Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Oh." Maebe peeked her head out from underneath the kitchen counter, where she was restacking food that should not have belonged under the kitchen counter. "You're home. How nice to see you."

She got up and closed the cabinet doors, then brushed off invisible specks of dust from her fluffy skirt and walked calmly, quietly, to him. And then past him.

"So, an update is in order I guess." Her voice sounded so strikingly casual, that it felt as though she worked for him, rather than dated him. "I moved all of the edible food under the sink, where the harmful chemicals were once located. The chemicals are now all in the cabinet where the chocolate stash was. They're in size order, with the biggest in front so that the smallest are now impossible to see."

That sounded very unhelpful, despite how she listed her changes as though she'd done him a favor.

"If you'll follow me, you'll find all bathroom toiletries have been replaced with pink ones, mostly glitter when I could find it, but you know, we do what we can." She moved into the bedroom, leaving the door open for him to follow.

"Last, we have the bedroom, which I've taken the liberty to do the most re-organizing in. Your clothing and Cami's are all located in that corner of the closet, there - " It was about 1/8th of the closet. "And as you can see, the rest is now mine. I organized your clothing in order of how much they suck, so you'll see a lot of it is right at the very top, easy for you to find and hopefully burn. And lastly, I shredded that pillow there."

She looked down at the pillow, which looked like a cat had mutilated it, and frowned. "I don't have an excuse for that one. I was just mad at being left alone."

Turning on her heel to look at him, she smiled cordially. "And how are you?"

"Trouble?" Maebe perked her head to one side, feigning confusion. "Why would you think you're in trouble?"

She moved fluidly, as she turned and sat down on the edge of the bed in one motion. Her hands rested carefully on her knees. "Are you asking me if you're in trouble because you and Cami worked so hard to convince me to move up here with you, despite how much I didn't want to believe I was wanted, just in time for me to fall asleep in this big, comfortable bed all by myself? I mean, why would you be in trouble for that?"

She reached over the edge of the bed, pulled out her nail file from the counter, and then sat back up to begin carefully filing her nails. "Honestly, I'm doing you a favor. Your home was a wreck. Clearly this is the only reason you guys wanted me here. To fix everything. So I fixed. Everything."

The nail file snapped in half in her fingers.

"Oops. I guess I have to fix that now, too."

It was exactly the moment he'd said the words I didn't think that Maebe's little professional ruse faded, and very cold, steely eyes landed on him. "A girl waits all her life to hear those words coming from the man she loves. Honey, I didn't think to check on you. I'm swooning. Really."

She dropped half of her nail file, and used the other half to hastily file her nails. For a few tense seconds, Maebe just sat there in silence, filing her nails and glaring at him. This ended with the sag of her shoulders, and a very tired sigh.

The nail file was put down, as were her hands.

"What am I doing here, Otto." She asked, the much more dangerous sound of genuine emotion in her voice. She sounded so tired. "I was fine before all of this. This isn't me. I don't do this whole.. whatever this is. Do you know how much time and effort I put into wrecking all your s**t? I could have been napping. Or getting waxed. Caring is exhausting, you know."

She fell backwards, and flopped down on the bed. She couldn't even be angry, she was just so tired. "I thought there was a point to me being up here. But I can't play house. I always lose."

Maebe listened to Otto slowly break himself down, piece by piece. She wasn't angry, but she was feeling the seductive pull of apathy try to claim her and pull her back down where she was safe. Listening to him stumble and hesitate with his words, trying to find a way to make it up to her, she found it too difficult to drown in her familiar apathy. She found it almost annoying, and would have found it more annoying if she wasn't secretly grateful for it.

"Oh, please. Just stop." She kicked him with one foot, right on the side of his stomach. "You know you're getting caught up in your own s**t right now, don't you? Like, get a grip here."

She sat up, and let out a long, overexaggerated sigh, right before sitting next to him.

"So you bummed out on your girlfriend for a while. And yes, she's pretty pissed. But maybe you should realize that the only reason why she's pissed in the first place is because she realized she wanted to be here, too, after a whole lot of time refusing to believe that. So she was. And you weren't. So you said you're sorry, and now if you stop leaving her alone so much, and maybe - and I make no promises here - but maybe, she'll stop shredding your pillows."

She really was not going to make promises she couldn't keep. She'd already warned him she did not play house well. This was his one and only warning to keep his valuables out of her reach.

Speaking of which.

"If it makes you feel any better," She muttered, her voice returning to annoyance. "I didn't touch your skateboard."

With each item listed, Maebe let out a long, exhausted groan. Her body eventually slumped back down onto the bed, and her arms flailed out behind her. She groaned and groaned and groaned, and once he started on the Dr. Pepper her legs began to bounce in the thralls of a hissy fit.

She stopped, because he offered to buy her a nice thing, which was - as he well knew - the best way to get Maebe back into his good graces. But she'd been moving and lifting all day, and even the thought of maxing out Otto's expense account did not soothe her need to lie there and do nothing.

"Nnnnghhh." Maebe flipped over, her lower body smashing into him. She rolled, and smashed. Rolled, and smashed. "I want nice things but I don't want to move anymore. This is too much work, why can't everything just come to me."

His hand snuck in to grab hers, and she stopped smashing into him. She laid there, her body unintentionally curled up against his, and thought about that for a moment.

"I do like text spam." She muttered. "But I just. You get busy lots, and it wasn't a problem before I lived up here. Everything reminds me of you two. I can't stop thinking about you for a second. And it makes me do things like this." She lifted her head just enough to be able to look at him through the tumbled curtain of hair that shifted against her face. "Are you sure this is really what you want?"

"Good." Maebe mumbled, as her eyes keenly watched him join her on the bed. No matter how tired she was, somehow her eyes always looked as sharp as a hawks. "Because I do want to come. I want to be pampered and - and more importantly, I want. You know." She reached out and gently shoved his shoulder, refusing to admit out loud just how desperately she wanted to be around him.

"Where did you get hurt? I have a specific set of kissing skills, here. Think wisely before you decide."

But even as she said it, she leaned in, and very carefully laid a kiss on his nose. She did it because Otto was close to her again, and it was getting harder and harder to keep up the act of indifference when every bone in her body just wanted to be against him.

So she settled for kissing his nose. It was a compromise.

She surveyed all the areas that he started to point out, and immediately pursed her lips, kissing only his bandaged chin because it was easy, and close.

"Did you fight a bear?" She asked, brushing tender fingers against his jawbone. "I said you had to decide where you were getting kisses. You can't just point to your entire body and say ow. I have a reserve built up from all this time alone, but it's still finite." She did not seem worried about his apparent demise from lack of kisses. His puppy dog eyes did their job, even if he couldn't really tell the difference. They stabbed her all the way down into her cold heart, but her face remained just as smug.

"At least tell me where to start," She muttered, finally admitting defeat. "And there's one more condition." Her lips finally cracked in a smile. "Wherever I kiss you, you have to kiss me back."