- she melts into his arms, the sensation achingly familiar even though it's been almost two years, and her mouth opens automatically with a soft oh as he kisses her deeply -

(...wait...)

This is officially the most interesting thing happening in the room over and above Paret failing embarrassingly at his card trick. Everyone is watching them. Including Paret, causing him to fail embarrassingly at his card trick for the fourth time.

Including -

- no, never mind, he is turning around and going back up the stairs now actually.

But.

But what?

What were you expecting, you imbecile?

Were you expecting - what - even if she had promised anything, which she didn't, at all, but even if she had she's not Lawful and even if she were that doesn't mean much in this specific domain, that's always been knowable, obvious, why you never took leave that included Signing Day, one of the myriad exact reasons you were never going to touch this entire sphere of mortal behavior if you had ever examined your reasons for that which you didn't because you thought, you could have just gone on thinking for the rest of your life, that you were just like that, the way some people are born blind only less likely to wind up being exposed during infancy for the deformity.  And now you know and have to go on knowing that you're not, quite, blind, thanks to - her -

- and it should have been obvious, actually, that any woman whose standards included former Asmodean priest Blai Artigas would be pretty broadly permissive, shouldn't it have been.  It's not that he considered this hypothesis and came to the considered non-obvious opinion that - he's flinching away from even thinking any of the words, but at any rate he didn't come to a considered opinion, he just didn't wonder about it, because he's very stupid.  It is a violation of the regularities of the universe that he can hang a wizard spell.  Because he's very, very stupid.

Anyway, presumably she's done with him now, so that's a logistical task to apply himself to while waiting for all these fucking moron feelings that do! not! matter! to burn themselves out, extinguishing themselves against the walls of his ribcage or whatever the fuck it is that they're doing, she's done with him and that calls for some adjustments to the schedule to make that low-friction and nondisruptive, and -

- someday someone is going to ask him how he could come possibly have come to Iomedae's service given the givens, and he cannot lie, and while he can probably just stare unhelpfully at them he will remember the answer every time anyone asks, so this is not something he can just mothball in the back of his mind and never think of again.  So hopefully all these breathtakingly stupid reactions he's having to this objectively very trivial situation do a good job of crumbling to cinders he can function around.  This would be an absolutely inexcusable way for a veteran in his thirties to have an operational constraint.  It would be embarrassing in a teenager, and he has left teenagerhood behind for more than long enough to suck it up that she, that - sucking it up does not have to take verbal form it just has to take the form of doing his job.

It can go right next to "are you a virgin", on the list of questions someone can rifle through for moderately intrusive conversation topics, that will make him have stupid flashbacks until they wind up on some other subject.  Whatever.  He is not commanded to enjoy it.

He'll do his job.

Somebody runs a bowl of stew up to the office a couple of minutes later and there is no further ripple in the visible conduct of the fort.