"No, no, I just — I have tremendous respect for you, you do know that?" the wizard says earnestly, her gesturing hands throwing candlelit shadows around her chambers, over the remains of dinner and the clutter of ongoing research. "I'm just saying. You're very—" she gestures tipsily with both hands, funneling into a point. "Focused. In your capabilities. And it's really impressive! You've saved my hide dozens of times! I respect you! I'm just saying we can't all be like that. I'm not a lesser practitioner for being, for being a generalist—"
"Kaila," the warlock murmurs over the rim of her wineglass, "you're a lightweight, and you're not even arguing with me. You're arguing with whoever said whatever about you, back at your arcane school. I don't care and I don't agree with however they put you down, and neither should you."
"No. But. I'm just saying."
"Kaila."
"No but I'm just saying!" Kaila blinks solemnly. "You're a walking force of destruction and I can't match that but I'm useful."
"Kaila—"
"No, look, if I overlap a Hanuman's Vector Knot and a standard energy density sieve and cross-polarised Grantham's and a geodesic working armature and—" the wizard does something complicated and eye-hurting with her hands, eyes smouldering with occult light. "See?"
"Darling," the warlock says softly, crossing her legs, "I've picked up enough to know that's very impressive, but I didn't go to school for this at all, remember."
"For about four hours or until I get sleepy from the wine," the wizard says grandly, "you can do what you like and it'll just run right off. Eldritch blast me in the chest all night, if you like. I'm impervious to you."
The warlock blinks, grins toothily, tries to smother it. "I don't think that's quite how you want to phrase that," she says.
"No but," Kaila presses her hands out carefully until the inner surface of the geodesic sparkles softly against her charged palms, "see? I've been working out how to layer everything to bleed off all the energies at once, manageably, and you can't get to me."
"You're really clever," the warlock says simply. "Really clever, Kaila, and they have no idea what they wasted by making you doubt yourself. But you still don't want to phrase it like that."
"No, no, it works!" Kaila says. "Go on! Eldritch blast me, or something."
"Eldritch blast you?" the warlock says. "Or get to you, to test whether you're impervious to me?"
The wizard slings her arms over the back of her chair, pushes with her heels to tilt it up slightly on its back legs, and casts the warlock a challenging look. "Do your worst," she says defiantly.
"Oh, darling," the warlock says, eyes crinkling, and digs her teeth into her lower lip. "You really ought be careful. I'm a wicked dedicant of infernal powers, you know."
"Impervious," the wizard sing-songs, with a dismissive little flick of her wrist.
"Of course you are," the warlock says, puts her wineglass aside, and stands. "Of course you are," and steps across the space between them, velvet skirt swishing.
"It's a volume, not a shell," the wizard says. "I'm no more vulnerable if you get inside," even as she involuntarily tilts the chair back a little more, eyes ever so slightly widened.
"Mm," the warlock says, the soft, embroidered toe of her shoe nudging the wizard's booted feet further apart. She steps between the wizard's knees, puts one hand on the back of the chair, and leans down to place her other palm lightly on the wizard's leg, just above the knee.
"Um," Kaila says.
"What," the warlock says, low and throaty near the wizard's ear, "about," as she begins to draw her hand slowly up her thigh, "an eldritch," leaning even further in until the tip of her nose brushes the shell of the wizard's ear and her hand is very high, and the wizard has gone taut and her breath has frozen in her chest; "blush?"
The wizard obligingly goes an immediate, spreading red, and lets out a ragged, involuntary noise.
The warlock closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and moves her hand from the wizard to join her other on the back of the chair, gripping the wood tight.
"Kaila," she says softly, "I'm weak for clever girls, and I am more than slightly wicked." She presses the lightest kiss to the wizard's temple. "Really, darling; be careful of me." She steps back, looking deliberately away.
"Um—" the wizard says uncertainly.
"I'll meet you with the others in the morning," the warlock says, snagging the wine bottle off the table, and leaves the wizard's sanctum with slightly more haste than grace.