Gomer + Caelus // Family Matters
Who: Gomer and Caelus
Where: the Black Pine Inn
When: September 19th (or the day after this post)
Rating & Warnings: Caelus runs into another dead end, Gomer is kind of a jerk, the usual.
After Dee had gone on her way, Caelus had sat for a moment or few in the interrogation room to parse through what she’d told him. He wasn’t one to take notes through interviews, not wanting the suspect to know what he did and did not value as important. Man, thinking of Dee as a suspect was nasty, especially now he knew for an absolute fact that she was innocent - she had not put poison in the cider, nor had she deliberately set out to kill him at that time.
She could, of course, have set things in motion for that much earlier, but Cael assumed there would be some residue of it in her mind - and of that, there was none. Dee was as surprised and upset about Aguilar’s rather brutalized passing as any of them.
Now, of course, came the more difficult task of dealing with Gomer.
He’d dressed for the occasion, smart-casual, his official trappings gone although the business he was aiming for with Gomer was far from the usual sort. He’d picked the Black Pine as it was out of the way of the standard passer-by, assuming by memory that Gomer would know where it was - after all, she’d visited Burrell there by all accounts.
When he arrived, though, Gomer had not yet made an appearance, and so he took up a bench within sight of both window and door for when she did, ordering a pint of ale for himself, and a smaller jug of liquor for her.
Yes, she'd met the unlucky priest there once. She was somewhat familiar with it, though it was not the usual haunt of the majority of her clients. The Fox'n Crown, the Coil, especially Inanna's- these were the places where she spent her time, and she felt a vague sense of unease going someplace unfamiliar.
Well, no matter. She would do what she could to take control of the situation, the only way she knew how. She'd taken the day off, telling Shiri stiffly of the situation, before holing herself up to get ready. Makeup not overdone, hair pulled back and tamed, clothing carefully selected to show off, but not to show as was her usual method. She was too angry for that, regardless of how much she liked Cael. Even she could respond appropriately to a situation. This one in particular.
She arrived, a little later than Cael- ten or fifteen minutes, perhaps. Nothing about how she dressed was particularly outstanding, but with her it didn't need to be. She'd been her mother's plan out of poverty for a reason, after all. She caught sight of Cael, took a moment to glance about- was Allen still about? she wondered idly- and nodded to the small asian girl that pretended she didn't recognize her and led her wordless to the table with Caelus.
There were some tables with benches and chairs, but most suited the low tables. She slid in to the bench opposite him, smiling, but tightly, her thoughts angry but unformed, surprisingly tight control exerted from a girl that seemed to fly off the handle often enough. Her eyes passed over the patrons, doing a quick check over each of them. If it were for anything else, she'd consider chatting some of them up. But the sight of Cael sobered her up. "Can't say I've ever been questioned in such a nice place," she said, her voice different outside of the bedroom.
“You’ll still have to say that,” the lad replied, beckoning her to a seat and signaling the asian girl to get food. “Questioning you implies that I think you’ve done something wrong.” Caelus blinked the focus from his eyes, briefly sinking into the angry web that was Gomer’s mind. Nothing came of the fleeting touch, and he pulled back before the wealth of her emotion leaked. There would be time enough to skim her mind when she started thinking in linear fashion.
“I…” Now came the awkward bit. “I’m sorry about your brother, Gomer. I liked him a lot.”
She smiled again, briefly. She'd been questioned a time or two. Even with her brother as a guard, she had a fairly low opinion of them in terms of them actually doing anything. For all the shit she'd put her through recently, she considered Shiri her real defense.
But at the mention of her brother, there was a sudden surge of emotion that was quite clearly defined. It was not love. It was... a kind of possession. He had been her brother. Not a good one, and one she had clearly been at odds with when they had lived still in Saltigos. She had been the second youngest, the third of their father's second wife, who had no doubt helped to make Lev's life a living hell. She didn't blame him for leaving. He hadn't blamed her at all, either. Life wasn't much better, but it was their own. There had been a respect in that which they'd never have been able to achieve if they'd stayed in Saltigos.
