Here's one of the regulars! He's never given his name, but one of Julien's co-workers swears he must be an esper because he's so hot, even though his hair is not neon. "Mocha and a maple eclair please."

"Coming right up!"

Oh god oh god - it's fine.  This is a sign that something bad is going to happen to him, but everything is a sign that something bad is going to happen to him, so he can handle it.  Here's the card reader.

He taps his phone. Beep.

And then goes over to the here's-your-order counter, right?  Away from Julien?

Yup, there he goes.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Julien experiences relief, but he does experience: the lack of an extremely bad thing happening to him.

The next day, a coworker says something seems different about him, like, in the way he looks - and Julien, extremely importantly, has not done something different with his hair (he's been very carefully showering on exactly the same schedule as before), has not started or stopped wearing glasses (his eyesight is as vaguely-slightly-weak as ever), has not stopped or started wearing guyliner again - nothing about him should be different.

So... that's it, then.  That's the thing.

He should still, definitely, keep an eye out for other things; it would be idiotic to let his guard down even a little.  But this is where his primary focus should be.  Because now, now that someone's commented on it, he absolutely cannot look in any mirrors.  Because whatever he sees there is probably not going to be something he likes.  He's 100% going to be some sort of monster, the instant he looks, and then... it'll be all over.

The next day he has a late shift, and this Timmy Ho's has a west-facing window.  So it's totally normal, Julien reasons, to wear sunglasses.  The sun is right there, shining directly at him.  In his eyes.  It's normal.  Everything's normal.

He doesn't take them off even after it gets properly dark.

In comes a regular. "Hi, I need to be conscious and capable of human speech for the next four to six hours or so, can I get a double double please?"

"Of course!"  Oh god.  Also: putting orders into the tablet involves sooo muuuch looking at his own hands, but probably they're not going to change right in front of him, into - crab claws, or praying mantis arms, or whatever monster they're going to make him, so as long as he's careful every time they leave or enter his vision, then, it - might - be okay.

...Fuck, was that too long a blink, after the nights filled with 'mares - safer to keep his eyes closed for a minute, until he regroups; it's not even like anyone can tell that he's doing it.  (Or, the people running things can definitely tell, but none of the characters can, not without giving themselves away.)  He will - feel - around for - there it is, the card reader - here you go, suspiciously hot regular.

"Are you okay?" Reach.

Aaaaaaa.  "Ye -"  Bump.

"- dude, you are not okay, you have more backlash on you than I do and I just did a dungeon, are you awakening?"

What.  What?  Is this - this is how things are going.  Okay.

"What?"

"I'm an esper - and espers can tell when we touch other espers - did you just start awakening recently with some kind of symptom -" He has his hand extended where Julien could clasp it if he wanted to. "Something which is compatible with me but that doesn't tell me exactly what it is..."

"I -"  If he accepts this questline then in a week he's definitely going to be some sort of ravening beast.  But he probably already was going to be, and sooner than that, and also... realistically there's no way he can unobtrusively maneuver out of this.  He already failed that when he touched this guy's hand.

"I... have to wear sunglasses."

"Well, that's three for three on people compatible with me who have to wear sunglasses, I guess. Uh, you should possibly be in the hospital, or else I could take you to my house, backlash is dangerous and I do not think you should be working at Tim's while awakening because that is insane."

It's..... well, first of all he, yeah, takes the esper's hand, finally.  He's cooperating.  It's after dark, in the summer, so it's got to be pretty late.  He doesn't want to look at devices any more than he has to.  "We close at ten?"

"I am almost positive that you can get time off for having an esper awakening and if Tim Horton's sucks about this for some reason you can flip them off because you are going to be an esper, even if your powers suck you can do better than a coffee shop job. - if you have some kind of short term money problem for which you need this week's paycheck in particular I can cover it?"

"Julien oh my god, go the fuck home."

"- Mind your own business, Elise!"  Also home isn't even the place he'd be going.  Can he avoid going with this man.... doesn't seem so.  Aaaaaaaa.

"It is reasonable to not to want to walk off with someone you have barely met to be clear! But like at least go home with a family member who can watch you or to the hospital, it is vanishingly rare for it to be outright impossible for a backlash to kill you - admittedly it is also vanishingly rare for a backlash to allow you to work at Tim Horton's but if I had for some reason been trying to do that with mine I could maybe have done some of the tasks before I, you know, died."

...Hospitals definitely have a lot of torture equipment in them, whereas options for random dudes are like.... kitchen knives baseball bats rape?  Mayyyybe a chainsaw???  And psychic pain rays, of course; esper.  Back home in the country with Mom is.... no.  Absolutely not.

"No, I can... it seems fine?"

"...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 fashion - 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?"

"I think some of the personality archetypes have aged poorly, but Neil Patrick Harris does a timeless job of selling the internal struggles of his character Barney -"

(They can go on like that as long as Julien doesn't have anything to say.)

Yeah he does not.  This is preferable.

And here's Haru's house. His phone and fingerprint unlock it; beep. When they get in, he (still asking Cricket questions about How I Met Your Mother) pulls his shirt off.

