When she thinks she can see him without crying again, she holds her baby close and walks silently back to Rana's.
The room has been replaced with - something else. She has no idea what this means. She has nobody to ask but Rana. Everything she asks places her further in his debt, of course, but it hardly matters now.
She steps inside.
"I did. I needed you very much. I needed -
" - they were all so worried about me, you know, not even for no reason, but they never - I don't think they were very good at asking what I wanted. And I don't think it occurs to me very easily to try. So - I'm very glad it occurs to you."
"It's cities, you know, it's the reason why they're bad, they take all the parts of you and try to hook them up where people expect them to be."
"Yeah.
"We don't even have to worry about food very much anymore, I can go into Milliways to eat until the night ends, right - "
"Yeah. The bar must not be a person because it doesn't seem to count towards any debts."
Nodnod. "There's a tab. But I can pay that back with Colorado Springs money, probably, if I want to settle up. In a hundred years."
Kissing is way better when you're not trapped in a stupid orange house in a country you don't understand with a disapproving mindreading alien perched nearby. Makes it way easier to kiss him back.
Oh good. She likes being delightful. He's very delightful too. And should definitely keep kissing her.
He is so happy about all of his life choices!!! All of them. Especially this one.
Cecelia's clothing is getting in the way of additional kissing.
- she is now experiencing some kind of weird emotion that can't quite decide whether it's happiness or terror, and then after a second it decides to spare her the terror and settle for making her sick.
She - stops moving and does not otherwise respond.
- he pulls away from her.
He has run into this problem before and he didn't know what to do with it and now he knows a lot more -
- but not enough to just not do this, apparently, and that's frustrating, and -
- he tugs her sleeve back onto her shoulder and finds somewhere clothed to lean his head against and holds her.
- okay, yeah, that's okay, she can just cling for a bit. She will do that.
"...Sorry."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ...scare you? If that's the thing? Make some other part of you think it needed to be in charge now?"
Nodnodnod.
"I don't know. How it works. Exactly. Just - felt very, very nice, and then suddenly I felt sick."
"Well, now we know what's nice and what's scary so hopefully it will not happen again."
"I guess."
"I kind of - it's not like none of me wants you to touch me, it's just -
" - I think we were in the middle of a discussion about what we were, and whether it was any like being married, and then we realized we could pause time for as long as we wanted to figure it out, and we got very excited, and we - maybe have not actually done the part where we figure things out."
Snuggle.
"I think - before any of this - a long time ago I would've said that it was okay to have sex or do - things past kissing - as long as you were married, and then a lot of stuff happened to make it terrifying, and I learned that - at least sometimes it hurts, a lot, and now I don't know how much of this is - being afraid of it hurting, and how much is being afraid of just the thing itself, and how much is wanting it to be something - I don't know - properly contextualized - "
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