nearamir | for reignfall

for reignfall | modern au

Faramir has established himself pretty thoroughly, without entirely meaning to, as a regular here. It's the kind of place, after all, where a man like him can easily spend hours, either browsing the second-hand bookshelves or just sipping at a hot drink and watching the world go by. It's good, he's decided, to have places like that. Peaceful places, where people know you, and nobody asks anything of you besides good manners and a decent tip - both of which he is more than happy to provide.

Over the past few months, he's got into the habit of spending his Saturday afternoons at the coffee shop, settled into the nook by the window with a latte and a notebook, where he can either read whatever catches his eye, or scribble down poetry of his own. His therapist encourages this, but that isn't why he does it; he does it because he always has, because it puts his mind at ease, and because when his time is his own, he may as well indulge in softer interests.

And because nobody remains to push him towards manlier occupations. There's that, too. He has nothing to prove, because with his father gone, he has nobody to prove it to; and sometimes he doubts whether that's a good enough reason, but it isn't as though he can go back to the Army. The shrapnel lodged under his rib has seen to that. So he's free to grow out his hair, which is now well past his shoulders and a far cry from the regulation cut he had a couple of years ago; he's free to shift his focus from strategy to literature; and he's free to sit in coffee shops with a notebook of poetry and a fairtrade latte, if that's what he wants to do.

He has, however, been away for a couple of weeks. There's something rather gratifying in finding that his absence has been noticed - the barista exclaims when he comes in, says they were starting to worry; and his table is, thankfully, free. He settles back into his usual place, smiling a little, and reaches into his tote for his notebook and pen. It's nice to belong somewhere, after all.

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His eyebrows raise a little, in restrained surprise. Half a miracle, indeed: he has not often thought on such company, and it had not occurred to him to make the connection between a girl in his favourite coffee shop and the distant idea of Tywin Lannister's daughter.

What he thinks, but does not say, is that the thought is a somewhat unpleasant one; Lannister is not a name much esteemed in his experience, since for all his flaws, Denethor Stewart was always a man who respected at least the appearance of honourable dealings. Dealing with the Lannisters was a matter of polite necessity, and of moving in some of the same circles; being well-mannered when necessity called for it did not prevent the worst gossip from finding its way back to the Stewart home. Including, now that he thinks of it, some that may have been about Cersei herself - and he is, in this moment, very glad that he did not listen too closely to it.

"Only half a miracle," he decides at last, with a little half-smile, "for one of the things that Father and I agreed most upon was that it was better that I leave to Boromir the kinds of engagements where we might have met. As I said, I am not so very sociable."

The brother who had passed away now suddenly had a name, and with the name, he had a face, too. She recalls him distinctly now, more so from when she was younger, when he had known to command a room with his jovial nature and strong bearing. Jaime had admired him somewhat, she is half-certain that crooked idea of entering the military had at least in part to do with becoming a man of comparable strength. He liked the idea of honour, of doing the right thing, defending others - mostly her. In her memory, Boromir is less off-puttingly gregarious than Robert, and distinctly less handsome than Faramir – still, to know that it is him who has died leaves her feeling.

Simply... feeling.

It doesn't occur to her that even a single rumour about her family could have reached Faramir, and if it did, she pretends it cannot matter. Siblings were meant to be close, and what jealous tongues have to theorise there is nothing a man with a mind like his would concern himself with. Granted, self-defence was an odd thing to plead when Aerys Targaryen had been stabbed in the back, but her brother was ultimately acquitted, even if his military dreams had come to an equally swift end. The Lannisters paid their debts and honoured their promises, however bloody, and she takes pride in the reputation –– even in the sort that brands her a truly heinous bitch.

Tyrion's words, not hers.

"My brother admired him a great deal. He would not say it like that, but I know it for a truth." What prompts her to tell such a truth, she does not know, but she distinctly loathes the idea that it has to do with the way she cannot tear her eyes from his. It is like following some forest path –

Good gods, what is happening to her?

