[LOG] Relationships.
June took his marks and sent him upstairs to the last door, to the bigger room with that predictable little key on its little chain. She also left him with a fair warning, that it might take her a while, for a reason she doesn't specify, and he may have to wait for a bit. He does, and for more than just a bit. There's a long space of nothing, in fact, before her knock sounds on the door. She seemed a little tipsy in the bit of conversation they had downstairs and now she seems, if anything, moreso. He'll find a smile laying in wait for him to answer her knock, though he won't have much time to notice it before she grabs a handful of collar and drags him into a kiss. It isn't just her low laugh that makes it sloppy; she also rotates in past the door, pulling him about with her and keeping her lips sealed against his as much as possible. Only when she's in the room fully does she release him and, with a sly glance and an unmuffled chuckle, move over to a side table to unburden herself. Balanced in that other arm are many treasures to be sure: a bottle of amber liquid, two glasses, and, stuffed in one of the glasses, a deck of cards. Certainly not the usual beer.
Far from patient, K'aus has a hard time waiting in a room by himself for, what, almost an hour? It feels like it. Part of his impatience comes from his short attention span at least today, as demonstrated by his wandering around the room looking in drawers and then, shamelessly, under the bed. Like he might find something there. Of course he doesn't, and he's in the middle of that last leg of his time killing when the knock comes. The rest, his answering the door and seeing that smile, the kiss, the laugh, happens with him on the receiving end and acting like it. Has she ever been this-- friendly? When she moves away he stands there watching her, his lips still parted, his shirt rumpled around where she grabbed him. His hand moves back to close the door behind him, trusting it's still where he left it, and he follows her as far as the edge of the bed, where he sits and looks her over. "Is that gonna cost me extra?" Her greeting?
June laughs again, still that low, almost private sound, as she finally removes the deck of cards from the glass and slaps it onto the tabletop. She turns to tilt a glance at him, eyelids drooping a bit and her cheeks flushed in her buzz. "If it did, I would have gotten the marks first," she tells him, her words, at least, still crisp enough and still heavily friendly thanks to her booze-boosted mood. Her hands move up to take care of her hair, loosing her curls and the small braid that was wound around them today. That task won't take her long, however, so she lines up another, asking simply, "Drink?"
She so totally would have. "Yeah, that's true," he realizes. He's sitting bent forward some on the corner he's claimed, hands clasped between his knees. And he's thinking about this new June, regarding her and her flushed cheeks and her hands while they undo her hair. That part especially distracts him, since now the whole volume of red curls is loose and shines in the light and-- "What? Yes." Drink. Blinking, K'aus conjures up a small, blank smile, just a neutral curve that he shares with her. "You're in rare form," he has her know.
Those distracting curls are shaken out one final time to double-check their pin-free status, then June transitions smoothly into pouring him some of that, it will reveal itself, spiced rum. Not expensive, to be sure, but it seems a step up from their home brews, marks-wise. "I can get drunk once in a while, too," she teases amid the minor clinkings, "you don't have a monopoly." Further explanation comes when she turns, a drink for each hand, for each of them. "It's been a good night. I won a dart game for, I think, the first time in my life. And we're getting a lot of people drunk." Including herself; she takes a first sip from her glass after handing off his, then drops herself down to sit next to him. "I'm not tired at all," she muses randomly, a notable fact only because of the late hour.
"If you're usually tired," when he comes calling, "I'd never know." It's almost like he can't take his eyes off her, can't look away from this drunk June. Even when he lifts his glass to take a drink, to discover it's not what he was expecting, K'aus is watching her over its rim. His fingers cradle it like a lover's hand. "We get drunk for very different reasons," he notes, thinking over and comparing the ones she's just given him versus the ones he knows as his own. She wins a dart game, he remembers horrible graphic images. "So business is good." It's a guess, but it's an educated one, and he takes another drink.
June glances, sly again, away from her drink and shrugs, leaving her usual status in regards to sleepiness a mystery. After that look falls, she rearranges herself, pushing herself back against the slanted pillows at the head of the bed, though she leaves her sandaled feet dangling off the edge. Better able to face him, now, she meets his fascinated gaze. "Yeah, well. You're you," she comments amiably, attempting to hide a chuckle behind her drink. She fails and only ends up spilling a drop of rum on her chin, a drop which she laughingly wipes with a single finger and licks away. "Business is good," she confirms with emphasis, "it couldn't be better." Only an intake of breath, a short excited gasp of sudden remembering, indicates she's changing the subject before she does. "Do you want to play a game?" She moves her glass-heavy hand toward the table. Cards.
K'aus is still dwelling on what her finger was doing only a moment ago when she switches subjects so smoothly. The gasp does very little to clue him on, sadly. Now that he's back in his own body and not co-inhabiting her digit, he lifts his eyebrows like he's missed something and briefly checks what he heard while he was away. First, "I am me," because she shot a little barb at him and he's only just realized. Second, cards. Right. While chewing on his lip, the brownrider scoots closer to the redhead, probably closer than he needs to scoot, leans over her on an arm to exchange glass for deck. "What are we playing? Go Fish?"
"Go Fish," June cheerily concedes that as an viable option, slipping in a sizeable swallow of rum before she adds, "Or we could play twenty-one. Or poker." She slides her glass onto the table, exchanging it for the card deck, which she settles into her grasp with an easy, unconscious shuffle. "We could play strip poker," she suggests with more of her usual, subtly bewitching manner, though she breaks the effect it has with the angling of an eyebrow and the short laugh that follows it.
"Poker with two people..." Isn't an appealing prospect, says K'aus's trailing off all meaningfully. And even when she ups the ante, aha, with the addition of the concept of /strip/ poker he's slow to rise. Taking his glass back, more for the feel of it in his hand than anything else, he considers with his mouth pushed out. "While normally the idea of being naked with a woman with almost no effort from me involved would probably be all I'd need-- I mean, aren't you tired of seeing me without clothes on?" Really, considering all of their 'visits'.
June counters his question with another question, lifting both of the brows at him now. "Are you saying you don't want to get naked?" It's posed as seriously as she can manage right now, which is still a pretty good approximation, if you can ignore the smile tugging its way, bit by bit, to her lips. Her hands idly ruffle the cards together over and over, an motion that's been so ingrained into her muscle memory it's like blinking. "We don't have to play," she offers generously, indifferently, as she slouches more comfortably into her propping pillows and moves the shuffling to over her stomach.
"I'm saying that if we're gonna get naked, we should probably put the cards away." They might interfere, get in the way or otherwise be a bad idea. Just think of the papercuts. "And I'm thinking that if you brought cards, you wanna play cards. Which is darling." Because they're usually... well, not playing cards. While she's shuffling, K'aus pulls himself ever closer to her, to the middle of the bed until he's across from her or would be if she were sitting. It'll be easier for when she deals him in. "There really isn't any reason for someone to want to play cards, poker specifically, aside from a) they want to win money, which, well, you've already got mine, or b) they wanna talk."
Darling, the word knits a tiny frown over a tensed glance, the expression fleeting and already disappeared by the time she focuses on her shuffling again. As soon as he's close enough, June hooks a leg over his knee, her other tucked underneath. "I brought cards," she explains neutrally, "because I don't feel like sleeping, and you don't sleep anyway. I figured we could do something other than stare at the ceiling. Before, after, whenever." The shuffling, with alternating holds, continues without a deal in sight. They've returned to the territory where he calls the shots again and he hasn't called for a deal.
