Bethas 16, 2720 - Just Past Midnight
Leaning into Em was easy, in most ways. Their heights were close enough, even, that it was no great stretch for her to settle the line of her jaw onto his shoulder. In these shoes? She barely had to do anything at all. Comfortable and close. The wrenching feeling of a wound opening in her chest, then, was all just the natural result of wanting things she didn't really think she could have. Not enough for her to move her arms, though--not nearly enough.
"Whale, huh?" Cerise raised her eyebrows, smiling through the only partially successful attempt to both kiss her and distract Sish with the tin. Sish didn't seem particularly interested, although she didn't move to bite him again--yet. Cerise pondered the suitability of whale as a lure for the miraan. She made a noise of discontent when he escaped her grasp, mollified only slightly by the way he pressed up against her to do it.
She was capable of some concession to necessity at least. Cerise moved to the side, keeping out of the way but not out of reach. He did, after all, need to move around the kitchen and she didn't really know where it was he was going. She'd never been here before, not seen this flat or this kitchen or this arrangement of drawers. The thought brought with it all the awareness of what time had passed between them that she'd been trying to ignore; it hurt, simply and completely. "Well I don't think Sish would be very good at it, so yes, that's how it would go. Strictly business, you understand."
Okay, so maybe she didn't move out of the way entirely--maybe she waited until he moved her, creating the excuse for him to touch her under the guise of getting to a drawer, reaching into a cabinet. Moving to the table to set the tin down. She paused, close but not touching, when he stopped to look at her.
The news of his brother, delivered evenly and with that smile still on his face, took all the air right out of her lungs for a heartbeat or two. She had never gotten along with him, not from the moment she first saw him; she was almost certain the feeling was mutual. But she'd never hated him, not really, and certainly not enough to be glad to hear about his death.
She felt, of all things, unaccountably guilty--like she should have been there, even though there was no reason for her to have been. Nothing she could have done, for Em or for anyone. It wasn't like she was the comforting sort. Even now, she couldn't think of a single thing to say. "I'm sorry" seemed like not enough. She had nothing else. All she could think of was to keep her hands on him, to briefly cover the back of one of his hands with her own while he stood there opening that godsdamn can.
"In Dentis of--with... Ah." It took her a moment, struck by the news itself, by the look on Emiel's face, to make all the connections. But she made them, sure enough. She frowned, because she didn't know what other face to make. And she swallowed, not sure what to say or how to feel about that. A joke hovered on the edge of her teeth--So is that why he never liked me? And here I thought it was my sparkling personality--but the levity seemed ghoulish.
It felt cowardly, to move on so quickly, but she had nothing else to offer. Any kind of sentiment she thought she could offer required Sish to be sufficiently distracted, anyway. She snorted, putting the subject of Rohan aside. Sish, from her shoulders, watched the can opener work with keen interest. The scent of it was--well. Fishy. Sort of? But sweet, and also not like fish at all. Cerise wrinkled her nose. It didn't really seem like the sort of thing a person should eat. So of course Sish couldn't get off of Cerise's shoulders fast enough to put her face in it.
"I think she has agreed to the trade," Cerise laughed. Sish immediately fell to making noisy, sloppy work of consuming the contents of the can. "I see what my love is worth to you, brat--bought for the price of exotic Hoxian whale." She clicked her tongue in dismay, but already she had moved to take Em's hand in her own again. They didn't have much time to make good on their escape.
Sish can learn to share, she almost said. But the bitterness of that smile hurt almost as much as the sentiment. Like her standing here meant nothing at all, and he was already resigned to her leaving never to be seen again. Given up as inevitable. Fine. Maybe it was. Fighting against that idea seemed too much to her just now. She wasn't even sure he wasn't right. Better to pull Emiel away from the chorus of loud, wet smacking noises Sish was making and towards her, towards a more enjoyable line of thinking.
"She won't be distracted for long," Cerise said with a grin full of sharp promise and a hand that drifted up his arm, "so unless you have another can of exotic marine life in there, I think we should put a door in between her and us as quickly as possible."