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While her crying might have died away, and her tears were beginning to dry, Lydia's nose was still hopelessly stuffed up with snot, so she continued to sniffle and snort and, occasionally, pull away just enough to wipe beneath her nose with her sleeve.

It was all very attractive, no doubt.

By the time Aro spoke, she was starting to feel just slightly better, just a little bit warmer inside, and a little less filled with doubt and pain. She was cuddled in about as close as she could get, knees on either side of Aro's body and pressing in, arms tucked in against his chest, head bent forward so as to rest it against him. She did find the question to be a curious one, but after only a moments hesitation she nodded, and tilted her head up just enough to peek up at him.

"Yes, sure. I mean, uhhhhh o-of course!" She nodded more.

Nothing about how he started whatever he was about to say seemed okay. Alarm bells were ringing in her head, because instantly, she thought what he had to tell her was going to be terrible. She could not fathom for even a second that it could be otherwise, and she had to fight not to duck her head back down, to hide away her face and mumble about how no, no she'd changed her mind, no they could talk later, not now, just...yes, later.

But she didn't. Instead, she took in a deep breath and held it, eyes wide, eyebrows drawn down in a look somewhere between sadly pathetic and concern. Whatever he wanted to tell her, he was having trouble saying it, and as a result, her feeling of dread began to ball into an even tighter knot in the pit of her stomach than before.

But then something in his expression changed. She didn't know if it was better or worse, but it seemed like he had decided to push ahead with whatever it was that he needed to say.

If she hadn't already been holding her breath, it would have caught in her throat when he spoke, or she might have gasped. Instead, she blinked up at him, once, twice, processing.

And then let it all out in one long, trembling exhale.

"I...Oh. Oh wow." She breathed out. She didn't know what to think, what to say, how to react. Despite how close they'd become, at the present moment, this was a highly unexpected revelation! But it was good for one thing, at least. It managed to wipe all other thoughts from her mind, her anxiety and hopelessness wiped a way in the face of something new, but in some ways, something just as frightening.

"Boyfriend...." She repeated. "I...you want me? Me? Really??" This wasn't a joke, she knew Aro wouldn't do that too her, but still, even after the kisses, the handholding, the small moments shared, she had been very much aware that nothing had never been made, well, official.

Also, he might have just been a very, very friendly guy. She had zero experience with things like this. She could assume a kiss meant like in that way, but it could have just been, well, friendly.

She could feel her own cheeks heating up as she found herself just staring up at him, with an odd expression that bordered on confusion, which she tried to blink away, looking down so that she was instead staring at his chest for a moment.

And then back up again with a small frown, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. "How could I possibly say no? How could I not feel the same way? You...you're everything. More! I don't deserve you, I-I don't. But I want to. I want to be yours! I do, I just....why me?" That last part was hushed, nearly a whisper, and she wanted to say the rest of what she was thinking, that he could do far better than her, but the words were choked off on a throat gone far too tight to continue.

The more he spoke, the more her mind swam with a mixture of confusion and a heady feeling of happiness that felt too good to be true. She was having trouble thinking, or even breathing for that matter, because it was all she had ever wanted to hear a man say to her, and more. To have somebody admit that they felt that way about her had been an inconceivable notion, but to have this particular person say it?

Well, it was like a dream come true. One that she was afraid could be shattered in an instant.

Her chest hurt so much. She felt like she could scream or cry or laugh or do all three at the same time. In the back of her head she knew that she was on the verge of hysterics, and needed to calm down, needed a chance just to think.

"Shhhhhhh shhhhhhh. No just...stop. Please." She pleaded with him, looking up at him again with large, panicked eyes. The brush of his thumb against her knuckles both helped and hindered her, the sound of his voice saying such sweet, kind things both wonderful and maddening at the same time. She knew what she wanted, she could not deny that she had feelings for him, very very strong feelings. But still, she could just not wrap her head around it, could not quite feel like this was something she deserved.

She was still looking at him, silently, pleadingly, though her gaze searched his own, and her fingers slid through his, squeezing tight, tighter, until her knuckles were white and her hand trembled with the effort of gripping so very tightly, not wanting to let go.

It was in those moments of silence, in looking at him, in squeezing his hand so tightly that she feared breaking his fingers (not that it was very likely she could), that clarity finally hit her like a brick wall, her eyes widening further as realization dawned. In an instant she was drawing herself up straighter, no longer cowering in his lap, hunched up, terrified of everything he had to say. She was reaching up with her free hand, gliding it over his chest and around to the back of his neck, up into his dreadlocks. She was pulling him down as she strained upwards to meet him half way, to bring his lips to hers, to kiss him, for once, instead of letting him be the one to catch her by surprise. She was taking action, and while at first her lips may have been a tentative brush against his own, a soft, experimental touch, it soon became something more as she pressed more deeply into it, her hand releasing his own to move up into his hair with her other. This was not meant to be something chaste or even friendly, but something much more, something exploratory, a chance to really feel him, and to let herself just accept how absolutely fantastic and unbelievable it was.