Nor will he within the next few moments, since he's thinking about something else. Something he shares with her, after his wandering eyes travel down his own leg to his knee, to the point at which the two of them are touching, the only point for now; then to the cards; then his glass. K'aus's expression changes, bemused would be appropriate. He speaks slowly as if he's forming his thoughts into words impromptu-like. "This is probably the weirdest relationship I've ever been in, romantic or otherwise. I mean I pay you for booze and sex, and here we are in a room with the door closed... with a deck of cards."
June's eyes return to him when he speaks, the card rustling going on just as easily without her watching. She recognizes the humor in this atypical relationship between them, but only with a smile and a single chuckle. Her shuffling stills and after a few straightening pats from her fingers she lifts the deck over to its spot on the table again. From there, she sits up even further, using the hook of her leg to help her straighten towards him. She'll grab his collar and draw him into a kiss for the second time tonight, gentler this time, and with nothing but the angling of her body guides him downward with her. More sex and fewer cards to go with his booze.
Still pondering the curious case of their arrangement, K'aus doesn't realize right away that her intentions lie elsewhere suddenly. It takes her using her physical attachment to him to get close to sharpen his focus, his dark eyes half-lidded when she takes him by the shirt again. This time she's gentler, this time he's more prepared and able to respond, which he does. And her manipulation of both of them has him stretched atop her in seconds, shifting to put himself comfortably in the niche between her legs and using an elbow to keep most of his weight from crushing her. While it could be easily assumed things would progress normally from here, he ruins the typical order of events by pulling his mouth away only enough so he can say low words at her. "Are you gonna be pissed about the cards, you can tell me honestly."
June's eyes, drifted closed somewhere during that slow-sinking fall, flash open when he pulls away. Is there a fire? Flood? No, just a question. She blinks through her moderately slowed reaction time, digging a bit for the honest answer and bringing it to the surface. "No," she tells him finally, pausing to stretch a hand down and shove free the last strap of her sandal that her feet couldn't free on their own. "It's your time not mine," she explains when both her gaze and her hand returns to him.
That is an honest answer. Maybe too honest. Still, she's right, he did pay. And somewhere in the back of K'aus's mind, despite that small thought that worries at him, that justifies it all. So he gives up on the issue and rejoins their mouths that quickly, the hand he can use at the moment traveling down her body. For two people so obviously accustomed to each other and to the steps, the declothing process doesn't take long. However, what comes after is a little more involved. While normally he might only draw things out as long as is necessary to please them both, tonight lasts quite a bit longer. Afterwards, he at least is on his back and trying to catch his breath, his hand draped lazily over his stomach and his eyes on the ceiling.
June lazes for a moment curled up next to him, bare back slick against his ribs, tumble of curls propped against his arm. When her sides cease to heave and her sighed sounds of contentment taper off, though, she sits up, moving only so far as the edge of the bed so she can reach for the table. No, it's not the cards she goes for, it's one of the glasses with liquor still at the bottom. She takes a swig for herself then turns to offer him one, planting one hand on the other side of him to make a sort of tent over his lazy hand.
There might be that moment of curious looking when her hand goes for the table, cards? No, glass. Her offer is appreciated, he's sitting up as much as he has to, or can under her tent, to take it from her and steal the last two swallows. The empty is returned, his stretching brushing him against her, hot skin to hot skin, and he falls back in with the pillows, a very comfortable crowd of them in fact. K'aus shoves his hand into his mussed hair and scratches his fingers around in the mess, his other hand drifting to fall backward against her side.
June deposits the empty glass and turns a brief smile at the prompt of his drifted touch. She takes it as an invitation to rejoin him, which she does shortly after it lands. She's a trifle more uncoordinated than usual as she slides down next to him, but she makes it without mishap, taking up a close mirror of his position rather than that little-spoon curl so customary in their post-coital ritual. She stares at the ceiling with him for a while, comfortably quiet, before her voice, low and soft, slips into the silence. "There's nothing saying we can't be friends on top of all this," she notes out of nowhere, her voice having gained a dullness, a sluggish bit of slur, somewhere in the time it spent in moans and murmurs.
Whether or not it was invitation, K'aus accepts, and welcomes, her company. It might not be obvious, but the little things, like his shifting to give her some of those pillows to lay back on and his arm moving closer to his body, that give him away. The quiet that persists after she's resituated herself lulls him into, if not sleep, then a sleepy state. His eyes are almost closed actually when she speaks, drawing him out of what might have been unsconsciousness in a minute or two. He rolls his head on the pillow to look at her and blinks several times. His voice is the usual low, husky one of after. Lacking a more intellectual response, he settles with, "What?"
His response draws her laughter up, it begins, privately, low in her throat, and grows to a full lazy chuckle. She draws her far hand up to drape it over her now closed eyes. "Nevermind," she mumbles over the end of her obscure amusement, and maybe it's an indication of just how inebriated she is that she expects that to be the end of it all. With one final muffled laugh at herself, she's quiet.
Which leaves him confused, all of it. Her reaction, her dismissal, her seemingly complete and sudden stillness. Again, K'aus takes the time he's been given to reflect back quickly on what she said, to try and recapture her tone, what it could have meant. Of course, it doesn't help, even if he understands now, has a better idea what to say, she's probably asleep. And even if she isn't, he assumes that she is so she might as well be. With a troubled look on his face he scratches idly at his collar bone and finally shifts to roll over onto his side, turning his back on her.
For a long time, she might as well be; June stays where she ended up, either staring at the backside of her wrist or leaving her eyes closed. She gives him just as much time as before, maybe more, before she gives in to her restlessness and stirs. Achingly slow, she slides herself from the bed and into the gauziness of her dress, forgoing the complication of underwear for now. In addition to the padding of her feet, his ears may be able to track the splash of more rum meeting a glass, the slight groan of boards as she seats herself on the benched windowsill, the slip of cards against each other as she pushes them through the quietest shuffle she knows.
Of course /he/ isn't going to sleep. It's too early or he hasn't had enough to drink, something like that. He's staring straight ahead while she moves and dresses, when she pours herself another drink, when she sits and when she begins to shuffle again. His hand passes over his face, scrubbing in particular around his eyes to wake them up, and he sits up without the care and slowness she put into use. There's no reason to sneak and so he doesn't. The sheet's gathered around his hips, held in place in a fist, and he grabs the bottle she brought and shuffles on bare feet over to her bench and her window, takes a seat on its other end and clears his throat.
June is surprised when he rouses himself and both shuffling and drinking are put on hold while she watches him go through the stages of joining her. She's sitting sidesaddle, leaned against the curtained window, leaving plenty of room for him on the other half of the sill. The cards are dropped to her lap, braced in a cradle of fingers inches away from her drink. His throat clearing surprises her further and it's only after a moment of blinking under raised eyebrows that she responds to it. "I told you I wasn't tired," she defends herself lightly.
"Despite my best efforts." K'aus lifts a glance at her, his mouth quirking to the side. He shifts then, getting a leg to bend beneath him to form a lap of sorts that the sheet pools in, leaving knees bare but decency intact. Without asking or saying so he stretches a hand out to steal those cards from her so that he might carry on shuffling them himself, though he's not nearly as skilled as she is, Bitran or no. "You said before we could be friends," he reminds her, now that he has his chance. "I guess I missed that we weren't. Which doesn't really surprise me, I mean I'm not good at being friends."
