Thank you all for your reviews so far :D

waiting; au-ish

Lightning generally considered herself to be a very patient person. Sometimes she was able to go after what she was waiting for, but other times, she simply needed to wait it out. She had no problem with that.

However, usually her patience was due to something just mildly inconvenient - waiting in line for something, or waiting for Serah to get off the phone, or waiting for the traffic light. It was completely different when now she was impatient for Hope come home.

This was something that had been building, unfortunately for her. When he rose up the ranks in the company he worked for, he started going on business trips. Nothing major - just a weekend here and there, or something overnight. The longest he'd gone was a week…

…Until they'd offered him a job that would take him out of the damn country for over a month.

They'd had a little fight over it. It was the opportunity of a lifetime - Hope would be able to present his findings to people who could give him bigger grants and work in a much bigger environment than the one at home. Lightning hadn't been all that impressed. She couldn't think of any reasons why.

Legitimate ones, anyway, considering most of her reasons involved the fact that she would miss him fiercely.

In the end, he went. They'd apologized and he'd kissed her over and over at the train station, telling her that he'd miss her so much. She'd simply nodded and kissed him back, murmuring that he'd better keep her up to date.

Of course he had. Hope was nothing if completely loyal to her. He'd text her at least twenty times a day, it felt like, usually called at least once, and sometimes he managed to get a hold of a webcam so they could see each other. It made the month more bearable.

Keeping in some kind of contact with him was definitely preferable to none at all, but when the day came where she was finally able to pick him up from the train station, it hit her like…well, a train at how much she missed him physically being there.

She couldn't stop the smile that formed on her face when she saw a familiar head of silver hair among the crowd of passengers. Before she could call out to him, Hope seemed to spot her instantly and broke out into a grin, weaving his way through everyone to make his way to her.

"Light!" he called out, as though she couldn't see him. Instead of responding, she moved to meet him in the middle, her arms already halfway outstretched by the time he got to her.

There was a thunk of his luggage falling to the ground next to them, but she barely noticed or cared as his arms were finally around her and she was pulled into his tight, safe embrace. It was actually a relief to be so close to him, to actually feel him and smell him and be surrounded by him and his arms.

A month wasn't that long in retrospect, but it felt like a lifetime had passed since she was last near him.

She felt him smile into her hair and their gazes naturally found each other, which led to their lips meeting right there in the station. Lightning wasn't really one for PDA at all, but it'd been so long...

Hope abruptly pulled away when someone accidentally - maybe "accidentally" - bumped into them, looking annoyed for a second before his expression morphed into another smile. "I missed you, Light," he murmured.

"I kind of figured that," she responded teasingly. "What do you say we get home and…catch up?"

The last two words came out in a much lower tone than she intended. Lightning thought that maybe it was because she was actually able to touch him again, instead of reading words across a screen or hearing his voice skewed by technology. The way he held her tightly indicated that maybe, perhaps, his mind was going in the same direction.

"Sure." He grinned and picked up his bags, leaning in for another peck of her lips. She ignored the thought that was screaming that a mere peck was hardly enough.

When we're alone…

Honestly, she wasn't really sure what to expect. Hope had always been incredibly attentive to her and seemed to always anticipate what she wanted before she even realized it herself.

It completely figured that the one time when she was sure of it, he was utterly oblivious.

That was clearly the only explanation. They were alone in the car, of course, but instead of pulling her across the console in the middle for a deeper kiss, he started talking about his trip. That was perfectly understandable, she supposed. Hope loved his field of work and could talk about it for days. She couldn't blame him for being excited.

She nodded and smiled and asked all the right questions in the right places on the drive home. Mostly she reveled in the fact that he was close by again, a thought she assumed was somewhere in his mind as well.

And yet, when they got home, the first thing Hope did was lug his bags upstairs. Okay, also understandable. Perhaps he wanted to get them to the bedroom…

…Except that he started doing a strange thing.

He started unpacking.

"I've gotta show you this paper, Light," Hope said in excitement, throwing some dirty clothes into the hamper behind him as he searched for something, presumably that paper. "This month has been so amazing in terms of our research - we may actually get some donors behind us now, since we can prove that things within this temporal science are in our reach and - "

"Mmhmmm." Lightning clearly wasn't paying any attention whatsoever, but he didn't seem to care. A slight frown crossed her lips, her eyes darting to his hands - hands that were busily digging around in his suitcase. She'd been waiting for so long to feel them again…

Her gaze flickered up to his lips, which were still moving rapidly as he spoke. The words washed over her like they were nothing, probably because she didn't have a clue what he was saying. She was too busy thinking about that short-lived reunion kiss at the station. How much longer would go on before she got a proper one?

A smirk crossed her lips, unnoticed by him. She was good at taking matters into her own hands, if nothing else.

" - plus, if one considers the depth of this study, it can only get even - mmmph!"

His incessant rambling was cut off when Lightning suddenly yanked on his tie and brought their lips together in a deep, brutal kiss. Her tongue spoke wordlessly in bold, desperate caresses with his, and they were both panting for breath when she pulled away.

"Hope," she gasped breathlessly, her free hand sliding underneath his shirt. She couldn't help but smirk at his shaky moan when she lightly raked her nails over the small of his back. "I've been waiting for you to come home for a month. I don't really care about temporal science right now."

"Uh - " Whatever he was about to say was cut off when she leaned up and kissed him again, this one a little less harsh - but her meaning was still clear.

Luckily, this time, he seemed to get it.

She felt him smile against her lips, going along with it when she pulled on his tie again. He went along with the motion as she lay down and he hovered over her, and she tried to inconspicuously kick his luggage away. The bags all landed with loud thunks, but neither of them seemed to notice or care.

"You know," he murmured in between increasingly frenzied kisses, her hands now frantically undoing his tie while his blessedly roamed under her shirt, "come to think of it, we have a lot of catching up to do."

Lightning chuckled under her breath, her lips resting on his jaw for a moment when she finally got that stupid tie undone. She pulled on each end of it, the way it looped around his neck forcing him even closer. He looked somewhat surprised - but mostly intrigued - by her feral smirk. All she could feel, all she could concentrate on, was the heat between their bodies. And his hands. His lips.

She was more than ready to make up for lost time.

"I've waited long enough."