Let's talk then.
Discussion after the dinner with G'thon and Miniyal.
Also, a tip of the hat to Guster's "Eden," which endured much repeated playtime from me during this scene.
11-15/16-2006 (Reyce, Issa):
If tempers were lost at that dinner, at least they do not manifest themselves in slamming doors or storming footsteps. Reyce is the picture of, if not calm, at least composure as they walk out - him taking the lead, holding the door while she follows, and then closing it behind them with a soft and well-mannered click. His hand drops the knob immediately, letting it turn back into place with the sound of spinning metal, but his palm hovers close by for a second more. When he turns, his hands find his pockets and he looks at Issa, rolling a significant look over his shoulder: the door, one might suspect, is thin enough to let sound carry through. So he sets off in silence, taking the lead but not taking her arm, the way he did when they came; he takes them through tunnels in the inner cavern which decidedly do not lead out, but further and further in, winding inevitably down towards that private niche Issa uses for reading. He maintains silence on the way and silence when they get there, lucky enough to find the room and the area deserted although the fireplace holds embers that suggest someone else occupied it not long ago. Again he volunteers to be the door holder, stepping through first and holding it back while he waits; he'll close it once she steps through.
Once outside the door, Issa wraps her arms around her midsection, turning to meet Reyce's gaze as soon as he lifts it, ready with a soft smile that's somehow hesitant. From there, she follows him almost exactly. When he spares a glance for the door, she does likewise. When he turns to pick his way through those downward winding tunnels, she, with nothing more than a mildly puzzled expression, falls into step behind him, her skirt rustling in the silence that she, too, maintains. Once they reach that room of hers, though, and she steps through that door, she stops following him and begins to trace the path of habit, swinging around the nearest table to get to the couch. It's amazing that cushion of the couch she chooses, the one nearest to those dying embers, isn't worn with her imprint yet, so often has she been found sitting there. Unfolding her arms and pulling her slippered feet up under her skirt, she takes up a position that's also all too familiar then looks across at him. "Come sit," she urges gently, her hand brushing the open cushion next to her in suggestion.
Reyce has an arm twisted behind him to hold the doorknob, and once Issa's through he slowly backs into it, pushing the door shut behind him. This time he does not linger over the knob, letting it turn closed with a soft click and moving away even as that click sounds. His own imprint has had less opportunity to wear itself into the pillow next to her, but it's to that pillow again that he moves. He sits, and immediately leans his head back against the couch, his knees swinging wide and hands sliding down to rest on them. Head tilted back, he can still see her face if he rolls his eyes down, and this is exactly what he does while he waits.
Issa watches him cross the room, motionless until he's taken up that spot next to her. Only when he's settled does she turn toward him, her shoulder digging into the couch, her knees falling to rest against his thigh. "I didn't think it would be like that." And so the silence is broken, not with an apology, but with a statement that somehow implies one. She lets out a too deep breath with a huff and squishes her curls against the back of the couch, leaned there at an angle that still allows her to keep eye contact.
Reyce's hand, the one closer to Issa, steals back from his knee to rest closer to hers, the backs of two knuckles allowed slowly to uncurl and brush against her. He does it sight unseen, still with his head tilted back although now his gaze has moved up to the ceiling. "I did," he allows, his lips tensing back into the shadow of a grimace. The knuckle of his index finger rubs against her knee, playing with the looseness of the skirt as he moves it around like a second skin. While he's doing this, he drops his head sideways so he's facing her more directly, and can flick his eyes back and forth across her features. His mouth starts to open with a soft pop of parting lips, but he too quickly changes his mind, licking his lips as though that were the only reason he'd opened them.
"Yeah?" Issa questions lightly, the word hardly given voice, though it doesn't really need it to carry in their close proximity. She turns a glance down at his roving knuckle, but keeps her own hands draped in the hollow created between her legs and the back of the couch. "And you still came," she states evenly. Only after it's escaped does some thought push her smile deeper with a quiet mirth, still subdued by the quiet after that eventful dinner. "Just to see me in a skirt?" Her knee moves, nudging against his hand as if to prompt a response.
Reyce pinches his knuckles together, grabbing a small piece of her skirt and lifting it between them. He tucks his chin down so he can see, his eyes studying the skirt in careful appraisal and watching the way it falls lightly back to her leg when he lets go. "Hmm," he muses. He starts to settle his kunckles back down, but in a jerk of movement draws them back to himself, then reaches out to brush them on the line of her cheekbone, trailing all the way back and around her ear - tucking a curl away. "No way out of it," he says with a solemnity that breaks the teasing, while he focuses his attention on the lingering touch of his fingers next to her ear.
Issa's eyelids sink slowly down while he tucks away that curl, and she swallows heavily before flinging them open again, returning her gaze, now a degree more intent. "I could have gone alone," she insists. "Not that I wanted to. At all. But..." When the end of that sentence fails her, her eyes drop and she moves to bridge that gap between them herself. Her right hand lifts from that out of the way nook of the couch and is laid flat against the fabric of his blue button down, pressing it down against his skin. Then she smooths it down, falling steadily until she reaches the hem, where her fingers twine into the edge of the shirt as if to anchor him to the couch, as if it were a preemptive action for some sudden separating motion she's sure will come.
