Myrtus was fairly lucky in that immediately after a customary celebration Beloxia was understandably lenient about people not even showing up the next morning. That he was present at all was a mark in his favor. He managed to dither some more by sorting the datapads on his desk and filing them. Certainly, it was tedious and not at all requiring fine attention, which he was sorely lacking. He consciously avoided remembering what he knew was on the vid. On his omnitool.

He anxiously went over what happened when he woke up that morning instead.

Veronica had touched him on the shoulder to wake him. She'd asked in a soft early morning murmur if he was hungry. He'd moved to sit up and she went to the kitchen. She came back with a hot breakfast on a tray, which she placed on her nightstand for him. She was drinking something hot for herself; he could see steam.

They hadn't said anything; he was eating and glad of it. It was prepackaged stuff, the kind you got at corner shops that were open all hours. But she'd taken it out, arranged it on plates and heated the meats up.

It was... so easy, he thought wistfully. She took breakfast in bed with him, with a blanket pulled over her knees. She'd gotten a white, goopy looking porridge-thing in a bowl and was dipping pieces of a misshapen brown pastry into it before taking bites. Her movements were easy, slow, and she'd asked if his breakfast was alright. It was.

She went to pour another cup of... tea, he thought it was. It wasn't as opaque and didn't have the aroma of coffee.

He noticed then that his clothes were folded and stacked on a chair next to the bed. He hadn't thought anything of it as he dressed and took the tray to the kitchen for her. He hadn't thought on how his shoes were arranged with all the rest of her shoes by the door.

How long had she been awake before him?

She'd woken him up early. Early enough so that he could get home and shower and change into work clothes, making it to work at the normal hour. He'd actually been really working and then went to get lunch. Tenax and Rubellin immediately noted his subtly relaxed posture and pounced, eager for the details. He was so unwary and... happy that he'd told them all. And of course they had to notice what he didn't do.

And now, he was realizing that she had been subtly thoughtful on her part and it humbled him how she'd thought to make him at ease.

Myrtus decided to just end the day a little early, taking the elevator to her floor of the offices, waiting for her in the lobby. When her shift ended and she sees him, her smile graces her face automatically, if less brightly. She's cautious, now. It pains him to see it change like that.

"Hello."

"Hi."

"Where would you like to go?"

"Can we just walk?" Veronica asked. "Have you eaten yet?"

"I can do with something to eat," Myrtus nods.

They set out, side by side.

"Are you mad that I made a vid without telling you first?" Veronica finally asks.

"... I'm not. I'm surprised. Unless you plan to distribute it on the extranet without giving me royalties. Then I should inform you that I would be very, very upset."

And there it is, Veronica laughs and Myrtus' mandibles make a happy wriggle.

They almost pass a restaurant, but Veronica stops in her tracks, scanning the signage.

"What do you think about this place? Want to try it?"

"Well, I've been experiencing all sorts of new things this week. Sure."

So they walked into a Chinese restaurant.

There was something definitely novel about the dishes once they arrived.

"I thought humans have qualms about whole-bodied meat?" Myrtus was confused.

Veronica's plate had an entire, recognizable, fish on it. It was covered in a blanket of garnish, but there it was. A whole fish, eyeball up, mouth gaping.

"Chinese do not. We're sort of famous for it, actually," Veronica nonchalantly gouged out the eyeball and popped it into her mouth. "Almost no taboos over species, no taboos about organ meats, or extremities. A very flexible food culture."

Myrtus looked at his dish and decided that must explain it, because he wouldn't have expected it to look so... familiar. He'd chosen scylla, a sea-dwelling Palaveni arthropod with segmented bodies weighing three to four pounds and prized for the meat in their legs, which were long and as thick around as a turian finger. Many other alien cuisine interpretations of the creature had its meat removed from the exoskeleton and cooked that way. Here, not only were the exoskeletons left on, they didn't even remove the feelers. Or the eye stalks. The legs were conveniently detached from the bodies, however.

He picked one up and happily cracked the shell with a quick snap of his jaws, before prying it apart and scraping the meat off with his upper lip plates. Just the way it was meant to be eaten. He liked the way it was prepared; fried in the shells and garnished with thinly sliced spicy Quarian tubers.

They ate, until Myrtus felt sure enough to broach the question about what Veronica had wanted to explain to him.

"I don't always make vids. Last night, I wanted to, to remember. So when you fell asleep, I replayed it. I touched myself. It was good. You didn't need to apologize," her voice was soft, covered by the din of the restaurant.

"It's not the same," Myrtus muttered.

"True," Veronica nodded. "It isn't. I'm not worried, because that wasn't going to be the only time."

Myrtus didn't have anything to say about that; that he hadn't disappointed her into dropping him on a permanent basis gave him the most giddy feeling.

"I have another question."

"What?"

"Candyman?"

"Oh," Veronica giggled. "That. It's because you're really sweet."

"...Ah. Literally."

Veronica reached out to take his hand.

"Not just literally. You really are sweet. I think so, you know."

Oh. Myrtus blinked.

"So... What are your plans for this evening?" Veronica took a sip of tea.

"I hadn't thought that far ahead, actually," Myrtus shifted in his seat. "Would you want to go back to my place?"

Veronica nodded.

tbc