Rae gave him a look -- a coy grin mixed with a one-shouldered shrug -- when he told her that she didn’t, in fact, want to hear what he was thinking. He took it back and she chuckled softly. “I don’t say things I don’t mean,” she pointed out. But he was right. It wasn’t going to help their current situation any. “Fine, fine. Patience is a virtue that I need to learn,” she snorted a laugh. “At least in this context.”
The flinch didn’t go unnoticed, nor did the fact that it wasn’t accompanied with a pained expression. That usually meant one thing and one thing only, and Rae couldn’t help but smirk at the implications. “Ticklish,” she stated. It wasn’t a question; he was definitely ticklish. “Bet you wish I was more forgetful, hm?” she asked. It was ironic. “I never thought I’d be looking forward to semi-solitude.” Though it wouldn’t really be solitude, because he’d be there. Yeah. Complex was a good word. Rae didn’t want to admit it, but her feelings toward him were growing by the day. Her mind, the trauma-addled part, anyway, was telling her to run. To give him the greatest gift she could ever give, and set him free. But her heart... well, it didn’t agree. Her heart needed him, her body wanted him, and her mind was tragically outnumbered in this fight. She was sure that, at least once or twice, she’d showed her hand. Especially by giving him the ‘let’s take it slow’ line. He probably knew that she was deeper into this than she wanted to show... but that wasn’t enough to stop her from showing it.
Pursing her lips and shrugging her head again, she chuckled softly. “I heard somewhere that it was like riding a bike, though,” she explained. She hadn’t actually heard that, but it was a funny little connotation to put onto their conversation. “One of those little things the body never forgets, even if the mind does. Muscle memory.” Probably not, but either way. “I always hoped that if I ever had to go years without dancing, I’d still remember how...” Completely unrelated, but she had this habit of speaking her mind with him.
She loved it when he did that. When he made an epic show of responding to things she said. When, for just a moment, he made it seem like he wasn’t going to react favorably, and then, unsurprisingly, he did. She watched him skate up to her, and her mouth tugged up into a smile, mostly against her volition. She liked it when he touched her. “Much better,” she whispered to him, a little grin on her face.
It was a little moronic, but rather than pay attention to his hands, Rae couldn’t take her eyes off of his smile. She listened to his words, just aware enough to apply them, but his face held her attention. “You should always be smiling like that. You have a perfect smile,” she told him, before turning her attention to where his hands were on the hockey stick. “It probably doesn’t help that the stick’s way too big for me, does it?” she smirked and shrugged. “But whatever. It’ll make it easier for when I get one that’s the right size.” All things that could be taken out of context, and she laughed when she realized that and shook her head.
With a nod, Rae glanced at the goal and took his advice. Shift weight, follow through... and it just barely made it off the post and in. She turned to him with a beaming smile on her face. “How about that?” she asked excitedly.