Oh.  Aaaaaaaaaaaa.  Sure.  Sure, right, that makes sense.  Julien will close his eyes and do the same.

Haru holds up his arm in a shoulder-putting fashion but doesn't close the distance. "- so it didn't say on IMDB?"

"I didn't check IMDB. I really doubt they had even cast the mother at that point, and the fact that she's white was already pretty obvious from looking at Ted's kids."

Julien has no idea Haru does this because his eyes remain closed.  It'll take him a minute to correctly psych himself up to be unsurprisable about looking down at himself and seeing a fly body or whatever.  And if he's unsurprisable then there will be no point in trying to surprise him with it right now.

"Yeah, that's - Julien? How much can I read into the shirt, here, I don't want to presume."

"Uh, it's -"  If Haru touches him then that's a really easy opportunity for Julien to feel the hand hit something that isn't his regular body map.  So he should touch Haru, but he also needs to psych himself up for that in the right way...  "I need a minute."

"Okay. - so they locked themselves into a white-passing mother so it doesn't super matter whose leg it was, nobody except that weird feet website is going to check."

"Right. Anyway, the umbrella -"

Wow it's really hard to think while other people are talking.  But he can't walk away because his eyes are closed and he doesn't even know the layout of this place well enough to attempt to try bumping around.

He manages to be confident about his brain being in the right shape after - who knows how long.  Seems like ages, though, and then he can look down at himself and watch his hand as it goes onto Haru's shoulder and be really confident the whole time that it would be lame storytelling for it to turn into a pigeon wing with him staring at it expecting that.

Haru slots into arms-around-each-other while continuing to talk about How I Met Your Mother. Someone named Barney is having a flashback episode, apparently. Julien and Haru could sit on the couch like this?

No no no he didn't expect that - let alone correctly - he's going to -

........Okay, it appears that in this instance he has not been turned into a monster.  And probably once's contact's been established, there's no - rugpull element, left to exploit.

(But that information doesn't translate into ability to move, just yet.)

...okay they can stand there then??

Julien certainly doesn't seem likely to cause anything else to happen.

...okay. Haru has no idea what's up with him but whatever it is is Hell Week so he will stand there and talk about Barney's character arc. Cricket ships him with Robin, apparently.

Julien stands all day for a living, so he's pretty good with this.

...Except that he already did nearly a full shift of that.  So after a bunch of minutes he goes slightly limp to get out from under Haru's arm and sits down on the floor.

"- sounds like sedoretu - Julien? We could sit on the couch?"

"Oh, okay."  He gets back up and will trail Haru to the couch.  Even if it will then take him a while to sit down on it.

Haru sits down. Puts an arm over the back of the cushions, though, like, only one arm, so Julien could sit on the other side.

After some staring Julien takes Haru's hand before sitting, then moves down to place it on his shoulder, and - gradually sidles up quite snuggily, over the course of a few minutes.  But any time Haru moves he jumps.

Okay, Haru can hold pretty still while he is talking to Cricket about whether Marshall, Lily, Robin, and Ted work as a sedoretu. He has to explain sedoretus to Cricket.

Sounds interesting.  ...........And also like it might be relevant somehow later???  It has not escaped Julien that Haru is like, hot, and shirtless specifically because of Julien, and - probably something is meant to come of this.  Snuggle.  (Extremely deliberately and carefully.)

Cricket eventually concludes that the weak leg of the sedoretu is Marshall and Ted, he's just not seeing it, and also the format leaves Barney out in the cold, but it does play very nicely with Lily being canonically down bad for Robin, although Robin does not really seem to reciprocate. Now it is time to talk about Barney's brother, who is just like Barney except a) inexplicably black and b) gay.

Isn't Neil Patrick Harris - should Julien be participating in this conversation??  "Isn't Neil Patrick Harris -" actually, no, he shouldn't be, what was he thinking.  Aaaaaa.

"- well in real life yes but he is an actor, simpleton."

- Is this the part where he gets turned into a pigeon -

No. "Anyway Barney's brother settles down and gets married and Barney's horrified about the monogamy..."

Okay!!  Julien is just going to sit here forever, apparently.  This is so much worse than working even accounting for the "guiding".

Eventually, after a couple hours, Haru's contributions to the conversation slow down. He asks Cricket to bring him his e-reader.

Cricket does this, and then goes over to his catbed in the window seat for a Nap.

Haru goes through the comments section on - a blog? His blog, apparently, he bans a spammer.

If he doesn't look at Haru's computer then it can't be used to jumpscare him with something horrible.  It's not even boring to refrain because there's just so much to worry about.

Then they'll have a low-key time of it till Haru's - backlash, that's presumably backlash? - drops away to a baseline level. "It's late," he says, shutting his computer. "We've got a guest room, do you want to try having it to yourself - mind you'll get worse from where you are as soon as I let go of you till you're up to where you were at at Tim's - or have a sleepover? I think you'll fit in my pajama pants all right."