"It is strange. I find you very sociable."

The lump in his throat is another thing that has become familiar. It came upon him often in these past few days, when the ceremony he attended once more brought him into contact with those who had known his brother; the grief is less raw, but the sense of injustice is not. He has never said it so bluntly as his father did, but in his heart he knows, too, that Boromir's loss was a grave and sorry one for all; in his heart, he knows that it should have been he who fell.

"Your brother was not alone in that." His eyes fall from hers first, turning downwards to his hands where they wrap around his coffee cup. "Boromir was a man much admired, and perhaps I am biased, but I would say that it was well-deserved." The smile that touches his lips is a melancholy one, but fond, too. He was one of those who admired Boromir, after all - an admiration not tempered, but rather heightened, by the knowledge of his elder brother's flaws and foibles. Now that his name is in the air, Faramir cannot help but think again of how Boromir might take this meeting: with what teasing and fond delight he might answer the news of his little brother's flirtations, and how he would laugh, and say that it had come later than anyone should have guessed.

He closes his eyes, and clears his throat, settling himself before he looks back up at Cersei. There is something almost apologetic in his smile. "Sociable may not be the word I meant. This is a different kind of thing, speaking to you this way. But parties and such affairs have always been more of a trial than a pleasure. Hence my lack of enthusiasm about this last weekend."

"I am sorry. I know those platitude do little to help with the loss. When I was little, I kicked a septon in the shin for the umpteenth assurance of how terrible it all was." She takes a careful sip of her coffee, and she realises quick enough that she might need to get herself another cup at this rate. Would it be too bold too quick, too open about any further intentions, if she ordered each of them one of those cinnamon rolls?

His smile is so apologetic that she wishes to wipe it away with something sweet.

She loves those parties, and she hates them, and she loves to hate them. She likes the admiring stares she catches, and the jealous ones, but she hates the conversations, the vast emptiness of the crowded rooms. That feeling seems directly related to the way she had enjoyed his company here, and how grave his absence had felt, even if they had never spoken much before this day. "You don't like the expectations of them? I always know that if someone is particularly thrilled to show up at one of them, I won't like a single word from his mouth. There is something so self-aggrandising about it at times." And she is only person worthy of such admiration, anyway. It is not aggrandising when she does it. "What did you do last week?"

He can likely tell that she is on the verge of counting two and two together, her mind picking through scrambles of news that she had heard rumours about in passing.

The mention of kicking septons does, for a moment, bring a less apologetic, more amused smile to his face. It is not, of course, something he would ever have done, or even considered - least of all as a child, when he did not have the courage or the certainty that adulthood has brought in certain matters - but it is oddly charming to think of, and he cannot help but sympathise. She is right: platitudes do little. When he was little, they only grieved him more. Now he is a man, he can see how they are meant, and be touched by them, but still, they do not bring back what is lost.

"There was a ceremony I had to attend." He is not embarrassed by it, precisely. It is only that it seems... unimportant, in the light of everything. He did not ask for a medal or a commendation, and it will no more bring back what has been lost than platitudes will, for it is only another form of the same. It had been in some ways pleasant, to see old comrades; in other ways, it had been a painful reminder of those who were not there. And it had felt, above all, too late. It might have had value, if his father had been there. If his father were not ashes scattered in the wind, a thousand miles away. "Military honours. A commendation in my name, and my lieutenant's promotion to my old post." He does smile at that, sipping his coffee. "I will say that he very much deserved it."

Truth be told, her methods these days would be different, too, and perhaps she has learned to nod at empty words and take them for what they are while swallowing her fury. Yet then, she had been a child, and there had been little else where she could have directed her confused, grief-fuelled rage, and the septon might not have been the first to offer hollow, comforting words, and gods be damned, he was not the last – but he was there in that wrong moment.

