(A/N: Okay, I lied, it wasn't quick at all!)

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Kimblee's taste in restaurants was as extravagant as in attire, although it was nothing new to Envy, who was used to moving within the upper echelons of society as an extension of its duties as a spy and puppet-master. There was generally little to be gained in observing and manipulating the poor, after all.

Lit mostly with candlelight and equipped with a duo of live violinists, the place was nothing if not romantic, and it was that element which made Envy ill at-ease. Although accustomed to human relationships, it had never been involved in the kind which were the focus of whoever Envy was spying on. It was Lust's job to rile their feelings; Envy's was to merely slip into their lives unnoticed, and so romantic gestures were something to avoid. It meant they were paying attention.

She felt a powerful sense of disorientation as she caught a glance at her reflection in the darkened window when they sat down, the bizarre sense of not recognizing one's self as such. Where was all the ugliness? Envy felt like this pretty female was mocking it. She reached out and tugged one of the silk curtains down so as to block out her image.

Perhaps perceiving her unease, Kimblee reached out and enfolded the hand with which she had drawn the curtain in his own. The candle-lit image seemed remote from Envy somehow, their fingers intertwined…surely nothing of this could be real, or if it was it belonged to someone else's life, someone else's reality.

"Is anything the matter?"

Something on the conflict must be showing on her face. How abnormal. If this were a mission, Envy would be botching it.

"No…not exactly."

"Is something inexactly the matter?"

She opened her mouth to say no, but then remembered that lying wasn't part of the deal this time. He wanted her, that entailed her honesty, right? Yeah, Envy's thoughts remarked, in whose fairytale? Still, he had asked…

"I…it should be a good thing, being myself. But I just can't make sense of it, my role here, what we're doing."

"Could it be that this is your first date – first real one, in any case – and you're simply nervous for that reason?" With his thumb, he began to rub light circles and figure-eights on the palm of her hand. His fingers were soft, telltale of one who guarded his hands carefully against anything which could mar his transmutation circles.

Envy smiled in spite of herself. "There you go being all logical again."

The conversation was interrupted by a waiter asking what they wanted to drink.

He glanced at her. "Any preference?"

"No, you pick."

What could something like expensive wine mean to a creature like Envy? She felt a little bad, that such a gesture held little significance for her, when it would likely have made any real woman weak in the knees. Lust would no doubt be impressed…

"If you're not comfortable, we don't have to stay." He said after the waiter had departed, picking up where their conversation had left off. It had seemed anti-climactic to simply hang around his apartment once they had made their relationship official, and yet now he wondered if he hadn't rushed the romantic aspect. He failed to remember how unaccustomed Envy was to being treated…well, human.

Envy shook her head. "I'm not such a coward, to run away from something new, only…can I ask a question, without seeming rude?"

"Remember who you're with. The ruder the question, the more I'll likely enjoy answering it."

"What do you see, in a place like this? I'm not criticizing it," she added, because what kind of moron gets taken out to such a fancy place and then complains? "I've just never been able to ask before. What makes luxury…significant?"

Envy understood what it took for a human to survive, and knew that at their heart, all the comforts of society followed from this necessity. But this kind of extravagance was so far above and beyond what any creature would need for survival it seemed abstract, almost akin to Greed's meaningless pursuits, except this wasn't utterly crass and tasteless. She half-expected defensiveness, because this, if anything, seemed important to him, but when he answered there was nothing of that.

"I'm afraid I'm not the best person to ask. What I enjoy in luxury isn't typical – either that or I vastly overestimate the morality and stupidity of others."

"I'm asking you. I know as much as I care to about the rest of your kind. More than I care to, in fact. So tell me."

"Well, I admire what they do as far as it goes; the aspect of beauty and the status it infers. But there's another side to it which I doubt they see, or perhaps avert their eyes from. This-" he gestured with the hand not holding hers, "-is what wars are fought for, so that the elite might enjoy this. At least, if I've interpreted history correctly. The low are the beasts of burden for the high to use as they will."

Envy's thoughts flashed to Xerxies, the empire ransomed for the immorality of its ruler. Envy smirked. He didn't know how right he was.

"It's the cruelty mingled with beauty which entices me," Kimblee continued. "I don't enjoy it for that reason per se, I'm not so hateful, but I believe that one can only fully admire something when they know its full cost. And this, the excess for a few at the expense of many, is a dear price indeed."

