FIC: LIWFY 17/25: Substitution (RPF, Kris/Jim, NC-17)
Substitution
Kink bingo square: phonesex
RPF. 2600 words. Kris/Jim Cantiello. NC-17.
It's not the first time Kris has fooled around with a friend, and he promises it won't get weird. [Story 17/25 of Life Is Waiting For You.]
"Help me, Obi-wan, you're my only hope."
Kris laughed and the phone, which was balanced precariously between his shoulder and his ear as he tried to extricate his macroeconomics textbook from his bag, lost its battle with gravity. He scrambled to pick it up before it was lost forever under his pile of notes.
"If you can prove you're in a metal bikini right now, I'll do anything you ask."
"Hang on, my roommate says if I hit the webcam against the fish tank three times, it sort of works," said Jim.
"Why do you have a fish tank?"
"For the fish," said Jim, and Kris actually did hear some thumping in the background. He kind of hoped Jim wasn't in a metal bikini, but if he was then he absolutely wanted pictorial evidence.
"You don't have fish."
"But we might," said Jim, "and Michael likes to decorate it on holidays."
"Every time I think you're weird, Slezak is even weirder."
"I know," says Jim, "that's why I keep him around. And I’m not weird, I'm eccentric. Or I will be when I'm older. Right now I'm just practicing to be eccentric."
"So what can I help you with, Princess?"
"Right," said Jim. "The urgent emergency." Which apparently was neither urgent, nor an emergency. "You're still on campus, right? Thursday night?"
"Rehearsal was cancelled," said Kris. "I'm at home right now. Why?"
"Well, crap," said Jim. "I left something in the office and didn't want to have to head back in tonight. I'm already comfortable."
"You can't just get it in the morning?" said Kris. "Can't be that urgent if you didn't notice till now."
"Yeeeeeeah," said Jim, stretching out the word. "I'd have to get up early enough to be the first one in there, and that's even worse than putting my pants back on and going now."
"Wow, you really are in a metal bikini," said Kris. "That's way more about your personal life than I needed to know. So what did you leave behind that you don't want anyone else to see?"
"The whole reason I asked you to get it," said Jim, "is because you're the one guy I trust not to look."
"Not to look, sure," said Kris, "but that's not going to stop me from asking. Especially now that I know I'm not supposed to look. What's in the bag, Jim?"
"Gwyneth Paltrow's severed head," said Jim. "Sorry you asked?"
"It's something dirty, isn't it?" said Kris. He was joking, but Jim's awkward silence said everything. "It is something dirty!"
"My dirty magazines are nobody's business but mine," said Jim. "I don't even know where my pants are. Maybe they're on the balcony."
"You keep telling me how you're not wearing any pants and I'm going to start to think it's a hint," said Kris. It just wouldn't be a conversation with Jim if it wasn't flirty. "Why would your pants be on the balcony?"
"Michael was cleaning," said Jim. "It was kind of an out of sight, out of mind thing."
"You can't get him to go out to the school and get your stuff for you?" said Kris.
"First of all," said Jim, "he's on a date, so he'd kill me if I called him and asked. And second of all, he'd look." There was the sound of a door sliding open in the background, then Jim laughing. "They are on the balcony. I'm going to kill him. There's no way I'm putting these on before they warm up."
"Well, if you find yourself unable to get out to get your porn," said Kris, "I can try to help you out. You know, make some high breathy sounds, maybe rock my chair legs against the floor a little. You know, the usual." He waited for Jim to laugh, but it didn't quite come. "Jim."
"You don't need to make high breathy sounds," he said, and then he did finally laugh but it was off. It was forced.
"I was just-"
"-kidding, I know," said Jim. There was a roar in the background. Kris wondered if it might be a hair dryer. "Like you would actually have a usual."
"But I could."
It wasn't even that impulsive, not really. Okay, it was a little impulsive, but he meant it. It didn't have to be a huge deal. It could just be fun, and helpful. And Kris liked Jim, it wouldn't even be the first time he thought about maybe fooling around with him.
"You're still kidding, right?" Jim said after an awkward silence.
"No, actually," said Kris, "but no obligation or anything." Just because Kris was comfortable with it, didn't mean Jim was, or should be. "Just an option."
"You really don't want to go back to campus, do you?"
