"Yeah." It's so uncool of her, but she can't stop the smile that breaks out onto her face. Abby doesn't seem uncomfortable with this at all, or like she feels weird about what they did yesterday. All good signs, even if she does look half-asleep still.
"Did you, uh, sleep okay?" Stupid question. Not to mention kind of formal and awkwardly polite, for her.
Look, she isn't sure what to do in this situation, exactly. It's not like she can lean over and kiss Abby good morning. She can't just, like, assume. All the weeks of awkwardness and tension and sideways glances and finally they've done something about it, but they still haven't talked, they still don't know exactly where they stand.
Abby smiles too, an automatic reaction and eager nerves suddenly bring the moment into focus, the two of them facing each other like this, tucked in. She wonders what she looks like to Clarisse lying on her side, one arm between them on the bed and the other sort of crushed underneath of herself. She's never wondered so much about what Clarisse could be thinking about her. She says, "What?" a little laugh in her voice, and Clarisse's answer makes her grin. "Um, yeah." She scrubs her eye. "I think you're a good luck charm against nightmares."
Cuz she didn't have one. She slept good, sound. Didn't wake up in the night. Same as that other night they spent together, lying tangled up. "You?"
... Yeah, it's awkward. Pretty new. It's nice, though. Clarisse checking on her is kinda cute.
Nothing was wrong with the apartment room. It just didn't feel right. She'd take forever to fall asleep, and wake up with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach only to find that just a few hours had passed and it was still dark outside. This was a thousand percent better.
She's up but doesn't really want to leave, not with Abby lying there smiling at her like that. Their legs touching. But her heart is starting to race already and if she stays here she might say the first thing that pops into her head, and who knows what weird shit that might be?
Okay. Okay okay okay. She needs a few minutes, not to escape but to clear her head, figure out what she's going to do about this.
Clarisse rises to a sitting position and rubs a hand across her face, wiping sleep from her eyes. The part of her that sucks at this kind of thing and doesn't know how to react to stress is just dying to say something stupid, but she manages to sound pretty normal, actually, when she speaks again.
"You hungry? I can get some breakfast and bring it back here." Not that the two of them couldn't both walk to the dining hall. But eating there would definitely fuck up the intimate conversational vibe that Clarisse is planning on so she hopes Abby just says okay and lets her go.
"That's good." She ignores the guilty pang in her chest — it wasn't her fault, they already established that. She could touch Clarisse in this moment in reassurance, put a hand on her waist or her arm, but in thinking too hard about whether or not it would be weird to do something like that she misses her chance. Clarisse has sat up.
Abby watches her, slowly easing up onto an elbow. She doesn't really know what to think — still waking up, aware that this isn't the same vibe as the morning after the training yard, not sure what has replaced it. At least she doesn't feel the need to get her things and bolt, and Clarisse is sitting easy, relaxed, rubbing her eye. Whatever is going through her head, it's obviously okay.
After a moment's consideration, Abby sinks back down onto her pillow.
"Sure." That nervousness is back again, but it's not bad. It's just there. It keeps making her smile, ugh. She wants to grab Clarisse's pillow and pull it over her face or something. "I'll... be here."
For just a second Clarisse stays where she is, watching Abby smile and feeling a mixture of giddy excitement and nervousness. Then she slides out of bed.
Her clothes—their clothes are strewn on the floor. Clarisse has to turn one leg of her pants rightside out before she pulls them on, in a move that reminds her of that morning in the training yard, when she'd gone back to the tent unbuttoned and even more of a mess than usual, her underwear clenched tight in one fist.
This isn't half as awkward as that, although she is aware that Abby must be watching her as she gets dressed, pulling her shirt over her head without bothering with her bra first. Her clothes are wrinkled from hours lying unfolded on the floor, and she runs her hands down the front of her shirt a couple times even though it doesn't help much.
Right, all her clean stuff is across the harbor. That's something she'll have to deal with at some point later today.
"Be back in ten. Don't fall back to sleep," she warns as she finishes pulling her boots on and goes to exit. It's not at all a serious threat, though. She knows Abby too well.
"Oh," Abby says, laughing, delighted. Her ears feel hot. "Okay."