"Then you must have deserved yours too." He must be the most humble person she has ever met, and in some ways, it absolutely overwhelms her. She can cope just well with men who believe they have accomplished feats of world-wide relevance when they turned on their computers in the mid-morning to make some vaguely ill-informed investment choice. She does not know how to cope with a man who wins military honours and acts as if his friend's promotion was the weightier deal.

The war, for her, has been something that happened to other people, far away. It had only breathed coldly down her neck once, when her brother had decided to join the military, but there had been no more than basic training before the Incident that saw him discharged, and then she didn't have to fear that distant war again. Some of the men who fell were men she vaguely knew, more in passing than anything else – Boromir, for one. The old Stark and his eldest son. Rhaegar Targaryen, of course, but knowing had been quite the relative term there, too. And now there is Faramir, who returned whole enough, and commended. "I am glad you came back."

Perhaps she does simply mean the café.

He almost answers; almost tells her what is on his mind: that it does not matter whether he deserved it or not, because the thing itself does not matter. He wants to explain that it isn't a matter of deserving, that he knows what he did, and that both the cost and the reward of it are a year in the past. He wants to say aloud that it is more important to have seen Beregond promoted, to have seen Beregond live to be promoted, than any commendation pinned to a uniform that he no longer wears. He has never sought glory for its own sake, and what is the value of a medal and words in a book, against the respect of good men?

But he says none of that, because experience tells him that it only opens the way for a longer conversation and deeper misunderstanding; because she seems to have decided that it is modesty that drives him to brush it aside, and because he does not need to convince her. He does not want to sit overlong, either, with the question of who deserves what. Deserve is a Pandora's box that, once opened, cannot be closed.

He just smiles faintly, and meets her eyes again for a moment. "As am I. There is a great deal I would have missed out on, if I had not come back."

And, at least for the moment, he does mean the café.

"Demanding your attention today was a good choice." There is a hint of pride in her voice, as if she succeeded in something she had dwelled on for quite some time, and even she might have to admit – if only to herself – that this was the case. That she had wanted his attention, and had not received it in the way she normally might, which had only made her want it more.

And now that she has it, she is unwilling to let it go.

The coffee-concoction she has chosen is sweet on her tongue, though she supposed it would be sweeter if he kissed her in some darkened corner. That she must wait at least until after their date to show him to her bedroom seems almost torturous. "Truth be told, I spent a good few months wondering if you had a partner of sorts."

He cannot help but laugh at that, a low chuckle that seems to dispel some of the tension in him. It is a lighter topic, and a more comfortable one, than that of deserving and weighty commendation.

"I would not have been offended, you know, if you had asked." Surprised, perhaps. He still is a little surprised - for while he is aware that he is not ugly or particularly loathsome to women, he rarely gives much thought to them being interested in him, and she is young and beautiful and no doubt has better options available - but that is not at all an unpleasant thing. He does not think he would have minded, if she had approached him earlier.

But he might not have been so inclined to answer her, if she had. There is something about the fact that she noticed his absence and commented on it, something in how this conversation has gone, that casts her in a slightly different light.

"For what it's worth, the answer would have been no, whenever you asked. It has been a year or more since I went on a date."

"Then I had better make it a good one." Her smile is soft and enticing, but in her mind, there is a neon sign that flashes and screams Has This Man Not Had Sex In Over A Year. This is not the sort of thing that happens in her world, she is greedy for the little pleasures, no matter how badly she takes them, or how ill-advised they are. There are politics attached to her dates, usually, which is why they rarely lead to anything, much less something fun, and in some ways, now that she knows who he is, this should feel the same.

It does not.

Which is strange.

"I really thought I missed my chance."

Her smile is a gentle one, he thinks: warm and inviting, and with an intensity in her eyes that is at once appealing and a little startling. He smiles in answer, shaking his head. It is a strange thought, that she would have been worried in the slightest about missing her chance - a strange thought that anyone could think that of him. And yet, why would it be strange for her to think it? She knows little enough about him, sees him rarely enough, that there is no reason she would know the kind of man he is; nor to know the kind of man that, despite his father's aspirations, he is not.

