Just a guy (runwiththepack) wrote in worldsapart_ic, @ 2019-06-05 12:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | jesse weaver, katherine davenport |
Who: Jesse Weaver & Kitty Davenport
What: Jesse comes home
When: After this
Where: Their shared apartment
Rating: Low
Warnings: n/a
Kitty felt anxious. She never felt anxious, not about Jesse, at least. Jesse had always been her port in the storm, her calm. But ever since she realised how she felt - or, at least, finally acknowledging how she felt - things between them had been weird. Jesse had been working extra hours and avoiding her and she had been trying to make new friends and do things to keep herself busy so that she wasn't moping. So she wasn't missing Jesse. And it was sort of working? But she missed him a lot and she hated the awkwardness between them. The few times when they ran into each other it felt stilted and like something between them was broken and that- that broke her heart.
James might have been right, and she knew that she needed to pull her head out of her ass and just get over him. Get on with it. Be his friend. Or something.
She knew she'd fucked up with the text message, and since Jesse hadn't replied to her she also knew that he would probably swing home briefly before going out again, probably to stay at the pack house which- well, that also hurt. Because she was welcome there, of course, but she couldn't stay there. She wasn't a werewolf.
She'd been baking. A lot, to be honest, this whole situation was a mess and she had baked so much literally no one wanted any more baked goods. She couldn't palm any more off onto Brett or Elijah or James or Zara (Maya would have probably just eaten everything given to her anyway and it was Zara's responsibility as Mom to make sure that she didn't just eat sweet thing). Kyle kept taking what she gave him because his metabolism was stupid. Noel took things too, probably to dish out amongst the pack. McKenzie was endlessly patient but it wasn't their place to deal with Kitty's neuroses.
White chocolate and raspberry blondies sat on the counter, cooling. Cupcakes were on the opposite side having already been iced and three bags of gummy bears were emptied into a bowl. She'd managed to learn some basics relatively quickly (if there was one thing Kitty was good at it was learning), she almost had the alphabet down which was a good place to start. Now it was just a case of waiting for Jesse to come home.
She hoped he came home.
It was quite literally the worst time of the month to be having any sort of conflict given how close it was to a full moon but you really didn't get to pick and choose when stuff like this happened and it had been brewing for a long time. Too long. And those text messages had quite literally been the last straw that broke the camel's back, Kitty had lashed out and Jesse had reacted and now? Now they needed to "talk". He had half a mind not to go home but then she sent one further text, softer, more pleading, and his resolve broke like a poorly made dam holding back floodwaters.
Although half the battle was actually going in, opening the door, and he had literally been staring at it for the last fifteen minutes.
And man the apartment smelt... good, really good but no, he needed to not let his stomach do the talking and actually let his brain kick in though admittedly human!brain and wolf!brain were one and the same right now. He pulled in a deep breath and finally stepped through into the apartment and shrugged out of his jacket, letting it hang up on the nearby hook before he just turned to regard the nearby kitchen.
Wow, that was a lot of... baking.
Well, shit.
"Hey," he greeted quietly.
Kitty jumped where she'd been standing in their kitchen, heart leaping to her throat and she snatched her hand out of the gummy-bear bowl. She'd been stuffing them in her mouth to try and calm the rising anxiety that rippled through her because with each minute Jesse wasn't here was another minute that she was convincing herself that he hated her, that she'd fucked up and that he wasn't going to come back ever except to grab his shit and then go and stay with Noel. Or something.
So when he closed the door, she dropped the handful of gummy bears she'd been holding and turned on the spot, fingers immediately reaching to fiddle with the loose ends of her hair. She felt the familiar rush when her eyes fell on him and she took a slow breath.
"Hey." She wet her lower lip, gaze dropping, "I- Thank you for coming home."
Jesse shifted awkwardly as he knew he was the cause of Kitty's nerves and he hated that, he really did. They were friends, the best kind of friend, and yet here there were unable to exchange words without this heavy atmosphere. Or he was just being oversensitive given how close they were to the full moon.
"Well, you asked," he offered with a shrug of his shoulders.
He pushed a breath out and stepped further into the shared apartment, leaning around Kitty to grab a couple gummy bears.
Kitty's breath caught as Jesse leaned past her and she was surrounded by the smell of his cologne and deoderant. She swallowed, closing her eyes briefly and resisting the urge to playfully slap his hand away. She hated that she felt like she was on egg-shells around him right now, second guessing and overthinking everything.
