“I scolded her for it. Although I’m not a hundred percent sure she didn’t feel more embarrassed by the part where I digressed into ‘the reason sex is supposed to be really good for guiding is fluid exchange’ than by the majority where I talked about consent.”

"Accusing me of taking advantage of a vulnerable awakener, whatever, being wrong about guiding mechanics, that's unforgivable."

“It’s not that she was wrong, it’s that she knew and overlooked it!”

"Ah, I see. Rank carelessness."

“She did defend herself some by saying that she knew we knew each other beforehand and not in exactly what capacity. But, like, I’m pretty sure that was an ex post facto justification and she just had esper fanfic playing in her head when she made the decision.”

"I don't read that stuff, is any of it good?"

“Some of it! Although, like, caveat, I don’t read RPF, I read esper AUs featuring fictional people.”

"What, like, Harry Potter but they're espers in addition to wizards?"

“Or instead of wizards! But yes, that kind of thing.”

"Do they all have standard powers and backlashes all these authors coordinate on or does everybody make something up?"

“Hmm, somewhere in between? Like—I don’t read that much Harry Potter specifically but not, like, none—I’ve seen several where Harry’s backlash is horrible headaches, you know, for obvious reasons, but then what power he has that goes with it varies—the authors don’t coordinate, but there are trends, is how I’d put it.”

"That sound fun but like you'd have to read a pretty high volume of fanfic to appreciate the conversation they're having."

“Well, on archiveofourown, there’s features like ‘gifts’ and ‘inspired by’ that let you just follow a lot of conversations through instead of having to come across bits individually.”

"Gifts? The stories are gifts? That's adorable."

“Yeah! You can write a story and label it as being a gift for another author!”

"Do you write these or just read 'em?"

“I just read ‘em. But my friend who I told about the story idea where people with genetic resistance to diseases can squish ‘em, she writes a lot of fanfic. Not Harry Potter, though.”

"Something I'd have heard of or nah?"

Lucy lists several fandoms that are not here reproduced to minimize the lowkey retcons required later on in order to avoid canon puncturing.

Haru has not heard of most of them and asking what the heck they're all about will carry him through the rest of his needful guiding.

And meanwhile snuggles are happening! Lucy is a big fan of this.

"I'm zeroed out. Conversation time?"

Nod.

“I like you a lot.”

"I like you too."

“I know espers have a lot of different cultural stuff around sex, for guiding reasons? And I have not totally figured out where I fit into that yet. But, uh, I think the set of states I can occupy, healthily, is wider than the set of states I would be liable to occupy based solely on my own inclinations.”