"Hey, maybe you're not the only one not wearing pants," said Kris. "If you're feeling really weird right now, you can forget I said anything."
"What, and pass up the chance when there are no guarantees it'll ever come again?" he said. "Fat chance of that."
He said it like it didn't matter, in a way that Kris could tell it totally did. Not in a pining-after-you-way, more in an I-want-to-get-off-and-I-trust-you way. In a hey-this-could-be-fun-and-so-what-if-it's-a-little-awkward-we-should-both-be-used-to-that way.
"Well, get off the balcony to start with," said Kris, and Jim laughed again and Kris heard the sound of a door closing. Maybe his bedroom door. Kris didn't ask, he just got comfortable and pictured Jim and Mike's apartment, the pile of magazines on the coffee table, the perpetual half-pot of coffee on the kitchen counter, every phone number either one of them had ever received pinned up on the fridge with an ironic magnet, either like badges of honor or a record of their failures, Kris had never been entirely sure which.
"You're a lot bossier than my magazines," said Jim a few moments later.
Kris wondered why Jim couldn't use the internet like a normal person, then wondered if maybe this was all an elaborate set-up from the beginning. He didn't really mind if it was, though. It wasn't the kind of thing you could just ask for from someone you weren't dating, or even hooking up with.
"What kind of magazines?" Kris asked him, drawing one knee of, fingers casually running along the skin of his own inner thigh. "Tell me about them."
"Then you'll know what I like," said Jim.
"I think I kind of already know what you like," said Kris. Funny girls with curly hair. Weird musicians. People who made him laugh. "Boys or girls?"
"Guys," said Jim, letting out a soft, almost inaudible sigh. "College guys. Athletes. Mostly solo shots, but some...um."
"Tell me," said Kris. "You know it's turning you on, thinking about it. Tell me about your dirty magazines, Jim. They're kind of like a fetish, huh? Having them in your hands-"
"Being able to touch them," finished Jim. "I know it's a little weird."
"I like weird," said Kris.
"Pictures of guys," said Jim, "touching themselves, legs spread, showing off everything."
"Is that what you're doing right now?"
"Well, I didn't put my pants back on," said Jim. There was a scuffling noise, a slight grunt, then Jim was back on the line. "I don't get them very often. The magazines. Kind of hard to look people in the eye. But sometimes...."
"Don't be embarrassed," said Kris. "Wait, hold that thought, I need to take my underwear off." Jim groaned quietly into the phone and Kris smiled to himself while he struggled out of the rest of his clothes too. "I really wasn't wearing much when you called. We've got the heat cranked in here. It's so warm in my room I'm a little sweaty."
"At the nape of your neck?" said Jim, and Kris immediately reached for it, rubbed the spot Jim was talking about. He wondered how often Jim looked to have noticed that.
"Yeah," he said. "The small of my back. The backs of my knees." He touched each spot as he mentioned it. "It's nice to take it all off."
"Yeah," said Jim, and Kris heard the first telltale whisper of flesh on flesh in the background. Jim's breathing alone could have told him what was going on, but that little, recognizable sound was what took Kris from curious and semi-hard to totally up for this.
"I've thought about what I would do to you," said Kris. "If we were ever, you know, together."
"Do you think that about everybody?"
"Yeah, kind of," admitted Kris. "Just idle thoughts, you know. I always figured you'd be a great kisser. Just something about you. And you'd be handsy, like me. You'd want to touch everything. Am I right?"
"You might be right," said Jim. Kris didn't know if he was being cagy, or if he just hadn't done enough to know what he'd be like. But he obviously knew what he wanted.
"I'd do that to you," said Kris. "Hold you and touch you everywhere. You get so much about a person by touching them. People don't touch each other enough."
"I...agree," said Jim, his voice catching just slightly between the two words. Kris smiled to himself. "I'd let you touch me."
Kris couldn't touch Jim but he could touch himself, and he did. Little teasing touches. Little strokes. Little grasps. He licked his palm and grabbed hold of himself and from the faint gasp he was fairly sure Jim heard the licking.
"Are your legs spread?" said Kris. "Like the guys in the magazines? If I was standing at your feet, could I see everything?"
"Yes...yes," said Jim, then, "wait, I'm..." He didn't finish the sentence before he did whatever he was about to say he was going to do. "Propping my hips up."
"Oh," said Kris, and didn't that do some very nice things for him. "Now I can see everything. Everything."
