Dungeons and Dalliances

6.38 – A Bet is a Bet

Sofia was having an … interesting evening. Mostly thanks to, of course, the usual suspect. Natalie.

As the team wound down their day over dinner, she had been seated close to Sofia, their thighs touching within the confines of the booth. In all honesty, even that simple skin contact would have been enough to fluster her. Despite their recent dungeon expeditions and Natalie's enthusiastic involvement in their hastily made bet, Sofia could hardly be considered experienced in such matters. Yet, experience alone didn't cure nervousness—it merely provided familiarity, which might dampen the feeling but not wholly erase it.

More importantly, it wasn't that Natalie was acting friendlier than usual, purposefully brushing against her and generally hanging close, but rather, that their bet was coming to a close. Tomorrow would be mostly filled with taking out the goblin nest, followed by a long trip back to Tenet and handling all of the various errands that would come with returning to the academy.

So that meant tonight was the night.

The last opportunity before their bet ended.

And Natalie had made her intentions clear. How she intended to 'finish off her training.' Hence, she was feeling unusually hot, even if all Natalie was doing was hanging a bit closer than usual. Because the subtext of why she was doing so was rather blatant.

The teasing was far subtler than usual, and yet Sofia couldn't help but squirm her way through the evening, unable to fight away a blush that persisted through half their conversations—or would at least reappear whenever Natalie did so much as touch shoulders or turn a grin toward her. Sofia would almost have preferred if Natalie had been more blatant in her teasing.

Which maybe she was. By not doing so. If that made any sense.

It was, Sofia decided, extremely unfair that both teasing her and not teasing her had exactly the same effect.

There was a single lull in the mortification, during which, after dinner, they had a postmortem discussion on how they'd handled the goblin encounters of the day before and the more intense one several hours ago. Such talks were common, of course, for any delving party, no matter how experienced. They frequently had them during lunch chatters, when it came to the weekly dungeon runs, though they were informal things.

Some teams were more structured about post-combat analysis, going through postmortems with a seriousness not befitting lunchroom casual talk, but one of the benefits of having a team of five who were both friendly with each other and passionate about their profession meant that such discussions just happened. For Tenet students, post-dungeon analysis was almost a mode of small talk.

Once those practical discussions had wrapped up, they had returned to more casual topics, and so the brief distraction was lost, and Natalie's 'accidental' touches returned. Thus so had Sofia's growing nervousness. It was a very intense squirming in her stomach, the anticipation of what was coming, to the extent she was almost relieved when the time came that they were heading upstairs.

Sofia didn't even realize she had followed Natalie into her bedroom until the redhead turned to her, raised an eyebrow, and amusement tugged on her lips.

"Uh. Can I help you?"

Sofia blinked, genuinely confused for a second. Then she looked backward, at the door closed behind her—which she had closed—and remembered that despite all of Natalie's extensive not-teasing the previous two hours, they hadn't spoken a word about their plans for the night. Certainly Natalie hadn't dropped an invitation, or an instruction for that matter, for Sofia to join her in her bedroom.

Dumbly, Sofia tried to come up with an excuse, but failed. At least with sufficient speed to not embarrass herself. That, of course, only plastered on an even smugger grin, and Natalie laughed at her.

"Just wanted to say hi, or did you have something else planned, tonight?" Natalie teased.

"The bet is almost over."

Natalie raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. "Is it? I almost forgot."

"Stop playing around." Her cheeks heating up, Sofia walked to the window, putting her back to Natalie and gazing out into the uninspiring view of Tarenhelm's countryside. "You mentioned it yourself: this is our last night here. And you've been acting strange."

"Strange? How so?"

Sofia didn't explain herself; Natalie knew what she'd been doing, hovering so much closer than usual and sneaking in 'accidental' touches.

"Still, I might've forgotten," Natalie said. "Why not take the risk?"

"You didn't forget."

"Could still take your chances. Because if I had forgotten, then I wouldn't get to cash in. The bet would've passed and been over with."

Cash in. Such a crude way to phrase it. So … dismissive. Narrowing it down to some 'payout.' Like this whole thing was just about sex. Natalie getting to have some fun with her reward, and nothing more.

But, wasn't it that?

Sofia's thoughts went back to that conversation with Jordan. Or both of them, she supposed, among a dozen other smaller, less coordinated efforts to discover what Sofia's feelings were on the matter. That woman really did meddle too much.

The silence had gone on a second too long, so Sofia sniffed and replied. "You didn't forget. You're much too perverted to give up on that opportunity. You've been thinking about it all day."

Having been staring out the window to save herself from Natalie's amused blue eyes, she didn't see the woman approach to rest her hands on her hips. When Natalie's response came, the words were right next to her ear, low and breathy. They sent a shiver down her spine and made her stomach clench.

"I was going to make fun of you for your ego, for saying that of course I was thinking about you all day," Natalie murmured. "But you're right. I have been."

Sofia swallowed. It was rather ridiculous how fast her heart started slamming at those words. She'd faced down actual monsters and gone into tournaments and been less filled with nervousness—by several orders of magnitude.

"Well," Sofia said. "A bet is a bet. So let's get it over with, yes?"