( She lets him catch her hand, relenting in the motion if not the hold on him. Which is sort of awkward by now, but she doesn't particularly care.

She's definitely laughing, even if she sounds congested from crying. )

Better? Ha! It needs to come out and breathe, get away from all that stuffy better than thou act. Come play with the plebs, hmm?

( Completely unable to take the seriousness clause to mean anything, she ducks her head down again. It's a calculated risk, based exactly on what he's just confessed and her own version of -- well, dealing with things. )

There's only one way to fix that!

( The sting: one way to fix the sting. Collette intially intends to press her lips against his tmple, but no way was that working with current angles. So he gets a featherlight kiss on his forehead, above an eyebrow.

For her efforts, she's most likely going to get a delicious taste of hair stuck to lips. Bummer! But it's about a different resolve. Okay, he was weird about getting kissed on the lips, an attempt on his life is gonna do that. She still feels he needs a thousand good reasons to stop having the one bad case rest prominently on his mind.

So if his lips are off limits for now, that leaves the rest of him at her disposal. (Poor guy. She'd warned him, after all!) )