...The last time he talked - was bad.  So he'll just - well first he sits up, but then he shakes his head.

"......I can recast that as a yes-or-no question. Should I do that?"

Nod.

"Do you want to try sleeping alone in the guest bed?"

...Nod.

"Okay. Do you want to borrow some pajamas?"

Nod??

"Are you good to follow me up to my room to get them?"

Hhhh.  ....But - nod.

Haru's room is upstairs. He's got a fantasy-modded Civilization screenshot as desktop wallpaper; it comes up when the dresser drawer makes the desk wobble enough to jiggle the mouse. He produces a pair of pajama pants and a gray T-shirt that look like they'll probably fit Julien. "Guest room is over here," he says, when these have been excavated. "If your backlash gets to you badly enough that you can't sleep you can wake me up and I can join you, okay? I'm not going to be weird about it."

Julien is absolutely not going to be able to sleep alone, but he also isn't going to be able to with this guy there, otherwise he would have while not being bored on the couch.  Nod.

"You want first crack at the bathroom? I can get you an unopened toothbrush."

Nod.

Toothbrush, and Haru disappears into his room, leaving Julien with the pajamas and the toothbrush.

Teethbrushing is easy except that he remembers halfway through that this is more attention than he usually pays to the inside of his mouth and that's a prime opportunity for Suddenly Teeth, so he has to pause and freak out about that and then stop freaking out about that enough to finish up with no opportunity for surprise.  And then of course it takes several minutes to prepare to actually change, especially since there's a mirror.  He can face away from the mirror but he can't make there not be one.

But he does eventually emerge, with clean teeth and pajamas and also still the sunglasses.

"Sleep well," says Haru, and he goes into the bathroom himself.

Sure, lol.

Okay, the guest room was - Haru said that door, and it could have any number of things inside of it, such as mirrors or monsters or - anything.  He gets his head in order and goes in.

The guest room has a bed! A nightstand! A window, with curtains! No mirror, as it happens. There is a dresser. There is a wall hanging that might be from India or something.

Okay Julien is going to - first of all, turn on the light and close the door behind him, and then do brains about the window before making sure the curtains are as tight and opaque as he can make them, and then - get in the bed, and with the lights and sunglasses on, try and endure the next however many hours.

He does, despite himself, drift off at a few points.  He dreams of being chased through warehouses, of being caught and torn apart, of being stitched back together in new configurations.  Of being eaten by a tiger or lion or something - he only sees the eyes, while it's stalking him, and then the inside of the mouth, while he's being eaten, and then transforming inside it, as the acid sizzles him away, into something even more large and awful and powerful, with lots of limbs, wings and tentacles and wolf-legs and eyes - and he claws and strains and bursts his way out - it was a leopard, looks like - and then there's the people who failed to save him (were they there, when he was being hunted?  ...it's still their fault, their fault and his right); he reaches for them and grasps them and shovels them into his great mouth -

He wakes up and, right, the light's on and he's in this room, this strange room - aaaa he can see his body and everything is - still the same.  So far.  It stays still the same.  He feels really bad, he - bites his arm, not that hard, until he feels enough better to stop doing that.  He is not going to torture himself for their benefit, they're going to have to put in the work for that, but he - he's allowed to ground himself.  It helped.

The rest of the night continues in much the same way.  He tries to keep the pain to a minimum but everything is so bad and after another few rounds of nightmares he ends up pressing his other arm into the corner of the nightstand until he feels like he can breathe again.  And then he's really really very definitely not allowed to do anything more because the marks might not fade by morning and someone might take that as evidence that he wants to be hurt a lot more.  So instead he just curls up as tight as he can go, clenching all his muscles, and - it's really not as good but he doesn't die of it not being as good, or anything.

In the morning someone knocks on the door.

Hhhhhh.

"Come in!"

Haru pokes his head in. "Hey, you sleep all right?"

"It was okay."  ....Wait - "Do you want me to talk?  Or -"

"- I'm not backlashed right now so I don't need you to talk, if you'd rather do the nodding and shaking your head thing."

What does that meeeeeeean.  Nod.

"Scrambled eggs for breakfast sound good?"

Nod!

"I haven't practiced cooking in contact with another person in a while but I did a fair amount of it when I was awakening if you want to shake off some overnight backlash." Hand?

Stare stare stare stare hand do not turn into a monster - hand.

And they can go downstairs and Haru will make them scrambled eggs. He puts ketchup on his and Julien is free to do that or not do that.

Julien refrains.  (Because he closed his eyes again and toppings including salt seem way too hard to navigate like that.)

There's salt in the eggs. Haru sits on his left so he can eat with his right hand; he manages left-hand eating for himself.

Julien manages the first half of his eggs pretty well but as they get sparser he starts to do worse.

"You want me to nudge all those into the near end of your plate for you so they're easier to stab blind?"

How does he - probably it's pretty obvious.  Even with the sunglasses, even if he's not reading Julien's mind.  Nod.

Nudge nudge the eggs. "There you go."

Well, eggs.

