exeggutorhead | IC Inbox

[As soon as he gets out, he beelines right back over to the bed...although he slows down just a little as he gets closer, and when he flops down next to her, he doesn't cuddle right up. He's not...really sure how touchy-feely she'd want to be with him after all that.]

That sounds amazing.

And yeah, but it can wait a minute. It does feel a lot better than it did.

[He lets out a quiet snort, and while he's still kind of joking, that apologetic note is back in his voice as he continues.]

You took much better care of me than I deserved.

_{[It's probably a smart idea for them both to have a little distance. It's not that Heather feels scared or repelled in any way (honestly, as deadly earnest as she knows he'd been every time he snarled about hurting or killing them, it had still been a little hard to take him seriously when he clearly had no idea how to even function in his own skin), but... well.]

[It had been a long and incredibly weird for them both.]

[She does, however, reach out to take his good hand, giving it a squeeze.]}

Hey... you'd do the same for me, if the old me was a misanthropic, grudge-bearing zombie with an attitude problem.

_{[Making light is the best way she knows to show that everything is all right.]}

And... well, let's be real. You really didn't have any reason to think we actually wanted to help, did you?

[He squeezes her hand back, a half-smile of his own breaking onto his face.]

'Course I would. I'd even bring you your favorite frapp.

And hell...I didn't know what you were all going to do with me. I mean, there was Al, definitely the enemy. And Joker...I don't know what I thought he was doing there but he was a conspirator.

And then there was you, the alchemist mastermind behind it all.

[He punctuates that with a light poke at a ticklish spot on her neck. One that's quickly withdrawn, since it's with his bad hand, but all the same. Even if he's still feeling out of sorts, he knows that even a little bit of playfulness can go a long way for both of them.]

I thought I'd been sent on a mission to seduce secrets out of you and you'd caught on and...I don't know, you'd obviously done something.

_{[She's too exhausted to do much laughing, but she manages a breath of a chuckle at the poke, drawing her shoulder up.]}

I have no idea how you looked at this and arrived at the conclusion of 'alchemist mastermind'.

_{[... CONSIDERING THEY'D WOKEN UP IN BED TOGETHER, THOUGH, it's hard to blame him for the second part of his assumption. Which is why she laughs again at the the thought.]}

Then again, I guess the first thing any mastermind worth their salt would want to do with you is snuggle up, huh?

[He lets out a little 'pfff' of breath, grinning tiredly.]

Oh, you would be so surprised.

[He does that thing he does where he puts a hand up to his chest vainly, although it looks even sillier when he's lying back on the bed like he is.]

And of course they would, but they'd find out pretty quick that snuggling a homunculus is a lot more like snuggling an ice cube, right?

Edited 2016-08-20 07:29 (UTC)

_{[It looks ridiculous.]}

Well obviously that's why I had to turn you human, duh.

This all happened because I was, like, so cold and sad every night.

_{[She's giggling a little bit-- the surreality of this entire fucking day is kind of getting to her-- when there's a knock at the door and she slowly sits up, letting go of Envy's hand.]}

Oh-- food's here.

_{[NOURISHMENT.]}

Oh, god, it all makes sense now.

[If the food hadn't arrived just then, who knows what rabbit hole this narrative might have gone down, with them both so out of it. But the food does arrive, and Envy sits bolt upright immediately.]

[And when the macaroni is set down, he's not going to be doing any talking at all for a bit because he's way too busy putting it into his face, and the first bite gets an almost blissful expression out of him. He really was starving.]

This is so good.

[Talking with his mouth partially full because he wants to talk but he doesn't want to stop eating.]

_{[She doesn't join in right off the bat, lingering by the door for a moment to peer down the hallway after the room service attendant as they wheel their trolley back towards the elevator.]}

... That's the most dapper Graveler I've ever seen. It had a bowtie and everything.

_{[She didn't even know they had necks.]

[By the time she turns back, Envy's already in the process of demolishing the food, and she lets out another one of those quiet laughs at the sight, the sort that's equal parts amusement and relief. She'd been seriously worried about the fact that he'd gone without food for the entire freaking day-- getting him to stay hydrated was one thing, but there was little to no actual way to get food into him without literally spoon-feeding and that was such a bad idea that no one even suggested it.]

[And then the sudden return of a YAWNING VOID in her middle reminds her that SHE hadn't eaten much of anything either, and she sits down right there on the floor, grabbing a fork from the tray.]}

Hey, chipmunk-cheeks, save a little for me.

