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He likes to think he’s getting used to it, as much as anybody can get used to knowing what’s going on in someone else’s head. But if Andy and Connie don’t cut out their little “will-they-won’t they pining for each other” act soon, Henry’s tempted to stage an intervention. He really doesn’t want to have to do that, not least because he doesn’t think Connie wants to spend time alone with him after Andrea’s borderline reverence got him caught staring again.
He still gets the occasional flashes from folks looking at him. Someone was eyeing his thighs and crotch at breakfast, which he would like to blame on his nicely broken-in jeans. It could have been anybody. Lots of people look and it doesn’t necessarily mean something.
He might believe those things if he weren’t still sharing in someone else’s masturbation sessions. He hasn’t seen his own face again, but it’s hard to forget even once. It’s also hard to forget that someone, somewhere on this base has been getting him off without knowing it. He’s tried to block it out, avoided touching himself, and it doesn’t matter. It’s like having a wet dream, except he’s awake enough to feel weird as hell about it.
The unexpected consolation for all this mess is that he’s been getting to know Shiro better. It was a point of pride at first, and maybe curiosity, but it turned out to be enjoyable enough. He doesn’t know why that is, but he’s not about to let his surprise subtract from the experience. He finds Shiro out on the cliff again; if he’s been smoking this time, he put it out a while ago, because Henry can’t smell anything but the sea air.
Henry drops to the ground next to him, then he reaches over and plops the paper bag right onto Shiro’s lap. A series of thoughts flit by, too unformed for Henry to catch, then Shiro glances his way, suspicion and surprise written all over his face. The vision Henry gets of himself is vaguely embarrassing; he looks like he’s up to no good, or worse, like he’s flirting, his eyes sparkling with mischief and cheeks flushed from his recent brisk walk. He ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck in anticipation.
“Go on, open it.”
Shiro’s face doesn’t get less suspicious, but he does what Henry tells him to. The bag crinkles in surround sound, and then Shiro is smiling. To Henry, the buns look alright. They’re the size of his fist, a nice enough pastry with a dull green swirl decorating the top. The vision he gets from Shiro is different; the crust is glossier, the green brighter, like a food artist came in to doll it up for a commercial.
Henry can’t totally suppress the surprised sound he makes at the discovery, but Shiro doesn’t seem to notice it. Instead he has a tentative smile for Henry, who smiles back reflexively and is almost startled by the whiteness of his own teeth, the smooth, uniform pinkness of the lips he knows are kind of chapped, the depth of the dimples he’s not sure he actually has.
His chest feels strange and warm. He clears his throat. “Had to go into town today. Saw those and thought you might like ’em.”
“I do. Thank you.” Shiro says it stiffly, and he’s not looking at Henry any more. His thoughts aren’t any help either, zipping from one thing to another without ever really landing. But the warm feeling seems too intense to be Henry’s alone, and that weird primal hum from earlier has started up again. Henry forgot what he had associated the hum with in the past, it was almost imperceptible at the moment.
“It was nothin’.” Before, it was an understatement. This is an outright lie. Henry went to four different bakeries to hunt down the buns, because once the idea occurred to him, he couldn’t let up until he found them.
Shiro holds out the bag to share, and Henry politely takes a bun. The matcha filling is almost dense, nearly a similar texture to the fluffy bread, and not as sweet as he expected. “Not half bad,” he says, and Shiro only smiles carefully, but he might as well be beaming for all the genuine, uncomplicated happiness bouncing inside Henry’s skull. It’s only a flash before it’s gone, but it leaves him reeling so hard that he doesn’t notice Shiro’s talking right away.
“Pardon?”
“I asked if you have a favorite treat. I would like to repay you.”
Henry snorts. “You don’t gotta do that.”
He gets the impression Shiro doesn’t believe him at all, or maybe he simply doesn’t care. “Perhaps not. I would still like to know.”
Henry doesn’t have to develop precognition to know that whatever he answers, he’s soon going to get it whether he wants it or not. There’s no point in arguing over it. “I’m not picky,” he tries instead. Shiro glances away, plucking at a piece of his matcha bun. He doesn’t feel offended, but Henry can’t put a name to what it is more precisely than that. It’s like Shiro thinks of it as a rejection. It’s frustrating, because it was only a moment ago that Henry’s head was bursting with that joy, and it feels awful to be the reason it’s fizzling out. ardahan escort “I like cinnamon though. Cinnamon anything, just about. And you can’t ever go wrong with a nice apple pie.”
