Nona likes watching Quin drink.
There's something soothing in the way the other woman's throat works on an overlarge mouthful of liquid, the way she sighs contentment to the sky after finishing off the most recent of several glasses. It's relaxing in its own way, to watch someone else so thoroughly content, as pleasant as the sharp overhot bite of victory that comes from Nona's competitions with Oculus.
The wine is good enough, she supposes. It's not Nona's habit as much as it is Quin's, and the bottles long ago ceased to be on her behalf; now it's for that rhythmic motion of Quin's throat, and the way her uncovered eye lights up when she recognizes the bottle in Nona's hand, and the steady thrum of pointless conversation between them.
It's close to friendship, Nona decided some time ago. The idea is satisfying in itself, creeps into the curve of her lips sometimes when she finds a particularly promising bottle of wine to offer, and she suspects now that Quin would take her up on the offer of company even if she lacked the requisite alcohol to tempt her into association.
She brings it anyway. They have a routine; far be it from her to disrupt that.
"What are you waiting for?" Quin asks, breaking apart the momentary silence crystallizing in the air between them. When Nona looks up Quin is smiling, her mouth tugging lopsided to speak to the heat of the alcohol she's consumed already if the slip of her gaze wasn't enough to offer proof. Her stare catches Nona's hair, the glint of her earring, the collar of her shirt, and then down, settles into the pool of wine in Nona's untouched glass in time with the shadow of disapproval spreading over Quin's features. "I've told you and told you not to waste it pouring yourself a glass."
Nona tips her head, far enough that her braid swings heavy across her back and catches the sleeve of her shirt. "You'd be drinking alone if I didn't have a cup." She winds her fingers around the weight of the glass, lets the cool catch into the pattern of her fingerprints, and then lifts it to her lips, presses her mouth to the clean edge in an act more of claiming than of true thirst.
It's mostly funny and faintly charming, the way Quin's eyes track the glint of sunlight off the glass, the way she sighs resignation as Nona's lips touch down. There's a brush of alcohol at Nona's mouth, just enough to burn heat over her lips and the tip of her tongue; then she relents, pulls the glass back and holds it out in Quin's direction.
"You'll enjoy it more than I would," she allows, a statement of fact rather than an excuse.
She's expecting Quin to reach up to catch the glass herself, is prepared for the drag of friction as the other woman's fingers brush hers. But Quin doesn't find this solution obvious, or perhaps Nona is holding the glass too high to make her intentions clear, and what happens instead is Quin ducking in to catch the corner of the cup with her own mouth while Nona's fingers are still steady on the weight of it.
There's a brief flicker in the world. Nona's gravity dips, drops her an inch in space and a heartbeat in time, and while she's blinking in the first surprise Quin is pulling back, lifting a hand to press the back of her fingers to her wine-wet lips.
"Ah," she sighs. "I don't understand how you can hold onto that the entire time without touching it yourself."
"It's easy," Nona admits, brings the glass back to set it against the table with a faint clink. "If I drank it I'd have to refill it. It would just become another drink less for you."
Quin laughs, tips her head so her hair swings against the line of her jaw. Her uncovered eye catches the light, turns itself gold-on-bronze in the warm of the illumination, and Nona feels tension at her lips before she realizes she's beginning to smile again.
This time, when the quiet falls, it's heavy instead of tense, the warm weight of nighttime stillness unraveling all around them in spite of the sun overhead. There's no nervousness, none of the strain Nona has seen while playing voyeur to human memories or written clear across recreated faces; there's just the sunlight hot against her skin, Quin's laughter lingering in the color of her eyes, and the space between them easing smaller as Nona sits up in her chair and leans forward towards Quin's mouth.
Quin tastes like the wine, evaporating burn clinging to the corners of her mouth and the wet of her tongue when she tips her head and parts her lips to the pressure of Nona's. This close Nona can smell her, too, the metal and leather of her eyepiece and a strawberry-sweet clinging to her skin, the variation turning Quin's mouth far more intoxicating than the trivial amount of alcohol yet at her skin. Nona's fingers land butterfly-light at Quin's shoulder, Quin's hand fits itself in against the soft white of Nona's shirt, and when they lean in farther towards each other the last sip of wine in the bottom of the glass is left forgotten.
Close to friendship, Nona decides, as Quin's mouth fits to hers as it does to the edge of the glass. But perhaps not entirely like.