She's definitely watching Clarisse as she gets up out of the bed in one fluid movement, unable to help looking as she bends at the waist to retrieve her trousers from the floor, shoving her arm into them to turn one leg right side out. That was Abby's doing. They were moving fast, tugging on clothes without looking down. She remembers thinking at some point that if she didn't get her hands on Clarisse's skin right then and there she was gonna scream in frustration.
There are half-moon nail marks on the undersides of Clarisse's thighs.
Abby exhales in a rush and sits up, letting the blankets pool in her lap. Pushing a hand through her hair, drawing it back from her face, she says, "I won't," and means it. She's up. Awake and full of nerves all over again. Happy. Kinda horny?
The moment Clarisse shuts the door she starts to finger comb. By the time she's back she's got a braid again and clothes on, a plain shirt and pants and she's made the bed, sorta, just tugged the covers back up and threw everything else into place. Doing what she'd usually do and probably looking far too casual about it in the process.
Clarisse returns balancing a tray with food and two mugs of steaming coffee. It's basically impossible to look cool balancing a tray of anything, but she's doing her best. She mostly picked things that wouldn't be gross if they got cold, but there's still a mix of things they both like—bacon and toasted bread with jam, some apple slices and honey.
She's not surprised to see that the bed's been made, or that Abby's dressed with her hair braided. It's exactly like any other morning, except for all the ways it isn't.
She sets the tray down on the table nearest Abby's bed, and then hesitates, not sure whether to sit down there or on her own bed. Even as she does it, she's aware that she's making it a bigger deal than it should be. She's flopped down on Abby's bed like she owned it dozens of times before this and never given it a second thought, but suddenly she's hyper aware of everything she's doing and how it might come across.
Well, Abby's bed is closer. Clarisse picks up her mug of coffee and sits on the end, holding it in both hands even though it's still a little too hot to drink.
"Hey," she says, feeling like an idiot. "I hope this is okay." Like Abby is going to get pissed at her for bringing the wrong food, or something, when she's seen her eat all this stuff on a regular basis. Stupid.
Abby, who got up the moment Clarisse entered the door, has to take her seat again with no small amount of awkwardness but she still does, and next to her on the bed. This time, she can allow their legs to touch a little, as they did before, with less nervousness. And thankfully there's something to do with her hands — she brings the other mug up to her nose and inhales the rusty, deep smell of the coffee.
Sitting here holding it, noting the rest of the food Clarisse has brought back up the stairs for her, she doesn't assume for a second that she's talking about that. She shrugs. "It's okay. I — um, hope it happens again."
So. Yeah.
She's staring into her coffee for emotional support.
Clarisse was definitely talking about the food, and for several moments afterward she's lost for words. Her ears get all hot and she takes a sip of the coffee, stalling, even though it's gonna burn her mouth.
"Yeah," she says when she feels like she can, "about that."
She puts her mug back down on the tray. She can't hold onto it and say this. She doesn't know what her hands are going to do.
"When you say happens again, do... you just want to be friends who hook up? Or—or like—" Fuck it, right? She's thinking about what she said to Jayce right after Ellie disappeared, about how she just keeps loving people anyway, even if it hurts her.
"I think about you all the time," Clarisse says in a rush. "When you didn't remember me I felt like I was going to throw up every day when I woke up and you weren't there. All I wanted to do was be with you. And I kept thinking that at least I didn't kiss you on Satinalia because if I'd done that it would have made everything even harder, but I don't think it really mattered that I didn't do it, because I still wished I had."
At that point she peters out and has to stop to breathe. This all sounded way better and more coherent in her head while she was walking back up here, for the record.
It feels like, from Clarisse's sudden silence and the way she brings her cup immediately to her mouth, Abby might have said the wrong thing, the pause indicating to her that Clarisse is now figuring out how to duck out from underneath of that proposal. Her palms feel sweaty on her own mug, hot from the coffee and the blood suddenly pumping much quicker in her ears. She feels like a teenager. They're probably just as red as each other.
Clarisse puts her mug down. The pottery clipping against the wood table is so loud. Abby says "Sorry," and it comes out little and stupid, but Clarisse keeps going just to beat her to the point and what she does say makes Abby's jaw drop inelegantly.
