fandomhigh | Library; Wednesday [ 09/26 ]

"You're already smiling," Lee noted as he came to lean a hip against the desk. "Either it's a really good book or it's something else."

Adah's mouth shifted a little in an attempt to keep the smile, like so many weeds, from growing, determined to keep her eyes on it for just a moment longer before, with an air of importance, she lifted her head as she lowered the book. It laid flat against the desk, open to an article on articles, and her hands flanked the edges, one by coincidence, one on purpose. Her head tilted slightly as she looked at the Eel with hard expression that suggested that the reason was quite obvious.

After all, Adah didn't read bad books.

Trying to contain a laugh, he dropped his book and bag on the floor near his feet and put his hands in front of him, almost a mirror of her position.

"You're teasing me in your mind, aren't you?" He nodded knowingly even though he had no idea and that was the reason his grin emerged again. "You'd rather be reading a book on modeling, right?"

Adah had full intent to and was completely determined to maintain her smug, grinning silence, and she thought she'd be able to until that last part. Her eyes closed tightly, face scrunching, in an attempt to keep a laugh, which still slipped out as a breath of a snort. Her head ducked, shaking it off; when she lifted again, her smile was just a little wider and her face a little pink, and she held out a finger on her left hand to signal to the Eel to wait just a moment as she got her conversation notebook out. So much for silence, but a statement like that demanded a response.

"Why would I bother reading about it," she wrote with a crooked smirk, "when I could just ask you all about it?"

"Good point," he conceded with a nod. "It's an art, you see. Modeling, that is. One of many, many complexities taken from mysterious origins. It requires a lot of thought on my part," he said with an exaggerated nod. "And removal of clothing but let's ignore that for now."

Adah folded her hands in front of her...well, she reached for her dead, limp right hand with her active, good left hand, picked it up, and moved it in front of her to simulate folding her hands in front of her, and straightened as well as she could to give the Eel her rapt attention, head bobbing at this very important string of complete bull. He was good, however, at pulling things completely out of no where. Might even rival Leah at making it seem like you knew something while simultaneously making it entirely up. She nodded her head, of course it was, of course it did, and then she smirked at the last one. Oh? Did they have to? Wasn't that the most important part of modeling? Then again, yes, the Eel was the expert here...

"Ah, I've got your attention now," he said, noting the smirk and blushing a little. "Yes, modeling. Taken from the Caprican word...modeling."

Wow, that was creative. "Meaning to...model." He was losing steam. "To look good while walking around in circles. It's really good exercise, you see. All that twisting and turning and bending and standing up straight and trying not to laugh while looking like a complete fool."

He tapped his fingers against the desk for a moment. "It's something I'm good at. The fool part, not the modeling part."

Adah was holding out strong at keeping herself from grinning too much, at keeping the desire to laugh restricted to her eyes, wide and shining as if to hold more than usual. And, again, he completely got her at the end. She'll have to watch those, she thought, actually letting out a small burst of an audible laugh as she ducked her head and bit it silent against her lip. This Eel came equipped with a stinger on its tail.

"Let me make sure I am getting this complex science correct," she wrote. "You're supposed to look like a fool? It's no wonder, then, that you excel at it with ease."

Enjoying the reaction his complete idiocy was getting, he laughed at her words before schooling his face and nodding again.

"It's my middle name, in fact. Lee Fool Adama," he said, pretending to buff his nails on his shirt before putting his hand back down on the desk. "The teacher says it's all in my eyes, you see."

And thus, he batted his eyes at her and wondered where in the frak this had all come from.

"Think he's right?"

A Mad Aloof Eel! Adah? Was delighted. Grinning a little, she leaned forward, head tilted up for a better look at these eyes he was talking about, to get herself in a better position to judge.

Lee leaned a little further across the desk to give her a better view, eyes opened and focused.

"Tell me what you think," he said quietly, almost as an afterthought.

Adah maintained a steady gaze up until, after a moment, she regrettably spoiled that suspended moment in her mind with a blink. Like a short row of dominoes, that single, oddly synchronized movement of her eyelids set off a slow chain of events, completely removed from the processes of her brain. The blink allowed her smile to soften, and the softened smile increased her awareness of their proximity. The awareness of their proximity had her left shoulder slowly creeping up, guarded, and the creeping of her shoulder had her lips part slightly. "I..."

It could have just been a breath, a sigh, the releasing of expired air from her lungs, through her throat, and out past the small opening between her lips. That's probably what it sounded like. She hoped, anyway. But she knew what it was and she drew away, reaching instead for her notebook. Her blinks became more rapid now, and a red was scattered across her face.

Her face was ducked more than usual as she wrote, and she kept it down as she slid the notebook forward.

"I think he might just be onto something there..."

He wasn't entirely sure what just happened but it was something different. He leaned back slowly, took a quiet breath before wiggling his fingers against the desk, something to occupy his thoughts.

He'd heard something from her but decided not to push when she seemed to draw in on herself and stayed that way while she slid the notebook across towards him.

His smile returned through and traced a light finger under the writing. "Maybe he is. I like yours too. Your eyes. They're expressive."

