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“Hey, Janet,” Jason starts, voice hesitant and a third of an octave higher than usual, but then he goes quiet.
Janet frowns, because Jason sounded anxious and also like he had something to say, which makes her want to listen.
Janet’s been back from the Bad Place for a few days now, and she’s relaxing like Eleanor told her she should for a couple of days, or doing the best she can at relaxing when humanity is at stake and a non-negligible fraction of herself is occupied by the Janet babies.
The relaxation is working overall, though, because she’s sitting on the sofa and Jason’s next to her working on a crossword, legs crossed, close enough that he’s pressed against her in a way that makes her feel like she has a heart, but the metaphorical kind, and that heart is bursting.
She made him a Florida-themed crossword, so it’s easier for him to get the answers, though he has trouble with the spelling. She likes watching him. She likes being with him.
It’s all very different from the weeks she spent in a cage that she assumes would be either too hot or too cold if temperature regulation were an issue for her, watching Vicky trying and failing to be Michael, vaguely tipsy from magnetic interference in an uncomfortable way. For her human friends, Janet has always compared the influence of magnets to being drunk, but she suspects that in the Bad Place it was more like being drugged.
“Did you want to say something?” Janet asks, lifting her head from Jason’s shoulder and shifting a bit to look at him more easily. Jason shrugs against her, circling one of the clues.
Largest number of Filipinos in Florida, it says, and Jason lets out a delighted gasp and proudly writes JACKSONVILLE into E3.
Four of the clues lead to Jacksonville, but Jason’s adorable when he’s happy, and Janet likes making him happy just as much as she knows he likes making her happy.
(Jason is the first person to ever want to make her happy. She’s not sure if he’ll ever understand how important that is, which is a shame but also, in a way, sweet.)
Maybe Jason didn’t really feel like saying anything after all, Janet considers, or he’s lost his train of thought completely, but he proves her wrong—which is one of her favorite things about Jason and also humans in general; their ability to surprise her, their ability to prove her wrong—by letting out a sigh, allowing his pencil to go still, and saying, “So when your weird sister broke up with me she said, uh, she said that being with me was fun but not always easy.”
The first thing Janet feels in response to that statement: annoyance. Not at Jason, but at Bad Janet, and not just for breaking up with Jason. She knows that it’s Bad Janet’s nature to be terrible, but it’s an unwelcome addition to her nature to be reasonable, and the statement is reasonable, and Janet can’t lie about it. She hates lying, and doesn’t have the energy for it either, what with the Janet babies.
“And that’s why she broke up with me,” Jason continues. “Also she wasn’t you, which was weird and totally illegal, but I think she was right? Right? It’s something a lot of people say, like in Jacksonville people were always saying I wasn’t easy to be around even though I was fun, and I know everyone else thinks I’m...” Jason trails off. He shrugs.
He’s talking with his whole body, and it means that his solid weight against her has moved away so that they can fully face each other to allow Jason to see her in her entirety, because humans can’t throw their vision or see several things with clarity at once. (That’s why security cameras were invented.)
Now that Janet is looking right at Jason and Jason is looking right at her, the other dimensions fade, and she purses her lips, running through all of the things that she could say in response to this while Jason continues talking, allowing her to tweak the various possibilities.
“Aren’t you gonna get tired of me? At some point? I mean, you know everything in the whole entire universe and I’m me. Like, I’ll never get tired of you, because you’re interesting, you’re the most interesting ever, but I’m...” He frowns and furrows his brow. “I’m not, like, not interesting. I’m awesome,” though he says it like he’s not convinced, “but I’m...not as awesome as you, and all the interesting things about me run out and all the cool things don’t always seem as cool, y’know? When I think about them, or when other people hear them.”
It is true that a non-zero amount of things that Jason thinks are cool are not particularly cool, especially when it comes to the details of the life he lived, but Janet objects to most of that statement. She reaches out a hand to grasp one of Jason’s as he takes a deep breath, and he tilts his head, questioning. His expression is worried and pleading both, and Janet feels a wave of affection and a little bit of her own worry chewing through, the worry that he’ll get tired of her someday too. It is a very unfounded worry, but Janet has realized that worry is often unfounded.
“It’s true that I’m awesome,” Janet agrees, and Jason smiles. “In the most classic sense of the word. But you’re also awesome to me, and you know me best out of everyone I care about.”
Jason mumbles, “I try,” and Janet nods.
“Exactly. You try, and you’ve always tried to interact with me as a fellow being. You’ve never thought I had no feelings, and you’ve never considered the possibility that I’m just a tool. You were the one who figured out that Bad Janet wasn’t me because you know the details of who I am.”
“Yeah, ‘cause I love you,” Jason says with absolute certainty, and Janet leans forward and kisses him because that was the perfect thing to say. It’s always the perfect thing to say.
When she leans back, she says, “It’s not always easy being with you. But nothing interesting is ever easy, and I am more comfortable with you than with anyone else, and I don’t want to leave you, and I’m not bored of you.”
“What if you do get bored of me, though?” Jason asks again, and Janet feels a bit of frustration. It is possible that someday, if they get a someday, because, she reminds herself, their situation is precarious, she’ll get tired of him. He is a human, and she is a Janet, and that’s a significant difference. But opposites attract. Like magnets. And most of the time, Janet likes magnets, and she doesn’t think that that will change anytime soon.
“I can’t say it won’t happen, just like I can’t say that you’ll never get tired of me or not want to be with me anymore.” Jason starts to protest, but Janet shakes her head. “It could happen. I’ve run the simulations, and there are always situations in which something you can’t imagine happening can happen. But we can figure it out then.” Janet pauses, considering whether or not she should bring up the relative instability of their current existence, and then decides she might as well. Jason can handle it, and he does best with concrete facts and examples, much like Janet herself. “Also, the Judge might decide to undo everything we’ve ever worked for, so currently this whole conversation is extremely theoretical.”
That seems to cheer Jason up. “Oh, yeah! We might all die anyway! So you’re saying we should just enjoy us while it lasts, right?”
Janet beams, because she knew he’d get there eventually. She did, after all, though it took her much longer. “Exactly!”
No matter what happens, they love each other, and Janet, knowing everything, knows that that’s the most important thing.