Welcome to Gaia! ::

Not worth it? Not worth it?! That just had Cami letting out a ragged, breathy sound before tears started to track down her face. She wanted to simultaneously beat him with the pillow and hide beneath it in shame. Hadn't he told her once that she didn't have to smile when she didn't want to? Well right now poor Otto was going to get a storm of the woman's full-blown feelings in his face. "STOP THAT." It was a little garbled around her crying but the command was clear.

"You're worth so much and you never believe me and I know you think I'm crazy. You and Maebe both do but I'm not." Sitting up herself Cami's knees were tight against her body, posture entirely closed in on itself, even as fists scrubbed at her eyes to eliminate the tears. "I know that you're gonna find someone better and it kills me." It came out in a long blurt, her shameful secret, the thing that was making her ache and tiptoe around Otto.

Maebe knew it and Maebe had assured her that if there was any competition to be had the blonde wasn't trying to win it. She'd share if Cami would share which was a naturally ridiculous question. When didn't Cami share? When was she ever selfish and possessive?

Oh.

Now.

Wrong? She wanted to be wrong because it meant that she could keep someone. Maybe someone might actually want to keep her. Certainly no one ever had before in Cami's life. Not her unnamed, faceless father who was gone before Camille was even two years old. Certainly not her mother who had viewed Camille as a thing to be bred and trained rather than as a child to be loved and nurtured. He Who Shall Never Again Be Named clearly had not wanted anything more than a freak in his sheets and for many other people that might have been alright.

Cami wanted, ached, to be needed. Perhaps not even loved but needed, wanted, in a way that had nothing to do with orgasms and endorphins and everything to do with liking her because she was just a little crazy. Corny. Dorky. Sweet and so giving? Grief was frustration to Cami, was anger to Cami, because she didn't quite know how to be properly sad. Or perhaps she'd just been properly sad for so long she thought it was normal with rays of happiness shooting through the clouds.

Taking a breath to refute that no she wasn't wrong the redhead had no time at all to argue. Otto was grabbing her in a way that was so very un-Otto and then did something so shocking that her eyes shot wide with the shock of it. Wide, then closed slightly as she went from passive to active, pushing her lips against his lightly. Absorbing the feel, the taste, the way her mind and body were reacting.

Clouds were no more in that moment -- it was all sunshine.

It was appropriate that when Otto finally made the first move it would be overshadowed by something like grief. Grief had, however, pushed them both to a place that perhaps they would not otherwise have been for quite some time. Grief might have ended up making Maebe Grace Bertrand cry tears of joy that what she'd been nudging her reluctant lovers to do finally just happened.

Cami was decidedly still shell-shocked as Otto sat back and stammered some kind of plea for her to stay, a plea not to be angry, and in any other moment she might have just snagged him for another kiss. No words were sometimes the best words and when they were both so poor at them? Doubly true.

Instead Cami just reached out to snag his hands with both of her own, linking their fingers together as she squeezed lightly. She wasn't going to go anywhere. "Haven't I promised not to walk out on you yet, Otto? Out loud, I mean. I think it all the time but I might have been too worried it would scare you..." Trailing off, realizing she was blathering, Cami lifted her shoulder to scrub at a stray tear.

"You wanted to kiss me?" Important questions first.

Grief was not absolute and the way Cami smiled in response to Otto's laughter proved that. It was brilliant and genuine in a way that would have evoked memories of the day he'd led her into his bedroom and told her it was now hers too. The light of it shone through her smile, her eyes, everything about her was just aglow because he wanted her too.

Cami had known she loved Otto for quite some time because it was a feeling so easy and comfortable that it was like breathing or floating. What kind of love it was, however, had been impossible to quantify. Was it romantic? Platonic? Did she see him as a sort of brother or did she want more from him? Then, later: why did it matter? Why did it matter what sort of care and affection she had for him as long as she had care and affection?

Now that question was settling in the front of her mind again as she nipped at her bottom lip. "Can I do something I want to?"

Holding his hands in hers because that connection was, to her, the most important in this moment she leaned forward until she was kissing him again. It was more now than it had been before because Cami could consciously put her feelings into it. That she loved Otto (no matter what kind of relationship they had it would persist) for what he was not what he thought he shouldn't be. That he made her happy just as he was even though she was dumb, and corny, and a little crazy.

Kneeling in the center of their bed-nest isolation struck again but it was a different sort, a different power, as it pushed the Grief back around the edges. Or tried to, in any case, and succeeded with Camille. It wasn't possible to feel anything but the bubbles of enjoyment, of delight that Otto wanted to keep her around (at least for now, her brain whispered and was ignored), and the stomach tingles that came with uncertainty.

Feeling oddly thirteen again when she drew back Cami tried to hide behind her hair and failed, doing nothing but looking like a shy poof. "Oh my God, Otto, I feel like I'm in middle school again." Laughing, blushing slightly, she released his hands to wrap her arms around his torso, head on his shoulder in a tight hug.

Otto, mixing boldness with his particular brand of hidden kindness? He would be devastating in the most incredible way if he were to learn to wield that particular power. Cami tried so hard to see the good in people and as far as he was concerned she didn't have to look far. He'd been just as kind to her, if not more kind, than she had been to him!

Her own grief was trying to find cracks in the bubble of isolation around the pair of them in the center of the bed but there were so very few. This wasn't how her relationship with Damon had started; if anything she was closer to Otto than she'd ever been to the pretty bed warmer she'd thought she'd been in love with. To be fair to her feelings at the time it was the closest that Cami had ever got to the feeling. Now, with Maebe before and with Otto now, she was getting closer.

For a moment her mother's voice, the warnings about getting attached, rooted her. But Otto's laughter banished it for how could he laugh if he were planning on using her? On leaving her? It was not an Otto thing to do. In Cami's opinion it never would be. Manipulative? Hardly.

Lifting her head at the mention of a better Otto she looked into his eyes, surprisingly easy considering there was only an inch of difference between their heights. Sliding her arm up his side until she could lightly run her thumb across his jaw, kissing him again. While Cami didn't feel that they needed to make up for lost time she certainly was interested in making the most of the time they had just in case something changed. Perhaps Otto would wake up tomorrow and tell her he thought of her as nothing more than his best bud, his roomie, and wanted to keep things platonic.

Which she'd accept, absolutely, but not without some sadness.

"You said it to me about not smiling when I didn't want to smile. Well I'm going to tell you the same thing. You don't have to hide from me or hesitate or anything. Don't grumble if you want to smile. Don't bite it back if you want to laugh. Or kiss me. Or not kiss me!" Though clearly that last suggestion was made for the sake of form more than anything else.

"I know you have a mind of your own and when you find it again it'll be wonderful. And uhm..." She thought about it, snuggling back up with the hand that had been stroking his jaw now an arm hooked around his neck, knee edging in between his so that they were almost snuggling sitting up. "I'll be more honest too. I'm going to stop worrying about whether you're going to replace me and I will just trust that you want me here too." Because he did. Perhaps the only time he didn't was when Maebe was in her place and, really, that was alright.