She has a shadow, now. An, apparently, studiously disinterested shadow, standing far enough behind her to not be looming, but close enough he'd obviously be interested in interaction, were it not for his expression. His expression says he's here for his own reasons which have nothing to do with you. 

Possibly to do with the quiches, though. He's eyeing one that looks like it maybe has eggplant in it. 

Reve is busy with her food conundrum (the labeling says plant-based for the non-meat section but does that mean it vegetarian or vegan, a quiche is all eggs and catered food using eggs is sourcing them based on minimal cost... are the fillings slightly different colors, that often happens with a vegan quiche but she can't pick them up and look at them side-by-side...) and also is dispositionally not a Noticer, so she's not going to notice Caine until he moves into her field of view!

He sidles a little bit forward and to the side, reaching for an eggplant tomato quiche. 

He takes a bite, eyes darting between her and the contents of the table.

"This one's vegan," he comments, apparently to the air. 

Oh! It's the very compatible out-of-town esper from earlier, with the maybe-concerning guiding situation.

"Oh! Uh, thank you." She grabs one and takes a bite. 

Wait. "Um. How'd you... know?"

"Tastes right. Tofu base. It goes well with eggplant and tomato, good pick on their end." 

He takes another bite and ducks his chin down into his scarf.

Nooot what she meant? But okay. 

...he had a noticeable amount of backlash, when they touched. And he was shy around his (friend? companion? extrovert?), but...  no harm in asking, right?

"...do you want to hold hands for a bit? They put cozy couches in some of the siderooms." There, that's a nice and normal way to ask if someone wants guiding.

"Yes," he responds, a little too quickly.

He takes another bite of quiche, avoiding her eyes. He does hold out his empty hand, though?

Reve will take his hand - wow they sure are compatible, that is definitely a thing she is feeling, cool, cool - and without trying to make eye contact, she'll lead him him past a closed door sideroom (people are probably in there and want privacy), a partially open door sideroom (she can hear that people are in there and she's not super interested in walking in on those sounds), and - ooh, this one is empty - into a sideroom and towards a Large and Comfy couch.

The moment their hands touch, he finds himself relaxing a little as his small pool of acute backlash starts draining away. It feels better immediately, and the guiding- well, it's better than Mintos, anyway. 

He brings the quiche, but sets it down on the first flat surface that presents itself inside the room. His stomach is... Not happy about all those tacos as is, without pushing it further, but he'll be hungry later if the girl (Reve?) can reduce his backlog enough. 

Before anything else can happen, though, he stops them both.

"How much contact are you comfortable with?" And, she doesn't look definitely under eighteen, but just to be safe, he adds: "And how old are you?" 

She looks relieved at the first question and mildly consternated at the second. "Nothing below the waist, I'm probably not taking off my undershirt, and I'm not opposed to making out but I usually want to know more about people before kissing them." She pauses for a beat. "like, uh, what to call them. And I'm 20." 

(...he feels... more backlashed than he did before....)

Oh. Right.

"Caine. I'm twenty-five. Nothing below the waist," he agrees, "Kissing is fine."

His expression tightens as his guiding rate slows, and the chronic starts turning into acute on its way through him. The guiding feels nice, but- he let it build a bit too much, frankly. 

He needs to not take that out on Reve. 

"You want to know things?" 

"Caine," she repeats, smiling. "Sec, let me -"

She lets go of his hand for a bit and wriggles out of the mid-sleeved blouse she was wearing. (She's got a blue striped low-cut tank top on underneath, which she grabbed specifically for guiding with strangers.) 

She places her blouse on one end of the couch and then grabs his hand again, twining her arm around his for increased contact. "This okay?" 

He's wearing a sleeveless shirt already, but he'll take it off and toss it at a nearby chair, along with his scarf. Shirtless, an esper can see a number of scars scrawled over his chest and stomach, though they're all pale and thin enough to escape the average human's casual gaze. 

"It's- good," he cuts off the 'fine' before it can exit his mouth. "Sit?"  

She nods happily, plopping down on the couch and tugging him along with her. (... she definitely notices the scars, but it seems rude to ask.)

"So what's your power like? I make time-slowing zones." 

He will shift around until they have reached as much skin contact as she will allow. Then he relaxes into the cushions and does his best to pay more attention to the guiding than the backlash. 

