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

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"You know all the same things I do to watch out for. How to tell when someone's been bitten or the infection is ramping up, what the timeline is. What we need to know to get out of the way in time if his virus shows up here for whatever reason, however it might."

She still trusts Jesus. She doesn't need to do it herself.

The follow up is only fair then and she nods.

"I'll talk to Carver."

He nods; he'll get all that information.

"I can talk to Grayson. I probably should... Dominants and submissives are just going to be a part of our lives of we all keep working together, and I want us to."

"Same rule for you though: you tell me when you do, and we meet up after," she says after a moment of considering telling him to leave it with her. She wants his thoughts on it. She wants his eyes on it.

"I'm still undecided about Jacob and Dinah." Speaking of pairings.

He slips some money into the till he still needs to count, and pours them another round. He's feeling a little looser now, a little warmer with alcohol. They aren't fighting now, he can relax.

"Undecided about being paired, or bringing them to the farm?"

"The contracts are fine," she can say readily. The second part is harder, though not by much.

"And obviously if there's an emergency that's different. But I'm not sure I want to bring them in on the property."

Jesus ran Hilltop as a sort of actual sanctuary, taking in people Alexandria sent away, so he takes this in with a small frown. "What has you doubting them?"

"I don't know Dinah very well. I don't know how she'd react to... any of it, yet," she admits. Dinah is a city kid through and through, like so many of them were. She also just hasn't seen her in a real emergency yet.

"And Jacob - he has his own things going that I don't get to know about. When he's done with me, just seems easier to me if we both take our secrets with us."

They're fair points. He won't argue for or against them coming, the farm idea is still in its infancy and they need to get it settled before they start packing more people in. He knows that.

"When he's done with you?" He echoes. "What if he wants to stay with you? I...really don't think he'll ever go back to Vrenille."

She finishes the second half of her drink, and nudges the empty glass back towards him across the bar.

"Why not?" she asks, first.

He hesitates, and takes a moment to fill her drink while he thinks how to explain. "Vrenille doesn't seem very interested in giving him that chance. Their relationship had complications I think Vrenille doesn't want to navigate again."

"I kind of got that impression from him, too, when we talked," she admits. "But that was right after everything happened. And Jacob - he actually talks kind of the same way, but I've been pushing him to mend things."

She shrugs. "Who knows? But I was always a temporary solution. Just because it's drawn out to be a bit longer temporary doesn't mean he won't still move on when someone better comes along, even if it's not Vrenille."

"He might," he agrees, but he's looking at Rosita. "What's 'better' that he could come across than a badass like you, though?"

She smiles, raises her glass a bit at badass: damn straight.

But all the same: "Someone who wasn't introduced as a stand in? Someone that's not a SIN guard? Someone he actually loves?"

He raises an eyebrow. "You have to love your Dominant now to be a good pairing? I didn't think that'd be one of your criteria."

"I didn't say it was one of my criteria, Judgey Judgerson," she snorts. Not by a long shot.

"But I'm pretty sure it's one of his."

"He is kind of a romantic, huh," Jesus says, although a little bit reserved. "We'll see."

"Yeah, we will," she agrees.

"In the meantime, he wants to keep me out of his business, that's cool. But the details of this is mine."

He nods; he can abide by that. "He gave me some brass knuckles for Christmas. I love them." He's used them, carries them with him sometimes.

"But Vrenille gave me a key to the Manor for Christmas, too. I get the feeling Jacob wouldn't take it very well. I don't like feeling like one of my friendships hurts someone but..." But it does and he can't fix that.

Well that's. News. She traces her fingertip along the rim of her glass, toying with where it catches where she's been drinking from it, where a drop dried sticky from the first round.

"Do you think Vrenille replaced him with you?" she asks, not because she thinks it's true, but because she wants to know if he does with his more intimate insight into the relationships in play.

Edited Date: 2023-02-26 03:55 am (UTC)

"No." And it feels good to say it out loud, to have this fragile faith in someone. "I think my relationship with him would be the same even if Jacob had never gone home. Maybe a little more complicated because of Jacob..."

And Jacob's jealousy, which Jesus had assumed was new and it turned out it wasn't.

"But I don't think Vrenille works that way. I don't think he sees people that way." Jesus doesn't either.

"Then it's between them," she says simply. She has a habit of getting herself involved where things get quite complicated, quite quickly, and she has a hard time talking things out at that point, but this is all quite clear to her.

"And I'll tell him that, again, if it comes up. He has a certain way of seeing things, sometimes, but - I'll give him the credit that he does try to listen when I disagree with him."

"How often have you disagreed with him?" Jesus asks, wondering how often they've had to share strong opinions at all yet.

"A couple times." Nothing big yet, of course, unless one counts the Zoo debacle.

"He lets people at the Spread Eagle and the Arena believe that he's got me coming around because I can't live without his dick," she snorts, finally hooking a barstool with her foot.

"Safest way he could figure out how to explain why he's contracted with a SIN guard, I guess. I wasn't exactly happy about that when I found out."

Jesus looks at her, and the anger he had earlier is a very different flavor than this one is. He purses his lips, nods slightly.

"And how do you feel about it now?"

She shrugs, but it's a dishonest answer and she doesn't try hiding that fact.

"I agree it's a lot safer for him than letting his black market pals think he's in love with a SIN guard." It's more of a risk for her, but not significantly more than the sympathies everyone knows she came in with. That she was accepted with. "I just don't go around there anymore."