[Stamina?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Nick
Pen asked him for a wonder of breakfasts, a culinary delight.
Pen also asked him to get up before she usually gets up to make it.
Last night he stayed up with her later than he usually does, at first reading and then tucking himself in close to hold her while she fell asleep. His eyelids grew heavy while he waited; he kept himself awake only by imagining skin monsters and any number of horrors Pen has described to him following one of her nightmares.
He leaves their bed long after Pen has fallen asleep so that he can read for a while in order to keep himself awake.
Somehow, he keeps himself awake.
It is almost three when he sneaks down to the kitchen, setting his feet carefully in spite of the fact that they are soundless. Habits gained in childhood and adolescence die hard.
And so it is that when Pen wakes howeverlong later, before the dawn, she will find his spot in bed empty and cold, without any lingering warmth from his body that might indicate he had just risen. There is a smell permeating the house, buttery and warm.
Pen
This is how Pen wakes. At once, and with only a change to her breathing to indicate that slumber has given her up; then her eyes open, and she props herself up on one elbow. Nicholas's side of the bed (there are no true sides, with how willing to sprawl and entangle Penelope is) is empty and grave-cold and Pen smooths her hand over his usual spot. Then she rolls over to her other side and closes her eyes again. It is only one moment. Pen is not by nature a morning person, though through determination she has made it so. Pen cuddles into her pillow in lieu of Nicholas and then she opens her eyes again and rises.
When she comes down the stairs, it is in a pale pink satin robe, unbelted, and beneath the robe a pair of lacy briefs she went to bed with, naught else, and her face glowing with that just-washed radiance only a just-washed face can have. The only jewelry is a ring on her left finger, and when she finds Nick she peers at him from behind the tangle of her bright hair. Her bangs are still doing strange things.
Nick
When Pen looks, she will find Nick in the kitchen. If she had come around the corner and into the dining room first she would have seen plates laid out, with silverware to the side and small cocktail glasses accompanying. The light was left dim; outside it is still dark.
Her husband is at the counter and taking two grapefruit halves from a pan, carefully gripping them between thumb and forefinger as he does and setting them down rather quickly. They appear to have been broiled; atop them is a broiled dusting of cinnamon sugar.
Nick glances over his shoulder at her, and as he makes eye contact she can see his eyes are a little bleary and red. It's to be expected, perhaps, if he woke up this early. "Good morning," he says, even though it does not feel like a good morning to him: and there is an affectionate curl of a smile as he takes in her bangs, twisted off to the side. "Go sit down. I'll be in in a minute."
Pen
Penelope gazes at Nicholas for a moment; she presses her cheek against the side of the door, for she stopped there, in order to give the whole of the kitchen this sweeping look - clarity might break its heart before that look; it might fall before; and then as she gazes there's this spark-flick of a smile, more in the eyes than on the mouth, and she drifts away from the kitchen and takes in the dining room table with its unusual formality, dishes set, cocktail glasses accompanying, and she takes a candle beeswax it was once an owl but its head has melted away into the feathers takes this candle down from one of the bookshelves and lights it with a match and sets the candle near where she takes a seat and she doesn't yet speak a word. When Nick does check in the dining room, Pen has taken down a small clothbound book from a shelf and is reading a page.
Nick
Nicholas does not take long to wander into the dining room, with its unusually formal setup. He cannot suppress a flicker of a smile when he sees the owl perched there between the plates, with a bright column of flame in place of its head. Nick is carrying a small tray, on which he has the grapefruit and a small pitcher full of what looks like (is) mimosa, and a large plate.
Once arranged carefully on the plate (though less artfully than he might have liked), breakfast turns out to be poached egg, slivers of parmesan, and prosciutto and a biscuit, accompanied by slices of tomato and of course the grapefruit. Nick leans down to kiss the top of her head before he seats himself. "Good enough for a victory breakfast?"
Pen
He sets the tray down and Pen lets her hands and the book fall gently to her lap, one finger holding her place, her chin lofted as she looks over the spread; when Nick kisses the top of her head, she reaches up to catch him there, an arm (Medea [mythic], lake-lady) loose around his neck; tilts her head back, lets it fall, for a kiss on the mouth.
"Did you sleep at all?" Her tone is conspiratorial; so is the look in her eyes.
