"Okay~"

Happy snuggly nuzzly Cara! She gently pets his hair. 

He gradually unwinds from being all keyed up and relaxes onto her. "You're very cute."

She smiles warmly and kisses his forehead. "You too! And you make incredible noises, it's delightful." 

"Oh do I. Well I'm glad you enjoyed the concert."

"It was a pleasure to conduct." She giggles and kisses him on the lips.

Oooh more kissing.

Yes! Cara would like more of that, please.

"Get a room."

"...sorry, kitty, I didn't realize you were up."

Oops. She blushes and waves at Cricket. "Espers, huh?" 

"Apparently."

"If she'd interpreted you as talking to her -"

"I was talking to you and would've said that. Is that not good enough?"

"Probably good enough but be alert to it."

Ohhhh. (a) this fucking backlash (b) Haru is so good....

"Huh! I interpreted it as 'stop making out', approximately. Which I did, but I can't tell if it was my backlash or because it was a reasonable request that Haru was also following?" She tilts her head thoughtfully. "No, I think it was the latter. I was embarrassed while stopping, and that doesn't happen with my backlash." 

"You still have plenty but I guess it's not as dangerous when you're at a level where you can interpret idioms."

"And possibly the lack of emotional response part is a symptom that only shows up when I'm at higher backlash rates. Or maybe I followed the instruction as I understood it for backlash reasons, and felt the thing I was going to feel about it afterwards... man. I need to experiment with this, it'd be irresponsible not to, but also..." 

she shivers, and clings a little tighter to him.

"You can design experiments and I can help you with them, maybe interleaved with powers testing once hellweek is up."

Man, procrastinating on this is so tempting, but... "I would love to get your help with this, both with running experiments and brainstorming them, if you're willing. I was just thinking... awakening seems like it might be a good time to run higher-backlash experiments? Especially because... it feels like there's a lot of different important things to test?"  She gets her phone out and re-opens her backlash priority notes.

"We can also do it now, but if I were you I'd be worried about - finding a freaky result and then not being able to get rid of the backlash completely as a step in calming down."

She looks at him thoughtfully. Probably he would not be cool with... well, they can talk about it, that's had a good track record so far.

 "I'm guessing you wouldn't be comfortable with using my backlash to help keep me grounded if I was freaking out, even if I was?" 

She snorts. "I really hope it doesn't end up working like this, but if posted signs did the trick I could do the testing somewhere with one of those Keep Calm And Carry On posters in view."

"If you want to be hypnotized into taking deep breaths and doing cognitive behavioral therapy exercises, or something, I can serve in that capacity."

"If I'm panicking - especially if I'm hyperventilating - it's good to me to take a few deep breaths, I never want to be having a panic attack. I expect that that + a guiding hug is going to be more than enough, I am very responsive to even mundane touch as a grounding mechanism." Snugglesnuggle. "And you - feel very safe, to be around."

"...I don't think I want to run any experiments today, it's still too - fresh, but brainstorming things to try with you sounds really nice, if you're up for that."

"Sure. Posted signs, both positive and negative - we should try to fill out a big chart of all the known factors in various combinations, actually, once I can look at a spreadsheet I can do that."