It goes by turns, Reyce's hand freezing when hers moves into being. Shallow breaths follow the movement of her hand along his stomach, but aside from that he holds still as though afraid the wrong moment might send their silence flitting off. "Doesn't matter. It-" the word gets interrupted by a swallow, the reactivation of his own hand once hers, wound in his hem, falls still. His proddings have become fidgety, carefully tweaking each strand of hair and poking it down behind her ear. "What would you have said?" he wonders suddenly, the words falling from him too fast to be stopped, though his lips press down frustration at the end of them. His fingers curl into his palm and he draws the hand away, bringing it as a fist to press against his mouth. "If you'd answered his questions." Mouth covered by the fist, his eyes hold only restrained curiosity and a slight squinting at the back edges.
Issa fidgets too, untwisting, retwisting, bunching and smoothing, toying with the fabric between her fingers in stages, her eyes turned down to watch the spectacle rather than meet his eyes. "Which one?" she asks for clarification, no evident hesitation present in her voice. Apparently she just needs him to specify a question before she can provide her answer.
Reyce heaves a sigh, quick but pronounced, that moves his shoulders and draws his shirt up with them, adding a new element to her fidgeting. The fabric feels less soft than it looks, a little starchy, but that's more due to washing that to nature, for as her fingers fuss with the cloth it becomes softer in her grasp. "Whole thing," he says. A beat before he specifies. "Something wrong. Need to make it better. Asked you what you'd do." The curled fingers spill out from the fist, stretching flat along the fabric of the couch. He slides them down the cushion, dropping like a dead thing to the seat of the couch, just inches away from her fidgeting hand but for its own part unmoving.
Issa exhales a breath that, under normal circumstances, might give rise to a laugh. But it dies too soon, the amusement present too bitter, too dry to last long. "You can't tell me that you don't have a clue what my answer to that question would be, Reyce," she says first, with low tones and breathy words that continue to characterize her speech. Though she looks up at him at that almost pleading pronunciation of his name, her gaze scatters from there, her head lifted from the couch so she can turn her eyes on the rug, that chair, the door closing them in. "If I..." The breath meant for the rest of those words catches and she pauses, thoughtful, to gather a few more before she can begin again, stronger this time. "I think the question is: what do we do if I say I'm one of these 'worst people,'" and she stresses the words she rips from his speech, "you hate so much? Wanting to change things for the better." Her flicking stare returns to him and stays put, her eyes fixing on his as any last remaining remnants of her smile slip away.
Reyce drops his eyes abruptly down to his fallen hand, wincing slightly when she calls him out for knowing the answer. "It's not the change," he says softly, curling his fingers back together. "It's how it's done. I /know/," and here he lifts his eyes back to her, blinking sharply, "what it means for me. Can't promise that doesn't come into it. It does," he admits after a pause, his voice touched with a quiet note of surprise, his eyes fading in focus. "It does. You asked what we do. What will you let me do?" A beat after his words, somewhat disjointed from the ones that came before them, his attention sharpens again, watching her and no longer lost in thought. On his fallen hand, the thumb worms its way between the curled middle and ring fingers, pressing down.
"I... I don't know." Issa blinks over the unexpectedness of a question turned back on her and tries to look elsewhere, anywhere but up into his eyes. But she's caught and keeps flicking her attention back to him until, as the pause drags out, she gives up trying to look away altogether and meets his gaze searchingly. Her mouth hangs open before she has any words to fill it with, prepared to voice any number of those thoughts racing through her mind. Then, one crawls into the void, quiet and hesitant, but there just the same. "I don't want to let this bother me, Reyce, but... I've been with someone before who didn't agree with what I am. It's wasn't fun." She gives an unconsciously stronger tug at the bottom of his shirt. "We could say we're going to agree to disagree. But that just means it's probably going to come up again, larger and uglier, later on. So... I don't know." And she's back at the beginning.
Reyce rolls his eyes down at that strong tug on his shirt, though his nose must block a large portion of what he can see at that angle. His left hand, not the abandoned one lying tensed on the cushions, sneaks up to lie on his lap, right next to where she's fidgeting his shirt. With a brief flick his fingers unfold, touching hers, and then draw away, leaving the tips curled but the palm open to her. "Don't want to close it off. Don't think that helps. Ignore it, it's a problem. Would it be a problem, we kept talking about it?" He puffs air into his cheeks on these words, holding a caught breath for a moment then releasing it with a sigh. "I don't mind, you know. Talking about it." He moves his cheek down on the couch, angling his face down lower and puffing out another sigh.
The flick of his fingers against hers draws Issa's gaze down finally and she stares vacantly at his curled fingers while he speaks, the fidgeting motion of her own fingers slowing steadily. It's only after he's done that she stops messing with his shirt altogether, giving it one last smoothing between thumb and forefinger, before crossing those few inches that stand between their hands, dragging her fingernails across his palm before she grasps it. "I think," and an ill-placed sigh, however short, trips her words, "that I might be able to do that." All signs hint that a smile's returning as her head drops back onto its spot against the cushions, face turned up to his, so much nearer now. "Yeah," she utters with much more conviction, drawing his hand into her lap and bringing up her other one to cage it in, her thumb tracing out a minor caress along his knuckles. "Let's talk then."
Reyce gives his head a sharp nod down, the motion pressing the skin of his cheek up into his eye. Impelled by this, he closes both, though he soon lifts his face off the couch and re-places it, removing the pull on his cheek. "Want you to know what I meant. 'Worst people.'" His thumb finds its way to the side of her hand, tracing from pinky to wrist. "Don't think anybody knows what's 'better' and it's not enough to base things on if you're going to make changes. That's part of it. Leads to the other part, which is - you're talking about Instigators -" his eyes, still shut, squeeze down and then snap open, fixing on her face as he draws in a sniff - "no way to decide what's better and no way to decide who's better. Not sure it even exists. So you get people doing what's possible, convinced they're what's better, and the one who wins is the one who's willing to do the worst things because they work. That's what I meant."
