Soren woke at first light with somebody's arm across his chest and the immediate certainty that he was about to be in trouble.
<<Loraine: Hask wakes at half past six and counts heads at seven. It is twenty past six.>>
Right.
Hask was the one in charge of the cart and the stables as well.
Since he was the only who knew how to control the horses, his main job was often transporting the cart and managing them.
<<Lilith: Or, or, hear me out, you could stay and have another round.>>
Lilith.
<<Lilith: I'm just saying it's a nice arm and I don't get a lot of nice.>>
He got out from under it.
Reia made a sound into the pillow that was not a word and had opinions in it anyway, rolled over, and squinted at him getting into his shirt.
"Mm...You're going." she said more than asked.
"Cart at seven."
"Mm." She pushed her hair off her face. Her voice was flat and rough with sleep and a faint tone of satisfaction.
She let out a half groan and sat up a bit, pulling the sheets closer to cover her chest in the cold morning air.
She watched him as he got dressed slowly, her eyes staying on him a lot more than she should have and following the points of his body.
Her eyes trailed over his arms and torso, which had the most abundant of what looked like the remnants of scars.
Reia noticed them last night, though with what was going on she didn't find it appropriate to ask.
"Right. Two things, then I'm going back to sleep and you're going to be gone when I wake up, and that's fine."
"Go on."
"One. If Brannick's lot ever ask, you were never in this building." She held up a second finger. "Two. Don't make it strange."
He paused with one boot on.
"Make what strange?"
"*This.* You're going to walk out and then next time you come through my common room you're going to do a face, and then I'll have to do a face back because I can't feel my legs, and within a week everyone in the Broken Yoke will know." Reia dropped her hand.
"Which...which isn't a lot of people yes, but I'd rather people weren't in my business," She said with a slightly flushing face, a very faint pink colouring her cheek.
Soren had to do his best to calm his urges, which apparently didn't work from how Reia's eyes dropped and she looked back up like a guilty person before realising she wasn't the guilty party.
"Pervert..."
"You're just that pretty."
"Shameless"
"Guilty as charged."
She glared at the smirk on Soren's lips. She took a deep breath and continued from where she was cut off.
"So don't. It was a good night, I haven't had one of those in about two years, and I'd like it to stay a good night instead of turning into a whole thing."
"Understood."
"Don't say understood, you sound like a soldier."
"Understood."
She threw a pillow at him.
He caught it, put it back, and leaned over and kissed her once without hurrying, which was somehow more of a problem for her than anything he could have said.
"Good night," he agreed, and went to the door.
"Soren."
He stopped.
Reia was up on one elbow, and the flatness had gone out of her face, and what was under it was younger and much less sure.
"Last night. When you asked me whether I wanted to." She said it the way you report a fault with a roof.
"I've been thinking about it since about two in the morning, which is annoying, because I was supposed to be thinking about other things."
"Sorry."
"You're not." She sat up properly and pulled the blanket with her.
"I've turned men down before. Loads of them. That's not the thing. The thing is that every single time, turning them down was a fight. Usually it cost me something. A tip, or an evening, or a week of a man being difficult in my own common room."
Soren waited.
"And you stood there," Reia said, "and told me it'd be nothing if I said no, and you meant it, and I could tell you meant it, and I have been lying here for four hours realising I have never once in my whole life had a free no."
"That's a very low bar, Reia."
"I know it's a low bar." She pulled the blanket up.
"That's what's so annoying about you being the only one who's ever stepped over it and now I'm feeling things I shouldn't for what is supposed to be an in the moment thing."
"Well, we can have more moments at another time," Soren teased her, enjoying her reactions.
Reia calmed down and rolled her eyes even with a smile creeping on to her face, knowing throwing another pillow would only get her another kiss.
Though that's not necessarily a bad thing, she though before shaking her head and telling him to leave.
"Go on. You'll miss your cart."
Without missing a beat, Soren nodded, took a few steps forward, leaned over and gave her lips a quick peck.
"Sleep well..."
...
Soren walked out of the building and headed to where the cart was. His body felt content in a way he didn't know it could.
<<Lilith: Told you.>>
Told me what?
<<Lilith: Nothing. I'm having a lovely morning.>>
<<First Contact: Reia. Unranked. Free. Willing. Novel. Station Gap: Favourable (Free Citizen).>>
<<AWARD: 61 LP.>>
Eighty nine and sixty one.
<<Loraine: One hundred and fifty.>>
Out of eight hundred.
<<Loraine: Out of eight hundred. In thirty five days.>>
Soren walked down the market road in the grey.
That was one of the best night I'm likely to get. It paid sixty one.
<<Loraine: Yes.>>
So it isn't coming from that.
<<Lilith: ...Some of it will. Not most of it.>>
Say the rest.
<<Lilith: You worked it out on the towpath and you've been not-saying it for a fortnight so I wouldn't have to.>>
Say it anyway.
<<Lilith: Killing pays me.>> Her tone had gone small.
<<Since the merge. I don't know why, I don't like it, and I've checked eleven times hoping I'd read it wrong. Forty off Ost, and Ost was 7th Stage.>>
It scales like everything else you do.
<<Lilith: Rank. Gap. And how much it costs you.>> A pause.
<<I want it on the record that I am not asking. I never will. Not once, not if it leaves me at thirty eight percent for the rest of your life.>>
I know.
<<Lilith: But I won't shave the arithmetic either, because you'd find out and then you'd wonder what else I'd hidden.>>
Soren walked.
They've been running people through Vail's yard for fourteen months, he said. There are forty names in that column.
<<Lilith: ...Yes.>>
So I wasn't going to leave them alone regardless.
<<Loraine: For the record.>>
Go on.
<<Loraine: There is a version of this where you tell yourself the points are the reason and the men are the excuse. I would rather you did not lie to yourself about which is which. Not because I object. Because a man who lies about his own reasons stops being able to predict his own behaviour, and I have to plan around you.>>
Soren watched the bridge go past, and the blue door, and the bad sign.
I don't know yet, he said. I'll tell you when I do.
<<Loraine: ...That is the first honest answer you have given me.>>