[He is smiling, even as he has stripped away the pretense she had been shamefully content to hide behind. Her lips thin and the corners twitch downward, but she stiffens her expression to match the tense hold of her body and stops it before it can become a full frown. She doesn’t know why she bothers. Let him see how displeased she is, let him see what an unpleasant woman he has for some reason decided to care for-
She should refute the idea that she was scared off. It sounds so weak-]
I was not scared.
[But that protest is weak, and she fears that the lie is obvious, even without full awareness of how terrified she’d looked in the roots when he tried to press love and support into her hands. How pathetic she must have looked, how pathetic to put herself in his path now-
She is not breathing, and hadn’t noticed. Her fingers flex, sharp teeth suck and bite into her bottom lip, reluctant to talk even if it must be done to do away with the wrongness between them, all the mistakes he’d made in his thinking.]
- What did your first message say?
[A weakness, bared, to stall. (It’s not that she needs to know-)]
no subject
She should refute the idea that she was scared off. It sounds so weak-]
I was not scared.
[But that protest is weak, and she fears that the lie is obvious, even without full awareness of how terrified she’d looked in the roots when he tried to press love and support into her hands. How pathetic she must have looked, how pathetic to put herself in his path now-
She is not breathing, and hadn’t noticed. Her fingers flex, sharp teeth suck and bite into her bottom lip, reluctant to talk even if it must be done to do away with the wrongness between them, all the mistakes he’d made in his thinking.]
- What did your first message say?
[A weakness, bared, to stall. (It’s not that she needs to know-)]