"You do still live here," she pointed out with a little smile, carefully stepping to the side and grabbing the silicon mitt to adjust the pan and start easing the brownies out of the pan onto the cooling rack.
She wet her lower lip, looked at him and then focused back on the brownies. "I- I've got some ASL videos lined up on the comcast, I've learned the alphabet so I can teach you that before we start trying to learn anything more complicated."
Jesse popped a couple of the bears into his mouth as he watched Kitty as she moved away to start unloading freshly baked brownies and he wasn't ashamed to admit that he was tracking their movements like some sort of heat seeking missile.
"You don't have to help me," he said with a shake of his head. "I mean you don't need to feel like you have to just because we fell out over text."
"You think I'm gonna pass up the opportunity to learn something new?" Kitty asked, wincing only slightly as she stretched to grab plates from the cupboard. Cameron had been right; she was sore, sore in places she hadn't realised she should be and even though she was still able to feel her adrenaline running through her, whatever dopamine rush she got out of it wasn't enough to smooth down the pain in her core.
She shrugged. "I- I want to. Besides, it'll help the pack, right?"
Waving a hand, she held out a small side plate. "They're still hot, but that's never stopped you before. Don't take too many, they're meant to be incentives for when you get stuff right."
Jesse's brow furrowed when Kitty let out a wince and he tipped his head to regard her with a look of concern. "You okay?"
He chewed on another gummy bear because food was still food regardless of what form it took and Jesse had always had an appetite to rival that of pretty much anyone. Part of him wanted to resist Kitty's delicious baked goods because... principle or whatever but his stomach always won out and he picked up the first brownie of many.
"Yeah just- my exercise class killed me in ways that I wasn't expecting it to," she answered with a shrug of her shoulder.
She tilted her head, "I-" she rocked up on her toes, fingers lacing together in front of her in a manner that was as much of a tell of her nerves as anything else. "I- Jesse-"
"You said we needed to talk," Jesse blurted out because honestly he'd never been very good at keeping stuff to himself save for a couple key things and given the huge amount of awkward hanging between them he figured it was about time they tackle it head on and hopefully get it out of the way.
Kitty blinked at him, the words having blurted out of him and she swallowed, wetting her lower lip and carefully unlacing her fingers, fiddling with her hair instead as she drew her lip between her teeth and started chewing it. Her heart was hammering somewhere around her throat and it was deeply unpleasant.
She swallowed again and nodded her head. "Yeah, I guess we do. I- I don't understand what's going on but I- I hate it."
Jesse just stared at Kitty like she'd grown six heads. "You mean before or after I told you that I casually saw a Succubus on occasion?" That seemed to be where this whole weirdness had really kicked into a high gear as he'd definitely been having some issues with Grayson because of the fact that every time that he saw Kitty she seemed to smell like him. Granted he had no right given that they were just friends and housemates but something in him prickled every time he caught that particular scent, he was desperately trying not to look too deeply into that because he wasn't sure he'd like what would end up staring back at him.
Kitty had the decency to flush brightly, the colour catching her cheeks and setting them alight. She ducked her head and her toes turned inward before she took in a breath. She didn't even know how to explain what her problem with that had been without sounding pathetic.
"And then you stoppped being at home," she pointed out, promising herself she'd loop back to her problem with the succubus in a minute. "And then we forgot how to communicate without sniping at each other and I want to go back to how we were before." Before she'd realised she was in love with him, would be preferable. Before she realised that she'd never have a chance.
She didn't look up at him until after she'd finished speaking. "I- Before. Before the succubus thing."
So this weirdness had been going on longer than the Succubus? And that was his fault? Jesse resisted the urge to fold his arms across his chest because he knew that wasn't open body language and closing himself off this early into their conversation wouldn't be good for either of them. Not that he was at his most rational right now. Stupid full moons.
He'd stopped being at home because it was just... awkward and he hadn't wanted to be the guy who got pissy because Kitty smelt like another unfamiliar wolf who wasn't pack but was apparently close enough to her to be basically all over her.
"Okay," he said with a nod. "I mean, I want that too- I don't like how weird things are between us right now."
Kitty drew in another breath and realised that if she wanted to truly clear the air she might have to be the one to speak first. Jesse was a lot of things, but willing to put himself in an emotionally vulnerable position first wasn't always one of them. And for someone who generally wore his feelings on his face and his heart on his sleeve, she knew he'd been holding a lot back whenever she did see him and she just wanted to know why.