"You have missed nothing," he reassures her, in lieu of anything better to say. "Though I am glad that the chance was taken. I would not have dared ask." Not when she is so much younger than he is, and so much untouched by the things that haunt him; not when she is so casual an acquaintance, and one he knows so little about.

"I just saw the sort of words you write with your own hands. I missed a great deal." Or rather, she could only guess at it, but her wishful guessing had been terribly close to reality.

Her cup is near finished, and she wonders now if she should do as he did and order another, or rather, if she ought to wait until he, too, is done, so that she might twist their talk into further steps. The gods know she would go on something as ordinary and, usually, boring as a walk to spend just a tad more time with him.

This is not brought on by some ridiculous and sappy feeling, of course: she just believes that more time spent is what she needs to see an opening to grab him by the collar to kiss him. "There's an exhibition at the art gallery," and she could not tell by which artist it is, or what is being displayed, not even if her life depended on it. "If you're not too busy after this?"

"You missed nothing that cannot be recovered, then," he corrects himself, and there is in his voice a hint of laughter. He is not a man much touched by flattery, and yet he does feel its effect - does find himself strangely charmed by her flirtations, and by the impulse behind them. It has a lightness to it which he is unaccustomed to, and which, in truth, he has sorely needed; and she has in her approach a confidence that is more winning than anything she could actually say or do with it.

He reaches for his notebook - he will not, after all, be writing any more - and draws it towards him, shaking his head with a smile.

"I am not busy at all." That is the truth: there is a reason he comes here on Saturdays, and it is that he has no other commitments between now and the morning. "And, with that in mind, how could I refuse so kind an invitation?"

"I don't much believe in waiting, I have found." So much of a woman's life seems to be tied to waiting for the right moment, to reach some imaginary goal, or to please another with her patience. It is not for her. It nearly cost her this little taste of freedom once, she will not repeat the same mistake.

That isn't to say she isn't prone to repeating mistakes over and over again in different ways. She did, in fact, have plans after this, for one – but nothing that she would mind being a no-show on, though she might try and sneak in a call to excuse herself. If she remembers.

"Then it's decided."

"Is it?" There is a hint of bemusement in his smile, and of amusement too: truthful enough to say she doesn't believe in waiting. It does not seem to him an unpleasant thing. It reminds him more than anything of Boromir, if he is honest - of how he would barrel through doubt and over-weighty thought and cut direct to what he wanted - and that makes her forthrightness oddly, comfortingly familiar. Just because he may at times be more a dreamer than a man of action, it does not mean he fails to appreciate bold and decisive certainty in others. In fact, he realises, it is quite attractive in itself, aside from her beauty.

There is a great deal that is attractive in her, now that he allows himself to look.

So he will gladly walk with her to the gallery, and while the exhibit itself turns out to be one which does not hold all that much interest for him, still it is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. He had not expected any such thing, and it is a nice surprise to return home that night with the sense of something beginning, in a life that for so many years has seemed to hold only endings. Truthfully, little of import has happened - company over coffee, a stroll through a gallery - and yet he finds that he is smiling, that he hums as he makes himself dinner, and that when he does retrieve his phone to find her text waiting for him, there is a strange excitement that it sparks in him. He takes a few minutes to text her back - thanking her for a lovely afternoon, and letting her know that he looks forwards to their dinner - and then adds her to a contacts list that still holds the numbers of too many dead men. There is, in all of this, an unfamiliar joy that bubbles beneath the surface; he cannot quite shake the sense that this is the best thing to happen to him in some time.

