Hmmmmm.

Trying to carry it around while trying to find a bathroom sounds awkward.

Is there anything handy she could tie it to? Some piece of furniture with legs?

The sofa has legs.

She takes off her shirt.

That is a logical thing to do and he will accept this situation. Professionally.

Will he accept her tying one of the sleeves around his wrist and the other around the leg of the sofa?

....you know what, sure, he can get out any time he wants if he needs to stop her from setting the house on fire or something, he will allow it.

Cricket, on the other hand, will be literally rolling on the floor laughing his ass off.

He can really extremely get out of it if he needs to! It has occurred to Lucy that he might incidentally tug on the knots but not that he could, you know, deliberately untie them.

Okay now that the Comfy Thing is secured she’s going to go try to find a bathroom.

Oh, hey! The room the Comfy Thing ended up in after the Tickling Incident is a bathroom! What a fortuitous coincidence. Pity she didn’t know that at the time.

It does not occur to her to bother closing the door but fortunately the angles are such that this is merely notable and not deeply awkward.

Cricket has no interest in supervising her when he could be purring on Haru,

who is petting him with his free hand and snickering and admitting that it might indeed seem very funny in a week.

And Lucy returns and hugflops. She does not make any move to untie Haru, let alone put her shirt back on; but on the plus side, she didn’t decide to remove any more garments while in the bathroom.

Since Haru is now flopped on Cricket will undo the arm knot for him and then begin to summarize the entire plot of How I Met Your Mother.

Oh hm the shirt has gotten loose. Lucy unties the other end from the sofa leg and toes it around her waist; she likes that shirt and it would be a pity to lose it if the thing starts flying again.

She can do that unimpeded.

...if he puts on music, once his backlash is down enough, something everybody knows like Bohemian Rhapsody, will she sing? This has got to be psychological, maybe she'll sing even if she won't speak communicatively...

!

She’ll totally sing!

It hadn’t actually come up at any point in their communications prior to today, but it turns out she is good at singing.

I put on Bohemian Rhapsody and she will sing even though she won't, like, address me or Cricket

She does like singing. And Freddie Mercury.

He'll let the rest of the album play, then, though quietly enough that he can still hear Cricket commentating.

After a couple of songs she gets up and starts dancing.

She is a lot better at singing than dancing, but she’s definitely having fun.

Thaaaat's counter to the project of getting her guided to the point where she can maybe issue any comments about the situation. He could... dance with her, he guesses?

Well, if he gets up this will successfully jar her out of her dance-like-you-cannot-comprehend-there-being-anyone-to-watch reverie! She is briefly on high alert and then relaxes when he doesn’t, like, leave.

He's not a great dancer himself but he can do moving around vaguely to the beat in a manner which allows for guiding if she's amenable and if she's not then he's going to try to get her back onto the couch.

She does not perceive him as a potential dance partner. Back to the couch.

Would dance, would not dance with me. I think between my observations and the fact that she's compatible with me it's something about how she perceives other people, at least partially, I'm going to ask my mother if she can borrow somebody's pet which Lucy doesn't already know to be a person and see what happens.

Oh, that must be very strange for her. And for you, obviously. I’ll think about how else to test it.