"S -"  Okay he's just not allowed to apologize for, what, something like the next half hour.  That seems reasonable.  "Stranger things have, yeah."  Isn't there a thing about how if you can't apologize you should thank the person?  "Thanks for - going along with that."

"I don't think I was very good at it but apparently it worked."

It really did.  "Yeah."  Sniffle.  "So, you like books?  - By which I mean, what do you want to talk about.  It doesn't have to be this.  I mean it could be it just doesn't have to."

"Yeah, I like books. I could compare the Les Mis book to the musical more if this would be interesting."

"Sure."

"If this would be boring and you would not be questioning and commenting throughout it doesn't work."

"No, it would be, I'm" sorry "just..." keeping a perfect neutral-to-negative demeanor, like Bug thought.  Man, Bug was right about really a lot of things and Julien will probably have a Lot of emotions about this once he runs out of emotions about the one thing he did really wrong.  "Tired.  I really like the musical; I've listened to it a lot.  And I've seen some stuff online about what the book is like; I know there are.... digressions?  On sewers?  And some stuff about some of the barricade boys, the red one and the green one, Enjolras and something with an R?  And I know there's a doctor one and a nonbinary poet one and one that has a smackdown with Marius about being free."  Also he's read some Valvert but let's not go there, eh.

"If you're tired we can have this conversation while brushing our teeth and stuff like that. The one with the R you might be thinking of Grantaire. It's a pun, sounds like grand-R -" And he can go from there.

Julien is kind of wired, actually, and is going to need quite a bit to wind down, but brushing their teeth and getting cozy in pajama pants seems like a great idea even if they then spend a long time in bed talking about nuns and hostage situations in which Valjean ??shoves a hot fire-poker into his own arm to assert dominance?? and non-hostage situations in which Valjean gets buried alive in a coffin on purpose and also the fact that he carries multiple wigs in his coat.  Wow, Jean Valjean is just kind of fucking insane, apparently, who knew.  (Probably lots of people who aren't solely focused on gay shipping.)

How's Haru doing on backlash by the time Julien starts to actually get tired?  He doesn't want to leave him in the lurch, after that.

Snuggling is almost a social activity. With a compatible person. Haru managed to sleep while he had his own awakening and he can sleep now.

Julien is actually absolutely not going to be able to sleep without Haru singing the sweet lullaby of safety protocols to him, but also, even though he can tell it's a very bad idea, because it's critically important that Julien be as well as he can so that he doesn't cause horrible problems - he does not actually seem capable of asking for this, once Haru beds down.  He tries, well past the point where Haru's definitely all the way asleep, and then he gives up.  Nothing to do but lie here and cry a little and feel bad about himself and also his other self.  For hours.

At 1:17 in the morning Haru's phone howls.

Haru sits bolt upright and vaults out of bed to silence it. "Julien?"

Yes he's still awake.  "Yeah?"

"Emergency dungeon." He's peering at his phone now. "It must be really bad if the night shift dispatcher overrode my vacation status - and they're springing for a teleport -" He starts changing out of his pajamas.

That's so bad.  What does he say.  "That's so bad."  - Oh he has to close his eyes right now.  Aaaa.

"Yeah." He scrolls through his texts a bit and starts pulling on socks. "They're going to teleport me to Cleveland, and back...

"I shouldn't be gone for more than two, maybe three hours.

"I may be very backlashed by the time I bail out. If they need me all the way in Cleveland at one in the morning I will be really pushing it. I do my best to avoid the really dangerous versions of my backlash but I have made mistakes before and if that happens someone else will be the one deciding to send me away, and they will need to already know where I should land.

"I can wake up Ren to ask her to keep an eye on you, and have the dispatcher wake June up so she can be waiting in her silo for me.

"But if you are absolutely sure that you can sit tight and guide me down I can tell them to teleport me back here instead."

"I - I - don't think I should be the one to judge this but I think so?  Leaving here hasn't felt safer than staying, at any point.  - Except when the fire alarm went off, I'm sorry, I forgot that, I felt safer leaving then."

"Okay.

"If you do have some kind of panic such that I will not be instantly able to find you upon teleporting home, you need to make sure Ren wakes up in the process, I'm leaving her a text in case you can't explain in full. She can't guide me but she got me through my awakening alive and can drag me to June's if she has to."

"Okay."  Heeeee's going to mess this up and Haru is going to DIE(?).  "Should you - if you call me right before you port back will that work, and if I don't pick up or if I'm crazy then you can do something else?"

"That will probably work but if I am very badly off I will not believe you exist and will accordingly not call you."

"Can you tell the dispatcher?  I - don't want to kill you -"

"- yeah, I can give them your number." Tap tap tap. "The thing is that June's certainly asleep and would need notice to get up and get situated in her silo, and I don't know exactly when I'll be through with the dungeon, so there will be a point of no return where if enough things go a particular way, all of which are individually unlikely but not impossible, it's here with you or I'm in trouble. It's possible I should just have her woken up anyway -"

He does NOT want to be abandoned (in a way where his brain apparently counts other guiding for that but not really the dungeon itself) but it is MORE IMPORTANT that Haru doesn't DIE.  Oh great, more crying.  "Maybe, yeah," he chokes.

"I wish I had, like, any idea literally at all, how much she'd mind that." Tap tap. "Dispatcher'll says he'll wake June up in half an hour if you're not answering texts reassuringly, I won't be done in half an hour unless I need a hospital more than I need a guide."

Nod nod nod nod nod.  "Sounds," good fine "smart."