"-electricity," he answers once they're settled. "Lightning, speed, and cognitive speedup. I handle most non-specific high ranked dungeons in BC South-West. Code name is White Fang." 

Ahhhh the guiding feels niiiiice~ She wiggles happily and leans into him.

...wait.

"Oh! You're the Canadian lightning speedster! I've been in a few dungeons with your team! The sharp angry confetti one, the one with stuffed animals with swords, the DDR dungeon... they were all pretty big, though, I only ever saw you guys at a distance." 

There's a little smile. He nods, "The sword plushes weren't bad. Didn't use any blasts until the boss. My team made bets." 

Reve nods agreeably. "I was the reason most of them kept falling over! Monsters like that, with limbs that aren't firm and animated by magic and not physics, are really easy for me to fuck with." 

She rotates a bit and tentatively reaches her free arm across his body to rest on his shoulder.

He shifts a little to make that more comfortable. 

Also, he lets out a little 'hah' of amusement.

"Saw that. They looked like- they didn't run on physics, but they still wheeled their arms to get their balance. Ridiculous." 

"My power only interacts with physics! So if you have a leg that's held up by magic and a section of it moves even a bit slower than the rest of it, the leg will bend at the boundary and because they don't usually get detailed feedback from their limbs they just fall over." 

(hhhhh. guiding... his skin feels really nice to touch.)

"Using time as a trip hazard," he smirks, "Clever application. Efficient, too, I bet." 

He already feels a little better. This is just like- 

"I remember your hair," he interrupts himself, "From the confetti one. Spotted you on entry. Had to leave my team so I was keeping an eye out for others." 

"Yep! I get backlashed for volume per unit time, so any time I can get a lot out of with a thin slice like that it's really nice." 

Reve nestles her head against his shoulder, forehead pressed into his neck. She can feel... 

"...you've got a fair bit of chronic backlash," she murmurs. When you're paying attention, the way it metabolizes as it gets guided away is distinctive (Scarlet taught her how to pay attention; it's a useful skill, she'd said, for a career dungeon esper who might end up guiding strangers.)

"Yeah." Does she want an explanation? He can give an explanation, but he's not going to volunteer it. 

We'll, she's curious, but... she doesn't want to shouldn't pry. She just met this guy.

(you want to get close to him emotionally because touching him feels incredible, she observes, and well. Yes, that's true. But. touching him really does feel incredible, though,,)

She settles for turning her body into his more and making a little "mmm" noise which could be about what he said or the guiding, really. 

He'll... Give a medium explanation, then, while relaxing further into a puddle underneath her, feeling his backlash slowly melt away. 

"My partner doesn't match me well."

The feeling of guiding is overtaking the vague nausea more and more. Maybe he'll stop feeling like a wet noodle at some point soon. 

Huh. Well, he's an adult and allowed to make his own choices.

...oh. Right. Speaking of being an adult...

 "Anything I should know about your backlash?" She should have asked this when she noticed that it was chronic, that's half the point of being able to tell if you're guiding away chronic backlash in the first place, but. She got distracted. By the guiding.

"Mm. Probably." 

...Reve un-nestles her head so she can look at his face, this being at least theoretically useful for knowing if she's Uncomfortably Prying or if he's just being difficult.

He avoids her eyes (he's being Difficult). 

He hmphs.

"Slows my metabolic rate," he grumbles. "Body won't absorb anything. Nausea, heartburn, indigestion." 

Nod. "The compatibility makes sense - mine makes it progressively harder to remember things, or care about the future, or focus on anything that isn't happening right in front of me."

She sighs, and re-nestles her head. (Every time she describes her backlash this way, she's aware she's conspicuously avoiding saying my backlash is ADHD, but. She's not going to say that.) 

He nods, "You affect time, so your backlash locks you into the present." 

(His hand rests on her back above her tank top, rubbing absently there.)

Oh! He gets it. "Yeah."

And mmmmm that feels niiiiiiiice... 

...if she lets go of the hand she's holding, can she successfully wrap her arms around him?

As he is not a broad man by any definition of the word, she has no trouble doing this! He will wrap around her in return and shift to settle deeper into the couch cushions until he is practically being eaten by them.

