The feeling grows stronger but also more pointed. He should be telling people things. Why is he trying to hide himself? Secrets are obviously bad.

Nope, he’s going crazy. He’s very intently not-listening to that rising voice when he runs into someone-

Sable, an esper recently through her own hellweek, is walking to a coffeeshop to relax. She's looking forward to enjoying ambient people-presence while debating what to do about her powers and backlash.

And then a guy bumps into her, obviously in some kind of hurry—

Um what that is way too good for a collision to feel. Wait that's what compatibility feels like. Oh. 

"Um, hi? Didn't expect to literally bump into a compatible esper on the street."

“Sorry”, he apologises automatically, taking a step away. And then, since he’s already talking, the madness takes over and he can’t stop himself from adding, “although I don’t regret it because that felt weirdly good-”

Which is when his brain catches up to what the purple-haired girl has said. That gets him to shut up for all of less than a second before he continues with a reply. 

“Oh, no, I’m not an esper.”

(He also manages to stop after that, he might be proud of himself for not continuing to give in to the impulse to overshare if he wasn’t still fighting it.)

He's... not?

She tilts her head.

"Odd, given that I'm an esper, and it felt weirdly good — compatibility good — for me, and you reported the same. Maybe you're awakening?"

“Oh, that explains the eyes”, he comments despite his resolution to not saying every thought that shows up. (He’s sooo failing at it so far.) 

If she noticed the absurdly large amount of backlash he’s under during that brief touch, she probably won’t even need him to reply to that.

“I guess I could be? I do feel weird. That’s why I was heading back home. I didn’t want to be weird in public. Which I am being. Now.”

"Yeah, my glowup got my theme color right, for sure." She hums a bit. "Do you want no-pressure guiding company to come home with you? Or go to my place? Or something? It sure feels like you're under way too much backlash for a dude who didn't know he was an esper until a minute ago, which sure sounds like you're starting hellweek, and that's generally a bad time to be unsupervised and unguided."

“I’m actually not sure what I want! The touching did feel pretty great but also I’m pretty sure I very strongly didn’t want to be around people not very long ago and I certainly didn’t want to be telling a stranger everything but that’s clearly what I’m doing right now anyway so who knows anything anymore?”

She taps her lips for a moment. "Hm. Short term fix idea: I put headphones in, turn on some loud music, and read shit on my phone, while you talk to someone you trust to get advice since your backlash is messing with your judgment, with optional handholding or more contact if you wish to take the edge off the endless fountain of backlash while you do?"

Oh, hey, new discovery. If he has enough thoughts at the same time or they’re vague enough, he’s unable to voice them all.

“That sounds like the best option. Otherwise I’m probably going to get even more eager to confess everything and anything I think of to as many people as possible, right?

“I’ll call Leo, I don’t think the party he was going to has started yet. He’s pretty good at guessing what I’m thinking even when I’m not saying it,  so it might feel less like being emotionally naked in front of a stranger…

“Uh, anyway, I’d rather go to your place if it isn’t too far,” and now he’s going to bite his lower lip and hold back an unnecessary (no no, it’s really necessary, why is he hiding it?) explanation so she can reply.

"No, it's not far. I only just left, honestly." She offers him a hand to hold (and revels in the fact that her backlash is low enough that the gesture still means things!), and leads the way back to her apartment. It's just a couple blocks away.

“That’s good”, he nods and takes her hand, relaxing very slightly at the touch. “I’m going to keep babbling your ear off on the way there and feeling simultaneously absolutely embarrassed and eager to tell you more.”

Sable smiles gently back at him. "Extremely valid on both points. I don't judge, though. Like unless you're plotting to blow up a city. I'd probably frown a bit about plots to blow up a whole city. But short of that?" She shrugs and keeps smiling.

“I have no plans to blow up a city but if I came up with any right now just get me on the phone with the police and I’ll for sure tell them every detail.

“Unfortunately being forced to be fully honest doesn’t also make me believe that everyone else also is being so —well, that’s actually a good thing but figures of speech or whatever— and I still think that everyone judges others even if it’s unintentionally.”

She nods softly. "Understandable. Only way for me to demonstrate differently is with time, consistency. It'll take a heap of personal experience before you can trust something like that."

“Leo will smack me with a figurative newspaper for being a cynic,” he replies. “For backlash-enforced clarification, that’s in a slightly amused, mostly neutral, and obviously still embarrassed tone.”

She giggles and grins. "I'll probably stick to noseboops rather than figurative rolled up newspapers. Mostly I just try to provide a hopeful counterpoint for any cynics in my life, rather than expecting scolding to help." She'll give his hand a squeeze, too.

"Besides, cynics make some good points, sometimes. Rosy dorks like me need y'all to help balance us out."

“I’m pretty sure he means it lightheartedly, he’s somewhere between amused and concerned about my worldview. Mostly the first one.”

He’ll stare down at her hand at the squeeze, “I don’t really understand what that was for.”

“The need is probably mutual. Team projects would not work if everyone was like me. That’d be a lot of lost scientific discoveries.”

"Sort of... a mix of appreciation and wishing the world would be nicer to you."

"Good point about the discoveries, too. Can't push the world forward on spite alone."

“Oh, the world is plenty nice. I’ve been pretty lucky. Being an esper will also be good once this week is over if I don’t die of shame or over-people’ing.”

“And I don’t function on spite, I’m just not very prosocial either. Group projects would be done by assigning tasks to people to be done separately and then joined in the end by a single person with the minimal amount of actual interaction.”

Sable nods. "Well, we'll do what we can to keep the emotional consequences of your backlash from ending you. On the positive side, if we can keep you just sharing all this stuff with Leo and me, that's better than making it all public, right?"

“The backlash says that absolutely not, I should be telling everyone. Regular me will prefer it but still think it’s too many people,” he replies with a nod. “Oh, and the dying was a hyperbole.”

"Figured, yes, but I'm just as happy to help prevent metaphorical death as well as literal. And yeah, I think we should err on the side of your unbacklashed preferences over your backlash's demands as much as we can get away with, just for longer-term well-being. Probably you should talk with Leo about locking you out of social media for the week, or making it read-only somehow."