It was the right call. “I should have guessed about the apple pie, you seem like you’d enjoy that kind of classic American dessert.” Henry doesn’t have to look to know Shiro’s smiling again; the warmth of it is buzzing in his mind.
“I guess I’m something of a classic American man.” Henry mused.
“That you are.”
***
Henry wakes up early. He would know what that means even if he weren’t achingly hard already. There is a fading impression of a mouth brushing his, of hands skimming the length of his torso. This one isn’t as creative as he knows they can get. It’s straightforward, just enough touching and half-formed twists of thought to get them both through it.
He refuses to touch himself. It’s the principle of the thing. At least then he can say he isn’t taking advantage of the situation.
He gets off anyway, like he always does. It’s part of his routine, which is both strange and comforting. He has not forgotten his fear that this will happen at a time when it’s deeply inconvenient. At least he can live with it if it remains predictable.
These are his mornings, the new normal. If he wakes early, he gets to partake in somebody’s fantasy. He doesn’t masturbate. He orgasms anyway. Whether he wakes early or not, he listens to Hasselhoff. He brushes his teeth. He takes a shower.
Breakfast means coffee. Two eggs, fried, runny yolks. Two slices of toast. Two pieces of sausage. Orange juice. Vitamins if he knows Andrea’s watching. Go back to make more if he’s still feeling hungry. Maybe poke at some of the fruit and choose not to eat anything else after all.
After breakfast, there’s usually a meeting. He always found them tedious, if necessary. Now, he can barely stand them. A meeting means a bunch of people clustered together. It means too much noise in his head, too many sights and sounds to focus on.
The more people that arrive, the more crowded the inside of his head grows. He gets layered images of the Commander, all at slightly different angles. He can see the blueprints on a mechanic’s tablet that he’s studying instead of listening. He can pinpoint the precise moment Tom starts to drift off into some daydream, because he can see his girlfriend in his head, as usual. Someone else is reciting their grocery list again.
He has to put his stylus down when he realizes someone’s watching him chew on it. That doesn’t make them stop looking, though. The gaze is so focused it feels like a touch, like the brush of feather light fingers along his jawline, down his throat to the open collar of his shirt. They imagine smoothing the wrinkling of his brow, which makes him draw it tighter. They picture pushing his hair from his face, and he can feel his cheeks begin to burn. The touch rounds his ear, brushes the lobe, and it’s followed by their mouth.
Henry coughs, and his mind lights up with more images of himself as several heads swivel his way. “Sorry,” he mutters from behind his hand. At least it banishes the fantasy too.
***
“Are you feeling any different today?”
Henry stretches his legs out, balancing most of the weight on his hands so he can keep still for Andrea’s machine. “Nothin’ new.”
She runs through the usual questions about fatigue and loss of appetite, and his answers are the same as always. It’s tiresome for them both, and he can’t resent her for being thorough about her job, but he sort of wants to unleash the frustration somewhere.
“You seem agitated,” she says before he can make any snippy comments.
“You readin’ minds now too?” The joke doesn’t land as softly as it should.
“I’m reading the years I have known you,” she says, not unkindly. It unravels some of his tension, as it’s probably intended to do. “Is there something you need to talk about? With your friend, perhaps, not your doctor?” Andrea’s the only person he can talk to about any of this, but he still hasn’t mentioned the masturbatory fantasies, figuring that’s more TMI than vital intelligence. He’s not sure he feels like talking about today’s meeting, either, or how he can’t stop thinking about it. Eventually he grunts, and she lets it go. Her hands are chilly when they bump his face, releasing him from the stupid helmet. “Well, you know how to find me, and you know my taste in whiskey,” she says with a shrug. It’s refreshing, at least, to realize that both the offer to talk and her nonchalance about his rejection of it are as earnest as they seem.
It’s disarming enough that he’s able to summon a smile while he changes the subject. “I think you oughta ask her on a date.”
Andrea glances up from where she’s carefully packing away all the tubes and wires. “Is this you using your abilities to interfere?” she asks cautiously. Her mind is blank, a artvin escort quiet hum of nothing, which is an unnerving skill she has been working on for the past few days.
“Maybe.”
