices the tree, the storms must have brought it down, but there's nothing sinister about it. That is, until he traces it's bulk back to the source and finds none other than Jessica Jones sat there, apparently doing the same exact thing he is. She doesn't jog. But then again, neither the fuck does he.

He should just go back, get his water, pretend he never saw her. Frank had been upset that night at the Inn, and every other time they'd managed to not have a conversation. But he keeps seeing her throwing up on Karen's porch, he never sees her with anyone. She always was great at pushing people away and maybe he's been an asshole too in his way, just by letting her push him over. Before he can think better of it, he takes a few strides forward until she can't easily avoid his presence and tries to study her for any sign of distress. She seems alright, or as much so as she ever is. He lifts his hands to sign to her, but with the last of the soundproofing out of his house, it feels like a lie. And speaking to her feels too much like taking the initiative. So instead he stares at her, because that's much better, as he slowly catches his breath. A large part of him is expecting her to just walk and/or jog away anyway, so why put forth the effort?

[underachievement]

She can admit to herself that she ran too far. She catches her breath but then she's exhausted by the thought of running back. Walking would just take longer. Were that this water were a sleeping bag, she could lie down right here. Or maybe the snap and crunch of a figure rapidly approaching will turn out to be a wendigo and that's the incredibly underwhelming end to her disappointing sequel of a story. She doesn't know what the hell she's doing here but she doesn't miss the purpose she had forced upon her before, either. And she hates herself for wasting her week home, closing the office instead of throwing herself into a dead-end case alongside her epic bender. Jess can't summon passion over it or anything, as the noise draws closer, but she doesn't want to die this pointlessly.

Basically guaranteeing she's about to.

Against the historical odds, it's not a wendigo or a bear or a pissed off lynx, just Frank, in shorts. Jess bites the inside of her lip. She may not have any idea of how upset he is with her but that doesn't leave them anywhere near laughing terms. The jordans are definitely crazier but there's something about the subtlety of the basketball shorts that's particularly amusing. Maybe how they glorify the kicks where sweatpants might dare to try and contain them.

"Howdy, Footloose." She jams a little wave into the action of planting her hand beside her, leaning on one shoulder.

[oorah]

It doesn't take him long to realize his mistake. She's tired, too tired to move, and he's getting there himself. Frank drops his hands, clenching his fists loosely in anticipation of her laughter. Yeah, he's an old beardy dad with Jordans and weird superpowers, so what??? His eyes dare her to do it even while his heart picks its speed back up, ready to shatter against his ribcage at any moment. What comes out instead is almost endearing, not that he'd admit it.

"Does that make you Kevin Bacon?" he quips without truly thinking it through, licking his lips even as he tries to forget how thirsty he is. Apparently, they're on sarcasm terms, which may as well be breathing for Jess, right? It doesn't mean anything. He hates that he cares. It's only now that he's realizing he's never really had an ex-girlfriend before, not like he'd ever call her such a ridiculous thing, but it still feels bad. Like he wants to impress her just to feel even slightly better about being a useless sack of shit here. After a moment, he just... relents. He's sure it looks pathetic, the way he drops his head and visibly gives in, but if he was tired before jogging certainly hadn't helped him be anything else. "Hey, Jess." That's all he's got, thanks for playing.

[underachievement]

She's pretty sure it doesn't and she enjoys picking old, likely mistaken memories from her mind, trying to recall any other characters in that movie. She can't, though someone must have banned dancing in the first place, and that'd probably be her.

From all appearances, he seems to be getting along fine. Right now and in general though Jess restricts her interest to the natural chaos of their orbits instead of seek or stalk him out. She doesn't think of herself as his ex-girlfriend, never having had the title to lose. She couldn't be anybody's girlfriend, she was never entirely there. Half of her was always screwed in by the bones to Kilgrave's emotional torture porn devices. The distance Frank's given her has allowed her the dignity to pry herself out on her own.

But if it was working as effectively as she thought it was, she wouldn't be mindful of her breathing, wary of her bespoke attack bubble.

