Welcome to Gaia! ::

Shff, shff, shff.

Sand was an inevitability when one lived on an island. It was even moreso when Lucky had chosen to go digging through it in the hopes of uncovering lost and rather valuable supplies, as the rumors seemed to indicate. All he had generally been able to find was soap, but today he had nothing to show for his digging at all except for, well, sand. He'd been able to wash most of it off in the ocean, but it still clung to his sandal-clad feet as he waded back toward civilization.

It was a surprise, then, to find someone just lying on the beach. Not really doing anything at all. He moved closer in vague curiosity, and the off chance that his meager first aid skills might be necessary. Was she... sunbathing?

By the time he got close enough to confirm it, he realized exactly who she was. And that she was wearing practically nothing. And that he was still staring.

And proceeded to turn a red bright enough to rival any sunburn.

He should have kept on walking. He should have kept on walking and increased his pace and never looked back and all of those options somehow seemed impossible while he was standing there paralyzed with a confusing combination of guilt, hope, and fear.

Mostly the last one.

It startled him that she'd noticed, and in penance Lucky immediately wedged a hand under his glasses and over his eyes, propping it up with his other arm. He twisted himself sharply toward the horizon, so that very few of the spaces between his fingers still revealed Maebe. He wanted to apologize, but even the idea of doing so made him feel uneasy. Apologizing was what got him here in the first place. Apologizing and... All that he could really manage was an incomplete stutter of a sound.

A triangular window appeared briefly between his fingers when she called his name, once, twice, calling him over. His gaze jumped to her for just a second, and then away again, snapping shut.

"Just - just passing -" It was extremely difficult to keep his composure right now. Half of him wanted to bolt with no further explanation, but the other half was almost hopeful that maybe Mimsy had been wrong about her. Despite all the explanations, he still wanted to give Maebe the benefit of the doubt. It was rare to find people who felt trustworthy, who seemed to care about him, and who in turn he could probably care about too. A friend, if nothing else. If what he had done hadn't driven her away, nothing probably would. Still, he couldn't help but feel embarrassed by what he had done, and that was more than enough to tongue-tie him at the most inconvenient time. "I - uh - I sh- should not - you look busy - I think I'll just -"

He looked like he might have been hyperventilating a little bit.

"But-" There wasn't really a chance to get a word in edgewise anyway. He kept his mouth shut - in hesitation at first, but gratefully when Maebe seemed to expect it anyway. He quickly nodded a few times in agreement. Not talking right now was definitely something he could handle. It was the majority of the stress he was facing, he realized, since just about everything he could think of sounded terrible when he over-analyzed it. And the more he thought about it, he didn't even know what he had been trying to say anyway.

His shoulders gradually relaxed to a more 'mildly perturbed' level, and little by little he let the hand-shield slip away so that he could watch her turn away.

Only to be dumbfounded once again as he found himself taking the offered bottle of sunscreen. He turned it over once or twice in his hands, then glanced between it and Maebe's exposed back. Then he turned it over again. Then he began to make a face like he couldn't actually believe what was happening.

Some nervous instinct made him look around for a second; enough had happened by now that he never felt particularly secure in his privacy. But he hadn't expected much and had seen even less. The longer he stayed, the less of an excuse he had to leave. And she was right, he hadn't been that busy himself. After a false start or two he sank down onto the far end of the towel. This time it was his own turn to splay his legs out awkwardly to either side of Maebe, and let his bad posture show as he curled into a timid semicircle behind her.

The first layer of sunscreen was applied directly to her upper back and shoulder blades. His hand was shaking a little, and his fingers barely made contact with her skin at first; it was probably a dead giveaway that this was the first time he'd ever touched a girl's back. And that any charm he might have had the last time they met had only been a temporary thing.

His hand jumped back, uncertain, before he tried again, this time pressing down slightly more with just his fingertips. The application of sunscreen continued otherwise quietly, just the sound of rolling waves and the now familiar silence of jungle devoid of life. The longer she left him to his own thoughts, his confidence seemed to gradually build. The touch of fingertips running along her back gave way to fingers, gave way again to his entire hand at some point, and then two - as it should have from the beginning if he had had any idea what he was doing. He treated it like some kind of (soft, peach-colored) puzzle. As soon as he completed it, he could escape, before she had a chance to mention --

Mired in his focus and distracted by the game he'd made of it to calm his nerves, his hands had begun to dip down the length of her iliac crest. The first statement startled him, and the second nearly shut him down entirely. For several seconds Maebe would feel two cold handprints against her back, frozen in place on either side of the base of her spine. And then movement returned again, and both hands crept back up to safety on top of her shoulders, the nervous twitches back as expected.