She sweeps her hand across her face to tuck her hair; there is no hair that isn't already braided back so it's just a familiar motion, curling her fingers around her ear and letting them linger there while she listens. When she glances over and registers the raw look on Clarisse's face, a shyness she doesn't think she's ever seen before, she doesn't hesitate.
"Me too. I wanted — I tried to ask you," but wimped out, sat around afterwards, thought about it for days. Kept revisiting the entire moment in odd places, playing through alternative versions of it in her head: the one where she got it out and Clarisse kissed her because she wanted to; the one where Clarisse told her she didn't feel the same way, and that they probably shouldn't stay friends. "I got in my head about it, I didn't want to fuck anything up because you're so important to me. And I — really like you."
Hearing Abby say this is a huge weight off her chest. Not just I really like you, even though it's mostly that, but a little bit I got in my head about it too. It makes Clarisse feel a little bit less dumb about how weird she's been making this, when the whole time she didn't have to be.
This time when she breathes in, it feels like she's actually filling her chest with air. She's still—nervous, a little, that butterflies in the stomach kind of feeling. But she's happy more than anything. Relieved. Excited. Watching Abby tuck an invisible piece of hair behind her ear makes it feel like something soft is blooming inside her chest.
Abby's still holding onto her coffee, so Clarisse doesn't so much take her hand as just place her own over top of it, letting her thumb curl gently around Abby's wrist. "I really like you too, Abs. I'm sorry," she says. "That I was so stupid after the first time."
Maybe she had a good enough reason to act a little stupid. Maybe. But even after that, she'd said they shouldn't have, that it was a mistake, and she'd made herself hold back instead of doing what she wanted. Wasting time, when they both know that it's so finite.
Clarisse's hand is warm where it tucks in against her skin and Abby breathes out, smiles quick on the exhale, lips twitching up. They touched all the time before any of this, ranging from accidental brushes to intentional shoves, and none of it ever made her feel excited like she does right now. Now Clarisse's touch carries a sort of electricity, something she didn't realise she needed. "Don't be. I was stupid too; I can't believe I walked away from you like that."
Like, looking back on it?? She wouldn't have been surprised to find out now that Clarisse was really offended by that. All she could think about was needing to get away from the situation as fast as possible... she was thinking about herself far too much.
"But after I found out I forgot about you I got kinda freaked out. And I was wondering what the point of holding back even was. You know?"
Clarisse is shaking her head, but she's smiling. She keeps holding onto Abby's wrist, enjoying the way it's warm against her palm. Right, Abby walked away from her first, but Clarisse had been planning her own escape too, and she'd been too relieved by the sudden aloneness to even think about being offended.
"Yeah, I know." She's thinking back to yesterday, how Abby had asked if they could talk and then kissed her instead. They might have had this conversation last night instead, then, if Abby had hesitated a little more. But Clarisse kind of prefers it this way, talking now that the immediate emotional reaction of being forgotten and then remembered again has had time to settle.
"So does this mean," she says, trailing off, a little embarrassed about what she's asking. "Are we..." Dating seems sort of dumb to say, because isn't that what you do to get to know somebody? She already knows Abby. Official seems equally stupid, like they're going to have to go announce their intentions publicly or something.
"Together," she settles on, waving her free hand in a very it's whatever! who cares! way even though it's not whatever and she cares a lot.
So does this mean is the start of a sentence that should cause her dread maybe, or bring around another fresh wave of nervousness but all Abby feels right now is calm, even a little relieved. She's been wondering this herself, what it all means, and once they've got that figured out they can finally relax, stop dancing around each other. Figure out exactly what this is together.
And Clarisse says that word right as she's thinking it, too.
"Um," Abby says, and grins suddenly, wide and pleased. Clarisse's hand on her wrist feels so nice, her fingers brushing gently against the tender skin on the underside of it. "Yeah. I guess we are."
Kinda funny to think that people have said that about them before, that they're always together. Rooming together, working together — being together together seems so adjacent to all of that. She's still smiling at Clarisse and unwilling to take her arm back even though she wants to drink her coffee, right up until she says, "Cool," and flusters, turning her head in the direction of the food. Her face is hot.
