I Wanna Say [Liltotto/Dorian]

Her more jovial, embarrassed expression turned to that of calm concern and attentiveness as she noticed the shift in her partner's mood, alongside his frustrations with his training, coming to his side again and gently nudging in him the side with her elbow, "Hey, no beating yourself up, you do that enough already, in the most literal sense."

If he looked her way, she would be giving him a small, reassuring smile, though there was a serious look to her gaze and knit brow, "The fact you can form a bow at all is impressive for somebody newly developing Quincy abilities. Everyone's gotta start somewhere, and you've managed to do the rough path to get there. But if you aren't seeing any progress, then that just means you haven't found the 'thing' to push you forward."

A slight narrow of the eyes and cant of the head would lead her next observation, "You can't just keep bludgeoning yourself through stuff, it doesn't do much except hurt you. It might be what you're used to doing, but you gotta shift gears or else you'll mess up your body, then who're you helping?"

Wrapping an arm around his, she'd rest her head against his arm, clearly a subtle act of physical affection as well as reassurance, "You can't just tell yourself everything you're doing wrong, you have to figure out how to do things right too. Don't get me wrong, I always gotta remind myself of that too, i'm not perfect or in any better a place. So tell me, what do you think you could do to improve your skill?"

"I suppose that I do, hm."

Of course, Dorian knew how hard he was on himself. If anything, the greatest difficulty he found himself facing these days was the fact that he could not be even more difficult on himself, that he had to measure out his efforts.

"It isn't necessarily a matter of failing to meet expectations. I haven't hit what I would call any roadblocks or difficult hurdles. It's simply taking more time than I'd like."

Liltotto's affections were certainly welcome, and they helped him to lose a bit of that tension that was filling his body. She was, if nothing else, a very pleasant distraction from the harsh thoughts he tended to have.

"You 'suppose'?" An incredulous but clearly lighthearted response came, tilting her head up to look at him with a raised brow and a slight crooked smile. She knew how he was like, and had gotten perfectly familiar with how he thought and went about, and thus took up the opportunity for a light yet chiding tease, "Up to run yourself off a cliff like a headless pony with that impatience of yours. It'll come with time, i'm sure of it. You'll give that cute face wrinkles with all that glowering, after all," she'd lean up, giving him a teasing kiss on the cheek, a warm chuckle heard as she'd gently tug him along. She felt that his shift in mood had alleviated, though still gave her partner an air of support.

"Now c'mon, let's go to your place. It's late and chilly, we should be someplace comfortable."

"I never worry about wrinkles, dear. I take much too good care of my skin for that."

A lighthearted response, even if it was also an entirely genuine one. One would be hard-pressed to find any man or woman in the City of Lights who put quite as much work into their appearance as Dorian did, after all, but he felt he'd earned that right.

Without much else to say on the matter, Dorian was certainly willing to enjoy the quiet night and the walk to his own home, a relatively luxurious apartment that was, at the same time, a bit sparsely decorated. It wasn't that it seemed empty, but rather it seemed as if he treated the place more as a display rather than a proper home. Not much on the walls, everything immaculately in place, and the only parts of the place that looked to really see any use were the kitchen and the office on one end.

"As I told you, everything in perfectly good shape."

That said, the layer of dust Liltotto had teased him about was indeed also present on some of it.

A low laugh sounded from her closed lips, curled in a fond smile to part, speaking a teasing phrase with their shared language that would come across similarly as "Dummy" to his ears, peacefully walking close to him on their quiet walk home, her gaze occasionally grazing the pale streets that she'd have gotten accustomed to. The cold white architecture looked almost blue and glowing during darker hours, something she'd grown to have admired about the city among other things. Having his company felt different than her typical night walk through the quiet parts of the city, she certainly couldn't feel lonely or too down when she was with someone she loved, but there was no way she would ask of him to do this frequently - he needed his rest.

"Oh, woah." She'd mumble on impulse as they'd approach the apartments. Somehow it both was and wasn't a shock that he lived in someplace a lot more upscale than she; On her salary she could probably afford better than her plain tiny place, but between doing work abroad often and feeling putting more cash into someplace nicer was just a waste on someone like her, she just didn't do it. Even now she felt out of place going into somewhere that nice, but she disregarded those thoughts as they entered the unit, taking in the appearance of the room that most certainly did not look too lived-in.

"..Your house looks like a display model..." Her expression looked both amused yet weary; she wasn't expecting a pigsty or anything, but this was it's own absurd, opposite extreme. There was even dust on some articles of furniture that clearly hadn't been touched in a while, stifling a laugh that her earlier tease turned out to be the truth, "Everything doesn't have to be perfect all the time, yknow. Nobody'll kill you for it."

