Apartment Above Lukes, Tuesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

So, technically, Kathy's plan was to make tacos for dinner, but no one would know that from the state of the kitchen. She'd decided to make homemade guacamole (because what were tacos other than tasty vehicles for guac?) and now all the taco fixings were kind of pushed off to one side while she finished mashing up the avocados and chopping the cilantro and prepping the other stuff.

And texting Dante, because making tacos was the perfect opportunity for jokes, right? Especially with her shoulder still a little red from Pride?

Looking forward to putting all the tacos into my face tonight, she said, continuing their lazy conversation. No more sausage for me, but tacos are always the way to my...heart.

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[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh?" Kathy asked, halfway out of the kitchen, her mind more about getting the strap-on back into her room in case Raven came home unexpectedly. That concern vanished as soon as what he said actually registered in her consciousness. "Oh!"

That was unexpected. And considering the context, she drew entirely the wrong conclusion from it. "Uhh, that's...great," she said, a little lamely. "Sorry, I didn't mean to push with the--the box. I wasn't assuming--look, being friends still is way more important than anything else we got up to, so whatever you've decided, I'm not gonna push. So don't worry about that, okay?"

[rebelseekspizza]

There was a long pause.

Dante cast her a confused look over her shoulder. "The fuck you talking about?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Your decision to not sleep with anyone else," Kathy said, now thoroughly confused. She'd tucked the box beneath her elbow so she could worry at her hands. "I was letting you know that you don't have to worry about me trying to make you change your mind. We can keep teasing and joking and I won't have any expectations of where it's going to go."

[rebelseekspizza]

Now Dante was confused, too. "I kinda figured you and Anders were a package deal," he said, shoving some meat along the side of the pan. "Unless I got that wrong."

WORDS. STUPID.

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SO STUPID.

"I don't ever expect you to sleep with me just because we're both sleeping with Anders," Kathy said quietly, inwardly despairing. She'd thought that they'd gotten here because this was where they wanted to be, not because she and Anders were a package. She drew a long, shuddery breath and pushed that all aside to deal with later. "I--I'm sorry I gave you that impression. I tried not to demands--I'll be better. But you don't ever have to sleep with me if you don't want to, regardless of what Anders and I are doing. If I made you feel that way, I'm so sorry."

She fought to give him a smile, thin and weak though it was. One that said that they were okay, even if she wasn't okay right then, because they were what mattered. "If you want to try just sleeping with him, that's really great. And don't hesitate to call me out for being me, I guess, if I ever do or say something that makes you feel like I'm not holding to that."

[rebelseekspizza]

Well, that put Dante two for two in totally failing to communicate about this properly.

Maybe two and a half for two and a half, if you counted last conversation with Anders about it.

He groped for the fridge with one hand, hoping to find something alcoholic. "Kathy," he said, with all the talking experience he'd built up over the past two weeks, "By package deal I mean I didn't think about not sleeping with you for one second. You're just kind of-- part of this whole thing."

Unless he was making the wrong assumptions about what she wanted, but going by that rant just now, he didn't think he was. "The rules for you are different than for everybody else, I just took that as a given."

[spin_kick_snap]

There were more multiple bottles of beer and malt beverages in the door if he wanted them. Including a few Mike's Hard Strawberry Lemonade.

"I--I am?" she asked, looking bewildered. "You didn't? I..."

Fuck, now she was even closer to tears than before, just out of sheer relief. Not even because she was still part of it, but because she hadn't been screwing up as horribly as she'd just thought. She took a second to glance up at the ceiling to let the tears drain back and steady herself so Dante wouldn't have to deal with crying on top of everything else. He hated crying.

"I think maybe I need a drink," she said with a small laugh, once more to signal that everything was okay than because anything was funny.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante nudged open the fridge, producing a bottle of beer and a bottle of the hard lemonade. The latter, he offered to Kathy.

"A lot of the stuff I used to do doesn't do much for me anymore," he said. "I figured just, you know, whatever. I can get my dick sucked and feel like trash, or I can stay home and get my dick sucked and feel good."

He popped open his bottle and took a swig. "Not saying we got the same thing going on as me and Anders or you and Anders, but you're important. Not so much with the trash."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy took the bottle, popped the lid, and drank half of it in a long swallow. It was more sugar than alcohol, but it was something she could focus on that wasn't all of this.

And then he talked and she listened and she thought about what he said before responding, choosing her words carefully rather than just spewing forth with a torrent.

"I know that what we have isn't the same as what Anders has with either of us," she said quietly. "But it's still important to me and I'm glad that I don't make you feel bad about it afterwards. The last thing I ever want to do is make you feel like I'm expecting or demanding something from you that you don't want to give."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante took the pan of meat off the stove, figuring brown was brown enough. "I know," he said, rummaging around for the knob to turn the stove off.