They didn't talk much. They didn't rely on one another. They were as good as strangers. But they had been bound by blood, and he had been her brother. And one of his own had killed him.
"I didn't like him much," she said finally, truthfully, her eyes wandering away to the outside, ignoring the girl when she came back to the table and set something down. "But he wasn't that likable. Must have come from his mother's side."
How weird that would be. How bizarre. Caelus couldn't imagine not liking a member of his own family, especially not a sibling. He and his brother fought often, it was true, but it was all a big joke, all with full consent that the 'fight to the death' game they'd been playing since infancy would result in no true injury, would be for a laugh, for fun, and would usually end up with Cael sitting on the younger boy's head. Such was the way of the world, not estrangement or awkwardness. Then again, Gomer and Lev - one a whore, one a guardsman, they had entered different walks of life. Gomer's feeling of possession, though, the guard understood and empathised with easily.
He, too, ignored the arrival of food, but he did take a swallow from his drink. "Could you tell me what happened on the day you got the ledger message?"
She coiled a strand of her copper locks about a finger, looking down at it from beneath darkened lashes. Even dressed properly, there was still something off about her, everything suggestive even when she didn't mean for it to be. "Nothing much. I was hardly awake at the time." It'd been a strange thing to wake up to on top of that. She'd thought it was a joke, and a bad one. No one would get anything from it. She pulled the curl straight and let it go, where it bounced again to her shoulder.
"He'd asked if I could put him up for a bit at Inanna's," she said finally. It hadn't been free, no, but it was the best she could do. She'd been planning to pay a night, a strange sort of concern or pride. Taking care of your own. "Said something like he'd been getting hassled a lot at work lately," she said, moving her blue gaze from her hair to him, a sharp glare. Had that been true? He had no reason to lie to her about it. Why they'd been doing it, she didn't know. "Know anything about that, Cael?"
Cael thought about whether or not to answer. The investigation into Aguilar's actions was internal and not for external ears, even if those ears were the petite, adorable ovals that belonged to the suspect's own sister. "He was under investigation," he said, eventually. "That's all I can tell you right now, Gomer. Anything else... I'd just be guessing, and that wouldn't be fair to Aguilar. Not until we have something concrete, yeah? ...So, he was staying with you? Or was going to?"
Under investigation. Somehow, that didn't seem to surprise her. Aguilars were far from noble. Filthy, dirty people, servants no better than slaves. She tapped her fingernails on the table, her eyes elsewhere. Lev had played by the rules and gotten nothing for it before he'd come to Tyrol. At least here he'd been able to get something for it, fleeting as it was.
She pushed her hair from her shoulder, biting on a nail. She looked at the food in front of her and hesitated before taking one, some sort of fried thing, and took a small bite from it. Her initial urge was to eat it all at once, to horde it as though she might starve, as though it might be taken away. But she took her time. Forced herself to.
"I guess so," she said finally. Did it really matter? He was dead and one of the guards had killed him. If it hadn't been for one of the guards holding her back, Cosimo wouldn't have any eyes right now. "Yeah. He stayed the night at Inanna's. Wasn't too happy about it, but he paid up and stayed anyway. As far as I know he was going to stay another night or at least look for someplace else."
Probably a wise decision if Gray and Cosimo were on his ass. A shame for him that Dee had found out the truth before he died, a shame for Dee that she had, too. She had the perfect motive in the real world, where Caelus could make as much difference as a flea. He had to find more logical, realistic proof that she was innocent, that Aguilar was either sickening or had already been poisoned. Anything else and she could find herself branded a murder no matter the real rub of it.
“Did he tell you anything about why he wanted to stay? Anything specific, I mean. Was it just the guard he was hiding from, or something else?”
She glared at Cael a little, but pulled back, looking back down to the food between them. She ignored it in favour of the drink he'd ordered for her, ignoring, for a moment, the question.