When the eggs are gone - hm. Haru stacks the plates and puts the forks on top of them but does not attempt to clear them with his uncommunicative awakening guy. "Couch?"

This bit would be easier if his brain would - just - get in the right shape, so that he could open his eyes.  He could get walked anywhere with his eyes closed.  (He could also get walked anywhere with his eyes open, but.)

He's so tired...  Also he broke his own rule last night because he didn't eat after work, and he ate some during work but that was before five o'clock and really more of a lunch-sized number of calories, and he didn't notice he was hungry because of all the everything else but now he feels super hungry.  But he's got this prison guard who he can't talk to so there's not really any way for him to get more food.

Nod.

"...if walking is bad I can carry you?"

"- No -"

"Okay. Just offering. Whenever you're ready."

Fuck.  ...But - "Should I talk for logistics reasons, and then shut up the rest of the time?  Or always be silent."

"- I have no idea what your symptoms are or why talking is sometimes bad. I think we can get through the week on nodding and shaking your head if that's what you need and I think we can still do that if you want more guiding than I can do on no backlash."

"...It did not seem like you wanted me to talk."

"I'm not very talkative when I'm not backlashed, and when I am backlashed I need conversation at a clip that seemed like it was going to be hard for you to sustain so I was focusing on Cricket. But I have no underlying wish for you to not talk."

...Okay, so, maybe the monster is the one in charge here.

"I'm still really hungry."

"Oh! More eggs or do you wanna have a look in the pantry? - or have me recite the contents of the pantry if this is an eyes closed time."

"Either is fine.  I have my eyes open."

"Pantry's this way."

They've got various snacks, a range of aggressively pedestrian things and weird hippie stuff.

Potato chips, then.  He'll follow Haru's lead on whether to take them back to the table or to the couch.

Couch is good. Haru's got Les Mis to read.

Julien is going to scarf down quite a lot of potatoes and then do his slow, careful snuggleup-ing, out of the way of the book, and then - doze off.  Food coma style.

Although... not quite enough like a coma that he doesn't have dreams.  Sometimes there are little variously-unhappy noises, too quiet to carry through walls but definitely noticeable now that he's right on Haru.

Poor guy. Once he's asleep Haru risks repositioning a little for more surface area, very gently.

"-Nn?"

Whoops. "Everything's fine, you can nap."

..........Right, everything is awful but this is in line with what he knows about the awful situation.

Back asleep.

Haru does his best not to move for the rest of the nap. Poor Julien.

After not too long the noises get denser and unhappier until Julien wakes up, gasping.

"Whoa, hey. Bad dream, I take it."

What - Right.  "Yeah."

"Hell week is the fucking worst."

"Yeah."  Sure.  Whatever this is certainly sucks.  And he can't even bite himself to calm down because he's right in front of Haru, and then one of them will turn into a beast with big teeth and eat the other one, probably.

Haru Holds Perfectly Still Even Though His Right Hip Is Really Starting To Dislike That.

Well, Julien curls up real tight in on himself, which is definitely a movement.  It's not aimed at doing anything to Haru's hip, though.

"Iiiiis it okay if I move also, you didn't seem to like it when you were asleep."

"I -" he's got to come up with a pretend backlash, hasn't he.  And maybe whoever's running things will think it's funny, he's funny, if - well first he should get off of Haru.  "I can touch you but you can't touch me, is the thing.  Or else I might turn into a monster."

"...I don't think I follow you."

"If I know - exactly - where I am, and what I am, then I can't turn into a monster.  But if there are surprises then I could."

"...okay. Uh, I don't really expect telling you this to help but just in case, espers do not physically transform into nonhuman organisms, ever, it's just some pigment stuff and getting fitter and more symmetrical."

Hahahahaha yeah, sure, espers in the real world don't.  "I know."

"And psychological backlash is often a little malleable though I guess it's completely plausible that this is the best you can do at the moment. But if the idea is just - that you need to be the one to close the distance - that's simple, I can remember that." He crosses his knees to quiet the angry hip, stretches out his spine a bit, holds out his arm again.

Julien - should be thinking about this as a negotiation, as, he did a thing that was maybe causing more entertainment for the showrunners, but also kind of making things easier on himself.  He really and truly has no idea what they want, no way of guessing it.  So to play it safe, he should... give them crumbs.  Something to entice them.  Make it look like he's working his way up to something juicy.

Arm.  Snuggle.  "Does... do you think that would work for more - traditional - forms of guiding?"

"Uh, I can't say I've ever specifically tried to hold perfectly still while someone kissed me before."

"....Maybe before that we could try - you letting me know where... places you might move are.  Like if I know you're going to be moving your hand around my arm, then I can - take a minute, to pay attention to my whole arm in the right way, and then say go."

"...sure, I can try to do that. Does this only apply to parts of me that are in contact, you've mostly seemed okay about me turning pages...?"

"Yeah it's about contact."

"Gotcha. Uh, I'm comfortable at present but as a dry run how about - I'd like to pick up my arm and switch to having my wrist on your right shoulder, give my elbow a break from being extended?"

