She grinned at him, sending the flame back to the candle. “What — oh, the bonding. It’s, um. It’s hard to explain.” Summer chewed on her lip for a minute, trying to think of the right words. “I guess the closest analogue would be the mind melds, from Star Trek. When I bond to someone, it’s mostly involuntary on my part, though, and they usually don’t know anything about it. But what it means is that even under heavy shields, unless I’m drugged, I can still sense that person. No matter what. Distance doesn’t matter. Their feelings are a whisper in the back of my mind.” She paused again, flicking her gaze up to Victor. “I’m bonded to the girls I met in college. One of them lives in Hawai’i. I can still feel her.”
“Wow, she’s in Hawaii? That’s incredible that you can still feel her emotions. I suppose it might also be difficult.” He shook his head in bewilderment, “Trying to sort of all of those emotions and your own must be an interesting process.” He stopped then and thought a moment. “So you said that we bonded, correct? I’ll do my best not to be too much of a pain then with the bloodlust.” He smiled, half joking, half not. “Do you keep in touch with your friends from college?”
“I said we could.” She smirked at him, laughing. “If we keep doing what we were doing last night, then definitely. But it’s a lot easier to handle bonded emotions than almost any other. They aren’t obtrusive, and they don’t affect me physically.” Summer’s eyes went distant for a moment. “It’s the people I’m not bonded to that are the problem, that way. Someone else’s pain, someone else’s desire, someone else’s desperate hope. You asked, why have I been alone so much? That’s why.”
“Wait, so is it based in sexual arousal? Intimacy? both the romantic or non romantic sort.”
Victor looked down for a moment. “I wish there was something I could do,” he mumbled almost inaudibly. He looked up at her then, questioning and curiosity in his eyes. “Have you ever given your emotions to other people?”
“Victor, darling, I do search-and-rescue and crowd control for SHIELD. Yes, I can project.” Summer propped her elbows on the table and looked at him over her hands. “I don’t understand what you mean. What is it you /want/ to do? I’m not exactly suffering anymore. I have a job, there are people who see my abilities as useful but allow me to say no, and now there’s you.”