"Okay," Issa mutters against the couch cushion, thoughtful in the whispered calm of the word. The pressure from her fingers speaks louder of the fact that she's reassured. Her expression remains serene, if not smiling, even after mentions of the Instigators, though when she responds she steers carefully clear of that part of his point. "What do you have then? To base changes on. If not driven by something believed-- individually or collectively-- to be better, then what?" Her covering hand briefly releases to turn a palm helplessly up to the ceiling before clapping down again.
Reyce watches her face carefully, now that his eyes are on her, and does a slow back and forth search to draw in details. "Don't know exactly," he admits, the edges of his lips twitching in at the thought. "Can't remove it entirely. Know that. Some level, what you do you have to think is good but I don't like people just saying it's good, and that's all the reason why. Have to know how it works, what it'll do. And not just doing it because they got a whim that it seems better but because there's a specific thing that doesn't work, something they can do better. Don't know exactly," he says again, trailing off and letting his gaze wander down to the couch.
"And when it's impossible to know the effects? Impossible to guess what will happen?" Issa prompts further, her free shoulder lifting in a tiny shrug. She doesn't give him much time to respond, though. "I'm just saying," she adds, beginning to shift her position, untucking her feet with a faint grunt. They're then thrust across his lap, legs stretching out and bringing her skirt along with them, as she continues. "That, yes. Be practical and grounded and /think/ about what you're doing. But at some point... at some point," and she places her head back against the couch, realigning her face with his, "you have to stop juggling unknown outcomes and deal with the vague 'better.' Deal in hope, or luck, or best guesses. Otherwise..." She leads off into a pause for emphasis, but loses some of the effect when she turns her face down again, looking at their hands as she unjoins hers to trace lines and push his palm flat with her fingertips. "You just get stuck."
Reyce's palm goes flat obediently, his left hand no more than a pliant toy for her. All Reyce does is follow her gaze downwards, watching what she does, and move his other hand, till now forgotten, to rest loosely on the crook of his left elbow. "Depends. It's something that needs to be done, an immediate problem, think you've got to make your best guess. You don't know, you've got no real reason to do it, then it's not worth it. Doing that's just to say your way is the right way, which is bullshit, and you might wind up taking something that works and breaking it." He tilts his shoulder further into the couch, getting more comfortable on it.
And toy Issa does, alternately curling his fingers and rolling them flat again, while smoothing the pad of her thumb in minor explorations around the already well-known paths of his palm. Her face remains down, watching the impromptu game of unknown rules play out between their hands, the angle of her head untucking those curls he took such pains to place earlier. "And if it's broken already?" she asks, her voice hushed just a touch below what would be considered conversational. "If it doesn't work? Not an immediate problem, but a problem. Not only for one person, but many. Do you just leave it be?" Her intonation sinks back into the measured outlining of the questions they played at on her birthday, remaining strictly abstract.
Reyce lifts his eyes to her face, what he can see of it from the angle she's adopted to watch their hands. He draws in a quick sniff before speaking. "Fix around the edges. Take time with it. See where I'm going. That I don't overstep. Make it work better, as best as I can." Hesitant, his right hand creeps away from his elbow, touching one of those curls she's misplaced. He just lets it rest there on his finger for a while as he stares at it. Then he tucks it behind her ear, his touch gentle, and retreats quickly with a soft slap as his hand drops down to his lap. "She's green, Issa. Find another way around." The hand she still holds goes absolutely limp, not even holding the position she's put it in. The rest of him braces, and his eyes squint down while remaining on her.
As Reyce's hand goes limp, Issa's gives a subtle tremble and freezes stiffly, her thumb halting halfway down his lifeline. Jaw clenched, she lifts her face again, allowing just a brush of eye contact before turning only her eyes down again, lashes sweeping against her cheeks. It almost seems as if she's going to leave that comment strung out between them, ignored, so long does that pause drag on. But then... "I am." She must have learned that trick from Miniyal at dinner, for the simple statement is murmured as if it was never meant to leave her mouth, as if it were for her benefit only. Her thumb thaws enough to complete that line and backtracks once more, but then she declares the game over and done with a rippling of her fingertips against the back of his hand, and withdraws.
Reyce, however, does not allow the game to be over, reaching back to snag her hand and press it tight in his own, which curls around it as though it would form a fist. "Because it's better or because it's better for /you/?" This is enough, for the game: his hand snaps back open, the fingers left splayed out, but he leaves her free to do whatever she wants. "You can turn that back on me, you want to. I know that. Point still stands. You put yourself in and you leave the way up for anyone who wants to take it from you. You think the Igenites had a hard time of it? You think that dick E'sere's going to stay on his island once he hears a greenrider's got the spot he killed people for? You think there aren't others who'd go at you, with or without him?" At last, the splayed hands returns to him, knocking down on top of his right hand with knuckle-to-knuckle contact. "Know you don't like Sinopa. But you talk to Roa. She goes up first, she's got a fucking lifetime leading the weyr. Can't do exactly what you want. So what?" With an effort, he tames the snarl that would usually appear at this point in the conversation - it makes a flickering show, but he casts it away with a rapid shake of his head, pushing off his comfortable lean against the couch and biting in his cheeks to help keep it down. His eyes remain squinted, and fixed on her response.
