Logs:Give them, O Lord— what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.

Give them, O Lord— what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.
Dramatis Personae Kitty, Leo	Easter Sunday "Um. Is that, a preference, or a dealbreaker, or..."
Location <PRV> Kitty and Marinov's Apartment {Cathaus} - Lower East Side
This high ceiling, fourth floor apartment is on its way to being well lived in. The walls are a light cream colour, the spotless hardwood floors stained a rich red-brown. The door opens into the living room, always bright with natural light coming in the windows or the glow of the twin pink rock salt lamps nestled on the one of the sills. Small succulents and other resilient, cat-safe houseplants dot the windowsills and nearby surfaces – one on the low coffee table between the faux-leather couch and the television mounted on the wall, another on a brushed-metal ladder bookshelf squeezed into a corner. There are no rugs, nothing that can collect fur, but the couch and floor are both covered in pillows. In a corner, wedged between the wall and the bookshelf, is a stack of protest signs, the majority gathered from the long year of Jackson Holland's imprisonment. On the wall opposite the television, there is a framed poster of the Cat’s Eye Nebula from an astrophysics conference. To the left of this space is a small kitchen, just large enough to fit two people in it, if one of them can walk through other people. To the right is a small hallway, leading to the washroom and two bedrooms. The nearer bedroom door has a small blue mezuzah on the doorframe, newly fastened to the wood, and a ceramic hamsa attached to the center of the door. Kitty doesn't keep strict kosher -- so perhaps the sudden Tin-Foil-ification of her kitchen is a shock to those who know her, or saw her kitchen last Passover. Once again the holiday vibes are Chaotic in here -- On the coffee table there is a basket of pastel eggs (all dairy-kosher, if someone is bothering to look at their wrappers) next to an open box of Streit's matzah; a plush frog is keeping watch over the windowsill with a stuffed rabbit; the playlist currently on shuffle is switching from "Heaven's Eyes" to "Bless the Lord" -- maybe it's just a Stephen Schwartz sort of day. The apartment is warm with the heat of the oven, even with the windows open. Kitty, hair tied up, NASA branded apron tied over a loose plain black tee and grey leggings, is just cleaning up in here, putting away the cutting boards and mixing bowls in favour of a jug of orange juice -- and then, with a glance at the clock, returning to the cupboard to rummage for Prosecco and glasses. Her laptop is perched in the kitchen, open to a recipe proclaiming that it is the Passover cake to end all Passover cake, with the tagline I can't believe it's not chametz! There is a quiet knock-knock at the door that is almost immediately followed by a key in the lock. The timing is right but Leo does not look like he has come from church, dressed Nice Enough but absolutely not Easter Nice given his proclivities, purple mandarin collar shirt with very subtle blue-pink colorshift piping, black twill trousers and black kilt loafers. The decorations soften his expression with a fondness as he slips off his shoes by the door. He's heading to the kitchen to deliver a small kiss to Kitty -- and then a very uncertain look at the tin foil, brows furrowing at that and then down at the large tote in his hands. His brows are knitting into a very familiar anxiety, and despite the bright pastel tote and the tupperware of soup it contains being Kind Of Hefty he is making an entirely futile and probably fully subconscious attempt to kind of shift it behind his legs as if? Maybe? Kitty will not notice? Hm. Kitty pauses briefly in her non-traditional method of uncorking wine to return the kiss. The cork comes out easily after, bubbles foaming over the bottle as she quickly places it in the sink before turning back to Leo. Looks at the furrow of his brow and then down to the Totally Visible Tote. She presses her lips tight together, visibly trying to hold back her amusement but the corners of her mouth betray her anyway. "What've you got there?" "I didn't put foil," Leo blurts -- not actually an answer. But he's lifting the Tupperware out of the bag, matzo balls clearly bobbing in his broth along with chicken and considerably less traditional taro and moringa. "Should I have... maybe this is. All wrong." He is now frowning at the Tupperware as though it has betrayed him. He's folding the tote bag (it says HAPPY HUNTING! around an image of an Egg-filled easter basket) with a surprising punctiliousness considering he is not actually looking at it at all. "Are you -- doing the -- kash...er. Now." There's a stilted and delicate care that turns this would-be question into more of a statement than it was probably supposed to be. “Uh—” Kitty looks confused, then delighted, then concerned in quick succession. “Oh, no I’m not, more kosher — thank you that looks so good — um, this, is.” Kitty looks at her foil covered stove-top with a faint flush. “I did clean for Passover it’s just — I may have told my dad I was spending the first night at Chabad, and that may have ballooned into a bunch of lies about going