flora
"No," Flora laughs, shaking her head, curls bouncing messily around her shoulders. "Obviously it wouldn’t work on me. But if it were me, I’d have figured out where you were so I could ‘accidentally’ run into you, obviously look my best to make you feel horrible about having ever left my side." She grins, teeth flashing. "But, don’t pull a Koa, Kai. Don’t overthink your way into making her think you don’t care at all." Gods knew how shit Koa had made Soh feel just because he was spinning his wheels instead of just showing up.
She blinks, caught somewhere between the lingering heat of the gin and the fraying edge of the conversation. The thing about snoring gets lost in the haze, and she doesn’t bother trying to parse who said what first. Instead, she lifts a hand vaguely and lets it fall back down to snipe a gummy worm with a shrug.
What she does notice clearly, is the shift in him. She sees it like a weather change on the horizon, feels it ripple out in the silence that follows his quiet, stung retreat. The gummy worms are abandoned. The tiles sit forgotten between them. And Kaisel just...sinks. And gods it's probably absolutely inappropriate, but it makes her smile. Because there is something so perfectly Kai about the dramatics of it. Not the pain—she knows that too well. But the flair. The collapse. The full-body, sideways swan dive into feeling too much at once. Exhaling, Flora, like a reflection in a cracked mirror, lets herself slide down onto her side, stretching out so she can see him without craning her neck.
Propping her chin on her hand, she studies him, eyes soft and a little sad. "What’s wrong?"
She lets the question linger, low and sincere, before adding quietly, "You’re right. I could have come over, but...everything feels so weird." Her fingers play idly with the gummy worm nearest her, coiling and uncoiling it like a nervous habit. "Anytime Koa and Soh are around it’s like...I’m not allowed to be. Like I’m a storm cloud about to ruin their perfect day just by existing."
Her voice is quiet now, not a whisper, just worn. "Soh told me about what happened at the Hanged Man with them after, and...I dunno, I just don't want to ruin it for either of them." She glances over at Kai again, still sprawled and silent. "There’s nothing I can do to fix it without making it more awkward. So yeah...sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone like Jack, where at least I can't make things worse."
She blinks, caught somewhere between the lingering heat of the gin and the fraying edge of the conversation. The thing about snoring gets lost in the haze, and she doesn’t bother trying to parse who said what first. Instead, she lifts a hand vaguely and lets it fall back down to snipe a gummy worm with a shrug.
What she does notice clearly, is the shift in him. She sees it like a weather change on the horizon, feels it ripple out in the silence that follows his quiet, stung retreat. The gummy worms are abandoned. The tiles sit forgotten between them. And Kaisel just...sinks. And gods it's probably absolutely inappropriate, but it makes her smile. Because there is something so perfectly Kai about the dramatics of it. Not the pain—she knows that too well. But the flair. The collapse. The full-body, sideways swan dive into feeling too much at once. Exhaling, Flora, like a reflection in a cracked mirror, lets herself slide down onto her side, stretching out so she can see him without craning her neck.
Propping her chin on her hand, she studies him, eyes soft and a little sad. "What’s wrong?"
She lets the question linger, low and sincere, before adding quietly, "You’re right. I could have come over, but...everything feels so weird." Her fingers play idly with the gummy worm nearest her, coiling and uncoiling it like a nervous habit. "Anytime Koa and Soh are around it’s like...I’m not allowed to be. Like I’m a storm cloud about to ruin their perfect day just by existing."
Her voice is quiet now, not a whisper, just worn. "Soh told me about what happened at the Hanged Man with them after, and...I dunno, I just don't want to ruin it for either of them." She glances over at Kai again, still sprawled and silent. "There’s nothing I can do to fix it without making it more awkward. So yeah...sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone like Jack, where at least I can't make things worse."
My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you
And now I'm covered in you
