fandomhigh | Library; Wednesday [ 09/26 ]

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."

Adah had to go over that another time in her head to make all the yous and saws were properly aligned, correctly balanced. Her smile grew a little. The Eel sounded quite confident to think he knew what she thought she saw, but with good reason. She would have liked to have thought that she would have seen it whether he wanted to or not, but, biting her lip and ducking her head for a moment, she glanced back up through her hair with a question. And why, exactly, had he wanted her to see it? What did he expect her to do with this newfound knowledge?

He grinned then, a slight blush creeping across cheeks and crawling around his ears. He relaxed a little more, fingers drawing invisible words on the desk in front of him.

"You are," he started and had to stop for a moment, had to gather his words up and make them better. "You are very perceptive and very smart. Why should I hide it when I can show you?"

Adah was reluctant; part of her just wanted to maintain the gazing to see if she could manage to keep it unfaltered, but the movement of the Eel's fingers caught her attention more and dropped her eyes to watch them move, head tilting in an attempt to make out if there was any purpose, or rhythm or reason to them, or if they were just moving for the sake of moving. She let out a soft sigh, a happy one, considered having her fingers interrupt his in some off way to thank him for recognizing that about her, not bothering to hide things, with a slight stab of guilt for how much she was constantly trying to hide. She didn't do that as often with him, though, she realized, and that thought it was caused her hand to creep forward a little, fingers like the leg of a spider to close of bit of the distance. Not entirely all the way. That could be his open invitation.

He caught the movement and looked down, watched her fingers come closer and, in turn, swirled his fingers closer. Not entirely touching, not yet, but ghosting near the tips of her fingers, around the sides of her hand before they returned to their original position.

He looked up, caught her eyes before he closed that last bit of distance, took the invitation and used one finger, softly, to run just over hers, near the knuckle.

Smiling lightly, Adah closed her eyes and mused to herself how it wasn't really very fair, that something as small as a brush of a finger against hers would have such an effect on her. But touch was just something Adah had never been used to; she was used to people regarding her deformity as if it were something contagious. But injustice never ruled forever (thank you, Seneca), and, maybe, eventually, she'd be able to keep her body from shivering, her shoulders from shifting, her lips from curling up into that expression that was betraying any attempt to not seem effected.

Still wasn't fair; lifting her heavy eyelids, she glanced over to Lee, wondering if he had any idea at all the sort of injustice he dealt.

"Soft hands," he said, keeping his eyes on hers and moving that one finger up a little higher, touch still gentle, until he was drawing light circle on the top of her hand.

He dropped his eyes then, watched his finger on her hand for a few moments before looking back up at her and saying, "Capable hands."

Singular. Hand. Not plural, only one. The right hand was useless, limp. If the Eel was passing his fingers across its back, Adah might not even even notice that it was happening. Nothing but dead nerves, skin, bone. But this....of course it was capable. It had to be. She did everything with that hand. That hand that feeds, the hand that reached, grabbed, felt, talked. Her strongest asset, her only weapon. And she was letting someone touch it. Very suddenly, it became very clear why something so simple to other people was built into a complex in Adah. Very suddenly, there was a flash of panic in her eyes, and then, with a jerk of her body reacting faster than her brain, her hand pulled away sharply. Her face filled with red, but it was too late now and, besides, even if she told her hand to move back, the body wasn't responding. "..S...Sorry." Shoulder locked, all her supposedly capable hand could do now was curl up against her chest.

"Why are you sorry?" Lee asked gently after he'd realized what happened, had seen the panic in her eyes and watched her hand curl away from him. "You don't have to apologize to me for that. It's all right. Are you all right?"

Adah's mouth opened like she was going to say something, but it was faltering, and really, it was just fer feeling like she was losing more control again. Sharply, she steeled herself enough to make sure she could give her head a shake, to assure him that she was oaky, she was fine, fine, fine...Just needed to get her shoulder loose, loosen the elbow to unfurl the tucked arm. This was exactly what she'd been thinking to River the other day, that loss of control, the loss of everything, and the panic...Dog, the panic, like drowning...

She closed her eyes tight, against everything else but her own breathing. She was fine, fine! She just needed a moment...just herself, her half brain, her disobedient body.

"All right," he said quickly, straightening up for lack of not knowing what else to do. "Should I..."

He'd been about to say 'help' but he remembered that look from the other week and bit that off just before it came out of his mouth.

"...keep talking?" That was lame but he needed to say something. "Or be quiet?"

Library; Wednesday [ 09/26 ]

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