June watches the cards go into his possession and keeps her eyes on them while he speaks, an easier focus for her fuzzy mind than his face right now. "No, I thought... I mean, we w-- are. I thought. It's just, what you said. As if we should be fucking or nothing. And I... I don't know." She drowns her confusion in a blindly-grabbed swallow of rum, which is sure to only bring more on. She lets her head roll back after that drink, letting her gaze be pulled up with it, landing it on his face.
This might be the one instance in all their time together that K'aus is the soberest one of them. He should probably be feeling a little uncertain right about now, but it doesn't show. "Oh yeah, that again. What is it about the fucking or nothing thing that's so awful? It's easy, it's fun, nobody gets hurt. You aren't the first person lately to have a problem with it, which is why I'm confused." He can shuffle without looking too, as he shows now by looking at her, but he's slower that way, clumsier. "So what are your... terms." He's very careful about that word.
June dips for another sip, coming out on the other end with a sigh to settle her weightless thoughts. "Because that's how it all is," is her explanation, "and it's not all that fun. Because if we're friends, it seems like it should be fucking and something. Not always, just..." That thought escapes her and flits away and she's too distracted by what he says next to chase it down. "Terms?" she questions the concept, puzzled by it. "For being friends?"
But what she said stalls his explaining. 'How it all is'. Whether or not she meant it as he interprets it, he's stilled completely by the feeling he gets. The cards are paused in his hands, mid-shuffle, his eyes are focused intently on her face, on her expression. Not the first time he's been forced to think deeper than he might want to, K'aus lets his gaze drift listlessly to one side while he does so. Finally, "I get it." Does he though? "Nevermind what I said. But isn't friends and fucking like... Isn't that what people who are together, involved, isn't that what they do?"
A shadow of a frown jumps unpermitted to June's forehead and she replies, lazily fervent, "No, fuck that. There's no... obligation, or... anything. It's just treating the person you're fucking like they're good for more than just... fucking." She seems to realize she's using that word a lot, but after that short pause she gives up caring about it. Her eyes cut away after she's finished and, distractedly, she raises her glass again for a hearty swig that finishes it off. She doesn't seek more yet, just stares at the unreachable drop left in the bottom nook of the glass.
There's still that whole bottle, the one he brought with them to their window. When she's done with her glass he pushes it slowly across the small space between them, to the middle, where it stops. Then he redirects his attention to whatever lies outside that window, whatever he can see in the darkness, which is more likely his own reflection. After that long moment he takes a deep breath and lets it be a sigh. "So what do you want?"
The bottle pulls June's attention slowly and keeps it while she considers the advantages and disadvantages of another refill. His next question tips the scales firmly toward the advantages. "Want?" she mutters the repeat to herself, as if baffled by it. "Nothing," she states decidedly after a few seconds of thought, her thinned gaze trained on the interplay of bottle and glass to make sure there isn't any spilled. "Nothing," she repeats again once a finger of the liquid is safely in the glass. "I was just clarifying and I honestly couldn't care less about the cards, about playing them with you. I don't even know," she adds, giving her head a tiny shake before looking up at him again, "how this turned into a full blown talk. I just thought we were beyond the usual shit, and turns out we were, just that you said... but it doesn't matter. I don't want anything," she reiterates in case he didn't catch it the first two times. That was too much talking, she has to calm her voice with a sip from her refill.
She couldn't care less. For some reason, K'aus gives her a sharp look that watches her careful pouring without spilling. But she's allowed her full say and he doesn't interrupt her even if he very much wants to say some things. They can wait until she's done and when she is, during her sip, he gives her his response. "You wanna know what's even worse than a woman getting upset about something stupid?" Apparently her answer isn't necessary, he's going on. "A woman who gets upset about something stupid and pretends like she isn't upset. You wanted something outside of sex did you not, is that not why we're talking? And then we're talking and that's not what you want? Forgive me, I'm just trying to get this all straight."
June is taken aback a bit by what he comes back with and comes up from her sip blinking. "No," she corrects him, voice calmed from the firmness it had before, "I'm really not upset." She sets her drink down on the sill and plants her hands next to it, leaning in as if that could make her point clearer. "I'm really not. I have no reason to pretend that. I thought you said something, thought you thought differently. I wanted to make sure if you did. And I'm just... saying things." Frustrated by her lack of clarity she gives another minute shake of her head, eyes tracking to the side as if she could read back up a transcript of what she said, see where the miscommunication might lie. She takes a settling breath and, staring at the curtain still, says, "I don't want anything specific. Nothing like a relationship. I'm a whore," she admits frankly, without bite, "how fucked up would that be? I just think it'd be fucked up at this point if you saw me as..." and she stresses, "... just a whore." She's not making sense even to herself, though, and she reverses her lean, falling back against the frame and letting her head clunk softly against it as she takes her turn to sigh.
She's really not upset? He's really not convinced. And less convinced as she goes on to say things like 'pretend' and 'saying things'. And yes, she's had a few drinks, and he hasn't, and maybe that's making for an uneven playing field, as it were, but K'aus isn't big enough to let it go. Especially not after she's gone and dropped the 'w' word, /twice/. Since he's usually the one of them to use that epithet and since she's all done, he steps in. Slowly, though. This is a mine field. "I think it's really unfair to call yourself a whore when I'm not really in a position right now to argue that you aren't." His downward glance brings into light his halfheartedly concealed nudity. "Not that I definitely would if cirumstances were different. But look, the thing is, if you're a whore then I'm the mark. That's how this works. I'm just some customer, right? And beyond that I'm not even /trying/, I mean I don't even pass for decent on my best of days. Really, I'm being serious. You wouldn't even look at me straight before I paid you that first time."
"You don't have to argue," June tells him,, a hint of a smile sneaking up at her soft-snorted breath. "I am, it's part of what I am." She lets him have his say, gaze and hand both wandering, while she listens, for her glass. It's brought to her, curled in to rest over the haphazard cleavage the tossed on dress reveals, but not sipped from just yet. "Maybe not," she concedes honestly, pausing with her eyes on him to parse that thought, to build enough steam to continue. "But that's the thing. You shouldn't be just," her stress all drains into that word, "a customer at this point, either. I don't think of you as a mark and nothing when you're not, it's not like that. Fuck trying or not, doesn't matter."
Despite their picking apart their characters, K'aus wears the expression of the patient, attentive debater, taking her points as she makes them and doing so neutrally, and then making his own. "But I do pay, see, we participate in a financial transaction, there are services rendered." At this point he realizes what he's arguing /for/ and drops his train of thought momentarily, and his gaze, so he can stare at her hands and reestablish the line he's drawn in his head. "There has to be boundaries with us, June. There has to be-- a way of doing things, the same way you made very clear the first time we were together. If we don't have that then things get blurred, things get confused, shit gets messy." He's looking at her now, very serious. "And if I'm the reasonable one in this little piece then we're in some serious fucking trouble."