When the evening they have arranged does come, he meets it with enthusiasm. A suit seems like overkill, but he does arrive at the restaurant looking a good deal sharper than he did at the café, in a freshly pressed shirt and waistcoat, with his hair combed back into a much neater bun. He even brings flowers, a small bouquet of wildflowers picked in the woods, carefully wrapped so that she can put them into her bag if she wants. He is early, of course; it has been so long since he did anything like this that he is not entirely sure what to do with himself, but he does disguise that fact well, and as the date continues on, so he begins to relax, to smile and to be more readily himself. And it is... nice. It is so very, very nice.

Her dates have ended in lavish gifts and in rides in luxury cars, in bars ordinary people do not even know exist and restaurants that serve gold-dappled cakes to their gold-dappled guests. Exceptions were found in hours with her brother, where the word date alone is treated like poison by her, and eyes may never be on them at all. And yet between all this, she finds herself in an art gallery with a man she wishes to know, and while the art does not touch her, she finds herself smiling an honest, genuine smile more often than on plenty of those other dates combined.

Afterwards, she drops by the gathering she meant to neglect, an appearance for appearance' sake, has a glass of wine and no patience for others, and when she gets home, his text has arrived. She reads it in her chaise longue, and then reads it twice more with her heart pattering like a trapped bird. Her own reply is succinct, but honest: she, too, had a lovely time, and she, too, cannot wait to see him for dinner.

It isn't silence, after that, she seems to make a habit of texting him, albeit those messages tend to be inquisitive, if inconsequential. Is he well, she asks on one day. She has a complaint to be raised over a pile of documents her lessons require on another. To agree on dates and times for their next rendezvous, she calls him with little warning, preferring his voice to his, she is loathe to admit it, slow typing.

For the first time in her romantic life, she is almost not late. For the occasion, she has chosen a dress that is neither casual, nor too formal to be beyond any point of comfort, in a deep green that is meant to bring out her eyes – something about him strikes her as a man who prefers the shades of the forest to those of blood. The wildflowers imply she might have been right, but there isn't immediate room for so calculating a thought when she receives them with a kiss to his cheek. She is tender with them where she would normally neglect to pay any attentions to the bouquets she receives.

"It has been a long time since I enjoyed a date this much," she tells him, shocked by her own honesty and drunk – not on the glass of wine she has been nursing, paired perfectly with her food – on his company. Her eyes wander to her flowers. "Say, do you know how to press flowers?"

She is beautiful, in the greens and golds of a woodland summer, and he is struck anew by the strangeness of the situation, that fluttering newness that rises in his chest. He has enjoyed talking to her on the phone, when she calls him, but it is not at all the same thing as meeting in person - and there is something fundamentally different in this meeting, a change in who they are to one another. She seems to appreciate his small gift, and that is a relief, because he had worried that she might not. She seems like a woman more used to receiving jewellery and expensive trinkets than the flowers of the forest; but he will not be less than himself in this, and he will not lead her astray when it comes to who he is.

He smiles at her question, and all the more so at her comment; a smile wide enough that, for a moment, it almost drives the grave and sorrowing shadow from his eyes.

"I do," he answers, with a little nod. "If you have a heavy book and some kitchen roll, it's really quite easy." His eyes follow hers to the flowers, then drift back to her face, the candlelight gleaming in emerald eyes and catching its reflections in golden hair. His smile softens, and there, again, is something that is close to shyness. "I would be happy to show you."

Kitchen roll, she thinks, do I even own kitchen roll? The contents of her kitchen are not as much a mystery as they could be: she does, on occasion, have groceries delivered, after all. She prepares her own coffee and the occasional cup of tea, she can prepare a passable breakfast. Yet the majority of what she eats is delivered or picked up, dinners out are more common for her than a meal she prepared herself.

Before she can dwell on whether or not basic everyday items for cleaning purposes are not perpetually her maid's business, or if she will need to make do with tissues, he suggests that he might show her. She decided in this very moment that, for all intends and purposes, she does have kitchen roll at home. By the time he could discover that she doesn't, he is hopefully otherwise occupied.

