juststopped | (no subject)

"Yeah, slave labor," Krem quipped mildly, going to the refrigerator to suss out the bottle of wine and deal with opening it while he was still in there. It gave the bottle a few moments to breathe while he carried it back to the table, smiling at her softly.

"You don't think I'd make a good mistress?" she teases, starting to serve the food as he brings the wine back to the table. "I'd be very benevolent and fair."

"Oh, surely the best," Krem said, though his voice took on a slightly distant tone, even for the teasing. He had no one to blame for that but himself; he'd been the one to start the line of teasing, and he either had to stop it lamely or allow it to continue.

The thing of it was that he wasn't entirely sure which he wanted. The teasing meant nothing. There was a sort of appeal, though; much like there was to everything about Adaline.

He poured her some of the wine, smiling softly.

He pours the wine and Adaline serves them both pasta, getting up from the table again when she realises that she's forgotten the butter. She sets it down on the table and then settles into her chair.

"I hope it's edible," she says. "At least I'm actually feeding you dinner instead of just dessert?"

"I'm sure it will be. It smells very good," he assured, and sat down in his chair, smiling softly. He poured himself some wine, put a slice of bread on the side of her plate before grabbing one for himself.

"You were hardly complaining about only getting dessert, as I remember."

"Well, it was excellent dessert," says Adaline, her eyebrow quirking, showing that the cake isn't the only thing she's talking about, even if she's acting prim. "I was very satisfied."

Krem smiled, sweet and innocent, like they weren't being deliberate and flirtatious with each other like they had been since that first night they'd spent together. Like Adaline wasn't a beautiful specimen, comely with her plait against her neck, practically asking Krem's eyes to trace down the line of her throat.

He focused on the food, for now. There was every opportunity for other things later. And it would be rather nice to prove that he had the ability to behave himself, that he didn't just view her as something sexual. He was here because he enjoyed her and her time, before anything else.

Adaline falls into companionable silence for a moment, taking the first bite of her food and finding her relieved that it's not only edible but actually tasty. She chews an then reaches for her wine.

"Did you have a good day, today?" she asks. "Were you at work?"

"At the shop, yes. I have something like thirty standing commissions to finish by the end of the week, plus all the dailies." He shrugged and laughed softly. "Miracle my fingers haven't fallen off yet. Everyone's always so impressed I do all my tailoring by hand, but I never learned any other way."

He dug into the pasta, happy for it. He hummed happily at the flavors, content with everything for a moment.

"Well, I learned to sew when I was a girl, but I was never better than functional, I'm afraid." She said, smiling against the rim of her wine glass. "Would you make me something? When you're not so busy, I mean?"

"They tried to get me to use the machines, the first day. I jammed it up horribly and broke seven needles in an hour. In the next, I did three pieces that they said should have taken me two days, all by hand."

He hummed softly. "I probably could make something, from scratch. I know more about tailoring than drafting. But I could try my hand at it. You'd have to be available for fittings and such." He smiled a little. "Such a trial, I'm sure."

"I can mend socks?" says Adaline, laughing a little, shaking her head. "Oh, well, if I'd have to be available for fittings. With you?" She shakes her head and sets her wine glass down. "I've reconsidered."

"When I was young, growing up, our family's shop would sometimes get in neighbors bartering work out? Wives with their stockings and dresses for food things; we had a good rapport with one of the cloth merchants and one of the cobblers because we'd mend just about anything of theirs."

Krem smiled nostalgically. "I did a lot of the fine-craft mending. Things that needed needle work to cover up things, it couldn't just be patched. Not the most handsome embroidery you've ever seen, but remarkable, especially when I was ten or so."

He tilted his wine glass to her, shrugged. Ate some more of everything before he continued. "My mother wanted to marry me off to that clothier or his eldest son so badly."

"But here you are instead?" She smiles, enjoying listening to him talk, enjoying that he feels relaxed enough to share these things with her. She can't imagine telling him the truth about herself, not yet, but hopefully he wouldn't hold that against her if she ever managed to tell him. "Selfishly, I'm happy this is how things turned out."

