5author's note: This is a short thing originally posted on my tumblr, inspired by a particular piece of fanart. I am the queen of run-on sentences.
He comes to see her after a few weeks - a few long, tense weeks of exchanging messages on the communicator, messages that are short and casual and just never seem to say enough. The visit has to be brief, he tells her, because he's busy and so is she; he's on the way to Fendel on business and she's about to head to Windor to research one thing or another at the behest of King Richard.
She clears a space in her messy room and they have tea - Hubert hadn't known that Pascal liked tea, much less knew how to make it - and even though they're sitting on the floor drinking from mismatched china and there are piles and piles of books around them and the carpet smells like oil, it's still comfortable, still feels right. They talk about what they've been doing, what they want to be doing, what everyone else has been doing, and they both avoid the topic of their relationship as if it's entirely taboo. When uncomfortable silences settle between them it's Pascal who springs to life, declaring she's found something else to research, or that she's heard a rumor about someone they know, and each time Hubert is grateful for her interference. Still, he can't help wishing she would say something, anything, about them, about her feelings, about his.
When three hours have passed and the clock on her wall tells him he should have left an hour ago, he rises to his feet and tells her he must leave. She playfully begs him to stay, even jokes that he can spend the night next door since Fourier is out, but he declines - regretfully - and goes to the door. She follows him out, and he moves outside and steps off her small porch and turns to wish her well until their next visit -
"Don't take too long to come see me again, okay?" she says, and her voice is soft and afraid and not very Pascal at all, and Hubert is so stunned by hearing it that he loses all sense of what is right and wrong and questionable, and for some reason he would really like to take her in his arms and hug her tight and tell her the truth about everything. He wants to tell her that he loves her and that he can't imagine his life without her, that he wants to take her away from the oppressive and lonely enclave, that the thing he wants most in the world is to rip away the miles of distance that sit between them -
- but instead he sighs and nods and bites back the words, because he can't, he just can't.
But then Pascal gives him a little half-smile and leans back against the doorframe, crossing her arms at her waist, and she's just looking at him, not saying a word, and it's like an invitation that he can't refuse. He swallows and takes one step back onto the little porch, drawing closer, close enough that he can smell freshly washed hair and see a smudge of grease on her collarbone, close enough that he can see and hear her breathing, close enough that he can notice for the first time that her lips are dry and chapped but a sweet shade of pink. He pauses, unsure, but the other side of her mouth turns up in a smile and then he really does forget about being right or wrong.
He rushes into the kiss with his eyes shut tight; it's hard and not at all romantic, feels to him like he's trying to force his love on her, but once he starts he isn't sure how to stop. He waits, wondering if she's going to end it, but she doesn't. He feels her draw away, but then she's back again, returning his kiss with one of her own, one that's gentle and patient and full of something that might be love, or kindness, maybe both and even more - and then he knows, knows for sure, what this must mean.
They break apart and open their eyes and look at each other, and then she laughs, reaching up with both hands to fiddle with the collar of his uniform, a reddish blush rising into her cheeks. "I mean it," she tells him, "don't make me wait. I want that again really, really soon."
"Then you will have it," he agrees, and he thinks he sounds like a moron just up until the moment that she lifts her eyes to his and smiles again, shyly, and nods. And he falls in love with her all over again right there and then, and neither of them need to speak a word about their feelings because they've already told each other the truth in their own way.
