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It is well into the evening when Ignasse walks her back to her apartment door. He had graciously offered to spend the day helping her in one of the Firmament’s communal greenhouses, planting new seeds and potting and repotting older seedlings, and now they’re both covered in dirt for their efforts (Ignasse moreso than her, but she can still feel the grit under her nails and the dust in her hair). The dirt-covered elezen in question is leaning in to kiss her goodbye when Nana has a better idea, putting up one hand to gently push him back.
“We might as well clean up together,” Nana says, watching the hurt on Ignasse’s face instantly turn to relief and then that to elation. She gives his chest a pat and then turns to unlock the door. Ignasse has been here before only a handful of times before (she largely prefers going to his family's small estate, because seeing him is easier than letting him see her), but it's not like her apartment is big enough for him to get lost in. She clears her throat as she turns the overhead light on, closing the door behind them as she says, “Make yourself at home.”
“I'll start the bath,” Ignasse says, stopping to flick her orchestrion on before rounding the corner to her apartment’s tiny bathroom. Some instrumental piece that she can't quite recall the name of fills the quiet, loud enough to cover the racing of her heart but not loud enough to have the neighbors complain. Nana hums along as she kicks off her shoes and leaves them by the door.
“I should have clothes around here somewhere for you to put on after,” she calls back as she makes her way over towards her bed, ears twitching at the sound of Ignasse starting the bath. Most of the clothes she's found laying around her apartment were left behind by Paulecrain, but she doesn't say that (and she doesn't say that she probably has pairs of both of their smalls stuck away somewhere, because that's between her and whichever of the gods is watching). She stands beside the nightstand, pulling the metal decorations off of her forelocks and setting them down before taking off her necklace and bracelet (round blue stones strung together, a gift purchased by Ignasse from one of the stalls in Kugane when they had first come back from Eureka) and setting those down as well.
Nana turns and through the slots of the partition separating her bathroom from her bedroom, can see Ignasse stripping out of his dirt-stained clothes. She really should join him, she knows, but something locks her in place, just looking at him (just looking at him). Their eyes, brown to hazel, meet through the slots and he smiles, gentle and teasing as he steps out of his trousers. Something sharp passes through her as she looks at him (desire but not quite, something much worse), the way his hair falls loose around his face, the way the dying rays of the sun through the window turns the hair on his arms and chest golden, the smattering of old pink scars across his skin. Ignasse turns, stopping the tap and stepping into the tub, giving her a glimpse at the planes of his ass and the backs of his thighs (and the soft of his cock hanging between them, something she hadn't been quite brave enough to turn her eyes down to when he was facing her) before he sits down in the water.
Nana can feel his eyes on her as she strips out of her clothes, but when she meets his gaze again, he's looking at her with something softer than desire (but sharper all at once, something too painful to put a name to). Slowly, she walks around the partition and lowers herself into the free spot opposite him, careful to not slosh any of the warm water over the side (her bath is plenty big for her alone, but having a full-grown elezen man in it with her makes things more complicated). She draws her knees close to her chest, simply looking at Ignasse as he leans back against the side of the tub and closes his eyes.
His feet brush against hers and she wonders if this is what a normal relationship is like, what domesticity is like. Ignasse would have it this way, if she'd let him, but she knows there's the matter of the other knight she hasn't managed to make herself shake. She lets herself picture it for just a moment (a bath big enough for three, a bed big enough for three, three lances on the weapon rack by the door), before dismissing the impossibility of it all. Paulecrain is…Paulecrain, and she and Paulecrain are too similar when it comes to matters of the heart (sometimes she thinks she just doesn't know how to stop running, how to let herself be quiet and loved, how to kill the little girl inside of her that was always too afraid to get attached to people she knew she'd leave behind in the course of growing up).
Besides, even if Paulecrain wasn't the way he is, he and Ignasse only tolerate the other’s presence in her life at the best of times. At the worst of times, it's all she can do to keep from being caught in the middle of the ire they direct towards each other.
Back in Pyros, Grinnaux (on the rare time they had been sent out together without Kaede or any of the other former knights of the Ward present) had delighted in telling her about the time Ignasse had drunkenly initiated a fistfight with Paulecrain in the common area of the inn in Kugane while she had been away on the Steppe moons prior. Ignasse and Paulecrain have tipped more towards toleration as of late, but there still isn't a proper meshing. She knows they'd both prefer the man on her other arm to be someone else (Grinnaux, Vellguine), if not having her alone to prove themselves the winner, but they're all three too stubborn to admit walking away would be the easiest course.
(She and Paulecrain could stay at a standstill forever, running apart and together all at once, but really, how long can Ignasse be content with waiting for her to love him back?)
Ignasse cracks a hazel eye open and says, startling her out of her thoughts, “If you’d like, I can wash your hair for you.”
Nana doesn't trust her voice to work the way she wants, so she simply nods instead. She turns as carefully as she can until she's sitting between Ignasse’s spread legs and tucks her knees back up against her chest. Whatever this is, she thinks as shuts her eyes, whatever it is for now, is nice. Ignasse leans in and presses a kiss just underneath one of her ears before cupping his hands and gently pouring water onto her hair (and maybe this is really nice.)