"I could, but I think the personalisation is pulling some weight. Your phrasing is good, in any event, and it's making me more confident that such phrasings in general are possible. ...noting aloud, I seem to default to very pessimistic that it's possible to communicate difficult things with just words." Which is the dumbest possible hangup and the definition of a skill issue. He'll actually go ahead and write that one down because it feels like he ought to remember it in the future.

"Good to note. You seem fine at talking to me but that's probably a special case."

"Yes, though also telling you about all of this was really desperately unpleasant and even while I knew I shouldn't and wouldn't I spent a lot of the time I was confessing everything to you wishing I could get my power to figure out how to do it for me."

"—perhaps the cheerful self-deprecation is out of place here."

Pat pat. "It will probably suck less with more acclimation."

"I have also noted to myself that I had some unearned confidence in my ability to understand people and communicate without my powers. This is something I can work on, as a skill."

"Today you even read someone's body language, apparently."

"I have some ability to do it! Just not... nearly to the extent I thought I did."

"Am I hard to read?"

"Yes. Very." Half the crises he had over the past weeks were due to being unable to tell whether Haru liked him.

"Would it be... skillbuilding... if I let you read me via power while you were also, like, looking at me conventionally."

That makes his heart do something funny. 

"M-maybe?"

"Okay. Wait till I say when or you'll just backlash us both to no effect, but - when."

Oh, God... Jaeha braces himself and looks.

The specific thing they are doing right now is scary. It's not too scary to do at all, but Haru's ready to flinch about it, like if he were trying to pick up a snake that might wrap gently around his hand no problem but might strike; he is prepared to discover at any instant that actually he can't handle this and it's too vulnerable he isn't ready and he needs to lock down again.

On the topic of Jaeha in general, though, the way they're curled up together, that's very comfortable and fond and warm, maybe because he can flinch about the mental contact whenever he wants and everything else between them is definitely safe.

A little longer-term anxiety about Project Cut It Out Forever, it's surprisingly complicated - not very surprising but yes very complicated - but not in a way that has called into question whether it's worth undertaking and sticking around to see through.

Haru is maybe a bit lower on the somaticized emotions in general than most people. There's the faintest flickers of the correlates of other thoughts going by but they're happening almost entirely on a level Jaeha can't read, not because Haru's not letting him but because Jaeha's power doesn't extend in that more verbal direction. Tiny flecks of pride and curiosity and satisfaction that register in the nerves for only an instant before being packed away neatly as endorsed attitudes or dismissed passing fancies.

"Haah," he breathes, closing his eyes. "I need—can I have a minute with just this? I'm—" This soothes Jaeha's deep, primal emotional core in a way he didn't know was possible.

Haru likes him. Haru really, actually likes him. It's right there, plain as day, Jaeha can feel it.

Haru - takes a second to focus on the ready-to-flinch feeling, examines it, interrogates it - and puts it aside.

"Yeah."

"This means more than I can say," he murmurs, just basking on the feeling, on the way Haru's warmth mirrors his, the way the easy comfort around Jaeha matches his own comfort around Haru.

The backlash cost of doing this is minimal, and more than made up for by the snuggling, adding only a buzz to the snuggling so soft it's barely even there.

Haru pets him. There is a little self-congratulatory glow when Jaeha says that.

He's so cute, it's unreal. 

"You're—still pretty hard to read, though. Your feelings work in very—you—ways."

"How do you mean?"

"I—don't get emotions directly. It's all, what you're feeling in your body plus some things about what those feelings are pointing to, what you're perceiving and focusing on in broad strokes. I can't tell that you're looking at me, but I can tell that you're near a person, and it's only one person, and it's someone you feel very close to. Stuff like that. 

"And—people get fleeting thoughts and emotions and feelings all the time, right, but you're constantly—organising yours. Feel a feeling, look at it, put it away. I'm not sure you're even doing it consciously most of the time?"

"- the whole point is to do it consciously! I don't want my thoughts putting themselves away without making sure they're doing it right!"

"—of course. My bad." He kisses Haru's cheek. "It's so... tidy. And makes it really hard for me to get anything other than what you want to show, which I suppose is a plus."

"As long as it's not too - intellectualized or whatever - for you to get what you're getting out of it."