"I am staying somewhere," she says softly. The idea of sipping at her drink, now that the rest of her brain has caught up with the rush of alcohol she just injected unceremoniously into her bloodstream, suddenly seems incredibly unappealing. She slides her hands from the table surface, folding them in her lap in a too-hasty gesture not unlike one that would indicate deferring to an authority. It is automatic, and it feels too timid and restrained, but it feels, distantly, correct. Nothing Raleighish about it.
It would be far, far too easy to adopt his square-shouldered slouch over the table, posture faintly redolent of an unconcerned sprawl, legs hooked beneath the seat, head to one side, eyes dark and watchful as his fingernails tap a seemingly careless tattoo against the rim of his glass with its steadily dwindling contents.
"Thank you." She flashes Aziraphale a brief expression of gratitude, too strained, too shy, before her eyes again become distant and downcast.
She has no idea what to say, and is fast coming to the realization that this other man has no intention of leaving, engaged as he is in their stilted, almost one-sided conversation.
The trickling silence between them stretches to a point of social tension, and, trying desperately to mask her panic and think of something to say, Mako seizes the first handful of raw, guarded, tensionless instinct she can find and pulls.
Immediately her hands slide back to the table surface, propping her chin on the ridge of her knuckles in a closed fist, looking at Aziraphale with none of her demure reticence, none of her painfully soft-spoken laconicism, her stare even and flat and composed.
"Anything I should know about this place?" she asks, the words tinged with a subtle American accent.
no subject
It would be far, far too easy to adopt his square-shouldered slouch over the table, posture faintly redolent of an unconcerned sprawl, legs hooked beneath the seat, head to one side, eyes dark and watchful as his fingernails tap a seemingly careless tattoo against the rim of his glass with its steadily dwindling contents.
"Thank you." She flashes Aziraphale a brief expression of gratitude, too strained, too shy, before her eyes again become distant and downcast.
She has no idea what to say, and is fast coming to the realization that this other man has no intention of leaving, engaged as he is in their stilted, almost one-sided conversation.
The trickling silence between them stretches to a point of social tension, and, trying desperately to mask her panic and think of something to say, Mako seizes the first handful of raw, guarded, tensionless instinct she can find and pulls.
Immediately her hands slide back to the table surface, propping her chin on the ridge of her knuckles in a closed fist, looking at Aziraphale with none of her demure reticence, none of her painfully soft-spoken laconicism, her stare even and flat and composed.
"Anything I should know about this place?" she asks, the words tinged with a subtle American accent.