Hartan Expanding Ch. 02

She laughed, "Not on purpose. Thank you, though."

"For looking? My God, of course I'm going to... I mean, it's... boring, and there's nothing else to look at..." I was smiling, pretending to be reluctant.

"Stare all you want, Kevin. As long as I can stare at you in return, it's all fair. Really, though, I mean, the real reason you were staring was the same reason everyone stares. It's a hardwired, hind-brain want-that sort of thing. Never mind consequences, right?"

"Yeah..."

"It's the same on both sides, you know that. But, you've seen more than my panties, I think."

I was non-committal. Maria had worn bras where her nipples poked out before and as much as I tried not to stare, I definitely observed that situation carefully!

She continued, "I've seen how Hana is looking at you, and Mom just mentioned that something 'hypothetically' might have happened, but she didn't say what."

"Not hypothetical, actually." I wasn't totally comfortable telling this, but all the messages had been, be totally honest, and I was 'courting' the idea of Maria as handler, so I had to start that way, I decided. "Hana and I just did oral. That is, really, she just did oral on me. I just ... haven't done much. We're getting ahead of ourselves, here. I shouldn't be talking with you yet unless I know some things."

"Like?"

"I guess I can't make you promise to keep secret what I tell you."

"No. Can't do that. I have to talk things out fully with any other handlers you have, and I have to write reports that summarize things."

"So, I have no more privacy?"

"Do you want to go offworld?"

I snorted, a bewildered don't-know gesture. "I want to live. If that's somewhere else, fine. I like Earth, but if the only way to live is not to be here, then, well, that's where I'll be. So, either I die on Earth burning in radioactive flames, or I give up the ability to have a private thought. Life isn't easy."

"Not exactly. You can have all the private thoughts you want. Most of them are completely natural and normal, and what I would call that, anyway. Like, what you just said, the way I have to write it up is to say, abstractly, you're 'having concerns about intellectual and emotional privacy in a world where we're being constantly evaluated and recorded.' Or, something like that."

"Minimizing my despair into a cogent verblet."

She looked at me oddly, "Are those words?"

Sometimes I forgot she wasn't born in the USA and odd idioms were sometimes confusing. "The word cogent means the compact and correct expression of an idea. Verblet maybe isn't a word, it's me being silly. Hamlet is a small city, cutlet is a small cut -- verblet is a small verb. Just my joke."

"Oh." She paused, then returned to the idea, "I'm not trying to minimize your despair. I'm minimizing the idea that you're having life-changing thoughts, because if I make you sound like a crazy person, you aren't going to go anywhere."

She was right, obviously.

I said, "So, Mom said I have to be absolutely honest with you, and ask what your plans are, too. So. Here's honest, at least as far as I can be."

She opened her face, smiling and raising her eyebrows, waiting for something nice, I think, which I was quite ready to give her.

"Maria. You're really beautiful. Your eyes are soft and warm, and I like looking in them. Your face is really pretty, and I ... I think you know that I think your body is... attractive. I have watched you for a long time now." I cleared my throat, and decided to take even more risks. "Really, I've watched you, with... some 'lust in my heart', I guess, and imagined things. I like the idea of kissing and talking and... being together. I'm sorry if this is embarrassing. I guess I feel free to say anything, now, 'cuz you're always... really pretty level-headed?"

She smiled at me, accepting the compliment. "Thank you"

"I guess, we've talked, all sorts of things, and you seem like an interesting and funny person, and I like that, too. Then, of course, I've noticed how you are with the little ones, how you're naturally comfortable around them, and loving, and careful... I guess I can imagine more than that, with you." I paused. I realized I hadn't said that well, but her eyes told me she got it.

Maria smiled at me, slightly embarrassed. "Thank you!"

I went on. "Your kindness, being bright, and smart, upbeat -- it's obvious to the people around you. I want to know you better. It turns out, today, just today, I have had a very, very, very odd day. I got introduced to 18Club, and like, no one would ever talks about it? And, it's completely logical? More than that, the way it's explained, it's even completely necessary! An almost-secret organization? It's freaky! And, how do I know what I'm getting myself into?!?"

She was still looking at me, waiting. She'd heard this stuff before, I was sure.

