Irene's smile was back, softer this time, and she felt her own face warm just a little. That wasn't particularly any kind of revelation -- Irene had been using her looks to her advantage for the better part of two decades, now -- but it still sent a little flip through her chest to hear it from Amaya. (Particularly now, with messy hair and no makeup and not a hyaluronic acid in sight.)

"Do you not believe you're pretty?" Irene wondered, which was a question she had always been curious about, and that nose wrinkle just pulled it out of her where she might have left things alone, on a different day. "Or do you not like hearing it?"

She tempered her question by reaching a hand, light and easy and soft, to very carefully smooth down Amaya's hair -- which, of course, was an impossible task and she knew it, but she also had pointedly shed her jewelry last night so that she could even attempt hair-playing as a general practice.

"Because I think you're fucking beautiful, Amaya. All the time." And see, the nice thing about truth day was that there truly was no way Irene was just flattering or blowing smoke, was there? She really did believe that. (Which was, in a way, almost a little surprising to Irene herself, the absolute truth of that. And, if she examined it, it also had remarkably little to do with her actual, physical attraction to Amaya -- but that was a bridge she could try to resist pitching herself off all morning, wasn't it?)