How about that dom over there, also catching a break and eating some calorie dense foods while not quite watching the TV.

...yes, that will do nicely.

Ari checks that his presentation is still as confusing as humanly possible. Short hair with long rat-tail braid, check; bright red lipstick, check; nice leather belt with very obtrusive buckle, check. He goes over to the dom and ducks his head a little bit. "Anybody sitting here?"

Henry looks up, gives Ari an all over, with the typical level of confusion. "No, you have permission to sit."

"Thank you," Ari says. (He has a faint accent, almost German but subtly off.) He sits down, setting his tray in front of him.

"I'm Ari," he says. "Ari Kaltmann. New here, as you might be able to tell. Yourself?"

"Henry Oswald. I have been here for a while."

"Nothing wrong with that," Ari says. "I plan on staying here for a while too. Helping the youth, or whatever."

Shrug. "That's good? I mostly started for the quick money, but I might end up following a law-enforcement track."

"Yeah, I'm here for the money too, I was lying. It kind of seems like the perfect job once you've got it down enough you don't have to concentrate on it anymore, though. If you like getting paid to mess around on the Internet. Which I do!"

He takes a bite of sandwich. "Law enforcement, huh? What kind?"

"Eclipsed. I mean, law enforcement on eclipsed. Locking down people remotely, which is something there is always a good demand on the day to day, and during the eclipses themselves. Possibly precog and danger sensing, but I will see if I will cross that bridge once I have the foresight for it." He takes a bite of his apple.

"Hey, that's cool! I'd go for precog but, like, the thing about precog is... you kind of have to devote yourself to it? Like, if I got precog and didn't work the eclipses I'd feel like shit, but if I had to work eclipses I'd feel like shit? And technically not going for precog is the same choice just at a different level, but I think the difference is if somebody said 'you have precog and don't work eclipses? what kind of asshole are you?' I'd agree with them, but if somebody said 'you're a psion and you don't go for precog and work eclipses? what kind of asshole are you?' they sound ridiculous."

He eats some more sandwich. "I dunno. I mostly just focus on sensory tricks, they're more fun."

He bites from a protein bar, there is enough of his apple that the flavor mix must be ungodly. "Huh, the way I see it not working during eclipses is... still asshole, but the first thing that comes to mind is lacking self-preservation? You can also make yourself safer by preventing the little tykes with no self-control from blowing people up. Anyway, what sort of sensory tricks?"

"Sense sharing was the first one I picked up. Over time I've expanded that to making people feel pretty much whatever I like. Want a demonstration?"

Eyebrow raise. "Sure, something simple like the taste of your sandwich."

He gets a taste of the sandwich. (The extra potency of the sense of taste as someone who's spent most of his life starving - the entirely unconscious association of food with sex - the feeling of a smudge of aioli at the corner of his lip, which he wipes off with a napkin - the wry, fleeting thought, I can never seem to eat a sandwich without it looking like somebody just shot a load on my face - idly, half-consciously wondering what Henry's cum tastes like - he cuts off the connection.)

It's a pretty good sandwich.

Henry smirks amused. "Delicious. Too bad, I can't share my senses with you. But my sub has the skill."

"Ooh. My Eli's a mage, so he can't do it either, but he's got other tricks."

"Like what?"

"Well, he's a shapeshifter. He doesn't have it fully general yet, obviously, and he's probably not going to get it for a while yet since we're splitting our attention between passion projects and marketable skills - but," and here he leans in and whispers into Henry's ear, "he can do some amazing things to his cock."

"Does he really?"

"He does this thing where he's fucking me and it grows as he's doing it," Ari confesses. "Or he'll change it into different shapes - a dog's, or a horse's - and he'll fuck me like that. Or when I fuck him, he'll tighten around me until I can hardly move inside him."

"Wow," Henry says sounding very impressed, like Ari just casually mentioned climbing the Everest. "That makes Gabe's thing about having his body piloted sound tame."

"Ooh, but that does sound fun. Maybe one day I'll meet this Gabe and we'll have a meeting of the minds."

"Sure, he actually works here. And I am sure we would like to meet your Eli."

"Well, we've got our apartment, which is very accommodating of visitors. Or, contrariwise, we could visit you. I'll leave the decision up to you, since you're a big strong dom et cetera."

Henry snorts. "The big strong dom would love to have you over. And also my big strong sub."