33 Apocalypse Ave (and eventually to Limbo City), Friday Afternoon

[spin_kick_snap]

Last week, Kathy had been an utter lump, eating ice cream and playing sad music and watching a lot of TV while she got used to life without the guys. This week wasn't actually much easier, but Kathy's tolerance for her own moping had run out and left her needing to do something that wasn't just dwell.

Fortunately, it wasn't like she was lacking in options. With the guys gone and Raven spending most of her time out in the woods, the house was just too big and full of memories. So she was moving back to the apartment above Luke's - along with Raven, at least nominally - and this week she'd really gotten her ass in gear when it came to packing. Most of the upstairs was packed, even if those boxes were still mostly stacked downstairs, and now she was just cleaning out their old rooms of the detritus the always seemed to accumulate under furniture and in corners.

Like this old credit card bill of Dante's from...April of 2017. Kathy snorted and rolled her eyes, preparing to toss it into the bin that was half-full of junk when she noticed that one of the items on there was in Hangul. Wait. Had Dante been learning stuff in Korean?

Wait. 김치 크림 파이. Was that a-- Kathy grabbed her phone and did a quick search and yep. It was pretty much exactly the kind of website she'd been expecting with a name like that. Definitely didn't have to do with desserts, that was for damn sure.

"Oh." She wasn't entirely sure what to make of it, especially since that was back when everything had still been really...rough...between them. They'd been friends, in a tentative kind of manner, but no more. So then why...?

"Hi, Portalocity? I've got a portal scheduled to Limbo City for later on this evening, but I was wondering, could I bump it up to earlier than that? Something this afternoon would be good, yeah."

[Open for calls, texts, and visitors before she goes, and LC folks afterwards!]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy pillowed her head in his lap, looking up at his face. She was so glad she hadn't tried to talk about this over text or a call. Being with him grounded her a bit, letting her calm jangled nerves and hyperactive anxieties with his body language.

"Right," she said. "I was his exception, but we were still kind of figuring out where we were. Definitely hadn't started hooking up again yet."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante's fingers were stroking idly through her hair. He wasn't upset or anything, just puzzled.

"I saw an ad, I was like, 'Korean girls are hot'," he said, pondering aloud.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh," Kathy said, feeling distinctly embarrassed.

And here she'd been thinking it had something to do with her. Way to be both narcissistic and weird conspiracy theorist at the same time, Kath.

"So you figured you'd sign up and check it out?"

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shrugged. "I guess," he said, his fingers not letting up. "I cancelled pretty quick, though. It felt... weird."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Because of me?" she asked, sounding apologetic.

She hadn't meant to ruin your porn, Dante.

[rebelseekspizza]

"I guess," Dante said thoughtfully. "You ever look at somebody and be like, 'You're almost that person, but not really'?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy nodded. "And you were still having a hard time thinking of me like that," she said quietly. "And that made it hard to watch them, too? Because they were close enough to trigger that 'not into it' reflex?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"I still got hard," Dante said, after a pause. "Just. Yeah. Weird."

About as confused as that entire period had been, really.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Hard but not really interested?" Kathy asked. "Body willing but the mind elsewhere?"

Her brow furrowed as something new occurred to her. "Did it help at all? With me, I mean? Made it easier to think of me like that?"

[rebelseekspizza]

That long pause was mostly there because Dante needed to think about something he'd never thought about before.

"... Yeah," he said.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh," Kathy said again, bringing her total up to three for the conversation.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Oh?" Dante asked.

[spin_kick_snap]

Her first instinct was to play it off, to casually sidestep the question. Instead, she took a moment and then admitted, "I'm trying to sort through how that makes me feel. If I even have a right to feel any way about it."

[rebelseekspizza]

"You're gonna feel however you're gonna feel," Dante said. "No right way about it."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Right now, I feel a jumble of different things," she said. "Enough that I'm not sure what all of them are. But, at the same time, you having an old porn account somewhere isn't any of my business, you know? Like, you would have been well within your right to say then when I asked about it."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shrugged. "Why do that?" he said. "I got nothing to hide here."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Well, yeah," Kathy said with a shrug. "But having nothing to hide isn't the same thing as it being my business. Just like having feelings isn't the same as being entitled to them."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Sure," Dante granted her. "But this is not like, a big dark secret or anything. I guess I wasn't ready to think of you like that yet? But part of me kinda wanted to?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy nodded again, those last sentences recontextualizing some things and helping her get a little bit of a better grasp on how she was feeling.

"I never felt like it was," she said. "Or like you were trying to hide anything from me. I wouldn't even have looked at bill, except there was Hangul."

Which had caught her attention long enough to read it before she'd even fully realized what it was.

"And even then, the only thing that made it weird was that it was from then, you know? I mean, if you were looking at a site called Kimchi Creampies now, I'd probably just ask if you saw anything worth sharing."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante laughed softly. "Think I get enough kimchi creampies of my own now," he teased. "You're hotter than any girl on that site."

He was biased.

[spin_kick_snap]

Just a little bit.

"Hey, I'm just saying, I'm not gonna interrogate your porn choices. You missed that phase by a few years," she said, her face relaxing into a smile again.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante kissed her mouth quickly, now that he could. "Though I do remember this awesome vid in a shower..." he said.

Joked? Half-joked?

[spin_kick_snap]

She hadn't even realized she'd been giving off 'don't kiss me' vibes. But if he had, she probably would have just felt even more confused.

"Mmm, you think it's something I might be interested in?" she asked, interest kindling in her eyes. "I'll have to hear some details..."

[rebelseekspizza]

She'd been Very Serious. Dante tried to avoid kissing her when she was Very Serious; he didn't want to seem dismissive.

"So there was this hot Korean chick in this big-ass shower and she was like, totally in command," he said. "Made the guy play with her and then fuck her under the hot water."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Fuckin' closet masochist," Kathy teased, pulling him down for a kiss. "I'd make you kneel. And tell me how much you want."