"Yeah." He offers her a hand and summons the commscreen. "Ready?"

She takes his hand. "Ready."

Vworp.

She is now being pressed against a wall and kissed desperately.

!!! Hye-jin was not expecting this, actually!

She's not complaining, and is in fact really into it, but. She does make a little surprised sound before she turns to putty under his hands (and lips). This isn't an unwilling woman, though, not with her arms wrapped around his neck like that.

"W-we, um, there's - Woo-young," she murmurs, when she needs to come up for air.

Literally who.

—oh.

Fuck. Right.

He pulls away and looks around.

No sign of the man, but there's a little note on Tae-gun's center table under the remote.

...he fetches it via careful applications of dry ice and then plucks it out of his improvised ice pincers so that both he and Hye-jin can read it.

I know you're going to fret, so please instead don't. I'm fine. Went out to get shitfaced with other people. Enjoy your time together.

- MWY

"..... no further objections," says Hye-jin, blushing.

Thank you Woo-young-ah you're the best Woo-young-ah no one could have a better friend Woo-young-ah.

That prayer out of the way, he has some unfinished business with his partner.

Whimper!

Yep, he sure does! This is going to the expected places way, way faster than it had with her last partner! Fuck it's hot to be wanted this much.

He wants to crowd out every memory of her shitty ex and wants her to crowd out every memory of his shitty ex.

(That is a lie. He is lying. He wishes it was true, but it's not.)

He wants to, at least, get her to reasonable levels of backlash. That much is perfectly achievable by fucking her brains out. He's not sure they'll get to his bed by the first time he comes but a hidden perk of his backlash is that he basically does not have a refractory period while backlashing so he can just keep fucking her. He wants her to be exhausted and sore everywhere and for her to remember him and his face and his mouth and his tongue and his fingers and his cock every time she feels a twitch in her muscles. He wants to mark her, wants to bite her and leave bruises. He may be talked down from this, it won't even be hard, but it will be necessary, because that's where he's going, otherwise.

So, on one hand, there's a slight issue with physically marking her: she has regeneration! Whatever marks he makes will disappear pretty quickly.

On the other hand: she turns out to be really into it!!

No attempts to talk him down are necessary, or made. ... Actually she kind of eggs him on. Look this is fun, okay, he's her second sexual partner in her life and he's really making it clear she was missing out!!!

She's his...

...

...okay he's lost count of number of sexual partners but most of them were men, she's his third woman he thinks (he's not totally sure, the time he manifested was a blur). The thing about sex though is that if you're really into it and really into your partner being really into it (and you've read up at least a bit to expand your creative horizons) you'll figure it out. And when he's in the depth of backlash like this, all of his embarrassment goes out the window, so he's just going to be trying things and asking questions and figuring out how to get her more exhausted than right after a dungeon.

Squeak.

Sounds good to her.

Jaeha's got four screens floating in front of his eyes keeping track of different things and is on his third mug of coffee this afternoon. One of the screens is showing the area surrounding the dungeon live, and the team he's assembled* is getting ready to go in and rescue Tae-gun when the portal's edges suddenly turn green and his knees almost give out.

* It was not, mostly, assembled by him. It was, however, assembled by him in larger part than anyone other than himself knows, and it was assembled a lot more quickly than it otherwise would have been. There's a very real sense in which that team would not be there now if it weren't for him.

He maximises that window and puts his coffee mug down and stares at it while holding the corners of the kitchen counter hard enough to turn his knuckles white and the edges of his vision black.

He's alive. He's alive. He's alive he's alive he's alive Tae-gun is alive. Jaeha knew it. He was right. He was right. He was right all along, Tae-gun is alive, of course Tae-gun is alive, it's not some measly fire dungeon that's going to kill Tae-gun, and it's not because of some random fire esper that he's going to die. Tae-gun is alive, Tae-gun is alive, Tae-gun found the dungeon's core and killed the dungeon and he's about to step through the portal, looking as stunning as he always does, not a hair out of place, like singlehandedly destroying Volcanic Range were just Tuesday for him, because it is, because he's Lee Tae-gun—

Tae-gun doesn't, however, immediately step out. No one does. Jaeha's screen doesn't have the audio turned on, but it's clear that the staff surrounding the portal are looking extremely alarmed by this development. People are running back and forth between different groups to consult and opening comms and taking calls and trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.

It's obvious what just happened. Jaeha was a fool, an enormous fool, of course he didn't need to rescue Tae-gun, he should've believed in Tae-gun, should've trusted him, should've had faith, he's Lee Tae-gun, no one needs to rescue Lee Tae-gun, Lee Tae-gun is the one who rescues other people, he's always alright, he's always fine, no matter what happens Tae-gun will always be there, the world is alright, the world makes sense, Tae-gun is alive Tae-gun is alive!!!!!!!

Time continues to pass. Lee Tae-gun continues not to step through the portal.