Chris nestles into Marlo's shoulder. 

Chris suddenly looks very vulnerable and very sad.

He holds (him? her) Chris closer, puts a hand on the back of Chris's head. "I've got you," he says, very softly. 

"We should go walking through the Good Place at some point. See if it has stables, or-- I don't know what sort of things you like--"

"At some point." He strokes Chris's shoulder. 

"I've been catching up on my reading while I waited for you to arrive. There's not a lot to do here."

He nods. "Are you going to be okay?" 

He chooses his words carefully. "I... perhaps should have anticipated that the dead grieve those they've lost the way the living do."

...he hadn't been thinking about that and it's only just now that he realizes he'd been doing so deliberately. He pulls Chris closer to him, keeps his hands on Chris's hair and back.

"There are three hundred and sixty two people in this town and I have not heard them say anything about provisions for visitors or immigrants."

"I'm sorry," he says, still very soft. He's so so gentle with Chris. 

"I... did not see my brother Ron or my best friend Rachel very often when I was alive. I was very busy. But it feels different to not have the option to see them if I choose." He pauses. "My brother is a good man. If I made it I'm sure he will."

He wants it to be like when he was overseas, but it isn't; they could write, or video call, and there was always the chance that he'd see them again. (He was going to call Melissa tomorrow — and instead she's going to hear that —) 

"I'm sure they will." 

"It is difficult to imagine a set of criteria for the Good Place which Rachel would pass."

"...right. Salvation through good works, apparently." He holds Chris closer still. 

"Lucky for me. I've never had faith in anything."

"Lucky for a lot of people, I'm sure, I'm not actually objecting, it's just — it's an important thing to be right about and I can't go back to tell anyone how wrong we were." 

"Good Christian boy?"

"I tried, anyway." 

"You got in here. I'd say you did well."

Thinking of himself as good, with no qualifiers, feels deeply incorrect on a level he doesn't think he can verbalize. "...I suppose you aren't wrong, it's just strange to think of it that way." 

"It is strange for me as well. It seems as though God objects to drug use, slavery, and promiscuous gay sex less than I was led to believe."

…he doesn't interact with any portion of that statement, because he's not sure he can do so in a way that wouldn't be hurtful, and keeps holding Chris. 

"Ah," Chris says, not without affection. "Sheltered good Christian boy."

"I spent the last six years in the military but if sheltered is the word you care to use I can't actually stop you," he says mildly. 

"You are sheltered with regards to what it is like to be sold as property or to have sex in order to have a place to sleep, and I am sheltered with regards to how much time I've spent worrying about being blown apart by an improvised explosive device, which is perhaps the more important kind of sheltering."