Oh, honey. Can Zash's not-quite-nightmares lighten up a bit if she projects adoration at him? Let's find out.

Nai meanwhile can get a vague and fuzzy [hello I'm awake but not social yet, I hope you are well] of acknowledgement. She's not as good at plants are at multitasking, but she's still capable.

[acknowledgement]

The adoration lightens the dreams up for only a couple of minutes before it stirs him awake. "Nnn."

"Damn. My nefarious plot to give you good dreams has been foiled," she sighs, petting Zash. "Good morning, love."

He can't literally purr but he can at least project a mental sound of purring while he presses himself against her petting like a cat looking for more scritches.

He's extremely cute and this gets him more scritches, yes. They can totally avoid facing the day for a little while.

The unfortunate thing about being in each other's heads is that he can absolutely tell that she's aware they're putting off facing the day, and especially Nai, though.

Nai, who's Nai, they don't need to face anyone today and most certainly no one called Nai. In fact they don't need to do anything at all today, look at how he's hiding under the covers because it is a sensible and mature thing to do when you don't have to do anything at all today.

She agrees, but unfortunately she's a bit out of practice at self delusion. But she's happy to distract herself with how absolutely adorable he is when he's cranky and has just woken up. She missed out on this when he was sneakily making sure to always wake up before her!! This was clearly a travesty!!!

Look does she blame him. Everything worked out fine by divine providence but he was madly in love with her and even while he's having bad dreams he absolutely leaks that all over everywhere and she'd have NOTICED and then she'd have tried to pretend she hadn't and he'd notice she had anyway and that sounds like an absolutely terrible time for all involved Morgan most of all.

No, no, this is fine, she's not actually doubting his tactical decisions, she even agrees with them, just. Gosh he's cute. He's so cute!!!!! Look at him, so grumpy and with messy hair!!!

He's pretty sure his hair has a life of its own and just always reverts to looking the same so it's not just a sleep thing. It's always like this.

Yes, it's very charming. Though, honestly, she is not the person to complain to about unruly hair right now, has he seen the mess the total cellular regeneration has made of hers? She desperately needs a haircut. It's a gigantic unruly mess that she just has been unwilling to deal with and has been pinning away so as not to. His hair seems to revert to what he feels is His Hairstyle, that sounds much nicer than 'grown all at once.' She used to have actual styling present!

He bets she could get that to work for her too somehow. It is pretty sticky, he had a hard enough time changing it ever because the correct way for him to look was identical to Nai and then Yvette fell in love with him and now he just can't be anyone else.

Maybe. But maybe not, the mechanism by which she is a plant hybrid is different. They'll have to see.

.... Wait, she broke him?? But she's in love with him as him-the-person not him-the-body! (Though don't get her wrong his body is very appealing and she's found herself surprisingly into his scars.) They literally just had excellent kinky shapeshifter sex, why does her being in love with him stop him from changing how he looks???

Well because when he changes he's being something other than what he is, he developed a whole gender and self-concept over the decades and now he has a lot of difficulty imagining himself as anything different. And there's also the whole thing he crossed out there about how the fact that he knows what Nai looks like means that he can't really change what he fundamentally looks like because he fundamentally looks like Nai.

In theory, he guesses, they could synchronise changing, but they haven't, and that runs against the self-concept thing again.

... Huh. Okay. That makes sense. Well, for the record, she loves him for him, and he is a unique plant hybrid who cheats at physics and biology and can morph his body into whatever he wants, and that's awesome, actually.

She's gonna make him cry come on he's been having such a great run of not crying lately!

Also, uh, he just went and thought about how much he loves and misses Nai and they had a fight yesterday and he's feeling awful about it again.

It's okay if he needs to cry. He has been not crying for quite a while, he's got a lot to make up for.

... Though, Yvette's also aware that Nai isn't hiding, and from what she can see looks mostly all right from a psychic perspective, so. Oops. Zash might not have been looking, but she can't quite help it, she's sharing a gate with him.

...yeah huh Nai isn't hiding.

[ping?]

Wait what's he doing he didn't mean to do this.

[acknowledgement]

[big conversation needed]

...scary. What if instead he hides under the covers again.

That is perfectly valid, though she'll answer for him since he's hiding.

[acknowledgement but request for further delay]

Then, with more affection:

[Zash needs more time to hide first.]

[legit]

Did he just say legit.

Nai is trying to respect this delay request so shut up Zash.