“It’s never happened to me before!” Summer can’t quite keep the snap out of her voice. “I’m seventeen, this isn’t supposed to happen. I’m supposed to know what I’m doing by now, not, not — ” She flails her arms for a second before shoving the outside door open. “Not being stuck listening to everyone else’s inner feelings!” she finishes finally.
“I’ve been able to shield /perfectly/ since I started here.” She drops her backpack on top of one of the senior lunch tables and sits with a dejected thud. “But now I can’t even tell if I’m projecting or not — am I projecting?”
There’s a snap in her tone, but Stiles isn’t phased by it. He doesn’t get phased by things like that anymore, they aren’t problems to him. He looks at her and holds his ground. “Okay, okay, okay, I’m sorry,” he says, waving his hands around. “My mind control powers are…frustrating sometimes, but I don’t know anything about shielding..” he muses, more serious than before this time.
He notices the exasperated look on her face and Stiles falls right next to her, backpack falling off his shoulder and hitting the ground. “I mean, how do you tell if you’re projecting or not? What normally happens?” Stiles asks in question, looking at her with interested eyes.
“Are you feeling anything that seems out of the ordinary for you right now? Something you wouldn’t normally be feeling in this situation?” It actually does help that he’s asking sensible questions, instead of freaking out. /She’s/ freaking out. She clamps her hands over her temples, imagining the impenetrable soap bubble wall that’s always meant shielding before.
She can taste Stiles, but he’s right /there/. Everyone else becomes dimmer, softer, like the sounds from the neighbour’s yard instead of right there in her ear. Or her mind, as the case may be. She really doesn’t want to know this much about what is going on inside him.
It’s rude. She hates being that kind of rude.
