krempuff | [for Adaline; April]

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[for Adaline; April]

Krem made sure that he had enough time to get home and shower before Adaline would be coming over. He didn't know, really, if she would be baking bread at his place as well, but he wanted to at least have enough time for that. It was a day he had off work, but he'd been at the gym anyway, which meant he'd gone harder than necessary, which meant he needed the shower even more than ever if he was going to have her over.

He was probably acting a damn fool about this. But it was worth making a good second impression. Just in case the first impression was just the wine talking.

Of course, since the lemon cake was a process, it still left him idling as he waited for Adaline to show up. He double checked that he'd texted her the proper building and apartment number, that he hadn't come across rudely. He tidied a little. He took off the cat's collar, just so she wouldn't spook Adaline--after all, there was no reason to assume Adaline would be able to see a ghost cat, like Krem could, so a floating collar would be awful strange. And then, he simply waited between steps of making the cake, as patiently as he possibly could, trying not to be nervous the whole time.

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"You could come sit with me then?" she says, tilting her head back to look up at him, head tilted on one side. Her teeth touch her lip for a second as she studies his face. "I've got nowhere else to be. It's fine. I'm quite content to sit here and drink wine while you make dinner."

"I think if I sit down, the cake will burn," Krem said, smirking just a little bit. Just enough to let her know he was teasing. He sipped his wine and reached out, brushing a bit of her hair back from her hair.

"But I suppose I do have a few minutes before I have to worry about that."

He touches her fingers and, on impulse, she turns her head and kisses his fingers, just a brush of her lips against callused skin. She smiles up at him.

"I'd hate to be responsible for burned cake."

He traced the shape of her mouth, very delicately, not wanting to smear her lipstick. His stomach twisted for a moment, heat coiling and uncoiling as he tried to maintain some semblance of calm when he was tempted to take a half-cooked cake out of the oven and put the slow cooker on low for the rest of the evening.

"You should catch me up on other things. We talked a lot over dinner, but I'm sure we could have talked more about how you were settling in, the sorts of people you're meeting. Or you could ask me about things."

That touch, gentle as it is, starts a throbbing low in her belly and Adaline has to take a little breath in as she rides it out. Her eyelashes flutter.

"Catch you up. Right." She doesn't have much to say to him, right then, not about people she's met or what she's been doing - not much has changed in a handful of days. "Tell me more about you. I know...virtually nothing. I know you left home in a hurry. I know you were a mercenary."

Krem hadn't necessarily meant the days between their last meeting--there had been a few days of her settling between her arrival and their first meeting after, and then a couple weeks where he'd been beside himself with worry because of Aggie and Dorian's disappearances.

But asking about him probably did call for sitting, even if he did the condensed version. He moved around and sat on the couch as well.

"Tailors child," he said first, softly, carefully. Never tailors son, because he never had been. "Joined the army when I was sixteen after things had gone all tits up--my father lost everything and had to sell himself into slavery to keep me and my mother out of it. I joined the army for a more prosperous path. Forged papers. Women can join the paper, but only under certain paths--not very reputable ones, and even less reputable for an unskilled sixteen year old like I was."

Adaline draws her knees up, tucks her feet up onto the couch and turns towards him, giving her her full attention, her wine glass cradled between both of her hands. "Did you always know?" she asks. "You said "women" but...Is that..." She frowns slightly. "Is that a terribly rude question?" She blushes. "I'm so sorry, if it is."

"I...no. No, it's not rude, not to me." It was, certainly, not the rudest he'd ever gotten.

He was quiet a moment, then shrugged. "I've known since there was a way of knowing. Does that make sense? Like, when you're very young, you don't really know much of anything. But very soon after that, you start to figure things. I was still young, just learning that girls and boys were very different."

"And you knew that you were a boy." She nods, taking that information in. "It must have been a hard road for you." Adaline knows something about hard roads, but not like that. "Do you miss it? Being a soldier?"

"I knew I was different," Krem corrected. They were backtracking from the story of him leaving Tevinter in a hurry, really, but that was alright. He'd never gone in depth with someone about these things.

"My father was alright about it. He'd angle his shaving mirror down, and I'd pretend to shave with him. I think he knew, even when I was very young. But, oh, my mother. She was--I knew she was just worried. About me, about the family. But every day, I'd put on all those layers, get into my dress and look in the mirror and hate myself. That's when I knew."