"What should I...you could tell me what to do," said Jim. "You could...I think that would be...."
Kris wanted to tell him to stop being embarrassed again, but then he figured that would just make him more embarrassed so he bit his tongue. "If you're not fingering yourself yet, you should be," he said and ran just the tip of his finger over his own hole before trailing it up his cock again. "Have you ever? I hope you have. It's amazing."
"I can't believe you just...oh," said Jim, and Kris smiled again. They were in private right now. He'd say things he didn't say in public. It was the point. "I wasn't, but...."
"Are you now?"
"I...yeah," said Jim. "Yeah. Are you? Tell me you are. Lie if you have to."
Kris didn't like to lie, so he took a second to find some lotion-closer to hand than his lube; he wasn't planning for this-and then pressed a finger inside, just one. His imagination was doing most of the work today. That and his other hand, which found a pretty steady rhythm pretty quickly.
"I am," said Kris. "How would you take me, if you were here? On my front? On my back? On my side? Or would you want to do it standing up? Over a table? Sitting in a chair with me riding you? Or do you want to be the one riding me, Jim?"
"Oh, oh God, oh God," he said, not even trying to form sentences anymore. Kris didn't even think he was trying to form thoughts anymore.
"Is this where I use my sexy voice?"
"If you could just...breathe."
Kris's breath caught both at the nakedly honest request and at the way Jim's voice shook as he asked, trembling against the increasingly audible backdrop of Jim jerking off.
"Oh, oh, oh," Kris said as orgasm snuck up on him, just like that.
"Or that," said Jim, and sucked in a deep breath and there was the frantic noise of skin and sheets and whimpers and then Jim just let it all out, a half-moan, half-cry followed by harsh panting for breath. There was no mistaking his orgasm for anything else.
For something that light and that fun, the finale was a lot more intense than Kris was expecting. For a little while he just breathed, waiting for his head to stop spinning, his pulse to slow down. And he still remained quiet, listening to Jim breathe, as he grabbed a wetwipe from beside the bed to clean up his hands and his stomach.
"Weirdest sex you've ever had?" said Jim after a few more moments of awkward silence.
"Not even close," said Kris. "Top ten maybe. Lower top ten."
"How have you even had that much sex?"
"I don't know," said Kris, and he shrugged even though no one could see. "People just like to have sex with me. Usually in person, though. This is new. I don't usually talk about sex, but...I think I liked it."
"You think?"
Kris laughed as he looked for his underwear. It didn't make it far, hanging off the drawer knob of his night table. "It was definitely good," he said. "Still a little unexpected. I actually think I might be into doing that again."
"With me?"
Kris just laughed again and wedged the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he slid his underwear back on. If he was sweaty before they started, he was really sticky now. There was no way he should need to put his fan on this early in the year, though; maybe when he was off the phone he could just crack a window.
"Would that be such a bad thing?"
"No, no," said Jim quickly.
"Too weird?"
"Not too weird," he said after a moment, though he clearly had to think about it. "I'd be open to the possibility."
"Cool," said Kris, just as there was a knock at his door. And Kris was a pretty open guy but he wasn't going to answer the door in his underwear until he knew for sure who it was. In their place, there was no guarantee it was just his roommates. "Listen, I gotta go. Someone needs me for something. I hope it involves ice."
"Wow," said Jim, just a beat too late. "I hope it involves ice too."
"I'll just leave you with that thought," said Kris. The knock at his door came again, louder, this time accompanied by someone's laughter. "Just a second!" he called out, then returned to Jim. "See you tomorrow?"
"As always," said Jim, and that served as enough of a goodbye.
Jim said he didn't feel weird about it and Kris hoped he meant it. If Jim had any trouble meeting his eyes tomorrow, well, Kris would just have to take care of that. Friends first, that was the most important thing. He wouldn’t let it be weird.
"Kris, what are you doing in there?" he heard through the door, this time accompanied by a couple of bangs with the palm of someone's hand.
"Not what you think I'm doing!" he said, tossing his phone on the bed and hopping into a pair of jeans. Not anymore, anyway.
He tugged on a semi-clean t-shirt and finally went to find out what the rest of his friends were up to. He reminded himself that he'd been with a couple of them before too, and things between them were completely fine. Completely normal.
Kris was really good at not letting things get weird, and this would be no different.