"Okay."

Haru stretches out his arm and repositions as described.

Julien doesn't jump.

"Success."

"Success."

If that seems to be all Haru returns his attention to Les Mis.

Okay????  Confusing.

(If this carries on long enough he might get dozy again.)

It doesn't go on that long. Eventually Haru says, "Thoughts on lunch?"

Okay, okay, so, the thing is, the last time he made the very slightest foray into anything resembling 'fun' conversation, everything got very scary very fast, and like, was really bad not even from a simulation perspective.  He would have been pretty upset even if it had happened in the real world.  The monster said something that - customers at Tim's sometimes treat him like a simpleton but they don't usually call him one, or even equivalent terms except once.  And Haru didn't say anything about it, he said literally nothing.  And the scary part is that Julien doesn't know what it means.  The most concrete idea he has is that Cricket's in charge and so Haru doesn't feel like speaking up against him for whatever reason, out of fear or resignation or what, but he's really not confident in that at all; he just doesn't have any other frames.

But if he's supposed to be kissing Haru then he should attempt, even a little, to be - charming, or something like it; casual, friendly.  If he's too stressed for charming to be on the table.  So he wants to point out self-depreciatingly that he just ate like half a bag of chips, but then something awful will happen.  Like maybe Haru will point out that it wasn't 'just', because some large amount of time passed while he was napping, or he'll say something judgey and disparaging about the idea of anyone eating half a bag of chips in one go, or -

"My secondary sometimes doesn't like to eat when backlashed but if he were going to eat something in spite of that it would absolutely never be potato chips so I assume you don't have exactly his thing."

"...I'm kind of full."

"Okay. I'll make a box of KD and it'll warm over fine if you want some of it in an hour or two?"

"Sure.  Thank you."

"No problem. Do you want to do the cooking-while-guiding dance or nah?"

That involves sooo much moving and also there are knives in there.  "Whatever you want is fine."

"Okay. Faster if we don't, I guess, but this is an extremely weak preference and if you change your mind please don't hesitate to chase me into the kitchen, okay?"

Like if he turns into a BEAST?  "Okay."

"I'm gonna stand up when you're ready, say when."

Well Julien can take a beat and then disconnect himself from Haru and - "When."  (Wait was that being the kind of friendly that'll get him at minimum a really mean reply??  He didn't even think about that; it's just the standard response, to him...)

Hup. Operation KD is go.

Not-relief-but-a-lack-of-a-bad-thing-happening-to-him!

It doesn't take very long to make. Haru returns to the couch with his bowl of pasta. "I'm gonna sit back down when you're ready?"

"You can sit now and I'll touch you in a sec?"

"Sure." Plop.

Sliiiide.  Arm in contact.

Holding sooooo still except for his opposite-side arm with which he will take a bite of food.

This is acceptable!  Julien continues to get cuddlier about it.

Oh good. Perhaps Haru has solved the puzzle of how to guide this guy through hellweek. We can dream.

As part of the cuddliness increasing, Julien plants his face on Haru's arm.  Half of it, more specifically, because of the sunglasses.  Which leaves the mouth half!  The thing he's doing is not really describable as kissing, but it's maybe heading in that direction???

...

"...you holding up okay there?"

"I didn't just get worse?"

"It's just, uh, you're slightly eating my arm."

He jerks back.  "No I wasn't -"

"I'm fine, just, not sure what you were going for there."

Julien very thoroughly checks around the inside of his mouth with his tongue for teeth becoming sharp, and then his hands for visual confirmation that his fingers aren't growing claws.

"...did I say something wrong?"

"I wasn't going to eat you."

"No, I know, it's just, like - I wasn't speaking technically."

"I didn't even have my mouth open..."

"Okay! I couldn't see it."

"Sorry."

"Anyways."

"Mm-hm." Les Mis.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Because it is a classic French novel Haru hasn't had time to read before!

Well eventually Julien will resnuggle.

Oh good. It is important for health reasons. Haru eats his KD with his free hand and reads.

This is sooooo booooring but it being so boring is hugely significantly better than it being torture, so he's not going to do anything to change it.

Eventually Cricket wakes up and awakens his computer and baps the spacebar and resumes his movie marathon. Julien can probably hear most of the dialogue from the couch if listening to the audio only of House episodes is an improvement.

It is except for how it's very very terrifying for Cricket to be awake and Julien to have constant sensory evidence of this.

Well, he's not doing anything about being awake, he's just lounging there watching House. Eventually he pauses mid-it-not-being-lupus and trots into the kitchen to serve himself fish; the kitchen has cat accommodations so he can do this.

Hhhhhhhhhhh.

Om nom nom fish. Then he goes to the bathroom and comes out again and resumes House.

Julien WANTS TO GO BACK TO WORK.  Things were FINE at work.  (Things were actually quite bad at work.)  But at least there were things to do and he could mostly rely on pretending things were normal and not looking at himself being The Things That Were Happening.  He has no idea what thing is happening here; he has no idea how to navigate this, and he has no task to distract him from wondering.  And no way to calibrate whether he's doing it correctly.

