"I'm gonna go take a shower!" he says, jumping off the bed.

"Want company?"

"No!" he replies, not-quite-slamming the door behind himself.

Then he opens it again and mumbles a "Yes."

"Coming!"

Both Jaeha and Tae-gun have assignments today, but unlike Tae-gun, Jaeha is not insane, and only has one of them. He and Tae-gun will probably be assigned to some dungeons together eventually but their abilities don't really dovetail all that well, with their main area of overlap being any dungeons that have threats both psychic and physical—but not just any of those: Jaeha's a heavy hitter in the former department while Tae-gun is a heavy hitter in the latter, and dungeons that require heavy hitters of both kinds are pretty rare. This means that they won't be able to do a ton of passive guiding while at work, and furthermore that Jaeha will be coming back to their (now-finished) silo and just sort of hanging out there, waiting for Tae-gun, not doing anything in particular.

That last part is his backlash, of course. He doesn't want to do anything in particular, because nothing appeals. This level of apathy will eventually fade to a more manageable one on its own, but hopefully Tae-gun's help will help much more directly and thoroughly.

He doesn't have to wait very long for Tae-gun, to be fair; he may have multiple assignments, but he does still have breaks between them, and he's going to spend those in isolation with Jaeha.

Even though he doesn't particularly feel the drive to do this right now, he did tell Tae-gun that he was going to be "free use Jaeha" in their silo, so he's stark naked when Tae-gun arrives after his first dungeon, having a smoke and doomscrolling on Twitter.

He can really get used to this. Leaving a mission, arriving at a shared silo, and having an attractive man waiting for him to fuck his brains out? That's the life. Even Kang Jaeha's backlash feeds into the fantasy, the way he gets progressively into Tae-gun over the duration of their sessions. It feeds into some primal part of him, riding someone's cock until he breaks through their apathy and gets them excited. Like he's just that irresistible.

Well. He is.

See, that's flattering, too. Kang Jaeha's pretty, pretty words always give him butterflies.

The bulk of Jaeha's most recently acquired backlash is dealt with on Tae-gun's first break, so he's a lot more excited to be free use Jaeha on Tae-gun's second break, and he is once again wearing just an apron and cooking dinner when Tae-gun arrives after his third and final dungeon of the day.

...is Tae-gun ever going to get used to that sight? He sure hopes not. It's just an amazing way to end the day, to get to their silo, leave his shoes by the door, and make a beeline for his partner to go to town on him.

Jaeha made sure to pick something he can stop in the middle of cooking to enjoy himself. "Ah, someone's impatient today," he says around a moan, resting his weight on the sink counter while arching his back to give Tae-gun better access.

...is he impatient? He supposes this last dungeon was trickier than expected and he might have gotten more backlashed than usual, and that might be affecting his judgment about how impatient he is. He doesn't feel particularly impatient. In any case his tongue is far too busy right now for him to want to give Kang Jaeha a proper answer with words. They can figure words out once he feels satisfied his partner has been sufficiently prepped.

See, Tae-gun, when one has one's tongue in one's partner within ten seconds of arriving in one's silo and is not even willing to stop what they're doing to respond to said partner, that is impatience.

Again, though, he is not complaining. Anhedonia, goodbye, it's so great to feel things again, even if what he's feeling may be slightly overstimulating. Beats the alternative, by far, and it's also really great to be desired so badly, regardless of whether said desire comes from backlash. Quite the opposite, actually: Jaeha's backlash makes him less himself, so it stands to reason that Tae-gun's would make him more, with this level of compatibility, and Tae-gun-but-more wants Jaeha. Who could possibly object to this?

Yeah okay this is enough. He pulls away and gets back to his feet. "Bend over."

That sends a chill down his spine. "Yes, sir."

He did manage to eventually finish making dinner—both of them actually thought the idea of Jaeha trying to do it while constantly distracted was incredibly hot—and then they ate together next to each other, Tae-gun one-handed.

(It's really, really great to be wanted this badly.)

Now they're in bed, snuggling and no longer actively fucking, and in the past Jaeha's partners would probably have begged off to go back home by this point.

(Another benefit of being partnered to Tae-gun: his backlash makes him mostly not notice or mind the way Jaeha is poor company when he's backlashed, and most of their sober interactions involve a version of Jaeha who doesn't feel at best "meh" about literally everything.)

He's not really sure what to think about the fact that neither of them is going back home, though. It's not that he's raring to go, either—again, he has very little experience with sticking around this long, himself—but that probably implies some things? Or at least it maybe does? Jaeha is not used to having to figure out what he's feeling, since the answer is typically "nothing", and he's also not sure if the desire to do it is a stable personality trait of his that he lost over the years or if it's just the novelty or, or what. He never really considered himself an introspective person, even prior to his manifestation, but he didn't know the alternative, back then.

?

...Jaeha pets him.

Lee Tae-gun is so cute, and no one knows this. That boggles the mind, actually, that Lee Tae-gun, the shooting star who can clear A-ranks solo, who never looks anything short of perfect in public, is this cute and no one knows. No one but Tae-gun's last partners and now Jaeha, that is, and they're just rounding errors.

People absolutely would buy the version of Lee Tae-gun who told Jaeha to bend over, though. Jaeha is suddenly very curious about how people will write their porn about the two of them. He hasn't ever read those, but he bets they'd be entertaining, now.

(It's great to be able to feel entertained.)

Actually he can just look those up. He summons a commscreen and opens the browser. "Lee Tae-gun."

"Mm?"

"Do you know what platform people typically use to write those stories about other people? Like, fictional ones, but about real people?"