Issa's eyes startle up to meet his when he seizes her hand, face no longer quite so serene. Her mouth is pressed down, jaw still clenched tight, her brows threatening a frown that gradually makes its appearance as he continues. With her hand her own to control again, she stubbornly brings it back to her lap, plopping it heavily into almost the exact spot he grabbed it from. When it's her time to respond, she allows herself several beats of silence, staring up at him intently, moved only by her breathing, suddenly grown heavy. "It's not just /me/, Reyce," she finally says, mimicing his stressed pronoun, her voice soft steel, calmly grounded, "it's the whole fucking Weyr. If I have to endure a whole wing of E'seres, I will. If I have to work through Roa and keep to the shadows, I will. It's a way around." Subtly, she places a mocking stress on the word torn from his much gentler instruction, drawing it out into a slight pause. "And there's more to it than you know. So just don't. I don't lecture you on Benden."
Reyce has finally repressed that overeager snarl, his expression now controlled and level. He lowers his chin while he listens to her, watching her from an angle closer to her own. When she's finished, he too waits a beat. "Are you an Instigator," he asks, "or not?" His chin snaps up, nostrils flared and eyes cast down at her over the slant of his cheekbones. Below, the fingers of both hands twist backwards, winding together tightly.
Issa allows not a moment for surprise to touch her features, transitioning straight from that knit frown to dark, smooth disbelief. One corner of her mouth twitches up into an acidic half grin, her head dropping into a slight tilt to the opposite side, and her eyes squint up at him as if he'd just asked the most stupid question she's ever heard. "No," she answers shortly. When she elaborates, it's touched with a cynical amusement. "I was an oblivious laundry girl, Reyce. I kept my head down, met my quota and tried to keep the other girls off my back. That's it."
Reyce's eyes drop down to her grin, studying it pointedly and carefully. "Don't do that," he says, quietly, when she's finished. His eyes flick back up to hers, and his features drag into the frown she just got rid of. "I'm trying not to." With this he pushes away, shifting his place on the couch a few inches sideways and unlacing his hands to slap down on the newfound space to either side of him. "You've asked me about it and I know who you used to work for. That's why I asked. That's what I was talking about. Fine." On this word, he wipes the frown away with a sudden sniff, turning his face away and clenching his fingers down over the portion of cushion he's got.
It's the quiet in his voice that gets her; as if wiped from her face, the grin and the squint both fade quickly on the heels of his frown's appearance. When her expression falls, it transitions into a relaxed reticence and she tucks her chin to avoid his eyes. In response to his withdrawal, even of just those few inches, she slides her feet back across his lap, placing them on the cushion next to him so that she now sits with bent knees and completely sideways on the couch, hands still draped uselessly against her thighs. She sucks in a breath, and it might be mistaken for a deep sigh if she didn't hold it in quite so long, if she hadn't punctuate its escape with a tiny strangled sound of words dying unspoken. Only silence follows from her, then, though she dares enough to lift her eyes to watch him.
Reyce does not immediately acknowledge the feet slung across his lap, though the edge of her skirt falls down to brush his hand on the cushion. After what seems a long moment, his fingers twitch and pinch that nearby hem, sending tiny ripples of conveyed pressure along the fabric. It's these he watches, dragging his attention back from the far wall to stare at her bent knees. "I can't talk anymore, right now." He murmurs the words for her knees' benefit, only looking at her afterwards. His mouth has drawn down somewhat at the corners; his eyes make a moderate, paced search of her expression. His fingers drop her skirt, but remain on the inside of it, in the shadow of her calves.
Issa slips one hand from her lap and under the awning of her skirt, the backs of her fingers just brushing against the side of his hand as she leans forward onto her bent legs. Apparently, her words too are just for her knees, for she rests her mouth against the top of one before muttering a muffled, "I'm sorry." Her expression has loosened to one of complete neutrality; all the tension is held in her eyes, a drawn and weary glassiness, though they're directed away from him, focused idly on the rug just beyond his feet. It's not until she speaks again several moments later that he's allowed to see it. "I think I'm going to go up to bed," she states simply, bringing her gaze up to his. "You want to come?" She pushes up a smile, but it's too heavy and falls under its own weight seconds later.
Reyce blinks a bit at the apology, his hand twitching towards hers. "Okay," he murmurs. "Don't worry about it." His hand's hesitant movement becomes a quick grab, latching onto her fingers and giving them a squeeze. The other hand comes up to find her chin, trailing the index finger along her jaw on its way. "Can't tonight. Can't be cooped up. Okay?" His eyes flick again, and his hand draws her chin closer to him. He has to lean considerably to plant a short kiss on her mouth. After it, he draws only a short distance away, using his continued hold of her chin to tilt her face up further and accomodate the angle. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"
For all that she initiated the contact, Issa's hand in his falls surprisingly limp. But she greets his explanation with another smile, stronger this time, and meets that kiss willingly, warmly. "Yeah. Okay," she responds, hand and chin both slipping away from him. She swings her feet of the couch and rises, twitching her skirt so it will fall correctly and heaving a quick sigh. She's not done with him yet, though, and she leans over to place a hand on his shoulder, saying, "Night," as if it were of no consequence that she'll be leaving without him. And she deals out a similarly quick kiss of her own before trailing her hand away and straightening, gliding between the tables and out the door.