Taking a breath, I continued, "I've just had the craziest, most caring, honest, fearful, grown-up conversation with my mother of my entire life. Today. All this heavy emotion-filled info. And, just a couple of days ago, I had my first-ever blowjob, and a second one the next morning, and wowzers, that was fabulous, but then, shyness and a feeling of complications from her, and now this."

Maria was smiling broadly at this list, and laughed with me at the end. She moved over, cross-legged, to sit next to me, and held my hand. Just sitting there, she looked in my eyes and waited.

I could tell it was time for me to ask something. "Maria, I'm way out of my depth. I need help. Apparently, I need a handler to help me. I would also really like to have a girlfriend."

Maria was nodding.

"Would you be my girlfriend and handler?"

Maria's nod turned into a big smile and a hug, and a fervent, "Yes!"

She pulled back her head, and put her forehead against mine, our eyes so close together I couldn't focus. I felt her face get closer to mine, and we kissed, tenderly, touching cheek to cheek.

There was a connection, with her, like invisible strings from my head into hers.

I said, "So, what next?"

"Protocol says we both have to inform any parents or house-owners, or house-leaders if there's an elected leadership. They don't get a veto except in urgent circumstances, but they have the right to be informed. They also are quasi-legally obligated in certain ways to give us some amount of privacy."

"Modicum."

"What?"

"A modicum of privacy. It's a fancy English old word that means a small amount of a good thing, I think. It's not used much, but it's got style and I like using words with style."

"I've noticed that about you, Kev. Sometimes a $10 word where a 25-cent word would do."

"But the $10 words are so much more fun!"

"I didn't grow up speaking English, Kevin. I've taken it since I was in 1st grade, and spoken it for the last 4 years here, but sometimes you challenge me, and sometimes other people use big words to make me feel inferior. It's a native-born versus immigrant thing."

"Oh! Oh my God, really?" I was sorry, "I didn't mean that! I just... Like the language, it's fun. I'm not trying to make you feel that way!"

"It's fine, I know that now. Relax. I'm actually happy about it - I have a much bigger vocabulary than I would have. And, you always correct my grammar, so the way I figure it, it's free English lessons just being around you."

"So, do we go tell Mom now?"

"Sure. Why not."

We stood up. I said, "What do we tell the others? Everyone else? The kids here that aren't 18 yet? We're not allowed to tell them."

Maria said, knowingly, "There is a protocol for this. It's simple. We tell them that we're boyfriend-girlfriend, and, more than that, we're in a classes together at school so we are going to room together so we can work on projects when we're at home."

I laughed, "We both like computers. It doesn't have to be a class. We can just tell them it's a special project, Outside Achievement Spaceware. OAS is always fun stuff, anyone can do anything, and it's convenient."

She said, "Nope. We go with the protocol. Mom will handle any questions from them."

"Oh."

We got up to track down Mom.

== Chapter: Mom, Redux ==

We opened the door and walked down the hall to the living room, where mom was on the phone with a parishioner. I wrote a note on her pad, "Maria. Yes." Mom nodded violently, smiling but not making a sound, her eyes lit up. Maria took the pad and wrote, "Kevin. Yes." She kept nodding, and made the sign language thank-you. She stopped, and said, "Hold on, Hank. Hold a sec."

She muted her phone and said, somewhat formally like she was following a script, "Kevin. Maria. You are granted room rights. I will inform Hana that she is to trade bedspaces with Maria now. Maria, Kevin, please help her move her clothes to her new bed space. She's gotten the 18Club into herself, it won't be a total surprise. Can you ask her to come talk with me?"

Maria nodded, and Mom went back to talking on the phone.

We got Hana, and brought her back to Mom, who explained things in a very formal way.

Hana said, "Hai. Understand. Sad. Understand." To me she said, "Love you."

I said, "Love you, too, Hana." I gave her a big hug, and she hugged me back very strongly. I kissed her cheek, and she kissed mine again. Maria, surprisingly, did the same thing, even with the saying 'I love you' and the cheek kissing.

They were kind-of step-sisters.

== Chapter: First Night ==

Maria, Hana, and I schlepping clothes around; there wasn't that much to move since nobody really owns much anymore. All I really called my own were some school clothes and my device, plus maybe my desk lamp and some hardcover books.

