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]

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."

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

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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?"

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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?"

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

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

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"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?"

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"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."

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

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"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."

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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."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante ran a hand through his hair. (It really was getting long, in some places. In other places it itched with growth where it'd once been kept shot.) "That's no way to live."

But he didn't know how to make things more simple, either.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I have before," Kathy said with a shrug, spooning a truly obscene amount of guac onto her taco. And also kimchi because this was her house and no one could tell her how to eat her tacos, dammit. "And hopefully we'll either get to the point where I can fuck up without setting us back to square one or I'll figure out what's okay and what isn't."

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Another long pause. Dante took his plate and put it down on the table.

"I don't wanna be like your dad, Kathy."

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There were a couple of jokes Kathy could have made, ranging from the inappropriate ('Good, cause you're doing a lousy impression of scattered ashes') to the incredibly inappropriate ('Great, cause I never wanted to fuck my dad'), but she didn't. Mostly because they were just shitty ways to change the subject back to something safer. But that would mean leaving this here and--she couldn't do that.

"I don't think of you the way I thought about him," she offered. And gave real consideration to just leaving it there. But he'd probably realize that there was more and so it was easier to just add, "But I can't honestly say I don't sometimes act the same way."

Beat.

"Feel the same way."

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Dante sighed. "Yeah, I can tell," he said, sinking into a seat behind his tacos. "Not sure how I can fix that."

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Kathy's own taco tasted like dust in her mouth. She wanted to blame the lack of cilantro in the guacamole but she knew that wasn't it.

"This wasn't how this evening was supposed to go, you know," she said, setting down her taco. Maybe she'd pick it up again later. "I was going to try to convince you to try kimchi on your tacos, argue with you over the mixers I have in my fridge since I still can't find just plain strawberry juice, and talk to you about the trip to Mexico. Nothing's set yet, but Anders and I were talking about maybe seeing if you wanted to come down if we ended up staying a second week. Simple stuff. Light stuff. Easy stuff. Not this. I'm sorry."

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"Hey, I started it," Dante said, mouth twisting into a light smile that dared Kathy to match it. "We can get this outta the way now or table it for later, then get back to your mixers."

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Dear god did Kathy want to get back to mixers. She wanted to go back in time and never have said anything at all. Dante was being really chill about it, but the pit of her stomach roiled with anxiety as she worried over how long that would stay true. Pretending they could ignore this was so tempting and then they could move to more solid ground and maybe Kathy could eat her tacos again.

But ignoring the topic wouldn't make it go away and it would just hang over them until they did talk about it. Maybe Dante would be able to ignore it, but Kathy would always be acutely aware that it was still lurking between them. "Do you have a preference?" she asked. "Me deciding to keep talking about it isn't going to do much if you'd rather do anything but."

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Dante shrugged. "Not really," he said. "Whatever you think's gonna help."

He had beer. He'd be fine. And he was clearly less emotionally all over this than she was.

He felt pretty chill.

[spin_kick_snap]

Dante less emotionally all over than Kathy, news at eleven.

"I don't..." She mulled over how to even begin. "Dealing with my dad was hard because he was capricious. And he'd sulk or ignore us if he was upset. The silent treatment really bothers me to this day because of that. It's so stupid, I know, but it bugs me and--I'm getting off-topic. That doesn't matter. The important thing I'm trying to say is that you're not like that. You're not a tin-pot dictator that likes to prove he's the head of the house by belittling the rest of us."

See? Not the same.

[rebelseekspizza]

"I know," Dante said. "I mean, I figured."

Did it sound arrogant, saying you weren't a tinpot dictator? Dante just couldn't figure it out.

"But like you said, you react to me like that sometimes. I noticed."

He shrugged, picking at his taco. Emotional conversation or no, he was hungry, damn it. "Look, I'm not gonna lie this wasn't touch and go for a while," he said. "But I feel like we're hitting a good groove these days. No?"

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She was jealous of his appetite, dammit. Hers was finicky as all hell these days.

"I don't know," Kathy said. "That's the whole problem. I...I think so? But I can't trust that. How much is true and how much am I just reading what I want to read into it? How stable is that good space? What if we fight or I make you mad? Will you pull away again because we argued? Is it okay for me to even ask these questions or am I being selfish and expectant again for want to...like...control how we interact and not push you away?"

She looked at him, a little helpless. "I don't know, Dante. I just don't."