Sure she can play along "Would you rather be in his lap instead?"

Tim nudges Graviton off his lap, then rises to his feet.  "Go on, take your shirt off.  The rest of us have, might as well join us."  He streeetches, a little bit of a cocky grin on his face.  He takes a step forward, leading with his right foot.  "You racked up some backlash with that distraction, right?"

"Some. Not too much." When did Aumento become confident and not a priss? He was a bit harder to look away from when he wasn't doing the snooty by-the-book act. "You don't have to get up over it. You two looked comfortable." He removes his shirt as he speaks.

Excellent.  Safety first, he cloaks Misha in a fraction of his power.  Then, he darts forward.  Right leg to the left of Misha, right hand on Misha’s bare right shoulder.  The guiding is still a lot, but he’s wrestled compatible people before.

His right hip bumps into Misha, breaking Misha’s balance.  And he dumps Misha on the ground, following him down.  He has Misha in side control, their chests smooshed together.  His arms are looped under Misha’s left armpit and the right side of his neck.

”Now we’re even for that stunt you pulled.  Graviton, I think you mentioned a sandwich, earlier?”

"Seems the most efficient, yeah."

“C’mon down, then?”  He can’t exactly gesture her down on top of him, not while playfully pinning Misha.  But he can make a head-jerking gesture.

Sure, she can turn herself into a blanket to cover both her coworkers.

What

the

actual

fuck

just

happened?

And why is he on the bottom of it?

“Is totally different! You asked for demonstration. I did not ask for judo lesson.” This would be a more effective critique, probably, if he sounded angrier.

"This wasn't a lesson, this was a demonstration."  Tim's very Smug.  And very Guiding.

“I did not ask for demonstration, too. Aren’t you Westerners supposed to be all about consent?”

"And Aumento didn't ask to have his shirt lit on fire....so..."

“That was the demonstration! He wanted see how power worked, and something about burning, I think. So he got demonstration of shirt appearing on fire.”

"Well, you walked into the guiding tent.  And now you're getting guided.  That's what you came here for, right?"

“I came in to ask you question. I only agreed to be shirtless so you did not feel too alone, Shirtless.”

“Well, I’m really now alone anymore.  What was the question?”

“How long will you need for break? I have test results coming back. Like I asked earlier.”

"Well...it would have been about forty minutes, before.  With the extra guiding, well."  Tim shifts subtly.  Slightly more of his (and Graviton's!) weight is bearing down on the pinned foreign esper.  "Who knows?  But since you're not going anywhere, I was wondering if you could explain a little more about how your power works."

His desire is to understand, if Misha's power is wondering.

"Do I get to at least be in a more comfortable position for those forty minutes? I am getting leg cramps." He shifts around a bit, though he doesn't actually try to push the two of them off of him. Fat lot of good that would do against two separate espers with strength-and-weight powers. Oh, well. At least the guiding is nice.

"Is hard to explain. I can sense strong desires directly. Not really the mind having the desire, really. If twenty people are hungry, it just feels like lots of hunger. If I know a person well, I can pick them out because they desire differently than others. Like Shirtless, you always have very active desires. It's never I want peace or I want everything just work out. Graviton, you are a little more neutral, more practical, more good outcome than flashy action. Usually, anyway. Back home I could always tell when my guide was nearby, or my commander or my colleague. The head-chatter is unique." This fun fact always feels very relevant while being guided at volumes like he's currently experiencing, but, "I guess is not interesting to you. You want know power part." He sighs as he tries to summon the words, but it's... difficult, and—

We could just do it the easy way. With this much guiding on board we'll barely even notice.

Don't we remember? The last time we used this power we were called untrustworthy! We were not believed!

This is different. We are looking for the truth, not reassurance. It will be fine.

We'll

make

it

be

fine.

Tim can no doubt feel the spike in Misha's power as he opens his mouth and sighs out words he does not understand:

"My power makes other people's desires seem real to them. When I tug on a desire that is strong—a lot of people nearby have it, or one person is really, desperately fixated upon it—I feel an urge to do something that will cause that to come true. I have to physically act upon the desire in some way, and the power will augment or alter the sensory appearance of my action to conform to the desired outcome. The thing that is hardest to explain is that I do not usually know what I'm about to do. All I know with any certainty is the action that I have to take to cause the outcome. For instance, right at this moment, you two are hearing a perfectly grammatical English paragraph, replete with grammar and vocabulary that I do not actually know. All I personally perceive right now is that I am sighing heavily. If you ask me, when I am done doing this little trick, to repeat what I just said, I won't be able to. I won't even know what precisely you know. All I'll know is that one of you—probably both, from the feel of it, but mostly this feels like a Timothy Delgado Wish—wanted to understand why my actions are so erratic, and that now, thanks to this weird sigh, you both do. As you might imagine, this often results in wildly unexpected outcomes. I knew that I'd do a cool little pyrotechnic trick with my finger guns, for instance, but not that it would set Timothy Delgado's shirt on fire. That was unintentional, but in retrospect the reason was that you were skeptical of my powers and the extent of an illusory effect. The desire that I tapped into wanted to be impressed by the strange foreign esper with the cryptic powers, and so the illusion delivered. This is always how my power works: I have some very basic control over its contours at best, but the strength of the effect and its precise nature are beyond my control, because I'm not actually in the driver's seat: whoever is doing the wishing is. I'm just the vector by which the hoped-for result occurs. Also please remember that if you have further questions, you will have to carefully specify them to me, because I can't hear or understand what I just said, and so would require further use of this ability to respond to you with contextual answers, and doing this is mildly uncomfortable for what I imagine are obvious reasons."

And then he takes a big breath, and the magic is gone. Regular old Misha is back.

Poetry.

“There we go.  Much better.” I wish I’d been recording or taking notes or something. His left hand moves to the back of Misha’s skull, and begins petting.  His right wraps itself around Misha’s shoulder and squeezes slightly.  “That…explains a few things.  Good job.”

Next time I run with an esper power like this…I don’t think I can actually take a lesson away from this.  This was just crazy. “You miss feeling wishes?”

Timothy isn’t made of stone.  He really just wants to get along with Misha.