victory_road | Great googly moogly, it's all gone to [extremely loud incorrect buzzer]

"I'm going to assume that was a compliment."

Lust doesn't understand the words but the sentiment is there and the sound and shape of the words are familiar, if nothing else. She doesn't need to know exactly what he'd said.

Lazily, but with great reverence, her hands come up to rest on his forearms. The feel of him so familiar and so strange at the same time. His hands on her face almost burn, but pleasantly. And he always makes her feel so small and delicate. She remembers that now, the sensation coming over her again after all this time.

"I missed you. I didn't know it was possible to miss someone like that." All too well she remembers how hollowed out she'd felt. Like something inside of her was ripped out and the raw and gaping wound it left felt as though it would never begin to close.

This was the only thing that could fully heal it. Him, here with her. Where they're supposed to be.

"And as flattering as that is...I've been dancing all night and then I ran home, my legs are beginning to protest."

Right. It's easy for Scar to forget that most don't share his nearly machine-like constitution. He's walked for three days, and he would still walk for three more, if he needed to. If there was anything as important as this.

He was supposed to have another entire week, after all.

Poor Henry.

His hands on her are as meticulously gentle as they've always been. He carefully draws his fingers from her hair and reaches for her waist, tugging lightly toward the bed. He can take a hint. They can rest. He suspects he'll realize he needs it, the moment he's off his hurting feet again.

Gratefully, Lust goes with him. As nice as it was to stand together, she's been on her feet all day. Even considering her daily life is physically demanding, it had been a lot. And the emotional exhaustion isn't helping either.

She doesn't bother to draw back the covers yet, wanting to make it clear she isn't implying they need go to sleep. She just wants to lie down after a long day. And it will be so nice, to lie in bed with him again. To feel him close, to hold him. In the wake of everything, she feels surprisingly peaceful now.

The two Espurr make room for them, and the other two toddle over to the bed. They're used to sleeping in it with their trainer, and Scar's presence isn't about to deter them.

"Don't mind them, they think they own the place. Which is partially my fault, I've spoiled them horribly."

Scar lets his head turn into her pillows, smells her on them, and his thoughts align with hers. As soon as his great and terrible question had burst out of him to a positive answer, the maelstrom of emotions has settled into a low hum his mind can manage. He had been a right disaster for three days, barely sleeping, stopping only for the sake of his poor new friend's legs, wearing his damn coat the whole way from Violet.

God, his feet do hurt. The extent of it isn't revealed until he's finally off them.

"Of course you have," he rumbles as he maneuvers carefully on top of her sheets, avoiding the purple puffs of fur and eyes, his attention still glued to the woman settling beside him. His thinking, his words, they still haven't returned, really. Instinct is all that's left, and he's tugging her closer before he's even fully settled.

Scar doesn't need to tug her very hard, she shifts into him and fits herself against him as though there isn't nearly a decade lost between them. The Espurr make a few protesting mewls but settle themselves around the pair.

"I've missed this."

The quiet nearness of him. His arms around her. All of it. There'd been some soft, distant longing for him all of this time. It had become such a part of her that it's sudden absence is still surreal. She is her own woman, she knows this. She's the same woman she's always been, just changed by circumstance and a cruel stretch of years. But still he's a part of her, a piece that when absent leaves her somehow incomplete.

She realizes now that she'd been afraid he'd keep some distance between them, some little space as he readjusts. Ridiculous, she knows now, pressed against him and inhaling...well...mostly her own soap and shampoo, right now.

A sudden half-laugh escapes her.

"You smell like my shower caddy."

"It's doing something to me," he admits with a thoughtful frown, pinching at his shirt collar and catching another whiff of... Definitely Not Scar.

Doing what, he isn't going to put an exact finger on.

His arm falls warm around her waist, and Scar makes no effort to restrain himself from pressing closer. Where there had once been a wall he had needed to punch through with his bare hands every time they wished to be close, he can now just... be.

That will definitely take some unpacking. The fact that the only thing left remaining in his head at this very moment is what he wants will take a great deal of unpacking. He's reaching for her hair again, gently undoing the tie. Again.

"We can get you your own toiletries tomorrow."

While Lust is very fond of her soap and shampoo scents, they aren't Scar scents. Though it's certainly better than the funk he'd smelled of when he arrived.

Her hands settle against his chest once more, feeling the beat of his heart against her palm.

"I'm afraid those haven't survived the years. But most of your things have. Either here or at the cottage..." She lets out a little laugh as he loosens her hair yet again. Another something she hadn't thought of in so long, how much he'd always seemed to love her hair. Thank god he wasn't here when it had all been shorn off.

