Sure, there can be an invisible shower hug.

Okay.  Good.  Aaaa.  "Sorry."  Back to showering.

Aaaaand rinse rinse rinse he's done.  This is fine.  At some point he's going to become really viscerally uncomfortable with the idea of Haru being able to be invisible, but it hasn't happened yet!  So it's fine.  They can dry off and reseparate and rereunite and brush teeth and go to bed?

Yup. Haru is visible again now.

Snuggle.

.....Does Haru want to hear about all the things he learned about first aid today?  Actually how much first aid does he already know.  Probably dungeoneers are supposed to know some.

"I've taken a class but it mostly focused on how to move people safely, because it's almost always going to make more sense to rush them to the portal and hand them off than try to do something about it in a dungeon."

"What did you learn?"

...sure, Haru can turn his memories of his moving-people-who-are-variously-injured class into a bedtime story if this will be soothing. You check if they're dead, first of all, and if they're broken/bleeding/dehydrated/known diabetic/whatever that affects this that and the other thing...

It is the best bedtime story.  (Or at least the best one available to him.)  He asks for elaborations on various things until he doesn't.

And then Haru can sleep too.

Julien once again has several brief wake-ups that don't pose much issue.

Until sometime between five and six, when he doesn't immediately fall back asleep, and decides to extract himself and go to the bathroom.

....Eyes.  The thing is that his eyes are so eyes, now.  He really wants to know how they're going to turn out, but apparently he'll almost certainly like them so there's not much point in worrying.

Still, they're interesting to look at.  And he hasn't really come to terms with them being different, yet.  He'd spent time thinking about them before, sure, but he didn't think anything was real then, let alone that in particular.  It was... evidence of a violation to him.  One which he already felt certain was true.  He should probably take a moment to process his feelings about this.

He liked his eyes before.  They were deep, bottomless, et cetera; sometimes boys said nice things about them.  Not much to see at a distance, only betraying any texture when one really got up close or when the light was just right.  Which felt like something he could identify with.  Like a good metaphor for him in general.  Maybe it wasn't; maybe everyone feels like they're kind of unassuming at first blush and only really interesting once you get to know them.  It's a comforting enough narrative.  Probably lots of people latch onto it.

And now they're very obvious, and probably on their way to becoming more so.

It's interesting how different they look, in the pre-dawn lighting, with no sun coming in through the window.  Your eye color is something you should be pretty used to, at his age, and he's not going to get the chance to become familiar with this one, because it's going to get replaced with something he likes better.  And in some sense this is better, objectively strictly better, to not be stuck very long with something he doesn't like.  And yet... there's something violating in the brevity of the transition.  Though less than in the transition itself.

He wishes he'd brought his phone with him instead of leaving it on the bedside table.  He wants more pictures.  But then he'd probably wake Haru up and he wants to not do that.

Of course, there's also a risk of that in going back to bed at all.

Not that that stopped him the first morning.  But, that was a much more time sensitive situation.  It mattered, unlike this, or at least he really thought it did.  It's - less clear, now, since it's been a while and he still hasn't gone back to being wrong about everything in that particular way.  Maybe it would have been fine to not.

And wasn't it its own form of insane panic, that he was so quick to throw himself under the bus.  He was wrong, yes, but plenty of people are wrong and he hadn't actually caused anything horrible to happen.  (........He was probably, almost certainly wrong.  At some point he should try and actually evaluate the probability that he's in a simulation instead of running his assumption that he's not on embarrassment - but it probably, genuinely, should not be while he's backlashed, and until then embarrassment will certainly do.  If he doesn't feel better in a few days then that will be very suspicious and he can revisit this then.)  But fundamentally, people don't deserve to have horrible things happen to them just because they're wrong about things.

He knows that; he believes that.  It's just hard to feel it, sometimes, when the person is...

Him.

...Shit.

Fuck.  Goddammit.

Well, now that he's here, what does he want to do.  What does he want to do about it.  He - he could go back, and crawl into bed with Haru, immediately; into bed and out of existence.  He doesn't want to.  He cooperated as best he could, last time, and what did it get him.  Julien still spilled all of his secrets that he found it convenient to.  Julien still told Haru that he didn't do anything wrong, even if he never came back - well, here he is, and he's disinclined to go away quite so easily this time.

(Haru can turn invisible, Haru can't hide the sensation of guiding but he can still hold him down and prevent him from getting away while he does it; Haru has every advantage and is very correct that in a few days Julien will indeed be back no matter what -)

He really cannot afford to burn even one of his bridges.  But by god he deserves to have nice things, too, even though he's himself.  So, fuck it, he's taking a bath.  If there's any bath bombs or bubble liquid in the cupboards he's using that.  ~Julien~ can buy the Swans a replacement later, if he wants to.

He sings softly to himself, every now and again.

Ren keeps all her bubble bath in the ensuite.

Haru will if undisturbed sleep till about eight.

That's fine.  He'll experiment with trying to get things frothy with just the available soap.  And do variously-partial drains and refills to keep the temperature tolerable.

"Julien?" calls Haru's voice, once he's awake.

"Occupied!" comes the reply from the bathroom.  Ha.

"...'kay, what d'you want for breakfast?"

"French toast!  ...Or ice cream."

"I'll see what I can do!"

"- Thank you!"

And fine, yeah, this round's getting cold again anyways.  He'll rinse off and dry himself and put his pajama pants back on and then dig through his luggage for a fresh outfit for the day.  WITH a SHIRT.  He's cold.