But she didn't think she'd get an answer if she wasn't honest first. And if she was going to ever truly get over him, maybe she needed this. Maybe this was the final straw for her; the confirmation that there was nothing there. She could then use that whenever she felt herself free-wheeling in her feelings.
"I don't like it either," she told him. "I- I was-"
She wet her lower lip. Boy, this was hard.
"I- I was thrown, I guess? By the whole... succubus thing."
Jesse frowned slightly when Kitty admitted to being thrown by the whole Succubus thing. "Thrown? Why?" It was a simple question but the answer was bound to be more complicated but Jesse had to ask, had to know what it was about the Succubus that was different from all the others he saw on a casual basis.
Food was for the moment completely forgotten about as Jesse focused his attention on Kitty and the conversation that needed to be had.
He knew that at some point he'd also have to be honest and that wasn't at all terrifying.
Kitty suddenly - powerfully - wished that she'd had some wine before Jesse had come home. She hadn't known when he'd be back, so it would have been super easy for her to have had at least a little bit of fermented courage. She was a chatty drunk, after all, and it was one of the many reasons she tried her hardest not to let Jesse see her that way.
She wet her lower lip and shifted uncomfortably. Of course he'd have asked a follow up question. She chewed on her lower lip, feeling it beginning to sting a little and she turned away, lifting her shoulders in a shrug and sticking her hands under the cool water, washing them and then grabbing a glass from the rack, filling it with water from the tap to have something to do so she wasn't looking at him.
"I just- how's anyone supposed to compete with a succubus?" she asked quietly.
Compete? Why would Kitty be worrying about competing with a Succubus? It was probably a good thing she wasn't looking at him as wonderful and sweet as he could be he wasn't particularly bright when it came to certain things and it was definitely taking him far too long to figure out what she meant by that statement.
Then finally he got it and his eyes widened.
No, that couldn't be it, right? This was Kitty after all, she could have anybody and he definitely wasn't good enough. Better to play dumb though, just for confirmation. "Why would anybody want to compete?"
Kitty felt the confused silence echoing behind her and despite everything her lips curled up into an affectionate smile. Jesse really had no idea. She supposed that was probably for the best. And she'd have to work out how they'd get past the inevitable awkwardness of him trying to work out how to tell her he didn't feel that way even though she'd come to terms with that already.
She wet her lower lip and shook her head, "I- well, they couldn't," she pointed out, looking at him over her shoulder with a sad smile. "After all, they set a pretty high bar."
She placed her glass on the counter and grabbed a dishcloth, drying her hands on it and, because she'd put it off long enough, she looked at him properly, meeting his eyes.
Her brows were raised, sadness and anxiety written across her face and she held her hand up. "Just- I don't- I promise I'll stop making things weird," she told him, the words tumbling out of her now more quickly than she'd been anticipating, like a boulder had been pushed off the top of a hill and had started rolling out of control. "I don't expect you to feel the same and honestly that's okay, I just need some time to move on and be okay again so that we can go back to how we were before and I just-"
It was in equal parts a good thing and a bad thing that this particular conversation was happening in the days leading up to a full moon because it meant two things. The first being that he was less likely to repress whatever it was he was feeling but the second being he'd be more impulsive than he was normally and he was by all rights pretty damn impulsive.
There was something he'd been wanting to do for a long time but he'd always stopped himself because he hadn't thought there would ever be a chance and he hadn't wanted to ruin what he and Kitty had. Their friendship was important, really important, and it was one of those relationships he truly valued and cared about that he hadn't wanted to do anything that would jeopardise that.
Of course right now it felt like a it was very much a now or never moment.
Jesse picked now.
He closed the distance between him and Kitty in a few short long strides before after taking a deep breath he curled both hands in her hair and dropped down to press his mouth to hers.
Kitty had looked down, twisted her fingers together, not wanting to look at Jesse's face as she spoke. And he didn't say anything, she was going to try and restart her brain, finish the aborted sentence but then suddenly she saw Jesse's feet moving and she felt him in her space. His fingers pushed into her hair and tugged her face up and suddenly he was kissing her and Kitty's whole world narrowed down to a point.
Something in her mind exploded, fireworks lighting up behind her eyes and she belatedly realised she needed to react. Her fingers lifted, twisting in Jesse's shirt before one hand skated over his neck to the back of his head, fingers curling in the short strands as she stepped into his space and pushed up into the kiss, catching his lower lip between her teeth as her other hand slid up to secure at the back of his neck, keeping him close.
