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She had been looking for a snuggle, but sleep!Michael's idea of getting cozy was a little more than she'd bargained for.

"Michael." She squirmed and made liberal use of her elbows until he let up. Noel continued her squirm until she got back around to his face.

> ”Mornin’.”

"Mornin’.” She echoed with a wary eye that was soothed with a kiss. A kiss-kiss. Like, on the lips. Chaste and then maybe not so chaste before Noel shyed back. In bed, with Ranger as a heat source, the morning chill didn't even have a chance. Add in a touch of embarrassment and she figured that the thrill of being able to actually kiss hadn't yet lost its shine. It was going to take some time to wear off so for the meantime they'd just have to keep practicing until kissing became second nature.

"I couldn' get the coffee mak'r to make." She gave him a poke in the chest, unintentionally falling into his familiar Texas drawl. "So I thought I'd get back t' bed, but if yu're awake maybe that won' last."

She had to go find a marker, a big one, able to black out what she shouldn't be seeing. If she'd been out on her own, that kind of thing would be on her person at all times. Here at Haven she hadn't needed it. Not even to write her name on herself.

By the time she was back, Michael was pounding back a shot of his own. It took guts to volunteer for this. And they'd prepared as best as they could. Now they had to trust the process.

Noel knocked back some allergy meds and a shot that had her cringing as she climbed into the Ranger's lap. She put her knees at his hips and her elbows on his shoulders. It was best for controlling the head, if she needed to. Plus she could easily balance the papers on the back of the couch so she could see them and he could not.

"Here." She put his hands at the tops of her hips just so he wouldn't feel weird about what to do with them. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a quick breath because this was what she was used to. This was work. But it was also personal. She wanted to do this as exactly as possible, and she had a list. That was good, but he was probably going to lose more than he'd expected.

"I might boss you around a bit," She warned Michael before moving his head around to tip his face up and put them nose to nose. "but you're in good hands."

A smile, a slight hesitation, and Noel pressed her lips against Michael's. A gentle touch of a closed mouth kiss because their first kiss shouldn't have to be business. In fact, she planted another kiss on each cheek and one on his forehead for good measure. And a hug where she could bury her face in his neck for a moment. Noel had to collect herself and calm her breathing because all of that had felt totally illicit.

"Okay, okay. For real this time." She laughed through her words and grabbed up the list, re-reading the first point. She marked it off thoroughly and put the page down before pulling Michael close and diving right in. Once she had a mental link established, her body went on autopilot while she navigated his memories. He was specific enough that it was quick. But she grabbed up the context and did her best to decide where the cutting needed to happen. What might re-trigger that? What would his mind likely gloss over automatically?

Once she'd decided, Noel pulled back and told him to open his eyes. Her pupils vibrated back and forth in their sockets. As she cut those memories out, both their visions closed down to a tunnel. They could only see the other's eyes until it was done and the fog lifted. It sometimes felt like waking up all over again.

"There's one." Noel went back to her paper, read, marked, kissed, and erased— rinse and repeat— and so their late evening dragged on past the end of the movie and on into the early morning.

Once Noel'd finished the entire list she made sure to shred it, toss it out, and even take the trash to the chute. Even the smell of the permanent marker might be enough to tip them off, otherwise. One last note and Noel settled back on Ranger's lap while rubbing at her eyes. Tired didn't begin to cover it at this point. That list had been longer than she'd initially thought.

"Just one more." That final mental clean up to hide that they'd hidden or destroyed the evidence. Noel put his hands back on her hips, but with a slip of paper beneath his this time. No need for a mental read, she'd been there to help take the trash out and put the bourbon away. So when their vision opened up all that was left was for the Ranger to read his note.

"Kiss me already."

"I can get your list." She confirmed. And that seemed to be enough. Noel didn't dare move from her spot on the couch to follow, not that she could easily get up with half a mountain flopped over one leg. This crazy plan was actually in motion and Michael was motivated enough to sit down right here and now to get it sorted out.

She pat the couch and asked Revvie to snuggle on the other side. There was no point in leaving anybody out and it seemed the Ranger needed a minute at the computer alone.

"It's probably worth noting— I don't know how to turn it off. So... it's an every single time sort of thing."

Once upon a time she'd met a person who was also paranoid about psychics. He'd taken care of her, fed her pizza, braided her hair, and tried to kill her. She probably should have discounted his opinion, but it was one of the few she had a difficult time forgetting, in part because of the attempted murder.

He'd suggested that it wasn't that she couldn't stop reading memories at every taste. It was that she wouldn't stop. That there was some part of her that was eternally suspicious, and if she trusted someone, reeeally trusted them, then maybe she would learn to stop.

The puppies were getting the pet of a lifetime as Noel processed that hypothesis again. If it was true, maybe this wasn't as stupidly selfish she it seemed. If she could learn to turn it off, Noel wouldn't be slowly replacing her experiences with the Ranger's non-classified ones. In the meantime, she had to come up with a strategy. Stick to recent stuff? Go for the same memory over and over again? Then maybe she could tune it out and stay more in the moment...

