"Well, no, but if bits are falling off anyway- Whatever, napkins works better, here."

She has some in a pocket from earlier and roughly balls them up and presents them.

He will gamely throw napkins at her.

She can, with a few attempts, stop flinging them away and instead make it so when they hit her she doesn't feel it!

"Fun! Fun fun fun... It's starting to feel like we should stop trying things right now and get to zero and, like, text people, make plans, exchange numbers. But I think I've tried more things than you?"

"And I'll zero you out faster if we match closer anyway, hm -" He stands up on his tiptoes, then - bends his ankles again, and doesn't come down - "- ha ha I can fly - shit, that's a lot more expensive than being invisible, though -" He lands again and hugs her.

Ooh hug! It's nice. Okay can she- You know what ask-

"That's cool! If I tried that it'd be wildly unstable, I think- Can I platonically put my arms under your shirt?"

"Yeah, go for it."

So she does and immediately feels the indescribable relief accelerate.

"You need me to keep talking, right? Or only when you're pretty backlashed?"

"So, strictly speaking, talking doesn't help, only guiding helps. But I am very motivated to have a conversation and I don't want to screw my backlashed self over by making that difficult for him. But I can spend longer periods of time not compulsively talking the less backlashed I am."

"Okay, I'll try to calibrate that accordingly. Or you can just say so. Backlash is fucked up, I won't blame you for it. Should we sit on the couch? I'm not sure how long this will take..."

"That's what it's there for... more or less." Couch hug.

She will, if not interrupted, ramble about hard sci-fi radiator design for a bit. Answering questions-ly. Her favorite theory on Trek radiators is that they leave a plume of very thin but extremely fast exhaust... Or dump heat into the warp field somehow.

"No chance they're just using the heat for various applications on the ship?"

"So, you know those big towers some power plants have? They're cooling towers. Every - mechanical or physical process we know of for using heat mostly just moves it around. They totally use warp core heat for applications on the ship. For the shields and replicators and stuff. But they'll be left with more heat than they started with. And no atmosphere to dump it into. It has to go somehow or the ship will eventually melt. It's possible they have some exotic cooling method. Throw it into subspace? But that's the lazy way out!"

"I don't think I'd accuse the engineering coherence of Star Trek of being non-lazy."

"And that's why it's frustrating since I'm into- I know how to do the basic design for a real interstellar spaceship, the basic math and stuff- That's not what they're going for so I guess I'm an annoying critic, eh?"

"What if your design would not be borne out should it ever be tested?"

"-That would stink? And there's a huge difference between napkin math saying 'yeah that is physically possible under known non-esper physics' and actually building it, yeah."

"Do you hope to go colonize Alpha Centauri?"

"That would be very awesome! So kind of yes. But- Well, Mars first, or maybe the Moon, the Moon has the advantage of closeness. Little steps. Also we have to fix aging at some point."

"I like your checklist."

"Thanks? I have... Absolutely no advantage on the medicine front though. I guess my edge there is esper money and potential scientists not dying in dungeons."

"Future scientists are not to my knowledge at elevated risk, but esper money can turn into lots of stuff, yeah."

"It's really weird to think about. I - wouldn't say I grew up dirt poor, but definitely not rich or even so much middle class."

"My folks are middle class but like definitely the kind where they actually are and not the kind where they're self-effacing about being rich. You can get great loan terms as an esper to get started with anything pressing."

"Mom and I agreed it warranted raiding the college fund, but if I need anything big or had to spend months travelling to find someone compatible instead of getting lucky on the first try that was the plan, yeah."