Adah hesitated a moment before, regrettably, slowly pulling the notebook away from under the Eel's finger and closer to herself so she could write again.

"They kind of have to be; can't exactly spell everything out all the time, now, can I?"

"No, I guess you can't," he said quietly. "And neither can I. You've seen how I am with words sometimes. If you watch a person's eyes, you can see...how they feel."

Her head tilted slightly to the side, Adah quietly ruminated over the Eel's words, the softness to them, that pause. More things to look to than eyes for trying to determine how someone feels, but, still, her own eyes did flit briefly up toward him, retreating quickly, wide, expressive, shy little butterflies.

"Poets," she ended up writing, "are fond of saying that eyes are like windows to the soul."

Luos eht ot Swodniw. Adah didn't actually believe in having a soul, but she figured it could be synonymous with emotion, expression, feeling at this point.

"It's a good saying," Lee said after reading her words carefully.

He shifted, moved so he could lean his elbows on the desk, facing her more completely.

"Why don't you put it to test?" Lee said, quiet again. "See anything in my eyes?"

Drawing in a breath, slightly unstable, Adah tried to resolve herself to stay completely as she was, no shifting, no steeling, no nervous glance up toward the Eel's own movement quite eyes. Still, her lips pressed together slightly, and she had to move her pen, but she did so with as little extraneous steps as possible, writing a bit more slowly.

"An open invitation? That's a bit of a dangerous game you suggest. I'm quite good at seeing things that others don't even realize exist, you know..."

Adah herself was feeling a bit like she might already be seeing it, and longed to avoid the moment all together. If it was there, she wouldn't know what to do with it. If it wasn't there, well...she didn't know how she'd handle that, either.

He found himself nodding before speaking, moving one hand out from where he'd tucked it against his elbow to lay flat against the desk again, fingers splayed.

"It's an open invitation," he finally said. "If you want to look, you can. I'm not hiding anything. If not...we can save it for another day."

Putting it off was tempting, but there were other factors. Putting it off would mean that she might actually never have the chance because all of this would seem rather silly and foolish outside of the situation. That might be a good thing; after the whole thing with River just yesterday (strange to think that it was just yesterday; yesterday seemed so long that it could have been ages), Adah wasn't sure she could handle all of this. Too much of that which left her ignorant and confused. However, perhaps she was wrong, and there would be nothing and it really was just the stress of what happened with River altering her usually sharp perception of things. If that was the case, she was making the proverbial mountain out of an anthill.

Didn't mean the ants couldn't still tear flesh. The toes of her left foot curled slightly in her shoes, part out of nervousness, part out of remembering.

And then, making her decision, Adah moved her head. She glanced over at the Eel, blinked her eyes a few times as if to clear them, and idly attempted to brush some of her hair out of them before, holding her breath, she settled her gaze calmly on Lee's.

When her gaze settled on his, he offered a small smile, just a small upturning of his mouth.

And he didn't hide anything, not that he had been before. Now, it was more letting what he'd been feeling show in his eyes, not in his words. He'd never been the best with words anyway. Took after his father in that respect.

He held her gaze steadily, didn't blink and let her look, see him.

Her own eyes dancing slightly as if uncertain where to really settle and start looking, Adah found herself to be blinking more than she would have liked, but, other than that, it was the only movement she made. She'd almost felt as if the compulsive, repulsive pumping of the chambers of her heart had ceased, if just for a bit, as if even white and red blood cells in their veins would be too much movement. Just as she'd start thinking that, though, it would let out a thump, a twitch, pushing into its robotic job, but at least it was keeping the blood out of her cheeks. It wasn't difficult at all to do what she'd set out to do; she imagined herself having River's ability to read mind, wondering, stretching to try to see what the Eel might be thinking, but she realized she didn't need to. Looking over into his eyes, she could see doors, opening. Wide doors, large doors, into breezy rooms with big windows that let sunlight in but rain out. It didn't seem to matter at that moment what was in the room. Its open nature was the thing. Gniht eht saw, erutan nepo sti.

She smiled lightly; the Eel's eyes were incredibly nice to look at.

"You have an open invitation," he said quietly, still not glancing away from her gaze, "to look whenever you'd like. And if looking makes you smile like that, you should do it some more."

He leaned a little closer, relaxing muscles that he hadn't realized were tensed in nervousness and was quiet again.

If Adah was the type to feel bad about things like that, she would then feel bad over the fact that the Eel's statement changed her smile, sharpened it a little. Impossible not to, not with him saying things like that, leaning a little closer. Her eyes, very quickly, darted, like a mouse trying to cut across a deer path before the lynx stalking it could stop it, down from his eyes, as she wondered what the Eel would think if her unasked question about what else the open invitation might extend to if it were not unasked. She was glad for it being unasked, as she still wouldn't know what to do with the answer. Her eyes darted back up, searched his eyes again; maybe it didn't even need to be asked...

She became slowly aware of a tightening pain in her chest, from holding her breath, which she wasn't aware she was doing until that moment.

He thought about shifting away, moving, but he didn't. He stayed right where he was, eyes still on hers.

"Whatever your thinking," he finally said, "it's all right. You saw what you think you saw because I wanted to show you."

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