“I thought we agreed—”
“We didn’t agree. You told me not to use anything I learn.” Her mouth pinches, and he waves it off before she can argue back. “It’s good advice, and I’m takin’ it to heart. But we also talked about how maybe interfering does more good than harm sometimes. So I’m givin’ you advice too: quit worryin’ and just ask.”
“Can you predict the future now as well, and tell me that my friendship with her will not be altered if something goes wrong?”
Henry sighs. “No, but I can tell you you’re both nice people who give a shit about other people’s needs. Seems like that’s a good start for workin’ any problems out. You deserve to enjoy yourself, Andy. I’m not telling you anything inside her head, I’m just sayin’ you should ask. If it helps, it’s the same thing I’d tell you even if I didn’t have some kind of edge.”
She takes a breath and nods. “We will see.”
He figures it’s the best he’s going to get out of her. “Good enough. Please don’t make me regret helpin’ you find out what her tits actually look like.”
Andrea snorts and promises to keep working on blocking him out, then she shoos him out of her office. She cites having more work to do, but her face is pink and she’s unguarded enough that he knows she’s mentally composing a message to Connie.
***
With Andrea’s blessing, he leaves for the mission as planned shortly after lunch. It’s a simple excursion, overseeing the arrival of a human rights activist for a meeting in Spain. They get it done without a hitch and they’re home within forty-eight hours of embarking.
He finds Shiro waiting outside in the usual place, and he seems weirdly antsy from the feel of it. Anticipatory. It’s how Henry realizes they’ve fallen into a pattern; he almost always takes a break around now.
When his boot crunches on the rock, there’s a shiver like Shiro’s nerves jumped. He’s so tightly wound inside that it is weird as hell to see the wry half-smile suggesting he’s not the least bit bothered. Henry’s grown used to feeling guilty over the things his ability tells him about people, but the clash between Shiro’s interior and exterior world never fails to highlight how intrusive it really is.
“Fancy meetin’ you here.”
Shiro doesn’t bother with a greeting. Instead he shoves a small box at Henry, held out with both hands. “I visited the market. This is for you.” It’s accompanied by a charming memory of Shiro painstakingly picking out several pastries, visibly trying the worker’s patience as he rejects two for being too ugly. Henry pretends to be surprised when he opens the box to find several nearly-perfect pastries inside. There are profiteroles dusted with cinnamon, and two more that he knows from Shiro’s thoughts are apple turnovers, or something like it. “They did not have apple pie,” Shiro says even as Henry picks one up.
“Thank you.” Henry smiles, and he’s almost startled by the warmth expanding inside him. He doesn’t even know if it’s his or Shiro’s feeling, but he is once again impressed by his own great smile, and he can feel that thrumming presence still, underneath it all. “You’re gonna help me eat some of this, right?”
He splits the turnover and shoves one half at Shiro, then he picks at his own piece. It’s flaky on the outside and gooey within, tart apple mixed with almost-too-sweet cinnamon and spice. He can tell Shiro likes it too, although these pastries never got the funny glow up the matcha buns received when viewed through Shiro’s eyes. Something about that thought sticks in Henry’s head, but it’s hard to identify why when he’s busy enjoying himself.
Then some of the apple filling sticks to his thumb. He pops the end into his mouth and sucks it clean. It’s nothing, a thoughtless gesture on his end. But he’s hit with the next image as if by force, a painful gut-punch of a vision, except that all he’s doing in it is sealing his mouth around the end of his thumb. It’s so small, and it’s also obscene.
When he glances up, their eyes meet, and he knows the red stain in Shiro’s cheeks for what it is. Henry’s pulse is galloping so fast he can feel the vein in the side of his neck pumping.
He shoves the rest of the pastry unceremoniously into his mouth, nearly choking on it before he manages to speak around it. “I gotta go. I just remembered I left— Thank you so much for this. I’ll see you around.” Henry flees, and Shiro’s thoughts follow him until he’s too far away to sense them any longer, panic giving way to a mix of disappointment and dim resignation that makes Henry feel like a jackass.
