...Melody does not feel like having an argument about how he should go to his actual bed. 

:You may not want to be around if he's taking a nap: she warns Dree. :Given how he sometimes projects horrible nightmares at everyone in the house: 

"Yup. Off I go. Here's my email if you need anything -" She adds herself to Melody's contacts. "And I'll preprogram a couple eoms* for you - this one is 'please come over earliest convenience', this one's 'is this a good time for a telepathy chat' -" And then she heads out and nyooms away.

*A message sent with a single click, translated here as "eom" for "End Of Message" because the subject line and content are the same.

Melody thanks her, and then nabs the opportunity for some (grumpy, resentful) language tutorial practice. Just because it's a much better teaching tool than she's ever experienced before doesn't mean she likes it. 

Leareth does, predictably, start shrieking in terror in his sleep about a candlemark later, though thankfully not actually projecting. 

Melody sighs and gets up and starts trotting over to the living room, though she's hoping Leareth's support dog will do something about this before she has to. 

448, roused out of her own nap, rushes over to see if this problem can be solved by licking Leareth's face!!!

It's very fortunate that Leareth does not currently have an active mage-gift, because he has no idea where he is or what's happening and it would have been very easy to reflexively fireball whatever is touching him!

By the time Melody gets there, though, he's most of the way awake and no longer screaming, just looking confusedly at the ceiling. 

Melody sighs and sits down on the other sofa and starts quietly reminding him in Mindspeech where they are and what's happened over the last few days. 

Leareth is kind of listening, but also he has a DOG who is SOFT and WARM to snuggle up against and keeps licking him. 

Melody is not making any comments about the dog spit. She is trying so hard not to make any comments about it. If Leareth finds it reassuring to be covered in slimy dog drool then that's his prerogative. 

448 is so good at her job. She will cover him with all the dog spit he could possibly want.

...It's now candlemarks past noon, and Melody is realizing that she completely forgot to cause lunch to happen. 

:I'll get you something to eat: she tells Leareth once he seems calmer. :And then you have to shower. I'm sorry, I know it's going to be stressful: But it's getting to the point where she would feel kind of embarrassed about having anyone over tomorrow if Leareth is still wearing the same clothes and hasn't bathed. Not that she's about to say that out loud. 

:I know. I think it'll be better once you've done it once and nothing bad happened? I'm thinking that I can run the water first to get the temperature right, and you can sit on the floor so there's no risk of slipping, and I can be right there the whole time. ....And I guess if you really really want and you think it'll help, you can have your dog there. Assuming she puts up with it: 

Melody proooobably has a point about how he just needs to prove to himself that he can do it once and nothing bad will happen. And also he is starting to feel kind of gross in a way that bothers him. 

Nonetheless, Leareth is going to be completely incapable of eating lunch while distracting by the stress of his pending mandatory shower experience. He stares miserable at his sandwich and halfheartedly pokes it and does not eat it. 

448 doesn't have anything she knows how to do that might solve this problem. She doesn't beg for the sandwich though, she knows better.

Leareth pets her absently. :Melody, can we please just do it now and get it over with: 

:...I am feeling a bit more unsure of this being in any way a good idea to push right now. I - think probably it makes sense to do all the setup for it and decide at that point if you're up for it. - Oh, you know what I should do, I should throw a bunch of our towels in the clothes drying machine. It makes clothes come out nice and warm. And it doesn't have to be a long or thorough wash this time, if all you can manage is thirty seconds of sitting under the water, that's at least a start: And will get the DOG SPIT out of his hair. 

Leareth takes a few deep breaths. :All right: 

This is quickly becoming one of the more awkward interactions of Melody's life! But she persists anyway! She finds all the towels she can and plops them in the dryer out back for five minutes, and in the meantime she coaxes Leareth upstairs and starts running the water in the shower, sticking her arm through the barely-ajar door to gauge the temperature while hopefully avoiding a wet mess. Her sleeve is getting soaked but that seems unavoidable. 

Leareth calls for 448 to follow him upstairs. He sits on the floor of the bathroom and very very slowly manages to take his clothes off, with frequent pauses for petting and putting his entire face on her. He wonders how incredibly confused 448 is about what's going on here. If he were a dog he's pretty sure he would be confused about this. 

Is the point of this exercise... that now she can lick more of him? She will experiment by licking his ribs.

Leareth does not especially like this! He tenses up and spends several seconds trying to remember if he knows a command for 'stop doing that' - she knows 'give space' but he doesn't actually want her to go away just to not do that thing in particular... 

"Sit," he tries, while gently pushing her nose away from his torso. 

Melody leaves the water running at what seems to her to be a sensible temperature, and runs downstairs and out back to collect warm towels. 

There might or might not be something 448 could do in principle to make this less awful? Leareth isn't thinking of it, though, and even if he could think of something, he hasn't trained her to do it in advance. Probably this is just doomed to be very awful. 

:All right can we just do it and get it over with now: