—I don't see why you are demanding it in so many words!
[He finally blurts that out with a pout, which is at least mostly affected. The atmosphere is so tense it feels like the room might shatter like glass, and Nikolas is quickly coming to realize that if this is happening, and right now, he doesn't much like the feeling of it being like that. It feels like starting things off very much on the wrong foot to begin with this kind of brittle awkwardness. He has to break the mood somehow, damn it all.
The easiest way would be by deflecting the topic entirely, but he doesn't want to, and that, too, terrifies him.
For a long moment he only pouts at Winter, his lip quivering in the corner in a way that could mean he's about to cry or could mean he's about to laugh. He's not sure himself which it is.]
You're a tyrant. Ah, no. Perhaps not. I oughtn't tease so very much as that; you might go on thinking you don't deserve to hear that I care very much for you, more deeply than you could know, entirely the fault of my own failures. And that I want you no less now than I did that night. —Yes, even sober! Moreso sober, there's the truth of the matter at last. The crux of it all, that is.
no subject
[He finally blurts that out with a pout, which is at least mostly affected. The atmosphere is so tense it feels like the room might shatter like glass, and Nikolas is quickly coming to realize that if this is happening, and right now, he doesn't much like the feeling of it being like that. It feels like starting things off very much on the wrong foot to begin with this kind of brittle awkwardness. He has to break the mood somehow, damn it all.
The easiest way would be by deflecting the topic entirely, but he doesn't want to, and that, too, terrifies him.
For a long moment he only pouts at Winter, his lip quivering in the corner in a way that could mean he's about to cry or could mean he's about to laugh. He's not sure himself which it is.]
You're a tyrant. Ah, no. Perhaps not. I oughtn't tease so very much as that; you might go on thinking you don't deserve to hear that I care very much for you, more deeply than you could know, entirely the fault of my own failures. And that I want you no less now than I did that night. —Yes, even sober! Moreso sober, there's the truth of the matter at last. The crux of it all, that is.
—I am entirely too sober right now, in fact.