As she wonders over their mutual intentions, he feathers his fingers over her cheek as he had over her hair. She is so soft; but of course she is, beautiful thing, though there had been some metaphor-conscious part of him that had expected her to be as bright and hard and shimmering as her quality of character.
He tilts his head when she offers him that warning, unshy about meeting her gaze. "And you wouldn't have been touching me as you were if you didn't have the same thing on your mind. Or were you just not expecting me to pursue?" If there is warning in her, he echoes it; he had always wondered, a little, if his young self had been nothing more than an ego boost to a woman who could tell he was attracted to her.
Still, he lets his hand drop and tucks it back to his side, mild again in a moment. Should he be honest? Or should he tell her what she wants to hear?
In the end, it's solidarity to his younger self that informs his choice, and he levels with her. "However, it's likely that you're right in some sense. The young man that I was... he wouldn't climb into bed with a person for any reason short of being in love with them, or being on his way to that. You would be taking advantage of the fact that I am not that young man anymore... and in turn I'd be using your affection for that younger self to assuage my own curiosity about what it is that I had missed, having failed to take up your offer for something more casual so long ago.
"You weighed heavily on mind when I went home, Serene," he tells her, "I often wondered if I shouldn't have tried to decouple love and sex, just to see how we would have worked, or wondered what would have happened if I'd been here long enough... well. But in all likelihood I am only a figment, and so I have a unique opportunity to cheat fate, and very little to lose for the asking."
no subject
He tilts his head when she offers him that warning, unshy about meeting her gaze. "And you wouldn't have been touching me as you were if you didn't have the same thing on your mind. Or were you just not expecting me to pursue?" If there is warning in her, he echoes it; he had always wondered, a little, if his young self had been nothing more than an ego boost to a woman who could tell he was attracted to her.
Still, he lets his hand drop and tucks it back to his side, mild again in a moment. Should he be honest? Or should he tell her what she wants to hear?
In the end, it's solidarity to his younger self that informs his choice, and he levels with her. "However, it's likely that you're right in some sense. The young man that I was... he wouldn't climb into bed with a person for any reason short of being in love with them, or being on his way to that. You would be taking advantage of the fact that I am not that young man anymore... and in turn I'd be using your affection for that younger self to assuage my own curiosity about what it is that I had missed, having failed to take up your offer for something more casual so long ago.
"You weighed heavily on mind when I went home, Serene," he tells her, "I often wondered if I shouldn't have tried to decouple love and sex, just to see how we would have worked, or wondered what would have happened if I'd been here long enough... well. But in all likelihood I am only a figment, and so I have a unique opportunity to cheat fate, and very little to lose for the asking."