Can't you tell that this is all just a contest?

[jonocalypse]

WHO: Jono jonocalypse  and Paige ahhmahlawd 
WHERE: A coffee shop to start
WHEN: Saturday at 7, sharpish
WARNINGS: ANGST (when is it not)
SUMMARY: After months of UST and random makeouts, things come to a head as Jono is forced to consider the eternal question of "are we an 'us'?"
FORMAT: Para to start, and then whatever K decides to go with.

Comments

[ahhmahlawd]

There was no question for Paige. Jono has made himself clear at the park, hadn't he? They were dating. That made them an "us". She had been thinking this way ever since then. Naturally. So Paige was just naively beaming at Jono and talking about her job and sipping on her tea. How was police work? She was dubbed the "Porn Police" at work. It was a long story. And so on.

If anything was amiss, Paige was completely unaware, as per usual.

[jonocalypse]

Jono wasn't quite enjoying the (admittedly fragile) calm as much as he could, as Paige's blithe confidence was slightly intimidating. Was he doing this again, really? Had he really made the same mistake he had all those years ago?

But no, he wanted to be with Paige, didn't he? He did; he knew it. But just not in the way that she wanted, he supposed. It wasn't fair to her, somehow, that he was older, that things hadn't worked out between them anyway, that she somehow still saw him as his eighteen-year-old self. Things had changed. He had changed. Being with Paige seemed like an absurd denial of that, somehow.

Jono realized he'd lost the thread of what Paige had been talking about; she'd just said something and he'd not heard it. "Come again?"

[ahhmahlawd]

"I don't think you've heard a word I said. Is something wrong?" One of Paige's eyebrows arched at his inattentiveness. She was talking too much again, a bad habit that everyone always made fun of. But she was supremely happy that they were just having a moment to themselves outside of work and responsibilities that the words flowed out of her easily. "Still tired?"

She was sympathetic-- someone like Paige slept only when necessary, working all hours of the day and night because she was such a perfectionist.

[jonocalypse]

"A little, yeah," Jono admitted, and it wasn't exactly a lie. "My mind was a bit elsewhere. What were you saying?"

Paige liked to talk, and that was fine with him, because Jono was a habitual listener and thus skilled in selective hearing. He usually didn't tune out so completely, though.