"That sounds nice.  If you're sure."

"It's no problem. I didn't even buy extra chicken."

"Okay."  Yeah, he feels better about this.  Obviously the chicken isn't more real than anything else, and so he kind of wants to try it, but - no, he actually really doesn't.  Even if it weren't an egregious tell that Julien knows what's up, it's - he struggled against the paramedics, sure, but that was in self-defense.  He doesn't want to hurt anyone, or anything, even if they're just constructs.  He doesn't want to be that sort of person.  No chicken.

Haru's going to throw the chicken in the oven real quick, and retrieve his computer to put on the table beyond the Oreos in case Julien wants to look anything up, and then go back to hovering in range to be handheld. "Probably what makes sense for overnight is to share the guest room, there's a queen size in there and my room only has a full, we can try putting you in the guest room by yourself but you'd get back up to full volume awakening backlash well before you got a full night's sleep."

Hm.  Hm.  "Sounds good.  Why is that the bed layout?"

"One use case for the guest room is that we have people over who are a couple? Like Ren's co-worker and her husband get their place renovated and crash here for a few days, that happened once. When we moved into this house I replaced my bed because I'd previously had the same one since I was practically an infant but I didn't think I needed room for overnight company, my partner has can't-stand-to-interact-with-people backlash and is too female besides."

Hmmmm!  Scary.  Okay.  Well, he doesn't have to interact with that till after food, and he can spend the food time psyching himself up about it.  "Oh, that makes perfect sense, yeah."

Handholding. Eventually Haru's backlash ticks low enough that he links elbows so he can have both hands to type a blog post.

"Do you want me to put on a blindfold?"

"Not necessary for this, it'll be public when I publish it anyway, and if I need more privacy for something like if I'm redacting an interview we can sit back to back on the couch or something."

"Oh, I don't like it when people can see me type at all.  At least for anything substantial, not like google searches or whatever."

"Understandable but not a specific problem I have." The post is about "the" "standard" dungeon and what variations away from "it" are the most common.

Julien doesn't notice this because he keeps his eyes closed anyway.  He doesn't fall all the way asleep but he does melt more and more onto Haru as the minutes go by.

That's cute and fine. Haru texts Ren, finishes his blog post, picks up where he left off in Paradise Lost.

"How much longer on the salad?" he whispers, after a while.

"Ren'll be home in five minutes, chicken'll be done around the same time, she'll put stuff together - not the chicken for yours - and we'll be eating in fifteen."

"Ooooookay."  With an enormous application of will he peels himself off of Haru and blinks his eyes open.  "Where's your restroom?"

Point. "On the left."

Cool.  Bathroom, handwashing -

- eyes.

Wow, eyes.

Wow, eyes.  It - makes sense, doesn't it.  That if they're pretending he's an esper, they would do this to him; this - already isn't his body, probably.  He's pretty sure.  But it's still kind of disturbing.

He emerges.

"My eyes are the wrong color!"

"Huh, that's fast. I guess my eye change might have been as fast, they're navy blue now but you can't really see it in most light and nobody was checking for it on my first day of awakening. Do you like it?"

"Not really!  It could be worse..."

"If you don't like it it's probably not done, people pretty reliably like their color shifts."