"Are you bored?" Haru asks eventually.

Oh no oh no oh no.  If he says yes then he's going to be tortured for his impertinence.  But if he says no, then, any reasonable person would be bored in this situation, it's going to blow his cover and they'll know, and they'll know he was lying -  "I... am awakening."

"I was bored, when I was awakening, sometimes, when I ran out of interesting things to talk about, which was frequently because I had to be talking every minute I was awake. Is there a form of entertainment you can presently tolerate?"

"....Is there anything I can do for you?  Like a task?"

"...it'd be makework but if that would help I can come up with something?"

"I don't want you to make up makework."

"Okay. I don't really have a task I non-makeworkly need from you. I've got books. We can put Cricket's TV show on the big screen. I think my mother owns board games. You have your phone, right? Does it need charging?"

"I don't have my phone."  Electronics are scary; ANYTHING could jumpscare him on one.  That's what they're for, showing different content.  "Screens are shiny and I could see myself in one by surprise."  (This is also true.)  Board games are... he's going to accidentally gamble and lose his soul if he tries to play one??  "I don't know about the rest."

"Do you want to go pick a book off my shelf to try?"

"...Do you have any that are going to turn me into a monster?"  If he lampshades the possibility of something horrible happening because of books then that would be a really lame time to do something horrible to him with books.  "Like the Necronomicon or whatever?"

"No. I don't think that's even a real book? I have some science fiction and various classics in French and English and also Banaag at Sikat if you happen to read Tagalog."

Uh-huh.  "...I know that espers don't - actually - turn into monsters."  (In real life.)  "But if there are ones that are - kind of at all related to, to that subject, then I don't want to see them.  Or really just scary things in general."

"Okay, so, no Jekyll and Hyde, no Kafka's Metamorphosis, perhaps no Midsummer Night's Dream. Dickens? Oliver Twist or something."

All he knows about that is from a vaguely-remembered referential segment on a kids' show and that maybe there's a musical that adapts the story with hippies??  "Isn't that about starving children?"

"Starving children feature but they are all completely human throughout."

"I... think I am also probably not feeling up to scathing social commentary about the horrors of the past.  Or present, or future."

"Okay. Uh. Hm. Austen? Verne, if you read French, I've only got the original French."

He does not read French very well.  From what Julien knows Austen sounds like also pretty scathing social commentary about the past, although maybe rich people have it better enough that it won't be bonus awful for him emotionally on top of the general situation.  Also he's like, not a girl, so, that probably helps, the not being able to completely empathize with The Woman's Plight.  - NO that's a GREAT way to get TURNED INTO A GIRL.  Or woman, whatever, and then sent to the past when things were really bad for them.  "Austen might be okay."

"Let's go get you, hm, Emma, and if that sucks we can swap it out for something. I'll stand up when you're ready?"

Julien disconnects from Haru.

Hup. "Do you want to come or should I just nip up and grab it?"

A thing Julien has learned is that there are just sooo many reflective surfaces, everywhere.  "I'll sit tight."

"Okay. Be right back."

Up the stairs he goes. Down them he comes. He's got Emma but has also found Anne of Green Gables, a Shakespeare sonnet collection, and a Dr. Dolittle omnibus. "Dr. Dolittle has the guy talking to animals but no characters transform into anything else," he says, "I don't know if that's okay or not at the moment but here it is."

Sounds bad.  Anne might have less bad stuff in it, but is about children in addition to girls, and he doesn't want to get turned into one of those either, and also from what he remembers it's kind of - lessony?  If he experiences lessons for children then he will probably have to be perfect at those in addition to everything else going on and that sounds like way too much to handle.  And he does like poetry.  "Thanks."  He reaches for the Shakespeare.

"I'm mostly more of a novels person but if poems are better I have a couple more booksful. I'm gonna sit down when you're ready."

"Yeah go ahead."  He's gonna sit over here for a minute, though.

Julien remembers enough to know that 18 is the really famous one that probably won't have anything that bad in it (or if it does he should find that very suspicious), and it's fine, and then he carries on to the next one from there.

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d phoenix, in her blood;

Nope nope nope nope nope.  He closes the book, and his eyes, and focuses on the feeling in his hands and mouth to catch it if they change.

"- Julien?"

"Hi."

"Poems no good after all?"

"Not really."

"I could put on music? ...possibly entirely instrumental music to eliminate the risk of lyrics that have whatever the poem issue was."

"Okay."

Haru does phone things. The speakers begin to emit Vivaldi.

Oh god is this going to turn into The Rite of Spring and is Julien going to go feral and riotous in response to hearing it.  ....No, the Four Seasons are different.  That was a different guy.

Sssssslow snuggle.  Still with his eyes closed.

They can hang out like that for quite a while. Haru's Unlimited Old Instrumental Music Playlist is long and so is Les Mis.

It's not obvious when Julien falls asleep but it is obvious when he starts whimpering again.

Poor guy, but if he wants to read Les Mis while this is happening he can't do much about it.