Nick
Perhaps Nick had been intending to deny having stayed up all night: even if he were so inclined, Pen is sharp enough to notice that he is still wearing yesterday's grey pants and light sweater. He didn't even think to change before rising back out of bed last night to find ways to keep himself awake.
When he draws back after kissing her he lingers there for a moment with his hand cupped around her shoulder, and there is a returning glint of conspiracy. "How would I have been down here to make you breakfast, if I'd slept?" He circles around behind her chair so that he can take his seat across from her. His smile is tinged with rue, now. "I don't think today is going to be the day that I also go running with you."
Pen
"Of course it isn't," Pen says, looking (bemused, musing) down at the food. Her profile is a cameo's, a Renaissance lady's; her hair is still a hopeless tangle and it falls across her cheek when she takes her hand from her lap and rests her elbow on the table, her chin on her fist, cants her head. Beat. "That was another prize. This one included -- mm," and she curls her tongue behind her teeth. "What was it?" Opens her fist so she can stroke her chin, her jaw, her throat, one long fluid gesture. "It was something about lying, no? About the best lie. Nicholas, this does all look like a fine feast. Let's hope one bite doesn't strike me with yearning for this to be a habit, hmm?" Mischief, again.
Nick
He likes to watch her profile, likes to imagine her against a backdrop, a splash of lake and light or perhaps reinterpret her image as stained glass. He is watching her now as she lets her jaw rest on her fist, though his reddened eyes and glazed expression could give the impression that he is staring at her simply for lack of anything better to stare at. It would be the wrong impression, but.
She mentions a story about the best lie, and there is a little grin that appears, a caught-out thing, as he splashes drink into both his glass and Pen's and then reaches for his fork. "Maybe I haven't told any big lies to tell you." He, too, is mischievous, though his smile wavers as she mentions yearning to habit. "We can make it a daylight-hours habit," he says.
Pen
Pen laughs, softly. The sound is a clot of candle smoke, a suggestion of brightness somewhere. "Daylight hours are still mine before they are yours," and this, this is a tease, and Pen leans forward and her robe gapes and the rose-pink of it gleams like the edge of a (strawberry) moon, luminous where the candle's light dredges such limned edges out; when she leans forward she also scoots her chair back so her naked collar is touching the table's edge and she can reach and reach for Nick's hand; cover it with hers; squeeze. Her hair threatens to trail through her plate, but she saves it with her other hand, drawing it over her head and exposing the side of her neck when she twists the ruddy mass of it; then she straightens; scoots the chair in; lifts her glass and takes a happy sip of it, eyes drifting closed as she does, and then fork: to dig in. "And that does not count as a big lie, Nicholai; it must be - shoot what must it be? Give me a moment; I'll remember."
This is what it's like when Pen is not wholly awake; she must have slept very deeply last night indeed not to be ready as soon as she pushes herself out of bed. She hums with pleasure after she takes a bite of the poached egg, hums deep in her throat, thrums, and then, "We need too to decide how to decide where we're going that is new." Firm.
Nick
She does not have to reach far; as she leans forward and her hand extends for his he scoots his chair in and forward and reaches for her, tangles his fingers in between hers and squeezes back, his thumb caressing her knuckles. He takes up his fork and cleaves it through the poached egg, sending yolk running across his plate like a splash of sunlight, and breaks a fragment of biscuit off with his thumb and forefinger. "Let me know when you remember," he says, and his eyes glint as he glances back at her.
He dredges the biscuit fragment through the egg yolk and pops it into his mouth. "Where would you most like to go? I've never really been out of the country, other than for work."
Pen
"There are so many places I'd like to go," Pen says, considering. Her lashes drift low again, shadow her cheekbones, and her gaze stays down: and pensive. "How long will you take off work for our adventure?"
Nick
"That depends on where we go," he says. "I have a couple of weeks saved up, so we could probably go somewhere like Europe. Or Turkey, maybe, or Korea." Evidently there are a lot of places he would like to go, too.
Pen
"Would you use your weeks up now? Do you want to go to a city or to a country? An island, or a place bounded by rivers?" Pen smiles at Nicholas; it is once again a smile more in the eyes, for her mouth is a solemn little thing in the morning. "We could write the names of such places on scraps of paper and put them in a hat. I could hide them," Pen grins. "And the first you find, that's where we go."
