Mesmerized

Style

She has an impeccable sense of style.

In all honesty, he doesn't think that she could look bad in anything. She has a way of knowing what to wear and how to combine and she's so unapologetic about the things that she wears and what her style is.

And gosh she looks good in her clothes.

From her sneakers and Doc Martens, her skinny and wide-legged jeans, her colorful blouses, her T-shirts, hoodies and jean jackets.

They are all so her and she looks amazing each and every time he sees her.

But her clothing, like so many aspects of her can be enthralling and distracting.

But it's not her clothes that distracts him when he walks into school that morning.

He walks in as he always does: Coolly. He greets some people by the door and smiles as he sees some others. He's feeling half-tired but also satisfied because last night they stopped some heinous crime from taking place in Swellview again.

Sure, he had to wake up at 3 in the morning. Sure, he had to sneak out through his window and fell out of the three. And sure, he had ended up smelling like fish because the villains had obviously decided to have a fight in a warehouse at the Swellview docks where thousands of fish hung around on hooks.

Fun.

But he's satisfied.

And he has a big to-go tumbler of coffee to help him get through the day, so he'll be fine.

He walks directly towards his locker, eyes glued onto his screen as he watches the morning news (most of which he already knows: villains that Captain Man and Kid Danger had stopped the previous night and the Vice Mayor Willard's next budget cuts which will be rolling out soon).

He glances up when he nears his locker, already expecting to find Char there waiting for him (always an early bird). He sees her, starts to smile tiredly, ready to murmur a good morning, when he finally notices what she's wearing.

That's about all the distraction that he needed for him to forget how to walk. One foot suddenly hooks into the other, and he stumbles forward towards the lockers, only managing to catch himself at the last moment before he smashes his face into them.

He doesn't even have time to consider how clumsy that looked. He straightens up, walks towards her and points at her attire, "Is that my hoodie?" he blurts out.

He doesn't even need an answer. He knows that it's his. It's in his colors. Red and blue. And it looks big on her.

It also looks really good on her.

"Good morning to you too, Hen. How are you? Are you doing alright?" Charlotte says playfully with a smile and an eye-roll.

"Yeah, yeah. Good morning," he answers back with a shooing motion. "Is that my hoodie?" he asks again.

"Yeah. You, uhm- you left it at my house that day that we had our study sesh. And today I saw it and it went so good with the jeans and the boots and- You don't mind do you?" she finishes shyly, biting her lips and looking up at him through her eyelashes.

His brain short-circuits when she looks at him like that. It's enough to render him speechless and he can only nod at her.

"Yeah," he finally says after a few seconds more, voice sounding hoarse. He clears his throat as he takes her in.

The black boots and skinny jeans really do go well with the red of the hoodie. Her skin looks amazing in the color (but truthfully, when does her skin ever not look great? It's always beautiful).

Her hair is down today, framing her face and partially covering her big earrings.

She looks stunning.

As a whole, but most importantly, in his hoodie.

"You can keep it if you want," he adds, voice coming out just above a whisper.

She looks up, and he doesn't know what she sees on his face, but she stares back at him, biting her lip-gloss stained lips as she does.

He's looking at her probably in the way a particularly hungry animal might look at its prey (Oh how the tables have turned). He's drinking her in, trying to imprint the memory of her in his hoodie onto his brain so it can last forever.

"You don't mind?"

He wants to tell her that no, how could he mind when she looks better than him in it? How could he mind when all he can think about at the moment is how good she would look in any one of his other clothes.

He decides to just shakes his head.

Her answer is a big, shining smile, and it feels as if he's an iceberg melting in its heat.

"Thanks, Hen."

Jasper arrives at that moment and comes to stand next to him. He shoots one look at Charlotte's hoodie and the same question is asked again. Charlotte laughs, telling him to ask Henry because she has to go talk to a teacher about one of her club activities.

As she walks away, Henry watches her. He takes in how the clothes fit, how she practically glides through the hallway, her hips swaying slightly. He jumps when a hand slaps him on the shoulder.

"You've got it bad, Hen." Jasper says.

He can't even find it within himself to deny it.

The look that Jasper shoots him tells him that he also knows that.

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Tbc.