The specific thing they are doing right now is scary. It's not too scary to do at all, but Haru's ready to flinch about it, like if he were trying to pick up a snake that might wrap gently around his hand no problem but might strike; he is prepared to discover at any instant that actually he can't handle this and it's too vulnerable he isn't ready and he needs to lock down again.

On the topic of Jaeha in general, though, the way they're curled up together, that's very comfortable and fond and warm, maybe because he can flinch about the mental contact whenever he wants and everything else between them is definitely safe.

A little longer-term anxiety about Project Cut It Out Forever, it's surprisingly complicated - not very surprising but yes very complicated - but not in a way that has called into question whether it's worth undertaking and sticking around to see through.

Haru is maybe a bit lower on the somaticized emotions in general than most people. There's the faintest flickers of the correlates of other thoughts going by but they're happening almost entirely on a level Jaeha can't read, not because Haru's not letting him but because Jaeha's power doesn't extend in that more verbal direction. Tiny flecks of pride and curiosity and satisfaction that register in the nerves for only an instant before being packed away neatly as endorsed attitudes or dismissed passing fancies.

"Haah," he breathes, closing his eyes. "I need—can I have a minute with just this? I'm—" This soothes Jaeha's deep, primal emotional core in a way he didn't know was possible.

Haru likes him. Haru really, actually likes him. It's right there, plain as day, Jaeha can feel it.

Haru - takes a second to focus on the ready-to-flinch feeling, examines it, interrogates it - and puts it aside.

"Yeah."

"This means more than I can say," he murmurs, just basking on the feeling, on the way Haru's warmth mirrors his, the way the easy comfort around Jaeha matches his own comfort around Haru.

The backlash cost of doing this is minimal, and more than made up for by the snuggling, adding only a buzz to the snuggling so soft it's barely even there.

Haru pets him. There is a little self-congratulatory glow when Jaeha says that.

He's so cute, it's unreal. 

"You're—still pretty hard to read, though. Your feelings work in very—you—ways."

"How do you mean?"

"I—don't get emotions directly. It's all, what you're feeling in your body plus some things about what those feelings are pointing to, what you're perceiving and focusing on in broad strokes. I can't tell that you're looking at me, but I can tell that you're near a person, and it's only one person, and it's someone you feel very close to. Stuff like that. 

"And—people get fleeting thoughts and emotions and feelings all the time, right, but you're constantly—organising yours. Feel a feeling, look at it, put it away. I'm not sure you're even doing it consciously most of the time?"

"- the whole point is to do it consciously! I don't want my thoughts putting themselves away without making sure they're doing it right!"

"—of course. My bad." He kisses Haru's cheek. "It's so... tidy. And makes it really hard for me to get anything other than what you want to show, which I suppose is a plus."

"As long as it's not too - intellectualized or whatever - for you to get what you're getting out of it."

"I can't get the intellectual part at all, it's just the feelings. ...we had a goal with this but given that the way you seem to feel is 'comfortable with maybe a bit of anxiety about the empathy' I'm not sure how I'd... learn anything..." He really didn't think it through his brain just went offline when Haru suggested letting him look.

"I think the goal was practicing reading people by looking at them with your eyes, but maybe I'm just a terrible example."

"Yeah, I just mean you look—I would not have been able to guess the part about being nervous about this without knowing you personally, just from looking, and even now I can't see it."

"Huh, I wasn't going to any effort to hide it."