“I could say the same about you, my dear Robert,” Rosalind simply responded, recollecting how he himself appeared when he was truly invested in their work. When his sleeves were rolled up and his blouse was equally stained with oil and grease and his otherwise perfectly-coiffed hair was mussed, and he had taken to muttering under his breath cusses in response to, oh, a piece of the machine momentarily hissing at him—things he usually wouldn’t say in front of her, far too much of a gentleman. He was not naturally as involved as she was and never chose to work all the time, but when he got into their work, he was as bad as her, perhaps even more invested at times.
At the mention of her university days, however, she just tapped her nose and raised an eyebrow to him smugly. “What happened in university, stays in university,” she teased him, though no doubt theirs wouldn’t have differed that much. Back then, Rosalind had actually been quite the party animal, but purely because of boredom and curiosity, and she had still worked meticulously all day and far into the night even with a hangover or even when she was still slightly tipsy. “I tease. But yes, I suppose you could say that. No one matched young Rosalind Lutece’s ability to drink ten pints within an hour and not even stumble. Though, my resistance to alcohol has probably lowered by now. It has been years…”
"Ah, but the citizens of Columbia favour you over me, dear Rosa." Robert slid his hand over the tabletop, directing a small smile over to Rosa's direction before filling her glass back up. It was true, though. She was the one that had enabled the city to float, not him- never mind that they were the same person; Columbia did not need to know about that. "It would be terribly hard to explain what we were to... ah, onlookers." Though the public had no knowledge of the feelings he had harbored for his counterpart, the term 'incest' would undoubtedly pop up in their minds if they had somehow caught wind of it; something he would be definitely against. He was not ashamed of... loving himself, one could say, but Rosalind had spent so much time ensuring that she would be taken seriously by others because of her sex- who was he to ruin his-- her efforts on this aspect? "Be comforted in the fact that you would be the only one who would be able to see me this way, my love. I'd hate it if you were jealous of the ladies that chase after me." A cheeky grin played upon his lips, the physicist closed in the distance between him and his counterpart, taking her hand in his before pressing a playful kiss to her knuckles.
Mirroring her actions and raising an eyebrow of his own, Robert let out a small chuckle as he pondered about what his beloved counterpart had been like when they were much younger. He wouldn't be surprised if her tolerance for alcohol were as strong as his, even though she had not drank anything of the sort for quite a while. "I'd certainly be more than willing to help you gain that tolerance back," he mentioned casually, "I'd hate if some dimwit suitor of yours managed to got you drunk. He'd be in the hospital for months when I track him down and give him a quick lesson of how high up in the sky Columbia was, thanks to you." He was joking, of course, but it did not mean that his words did not have any truth in them. Rosalind was his alone, and Robert would do anything to ensure that that fact stayed true, regardless of whatever Comstock had in mind for the both of them here on after. He was the possessive sort, but he was certain that Rosalind would understand his purpose if her suitors had all managed to end up in the hospital.
