“You did go to university, didn’t you?”

Lux Lefevre didn’t ask these sorts of questions on account of his particular need to move through meetings quicker than his lungs could think to sabotage him. When he was young, fresh faced and starting out under his own father? Well sure, maybe he’d be known for entertaining the small talk here or there.

He was, after all, a southern man, and they were famed for their genteel nature until they grew old enough to get away with the grumbling gruff that everyone excused and turned a blind eye against.

Heloise Bellamy is not her uncle. She doesn’t ask this question with a need to awkwardly interject with frivolous small talk. She asks because she wants to know an answer that really...

She already knows.

You can see that in the way she tilts her head, the way her smile uncurls like a flower’s petals on a sunny day, obnoxiously big, big, big so it can drink up all that sunshine greedy as ever.

“The early worms get the bird! I mean- uh, the early-” he talks too fast, thinks even quicker, and it leaves his tongue in knots sometimes. Or maybe that’s just, you know, all the blood he’s seeing that apparently does NOT belong to Theodore. 

Cool, right? Totally cool. Cool, cool, cool- his inner Jeff Winger says, but his inner Troy Bolton is staring at the fire with pizza in his hands wondering what the fuck what the fu-

        There’s a flash of knowing in his eyes, then --- familiarity, and something far less tangible, flute of champagne lifted to his lips in his gaze. He has made plenty of charming small talk with a number of the guests; it’s a matter of making himself quite known at these events, without any additional motive for the time being. The host has a reputation of paying off a number of policymakers to allow for his illicit activities, and it is Napoleon’s goal to earn his trust as an enthralling attendee.

        He does not expect to see a familiar face, these days.

        So rare a thing it is for Napoleon Solo to be caught unawares, uncertain of his course of action from that point on. The lurch beneath his ribs is as much out of a measure of undeniable distaste as it is something that vaguely frightens him, a twitch of vulnerability heavy in the pit of his belly, leaving him to elegantly finish the remainder of the champagne in his glass before handing it off to a man passing with a tray for the guests.