"I know," June says of boundaries, simple as that, though there's more than basic whore's reflex behind the tone. He may be so serious about the sentiment he finishes with, but June can't help but laugh. The attempt to stem the response to the simple smile that first appears is a doomed effort; a laugh emerges without any of the usual building chuckles, though it remains soft, understated. She turns her head to the side to enjoy the brief moment of humor, forehead pressing against the glass through the layer of curtains. From there, she tilts a look over to him. "We would be, wouldn't we? But it's okay, I have a feeling reason'll come back as soon as I sober up." Which won't be anytime soon if she finishes that glass. She does, straightening to drink; it takes just a quick swallow to do away with the rest. "And don't worry. Rules are still there, friends or not. They're there to make sure there's no mess."
These are things he can agree with. There's probably a small part of him that's very much missing the calm, level-headed June he knows so well, right now. Still, K'aus is all too willing to hang out with slightly inebriated June, too, so though he follows that glass up and back he doesn't comment on it. It isn't like he, being him, has the right anyway. "No mess," he repeats, because that part especially is important. "We're still, I mean I'm still gonna be here and all that other stuff still stands. I'm still gonna be just as pissed off if something happens to you or the girls and you don't tell me."
June sets her empty glass down; or rather, she gets it approximately on level with the windowsill and releases, giving it a short thud-and-skid ride before it comes to rest. "I know," she tells him, the words subtly calmed by that reassurance, as she rearranges herself into a more relaxed posture. She drags her feet up to the space between them and, bent knees draped with the fabric of her skirt, burrows her cold toes underneath his leg. "And if I don't tell you why I need to go between suddenly," she adds for him, a trifle teasingly. It's been a largely taboo subject with her since she apologized, but drunk June has no problem with it. "I still have two undelivered letters, you know," she comments, the transition from heavier topics to lighter talk completely eradicated in her current state.
Her knees won't be bent for long, not when she's so willingly given him her feet. She'll find his hands are warmer than his legs and whatever security his thin sheet provides, once he has her ankles in his lap he wraps his long fingers around one foot, first, up from her heel to her toes. K'aus rewards her tease with a sly smirk, ha ha very funny. Drunk June has very little problem with a few things, it would seem. "Two undelivered letters, two trips Between to some farm or sty or wherever, no problem. I said I would so I will. You just say the word, kid." Imitating her from before, he goes ahead and leans back against the part of the wall he has access too from their seat and tips his chin down to concentrate on what he's doing with his hands.
He may be disappointed by her response to that impromptu massage. She watches her feet go into his possession with a blink of confusion before she realizes his aim and when his fingers begin to work their magic, there's no hum or moan or proclaimed gratitude. She simply relaxes into his grip, a swallow followed by a heavy puff of breath her only indication of contentment. "Kid?" she questions him a delayed moment later, arching an eyebrow at the endearment. "I am not that much younger than you," she protests lightly, smiling lazily.
"But you are younger. Everybody's younger than me," K'aus informs her helpfully, looking up from his work to meet her eyes again, a gentle if not emotive change in the line of his mouth. "I like 'em young. Old people remember too much, I don't wanna talk about stuff I've already done. I wanna talk about naughty things. I want some pretty young thing to look at, call me daddy." That part might just be for shock value or, more likely, to amuse her. "I want someone to stay up all night with me and still be breathing when the sun comes up. I wanna drink and fuck until my dick rots off. And then maybe I'll retire to just the drinking."
It does it's job. "Daddy?" June repeats, the word rich with an undercurrent of laughter that surfaces so easily soon after, sending her eyes closed for a moment. She doesn't let it distract her from the rest of what he says, though, and she reattunes herself when his voice picks up again. "Someone /much/ younger, then," is what she surmises, "someone who could be your kid. Someone who can take care of you when your dick rots off." She borrows his phrase, but it sinks in a second later. "That sounds disgusting. I don't want to hear about that when it happens." How's that for the boundaries of friendship?
/Now/ he grins, toothy canines and lines around his mouth and eyes; he even snorts. "In all seriousness I can't be too careful, any one of them /could/ be my kid." Not that the thought's stopped him thus far, habits or life or otherwise. A deep breath and his hands work easily the arch of her foot. "I hope none of them are, every time I see one of those little ones or a girl that looks a little bit like me. But my imagination runs away with itself sometimes. I always say I'll take 'em Between, no problem, I don't really see why any of 'em would refuse. Who wants a kid with me, y'know? Eh, I dunno." Awkward silence.
Awkward silence, awkward phrasing. June stares at him for along moment across the length of her legs, blinking slowed by the alcohol coursing in her veins as they speak, and then asks curiously, "Do you want to have a kid with you?"
Another glance at her, very brief, then back down. "If we're still being serious, and if you're drunk enough you might forget later... I did. Once. When, uh. When Thread stopped falling I figured I could relax, I mean it's what, decades before it would happen again, plenty of time to settle down a little. And I was with someone, and I knew she would want 'em eventually. And it isn't like it would have been hard making it happen." K'aus's attentions switch over to her other foot, her ankle the first to receive them. "But things change." And hesitantly, like he isn't sure how she might react, "Do you wanna have a kid with you?"
Is she drunk enough to forget? June shrugs. Who can tell. But he goes on anyway, so she pinpoints him with what focus remains to her and listens. Her mouth presses out a letter 'm' and second later she gives it sound. "Mmm." His question will require more elaboration, but it doesn't take her long to summon it. "Not right now. I'm very anti-reproduction right now, as you can imagine. And I haven't ever. Val thinks that every woman secretly wants a baby, but I'm not so sure." She shrugs again. Who can tell.
Can he imagine? K'aus's lifted eyebrow says neither yes or no to the point. "Is it secretly? They're usually pretty vocal about it. Pregnancy's kind of a big deal for a lot of people right now, isn't it? We're in an Interval, we're worrying about where our next tithe's coming from, it might not be the appropriate time for procreation is all I'm saying. People like you and me might be the wave of the future for all we know. How about now?" What? "Are you tired?"
"Wave of the... underpopulated future," June adds, the idea tickling her into a quiet, singular chuckle as she gazes at her toes, moving them in an uninterrupting wiggle. His question draws raised brows and she stares at him for a beat with eyes that certainly seem sleepy. "Some," she answers. "More. You make me tired," she concludes, finishing it off with a strong smile.
There's something about the way he looks at her when she says that, 'underpopulated', that suggests the idea suits him just fine. But he keeps that opinion, if it does in fact exist, to himself. K'aus pinches one of her wiggling toes gently between thumb and forefinger and catches that sleepy gaze with his, which suffers from neither alcohol buzz or exhaustion, for once. "I'll take that as a compliment," he says dryly, shifting her feet from the bend of his leg so he can stand. Keeping his sheet hitched with one hand leaves the other unoccupied and it's that one he gives her, for help up that he doesn't look willing to take no for.
Those feet fall gently off the sill and find the floor again, though June doesn't seem to anticipate how this will require her to sit up straighter. She does so reluctantly, but lucky for her she doesn't have to maintain it long. When K'aus extends his hand she gives it a short look before she fills it with her own and lets him haul her up. "You haven't had hardly anything to drink," she notes, with an air of protest. Apparently she hasn't imbibed enough to prevent her from keeping track of his own intake and therefore willingness to sleep.
Haul he does, but that's as far as his helping hand goes. She's not entirely on her own to the bed, but he doesn't babysit her either, he has a sheet to take care of. It almost got away from him too, lucky thing he snatched it together in time, now he's circling the bed to find 'his side' again, to reclaim a lounging pose with most of him propped up by pillows. "I think you had enough for both of us," he quips, fingers lacing atop his stomach. "Go to sleep, I'm buying." Literally.