Jesse made a soft sound in the back of his throat when Kitty kissed back and did that thing with her teeth on his lower lip which resulted in his hands dropping away and his arms wrapping her waist, muscles tightening to pull her that much closer until they were literally pressed skin to skin.
It wasn't until air became a necessity that Jesse pulled away but he didn't go far, he kept his forehead pressed against hers and his breath escaped over her lips as he just lingered.
Definitely a bad time of the month for this given that the wolf wanted nothing more than to leave its mark on Kitty.
Kitty sucked in a breath when the kiss broke, shuddering a little as Jesse's breath ghosted over her lips and she opened her eyes to look up at him, feeling the warm weight of his arms around her waist, tugging her close. She wet her lower lip, tasting him on the edge along with gummy bears and the edge of brownies from where he'd eaten one already.
She nudged his nose with hers and her lower lip was drawn between her teeth again, fingers carding through his hair softly so that he couldn't pull away.
"You just- You kissed me."
Jesse gave a soft chuckle in response to Kitty's statement before he just nodded his head. "Uh, yeah, yeah I did." He inhaled and glanced up to catch her gaze. "I've been crappy lately because of all the time you've been spending with Grayson." He was jealous, had been for a while, and definitely hadn't processed it well. Or at all. "I just- I guess. Well, no, I was definitely jealous."
There, he said it, outloud, for all the world to hear.
Thankfully it was just him and Kitty.
"Grayson's just-" Kitty cut herself off, recognising a split second after she started talking that this was a moment and she needed to Not Mess Up, so she just let her lips curl up into an affectionate smile and leaned up onto her toes, stealing another kiss, brief and chaste, before standing down again. She ignored the rush that rippled through her at the knowledge that Jesse had been jealous. Over her. Her fingers were still moving through his hair, her other hand cupping his cheek. "I- I think I was jealous too?"
If they were being honest, she might as well go whole hog.
"The whole... succubus thing. I mean-"
Jesse's eyes closed in response to the fleeting kiss and his arms reacted instinctively by tightening around her, drawing her that much closer. "Well, you don't need to be." He shook his head and caught her gaze with his. "That's over with. Has been for a while and-" He leaned down and stole another kiss, this one a lot less chaste than the one she'd just placed on him "In case you hadn't noticed I'm here, kissing you."
He smoothed his hands up Kitty's back and let his fingers get lost in her hair.
"It never meant anything, the succubus that is."
Kitty hummed into the kiss, pressing up as Jesse's hands tugged her closer, her own catching on his shoulders to balance her when his touch slid up her back and into her hair.
"I just-" she opened her eyes to look up at him and her shoulder hitched self consicously. "Even though it didn't mean anything I just- it still- I-"
She wet her lower lip, feeling the taste of sugar and brownie lingering on the edge from where Jesse had kissed her.
"How does someone compete with that?"
"Easily when they're you," Jesse said softly, sincerely, and with the smallest lift of his shoulders.
Kitty looked completely confused, blinking up at Jesse and leaning back a little so that she could see him properly, her mind already starting to go into over-thinking mode; what if they messed this up? What if Jesse didn't really want this and it was just the pre-full moon emotions getting the better of him? What if- fuck, what if this was what he thought she wanted (which it was, god, it really was) but not really what he did? What if it was just him blurring the lines between friend jealous and not-friend jealousy?
She swallowed, cupping his face and running her thumb along the line of his cheekbone. "She's a succubus," she pointed out, "they're like, the pinnacle of all things intimate and desirable and stuff."
Jesse knew Kitty very well so he knew exactly when she was going into overthinking mode and he could see the beginnings of it in the way her brow creased ever so slightly in the middle and she might not be physically retreating but he could feel her retreating in other ways.
Nope. Not happening.
He ducked back into her space and caught her up in another kiss.
"And there's no- mmph-" Whatever she was going to say was lost - because Jesse had just been looking at her and not talking and she knew that it was because she was right about the succubus - when he kissed her again, his fingers tightening in her hair and she leaned up into it, feeling a little thrill move through her when he pressed closer and she ended up pressed against their fridge-freezer, the chill of the door causing a shudder to ripple through her.
When they broke for air and she managed to drag her eyes open, chest heaving as she struggled to breathe in the wake of being kissed dizzy, Kitty's teeth caught her lower lip and she looked up at him, questioning and curious but her gaze was significantly darker than it had been a moment before.
