[Closed] Shadows and Lights (Aura)

[Fionn]

Yaris 1, 2719 | After Dark
Professor Keyes’ Office

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Her joking response earned an eye roll from the passive boy, a largely pointless gesture given the low lighting. All the same, he was glad that she’d taken his words so well, given that he was being an idiot. It was nice that she had chosen to roll with it, simply accepting that he said dumb shit and helping it ease his embarrassment by laughing it off. Laughter could defuse some many things, the infusion of humour sometimes exactly what was needed to improve an awkward situation or a difficult one lighter to bear. Fionn had done it on her behalf without considering it consciously. She’d gone to say something but stopped herself, the young man sensing that whatever she’d wanted to admit was possibly too much for her to manage. It was like how he’d felt when he’d struggled to tell her about the matching bracelet he’d made for himself — the one that he now wore — and his doubts about gifting her the bracelet the last time they’d met up. He understood that whatever she wanted to say had the same discomfort connected to it so he had tried to help, as he would have liked to have been helped back in the garden while he was damn close to spontaneously combusting.

A joke for a joke but he was the one who found the mirth in the situation. She had taken him seriously and by the sounds of it, she’d come close to saying that she hadn’t noticed his body growing soft when she’d been feeling him up in the lab. Of course she hadn’t noticed. For one thing, she didn’t have a point of comparison; Aurelie hadn’t known him before he’d started working with Keyes. For another, while he might not be shouldering the same workload as he had before going to work for the professor, he still did enough heavy lifting and the like to be in good shape.

Fionn couldn’t stop himself from cracking a grin, pleased by how flustered she’d grown in those few seconds, the response he’d elicited something that he lapped up gleefully. The youth had no doubts about his own attractiveness but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t nice to hear about it. It was all right to be a little vain, wasn’t it?

It didn’t make it any easier to tame his mood but he could do nothing to control the giddy delight that surged through him. His heart was trying to beat a tattoo on the underside of his sternum, probably something that Aura could feel too, even if she couldn’t hear it. She was still using his chest as a pillow and now his abdomen had become a table. The teenager was becoming a regular piece of furniture.

If he was sensible then the passive would keep his mouth shut instead of adding fuel to his own fires but the blond was hardly in a sensible mood. The only thing that saved him — albeit temporarily — was his stomach because he really was hungry and he was eager to make quick work of the sandwiches. In all honesty, he could probably have eaten the entire bundle of sandwiches that he’d brought with him but he had to pace himself, forcing himself to eat slowly and allow his companion to get her fair share. When they reached the end of the sandwiches, he could still feel his stomach growling within him even if the whistles, bangs and shrieks made the soft gurgles inaudible. At least there was cake and gingerbread to add to it. And the fizzy lemonade, of course, his own drink abandoned off to one side and the bottle it had come from left unstoppered so that its contents were slowly going flat.

Fionn made to shift the cake onto his belly but thought better of it, wriggling free of her hold so that he could sort the drinks situation but leaving the cake within her grasp this time; he had no intention of leaving her for long anyway.

“My body is fine, is it?” Fionn questioned, making no effort to hide the mischievous edge from his voice as he recovered his lemonade and gulped it down. When he moved the cup away from his lips, the first thing that issued out of him was a burp, the young man laughing juvenilely even as he excused himself as was proper manners. However, after that came hiccups, air jolting out of him in soft squeaks of sound as he continued to giggle and topped up his drink. Topping up the kitchen maid’s drink if she wanted it, the matter of sealing the bottle still remained as it wasn’t entirely empty yet. It was a sizeable enough bottle in fairness and in all honesty, the blond didn’t want to leave it open only for one or other of them to knock it over; what a waste that would be.

“Are you sure you’ve examined enough of my body to be certain about how fine it is, Aurelie Steerpike?” he teased, a wicked grin finding its way onto his face, tongue protruding only to be held in place by the press of his teeth, uncovered by the broad stretch of his lips. The light show outside provided good illumination for the cheeky expression, allowing her to see it in all its glory, as he grasped the glass drinks bottle.

Holding his thumb over the hole at the neck, he shook the lemonade vigorously and then upended it abruptly. The marble that had been held in its temporary glass prison shot down the neck and reunited with the washer at its top, re-establishing the airtight seal with a sucking sound. Only when that was done would he crawl back to the spot that he’d recently vacated. This time, he propped himself up on his elbow, stretching out beside her but facing towards her this time. The entire reason for this rendezvous seemed to be forgotten by both of them. Well… maybe the fireworks hadn’t been the entire reason.

“I… have no idea how they do it being honest. It could be science, it could be magic but either way, they do it with something that we can’t have,” he pointed out gently, his voice lacking its habitual bitterness when commenting on such things. He picked up another gingerbread cookie, snapping off a segment with his teeth before using the biscuit to gesture as he spoke, no doubt inadvertently showering some crumbs in her direction.

“I don’t have to know everything, Aura and I think… I think that that’s all right, sometimes. I think sometimes it’s okay to enjoy something simple. I mean, this…”

He pointed his makeshift baton at the window, purple and red streaking through the sky as he did so as if to punctuate his point.

