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[personal profile] nsfwords
Inspired by the "Surprise" square of my January Fresh Starts Bingo card. 448 words, this is a follow-up to "Softened" and "Amenable" and continues exploring Althea's treatment process at RePrint.

Guarded

Everyone she’d met so far that afternoon had been kind, courteous, and utterly wrong in some way Althea had trouble defining on the digipaper reaction cards. Broken into five sections each digital card had emojis, a feelings wheel, a 1-10 sliding scale, an area with twelve different colors, and a simple section of lines for journaling her reaction. On all of the cards so far she’d circled the neutral face emoji and a word like skeptical, bored, or insecure from the feelings wheel. Althea had taken the opportunity for each prospect’s casual touch experience when it was offered, mostly because she still thought it would be rude to refuse, and now felt very discouraged that the three handshakes, one casual forearm touch, and quickly aborted hug attempt meant she’d already gone through five prospects without connecting to a Familial Guardian.
 
The sun had set outside her window several minutes ago and she had her galaxy blanket tucked tightly around her thighs and pulled up under her chin when Nurse Manning escorted the next candidate into the room.
 
Oh no, was Althea’s immediate thought. The newcomer was stunningly gorgeous. Chin length brown hair cut in an asymmetrical bob, soft hazel eyes, and a crooked smile that stretched their cheeks wide. They had heavy gauges of dark metal in both ears and wore a long navy blue sweatshirt with thumb holes over tight black jeans. As they seated themselves across from her Althea shrunk even further into her armchair and shook her head while muttering, “Sorry, nope. I, you, you’re too, wow, to be family.”
 
They startled her by laughing, plopping into the armchair across from hers gracelessly, and thrusting their reaction card towards Althea.
 
“I’m Shea, and you can write “total hottie” on my reaction card, I won’t mind!” Shea said and kept on grinning.
 
“Right. Just, one sec.” Althea could feel heat exploding in her cheeks and quickly circled surprised, overwhelmed, and fascinated from the feelings wheel. Then she chose the 10 on the sliding scale and quickly noted “I like liked Them,“ at the bottom of the card. It was the first reaction she’d chosen to write in her own words, but she wasn’t sure how else to convey the immediate attraction she’d experienced when Shea had entered her room. Althea just knew this was not the response Dr. Carey meant for her to have when she chose a Familial Guardian.
 
Passing the digipaper back to Shea, Althea gave a shy awkward wave as they stood up. Shea gifted her with a softening smile and walked back over to the door, turning around once their hand touched the knob to give Althea their own little wave goodbye.
 

Date: 2021-03-14 12:52 am (UTC)
kellan_the_tabby: My face, reflected in a round mirror I'm holding up; the rest of the image is the side of my head, hair shorn short. (Default)
From: [personal profile] kellan_the_tabby
... wups! I can totally picture this happening to me, too, if I tried this.

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nsfwords

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