14 [Video/Text]

[yeahscience]

[Jesse's back, bitches! He's yawning and rubbing at his eyes, so evidently, it hasn't been very long since he woke up.]

Yo, how long was I out for...? I had the weirdest dreams. Like I was all fighting dinosaurs, and then I was a pirate, and then we were on the moon, and then I was a little kid running around here...

[He hesitates, going back

Comments

[yeahscience]

[He's startled for a half a second, but then his face floods with open relief, a huge smile taking over.]

You're awake... I-- [Oh, wait, they don't have to do this over the comm.] Hell yeah, get your ass over here, what are you even waiting for?

Log, then!

[yeahscience]

Jesse was waiting outside by the time Claire came down, one hand still on the doorknob; and the moment she got there, her wrist was in his other hand, and he was tugging her through the door with a teasing, "Yo, get in here, already."

And then she was back in his room, and it was like the last few weeks had never happened. He still wasn't sure exactly how long they'd been apart, but for him it'd been like almost two weeks, and that was too damn long, not knowing when he'd see her awake. He wrapped his arms tight around her and buried his face in her hair, breathing in the scent of her shampoo again. "I missed you," he murmured, closing his eyes.

[yeahscience]

Jesse's plans hadn't really included talking -- not yet, anyway -- and before she said that he'd gone quiet, arms tight around her, enjoying the warmth of her against him. But now, he went a little tense, eyes opening narrowly. In his experience, uh, interesting pretty fucking rarely coincided with good.

He drew back slightly, enough to look down at her face. "And, uh... what's that?" he asked, with great trepidation and a tight, anxious smile.

[yeahscience]

"Oh." Okay, yeah, at some point they were going to have to have a conversation about how to break news. In Jesse's world, interesting tended to mean, well, a lot of interesting. Bad interesting. 'Watch your back so you don't get shot' interesting. Not so much 'yippy little dog' interesting, which was pretty Goddamn like preferable.

Besides, she'd said something else he liked. He took a deep breath and relaxed, smiling into the kiss. "We do, huh?" he murmured against her lips, teasing, but pleased. Big dogs were more his thing, but he'd take ten yippy show dogs for that we.

[yeahscience]

Jesse laughed, letting himself be pushed towards the bed, which was, you know, a little more what he'd had in mind all along. "You too, baby," he assured her, kissing her again, tugging her down to the bed with him. "This place blows without you

[yeahscience]

"Yeah." Jesse nodded, his own smile fading a little. "Yeah, I know." Whatever, he'd probably try to act like he didn't care later on, but he did, a little. He'd loved Christmas when he was a kid, before everything went to shit. Now... maybe he'd spent the last few Christmases hanging out in parking lots or the mall (and once, memorably, at a strip club), and maybe Claire's penchant for decorating had been a little overwhelming... but privately, he'd been pretty psyched.

He sighed, rubbing her shoulder lightly. "We'll just have to have it late, that's all. Right?" He hesitated, considering. "Maybe... really late, because I'm sort of, you know, working on something, and it's not really... finished, yet."

[yeahscience]

"I don't know about that, yo. Mine's pretty sick." Jesse grinned, but teasing or not, he maybe seemed a little nervous. He'd already been working on Claire's present for a while, now, but he wasn't all that confident in his art skills anymore. He'd already finished three drafts, only to throw them all away for not being good enough.

Besides, she was pretty good at being all thoughtful and shit. Her present probably was better than his.

He rolled onto his back, looping an arm around her shoulders. "Um... we can do it in, like, maybe a couple weeks?" he hedged, hoping that was enough time.

[yeahscience]

He winced slightly. "Yeah. It's cool." Dealing with Pink hadn't been as soul-suckingly awful as he'd figured it would be, actually... But he didn't want to talk about that with her. It seemed like they worked okay together when they had a common goal, but that didn't mean they were exactly likely to become best buddies.

"--Hey, who took the dogs while I was out, anyways? Did he? 'Cause that was like... almost two weeks ago." He rubbed her arm lightly, and added, in a quieter voice: "You'd been down for ten days."