"Here." She tosses him the bottle. He didn't bring any water unless it's hiding in his shoes. Her toss is off, her distribution of strength miscalculated, and it lands two feet in front of him. Okay, well. Shut up. That's why she's here. Shut up.

[oorah]

Frank only said his name because he couldn't remember any of the other characters himself so there you go. Two peas in a really sad pod, like it ever was. He looks up, stupid danger-sensing spiking when she throws the bottle. When it lands a long way off from him, he frowns, just looking at the grass and his hand raised like a vice ready to snap the thing out of the air. At first, he thinks she did it on purpose, to see him squirm maybe, but when he looks back at her face he realizes what's happening. Frank stumbles forward to collect the water off the ground, raising it to his lips and immediately taking a long drink. There's something vodka-y about it but he doesn't worry, drugging people isn't really Jessica's style and he can guess how it got there. His other hand, still clutching the bottle cap, arranges in his signature OK symbol in place of a thank you. He really needed that.

Doing his best not to drink it all, he eventually lowers the water and comes back to himself, capping the bottle again and wiping his mouth with the back of one wrist. He had been about to give it back to her, but that would close the distance between them and he's not sure how he feels about that yet. He's also not sure if her forcefield will even allow it or how much control she has over it to begin with. If it's anything like his ability, the answer is: not much. He looks from the water and back to her and tries not to assign the olive branch title the item seems determined to take on and instead puts it back on the ground and rolls it over to her, watching as it harmlessly bounces off her shoe and rests not far from a natural place for her hand to pick it up from.

"Thanks," he reiterates, biting into the inside of his lip before any other dumb thing can spill out. He wants to sit down himself now, but in some odd way it would feel like a weakness if he had to look up at her now. He'd always liked it before, and he can still remember the way her profile looks from that angle, attempting to shake his head to clear the image the second it's conjured. "I, uh. Should leave you to it."

But it's like his legs are cemented in like fence poles and he doesn't even have the strength to turn around and look back at the village they'd abandoned. His heart starts racing, inexplicably, until he connects the why. He'd run away with her once, his body is remembering the terror he felt being out there at her mercy, the Sound Eaters only a passing inconvenience compared to the hurt Jessica could deal him. And deal it she did, though he doesn't blame her for having her own convictions. It's something he had respected then and he respects now even when he wants to go back and start all over at the very beginning - erase and retcon their history at first neck-snapping.

His throat goes dry despite the water coating it and suddenly, he has to look away again or he'll break. He's seeing her at the party now, remembering her socializing around. Maybe not as much as he had, Kira really has to stop giving him weed. Or he has to stop accepting, either way. Unable to leave it be and 100% already kicking himself, Frank meets her eyes steadily this time and shoves down the rising tide of agita to ask something he desperately needs to know. It's not that he thinks she needs him to survive, he knows the opposite is true, actually. Survival and happiness are two very different things, however, and for a moment out in that tent they'd had a shot at both.

"Are you okay?"

[underachievement]

Jess skims the body language from his ever open book: Favouring his feet equally, drinking deeply without issue, no lag in his joints. Hasn't been roughed up recently, voluntarily or otherwise, she's real sure of that until he pulls the bowling technique, getting her water back to her. Jess stares at him like he's grown a second head. This may be the weirdest thing to happen to her since the fountain spewed her out. Ah, right, her dumb loserpower. Okay, fair. Then he says he should duck out. She assumes they're related to each other and both related to her. Sadly she left her corkboard, pins and red yarn in House 60.

He's got all the right to move on, literally and figuratively. Obviously she saw him at the party too, where he seemed to have people around him whenever his wild flailing on the dancefloor died down. Including people who know who he is in New York and have accepted him here, and thank fuck, not including a gaggle of twelve-year-olds looking to him to be someone he isn't. He has a chance in this place, a better one without her. The proof is in the basketball shorts: Here he is jogging, one of society's few indisputably glorified activities. Yeah, doubtless he's doing it to deal with insomnia, same as her, but look at how prepared he is. As far as she knows, he's been doing this for several mornings.

