FIC: pheres dysseu, pale

[xihe]

      PHERES DYSSEU: 8 SWEEPS / ALMOST 19 YEARS OLD
SIPARA NZINGA: 8 SWEEPS / 18 YEARS OLD
 

“I love you,” you declare, and Sipara jostles, her ears pulling straight up like she’s been slapped. She stares at you, wide-eyed, a hand flitting towards her mouth.

Then she yelps: “- fuck off, I love you MORE.”

“You can’t,” you say, peaceful. “I said it first.”

“Well, I’m saying it better!” She puffs out her cheeks, flouncing off of her seat on the crate. Her heels thump as she begins to pace, the solid whack of keratin against wood. “I’m saying it, like, super better,” she adds, wrinkling her nose, and you laugh.

Her face is all circles, all fat: her weight fluctuates but it always stays round, round, round as the day you met her, sweeps and sweeps ago. “I love your face, and your nose, and yes, even those silly ears,” you tell her, and they flick back, just like that. Her eyes are big enough that you can see the gray specks in them, right at the edges, where the colour’s still mottled. “I love that you look like you’re six, for heaven’s sake. I love –”

“I don’t look like I’m six!”

“You look like you’re six and a day,” you give, and she squawks with outrage. Then she’s in your face in a flurry of curls, hands braced on your knees, her face inches from yours. When you lean back, she leans in. Her nose squashes against yours.

“I love you better,” she announces. “You’re dumb, and you’re extra, and you can’t even tie your shoelaces without, like, falling over.”

It’s your turn to squawk. “That is untrue –”

“Then do it!” she crows, right in your face, pulling back so you can see the waggle of her eyebrows. Then she’s grabbing your hand between both of hers and tugging. “Do it, do it, prove me wrong -”

“No!” You’re laughing, loud and bright, and so is she, as she tugs you onto your feet. “I am not!”

She huffs at you, but her shoulders slump, her ears relax. Her grip on your hand loosens, and just like that, you reach up, pap her on the cheek.

The first time you did this, she’d bit you on the wrist for your trouble. But that was sweeps and sweeps ago: now she nuzzles her face into the curve of your palm, presses her lips, fangless, against your wrist, pale as the moonlight above. Now she flings both arms around your shoulders and bounces up on her toes.

A kiss to both cheeks, a kiss to your forehead, a kiss to your mouth: each perfunctory, careful, with just enough force that you’re going to have to wipe lipstick off. “I love you,” she tells you, and it’s not a proclamation. It’s not a game: there’s a steady confidence to it, now, like she’s telling you the sky is blue, or the trees are pink. “I love you more than, like, anything I’ve ever, ever seen, ‘n more'n anyone I’ll ever, ever meet, and -”

Liyiji clears his throat.

“Please get a room,” he says, flat, peering down at the two of you from the front of the ship, his hands on the shipwheel. Riccin’s face is as orange as the sun, and they’re steadfastly staring at the moons, their mouth twisted like they’re trying not to smile. “I’m not into public piles. Sorry.”