Badly Done, Emma - [Tina's apartment, Day 15] - [James, Tina]

[gold_ambition]

Where Tina invited, James went. It was somewhat remarkable, really, that after all that had happened she could so easily suggest another afternoon watching movies. He'd walked out on her after their date, punched her ex without any true repentance, and didn't feel bad at all about what had happened yesterday except that Jim had gotten to share--and

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[rn_chapel]

Tina was standing near the door, expecting him. She'd cleaned the place up a little, which mostly consisted of picking up clothes and discarding food that she certainly wasn't going to trust, and had equipped their movie-watching area with glasses of filtered water and a couple of not-entirely-joking ice packs.

"Okay, so, I was going to ask you to explain one of Kepler's laws to me, but then I thought maybe you didn't have a Johannes Kepler in your timeline. And I'm not sure I could separate a valid explanation from sex-fever-fueled rambling, anyway," Tina said, through a little crack in the door. "So why don't you tell me what you really thought of Persuasion?"

She figured that if his answer had any complexity at all, he was probably safe to let in. But she'd also be happy to let him keep going for a while.

[gold_ambition]

James rolled his eyes. He still wanted to have sex with Tina, felt a little hot under the collar just thinking about her, but the fever had receded and the uncontrollable urge had died with it.

The urge remained, but he could handle that until she gave in for good.

"Fine," he said. "I liked it. That was me gasping when they finally got together. I'm a girly man with no lingering shreds of dignity." He sighed. "And the square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit."

[rn_chapel]

"Girly men can have dignity," Tina said. "Some of my best friends are dignified girly men."

She opened the door and stepped back to let him in. Though she'd considered putting on more concealing clothes out of a new sense of hyper-modesty, she'd talked herself out of it again and was wearing the tank top and shorts she'd put on after her morning shower. Clean ones, at least, and not revealing in and of themselves, though they didn't do much to conceal the love bites and faint bruises that bloomed at periodic intervals on her skin.

Still, she was in good spirits, and in as good of health as could be expected, under the circumstances, and was more than ready to do something social that involved no fucking whatsoever.

[gold_ambition]

"And you want me not to punch them," James wondered, shaking his head as he entered. He could not avoid seeing the marks on her flesh, and wonder if he'd put them there or if Jim had. If... A thought flared and was quickly sent to the furthest reaches of his consciousness, though jealousy smoldered.

Who else? his mind demanded. Jim, he'd been there for, he couldn't avoid thinking of, but Jim had seemed almost like a shadow. If someone else had gotten to her, how could he stand it?

His jaw somewhat set, he held out the flowers.

"I figured these were safe," he said.