Hefting herself off the tree trunk, she bends to scoop up the water bottle. He ought to be moving on as she straightens up. Instead he's still there and asking the most ridiculous question on Earth and whatever planet this is. Jess chuckles, batting dirt from the bottle.

"I'm jogging," she drones bitterly with a cant of her head. "What do you think."

[oorah]

He laughs too, a thready sound of huffing defeat as he accepts that answer for the truth it is. She overestimates his preparedness - he hadn't even brought water - but by the same token he is doing better. Frank isn't beholden to anyone here and it suits him well, he feels more like himself. Even with strange blue-haired girls calling him out on the Network for writing his name in that census book entirely too many times. He wonders if he can cross them out without drawing suspicion but that ship probably sailed. At least she's the first person to take him up on his good nature considering it's seriously dwindled since Reims. He can come and go more or less as he pleases. Kamala is his only true tie-down and for the most part she's happy to see him not juggle so many hats.

"Yeah. Same here," he imparts carefully, but it's nothing she can't see for himself. He's trying, but not to be something bigger than himself. Just... to be, and to be okay with that level of being. Neither of them could do shit about the Wendigo and that sucked, okay, but what's the alternative? They're the parents of a whole fucking town again? No thank you. She thought he wanted that, at least, he thinks that's why she left his house that day; but she's wrong. If she'd asked she would know though, so it doesn't matter. That part doesn't, anyway. Before he can stop himself, the next question tears itself free from his mouth and he already knows he's going to regret getting sucked back in, but he can't take it back either, letting it hang suspended there in front of her - ripe for the taking. "Couldn't sleep?"

[underachievement]

Oddly, she's not transported anywhere by his inquiry, which is to say, the panic that summons her bubble remains dormant. They may be stricken with the same affliction but not necessarily suffering from the same dreams anymore. Wouldn't that be nice for him? Except she's clinging to it to reinforce her denial. Jess knows from experience that the nightmares become less frequent over time, more time than they've had, and that they change, but they never go away completely.

"Nah," she confirms with the glint of a sneer hooking her lip. "Couldn't, didn't want to, six of one." Half a dozen of the other. She shrugs as she unscrews the cap to dive into a gulp of water just for the aftertaste. She leans back against the oversized log, backside to the bark. It could be she's dreaming right now and a dark shape is about to race across the path and snatch him. If that were the case, her anxiety would be keyed up and her thighs wouldn't be screaming. He's real. "Everything's a pain in the ass without powers." Or she'd be treating her nightmares the usual way: unrepentant, ceaseless drinking. On a roof. Man, she misses roofs.

[oorah]

The nightmares are only half of why he can't sleep, the other half is the noise. He's getting used to it, slowly, but everything is so loud here and it's still only a fraction of what being in New York had been like. He gets not wanting to even more, watching her though he isn't sure what for anymore. He used to watch her all the time, for signs of distress, or really any small measure of happiness, so now it's probably just ingrained into him. It doesn't mean anything, he won't let it. Because that's how these things work, obviously.

All things considered, Frank feels calm. Maybe it's all the running or maybe it's something else, but her idle confession suddenly seems like a milestone as his expression predictably turns empathetic. "You can have mine," he offers lamely, the same joke he makes every time Kamala complains about hers. He knows how hard it is, to be betrayed by your own body. Even if it isn't quite to the same extent as a healing factor or a high-speed metabolism. He shrugs a shoulder and finally forces himself to look away.

"Actually, I would've thought you'd be into this one." The bubble, he means, gaze swinging like a pendulum back into hers. He's saying something just to get a rise out of her now and he knows it. He shouldn't, if he's going to do that he should just walk away. And yet, he can't move. "You like everyone at arm's length, right?"

[underachievement]

From the crinkle in her brow, she's clearly stuck on the first of his glib comments. Of course he's got one, too, but she didn't wonder about it until now. Kamala's is skin tougher than Jess's was back home, and it's shareable for a little while. That suits her, a tough kid who wrings herself out from hair trigger compassion. Frank would find some use in that if he had it too, or anything that could protect people, regardless of whether it reflected a far less flattering aspect of his personality.

