It was his birthday, a day he'd only just recently even bothered paying much attention to, and he always did pride himself in his dedication to executing instructions with deftly competency. And so the grunt of appreciation at those whispered requests was just as much for their promised method of indulgence as it was for that adroit use of Liliana's own skill to meet him with a checkmate that he could hardly agree with.

And so he didn't. He just lifted a hand to brush her cheek with his before she slipped away. That, and the soft smile, standing in for his substitution for a loving gaze, and the words if you insist danced on his lips, but he did not speak them, because she certainly didn't need to.

When his hand left her cheek, it reached for that mug.

"By all means," he said, instead, and when he sighed into his mug, it was not a sigh of resignation or frustration as most of his sighs tended to be, but of a much rarer nature, one of pure, if absolutely and utterly mystified, contentment.