By the time he makes it into the kitchen Haru's got a few slices of French toast going. "I don't know if this will turn out amazing, the bread we had on hand is full of various seeds that may or may not tolerate an introduction to maple syrup gracefully, but we do also have ice cream if the toast's inedible," he says. He holds out his hand. "There's vanilla and Half Baked and Cherry Garcia."

"...Thank you," he repeats.  He doesn't take the hand.  "If you would only do that for Julien, you should know that I'm... not - him.  Again."

"Ah. I mean, you can still have French toast, it's whatever. What time did you get out of bed, it seems I guessed incorrectly."

"Like 5:30."

"...can you tell if you're still ticking up or if you're plateaued at standard unguided awakening level?"

"...I think stable?  Why do you ask."

"Wanted to know if I should expect you to be - worsening, or not." He flips the toasts. "Though also it's, you know, not a thing that gets studied a lot, if you've gotten from where I was stabilizing you overnight to standard awakening in three hours or less that's data."

"I don't know.  I wasn't really thinking closely about it, before.  To compare against."

"Fair enough." He peeks under a toast and plates it, peeks under another and leaves it lie. Holds out the plate.

"Thanks."  How fare the seeds?

There's caraway and pumpkin and poppy and sesame and a few more kinds in there. It's a very seedy bread.

That's pretty nice.

....You know what, no:

Julien's the one who decided not to smile all week.  He'll do whatever the fuck he wants.  It's his brief life and he'll enjoy what he can of it.

"Turned out okay?"

"Yeah."  Munch munch.  "What was your guess about when I got up?"

"I figured you were probably just up to pee and couldn't have been gone more than ten minutes at the outside."

"It was supposed to be that but he got distracted."  ...Ooh, he could be having this French toast à la mode.  With the Half Baked.  To the freezer!

There is indeed a pint of Half Baked in there. More than Half of it, even.

"What by?" Haru asks. "Do you want a second slice of this?"

"My eyes again, and yes please."  Wow, having Haru behind him is so much scarier than him being where he can see him; he checks over his shoulder like six times in the course of obtaining the ice cream.

Plop goes a second slice on a plate for him. Haru puts the third slice onto a new plate for himself, turns the stove off, slaps a pat of butter on top of his toast, and sits down to eat - after a bit of dithering he goes with the chair across from Julien('s backlash).

"Thanks again," he says through a mouthful of (delicious, indulgent) breakfast.  "....I'll come back over to you in a while, willingly.  For the record.  I just think I deserve to have more than zero positive experiences before I stop existing again."

"If French toast and ice cream are what you want out of life that is easily accomplished."

".....Hm.  I think - I also want.... a name."

"...are you asking me to name you or just thinking out loud?"

"The latter.  I'll mull on it."