"- yeep okay I'm gonna guess something in the sensor or psychic neighborhood!"

"Aaaaaaa shit.  I didn't mean to do that - aa - are you okay?"

"I'll be fine, just, whatever that was it bounced off me and that backlashed me a little bit and I wasn't expecting that."

"I also was not expecting that.  To be clear."

"I know, it's a new power. Did me throwing it off make it impossible to tell what it was or did you get a sense of it?"

"Yeah, I don't know.  I mean, I was just - I was wondering what you were thinking and so actually it's probably definitely that."

"...huh. If it works on monsters, comes with location data, or both, it'll be good in dungeons, but I hope it's not too easy to use by accident."

"Yeah..."

"I'm not a good test subject for this but I don't know who would be, off the top of my head."

".....Cricket seems to almost always want to say what he thinks??"

"I guess it's worth asking him."

Cricket is curled up asleep in his cat bed on the window seat.

"When he wakes up.  In the meantime..."  Should they kiss????  Julien wants to know this but he does NOT want to use magic to know it.  ...Okay, cool, that didn't do anything.  "Should we guide this off?"

He doesn't move his hand or his mouth or any particular part of his body towards Haru.

"Yeah. Did you think about kissing or only about whether reality is a simulation?"

Okay suave mode attempt to engage.  "I didn't have to think about kissing."  He leans in.  "I already knew how I felt about that."

Yay he gets to kiss the cute compatible boy!! Kiss!!!

Yayyyyyyy.  Wow.  This is going to be amazing when he has more backlash and also he wonders what Haru's thinking but NO HE ACTUALLY DOESN'T.  He - is just going to be selfish for a minute and if Haru doesn't like something about this he will have to convey that externally.

Haru is easy! Literally he installed the "easy" trait several years ago and he is a slutty esper now at least in theory however disappointing the practice has historically been! Kissing away the backlash works a little better if you open your mouth a little more and also if there are possibly other points of contact, like say a hand on a waist sneaking under the shirt, for instance.

For instance that!  And for instance feeling up Haru's arms!  Haru has nice arms.  ...Julien also probably has nice arms now; he should feel himself up later and check those out, and also find out more things about the rest of his esper body.  ......And maybe more things about the rest of Haru's esper body.  Later.

Haru does have nice arms! He doesn't actually work out per se much, but this is because he believes that if you work a physically demanding job you will in the course of doing that job get the exercise necessary to keep doing it, and he does pick up heavy things (people, for instance) and put them down again, pretty frequently, in the course of said job.

It was not a very expensive backlash uptick for Haru, but they don't actually have to stop kissing as soon as there is no longer an excuse.

On the one hand the kissing is extremely nice but on the other he feels kind of electrified in wanting to know more about his power.  (NOT LIKE THAT.  NO USING IT.)  But back on the first hand there's nothing to do about this until Cricket wakes up so this is probably the best distraction available to pass the time, until Haru gets bored.

- God fucking dammit, at one point he wonders a little bit too hard whether Haru's getting bored, and in the wrong shape, and then they're back where they started.

Haru's instinctive reaction to being backlashed slightly more while kissing someone is to kiss him harder,

followed by: "...so it's maybe easy to use by accident, huh?"

"- Mmph!  Yeah..."

"Thaaaat's not great. Both because of it being some kinda mindreading power and because it means you'll be picking up backlash constantly. Probably if Cricket's down to test you'll want an idea of your range, maybe it's not too long..."