Also, a tip of the hat to Guster's "Eden," which endured much repeated playtime from me during this scene.
11-15/16-2006 (Reyce, Issa):
If tempers were lost at that dinner, at least they do not manifest themselves in slamming doors or storming footsteps. Reyce is the picture of, if not calm, at least composure as they walk out - him taking the lead, holding the door while she follows, and then closing it behind them with a soft and well-mannered click. His hand drops the knob immediately, letting it turn back into place with the sound of spinning metal, but his palm hovers close by for a second more. When he turns, his hands find his pockets and he looks at Issa, rolling a significant look over his shoulder: the door, one might suspect, is thin enough to let sound carry through. So he sets off in silence, taking the lead but not taking her arm, the way he did when they came; he takes them through tunnels in the inner cavern which decidedly do not lead out, but further and further in, winding inevitably down towards that private niche Issa uses for reading. He maintains silence on the way and silence when they get there, lucky enough to find the room and the area deserted although the fireplace holds embers that suggest someone else occupied it not long ago. Again he volunteers to be the door holder, stepping through first and holding it back while he waits; he'll close it once she steps through.
Once outside the door, Issa wraps her arms around her midsection, turning to meet Reyce's gaze as soon as he lifts it, ready with a soft smile that's somehow hesitant. From there, she follows him almost exactly. When he spares a glance for the door, she does likewise. When he turns to pick his way through those downward winding tunnels, she, with nothing more than a mildly puzzled expression, falls into step behind him, her skirt rustling in the silence that she, too, maintains. Once they reach that room of hers, though, and she steps through that door, she stops following him and begins to trace the path of habit, swinging around the nearest table to get to the couch. It's amazing that cushion of the couch she chooses, the one nearest to those dying embers, isn't worn with her imprint yet, so often has she been found sitting there. Unfolding her arms and pulling her slippered feet up under her skirt, she takes up a position that's also all too familiar then looks across at him. "Come sit," she urges gently, her hand brushing the open cushion next to her in suggestion.
Reyce has an arm twisted behind him to hold the doorknob, and once Issa's through he slowly backs into it, pushing the door shut behind him. This time he does not linger over the knob, letting it turn closed with a soft click and moving away even as that click sounds. His own imprint has had less opportunity to wear itself into the pillow next to her, but it's to that pillow again that he moves. He sits, and immediately leans his head back against the couch, his knees swinging wide and hands sliding down to rest on them. Head tilted back, he can still see her face if he rolls his eyes down, and this is exactly what he does while he waits.
Issa watches him cross the room, motionless until he's taken up that spot next to her. Only when he's settled does she turn toward him, her shoulder digging into the couch, her knees falling to rest against his thigh. "I didn't think it would be like that." And so the silence is broken, not with an apology, but with a statement that somehow implies one. She lets out a too deep breath with a huff and squishes her curls against the back of the couch, leaned there at an angle that still allows her to keep eye contact.
Reyce's hand, the one closer to Issa, steals back from his knee to rest closer to hers, the backs of two knuckles allowed slowly to uncurl and brush against her. He does it sight unseen, still with his head tilted back although now his gaze has moved up to the ceiling. "I did," he allows, his lips tensing back into the shadow of a grimace. The knuckle of his index finger rubs against her knee, playing with the looseness of the skirt as he moves it around like a second skin. While he's doing this, he drops his head sideways so he's facing her more directly, and can flick his eyes back and forth across her features. His mouth starts to open with a soft pop of parting lips, but he too quickly changes his mind, licking his lips as though that were the only reason he'd opened them.
"Yeah?" Issa questions lightly, the word hardly given voice, though it doesn't really need it to carry in their close proximity. She turns a glance down at his roving knuckle, but keeps her own hands draped in the hollow created between her legs and the back of the couch. "And you still came," she states evenly. Only after it's escaped does some thought push her smile deeper with a quiet mirth, still subdued by the quiet after that eventful dinner. "Just to see me in a skirt?" Her knee moves, nudging against his hand as if to prompt a response.
Reyce pinches his knuckles together, grabbing a small piece of her skirt and lifting it between them. He tucks his chin down so he can see, his eyes studying the skirt in careful appraisal and watching the way it falls lightly back to her leg when he lets go. "Hmm," he muses. He starts to settle his kunckles back down, but in a jerk of movement draws them back to himself, then reaches out to brush them on the line of her cheekbone, trailing all the way back and around her ear - tucking a curl away. "No way out of it," he says with a solemnity that breaks the teasing, while he focuses his attention on the lingering touch of his fingers next to her ear.
Issa's eyelids sink slowly down while he tucks away that curl, and she swallows heavily before flinging them open again, returning her gaze, now a degree more intent. "I could have gone alone," she insists. "Not that I wanted to. At all. But..." When the end of that sentence fails her, her eyes drop and she moves to bridge that gap between them herself. Her right hand lifts from that out of the way nook of the couch and is laid flat against the fabric of his blue button down, pressing it down against his skin. Then she smooths it down, falling steadily until she reaches the hem, where her fingers twine into the edge of the shirt as if to anchor him to the couch, as if it were a preemptive action for some sudden separating motion she's sure will come.
