"You know you've totally like, changed the tragic-edy of my life," Jed nodded solemnly, as best he could from his position flopped across her bed while she shot at aliens on her screen. It was easier to say such things when she wasn't completely paying attention, only because he tended to lose track of his thoughts when she was looking at him. "I could've been like, cruising on asshole asteroid and then suddenly 'bam'! You came and knocked me onto a different path." He flipped over onto his back and looked up at the ceiling instead, tossing a football up and down to do something with his hands. "You know. Like Star Wars shit."
you say you're no good, but you're good for me / @founderscouncil (jed)
That's a cute way of saying trajectory. Or tragedy. Either or. She doesn't look at him just yet, keeps her hazel eyes firmly trained on the aliens on her screen, but she hears him all the same, having long since turned down the volume of the game as discreetly as possible.
It's not eavesdropping if she's making it more comfortable for him to speak his mind. And he does, telling her that she knocked him onto a different path - that he'd been cruising on asshole asteroid beforehand, but that she changed the entire trajectory of his life. That she did that. She did that.
Game over, flashes on screen, but it doesn't feel that way. Rather, it feels like the game has only just begun for them.
As it stands, Flori does not start a new round just yet. Instead, she turns on her spinny chair and looks at him, the way he'd just been looking at her. She felt his warm gaze, she always does when he looks at her; she just knows.
"Jed Tien," Flori says, and she cannot stop smiling for the (un)life of her as she watches him toss a football up and down just to give his hands something to do. "Are you calling us a dyad in the force? What a mark, what a steal, I'll take it." If only because: "I think it's the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me."
"You know---" She's leaning forward a bit now, but her eyes remain comfortably trained on Jed. "---my mom's side of the family, the Harmans, they all believe in something that they call the Soulmate Principle; every person in the world has another person that just fits them. Or multiple people, plural. Legend has it that said people are connected with a silver cord, heart to heart. Sort of like the red string of fate, I suppose, but with a twist. It's similar to the Star Wars stuff you just mentioned."
And she may not say it aloud, but Flori does think - does know, does believe - they're connected like that. She'd bet her (un)life on it.
"People always say oh, he changed for you, that's so romantic, but I don't think that's quite what happened there. You changed for you. Because you could. Because the capacity was always there. I just gave you a jumping off point."
She turns back to the game over screen that's still flashing and exits the game. Turns off her pc afterwards. And then she swivels around to face him again as her eyes track the football being thrown up into the air and being caught with expert precision.
(Part of her wonders why he's never been drafted for Salvatore's sorry excuse of a football team, but then, if he had, Jed and Kaleb would have been expected to carry the team, and Jed's already carrying the pack, so to speak.)
Up goes the football and Floribeth uses a bit of her vampire speed to leap out of the spinny chair and launch herself across him, landing onto his other side well before he catches the football again. Only the fact that she's calculated it in her head beforehand makes it so that she hasn't gone careening off the other side of her daybed. (Though she likes to think that the swinging chair in the corner would have caught her, somehow, slowing her wild descent towards the floor.)
She giggles, then breathes in deep, inhaling his scent, and tucks herself against his side like she's always belonged there. Like she still does belong there. Presses sweet, secret kisses on every soft bit of exposed skin she can find, murmuring thanks and praise in equal measure because he deserves to be celebrated like that, she thinks, nuzzling against him as she listens to his heartbeat; it's strong and steady, stalwart and true. It's her favorite sound in the world.
And it's as much for him as it is for her, because sometimes she thinks this isn't real; sometimes she thinks she might still be at the detention facility, she thinks that all of this might be a deliberately crafted illusion - she's done it for and to others, so who's to say that they cannot do it to her? After all, it doesn't take much to determine her type: werewolf, person of color, someone who's the complete opposite of her - Jed is every fantasy she's ever had made manifest.
A few minutes later, Flori wrenches herself free from her worries and goes back to listening to his heart again, replaying his lovely words over and over in her mind, until her own heart kicks up a beat. Her scent sweetens and her mouth floods with saliva. They both know what that means.
(It means wantneedhungerlove - she doesn't have the words yet to describe the inexorable voraciousness that lives inside of her, often only sated by him. But she can show him. She can always show him.)
One day soon, when they have enough down-time and there isn't a life-ending crisis to deal with, she'll take her time with him; she'll worship his body the way he deserves, because making him feel good makes her feel good, but until then...
"Can I kiss you?" The question is nothing more than a whimper as it falls from her red, red pouty mouth. Even so, she's rather proud of herself for using her words rather than falling back on telepathy. "Please, Jed, I think I need to kiss you, I need to get lost in the perfect sensation of feeling your lips on mine until they're kiss-bitten and spit-shiny. I need the world to shrink down until it's just us two. I need you so, so close. But above all, I need to show you how much your words mean to me. May I please do that?"