"Alright, but you're the one risking choking on it in the night."

Oh Henry told him all about that. Scar even tried his very best to imagine it. He failed.

"If nothing has managed to kill me yet..." he murmurs as his fingers carefully work the elastic out of her hair for the second time in as many hours. He flicks it... somewhere not here, fingertips running gently over her scalp.

The years are hitting him again. He suspects it will be a while before it stops washing over him at every chance. All the people he'll never get to see again... This in particular isn't a new feeling. It isn't even as bad as all the faces he's lost in the past; none of his friends here belonged here. If they're gone, that means they were home. That means Alphonse is home.

Scar, however...

She's kept him with her. All this time. Thank you wouldn't be the right expression. Not for holding onto a dead man's belongings.

He may be the greatest idiot who's ever lived.

"I've been awful to you."

More words, tumbling out of his mouth before he can think to stop them. It's a sentiment he would have thought true even all those years ago (four days ago, depending on your perspective), but he wouldn't have been able to grasp the shape of why. Why he couldn't let her see all of him. Why he was never worthy. Why he swallowed everything he wanted and let it eat him alive. Why he could watch as if outside himself as he hurt the both of them and never know how to stop. Why he constantly felt like an interloper in his own life.

He's done treating himself like he's the opportunistic second best option. She's never even thought of him in those terms. Torturing himself in the perpetual, latent assuredness that he's done anything but reciprocate what has been freely given…

It's insulting to her.

And this has been slowly crashing over his head since the spare key had turned over in their small, secluded house in Violet City. That his heart had never truly managed to break out of its adolescent prison. That he had been so lost in his own maze of guilt that he could never see the truth for what it was. Is.

Wanting isn't a futile exercise of staring from the other side of a glass window. Of wishing he was older, then wishing he wasn't powerless, then that he wasn't alone. That he could walk openly in the street, that he could sleep at night, that a familiar face would be more than a shadow, that it could all please, please end.

Wanting could be anything, really. Even reciprocated.

It all seems remarkably simple, now, that she loves him just as much, just as recklessly, just as fully, as he loves her. That it isn't all a terrible cosmic punchline. That it simply is.

Scar blinks a little too much. Stares a little too much. It's been hitting him over and over and over since he had stared at the nearly decade-old photo sitting on her vanity, and it's finally broken through. His eyes are wide and bright, lost in hers all over again, emotions too big for him to piece into words flashing past them while his mouth hangs dumbly open.

Oh...

Lust reaches up to lay one hand on his face, stunned a bit. That had hardly been anything she expected to hear.

"You haven't been. Just...inexperienced and unmindful." He'd been so very broken. They both had been, in their own ways. Some wounds don't heal easily, some things aren't easily learned. They'd both hurt one another and struggled and lashed out without thought when emotions ran too high.

"And I can say the same of myself. I never made things easy for you. Anyway, this is a happy night. I don't need any apologies from you, I just need you."

It's only been a few hours, really, she's still grasping that Scar is back, that he's here, in her bed that has been far too empty for far too long. Unless one counted a small army of cat Pokemon - the Espurr are only the tip of that particular iceberg. And even in so brief a time she can tell something's different. Something's changed in him.

She doesn't want to dwell on old mistakes and the rockier parts of their relationship. Not right now. She just wants to bask in the warm contentment his return has brought. It had always seemed the unreachable dream, the one thing that would be forever beyond her grasp. Her fingers stroke his cheek, gently.

"I promise nothing horrible will happen if we just enjoy being together again."

Frozen as the extent of his misconceptions are spread out behind him, Scar frantically grasps for the right words. Even this flash of a moment is a microcosm of what's been surgically plucked out of him by the shock of reawakening: Her fingers are on his cheek, and he turns closer, presses warmer against her.

"I know," is what he manages, short and simple and easy because he needs to get anything out right now to make her understand. To let her know that he isn't drawing away. Scar swallows. A steadying breath. Tries again.

"I hated myself, for how happy I am with you."

Oh it sure does feel some kind of way to say the quiet part out loud. His eyes are still locked on hers, desperate with remorse, wild with the sheer magnitude of this epiphany that's been brewing in his brain stem for days.

"And I wasn't even letting myself be, more times than not. Now, I..." Foolish doesn't cut it. Nothing cuts it, in hindsight. There are a hundred mistakes between the both of them, cruel twists of circumstance and the weight of destructive forces far greater than either of them on their shoulders, but few of their frictions were so quietly personal. Painfully simple.

