theattic | THE FLUFF CORNER

"I'll pour us some wine."

Lust turned to go back to the kitchen, but glanced down at Prince.

"What? I don't think Pokemon are supposed to have wine. Your trainer will be right back, don't look so sad. I think I have some treats in the kitchen." If Guttle hadn't eaten them all. She assumed Prince would follow her, and didn't bother to give him any further encouragement as she went and fetched two sizable wine glasses and a bag of Poketreats from a cabinet.

Despite the rather glum fog that had settled over the day, she was looking forward to relaxing with Henry. She didn't indulge in berry induced highs very often, and he was the only person she did so with. It was just nice, sometimes, to let everything drop away for a while and just feel good. It seemed as though Henry needed it as much as she did.

Prince followed her on dainty paws.

Henry worked away in the kitchen with the grater he'd made sure to warn EVERYONE ELSE away from using unless they wanted the cheese for their omelette to give them hallucinations. Maybe for April fools he'd leave it out. But soon the grating was done and he would have to go back into the--

No, he couldn't think about it like that. Not HAVE to. GET to. He was GETTING to spend some time zoning out with his friend. Frined. F r i e n d.

He then noticed a little pink and blue shadow behind him. Prince was waiting with his tail around his paws.

"I don't know what you're thinking, but you'd better stop thinking it." He stepped over the Pokemon and joined Lust in the living room. "This will be a lot stronger than you're used to since it's fresh. Are you okay with that?"

Lust had already made herself comfortable when Henry joined her, two glasses set and out and a bag of newly bought candies and snacks on the coffee table with the opened bottle of wine.

"Oh, what's that saying? Go big or go home? Though we're already home, so I suppose it doesn't really apply. Yes, that's fine. I could use something strong, thank you."

She'd had enough experience with the milder dried stuff, she wasn't going into this blind. She patted the couch next to her, inviting him to sit.

"How's your head feeling?"

He offered her a pile of the stuff on a little saucer and took up the glass that was nearest him.

"It hurts if I touch it, so I'll have to not do that." Henry cringed a little. Since when did he try to inject humor into anything? He was the straightman, the deadpan snarker. He quickly shoved the little wad of zest into his mouth and started chewing. He had to stop THINKING. Thinking was just awful.

This place was getting to him.

"Thanks for looking out for me."

Lust chuckled mildly, but then she shrugged and looked away with a faint flush.

"It's just what people do." She still wasn't very good at receiving honest gratitude or affection. It made her strangely uncomfortable. Sometimes it felt as though she were still just pretending to be a good person, that that wasn't the truth at all. Even genuine thanks rang false through her own personal filters.

She took her pinch of zest and concentrated on it to occupy herself.

Henry made a face. He was so used to the dried zest that he wasn't used to how bitter the fresh stuff tasted. He took a gulp of his wine and flopped back against the sofa.

"What do you think everyone else is doing? Turns out, Prince signed me up for some online dating thing. I had to apologize to the person who replied to my profile."

"Well, Envy and France are celebrating, I'm sure. Greed's probably drinking or getting up to trouble with someone or someones." Lust sucked pensively at her zest, not bothered much by the flavor.

"I have no idea where Heather is, I assumed she'd be with you. And I think I'd kick my Pokemon out of the house for an hour if they did something like that to me." She shook her head. At least she'd been spared that indignity. "Who even needs a service for that sort of thing? If you want to meet someone, it isn't difficult."

There were people everywhere. And dozens of places existed solely for them all to mingle and meet.

"I mean, either one of us could be out on dates, if we wanted to be." Henry was good looking, in that shaggy poet sort of way. And there were more than enough different sorts of people that were bound to be those who weren't immediately put off by his strange ways. Some people even liked a bit of the strange.

It was Henry's turn to laugh. Well it was sort of a laugh. It was mostly quick puffs of air escaping through his teeth.

"I don't think so, I think you have to go outside before you go on dates."

Henry was a homebody if there ever was one. He could feel the numbness taking hold in the back of his throat and therefore the numbness settling in the back of his brain. His worries started to evaporate. They really were silly worries. So he thought his housemate was hot. She was. She was very pretty and there was nothing wrong with appreciating that.

"Well that's what I mean. You're not a cripple, and you're not so agoraphobic that you can't go outside. If you wanted to go out and meet people for a date, you could. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to." Lust always tended to be more talkative when she was coming under the influence.

"Anyway, from what I've seen of dates, they seem overrated. I'd rather do this."

It was nice to go out to do things, of course, but not to make some special spectacle of it. Especially on this day, of all days, when everyone who was a pair was trying to show off to one another. It was just a madhouse.

Henry blinked at her and part of him wanted to tell her that he had worked fucking hard to get to this point and that dating somebody would be a huge step. But then he promptly forgot about what he was thinking about and held up his hand.

"I think my fingerprints just disappeared."

"They do that, sometimes." Lust looked at her own hands. Her fingerprints were still there, but her skin was taking on a sort of shimmering hue.