He knows from his meetings with Andrea that she often sees him as tired, frustrated, worn down; in his best light he might look mischievous or have a friendly enough smile. It has never occurred bodrum escort to him to think of those as anything but objective images. He passes Tom in the hallway, and it only confirms his hunch. Tom sees him like he thinks Henry’s got somewhere to be, with determination in his walk. He also sees a ruggedly handsome old man — which is, by the way, a weird amalgam of flattering and insulting. I mean, come on, he’s 35, which Henry definitely does not consider old, despite what a 22-year-old kid like Tom might think. Maybe he ought to do something with his beard.
Shiro doesn’t seem to mind his beard, though. Shiro doesn’t seem to mind his anything. When Shiro looks at him, it’s not the same man Henry sees in the mirror.
He remembers Andrea laughing as she scrubbed the heavy makeup from her face after an interview. He remembers how she looked on a holoscreen, a good-looking person rendered flawless nearly to the point of unrecognizability by virtue of thick makeup and flattering camera angles. Shiro’s mind seems to do the same thing to Henry. It makes him up and grooms him just right, like he’s going to play himself in a movie.
When Henry gets to his room, he’s paying attention this time. He’s been walking the dorm hallway since he arrived at the base, passing by Gunther’s door every time he comes or goes, without thinking about who’s farther down, right where the hall dead-ends shortly past Henry’s room. He doesn’t know if it’s better or worse knowing that it’s probably been Shiro every time he’s gotten the fantasies projected into his head in the wee hours of the morning, and doesn’t that just figure? Of course Shiro would even masturbate on a schedule.
Okay. So Shiro thinks he’s hot. Shiro might even want to fuck him, if given the opportunity.
Now that Henry’s alone in his room and not staggered by the brain-warping sense of attraction to a shinier, prettier version of himself, he realizes it’s not actually crazy. Maybe it’s not even exclusively Henry. Maybe Shiro looks at Francois or Tom like that too. Either would look great on the cover of a romance novel. Maybe Shiro likes more than just men, and he’s running around this base horny for two-thirds of its inhabitants.
Even if it is exclusively Henry, there’s no point jumping to conclusions. Physical attraction could mean a lot of things. It could have just been the one time, a normal response to someone vaguely in the realm of Shiro’s type doing something nice for him. Henry’s memory is pretty good, though; with the clarity of hindsight, he’s pretty sure it’s not the first time. But even multiple times don’t indicate Shiro taking an active interest, or having any desire to act on that interest, or attaching some sort of meaning to that interest beyond the purely sexual.
It’s not like Henry’s never given it a thought, or several thoughts, or filed things away for later. Like that time back when Shiro had first joined and was still insisting on wearing a simple tank top and sweatpants for mobility instead of proper body armor. Henry was forced to watch as rain stuck his hair to his face, water streaming down his glistening tattooed arms, soaking his top straight through so it was plastered against his defined chest, leaving nothing to the imagination, his nipples poking out, hardened from the cold. Henry has definitely revisited that one a few times.
So it’s flattering, really, to know Shiro finds him attractive, and he knows that it doesn’t have to hold some particular meaning. But he hasn’t forgotten the meeting the other day, someone watching him, thinking about touching him in ways that might’ve not been purely sexual.
He doesn’t know if it’s better to assume that it was Shiro then too or that there’s more than one person on this small base with a thing for him. Both options feel conceited in their own ways, like he’s blowing smoke up his own ass. Both options are sort of embarrassing to consider.
Regardless, what’s important is deciding what to do with the information. According to the general rules he and Andrea established, the answer is do nothing. Even after their talks about minimizing harm and maximizing helpfulness, he’s pretty sure she didn’t mean he should be helping Shiro by offering to do at least one of the things Shiro’s fantasized about. It’s not like he’d feel great about acting on knowledge he never should have had, anyway. He thinks he gets Andy’s hesitance to take his advice about Connie now, and he was a lot more sure about their feelings for each other than he is about this.
So. Do nothing. He can handle that.
If he has to do nothing, then it’s probably also best not to do anything misleading. Like seeking him out just to talk or sharing alcohol or bringing him one of his favorite foods. Henry scrubs a hand over his face.
***
Henry reassesses his routine, and he manages to throw it off by about ten minutes. It’s different enough to keep him away from Shiro without arousing suspicion that he’s actively trying not to run into him. He runs into him anyway, but only once and only as Shiro’s already leaving. Henry’s left with the impression Shiro thinks that it’s at least plausible it’s only bad timing. There are no hard feelings anyway, which makes Henry feel like less of an asshole.
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