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[handleyourshit]

  


This is Rosita.  I'll hit you back when I can.

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[hippie_ninja]

"That's all I wanted to know. If anything's changed." He thinks it will, with time.

"He's doing better, I think."

[handleyourshit]

"Yeah," she agrees. She thinks so too.

"Doesn't mean I think the needle should move from where it is any time soon. I don't want to put that on him until he's ready. We can talk about it then."

[hippie_ninja]

"I understand." And he thinks it's wise, to be cautious that way without cutting Carver out or pushing him away. "I like how you've handled everything that happened. I'm proud of you. It takes a lot of strength to give someone a second chance."

[handleyourshit]

Rosita is not a woman that others could easily point to and say she needs approval; she doesn't. If she believes something is the right thing to do, she'll do it alone if she has to, even though she doesn't want things to be that way.

But it's nice. It makes her smile now, not the wide, delighted one when they're messing around or the thin, dry one reserved for sarcasm and strangers. Something softer, something only for those closest to her.

"I'm still just making it up as I go, and I don't know where we'll end up. It's not just up to me." And there are parts that are still hard if she lets herself think about it, but there's a lot that's been easier lately, too.

[hippie_ninja]

He likes that smile, likes what it means between the two of them and that after everything she's been through, that smile is still part of her.

"It's not. But I think he wants to end up in a good place with you. A happier place." He has mountains of evidence to support this, in case he sees any doubt in her.

[handleyourshit]

And there is doubt. There are parts of her that can't bear to believe in such things as happy endings anymore, not without risking what little of it she's managed to scrape together for herself now.

"Maybe," she hedges. "As long as I don't get greedy."

[hippie_ninja]

"It's not greedy to want to be happy," he says gently, but with understanding. "But I'm afraid to trust being happy, too."

[handleyourshit]

"It's not being happy I don't trust."

It's people, always people, lying to her when she finds a way to be.

"What is it for you?"

[hippie_ninja]

"By the time I'm ready to make a big leap forward with people they've already grown tired of me." A small, sad smile. A shrug. He's used to it; it still hurts. "So I'm happy and they're ready to leave. Or they're happy and I'm not. I've never really had it line up to where we were both satisfied."

[handleyourshit]

"Never?" she presses.

Never before, or never still?

[hippie_ninja]

He sighs, because he knows how it sounds. "It's the sort of irrational thing that hasn't gone away even with evidence. I was working on it with Jean...I was going to anyway. We never got to it."

[handleyourshit]

"It's not irrational. It's what you needed to survive."

Maybe not in as literal a sense as some of the skills they share, but all the same.

"You had to pick like the one thing I can't help you with."

[hippie_ninja]

He tips his head. "You help. Maybe in some ways more than the others do."

As steady as K and Vrenille and Drake are, his survival mechanism comes from an older and more fundamental place than romance does.

"I never had a family that lasted. But you're like my sister. I'm starting to know I can come to you and you'll just be there." And he's never had that with anyone in his life.

[handleyourshit]

She lifts her chin. "And I always will." As long as she has a choice in it, anyway. As long as she has her way.

"Wherever I am, whatever's going on, the space at my back is for you."

[hippie_ninja]

"That's true for me, too." He knows she doubts that. He knows that the more men he gathers to him, the less likely she is to believe it, but it's true and will go on being true.

[handleyourshit]

She taps her pencil idly on the paper she's just doodling on now for something to do with her hands, pressing her lips together as she thinks.

"I don't mean to be... the way I am. I don't want to want people all to myself." She's not the jealous type, but the more people someone pulls around them, the more insecure she gets. Not just with Jesus.

"Just seems like every time it happens, I'm not important anymore. I think that's the problem."

[hippie_ninja]

"I know." He's been victim to that, too, through the years. "All I can do is keep coming around though, right? All we can do is keep an eye out for evidence that what we used to know doesn't have to always be the case."

[handleyourshit]

And then it spirals from there. Like she told Vrenille, when it comes right down to it, when someone's back is right up against it, that's when you learn who they grab hold of, and who they let fall - and everyone only has so many hands. It's simple math.

"It's different here," she says quietly, like a new mantra. "Things can be different here."

[hippie_ninja]

"They are. And they will be." Different might not be better, but it could be. They aren't starving here. They have people. There are no walkers. "We have a chance to grow in new ways."

[handleyourshit]

She smiles a bit at that, turns her piece of sketch paper so he can see it. A bunch of little smiley faces that don't mean anything, and a halfway decent wooden rail fence that starts and ends nowhere and holds in a halfassed grassy hill.

"I don't think artist is one of those ways for me."

[hippie_ninja]

"I see a Van Gogh in you," Jesus retorts, eyeing her masterpiece. "The question is if you enjoy it though. No point in a hobby that doesn't relax you or let off steam."

His own is just an abstract piece, a lot of purples and blue lines.

[handleyourshit]

"I had hobbies that did that," she points out.

"Sex. I like building things. I really, really do."

[hippie_ninja]

"Sex is like a job here though." He has more sex now than he ever did in the old world, and he has to work hard not to take it for granted.

[handleyourshit]

"Yeah, that's why 'had'," she chuckles, because it's hardly stress relieving in its entirety here now.

"And as for building, I'm going to assume you're going to read too much into that and tell me it's not a proper hobby." She drops the paper down on the counter, sets her pencil down on top of it so she can clear plates.

[hippie_ninja]

"It would be a hobby if you didn't have to do it," he corrects, flicking a little painty water at her. "A hobby is a luxury. We get luxuries now, Ro. We get to do things like self-care."