finlay mccracken. (yinned) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-05-05 20:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, finlay mccracken, jack fuller |
Who: Jack Fuller and Finlay McCracken
What: A serious discussion about powers
When: BACKDATED TO 04 May after pub night
Where: Girl's dorm. 2E
Warnings: They talk about powers (hers) and the issue of consent. Also implied sexytimes.
Status: Complete
"Okay?" he asked, hooking a finger into the waistband of her jeans, toying with the button.
Fin sat up on her elbows the best she could and looked at Jack. It was not the first time that he had asked her that this week and while she appreciated that he was continually cautious about what they were doing, it was now mildly annoying. “Jack,” Fin said, tipsy from pub night. “I would tell you if it wasn’t. Why do you keep asking?”
His mouth fell open before there were words to fill it, and while it was a relief to hear that it was okay, and even more that she would speak up were anything wrong, there was one more motive for Jack's running concern about whether or not she felt comfortable with their new sex life. It had driven the concern to what most people would consider excessive levels, but so far it had seemed the safer, better route to take. "I -" how did he say it so that it didn't sound like he was implying that she would somehow accidentally be partially responsible for a situation of questionable consent? "I just want to know I'm not - um, that we don't do something you're not comfortable with, and like... like if your powers were working on me, that I wouldn't care." Yes. That sounded better - if not infinitely more confusing - than 'I don't want to accidentally rape you because you've knocked my morals into the gutter.'
Fin looked at him for a moment trying to figure out what exactly he meant. She raised an eyebrow. “Wait - what? You want me to use my powers on you?” She paused and tried to figure out what precisely was going through his mind right now. “I am comfortable with what we’ve been doing.” Was he worried that she had been using her powers on him or did he think she had at some point?
"No, I - I don't..." Jack sat up, pulling her legs over his and rubbing his face in an attempt to clear his head. "If you got involved in... this," (sex) "if you weren't thinking about your powers and they started working on me and suddenly I had no morals..." Was that any clearer, without having to imply that her powers scared the shit out of him in select circumstances? "I don't want to do things you don't want me to," he finished, finally looking her in the eye. "Ever."
Okay this made more sense to her. She frowned a little bit, there was no way she could promise him that she would be in her powers 100% of the time but the amount of accidental power usage had drastically decreased, especially at IVI. “I don’t - I think the odds of that happening are fairly low. I’m not trying to -” she wasn’t sure how to make him feel better about this - but she wanted to. “Bad things - not that - have happened to me when I’ve used my powers on people before, if I didn’t trust you or the level of control I had over my powers we would not be doing this right now.” Maybe this was a conversation they should have had back at the beginning.
It made sense that it would have been a consideration of hers too, but somehow it hadn't fully registered in his hours spent contemplating how to handle himself when spending time in the bed of someone who could adjust his moral standards. "Yeah," Jack said, attempting a smile and running his thumb over her cheek. "Sorry, I just..." Maybe they had done this backwards. "I would never do that to someone, so I didn't want... I don't know about your history," even though the questions he hesitated to ask were starting accumulate, lately. "And I want to. I just don't want to be part of the bad things; I want this to go better than all of that."
“I do too,” Fin told him and she felt herself relax - not realizing she had been a little on edge once the conversation about her powers had started even though she wasn’t being accused of using them on an unsuspecting victim or him. She took a deep breath and felt a little nervous. “If you want to ask me something you can,” she said her tone a little softer. “I just don’t like bringing it up.” Well she didn’t really like talking about it either, but she didn’t want Jack to feel like she was keeping him at arm’s reach either.
"No," he murmured, pulling her up into his lap to wrap his arms around her. It wasn't hard to see she was unhappy, dwelling in the moment. They hadn't learned how to do this yet, how to help each other do anything more than push things aside, manage a temporary escape. It was easier to kiss her again, thread a hand into her short-cropped hair. Maybe later, he reasoned. Maybe when they weren't already talking about things she would rather not spend time reliving. Or maybe he would just keep trying to make her happy, and everything else would eventually not matter.
It was easy to feel safe with his arms around her in the quiet of her dorm room and forget everything that was going on around them. She could close her eyes and just pretend that things were okay for right now and they would be okay, but she resisted the urge (maybe it was the alcohol after weeks of not having it or maybe it was the fact that unlike when she was in Glasgow, she had surrounded herself with reasonably decent people). Instead she sat up, still in his lap, and looked at him. “Okay,” she said, but she wasn’t sure if he meant it or he felt like now wasn’t the time. “Are you sure?”
Jack hesitated, brow furrowing slightly as he considered what to say. Did she really want to talk about life before IVI, and he'd never offered the chance, or was she offering the same kind of concern he showed, only with a different topic? "No?" he admitted. "I don't know. It just seems like... some things, we don't really talk about, and I don't know if it's because you don't want to, or because it feels weird for me to ask."
“Maybe a touch of both,” Fin told him, frowning. She had been accused on more than one occasion of purposely changing the subject when a topic came up that she didn’t want to talk about – whether it was life before IVI or just something she wanted to avoid. But maybe at least for now it was better than they were at least broaching the topic that they tended avoid talking about this sort of thing. “But I just wanted to let you know – you can always ask,” she added before she leaned in to kiss him him quickly.
What was... ? Nope, there was no real hope of understanding women, regardless of circumstances. Maybe the avoidance of serious subjects was a two-way street, but it didn't seem like a topic that could easily be balanced with making out. It felt obviously wrong, to suck up the guts to ask her if she'd been homeless or if he was reading network commentary all wrong, and then cop a feel. "Okay," he agreed. Agreeing was easier than asking, agreeing led toward sex and asking led toward the unknown.
Unless - "Wait, are you wanting to ask me something?"
“No,” she told him. Even if they didn’t talk about it tonight, she just wanted him to know that she was comfortable (well maybe not comfortable but willing to) broach anything with him. But maybe she had gone about making sure he knew that it was okay the wrong way.
"You can ask me anything you want," Jack reassured, his fingers splayed out and pressing against the skin of her back. "You can talk to me about anything, I'm here for that. For you." They were aces at avoidance, both comfortable pushing life away in favor of pleasant distractions, but he meant what he said. It was a strange syncopation, slightly out of time with the development of more physical aspects, but the more time he was spending around her, the more he wanted to know, to be a part of.
"I’m here for you too," she replied leaning back to get a better look at him. He was important to her to say the least, he had never made her feel uncomfortable in all the time that they spent together and she genuinely cared about him. “Sometimes it just feels easier to keep things to myself,” she explained but she knew that one was probably not needed - especially since there were things he didn’t talk about either.
Jack nodded, he understood the feeling perfectly, and though she didn't say it aloud, Fin was right. He almost never spoke of his kidnapping, of Providence, of guilt and anger and sadness. Why ruin the good parts of life, thin on the ground as they were these days, with talk of the bad? Fin was the good as of late, and he didn't want to spoil that. For all the permissions just granted, the honest insistence that they could talk about difficult things if they wanted to, Jack didn't want to, not right now.