smilestopscars | A House, Currant, Maine, Saturday

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A House, Currant, Maine, Saturday

Earlier in the week, Kathy had requested Ezra to tell her when he was free to be visited at home in Currant. And today, well, he was free for a visit: the house was empty, Lock was off in Boston with Bianca, and Ezra had nothing in the way of obligations happening. So he'd told her that.

And now he was just waiting around, lounging on the couch, reading a book. Easy Saturday, just like he liked it.

[ooc: NFB. Primarily for the one mentioned, but open also for texts/calls/whathaveyou!]

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"Yes," Kathy said, and not even because he lost his clothing when he changed. "I mean, if you don't mind me cuddling you. And maybe, umm, brushing your tail?"

Was that okay? Was that a very weird ask?

"It's okay."

Both of those things. And it wasn't weird, either. Maybe if she'd been more of a random person, then yeah. But she was Kathy, and she'd been around his fox form before.

He pulled himself off her lap and onto his feet in one graceful, fluid motion. Then he reached for his shirt, and pulled that off, because he didn't want to get lost in it when he changed.

Normally, Kathy would have watched, fascinated by the change and also Ez in general. But after everything earlier, she didn't want to overstep her bounds. "You are so pretty," she murmured as his shirt fluttered to the ground and then busied herself looking in her bag for a comb

He didn't strip further than getting topless. Usually, he might've, but he didn't feel like it right now, and it wasn't necessary.

One second, he was a man. The next, he was a fox, gracefully stepping out of a pair of stylish pants that were now laying in a heap on the floor. Then he hopped back onto the couch.

And Kathy, comb in hand, turned back around and immediately gathered him into her arms, burying her face against his soft fur. "I'm sorry," she told him again because she couldn't see his expression now. "I know I said it and I know you know, but I did have to say it one more time. Because I hurt you and I love you and--"

She shook her head against him. God, he was soft.

"I'm gonna cuddle you and babble at you and you can feel free to just tune me out. It's okay. It'll probably be easier if you did, honestly."

He was very soft.

He was also very safe, with his ability to keep the very last of his emotions to himself like this. So, he settled down into her arms. She was free to do as she pleased.

He'd just take the comfort from it.

"I know you can understand me like this and you'll remember everything that I natter on about," she continued, starting to comb his tail. The motion was comforting to her, too. "But it's hard to, like, focus on that?"

She bit her lip. "That night, after the tower, when I thought we were going home? My plan was to let Anders sleep with Dante and ask you to turn into a fox and cuddle you. I was so mad and hurt and scared and you were probably the only one I wasn't at least a little bit mad and hurt and scared at, you know?" However unfair it might have been for her to feel those things, but she wasn't saying that part out loud. "I knew that fighting Vergil was awful for Dante and that he needed comfort, but I was...out of comfort right then? Which is kinda awful for me to say? But my dad--" Her voice cracked and she stopped. Hell, she didn't even think Ez knew about all that had happened there. "I just thought that maybe sleeping with fox-you would be okay. Because I'd be warm and you'd be soft and we could both be a comfort for the other without having to, like, actually comfort anyone, if that makes sense. But then we stayed in Limbo City and you went home - which was smart and I'm glad you did - and that isn't what happened."

She was talking about Limbo City.

Of course she was talking about Limbo City.

Probably for the best that foxes didn't sigh. He closed his eyes, instead, focusing on the combing motion against his tail and letting her words just... wash over him. Not fully tuning them out but getting closer to that than listening to every single word intently.

See and this was why it felt like not really talking to him; he didn't respond like normal and she could almost fool herself into thinking he wasn't retaining this at all.

She kept talking, voice soft still stroking his tail. "I just...miss you. I was going to say I miss back when we didn't have any distance, but we always kinda did, didn't we? I was panicky and anxious and you were hiding everything. I want to see how we are now that we're not like that. I mean, at least, not as much."

Looking down at him, she said. "Huh. I wonder how much you is you like this." And then blushed. Fiercely.

She'd do well to remember that it was talking to him, though. Otherwise she'd run the risk of abusing the privilege. And it was a privilege, because he wouldn't hang out in fox form with just anyone.

