You're good at that sort of thing.

I feel like the answer is just going to be 'we loved him and we trusted him' but I should probably ask in case I'm wrong.

Yeah.

Sigh. Thanks. I know you're busy.

I do not plan on being so busy that I schedule myself out of being a supportive boyfriend.

I don't know how many of these appointments it's going to take. And we don't have arbitrarily many of you.

Findekáno can sit some of 'em. But don't worry about it, okay?

Yeah.

I love you.

Love you too.

I'll keep the next slot clear, let me know if you want me to take it or Findekáno's busy or whatever. And he gives his boyfriend a kiss. Bye.

And he lets him know that it'd be nice to see him, when it's the next slot.

So Kib's there.

And Boots does a I-know-we've-all-got-eidetic-memory-but-can-you-just-reconfirm consent check and goes back in to pinch closed nasty little associations that are haunting her patient.

And which are inconveniently things like 'people raising an eyebrow' and 'people being behind me' and 'the edge of my sleeve catching on something so it feels for a second like my hand is constrained' and 'eating' and 'the smell of metal'.

...people raising an eyebrow. I didn't know that, I would have stopped!

I wouldn't want you to, there are literally thousands of these, and they're all - I worked on them, I wore them all down, none of them are that bad individually -

Yes but I do that all the fucking time, we all do that all the fucking time - Sigh.

Well at any rate it is not attached to anything awful now.

Right, every mannerism specific to you sets off alarm bells in my head, that doesn't mean to stop being specific to yourself in any respect! 

His face or especially his jaw brushing against anything. People whispering. Things moving in his peripheral vision, these thirty different tastes, his hair getting wet -

And Boots works and works and works until she's all out of oomph for the day and is probably going to have to rebraid her hair by hand in the morning instead of being telekinetically tidy with it.

"Do you have an estimate -"

"Maybe - four more batches, for this stage? And then whatever else you want done."

"Thank you very much."

"You're welcome. I'm sorry it's taking so long."