He huffed a sigh and sipped his wine. "I don't know. Bits of it. Soldiering was--difficult. I went in to have my name again, initially. Names back home go from the male head of house. When a man sells himself into slavery, the wife and minor children don't revert to a maiden name. They just become nameless."

"That..." Adaline feels terrible but she just can't share with him how intimately she knows the feeling of losing your name, of leaving a whole self behind. She reaches out, her hand sliding over his, her hum stroking along his. "That sounds...it must have been hard."

"I certainly wasn't the only one who joined up to get their name back," Krem said with a shrug and a wistful sort of smile. He wasn't even the only one who'd come from his part of the country. He was infinitely glad, though, that no one had known his face or recognized Aclassi during role call.

"But I was the only one who's papers were fully forged," he said with another shrug and a sip of his wine. "And that's what got me in trouble. I was with the army for three years nearly before anyone found out. Was up for promotion. Had to get a physical--but the healer I bribed regularly for that sort of thing was away on other business, and the one they brought in thought he could blackmail me. Offered he'd go lenient on me, say I was sick in the head if I paid him off twice what I was bribing my regular healer."

Krem stared into his wine. "So I hit him and ran for the border. Wasn't far."

Adaline's eyes widen slightly; it reminds of her running from those Feds on the airstrip, her bare feet stinging on the cement. She traces the bones of his wrist.

"But here you are."

"Here I am," Krem confirmed softly.

The sharp, bittersweet smell of lemons cut through the smell of the cooking lamb, and Krem hummed softly, lifting himself out of the couch. "And there's the cake. Should take that out so it can cool, and check the lamb."

"I really could get used to this you know," says Adaline, taking another sip of her wine and making herself slightly more comfortable on Krem's couch. "You should be careful of spoiling me."

"I suppose if I have such a pretty house guest, it can't be all bad," Krem said, taking the cake out of the oven and setting it to cool off sides. He checked on the lamb and turned the heat down a little.

"How hungry are you, really? The lamb still has a bit and the cake will take a while to cool." He laughed softly. "I can order in, if you'd rather. My timing is all off tonight, I'm sorry."

"Oh well," says Adaline. "It's early yet. I'm sure we could fill the time."

There is, she finds, the smallest shiver of nerves. What if the other night, lovely as it was, was the direct side effect of a bottle of wine each?

He smiled and came back over to the couch, sitting down once more. He sat just a little bit closer this time than he had before. Not quite so their knees touched, but very nearly. It was nice, and he enjoyed the prospect that they might, that they were very nearly, touching.

"Is it a good wine, do you think? I've never been very good at telling."

Adaline takes another sip, thoughtful, aware of the space between their bodies. The possibility of promise.

"Not the best I've ever had," she says. "But definitely not the worst."

"Oh, I've definitely had worse," Krem agreed with a laugh. He hummed, vague and soft, thinking of how to steer the conversation, what was a safe topic of conversation for either one of them--he could talk more about home, about being a mercenary, that sort of thing. But he didn't want to bore her with that sort of thing.

He found himself fidgeting with his lip ring, just a bit, between sips of wine.

After a few moments silence, Adaline turns towards him, tucking one knee up so that her shin is pressed against his thigh.

"Tell me something about you that you don't tell other people," she says. "I'll do you a trade."

Krem thought, face soft and quiet, a long moment. After a while he stretched his legs out a bit. His toes brushed her leg, on the opposite side of him, and he smiled a little bit.

"I don't keep a lot of secrets," he said with a little shrug. "I'll keep things, sometimes, until the right time to tell them. But I don't like to hold onto things entirely. It's hurt too many people--especially me."

But he smiled softly. "But that's alright if that means you don't want to tell me something."

Adaline can understand that. She studies his profile for a moment, reaches out and idly trails her fingers against his arm.

"No, no," she says, shaking her head. "Adaline is my real name but you were the first person I told in a long, long time. That first time we met."

A thrill of heat went up his arm, just from the pressure of her fingers and Krem found himself smiling, a little honored--or something else, he wasn't quite sure what--that he had been given that bit of her first, if only by happenstance if nothing else.

"It's a lovely name, Adaline," he said softly. He looked up at the ceiling, quiet for a moment. "Oh, I suppose I do have one secret. I've only told one other person. My dead name."

It's not a term that Adaline's ever heard but, from context, she can figure it out. Her eyebrows draw together slightly and she squeezes his arm gently.

"If that's one of those things you want to wait on, you don't have to tell me," she says, smiling softly. "I'll give you my secret for free."

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