The glass set back down, she linked her fingers together, perfectly arched eyebrows lifted some. "Cael, it's not in the nature of some people to tell them all of their problems. When I had problems," she said, recalling briefly- very briefly- Cristofolo the first time he saw her after his transformation, "the last person I was going to tell was Lev. But if I'd wanted something done about it? I knew I'd have his back. It's the same here. It wasn't my business. He didn't tell me, and I didn't ask. But I did what I could anyway. If I'd had time..."
She took another swallow of her drink. It was hitting her now differently from how it had hit her before. When people died, they died. It was different from running away from home. He wouldn't pop up unexpectedly... or, he might, but not in the same way as before and probably in a way that would get him killed even faster.
"I'd have done more," she finished, not look at him this time, hands around the glass. It was a matter of pride, and a matter of having failed. And if she wouldn't do it for family, who would she do it for? "And I find that woman did any of it on purpose, I'll do more there, too," she said stiffly.
"That's what I am here to confirm," Caelus told her, gently. "Please don't take the law into your own hands at this or any stage, Gomer - it might feel the right thing to do, but it won't help anything except your own footsteps into a jail cell or the hangman's noose - and that's something I don't ever want to see happen."
He reached for a piece of bread out of habit, breaking it and setting it down onto the platter between them. It was more out of something to do than any real hunger, although as a teenager, Caelus was more than ready to admit that hunger more often ruled his hours than sense. "I'm sorry if you feel that this question is a repetition," he said, "but is there anyone you know of that held a grudge against your brother or he had had arguments with that could cause resentment?" Even as he finished verbalising the question, he paid close attention to her thoughts. Even if Gomer did know, it might not be that she would feel comfortable divulging the information. He had no compunctions against cheating, now and then.
Her look was somewhere between a glare and a pout. She wasn't about to ask how do you know?, as she'd gotten herself into trouble once doing just that. But only once. Shiri'd thought it amusing, but Gomer had made sure to be more careful since then. She checked her nails, allowing herself to be gently scolded by Caelus.
She almost didn't keep the eyeroll in check when he asked again. "I tell you, I don't know," she said, exasperation worming its way into her voice, lower-pitched than many people suspected upon seeing such a small girl. She sighed and sat a moment to think. Her mother, certainly, had never bore him any love, but she was far from here. His wife surely, but again, Saltigos was a two day trip at the very least, and none of them were in any position to skip town just for the sake of coming after him. She'd sent some of her own money back in place of his, but with a note adding that that would be the last of it they'd see. He'd been a fool for still sending them money in the first place.
As for here in Tyrol... who knew? She shrugged a little. "I'm sure there were people. I don't know who they were, though."
A pang of frustration shot through her companion. Again, she was verbalising the same thing that was in her mind. So far Cael was coming up absolutely stumped as to where to look, and the number of immediate witnesses and obviously affiliated parties was swiftly running out.
He compressed a sigh before it escaped and took a steady stance of arm against the table. It went against interview protocol to initiate contact with your charge, but this wasn't really an interrogation. Also, it was Gomer sat across from him, and close or not, losing a sibling was a kick to the proverbials as far as Caelus was concerned.
He reached across the intervening tabletop to set warm fingertips to the back of her hand. "Is there anything I can help with?"
He might have been able to read minds, but she had her experience in reading people. His frustration, however it vented itself, made her head tilt a little. Maybe it was just a little stiffness, a sudden intake of breath, a sudden exhalation... her thoughts turned briefly from her own troubles to him, and she rested her chin in her hand, elbow on the table, the other tapping restlessly on the countertop, before she looked down again. Was it unfair to get mad at him? Did it even really matter?
She looked back to her hand as his fingers pressed to her hand. Her thoughts gravitated warmly in that direction. She loved boys. She loved everything about them, all types, all sizes, though certainly how much money they had made her love some more than others. Her expression shifted, reflecting this. He was young, a little younger than her, but he was already beautiful. His hands, too. She tapped a finger experimentally, arching a sharp brow as she looked up to him. Partly flirting, partly curious. He was on duty, wasn't he? Not that she was displeased.
