"You...what?" John stopped dead and swiveled to face her, trying to keep the visceral stab of fear from showing in his eyes.
Don't be daft, he told himself, the Snob wouldn't hurt her. But a year or two back he would have said the same thing about Raphael, or even Michael. And it could just as easily have been any of the other Manor denizens, some of whom wouldn't hesitate to invoke the 'self defense' clause in Adam's truce against a powerless mortal woman.
"Kit," he said after a long moment's search for words, still holding her one hand and reaching out to take the other, "luv, all that happened years ago. When I got these," he touched the center of his chest where the ropey scars from Lucifer's 'surgery' crisscrossed his heart. "Him and me've got a reckoning coming one of these days. And Christ, I wish I'd been there to see you do that..." He smirked, but it quickly faded. "But you can't...this isn't the sort of place where you can just haul off and deck someone, whether they deserve it or not." He so desperately didn't want to have to explain the why, hoping she'd trust him enough not to push too hard for reasons. If she hadn't seen what the Manor was yet, she wasn't ready to. Or maybe he was the one who wasn't ready.
He did want to give her more than a cryptic warning, though, and all that honesty he'd been promising himself he'd get around to showing her had to start somewhere. So he added, "Look...there's more that goes on around here than you see. I won't lie to you, just by being in this place you're closer to crossing the line than you've ever been before." He trusted that after their prior conversations, he didn't need to elaborate on which line he meant. "But there's also a truce, and it's got some pretty heavy-duty enforcement, and nobody here's got any reason to give you grief. So you're as safe here as you would be back home in Belfast--maybe safer even, with Adam and Crowley and me looking out for you." Belfast wasn't exactly a nursery school, after all.
"Just..." he squeezed her hands, wondering if he'd said too much; if she'd break and run if he let go. "Try not to go tempting fate, all right? For the sake of my cardiac health if nothing else?"
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-09-14 04:32 am (UTC)Don't be daft, he told himself, the Snob wouldn't hurt her. But a year or two back he would have said the same thing about Raphael, or even Michael. And it could just as easily have been any of the other Manor denizens, some of whom wouldn't hesitate to invoke the 'self defense' clause in Adam's truce against a powerless mortal woman.
"Kit," he said after a long moment's search for words, still holding her one hand and reaching out to take the other, "luv, all that happened years ago. When I got these," he touched the center of his chest where the ropey scars from Lucifer's 'surgery' crisscrossed his heart. "Him and me've got a reckoning coming one of these days. And Christ, I wish I'd been there to see you do that..." He smirked, but it quickly faded. "But you can't...this isn't the sort of place where you can just haul off and deck someone, whether they deserve it or not." He so desperately didn't want to have to explain the why, hoping she'd trust him enough not to push too hard for reasons. If she hadn't seen what the Manor was yet, she wasn't ready to. Or maybe he was the one who wasn't ready.
He did want to give her more than a cryptic warning, though, and all that honesty he'd been promising himself he'd get around to showing her had to start somewhere. So he added, "Look...there's more that goes on around here than you see. I won't lie to you, just by being in this place you're closer to crossing the line than you've ever been before." He trusted that after their prior conversations, he didn't need to elaborate on which line he meant. "But there's also a truce, and it's got some pretty heavy-duty enforcement, and nobody here's got any reason to give you grief. So you're as safe here as you would be back home in Belfast--maybe safer even, with Adam and Crowley and me looking out for you." Belfast wasn't exactly a nursery school, after all.
"Just..." he squeezed her hands, wondering if he'd said too much; if she'd break and run if he let go. "Try not to go tempting fate, all right? For the sake of my cardiac health if nothing else?"