Petra glanced down at Jesse.
"Hey, Jess. What's up?"
Jesse snuggled into Petra's side, warily eyeing the new people.
Jack had saved Jesse, of course, but their thoughts about his motivations were still as murky as a dirty fish tank.
Not to mention the feeling of eyes on the back of their neck was stronger than ever.
"Do you trust these guys...?"
Petra hummed and patted Jesse on the back. "Don't worry about 'em- Jack's a bit intimidating but he's a good guy. Well... demon," she amended, making Jesse giggle weakly.
"That's... good to know, I guess."
Petra nodded absently, leaning on the arm of her wobbly chair that was apparently more sturdy than it looked, since it wasn't falling or anything. "Yeah. I mean, we never trained together, since Fred died... before I came here, but I've met him on more than one occasion. Sometimes it's quicker to go right through Beacontown than it is to just do a huge detour around it, so."
She shrugged. "It's getting better."
It really didn't look that way to Jesse, but they decided not to voice their concern about it.
The red-haired demon gave a rather luxurious stretch, like a cat, joints popping, and stood up while Jesse was pondering Petra's endorsement of Jack. "I'm gonna go shower."
"... there's a shower in here?"
Petra snorted and patted Jesse on the head. "I know it looks like we're in a bunker but you don't have to be that surprised about the shower."
And off she went to the shower, leaving Jesse to feel like something was drilling into the back of their neck.
Gill and Maya were arguing and Jesse didn't feel like interrupting their flirting. (Well, arguing, but they did it so colloquially that Jesse felt like it had to be flirting, right?) Lukas was reading a book and trying to plan something out with the other lords while Aiden was just sitting and resting.
Well, it was better than nothing.
Jesse hurried over and plopped down right next to Aiden, almost pressing up against his side. He scowled down at them but that was still better than the itchy feeling of someone watching them.
"What? What do you want? I'm kinda busy. Go stick to Petra."
"Petra's showering," they informed him.
He paused, taking this new piece of information in.
"... do not go stick to Petra."
Jesse couldn't help but smile at that, a little giggle sneaking out of their lips. "I'm no' sticking to Petra," they replied, still hunkered down next to him.
He sighed. "I see that. Go stick to Gill and Maya, then."
"But they're flirting with each other."
Aiden snorted, trying to avoid looking at Gill or Maya, who'd just paused in their ferocious arguing and signing 'fuck you' incessantly at one another ("Here, you want a lipstick, you bitch?" "Yeah, so I can shove the thing up your ass, prick."), and who had just sent him a very quizzical look.
If he made eye contact with them he was going to explode laughing, and that wasn't exactly helpful for helping assure everyone that nothing important had just happened.
"Uh... I guess."
He glanced down at them, practically leaning into him, and poked at them- not rudely, but still a bit gruffly. "Go bother someone else for a bit. I'm thinking."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Aiden rolled his eyes. (Well, eye, but Jesse kind of presumed he wasn't just rolling a single eye.) "What, you being my therapist today? No, I don't wanna talk about it. Go stick to someone else for now." And he nudged them away (without being as acidic as usual) to do more thinking.
Effectively thwarted in their hopeful method of sticking to someone familiar and safe to try to take their mind off the eyes on their back (and the itch to turn and look), Jesse looked around for someone else to stick close to.
And... hopefully not bother them to hell and back.
Reuben nudged them at Radar, so they shuffled over and peeked up at him.
He was a good head or two taller than them, which wasn't hard since they were stupidly short. Especially for nearly eighteen. They were barely above the height to be a legal midget.
He glanced down at them and gave them a slightly nervous smile, adjusting his glasses. "O-oh. Hey." He cleared his throat, straying a few inches away. "Is... something up?"
Jesse thought about telling him about the eyes on their back.
About the creepy, itching, crawling feeling that they'd been feeling fixed on their back since they'd walked out of the Underneath.
About seeing nothing when they turned around.
"No. Nothin's wrong."
Radar hummed absently, still shuffling some papers.
At a loss for words, Jesse pointed at the papers. "Do you do paperwork?"
Radar paused, considering the papers in his hands. "Uh... I guess so. It's mostly looking over the... 'contracts' that people form in Beacontown."