It goes by turns, Reyce's hand freezing when hers moves into being. Shallow breaths follow the movement of her hand along his stomach, but aside from that he holds still as though afraid the wrong moment might send their silence flitting off. "Doesn't matter. It-" the word gets interrupted by a swallow, the reactivation of his own hand once hers, wound in his hem, falls still. His proddings have become fidgety, carefully tweaking each strand of hair and poking it down behind her ear. "What would you have said?" he wonders suddenly, the words falling from him too fast to be stopped, though his lips press down frustration at the end of them. His fingers curl into his palm and he draws the hand away, bringing it as a fist to press against his mouth. "If you'd answered his questions." Mouth covered by the fist, his eyes hold only restrained curiosity and a slight squinting at the back edges.
Issa fidgets too, untwisting, retwisting, bunching and smoothing, toying with the fabric between her fingers in stages, her eyes turned down to watch the spectacle rather than meet his eyes. "Which one?" she asks for clarification, no evident hesitation present in her voice. Apparently she just needs him to specify a question before she can provide her answer.
Reyce heaves a sigh, quick but pronounced, that moves his shoulders and draws his shirt up with them, adding a new element to her fidgeting. The fabric feels less soft than it looks, a little starchy, but that's more due to washing that to nature, for as her fingers fuss with the cloth it becomes softer in her grasp. "Whole thing," he says. A beat before he specifies. "Something wrong. Need to make it better. Asked you what you'd do." The curled fingers spill out from the fist, stretching flat along the fabric of the couch. He slides them down the cushion, dropping like a dead thing to the seat of the couch, just inches away from her fidgeting hand but for its own part unmoving.
Issa exhales a breath that, under normal circumstances, might give rise to a laugh. But it dies too soon, the amusement present too bitter, too dry to last long. "You can't tell me that you don't have a clue what my answer to that question would be, Reyce," she says first, with low tones and breathy words that continue to characterize her speech. Though she looks up at him at that almost pleading pronunciation of his name, her gaze scatters from there, her head lifted from the couch so she can turn her eyes on the rug, that chair, the door closing them in. "If I..." The breath meant for the rest of those words catches and she pauses, thoughtful, to gather a few more before she can begin again, stronger this time. "I think the question is: what do we do if I say I'm one of these 'worst people,'" and she stresses the words she rips from his speech, "you hate so much? Wanting to change things for the better." Her flicking stare returns to him and stays put, her eyes fixing on his as any last remaining remnants of her smile slip away.
Reyce drops his eyes abruptly down to his fallen hand, wincing slightly when she calls him out for knowing the answer. "It's not the change," he says softly, curling his fingers back together. "It's how it's done. I /know/," and here he lifts his eyes back to her, blinking sharply, "what it means for me. Can't promise that doesn't come into it. It does," he admits after a pause, his voice touched with a quiet note of surprise, his eyes fading in focus. "It does. You asked what we do. What will you let me do?" A beat after his words, somewhat disjointed from the ones that came before them, his attention sharpens again, watching her and no longer lost in thought. On his fallen hand, the thumb worms its way between the curled middle and ring fingers, pressing down.
"I... I don't know." Issa blinks over the unexpectedness of a question turned back on her and tries to look elsewhere, anywhere but up into his eyes. But she's caught and keeps flicking her attention back to him until, as the pause drags out, she gives up trying to look away altogether and meets his gaze searchingly. Her mouth hangs open before she has any words to fill it with, prepared to voice any number of those thoughts racing through her mind. Then, one crawls into the void, quiet and hesitant, but there just the same. "I don't want to let this bother me, Reyce, but... I've been with someone before who didn't agree with what I am. It's wasn't fun." She gives an unconsciously stronger tug at the bottom of his shirt. "We could say we're going to agree to disagree. But that just means it's probably going to come up again, larger and uglier, later on. So... I don't know." And she's back at the beginning.
Reyce rolls his eyes down at that strong tug on his shirt, though his nose must block a large portion of what he can see at that angle. His left hand, not the abandoned one lying tensed on the cushions, sneaks up to lie on his lap, right next to where she's fidgeting his shirt. With a brief flick his fingers unfold, touching hers, and then draw away, leaving the tips curled but the palm open to her. "Don't want to close it off. Don't think that helps. Ignore it, it's a problem. Would it be a problem, we kept talking about it?" He puffs air into his cheeks on these words, holding a caught breath for a moment then releasing it with a sigh. "I don't mind, you know. Talking about it." He moves his cheek down on the couch, angling his face down lower and puffing out another sigh.
The flick of his fingers against hers draws Issa's gaze down finally and she stares vacantly at his curled fingers while he speaks, the fidgeting motion of her own fingers slowing steadily. It's only after he's done that she stops messing with his shirt altogether, giving it one last smoothing between thumb and forefinger, before crossing those few inches that stand between their hands, dragging her fingernails across his palm before she grasps it. "I think," and an ill-placed sigh, however short, trips her words, "that I might be able to do that." All signs hint that a smile's returning as her head drops back onto its spot against the cushions, face turned up to his, so much nearer now. "Yeah," she utters with much more conviction, drawing his hand into her lap and bringing up her other one to cage it in, her thumb tracing out a minor caress along his knuckles. "Let's talk then."
Reyce gives his head a sharp nod down, the motion pressing the skin of his cheek up into his eye. Impelled by this, he closes both, though he soon lifts his face off the couch and re-places it, removing the pull on his cheek. "Want you to know what I meant. 'Worst people.'" His thumb finds its way to the side of her hand, tracing from pinky to wrist. "Don't think anybody knows what's 'better' and it's not enough to base things on if you're going to make changes. That's part of it. Leads to the other part, which is - you're talking about Instigators -" his eyes, still shut, squeeze down and then snap open, fixing on her face as he draws in a sniff - "no way to decide what's better and no way to decide who's better. Not sure it even exists. So you get people doing what's possible, convinced they're what's better, and the one who wins is the one who's willing to do the worst things because they work. That's what I meant."
