"Usually just the one if you don't count potatoes! He will tolerate roasted broccoli with enough butter and garlic on it, I think that's my greatest hit in the vegetables department with Charlie."

"Think he might like kimchi with the right seasonings?"

"Alas, no, he has the spice tolerance of a... I set that sentence up to require a simile and I don't have one. He does not have a significant spice tolerance."

"It doesn't need to be spicy, so long as he doesn't inherently object to the underlying flavour 'butter and garlic' isn't not a kind of seasoning," however much that sentence pains him. Well, the garlic's alright.

"I haven't tried him on really mild kimchi. It's harder to get, there, and he lives in a teeny nowhere town where I'd actually be a little surprised to find one kind of kimchi in the store, though maybe I'm selling the place short."

No, see, Haru, this was Jaeha offering to cook for your dad so as to make your dad like him.

...ah, fuck his life, honestly. He'll just say it.

"I was subtly indicating that I could cook for your family should the opportunity ever present itself." Haru knows he likes him anyway, what's he go to lose except for everything.

"Well, you'd have to go to Canada, he can be budged but it takes something big and I'm not going to awaken again."

"As an honorary esper with access to the teleport network that is an acceptable cost to me."

"Honorary?"

"Well I'm not currently being much of one, am I?" ...wait. "—sorry, that came off as more bitter than I meant it, I was just making light of it."

"I'm used to 'honorary' meaning more like, you don't have a doctoral degree, but this college thinks you're very cool, so they will award you one. You're a genuine esper who happens to be on vacation."

"...could be I've always been mistaken about what that word means..." He pauses his cooking to open his commscreen and Google it. "Oh, could be a regional thing, Google says Brits use it to talk about being an unpaid holder of an office and that is what I thought at the time."

"Aha. But you're even still being paid! Just retainer rates."

"I suppose you're right. I'm almost done, do you want to—never mind, actually." He shouldn't ask his backlashed partner to go set the table on his own.

"What might I have wanted to do in the universe where you finished your question?"

"Just set the table."

"Well, I could, but I'd have to let go of you, which as you apparently surmised is not very appealing."

"Mmhmmm." He kisses Haru's temple. "It's okay, I'll do it in a bit."

"You are so accommodating."

"It's because I like you," which is still not something he's ready to say in either Korean or Japanese but this is fine. It's fine.

"It's really convenient! I'm so glad I met you."

Jaeha kisses him for that, but then he can get on the setting up the table and serving the food.

With a limpet.

Haru will sit in his own chair to actually eat, but scooted up right beside Jaeha. Mmmmmmm bibimbap.

Good, good, if Haru likes his cooking that's one more thing keeping him around.

He certainly seems to!

Then he runs to fetch his laptop and pulls up his interview template. "So obviously I have since learned more things about you but the reason you were on my list is the whole Nightmare thing, is there anything in that vein I should steer clear of either because you don't want to talk about it or because you don't want it on the blog?"