"I'll bear that in mind."

"Uh, also I assume I can't talk either of you into accompanying me to the bathroom as needed but if someone could be talking to me through the door I might be able to make do with that."

"How much weight is that 'might' carrying?"

"Well, I haven't tried it. I was at home when this started, with my mom, and she said something about how it beats changing diapers."

"I am not so against the idea that I'm willing to risk you dying over it.  You have a better sense of the calibration here than I; I'll do as you request."

"Thank you."

"Do you take any medications?"

"A multivitamin, nothing that'll do me any harm to skip for a week."

"I'd like to test for whether you might have been drugged, even though it's not my leading hypothesis for what's going on here.  I don't have kits for any of my more-specific guesses, but there is one which can tell to a first approximation whether there are any drugs in your system."

"Okay. FYI I hate the way blood smells."

"How much so?"

"A normal blood draw isn't a huge issue, just don't make me be the one holding pressure on the puncture before you bandage it and maybe spend longer on that step than usual."

"Also we had coffee."

"Hm.  Is a second blood draw much worse than one, if they're performed competently?  A comparison may still be useful."

"If they are performed competently enough that there's not entire drops of blood exposed to the air I'm breathing it's not a big deal."

"Ariel, would you be willing to assist?"

"Sure, I'm not squeamish.  - About - blood, in particular.  In reasonable quantities."

Here is his arm.

Xavier has to fetch the materials (during which Ari patters about a music video she saw recently with gallons of fake blood that she was not a fan of) but then, yes, gloves and needles and arm.

Ari presses gauze in the crook of Haru's elbow and holds his hand above his head while Xavier carries the kit away.

"Was the song itself any good?" Haru mumbles into his other elbow while ignoring the blood draw situation.

"Yeah, that's why I looked it up.  And I've personally given like four or five gallons to the Red Cross, but like, you know, over my whole life, which is really not the same at all.  - My whole life since I was sixteen.  Still."

"I tried donating blood once but I fainted and they told me not to come back. I should revisit that once I am an esper at home with other espers, fluid transmission is one option for guiding. That's the term for de-backlashing each other, 'guiding'."

"Once - oh.  Right."

"As, you know, the optimistic long term projection, I retain insight into the fact that my condition sounds super wacky to the people around me who have never previously heard of espers and our hell weeks."