Clarisse can't stop grinning. "Cool," she agrees, and gives Abby's wrist a little squeeze before releasing it.
They're both still a little red in the face, self-conscious about their own happiness, but it feels like her stomach untied all its knots as soon as Abby said yeah, and she relaxes into the way she's sitting on the bed, letting her leg knock against Abby's without a second thought. This is good. It feels right. She's really happy.
And now that she's not on the verge of some kind of attack, Clarisse is hungry, too. She reaches for a slice of toast and lifts it to her mouth, but a thought occurs to her before she takes a bite. "Does this mean I get to take you out?"
Yeah, Abby is too. She's grinning into her coffee, reaching for an apple slice and dipping it luxuriously into the little carafe of honey. "Sure."
Take you out. Like on a date, she means — and she didn't think Clarisse was gonna be so smooth about asking her that either, it's a delightful surprise. She's already looking forward to it. Maybe they'll go out and get good food together; maybe they can find a cool place to go for a hike.
With the slice of apple in her mouth she says, "Does this mean you're gonna bring breakfast back up to the room for me all the time, or only on special occasions?"
Because it wouldn't be them if she wasn't getting a dig in at Clarisse, so hopefully she didn't think she was about to get some kind of reprieve.
Good. She wants to do that. And she's not going to subject Abby to flying more than she has to, but she knows some cool places. Now that they have the eluvians, they don't even have to wait for Kirkwall winter to ease up.
Clarisse has just bitten off approximately half of the piece of toast in her hand, but she snorts and nudges Abby with her elbow, pleased. It feels so good to have Abby tease her again, and to shove her in response, without any lingering awkwardness. Just like how it used to be between them, only now there are some extra bonuses.
"Only on days you deserve it." It's not, on the surface, any different from something she might have said to Abby a few months ago, or last year even. But now there's a definite shift in the tone. Sure, as far as flirting goes it's not her best work, but it's been a while.
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"Did you, uh, sleep okay?" Stupid question. Not to mention kind of formal and awkwardly polite, for her.
Look, she isn't sure what to do in this situation, exactly. It's not like she can lean over and kiss Abby good morning. She can't just, like, assume. All the weeks of awkwardness and tension and sideways glances and finally they've done something about it, but they still haven't talked, they still don't know exactly where they stand.
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Cuz she didn't have one. She slept good, sound. Didn't wake up in the night. Same as that other night they spent together, lying tangled up. "You?"
... Yeah, it's awkward. Pretty new. It's nice, though. Clarisse checking on her is kinda cute.
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Nothing was wrong with the apartment room. It just didn't feel right. She'd take forever to fall asleep, and wake up with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach only to find that just a few hours had passed and it was still dark outside. This was a thousand percent better.
She's up but doesn't really want to leave, not with Abby lying there smiling at her like that. Their legs touching. But her heart is starting to race already and if she stays here she might say the first thing that pops into her head, and who knows what weird shit that might be?
Okay. Okay okay okay. She needs a few minutes, not to escape but to clear her head, figure out what she's going to do about this.
Clarisse rises to a sitting position and rubs a hand across her face, wiping sleep from her eyes. The part of her that sucks at this kind of thing and doesn't know how to react to stress is just dying to say something stupid, but she manages to sound pretty normal, actually, when she speaks again.
"You hungry? I can get some breakfast and bring it back here." Not that the two of them couldn't both walk to the dining hall. But eating there would definitely fuck up the intimate conversational vibe that Clarisse is planning on so she hopes Abby just says okay and lets her go.
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Abby watches her, slowly easing up onto an elbow. She doesn't really know what to think — still waking up, aware that this isn't the same vibe as the morning after the training yard, not sure what has replaced it. At least she doesn't feel the need to get her things and bolt, and Clarisse is sitting easy, relaxed, rubbing her eye. Whatever is going through her head, it's obviously okay.
After a moment's consideration, Abby sinks back down onto her pillow.
"Sure." That nervousness is back again, but it's not bad. It's just there. It keeps making her smile, ugh. She wants to grab Clarisse's pillow and pull it over her face or something. "I'll... be here."
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For just a second Clarisse stays where she is, watching Abby smile and feeling a mixture of giddy excitement and nervousness. Then she slides out of bed.
