May was about to fall back asleep in Ren's arms, and now she is not in Ren's arms, which puts paid to the "fall back asleep" plan.
"You're-I like you and don't want to hurt you and I hurt people and wasn't listening to you?"
"We're both backlashy, we're not in our right minds, I just needed to - talk to you for a minute, is all, to make sure you really wanted to, uh, do what you seemed like you were gonna."
"It's not like I wouldn't really like to! But I don't have an IUD and haven't had a minute to think straight about anything for days so I don't know how robust the really liking to is."
"I am confused about why you would really like to? Also I'm scared that I'm going to keep trying to do things even if you don't want to."
"Well guiding feels amazing and being a prude would be an incredible career liability for an esper so I'm probably going to have to fix that anyway."
"I am worried this is a little too complicated and me-focused to explain properly while you are backlashed."
"Given how I was acting before I don't seem very good at listening to explanations I guess, yeah."
"Yeah. I can explain it later. I would enjoy having sex and was packed a box of condoms specifically in case of it happening and it would be good for our backlash even and also this does not seem like the greatest mental vantage point from which to decide, maybe for you more than me."
"And if I'm the sort of person who doesn't think about that sort of thing I'd expect that to stay the case?"
"Not necessarily, psychological backlash can kind of have flavors, did I tell you about this already?"
"So like my backlash is that I'm really lonely but my flavors are, like, being anxious that I'm trying to socialize wrong and that's why it's not working like it's supposed to, and being touch-starved - that one seems mostly the least bad - and thinking that nobody else is real and that's why I'm so lonely, that one's the worst. And if you have a psychological backlash you might have flavors too but I don't know what they are except that for one of them you were, uh, touchier and less verbal, and now you're talking, so I bet those are different, and I don't know if it's just those two."
"I think..."
"I noticed I had missed that I was responsible for the city being destroyed and needed to turn myself in and I called a Master-Stranger alert as a result of that. And then Skitter decided the correct response to that was to put me on a boat with you and you touched me and it was like the sun was touching me and. I think you know the rest? And probably the prior part too I guess."
"- well the thing where touching me is like sunshine is guiding, the part before that was probably more informative about your backlash. You thought you were responsible for the city being destroyed? I thought that was Leviathan?"