"You reacting like I said something extremely surprising when I let on that I like you? Maybe it will be more obvious in a directly sensory format."

"...oh. I mean, you've—indicated before—but it was the part about the, uh—I don't actually know what idiolect means but I'm kind of guessing—" Kang Jaeha you need to shut up and also erase Haru's memories of the past five minutes. You can only do one of those so you'd better do at least that.

"Idiolect is like dialect for one person. My personal way of using language." He has maneuvered his left ear right onto Jaeha's chest.

Stop thaaaaaat that makes him even more self-conscious of his heartbeat which does not help with calming it down at aaaaaaaallllll.

"I guessed right, then." Inane statements are still better than whatever the fuck he's been on recently.

"Greek roots will get you everywhere." Snuggle snuggle. "I think the relationship dynamics and the incentives around esper partnerships are kind of fucky and awkward to navigate and I don't have a great universally applicable algorithm to apply to solve that problem but I like you and I am going to get you out of that hole and then we'll see where we're at."

What does that mean. That sounds like the kind of nonstatement that means Haru is just waiting for him to get fully guided out of altruism so that he discharges his responsibility and can then fuck off to be with someone better.

...that sounds like catastrophic thinking. It's probably not true. Haru said he likes him.

But he can't be sure, and he can't even figure it out firsthand right now, and Haru will only allow him to after he's "out of that hole" which is a very convenient thing to decide if you don't actually mean it—

Chill.

"That makes sense." No it doesn't he has no idea—chill.

Oblivious snuggle.

At least he's got a good poker face for some things. He really should practice. 

...

"Uh, while we're on the topic," that was the worst fucking possible opener, "of esper partnerships and such, uh..."

"Yeah, what about 'em?"

"I think you said you have a partner in Canada?" He doesn't actually remember if Haru ever mentioned it but that also means that Haru probably doesn't remember it either and could figure he must've at some point and in the worst case he can be confused about where he heard this.

"I do, when I visit Charlie I like to be there for longer than I actually want to take off work so I shopped around till I found somebody compatible enough."

"What's he... like?" You're not doing an amazing job at not coming off like a jealous controlling insane person. "I mean, if he caught your attention..." Is Jaeha saying that he's special? Yes he is. He is a lot more special than Johnny could ever dream of being. 

Groupies.

"He caught my attention via fistbump, not by, like, having anything going on upstairs. I don't really think you'd get along. He's like eighty percent canned lines about superheroism, when we meet up he's usually at least tipsy, I can tolerate him when I'm backlashed and would gladly talk to anyone rather than be by myself but we don't otherwise hang out."

Ah.

Okay!

He can hold onto his poker face when he's been concentrating on nothing but that for the past several minutes so he doesn't start grinning like an idiot. Even though that's exactly the facial expression he's having to clamp down on.

"That sounds unpleasant. Ms. Yamanaka didn't want to come with and I assume you didn't want to bother with the teleport costs?"

"Right, it woulda eaten into my charity budget something awful to pop back to Japan to sit with her."

...does that mean he's going to object to Jaeha teleporting to Canada with him. That would suck. That would suck so much.

"Yeah, you're not wrong about that."

Argh!

"...you okay? I assume since you weren't monogamous with your last partner and haven't brought it up with me either that it's not that..."

...how does he say "I liked my partner less" in a way that... doesn't sound clingy...

"Well my relationship with him was different. I... think I mentioned we didn't like each other very much?"

"It didn't sound sunshine and roses, certainly."

"So there was at least part of it that was that we, ah, kind of didn't want to spend much more time together than we needed to and weren't very interested in what the other was doing." Mostly Wo Do-in, Jaeha himself actually had never made use of the "fuck whomever you want" permission until he met Haru.

"Well, arguably you didn't even spend as much time together as you needed to but I guess if you were barely tolerating each other to begin with and also free to fuck around that makes the neglect, like, not necessarily excusable but more understandable..." Pet pet.

"Yeah."

Now get the hinnnttttttttt.

"Before I awakened I was kind of - there's not a great one-word label even though I think it's kind of common, like, it's not 'trad' because I can't be trad because I'm gay, it's not 'romantic' because that has all these implications of being unrealistic and impractical, it's not 'prudish' because it was just about how I wanted my own personal life to work out, but like, I wanted to - get it right on the first try, go hard on monogamy, fly the boy of my dreams to Canada and get married and stay that way, not like my parents. And then I awakened and was like, well, that's a liability, if I want all the other things I want in my life, if I want sanity and superpowers, I had better be willing to fuck Sparkler - that's the Canada partner's codename, and, like, not him in particular, I met him later, but people in the general category of Sparkler. So I kinda - edited myself - which then turned out to have been basically unnecessary, because, like, I could do without Sparkler in the specific and Yamanaka turned out to exist, but..."

"...but...?" He knows that any possible way his brain will find to complete that sentence will be worse than reality and he doesn't care to try actually.