“That’s not quite what I meant, but okay. Okay. I’m not projecting.” Experimentally, just to see if she even /can/ at this point, really, she tries projecting calm on him. What bits of her are out of control? Is it just her shields, the ones that protect her from everyone else’s emotions? Or is she going to be lashing the people around her with her emotions, or worse, forcing them to feel random things?
She picks at the zipper on her backpack, not looking at Stiles. “It’s okay,” she says softly, listening to the rapid spin of his emotions. “You don’t have to stay here with me.” After all, she knows why he was the only one to say anything. It’s rare for an empath to be in the Hero track; most of the other students don’t know what to do with her. And what she’d done to Jackson, sophomore year, had left a lasting memory.
“Then what did you mean?” Stiles asks, looking at her in curiosity. Then he catches what she says and he finds that she’s not projecting. He would’ve felt a rushing wave of emotion of his body, unnaturally there if she was doing so. He licks his lips absently before he scratches his fingers through his hair, understanding the situation at the moment now. “Shit…you really aren’t projecting.”
He notes how her anxious matters occur, her fingers messing around with the zipper on her backpack. Honestly, Stiles does something similar, only he decides to mess with his nails instead. It’s a much better solution. “I want to stay here, I wouldn’t even be here in the first place if I didn’t want to,” Stiles admits, the compassion in his heart showing on the surface. For someone who was a Hero and not a Sidekick, that was a rather rare occurrence. Honestly, he was sure that was practically unheard of at this point in time.
Summer swallows hard when he acknowledges that she’s not projecting, even when she’s trying to. It doesn’t help; her throat tightens and her eyes burn, and the next blink sends hot drops rolling down her cheeks. She keeps her face turned away from him, so maybe he won’t see, but her voice is high when she speaks.
“Why do you want to?” At least, if she’s shielded enough to keep herself from projecting deliberately, she should be able to keep herself from projecting accidentally. Assuming she doesn’t lose them again.