#it's like 100 paragraphs of nathan walking home from the store and like 1 paragraph of intimacy and the rest is like introspection

[pavlovianpanic]

2 (kate and nathan)

that damn nsfw meme again • tentatively (still?) accepting • @ottersden

2) crying crying during sex that leads to a pause or early end to comfort and take care of whatever emotions bubbled over

nathan prescott's release has been heavily influenced by kate marsh's entire disposition. once a witness against him, kate saw him through his time in prison, encouraged his good behavior, helped him seek forgiveness, understand what it means to be sorry and to come to a realization that ... if she can forgive him, then maybe he can also forgive himself.

it's not that easy. these sorts of things never are, and the messiness along the way is not swept under the rug. it is embraced, accepted, and nate has done his best to show her i really mean it this time.

he answered her questions, as difficult as that had been. more for her, of course, but telling it felt like a penny on his tongue as if telling the story of a kid he doesn't recognize.

in prison, he had become what he thought might be a man, having little to compare by, but when she told him one day that he is a good man, nate knew he had achieved the first real step in redemption.

redemption. she speaks a lot about it, and how he is in the process of earning the right to be redeemed. how he was not yet in the first phases of the real thing.

but that time has passed. a lot of time passed, and he did the halfway house, and the programs, and finally managed to do all the right things for once. if time can be corrected for some, it seems that nate can correct things, too, and live a quieter, much more humble life.

his apartment is nicer than his prison digs, more spacious, but still small. it's a studio tucked away in the gresham area, because kate lives in portland now, and there's just enough distance between them to allow her grace.

gresham is more who he is now, he thinks, and he's not afraid to walk around at night.

he passes mt. hood's small community college on his way home from work, wondering if maybe he could go back some day. getting an education was never his priority before, but he had done a lot of reading in prison. combined with the right meds, he's actually more or less stable, but it takes time to prove that to the person who lived through his greatest torment. and rachel.

he still can't think of her, only when he has to, and he's convinced she's out there, watching him. he hasn't seen her posters in so long, but for every new missing person's report that's plastered on a telephone pole, he finds himself checking. is it her? is it you, rachel? are you missing again? but that cannot be. rachel has been found, laid to rest next to chloe price, and that chapter of his life is oddly over.

he doesn't know killing chloe fixed things / he doesn't know that he's the real start of the storm. no, because that's wrong. chloe had a choice, and she was brave. nathan was weak, and nate grimaces.

with all he doesn't know, it actually doesn't matter. it wouldn't have held up in court. he's had to repent for crimes he never confessed to, but was still guilty of. his stints at the vortex parties, the girls he had coerced, even his first real girlfriend. all of it. some secrets are taken to the grave. some things ... he has been unsure of how to tell kate, but they come up, so they pray, repent, and he feels oddly better, but he wonders, very late at night, if his feeling better is actually a good thing.

what does that do for the people he hurt? kate is not his only victim. she's just the one most devoted to faith even he cannot understand, could not find in prison himself, but now almost clings to because ... ah, it's the same, isn't it?

i don't believe in god ... but i believe in kate marsh. who else said that once? how powerful is kate's standing with god?

all of this almost does nothing for him sometimes, despairing in the newfound privacy of his studio.

his furnishings were gifts from mostly kate, bargains at the good will, and an odd private donation of a new camera from an anonymous source. nate hasn't unboxed it yet, instead leaving it hidden in his empty closet. fuck that.

which all sort of brings him here, right? december, snow, and heavy boots. he smokes a cigarette outside of his apartment, dumping its carcass into the proper disposal as he heads inside with a meager bag of whatever. it doesn't matter. he tries to keep his one bad habit from kate, but she can smell it on him, frowns, and insists he stop soon.

it's bad for you, she's argued. and the environment. flippantly, he agrees he will, but there are odd things that humans are incapable of, and this must be one of his fatal flaws.

she's promised to come over tonight, so he's saved up to order a pizza, pay for a cheap movie off youtube, and settle on the couch that allows suitable distance between them.

it's been sort of ritualistic. at first, when she would come over, he would leave all the curtains split, the windows open, and the doors unlocked. she brought her own food, was allowed to keep her cellphone in sight at all times, and overall, the boundaries were strict. it was one thing visiting nate at prison during regulated hours or even at the halfway house in portland, but this ... being with him so close without any guard between them had resounded kate to play it safer than ever.

