and some men’s hearts seem to circle forever: you catch sight of them on clear nights,

[apostasia]

WHO: Adelaide Leblanc + Martel
WHAT: The morning after the night before.
WHEN: The morning following Josephine and Vivienne's soiree.
WHERE: Martel's quarters.
NOTES: Contains nudity.

Adelaide is awake, he knows. He'd felt it when her breathing shifted from the slow, evenness of sleep; he had been less surprised than he might have been when she didn't move, upon her side away from him. The curve of her hip beneath the blanket and fur is not without its appeal, so there's that. His hand lingers a moment above her shoulder; her hair; falls to his side again as he rolls onto his back. Well, he can understand. His ceiling has never held such fascination to him - it might hold the great secrets of existence for the way he studies it. It would be easier, he supposes, if it had just been bad--

His laugh is abrupt in the early morning silence, the cool air and the light that knifes through the window, interrupting the careful, experimental way she shifts. Still rough with sleep, a low drawl, not unkind--

"All right, darling, just let me down gently."

He thinks they will survive this. She found it in her to live with his past; they can probably live with where he put his tongue when it was still dark. Even if she is, currently, quite possibly trying to work out if she can get out his window without his noticing.

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[apostasia]

"She adored me," he informs her, and there's a shadow of regret in it - but at this distance and after all these years, it's a shadow, only, when there are so many he hurt and so few he's inclined to remember fondly at all. He'd rather remember her fondly, when she'd been his friend first and foremost; he owes her an apology that he never gave, that she was to tease out had been intended by doing her the courtesy of their last meeting.

Allowing her that moment to say what she would to him, the life she'd planned to lead unraveling under his hands. (He remembers the fistful of hair she pulled out of his head more than anything she said, but he'd been near to dead on his feet, in fairness.)

"And," he says, lips twisting in a wry smile, "rather disproved the theory love is blind." A little shrug of his hands - "She married well, in the end, but you needn't worry I've any notions of doing the same."