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“Oh gosh, Dot, your face is red!” Cleo says. “Did the sun burn you?” Cleo reaches for them but stops just before she can touch their face.
“Perhaps a little,” Dot says. They do not move, they do not pull away.
Cleo places her fingertips gingerly against their reddened cheekbone. “Does it hurt?”
“Not particularly.”
She smiles. “Well, that’s good.”
They sit there for a moment, quietly, Cleo’s fingers still resting on Dot’s cheek.
“Cleo,” Dot eventually says.
“Yes?”
They are looking at Cleo, near enough at this distance that they don’t need their glasses to see her clearly. Whatever it was that held them back from looking too closely in the past seems to be gone in this moment.
“Thank you for saving me.”
Cleo doesn’t really know how to respond. Her heart is still hammering in her chest from, well, from everything that just happened, and her mind feels like it’s going a mile a minute and any semblance of a ‘you’re welcome’ gets swept up in the chaos before it reaches her mouth. But in the absence of words, she lets her hand fall, her palm slowly coming into full contact with Dot’s cheek.
“Of course. I’m really glad you’re still here with… with all of us.”
Beneath her hand, Cleo feels a slight shift, the tiniest twitch of muscle as the corner of Dot’s mouth moves ever so slightly upwards into a grin.