Nick
"I like the hat idea," Nick says, and he too smiles and here more in the eyes: he is growing too tired for it to reach his mouth. He will likely be in bed after breakfast is over, despite his most valiant attempts. "I'm all right with using most of them up. It would be worth it, to go somewhere for a little while. Maybe just a week, depending on where we pick," and here a little tilt of his head.
"I want to go to a place bounded by rivers. Or maybe to a place on a lake," he says. "I'd like to see Europe. I haven't been. Or somewhere in the Carribean. Or...well. Let's just put a lot of things in the hat."
Pen
"Why don't you get a hat? I want to watch you walk away," Pen says, with such simplicity of tone, such purity of expression, that just how rogueish the remark is might take a moment or two to sink in.
"This is so delicious, Nicholas," she also says, earnest, after another few bites of breakfast, after she takes a sip of mimosa, watches the man opposite of her over the rim of her glass.
Nick
She compliments the breakfast, and the smile it earns is unusually wide for him, particularly given his exhaustion. Past the curtains it is still dark, though they are beginning to hear the occasional bird or cricket if they listen; the days are growing shorter and it will not be dawn yet for a while.
"I'll go get a hat," he says, and his fingers trial up over her shoulder as he walks past her and around into the other room. She'll have to twist her head around to watch him walk away, but it can be done. He retrieves a deep purple knit cap, which he is holding in both of his hands as he returns to the room and to her. "We'll throw things in after breakfast," he says, taking up his fork again.
Pen
Pen does twist her head to look over her shoulder, watch Nick walk away from her. But only for a moment; he disappears from sight. He disappears behind the edge of a wall, and Pen glances down at her breakfast plate, and smiles a little private smile, meant for no one, and then she pushes the tangle of her red hair out of her face and lends her will to eating more of what's in front of her. She does not begin reading the little book in her lap again, and he isn't gone so long as all that. When he returns, her gaze finds him, follows him back to his chair.
"I had a dream about you last night. You were the moon's man, and you could occupy every glint of light on anything that was the moon's color, and that's how we met. Secretly."
Nick
The cap he'd set on the table between the two of them, open like a mouth to receive whatever scraps of paper and whatever places and names they will put into it. He wraps a slice of prosciutto around a bit of biscuit and pops it into his mouth as he redirects his eyes toward her, to hear about her dream. He smiles at her, once he has finished chewing. "What did we do, once we met? Did I occupy anything of yours?"
Pen
Pen nodnodnods and scrapes her finger through some of the golden yolk parmesan flecked and sucks on it with an air so self-possessed and courteous that she could perhaps get away with the appalling manners in front of somebody's grandmother, and still be thought a very appealing girl (woman). "One time my necklace and one time the buckle of my shoes. Another time this cup I had, I left it out on the windowsill so it would glint and you could come."
Nick
Nick smiles; he does not appear offput by her manners. Nicholas grew up in the same household as Anna Hyde, who would have done as much and worse (though in fairness she is often not thought to be a courteous young woman, you see.) "I would have come down out of the sky to see you," he says: and indeed he must have, in her dream.
He digs his spoon into his grapefruit, wiggles it about and frees a wedge, which he transfers to his mouth. "So I owe you a lie."
Pen
"Even if you could see me better from the sky?" Here, a quick smile, audacious, solemn. Another sip of her mimosa, and Pen rests the flat of one knee against the edge of the dining room table, bare toes curling around the chair's seat, and she leaning forward. She rests her elbow on her knee, cups her jaw in the palm of her hand. "The most outrageous."
Nick
"It's not the same as seeing you this close," he says, and his hand breaches the short distance between them to rest on her knee, to trace the shape of it with his fingertips.
Nick furrows his brows and works another wedge of grapefruit out of its casing. "I think the most outrageous might have been one I told Rob. He made me swear I wouldn't tell you, back when we were all cabaled together."
Pen
"That's not seeing," Pen says, glance dipping to skim the shape of Nick's fingers, the back of his hand, his wrist and his arm before finding his eyes again; there her glance sets anchor.
The power of suggestion: Nick works on his grapefruit half. Pen works on hers. Pen likes eating disgusting healthy things and doing horrifying to sane people healthy things in the morning, so she quite enjoys this grapefruit drenched in sugar Nick has provided for their feast.
