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

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It's exactly what she means; in a world where everyone has blood on their hands, the only way Rosita - indeed, anyone who's happy in Alexandria - knows how to show how serious she is about her affection involves a willingness not to hesitate or back down, ever, when blood is on the table. She is not ashamed of it and no one can make her.

But even if she didn't know what, exactly, Jesus got out of Rosita signing a contract with anyone let alone a friend of his friend's, she did trust him enough to entertain it. To do it. She considers him now.

"How did you know, though? What makes you so sure?"

"Everyone I talked to about him said he was kind. But he's Vrenille's friend which means he can hold his own. When I spoke to him, I just had a good feeling about it." He trusts his instincts.

"You deserve someone kind for a change, but not someone you have to worry too much about. I wanted someone you could just enjoy being with for a while."

Kind is terrifying. It's nice to dabble in for a while, she's attached to Siddiq for his sweetness, loved when Abraham was - but it's terrifying. It's what crumples under pressure, the first thing most people give up when they have to start cutting off dead weight, herself included.

"Well, he's an assassin," she allows. "And he's hurting. I think things are going as smoothly as they can given the givens."

An assassin. So that's what Jacob hadn't wanted to tell him in Veracity.
(Which is surprising, considering everything Jacob already knows about what Jesus and Rosita do regularly to get by).

"He's a bartender. How are you keeping him from trying to give you drinks?"

"Same way I am everyone," she shrugs, and holds up her arm.

Which is where she would normally have left it, when she has the ability to stop talking when she wants to, which is not now.

"Doctor said I could take the splint off now but it's a great excuse, and I think I can get a few more weeks out of it before anyone starts to wonder too much."

He nods, worried about this but he's worried about every aspect of her pregnancy here already.

"You can bring people to Marked. I'll make sure your drinks are just juice or soda."

It's such a small thing, and such an unnecessary kindness. Rosita hasn't balked about refusing alcohol and if push came to shove she would flat tell people it wasn't their business - people can just choose not to drink - but it's so pervasive in this city that it always catches her an odd look anyway.

She is uninterested in odd looks, thank you very much, or being drugged without knowing it, so she smiles.

"And when I'm a SIN guard, I won't arrest you."

One of those unexpectedly bright, playful looks.

"You'd have to catch me first anyway."

"Oh, if I had to -" she answers, laughing, both a tease and not.

"I'd just text you offering to gossip."

"Oh. That's how you think you get me, is it?" He leans closer. "Gossip about who?"

Her smile broadens. Gotcha.

"Rain check," she promises. "Or we can gossip about you, and how you're actually doing."

He frowns, thinking, then shrugs. "I'm all right. Usual lack of sleep, usual hoarding tendencies." Gossiping about himself isn't nearly as interesting, Rosita.

For whom?

"And none of it is changing at all, even with all these new people around?"

He wouldn't answer this if not for the mist. He takes a breath, finds he can't fight the words, and just gives in.

"I can't sleep unless someone else is around. And if they're not like us, I can't sleep around them because I worry they won't know what to listen for. I tried drinking before bed--it just made me wake up more often through the night. Drinking was never a big feature in my life before, anyway. I have enough friends now I don't need aphrodisiacs to meet quota, though. The contact is...nice. Except when it's not. Do you have those moments, too?"

"Contact - sex - is always how I've dealt. With everything." When she isn't just bullheadedly forging ahead anyway, which only goes so far, which isn't for everyone.

"But I don't like people as much as I think I used to, at least not this many people, not these kinds of people." People not like them. "That's what begins to wear on me, and when I've had enough, then I've had enough, period."

So, yes and no.

"I did once I knew where to look." But then he'd found other ways of coping with things, so sex never took off as a primary mechanism for him, just like drugs--thankfully--never did either.

"What 'kinds' of people?"

"People who have never had to do the things we've done," she tries to get around it, but for someone who shares her words out more often than not, apparently now she can't shut up.

"I'm not judging them, I'm glad they don't know what it's like to scrape a layer of mold off the top of something to chance that what's underneath is good, or stab one of their friends in the head, or push for a week straight to get to a safe house. But it makes me feel like I have an extra head or something, sometimes."

"The day Aaron and I found you, I snuck out to meet Aaron in the woods. I left Tara with a list as long as my arm of things the camp needed, but it was all...noise complaints, and neighbors bickering, and laws they wanted me to entertain. Property laws." He taps his fingers on the edge of the table. "I'd known for a while that the Hilltop wasn't where I belonged anymore. I knew it, though, when I found you and brought you back to heal there. Sometimes I think this is just karma: I left Tara in charge when she didn't want it, either, and now this is all I've got. A place where the biggest problem is what interesting, kind, attractive person I get to have sex with next week."

She can't even judge him. Michonne wanted her on her council but Rosita never would agree, preferred to be with the scavenging and hunting parties, going outside the walls again and again like few others could. She didn't want to sit in a town hall and talk about things that would only matter if Michonne agreed. She didn't want to talk and talk and talk and talk about things that were important, yes, but not vital in the way clearing walkers always was.

"Were you one of the people that wished we could go back?" she asks. She was in the beginning. She doesn't think she is now, not if she's being honest.

"There's no going back," he shakes his head. "And people who wish for it are just setting themselves up to fail. I wanted to go forward. When I met you I really thought I'd be part of the future."

He shrugs, looks away, looks at what he does have. He tries not to have an opinion on it. "But the future is for the kids."

How often has Rosita heard that, from how many people? Worded differently, yes - usually in the form of people who don't see a future for themselves at all and thus no reason to keep fighting for it - but the same sentiment.

But what is she supposed to tell Jesus, for whom this is genuinely all there is?

"If anyone in the communities has a future, you played a huge role in winning that for them."

The problem, he's realizing right now, is that he never had a personal stake in the future. Babies were being born in the Hilltop before they were in Alexandria, and Jesus knew their parents, but he can't recall ever being directly attached to them. He didn't ask about baby names like he has asked about Socorro.

He smiles slightly, pained and trying not to be. "I hope it's a good future for you." And Socorro.

She has an opinion on that future for herself. With anyone else she might at least have considered saying it, but this is Jesus. Any loss she feels is just that, a feeling, while his loss is very, very real.

She smiles back, gentle in a way few people see from her. She appreciates that, even if she's still caught in worrying about whether or not she even actually has one, or what it looks like.

"No one's taken their clothes off here yet," she points out. "But I bet it's coming. I don't want them to make us try to do anything together."

"Hakkyuu's over there," he nods slightly. "I'll be okay with him."

"Good." She doesn't know Hakkyuu, but as far as just sex goes, Jesus can handle himself. She just needs to not screw him up, if that's even a possibility here.

She doesn't trust it. She stands instead, leans across the table, and slides her fingers gently through Jesus's hair so she can kiss the top of his head affectionately.

She leans her forehead there for a moment, lingering, before she straightens up.

"Remember, we promised." To touch base afterwards, somewhere, somehow, even if it's just a text.