"It is," Tae-gun says, hugging back and closing his eyes. "I'm stupid, too."

God, he's not sure what he's gonna do, now, he doesn't think he has the strength to let go. He might just die of hunger while hugging Tae-gun by his front door.

Well, he's not going to because Tae-gun is tugging him towards his living room sofa. They can snuggle there.

Whatever Tae-gun wants, he can get.

"...can you cancel tomorrow's dungeons too? I don't—I don't want to keep talking about it. We can talk more tomorrow. Please?"

"What part of 'I'll become a housewife if you ask me to' didn't you understand?" He kisses the top of Tae-gun's head and summons his commscreen to cancel his assignments. "Done."

The part! Where! It's! A ridiculous thing to say!!!! That's the part!!!!!!

Too bad. It's still true.

Well. Cool. Fine. Whatever.

...he loves Jaeha. And Jaeha loves him. This is also ridiculous to think about, and it's only been, it's only been a few months! How does that happen!!!! It doesn't, that's how. It's fake. But it's so, so nice. Lying here on top of Jaeha in his living room, pressing his ear against Jaeha's skin and hearing his heartbeat and feeling the rise and fall of his chest while he breathes. Everything else feels secondary and distant, compared to that. And he might be scared of Jaeha's powers, but he was already feeling that way before. He was feeling like he was trying to do his due diligence, like he needed to make sure, but it was so, so small compared to how he feels about Jaeha.

"...what are you thinking, Tae-gun-ah?" He's trying not to sound clingy and anxious but actually not listening at all for other people's feelings is. Hard. It's hard. It's especially hard when he's feeling kind of vulnerable and precarious but of course it'd be exactly the wrong thing, for him to do it anyway.

"...I'm thinking that it's ridiculous that—you like me this much. And that I like you this much. And that it doesn't feel real. And that I don't want to stop. And that I—like hearing the way your heartrate picks up while I'm saying this."

"Oh, Tae-gun-ah, I can't handle this, this is too much," he says, squeezing Tae-gun closer. "There isn't enough me for all of this."

He closes his eyes. "No takebacks."

"Not for the world. You're mine."

Yeah. Yeah, he is.

Tae-gun also cancels his dungeons the next day—they are all of them small, and he basically never does this, and figuring out where he and Jaeha stand is important not just from a relationship perspective but also from a work perspective, and there are people who can cover for him even if that's going to stretch the support staff thinner, and they were counting on him but this is a good idea for his long term stability which is the most important thing when it comes to how much work he can do and how many people he can help—

Uh.

Tae-gun also cancels his dungeons the next day and only agonises about it for like an hour or two, maybe, and he fails to sleep in even though he wanted to because his brain thinks he should be working and is not willing to let him relax even if he took the day off.

Jaeha does manage to sleep in, at least in part because he had been awake for like forty hours straight and had an extremely miserable day and the emotional rollercoaster was physically draining. When he wakes up he reaches for Tae-gun's feelings before he even opens his eyes, then freezes and stops. 

This... is going to be difficult. 

"Good morning."

Tae-gun looks up from his phone and smiles—then stops. "Are you okay?"

"...I don't know. On the one hand I'm waking up next to the man I love when I thought I might never see him again, on the other the first thing I did as soon as I woke up was try to reach for his emotions. —I stopped, but it's a habit."

"...oh."

He's... having some trouble really viscerally caring about that second bit because it's his Jaeha, why wouldn't he want to share his emotions with his Jaeha? But—that's not the problem.

(It occurs to him that maybe the reason he's feeling that way is because Jaeha is trying to manipulate him but—he doesn't want to go there. Doesn't want to keep questioning everything. If Jaeha wanted to manipulate him he could've just not told Tae-gun anything at all, there's gotta be some minimal amount of trust for them to get anywhere.)

"Why did you?"

"It's a habit," he repeats. "It's—like opening my eyes. It doesn't feel any different, it's just a sense I have."

"It costs backlash though."

"Yeah." Tiny pitiful amounts, if it's purely passive and just with one target, a small enough amount that just snuggling Tae-gun like this covers it, but having a constant drain on his reserves like that even when he's not in a dungeon probably has consequences.

Tae-gun doesn't really know how to approach this problem. It's too big and too unlike the things he's good at. He considered telling other people about it to get advice but he couldn't share Jaeha's information without his consent, and on his own... he doesn't know what to do. 

"Let's... get up and eat something... and then we can talk about it." Gives them time to think a bit.

"Okay," he agrees. 

...but he's not getting up.