[He drew back, just so. A sliver of weight settled back on his heels, and he watched --
merely watched.
Silence pervaded the spaces between, and when he finally spoke, it was laced with a trepidation both uncommon and caustic, self-effacing and rife with hatred of itself. Eyes cast elsewhere, focused on anything but the man before him.]
"We can share it, if you want--"
[A jump to justification, that smoothtalker staccato smoothed pretty in reasoning and a barter burned by displaced intimacies, all fake.]
"Not in the manner of reading into anything,"
[Another pause, pretty and brief]
"Merely, we keep opposite schedules -- in part, at least."
[A spark, a crackle&hiss. Clove cast alight on the perfume's sickly sweet basenote, tinging it spicy.]