(no subject)

[fuck_it]

He's heard something about Kate, but he's not sure he believes it.

It was just a few days ago that he sat there on the floor of her flat and watched the paramedics take her away, that blank look on her face. Chris still can't get it out of his fuckin' head, can't stop thinking that somehow it's his fault, that if he'd turned up early, maybe it wouldn't have happened. He would've been there.

But another one of Chris's mates has called him, found him in the phone book or something and said Kate's not dead. It makes no sense; he'd been there and the EMT's had said it was true. But he has to go by her place anyway.

If he's alive, then there's no reason Kate can't be as well. He's supposed to be in the ground somewhere in Bristol, somewhere underneath a wooden cross with his name on it, after all.

He's standing outside of her door for a full three minutes before he remembers to knock, hand shaking a bit as he wonders whether or not it'll actually be Kate who answers.

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[everyonetakes]

Kate's brewing a cup of tea when the knock comes -- tea she only has in the first place because of that time Chris made her some to drink while stoned -- and she turns toward the door, frowning faintly. She's seen a few people since everything that happened, but she's kind of purposely avoided going out more than she has to. All this shit still makes her weirdly nervous, like going out too much is going to cause something bad to happen again or having too many people over is going to mean she ends up back where she was.

It's dumb. She knows it was the dress. No one's told her, the doctors wouldn't say it for certain, but she knows. It was the dress, nothing else.

So she goes to the door and looks through the peephole and finds herself enormously relieved to see Chris on the other side. She's going to have to explain things to him, but right now, as she opens the door, she's just glad to see him.

[fuck_it]

"Kate?" Chris says, and even though he wasn't sure he believed it when they told him, she's not looking at him like he's gone mental, so it has to be Kate. And it's not something he usually does, but he pulls her into a hug anyway, holding her tight just so he can be sure she's real.

"What the fuck, Kate?"

If it's only someone who looks like Kate who's somehow ended up in her apartment, he's gonna feel like a fucking bell-end though.

[everyonetakes]

Somehow it's harder to see Chris than anyone else. Jesse helped her out of the casket, but Chris was there in her apartment and she remembers everything he did for her, the sound of his voice when the paramedics had said they were calling it, and she doesn't know what to say. She just wraps her arms around him, burying her face against the side of his neck, and closes her eyes.

"I'm okay," she tells him, because that's what everyone has been asking. And maybe she's not okay, maybe things are still really weird and unsettling and she doesn't know what to do with herself most of the time, but she's not dead and she's not dying. So she's okay.

[fuck_it]

When Chris finally pulls away, he almost feels embarrassed for having done it. Like he's overreated to the whole thing. But all he's been thinking since then was that it would've been different if he'd shown up earlier, or fuck, what if he hadn't shown up at all? How long would it be before someone found her and called somebody?

"Good," he says, and runs one hand through his hair, unsure what else to do with it, "Jesus, Kate, I thought... you know."

[everyonetakes]

"Yeah, I know," she says, stepping back a little. It's the same thing everyone else had thought, too, but only Chris had been there and she knows it has to be different. It sucks for anyone to have thought she was dead, but she's pretty sure it's worse for Chris.

"You wanna come inside? I'm making tea." She has to thank him for everything, but she doesn't know how to say something like that. It seems like a weird thing to have to thank someone for, but she can't not. It's too big. The things he did for her that day are way too big to ignore.

[fuck_it]

"Yeah, yeah alright," Chris says and he steps inside, hands stuffed into his pockets because he can't figure out where the fuck he's supposed to put them. This is well weird. It's good weird, cos Kate's alive and all, but that doesn't mean he knows how he's supposed to handle it.

"...so you do tea now?"

[everyonetakes]

"Better than coffee when you're already jittery as fuck," she says with a little smile, closing the door behind him before she goes back to the kitchen. Her hands are shaking a little and she doesn't want to have to explain why; she's not even sure she knows why, really. Chris is here and that's good, she needs to talk to him, but she's never been good at being serious for very long.

It's harder than she thought it would be, just saying thank you.

"I probably should've called you earlier," she says, her back to him. "I just didn't know what the hell to say."

[fuck_it]

Chris shrugs in response, not thinking about the fact that Kate's back is to him and it likely just seems like he hasn't answered her at all. But just as she doesn't know what she would've said if she'd called, he doesn't really know what to say now.

"Yeah, well, your mate called," he says, after a moment, "Jesse, I think? Told me what happened."

[everyonetakes]

"Yeah, he was sort of... a little more coherent than I thought I'd be," she admits, then pours the water into the teapot, turning back to Chris as she lets it brew. Tea always makes her think of Marshall, of sitting in their kitchen long after their parents had gone to bed, talking about all the weird shit that was going on in their lives. It makes her miss him.

"I remember everything," she says, glancing up toward the cupboard before she opens it to get some mugs. "Like... everything. You coming in and trying to help me and the paramedics. It was weird, I could hear it and see it all, but I couldn't move."