Look how wide her eyes go; how clear their color, quartz-light, mercury glass; "He made you swear? How long did he believe it for?"
Nick
"Longer than he will admit to," Nick says. "A little while after I first joined the cabal, he was curious about the Chakravanti initiation process. We were still getting to know each other - it started a little that Christmas Eve before we had to go find you at Liz's. I realized after I told him a little that he didn't know much."
Nicholas, who does not really enjoy doing healthy things in the morning, is still very much enjoying the grapefruit. It isn't that healthy, after all. "At first I didn't tell him much because I was trying to come up with a good lie to tell him, which made him persist in trying to get it out of me - you know how he does. I eventually told him that our death rituals during initiation are presided over by a grandmaester whose location and identity we keep very quiet, for obvious reasons. The maester was ancient and had completed the ritual death over and over to the extent that he or she was barely human anymore. I hinted that I believed it was maybe a vampire. Anyway, I had him convinced that there was a Chakravanti archmaester who might actually be a vampire for a solid week before I started to get worried that he might take it too much to to heart."
Pen
"I understand why he didn't want you to tell me. That's an appalling lack of information on a subject House Tytalus is, alas, too familiar with," Pen says, virtuously and very Flambeauishly. Her eyes are no longer quite as wide, but the look she gives Nick is one up from beneath her lashes, and there's a smile still playing around her mouth, balanced against a certain thoughtfulness. "What do you think the most outrageous lie you ever told me is?"
Nick
"Probably a few months ago when you believed that I'd been a Hollow One once," Nick says, and there is a flash of a smile here, a devilish curl there at the edge. He recalls well her reaction.
Pen
"Hmf. Perhaps not that outrageous," Pen says, and then takes a very precise bite of a very precisely torn piece of biscuit, mopped up in egg, with a slice of tomato. Her chin lofts, see, and then she swallows. Says, bright-eyed, "What is the most outrageous true thing you have ever told me?"
Nick
"Hm," Nick says, his fingertips again tracing the shape of her knee. He tilts his head and a curl flips to the other side of his forehead, where it dangles like a party ribbon. "Probably about the poison at the Chakravanti parties. I still can't really believe that people actually do that, myself." He dabs up the last few bits of yolk with a piece of biscuit.
Pen
[Should I be having empathy?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (4, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 5 )
Nick
[Subterfuge!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Nick
[Nick is lying. In fact Pen can't recall Nick telling her about this before, but she is familiar enough with the subject matter that she knows he is lying. In fact he is half-hopeful she will catch him in the lie and get the joke, and half-hopeful that she won't.]
Pen
"Meticulous Nicholas was pretty," a melting glance - her tone a rake of pleased fondness, "ridiculous
When ridiculous Nicholas decided to lie.
But Penelope, splendidly, expectantly, and incredibly,"
A bite of her biscuit, and a sip of her mimosa.
"Unambivalently chivalrous asked Nicholas: Why?
Why, Nicholas, mischievous, with great sinfulness lie?
When Penelope lamentably falls for..."
Pen pauses; grins, this little crooked half-grin, shying toward abashed; she can't think of a good rhyming way to end it. "I mean, what a guy," and see, she takes another sip of her drink, to cool the flush that's come to her cheeks.
Nick
There is a sidelong glance toward her, a half-lashed thing, as he eats the last shred of prosciutto on his plate. There is another smile there, caught out as he had suspected and half-hoped he might be, because he knew the lie was ridiculous even if it was convincingly told.
She finishes her rhyme and he laughs. There's warmth in it, and he turns away from his plate so that he can place both of his hands just above her knees and look across at her. "I don't recall my most outrageous truth being part of our bargain, anyway. Were there other things I'm forgetting?"
Pen
"Ah. But there was another part of that win; don't you remember? Breakfast ready before I woke; the most outrageous lie you've ever told; and your tongue, all mine, for three days," and Pen: look at her, both solemn and mischievous, there across the table, his hands warm above her knee, the pink flush of her robe an afterthought. Pen rests a hand over one of his, then slides it up his wrist. Are his sleeves long? She pushes it up to expose bare skin, at least a little ways. "And among the very, very many things I plan on asking it to do for me, this: the most outrageous true thing you have ever told me."
