Re: (After)life: Nel L & Lear L & Fen L
Muscle memory was a very strange thing at times. Take now for instance, where it ran both sides of the coin in an instant. The heads up side, the one that drove his reaction more often than not in a moment like this one, was not a pretty one. Most people, man, woman, animal, if it put itself on him without invitation? It usually came back in some kind of pieces. No sooner had the shape from his past come and set hands on his face, then it was there. A flick of lightning across his shoulders, an instant flash that told him how to move without thinking.
Then there was the other side, the tails of the matter, which came up so close to never he couldn't even give a guess to how often it had occurred, rolled around in the shape of lips pressed against his own. Instantly he knew his senses hadn't duped him and, even if he was oft the more bristly of the trio in matters of affection, he tilted into that hand on his face like he'd done it just yesterday. He even kissed back in his own way, a faint squeeze of lips upon her own that would have been lost to anyone who couldn't read his language. He wouldn't say anything, he'd never been one of many words. Instead he just initiated a faint touch of his jaw against her fingertips.
It would be much the same way with Lear. Feet were planted, but there would be not an ounce of shrinking nor violence. Indeed he even moved in to the touch. The draping arm was given a broad surface to slide across, support as it had been dozens of time some great many years ago. The kiss was permitted without issue too and, once it was done and settled, it would be then that his eyes bounced around between the two. He was certain, so certain, this would prove to be a ruse. He was absolute in his knowledge that his past, the idea a moment like this would return, was a trap.
Yet, here they both were standing in front of him, happy to see him by all guesses he could think to make, and using words like home. However foreign an alien the latter sounded, the sense he got while standing between them was arguably the closest he'd gotten to seeming calm in a long time. Indeed, if he'd had his tail set on himself at the moment, it would have flopped idly to the side while he sought out a space to simply curl up at their feet like nothing had changed.
Things had changed of course, but in this one moment? He'd act like they hadn't. Eyes would again flit from brown to gold and back again, a sign of his appreciation of the literal open arms offering they'd laid upon him. One large hand each would be given in kind, a faint breeze of a touch, but more than he'd have given any of the other eight some billion souls on the planet. Certainly with any kind of genuine feeling behind it.
"It has been a long time." Because what else was there to say but the most obvious of things?