"The Yeerks said I'd been Imperiusing most everybody I ran into and would Ganymede please take me off their hands they were wrong about being able to contain me. Niari related the emergency hearing stuff and said she'd seen me very well-behaved and unbound."

"Six months ago I feel like they'd have gone 'well that's lovely but still if he was unbound they can't contain him he stays'. So. Progress." Yawn.

"I think Niari wants Chua's job and can tell which way the wind is blowing but I'm not complaining."

"Sounds like she'd be good at it." Snuggle. "Such a well-behaved demon, he didn't talk, he only made things when humans told him to..."

Snuggle. Sigh. "More importantly, I didn't curse anybody and didn't appear to be directing things behind the scenes."

"They'd be running better if you were."

"I feel like 'primarily curse-mediated organizational structure' is a form of things running badly."

"Fair." 

He again looks like he is debating whether to kiss Cam.

"What's on your mind?"

"What do you want right now?"

"I want you to be okay."

"I'm okay. I guess there's an off chance that in two years I'll discover I have absurdly strong feelings about some tangentially related topic, that's apparently a thing, but I'm okay with - I'm okay for me. But he hurt you, and I didn't stop him and I - don't want you to feel like you have to get over that for me to be okay -"

"Stopping brain parasites that control your body from controlling your body is not in fact an expectation I have of you."

"You could reasonably have preferences about whether I then go on to become friends with them."

"You're yourself and it's a very you thing."

"Sure but it's still okay to - not be okay with it -"

"I'm not okay with him, which is why as a petty gesture I have placed him in the body of Mike Newton. I am okay with you, I love you, you had so few options and I would have disintegrated in your place but you got me time and now he's out of the way."

"Yes. Yes he is." This time he does not hesitate about kissing him. "Oh, Cam."

Kiss.

"I have some grievances with the landlords," he mumbles, "but I will never stop being grateful they introduced me to you."

Snuggle. "Yeah, me too."

"Did anyone ask Bar why she answered 'is this a Bell' with 'Isabella is a Bell' instead of, say, 'well she is but the Yeerk controlling her head -"

"Mirelótë did. The door tries to avoid grabbing people when they will either turn right back around or need Security. So without being directly asked in a way she couldn't evade she tries to behave in ways that let the door grab people. And like - otherwise we wouldn't have gotten her world at all -"

" - yeah. Okay. What's the plan for that - I promised to take them alive, get the Valar to set up somewhere cozy -"

"Heavy use of Valar seems the way to go. They were being stealthy, using most of Bella and Matirin's actual plans for helping the Earth but with added Yeerks. If we just remove the Yeerks - there aren't even many in random people - the structures are all there. Once Bella's ready to pick them up."