#yen is a mess when she's pining <3 triss on the other hand...

[cherryjuicegf]

The woman behind the counter is smiling at her with a strange warmth, as though she knows her for years. Yennefer huffs at herself. People who know her for years don't smile at her like that.

Smiling, and her face is haloed by auburn curls pulled back with a green ribbon to reveal her round cheeks and shining eyes and the freckles that paint her face like tiny dark plums.

Plums.

Which are why Yennefer is standing in front of the counter. Right.

She clears her throat and lowers her look, distantly registering her mouth has gone dry. The paper bag in her hand is slightly shaking.

So many plums. Dark purple and red and round, in perfect condition, so that every one she catches in her hand she immediately wants to bite. The fruit is cool on her skin, dark red like the woman's lips and damn her, she won't stop smiling.

"I wouldn't choose these if I were you," she says suddenly and Yennefer almost flinches.

She raises her eyebrows, looks at the red round plum in her hand. "Oh?" she turns back at the woman, voice masked with stability. It's not like she watched what she was putting in the bag.

The woman's lips quirk at the edges and she tilts her head. "The red ones aren't as ripe." She takes a deep purple fruit in her hand, almost black, and offers it to Yennefer. Her voice is soft like velvety peaches. "Try this one."

Yennefer looks at it, then back at the woman, momentarily numb. "Should I..."

"Please," the woman laughs and oh, her laugh is beautiful, "I'm sure you can't refuse a small juicy bite in this heat."

Ignoring whatever route it is that her thoughts are taking as she stares into her kind brown eyes, Yennefer smiles faintly at her and takes the plum from her hand, which is indeed softer. And well, it is the farmers market, it's unbearably hot, the woman is smiling and she is only human.

So she takes a bite.

Brown eyes, warm still, staring as she rushes to hold the juices between her lips and savour the fruit in its sugary taste, her teeth deep into the red, soft flesh. Yennefer swallows, licks her lips. Her chin is probably sticky but she is too caught between red curls and long lashes to care.

The woman chuckles again, a deep blush now painting her cheeks. "You like it, don't you?" And then, as though Yennefer's knees are not ready to give in, she continues in a cheery voice. "They're santa rosa plums," she says and arbitrarily places four of them in the paper bag. "I prefer them from others because they're bigger and sweeter. And don't they have the most marvelous taste?"

Suddenly aware of the bag's weight, Yennefer blinks and looks away, nodding. "They do, but I didn't–" she looks at the bag, then the woman, then the bag "–how much...?"

The sun hits in a peculiar way, or it's just her eyes, because the woman shakes her head in protest, her big macrame earrings dangling with it, and Yennefer's heart almost jumps out of her chest. "No worries, it's free." There is a glint in her eyes. "A store offer, if you will."

Yennefer doesn't find it in herself to insist. The plum is still in her other hand, waiting to be eaten, and the woman is already turning to the next waiting in line.

Clutching the bag on her chest, she can only mutter a faint thank you, and take a few steps forward.

It's only when she looks back that she sees the woman watching at her with what resembles a smirk and her gaze forever warm that she curses herself for not learning more about her.

But it's too late. And it's not like she has been exactly lucky with her choices so far.

So she walks away, eating the rest of the plum and thinking how shapely the woman's fingers fit around it.

When she empties the bag at home, she barely holds back a gasp as she finds a phone number and a name written inside it.

Triss then. Thanks to the plums, it's Triss.