Nick
He is wearing long sleeves, a sweater: the sleeves came down once he had finished cooking, once his hands were no longer covered in biscuit dough. They are stretched from the time they spent around his elbows, and so it is not easy to push them aside and expose his forearm. There is another laugh from Nick, a glance down at their joined hands. "What do you think the most outrageous true thing I've ever told you is? You're the better judge."
Pen
Pen's gaze goes distant, slants off to the side and upward; she is still near dreaming, and this is nothing like her usual morning ritual, which she is so strict about keeping; even the variations are just another strictly kept schedule; Pen is not naturally someone who sticks to schedules, but her will is strong. All to say: she feels close to dreaming, and she is perhaps silent longer than one would think, if she were going to follow with an answer.
"I don't know," she says, simply. "When you tell me what you think it is, perhaps I will remember because I won't agree with you."
Nick
Nick's hands curve around the sides of her knee as he waits for her response. His gaze is expectant, and clearer than one would expect for the late-earliness of the hour, depending on how one were to choose to wrap their mind around this point in time. "I think being Awakened with two Awakened sisters as a set of triplets is pretty outrageous," he says. "That we all Awakened at the same time. I don't know if I would believe things could be Fated, otherwise."
Pen
The shape of her mouth is touched by rue; concession. He has a point. Pen traces the ridge of his knuckles with her middle finger. "But you do believe things can be Fated because of that; your sisters, your tripartite Awakenings?"
Nick
"I'm not entirely sure," he says, "but I think some things might be." He is leaning forward, partially out of a desire to be closer to her and partially because he is so tired. "I think we're probably fated to do only things we would have chosen for ourselves anyway. Or to...well. I don't know."
A corner of his mouth lifts. "Were you looking for something more outrageous than that?"
Pen
"I'm not looking for anything specific. Only an answer, which is true, to balance out the lie." Pen reaches over and tweaks Nick's chin, and then finishes off her egg, forking it onto the last of her biscuit, finishing it off with a strip of prosciutto, and: mm; salt; tart. "What's the most outrageous true thing I've ever told you?"
Nick
Nick's gaze is wandering toward the kitchen, a more directed thing than his wanderings generally are: he wants another biscuit. He is thinking of putting butter and jam on it or maybe butter and honey or maybe just another poached egg even though there aren't any more poached eggs are there. He would have to make them and he's not going to make them. He's not hungry and it will not do anything to make him less tired, fresh biscuits are just that good.
"That you and Rob used to date," and here his eyes return to her and there is a quirk of his mouth. "I'm not jealous, I just can't imagine it."
Pen
Pen's nose crinkles, and she sips the rest of her mimosa in one long and long and shouldn't she and no not breathing because one long sip, then sets it down again. "Hmmmmmmmm," she says, and it is her attempting to be neutral and aloof, while being grumpy, annoyed, and doubtful. But look how good the 'hmmm' is. Explicate the low cadence of it, the sonorous gentility of the sound. It is not a word, but it is not quite a lack of word; it is invitational, while at the same time also being a finisher; a considerate engaging snippet of aloofness. The perfect response. Pen's eyes hood, and glance cast down at her knee and-or Nick's hand.
Nick
The perfect response, but it still holds his eyes there a second too long, asks them to linger and sweep over her face. It is aloof. It is a topic he knows she does not especially like, and yet: she did ask him for a bit of truth, when sometimes it is better to lie.
He gives her a little smile that has a whisper of apology in it and rubs his hands over her knees. "Do you want anything else to eat?"
Pen
"I want an apple cooked in honey and clove, sliced on a toast smeared with goat cheese, if not a sliver of the golden sun himself," Pen says, still aloofly, and see she flicks a glance up at Nick like a whip or a thorn, some delicate lash, some lovely sharpness, and: how clear the gray of her eyes. They mark how weary he is, poor Nicholas.
She brushes past his hands on her knees, only so she can run her hands up his thighs beginning at his knees, lean forward. "What's the happiest order you ever obeyed?"
Pen does not like to lie herself; she tries never to do so. Lying and misdirection are not quite the same thing.
Nick
Nick's eyelashes flutter at her request, bat against his cheeks in gentle protest because he would very much like to close them, to nestle in his blankets and maybe talk Pen into joining him. "I'll make it for you," he says. "If we still have goat cheese. I think we still have goat cheese."