"And look, I don't know if this is ever gonna be more than whatever it is right now," he said, turning around - and taking a huge swig of his beer as he moved. "But I'm not gonna pretend like you're not in this. Not 'cause you're expecting anything or whatever, but because it's stupid to."

[spin_kick_snap]

Again, Kathy took a few moments before answering--this time because she wasn't sure if her first thoughts counted as more of her habit of 'always wanting more' or just causing trouble where it wasn't needed. So she nodded and finished her drink and thought of something else to say instead.

"That means a lot to me," she said. "I don't know what you want--or even if you want it to ever be anything other than exactly what we've got now. But I'm happy to just be a fixed point in this whole thing. Knowing there's a place for me is enough."

Might not always be, but that was for the future to take care of. Kathy was doing her best to live in the present. It was the only thing she could affect.

[rebelseekspizza]

"I don't know what I want from you either," Dante said, shrugging. "I know I wanna keep Anders in my life 'cause he makes me feel good about me like nobody else does."

He was gonna shrug some more and swig his beer to make that statement look like it meant nothing.

"And I know I still like sleeping with you," he said, "And I like hanging out with you. And getting back to doing this--" He gestured faintly in the direction the box had gone, and then between themselves, "Feels like it's how it's supposed to be again."

[spin_kick_snap]

That, Kathy could agree with wholeheartedly and she nodded again, more enthusiastically, to show it. "I missed this," she admitted. "Not just the sex but the--ease? The way you'd come knocking at my door just to say hey and laugh at me about studying. Sure, we'd fuck an awful lot, but we didn't have to. Sometimes you'd just let me draw on your arm or I'd wingman for you in Baltimore and it was good because we were friends. And we're not back there yet--not that it'll ever be just like that again, I know--but it feels like we're maybe on the road to getting somewhere like it. And I..." She swallowed hard to steady her voice again. "And that's important to me."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante quirked a small smile at her. "'s important to me too, Kat."

[spin_kick_snap]

Again, that dizzying feeling of relief and she smiled back him, bright and unshadowed by anything else.

"Are there things I can be doing to make you feel good about being you?" she asked. "I mean, I'm not trying to step on Anders' toes and I know he does it just, like, effortlessly or whatever, but if there are things I can do to help...?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Kathy," Dante said, putting his hands down on the edge of the counter. "Don't. Just do what comes natural, all right?"

[spin_kick_snap]

But when she did what came natural, it was either too much or not enough. Asking how she could help had come natural and had clearly been the wrong thing, leaving her feeling like she was on uneven ground again.

"Yeah, okay," she said, reaching to grab plates from the drying rack and a bit of silverware so Dante wouldn't have to use his hands to get the meat out of the frying pan and into his tacos. "Didn't mean to push."

And then she bit down on the apology that also came natural but she knew he didn't want.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante frowned at her as he moved some meat onto a taco. "Kathy?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Yeah?" she asked, looking up at him, brows furrowed.

[rebelseekspizza]

"You're doing the whole 'something's wrong but I don't wanna say it' thing," Dante ventured.

[spin_kick_snap]

"No, I..." Kathy bit her lip, and thought about it, making a vegetarian taco on autopilot. "I feel like I don't know how to talk to you anymore," she said finally. "Not about big things. Anders either, though to a lesser extent."

But definitely still there.

"I'm not sure about what's okay for me to do or say or feel a lot of the time, so I err on the side of...not doing or saying or trying not to feel. Because this way I can't screw everything up again. More. Whatever. It's like I'm always walking on thin ice and the wrong move will shatter everything." She gave him another wry smile. "So telling me to just do what comes natural when everything that comes natural to me is wrong, you know?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Yeah," Dante said. He gave her a slow, thoughtful once-over, chewing on his bottom lip.

"I can tell when you're overthinking it. Always could, but now it's pretty much all the time unless I can coax you outta it."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I don't mean to make you do that," Kathy said, ducking her head apologetically.

[rebelseekspizza]

"I don't do it 'cause you make me, I do it 'cause I want to," Dante sighed. "It's not good for you, Kat. I wish I could make it easier."

[spin_kick_snap]

There was that moment of thinking again, as Kathy thought of and discarded multiple ideas at once.

"It is just very hard to talk to you, when I don't know which response is right and which one is wrong," she said, clearly struggling to get the words out. "And when the wrong ones can cost us weeks or even months of progress. So it's easier to just be quiet and smile and even if we're not moving forward at least I'm not breaking anything."