His question scattered those thoughts and she looked back to him, earnestly surprised, and a little suspicious. She didn't pull away- she liked physical contact too much for that- but her first reaction was distrust, and she took a moment to answer, though it was clear there wasn't anything, not really. Nothing she'd need a guard for, at least. "That's very sweet of you," she said instead, using her other hand to trace a circle on the back of his hand while it touched the back of her other. "But no. I think I'll be all right," she said with her cupid-bow's smile.
The hint towards flirtation went unmissed. Even had her expression avoided the arch of brow, Gomer's mind gave Cael a thorough rundown of those attributes she found favourable. Thankfully she also spoke the civil denial, and with that the guard could withdraw his hand and fall back on social grace (what little of it he possessed) by accepting her assurances.
"If anything or anyone occurs to you, please tell me," he urged her.
She sighed when he pulled back, one that was both disappointment and acceptance. He was on the clock, and she was off. She stretched instead, her back curving inwards as she did so, her chest pushing out with the motion, her provocation completely physical- it didn't even register anymore that she did these things.
"I will, but I don't think there'll be anything," she said with another sigh in her voice, her elbow on the table again, her hand in her hair to push back the mass of curls. "I just don't know anything about Lev, Cael." Should she be sad? She didn't even know, really. Tamas' death had affected her more than this. The idea to feel guilty about it certainly didn't come to her and she picked up her drink again. Maybe, she thought, she didn't have to do anything to the guardswoman at all. She'd be marrying Diya.
A small smile lit her face again for seemingly no reason to everyone else in the room. That would be punishment enough, she'd wager.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, the uplift of her ample bosom distracted Caelus for more than the appropriate length of time. Her thoughts were clear as crystal to him, and not for the first time in his working history he sorely debated the idea of extending the 'interview' to other realms. The indecision flit over his features for a brief second before he schooled it. She did not sorely feel the loss of her brother, and although he could understand it given their situation, it was still a discomfiting thing to see. Now was not the time to even consider an assignation.
"That's fine," he said, warmly. "Eat up, though - it's good food, here."
Where: the Black Pine Inn
When: September 19th (or the day after this post)
Rating & Warnings: Caelus runs into another dead end, Gomer is kind of a jerk, the usual.
After Dee had gone on her way, Caelus had sat for a moment or few in the interrogation room to parse through what she’d told him. He wasn’t one to take notes through interviews, not wanting the suspect to know what he did and did not value as important. Man, thinking of Dee as a suspect was nasty, especially now he knew for an absolute fact that she was innocent - she had not put poison in the cider, nor had she deliberately set out to kill him at that time.
She could, of course, have set things in motion for that much earlier, but Cael assumed there would be some residue of it in her mind - and of that, there was none. Dee was as surprised and upset about Aguilar’s rather brutalized passing as any of them.
Now, of course, came the more difficult task of dealing with Gomer.
He’d dressed for the occasion, smart-casual, his official trappings gone although the business he was aiming for with Gomer was far from the usual sort. He’d picked the Black Pine as it was out of the way of the standard passer-by, assuming by memory that Gomer would know where it was - after all, she’d visited Burrell there by all accounts.
When he arrived, though, Gomer had not yet made an appearance, and so he took up a bench within sight of both window and door for when she did, ordering a pint of ale for himself, and a smaller jug of liquor for her.
Yes, she'd met the unlucky priest there once. She was somewhat familiar with it, though it was not the usual haunt of the majority of her clients. The Fox'n Crown, the Coil, especially Inanna's- these were the places where she spent her time, and she felt a vague sense of unease going someplace unfamiliar.
Well, no matter. She would do what she could to take control of the situation, the only way she knew how. She'd taken the day off, telling Shiri stiffly of the situation, before holing herself up to get ready. Makeup not overdone, hair pulled back and tamed, clothing carefully selected to show off, but not to show as was her usual method. She was too angry for that, regardless of how much she liked Cael. Even she could respond appropriately to a situation. This one in particular.