Next story: All The Education That I've Missed
Kink bingo square: phonesex
RPF. 2600 words. Kris/Jim Cantiello. NC-17.
It's not the first time Kris has fooled around with a friend, and he promises it won't get weird. [Story 17/25 of Life Is Waiting For You.]
"Help me, Obi-wan, you're my only hope."
Kris laughed and the phone, which was balanced precariously between his shoulder and his ear as he tried to extricate his macroeconomics textbook from his bag, lost its battle with gravity. He scrambled to pick it up before it was lost forever under his pile of notes.
"If you can prove you're in a metal bikini right now, I'll do anything you ask."
"Hang on, my roommate says if I hit the webcam against the fish tank three times, it sort of works," said Jim.
"Why do you have a fish tank?"
"For the fish," said Jim, and Kris actually did hear some thumping in the background. He kind of hoped Jim wasn't in a metal bikini, but if he was then he absolutely wanted pictorial evidence.
"You don't have fish."
"But we might," said Jim, "and Michael likes to decorate it on holidays."
"Every time I think you're weird, Slezak is even weirder."
"I know," says Jim, "that's why I keep him around. And I’m not weird, I'm eccentric. Or I will be when I'm older. Right now I'm just practicing to be eccentric."
"So what can I help you with, Princess?"
"Right," said Jim. "The urgent emergency." Which apparently was neither urgent, nor an emergency. "You're still on campus, right? Thursday night?"
"Rehearsal was cancelled," said Kris. "I'm at home right now. Why?"
"Well, crap," said Jim. "I left something in the office and didn't want to have to head back in tonight. I'm already comfortable."
"You can't just get it in the morning?" said Kris. "Can't be that urgent if you didn't notice till now."
"Yeeeeeeah," said Jim, stretching out the word. "I'd have to get up early enough to be the first one in there, and that's even worse than putting my pants back on and going now."
"Wow, you really are in a metal bikini," said Kris. "That's way more about your personal life than I needed to know. So what did you leave behind that you don't want anyone else to see?"
"The whole reason I asked you to get it," said Jim, "is because you're the one guy I trust not to look."
"Not to look, sure," said Kris, "but that's not going to stop me from asking. Especially now that I know I'm not supposed to look. What's in the bag, Jim?"
"Gwyneth Paltrow's severed head," said Jim. "Sorry you asked?"
"It's something dirty, isn't it?" said Kris. He was joking, but Jim's awkward silence said everything. "It is something dirty!"
"My dirty magazines are nobody's business but mine," said Jim. "I don't even know where my pants are. Maybe they're on the balcony."
"You keep telling me how you're not wearing any pants and I'm going to start to think it's a hint," said Kris. It just wouldn't be a conversation with Jim if it wasn't flirty. "Why would your pants be on the balcony?"
"Michael was cleaning," said Jim. "It was kind of an out of sight, out of mind thing."
"You can't get him to go out to the school and get your stuff for you?" said Kris.
"First of all," said Jim, "he's on a date, so he'd kill me if I called him and asked. And second of all, he'd look." There was the sound of a door sliding open in the background, then Jim laughing. "They are on the balcony. I'm going to kill him. There's no way I'm putting these on before they warm up."
"Well, if you find yourself unable to get out to get your porn," said Kris, "I can try to help you out. You know, make some high breathy sounds, maybe rock my chair legs against the floor a little. You know, the usual." He waited for Jim to laugh, but it didn't quite come. "Jim."
"You don't need to make high breathy sounds," he said, and then he did finally laugh but it was off. It was forced.
"I was just-"
"-kidding, I know," said Jim. There was a roar in the background. Kris wondered if it might be a hair dryer. "Like you would actually have a usual."
"But I could."
It wasn't even that impulsive, not really. Okay, it was a little impulsive, but he meant it. It didn't have to be a huge deal. It could just be fun, and helpful. And Kris liked Jim, it wouldn't even be the first time he thought about maybe fooling around with him.
"You're still kidding, right?" Jim said after an awkward silence.
"No, actually," said Kris, "but no obligation or anything." Just because Kris was comfortable with it, didn't mean Jim was, or should be. "Just an option."
"You really don't want to go back to campus, do you?"
"Hey, maybe you're not the only one not wearing pants," said Kris. "If you're feeling really weird right now, you can forget I said anything."
