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It was a warm moment in Adam's head, despite his awareness that his fingertips were numbed to a point of being just clumsy enough to require compensating if a fight broke out.
Right now, he didn't have to worry about a fight, or spies, or too much of anything. A picnic on the rooftop of the town hall was an unusual way to enjoy a food fair, but Raeliana had been clever. He was close enough for the scents and the pleasant din of laughter and music, the blurred but beautiful lights and colours, but not close in a way that meant he'd have to be on guard.
"Your mission has been accomplished," he told Raeliana.
She gave him a disconcerted look but then grinned and then struck a nonsense pose, holding clasped hands by her face with her pointer fingers extended upwards. "My spy missions are always a success!" It became clear that she was miming holding a gun.
"...A real spy mission?" Best to ask, even though this was a far cry from how poised she looked with a real gun.
"No! Ugh, I shouldn't joke about that," she murmured. "Those accusations about being a spy got me in enough trouble when I was engaged to Duke Wynknight... Anyway, what mission? This lovely picnic I arranged for us?"
"Getting me drunk."
"Sir Adam! It's just for fun!" Raeli could get flustered so easily. "When you say it like that, you make it sound quite ... quite..."
"Like a fact," he insisted.
She was disconcerted again - it was probably surprise because he never insisted on anything, outside of anything to do with safety concerns.
"Your throat will hurt if you keep talking so much," Raeliana said with her nose in the air. Not actually upset, though. "Have another drink to soothe it."
It already hurt a little. Adam drank more of the mead she'd brought along for their rooftop picnic. Then, inspired, he poured more in her glass too, concentrating not to make a drop spill or splash to mark Raeliana's dress or the picnic blanket and cushions laid out for their rooftop picnic. With greater care even than that, he offered the glass to Raeliana.
"I can be a gentleman knight now," he said, pleased.
"Oh! Um, thank you..." He kept almost-scaring her, but it was only such a little bit; Adam didn't have to be scared that she was truly scared of him. She never would be, he was sure. There, now Raeli looked pleased too. "You might have to lose a skill or two before you could blend in with them, Sir Adam."
Raeliana snickered and elbowed him lightly in the side, and he had to press his lips thinly to each other again. She was bold in a different way with tipsiness, just like he was. Throat growing sore from how much he was talking, and pushing down signs of laughter. It was his habit for the last few years; hiding the signs of things he felt, rather than hardly feeling at all.
He still loved sweet tastes of all sorts and she still enjoyed finding new tastes for him to try. In this case, Raeliana had been assured that it was sweeter even than most other kinds of mead, and she'd gone to a successful enough merchant that she'd decided it was worth believing him.
The sweetness was one thing, almost stinging the back of his palate and putting an ache in his gums. It would have been overwhelming, but with breaths and rolls of his tongue he could taste the flowers that the bees must have visited. The mead was golden in his glass, and the vision it brought to him was golden: a meadow in languid, soft sun, with busy activity all over open flowers. An orchard nearby - apple and peach - and yes, a herb garden further off. He had a good sense of smell but a poorer sense of how to cook, and couldn't identify any detail beyond that. It was strange how well the puffs of tastes all blended into honey, and then in turn into the taste of mead.
"I'm glad to see you're enjoying it!" Raeliana said.
Adam nodded firmly, and she laughed and stroked his hair so that he couldn't do it anymore - which was good, because it helped with the dizziness.
"All right, I did think it would be nice for you to relax - that's why I thought you could get drunk for once, up here on the roof where there's no danger to watch out for. Not for anything nefarious!"
He shrugged. "I'm always ready for a scheme when it comes to you."
"This scheme is completely innocent. Listen, I even ..." She paused, uncrossing her legs to shuffle to a closer seat, to speak more seriously. There was still a quality to her voice that added to the warmth in his head, and perhaps a tingle in his numb fingers. "I got you mead not just because it's made of honey. I thought, it must be part of Alsasa culture to make alcohol from what's in the forest. And that would be nice to remember? With all the old trees around, honey had to be part of it..."
"Roots," Adam said.
"...Roots?" Her disgusted face, so familiar in her early days of getting to know him and Duke Wynknight, was enough nostalgia that he gave in and smiled. Just a corner.
"But I was small. The root drinks were too strong for me. Children got water, juice, weak beer."
"Ugh, of course, like potatoes for vodka up there in the freezing cold--!"
Adam ignored her talk about things that made no sense for now, and shuffled closer himself. It wasn't that he wanted to be serious, but it felt important to share the warmth, in his head, with his presence. He ended up sitting half on Raeliana's cushion.
"It's a good gift, Miss McMillan. It doesn't have to remind me of long ago."
"Yeah, I can't help but believe it's good if it can make you talk this much."
"It's enough if it reminds me of you. Sweet things - it's like they can distract me from anything, even just a bit, and just enough. A little strange, and always distracting, and always good. This mead, I want it to remind me of you. Always. Sometimes I like remembering Alsasa, but I always like to think of you."
After that, Raeliana gave him a lot of water.
But when they said goodbye, she took his hand, and told him to call her "Raeliana" all the time and not "Miss McMillan" as she escorted him to the exit of her cottage.
"If you think that you want to do that, in the morning--" Her cheeks were red with a blush.
"Raeli," said Adam.
"...Raeliana," she said, blushing harder. "You can still be a little bit of a gentleman knight, for a while, until... Well, until we have another talk. Being drunk isn't always good for this kind of thing!"
He nodded and stayed there, wanting to look at her.
Later, Raeliana said that he gave her the puppy-eyes at a whole new intensity level, and blamed that for kissing him on the cheek before closing the door on him. Adam nodded at the explanation and then - they were alone for that talk too - he shrugged with a very obvious touch of disbelief.
Indignation looked very pretty on her.