"Yeah, she's staying over at my place for a while. It was meant to be a short break because she was feeling burnt out or something. Yeah, she's being all clingy as usual, haha," Elara snickered playfully at Terra, who had her head on her shoulder while holding up the phone to her ear while she cooked.
Taking the phone to herself, Terra answered passive-aggressively, "Ugh, what is it? Who cares? We can see anytime later; Ela is more important… no it's not favoritism; I just picked my fav… Okay, maybe it is…"
She trailed off while answering the call leaving Elara chuckling.
'So she still had that bad habit of walking about while answering a call.'
A few minutes later, she was done, she placed the already dished-out food on the table with a pair of mittens to avoid burns. Taking a bottle of yogurt and water she placed it beside their meal of pancakes and eggs.
"I'll be leaving soon," Elara explained while eating, "Do whatever you want, but if you're going to leave, at least tell me where to."
Terra hummed absent-mindedly, watching her eat with interest. Elara had two extremes when she ate: either she ate slowly and elegantly like royalty, or she went full glutton mode, gorging food till her cheeks puffed up like a squirrel's, which suited her quite well considering she had naturally big cheeks.
"Although watching Elara eat like royalty was fascinating, she preferred it when she stuffed her face full of food and found it extremely adorable.
"Is the food not to your liking?" Elara questioned with a worried look after noticing Terra hadn't taken a bite out of her food.
"Well… If you ask me, it'll be great if you feed me," Terra replied with a cheeky grin.
"Ha ha," Elara said sarcastically, "But seriously if you don't like that, I can order you something else."
"No, no, even if it's bad, I'll still eat it because it's yours. On the plus side the things you make are delicious," Terra said with a smile so wide her eyes crinkled before taking a bite with her spoon.
"Mmmh, so good," she moaned happily, feeling the deliciousness melt into her mouth.
Elara smiled, "Glad you liked it."
After breakfast, Terra took out the plates, and while washing them, Elara took her car keys and was about to leave.
"Wait! Can I drop you instead?" Terra asked hopefully.
Staring at the bright blue eyes, Elara sighed softly, "Alright, but be quick. I need to leave."
While waiting for Terra to prepare, Elara's phone rang, and on sneakily eavesdropping, Terrence heard an annoying name.
"Soon. No, Terra will drop me off. Huh? Of course not! You're the CEO why would—don't joke like that Terry, it's not fun…?!" Elara paused when she heard a noise that seemed like a fall from where Terra was.
"Excuse me for a bit," she said before pausing the call; walking up to Terra, she was relieved to see that nothing had happened except that the case of her fashion contact lenses had fallen off.
"Girl, be more careful!" she chastised with a frown, leaving Terra giggling, "It's not funny!"
"I'm fine; sorry I couldn't stop myself from laughing; you look like an angry squirrel."
Seeing Elara simply roll her eyes before leaving Terra chuckled before continuing her preparation.
"Yeah, she's fine, just dropped a case. I need to leave soon though. A delivery? Surprise? Alright, I'll be looking forward to that. Bye," Elara ended the call coinciding with Terra coming out.
Putting out her hand like a child Terra said, "Let's go."
Elara chuckled softly, grabbing her hand naturally as she teased, "You're like a kid."
"As long as I'm yours."
"Whatever you say lol."
***
Terrence sat in his office tackling a startling amount of documents stacked up in his desk. However, something kept weighing heavily on his mind, and halfway through, he decided to take a break.
Gulping a cup of cold soy milk which he had come to love after being introduced to it by Elara, an outwardly calmness besieged his body. It was delicious, probably even better than Elara's homemade one; however, he'd still choose Elara's any day.
The more he thought about Elara, the more annoyed he became. Why was that lady so close to Elara? And why did Elara have such little boundaries with friends? It was fun when it was with him, she was casual about many things and would accept lots of questionable demands from him as if normal but now it had switched to Terra… although selfish, it became as clear as day just how bad this thing was.
The problem with Elara was her complete trust in her friends; when it came to strangers, she was alert and knew to read between the lines, but with friends, it was like she short-circuited!
Terra was a clear example; it was so obvious to anyone with eyes that Terra was heavily infatuated with Elara. However, when he tried to insinuate this to Elara, she brushed it off so casually, saying it was simply what friends did.
When questioned why her other friends didn't behave like that she said that everyone has their ways of showing their love and Terra just happened to be slightly more passionate, thinking about the peach-haired lady who seemed to be on the verge of risking everything and kidnap Elara, Terrence thought this might be more than a 'little passion'.
The only thing he had left to hold on to was Elara's promise of drawing the line if necessary. The problem was, could she even tell when that line needed to be drawn?
Sighing distantly he reached out to his pocket to bring out a squishy fox plushie that squealed softly with every squeeze.
Elara had gifted it to him during her birthday saying it'd be a good way to release stress. He never really placed any hope in this and simply liked the idea of carrying about something Elara gave to him…
Squeal… Squee! Squee!!
Watching the thing squeal in his hands with each successful squeeze, he imagined a certain peach-haired female making him attack the toy harder. Its painful squeals filled the room and left Merlin, who stood outside, speechless.
Merlin: (・_・)
Did his boss really stop working to play with a toy??
"Sir…?" Merlin called out worriedly; he was starting to worry about his boss's mental state; was this the consequence of abstaining from a beloved?
Snapping out of his daze Terrence replied with a hum. Staring at the fox one last time, he chuckled; even the simplest of gestures by Elara always came in handy.
Wasn't she just too good?
***
Meanwhile, in the writers department, two workers huddled together discussing morally questionable discussions about their colleague.
"Do you think Elara got a girlfriend?" Dennis whispered to Emily.
"Ah, you mean the excessive display of affection shown this morning, along with the constant calls that had Elara grinning from ear to ear? Yeah, they're definitely dating; you'll have to be a fool to believe Elara's 'she's just a friend'," Emily responded matter-of-factly.
"... But she's aroace?" Dennis said unsurely.
Emily rolled her eyes dismissively, "You believe that shit? It's obvious she just made that up to keep her pursuers at bay since she sure had a lot of them. I mean, how else do you define their relationship? What friend of yours treats you like that?"
"It'd be great if I had a 'friend' that hot treating me like that," Dennis sighed wistfully.
Meanwhile, Elara, who had heard everything, snorted internally. This wasn't new to her; even from a young age, she could tell that her ideas of relationships were different from others.
She learned from a young age that the actions she regarded as normal and platonic were somehow romantic to others; she never really understood it but, with time, she managed to adhere to society's ideas of relationships to avoid people pointing fingers at her as purposely misleading.
To her, her aroace identity wasn't something she was keenly into defending; it was simply a way of telling others her perception of romantic and sexual attraction was different, and her views on different types of love were different. Identifying as aroace was the closest way she could think of.
But just like before, once they saw a glimpse of her relationships with others, they'd make up their conclusions. It stopped bothering her a long time ago after she found out how to perfectly navigate through everything without getting blamed for 'confusing' anyone.
Something she had better than before were friends, true friends who understood her despite her differences. Ones that didn't find her lack of boundaries and views on love jarring and misleading.
Friends that truly understood her… these were all she ever needed and her life had been much better after getting them.