The full torso-length skin contact is... Very nice... 

Reve is also rather small! She leans into him, making soft happy noises as she does.

"S'Reve, right?" His words are a little slurred, and he has to shake his head a little to wake himself up. "You didn't say, but that's what you told crowf-" he clears his throat, "Robin." 

Stars above she really did poke fun at him for not introducing himself earlier and then. Did not give him her name just now, huh.

(Her face is pressed against his neck, but he might be able to feel the warmth of her blush.)

"Reve, yeah. Or Hourglass." 

"Mm."

His face is now pressed against her hair, so she can probably feel his small smirk. 

Reve eloquently replies with some fascinatingly incoherent mumbling, though she gets distracted halfway through by how nice the guiding feels and transitions to a satisfied mmmmmmmmmm.

"...Crow?", she says a bit later, when the audio processing thread in her brain is finally given enough resources to finish its last task.

The question pulls him out of his light doze after a few moments spent percolating. 

"...crowfood. Sqeqote. Means crow." 

Reve does not know Skweh-kwa-tuh to mean anything (maybe that's Robin's codename?), but that's okay!

The sleepy backlash is very cute. She hugs him a bit tighter, content to sit there in silec - mmmhhh 

...near silence, enjoying the guiding.

He will doze for a while if allowed to, more comfortable than he's been in a few months now. Her occasional happy noises only make him smile a little and perhaps nuzzle at her hair if he's awake enough. 

A truly incredible thing about commscreens is that, because they track intent instead of finger movement, you can give straightforwardly commands while your hand is pinned against a couch by a compatible esper who is guiding you and also fast asleep. Truly, Reve lives a charmed life.

With her cheek pressed against his chest, she happily feeds her brain's endless desire for stimulation with a muted strategy game stream projected out in the direction she's already facing, melts into the guiding, and lets him nap as long as he needs to.

Some time later, his stomach growls. 

This startles him enough to wake out of his doze and blink down at it in incomprehension. Or at least where it probably is below Reve's body. 

She flicks her stream away and smiles up at him. "Hi there, sleepy."

He blinks slowly at her for a moment now, before something clicks on and she feels a brief spike of acute backlash. 

"-hey," he looks around, quickly spotting his quiche on the coffee table. His stomach growls again, louder this time. 

He makes a face about this. 

...she stares at him incredulously. "Did you just -" except they both know he did, so that's not actually the question, is it. "...why?"

"Habit?" 

"Why is that -" 

Pop-quiz, Reve! Can you think of a reason why a combat esper might be:

(a) a bit weird about good-compatibility guiding,
(b) kinda withdrawn and moody,
(c) sitting on a small pile of chronic backlash,
(d) used to casually using their power in small ways to make their life better,
(e) and working with a low compatibility partner?

any reason at all? 

...oh. (augh.)

"...nevermind, sorry," she mumbles.

"Mm."

"Pass me my quiche?" He slightly loosens his octopus impression as he speaks. 

Reve can do that, yeah. Here's a quiche. And a snuggly blue girl.

He helps her tuck herself back where she was, mostly. Sans a hand holding his quiche.

"Thanks," he says, and for more than just the food. He then starts eating it before his stomach can complain again. 

He's not sure if he likes being able to be hungry better or worse. At least there's something with eggplant available here. 

"Of course." Mildly pensive guiding snuggles.

"...I can go grab us both some more food, if you'd like?" 

-she is slightly squished for a moment, before he catches himself and loosens his grip. 

"I can text Robin," he says swiftly, rather than acknowledging anything that may have just happened. 

Eep!

"Oh, uh, that works too," she adds lamely.

They have to shuffle around a bit so he can access his pocket. She can see his screen - the lockscreen is a picture of a pug and a bulldog flopped on a wooden deck - before he shifts again so he can use both thumbs to type. 

"-you want anything? They restocked the meat-free tacos, apparently." 

cute... "I'm good on food, but I'd take a root beer, if that's ok?" There's a table of the cute little 8 ounce cans out there, but Reve hadn't wanted to hold a drink and her food, since that would have meant zero hands free for the ritual exchanging of business cards and esper compatibility testing. (You need more than zero hands to do either of those things, as Reve learned ather first mixer. And again at her third.)