"You were thinking too much," Jesse murmured, voice thick and deeper than it had been moments ago. "And there is no comparison, Kitty. Is a Succubus great in bed? No doubt about that but..." His voice trailed off as one hand lifted to run the back of his fingers over her cheek and along the delicate curve of her neck before they spread outwards in a fanning motion until they were exploring the length and breadth of her exposed collarbone. "It's nothing compared to being with somebody you actually care about."
His gaze, dark and intense, lifted and rested on Kitty.
Kitty's breath caught, her head tilting to the side slightly and body pressing up into the warmth of Jesse's fingers as they slid over her skin. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, looking up at him, watching the way his eyes tracked his fingers before he looked up at her again and she felt something in her twist and jump and want when his dark gaze met hers.
"You know you can't kiss me whenever I start thinking," she told him, hand trailing down his chest to rest at his hip, tugging him towards her a little closer, fingers twisting in the fabric and leaning forward, nuding her nose against his. She glanced away from him just for a moment, eyes falling on the calendar - it was too close to the full moon for this to be a good idea and she really didn't want him to regret it - before her gaze was dragged back to him. It was hard to look away when he was looking at her like she was important.
She swallowed, "I guess our experiences are different, in that arena," she admitted.
"I can if that thinking involves over thinking," Jesse pointed out as he dropped his gaze to watch the movement of her hand until it secured itself around his hip and she pulled him that much closer. And the nose nudge? Well, that was just something else, and the wolf in him was definitely responsive to it. Evident in how he emitted the smallest of growls though he did catch himself, clearing his throat.
It was so close to the full moon that he wasn't really thinking past the needs and wants happening throughout his body as a result of having Kitty this close to him and being able to act on his impulses. He inhaled and exhaled slowly as he leaned in closer, brushing his nose over hers.
"I should probably move before we uh, rush into anything." He wet his lower lip as he passed his hand over Kitty's arm before it dropped to curl at the small of her back.
Kitty hummed a little, "You might be kissing me a lot," she pointed out, nudging his nose again, voice dropping a little, "considering how prone I am to... overthinking."
The growl in the back of his throat wasn't missed and even as he cleared his throat her heart leapt in her chest at the sound. Her fingers brushed through his hair, keeping him close even as he rested his palm against the small of her back, warm and branding through her clothes. Her nose ghosted against his again and she looked up at him, wetting her lower lip.
"Mm," she agreed, "it- it is pre-full moon, J," she reminded him. "It-" Fuck his hand was distracting, as was the puff of breath over her lips. She swallowed. "Yeah. We should be sensible about this, right? ...Right?"
"Yeah, I mean," Jesse began. " I'm not really in the best of places in terms of control." His gaze dropped to follow the movement of her tongue along her lower lip. "And sensible was never really my strong point."
He closed his eyes at the sensation of Kitty's fingers in his hair and exhaled a slow breath in the hopes of regaining some sort of composure.
Kitty nudged his nose gently and leaned up to press a kiss against his cheek. "It'd be a shame for all my baking to go to waste," she added, thumb brushing just underneath his ear as her fingers kept carding through his hair, her touch a little restless even though the movements were ones that were mostly familiar to her. They just held a reciprocated weight, now.
"And you did wanna learn sign language..." Though she wondered if he wasn't too distracted, now.
She was right. She normally was. Jesse took a slow calming breath and rolled his neck, pushing down on the urge he had to pin her to every single flat surface in their shared apartment. "Okay," he said with a definitive nod as he reluctantly untangled himself and most importantly took his hands off her because those were in fact the most dangerous things considering all they wanted to do was roam and explore Kitty's body in new more intimate of ways.
He cleared his throat and stole a brownie, popping that into his mouth and chewing it slowly.
"So... sign language."
When Jesse dropped his hands, Kitty physically sagged against the fridge-freezer and used the cool of it against her shoulders to temper the hammering of her heart. She pressed her lips together, pushed past the urge she had to tug him into another kiss, and then moved towards the set up she had on the couch.
"Sign language," she repeated, waving at him to bring the plate over. "No more brownies- they're rewards for getting stuff done right." Though there was probably a different - better - reward system on the table now, but that maybe should be kept for more intense learning...
Jesse rolled his eyes as Kitty told him that he couldn't eat any more brownies unless he got stuff right but he grabbed the plate along with a couple other things including drinks because he knew what Kitty was like when she got her teacher head on, it would last for hours, but he wasn't going to complain.
Not if it meant spending time with Kitty and things were looking up.