Her eyes meet his again, and she is almost convinced he, too, must feel that jolt between them, that spark, and her smile is warm, inviting, and lazed with another sort of appetite altogether. Dating has never been difficult for her – it is easy to be asked out, to wade through the dull conversation, to take the gifts. This is easy, too, but it does not feel like her usual rendezvous: she wants to be here, and while one day, the novelty of forest-grown flowers, handpicked just for her, will likely wear off, and while she loves gold too much to be denied these kinds of gifts... For now, the way her heart beats just a tad harder is real, and she wants it to last. She wants it to lead somewhere further than her sheets. "I would love for you to join me tonight."

He is not blind to the heat that lies behind that smile, although he would not swear to its intent: regardless, it does stir in him an answering warmth, one that makes him wonder whether this might not lead, in time, to more than goodnight kisses and the brush of knees beneath the table (which is, truthfully, hard to avoid at times, with legs as long as his). There is, in her look, a certain promise of future pleasures, of dates in some more intimate venue, and kisses that come with more than their share of passion. He would be lying if he claimed that the thought was an unpleasant one.

It is not, then, entirely a surprise when she invites him to join her after dinner; it is not a surprise, but it is a cause for hesitation. He would not want, after all, to overstep; he does not want to let her eagerness get the better of her common sense. There is certainly a part of him that whispers that going home with her on the first date might be taken amiss, that she might mistake him for someone who wants nothing more than a feverish fumble and a hasty exit. He is not such a man, and never has been: the thought unsettles him.

And yet, he did offer to show her how to press his flowers, and flimsy though it might be, it is excuse enough to allow for what he cannot deny is a pleasant suggestion. Perhaps he is a little curious, too, to know her better: to see where she lives, and who she is when she is not around him. He sips his wine, and smiles across the table at her, nodding.

"I would be honoured."

She likes to accuse people of intent, and it is the same in this moment. His knee brushes against hers, bared from the way she sits. It must be a calculated seeking of closeness, it cannot be purely incidental. Is he, just as she is, wondering what it will be like to share a kiss? To be pressed skin to skin, or, less sweetly put: does he already imagine himself in her bed, has he pictured, in detail, what it would be like to get her out of this dress and under him for their mutual pleasure?

She crosses her legs, and has her foot brush against his shin, slow and teasing, and, if he wishes to imagine it this way, purely there by chance.

That he is honoured draws a breath of laughter from her, light and brief, but honest all the same. There is no doubt in her mind that they will end in her bed tonight – if they make it quite this far, and do not end up giving in to one another about halfway there. That he might wish to take it slow for his own sake, or that he had the consideration for her, has not occurred to her yet. The way he phrases what she deems to be excitement – nervous excitement, perhaps, but excitement all the same – only impresses on her how well thought-out her own choice is. He will show an interest in her finding pleasure in turn; that is more than she is naturally inclined to expect of anyone who is not... a bit too close for most people's comfort. She watches him from beneath her lashes. "I will give you the grand tour. It's a clear night, we could have a glass of wine on the balcony."

After they've fucked, of course, and assuming his interest remains so steadfast. It is hard to imagine him fleeing, though, yet she does not know what else to picture. Indifference would be business-like, even if sometimes feigned. Enthusiasm is usually a sign that she is the one doing a great deal of manipulating. That he might meet her as an equal, just as he does now, even after – it is an odd thing to even imagine.

There is a weight in that look, in the lowered lids and the gleam of green eyes through the shadows of long lashes, that is undeniable; and there is, perhaps, a slight darkening of his own eyes in answer, a shift in focus. But it is slight, and it is under control; the trace of her foot against his leg is sweetly promising, but he has never been one to take promises unspoken. He does not dwell on the parting of her lips, the breathy sound of her laughter; he does not let himself linger on what other breathy sounds might be drawn from those lips. He does not think, because he will not be so crude as to think, how those sharp green eyes might look misted and upturned, or how her touch might trail just as slowly as that brush of her foot, which he is not blind enough to mistake now for chance.