Will she ask him to run to the store? He hopes they still have goat cheese.
The happiest order, she asks after, and he does not move back when she leans forward. He could kiss her now, if this were the moment he were so inclined. His eyebrows tilt in amusement. "What does 'order' mean, here? Are Mom's requests to clean my room lumped in?"
Pen
"Mmhmm."
Pen folds her arms over his lap and rests her head in the cradle she has made, and looks up at this new-perspective, different-perspective dark Nick thoughtfully. The robe's satin is gracious in how it catches the light; traps it; bends it into a current, a suggestion of movement; of glamour, of illusion; illusive, elusive; a warm glow, the roundness of her shoulders, the flex of her spine and its curve, when draped so by rose. Dawn-light, bent to a purpose.
Nick
His hands leave her knees and slide all the way up the outside of her thighs to her hips, and here they curve around and settle on her back. The robe is satiny soft beneath his fingertips, slides against his hands like water. It helps him imagine soft blankets. A pile of very soft blankets. Blankets tucked between his toes and beneath his chin.
There is a ruminative noise in the back of his throat. "When my sixth grade civics teacher asked me to come in for an extra assignment so that I didn't have to play football. I complained about the extra work, but it was for this honors society thing she thought I'd be good at." He tilts his head. "That, or when Anna told me to shut up and ask you to hang out alone."
Pen
"So definitely not when your Mom told you to clean your room then?"
Pen says, with a sly quirk of her mouth; she hides it behind her wrist - easy enough. "And not when I told you to leave the dishes for me to do?"
"Did Anna truly tell you to shut up? What would you ask me to say, if you'd won a bet and had control of my tongue for an entire three days?"
Nick
Nick has begun a slow slide forward: sooner or later he's going to be lying across her back with his cheek against the back of her shoulderblades, if he keeps going at this rate. "No. Though my room probably did need to be cleaned on all of the occasions." A thoughtful pause. "I do like when you offer to do the dishes."
Sliiiiiiiide. His cheek finally does come to rest against the softness of her robe. "She did tell me to shut up. In her defense, I was nervous about spending time with you and I kept talking about it." There is another pause. She can hear, if she listens, the faint rasp of his eyelashes as they sweep against cloth. "I would ask you what lie you always wish you could tell, if you could lie perfectly. And I would ask you for stories, and for poems. I would want to know what Working you did that you've been the happiest with."
Pen
"You were silly to be nervous; it concerns me - that I wasn't easy to approach, especially when I would have welcomed the approach," Pen says, and bent as she is, and with Nick's cheek against her shoulder blades, her voice is constrained - pressure on her diaphragm. Her voice is a tarnished version of itself; see the smoke in it, the reflective quality gone to rust; blood and ozone; the taste of lightning, licking a silver spoon; metal. "You really think dating Robin was the most outrageous thing of all outrageous things? It is more outrageous than when I told you about the swan curse, with the feathers? More outrageous than when I told you about the priest and the Thin Mints? I'll give you one of yours, in a slant-wise fashion, or at least contest the premise of part of it: I can lie perfectly. I simply haven't done it yet, but when I do, nobody will suspect it of me, since I am not that great at -- well. You know."
Nick
Nick's fingertips run down over her spine, and he tilts his head a fraction so that he can watch them curve over each ridge and dip, watch the play of light along her robe as it shifts against her skin. "The priest with the Thin Mints was pretty outrageous. So was the time you and that Chakravanti you knew found the talking book. Maybe I want to change my answer," he says.
His hand stills, flattens against the hollow of her back, and he nuzzles his cheek in, presses his mouth against the sharp edge of her shoulder. "When you can lie perfectly, what will the lie be?"
Pen
"I cannot tell you without compromising the perfection of the lie; you would know it was a lie then, and be prepared; and see through it; and it would be as gauze; the sun shining behind it, brilliant and blinding; and all you would see would be the lie, because the rest faded, and that is not the way to lie perfectly. The perfect lie is an invisible stitch which holds the entire thing together."
Pen: like the sea, she shifts; not restless, but always in motion; motion is poetry: it is the crash and the clamor, the stillness and the gleaming; it is the shadow, too, and the delicacy of salt-spray; and Pen shifting only makes her arms into a more comfortable cradle, turns her head so she - not see Nick. He is resting on her back; but she can see the general direction he is in; his forehead; his eyelashes, maybe, one eye; one eyebrow. The shadow beneath his curls.