"Okay," Issa mutters against the couch cushion, thoughtful in the whispered calm of the word. The pressure from her fingers speaks louder of the fact that she's reassured. Her expression remains serene, if not smiling, even after mentions of the Instigators, though when she responds she steers carefully clear of that part of his point. "What do you have then? To base changes on. If not driven by something believed-- individually or collectively-- to be better, then what?" Her covering hand briefly releases to turn a palm helplessly up to the ceiling before clapping down again.
Reyce watches her face carefully, now that his eyes are on her, and does a slow back and forth search to draw in details. "Don't know exactly," he admits, the edges of his lips twitching in at the thought. "Can't remove it entirely. Know that. Some level, what you do you have to think is good but I don't like people just saying it's good, and that's all the reason why. Have to know how it works, what it'll do. And not just doing it because they got a whim that it seems better but because there's a specific thing that doesn't work, something they can do better. Don't know exactly," he says again, trailing off and letting his gaze wander down to the couch.
"And when it's impossible to know the effects? Impossible to guess what will happen?" Issa prompts further, her free shoulder lifting in a tiny shrug. She doesn't give him much time to respond, though. "I'm just saying," she adds, beginning to shift her position, untucking her feet with a faint grunt. They're then thrust across his lap, legs stretching out and bringing her skirt along with them, as she continues. "That, yes. Be practical and grounded and /think/ about what you're doing. But at some point... at some point," and she places her head back against the couch, realigning her face with his, "you have to stop juggling unknown outcomes and deal with the vague 'better.' Deal in hope, or luck, or best guesses. Otherwise..." She leads off into a pause for emphasis, but loses some of the effect when she turns her face down again, looking at their hands as she unjoins hers to trace lines and push his palm flat with her fingertips. "You just get stuck."
Reyce's palm goes flat obediently, his left hand no more than a pliant toy for her. All Reyce does is follow her gaze downwards, watching what she does, and move his other hand, till now forgotten, to rest loosely on the crook of his left elbow. "Depends. It's something that needs to be done, an immediate problem, think you've got to make your best guess. You don't know, you've got no real reason to do it, then it's not worth it. Doing that's just to say your way is the right way, which is bullshit, and you might wind up taking something that works and breaking it." He tilts his shoulder further into the couch, getting more comfortable on it.
And toy Issa does, alternately curling his fingers and rolling them flat again, while smoothing the pad of her thumb in minor explorations around the already well-known paths of his palm. Her face remains down, watching the impromptu game of unknown rules play out between their hands, the angle of her head untucking those curls he took such pains to place earlier. "And if it's broken already?" she asks, her voice hushed just a touch below what would be considered conversational. "If it doesn't work? Not an immediate problem, but a problem. Not only for one person, but many. Do you just leave it be?" Her intonation sinks back into the measured outlining of the questions they played at on her birthday, remaining strictly abstract.
Reyce lifts his eyes to her face, what he can see of it from the angle she's adopted to watch their hands. He draws in a quick sniff before speaking. "Fix around the edges. Take time with it. See where I'm going. That I don't overstep. Make it work better, as best as I can." Hesitant, his right hand creeps away from his elbow, touching one of those curls she's misplaced. He just lets it rest there on his finger for a while as he stares at it. Then he tucks it behind her ear, his touch gentle, and retreats quickly with a soft slap as his hand drops down to his lap. "She's green, Issa. Find another way around." The hand she still holds goes absolutely limp, not even holding the position she's put it in. The rest of him braces, and his eyes squint down while remaining on her.
As Reyce's hand goes limp, Issa's gives a subtle tremble and freezes stiffly, her thumb halting halfway down his lifeline. Jaw clenched, she lifts her face again, allowing just a brush of eye contact before turning only her eyes down again, lashes sweeping against her cheeks. It almost seems as if she's going to leave that comment strung out between them, ignored, so long does that pause drag on. But then... "I am." She must have learned that trick from Miniyal at dinner, for the simple statement is murmured as if it was never meant to leave her mouth, as if it were for her benefit only. Her thumb thaws enough to complete that line and backtracks once more, but then she declares the game over and done with a rippling of her fingertips against the back of his hand, and withdraws.
Reyce, however, does not allow the game to be over, reaching back to snag her hand and press it tight in his own, which curls around it as though it would form a fist. "Because it's better or because it's better for /you/?" This is enough, for the game: his hand snaps back open, the fingers left splayed out, but he leaves her free to do whatever she wants. "You can turn that back on me, you want to. I know that. Point still stands. You put yourself in and you leave the way up for anyone who wants to take it from you. You think the Igenites had a hard time of it? You think that dick E'sere's going to stay on his island once he hears a greenrider's got the spot he killed people for? You think there aren't others who'd go at you, with or without him?" At last, the splayed hands returns to him, knocking down on top of his right hand with knuckle-to-knuckle contact. "Know you don't like Sinopa. But you talk to Roa. She goes up first, she's got a fucking lifetime leading the weyr. Can't do exactly what you want. So what?" With an effort, he tames the snarl that would usually appear at this point in the conversation - it makes a flickering show, but he casts it away with a rapid shake of his head, pushing off his comfortable lean against the couch and biting in his cheeks to help keep it down. His eyes remain squinted, and fixed on her response.