She arrived, a little later than Cael- ten or fifteen minutes, perhaps. Nothing about how she dressed was particularly outstanding, but with her it didn't need to be. She'd been her mother's plan out of poverty for a reason, after all. She caught sight of Cael, took a moment to glance about- was Allen still about? she wondered idly- and nodded to the small asian girl that pretended she didn't recognize her and led her wordless to the table with Caelus.
There were some tables with benches and chairs, but most suited the low tables. She slid in to the bench opposite him, smiling, but tightly, her thoughts angry but unformed, surprisingly tight control exerted from a girl that seemed to fly off the handle often enough. Her eyes passed over the patrons, doing a quick check over each of them. If it were for anything else, she'd consider chatting some of them up. But the sight of Cael sobered her up. "Can't say I've ever been questioned in such a nice place," she said, her voice different outside of the bedroom.
“You’ll still have to say that,” the lad replied, beckoning her to a seat and signaling the asian girl to get food. “Questioning you implies that I think you’ve done something wrong.” Caelus blinked the focus from his eyes, briefly sinking into the angry web that was Gomer’s mind. Nothing came of the fleeting touch, and he pulled back before the wealth of her emotion leaked. There would be time enough to skim her mind when she started thinking in linear fashion.
“I…” Now came the awkward bit. “I’m sorry about your brother, Gomer. I liked him a lot.”
She smiled again, briefly. She'd been questioned a time or two. Even with her brother as a guard, she had a fairly low opinion of them in terms of them actually doing anything. For all the shit she'd put her through recently, she considered Shiri her real defense.
But at the mention of her brother, there was a sudden surge of emotion that was quite clearly defined. It was not love. It was... a kind of possession. He had been her brother. Not a good one, and one she had clearly been at odds with when they had lived still in Saltigos. She had been the second youngest, the third of their father's second wife, who had no doubt helped to make Lev's life a living hell. She didn't blame him for leaving. He hadn't blamed her at all, either. Life wasn't much better, but it was their own. There had been a respect in that which they'd never have been able to achieve if they'd stayed in Saltigos.
They didn't talk much. They didn't rely on one another. They were as good as strangers. But they had been bound by blood, and he had been her brother. And one of his own had killed him.
"I didn't like him much," she said finally, truthfully, her eyes wandering away to the outside, ignoring the girl when she came back to the table and set something down. "But he wasn't that likable. Must have come from his mother's side."
How weird that would be. How bizarre. Caelus couldn't imagine not liking a member of his own family, especially not a sibling. He and his brother fought often, it was true, but it was all a big joke, all with full consent that the 'fight to the death' game they'd been playing since infancy would result in no true injury, would be for a laugh, for fun, and would usually end up with Cael sitting on the younger boy's head. Such was the way of the world, not estrangement or awkwardness. Then again, Gomer and Lev - one a whore, one a guardsman, they had entered different walks of life. Gomer's feeling of possession, though, the guard understood and empathised with easily.
He, too, ignored the arrival of food, but he did take a swallow from his drink. "Could you tell me what happened on the day you got the ledger message?"
She coiled a strand of her copper locks about a finger, looking down at it from beneath darkened lashes. Even dressed properly, there was still something off about her, everything suggestive even when she didn't mean for it to be. "Nothing much. I was hardly awake at the time." It'd been a strange thing to wake up to on top of that. She'd thought it was a joke, and a bad one. No one would get anything from it. She pulled the curl straight and let it go, where it bounced again to her shoulder.
"He'd asked if I could put him up for a bit at Inanna's," she said finally. It hadn't been free, no, but it was the best she could do. She'd been planning to pay a night, a strange sort of concern or pride. Taking care of your own. "Said something like he'd been getting hassled a lot at work lately," she said, moving her blue gaze from her hair to him, a sharp glare. Had that been true? He had no reason to lie to her about it. Why they'd been doing it, she didn't know. "Know anything about that, Cael?"