His ability has to be like hers in that it only does him any good.

"I like not putting people in danger." Which she no longer does simply by existing. What instinct she's struggling to leave behind is the urge to look over her shoulder, to log every pair of eyes that might see her in a day, to watch her words for fear of who might hear them at night. It takes suppressing the urge to watch out for him too, and everyone he could be seen caring about. Stripping him of his second-in-command status is a stranger process than it is difficult. The damage it's done him doesn't go anywhere and she has to see it without being able to use it as a metric for their readiness in case of emergency.

Jess balances the bottle on the tree behind her after twisting the cap tight. "Are you gonna make me guess yours?"

[oorah]

She's right and wrong about his ability. He had used it to "save" people from the lightning, only to learn that they didn't need his help. Maybe especially Kamala, though she hadn't held it against him at the time. Frank has been somewhat vocal about his powers, wondering aloud if they all had them. So far it seemed sporadic, unpatterned, but he doesn't think that can be true at all. Surely Kira and Karen turning him into the Hulk just by holding his hand wasn't unrelated to the black communicators strapped diligently to both of their wrists? He doesn't have the time or the willpower to think on it now, especially not all the way through to a natural conclusion. Maybe it was time to take one of those network polls he hated so well.

Frank's expression softens all over again as much as he fights it. Jessica must like that about this place, not having to worry about who she talks to or what it means. He had seen an easiness to her he'd never seen in Reims, at least, until she got way too damn drunk. He's glad Karen was there to take her in or he worries that he might have. He's worrying his lip, almost missing her question. He didn't think she'd want to know, but he hadn't thought she cared about him at all and he'd been super wrong about that. There's a part of him that wants to keep it close though he hadn't with anyone else. In Reims it would have been imperative for him to share any resource at their disposal, but here it doesn't matter what he can do. She's asking because she's curious, maybe even to hold a fucking conversation with him. The thought is nearly maddening after their relationship was governed solely by the state of that piece of shit in purple for so long.

"I can... sense danger," he admits after way too long a pause, looking marginally embarrassed by the confession. It's a dumb power in a lot of ways. The paranoid guy with a fear of everything gets that heightened supernaturally? But it's the same as her personal-space bubble or Kamala's tough-as-nails hide. Or the way Karen and Kira can lend their strength to others. It's all very poetic and metaphorical somehow, but there's no library here for him to keep up on lame white guy novels so he's pleasantly bereft of comparison. "I guess it comes in handy sometimes." When it doesn't paralyze him with fear instead.

[underachievement]

Okay, that does suck more than hers. It's also more interesting than hers or Kamala's, especially if it's triggered the same way, but would be kind of redundant if it were. Soldiers always clock the exits, like lots of other survivors. It was a super power he already kinda had. Must be terrible to have that twisted on him so that he has to relearn control. Jess lost her handle on her panic attacks several Kilgrave deaths ago, leaving her little to miss. And if she doesn't get all that close to anyone, she won't have to learn to do that again, herself, just to have it ripped away soon after.

"Getting anything right now?" she asks, half referring to her bubble and half referring to everything else. She won't take offense if he is though she'd wonder why he's keeping himself around her. If it's just the skin-crawling sensation of amped up anxiety, that feeling of being frantically trapped in a cage of your own skin, it cannot possibly be worth it. But she doesn't feel particularly dangerous at the moment. Having an objective take on it literally couldn't hurt, though.

[oorah]

He sees the understanding in her eyes and it hurts more than any visible dismissal could. The hurt in his gaze reflects back at her before he can prevent it, and his head hangs off his throat tellingly to hide the expression from her inevitable scrutiny. Yep, should've walked away. He never did get that 'quit while you're ahead' thing down though.