He does not think on any of that, because that path leads, at best, to embarrassment when he stands up, and at worst, to actual harm. But he does think, when she watches him across the table, of how her mouth might feel against his, whether the wine might not be sweeter from her lips. He does not think she would object - a thing that is, in itself, still a kind of wonder. She has invited him in. There is an excitement that is almost fear that goes along with that: a sense of a rubicon, a step towards something more serious than a casual talk in a coffee shop, or a walk through an art gallery.

He had not realised, until their conversation, how much he has craved that. How lonely, despite all his acquaintances and all the people he sees day by day, he has been.

"I cannot imagine anything lovelier," he replies, smiling, and in the moment, means it.

There is no comment that might hint at what he might wish to do to her later that night, nor does he seem inclined to touch her in some unbidden way to illustrate his interest. Of course, no every single man she has been on a date with has been forward, much less forward to the point of boundary crossing – but by the time she has invited them to her home, some natural banter in the direction usually followed. Not that she she hasn't been known to change her mind at the last minute, if the pay-off did not seem quite as sweet as she had initially hoped.

And yet she is not thinking much of a pay-off in this moment. She wants him, and it has to be him, it has to be him on her balcony with the wine, and it has to be him in her bed later that night, if she can quite make it happen. It is certainly him she is thinking of kissing, wondering if he would come to be so at ease that she could let down his hair and tangle her fingers in it. There is no business reason to this, no clear advancement that she would think him inclined toward granting –– and that makes it quite confusing to want him this much, for nothing but the sake of his company.

"This is the most pleasant date I have had in a long time," she admits, perhaps partly drawn by that smile of his, and she would like to curse herself in the next moment, as she is prone to doing for any personal revelation.

He does not doubt, in his heart of hearts, that she says this to many men - and yet, seeing the small changes in her expression, the way she looks almost as though she regrets saying it, he does not doubt that she means it, either. That thought brings a warm kind of comfort, a bright glow of feeling that he may have been the cause of her happiness.

Perhaps that he may yet cause her other happinesses, if she allows it. That, too, is a pleasing thought. For too much of his life has pleasure been a distant and irrelevant aim; what he has offered of himself has been for honour and for safety and for the simple practicality of survival, but not for joy. Even since his discharge, not for joy. He has felt, at times, that he is out of the way of recognising joy when it comes, far less giving it to others.

Yet this is joy that he feels, and it has not come at any cost to her or anyone else, and there is that blossoming of hope again, of something beginning. His eyes drop from hers, almost shyly, and he takes another sip of wine.

"Then I am glad, because I should hate to think that I was the only one enjoying myself."

There it is again, that genuine interest in her and her comforts. It is not in a man's nature, or so she has been taught and learned, to think much of her enjoyment – in fact, the less aware they are, the better. And yet, he makes it sound like an earnest anxiety, her boredom or her disinterest.

Finally, she lifts her fork to the little cake she chose for a dessert, and there is a hint of excitement as she punctures its side, releasing the soft, warm chocolate within. Without thinking, she offers him a taste from her own bit of cutlery. "You should try it while it's still hot."

It is the very thoughtlessness of it that makes him accept the offer with a smile, leaning across the table to take the morsel from her fork. It does not feel to him like a conscious and calculated flirtation on her part, and so it is easier to let himself forget that it may be an inappropriate one to accept.

The cake is sweet and hot against his tongue, thick chocolate warming his mouth as he settles back into his seat, still smiling and only a little pink-faced. "It's very good," he says, when he has swallowed, and reaches for his napkin to dab the traces of chocolate off the corner of his mouth. His eyes do not leave hers, and that, too, is unconsidered. "Very sweet." Then, clearing his throat and looking away: "Thank you for sharing."

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<3!!!

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