"What, and pass up the chance when there are no guarantees it'll ever come again?" he said. "Fat chance of that."
He said it like it didn't matter, in a way that Kris could tell it totally did. Not in a pining-after-you-way, more in an I-want-to-get-off-and-I-trust-you way. In a hey-this-could-be-fun-and-so-what-if-it's-a-little-awkward-we-should-both-be-used-to-that way.
"Well, get off the balcony to start with," said Kris, and Jim laughed again and Kris heard the sound of a door closing. Maybe his bedroom door. Kris didn't ask, he just got comfortable and pictured Jim and Mike's apartment, the pile of magazines on the coffee table, the perpetual half-pot of coffee on the kitchen counter, every phone number either one of them had ever received pinned up on the fridge with an ironic magnet, either like badges of honor or a record of their failures, Kris had never been entirely sure which.
"You're a lot bossier than my magazines," said Jim a few moments later.
Kris wondered why Jim couldn't use the internet like a normal person, then wondered if maybe this was all an elaborate set-up from the beginning. He didn't really mind if it was, though. It wasn't the kind of thing you could just ask for from someone you weren't dating, or even hooking up with.
"What kind of magazines?" Kris asked him, drawing one knee of, fingers casually running along the skin of his own inner thigh. "Tell me about them."
"Then you'll know what I like," said Jim.
"I think I kind of already know what you like," said Kris. Funny girls with curly hair. Weird musicians. People who made him laugh. "Boys or girls?"
"Guys," said Jim, letting out a soft, almost inaudible sigh. "College guys. Athletes. Mostly solo shots, but some...um."
"Tell me," said Kris. "You know it's turning you on, thinking about it. Tell me about your dirty magazines, Jim. They're kind of like a fetish, huh? Having them in your hands-"
"Being able to touch them," finished Jim. "I know it's a little weird."
"I like weird," said Kris.
"Pictures of guys," said Jim, "touching themselves, legs spread, showing off everything."
"Is that what you're doing right now?"
"Well, I didn't put my pants back on," said Jim. There was a scuffling noise, a slight grunt, then Jim was back on the line. "I don't get them very often. The magazines. Kind of hard to look people in the eye. But sometimes...."
"Don't be embarrassed," said Kris. "Wait, hold that thought, I need to take my underwear off." Jim groaned quietly into the phone and Kris smiled to himself while he struggled out of the rest of his clothes too. "I really wasn't wearing much when you called. We've got the heat cranked in here. It's so warm in my room I'm a little sweaty."
"At the nape of your neck?" said Jim, and Kris immediately reached for it, rubbed the spot Jim was talking about. He wondered how often Jim looked to have noticed that.
"Yeah," he said. "The small of my back. The backs of my knees." He touched each spot as he mentioned it. "It's nice to take it all off."
"Yeah," said Jim, and Kris heard the first telltale whisper of flesh on flesh in the background. Jim's breathing alone could have told him what was going on, but that little, recognizable sound was what took Kris from curious and semi-hard to totally up for this.
"I've thought about what I would do to you," said Kris. "If we were ever, you know, together."
"Do you think that about everybody?"
"Yeah, kind of," admitted Kris. "Just idle thoughts, you know. I always figured you'd be a great kisser. Just something about you. And you'd be handsy, like me. You'd want to touch everything. Am I right?"
"You might be right," said Jim. Kris didn't know if he was being cagy, or if he just hadn't done enough to know what he'd be like. But he obviously knew what he wanted.
"I'd do that to you," said Kris. "Hold you and touch you everywhere. You get so much about a person by touching them. People don't touch each other enough."
"I...agree," said Jim, his voice catching just slightly between the two words. Kris smiled to himself. "I'd let you touch me."
Kris couldn't touch Jim but he could touch himself, and he did. Little teasing touches. Little strokes. Little grasps. He licked his palm and grabbed hold of himself and from the faint gasp he was fairly sure Jim heard the licking.
"Are your legs spread?" said Kris. "Like the guys in the magazines? If I was standing at your feet, could I see everything?"
"Yes...yes," said Jim, then, "wait, I'm..." He didn't finish the sentence before he did whatever he was about to say he was going to do. "Propping my hips up."
"Oh," said Kris, and didn't that do some very nice things for him. "Now I can see everything. Everything."
