Talk Nerdy to Me

Chapter 27: A Mistake is Made

Summary:

Ra and the Kids settle into a rhythm of schedules, photography, and a little fun on the side.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for .)

Chapter Text

Ra sat on the floor of the shower, letting the water fall onto her back and head. It was soothing, in a way, bringing the remaining tension in her shoulders down to a minimum. She hadn't gotten that riled up in ages. Her emotions were tightly controlled, only the occasional bubble popping to the surface. Never an entire jar like this one.

In her mind, Ra's emotions, sensory issues, and consistent anxiety were lined up on a shelf, contained within carefully preserved Pyrex bottles and beakers. Each one was carefully emptied via meditation, drawing, and gaming. It wasn't often that one overflowed, but when they did... boom .

She felt awful.

She felt hollow, to tell the truth. Some halfway point between bone-deep sorrow and completely numb, in spite of the safety and happiness she had found traveling with the boys. She knew that some might wonder how she did grow up being trafficked, and not have a clue that she had been. Or how little she did grasp that what her father had raised her with was far from normal.

I blame the autism until further notice . She smirked slightly at the thought. Well, it did apply here too. Growing up undiagnosed just meant that she had developed a lot of coping mechanisms, and not all of them were good ones. The bottles of emotions in her head were proof enough of that.

She had just managed to get all the bottles back on her mental shelf when Chris came out of the bathroom wearing just his slacks. No socks, the band of his boxers visible over one hip and not the other. His abs - the ones that Stay all screamed over a fleeting glimpse of - rippling and the little Serratus Anterior to either side of his ribs, the way his Oblique was dusted in fine black hairs that pointed down.

She closed her eyes tightly, trying to shake the image from her mind. She wondered what those tiny muscles under his ribs would do if he put his arms over his head, and her mind skittered around like a calf trying to walk on on smooth glass. Ra was not a woman to swoon over a body. Yet here she was, water feeling cool in spite of its heat.

Anatomy lessons, she'd had in plenty. But there was something completely different about seeing those anatomy lessons come to life in a man she liked.

Ra stood up in the shower, feeling... hot. There was a pull in her belly, a movement she wasn't used to, one she'd felt only rarely in her life. Only one time with a real person, but fairly often when music like Red Lights played. She felt the breath leave her body as she realized what she hadn't wanted to admit to herself.

Ra didn't just like Chris. She was sexually attracted to him. Her. The confirmed demisexual. The one who needed emotions and feelings involved to even begin to get interested. She bit her lip, trying to figure out what to even begin to do. She couldn't act on it. It'd be dangerous. For the both of them. Not to mention she didn't even know what she was doing.

It would be dangerous to even consider doing something now about the attraction, without letting him know. She had played with herself plenty of times. Never thinking of someone else, though. And that wasn't about to happen.

She started actually washing the dirt of travel off as she ran through her mind what she could do about this.

How do you just turn it off like that? Felix had asked when she'd had two glasses of wine.