June can handle the short trip to the bed, she's a big girl. But first she pauses long enough to slip her dress' straps off her shoulders and shimmy out of it, which will give him plenty of time to get settled before she joins him. One knee and then the other finds the bed, then she pulls herself up to his level, remaining up for the moment it takes to tilt his chin to her, to plant a placid kiss on his lips. Wordless thanks, perhaps. Only then does she turn over, back to him, and stretch out the entire length of the bed to finally attempt sleep.
Far from patient, K'aus has a hard time waiting in a room by himself for, what, almost an hour? It feels like it. Part of his impatience comes from his short attention span at least today, as demonstrated by his wandering around the room looking in drawers and then, shamelessly, under the bed. Like he might find something there. Of course he doesn't, and he's in the middle of that last leg of his time killing when the knock comes. The rest, his answering the door and seeing that smile, the kiss, the laugh, happens with him on the receiving end and acting like it. Has she ever been this-- friendly? When she moves away he stands there watching her, his lips still parted, his shirt rumpled around where she grabbed him. His hand moves back to close the door behind him, trusting it's still where he left it, and he follows her as far as the edge of the bed, where he sits and looks her over. "Is that gonna cost me extra?" Her greeting?
June laughs again, still that low, almost private sound, as she finally removes the deck of cards from the glass and slaps it onto the tabletop. She turns to tilt a glance at him, eyelids drooping a bit and her cheeks flushed in her buzz. "If it did, I would have gotten the marks first," she tells him, her words, at least, still crisp enough and still heavily friendly thanks to her booze-boosted mood. Her hands move up to take care of her hair, loosing her curls and the small braid that was wound around them today. That task won't take her long, however, so she lines up another, asking simply, "Drink?"
She so totally would have. "Yeah, that's true," he realizes. He's sitting bent forward some on the corner he's claimed, hands clasped between his knees. And he's thinking about this new June, regarding her and her flushed cheeks and her hands while they undo her hair. That part especially distracts him, since now the whole volume of red curls is loose and shines in the light and-- "What? Yes." Drink. Blinking, K'aus conjures up a small, blank smile, just a neutral curve that he shares with her. "You're in rare form," he has her know.
Those distracting curls are shaken out one final time to double-check their pin-free status, then June transitions smoothly into pouring him some of that, it will reveal itself, spiced rum. Not expensive, to be sure, but it seems a step up from their home brews, marks-wise. "I can get drunk once in a while, too," she teases amid the minor clinkings, "you don't have a monopoly." Further explanation comes when she turns, a drink for each hand, for each of them. "It's been a good night. I won a dart game for, I think, the first time in my life. And we're getting a lot of people drunk." Including herself; she takes a first sip from her glass after handing off his, then drops herself down to sit next to him. "I'm not tired at all," she muses randomly, a notable fact only because of the late hour.
"If you're usually tired," when he comes calling, "I'd never know." It's almost like he can't take his eyes off her, can't look away from this drunk June. Even when he lifts his glass to take a drink, to discover it's not what he was expecting, K'aus is watching her over its rim. His fingers cradle it like a lover's hand. "We get drunk for very different reasons," he notes, thinking over and comparing the ones she's just given him versus the ones he knows as his own. She wins a dart game, he remembers horrible graphic images. "So business is good." It's a guess, but it's an educated one, and he takes another drink.
June glances, sly again, away from her drink and shrugs, leaving her usual status in regards to sleepiness a mystery. After that look falls, she rearranges herself, pushing herself back against the slanted pillows at the head of the bed, though she leaves her sandaled feet dangling off the edge. Better able to face him, now, she meets his fascinated gaze. "Yeah, well. You're you," she comments amiably, attempting to hide a chuckle behind her drink. She fails and only ends up spilling a drop of rum on her chin, a drop which she laughingly wipes with a single finger and licks away. "Business is good," she confirms with emphasis, "it couldn't be better." Only an intake of breath, a short excited gasp of sudden remembering, indicates she's changing the subject before she does. "Do you want to play a game?" She moves her glass-heavy hand toward the table. Cards.
K'aus is still dwelling on what her finger was doing only a moment ago when she switches subjects so smoothly. The gasp does very little to clue him on, sadly. Now that he's back in his own body and not co-inhabiting her digit, he lifts his eyebrows like he's missed something and briefly checks what he heard while he was away. First, "I am me," because she shot a little barb at him and he's only just realized. Second, cards. Right. While chewing on his lip, the brownrider scoots closer to the redhead, probably closer than he needs to scoot, leans over her on an arm to exchange glass for deck. "What are we playing? Go Fish?"
"Go Fish," June cheerily concedes that as an viable option, slipping in a sizeable swallow of rum before she adds, "Or we could play twenty-one. Or poker." She slides her glass onto the table, exchanging it for the card deck, which she settles into her grasp with an easy, unconscious shuffle. "We could play strip poker," she suggests with more of her usual, subtly bewitching manner, though she breaks the effect it has with the angling of an eyebrow and the short laugh that follows it.
"Poker with two people..." Isn't an appealing prospect, says K'aus's trailing off all meaningfully. And even when she ups the ante, aha, with the addition of the concept of /strip/ poker he's slow to rise. Taking his glass back, more for the feel of it in his hand than anything else, he considers with his mouth pushed out. "While normally the idea of being naked with a woman with almost no effort from me involved would probably be all I'd need-- I mean, aren't you tired of seeing me without clothes on?" Really, considering all of their 'visits'.
June counters his question with another question, lifting both of the brows at him now. "Are you saying you don't want to get naked?" It's posed as seriously as she can manage right now, which is still a pretty good approximation, if you can ignore the smile tugging its way, bit by bit, to her lips. Her hands idly ruffle the cards together over and over, an motion that's been so ingrained into her muscle memory it's like blinking. "We don't have to play," she offers generously, indifferently, as she slouches more comfortably into her propping pillows and moves the shuffling to over her stomach.
"I'm saying that if we're gonna get naked, we should probably put the cards away." They might interfere, get in the way or otherwise be a bad idea. Just think of the papercuts. "And I'm thinking that if you brought cards, you wanna play cards. Which is darling." Because they're usually... well, not playing cards. While she's shuffling, K'aus pulls himself ever closer to her, to the middle of the bed until he's across from her or would be if she were sitting. It'll be easier for when she deals him in. "There really isn't any reason for someone to want to play cards, poker specifically, aside from a) they want to win money, which, well, you've already got mine, or b) they wanna talk."
Darling, the word knits a tiny frown over a tensed glance, the expression fleeting and already disappeared by the time she focuses on her shuffling again. As soon as he's close enough, June hooks a leg over his knee, her other tucked underneath. "I brought cards," she explains neutrally, "because I don't feel like sleeping, and you don't sleep anyway. I figured we could do something other than stare at the ceiling. Before, after, whenever." The shuffling, with alternating holds, continues without a deal in sight. They've returned to the territory where he calls the shots again and he hasn't called for a deal.
Nor will he within the next few moments, since he's thinking about something else. Something he shares with her, after his wandering eyes travel down his own leg to his knee, to the point at which the two of them are touching, the only point for now; then to the cards; then his glass. K'aus's expression changes, bemused would be appropriate. He speaks slowly as if he's forming his thoughts into words impromptu-like. "This is probably the weirdest relationship I've ever been in, romantic or otherwise. I mean I pay you for booze and sex, and here we are in a room with the door closed... with a deck of cards."