He will add that to the list, then, to Robin's mild consternation. 

"Door isn't locked, is it?" 

Headshake.

(People will sometimes assume that you're up for more than you actually are, if you lock the door after getting them alone in a room for guiding, after all.)

(...speaking of guiding... mmmmm...)

Cozy guiding snuggles continue to be very soothing, yeah. She's still working through his backlash, and probably won't be done by the time the evening is over, but she's reduced it enough the effects are very obvious by now.  

Would she like to see pictures of his dogs while they wait? Since he has his phone out and open anyway? He will pull up his gallery to one as a silent offer. It's the pug again, looking deeply unimpressed in a soft, dog-sized DRT helmet and vest. 

"Cute! What's their name?" Nuzzle. 

"This one is Paws. He's twelve, I got him as a puppy when I was a kid."

There is a short series of pictures of Paws in the DRT getup, before the gallery moves on to something else. He looks pretty unimpressed in all of them. The second last image is an action shot of him shaking his whole body, and in the last the helmet is on the floor beside him instead of on his head. 

"He'll only let me put things on his head for a little while, but he likes vests." 

Reve squees and coos appropriately at the very cute dog photos. (Caine, arms around her, feels her small body move as she makes her noises.) 

Hm. That's... Inconvenient. (It's never been inconvenient before-) 

He is a whole ass adult who can ignore his body being inconvenient. It's not particularly obvious to not-him people when he's dressed, luckily. He shifts a little, and focuses on the puppy pictures. 

Pictures of the bulldog on his lockscreen ("his name is Bull, he's the nicest of my pups, he'll tolerate anything"), acting as a backrest for Robin, covered in several smaller dogs including Paws, wearing a set of horns and a nose ring with great patience. 

Reve, blissfully unaware of any inconvenience she might be causing, is an excellent participant in the "check out my pet photos" social ritual. She giggles at all the funny outfits they're in. "So many buppers! Do they all get along okay?" 

"Pretty much, yeah. Paws is a little more standoffish than the rest, and Syrup likes his alone time, but yeah." 

Syrup: the small brown dog with the cream muzzle. Caine points him out in one of the group photos. 

There's also Cookie, who looks more beagle than anything else but is definitely a mutt; Yūrei, a red and white greyhound who is clearly recovering from some kind of injury, from the bandages and cone he's wearing; and Singer, a small grey puppy still growing into his paws. 

Six dogs?? How does he have any free time... 

It seems most of his free time is in fact spent on his dogs! 

There's a knock on the door as Caine is showing off a short video of attempts to train Singer to sit.

A muffled voice calls through the door, "Delivery!" 

(Video Caine keeps pausing to scritch the puppy, so not a lot of progress is being made.)

Reve looks up at Caine. (She could prooobably wriggle out of his arms to go get their doordash retrieve food from Robin, but she doesn't want to startle him and maybe he has other ideas about how this should go?)

"The door's unlocked," is his other idea. 

"My hands are full!" 

He sighs, looking down at Reve, "You wanna get it, or me?" 

Reve looks at her undershirt and then his lack-of-shirt and smiles. "I got it." 

She bounces doorwards and opens it with bit of a silly flourish.

Here is Robin! His arms are indeed full, as he is holding several small plates over one arm like a waiter, while in the other he is holding a larger plate in his hand while his arm keeps a number of cans tucked against his chest. 

"Hey! I hear you called for a bajillion tiny tacos and some root beer? Also, help?"

One of the cans is slipping out from under his arm - which makes the whole operation somewhat precarious. He's trying to keep it in place by holding it with his knee. This is even more precarious, frankly. 

That's? A lot of stuff??

Reve, after a moment's hesitation, will attempt to retrieve the precariously-pinned soda cans first so Robin can regain use of his arm.

Robin attempts to carefully loosen his arm once he notices what she's going for. She can catch most of them easily, but one slips just a little too quick and falls towards the ground-

And then it's falling almost half as slowly, and then it pitches unexpectedly, as if caught on something, into Reve's outstretched hand.

"Careful!" She giggles.

"Phew! Nice catch! No kidding, that was the root beer!" 

So relieved, he reshuffles his load a bit and steps into the room, heading for the coffee table and freedom. 