Issa's eyes startle up to meet his when he seizes her hand, face no longer quite so serene. Her mouth is pressed down, jaw still clenched tight, her brows threatening a frown that gradually makes its appearance as he continues. With her hand her own to control again, she stubbornly brings it back to her lap, plopping it heavily into almost the exact spot he grabbed it from. When it's her time to respond, she allows herself several beats of silence, staring up at him intently, moved only by her breathing, suddenly grown heavy. "It's not just /me/, Reyce," she finally says, mimicing his stressed pronoun, her voice soft steel, calmly grounded, "it's the whole fucking Weyr. If I have to endure a whole wing of E'seres, I will. If I have to work through Roa and keep to the shadows, I will. It's a way around." Subtly, she places a mocking stress on the word torn from his much gentler instruction, drawing it out into a slight pause. "And there's more to it than you know. So just don't. I don't lecture you on Benden."
Reyce has finally repressed that overeager snarl, his expression now controlled and level. He lowers his chin while he listens to her, watching her from an angle closer to her own. When she's finished, he too waits a beat. "Are you an Instigator," he asks, "or not?" His chin snaps up, nostrils flared and eyes cast down at her over the slant of his cheekbones. Below, the fingers of both hands twist backwards, winding together tightly.
Issa allows not a moment for surprise to touch her features, transitioning straight from that knit frown to dark, smooth disbelief. One corner of her mouth twitches up into an acidic half grin, her head dropping into a slight tilt to the opposite side, and her eyes squint up at him as if he'd just asked the most stupid question she's ever heard. "No," she answers shortly. When she elaborates, it's touched with a cynical amusement. "I was an oblivious laundry girl, Reyce. I kept my head down, met my quota and tried to keep the other girls off my back. That's it."
Reyce's eyes drop down to her grin, studying it pointedly and carefully. "Don't do that," he says, quietly, when she's finished. His eyes flick back up to hers, and his features drag into the frown she just got rid of. "I'm trying not to." With this he pushes away, shifting his place on the couch a few inches sideways and unlacing his hands to slap down on the newfound space to either side of him. "You've asked me about it and I know who you used to work for. That's why I asked. That's what I was talking about. Fine." On this word, he wipes the frown away with a sudden sniff, turning his face away and clenching his fingers down over the portion of cushion he's got.
It's the quiet in his voice that gets her; as if wiped from her face, the grin and the squint both fade quickly on the heels of his frown's appearance. When her expression falls, it transitions into a relaxed reticence and she tucks her chin to avoid his eyes. In response to his withdrawal, even of just those few inches, she slides her feet back across his lap, placing them on the cushion next to him so that she now sits with bent knees and completely sideways on the couch, hands still draped uselessly against her thighs. She sucks in a breath, and it might be mistaken for a deep sigh if she didn't hold it in quite so long, if she hadn't punctuate its escape with a tiny strangled sound of words dying unspoken. Only silence follows from her, then, though she dares enough to lift her eyes to watch him.
Reyce does not immediately acknowledge the feet slung across his lap, though the edge of her skirt falls down to brush his hand on the cushion. After what seems a long moment, his fingers twitch and pinch that nearby hem, sending tiny ripples of conveyed pressure along the fabric. It's these he watches, dragging his attention back from the far wall to stare at her bent knees. "I can't talk anymore, right now." He murmurs the words for her knees' benefit, only looking at her afterwards. His mouth has drawn down somewhat at the corners; his eyes make a moderate, paced search of her expression. His fingers drop her skirt, but remain on the inside of it, in the shadow of her calves.
Issa slips one hand from her lap and under the awning of her skirt, the backs of her fingers just brushing against the side of his hand as she leans forward onto her bent legs. Apparently, her words too are just for her knees, for she rests her mouth against the top of one before muttering a muffled, "I'm sorry." Her expression has loosened to one of complete neutrality; all the tension is held in her eyes, a drawn and weary glassiness, though they're directed away from him, focused idly on the rug just beyond his feet. It's not until she speaks again several moments later that he's allowed to see it. "I think I'm going to go up to bed," she states simply, bringing her gaze up to his. "You want to come?" She pushes up a smile, but it's too heavy and falls under its own weight seconds later.
Reyce blinks a bit at the apology, his hand twitching towards hers. "Okay," he murmurs. "Don't worry about it." His hand's hesitant movement becomes a quick grab, latching onto her fingers and giving them a squeeze. The other hand comes up to find her chin, trailing the index finger along her jaw on its way. "Can't tonight. Can't be cooped up. Okay?" His eyes flick again, and his hand draws her chin closer to him. He has to lean considerably to plant a short kiss on her mouth. After it, he draws only a short distance away, using his continued hold of her chin to tilt her face up further and accomodate the angle. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"
For all that she initiated the contact, Issa's hand in his falls surprisingly limp. But she greets his explanation with another smile, stronger this time, and meets that kiss willingly, warmly. "Yeah. Okay," she responds, hand and chin both slipping away from him. She swings her feet of the couch and rises, twitching her skirt so it will fall correctly and heaving a quick sigh. She's not done with him yet, though, and she leans over to place a hand on his shoulder, saying, "Night," as if it were of no consequence that she'll be leaving without him. And she deals out a similarly quick kiss of her own before trailing her hand away and straightening, gliding between the tables and out the door.