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“What does love feel like?” Georgie asks one day, seemingly out of the blue.
Jon looks up from the book he had been reading, curled up on the other side of the couch with the Admiral sleeping in his lap. The moment his focus shifts off the page, Georgie’s emotions crawl into his chest; the static hum of curiosity, the gentle swell of contentment, but also something… tender, almost like a bruise. It’s a little uncomfortable, like a cough lodged in his chest, but it’s nothing Jon can’t push past.
“Love?” Jon repeats softly. He tries to be mindful of the strange tender feeling and keep the edge out of his voice. In part, he’s surprised it took her that long to come to the question. But mostly, even after all this time practicing and honing his ability, he feels woefully unprepared to answer.
Georgie shrugs, and it pushes against the bruising, though her expression barely changes. “Yeah. I know what it feels like to me, but… well, I’m not you.”
Jon’s own face twists. He scratches down the Admiral’s spine, waking the cat enough to get a soft mrrp and little drops of safe, sleepy, good that help balance out Georgie’s strange discomfort for a moment. “It… feels different, from person to person,” Jon begins.
Georgie’s curiosity rises in time with her locking her phone and setting it aside. Under her full attention, Jon works to wrestle amorphous memories into words.
“I don’t have much one-on-one exposure to it,” he reminds her, and bites his lip when her tacky sympathy in his throat. “There’s my grandmother. She does love me, despite everything.” It’s difficult to parse out, for sure, but there.
When he was young, he could only describe home as feeling bad. Bad, like too many heavy books in his bag. Bad, like a hundred stinging paper cuts. Bad, like a plate of bitter brussel sprouts gone cold. Bad, like ocean waves pulling you under, tossing you about on the sandy bottom, letting you gasp for air only to wash over you again. It was only later that Jon would recognize the feeling as grief. Unwittingly, he had spent his childhood grieving for the parents he hardly remembered.
But it wasn’t bad all the time.
“Her love is… reserved,” Jon says slowly, “And stiff. Like a muscle she isn’t accustomed to using anymore. But it’s warm—all love is, really, that’s a constant. But her love is… if I had to pick a color, I might say a pale yellow? Gentle, but subdued. It’s… a hand patting my head, or a home-cooked meal. But it’s also itchy.”
At this, Georgie snorts, and amusement curls in Jon’s stomach. “Like an ugly hand-knit sweater?” she suggests.
Jon huffs, a smile twitching his face. “Something like that.” More like the itchy worry-irritation of him coming back from wandering off again—especially when escorted by the police. But you don’t worry like that over something you don’t care about.
The curiosity is more insistent now, all pins and needles creeping under his skin, so he keeps going. “As for others… Do you remember that time we were out with Mia and Danielle?” Georgie hums in confirmation and Jon nods to himself. “Well, I didn’t know they were… a thing, beforehand-”
“Jon, seriously?”
“You didn’t say it was a double date.”
“I didn’t think I needed to!”
Fond amusement tickles Jon’s ribs and he has to tamp his own smile down. No need to add insult to injury by laughing at his own embarrassment. “Regardless, I figured it out quickly. The two of them were all…” He fishes around for a suitable comparison to the effusive felicity that surged through him in their vicinity, but comes up short. “... pink.”
“Pink?” Georgie echos, eyebrow raised. “That’s corny.” Her teasing rumbles softly in his chest, like the beginning of a laugh.
Jon flushes, thankful his dark skin doesn’t turn its own shade of pink. But her amusement is still spreading its feelers through him and makes it difficult to be bitter over it. “That’s what it was,” he says defensively. “Pink, an-and sweet, like-like candy, or strawberry lemonade. I swore my teeth were going to rot before the end of the night.”
Georgie snorts, her mirth running its fingers up his sides and under his arms. Jon isn’t even physically ticklish, but Georgie has a way of working under his skin whether he likes it or not. He almost wants to put the conversation on hold; call a break, retreat to the bedroom, let Georgie fade into the background for a bit. But all that would require disturbing the Admiral, still content on his lap, which Jon isn’t quite willing to do.
“So… we’ve got familial love, and puppy love,” Georgie says, thankfully dialing back the cheerful boil to a simmer. But then the bruised feeling is back, applied with a steady pressure just short of true discomfort. “What about this? Mine, I mean.”
Jon knew it was coming, but he’s still not sure how to answer. Especially when he finally places the uncomfortable tenderness for what it is; vulnerability.
He’s not used to Georgie feeling anything less than sure of herself and, of course, it’s setting him on edge as well. Though, he supposes it makes sense; this is an intensely personal question, not just for her, but for them.