Cael thought about whether or not to answer. The investigation into Aguilar's actions was internal and not for external ears, even if those ears were the petite, adorable ovals that belonged to the suspect's own sister. "He was under investigation," he said, eventually. "That's all I can tell you right now, Gomer. Anything else... I'd just be guessing, and that wouldn't be fair to Aguilar. Not until we have something concrete, yeah? ...So, he was staying with you? Or was going to?"
Under investigation. Somehow, that didn't seem to surprise her. Aguilars were far from noble. Filthy, dirty people, servants no better than slaves. She tapped her fingernails on the table, her eyes elsewhere. Lev had played by the rules and gotten nothing for it before he'd come to Tyrol. At least here he'd been able to get something for it, fleeting as it was.
She pushed her hair from her shoulder, biting on a nail. She looked at the food in front of her and hesitated before taking one, some sort of fried thing, and took a small bite from it. Her initial urge was to eat it all at once, to horde it as though she might starve, as though it might be taken away. But she took her time. Forced herself to.
"I guess so," she said finally. Did it really matter? He was dead and one of the guards had killed him. If it hadn't been for one of the guards holding her back, Cosimo wouldn't have any eyes right now. "Yeah. He stayed the night at Inanna's. Wasn't too happy about it, but he paid up and stayed anyway. As far as I know he was going to stay another night or at least look for someplace else."
Probably a wise decision if Gray and Cosimo were on his ass. A shame for him that Dee had found out the truth before he died, a shame for Dee that she had, too. She had the perfect motive in the real world, where Caelus could make as much difference as a flea. He had to find more logical, realistic proof that she was innocent, that Aguilar was either sickening or had already been poisoned. Anything else and she could find herself branded a murder no matter the real rub of it.
“Did he tell you anything about why he wanted to stay? Anything specific, I mean. Was it just the guard he was hiding from, or something else?”
She glared at Cael a little, but pulled back, looking back down to the food between them. She ignored it in favour of the drink he'd ordered for her, ignoring, for a moment, the question.
The glass set back down, she linked her fingers together, perfectly arched eyebrows lifted some. "Cael, it's not in the nature of some people to tell them all of their problems. When I had problems," she said, recalling briefly- very briefly- Cristofolo the first time he saw her after his transformation, "the last person I was going to tell was Lev. But if I'd wanted something done about it? I knew I'd have his back. It's the same here. It wasn't my business. He didn't tell me, and I didn't ask. But I did what I could anyway. If I'd had time..."
She took another swallow of her drink. It was hitting her now differently from how it had hit her before. When people died, they died. It was different from running away from home. He wouldn't pop up unexpectedly... or, he might, but not in the same way as before and probably in a way that would get him killed even faster.
"I'd have done more," she finished, not look at him this time, hands around the glass. It was a matter of pride, and a matter of having failed. And if she wouldn't do it for family, who would she do it for? "And I find that woman did any of it on purpose, I'll do more there, too," she said stiffly.
"That's what I am here to confirm," Caelus told her, gently. "Please don't take the law into your own hands at this or any stage, Gomer - it might feel the right thing to do, but it won't help anything except your own footsteps into a jail cell or the hangman's noose - and that's something I don't ever want to see happen."
He reached for a piece of bread out of habit, breaking it and setting it down onto the platter between them. It was more out of something to do than any real hunger, although as a teenager, Caelus was more than ready to admit that hunger more often ruled his hours than sense. "I'm sorry if you feel that this question is a repetition," he said, "but is there anyone you know of that held a grudge against your brother or he had had arguments with that could cause resentment?" Even as he finished verbalising the question, he paid close attention to her thoughts. Even if Gomer did know, it might not be that she would feel comfortable divulging the information. He had no compunctions against cheating, now and then.
Her look was somewhere between a glare and a pout. She wasn't about to ask how do you know?, as she'd gotten herself into trouble once doing just that. But only once. Shiri'd thought it amusing, but Gomer had made sure to be more careful since then. She checked her nails, allowing herself to be gently scolded by Caelus.
