Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ameh "Light pollution," he repeated. He'd... known that. Forgotten it, but he had known. He shoved the rest of the smore in his mouth to keep himself from mumbling more, and that immediately proved to be a bad idea as Kiri...
Lips.
Immediately he attempted to swallow. He hadn't... chewed it enough, however, and his throat protested. Cough. Cough. Bug eyes. Thank goodness for the darkness, because she wouldn't be able to see how red he'd just turned.
"If... you want?" he said tentatively, rubbing his throat gently as he finally managed to get the last of the smore down. "You don't... have to."
Something told him he'd miss Kiri more than he'd miss... most of his friends. Especially since he'd been missing her all term. It was amazing that she didn't seem particularly sore with him for avoiding her... but he'd had no choice in that. His brain hadn't allowed for him to be around both her and Cela, and Cela had... constantly shown up.
Kiri dropped the rest of her s'more when Raiden started to cough. In the relative silence of the warm night, where the noises of the fire and the students had, curiously, faded into the background, it sounded like a misfiring Muggle car. She didn't feel like searching the grass for it, but she did look for something else she'd brought along. Her half-empty bottle of pumpkin juice. "I-I'm sorry," she stammered, unscrewing the tap and proffering the bottle to Raiden. "Er, here... have some pumpkin juice."
She watched him closely as he tried to get rid of his cough. Unfortunately (at least for Kiri), soon Raiden was done spluttering and gasping, and he was looking at her in a way that made her want to crawl out into the night and hide because she was sure that he knew,
knew! Kiri's own throat was very dry, and she regretted having suggested it in the first place. "Mmm," she managed, head spinning. She scooted closer to him. Now they were
much closer.
"Hold still..." she murmured. She pulled the sleeve of her robes over her right hand and raised it to his face. Her left hand came up, too, trembling slightly. Kiri grabbed his chin gently. It felt as if her skin was being burned away from the flesh. She could not meet his eyes. A quavering sigh escaped her.
Then she rubbed the robes sleeve over his lips slowly, wiping the remaining marshmallow stuff away. Whenever the cloth moved, Raiden's lip was moved to and fro. In other circumstances, it might have looked funny, but Kiri's mind was, in essence, a complete blank.