living like kings with broken strings. [elorein]

[Avu]

By the time Matteo had managed to get himself to Fort Hold and made a quick circuit of the Gather square, he’d come to the following conclusions:

1) He actually wanted to check out the Ice Maze, primarily because it was an ice maze, but he did not find the idea of a blind date appealing at all, and after he’d watched two random single people get paired up at the entrance, he’d skulked right back away again. Unfortunately, the woman running the entrance or whatever seemed to have absolutely no interest in leaving it unguarded, however momentarily, and Matteo was just not skilled enough to vault one of the walls and make a run for it while laughing maniacally without also probably landing on some unfortunate couple’s head, so, no, not an option.

2) He was a complete coward and the idea of dragging Vikenti in with him kept making his stomach clench awkwardly, so he needed another date. But on the other hand, he also wasn’t angling to be a total bastard and get an actual date when there was the possibility of Vikenti seeing—because they hadn’t ever actually cleared stuff up exactly, since “by omission” was not an actual technique for dealing with stress. So basically, he needed someone to be his date with the guarantee that they wouldn’t take it seriously and try to actually kiss him or anything. And while Matteo supposed he could just be a deliberately awful date, it was Gather, and that was kind of way too mean for him to deal with.

So, Lore.

He’d seen her briefly at the beginning of the day, and finding her again proved startlingly easy; Matteo couldn’t quite help the wide grin at the sight of her, and padded up behind her silently, because revenge. (No, he had absolutely not forgotten that she’d scared the shit out of him before at Benden, and it was totally not immature at all for him to be taking it out on her all this time later, shut up.) He considered his angle of attack for a moment before Matteo forwent anything remotely resembling subtlety and wrapped his arms around Elorein from behind, swinging her up in a circle and blowing a raspberry into her cheek in greeting.

“Loooree,” setting her down on her feet again because carrying her to the Ice Maze and asking for entry would probably seem a lot like a really bizarre kidnapping, “Hi. Come be my date to the Ice Maze,” which should’ve been a question but Matteo was determined to get Lore in with him, he did not want to face the inevitable drama associated with pretty much anyone else right now, and wow, including Vikenti in there was a new one. “There’s a woman running it that keeps hitching people up and it’s disturbing, knowing my luck I’d end up with someone who’s either married or old or both. It’d be traumatic.”

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