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It creeps up on her sometimes.
Who is she kidding— it creeps up on her most of the time.
Hands will roam, wander upon thighs, legs in general. They'll find themselves on waists, or hips. Some getting comfortable onto others' laps. Innuendos and dirty talk whispered into ears at a volume too high for her to ignore.
And none of them are doing any of this to her. They always wait for her to initiate, because they know. If she wants to leave, she's free to, any of them are.
She never stops feeling the crawling under her skin, though.
Amity stands up from the couch, she tries to be casual about it, but she stumbles and she shakes and when she looks back at them they all have their eyes on her.
Fuck.
"I'm-" she chokes on her words a little. Swallowing the filth down her throat, she tries again. "You can continue. I'm good."
And with that, she runs away.
She doesn't literally run, but she's definitely walking too quickly and she grabs for the handle of her bedroom door with too much force and she rips the door open with too much force and she slams it back closed with too much force once she's inside.
She tries to get it out, in any way she can. She wipes her hands against her clothes, so aggressively that it might as well burn her bare skin. And when that doesn't work, she tries flapping them in the cold air of her room. And when that doesn't work, she lets a strangled noise escape her throat, quiet enough that the others won't hear her all the way from the living room, but loudly enough it grates her ears.
Nothing's working.
She can hear the sounds in her ears and she can see the images behind her eyelids and she can feel the hands on her skin even though nothing happened.
She walks to her bed and collapses onto it. She desperately tries to focus on the feeling of her sheets, the sight of her ceiling.
The noise of the ringing in her ears.
She wants to scream.
When she hears a knock at her door, she doesn't immediately realize it wasn't in her head.
It knocks a second time, and she hums in acknowledgement, loudly enough for whoever's behind her door to hear her. It opens.
"Amity." Gus. "Just... wanted to check on you. Or, well, we all wanted to check on you, but we played rock paper scissors and I won, so here I am."
That gets a small chuckle out of her. Of course they'd play a game to decide who goes to see her, if all four of them showed up at once, she'd get overwhelmed and kick them all out.
It's small, but she hates and loves that they know her well enough to not be clumsy about that.
She strains herself a little, but she responds nonetheless.
"I'm okay, really. You should go back to the others."
"Oh..." Gus seems to hesitate. Amity doesn't know, she's not looking at him, she's still staring up at the stickers they all put together on her ceiling. She hears the telltale click of her door closing. He probably fully stepped inside, then. "No. We stopped."
That gets her attention enough for her to, at the the very least, raise her head.
"What do you mean you stopped? Oh Titan, I ruined the mood, didn't I. I really didn't mean to. I-"
"Hey, hey." Gus raises his hands, as if he has an anxious animal in front of him, but somehow his movements are soft and his voice is even more so. "It's cool. If we really can't keep it in our pants for a while, we should just, I don't know, fuck somewhere else. Which isn't happening."
Gus is pissing her off.
"What? No..." Amity stammers, fully sitting up on her bed now, "No, you don't have to do that. This is your space too, you can do whatever you want. Don't be concerned about me."
"Sure, but... Well, I do remember you mentioning that just the concept of it happening within the house makes you antsy. The others remember that too. So."
Gus is pissing her off.
"Who cares about that. It's- It's not a big deal, I'm fine, you can just-"
"Amity."
Gus cuts her off, again. And without getting a good look at his face, Amity would've thrown something at him. It screams with sympathy, maybe some annoyance, not at her, really. Something like, I'm not changing my mind. She sighs.
"Okay. Fine. I admit defeat."
"It's not really defeat, more like acceptance."
She does throw one of her pillows at him this time. Smug little bastard. They both have a laugh about it.
"Would you like me to leave?"
She thinks carefully about it. As if this decision is a snow globe and she wants to observe every single angle of it.
"...No. Stay for a bit?"
Gus sighs, all fondness, chucking the pillow back at Amity using her face as a target. She giggles, grabbing it before it can make contact.
He sits down next to her, not too far away that she can't reach him, but not too closely that the prickling under her skin wakes up.
Tentatively, like trying to hold a flame, she reaches out. When the tip of her fingers touch his hand, she thinks they must be cold.
Gus doesn't comment. He just lets Amity do whatever she wants with his hand.
She appreciates that.
She holds onto him, and he squeezes back just the slightest bit.
"I'm sorry."
"Sure, sure. Glad to help."
Gus pisses her off. Amity playfully punches him with her other hand. She misses.