He kind of wanted to argue about whether he'd been hiding everything. But he was also grateful of the excuse not to.

As for her blushing, well, he didn't even know that was happening. He was keeping his eyes closed.

Kathy always had the news crawl going on in her head, meta-commentary about what she was thinking, feeling, and saying, and how those were (usually negatively) affecting whomever she was talking to at the moment. If I say x thing, will they think y? Or maybe z? OR OH GOD WHAT IF THEY THINK Q? With Ezra as a fox and Kathy unable to read more than the most obvious fox body language, that news crawl got a little smaller. A little easier to ignore.

It was less about abusing the privilege - she hoped - and more that he'd likely get a less filtered, more stream of consciousness conversation.

"I'm working really hard to become a better person and it's hard. It's so hard. And it so often feels thankless, cause nobody notices. Dante and I sorta had a fight once - more like a tiff, cause I was mad and he was clueless - because of that. I've been trying to talk less. Not that you'd know it from our conversation today, heh. But, like...edit myself. I talk in circles a lot, around the point. Sometimes I talk because I haven't quite figured out the point for myself and I have to figure it out as I go. Sometimes it's because I worry that without a lot of context, I won't make sense. But a lot of that stuff is unnecessary and I'm just making...noise. And I know it annoys people. So I tried to stop. To figure out what I was trying to say and just say that. And it's hard, you know? Really hard. And then...he didn't even notice. Made a comment about me using up all the words in the room when I did, but missed all the months of lead up when I didn't."

She sighed, moving from his tail to scratching behind his ears. "I wonder how much of that we're doing to you," she said quietly. "Missing all hard work you're doing to focus on the few times you slip up."

To Ezra, it felt like they did it all the time. He often felt like his trying wasn't good enough, or the right kind.

But he also didn't think he was the most reliable person to judge that, either.

He butted his head against her hand a couple of times. Letting more of the fox bleed through than the man.

Kathy chuckled and petted him, pointedly not devolving into babytalk because this was Ezra. But there was a FOX and he was BUMPING HER HAND.

"Maybe we should talk about all the uncomfortable topics this way," she said, leaning back against the arm of the couch to give him more room to spread out. "Petting you keeps me from an anxiety spiral, I get to say whatever I need to about something you really don't want to talk about, you can ignore me completely so you don't have to hear the stuff I'm talking about, and we're both happy."

She still wanted to talk about Christian was the thing. And was pretty sure Ez would voluntarily drink silver to get out of that conversation.

She was wrong about that.

And she didn't entirely have it right about the dynamic of this situation, either, because it wasn't that easy to tune her out, and that meant she didn't really have a carte blanche on talking about whatever she felt like she needed to.

But right now, he was trying to trust her not to go too far in directions he couldn't bear to hear about. So he was just letting her pet him as he sprawled a little.

But there would be so much pointless agonizing about how bad Kathy was for being happy Christian was dead! Nobody wanted that conversation.

And no, she wasn't going to just gaily chatter on about anything she wanted. Like, even though she wanted to tell him about the bed that Dante'd had built for her, it combined two difficult topics and she'd already talked about LC once today. That was it.

"The store's doing well," she murmured. "Well, more the website than the brick-and-mortar. Tumblr's stupid-ass decision turned out to be a financial godsend."

Ezra couldn't exactly offer any reassuring hums in this form, the way a human might've.

He also barely knew what Tumblr was.

So he was just kind of shifting, getting a little more comfortable. Kneeding at her thigh with his front paws for a second before settling down and closing his eyes again.

She was going to take that as an invitation to continue, voice dropping lower. Getting a little sleepy herself. Look, this much talking was rough, even for her. "I've been doing challenges. Every month a different thing. Let people vote on a winner every month, they get some merch as a prize. Membership subscriptions are up. Had to get more bandwidth cause I started letting people upload art and stuff. It's becoming a community. Isn't that funny? A community off of a porn store website. I think I'm becoming a caricature of myself."

Beat.

"Even moreso."

Ezra made a noise that might have been a fox-style snort.

Or it might've been a yawn. Or possibly both! It was hard to tell.

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A House, Currant, Maine, Saturday

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