"Cricket!"

"Hmm."

"- wait, is that seriously a worthwhile suggestion."

"I think it could get dangerous very quickly, currently, but, I don't know, maybe sometime later when Julien's less but not zero backlashed he should try out laser tag or something."

"Dangerous like you'd hurt Cricket or like you'd freak out too badly and that would have unpredictable consequences?"

"The latter might lead to the former?"

"Yeah. Kitty, you are not as big as once you were." Scritch scritch.

purrrrrrrrrrrrrr

"I also wouldn't want to get scratched up if I got too freaked and put you in a position where you justly needed to defend yourself."

Cricket displays a pawful of sharps. "I'm really more of a biting person."

"That either."

purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr "under my left wing pleasethankyou" purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRrrrrrrr

This does not seem like an interaction that would benefit, or indeed not malefit, from Bug's interruption.  Thought it does give him an idea for something later.

Eventually Cricket wants Haru to carry him to his cat bed, which Haru does, and there Cricket falls asleep.

It's nice to have a moment to himself.

Haru returns to the couch once Cricket is emplaced but he does not presume about guiding.

...Sometimes a later is not actually very long.  He - watches Haru's reaction, and aborts if at any point he seems unhappy with this, but otherwise - takes his forearm in hand, and moves it, and positions it so that Haru's hand is in his hair.

This is fine with Haru, if slightly puzzling. "Guiding doesn't work through hair."

"Oh.

"It is nice, though."

"As you like. Shall I just scritch you like you're a cat or what?"

"Seems better than like I'm a bug.  Lowercase."

"I tend not to have a scritching relationship with bugs, lowercase." Scritch scritch.

Pretty soon it stops mattering that guiding doesn't work through hair, because all of Bug's bones gradually dissolve until he's draped entirely over Haru.  "Hmmnmmn."

(It's very conscious, the way he's doing this - he takes a moment to spiral about whether this is a bad sort of deception - but no, this is how he would be acting if he didn't feel nearly so bad, and he deserves to have nice things, and he can have the nice things associated with doing this even if it doesn't make the bad, the massive, looming bad, go away.  ...Though once the guiding starts, pretending gets substantially easier.)

He is cute. Haru is Not Being Weird About It unless scritching him at all counts as being weird about it but he thinks it's probably on the right side of the line.

"I'm kind of worried," Bug mumbles without growing a skeleton, "well, I'm kind of worried about everything, but, I have a concern about.... I'm kind of ignoring all of my brain screeching about whether things are okay, and just deciding to be selfish and do what I want, and I think... the things I want are mostly just, finnne actually, but if I do something, genuinely inappropriate.... that's why.  And I'm sorry.  In, y'know, advance.  ...I would have stolen your bubble bath this morning if there was any.  But there wasn't."