Today I present: Proof that I haven't forgotten my claim. XD;

21 Hearts theme #20: Home is where the heart is.

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Separation Anxiety

by: Navvy

Everyone needs a little space now and then. That was what Lina had said, and he understood it, but that didn't make this any easier for Gourry.

There was something gloomy about the sunny spring day without that bright splash of red at his side. There was something too quiet about the chattering townsfolk without the constant sound of her voice. There was something lonely about his pair of booted feet carrying him through streets full of other feet but none of them hers.

There was an ache in his heart like homesickness.

Gourry's lonely pair of feet brought him in sight of a place in which he would not yet have expected to find solace.

Miraculously, inexplicably, she was there, tapping her foot in impatience. A leap of joy was felt in his heart as the silence, the ache, the gloom, and the loneliness all melted away to be replaced by sunny warmth.

"You dawdled too much!" Lina exclaimed as her greeting.

"You didn't dawdle enough," he shot right back with a smile. Usually it was Gourry who returned earlier and ended up waiting. Lina hated to wait, but of course, she had no qualms about taking her own time.

"Well, I got a few trinkets," she said, pleased, and he caught a flash of something new and shiny on her wrist, "but anything more and we wouldn't have been able to pay for dinner!"

Food came before almost anything else, after all.

Eventually, Lina came to notice the greatly contented look on her partner's face and couldn't resist asking, "Did ya miss me?" She touched her chin with an index finger and batted her eyelashes at him for a fully cute effect.

"Yes," he answered casually, but seriously.

She balked at him for a moment. "Huh? C-come on, we were only shopping for an hour or two!"

It was actually three hours, but he didn't say that.

"I guess it just feels like I've returned home," he explained to her.

"We're staying at an inn, Gourry."

He simply answered, "I know," and they left it at that.

Because somewhere in her subconcious where she basked in the warm sunny glow from the company of her protector, there was a comfort not to be had from a few pretty trinkets or full-course meals.