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"What are we?" Ada asks.
She's still naked in his bed, stretched out on her back over his bedspread. If she flexes the muscles of her pelvic floor, she can feel the space he occupied, as if her body hasn't relaxed yet, too preoccupied with missing him. Too bad the warmth of him is beginning to fade from her skin, and he's out of arm's reach to renew it. He's sitting in a nearby chair, trousers pulled up but still undone, and he's trying to catch up on the briefings he was supposed to be reading when he was hooking up with her instead.
They're usually so careless and lighthearted after sex, but today she's got wonderings to ruin that mood.
"People," Chrom says.
"And?"
"Shepherds," Chrom offers, unhelpfully.
"Ha ha," Ada says. "Wish you were that good at dodging on the battlefield."
The corner of his mouth quirks, and Chrom looks at her somewhat dubiously. He doesn't know either, she knows, but he's the one with more responsibility. He ought to at least have a better idea.
"Do you want us to be something, Ada?" he asks.
Walked right into that one, she thinks.
"I just think it's difficult to keep thinking it can be this way forever," she says, but there's a little admission there: yes. Yes, she does.
Chrom smiles, leaning forward to lean on one elbow. He's so handsome, even when he's pushing her buttons, and it drives her insane. She shifts on the bed, lifting her hips to stretch, and his little look wanders over her and comes back to her face smug.
"Why am I not surprised?" he says. "My tactician needs a plan."
"Your tactician is pretty aware of how precarious it is to be sleeping with her lord," Ada replies, pointedly. "And what people would say, too."
"If it never worked out, Ada, we'd still be friends and allies," Chrom says. "And who cares what other people say?"
"You do," Ada says. "You have to."
Chrom frowns.
"For duty, yes, but as a man I don't care at all," he says, finally. "They can say whatever they want. They're going to anyway, right?"
Ada frowns, too, and she sits up a bit more. Chrom holds her gaze almost warily. Oh, gods, she hates these conversations. Chrom can be so fickle when it comes to reality, when it comes to anything but black and white. She can already see him setting up to forget this talk ever happened.
"Well, you have to think like a lord just as I have to think like a tactician," Ada says. "We aren't just a man and a woman, we are our roles in the army."
"I know that," he says. He sits up a little straighter.
"I know you do," Ada says, "but you can't tell me that what we do when we find time alone is completely irrelevant and expect me not to remind you otherwise."
"We are best friends," Chrom says, pointedly. "No one other than Frederick suspects anything."
"The fact that we worry about people suspecting is damning enough," Ada replies.
He sighs at her, turning his eyes back to his papers, but his mouth settles into a hard line.
"I don't want to discuss this right now," he says. "I have to go over this."
"Fine," she says. It drives her crazy that he can just brush her off like that, but she doesn't want to argue anyway. Instead she just climbs out of his bed to gather up her clothes, plucking them from the floor and untangling them from the sheets. He stays in stubborn silence, but if he wants to be stubborn about it, then fine.
Chrom doesn't say anything until she's doing up the clasp on her cloak, and then he dares ask: "Before you go, can you help me with one thing?"
He's holding up the papers.
"No," Ada says, incredulously. "Figure it out yourself."
"Ada," he sighs.
She strides right out.