"...well, right, which implies there's things, that we could be doing, besides sitting here blushing in a coffee shop, and that sounds like a good idea, just like, generally?"

"I might still have clarified the point if all we were gonna be doing was blushing in a coffee shop," he says.  "But.  There are thing we could be doing."

"I don't, um, I'm not... blushing in coffee shops... with anybody else right now." She looks down self-consciously into her rainbow sprinkles. "But I don't mind that kind of thing. It's like having friends, right? You don't hafta get mad when your friends have other friends."

He grins and bites his lip.  "That's pretty much exactly how I feel about it."

Tentative smile. "Oh... well, good."

"I even like it when my friends get along, from time to time."

"I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm not a hundred percent sure what you're getting at. But I think I might agree."

"Just thinking ahead a little," he says playfully.

"Well it's good that one of us is doing that. I'm pretty bad at it."

"Maybe you're just better than me at living in the moment," he says, trying to get the words out before he realizes how twee they are.

"You know what, I'll admit to that one."

"I'm glad you'll cop to at least some of your good qualities."  (Bryce @ Toby, inside his head: yes okay I hear it shut up.)

"Being adorable, living in the moment, spraypainting dungeon monsters in the face. That's me."

"I'm looking forward to getting to dig up more."  Why does he talk like this...

"Oh dang, now there's two of you..."

"Two of - oh, you mean me and Lenore?"

"Yeah. Going around making me acknowledge my positive qualities and stuff."

"...I do think you're - cooler than you realize - but I can ease off the teasing, if you like."

"No, it's okay. It's probably good for me or something. And, you know, I don't exactly mind people saying nice stuff about me."

"Just making sure."  Bryce has certainly had moods during which people insistently saying nice things about him were not helpful, though usually he is much more palpably miserable at times like that.  "Anyway, all I meant about my friends getting along was - " he ducks his head a little - "I was just, you know, laying the flirting on a little thicker."

"...wait, so did you mean that sometimes your flirty friends flirt with your other flirty friends and that's nice?"

"I did mean that," he says.  "And, you know, sometimes it's a little bit more than flirting."

She blushes. "Gosh..."

"Do you want an example?" he says, sounding somehow both a bit sly and a bit bashful.

Little wiggle. "Yeah..."