Caine is still lounging back on the couch. He makes no move to assist. 

"Hey! No thank you or anything?" 

"Thank you." 

"Don't make that face at me you bastard!" 

"You can't be mad at him! He's literally eepy," Reve says with a goofy grin.

She sets down the sodas and cracks one open, taking a massive swig. "Ooooh, cane sugar..."

"Yeah they got the good stuff." He rocks on his feet for a moment, then claps, "Right! I asked when they were bringing out more quiches and the eggplant tomato ones and spinach ones are vegan," he points to the bigger plate, featuring two of each, "So I just got those, cause he wouldn't want the other ones anyway since the eggplant is only in those." 

Indeed, Caine has already reached for one of the eggplant quiches. 

"Ooooh, thank you!"

Reve, despite prior comments about fullness, will inhale a spinach mini quiche in a decidedly unladylike fashion!

When she finishes, she does her best to drape herself across Caine in a way that doesn't stop him from eating or her from drinking soda. (She has a little drop of backlash of her own, now, if he's paying attention.)

He is, but he can guess where it came from even without speeding up, so he doesn't comment. 

Also his mouth is full of eggplant quiche, which would complicate any commenting substantially. 

"Right! I'll leave you two be. Call me if you need anything, don't do anything I wouldn't do!" 

And he swans his way out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. 

Reve's backlash finishes clearing before she finishes her soda, and... hmmm...

"I might mess around with my power a bit? Clear a bit more of your backlog?" 

-he swallows his latest bite, "Yeah, sure. Want more room? Can move the coffee table." He's not sure what she's going to do, but it doesn't hurt to offer. 

"No need," she says, slightly distractedly.

Her backlash jumps up, then starts to drop, then - remains steady, despite the guiding? 

She grins. 

He can't see what she could be affecting.

"What are you doing?" 

instead of answering, Reve tosses her empty soda can towards the trash can!

It's absolutely going to overshoo-

-no, apparently it's actually going to pitch downward (a faintly shimmering patch of air above the trash intersecting the bottom of the soda can) and then fly in. 

The shimmering patch remains.

"That!", she chirps.

"Nice." 

He leans forward to grab a drink of his own, and proceeds to neck it in one go. 

Then he offers the empty can to her? 

She can repeat the trick!

... she's off by a bit laterally, this time; her backlash ticks up a bit as she applies a rapid series of small corrections.

Then it dips back down as all the fields disappear at once, and levels out again as one appears in arm's reach of them both, becoming more and then less visible as she matches accumulation and drain like she's directing the flow of water. 

She sighs happily and leans into him.

"That's a neat trick." More the backlash-matching than the shot, though the shot was neat too.

He grabs one tiny tacos plate along with another pair of drinks before settling back in, popping one for himself and sticking the other between two pillows next to them, within her reach. The tacos, of course, go into his mouth. 

Something in Reve's pocket (presumably a phone) starts vibrating. It has the cadence of a call or alarm.

Reve sighs sooooo dramatically, and stops using her power.

She makes a swipe-right gesture with her left index finger, and the vibration stops too.

"Mm?" His mouth is full. 

"I have an alarm set to make me go mingle more." She looks vaguely apologetic about this. "...how late will you be here?"

He shrugs, and swallows, "Staying at a hotel tonight. Can stay as long as the venue is open." 

Reve gestures in the air. An unlabeled calendar pops up in front of them for a bit, which she scans and then dismisses with another flick.

"Closes at 11 pm but also I know some places we could go after, if you want more guiding and your sleep schedule permits." (She currently thinks she'll be down to make out with him, but she's not supposed to say that now unless she knows that she wants him to plan around it being true, and she isn't sure she does.)

He nods, "I'll stay here. Probably take a nap. Come find me when you want?" 

She squeezes him as the last of her backlash fades, and nuzzles him. "I will! Enjoy your nap~"

His is significantly better, if not all gone, a fact proven by the taco he shoves in his mouth as she leaves. Even if she can't guide him more tonight, he's incredibly lucky to have met her. 

Maybe he'll actually survive this coming Confluence. 

(He'd better.)

Reve puts her shirt back on, checks herself over with her phone camera to make sure she didn't spill food on herself or otherwise become Unpresentable, and bounces back out to rejoin the crowd.