Breathing out whatever other sillies she felt, she'd take a seat and pull her hairband out, letting her golden locks fall over her shoulders, "Ugh, I kind of miss having short hair.." A soft complaint came from her with a twitch of the brow as she ran her fingers through to fix up the strands and get more comfortable, "How the hell do you keep up with your hair and makeup all the time? That stuff drives me crazy anytime I try to put effort into it."

"Does it? Then I'm glad to have brought such a lovely doll in, that ought to seem perfectly in place."

He always tended to toss compliments at Liltotto almost casually, as if they were more a natural point of conversation than something he thought deeply on. That wasn't to say he didn't mean them, of course, or that they carried no emotion behind them. It was simply in his nature, as a culinarian and as a street rat from Paris, to use those little words of praise as something of a type of banter.

Taking a seat next to her, Dorian thought for a moment about his own appearance, how he kept up with it, and he let out something of a sheepish chuckle as he realized the answer.

"I just spend extra time in the morning. I don't need much sleep, after all."

A gentle scoff came from her, rolling her eyes with a smile on her face, "That wasn't meant to be a compliment, plus that just sounds absolutely creepy, hon," despite her response, she would go on to pick her feet up, turn herself around to lie her head and upper body on his lap, long messy golden locks splayed beneath her or draped around her shoulders, "You're too funny."

Though she'd want the droning of the television on in the background as she usually did in her own home, she was perfectly fine in the quiet ambience of his place, stretching a little bit on his lap and getting comfortable regardless of his reaction. Of course he didn't need much sleep, not that she entirely believed that, but she wouldn't call him out on it unless he was doing another slew of nonstop work again; the very last thing she wanted was him getting sick from wearing himself so thin.

"Hmm," a hum from her throat suddenly break the momentary silence between the two of them, "We've been together a while, yeah? Don't couples usually do more... Physical or sex things by now?"

The closest she'd ever gotten to such things were when he was braindead tired in the shower with her, and the occasional kisses and holds, but they didn't really do too many things that were incredibly intimate. Maybe she was feeling a bit touch starved, but her mind did go to wondering about that occasionally.

If he'd been holding something, Dorian would certainly have dropped it as Liltotto posited her question to him, but instead it was still more than visible enough on his face that she'd surprised him. After all, he considered their relationship to have moved at a fairly normal speed, though it wasn't as if he really had much frame of reference there. He was much too busy in the kitchen to have ever really thought about that kind of thing, and most of his peers growing up had been...

Well, he didn't exactly want to use someone like Duvalier or Basterbine as a point of comparison.

"Do they? It wasn't something I'd thought about, if I'm being honest."

That was actually a true statement, which in a way, Dorian realized probably sounded kind of odd. Well, he accepted that he was fairly abnormal in his own right.

Even a soldier such as Liltotto, who has experienced horrors unspeakable by many, couldn't help but feel an immediate race of regret and frozen embarrassment toward his reaction to her rather casual bringing up of such a topic, her face visibly turning red from ears to cheek despite mostly maintaining it's neutral appearance, her eyes looking elsewhere for a moment before her hand suddenly rose, giving him a swat on the shoulder in response. Somehow her face had gotten redder as she sat up, "You dumbass! Now you're making me feel like i'm a weirdo for thinking about it!"

Groaning, she'd cover her face with her hands, sinking back to lie down on his lap, stifling an awkward laugh in her voice, "I know you're busy all the time but... You really never thought about it?"

Her hands dropped, one hanging off of their seating as she'd avert her eyes from her partner, uncertainty scrunching her face a bit ".. Am I weird for wanting that? Like, I wasn't interested in it ever, but now it's like..." Her eyes rose once, only for her to cover her face with clumps of hair between her digits, as if her golden locks were any better at hiding her embarrassment, "Ugh, I don't know, I feel like a fucking idiot. Sorry..."

"I haven't, no. Not that you aren't...attractive, of course. But I tend to think about work, or what needs doing around the City of Lights. If I have a minute for my mind to wander, I use it to close my eyes."

In contrast to Liltotto's awkward discomfort, Dorian felt a sort of faint dread at this whole conversation. After all, he was smart enough to know that she was probably correct on this matter. He'd talked with those who worked under him enough to know that he was abnormal for never engaging with that side of life. But when there was so much to be done, how did he have time to think about that?

"I wouldn't say that you're strange for that, no. I'd say I'm strange for not thinking about it. You shouldn't apologize for that, dear."