Some of us had a single favorite childhood toy, but I'd let my last one go and was happy that it went to a good pair of young fingers where it'd do some good.

Trading around toys was required since sitting in a closet didn't bring joy to a kid, and there were TONS of kids around. Plus, we just didn't have storage space anyway.

I certainly couldn't bring almost anything with me offworld, I was pretty sure.

Maria proposed that they leave the headboard lamps as-is since they were identical models anyway and might as well leave them in place, but Hana wanted to take what was hers and have Maria move her own.

No matter what Hana said about being happy for me, I think she was a bit miffed. Her Good Thing, being with me and in an uncrowded room, had stopped. Maria's new sleeping situation had more people - two 3-tall bunks and all of them full - made sense in my sister's bigger room, but it resulted in a more cramped sleeping situation.

It was already late, so we headed for bed. Everyone else was already down for the night. I got up in my bunk, and Maria was opposite me, on top of her bunk. The half-meter gap between bunks wasn't too big, so I asked, right before I turned out the light, "Uhhh, Maria?"

"Yes?" She looked over at me. I got up out of bed, and spanned the space between us, and said, "May I have a goodnight kiss?"

She said, "Sure."

We leaned over the gap and kissed, lightly, just the barest of lip kisses, and it was done. I got back under my covers, and rolled over.

No gratuitous groping, no flagrant sexual innuendo, no intertwining of limbs in a grinding ecstatic thrusting ballet, none of that happened. Instead, we slept. I realized as I drifted off, I was missing out on some pretty big doings on this first night in the same room, first night with an official girlfriend.

(My first un-official 'girlfriend' was Janie Sackheim in first grade. She was funny. She asked if I wanted to be her boyfriend, I said sure, she said good, then she walked off. We sat together at lunch twice, maybe, then the third day she said 'we're done, Jeremy's my boyfriend now.' I just said, 'okay' since I had no idea what had happened anyway, and then laughed as she walked off. I got a second laugh since it occurred to me that Jeremy probably wouldn't know, either.)

This was my first night where we could actually be doing the horizontal mambo, sort of with permission.

In the morning, we woke up with the alarm clock like normal, and instead of looking over at Hana, I was greeted with the rapidly-increasingly smiling face of Maria.

Remembering, I grinned happily back at her. The pause we had was sweet and it got a connection out of it, emotionally, knowing we were in the same room and having a sense of there being a future that had her in it. I didn't know if we'd have any kind of a long-term thing possible - especially if she'd be going off-world separately from me, but for the moment? I liked it!

Someone said something outside our door and we took that as a sign and moved to get up.

I got down first, and looked over at her ladder to see Maria's butt under her t-shirt as she came down the ladder. Sure, I'd seen her in panties before, but it's another feeling when you know there's the possibility, even the remotest possibility, that you might eventually be allowed to touch the beauty in front of you instead of just looking.

Turning on the room light, Maria stripped off her shirt and panties, faced away from me. My perennial morning wood tent-poled my underwear, and I had to walk over next to her, facing the parted-curtain closet opening where I had my clothes and towel as well. We both put our folded sleeping-shirts and underwear on our shelves, and started to grab our towels. I stopped, though - I could tell she was watching me, so I turned to face her.

She looked in my eyes, got a faraway look and took a long, slow, deep breath. Starting to smile, her gaze dropped down my body, stopping at my erect cock sticking up in front of me, aimed at the ceiling.

I decided I could look at her, too, so I looked downwards over her body, which I'd seen the covered version of plenty of times before. Then, though, I hadn't had the full permission to just stare, and there was a big difference between almost-uncovered and actually-uncovered.

Her boobs were probably a C-cup, that is, 8-ish cm from her ribs, with nipples on tiny areolas on the upper slope. Her body was taut, and I could see a sixpack of tight abs hinting through her skin above her navel.

Below, a small patch of pubic hair had a triangle pointing downward but not reaching the cleft there. I realized the hair was hiding a significant mons pubis, the pubic bone that crested a curve downwards.

I'd kind-of seen it before covered by a cloth layer, but, still, it's an entirely different thing to look at a bare mons versus a covered one... and... wow. Coolness.

Maria cleared her throat.

I looked up.

"Showers?" She asked, smiling at me, like she knew she was appreciated just like I was.