frum, and…” she gestures helplessly at her backsplash, the painters tape holding that last piece of foil in place. “… I didn’t want to take it all down right away it is helpful for cleaning sometimes.” Her face has gone very pink. “You do not need to do the foil for me, and I am very excited to taste this.” A small furrow of her brow, now that she’s reaching for the Tupperware and can feel the ambient warmth of it. “… did you just make this?” Leo's effort not to look immensely relieved at Kitty's answer fails entirely. His own faint amusement is creeping in now, as he looks to the backsplash. "How long will this keep? Up? I could get you some lovely headscarf, if you want." He is at least only very slightly flushing as Kitty reaches for the soup. "I looked up a recipe for how it is usually made, but then I maybe," maybe, he's saying, "changed it, it looked..." He does not give his opinion of what the recipe looked like, but his matzo ball soup smells distinctly of garlic and calamansi, ginger and scallions folded in to his matzo balls. “Uh, until the house of cards collapses, he asks Akihiro when he’s going to convert, or he leaves town?” Kitty’s flush isn’t getting worse but it isn’t fading even as she laughs with Leo. “Would a headscarf suit me, do you think?” She tilts her head, posing for an invisible camera, as she takes the Tupperware into her arms. “Oh, that smells so good,” she says, yet her frown is growing, “just, wasn’t there, um, Mass? This morning? Or,” she looks up at Leo, deeply unsure of her next thought, “is that just the night before like Christmas?” "...Akihiro?" Leo looks briefly confused about this, but is easily distracted by an earnest contemplation of Kitty in a headscarf. "M-aybe," he does not sound entirely confident. "I like your hair." Kitty's next question puts a deep flush into his cheeks, his eyes lowering -- kind of abashed. "Either. Both. I like the Vigil, but. I didn't. I haven't been." His hands are smoothing restlessly against the folded tote bag on the counter, and there's a guilty tension creeping into his shoulders. "Did not. Make it to the Mass." “… You didn’t?” Kitty is setting the soup aside — perhaps once there was an aim to get it into a pot but now the counter will have to do — to focus on her boyfriend more (and skip, for now, the question of When the Hell did Akihiro Get Involved). “But it’s Easter?” Was this meant to be a question? Kitty’s confusion is rapidly becoming concern. “Is it — okay they’re probably staking out for you in Harlem, but, there are other? Churches?” A small pause, a deeper furrow of her forehead, then she adds, “Like, in the city and the world, also?” Leo shifts a little uncomfortably, his head shaking. The guilt in his expression has remained, but there's more sadness in his tone when he continues -- a definite quiver to his lips that he is trying quite definitely to marshal. "I go. When I am -- elsewhere. Sometimes it is okay. But here..." His head shakes, slow. "They posted Sentinels at St. Martin's. Just -- always, I can't even go to confession there anymore. A few times I tried -- some other churches. Here. I think -- maybe someone. Else. In the congregation, probably they called..." His teeth sink into his lip, his brow creasing as his fingers press down hard enough to turn his nailbeds white. "People know me in this city and I can't -- just ask Joshua to. Each week take me to the ends of the earth just to." His breath comes out in a hard rush. There’s a flash of anger in Kitty’s expression when Leo bites his lip, there and gone again as she thinks. “Okay but there are churches between here and like, the other side of the planet, right? There’s a whole nunnery up in Westchester and I’m up there so often anyway I could take you? Nobody there voted for Adams.” Kitty reaches for Leo’s near hand, wrapping her smaller one around it. “Or,” though her tone is falling already, as if she’s realizing as she says it that this is probably not a good idea, “no cop-bot can touch me, if I go with you…” She trails off, dipping her head. “I’m sorry. I — this would have been more useful if I had asked, earlier this week, I should have.” Leo turns his hand up, closing it around Kitty's. "I think -- even if I did not get hurt -- I do not want to disrupt Mass with a scene. I just -- want to pray without..." He squeezes at Kitty's hand, closing his eyes briefly. "And I don't want to make you have to..." His brows crease slowly, his words coming more slowly, too, a little uncertain, now. "It is -- it is different? I think? To... go to church? For you?" “You’re not making me if I’m offering.” Kitty squeezes back, her grip strong and solid. “It’s not — it would feel weird,” she admits, “but, like, I went with Jax a couple times in college and I didn’t burst into flames or anything?” She laughs briefly and weakly. “The music is lovely, I won’t be immediately clocked as a heathen for sitting down during communion, I think I can handle it. Especially since it means so much to you — that makes sitting in there more meaningful than it would be, otherwise.” "You aren't a heathen," Leo objects promptly, but then blushes faint and drops that line of thought. His forefinger traces slow circles against one of the pastel Easter eggs printed on his tote, and he's