June's eyes return to him when he speaks, the card rustling going on just as easily without her watching. She recognizes the humor in this atypical relationship between them, but only with a smile and a single chuckle. Her shuffling stills and after a few straightening pats from her fingers she lifts the deck over to its spot on the table again. From there, she sits up even further, using the hook of her leg to help her straighten towards him. She'll grab his collar and draw him into a kiss for the second time tonight, gentler this time, and with nothing but the angling of her body guides him downward with her. More sex and fewer cards to go with his booze.
Still pondering the curious case of their arrangement, K'aus doesn't realize right away that her intentions lie elsewhere suddenly. It takes her using her physical attachment to him to get close to sharpen his focus, his dark eyes half-lidded when she takes him by the shirt again. This time she's gentler, this time he's more prepared and able to respond, which he does. And her manipulation of both of them has him stretched atop her in seconds, shifting to put himself comfortably in the niche between her legs and using an elbow to keep most of his weight from crushing her. While it could be easily assumed things would progress normally from here, he ruins the typical order of events by pulling his mouth away only enough so he can say low words at her. "Are you gonna be pissed about the cards, you can tell me honestly."
June's eyes, drifted closed somewhere during that slow-sinking fall, flash open when he pulls away. Is there a fire? Flood? No, just a question. She blinks through her moderately slowed reaction time, digging a bit for the honest answer and bringing it to the surface. "No," she tells him finally, pausing to stretch a hand down and shove free the last strap of her sandal that her feet couldn't free on their own. "It's your time not mine," she explains when both her gaze and her hand returns to him.
That is an honest answer. Maybe too honest. Still, she's right, he did pay. And somewhere in the back of K'aus's mind, despite that small thought that worries at him, that justifies it all. So he gives up on the issue and rejoins their mouths that quickly, the hand he can use at the moment traveling down her body. For two people so obviously accustomed to each other and to the steps, the declothing process doesn't take long. However, what comes after is a little more involved. While normally he might only draw things out as long as is necessary to please them both, tonight lasts quite a bit longer. Afterwards, he at least is on his back and trying to catch his breath, his hand draped lazily over his stomach and his eyes on the ceiling.
June lazes for a moment curled up next to him, bare back slick against his ribs, tumble of curls propped against his arm. When her sides cease to heave and her sighed sounds of contentment taper off, though, she sits up, moving only so far as the edge of the bed so she can reach for the table. No, it's not the cards she goes for, it's one of the glasses with liquor still at the bottom. She takes a swig for herself then turns to offer him one, planting one hand on the other side of him to make a sort of tent over his lazy hand.
There might be that moment of curious looking when her hand goes for the table, cards? No, glass. Her offer is appreciated, he's sitting up as much as he has to, or can under her tent, to take it from her and steal the last two swallows. The empty is returned, his stretching brushing him against her, hot skin to hot skin, and he falls back in with the pillows, a very comfortable crowd of them in fact. K'aus shoves his hand into his mussed hair and scratches his fingers around in the mess, his other hand drifting to fall backward against her side.
June deposits the empty glass and turns a brief smile at the prompt of his drifted touch. She takes it as an invitation to rejoin him, which she does shortly after it lands. She's a trifle more uncoordinated than usual as she slides down next to him, but she makes it without mishap, taking up a close mirror of his position rather than that little-spoon curl so customary in their post-coital ritual. She stares at the ceiling with him for a while, comfortably quiet, before her voice, low and soft, slips into the silence. "There's nothing saying we can't be friends on top of all this," she notes out of nowhere, her voice having gained a dullness, a sluggish bit of slur, somewhere in the time it spent in moans and murmurs.
Whether or not it was invitation, K'aus accepts, and welcomes, her company. It might not be obvious, but the little things, like his shifting to give her some of those pillows to lay back on and his arm moving closer to his body, that give him away. The quiet that persists after she's resituated herself lulls him into, if not sleep, then a sleepy state. His eyes are almost closed actually when she speaks, drawing him out of what might have been unsconsciousness in a minute or two. He rolls his head on the pillow to look at her and blinks several times. His voice is the usual low, husky one of after. Lacking a more intellectual response, he settles with, "What?"
His response draws her laughter up, it begins, privately, low in her throat, and grows to a full lazy chuckle. She draws her far hand up to drape it over her now closed eyes. "Nevermind," she mumbles over the end of her obscure amusement, and maybe it's an indication of just how inebriated she is that she expects that to be the end of it all. With one final muffled laugh at herself, she's quiet.
Which leaves him confused, all of it. Her reaction, her dismissal, her seemingly complete and sudden stillness. Again, K'aus takes the time he's been given to reflect back quickly on what she said, to try and recapture her tone, what it could have meant. Of course, it doesn't help, even if he understands now, has a better idea what to say, she's probably asleep. And even if she isn't, he assumes that she is so she might as well be. With a troubled look on his face he scratches idly at his collar bone and finally shifts to roll over onto his side, turning his back on her.
For a long time, she might as well be; June stays where she ended up, either staring at the backside of her wrist or leaving her eyes closed. She gives him just as much time as before, maybe more, before she gives in to her restlessness and stirs. Achingly slow, she slides herself from the bed and into the gauziness of her dress, forgoing the complication of underwear for now. In addition to the padding of her feet, his ears may be able to track the splash of more rum meeting a glass, the slight groan of boards as she seats herself on the benched windowsill, the slip of cards against each other as she pushes them through the quietest shuffle she knows.
Of course /he/ isn't going to sleep. It's too early or he hasn't had enough to drink, something like that. He's staring straight ahead while she moves and dresses, when she pours herself another drink, when she sits and when she begins to shuffle again. His hand passes over his face, scrubbing in particular around his eyes to wake them up, and he sits up without the care and slowness she put into use. There's no reason to sneak and so he doesn't. The sheet's gathered around his hips, held in place in a fist, and he grabs the bottle she brought and shuffles on bare feet over to her bench and her window, takes a seat on its other end and clears his throat.
June is surprised when he rouses himself and both shuffling and drinking are put on hold while she watches him go through the stages of joining her. She's sitting sidesaddle, leaned against the curtained window, leaving plenty of room for him on the other half of the sill. The cards are dropped to her lap, braced in a cradle of fingers inches away from her drink. His throat clearing surprises her further and it's only after a moment of blinking under raised eyebrows that she responds to it. "I told you I wasn't tired," she defends herself lightly.
"Despite my best efforts." K'aus lifts a glance at her, his mouth quirking to the side. He shifts then, getting a leg to bend beneath him to form a lap of sorts that the sheet pools in, leaving knees bare but decency intact. Without asking or saying so he stretches a hand out to steal those cards from her so that he might carry on shuffling them himself, though he's not nearly as skilled as she is, Bitran or no. "You said before we could be friends," he reminds her, now that he has his chance. "I guess I missed that we weren't. Which doesn't really surprise me, I mean I'm not good at being friends."
June watches the cards go into his possession and keeps her eyes on them while he speaks, an easier focus for her fuzzy mind than his face right now. "No, I thought... I mean, we w-- are. I thought. It's just, what you said. As if we should be fucking or nothing. And I... I don't know." She drowns her confusion in a blindly-grabbed swallow of rum, which is sure to only bring more on. She lets her head roll back after that drink, letting her gaze be pulled up with it, landing it on his face.
