#aaaarrghhhh

(719): cant (719): gotta stay for dinner (cell): Make an excuse? (719): not nice. plus might be a big step even getting asked (719): sorry :( (719): make it up to you when I get home? (cell): Mmm. I can only imagine how. (cell): In vivid detail. (719): staaaahp you’re only making this harder (cell): Isn’t that my line? (cell): All right, all right. I suppose I’ll just be here pining away every minute. (cell): Inconsolable grief. (719): only a few hours whiney (cell): I can’t hear you I’m playing Patsy Cline on your stereo and wallowing. (719): good wallow music (cell): Nevermind, I just found a considerable amount of ice cream in the freezer. Behold I am fulfilled again. (719): DON’T YOU DARE (cell): Or at least filled. Full. And filled. (cell): Such an awful lot of ice cream. (719): aw cmon don’t eat it alllll (cell): Now who’s whiny? —— As promised, Cathy returned after only a few hours. But Carson still pulled a petulant pout for her as she came in the front door and he uncoiled on the couch to rise to his feet. “Luckily for you I lied, and grew too utterly despondent to eat any of the ice cream,” he tried to mope, but a grin trembling at the corners of his mouth ruined the effect. “Poor baby,” said Cathy, removing her coat and hanging it before going over to him and standing on the couch to pat him consolingly on the top of his head. He put his arms around her waist and laid his lips on her forehead, where she could feel the shape of his little smile. Therefore she could also feel the shape of his little expletive as he stiffened and then looked back towards the kitchen guiltily. “I may have also been too despondent to put it away,” he muttered, and Cathy made a terrible face up at him. “That’s it,” she said. “I can’t stand for that. I’m turning around and going to dinner again and I’m never coming back. You melt my ice cream, you break my heart. We’re through.” But she couldn’t hold her exaggerated scowl for long, especially not once she hooked her hands over the backs of his shoulders and hugged him close, resting her cheek against his. The dinner had been a bit more of a struggle than she’d anticipated. It didn’t ever get unpleasant or uncivil, but keeping it that way grew to be a strain unusually swiftly, and as she was leaving she had been afraid that she’d let her relief that it was over show a little too plainly on her face, which would have undone all the progress she’d made there. So of course she couldn’t stay furious at the heinous mistreatment of her ice cream upon returning home. Especially since the culprit was now kissing her cheek and snuggling his face into her neck. Carson, for his part, had missed her unusually keenly this evening, in spite of the brevity of her engagement. Some dim and heavy melancholy seemed to be building on his horizon, and she’d turned her sunny eyes to the road before he could bask in her gaze a little and burn that haze away. But now they were grandly reunited, all their various woes draining away under the other’s touch. “Will you forgive me?” he murmured against her neck, though she obviously bore him no ill will. “Maybe,” she said anyway, as if she had to think about it. But then she kissed his temple, and he closed his eyes and smiled. His eyes flashed open when she planted a little ticklish kiss on the side of his neck and grazed her teeth over the soft skin beneath his jaw before kissing her way down to his collarbones. His quiet smile widened and he murmured, “Is this forgiveness?” He sucked in a light breath as a small bruise bloomed under the seal of her lips and a little thrill ran through him at the feeling. “I did say I’d make it up to you for going away,” she said, stepping off the couch and pressing flush to him. For the second time that evening, the ice cream was forgotten.