The relief that flooded through her nearly made her giddy. She almost, almost, hugged him for that, but that thought led nearly immediately to ideas about kissing him because he was really a fantastic kisser. And that thought was followed closely by the realization that this was sort of what she was worried about, thoughts like that creeping in at odd times in conversation. They might be fine, but their relationship had changed. She wasn’t certain if she liked that or not.
No matter how hot the sex had been. And hooboy, had it been good. Maybe it was just that there were cars involved, but there was only one other night that stood out in her memory like this one. And that night had ended with her getting kicked out of bed the next morning. Though it was hard to continue to think badly of someone when they got themselves set on fire for you, so she supposed she was going to just have to forgive Pothos and be done with it. And then she could remember her night with him as fondly as she was remembering last night with Deimos. Well, almost as fondly. Pothos hadn’t bent her over the hood of a car.
So they would just… figure out where they were going from here. That was all. She and Dei were going to be fine. He didn’t seem freaked out about last night, so they’d just make the adjustments that came with adding sex to a relationship. She’d done it before, a lot, and she’d help her brother through it if he needed it. Though she sort of doubted he would. They were okay, and that’s all she really needed to know. But he was right, they needed to get out of there.
Except they couldn’t. She heard the door half a second after Dei, before she’d even realized that he’d frozen in response to the sound. There was little doubt who would be standing there, but somehow she couldn’t help herself. Lottie lifted her head and looked toward the door, just as Nem made the little grunt of surprise.
Philotes blinked. She’d kind of expected a little more reaction than that, but she wasn’t going to complain. It gave her a chance to smooth things over before Nemmy got mad, so she started talking before she’d really had a chance to think things through. “Um. Hi. I can explain this, really I can.”
At that point, she made a tactical error. One she should have known to avoid, but she was concentrating on the look on Nem’s face and not paying much attention to what her body was doing. Somehow, without her permission, it decided that it was going to get up while she was speaking with her sister. Maybe there was a subconscious thought that she should sit up or move away from Dei or at least make an attempt to cover herself since she was bare to all eyes from the waist up. Whatever the impetus, Lottie attempted to get up and roll over at the same time.
The results were not at all what she would have wanted. They probably weren’t what anybody else wanted either. The edge of the mattress was far closer than she’d thought, because Philotes had assumed they were in the middle of the bed, all cuddled up. Instead, they were much closer to one side and that was the side she rolled right off of. Onto the floor. Which would have been bad enough if she hadn’t tried to stop her graceless descent by grabbing onto the sheets, the duvet, anything to prevent the inevitable. All it succeeded in doing was depositing Lottie on the floor with all of the bed linens, leaving Deimos completely naked and uncovered in the middle of the mattress.
At least it was a softer landing than most. From her position on the floor, face hot and flaming with embarrassment, unwilling to even attempt to get up and see Dei’s face, Lottie repeated miserably, “I can explain, Nemmy.”