“She might be,” Rae nodded her head. “She and I are a lot alike. And I know that I did that a lot when I was in her shoes. Tried to put on a brave face. She's such a good person, you know? She deserves the best in the world. Deserves to be happy. I hate that she's going through this.” Shaking her head no, she looked down at the ground and sighed a little. “I know that feeling. Not wanting to be pitied. I think, maybe, she needs someone to tell her that there's a difference between pity and care. I needed that.” But no one had done it. It had taken people showing her.
Rae dashed her tongue out and wet her lips, raising one shoulder in a responding shrug and curling her lips up into a coy smile. “Glad we're on the same page, then,” she winked and tried her best not to say anything too obvious. She enjoyed flirting, but she didn't want him to become some sort of target, more than he already had with the Secret Squirrel business. “I think your phrasing kind of makes me sound bad, but...” she shrugged, “if I wasn't sick, you wouldn't have to hide your actions behind booze, trust me on that.”
Given her former occupation, Rae was very comfortable being watched. She played it up as much as she could, stopping for a second and holding her hand out behind her. “I think I've got a bit of a leg cramp,” she pointed out in a phony voice, leaning down and stretching her legs, touching her toes and giving him a playful look from between her calves. Dancer flexibility was beyond helpful when it came to flirting. With her cold, the congestion, though, she couldn't stay down there for too long. She stood up straight and took a second to regain her composure and letting the blood rush back down from her head. “Okay, I was trying to show off, but I think it backfired,” she laughed at herself. “I think I'll just stick to staying a few steps ahead. Or just walk beside you. Either one,” she joked.
“Hm,” she pondered aloud. “I suppose I can just let your imagination wander. What do you have to say to that, hm?”
Once again, being watched was something that she was very familiar with. Something she reveled in. Before she reached down to take the laces, she used her thumb and forefinger to push the small opening a little further apart and give him a little more of a show. “Thought it might've been,” she said, lowering her own tone a little. Yeah. Behaving was not easy. “Feel free to look,” she told him as she took her time tying the laces. “I'd say touch, but with this coat, you couldn't really feel a lot,” she joked.
She looked up at him with a lopsided grin and a nod when he placed his hand on the zipper of her coat. “Right,” she cleared her throat, moving her eyes from his hand and up to his face. “Don't want me getting sicker, right?” she tried to level her tone, but behaving... wasn't easy. She knew that she should probably have moved away by now... but she didn't want to. So she didn't. Not yet.