It eventually trails off, this time, instead of waking him up.

Oh good. Julien can nap as long as he wants.

He apparently wants about two and a half hours.

........Haru's going to try being imperceptible to the touch and if that doesn't alarm Sleepy Julien all by itself he will see if it lets him move.

He doesn't notice the power use and rouses a little but doesn't wake in response to the movement.

Lifehack. Okay. He wait for the little lick of backlash to ebb away - there it goes - and back to Les Mis.

Julien's pretty bleary upon waking.

"Did you not sleep at all last night?"

"...Last night was... what time is it?  And what day?  - I remember.  I slept some."

"It's three-something... three-thirty-two. Sunday."

"I remember," he repeats.  "....I would be - differently anxious - if I knew whether we were going to be doing kissing things at some point."  Possibly saying this will cause horrible things to happen now, but maybe he'll get some leeway from just having woken up.  - Or maybe that's back-justification and he's legitimately impaired and he said it impulsely.

"- I wasn't planning on it, I don't know quite what's up with you and don't want to be - taking advantage of your state, here."

What's a point that makes sense in character.  "...I think my state is, if anything slightly scary happens to me, I will jump three feet back, which - isn't good, but at least prevents the worst bad."

"But I don't have a great model of what things are slightly scary, like, why was sonnet nineteen a problem."

"- It was about like, beasts and violence.  As a metaphor, but.  Still."

"Which hit too close to home about the - transformation anxiety -?"

"Yeah."  Yawn.  "I think I also only want - the most saltine cracker of entertainment right now.  In general."  Good to cover for when he inevitably reacts poorly to something else.

"Is the instrumental music good for that?"

"Yeah, pretty good."

"Okay. Anyway, I think probably we should not do kissing things, it doesn't seem like you need them to survive the week or anything and if you're still into the idea next week nothing's stopping us then."

"...I might have further thoughts but I'm going to save them for when I'm more awake.  If ever."

"Valid."

Well, more cuddles, then.  As if they haven't already done shirtless ones and as if those are somehow substantively different from kissing.

"Do you want the remaining KD? I can stick it in the microwave for you."

"...Yes please."  And he unsnuggles, after a beat.

Haru gets up, plates and nukes the noodles, and brings them back and offers them and a fork.

Julien doesn't feel that hungry until three bites in and then he's kind of ravenous, again.  Om nom nom nom.

"You want anything to supplement that? We've got, like. Apples? OJ?"

Apples have texture and are associated with evil and he could choke on one or turn into a villain about it, but if he has orange juice then that's two orange things and maybe he'll turn into an oompa loompa about it??  Or a tiger or something.  Probably not a tiger, from this.  That would be weird.  "I could go for some orange juice!"

"Sure. We can also get groceries, I don't know what you normally eat." Glass of orange juice is fetched. It is no-pulp.

Ugh, here comes the choice of whether he should say he's vegetarian or should definitely not do that.  He should assume that he's definitely going to be presented with meat, at some point, and if he doesn't say it'll probably happen sooner and it'll break the conceit here, and if he does then it'll probably be surreptitious and maybe worse.  Technically he's been presented with a lot of meat already, in human bodies, for if he turns into a beast.  And there's also a potential plot beat where if he gets turned into a pigeon or whatever, where he gets mocked for already having been some sort of inherent prey animal, for the ethical choice he's made.

...Oh, but there's something that sidesteps all that, at least sort of, "- I don't want to eat meat this week."

"Understandable. Does fish count? Eggs and dairy okay?"

"Yes; yes.  Normally I eat a lot of frozen and canned stuff but that's just for convenience."  ...Are they going to send him a mutilated baby chick corpse when he tries to have an egg.  Welp, too late now.

"We've got lots of convenience food, it's so convenient you see. I think the chicken flavor instant ramen is fake, and the soy sauce flavor is almost definitely vegan..."

"Yeah, they are."  Wait.  Should he say he knows because of a friend?  No, that's too obvious a lie, if anyone's checking his social media history, or if his friends or family come into play, or - lots of things.  "If it's the same brand.  That I use."

"What brand is that?"

"......I don't... know.  I recognize it by the packaging and I don't actually know the name."  This is potentially ridicule fodder but what is he supposed to do instead, make one up?

"Oh, I do that too. I can check what it was in my last grocery order without getting up though." He does this. Shows Julien a picture.

"Yeah, that's it."

"Ingredients suggest the chicken is fictional."

"Yeah.  Thanks for double checking."

"No problem. Though tonight I think the dinner plan was for Ren to make spaghetti and you can just not have meatballs on yours."

"That sounds fine."  Spaghetti is most likely to be what, instead.  Brains?  No, that's dumb.  Nerves?

"If you didn't sleep well last night do you want to try sleeping in the same bed tonight and see if that helps?"

"...Yeah, that seems.  Like the thing to be done."

"I know it's awkward but even if we had ranged compatibility that'd still imply same-bed."

"- We don't have to if you don't want to."