"I wonder if I had fingerprints before. I never thought about it." And were they the same as they'd been the first time she'd lived as a human? Probably. But then again, her body had been remade. Was everything a perfect replica, or were there slight variations?

"Why wouldn't you?"

Henry only knew so much about Envy and his siblings and now that knowledge was dripping out of his ear like so many caterpillars. Now that he wasn't worried about seeming weird, he decided to enjoy himself looking at her. She'd make such pretty photos. But not in a creepy way. Like maybe a shot of her from far away where you only see part of her arm and the windowsill and maybe a dead bug.

"I don't know if homunculi do. We have lots of little differences. My eyes and my skin are different now that I'm human, even though they didn't change back to what they were the first time." Her skin more porous and delicate, the lines obvious and clear. And her eyes had lost that catlike slit, though a faint trace remained.

"I wonder what I'd look like." Henry's scrutiny didn't seem strange to Lust at the moment. She was aware he was looking at her, but she was talking. And about her physical self, of course he'd look. "Or what I did look like, I suppose." She looked up at Henry then, eyes fixing on him.

"It must be so strange, to remember being small and not yet formed, and always changing for all your existence."

"I'd never thought about it..." He turned his gaze to the wall and thought about it. At one point he was only three feet tall and couldn't read. And now he was grown. "All my teeth fell out once. That was pretty upsetting. But I guess you never went through that, huh?"

"That sounds horrible!" Lust clapped a hand over her mouth, shuddering at the thought. "I know it's perfectly normal, but phrasing it like that..."

She shook her head. Did her teeth feel loose? No, it was just an effect of her effected mind, that was all.

"No. As far back as I can remember clearly, I've always been exactly the same. Fully grown and fully functioning. I was a child and all of that before, but I don't remember anything about myself. It's alarming to be thrown into humanity fully grown, you know. Oh, of course you know, you're Envy's best friend."

Henry nodded slowly. Envy had described some things. And he'd overheard the homonculi's shenanigans with lerning 2 hooman over the months.

"I can't imagine being anyth--well." There was that one time he was a Leafeon. That had been upsetting. And he remembered it this time. "I think you've gotten the hang of it."

"I try. It helps, living with you and everyone else. Envy's been through it all, Greed's always been socially adjusted." She learned best by observation, and she had plenty to observe day in and day out. It made it all so much easier.

"And Heather's been very helpful. Not to mention patient. Everyone has, really." All of her assorted friends and family in this place. "Even you've given me uniquely human experiences I'd never had before. I'm very grateful for that."

The photographer sat up a little straighter, feeling proud of himself again. It was nice to know that a shut-in like him, someone who locked himself away from humanity, could still help someone feel human.

"Heather's good like that. Without her and her father, I'd still be living in the woods probably."

"The woods is no place for a human to live. I'm glad you live here, with us." That everyone who lived here did. It was comfortable to share a place, it gave a communal sense that Lust realized now she needed.

She looked over at him and smiled, noting how currently he appeared to have an aura of silvery glitter.

"You're a strange man, Mr. Henry, but I'm glad I know you. You're the interesting sort of strange."

"Some people get by fine in the woods, but I'm not one of them. I fell out of something rough when I came here and just wasn't ready to deal with normal people yet."

Prince pranced into the room and bounced up onto the sofa to sit between them. WHAT DID HE MISS he was giving Guttle makeup tips. Henry put a hand on the Sylveon's head. Though his attention was now on the Pokemon, he couldn't help the corner of his mouth twitching upward. He was interesting!

"Thanks, I think."

"I think a lot of us did. Came from something rough." Lust leaned back and sipped her wine when the Pokemon joined them. "I died. I think that's as rough as it can get."

It didn't bother her any. There was nothing left for her back in that world anyway, and now she had this one. She'd died to become a homunculus, and she'd died again to become human. It made some sort of poetic sense.

"You're welcome. I meant it as a complement."

Henry made a quiet, appreciative grunting sound. He'd gone through hell but he'd still made it. So far. His stomach knotted whenever he thought about what was waiting for him.

"Thanks," he repeated. "You're strange too."

That wasn't weird, was it?

"Thank you."

Everyone in this house was, to be perfectly honest. And they'd all found each other and now they were this strange, cobbled together little community of people. Funny how that worked.

"My head's always full of strange thoughts. It has been for as long as I can recall. I used to drive Envy mad, sharing it with him."

But now Envy didn't mind at all.

Henry pulled his socked feet up onto the sofa and locked his arms around his knees, his glass stem still twined between his fingers. "I do the same thing. I don't know how many weird texts he's gotten from me while I was in the berry patch."

Prince leaned forward and gave Henry's glass a sniff. His tongue was juuuuust long enough.

"I tend to keep my strange thoughts to myself these days. They're often dark, people find them morbid and depressing. I don't." Lust found herself shifting to tuck herself into the corner of couch back and arm, so she could face Henry and Prince.

"I think your Pokemon wants to get drunk with us."

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