"I run on autopilot. It's what I've been doing, it's easier to keep doing it than stop and do something else if it all feels the same. It's not like I have any criteria to make a different decision."

"You are... also a lot hornier than I would have expected based on that description."

"Being guided still feels nice even when nothing else does. And—it's the only thing that makes anything else feel good again. Coupled with none of my previous partners having been as compatible with me as you are, I needed to have sex with them to get as much guiding as I do by holding your hand. 

"It makes me become myself again." Or something like that.

"I think you should take a vacation, tell them not to call you unless it's Nightmare and then only go in with me to hand, get to zero as quickly as possible, and - check in with yourself - it's awkward timing since you just switched guilds but did Juno have people who knew this, were they just running you into the ground because they weren't sure they'd ever get you started again if they let you lose momentum?"

He blinks. 

He's really not sure what to say to that.

"Like, if your previous partners were not adequately down to fuck, that's - tragic, but - ratcheting you up to this point when you don't have the access to your own motivational system that would let you do anything else looks actively malicious? Like, seriously, do you want to fucking sue them? If we stay in bed all week will you want to sue them then? You're not okay and they kept sending you into dungeons! There are going to keep being dungeons for the foreseeable future! It is of course inexcusably tragic if somebody gets eaten by a dungeon while you're on vacation and it is also inexcusably tragic if someone else gets eaten by a dungeon in two decades because all your organs quit on you and you weren't even on vacation such that you could be wheedled out of it with a bonus and a promise that it's an exceptional circumstance! Have you had so much as a pleasant afternoon when I wasn't there in the last eight years?? Or done anything that wasn't suggested to you - don't sue them on my say-so, think about it and decide when you're at zero, I'm fucking pissed at those amateurs though -"

Why is that so incredibly attractive.

"I don't—think they were aware of how much backlog I have," he says, because he thinks that asking Haru to channel that anger into fucking him would be the wrong move.

"Your NDA doesn't cover telling people how much you have, just what it is, so that's me wanting to yell at all your ex-partners again! If you have no strenuous objections I'm putting in for that vacation for you."

Jaeha's finding himself in the weird mental state of reflexively wanting to object but not having any good objections. The version of him he's been channeling throughout his interactions with Haru has some feelings about—this not being justifiable, of it being possible for him to just take it slower without quitting altogether, of viscerally not wanting to take a break, but—the truth is he doesn't care. He doesn't care if he's an esper or on vacation or what. 

No... He realises that his true objection is that going on an extended vacation would be incredibly boring. 

"So you're suggesting that I, what, stay home all day doing nothing for—however long?" Ah fuck he's sure there'd have been a better way to frame this but fucked if he knows what it would be.

"You don't have to do nothing, if there is something you would prefer to be doing. Is there? - what's your blood type -"

"B negative."

Of course there isn't anything he'd rather be doing, what kind of question is that. He'd need to find something to occupy his time and he has no idea what.

"Well, nothing doing there. I'll tell them to load me up on dungeons and come home for an hour and a half in between 'em and while I'm out you can - do you have trouble concentrating on stuff like the way I get or does that part work and you just can't think of things to do, I can recommend you books. Cricket watches a lot of TV, if that's easier."

Spoken like someone who hasn't ever experienced a moment of anhedonia in his life. 

...he shouldn't be feeling defensive and bitter right now. Shouldn't be feeling anything, actually.

"It's neither of those. It's not that I can't think of things to do, it's that none of them appeal. Things I ought to like, used to like, I don't. I can think of any things I might do and I can then try to do them and it'll feel the same. 

"At least when I'm in a dungeon what I'm doing matters." See, this is totally something his character would say. Good job, Kang Jaeha.

"That's... true, but I am very concerned about you not having gotten to zero in forever, and the main two options for doing that in a hurry so you can get back to doing dungeons again in a remotely sane and sustainable manner are that I do a lot of dungeons and come home for guiding about that in between, or that I also take a vacation and tick up my backlash to approach yours through completely gratuitous power use, which, I don't have anything against occasional gratuitous power use, but if we're trying to be efficient and also dungeon-maximizing..."

"We could just keep doing dungeons and rely on the fact that regardless of anything else with you I'm backlash-negative..."

"How long do you think that's going to take to dig you out? Like, we're making progress, but I think that's - easily six weeks, maybe twice that, and I think if I go full on action movie hero and clear four dungeons a day we can cut that down a lot. I am open to your suggestion but mostly because I'm now reviewing every interaction we have ever had and realizing how much I have inadvertently made or prompted basically all of the non-sex-related decisions in them and if you have manifested this one non-sex-related preference that seems promising."

.......okay! That's a really obvious tell that he had somehow completely missed! He's going to need to keep that one in mind for the future! Also that is probably a huge part of why his old partners thought he was boring and unpleasant to be around and the fact that Haru has noticed it immediately does not bode well at all! Fuck!

(Also he's kind of scared of clearing his backlash to that extent. He doesn't want to look at that right now.)

"That seems like a reasonable estimate. Four dungeons a day—is a lot." Though Haru is mostly a sensor so maybe it's less? "I am not sure how much we'd cut down on if we did that. Five weeks, maybe? Four?"

"It is, yeah, but it'd be a sprint, not a marathon, I don't know that I can sustain it long enough to dig you out if you're coming along and using your powers and I think I can if it's only for as long as it takes without that factor. And...

"...it's your anhedonia and you get to decide how you relate to it, I don't, but you should decide that, it shouldn't.

"And as a distant minor factor, we haven't known each other that long and are still getting used to each other and if we want to last as a partnership then I should probably ever be introduced to you at baseline? I shouldn't get too used to you like this because the more I do the more of an adjustment it'll be when you're okay again. Like, I think I can make that adjustment now or later, this isn't a huge deal, but it does come to mind."

...well, if they want to last as a partnership Jaeha should become more interesting as a person, it's true.

He keeps having—hiccups—around emotions that he knows he'd be feeling if he weren't backlashed but he doesn't exactly know what they are nor what texture they have, and that makes it hard to know how to react. Can he tank a month, maybe two, of just staying home doing absolutely nothing?

Say something. Anything. Come on, Kang Jaeha.

"I see."

"I think this is... an emergency but it's a pretty slow-burning emergency, if you need a while to think I'm not going to fuss about it. Or if I haven't been adequately clear and you want to ask questions about how I'm thinking about this, I guess."

"I think... you might be thinking of me without my backlash as more different from me right now than I do," he tries.

"I am probably overgeneralizing from my own psychological backlash, sure. When was the last time you were at zero?"

"...when I was seventeen."

"You have absolutely no experience of adult life with your brain completely online and that is a serious problem and I believe that your backlash is preventing you from acknowledging how serious a problem that is."

Maybe so.

He's still scared.

He doesn't think he can argue, though. And he's feeling—something else. The shadows of something else, maybe. There's something in him that wants to—when Haru looks at him like that—Jaeha wants to do whatever Haru wants him to do. He wants to be Haru's.

"Let's try it for a week," he suggests, "and I'll see how—bearable—I find it?"