"I'm fine with it and moreover at this moment fully in my right mind, I'm trying to be careful with you."

"Oh-kay.  ....Does this also apply to kissing, or are you very straight or something."

"Uh, I'm also being careful about that but speaking in terms of demographic facts I'm gay."

"Okay, that was really unclear."

"It was unclear that I'm gay? It didn't come up but it's like, on my website, it's not a secret."

"It was unclear whether you were being careful about kissing things or if you really didn't want to.  For yourself."

"In general I am your standard issue slutty esper but you're in the middle of hellweek and you've got psychological backlash."

"Yes I got that part."

"Does any confusion remain?"

"Not... about this.... that I remember having noticed."

"Okay, good."

Julien downs the rest of the orange juice, then inches back over next to Haru.  ...He still has the cup.  Why did he not get rid of the cup before resuming cuddling.  Now what.

"You wanna pass me the cup and I'll put it on the end table?"

Nod.  Pass.  Carefully resting his head on Haru's shoulder.

Holding very still. "Would anything about this situation be less stressful if I were less perceptible?"

"- Maybe."

"...I ask because that's one of my powers, I can be selectively imperceptible. I don't actually know if I can conceal the feeling of guiding but usually that's not desirable anyway, and I can be invisible, inaudible - while you were asleep I needed to move so I went un-feelable for a second and when that didn't wake you up I shifted."

"Oh!  You can do that."  Apparently.

"Yeah, it's that and throwing off psychic effects and flying."

Julien tries to shift his brain around to prepare for this suddenly happening.  Aaaaaa.

"...if you don't want me to do that I won't but we may have to investigate alternate nap positions if you dislike it too much even for that."

"It seems fine?"  ...He's not acting like a fine person, is he.  "I mean, it's very scary, that - it might happen suddenly, or something, but.  It doesn't not seem fine.  Fundamentally."

"I will avoid surprising you with it when you're awake."

"Yeah.  Thanks."

"Mm-hm."

Les Mis.

Snuggle.  The fact that there's music really doesn't fundamentally change anything about the situation, but it is nicer than not.  And now Julien maybe has a better idea of where things are going, here.

Ren comes home and makes spaghetti and meatballs! She is innocently curious about Julien but doesn't pry.

"I was working at Tim Horton's and Haru bumped into me and noticed I was awakening," Julien explains.  Helpfully?  He'll find out.

"You hadn't even noticed? My goodness! I know it's rude to ask what someone's backlash is but I can't think of many that would pass you by like that. Haru woke up with nightmares when he started."

"I am worried about turning into some sort of beast or creature.  It gives pretty bad nightmares but I could work through it."

"I think maybe sort of like the clinical lycanthropy backlash, but I never interviewed that person so I don't know much more about it," Haru volunteers.

"Well, that sounds quite distressing and it's lucky you're compatible with Haru!"

"It really is."  The spaghetti doesn't seem to be nerves or anything, which is good and maybe a sign that his strategy is working.

"Ice cream?" Ren asks when people are winding down on the pasta.

Whhhhat could ice cream be, in terms of turning him into a monster.  ...Maybe nothing, maybe just his strategy is working and they're giving ice cream to him to signal that it's a good idea.  Then again - "What kind?"

"I got a pint of black cherry chip on the way home but we've also got, let me check," she checks, "cookie dough and coconut."

"I'd take a scoop of coconut."

Black cherry is maybe like blood or something; the other two are... hm.  "Coconut as well.  Thank you!"

Ren divides the remaining coconut ice cream between two dishes and gets black cherry chip for herself. She holds up her dish at Haru and he clinks it with her cheers-style.

That's really cute assuming it doesn't turn into blood or something halfway through.

It doesn't! Or blood looks a lot like black cherry chip ice cream.

Julien notices he's been way more fixated on other things turning into stuff or turning him into something than thinking about perceiving himself being the thing that does it.  Hard to say whether he's been slacking about a real threat, or accurately responding to a changing situation, or if they're really simulating guiding by directly affecting what things he's scared of.  In any case the ice cream is fine taste-wise and nice signal-wise.

"Couch?" Haru asks after the ice cream is all eaten.

"Yes."

So they logistics their way back to the couch and if nothing else comes up Haru will read Les Mis all evening.

One of the pieces of music is kind of scary and Julien wants to skip it, but other than that no.

It is easily skipped, a poke of the phone and it's gone.

"Can we leave the music on overnight?  I - still might not be able to sleep, with it, but..."

"Uh, yeah, we can have it on quietly. Also fair warning that I talk in my sleep. I can also fall asleep on some backlash as long as you'll talk to me while I'm getting there, if that might help."

"Oh, maybe.  And, uh, if you have something I could use as a blindfold, then I could take off the sunglasses.  Which might be more - oh, sleep masks, I mean; I forgot the word - more comfortable."

"I don't think we have sleep masks per se, I can see about express ordering something or you could just improvise with - I don't know, a scarf?" He sets about seeing whether he can get a sleep mask to appear at the house in the next couple hours.

"A scarf would be fine."