she glances down at her hands from above her scarf, wrapped tightly around her nose. it is a sunny yet freezing day under a clear sky. even in the centre of night city some days are not as sticky and muggy as the dense smog makes you believe. there is a small container cushioned between so mi’s palms and she quickly hides it from view when she knocks on v’s door, impatiently.
❝ open up! i have something that needs your immediate attention! ❞ while she waits, she wonders whether she should have put more effort into decorating it. although, then the highlight of the art piece might no longer be … when vince appears in the doorframe, so mi stretches out both her arms, presenting the tiniest terrarium that holds her surprise. ❝ hurry, get it inside or it might freeze to death. i think. flowers are sensitive to cold? not all of them, anyway. ❞
it is a printed model of a yellow zinnia. not the real thing, unfortunately, as these are hard to come by, cost a fortune and would be less personal than the handcrafted version ❝ i was bored the other day and got a little too invested in the meaning of flowers. it represents great memories. good times ─ and i thought of you, so… ❞
Told to hurry, yet he remains rooted to the ground for perhaps a second too long. A second too long, that is, for his surprise to appear just that — and if he isn't careful, V thinks to himself, it might be misconstrued as disapproval, or some other sense of displeasure.
But something so far from it is stumbling its way through his mind now.
As a cloud forms around the current of his exhale, the cold threatens to creep even farther into the trailer he'd arranged for himself on the fringes of the city; the very same one they spent a night stargazing on top of. One of those two dingy, plastic chairs they'd used has already turned to scrap, one of its brittle legs having snapped under V's weight a few days later.
So Mi doesn't know it yet, but he's since gotten a set of nicer chairs for the two of them — with proper cushioning, and the ability to recline.
But his mind swings from that flash of a memory to the present in the briefest of moments, his eyes likewise fluctuating in their fixation: first on the 3D-printed flower in its housing, then on So Mi, and back again.
His befuddlement makes way for the steady swell of his sentimentality. It's an element he's worked hard to hide from all of Night City but failed parlously, having been accused of it getting in his way by the likes of Regina, and it having been targeted by opponents who thought they could get a leg up on him with it. They were often proven wrong with the pull of a trigger out of spite.
So Mi, however, seems to respect it, this mawkishness of his. This gesture suggests she might even like it about him — an impossible thought to V's mind, but it presents itself to him all the same. To be liked at all, truly liked, perhaps even loved, resides firmly within the realm of the inconceivable.
It did for a long time, at least. That same outlandish concept now seems to shift towards the perimeter of the plane it's been confined in; the grey area between possible and impossible — the one that might keep him awake all night, for several nights in a row.
At last, that thought, too, inevitably fades in the face of the tangible reality – which he can't dispute, no matter how he might try – materializing in front of him. A smile begins touching his face, smoothing out the lines across his forehead and between his eyebrows, and instead etching them from his nose to the corners of his mouth.
He's tickled by this gift, amused, and endlessly endeared, both by it in itself and the meaning apparently attached to it.
Oh, they've made some good memories, all right — and more will be needed yet to fully drown out the fading sting of the betrayal that tainted all that came before it. He wishes he were the type not to hold grudges. It'd all be so much easier to just forgive and forget. The upside, he thinks, is that it makes their recovery from what once was all the more meaningful.
It's uncomfortable at times, difficult and painful even, but all the more worth it because of it.
In moments like these, though, she makes forgetting his apprehension and the reason for it so damned easy.
❛ Huh. Thanks! That's ... real sweet, actually. ❜ His teeth flash as his expression toes the line between an entertained grin and a soft-hearted smile — and at last, he takes the terrarium from So Mi's hands.
He swears he can feel his fingertips brush past her knuckles even as he attempts to avoid it for her sake. He also swears he can feel his stomach churn with the same yearning he's tried to beat down more than once.
The feeling goes ignored as he steps aside, pushing the door farther open with his back.
❛ Let's make some more good memories then. I've got a few cold ones we can crack open — and better chairs for us to sit on this time around, while you tell me how you got your hands on this pretty print. ❜