"No," he admits softly, slowly forcing himself to look up again even as his heart pounds far too hard for such a simple inquiry. She wants to know if she sets off her danger systems, and maybe she's not entitled to the answer but there it is. His eyes fix on her perfect, upturned nose and he hates himself all over again, taking a few short steps forward to see if the readout changes. So far, so nothing. "Your- uh. Forcefield thing. Set it off at the crab boil." But not now. Which means that either it's down or he's not close enough to sense it? Or something else entirely. He doesn't fucking know, he's not the superpowers expert.

[underachievement]

Jess pushes a sigh through her nose and stares off through the trees, sparing him the eye contact that's giving him trouble. She hastily builds a wall in her mind to obscure how she's already thinking about why. Disappointment in her too, probably. Nope. Wall. Not thinking about it.

Her gaze flicks back to him, lips flattening as her conditioning tries to prevent her from accepting his response. He goes on to state the obvious, filler that still helps. Jess does her best not to remember that night so it manages to feel like new information. She clears her throat, watching his face but avoiding his eyes, and belittles herself as much as possible in telling him, "It's gotten less touchy. I think. Could be wrong."

Well, he'd tell her. Wow, their dynamic just got even way the fuck weirder. Deep breath. This is good, Jones. It's other people with his power you have to avoid. Finding out from anyone else would have been infinitely worse. Definitely weird though. So he's like a human mood ring for one of her most active, least valuable emotions. He can stop her from hurting anyone with her ability, an idea Jess consigns to the very last of resorts, right below tying a brick to her ankle and throwing herself back into the fountain.

[oorah]

"That's... good," he imparts lamely, only a few paces away from her now. It feels wrong to be the one standing over her, but better than trying to talk to her from that far away. With both of them now occupying the same space, all he can smell is sweat and grass and he has to smile though it's a little wan. They're jogging, look at them. Assholes.

Now that she's here and apparently not running away from him, so many questions flicker through his mind to ask her, but he can't pin one down to actually speak. As much as he'd told himself he wants to be done with her, he's still so grateful every day that he knows she's safe. Away from that shitstain and the Sound Eaters and that whole community with their pitchforks at her door. Maybe she'd rather be in New York and maybe Frank still doesn't know what he wants or where he wants to be, but if they have to be in the same place he's just glad it's here and not Reims.

Frank visibly struggles before just - letting it go - also visibly. He runs a hand back through his hair and sighs, not caring if it seems dramatic. Let's be real, when does he ever hold back his dramatics? When he looks at her again, his expression is more clear, ready for... something. To speak, finally, it would seem. "Jess, I don't care if we..." Wow, that's a blatant lie and he knows it, cutting it the fuck off at the knees. He shakes his head to really drive nails into its coffin. Again, from the top, Castle. "We don't have to talk or be... friends. I get if you want to put that fucked up shit behind you. But, I- me, too." He touches his chest in indication, imploring her to listen even while expecting her not to. "I'm not tryin' to go back there, I'm not tryin' to think about it at all. I just wanted- I needed you to know that, I guess. Fuck."

[underachievement]

Naturally she thinks to flee, but she can't feel her feet after jogging off more than she can chew. If she tries to be a cool guy and walk away from the explosion now, and her legs are fatigue drunk and send her tilting, he's close enough to catch her. Some Danielle Steele horseshit, is what that would be. She listens and she also surreptitiously unlocks one knee and tests her foot, which tingles but works fine. Then, in too deep, Jess crosses her arms and swipes a strand of hair framing her face to behind her ear and takes in the rest. She stares through him, weighing his words against what actions of his she recalls clearest, this borderline sober. Either her state dependent memory is doing her a bad turn or it adds up.

"You took the soundproofing down?" It's such a small, lame question after the magnitude of his confession, but she needs liquid courage to ask the big ones. How is she not that fucked up shit behind him? How can he want anything to do with her? No matter what she asked of him, she could ascribe his compliance to camaraderie in wartime. That was until she slept with him. And left him. And shortly after that, all the pain was made completely pointless when they were ejected home. Where do you start with apologizing for that and why the shit would anybody accept it?

