If he'd said something wrong or unsatisfying, if telling the girl she was pretty hadn't been the right thing to say (isn't that what most girls wanted to hear from boys like him? isn't that what was expected?), Rhys was too guttered and too inexperienced in the art of reading strangers—in reading the opposite sex—to at all know or suspect he'd done anything she'd not been waiting on at all. In fact, while she hesitated for just a moment, that hint of a frown on her face, he might have stared too long at the way her brows moved or the way her make-up was smudged or the way that her lips pursed together just so. Then she thanked him and he scoffed, rubbing a hot hand under his nose, knuckles dragging,
"I mean, nice for someone with a knife, eh? Where'd you learn to do that shit? Not in Bastia, for sure." He turned the pearl-handled thing over in his fingers once she'd returned it instead of immediately shoving it into his trousers, pressing the warmth against his palm and running his thumb over the catch that tucked the blade back between the two slivers of incandescent shell. He'd not seen a girl with so much enthusiasm over sharp objects and to say he was a little intrigued would have been an understatement, though the warm feeling that tickled down his spine could have been just all the alcohol, right?
"Butchering your fancy-ersed clothes is pretty crazy." He admitted with a grin, but he'd stared at her face for too long and now he was flustered again, laughing loudly. Bleary blue eyes drifted and he couldn't help but want to assist with smudged make-up, couldn't help but feel some familiar, comfortable tug of interest in the way she was required to tilt her chin to look up at his too-tall, too-lanky self. Tugging out his kerchief and holding it near her face felt far less awkward than he thought it would, but then her her own hand moved—no—her tongue traced over skin and Rhys was acutely aware of every detail he'd never before noticed on the face of a near stranger in a way he'd definitely not been aware of before.
He stared, making a very quiet, very drawn out huh sort of noise from parted lips, not blinking while his heart fluttered wildly against the bone cage of his narrow chest.
"Nice?" The young Valentin finally smirked, echoing her question as if it was the answer, clearly staring at her mouth before meeting her gaze. His kerchief was in her hands and his hands were unsure of what to do with themselves other than reach up to fiddle with unfastened buttons below his collar, suddenly feeling a rush of warmth he couldn't trace the origins of, "Nah—" Rhys inhaled, summoning all the alcohol- and adrenaline-infused bravado he could at all summon, burying all sorts of strange feelings he didn't want to feel, and hummed his response while his smirk became the most wicked of grins,
"—that's fuckin' dangerous."
Her lips. Her face. The whole of Niccolette.
Dangerous.
Shifting on his unsteady feet and glancing down the phosphor-lit streets at her question with all the swiftness of someone who suddenly needed a new subject to dwell on, pulse dancing beneath flushed skin, he shrugged roughly before glancing down at the cobblestones near where she'd left her regards to the Queen's Arms' proprietor in the form of vomit, slowly looking back down the rest of Regrets Way as if formulating a plan,
"Looks like we both made room for more, hmm? I've got a few other favorite places, an' I'm not clocking ready to walk home anyway. Sleep is for the weak." The young Valentin chuckled, ignoring the bitter taste of bile those words left somewhere in the back of his throat, "I'm not buyin', though. 'Cause I'm sure not trying to get you drunk."
He snorted, turning to lead them down the street to some other pub full of students wasting their last weekend before classes again, totally not afraid to brush her shoulder and trail fingers along her arm as he did so, wobbly on his feet and giggling stupidly.