She jumped when the basilisk on screen roared up out of the water, not realizing that she'd zoned out and had been reviewing memories and potential options.

"Do you have a plan for going to sleep right away?" Or maybe it was that military adage that he could do it on command in any place at any time. She, however, could not. "Allergy medicine?"

That was so not at all what he'd been expecting, as evidenced by his "oh!" It ruffled his feathers. Noel chanced a look and saw that she wasn't the only one struggling for how to put things. That had her abandoning the movie, yet again. This whole kiss thing had them both in a twist.

"The only way your secrets aren't a problem is if they're not... there." He'd laid it out and now she was picking up the trail of what he might be thinking. Noel could do that, but she was still suspicious for where this was going. She could solve this problem, but she'd dismissed that option a long time ago as a bad idea. So she hadn't even brought it up.

That was an awful lot of trust for someone to let her go in and muck around in their head.

"Are you sure you don't need those secrets? Like, in case of emergency... or something?" And did he even know how it worked? She took a moment to give Dammit a scratch.

"I could take it out precisely, but that'd mean I'd have to know it first and you'd have to trust that when it goes for you, it goes for me. Or, I could do it blind..." Which had its own risks. "Less precise, but safer. No way to tell what'd go for me."

But she realized that she'd do it if he asked.

Was he actually considering this?

"Could always try pills first... it's less permanent."

> ”Noel”

One words and she was pretty sure she was in trouble.

> ”Those’re penises.”

"What!?" She might have been embarrassed at first, but now she was tomato red and sputtering. "No! I- it- I was-" Noel whipped her phone back to give it a better look. Oh hell. She had no idea what she was or wasn't looking at anyway.

So of course that's what the Ranger zeroed in on.

Fanfiction. The word felt like a nail in her coffin. Her eyes zipped up to Michael's a mix of panic and desperation in them and back to the phone. She was so mad to be tricked and so embarrassed that she could hardly focus on what was apparently a decorative tessellation of penises. Dammit made a soft whine and Noel put the phone down before she did something stupid like throw it. Instead she put her hand in Dammit's scruff.

> "...Do y’ not know what a penis looks like?”

"No. I don't— have—" It was like pulling teeth here to get words out. And there was zero chance of eye contact. It was cloudy with a hefty chance of denial, though. Noel tried a different tack. The opportunity to create her own personal memories was half the reason why she'd joined Haven. "I have male memories, but nothing remotely that personal. There's no reason to go there. And-and no personal experience of— that I know of. Maybe. Ever?" For goodness sakes, they hadn't even kissed! Not that Noel had never kissed anyone, but there was a definite difference between business and pleasure. She would kiss an enemy faster than she might kiss an ally. She'd have to live with the ally later...

She was embarrassed now and typically it took more than a few dumb words to embarrass Noel. Her memory wasn't that bad. She'd literally just read all this. She wouldn't have said it if she hadn't thought it wasn't true. In fact, she wasn't cringing through any of it. Her words tasted neutral and true. She believed.

And that was the biggest downfall of her power. If she believed it was true, her truth sense could backfire... like it apparently was now.

"It's Pen Island." And she was bringing it up now. The header said Pen Island. It even had an island with a tree and two beach balls for a logo and she was already on bringing it up on her phone. "I don't get how the rocketship ties in to the island theme, but... here."

She turned the phone around to show the site. It was subtle for what it was... And a legitimate source of pirated ebooks, it certainly was not.

Those were not rocket ships. But what reason did Noel have to think otherwise? She'd never seen anything like it in her working memory.

At first Noel thought Michael was ignoring her on purpose. Trapped as she was, there wasn't a whole lot she could do besides start pinching. She was just deciding where to start when he offered his phone to her.

"What...?" But his face said it all. He wanted her to read it for herself. So she did. And two sentences from where she blurted, "Oh my god," in disbelief was where Michael cut back in with his explanation.

A house. Only for Texans.

It was amusing, yeah, but made her flop her face into the leathery couch cushion because of course Texans would want to secede into their own house and "OF COURSE, there's a Texas house!" She held his phone back up to him, as far as she could reach which was maybe 2 inches higher than it was when in her hand. It was the thought that counted.

"I guess this means we're not in the same house. Again." Not that it mattered since all of this was make-believe. On screen a bit of snake hissing caught her attention for a moment. Sibilance like that just wasn't used in common conversation and the sound was distracting.

"So there's this one." Noel poked the Ranger in his side once they were back to something more mundane on screen. "The Hall of Redacted Information. And the next one, that's tThe Cellmate of Gulagban. Which, that one might just be my favorite because time travel." The more outlandish, the better. Her absolute favorite movie, according to notes, involved Dolphins in Space. "I mean, how far do you want to watch tonight? I dunno if I want to get into The Mug of Flames with all the sexting and the nude scenes."