"The talking book was not outrageous," and she is, dismissive. "It was only uncanny. Do you want to change your answer? Why'd you say that one?"
Nick
"Would it have to be a lie to me?" he asks, and his voice is beginning to sound faraway even though she shifts beneath him. His body sways with her, and it is becoming heavy. "I just liked the talking book story. I can't remember what it said to you, just that I thought it was really weird and strange at the time."
Pen
"No, I meant - " Pen stops. She closes her eyes because they are what she is sharpest with, what she is extraordinarily perceptive with, and it is good to do without one's edge. Every edge becomes blunted eventually: she remembers being told that. Then, "Crow, you should make me that golden sliver of the sun now."
Nick
There is an inquiring noise, a soft thing that curls at the edge see, the way a sliver of wood will curl in flame and turn to smoke and ash. He would like to stay exactly where he is; Pen's back is comfortable. "What did you mean?" His hand stirs against her back again, and she can hear a soft little exhale as he reluctantly draws himself up and away from her.
Pen
"I meant to ask why'd you say your first answer - dating Rob," Pen says, and she nestles deeper into Nick's lap. Now that he isn't resting on her back, she is cold; he is warm; and so it is. She only nestles for a moment before it becomes this fierce thing; before the ferocity dissolves; she recedes and lets him stand, sitting up and raking he fingers through her still-tangled hair, drawing the robe closed with a sharp gesture.
Nick
"Because I just thought it was funny and found it difficult to wrap my head around now," Nick says, and there is a shrug of his shoulders as he rests his fingertips on the table and pushes himself to his feet. There is a glance down toward her once he is vertical, an searching thing, and he reaches out to catch a curl and brush it back to the correct side of her part. "Did I upset you?"
Pen
Medusa curls in the morning, before he is usually awake to see them. They have a life of their own, crackle and hiss should a brush come near, and cling to his fingers, wrap around, constrict, tangle; it is not so easy to brush one away. "I just want to know; sometimes I am curious about how you see me." Pen smiles faintly. "Often it is clear in a way I can't reach; sometimes it seems as if you know me better than I do. But sometimes not."
Nick
"Well, I didn't always know you," he says, and when it becomes clear that the curl will snag and pull if he should shift it too far, he lets it fall back and gently sweeps a hand over her head instead. "I see you as the bravest, most generous and most loving person I've ever known," he says. There is a beat; there is a smile. "Should I tell you that more often?"
Pen
"No," Pen says. "I don't need you to tell me that."
Nick
"Well, that's how I see you," he says. He is still watching her, and gently brushes his thumb over her jaw. There is a foot that is tilted toward the kitchen, and another that remains firmly in place. He is awake, now, and watchful. "Do you still want more breakfast?"
Pen
"I know it is," Pen replies. In the chair she stretches, arcing her back as if she wanted it to crack, then sinking in languor against the chair's back, crossing one leg over the next. She has long legs; there is a small scar on the back of one leg, right by her achilles tendon. Nick knows its story. "Sometimes I am curious situationally. I know how you -- you burn in my chest; and of course I do. A golden sliver of the sun, for my consumption. You furnish that dish, and I'll take my shower." Pen, she stands and wraps her arms around Nick's waist, holding him while she's telling him to go: of course. "Will you be able to make it?" A bit of mockery there, even- light-heated, light-handed, a wry curl to the tilt of her mouth.
Nick
Nick nestles his face in against her neck, against her shoulder, and in that moment she might begin to more seriously doubt that he is going to make it. Then he says, "Yes, I can make it. I will make it." He sounds as though he is convincing himself. Because he is.
When he pulls away it's after he places a kiss there on her collarbone, and it's to shuffle his way back to the kitchen so that he can peel and slice an apple, cut a slice of bread (or two) for the toaster. The smell of honey and clove will reach her, upstairs after she steps out of the shower. When she returns later she will find two plates laid out, and fresh toast that is just beginning to cool, smeared with goat cheese.
So she has her sliver of the sun, and Nick manages to stay up just long enough to eat it with her. She has the sun, and soon enough he has his blankets, and curtains that make their bedroom as dark as a moonless night.
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