Re: coffee: sam & neil
She wouldn't be her if she talked like he did, formal and refined. His parents were the sort of wealth who looked down on those who lacked in anything, but Neil hadn't inherited that trait and so none of it had ever bothered him, not her language or her accent. "Formal is good for public appearances," he said dryly. He smiled when she said it was hot, but then his attention turned to time and years; he wasn't even entirely sure of how long he'd been gone some days. "Six, I think. Time moves differently here and there. It's enough to drive you insane." Maybe, in the end, it didn't matter. Six years, seven years, it had still been a long time.
He rolled his eyes when she called him predictable again. "One day. I'll work on it." Listening was easy, it had always been easier than talking. Other people's problems were difficult to shoulder but they were better than his own. His brow furrowed in concern when she said the seizures had gotten worse, and while he didn't honestly know a great deal about epilepsy he did know enough. "Oh, Sam," he sighed. "Does anyone else know?" He doubted it. "Oh. I don't think anyone would blame you for not looking." She'd deserved a break.
The thought of Louis being an Alexander 'through and through' made him smile, albeit a bit wistfully. "Yeah," he agreed. "I just want it over with. I want him out of that damn basement and free to live his life normally." He wasn't sure he could make Louis believe that Mere was good for him, that was part of the problem, and so he simply shrugged. One step at a time. First, Louis needed to be freed from the thing that had taken his soul.
Yes, they'd had plenty of sex. Yes, he was a grown adult, and so was she, and there was no shame in it. But he simply wasn't ever going to be the kind of man who could comfortably discuss his sex life with anyone. "I said you could ask," he protested mildly. "It's just not something I discuss often." The pencil was a distraction, he knew it was, but he took it. He could doodle more cats while he talked. "It's good, yes."