Super, super awkward.

[love/reassurance] she sends to Nai, gently and tentatively. [do you want/need space...?]

Which is a complicated sort of thing to send, but basically amounts to if he would like to avoid her she will cooperate with that because she doesn't want to hurt him (anymore), and generally speaking she wishes him well.

He slowly floats down to the platform, eyes darting between the two of them. Even with the connection to Yvette that he can't shut down, it continues to be very difficult to read him. Eventually his eyes settle on Zash and he says, "Your clothes."

"—hm?"

"They're wet.

"Why?"

Zash starts giggling. And then goes from giggling to laughter, and then from laughter to full-belly teary-eyed howling guffaws. He's holding onto Yvette's hand but that's as much as he can manage as the laughter starts to rock his whole body and he has to lean against her to not fall over.

...why is he being like that??

It helps that Yvette isn't trying to read him, because uh. Sharing a gate. Give the poor man some space after she kind of threatened to kill him. That sort of thing.

"They were gross and needed to be washed. So I washed them," she answers, also looking at Zash with some confusion. As she dutifully keeps him from falling over while he laughs. She's in his head and she's not entirely sure why he's laughing. Something about it being very mundane and also very him?

Zash can't hide from Nai and yet Nai still can't figure out why this is happening.

"Come, here, you, dork," he says, drawing big breaths between the words because he might pass out from the lack of air. He doesn't need air but still.

He looks at Yvette. Then at Zash. Then at Yvette again.

[help?]

"I said, come here, you, idiotic, monumentally stupid, fucking, dork!!!!"

"...you're insulting me."

But he does... walk over... to them???

[he missed you terribly and wants to hug you] she provides.

[... I sort of want to hug you too.]

...he's so confused??????

Yeah fuck him, Zash is pulling him into a hug and leaving space for Yvette to join them if she wants to.

She checks (with Zash, since he seems to know Nai's mind better than Nai himself, and also she's trying not to creepily stare into his fucking soul) that this would be okay, and then. Yes hug.

Zash arranges the three of them so that Nai is effectively sandwiched, and now he's no longer laughing too much to support himself but he's still grinning.

oh.

Nai starts crying.

[you idiot, you dork, you fucking asshole, I hate you so much, I want to fucking kill you why are you like this you ass]

Like this, so emotionally inept, the first thing he says to them is about Zash's clothes being wet, Zash missed his non-sequiturs so much, missed his adorably confused face, missed his mind—

—(which he, at some point, stopped hiding, because there's no point in hiding apparently, apparently Zash at some point in the last century and a half learned how to read him even without telepathy which is the most bullshit possible thing but if Nai had to guess who would be able to figure that out of course it would've been Zash)—

—and he is going to yell at Nai so much, but later, because what Nai needs to do right now is get a hug from his two favourite people in the world.

How does Zash know—

It's fucking obvious you doofus!!!!!!

Yvette helpfully draws a parallel between her work mapping out possibilities of things-that-can't-be-directly-perceived via bits of data that one can see, and this! They are not exactly alike but the principle is [~] rather closely equivalent. That's how!

Regardless, he is getting such hugs.

...the parallel does, in fact, help.

"You're still wet," he says with his facemouth because his brainmouth is kind of not fully online.