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 Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 7:35 pm
He was early this time.
Too early, almost ridiculously early, but besides the fact that Almandine in general had a habit of getting to places within a reasonable amount of time, he had been more interested in this particular meeting than he had cared to admit - for a variety of reasons.
He had thought about it - a little too much - in the last few days, and now that it was finally here, he was now second guessing everything.
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 7:43 pm
Abigail had been absolutely no help when he'd dropped himself on her couch and lamented about Negaverse agents and how unfair it was that they were so damn hot. She'd just laughed at him and teased him until he'd eventually given up before he said something dumb and owed her dinner. That hadn't stopped him from thinking about the corrupt senshi far too much while waiting for their date. When that evening came he got off work, had a descent dinner, paced around his loft, and eventually left to power up earlier than he should have. Somehow he wasn't surprised to see Almandine already there when he arrived. Dropping onto the roof from a neighboring building he smirked. "Hard to be fashionably early when you beat me here."
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 7:47 pm
He felt the power signature surge, stronger than his own - much stronger - and for a brief, concerning moment, Almandine wasn't sure whether it was Arachne or someone who else from the Order side of things who had happened to stumble upon him.
His head rose, a look of brief disconcert on his face - but it was, in fact, Arachne, gently landing beside him. This provoked a whole new confusing tangle of feelings inside of Almandine that had nothing to do with the fact that he was Order and everything to do with the fact that it was Arachne.
"Oh...yes, I'm sorry," he said now, and there was the aggravating and unnerving realization that his cheeks were faintly red. Almandine glanced down at his hands currently clasped together in his lap.
"How are you?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:22 pm
"You don't have to apologize. I figured you'd be on time at least." Expecting Almandine to be early had seemed like dangerous thinking but, well, here he was. Which could really only mean that the other senshi had been looking forward to the meeting as well. Bonus knowing he wasn't the only one but that made things more complicated. Part of him had been dreading finding out that after the initial feelings wore off Alma wouldn't want anything to do with him anymore. That would have been the icing on his cake. Phenomenal cosmic power at the expense of the rest of his life. "Im fantastic now that I can actually see you instead of just thinking about you."
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 12:34 pm
"I...was in the neighborhood," said Almandine, and the red on his cheeks was growing slightly more pronounced as he said it, his eyes flickering over Arachne's face, traveling over his uniform. For an Order senshi, he certainly had a lot of black to his outfit, which was, ironically, darker than Almandine's own in most respects.
Arachne's words made Almandine's head c**k to the side.
"Did you think about me?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:29 pm
Arachne didn't know what had started the blushing this time, or the last time either really, but Almandine needed to stop that before his own heart stopped. Almandine was good looking anyway but the flush on his cheeks made everything better. It made the other senshi look a little more normal compared to the slightly bland expression he'd associated with the other at first. The question made him grin though and he nodded. "I did. Kinda hard not to with someone like you." He took a few steps closer to the other senshi and reached out to run his thumb along Almandine's cheek, palm resting against his jaw. "This blush mean you were thinking about me too?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:02 pm
Almandine considered this for what seemed like quite a long time, when in reality was only a moment or two. It was, when he came down to it, a very nice feeling to be thought of by Arachne on many levels; and there was a part of Almandine - a surprising part of him - that wanted to know what exactly Arachne had been thinking of these last three days.
The touch against his cheek made his breath stutter, just the smallest hitch, and the flush deepened of its own accord. Almandine tried to control himself, because this was stupid; he was not some teenage maiden in one of the dramas so often put on at the theaters he worked at.
But...still.
"Yes," he said, because he was almost always honest, and because he couldn't quite help himself. "Yes, I thought of you quite often."
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:18 pm
If Arachne didn't spend as much time watching people and seeing how they reacted he probably wouldn't have noticed the way Almandine's breath hitched or the way his flush darkened. He was one of those people though and he did notice. He was used to people reacting to him like that. Hell he made a habit of making people react to him like that. But having Almandine do it? That was better. It meant he was getting a reaction that, possibly, no one else had been able to get. "I'm glad to hear that." Smiling he leaned in to brush a light kiss to the other senshi's lips. Arachne's own cheeks were lightly flushed and he was trying to ignore it. "Going to tell me what you were thinking about?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:39 pm
The kiss, in spite of how many kisses he'd gotten last time, was still unexpected. Almandine's eyes widened in surprise and then fluttered shut just before Arachne pulled away, something in his chest throbbing. He opened them a moment later, long enough to have been standing in the dark for longer than the kiss had actually lasted.
For a minute, words were difficult to come by, which was unusual, because Almandine was very used to knowing exactly what to say and when. "I...yes," he said, taking a breath. "I thought of our conversations, because I enjoyed them. Our discussions were very fruitful; it's nice to see things from a different point of view every now and then."
His gaze moved across Arachne's face. "And kissing, of course, because that was very pleasant."
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:50 pm
Arachne smiled at hearing Almandine had been thinking about their conversation. "Did you come up with any other questions? Or anything else you wanted to know about that you didn't understand?" They had gotten a little distracted from the conversation by the kisses and he didn't want to leave anything out if Almandine still wanted to know more. It also meant he could ask for more kisses and there was no way he was going to say no to that. He'd have to be dead. "Or is there something else you want to do with our time tonight?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:55 pm
"A few," Almandine conceded, the smile on Arachne's face making that throbbing his chest grow a little more. "I was wondering, quite honestly, about what it's like to be a White Moon senshi. I'm not really all that familiar with the differences between us, or why you're supposed to be considered evil and all that."
