yeah I got heartbreak that I reminisce about
Flora blinks at him like he’s trying to sell her the sky and call it the ocean, incredulity flaring bright enough to sting. "I kissed you back," she reminds him, the words low and even, as if gentleness might keep them from shaking. "You said you’d do it again and I said I would too." Her teeth find the inside of her cheek until the taste turns metallic, and still the rest pushes forward because it has to. "And then you told me your date with Caly was amazing. What was I supposed to think?" For a moment Flora fidgets, restless in the sea of colour. "Seemed lik either you were fine sleeping with me and kissing me while you were actively trying to date someone else, or whatever it is between us didn’t actually matter to you." The exasperation threads through every syllable, a tight, humming wire she refuses to call hurt, because either way she looked at it cut deep.
As Kai says he’s been working on them being friends, Flora eyes roll before she can stop them, a little flash of silvered disdain beneath her lashes. "You’ve done nothing but make it worse," she says, arms cinching in tighter as if the sweater might keep her stitched. "I told Soh to tell you that. That whatever stupid quest you were doing, I didn’t want it, and I didn’t want you disappearing into it like that was some noble stand-in for a conversation."
Something clicks into place with an awful, hollow sound and she goes still, spine lifting as if a string draws tight between her shoulder blades. That Kai is painting it now as if he only went after Caly because she pointed him that way isn’t the truth she remembers; not with the way his voice had brightened when he talked about her, not with AmAzINg braided through every sentence, not with his affections for her threaded so openly it glinted like sun on water. The implication scrapes her raw and she bristles, heat banding across the bridge of her nose as the flowers seem to hush around her ankles. "At every turn you told me Caly was the one you wanted." The emphasis lands soft but sharp, an undertow tugging at the edges: if Caly was the one, what did that make Flora? Practice, placeholder, or problem? "That was the only reason I even heard from you, was so that you could tell me all about how your latest date had gone."
Then he mentions a letter and her mouth parts, the breath she’s holding slipping out as if someone has cracked the seal on a bottle. Soh hadn’t said a word about a letter? Betrayal burns hot and bright, small and furious as Spice’s frost. Flora tips her chin anyway, arranging her face into something cool and careless, as if she’s known all along. "Right," she says airily, "and what did you put in that letter, huh?" It sounds rhetorical, the kind of question you toss away like a coin into deep water, but her eyes won’t leave his for the answer. That he'd found the time to write to and see Caly only further solidified just how low on the dragoon's priorities she clearly was.
As Kai says he’s been working on them being friends, Flora eyes roll before she can stop them, a little flash of silvered disdain beneath her lashes. "You’ve done nothing but make it worse," she says, arms cinching in tighter as if the sweater might keep her stitched. "I told Soh to tell you that. That whatever stupid quest you were doing, I didn’t want it, and I didn’t want you disappearing into it like that was some noble stand-in for a conversation."
Something clicks into place with an awful, hollow sound and she goes still, spine lifting as if a string draws tight between her shoulder blades. That Kai is painting it now as if he only went after Caly because she pointed him that way isn’t the truth she remembers; not with the way his voice had brightened when he talked about her, not with AmAzINg braided through every sentence, not with his affections for her threaded so openly it glinted like sun on water. The implication scrapes her raw and she bristles, heat banding across the bridge of her nose as the flowers seem to hush around her ankles. "At every turn you told me Caly was the one you wanted." The emphasis lands soft but sharp, an undertow tugging at the edges: if Caly was the one, what did that make Flora? Practice, placeholder, or problem? "That was the only reason I even heard from you, was so that you could tell me all about how your latest date had gone."
Then he mentions a letter and her mouth parts, the breath she’s holding slipping out as if someone has cracked the seal on a bottle. Soh hadn’t said a word about a letter? Betrayal burns hot and bright, small and furious as Spice’s frost. Flora tips her chin anyway, arranging her face into something cool and careless, as if she’s known all along. "Right," she says airily, "and what did you put in that letter, huh?" It sounds rhetorical, the kind of question you toss away like a coin into deep water, but her eyes won’t leave his for the answer. That he'd found the time to write to and see Caly only further solidified just how low on the dragoon's priorities she clearly was.
real big things I still gotta figure out
