damned_institute | Day 50: Intercom, Evening

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Day 50: Intercom, Evening

As expected, after the allotted amount of time had passed, the nurses started to move through the waiting rooms to inform the visitors that it was time for them to leave, whereas in the Sun Room King Kong was turned off and the staff quickly sprung to action to put the equipment away.

Meanwhile, the sound of intercom turning on cut into the hustle and bustle, but it was Lydia's voice which came through. "Mr. Landel is taking a quick nap," was all she said by way of explanation, as she seemed to be beyond making lengthy excuses for the man. "Nurses, once the visitors have said their goodbyes, escort the patients back to their rooms for dinner. Tonight there is steak and fries on the menu, with a slice of cheesecake for dessert and vegetarian options if requested.

"Enjoy your food and have a good sleep." Keeping it short, the intercom then turned off.

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The universe could suck it.

Not only was Brainy completely missing the point, he was doing that thing where he thought he'd hurt Peter's feelings by simply existing and retracting everything he said. In spite of the conversation going places he really, really did not want to go, Peter was having none of that.

"Dude, no. It's not that, it's just...uh. Weird to explain. And frankly I hope you don't think humanity is a bunch of freaks because I don't know how it works on your planet, so...yeah."

Deep breath. And no, face, stop doing that, we do not need to turn beet red on top of everything.

But as he continued it could not be helped. Peter's cheeks blossomed bright red against his will, and he found himself staunchly examining the most interesting crack in the floor. "So...so basically...'fap' means to like, touch. Yourself."

There was a dramatic pause. His mouth twitched. Hands attempted to articulate what could not be said and only created a muddled mess even the Signing deaf could never interpret. (He was not pointing at it. He refused.) A few moments of pregnant silence later and still nothing was clicking. All he could do was give up the ghost and cringe on the inside.

He leaned forward, voice dropped down to the most conspiratorial of whispers.

"...Sexually."

Peter was slowly turning a bright shade of red, which almost certainly meant that Brainiac 5 would have been better off not to ask about the word at all. The other boy had also taken to abandoning his dinner in favour of staring at the floor and gesturing with his hands with movements that, if they did mean anything, weren't any language Brainiac 5 was familiar with.

He was about to ask what exactly was taboo about touching yourself, since it wasn't physically possible to avoid doing so, no matter what cultural reasoning was behind the restriction, but then Peter opened his mouth to explain further and Brainiac 5 had to lean in a little to catch the words.

Only to jerk back upright a second later, his face blossoming a red to rival his roommate's.

"Ah, I see," he said quickly, in a tone that implied the meaning of those words was synonymous with 'please don't tell me anything more about this'. He fell silent, not sure if there was anything else he could really say in answer to that, especially not when part of his brain was wondering how and why and trying not to look at Peter's... area.

He stared at his dinner again in the hope that fixating on it would help his face return to normal - it didn't, really - but after a while he couldn't hold back anymore.

"But that doesn't even make any logical sense!"

"Oh my god, does it have to make sense?" Peter spluttered hopelessly. If he wasn't sure it was a physical impossibility he'd say his face was turning an even more brilliant red. This was getting out of hand and Peter wasn't sure how much more of Brainy's curiousity he was willing to curb. "It - it's supposed to feel good, okay? People do it when they're lonely or bored or - or things. It happens! Everybody does it. I mean - not like I have -" That you will ever know about... "- but lots of people do! It's like this...this silent truth thing. You know it happens, you know people do it, but you don't talk about it because that is just really weird and frankly, kind of an overshare."

Wow, okay, pause for breath. Brainy might be disgusted by the idea, but panicking wasn't going to help. Why couldn't he just give him a manual and leave it be?

Of course, that led to the disturbing image of Brainy thumbing through a copy of Your Body and You and taking meticulously thorough notes. Ugh. That would be so awkward. Less awkward than this, but not by much.

"Where did you hear about this anyway?" he finally asked. "It doesn't seem...like, were they trying to explain it to you, or what?" God help them if the person was trying to come onto him. He could die right now. He really could.

Apparently he'd been wrong in his initial assumption; it was possible for his face to become even more of a deep shade of red. Brainiac 5 couldn't even muster up the coherency to try and cut Peter off and explain until his roommate stopped on his own and the Coluan was aware of the fact he was, for lack of a better word, boggling at the other boy.

"...that's not what I meant," he said, his voice stilted and awkward. "I meant that what she said didn't make sense considering the... meaning of the word and the context of the situation."

He fidgeted with his fork in the ensuing silence, not really wanting to meet Peter's face directly right now and covering for that by eating some more of his dinner. He wished that, for once, he'd had something like one of Dream Girl's premonitions to warn him about this. Then he could have avoided the entire topic.

"She said I should... do that... in binary with another patient," he explained carefully after a long, awkward silence. "But that doesn't make any sense. ...at least not from my perspective." He wondered if he should ask Peter to please avoid explaining if he was missing something there as well.

"...Oh." Peter deflated in his seat. Well then. That whole spiel was entirely unnecessary. He was so making things worse, wasn't he? But for cripe's sake, he was not qualified in any way, shape, or form to be teaching Brainy the ways of the twisted world. Heck, he'd never even gone there. He was aware of the theoretical stuff and he'd seen certain things in movies and online (he had cable, it was inevitable), but that wasn't exactly a sound precedent for telling anybody else about - yes. This.

Could be worse. Brainy could be talking to somebody else about this and get the wrong idea about everything. Like that guy who had been trying to 'immunize' people for the so called virgin eating birds. Ugh.

Peter took a few shameful bites of his steak as he mulled the issue over. "In that case, it kinda sounds like she was using it more as slang? Like, if somebody's really into something, the implication is that it's something that...gets them going. You know. Like that. It still kinda means the same thing in that sense but it's not quite literal. Just like a - like a really icky metaphor." He paused. "That you shouldn't ever use. It's pretty rude."

His face turned sour. This would have been such a delicious victory dinner if they hadn't started on about monkey spanking.

Brainiac 5 was more than aware by this point that dinner would have been far, far more enjoyable if he hadn't asked what had seemed like a perfectly innocent question about a peculiar turn of phrase at the time. Now he'd essentially ruined the entire meal for himself and Peter, and he still couldn't quite look the other boy in the eyes.

"Well, I'd already decided not to speak with her if I could avoid it," he said after a moment. "She's... a pretty rude person, to be honest."

Silence pressed in again after that and he ate some more of his dinner, studiously focussing on the plate and its contents as he did so. While it helped in a way to know that Asuka was purposely being insulting, it wasn't so much of a revelation to make this exchange something he considered worthwhile.

What they needed was a change of topic, he decided as his fork scraped the plate carefully clean. Something, anything else to think about.

"Did you have any plans for tonight?" he asked, latching on the first topic to cross his mind and glancing across at the other boy.

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Day 50: Intercom, Evening

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