Welcome to Gaia! ::

She handed her phone over, but only after a careful pause and Shiloh watched as she fiddled with it for a moment, suspicious. When he took it from her hand, the text screen was already up and that pretty much cemented that she was keeping something from him – but it wasn’t his place to judge, and he wouldn’t. It was her body, her life, and the only thing he was interested in was looking out for her but he wasn’t going to do it at the expense of invaded her privacy, and her trust. Instead he gave her a pointed look, and made a teasing face at her.

“Alright, showgirl, hold your arm up so I can see your elbow,” he asked, reaching over with his free hand to push her sleeve up. “We’ll show Taym some of your best features.”

“No, no, you need to-“ He had started to move her arm into to right position but her next comment caught him off guard. At first he panicked, an instinct he found hard to get rid of, even if second later he remembered that she knew, that it was okay.

“That has nothing to do with it,” he said a little more tersely than he’d intended, and he pushed himself back a little bit once he had her arm in place, forcing the smile back onto his face. He trusted her; she was one of his closest friends but he just… He still wasn’t comfortable in his own skin, with things that probed any deeper than the surface.

He was working on it.

“Okay, hold your arm up like that, so you can see the crease in it,” he instructed, as he angled her phone to snap a picture.

He stiffened when she touched him (not like that, Lani, gdi you’re ruining the moment) but her voice was teasing, and she snuggled into his side, pressing a kiss onto his cheek. It wasn’t the judgment he’d braced himself for, what he’d expected even though he knew Maebe wasn’t like that. He relaxed as he lips pecked his cheek, and smiled at her next train of thought, shaking his head at her.

“Maebe, you’re making it very difficult for me to believe you’ve been only sending him innocent pictures when you say things like that but no, the intention is not for him to want to do your elbow, you butthead.”

He finally got her arm into position, and zoomed in until it was in the frame just right. The phone clicked, and the deed was done and Shiloh took a moment to study it before he started laughing.

“Yep, I think that’ll do just fine,” he said amid his laughter, handing her the phone and the picture of her ‘elbutt’.

Shiloh laughed too, shaking his head as he sank down onto the bed next to her. Maebe was simultaneously hard to figure out and an open book, he might not have understood why she did the things that she did, but it didn’t matter because he could understand her and that he cared about her, and in his mind that was all that mattered.

“What do you mean picked me? You brat, you can’t pick your friends. They just sort of show up and then you’re stuck with ‘em for life. So, you know, you better get used to it.”

And, in an exemplary display of his angelic and brilliant qualities, he stuck his tongue out at her.

“I’m pretty sure you picked the boots out first, you little thief,” he laughed, but it was short lived as the next moment he found himself on the floor, looking up at a grinning Maebe. Maebe didn’t smile, and she rarely grinned unless it was something good – something good for her.

He scrambled to move in time but it was too late, and she squished herself on top of him, pressing him flat against the floor. She wasn’t heavy, but she knew how to throw what weight she had around, and throw it well.

“Omph! Maebe, I’m not furniture, you can’t just choose me,” he wailed in mock anguish, trying to roll over and dislodge her. “You can’t just sit on me either, that’s cheating.”