This might be the one instance in all their time together that K'aus is the soberest one of them. He should probably be feeling a little uncertain right about now, but it doesn't show. "Oh yeah, that again. What is it about the fucking or nothing thing that's so awful? It's easy, it's fun, nobody gets hurt. You aren't the first person lately to have a problem with it, which is why I'm confused." He can shuffle without looking too, as he shows now by looking at her, but he's slower that way, clumsier. "So what are your... terms." He's very careful about that word.
June dips for another sip, coming out on the other end with a sigh to settle her weightless thoughts. "Because that's how it all is," is her explanation, "and it's not all that fun. Because if we're friends, it seems like it should be fucking and something. Not always, just..." That thought escapes her and flits away and she's too distracted by what he says next to chase it down. "Terms?" she questions the concept, puzzled by it. "For being friends?"
But what she said stalls his explaining. 'How it all is'. Whether or not she meant it as he interprets it, he's stilled completely by the feeling he gets. The cards are paused in his hands, mid-shuffle, his eyes are focused intently on her face, on her expression. Not the first time he's been forced to think deeper than he might want to, K'aus lets his gaze drift listlessly to one side while he does so. Finally, "I get it." Does he though? "Nevermind what I said. But isn't friends and fucking like... Isn't that what people who are together, involved, isn't that what they do?"
A shadow of a frown jumps unpermitted to June's forehead and she replies, lazily fervent, "No, fuck that. There's no... obligation, or... anything. It's just treating the person you're fucking like they're good for more than just... fucking." She seems to realize she's using that word a lot, but after that short pause she gives up caring about it. Her eyes cut away after she's finished and, distractedly, she raises her glass again for a hearty swig that finishes it off. She doesn't seek more yet, just stares at the unreachable drop left in the bottom nook of the glass.
There's still that whole bottle, the one he brought with them to their window. When she's done with her glass he pushes it slowly across the small space between them, to the middle, where it stops. Then he redirects his attention to whatever lies outside that window, whatever he can see in the darkness, which is more likely his own reflection. After that long moment he takes a deep breath and lets it be a sigh. "So what do you want?"
The bottle pulls June's attention slowly and keeps it while she considers the advantages and disadvantages of another refill. His next question tips the scales firmly toward the advantages. "Want?" she mutters the repeat to herself, as if baffled by it. "Nothing," she states decidedly after a few seconds of thought, her thinned gaze trained on the interplay of bottle and glass to make sure there isn't any spilled. "Nothing," she repeats again once a finger of the liquid is safely in the glass. "I was just clarifying and I honestly couldn't care less about the cards, about playing them with you. I don't even know," she adds, giving her head a tiny shake before looking up at him again, "how this turned into a full blown talk. I just thought we were beyond the usual shit, and turns out we were, just that you said... but it doesn't matter. I don't want anything," she reiterates in case he didn't catch it the first two times. That was too much talking, she has to calm her voice with a sip from her refill.
She couldn't care less. For some reason, K'aus gives her a sharp look that watches her careful pouring without spilling. But she's allowed her full say and he doesn't interrupt her even if he very much wants to say some things. They can wait until she's done and when she is, during her sip, he gives her his response. "You wanna know what's even worse than a woman getting upset about something stupid?" Apparently her answer isn't necessary, he's going on. "A woman who gets upset about something stupid and pretends like she isn't upset. You wanted something outside of sex did you not, is that not why we're talking? And then we're talking and that's not what you want? Forgive me, I'm just trying to get this all straight."
June is taken aback a bit by what he comes back with and comes up from her sip blinking. "No," she corrects him, voice calmed from the firmness it had before, "I'm really not upset." She sets her drink down on the sill and plants her hands next to it, leaning in as if that could make her point clearer. "I'm really not. I have no reason to pretend that. I thought you said something, thought you thought differently. I wanted to make sure if you did. And I'm just... saying things." Frustrated by her lack of clarity she gives another minute shake of her head, eyes tracking to the side as if she could read back up a transcript of what she said, see where the miscommunication might lie. She takes a settling breath and, staring at the curtain still, says, "I don't want anything specific. Nothing like a relationship. I'm a whore," she admits frankly, without bite, "how fucked up would that be? I just think it'd be fucked up at this point if you saw me as..." and she stresses, "... just a whore." She's not making sense even to herself, though, and she reverses her lean, falling back against the frame and letting her head clunk softly against it as she takes her turn to sigh.
She's really not upset? He's really not convinced. And less convinced as she goes on to say things like 'pretend' and 'saying things'. And yes, she's had a few drinks, and he hasn't, and maybe that's making for an uneven playing field, as it were, but K'aus isn't big enough to let it go. Especially not after she's gone and dropped the 'w' word, /twice/. Since he's usually the one of them to use that epithet and since she's all done, he steps in. Slowly, though. This is a mine field. "I think it's really unfair to call yourself a whore when I'm not really in a position right now to argue that you aren't." His downward glance brings into light his halfheartedly concealed nudity. "Not that I definitely would if cirumstances were different. But look, the thing is, if you're a whore then I'm the mark. That's how this works. I'm just some customer, right? And beyond that I'm not even /trying/, I mean I don't even pass for decent on my best of days. Really, I'm being serious. You wouldn't even look at me straight before I paid you that first time."
"You don't have to argue," June tells him,, a hint of a smile sneaking up at her soft-snorted breath. "I am, it's part of what I am." She lets him have his say, gaze and hand both wandering, while she listens, for her glass. It's brought to her, curled in to rest over the haphazard cleavage the tossed on dress reveals, but not sipped from just yet. "Maybe not," she concedes honestly, pausing with her eyes on him to parse that thought, to build enough steam to continue. "But that's the thing. You shouldn't be just," her stress all drains into that word, "a customer at this point, either. I don't think of you as a mark and nothing when you're not, it's not like that. Fuck trying or not, doesn't matter."
Despite their picking apart their characters, K'aus wears the expression of the patient, attentive debater, taking her points as she makes them and doing so neutrally, and then making his own. "But I do pay, see, we participate in a financial transaction, there are services rendered." At this point he realizes what he's arguing /for/ and drops his train of thought momentarily, and his gaze, so he can stare at her hands and reestablish the line he's drawn in his head. "There has to be boundaries with us, June. There has to be-- a way of doing things, the same way you made very clear the first time we were together. If we don't have that then things get blurred, things get confused, shit gets messy." He's looking at her now, very serious. "And if I'm the reasonable one in this little piece then we're in some serious fucking trouble."
"I know," June says of boundaries, simple as that, though there's more than basic whore's reflex behind the tone. He may be so serious about the sentiment he finishes with, but June can't help but laugh. The attempt to stem the response to the simple smile that first appears is a doomed effort; a laugh emerges without any of the usual building chuckles, though it remains soft, understated. She turns her head to the side to enjoy the brief moment of humor, forehead pressing against the glass through the layer of curtains. From there, she tilts a look over to him. "We would be, wouldn't we? But it's okay, I have a feeling reason'll come back as soon as I sober up." Which won't be anytime soon if she finishes that glass. She does, straightening to drink; it takes just a quick swallow to do away with the rest. "And don't worry. Rules are still there, friends or not. They're there to make sure there's no mess."
