[ Ironically, it's the fact that he reaches out to stop her that accomplishes her goal. It's not really a concious decision, his body tends to move reflexively and on instinct, a little faster than his mind can really reign in when he's in a situation causing stress. She reaches in, the plates in his left arm ripple into a sort of whirring shift, his shoulders go tense, but he's at least careful enough that it's his right hand that shoots out to catch her before she touches down.
Hand to hand's enough.
He's heard about this. Done it exactly once so far with the first guy he met here, and it was used almost like a piece of iron-clad proof. It's hard to explain just what they gleaned about each other in those flooding emotional transference, just that whatever they couldn't put into words was enough to form some basis of underlying trust. Just a fragment, enough to keep solid ground beneath their feet while they walked.
After this one initiates, he pieces together that it's sort of a common practice. That realization is just a little drop in an otherwise immense bucket that gets dumped on her in turn, a flood of wariness and fear and resignation, disbelief, uncertainty, surprise.
It's replaced with hers like a swap, an even trade, the soothing influx of calm that smothers his anxiety like dousing a flame. His tide levels out, breaks up on the rocks, drifts away from her.
It's the memories, though. Those wipe out the rest, and transfix him. This is new.
It's like she's struck a match, ground down on a lighter flint - she initiates, and then he's thrown in a little more firmly than she might have anticipated. His chest glows brightly blue in turn, and for those brief snatches, those tiny little segments, he's not seeing them from her eyes.
He's standing in her peripheral vision, a ghost, a watcher. Transplanted into these memories in a way that, thinking back, might almost feel like he was always in them.
He doesn't know, he can't possibly know the difference between what it was supposed to be and what he did to make it different. It's a flash, it's there and then over again, just a handful of seconds across her timeline that barely add up to even a couple minutes collectively.
The memories fade out, slip away, but he's stunned to a sort of stillness. He doesn't peel his hand away, waits for her to do that before he lowers his arm. ]
...must be a hell of a futon.
[ Because what else do you even say after something like that? ]
no subject
Hand to hand's enough.
He's heard about this. Done it exactly once so far with the first guy he met here, and it was used almost like a piece of iron-clad proof. It's hard to explain just what they gleaned about each other in those flooding emotional transference, just that whatever they couldn't put into words was enough to form some basis of underlying trust. Just a fragment, enough to keep solid ground beneath their feet while they walked.
After this one initiates, he pieces together that it's sort of a common practice. That realization is just a little drop in an otherwise immense bucket that gets dumped on her in turn, a flood of wariness and fear and resignation, disbelief, uncertainty, surprise.
It's replaced with hers like a swap, an even trade, the soothing influx of calm that smothers his anxiety like dousing a flame. His tide levels out, breaks up on the rocks, drifts away from her.
It's the memories, though. Those wipe out the rest, and transfix him. This is new.
It's like she's struck a match, ground down on a lighter flint - she initiates, and then he's thrown in a little more firmly than she might have anticipated. His chest glows brightly blue in turn, and for those brief snatches, those tiny little segments, he's not seeing them from her eyes.
He's standing in her peripheral vision, a ghost, a watcher. Transplanted into these memories in a way that, thinking back, might almost feel like he was always in them.
He doesn't know, he can't possibly know the difference between what it was supposed to be and what he did to make it different. It's a flash, it's there and then over again, just a handful of seconds across her timeline that barely add up to even a couple minutes collectively.
The memories fade out, slip away, but he's stunned to a sort of stillness. He doesn't peel his hand away, waits for her to do that before he lowers his arm. ]
...must be a hell of a futon.
[ Because what else do you even say after something like that? ]