"A cost you've seen both sides of, born into the circumstances you were."

"Exactly. My appreciation is different than most, because my perspective is."

"Do you feel like you've earned it more then the others here, having come from such…un-luxurious beginnings?"

Envy was a little afraid of his answer, for she had known so many humans who seemed to believe the world owed them something for their suffering – be it real or imagined – as though happiness was part-and-parcel of existence. It was that entitlement which made Envy's hatred of humans burn like the flames of hell.

"Earned?" One side of his mouth quirked upward, as though she had told a joke. "No, that's the point of luxury – it's beyond what anyone could earn. Or, if one was such a person as deserved it, they would certainly turn it down. But I don't, even knowing the true price behind it. It's an apt case-in-point example of why I'm not a good person."

The distinction between good and bad was as meaningless as wine to Envy, a human thing. Other than that, it was intriguing, looking at all this through his eyes, and blessedly different from Greed's undiscriminating voracity. She could have sat there and listened to him describe this opulence for her, paint the world in this new perspective, indefinitely.

-Could have, if she had still been an 'it'. This body was…problematic. She crossed her legs, trying to ignore the tight, sullen ache that had settled between them. How long had it been, since she'd gotten off as either gender? Years, Envy had lost track of how many. It was easy to forget when one was asexual, but now she felt every damn day of lack with excruciating clarity.

There had been fear before, at the sudden onset of this feeling, and him so close all of the sudden and everything so new. Yet now, seeing him in front of her, with his hand so gentle on her own, talking like they always had…she wanted him, and yet was still wary of what that meant. It didn't make the crushing physical imperative any less, though, that apprehension. It made sense. How could humans ever reproduce, if the drive to do so was not strong enough to overwhelm all the reasons not to?

Presently, the wine was delivered, and Envy distracted herself for a moment with that. She assumed it was good, but had no frame of reference.

"What if I'm terrible the first time?" She asked, abruptly. It wasn't the heart of Envy's fear (what if everything's terrible the first time?) but it was not far from the mark. As delicate an ego as Envy possessed, the thought of being anything less than ideal was demoralizing. He'd had others, after all, others who he actually wanted. What if they were better than Envy? Most people were undoubtedly more practiced...

"You won't be." He needed no clarification.

"I could be." Envy objected.

"No you couldn't."

"You don't know that."

"Yes I do."

"How?"

"Because I'll be doing everything."

Oh.

That only raised more questions.

"…What will you do?" Envy couldn't say if the flutter in her stomach was nerves or something else entirely…

"I'll kiss you." He leaned forward and did so. "First your mouth. Then here." He ran one finger from just below Envy's ear down to the place where her clavicles met. "Then lower, and lower still, until you tell me to stop. And if you don't…I'll stop after I have you screaming."

Envy's world seemed to wobble on its axis. She thought about how nice his mouth was for kissing, and how nice it might be for…other things, as well. The glass of wine in her hand promptly shattered. He regarded it, then her, with a raised brow.

"I think I'm going insane." She said, delicately dropping the shards of glass from her grip and shaking off drops of the beverage.

"I've often felt the same since I met you."

"You do a remarkable job of not showing it."

"The benefit of being insane from the beginning, I know how to hide it."

"You're not really insane. You know that, right?"

He shrugged. "Sanity is relative."

"Can we go back to your place…and maybe…not sleep?"

"We can go back and do whatever you want." He smirked. "Shall I call for the check?"

"We haven't even ordered food…"

"Do you care?"

"Well no, but don't you?" Food wasn't a take-it-or-leave-it thing for him, after all.

"At the moment, I would abhor anything which kept a table between us."

His fingers tightened on her own, almost to the point of pain. The heat in his words and eyes would have made her nervous before, but now…now it drew her like a suicidal moth. It was a wonder the very atmosphere around them didn't combust.

"Alright. Let's go."

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(A/N: The way things are going, it seems like they're going to have straight sex first. Which is weird, because I consider myself primarily a slash author, but...that's just the way it's happening, and I can't think of a reason why either of them would prefer one over the other. *Shrugs* If hetero-sex or fem!Envy isn't your thing, just wait for the next chapter ;D Thanks for reading!)