and he's proven himself. that's why she's there now, settled into his side as his arm is awkwardly slung over her shoulder, biting his lip as he tries not to yawn. her hair is down, longer than he had imagined it to be, and the pieces he's managed to swipe his fingers across are soft. he remembers that about her. everything about kate marsh is soft, even here now, a decade later. she's more lovely than ever, more confident, yet still as reserved, and oddly unmarried.

he has to wonder if he's ruined that for her. the bizarre hopeful in him has to think ... maybe she was waiting for me? after she started visiting, i thought ... i don't know.

nate and kate. it could have been cute back then. they could have been cute, and she had been honest that she had found him attractive. she was interested in him that whole time, especially the time he was nice to her. he had ruined that, of course, all in his crusade to ruin her. he was never nice. he was only kind to be cruel.

his tactless campaign of brutality had failed in the end / his attempts to remove her autonomy only made her more autonomous.

it's hard to keep things in the present, always looking back in regret or forward in fear.

choppy bangs hang over his forehead, using his free hand to push them back out of his face. for a moment, he almost feels like his old self again.

fuck that entirely. no way.

she says his name, the one he prefers, and he swivels his head down to look at her. she's staring hard at him as if struggling with something, and he goes to speak, but imagine his surprise to feel her body shift, move, and collapse onto him. it's like some sort of intimate trust fall, allowing him to hold the meager weight of her, and show her that he can do the right thing.

what is the right thing? he assumes if she's practically on top of him, she must want some sort of received affection, so his arms snake slowly around her, his chin trying to find its way to the top of her head, and he's straining, but it's cool, nate. he has to do this.

and they stay in a remaining, albeit awkward embrace, and his grip is loose as if to say, you can run away, little rabbit. he is no fox now, is he?

can we really shed our skin and teeth like that?

and their embrace is halted only by her lips beneath his chin, the way his chest rises, and how he asks if it's wrong to want to kiss her. he hasn't kissed anyone in a long, long time, and his desires are unknown now, though the lingering fantasies still bury beneath the skin, and he's prickling up. fuck. i shouldn't have said anything.

yet, she makes herself available to him, and he does the bare minimum. any hint of passion gone awry could spoil the occasion. a kiss is sufficient. it has to be. it never was before. nothing was ever enough for me.

but it doesn't stop at kissing. not at kissing, touching, or pushing her back onto the couch. he's waiting for any key indicator of hey, that's enough. he's on top of her, what he must imagine has been a frequent nightmare, but she keeps her eyes closed, her heart open, and her legs spread.

there is no way this is happening. she's testing me, right? this is a test?

through her encouragement, he's got his pants open, his face in her neck, and his body is trying to keep an even tempo. it's much better this way, he thinks. this is how it should have been all along, and maybe if he had been nice, patient, and kind, he could have gotten whatever it was he really wanted from her to start.

to be like this with kate is overwhelming. he's releasing soft, yet controlled moans, trying to restrain his past vocal expression.

nathan had been a dominant young king before, but now? nate is just a man. in a way, that's always what he wanted; he never wanted the pressures of the life he didn't choose, only wanting the freedom to choose at all.

now, he's some guy that works in gresham, keeps to himself, and what, is she my girlfriend now? shit, is that even okay? what kind of relationship is this going to be?

but he's not really thinking about that right now, instead consumed both in his own pleasure and waiting for her to tell him to stop. he's only able to do this because of her, so he's on his best behavior here, but still ... she feels too good.

the number of times he had pictured her in high school hadn't been enough, and her abstinence campaign had called to him directly as a challenge. he had found her to be a tease then, that all women were teasing him, but now?

i should have just waited for her. all of this could be different than it is now. i did this. this is all because of me.

it's when he's got this cadence going that he realizes she's choking back sobs, wet tears falling down her face. he's off of her fast, putting himself together so that he can pick up the pieces of whatever is going on. he thinks he might have a good idea. he's compromised her faith twice now, her body once by force, and this? he's not sure what this is. but he has to ask, so he does. tries to stroke her hair, wipe her tears, and all but beg her to be honest with him.

ah, seems to be more complicated than he's anticipating. it's too many emotions, she reveals. it's everything. her, him, their past, their present, and their future. do they have a future? is she letting this happen all over again? should she even be crying right now? is it okay to love someone that hurt you so badly before? can people change for real? it had been so nice until —

— she feels stupid, and even tells him outright this, to which he reassures her she's not. he explains he feels that perhaps he's ruined his one good thing; something so good that maybe that's how this has to be.

i have to ruin you. we can't be together.