Welcome to Gaia! ::

I don't want to see something else that isn't there anymore. He didn't say it, but he supposed he didn't have to. It had been present in his posture, his tone, and in his eyes. He didn't want something as passive and untouchable as a ghost, and he didn't want the stench of the undead that refused to lie in graves: he longed for demons that bound and possessed him and made him beg, monsters that dug their nails and fangs and howled with laughter until he bled out, reapers that clutched what passed for his soul and with knowing grins choked the life out of it. And maybe scraping and cutting his abrasive personality against someone else was the way to excise what rust he no longer wanted in his life.

The intensity in his eyes lessened as he returned from himself. "Okay." The word sounded so bland in comparison to his thoughts, so meek, even though the volume hadn't changed. "We can try." It wasn't the perfect answer and it wasn't a promise, and that was why Jack had avoided making one. Chel was right, he didn't want perfect. He wanted that sliver of uncertainty still tainting his words as naturally as he had wanted to unnerve the group around the campfire. Jack didn't desire a happy ending and didn't pretend he could offer one even without considering their jobs, and he knew Chel understood that because she didn't either. They bother craved some form of danger, and he supposed that was what this was in the end.

He lifted the mug to his lips, her hands tugged along not just by pinkies but by the several fingers he layered between hers, inhaled the smell of the Arabic dark roast, and drank. "You have to admit I'm getting better at it, though," Jack said. "While sober, even."

"The most important," he repeated blankly. It took him a solid two seconds to understand the gibberish Chel just sent his way, and then he scoffed. Several steps back towards normal. "What the ******** is a--is that some Snookie mutant clone?"

< It sounds like a celebratory food, > Owain put in, radiating relief and pride for them both.

"I'm not a honeybear, I'm more of a sweet cuddlikins sort of guy," he deadpanned.

He sighed and wondered what new hell he had just invited in. "Just...moderation, please," Jack replied after a moment. "Doesn't matter to me who knows, but I also don't need it shouted across the island either." He'd let her approach her third question however she wanted.

This one took longer to answer. It wasn't as though he had gone around looking for other women--hell, even his attempt with Peyton had gone sour--but at the same time it was still solidifying commitment, and while the security meant something to him, it was also making this whole conversation a little too surreal. Chelsea Craft, self-proclaimed whore of the ******** everything with two legs orientation, offering to narrow that field of vision for him.

He made a soft musing noise and wrinkled his face to lift his glasses up his nose without needing to use his hands. "...Sure. Like I said, we can try," Jack eventually replied. It wasn't that it was particularly hard to stay to one person, it wasn't his first rodeo; and it wasn't like Deus was ripe with people he felt a distinct need to ******** at some point. ******** over, maybe. But he still felt a need to emphasize the try part, as though saying only aloud would somehow cancel everything out with how definitive it sounded. Chel, after all, lived a very free life in her own way, even with this craziness coming from her mouth he kept nodding his head to.

He chuckled, but it did sound strangely tired; he wasn't sure why that was. "Then go shower, snuggleppuss," he told her without any indication that she was being freed from his grasp (if anything, quite the opposite), "before you vomit on me from your sudden influx of mush."

He considered it, hummed, and then decided pulling her in for a kiss sounded like a good first step. Jack still felt, as he always did, the inclination to slide his teeth into her scar, but he checked himself to just enough to prove he was alive and not as listless as his behavior suggested.

"Mm. Girlfriend," he said simply enough, smiling a little at the difficulty Chel had.

He muttered an apology somewhere in between, maybe, it was hard to tell as usual whether he was more amused or sarcastic at the idea of occupying headspace so possessively. But he understood all too well the twisted knots hanging from the memory of the dead like choked red lifelines, how they had a disturbing habit of feeling like puppet strings when they attached, and as a result there was no maybe in his silence, only acceptance and a thread of sympathy. He had yet to really talk about Lina, but what little he had managed earlier have been his step for the moment; there was enough going on without prodding the dead today. There was an equally quiet answer about her scar, but the n** at her lips he snuck in and the crooked half-smile were promise enough.

"Not at the moment, snickerdoodle," he replied, still managing to somehow say it with a straight face like the rest. "Maybe later." And then, just to see if it still weirded her out, Jack whispered, "Girlfriend."

He made a small face when she reminded him. Bargaining chip failure on his part.

"Do you really want to know," he asked, "or do you want it to be a surprise?"