[fuck_it]

Chris never realized that Kate could've been awake. She looked... well, she looked dead then, when he'd tried to get her to wake up, when he'd called for an EMT.

"Shit," Chris says, and he feels like maybe he should apologize for trying to do CPR. He knows he fucked it up, and he thinks that at one point he accidentally touched her breast while trying to do the chest thing. Either way, he can't imagine how all of that was. When he'd had his head thing, he'd passed out the first time, and the second time, there'd been the island.

[everyonetakes]

She sets the mugs down on the counter and realizes she doesn't have anything else to pretend to be busy with, so she turns back to look at Chris. "It was weird, but... it means a lot that you tried. That you, uh... that you stayed with me."

Looking up toward the ceiling, she blinks a few times, because she's so fucking tired of crying over this, but it's so hard not to. There are a lot of people who'd protect her, she knows that, but knowing it and living through it are two seriously different things. Maybe she's lucky in that way, getting to see what someone would do for her in a situation like that. It's probably not the sort of thing many people get to really experience.

[fuck_it]

"I'm—" Chris starts and stops, and frowns for a second, " 'm glad you're not dead."

Maybe it goes without saying considering he tried to bring her back, even if he didn't really know what he was doing and probably would've mucked it up, even if she was dying for real, but he reckons it doesn't hurt to say it.

"Besides, they send you to an island for two years after, so it's a load of wank anyway."

[everyonetakes]

She laughs at that, a tired laugh, but a laugh all the same. "I already did the island thing, maybe they'd let me skip that part."

There's so much for her in Darrow. The island had been good for her and there are things she misses about it -- the people, mostly, but the weather wasn't half bad either -- but this city has become home a lot faster than the island did. She knows she can't go back there. "I like this place. I don't want to leave."

[fuck_it]

"No way, you'd have to go back and do that bit all over again, and then you'll end up here again," Chris says, and it's good to hear her laugh about it. It's fuckin' horrible, they both know that, but what's done is done now, he reckons.

"Trust me, Kate, I'm an expert on it." He doesn't want her to leave either, that much he's sure of.

[everyonetakes]

"Well, I don't like your rules," she says, but she's smiling as she pours a cup of tea for both of them, then brings them over to the living room. She's careful to set them both on the table before she flops down on the couch, sinking into the cushions. Lately she's spent a lot of nights here on the couch, a blanket pulled up around her shoulders, Jeff sleeping at her feet. It's just easier to sleep out here with the TV on.

"I like it here way too much. I've got you and Harley and my stupid dog and a nice guy I'm pretty sure likes me," she says. "And a future, maybe. I always felt so directionless back there."

[fuck_it]

Chris takes a seat as well, reaching over to the table to grab the mug Kate's set down for him. He's got a feeling that it's going to taste weird, like it always seems to when Americans make tea, but fuck it. Allowances are gonna be made, especially when your mate's come back from the dead.

"North," Chris says with conviction, nodding once, "S'always a good direction, I've found."

[everyonetakes]

"North, huh?" she asks with a grin, holding her mug in both her hands, warming them against the outside of it. "I guess there's only far north you can get in Darrow."

And she means what she's said, she doesn't want to leave. "What's so great about north?"

[fuck_it]

He considers her question for a moment, even though he knows the answer he gave her is just something he's pulled out of his arse.

"Dunno," he concedes, "Though, the north pole's the one with the penguins, right? Those are pretty brilliant."

[everyonetakes]

She laughs again and she's suddenly really, really glad Chris has come around to visit. For the most part, she's still pretty sure she hasn't actually explain just how grateful she is that he found her, but maybe it's not possible. Maybe if she just keeps trying to explain it, it'll get weird, so she can leave it like it is, but she hopes he knows.

"I still don't think you could get far enough north in Darrow to find penguins," she says. "I'm pretty sure there were penguins on the island one year, though."

[fuck_it]

He's not completely convinced that they won't ever get penguins in Darrow, though. Fuck knows when it comes to this place, really.

"Moose as well," Chris says, and he takes a sip of his tea. It's not bad, definitely better than he'd initially thought it might be.

"Did you ever know Billy? We ran into one that just like.... just fuckin' stared at us. For what felt like ages. It was well weird."

[everyonetakes]

"Can't moose be like, super aggressive and mean?" Kate asks, smiling. She remembers Billy well, remembers how weirded out Harry had been when he'd shown up to a costume party dressed as Madonna, cone bra and all.

"I mean, I'm from Kansas, it's not like I see a lot of moose, but I feel like they trample people a lot in Alaska or wherever there's a lot of them," she continues. "Did it seem mean?"

[fuck_it]

"I think it was confused," Chris says, "I mean, if you were a moose and suddenly you wound up on an island, wouldn't you be confused? I'm not a moose and all that was confusing enough, y'know?"

Though now, he's started to wonder how it would have been, if he'd ended up on the island as a moose. Somehow, he reckons Cassie would've worked out what had happened.