"You- you did-?" He thought that he was going to be relieved to hear it, but he still felt a gnawing sense of discomfort. Even though the effect had long since worn off, the residual guilt remained at slightly lower levels. In some sense he felt like he had taken advantage of her in his 'sensitivity' stupor - overlooking how long it had taken for her to finally tell him to stop. No wonder he hadn't believed Mimsy when she told him Maebe was bad news; this really was his fault. As were quite a few other things he had done in those few hours.

Lucky seemed to have entirely lost track of what he was doing. He stared at the towel beneath both of them and his hands kept moving erratically over the same patches of skin "Uh. Last. Last one."

He didn't really want to say the words 'sensitivity training' out loud.

Maebe was moving and twisting under his hands, adding another level of danger and difficulty to what was already a daunting amount of physical contact for Lucky. This was beyond anything he had experience with in his right mind, leaving him frantically over-thinking. She had to be flirting with him. Was that - was that what she thought he wanted?

If he was honest with himself he could acknowledge she could be right. Lucky remembered the day before with perfect clarity, which was why Maebe's reactions right now were believable to him on some level as they had been when he had been doing the accidental instigating. But he was just himself now, and his inhibitions and paranoia made it that much more difficult to reach out to her now and not feel like he was making a mistake.

He was quickly turning red again, first at the noises she made and then at the insinuations about the both of them. Maebe was quickly revealing herself to be less and less like the person he thought she was. No matter how smart he thought he was, this situation was making him look like an idiot, naive. Lucky's look back at her was one of concern, though it was unclear which of them he was concerned for.

And then Maebe made a mistake. Not that she could have known -

"I do not believe that," he began, quietly, and the hands that had previously resigned themselves to her task now found the resolve to pull away from her skin. The comment had to be a joke, but it was a joke that Lucky didn't find very funny these days. "But this might be - I think this is a misunderstanding."

The time it took to wipe the oily residue from his hands was just long enough for Maebe to turn around and steal the bottle back from him. It was over, then. He could unwind and not feel her judging his every action like some kind of test. If she had been hoping for him to sweep her off her feet a second time, she must have been sorely disappointed. But when she turned around, for a split second he could see past the smile she wore. There was something about her eyes. Something sad, and familiar.

He didn't get up just yet

Her fingers brushed through his hair, along his skin, and he felt goosebumps. Unconsciously, he leaned a little closer, and while she talked he couldn't help but imagine running his hands through her hair again - though he didn't dare to actually do so. He focused on her eyes, her face, and tried not to let his gaze wander any farther below despite the obvious temptation. It felt surreal. She was beautiful, and he was... nobody. Not rich, or handsome, or tall, or confident. A girl like Maebe wouldn't have given him the time of day. A girl like Maebe would never have loved him. A girl like Maebe would never have known he existed.

So why did she?

"No," he spoke softly. "You cannot be that bad."

"Because I am." His hand reached up and found hers, gently closing around it. It was branded with a familiar circle and divided by a long, vertical, very visible scar. Not all of him was untouched. He looked grim. "I have done - I have done terrible things. I have hurt people."

His grip loosened noticeably in a single moment. He seemed panicked by the very idea of endangering her. Which meant there was only one thing he could think to do now. "I should go."

Lucky was no stranger to the body modifications on his hand. It was such a familiar detail by now that he actually more or less forgot about it at most times. So when Maebe suddenly fixated on it, it actually took him a few seconds too long to realize what was going on and why she was reacting so badly.

And by then she had him by the shirt.

"Huh?" This was all moving quickly in a direction he liked even less than before. He knew there was vengeance on both sides, but he had no idea Maebe had almost been a victim of it. The defining feature of the Circle issue, as far as he was personally aware, was that it was one big stupidly violent cult pitted against another. His hope for a better way had already been thoroughly crushed several times by several people; this was just his penance for having hope. "I don't know who you're talking about!"

His eyes were wide and - sad, really. At the first sign of aggression from Maebe he had withdrawn into his shell to prepare for the worst. It was much harder to rein in his feelings when they had been so open moments before. He'd been drawn to her honesty. He'd been drawn to how she was one of the few people on that rock that talked to him without looking down on him.

A girl like Maebe would never have loved him.

She was never going to believe him. She was never going to speak to him again.

They could have stayed friends.

"I - I didn't - I'm not -" He was protesting, but it was despondent. He looked like he had already more or less shut down, and she was just shaking a heartbroken rag doll. No effort was made to hide his pained expression, but he wasn't even looking directly at Maebe. It didn't matter what he said - in fact, the less he said, the better. For his own safety. And for hers, even if she never understood. Just another interrogation. It was all he was ever good for. "I'm not one of them."

Not the whole truth, but enough of it. This must have been how Sam felt.