Menace!! He snorts, amused, “I do not. Although he is relevant, and therefore I hate this prospect already, just FYI.”

Probably they should disentangle and clean up. As a first grudging step, Stephen finally shifts slightly to pull out of her, until some small noise of protest from Gwenaëlle draws him back to not give up all the skin-to-skin contact: there’s a rearranging of limbs, her thigh still against his hip, his arm flung over her midriff. (What if she just slept here, he thinks, and almost as quickly shies away from that tempting thought.) For now, he’s in that pleasant haze of having worked particular muscles which haven’t been worked in a while, and it’s just— nice, lying here with her. In the warm, contented silence, his fingers absentmindedly trail down Gwenaëlle’s arm.

And now that they’re talking, his brain’s starting to hum back to coherence again, gears turning and ticking over like a machine left unattended but still trundling away in the background. So he finds himself revisiting their earlier conversation, before this incredibly effective distraction, suddenly pivoting back without much segue and as if no time had passed:

“—So, wait, your nighttime rendezvous. Does that mean you’ve some additional spies for Riftwatch?”