Her clothes—their clothes are strewn on the floor. Clarisse has to turn one leg of her pants rightside out before she pulls them on, in a move that reminds her of that morning in the training yard, when she'd gone back to the tent unbuttoned and even more of a mess than usual, her underwear clenched tight in one fist.
This isn't half as awkward as that, although she is aware that Abby must be watching her as she gets dressed, pulling her shirt over her head without bothering with her bra first. Her clothes are wrinkled from hours lying unfolded on the floor, and she runs her hands down the front of her shirt a couple times even though it doesn't help much.
Right, all her clean stuff is across the harbor. That's something she'll have to deal with at some point later today.
"Be back in ten. Don't fall back to sleep," she warns as she finishes pulling her boots on and goes to exit. It's not at all a serious threat, though. She knows Abby too well.
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She's definitely watching Clarisse as she gets up out of the bed in one fluid movement, unable to help looking as she bends at the waist to retrieve her trousers from the floor, shoving her arm into them to turn one leg right side out. That was Abby's doing. They were moving fast, tugging on clothes without looking down. She remembers thinking at some point that if she didn't get her hands on Clarisse's skin right then and there she was gonna scream in frustration.
There are half-moon nail marks on the undersides of Clarisse's thighs.
Abby exhales in a rush and sits up, letting the blankets pool in her lap. Pushing a hand through her hair, drawing it back from her face, she says, "I won't," and means it. She's up. Awake and full of nerves all over again. Happy. Kinda horny?
The moment Clarisse shuts the door she starts to finger comb. By the time she's back she's got a braid again and clothes on, a plain shirt and pants and she's made the bed, sorta, just tugged the covers back up and threw everything else into place. Doing what she'd usually do and probably looking far too casual about it in the process.
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She's not surprised to see that the bed's been made, or that Abby's dressed with her hair braided. It's exactly like any other morning, except for all the ways it isn't.
She sets the tray down on the table nearest Abby's bed, and then hesitates, not sure whether to sit down there or on her own bed. Even as she does it, she's aware that she's making it a bigger deal than it should be. She's flopped down on Abby's bed like she owned it dozens of times before this and never given it a second thought, but suddenly she's hyper aware of everything she's doing and how it might come across.
Well, Abby's bed is closer. Clarisse picks up her mug of coffee and sits on the end, holding it in both hands even though it's still a little too hot to drink.
"Hey," she says, feeling like an idiot. "I hope this is okay." Like Abby is going to get pissed at her for bringing the wrong food, or something, when she's seen her eat all this stuff on a regular basis. Stupid.
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Sitting here holding it, noting the rest of the food Clarisse has brought back up the stairs for her, she doesn't assume for a second that she's talking about that. She shrugs. "It's okay. I — um, hope it happens again."
So. Yeah.
She's staring into her coffee for emotional support.
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"Yeah," she says when she feels like she can, "about that."
She puts her mug back down on the tray. She can't hold onto it and say this. She doesn't know what her hands are going to do.
"When you say happens again, do... you just want to be friends who hook up? Or—or like—" Fuck it, right? She's thinking about what she said to Jayce right after Ellie disappeared, about how she just keeps loving people anyway, even if it hurts her.
"I think about you all the time," Clarisse says in a rush. "When you didn't remember me I felt like I was going to throw up every day when I woke up and you weren't there. All I wanted to do was be with you. And I kept thinking that at least I didn't kiss you on Satinalia because if I'd done that it would have made everything even harder, but I don't think it really mattered that I didn't do it, because I still wished I had."
At that point she peters out and has to stop to breathe. This all sounded way better and more coherent in her head while she was walking back up here, for the record.
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Clarisse puts her mug down. The pottery clipping against the wood table is so loud. Abby says "Sorry," and it comes out little and stupid, but Clarisse keeps going just to beat her to the point and what she does say makes Abby's jaw drop inelegantly.
She sweeps her hand across her face to tuck her hair; there is no hair that isn't already braided back so it's just a familiar motion, curling her fingers around her ear and letting them linger there while she listens. When she glances over and registers the raw look on Clarisse's face, a shyness she doesn't think she's ever seen before, she doesn't hesitate.
