Leon broke the hug quickly, setting Ira down and clearing his throat with the practiced ease of someone who had decided nothing notable had just been happening and was moving forward on that basis.
He straightened his clothes.
Seraphine was looking at him with an expression that communicated several things simultaneously, none of which she was saying out loud. Her eyes moved—briefly, with an almost involuntary quality—to Ira's chest region, then away, then back once more before she caught herself and redirected her attention elsewhere with a quiet hmph that she seemed to be having entirely with herself.
Ira, for her part, appeared either genuinely unaware that anything had been interrupted or constitutionally incapable of treating it as significant. She stood beside Leon with the easy comfort of someone who had already said everything she wanted to say and was now simply present, which was somehow the most disarming possible response to the situation.
