OUR FOREST OF THORNS | tbosas ✔️

001 || Night Affairs

Just then however, it convinced him to close his eyes, tired from a long day at the Academy, and shut off that sense which did nothing but take from the sharpness of his hearing.

After a deep exhale that fanned down right on her shoulder, Daphne finally heard his real answer. "There's a faint breeze ruffling the grass," he noted. "I can hear the buzz of the streetlight right above the park entrance we left open on our way in and the Thaddeus' tick."

Daphne giggled at the mention of her bodyguard and his stupidly annoying tick of chewing on his own tongue. Her choice was a sound so clear it pretty much dared Coriolanus to open his eyes and find she had closed hers while he wasn't looking. "Go on," Daphne corrected her little slip of composure and stilled herself back once more.

There was no recovering for Coriolanus after that though, try as he might to cover it all up behind a quick cough and even behind laying back on the grass himself too. "I just hear you breathing," he dismissed the rest of the description quickly, retorting back to their usual cycle of teases. "You are such a loud breather."

"If you want me to stop breathing so badly, you should have told me to make Thaddeus wait in the car first."

"You know I wouldn't kill you in a public park," he was swift in reminding her. "That sounds more like you thing. You like your 'perfect scenarios' to be spectacles."

"Well, then there's that, Coryo dear," Daphne finally turned on her side to look at him.

Coryo dear — he liked that better than 'dummy'.

"You are safe too," she smiled, overly coy. "It's too little audience for me to kill you here."

"Too bad," Coriolanus shrugged.

"Too bad indeed. We both live another day."

Had anyone else been having this conversation with him, he would have been properly concerned by such words, but just between him and Daphne it was simply different. This discussion about murder and about killing each other was closer to what one would call an 'inside joke' than an actual threat.

Perhaps it was fair to admit this macabre habit of theirs  had scared him once. A cold sweat overwhelmed him that first time she made such a joke, back when they were fresh acquaintances from the Academy and from the thrill of having the president's daughter wishing to talk to him after classes, he had accepted her unusual invitation for a walk. Though she would say it simply to justify why she found it odd that he accepted her invitation in the first place, Daphne's carefree 'I could kill you' had panicked his just a little younger self so deeply that he gave voice to what would established their enduring joke — 'this isn't a very good place to kill someone'.

"Are you excited for tomorrow?"

Tomorrow. Coriolanus had allowed forgetfulness to settle in during his time spent with Daphne on such a customary whim for the two of them; one could say she had made a dangerous habit out of getting him out of bed in the dead of night, but he'd argue against such dull stamps that Daphne was by all means a dangerous girl to begin with. Perhaps especially because he was restlessly nervous about the Reaping tomorrow, he was happier than ever to jump at her first call. But to admit to being nervous was unbefitting to his status.

"It's not me attending the Reaping."

"But aren't you just burning to see what tributes are reaped this year?" Daphne accentuated in an attempt to imitate the way Dr. Gaul had praised to them the other day what the games are and how they should be seen.