it’s not until a moment after she’s taken the french fry that he realizes how this looks. them, alone at 3am, sharing food and secret smiles like they’re the only people that exist in the world. and maybe, right here and now, they are. he wouldn’t be surprised if he turned his head and found that the workers had disappeared but it’s the turning of the head that’s difficult for if he does, he misses out on a smile hera throws his way, a gaze she steals of him. he refuses to miss any of that especially when they’re so limited. he drops his hand on the table, fingers flexing almost without him even realizing. had they wanted something more? farrow can’t say.
his eyes absolutely light up at her near approval, smile turning wide and bright and positively giddy. farrow doesn’t know why but something that feels so nice blooms in his chest yet he has no word for it. he has no word for anything she makes him feel. “well, you’re not jumping with joy over it but i’ll take it,” he teases, wide grin still perched on his face. “ we know a thing or two, us new yorkers. despite what everyone else thinks.”
his laughter fades into something softer and then eventually, much like his heart in this moment, it stops. hera looks at him, really looks at him for the first time that night and farrow feels as if he’s translucent and she can see all the parts of him that he’s hiding from the world inside his ribcage. but she sees all of that, the bad and the ugly too, and still she calls him nice. “that’s—it’s really kind of you to say that.” farrow has been many things all his life but never once has he been described as nice. when the word falls from her lips, soft and quiet, he finds he likes it more than anything. “well that’s just because i—,” he pauses. because he what? the words get stuck on his throat. “i like your company. it’s nice.”
is this what waits for them after the dead of night? this push and pull that feels less like clumsy exchanges of letters and more like a late night dance between two people who have been partners for years, and then more? hera can’t imagine that there was ever a time she wanted to look away, to put a bridge between them long since burned. she catches the brief flex of his fingers and wonders, wonders, wonders whether she had caused that. she finds herself hoping she did, if only to give herself another reason to look for him after the sun has set.
and he becomes so positively blinding, propelled by her barely-there approval. so bright that she can begin to understand how icarus felt, weighed heavy with something bigger than adoration for apollo himself. she knows the feeling of free-falling towards the ocean, chased by wax-wings and the warm, warm imprint of a god. “as if i’d be jumping for joy over something from the east coast,” she says, tossing her hair over her shoulder in a dramatized display of arrogance. “let me try another one, to really solidify my opinion.” and not for his hands being so close again? a part of her asks, the one that was always as bold as her brother.
oh, how funny. to be called nice when her whole life has been dogged by bossy, difficult, a girl only second to her brother in everything but academics. hera’s eyes soften, her edges wearing down the longer the night goes on, the longer she sits in farrow’s space. without even trying, he’d taken every rough edge of hers and sanded them down to something touchable. she wonders what he would do if she told him. “it’s just ... you being nice is something i’ve noticed. formed my own opinion on, actually,” she says, far too quickly, aware that he’d never even explained himself before saying he liked her company. “maybe you make me nicer to be around,” she jokes, except the cadence of it sounds too honest.
