"...okay." He takes a sip of his coffee, finds the temperature just barely swiggable, swigs it. "Uh, anything you need to wrap up here, or - I walked here but my cat's waiting for me out front, stalking pigeons -"

"- That's grossly irresponsible."  Fuck fuck fuck fuck why did he say that.

"He's a person monstercat and doesn't like entering buildings without cat doors."

Oh.  Cool, Julien's going to get turned into a pigeon and then toyed with and eaten alive.  Message received he will stop being bitchy.  "Oh.  I'll... get my bag?"

"I'll go collect Cricket."

So Julien - breaks contact - and walks away from the counter, and mumbles an apology to Elise and gets a hug from her, which is awful until it seems like he really isn't about to suddenly turn spiky and blade-y in her arms, and zips up his backpack, and.... heads out front.

There's the esper! He is on his phone but pockets it and holds out his hand again when Julien approaches.

Purring winged cat on his shoulder.

Yes hand.  Haaaaaand.  Are they trying to make the torture seem worse later by providing him with hand now?  Julien will be on the lookout for this.  "Hello, hello," he says to each of them.

"Hello."

"Cricket, this is - Julien, do I have that right? And I'm Haru, or Traceless if you prefer the codename."

"You have that right.  Nice to meet you."

"House is thisaway. We live with my mom Ren. So uh - what exactly are the sunglasses doing for you if I may ask - I won't go around telling people and Cricket can fly ahead if you'd rather he not hear and you don't even really have to tell me -"

"I think I don't want to tell you quite yet."  He's got to keep his options open where he can.

"Legit. My backlash is loneliness, so I'm very chatty, but I can make phone calls and talk to Cricket and my mom if you get sick of me."

"That's good to know!  It seems fine so far, though."

"That's good. And you're pulling on it pretty hard so it should be gone in a few hours."

Plotline where this guy is nice to him while backlashed and then becomes much meaner later?  "Convenient!"

"For us, yes, I did have to apologize to my partner that I will not be joining her but I think she'll understand, we've all been through awakening, it sucks."

"I've been..." what's the tack, here - "not great, but like, fine - if you want to go visit her?  At some point."

"...if I knew for a fact you had, say, the exact same backlash as my secondary Sparkler, then that would be fine. If I don't know what it is I do not think you should be left by yourself. The most common single way for backlashes to kill people is by driving them to suicide and the fact that you haven't gotten into a corner of it like that yet doesn't mean you won't."

"...Oh."  (Oh.)

"Like mine for example, if I lean on it hard enough and there's little enough of it that I can steer I can keep it firmly in forms that don't make me want to die but it can drive me straight into suicidality-inducing delusions and I would have needed supervision during awakening even if I had wanted to be alone, which, well, conveniently - after a fasthion - I did not."

The situation is going to drive him to attempt suicide and he Should Not do that unless he can accept that whichever of "they bring him back and a new form of torture begins" and "he permadies" is more tragic and worse according to him.  "Oh."

"- so kitty, you were saying about How I Met Your Mother?"