She almost didn't keep the eyeroll in check when he asked again. "I tell you, I don't know," she said, exasperation worming its way into her voice, lower-pitched than many people suspected upon seeing such a small girl. She sighed and sat a moment to think. Her mother, certainly, had never bore him any love, but she was far from here. His wife surely, but again, Saltigos was a two day trip at the very least, and none of them were in any position to skip town just for the sake of coming after him. She'd sent some of her own money back in place of his, but with a note adding that that would be the last of it they'd see. He'd been a fool for still sending them money in the first place.
As for here in Tyrol... who knew? She shrugged a little. "I'm sure there were people. I don't know who they were, though."
A pang of frustration shot through her companion. Again, she was verbalising the same thing that was in her mind. So far Cael was coming up absolutely stumped as to where to look, and the number of immediate witnesses and obviously affiliated parties was swiftly running out.
He compressed a sigh before it escaped and took a steady stance of arm against the table. It went against interview protocol to initiate contact with your charge, but this wasn't really an interrogation. Also, it was Gomer sat across from him, and close or not, losing a sibling was a kick to the proverbials as far as Caelus was concerned.
He reached across the intervening tabletop to set warm fingertips to the back of her hand. "Is there anything I can help with?"
He might have been able to read minds, but she had her experience in reading people. His frustration, however it vented itself, made her head tilt a little. Maybe it was just a little stiffness, a sudden intake of breath, a sudden exhalation... her thoughts turned briefly from her own troubles to him, and she rested her chin in her hand, elbow on the table, the other tapping restlessly on the countertop, before she looked down again. Was it unfair to get mad at him? Did it even really matter?
She looked back to her hand as his fingers pressed to her hand. Her thoughts gravitated warmly in that direction. She loved boys. She loved everything about them, all types, all sizes, though certainly how much money they had made her love some more than others. Her expression shifted, reflecting this. He was young, a little younger than her, but he was already beautiful. His hands, too. She tapped a finger experimentally, arching a sharp brow as she looked up to him. Partly flirting, partly curious. He was on duty, wasn't he? Not that she was displeased.
His question scattered those thoughts and she looked back to him, earnestly surprised, and a little suspicious. She didn't pull away- she liked physical contact too much for that- but her first reaction was distrust, and she took a moment to answer, though it was clear there wasn't anything, not really. Nothing she'd need a guard for, at least. "That's very sweet of you," she said instead, using her other hand to trace a circle on the back of his hand while it touched the back of her other. "But no. I think I'll be all right," she said with her cupid-bow's smile.
The hint towards flirtation went unmissed. Even had her expression avoided the arch of brow, Gomer's mind gave Cael a thorough rundown of those attributes she found favourable. Thankfully she also spoke the civil denial, and with that the guard could withdraw his hand and fall back on social grace (what little of it he possessed) by accepting her assurances.
"If anything or anyone occurs to you, please tell me," he urged her.
She sighed when he pulled back, one that was both disappointment and acceptance. He was on the clock, and she was off. She stretched instead, her back curving inwards as she did so, her chest pushing out with the motion, her provocation completely physical- it didn't even register anymore that she did these things.
"I will, but I don't think there'll be anything," she said with another sigh in her voice, her elbow on the table again, her hand in her hair to push back the mass of curls. "I just don't know anything about Lev, Cael." Should she be sad? She didn't even know, really. Tamas' death had affected her more than this. The idea to feel guilty about it certainly didn't come to her and she picked up her drink again. Maybe, she thought, she didn't have to do anything to the guardswoman at all. She'd be marrying Diya.
A small smile lit her face again for seemingly no reason to everyone else in the room. That would be punishment enough, she'd wager.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, the uplift of her ample bosom distracted Caelus for more than the appropriate length of time. Her thoughts were clear as crystal to him, and not for the first time in his working history he sorely debated the idea of extending the 'interview' to other realms. The indecision flit over his features for a brief second before he schooled it. She did not sorely feel the loss of her brother, and although he could understand it given their situation, it was still a discomfiting thing to see. Now was not the time to even consider an assignation.
"That's fine," he said, warmly. "Eat up, though - it's good food, here."