[ She's taking this whole thing with remarkable equanimity. But, Hei reminds himself, that's likely the effects of the body-stone. His own paranoia -- always a quiet, low-level simmer -- has likewise evaporated. He has an image of someone opening up their heads like a pair of tin cans, and taking a slender needle to draw out the juice from that three-millimeter area of their brains that is the fear center. ]
[ At the tug of her hand, he glances down. With a blurred shock, he thinks she's so close, even as she seems so vanishingly far these days. That little gesture of hers, that way of tipping her face back to look up into his height, reminds him again of her teenaged self, more than any particular feature. She is still enveloped by that same, strange, wonderful luminosity: a quicksilver liveliness. ]
[ Against his will, he reaches out. A splay of fingertips across the curve of her cheek, skimming her jaw and chin -- before he gently detaches the other hand folded around hers. He settles next to her -- tilted out of alignment so they can face each other across one couch, feet nearly touching left to right, his socked foot near her leather-shod one. ]
[ His mouth feels disconnected from his brain. Blinking slowly, he wills both of them to syc up. ]
no subject
[ At the tug of her hand, he glances down. With a blurred shock, he thinks she's so close, even as she seems so vanishingly far these days. That little gesture of hers, that way of tipping her face back to look up into his height, reminds him again of her teenaged self, more than any particular feature. She is still enveloped by that same, strange, wonderful luminosity: a quicksilver liveliness. ]
[ Against his will, he reaches out. A splay of fingertips across the curve of her cheek, skimming her jaw and chin -- before he gently detaches the other hand folded around hers. He settles next to her -- tilted out of alignment so they can face each other across one couch, feet nearly touching left to right, his socked foot near her leather-shod one. ]
[ His mouth feels disconnected from his brain. Blinking slowly, he wills both of them to syc up. ]
Should I call you a cab?