_{[THE SALADS ARE LEFT UNTOUCHED, IT'S COMFORT FOOD TIME.]}

[Normally, he'd have gotten right on up to go look at their room service-mon, but that would mean he would have to stop eating.]

[He does nudge the dish a little closer to her as she sits down. SHARING THE MACARONI IS THE LEAST HE CAN DO.]

[It's not until the macaroni is gone and so is the soup that he thinks to make a casual nod to what they'd been talking about before.]

Man, if I'm going to get captured by a mastermind alchemist, I want it to be you.

Not to mention, you're so much hotter than anyone else I ever got sent after.

[He laughs, clearly intending that as something funny. NO BIG DEAL.]

Hand me some water out of the fridge, could you? I think it's right over next to you.

_{[Between the two of them, it didn't take long at all to make the macaroni (which really was astonishingly good, those brochures talking about Pewter City hosting a bangin' culinary scene weren't kidding) disappear, and Heather finds herself leaning against the bed with a half-finished cup of the soup next to her. After filling up on hot food, the body's automatic response is to get really fucking sleepy.]

[But she nods, sitting up to scoot a few feet to the room's mini-fridge and pass Envy a bottle of water. She gets one for herself as an afterthought.]}

Heheh.

If I'm hotter, I'd hate to see what the competition looked like.

_{[Without even really thinking about it (because honestly, half of what Envy says can be boiled down to weird, snide humor), she's just sort of taken what he's saying as a joke.]}

Pfft, oh god, it was gross old men as far as the eye can see.

[He laughs again, and takes a long swig of the water, letting out a relieved sigh after he swallows. Even though they'd at least gotten him to take some water during the day, it hadn't been nearly enough.]

You're the best mission ever.

_{[She's literally still in the process of laughing when it sinks in that, while he's certainly joking, he's not... joking.]

[It's a good thing she wasn't still eating, because the food would have turned to ash in her mouth.]

[She lowers the bottle of water, still trying to smile. Because she doesn't actually know what to say in return.]}

Gross old men, huh...

Mmhm.

[He nods again around the water bottle before lowering it again so he can talk. He's out of it enough that he doesn't catch on to her sudden discomfort right away.]

Yeah, like...I did complain about why they almost all had to be ugly, but it made the job easier to get started.

Still not any fun though. Eeyuck.

[He makes an overly dramatic grossed out face. Possibly more disturbing than if he'd sounded uncomfortable about it is the fact that he, well...doesn't. Sure it had been unpleasant and he'd always preferred when it wasn't him having to do it, but it had just been how things were. Another part of the job.]

_{[ALARM BELLS. SO MANY.]

[On one hand, yeah, the fact that he talks about it so casually is... well, distinctly Envy, and if she were to turn her brain right off, it would be easy to go along with the carefree tone he's set.]

[BUT ON THE OTHER]

[WHAT THE FUCK]}

Your job was literally to sleep with people?

_{[She's still wearing that kind of... ghost of a smile, because she knows if she dropped it she'd just look horrified, but it's visibly lackluster.]

[She'd already known he did plenty of shady shit, and plenty of it willingly, but Heather can't see him... choosing that particular line of work. Why would anyone, if they had an alternative?]}

[Now he starts catching on to her discomfort, her change in tone.]

Don't worry about it, it wasn't a huge deal. It wasn't pleasant, but it was just part of things.

I mean, my actual job was to go look for talented alchemists who we could convince to do what we wanted. Seducing someone is a pretty easy way to convince them, and I could look like anyone, so if we didn't have anyone else who could do it our master'd send me after the ones that would work best on.

[Which answers her question about exactly how much choice was involved in this.]

_{[The thing that really makes her stomach turn isn't the idea that Envy was basically being every single femme fatale spy ever to grace the silver screen. No, that's... honestly, by itself, not even a huge surprise.]

[If she wasn't Heather Mason, if she was naiive and innocent, it would barely even be a blip on the radar. Hell, it might even be kinda sexy.]

[But she knows better.]

[She was Alessa Gillespie.]

[She'd had a 'job' too.]}

I'm not worried, I'm just-- you know that sending your kid out to have sex with people as a job is basically what a pimp does, right? A really twisted pimp?

Yeah, I know, but...it never seemed like it was too big of a deal.

I didn't like it, but it's not like it traumatized me.