These are things he can agree with. There's probably a small part of him that's very much missing the calm, level-headed June he knows so well, right now. Still, K'aus is all too willing to hang out with slightly inebriated June, too, so though he follows that glass up and back he doesn't comment on it. It isn't like he, being him, has the right anyway. "No mess," he repeats, because that part especially is important. "We're still, I mean I'm still gonna be here and all that other stuff still stands. I'm still gonna be just as pissed off if something happens to you or the girls and you don't tell me."
June sets her empty glass down; or rather, she gets it approximately on level with the windowsill and releases, giving it a short thud-and-skid ride before it comes to rest. "I know," she tells him, the words subtly calmed by that reassurance, as she rearranges herself into a more relaxed posture. She drags her feet up to the space between them and, bent knees draped with the fabric of her skirt, burrows her cold toes underneath his leg. "And if I don't tell you why I need to go between suddenly," she adds for him, a trifle teasingly. It's been a largely taboo subject with her since she apologized, but drunk June has no problem with it. "I still have two undelivered letters, you know," she comments, the transition from heavier topics to lighter talk completely eradicated in her current state.
Her knees won't be bent for long, not when she's so willingly given him her feet. She'll find his hands are warmer than his legs and whatever security his thin sheet provides, once he has her ankles in his lap he wraps his long fingers around one foot, first, up from her heel to her toes. K'aus rewards her tease with a sly smirk, ha ha very funny. Drunk June has very little problem with a few things, it would seem. "Two undelivered letters, two trips Between to some farm or sty or wherever, no problem. I said I would so I will. You just say the word, kid." Imitating her from before, he goes ahead and leans back against the part of the wall he has access too from their seat and tips his chin down to concentrate on what he's doing with his hands.
He may be disappointed by her response to that impromptu massage. She watches her feet go into his possession with a blink of confusion before she realizes his aim and when his fingers begin to work their magic, there's no hum or moan or proclaimed gratitude. She simply relaxes into his grip, a swallow followed by a heavy puff of breath her only indication of contentment. "Kid?" she questions him a delayed moment later, arching an eyebrow at the endearment. "I am not that much younger than you," she protests lightly, smiling lazily.
"But you are younger. Everybody's younger than me," K'aus informs her helpfully, looking up from his work to meet her eyes again, a gentle if not emotive change in the line of his mouth. "I like 'em young. Old people remember too much, I don't wanna talk about stuff I've already done. I wanna talk about naughty things. I want some pretty young thing to look at, call me daddy." That part might just be for shock value or, more likely, to amuse her. "I want someone to stay up all night with me and still be breathing when the sun comes up. I wanna drink and fuck until my dick rots off. And then maybe I'll retire to just the drinking."
It does it's job. "Daddy?" June repeats, the word rich with an undercurrent of laughter that surfaces so easily soon after, sending her eyes closed for a moment. She doesn't let it distract her from the rest of what he says, though, and she reattunes herself when his voice picks up again. "Someone /much/ younger, then," is what she surmises, "someone who could be your kid. Someone who can take care of you when your dick rots off." She borrows his phrase, but it sinks in a second later. "That sounds disgusting. I don't want to hear about that when it happens." How's that for the boundaries of friendship?
/Now/ he grins, toothy canines and lines around his mouth and eyes; he even snorts. "In all seriousness I can't be too careful, any one of them /could/ be my kid." Not that the thought's stopped him thus far, habits or life or otherwise. A deep breath and his hands work easily the arch of her foot. "I hope none of them are, every time I see one of those little ones or a girl that looks a little bit like me. But my imagination runs away with itself sometimes. I always say I'll take 'em Between, no problem, I don't really see why any of 'em would refuse. Who wants a kid with me, y'know? Eh, I dunno." Awkward silence.
Awkward silence, awkward phrasing. June stares at him for along moment across the length of her legs, blinking slowed by the alcohol coursing in her veins as they speak, and then asks curiously, "Do you want to have a kid with you?"
Another glance at her, very brief, then back down. "If we're still being serious, and if you're drunk enough you might forget later... I did. Once. When, uh. When Thread stopped falling I figured I could relax, I mean it's what, decades before it would happen again, plenty of time to settle down a little. And I was with someone, and I knew she would want 'em eventually. And it isn't like it would have been hard making it happen." K'aus's attentions switch over to her other foot, her ankle the first to receive them. "But things change." And hesitantly, like he isn't sure how she might react, "Do you wanna have a kid with you?"
Is she drunk enough to forget? June shrugs. Who can tell. But he goes on anyway, so she pinpoints him with what focus remains to her and listens. Her mouth presses out a letter 'm' and second later she gives it sound. "Mmm." His question will require more elaboration, but it doesn't take her long to summon it. "Not right now. I'm very anti-reproduction right now, as you can imagine. And I haven't ever. Val thinks that every woman secretly wants a baby, but I'm not so sure." She shrugs again. Who can tell.
Can he imagine? K'aus's lifted eyebrow says neither yes or no to the point. "Is it secretly? They're usually pretty vocal about it. Pregnancy's kind of a big deal for a lot of people right now, isn't it? We're in an Interval, we're worrying about where our next tithe's coming from, it might not be the appropriate time for procreation is all I'm saying. People like you and me might be the wave of the future for all we know. How about now?" What? "Are you tired?"
"Wave of the... underpopulated future," June adds, the idea tickling her into a quiet, singular chuckle as she gazes at her toes, moving them in an uninterrupting wiggle. His question draws raised brows and she stares at him for a beat with eyes that certainly seem sleepy. "Some," she answers. "More. You make me tired," she concludes, finishing it off with a strong smile.
There's something about the way he looks at her when she says that, 'underpopulated', that suggests the idea suits him just fine. But he keeps that opinion, if it does in fact exist, to himself. K'aus pinches one of her wiggling toes gently between thumb and forefinger and catches that sleepy gaze with his, which suffers from neither alcohol buzz or exhaustion, for once. "I'll take that as a compliment," he says dryly, shifting her feet from the bend of his leg so he can stand. Keeping his sheet hitched with one hand leaves the other unoccupied and it's that one he gives her, for help up that he doesn't look willing to take no for.
Those feet fall gently off the sill and find the floor again, though June doesn't seem to anticipate how this will require her to sit up straighter. She does so reluctantly, but lucky for her she doesn't have to maintain it long. When K'aus extends his hand she gives it a short look before she fills it with her own and lets him haul her up. "You haven't had hardly anything to drink," she notes, with an air of protest. Apparently she hasn't imbibed enough to prevent her from keeping track of his own intake and therefore willingness to sleep.
Haul he does, but that's as far as his helping hand goes. She's not entirely on her own to the bed, but he doesn't babysit her either, he has a sheet to take care of. It almost got away from him too, lucky thing he snatched it together in time, now he's circling the bed to find 'his side' again, to reclaim a lounging pose with most of him propped up by pillows. "I think you had enough for both of us," he quips, fingers lacing atop his stomach. "Go to sleep, I'm buying." Literally.
June can handle the short trip to the bed, she's a big girl. But first she pauses long enough to slip her dress' straps off her shoulders and shimmy out of it, which will give him plenty of time to get settled before she joins him. One knee and then the other finds the bed, then she pulls herself up to his level, remaining up for the moment it takes to tilt his chin to her, to plant a placid kiss on his lips. Wordless thanks, perhaps. Only then does she turn over, back to him, and stretch out the entire length of the bed to finally attempt sleep.