"Dispatcher should be sending you a text now. I'm not taking any guns out because my usual guy won't be able to put them away for me if I can't when I'm operating in another city, but I'm going to go get some other gear on in the garage, and then disappear. See you in a few." He pats Julien's shoulder and heads out.

This is Great Lakes night dispatcher Matthew Chandler, please confirm this text has not gone astray

says Julien's phone.

Julien Doucet confirming.

Where did the tissues get to.  Right, there.  Great.

The dispatcher sends a checkmark.

If Julien listens closely he can hear a little bustle en route to and in the garage.

Then silence.

Okay.
Okay.

He - was already planning to spend tonight feeling bad, and - that's different, without a source of magic making him feel less bad, and a person that he could in theory wake up if something terrible happened.  ....He still has a person he can (and must) wake up if something goes terribly.

This calls for a checklist.  That's what you use when you can't trust your brain, even if it's just because it can't hold all the things you need it to.  Okay, laptop, new notes document, ☐ Optional: Wake up Ren.  What else could go wrong, what else would really fuck everything up and be awful and horrible.  ☐ Charge phone.  It doesn't really need it, not on the scale of three hours, but it would be SO bad if Julien was fine actually but no one knew it because his phone was dead.  Similarly, ☐ Do not restart phone (unless there is some sort of horrible glitch?  Decide whether to restart phone before 01:45.).  🗹 Charge laptop.  ☐ Develop strategy (Bug?  Guitar?  Movie?  Other?)  (Hoping is not a strategy!).  ☐ Cricket?

If there is a natural disaster of some sort he's already just fucked, but at least unless there's something really astonishingly horrible in the coincidence department, Haru will correctly abandon him and be fine.

☐ Set up nest in obvious location (couch?).  ☐ Arrange reality to not have to leave nest from 01:45-06:00.  Sublist: ☐ Bathroom ☐ Water ☐ Snacks ☐ Blanket ☐ Devices ☐ Guitar? ☐ Remote ☐ Tissues ☐ Wastebasket.

There are guns in the garage.  There are guns in the garage and Haru isn't here.  They're locked up, though.  It doesn't seem like it would help anything to type about them.  He digs his phone charger out of his luggage, plugs it in next to his laptop, and checks the relevant tickybox.

Sublist under strategy: ☐ Decide whether to think about sel[f/ves] or to ~Definitely Not Do That~.  🗹 Make lots of list.  (It's always nice to give yourself a couple of really easy items that you've already done, on a list like this; it's good motivation.)

Entertainment header.  ☐ More eye pictures.  ☐ Homework.  ...Everything else on here is maybe covered under strategy.  Time to start moving objects around.  He collects all the objects from the nest sublist and checks them off one at a time, then - wow, time goes by pretty fast in situations like this; he slips to the bathroom and washes his hands with his eyes closed so he doesn't get distracted by the mirror and is back to the couch at 1:43.  Two minutes isn't time enough for anything, so anything he doesn't have here now he does not have.  He will not move from this spot for the next several hours.  He checks off the one about not restarting his phone.

Hoping is really, really not a strategy, so he should make an actual one, but he really, really does not want to miss the dispatcher text when it comes in, so he's going to spend the next however-long-that-takes swapping between an easy-mode puzzle game and his texting app, in case his notifications decide not to work at this moment for some reason.

At 1:50:

Report is he's holding steady. Are you?

Yes.

he types, and then fixes the capitalization and adds a

So far,

at the front.  Send.