[Not entirely true, but she's getting him after France. There's not nearly as much of that damage that's still readily apparent for her to have noticed. He lets out a quiet snort.]

And she definitely didn't ever see me as her kid. We weren't people, remember?

Homunculi don't have mothers.

_{[If she was being less CAREFUL about her words right now, she might have said the first thing to cross her mind, which was "The fact that it didn't seem like a big deal MAKES IT AN EVEN BIGGER DEAL."]

[As it is, she frowns instead. She'd only eaten about a third of the macaroni but it feels like a rock sitting there in her stomach.]}

It doesn't matter how she saw it, it's still what she was doing.

Yeah, I know it is.

But...[He shrugs, because he's not sure what else to do. He's still tired after everything today was.]

It's not happening anymore, and it was a while ago by now. I don't have to go back to doing it, so it's nothing to bother over.

[Except for on a day like today, where he'd gotten to dive right back into that old mindset.]

_{[It was indeed a heinously-exhausting and stressful day. Which is part of why Heather really isn't sure she wants to push further. They're both tired, and he really doesn't seem to think it was as awful as it sounded to her ears.]

[So she shrugs a little, trying not to let the ugly, reawakened thoughts about his 'Master' show on her face.]}

If you say so...

_{[It's just one more notch carved into the bat that she'd like to cave Dante's skull in with if she ever showed her face here.]}

I do, really.

[Whether it's true or not, is...really better to not deal with right this second. He hesitates, and then adds that very thing:]

And...let's not talk about her anymore, not tonight.

[He'd been loyal to her again, all day. It almost makes him shudder to think about, so he tries not to. Instead, he gives her a slightly strained smile.]

Maybe we should sleep, anyway, now that we've eaten. I'm tired from being wrangled all day, and I bet you're even more tired from having to do the wrangling.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

_{[Both cutting the subject off and sleeping. Pushing those stormy thoughts out of her head, she offers him a tired smile, shifting to collect the dirty dishes.]}

Honestly, if we spend much longer sitting and talking, you'll have to wrangle me into bed 'cuz I'm about to fall asleep right here on the floor.

_{[For effect, she adds a yawn that turns real halfway through it.]}

Heh, don't go and do that. I'd have to move you up with one hand and, I don't know, I guess my teeth.

[While she takes care of the dishes, he moves to get out of his (and her, he only notices as he's doing that) clothes and into the boxers and shirt that pass for his pajamas. He's tired, but not tired enough to pass out in jeans. Luckily, his wrist isn't so injured that he can't get out of his own pants with minimal fumbling--after today and the conversation they just had, HEY HEATHER COME HELP ME TAKE OFF MY PANTS WINK WONK doesn't seem like the best joke to make.]

[So he just climbs into bed, pulling her side of the covers down for her and flopping down heavily. Whoof.]

Maybe we just won't have to go anywhere tomorrow.

_{[She takes a little longer to make it, stopping to glance at the untouched salads and then tuck them into the fridge. Those can be for tomorrow for the aforementioned Not Going Anywhere.]

[Likewise, comments about how good he'd looked in her shirt (sunflower-yellow with green hair? NOT A BAD COMBINATION ACTUALLY) don't seem particularly appropriate either, so although seeing him pull it off makes the amused crook in her smile come back, she doesn't bring it up.]

[She is absolutely NOT above passing out in her jeans, but she kicks them off anyway before crawling into the sheets next to him.]}

I'm all for that.

You'll wanna be giving that wrist a rest anyway.

_{[She assumes it must be feeling better than earlier since he didn't beeline for the painkillers that he now knew how to take, but better safe than sorry.]

[She yawns again, grabbing her 'Gear clumsily from the chair she'd left it in and starting to type-- just a quick text message to Al and Joker (and Henry, as an afterthought, since she'd definitely called him in a panic earlier and hadn't really followed up on it) letting them know that Envy was no longer a murderous amnesiac.]}

What'd you even do to it, get it caught in a revolving door?

[The normalcy of just them getting ready for bed is actually really comforting just about now, and he's almost ready to just drift off right then and there. Until...]

Oh. Uh.

[Briefly, he wonders if it might actually be less embarrassing to tell her that yes, he did get it caught in a revolving door.]

[But he sure does look kind of embarrassed and shifty all of a sudden. He wasn't at all prepared to have to poker face.]

It happened during the fight with Al, just before you got there.

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