“This is beautiful and I think that that’s enough for me tonight. It’s amazing but it’s also- I suppose that it doesn’t matter as much as I thought I would. It’s a nice backdrop but it isn’t… the most important thing here,” he confided, his voice dropping in volume, the gingerbread pointed in her direction. More than that, he all but waved it under her nose, eyebrows quirked and then waggled suggestively as he wafted the biscuit in front of her. There were other biscuits but it was clear that he wanted her to bite his one, his gaze fixed on her curiously.

“If you really want me to waffle on about what I think might or might not be going on outside the window when I don’t really know then I’ll do it but…”

He paused, the brown eyes dropping for a moment, teeth worrying briefly at his lip. He gazed up cautiously, hardly raising his head so that he was forced to look up at her from beneath his lashes.

“I don’t think that either of us wants to make guesses about how the gollies make the pretty lights. That out there isn’t really for us but… what we have in here…”

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Was it relief or disappointment she felt when Fionn moved away from her to get drinks and cake? A heady mix of both? On the one hand, he hadn't said anything when she started nattering on with what had started life as a joke and turned into a strange embarrassing confession. On the other hand, he did grin at her in such a way that she was under no illusions about what he thought of it. Were Aurelie made of sterner stuff, perhaps she could have found his obvious amusement in her floundering offensive; it just made her more so again. There was very little stern in her when Fionn smiled.

Aurelie was saved from having to comment on his vanity by all that came after, the girl scrunching up her face in mock offense. That dissolved quickly enough into quiet laughter. Aurelie propped herself up to sit properly, the position slightly more sensible if he wasn't there next to her. If less cozy than she had been before. She let Fionn top off her drink as well, though she drank hers rather more slowly and carefully. Not just because she didn't trust herself to speak once it was gone, either. Or because she was sorry he had moved away from her and it was easier to drink her lemonade than think about that. Cake made a poor substitute.

No, I am not at all sure. That would be an unwise thing to say, with his face so terrible and charming in the light from outside. It would also have been unwise to take that bottle out of his hands and try to kiss that smirk right off his face, so she didn't do it. Though she couldn't stop herself from grinning just a little bit back. Such a bald-faced statement, so confidently made--it was at least a little bit attractive by itself, wasn't it? Surely Aurelie was allowed to think so, even as she laughed. The laughter was giddy; delighted and flustered both.

He wasn't wrong, though. Not by Aurelie's estimation, at any rate. Or, she remembered sourly, Matron's. Or... well. A lot of people's. It was something of a popular opinion. That wasn't her favorite line of thinking, so she shoved it gently to the side and tried to focus just on Fionn instead. He came back to her, turning away from the window and looking at her instead. Aurelie found herself strongly disinterested in the show outside the window, giving up even on the pretense of it now. For just a moment, a hovering half of a heartbeat, she thought she might lean forward and kiss him again after all. Her question had been forgotten immediately--at least by her.

Fionn though, Fionn responded. Aurelie had rather hoped the question would keep her on the straight-and-narrow. If she was supposed to be on the straight-and-narrow. The girl wasn't really sure. They had both had only partially wanted to watch the fireworks together, she thought. Right? Just her luck then, that this was something Fionn knew nothing about and what's more, he didn't want to guess. Truly, she would have actually liked to hear it--she really, truly liked listening to him go on about things he found interesting. Even when she didn't know what he was talking about. Possibly even more so, in that case. But his expression of disinterest wasn't bitter in the way the statement could have been, and that was worth hearing too.

There was very little simple about her enjoyment of this moment. Not when Fionn said things like that, like... Aurelie didn't know what like. It was one thing to think about what she wanted, another to even have come this far. To look at his face and listen to his voice and feel that strange rushing mixture of things she always felt when she saw him. Joy and desire and some edge of anxiousness. She should not be here, and although she did her best to pretend otherwise, Aurelie didn't forget this for even a moment. She was happy, and it was making her stupid, making her careless, making her do things she shouldn't do and want things she couldn't have. Not simple in the slightest.

But the fireworks were beautiful, and she was happy, because she thought Fionn was beautiful too. In many ways, not all of them to do with how finely he was made. The face he made was ridiculous, waving gingerbread at her and no small amount of crumbs with it. Aurelie's was grave when she looked into his eyes and leaned forward to bite off as much as she could, stopping just short of Fionn's fingers. She chewed and swallowed it with equal gravity while he spoke.

"No," Aurelie said slowly, her heavy expression giving way to a smile, "I don't want that. Not even for the pleasure of hearing you do it." Aurelie leaned forward very, very carefully and brushed her mouth against his. Careful, careful--a touch so light it might not have happened at all. The only evidence the position of her face next to his, and the slight hitch in her breath.

"I don't think I--I don't think I am sure. That I've seen enough of you to judge. I--I should fix that. For science." Her voice was barely above a murmur, but they were so close--not even the noise outside could have drowned her out. Aurelie grinned, just a little unsure. That poor excuse for a joke had taken all her courage to say. Even then her voice had pitched up just a little, a squeak of nerves making her efforts go from artful to obvious. Or most of her courage--with the remainder she came to slide down just a little more so their faces were parallel. "I-If you want." Aurelie's breath caught and held, green eyes wide with perfect sincerity.

...Continued Here (Mature)...