"Contracts?"
"Yeah, since we don't have a ruler as of right now and we haven't had one for a while, um, as protection or to hire people, people will set up contracts. The people who are considering signing usually come to me so I can look over them before they sign and make sure it's fair for them and there aren't any, um, loop- loopholes."
Jesse tried to get a look at the papers. Radar gently shuffled them aside.
There was probably legal jargon that they shouldn't be looking at in there, now that they thought about it.
"What kind of loopholes?"
Radar thought about it. "Uh... one contract had the signer giving their soul to the person hiring them if they ever decided to leave. It was in really tiny font, too. I almost missed it."
"... oh."
A pause.
"That'd be kind of inconvenient."
He laughed. "It'd be pretty inconvenient for the signer, yeah."
Radar gently removed his glasses, setting the (cracked) lenses in his lap and taking out a different pair that was almost identical- they just weren't broken.
Jesse looked between the glasses. "Any difference between those two?"
"Huh? Oh. Yeah." Radar tapped his glasses. "These are just normal glasses. Uh, you guys have-"
"Yes, we have glasses in the human world." There had to be a better name for the human world than... well, 'the human world'. The demons called the demon world 'Cosmos' and not just 'the demon world', after all.
"Okay, so these are just correctional lenses. U-um, but these-" He held up the cracked lenses and broken bridge of the glasses. "These actually help me look for things. Like... uh, well, when I'm outside, it helps me spot danger a lot quicker. But when it's with legal stuff I can spot suspicious stuff a lot easier. I dunno how to explain it, uh..." He offered the cracked glasses to Jesse.
Jesse attempted putting them on and almost immediately jerked in surprise- beyond the cloudy, muddied mess that was corrective lenses, they could barely even make out Reuben on the floor, let alone any specific words or people. "Uh... holy shit, you have bad eyes."
"Who the FUCK taught you how to swear-?" Mevia almost yelled from the other side of the room.
Radar grinned shyly and a little sheepishly. "Yep. Nobody's beat me so far in bad eyesight."
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"Kind of both..."
A/N: Hey, I finished another chapter! I also have a now under Ariza Luca- I forgot to mention that last time, I think.
Working on an animation meme! I also have a heckton of drawing homework but most of it's due next week so I just need to draw my sneakers today.
RQTC: How's your eyesight?
I'm projecting onto Radar here- I have never met anyone with eyesight worse than mine. I've met someone who got close to being at my level, but my eyesight is on a whole 'nother level of bad. It's kind of a weird flex, but xD
I am a tree. Reviews are the birds in the tree. I'm gonna lose a lot of branches to birds being too heavy, lol.
Responses to reviews!
ThinMintE: Ahaha, probably a good idea. / Indeed! / Kind of explained above, but also Jesse tends to avoid direct eye contact with other demons due to their eyes being a different color- plus they tend to keep their eyes near the floor so most people would skim over after just looking at the black and red clothes. / Mm, nice! / Thank you!
Toni42: Hehehe. / I thought about the foreign language, but also I really needed an excuse to stick some sign language in here, so xD / I only know a few words. Like hello, thank you, wolf, and... well, 'fuck you' xD / aaack xD
Northern Goshawk: No problem! / I swear like a demon (hehe) but I try to keep it down around kids or parental figures. Sometimes it slips out, though. / Jesse's nb for the purpose of letting you imagine whichever Jesse it is (although I personally just headcanon they're enby anyway fdka;), but I can tell you it's not soon. / Thank you!
TheAmberShadow: It's going nice! / Ahahaha nice / I highly doubt that, fire I've been training in the art of puns for a berry long thyme. I have plant-y of puns to draw from. / Ahhh. Yeah, that's just a coincidence. / Gonna take a while but we're working on it xD / Jesse doesn't due to their lack of red eyes, so it's easy for people to skim over. / I dunno, not the person who made sign language xD / Hehehe.
Darkbeast Dend: That's nice!
Guest: They're both pretty shy, haha. / Nurm is lovely. / It's easy to accidentally do 'fuck you', unfortunately xD
Guest: It's not too hard, haha.
That's all for this time! See ya, so long, and g'bye!
x.X. A.L. X.x