"What should I...you could tell me what to do," said Jim. "You could...I think that would be...."
Kris wanted to tell him to stop being embarrassed again, but then he figured that would just make him more embarrassed so he bit his tongue. "If you're not fingering yourself yet, you should be," he said and ran just the tip of his finger over his own hole before trailing it up his cock again. "Have you ever? I hope you have. It's amazing."
"I can't believe you just...oh," said Jim, and Kris smiled again. They were in private right now. He'd say things he didn't say in public. It was the point. "I wasn't, but...."
"Are you now?"
"I...yeah," said Jim. "Yeah. Are you? Tell me you are. Lie if you have to."
Kris didn't like to lie, so he took a second to find some lotion-closer to hand than his lube; he wasn't planning for this-and then pressed a finger inside, just one. His imagination was doing most of the work today. That and his other hand, which found a pretty steady rhythm pretty quickly.
"I am," said Kris. "How would you take me, if you were here? On my front? On my back? On my side? Or would you want to do it standing up? Over a table? Sitting in a chair with me riding you? Or do you want to be the one riding me, Jim?"
"Oh, oh God, oh God," he said, not even trying to form sentences anymore. Kris didn't even think he was trying to form thoughts anymore.
"Is this where I use my sexy voice?"
"If you could just...breathe."
Kris's breath caught both at the nakedly honest request and at the way Jim's voice shook as he asked, trembling against the increasingly audible backdrop of Jim jerking off.
"Oh, oh, oh," Kris said as orgasm snuck up on him, just like that.
"Or that," said Jim, and sucked in a deep breath and there was the frantic noise of skin and sheets and whimpers and then Jim just let it all out, a half-moan, half-cry followed by harsh panting for breath. There was no mistaking his orgasm for anything else.
For something that light and that fun, the finale was a lot more intense than Kris was expecting. For a little while he just breathed, waiting for his head to stop spinning, his pulse to slow down. And he still remained quiet, listening to Jim breathe, as he grabbed a wetwipe from beside the bed to clean up his hands and his stomach.
"Weirdest sex you've ever had?" said Jim after a few more moments of awkward silence.
"Not even close," said Kris. "Top ten maybe. Lower top ten."
"How have you even had that much sex?"
"I don't know," said Kris, and he shrugged even though no one could see. "People just like to have sex with me. Usually in person, though. This is new. I don't usually talk about sex, but...I think I liked it."
"You think?"
Kris laughed as he looked for his underwear. It didn't make it far, hanging off the drawer knob of his night table. "It was definitely good," he said. "Still a little unexpected. I actually think I might be into doing that again."
"With me?"
Kris just laughed again and wedged the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he slid his underwear back on. If he was sweaty before they started, he was really sticky now. There was no way he should need to put his fan on this early in the year, though; maybe when he was off the phone he could just crack a window.
"Would that be such a bad thing?"
"No, no," said Jim quickly.
"Too weird?"
"Not too weird," he said after a moment, though he clearly had to think about it. "I'd be open to the possibility."
"Cool," said Kris, just as there was a knock at his door. And Kris was a pretty open guy but he wasn't going to answer the door in his underwear until he knew for sure who it was. In their place, there was no guarantee it was just his roommates. "Listen, I gotta go. Someone needs me for something. I hope it involves ice."
"Wow," said Jim, just a beat too late. "I hope it involves ice too."
"I'll just leave you with that thought," said Kris. The knock at his door came again, louder, this time accompanied by someone's laughter. "Just a second!" he called out, then returned to Jim. "See you tomorrow?"
"As always," said Jim, and that served as enough of a goodbye.
Jim said he didn't feel weird about it and Kris hoped he meant it. If Jim had any trouble meeting his eyes tomorrow, well, Kris would just have to take care of that. Friends first, that was the most important thing. He wouldn’t let it be weird.
"Kris, what are you doing in there?" he heard through the door, this time accompanied by a couple of bangs with the palm of someone's hand.
"Not what you think I'm doing!" he said, tossing his phone on the bed and hopping into a pair of jeans. Not anymore, anyway.
He tugged on a semi-clean t-shirt and finally went to find out what the rest of his friends were up to. He reminded himself that he'd been with a couple of them before too, and things between them were completely fine. Completely normal.
Kris was really good at not letting things get weird, and this would be no different.
Next story: All The Education That I've Missed