"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."

"Fix... not wanting me to do things to you?"

"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."

"I'm. I think that makes sense but I'm unclear on how much it matters?"

"How much what matters?"

"I wasn't really thinking about whether you wanted the thing. Earlier. I think?"

"Well I acknowledge that is not great."

"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?"

"I-don't think so?"

"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?"

"I collapsed buildings and dug trenches that wrecked the street and probably other stuff."

"Probably?"

"I assume so, since the city is in such a bad state and it's my fault and the stuff I just mentioned probably wouldn't be enough to do that on its own."

"...oh, I think I get it. And when you were - less verbal, what were you thinking about then?"

"When I um. Touched you?"

"Yeah."

"I was thinking that you were very good and I wanted to touch and I was um."

"Very horny about this? Because I am a bad person?"

"It is so completely normal to be horny about highly compatible guiding but like what was your backlash doing."

"I don't really remember many thoughts from then?"

"Well that's kind of concerning."