"Me too. I wanted — I tried to ask you," but wimped out, sat around afterwards, thought about it for days. Kept revisiting the entire moment in odd places, playing through alternative versions of it in her head: the one where she got it out and Clarisse kissed her because she wanted to; the one where Clarisse told her she didn't feel the same way, and that they probably shouldn't stay friends. "I got in my head about it, I didn't want to fuck anything up because you're so important to me. And I — really like you."
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This time when she breathes in, it feels like she's actually filling her chest with air. She's still—nervous, a little, that butterflies in the stomach kind of feeling. But she's happy more than anything. Relieved. Excited. Watching Abby tuck an invisible piece of hair behind her ear makes it feel like something soft is blooming inside her chest.
Abby's still holding onto her coffee, so Clarisse doesn't so much take her hand as just place her own over top of it, letting her thumb curl gently around Abby's wrist. "I really like you too, Abs. I'm sorry," she says. "That I was so stupid after the first time."
Maybe she had a good enough reason to act a little stupid. Maybe. But even after that, she'd said they shouldn't have, that it was a mistake, and she'd made herself hold back instead of doing what she wanted. Wasting time, when they both know that it's so finite.
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Like, looking back on it?? She wouldn't have been surprised to find out now that Clarisse was really offended by that. All she could think about was needing to get away from the situation as fast as possible... she was thinking about herself far too much.
"But after I found out I forgot about you I got kinda freaked out. And I was wondering what the point of holding back even was. You know?"
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"Yeah, I know." She's thinking back to yesterday, how Abby had asked if they could talk and then kissed her instead. They might have had this conversation last night instead, then, if Abby had hesitated a little more. But Clarisse kind of prefers it this way, talking now that the immediate emotional reaction of being forgotten and then remembered again has had time to settle.
"So does this mean," she says, trailing off, a little embarrassed about what she's asking. "Are we..." Dating seems sort of dumb to say, because isn't that what you do to get to know somebody? She already knows Abby. Official seems equally stupid, like they're going to have to go announce their intentions publicly or something.
"Together," she settles on, waving her free hand in a very it's whatever! who cares! way even though it's not whatever and she cares a lot.
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And Clarisse says that word right as she's thinking it, too.
"Um," Abby says, and grins suddenly, wide and pleased. Clarisse's hand on her wrist feels so nice, her fingers brushing gently against the tender skin on the underside of it. "Yeah. I guess we are."
Kinda funny to think that people have said that about them before, that they're always together. Rooming together, working together — being together together seems so adjacent to all of that. She's still smiling at Clarisse and unwilling to take her arm back even though she wants to drink her coffee, right up until she says, "Cool," and flusters, turning her head in the direction of the food. Her face is hot.
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They're both still a little red in the face, self-conscious about their own happiness, but it feels like her stomach untied all its knots as soon as Abby said yeah, and she relaxes into the way she's sitting on the bed, letting her leg knock against Abby's without a second thought. This is good. It feels right. She's really happy.
And now that she's not on the verge of some kind of attack, Clarisse is hungry, too. She reaches for a slice of toast and lifts it to her mouth, but a thought occurs to her before she takes a bite. "Does this mean I get to take you out?"
Okay, now toast.
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Take you out. Like on a date, she means — and she didn't think Clarisse was gonna be so smooth about asking her that either, it's a delightful surprise. She's already looking forward to it. Maybe they'll go out and get good food together; maybe they can find a cool place to go for a hike.
With the slice of apple in her mouth she says, "Does this mean you're gonna bring breakfast back up to the room for me all the time, or only on special occasions?"
Because it wouldn't be them if she wasn't getting a dig in at Clarisse, so hopefully she didn't think she was about to get some kind of reprieve.
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Clarisse has just bitten off approximately half of the piece of toast in her hand, but she snorts and nudges Abby with her elbow, pleased. It feels so good to have Abby tease her again, and to shove her in response, without any lingering awkwardness. Just like how it used to be between them, only now there are some extra bonuses.
"Only on days you deserve it." It's not, on the surface, any different from something she might have said to Abby a few months ago, or last year even. But now there's a definite shift in the tone. Sure, as far as flirting goes it's not her best work, but it's been a while.