We walked out of the room and, of course, there we were at the bathroom entrance. Luckily, there was only one person ahead, and I let Maria go as soon as that person got out. She grabbed the razor from the shelf, and I used the toilet uninterrupted. I realized we'd awakened a full 45 minutes early instead of the normal 30, so there wasn't contention. I got my teeth brushed, and waited; soon she was out. I was about to get in, but as she got out, she brushed up against me sexily, dragging her towel-covered boobs across my chest with a deliberate push.

It was my turn to inhale a bit, watching the water drip off her.

I showered quickly, then shaved (an every-3-days task, roundabouts), and took the hair scissors to my small mat of chest hair, trimming up a bit. I also grabbed a tuft of my pubic hair on my abdomen above my penis, trimming that, but I couldn't do that in much of a hurry. The scissors were really sharp and if I missed, I'd give myself a rather nasty cut.

Once before, I'd tried cutting the hair on my balls, but that was a mistake; I had made a small cut on my scrotum that convinced me that was an exceptionally bad idea to repeat. Stopping with the one pubic-hair snip, I decided manscaping was another question for Maria.

Once dressed, we walked to school together; it was a few kilometers. We talked on the way.

There was so much I didn't really know about her, so I asked. Like, where she was from (southern Brazil), why she'd moved here (lots of people from China coming in, and everyone wanted to get to the schools in the USA), what her parents had been in The Before (homemaker / part-time real estate agent, and telephone company office manager). She had 2 sisters, neither of them got to come north with her, she missed them. She was worried about them getting displaced by other refugees or Hartan destruction, but there was little news for some reason.

At school, I got lots of nods from girls in class all of a sudden, and some people came up and said hello, just to be friendly. It wasn't anything overt or way-obvious. The change was that somehow, people just knew my name, and wanted to make sure I knew theirs.

Some girls wanted to invite me to a Saturday Night party but I couldn't commit to that because I figured there'd be some to-do stuff with Maria. I suggested I might want to come, but I might have a date with me and I'd have to check with her.

This wasn't a problem, but they said I could get back to them.

I met up with Maria during 2nd gym, just for a couple of minutes. I said, "I don't know what party to go to."

"Can I plan it?"

"Please!"

"Done!" She smiled again. It seemed she was smiling a lot now. I think I knew why -- a certain anticipation of fun things to come. She winked at me, then kissed me quickly and went off to do her gymnastics strength work, and I had to head out on a distance run with the team. It was yucky out, a cold rain that was almost sleet, and the sweats I wore soaked through in short order.

My bio-sensors told my device when I got back that I had burned 30% more calories because of the extra weight of the water, but I never really trusted that it wasn't just designed to say that to make people happier they were running in the rain.

Again, in biochem, I met up with Alissa and brought her up to speed on things. She said she already knew about Maria from a message my mom sent. Apparently, there was a process I was not privy to.

Then, she turned back to the experiment we were doing, and wouldn't say a word. When Alissa was all business, there was no dislodging her. She seemed unconcerned with me and anything else that was social.

I, on the other hand, was more preoccupied than that.

== Chapter: After, Before, After ==

Dinners at school were divided into half-hour sections, with students divided into 6 groups so there weren't too many people at the same time in any one of the cafeterias. When they combined the junior highs and high schools with the outbuildings, downtown storefronts, and old office buildings we took over, the eating spaces were usually full.

Maria and I had eaten in different buildings in the past, at least I hadn't seen her in passing recently until then, but then again we switched sections monthly, so I sometimes saw people and then didn't see them again for quite a while. Everyone was going at their own speed, specializing in their own interest areas for a section of the day if they were older, and otherwise making for a pretty chaotic setup if you wanted to talk with someone.

My device scheduler created a meeting with Maria for after school and proposed a location. After school, I went and stood there, waiting, but Maria didn't show up for the longest time. She'd confirmed, so I did wait, but it wasn't until 10 minutes later that she showed.

She jogged up to me. "Hey! Good to see you!"

"You, too." I said, smiling.

She came right up to me and stopped, then leaned in and gave me a hug. I hugged her back, and she pulled away and took my hand to start walking. Obviously, she had things going on that weren't relaxed, timing-wise.

I looked over, falling into step with her, "So, have a busy day?"