He wasn't even sure why he himself was supposed to be considered evil. Almandine's eyes were still tracing over Arachne's face as though trying to memorize each line and sweep of his jaw, though he didn't seem to be aware that he was doing it at all, gaze lingering a little longer on Arachne's mouth before it moved again.
"Oh. Well, at some point, I would like to try kissing you again. If that's all right," Almandine added, just in case it wasn't.
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 5:27 pm
"Perfectly alright." He laughed. "But if we're going to have that sort of conversation we should probably sit down. More comfortable than just standing around, hm?" He caught Almandine's hand and tugged him over to a low wall that surrounded the skylights on the roof. It was safe enough to sit on, the angel wrong for anyone inside to be able to see them, and they still had a pretty good view of the rest of the city. He sat down and tugged the other senshi so he'd sit beside him. It was a good question. One Arachne wasn't actually sure he had the answer to. But he at least knew a bit and he knew what it felt like. "White Moon versus Negaverse ... tell you the truth I'm not really sure what the truth of it is. No one's really sure and, honestly, I haven't always been the best Senshi. Others are way more dedicated than I am." It wasn't something he liked to admit but, well, it was true. "From the little I know White Moon's were, at one point in the past, guardians. We were sort of the peacekeepers in the galaxy? If that makes sense. I know every, culture I guess, had someone like me, us technically, and we were the guardians of that culture." He probably should have said planet but he knew there were Senshi from stars and asteroids so that wasn't technically right. "After that my knowledge on it's gets a bit fuzzy. Corvus would be able to explain it better probably. Some agent of Chaos, the stuff that messed up your starseed and powers the Negaverse, decided it didn't like us and ******** things up. There was some giant war and everything got destroyed. Senshi are all reincarnations of the guardians back then and we got woken up because that same Chaos thing decided to reawaken here on Earth. I have no idea why the Negaverse hates or what they think we did wrong." Someone probably knew the answer to that but it wasn't a someone he'd ever met. It wasn't like he'd ever been good at being a Senshi. "As for the differences between us? Nothing really. You're the same as me except the cat that awakened you was Chaos. So instead of turning into a White Moon senshi like you would have been in the past you became how you are now."
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 6:29 pm
He didn't object as Arachne took his hand, Almandine following obediently to where he was led. He took a seat beside the other, feeling a gentle breeze rifle through the night air, Almandine carefully rearranging himself so that he was not sitting on his ponytail.
Something about Arachne's voice was soothing as he spoke; a certain cadence or a warmth, or perhaps just the fact that it was growing more familiar the more that Almandine came to know him. He liked listening to him; liked the gentleness he could hear as he explained, not impatient or scoffing at Almandine's request, as some might have, but taking the time to genuinely answer.
Almandine's hands folded together in his lap. "So...in other words, there's a war happening that no one can quite explain, but that has been going on for a long, long time," he said slowly, his mind working to process this. "I mean, it's how most wars start, I suppose, the beginning always gets a little messy."
A hand rose instinctively, Almandine's palm pressing against his chest, feeling the slow beat of his heart against his fingers. It was above where his starseed lay, above the black tainted thing that was making him into what he was - corrupted.
He did not know how he felt about that. Or about any of it.
His fingers curled against his chest, Almandine frowning. "If I had...if there was just a different set of circumstances, are you saying I would have just...woken up like you are?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 6:44 pm
It still amazed Arachne that Almandine didn't question his explanations of things. Even when he said he didn't know something or wasn't entirely sure the other senshi didn't dismiss what he said straight away. IT was nice to have someone willing to listen rather than just assuming they were right or that if you didn't know every detail you had to be wrong. "That sounds about right. It all got muddled, none of us really know why it started, and now we both think we're right." He was still pretty sure the White Moon and the Knights were 'right' but he wasn't entirely set on how they should be dealing with the Negaverse. That was more complicated. At Almandine's other question he nodded. "Yea. If a cat like the one that found me had found you instead you'd have been like me. You were a senshi in the past, i dont actually know if we were known as White Moon back then. Your starseed just got messed up but that's actually fixable." He reached over and lightly brushed his fingers against the hand Almandine had against his chest. "Does it hurt?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 6:56 pm
"It seems...pointless," said Almandine, still frowning. "Neither side willing to come to a compromise means that the entire time will be at a continual stalemate. Though I suppose it's not entirely unrealistic, considering the rest of the world also functions on the same basic principles of I'm right and you're wrong. People don't like being wrong."
He hadn't realized he'd even moved his own hand until he felt the light touch of Arachne's against it, fingers brushing across. Almandine felt a ripple of a sensation travel up and down his spine, something unexpected; he loosened his fingers, spreading them out, glancing down.
"No," he said truthfully, after a moment. "It doesn't feel like anything, at least not...physically, I suppose is the real answer. It just...there's something about the knowledge that it's apparently cracked or tainted or corrupted, what have you, that's..."
Almandine's voice was a little off. "...unpleasant," he said, lips pressing together. "I'm not sure I like it all that much."
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