He looks up.  (Oh no, she's still pretty.  That's fine.  He's fine.)  "Yeah, for sure.  I mean, I'm the one who downloaded it?  So there's probably not anything you can play that I wouldn't be okay with, I don't think."

"Okay."

She hums along, after a bit.  It's - not bad, definitely, but it drifts between styles, at times far too classical and operatic for the song and at others more casual and fitting.

. . . Cute.  He doesn't join in with the humming, but he starts patting his thigh in rhythm and doing a touch of torso grooving.

Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" is next.

Ah, so this is that playlist.  "I see you've gone for my impeccable taste in pre-curated early aughts pop.  A wise choice, truly."

"Thank you."

Her smile fades and she becomes rather pensive looking once they hit the chorus.

He's not gonna ask.  He is not going to ask.

"Bad breakup?"

For some reason, she seems to find this funny, although not enough to quite bring back a smile.  "Not as such, no.

"I wish.  - Almost.  Not - I wouldn't.  It would be a terrible idea, and things will be fine later.  Just, for now . . ."

"Do you want to talk about it."

"It's - " She adjusts her torso to face Ariel and puts all of her attention on him.  "Do you . . . know.  Things."

Aaaaaaa that's a lot of pretty-lady eye contact being beamed directly at him.  He leans away from it and shrinks into himself a bit.  " - What sort of things - "

(He almost puts another 'miss' at the end there, but catches himself before actually doing it.)

She seems kind of taken aback by his body language, and breaks focus and leans back against the couch herself.  " - Sorry.  Never mind."

"It's okay!  Just uh, sorry.  Sorry."  He considers and rejects the idea of asking for clarification on 'things' again; she did tell him to never mind.  ". . . If you still want to talk about that - and can, while avoiding whatever that is, I'm, you know.  Here."

"My aunt is.  She has certain ideas about how to act.  Which can be difficult to live up to, sometimes.  And, some of the things she thinks are - just wrong, but some aren't that bad, but can still be hard.  And.  She's done a lot for me - she's done so much for me - but sometimes I still just can't take it.  And I wish, right now, that I could just leave and never see her again, but that's just - something I have right now, and it's not going to stay that way forever.  But sometimes I just have to . . ."

That contained absolutely no specifics which he can say anything insightful or helpful (or seeming it) about.  Probably better not to push anything.  Or any 'things'.

"Do you want a hug?"

A small, short nod.

He scoots towards her.  The logistics of hugging while sitting down are kind of - oh, she can just go kind of sideways against him, there, okay.  It's more of holding her than a hug proper, but it's still nice.  Very nice.  He tries to think of the last time he had a hug and comes up short, which is pretty sad.  He is - definitely going to keep a careful eye out for signs she doesn't want to be in contact anymore; the absolute last thing he wants is to be creepy about hugging the pretty girl.  But it's not even the fact that she's pretty that's the main appeal, just - wow yeah it sure has been a long time since he's had something like this, and he hopes it keeps going on for a while.  Even though he is so carefully looking out for even the slightest sign that she thinks it should be over.

Hana also is not really giving off the impression of someone who has had a particularly sufficient number of hugs recently.

In the background, the song changes again.

Ariel's internal forces of 'need hug' are battling against those of 'sitting in one place for too long, especially with another person's body weight pressing against you, gets pretty darn uncomfortable'.  Also what if she does want it to end but just doesn't feel comfortable in making the first move?  That would still be creepy of him.  Aaa.

He still fails to move or act upon that thought, though.

She shifts a bit eventually, but not particularly in a way that permits Ariel to pull back.

A few moments after that, she lets out a small noise of - realization, perhaps?  Or possibly just comfort.

Oh.  Probably that's fine, then, and she wants to be here, right?  He still watches out for signs she wants to leave, but not quite as closely.

He must've relaxed a bit with that realization, too, because midway into the next song he realizes he's still not feeling fidgety even though it's been a while since that position change.

This is kind of an absurdly long hug, but she still hasn't moved away.  It's not entirely clear whether she's even still awake.

Well she did like, climb up a mountain and stuff; that's probably pretty tiring.  Possibly he should be devoting more effort into making sure she's like, actually okay and stuff, but she seems warm and looks fine?  Maybe she came from a relatively adjacent cabin or something and it wasn't really very far.

He has the urge to rub circles on her back or pet her hair or something, which probably isn't that weird considering they are several minutes into this cuddle.  But even if she likes it and is fine with it - and she might not and that's scary - it would still probably be worth commenting on in some way and then the bubble of this moment, the two of them, sitting together but without quite interacting, would burst.  Also this is literally the first time in his life that he's sat comfortably still for this long and he's kind of curious how long it'll last.

It lasts until several songs later, when Ariel's playlist shifts from relatively quiet songs, the most recent of which is Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek", to the loud and abrupt "The Call" by The Backstreet Boys, at which point Hana jerks into an upright position.

Ariel has listened to this playlist enough times to start anticipating the next song at the tail end of the previous one, but not with enough warning to really do anything about it except wonder if it might be jarring.  Especially since moving at all is the hard part and the phone is kind of out of reach, so he'd have to unsnuggle anyway.