"Oh?"

"I told some sunbaes that you look good naked."

"Well, I do. Why is that embarrassing?"

Aaaaaaah he thinks that if Kang Jaeha doesn't instinctively understand the answer to that question he has no way to possibly explain it.

"...um. Sorry for, uh, getting you dragged out here in the middle of the night, Kang Jaeha-shi. I don't usually get wasted like that."

"Don't worry about that. And you can just call me hyung instead."

"...a-ah. Right..."

...undo.

"Don't worry about that. And don't you think that 'shi' is a bit much for someone who's had you flat on your back every day for the past four days?"

...okay he has a point but does he have to put it like that!!!!

"Should I just call you sunbaenim instead?" he muses, switching to a more formal register. "You're my sunbae in Quasar, after all."

That just sounds wrong.

"No dice? You come up with something, then. I have a suggestion but I'm not sure we're there yet."

"If you're... okay with it... probably just... your name...?"

"That sounds good to me. For now, at least."

How does he manage to make that sound so lewd!!!

"If you want me to tease you less you need to make it less easy to do."

"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 had assignments today, but unlike Tae-gun, Jaeha is not insane, and only had 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 lots of 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.