Of course, at some point, it had to come to an end, even if just briefly before another kiss was stolen, and then another, but somewhere in there was a voice, small, breathless, but excited.

"Yes. Yes please."

Lydia could have melted against each one of those kisses, could have lost herself completely in them and in the moment. It was almost too easy to forget that only a handful of minutes before she had been a quivering, panicking, crying mess in his arms, buried beneath a blanket, unable to even look at him. Now, none of that even seemed to matter, because what seemed infinitely more important was the way his lips moved against hers, the coarse feel of his hair between her fingers, the firm yet gentle grip of his hands on either side of her face. Everything else dulled in comparison to the warmth that bloomed in her chest, chasing away the pain, even if just for those few minutes that seemed to stretch on and on and on.

When they had finished long enough to speak, she felt giddy, beyond happy, her face flushed, her lips twitching into a large smile, and then a grin as she bowed her head slightly and let out a laugh. This was the Lydia that had been hidden away before, banished to some further recess of her mind while she had wallowed in self doubt and terror of her own actions. She had returned, shining and overjoyed by this new development in her life.

His breathless words slipped through her mind, barely grasped, a word here, a phrase, the way it was said almost a better indicator of what was being said than the words themselves.

She could barely even open her mouth to speak, to tell him that she was very happy too, when he was kissing her again, muffling her words before cutting them off completely, and that was perfectly acceptable, because she didn't want to stop, anyway, now that they had only just begun.

Though, eventually, they did, and still breathless, with her heart hammering away in her chest, and while her face was pressed up against Aro's to hear if his was beating with the same intense rhythm as her own, she let out a long sigh, snuggling in closer, her arms having moved so that they were wrapped around him.

"I wish I had met you before we got here." She murmured, quietly, tiredly, her eyes feeling rather heavy, and sore from all of the tears she had shed before.

"Because." She murmured, still listening to his heart beat, her voice sounding almost dreamy for a moment, before he kissed the top of her head, and she pulled away again, just enough to look up at him once more with an almost wistful expression on her face.

"I think my parents would have liked you. My mother, especially. She always wanted me to be....well....." Her voice trailed off for a moment before she continued.

"More like her."

The hesitation came when she decided not to use the term normal.

Her face leaned into the palm of his hand, her own hand moving to slide over his, holding it close while she revelled in the feel of it. So giddy with her new relationship status as she was, it was hard to even really focus on what he said next, on what he asked shortly afterwards. Blinking away a dreamy eyed expression, she smiled, and gave her head a small shake.

"It means that I am not like her, or maybe that she is just not like me." Lydia hesitated, again, to say more than that, but came to the conclusion that hiding how she felt and what she was thinking at that point would be silly, when Arorangi had just seen the worst of her, both during her red-eye episode and afterwards.

"She was a stay at home mom. My dad was always away, on business, a workaholic. She had been a nurse, before she had me, but then dedicated herself to being a mother instead. She's quiet, polite, reserved, proper. I was.....not." She grinned, suddenly nervous.

How could she put it? How could she say it in a way that could be understood? She frowned slightly when she realized that she wasn't getting her point across clearly, and bit down on her lower lip, her hand sliding down to clutch at his wrist as she thought.

"I...Well, I mean, I tried, but I never quite fit in the way she would have liked me to. I went to a private school, I didn't have any friends, I got made fun of a lot for the things that I believed in and I think she just wanted...she just wanted me to be different from how I was, is all. Instead I was just...well, different from everyone else." She nodded.

"Yes, fitting in, being accepted, that's the kind of thing that was more important to her than to me. But that doesn't matter, anymore, anyways. I wont ever see her again. She won't get to meet you. Sometimes, I wonder if they even know....I mean, I hadn't been home in so long...." Again, she couldn't finish what she wanted to say. Did they think she was dead? Did somebody inform them that she was? WonderPark had been blown up, but she'd never even told her parents that she was going to be there. It was just meant to be a little side adventure in a sea of other adventures, just a light jaunt before she went back to her real work.

But it had been two years since then. To think that her parents might not find her absence in that time, to not receive any phone calls or letters or postcards, alarming would be foolish. As much as they never really understood her, or truly approved of her choices, they still loved her.

She shifted in Arorangi's grasp, troubled once more but for different reasons now, as if her brain just kept gravitating back to the most depressing thoughts that it could, latching on to anything that could keep her immersed in melancholy when instead, at that moment, she wanted to be happy. Her eyes were shining again when she looked back up at him, but rather than curling up and giving in to despair, she emboldened herself instead just enough to find Aro's lips with hers once more, seeking a distraction from all of her dark thoughts.

"Would you stay here with me for awhile?" She whispered, as she pulled away. "I don't know when Chris will be back....Oh, but maybe he wouldn't like it if I had somebody here for too long..." She bit down on her lip again, chewed on it, debating, and then.

"Can..can we go to your room? Could I stay there?"