For a long moment, Jon struggles for an adequate answer. The responsibility of getting it right, of not turning that bruise into a wound by saying the wrong thing or not saying enough, weighs on him. He knows Georgie will give him all the time he needs to wrestle with it, but he doesn’t think all the time in the world will make him more precise or any better at metaphors.
Eventually, he comes to a decision. Slowly, carefully, Jon picks up the Admiral from his place in Jon’s lap. He receives a sleepy blink and drops of puzzlement and discontent in response. Jon drops a quick kiss on his head, then scooches across the couch and places him in Georgie’s lap instead. As far as Jon can tell, the Admiral finds this rearrangement agreeable, while Georgie is nonplussed.
Jon gestures at the cat that Georgie is now idly petting. “Your love is… like a cat,” he says, idiotically. But Georgie’s feelings aren’t the harsh kind of amusement, or that particular flavor of mad-at-Jon. Her curiosity prods him, as well as her elbow against his arm, urging him to continue.
“A cat?” Georgie prompts. Something light and airy, like a breeze… oh, that’s encouragement.
“A cat,” Jon parrots, now bolstered, and gestures with his hands as he speaks. “It’s… warm, and soft. It purrs a lot—like when you play with my hair or when we’re cuddling. It can also be… particular, like when I try to make you tea but you don’t like it because I use the microwave instead of the kettle.”
“One of these days,” Georgie mutters with an echo of disappointment, but it’s lightened with fondness like creamer in coffee. Jon shoots her a look and she mimes zipping her lips.
“It’s warm and soft and… fluffy, but not like a cloud is. There’s substance to it.” Jon’s hand reaches out of its own accord for the Admiral, and ends up on top of Georgie’s mid-stroke. Jon stares at their overlying hands, heart in his throat, and feels that warmth rise in him. He’s not sure whose it is.
“It sits on my chest every morning, and every night. It knocks things around when I don’t pay it enough attention. It shoves itself between me and work, not caring if it’s interrupting, just stubbornly there. It’s a radiator of heat and comfort. It’s vibrant orange—like tabby fur, but also like the sky at sunset. It’s…”
It’s everywhere right now, curling up to fill his entire chest cavity, purring hard enough to rattle his bones, smothering his face in a mass of fur.
The hand under his turns up to grasp and squeeze, and Jon looks up at Georgie. He doesn’t need to be an empath to read her wide smile or bright eyes, beautiful as always.
Jon gulps around the lump in his throat, all his. “A cat,” he finishes, and hopes he got it right.
Georgie laughs—but it’s not at him, Jon knows that feeling well—and surges forward to kiss him.
For once, Jon only hears the Admiral’s protest instead of feeling it. Georgie’s love presses right up against his own, leaving not a breath of space between for anything else, and it should be suffocating, but it’s not.
When they separate, neither Georgie or her feelings go far. She’s still holding his hand and the cat in his chest weaves between his ribs, still purring purring purring in time with his racing heart.
Concern prickles his skin like goosebumps, and Jon blinks at Georgie in confusion. Then she lifts her free hand and wipes away a tear he hadn’t noticed trickling down his cheek.
“Alright?” she asks, soft and yellow-orange.
“Y-Yes.” And he is, really, but it’s just— overwhelming, sometimes, having someone feel so much and so pleasantly for him. It’s still so strange, but at once familiar in that he knows every hue and twinge. At this point, he knows the shape of Georgie better than he knows himself. It’s a lot sometimes, but…
“I’m happy, Georgie,” Jon says, and means it with his whole self. Sometimes he wishes his ability went both ways, so Georgie could know the fullness and depth of his feelings with the certainty that he knows hers. Then he wouldn’t have to stumble around with words that will always come up short to the real thing.
By Georgie’s smile, he thinks maybe his words were close enough. The concern fades away as she leans forward and pecks his forehead. “Me too, Jon.”
“I know,” he says automatically, because he can feel it wrapped like a blanket around the two of them.
She scoffs and flicks his forehead, just to the left of where she kissed. “I know you know,” she says, exasperation dulled almost smooth with gentle, repeated use. “Let me tell you anyway.”
Jon furrows his brow at first, but eventually squeezes her hand and concedes with a nod. “Alright.” After spending most of his life having to puzzle out other people, he knows he should be grateful that Georgie says what she means and means what she says, instead of being smart about it.
She smiles, pleased, and Jon lets it echo in him until he’s smiling back.
The Admiral stretches out until he’s lying half across both their laps, and Jon feels his nagging desire for attention not unlike the claws pricking his pant leg. Jon sates it by giving him a thorough chin scratch.
They both purr, the Admiral and Georgie, each in their own ways. And Jon is loved.