[oorah]

He instinctually takes a step back, hyperaware of her urge to flee when things get heavy. Emotionally speaking anyway. She doesn't get up and he wonders if she can. He knows she won't let him help her up though, so he just tries to think about something else. That question ought to do the trick.

"It's got nothing to do with you," he points out, which is as true as it isn't. He's sick of feeling beholden to her, but the thing is he knows she never wanted him to be. It was that place that forced them to be symbiotic the way neither of them were prepared for and yet had somehow been preparing their entire lives. He shakes his head. "But yeah, it's gone."

He and Kamala took it down together, they're patching up the house now. It's kind of hard to miss and she had been there - with Karen. She would have seen the detritus on the lawn, so it's pointless to try and keep it from her. Still there's an urge for Frank to want to keep something just for himself. She's not entitled to him anymore, only the pieces he decides to share. And of course, when she decides to listen. It gives them both a very narrow window to operate, though maybe that's for the best.

"Is that why you left that day?"

[underachievement]

She believes him, actually. It's got no more to do with her than any leftovers of Reims might, everything he knows about her inextricable from the agony that forced them together. It's unfathomable to her how deafening the walls could be a method for moving on but she doesn't get to ask him those questions. Kamala does, maybe; for two high strung people, the bond they share somehow keeps them grounded. Though she doesn't have it twisted: The second he starts stressing the kid out, Jess will drag a talking-to out of herself.

"Yeah. It, uh," she resettles her arms and snorts, self-effacing, "it goes off when I sleep." Rolling her eyes toward the treetops, continuing to play it off as the cosmic joke it is and not a spotlight on one of innumerable fatal character flaws. "I didn't think you'd want a loaded gun just lying around."

[oorah]

He'll respect it if she does, but he thinks he's self-aware enough to know when he's doing it. Ish. The party came close, but then apparently Kamala had pulled some parent trap shit to get Karen and Frank talking again. That's a cute anecdote they can skip oh I don't know, forever.

Expecting her to say... anything but what she says should be his new baseline by now, but again she's caught him completely off-guard. "Jess," he starts, pretty sure that might be the most ridiculous thing she's ever said to him. "I'm... me, right? Loaded guns are kind of my thing." He's not trying to make a joke, for once, just pointing out that she doesn't have to protect him from herself. She can't anyway so it's pointless.

When she sleeps, it registers late but now he's processing. Because she's most vulnerable then. This place found a way to keep her safe, finally, and maybe he has no right being this happy about it but he is anyway. Nothing and no one is ever going to touch her that way again and it can only vindicate him whether they're on speaking terms or not.

"You didn't have to go," he says after a minute, biting his lip. He didn't want her to go, but he can't say that. Not after she bailed on him another time after that, and that one had nothing to do with protecting him. That whole night was such a fucking mess though, he's all but written it out of his memory.

[underachievement]

They kind of are but Jess couldn't warn him about it then, and having him find out through her trial and error, waking up surrounded by the hooks Reims still had in Frank, it would have only made things worse. She's not even ready to tell him about it now but she has. Her longest conversations lately have been with teenagers who are already too wise for their age. She's honest with them but she tries to present herself simply, a person they should neither rely on nor concern themselves over. She'd been doing it to Frank too but her reserves must be limited.

"I didn't know--" about his psychic geiger counter or that he meant it when he yelled after her that he didn't miss their homey little hell from before. If she had, would she have stayed? Probably not. Even if she could have trusted him in that house, she would never trust herself. She shakes her head once and pins her stare to him. "You really wouldn't go back." She meant to ask it but the need vanished by the second syllable. It's true. What she wants to ask is what changed and she sure as hell won't ascribe that importance to a version of herself that makes her sick to think of. France held no freedom for either of them, regardless of how close or far apart they were.

[oorah]

Frank gets it suddenly, falling on him like a ton of bricks or like a fucking anvil in a Wiley Coyote short. He's not mad at her anymore, just like that. Sometimes he wishes his resolve were stronger, but this is almost too dumb and yet so quintessentially them.

