It's a gift from Yang, one of. There's a gift card with a sizable amount of credit for Vale's largest chain of bookstores, and a tiny handmade map sketching the route to 'Blakey's favourite section'.
You hit her for it, but a smile still curves your lips.
But the last gift, Yang offers when you're alone, with a little hesitance, and a little worry lurking around the corners of her eyes. Hardly anything fancy, just a simple, simple but solid book sleeve, though honestly more like a case than anything, a second cover, metal vines growing from metal corners and hinges meant to cap, meant to shield.
A sleeve that fits your battered journal perfectly.
"Swear I didn't look, Blake." Hesitance blooms into full worry with your silence, earnest, anxious. Her fingers wrap themselves in her hair, twiddling with the ends. "Promise."
"I believe you," you say, "I trust you."
The grin and bonecrushing hug you receive draws forth the humourous thought of who's given the bigger gift today.
"But how did you know?" you ask, once she's let you go, "Why not one of the others?"
"You hide it differently," is the simple reply, with that smile of one who watches, the one who guards, before it turns devilish. "And judging by the covers, it's one of the few that isn't paragraph after paragraph of dirty, dirty-"
Again you hit her, blood rising in your cheeks, and she cackles, the sound of it spiking every time you reach and your hand catches nothing but air. It's a dance, until both fall into your bed, breath coming a little quick.
"You don't want to know?" Such is your attempt to push aside silence, but it seeps in between your fingers, settles again around you. You want to turn to look at her, but don't dare. So you stare at the bottom of her bed. Wait.
Her hand takes one of yours, slow at first, but more firmly when you don't pull away. Fingers lace between yours as she admits, "I do," and your breath catches in your throat at the thought of sharing what's in there, but all stills when she shifts, and you turn to find her close, so close, your breath mingling.
"Whenever you're ready."
You smile.