"I love you," he whispers hazily, sinking into sleep.
The common response to a lover's 'I love you' is 'I love you too'. Everyone knows this. Andromeda Black knows this. She's said it to him. She's said the first phrase and also the response. She's meant the words, felt it. But just this once she thinks of something else to say.
"How much?" she whispers back, very much awake. His I love you's have this effect on her.
"Huh?" comes Ted's answer.
Andromeda laughs and turns over to face him. She props her head up with her hand, elbow lying on the sheets just beside his head. "You love me," she echoes his words to him.
Ted looks up at her, messy blonde hair, sleepy eyes, and a lazy smile - all visible to Andromeda thanks to the moonlight through the window. He frees his hand from under his head and lifts it up to her face. "I do," he tells her.
Andromeda leans into his hand, closing her eyes at his touch. "How much?" she says softly. Her smile still lingers but there's a seriousness in her voice. A neediness almost. In hindsight, Andromeda realizes, this wasn't a very a good idea. "Nevermind, forget I asked," she adds, lying back down and turning away.
She could scare him away with her asking. That's the summary of Andromeda Black, isn't it? Scaring people away the more she cared about them?
In the silence, she feels him tug hesitantly at her shirt. "Hey," he says gently, coaxingly. It reminded her of the way he talked to Corvus, her owl, during their first few meetings with each other. It was the tone Ted used whenever the owl tried to intimidate him with eye-squinting and head-swaying and wing-spreading and hissing. "Hey, Andy." It was a tone that just made it impossible not to trust him. And, well, Corvus practically adored him now.
But Andromeda doesn't answer. She hears him calling out to her and she's angry with herself that he has to. She keeps creating distance between the two of them. And it's not like she means to, not anymore. But she just can't help it.
"Hey," he tries once more, another tug at her shirt. "Andromeda."
"If you really want to know," Ted tells her, "we can take a picture of the ocean."
Andromeda knits her eyebrows, too distracted by this answer to remember to sulk in self-loathing. "What?"
"The ocean," Ted says simply, and she can almost hear the smile on his lips. "Probably the closest thing to measuring just how much I love you."
"You're an idiot," she blurts out, along with a soft peal of laughter. "An absolute idiot." She's grinning and blushing so much, there's no way she'll turn to face him now. "Let's go to the beach, then," she quips.
"Oh, let's," says Ted, putting his arm around her.
She holds his hand and squeezes it. "Might as well take a picture of the sky too," Andromeda says very quickly before she loses all of her momentary courage to say it, "because that's how much I love you."
