......pat pat. Haru's pretty quiet when he's not backlashy and he's not, now, he doesn't need to be to provide a maintenance dose of guiding.

"This sucks."

"Yep. Backlash sucks."

"Maybe I should just get wasted.  It doesn't feel like it could hurt at this point but maybe that's - not true."

"So, uh, drugs including alcohol will still affect you, but they will not... make you less backlashed. Backlash will just ignore all the biochemical stuff going on in your body. If you think alcohol would improve a coping mechanism you are finding success with or optimistic about, we can go buy you some; if you think it would just directly relax you I expect that is not the case at all."

"It might - make me less able to think about things.  Which might be good, or not."

"It could be - yeah, either way. I think I recommend experimenting with this after you're done, and you can vary the level of backlash at lower less awful levels and see how it interacts there, but if you want to try it, I'll go with you to the store."

"I'll think about it."

Haru nods, and wipes tears off his shoulder with one of the tissues they have handy, and returns to his book.

Aaaaaaaa.  Well, back to podcasting now that he has a little bit more brain to work with.  Not much; he keeps losing track of the conversation.  But probably the best thing for Haru's convenience and therefore for not getting kicked back to the hospital is for him to fall asleep, so he's allowed to drift a little bit if he can.  And in the meantime what if he holds very still and does not get any more tears on Haru.

Well, eventually they should go to actual bed, but Haru can carry him there if he's dozy by then.

Well, he is, but that wakes him right up.

"You fell asleep, I figured we could go to bed."

"Okay."

"As long as you're awake we can also brush our teeth and stuff." Detour to the bathroom.

Julien is Not Clinging.  He's not, because his arms aren't even around Haru, and also they aren't on the stairs so it's really not necessary.

Teeth.  Dental health.  Yes.  It doesn't do to give himself any cavities just because he's awakening.  ...Unless awakening fixes that, actually.  But Haru still brushes his so at least being an esper can't fix it that well.

Teethbrushing. Other nighttime ablutions which involve only very brief necessary detours from constant maintenance guiding. And bed. And, if Haru falls asleep first, nouns.

Not unless he's quite quick with it.  After about a minute in darkness, very quietly:  "Haru?"

"Yeah?"

"If there was a fire, what would we do to be safe?"

"My window screen swings open for Cricket, I'd fly you out that way if we couldn't take the stairs."

"What about your mom?"

"She can and has gone out her window without flying at all, the bricks stick out and she was into bouldering for a while."

"...Okay.

"What if there was an earthquake?"

"If it was bad enough to make it both necessary and hard to get out of the house, I'd go get my hydraulic rescue stuff out of the garage and get you all out with that. If it was less bad than that but you were hurt I'd just call you an ambulance."