Welcome to Gaia! ::

Jack rolled his eyes and bristled a little more. "Thanks for being so ******** thoughtful."

Turning grouchy, he all but glared at the handbag when she presented it. Of course it had to be a nice one she was thinking of defiling with ******** studs. "It's fine as it is," he snipped. "Some ******** fashion sense, that's what I should've given you for Christmas."

"No." He gave her an incredulous look. "What would I do with a purse?"

He winced internally for that poor, poor purse.

"And whine at people until you get what you want," he added stiffly, eying the wooden horse. It didn't look impressive at all, which made him feel slightly better, but still. "God, that's subtle: ride the stallion. I bet you the next one'll be a carved rooster: get some hard c**k." He snort-laughed at his own genius double entendres but it didn't fully color his expression.

"So. What next? You going to finish the food I brought or what?"

He knew it was an empty threat at this point and laughed even harder that she even tried it. Maybe if Chel hadn't whimpered her agreement by the campfire it would have worked.

"Well, since you're already getting cozy, we might as well talk," Jack replied once he calmed down, stretching back against the cushions. "Which I bet you've been dying to do since China." Like he wasn't a little anxious himself, like he wasn't wishing he could confront these topics without being so blasé. "So, talk."

He figured as much. Jack took his time as he reached for the half-empty glass from earlier and went back to sipping it thoughtfully. His gaze kept falling back to the presents, the canvas and scale in particular due to color and sheen. What are you? Ian has asked. Sober or not he still didn't know, but Jack couldn't help but wonder if he lied somewhere between those two items: between a soft code and a hard exterior, between hunter and beast. He had certainly acted like both in the past. But he had only ever been truly comfortable with being fully an animal: being "completely human" and suffering the mortality and and conscience and flaws that came with it was an unknown, and it made his skin itch.

"You saved me," he said eventually, his eyes everywhere but on her. "On a hunch I called out and you answered. Now I find myself in the delicate and unpleasant circumstance of owing you my life, and I don't know how to repay that debt. And you can shrug it off if you want," he said a little more defensively, expecting another joke, a snort, a wrinkle of the face, a comment devaluing his inner system of checks and balances, "you could say you were just doing your job, but that's not true. Fixing the anomaly was the job, not saving a ******** idiot trainee who tried to take on a dragon. You didn't have to, but you did. So. Here I am, fumbling like a ******** retard in the dark, trying to understand how to go from here." He let Chel chew on that as he drank.

"That's just one thing that bothers me," Jack argued, becoming more recalcitrant on impulse at the accusation, maybe even more so at the touch he hadn't invited. "There's so many ******** things that bother me, you wouldn't—"

He made a dismissive noise and lowered his glass, meeting Chel's eyes with a hard stare. "You really want to know why I called your name? Because I keep seeing—kept seeing these stupid ******** visions where people dropped like ******** flies or got the hell out of dodge, and every ******** time you stayed behind to try and get someone out, and every ******** time you did you died like a b***h, but at least I knew, right? At least I knew you'd always go back even if it ******** killed you. Or at least, now I know."

He swallowed down the second impulse to throw the glass (he knew it would do no old, but his built up annoyances demanded something be done) with what was left of the milkshake.

"And I didn't trust anyone else would come for my a**," he added with a scowl. "Not in that ******** stellar team, not with people like ******** Talia, or Wren, ******** hell she almost left too."

The scowl turned nasty, and for a long while Jack was a cornered animal. He took refuge in his dark mood because it was easier and more natural than even a calm head, and because as much as he longed for the detached manner under medication, conflict seemed to better befit his nature.

He remembered there was a runic dagger still on his person and considered getting it out if she tried restricting him any more. Even now his hand inched towards his pocket. There was fear in her eyes, though, and it was thrilling to see in spite of his anger.

"Think I'd be here if I didn't?" he all but growled, every word a piece of an answer she was prying from him unwillingly, as if it was another admittance of weakness like there had been under the stars. "Think we'd be here if I didn't?" Not just physically, but in emotion, in memory, in past deeds and past words.

He stayed on the defensive, not just because of the topic matter but because he didn't trust anything that looked that tame, not any more. The last person to give him eyes like that had traded his life off to save herself. His fingers curled around the hilt of the dagger and it soothed him just a little, in the manner of icepacks and bruises: temporary and numbing.

"Yeah."

He watched her carefully and remained tense.