Shame had threaded into his nervous system, and only sometimes did he have the tools to cut it away, to buy precious time before it grew back. Its cancerous heart had been a piece of him since he was old enough to know what longing truly meant.

New guilt unlocked: How immeasurably stupid the old guilt was. But he doesn't want to dwell, either. In fact, he wants very much the opposite.

"I want to be."

He's agreeing with her, he's desperate that she understands that, that she grasps the weight of what he's trying to express, still trying to even understand.

No, he hadn't just let himself be plenty of things. Lust knew that. Even if she'd never fully understood what he struggled with, she'd known it was a struggle. There'd always been some dark storm inside of him, something that held him back in so many ways.

"That's a very silly reason to hate yourself." Perhaps not the most helpful thing to say, but it's true and the tea is still in her system. That's a very large part of being together, being happy with one another. Though she can certainly admit they're a rather special case. They'd never been like other pairs. How could they be? All that lay between them and behind them...

But that's far away for Lust now. And much of it had always been hazy, thing she's aware of but has little personal connection to. So much is just a collection of events she knows happened but that she doesn't remember, or doesn't remember well.

"I am very glad, though, that you'd prefer to be happy than hate yourself. You shouldn't hate yourself. There's a great deal to like, you know."

She understands what he's saying. More or less. It's that thing that's different.

That same, slow smile creeps across Scar's face.

He really does love her.

It really isn't a great, terrible secret he's been burdened to silently carry to his grave.

The last period of stability in your living memory being when you're fifteen will do A Number on your emotional development. Food for thought!

He isn't thinking about that right now, though. As has been the refrain of the last hour, the last three days, the only fully formed thought in his head is simply... what he wants. So Scar does the only thing that makes sense, acts on the only complete thought that his mind can put into reality. It's hardly any effort; they're already sunken into one another. He nudges his nose lightly against hers, eases the angle of their faces together.

He kisses her, languid and soft, and there isn't a single part of him that feels bad about good it feels.

Oh.

Lust hadn't expected this, either. She'd simply assumed, without even thinking, it would be something slowly built back to. After a time of adjustment, of Scar...resettling, so to speak.

And that was fine. Their relationship was hardly one built on the physical. Besides, she's gotten used to that sort of thing simply not being a part of her life. There'd been opportunities of course, but...she simply hadn't had the inclination.

So the kiss takes her by surprise. She makes a small and startled noise against his lips before melting into him. Her heart skips a beat and a little thrill goes through her. The number of times she's dreamed of this very thing...

How is this real? A handful of hours ago and it had been a normal night, she'd been in her dressing room thinking only of a hot foot bath and which mindless nighttime show she'd put on before bed. Now she was back in Goldenrod, in bed with Scar, kissing him and running a hand through his hair. It's like all those years have just faded away with the touch of his mouth.

The kiss is easy and unhurried, but Scar draws back before long, just enough to open his eyes. His fingers brush through the curls against her neck, stroke the line of her jaw. Carefully lidded though it may have been in the uncertainty of his return, he isn't hiding how heavy his eyes and hands are on her, now.

But his thoughts are much the same. He doesn't want to rush her, sudden as all of this is. The consideration swirls in the back of his mind like smoke, obscured under the sheet of indulgent relief that's settled over all of him.

He knows he's impulsive. He knows he acts before he thinks. He's just never felt it quite like this before. Certainly not alone with her, behind closed doors.

Scar manages to linger in the stillness for another breath before he realizes he's already kissing her again, two fingers tilting her chin back into his.

Lust wouldn't go so far as to say he seems like a whole new man - he doesn't, he is still most certainly Scar - but it's as though something released in him. It's clear even in how he touches her, something more assured in his hands.

She certainly isn't going to deny him. She'll follow his lead, let him guide this far more intimate and private reunion. God knows how many nights she's longed for him uselessly, regretting all the times she hadn't kissed him, hadn't touched him. It had been hard, in the wake of his loss, not to think on how much time had been wasted.

That's likely what's going through his mind, or something close to it. Even if he can't remember...somehow, that seems worse and far more terrifying. Whatever's flipped whatever switch inside of him, Lust is content to go along. She returns the kiss eagerly, shifting against him, relearning the little details of his mouth, his hands.

Seven years is enough to smooth over some of the smaller memories.

[moving for Straight Activity]

Great googly moogly, it's all gone to [extremely loud incorrect buzzer]

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