"I know," he admits, because he had. And he knew it mattered to her even though she pretended otherwise. It takes almost a full 30 seconds of dodgy eye contact before he can ask his own, much less profound question. "I'm gonna... you wanna walk back to town?" With me? He swallows, almost in disbelief that he's opening himself up to rejection again. He is stronger now, though, he could take it even if she'd rather suffer out here and get a stupid cramp.

[underachievement]

He's a stupid cramp.

She is exhausted but she knows herself and she doesn't need superpowers to survive. If she stays out here, she's bear bait. Or bear equivalent. The longer she lazes around, the more reasonable an idea it becomes to recharge with a nap. With a conceding quirk of her head, she pushes off the tree trunk and grabs up her bottle.

"All right but if you try and teach me any boy scout shit on the way," she jokes dryly and then strains her expression. They've navigated the thin ice unusually well thus far. Let's not start tap dancing. The funny part is that while it probably won't be that that shatters the ceasefire but something just as inconsequential.

[oorah]

He holds up his hands in clear surrender, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his lips before it's gone. Frank waits for her to occupy the space next to him before turning around to head back into the settlement, everything hurts but it's in a way he's used to at least, and therefore easily ignored. He too is surprised at how well this went, even if it's probably just the combined effects of dehydration and exhaustion allowing them to exist on the same plane again.

"Which- uh. Where do you live?" he asks, still awkward but less so. He actually doesn't know and it's obvious he's not just pretending. He'd never seen her at any of the houses in his immediate area and had just assumed she lived off in the next village where he seldom ventures.

[underachievement]

Everything hurts in ways Jess is not at all used to, however downplaying her discomfort is old hat and having to do so will get her back to the village faster than if she went at her own pace. Is that why people like to work out together? Ew. Her next jog isn't going to be scheduled, it will be whenever she feels like it, or, more accurately, whenever she doesn't feel like doing anything else, but she'll avoid today's starting hour until she forgets why.

"Creepy little house at the end of the road," she tells him. When she arrived, panicking and sopping wet, she told him not to find her. He didn't. Though she may or may not have dreamed him leaving her a basket while she was sick and sober. She eyed up Seventh for a long time before landing on her House 60 address. Jess kicks a small tree branch into the brush and off the path. "Just minimizing my chances of falling off a bridge drunk."

It's a quarter of the truth and it can uphold the whole of it, for all that her indecision has mattered. She chose to remain close in case people needed help and she's only felt more and more stupid since. When she's fully sick of herself, maybe she'll grab another tent, abscond to Seventh and live behind the greenhouse, kick up a pot habit. Then when they find her, free housing at the police station. Presumably. She hasn't been in and still doesn't really get what it's for but hey, better to have it and not need it. Wasn't that the plan with the prison? And whoever managed to pull it off here isn't exactly getting a commemoration ceremony, which fuckin' tracks. Good thing her paranoia tops out just shy of "what if it was me."

[oorah]

"Fitting," he comments dryly, but follows more-or-less at her side, keeping pace easily. She used to be so much faster than him, stronger, better. Maybe some men would feel powerful at the sudden shift, but Frank just feels resentment. She doesn't need any more pain than life has already dealt her, regardless of the pain she's dealt him.. "Probably a good call." The bridge, but Frank doesn't believe it's the whole story either.

He too will avoid runs in the morning without fully piecing together why that is, thus upping their probability of doing this again without ever trying for it. Despite how inoffensively this is going, he's still unlikely to seek her out, and he knows she doesn't seek anyone out most of the time, so here they sit again at a familiar impasse. It doesn't feel as unbearable as it once had, however. Outside of every horror done to them, against each of their wills, he's beginning to realize they may not have much in common at all. Maybe that's why everything went so pear-shaped. That part he tries not to analyze.

"You want to be in the village with everyone else, but you don't," he realizes aloud, understanding her plight in all too many ways. It's too bad, she's clearly a part of it whether she wants to be or not the same as him. But it's sweet in her terrible way, that she wanted to be close enough to help. After a minute he grunts, miserable and commiserating: "Same."