"Here I am instead," Krem said with a little smile. There was so much in between his mother's various instances on his marriage and arriving in Darrow, but Krem wasn't sure how much of that was really important. How much of it was worth discussing.

He ate quietly a moment more, sipped his wine, grabbed a second slice of bread and hummed a compliment.

There were words on his tongue. Questions, curiosities. He needed to stop depending on liquid courage for any of it, but he couldn't find himself avoiding the wine, for the moment, as he tried to navigate the order of his words.

She can see the look on his face, the way he seems to be working up to something. She pauses tilting her head.

"What?"

"Tell me a truth about yourself?" He phrased it a question, carefully. He'd told her so much about herself, deliberately placed so much of himself carefully out for her as it was necessary to--and there were other things, more things, as well.

"tell me a truth, and I'll offer you another one of mine."

"A truth." She weighs that up for a moment, deciding how much she wants to tell him, how open she wants to be. "I have a daughter. Flemming. She's...the best thing I've ever done." She smiles. "I don't talk about her often, here."

Krem listened, closed his eyes and tried to imagine someone who was half of Adaline and half of someone else, some young woman somewhere back where she'd come from. He wondered how old she was. He wondered how old Adaline had been when she'd had her.

"I'm sorry she's not here with you," he said softly. "Though, from how I understand it, you might still be with her? It's a small consolation, I suppose." And very little consolation, to people like him.

He did not have so quiet and personal a truth, but he'd promised her one for her own. He held his wine glass. "I'm seeing other people. It's not a lack of faith. I just...I care too much. It's why me and my ex broke up. He thought he would be alright with it, and then he wasn't."

"That's what I've been told and, honestly, she's old enough to look after herself. I just...miss being able to check up on her from time to time. It's selfish, really." She studies his face while he's talking, the way he plays with his wine glass. "Wasn't alright with you seeing other people? Well, don't feel like you owe me anything. I've been seeing other people, too. Though, I'll admit, I have yet to summon up the level of intimacy that I've managed with you."

She doesn't mean just sex. She's sure he'll follow that.

He wasn't surprised that she was seeing other people. She was lovely, winsome and smart and funny, and he--well, he was just him. It was no surprise to him at all that Adaline, like Hild, would not be exclusive to him.

"I certain appreciate it," he said with soft earnestness, smiling at her. He reached across the table and touched her hand gently.

It's the easiest thing in the world, to turn her hand and catch his fingers with hers, threading them together, holding his hand. She squeezes.

"It's lovely," she says. She tilts her head, studying his face for a moment. "What reaction were you expecting?"

"I try to not suppose any sort of reaction," Krem said with a little shrug. That wasn't all it was, of course, but it was the fundamental element of it. He swirled his wine idly in his glass, looking at the way it clung to the inside walls of the glass and humming contemplatively.

"There are two here, and there were none back home. I couldn't dare risk it for so long, and then, when it was safe, they were all like family. I didn't go slowly, like maybe I should have."

His voice was colored with self-reproach, maybe a little regret. He had a lot of that. He had done so many things at such a rush, once he felt that he was safe and he could. Now where was he? Certainly not in a bad place, having dinner with a lovely woman who wanted to share her time with him.

"I can understand that," she says, nodding. "It's not the same, but, for a long time I had...stopped. Removed myself. I didn't date, didn't really talk to anyone, had very few friends. After my husband died." She took a sip of her wine. "I made my daughter I promise before I ended up here. Right before. We were on the phone, and I told her that things were going to be different." She gives him a little smile. "And here we are."

"Here we are," Krem confirmed. He wasn't sure it was really all that much of a consolation, much like knowing or supposing that they still existed back home--most of them, some of them, the ones that could.

That was a whole different story. He wasn't sure it mattered, really.

He topped up his wine, and then Adaline's, and smiled. "The food is all very delicious, since I haven't said so yet."