Welcome to Gaia! ::

Several things occurred to him as she explained. Well, maybe more than several things.

1.) Chel was an idiot for opening the door in the first place.
2.) Chel was an idiot for texting him while Evan was in there.
3.) Capturing demons must have meant Ami was moving forward with her project. He needed to get back asap just for that alone.
4.) Chel apparently didn't learn from their talk about this sensitive topic how to be discreet. No, stubbornness and loyalty had to be advertised with a foghorn to someone who had clearly been hostile before.
5.) Chel was an idiot.
6.) He was now friends with someone who may or may not get outed as a traitor. This did not look good for someone who already had a mark on his record.
7.) He did not honestly know his feelings about students, having been neutral up until that b*****d reaper started applying shock therapy to him.
8.) Evan was now more or less Someone To Avoid, even more so given his ties to Stormy and Jack's own less than squeaky clean image therein.
9.) Chel really was friends with these Penumbra people.
10.) <******** Chelsea Craft making things difficult.

All together, though, it was much harder to figure out how to respond: someone was in possible danger from someone else in a matter he had steadfastly managed not to get involved in besides a now empty promise to keep tabs on the violator, all of which could have been avoided if Chel just wasn't so Chel. The was a soft jostling over the line as he shifted on the bed. The cap came off with heavy resistance and he proceeded to take several more deep gulps. The sigh afterwards was audible.

"Maybe you should stay with your cousin a while," he suggested calmly.

"You've been holed up in your room," he repeated.

There was a strained pause from him after that because he didn't know what was the correct choice here. And make no mistake, there was always a wrong and a right way in every conversation for Jack, like life did have some basis in the video games Abbi so loved to inundate his ears with chatter of. This dialogue line gave you more points. This dialogue line gave you less points. This dialogue line locked you in for the bad ending.

It had been literal years since he had been in this position, listening to someone sit in a less than enviable position say they needed no help when everything about it screamed they did.

He huffed a sigh, half for something to do, half to show the line wasn't dead. "If I don't get involved, what, I'll just have to watch you get skewered?" he asked in a weary tone. "Because that's bullshit. When'd you get a martyr complex anyway?"

The more she spoke, the more he regretted saying anything at all. Not just for his usual reasons of being averse to being mushy, but because the image of mangled bodies and messed insides triggered a sudden wave of nausea. Jack swore he felt the whispers in his ear again and sharply sucked in a breath, squeezed the neck of his water bottle.

"Don't ******** joke," he hissed, his voice quickly turning gravelly from the force behind it. "That's your life, Chelsea Craft, that's your ********' life, so give two shits about it or you're on your own."

Bad dialogue choice. (Too soon, too soon, god he was a p***y.)

Died...?

The phone, right. Their conversation had grinded to a halt with Evan and never picked back up. There were probably phantom messages he'd never get to see; no more saved evidence of his mistakes either. Clean slate everywhere for him down to the layers of his very skin, save for the baggage he insisted on dragging with him.

It was much too late to avoid hurting himself.

"Busy trying not to die," Jack grumbled before downing more water. His head was starting to throb, and he tried laying back and switched ears on the phone. It was clear he was still seething at her blase attitude, which was preferable than trying to figure out what his supposed death might have meant to her (causes and effects and meanings and consequences of a life on another life). "M'serious. Get your s**t together. And tell Axton or I will."

She said the magic words. With great relish Jack said, "God yes. I haven't had any coffee at all since leaving, you don't even know."

Even just thinking about ice cream made him feel a little less nauseous. Anything non MRE related did.

"Mm." But there was still one last question that bothered him, one he already knew the answer to and yet somewhat dreaded hearing anyway. "Did you go into my room?"

"You what."

It was easy to picture the look Jack was giving her with just those two words. Any vague notions of breaking radio silence with Ian died. He took a lot of offense at Chel's tasteless joke and the prickly silence showed it.

"Shits n' giggles, huh," he said in a flat tone that indicated he was a second away from hanging up on her. Hell, he was waiting for her to mention the shoes just to add a cherry on the shitty sundae, because given how inept Ian was at room guarding, it would just be his luck. "Hope that was worth it to you."