steadier, now, when he looks back up at Kitty. "Does it... bother you. That I am. Not Jewish?" Kitty's eyes go wide. "No?" Probably this would be more convincing if her voice had not ticked upwards into a question. "I mean, absolutely no it does not bother me, just, this is a -- loaded question, um." There's a faint chill around the edges of Leo's hand where Kitty's fingertips are pressing just a fraction past his skin. "You've been making the effort to learn, and that's -- more than I can ask for, really. If you weren't, probably it would bother me? But, you do, so." She bites her lip, anxiety clear on her face. "Is -- is that going to be, does it bother you that I'm not..." Leo doesn't immediately answer, a pensive frown on his face. "It doesn't, with you," he finally says carefully, "with you, for you, I have wanted to learn. Your culture. What is important to you. All if it." There is a distinct but in his tone, and for a moment it struggles to sort itself into some form of words. "My life -- right now, it is not. Anythings I could ask you to..." His head shakes once. "I have no home to share with you. Even to go out with you puts you in dangers. But -- maybe -- maybe this won't be my life forever. And if I do -- figure out how to have a safe future, then..." He's looking down at their -- more than normally intertwined hands. "I would like to figure out how to have one with you." Somewhere in the space between with you and for you Kitty's frown has returned, somewhere after ask you Kitty turns her gaze down at their hands. When Leo looks, too, Kitty is carefully moving her fingertips back on only the surface of his skin. "One day, this torment will stop," she says quietly to their hands, "and when it does I am sure we can find space for Jesus in our home, in a way that doesn't require either of us to change our faith." "For us, maybe. But how..." Leo's frown has never left, deep, still, and mired in a thought that carries more weight with surprisingly less anxiety than is his norm. "I love you, and if that day does ever come. When making a home with you will not risk your life. And if you still love me then. I hope to ask you to marry me. That is -- already a lot of if but if... how do we make a family work? It seems -- complicated. To everyone." "Oh. Oh. Okay." This is not a happy oh, despite the way her breath caught and her eyes widened a moment ago, when Leo said marry me. "That's -- right. Kids. You want kids." Her hand is suddenly gone from Leo's grip -- Kitty walks through the cabinets in a straight line towards the couch and sinks into the cushions. "Um. Is that, a preference, or a dealbreaker, or..." She takes one of the chocolate eggs into her hand, focuses not on Leo but on the foil wrapping and peeling it off, slowly, with one fingernail. "Oh -- oh." It's a sort of mirror of Kitty's, soft and sinking. Leo follows Kitty at a delay -- around the cabinets, though he stops on the other side of the table rather than join Kitty on the couch, arms crossing awkwardly against his chest. "I've always wanted..." He swallows, not doing a very good job of stopping his expression from falling. "You -- don't." "I can't," Kitty corrects, the pallor coming over her face probably not related to the little egg melting against her hand. "I mean, I don't think I can -- carry, a fetus to term, or even in the viable realm of pre-term delivery, or maybe even -- be? Pregnant? At all?" When she looks up at Leo again, she just seems sad, but when she speaks again terror overtakes her expression before the end of the second abrupt clause. "What if it doesn't -- every time I solidify I destroy whatever is there -- there's no data on the suppression drugs on fetal development -- my mom had so many miscarriages before me -- that's all before you think about X-Gene interactions I'm so the wrong kind of almost-doctor for that --" Her breathing is speeding up with each additional piece of information, the chocolate in her hand melting as its crushed between her fingertips. "Oh," Leo says again, and then, with a softer horror, "'oh'." He's quiet a long while -- a little bit paler, eyes fixed on the bowl of chocolate eggs on the table between them. Eventually he skirts around the table, settling himself down beside Kitty. Evidently unfussed about the sticky melting chocolate, he moves his hand to curl over hers. He has not quite shed the traces of disappointment from his expression, though he is working hard at it. His voice is soft and earnest. "Mahal, I want to build a life with you. Whatever that looks like, we -- can figure it out. If that -- cannot be..." He swallows, squeezing at Kitty's chocolatey hand. "We will figure it out," he says again. Kitty stops voicing her pregnancy nightmares but it is clear the list is continuing in her head, or what she has already said is enough for her breaths to keep coming too fast, too shallow. When Leo moves her eyes drop down to the melted mess on her fingers, gaze unfocused. His hand is on top of Kitty's for a long moment before her palm turns slowly upwards, before her fingers find their way between his. No reassurance is coming from her aloud -- but Kitty melts against her boyfriend's side and squeezes his hand, slowly bringing her breathing back in time with Leo's.