"It works if someone reads things to me and I interrupt all the time!"

"I volunteer as tribute."

Mwah. "You're so good to me."

Yes he is and Haru'd better not forget it.

...hm.

"I don't think either of us are under any illusions that it wasn't sheer dumb luck that we met. It's not like we were—looking. Filtering. So, you know, in a sense Cricket is right. But...

"You get what you want. You know what it is and you go after it and you get it. You fistbump people because it's less aversive and comes off as charming and then you find someone you're compatible with and you immediately ask to spend time with them. You want your brain to work right, and you make sure it will, but you also want other things, you want to be a superhero—so you find the ratio of how much you tolerate breaking your brain to be a superhero, and once you can fix it faster you can also be more of a superhero.

"...and I have to say that you getting really mad on my behalf and doing so much so that I can have my brain back had its fair share of attractiveness.

"There's other things but—we've only just met. I'll learn more about them and about you, and I'll like them, too. I'm sure of that."

"eee" and now it is time for makeouts.

All according to his devious plans.

His devious plan was so artful! It looks like you can talk Haru into having sex a third time in the same day with an opener like that!

This was probably possible for him to have derived a priori but he was a bit too scared that if he said the words they'd be too real. And—they kind of are and—he's kind of scared, and he's especially scared that he has no idea what Haru's feeling except he knows Haru doesn't reciprocate, couldn't reciprocate, so he's having to create a version of himself Haru will like so that he will feel safe and not like the floor might open up beneath his feet at any moment and take everything away from him. 

But the sex is fun too.

If he's not radiating the nervousness too obviously then Haru won't notice confidently enough to interrupt them to ask about it!

Well, that depends on how Haru will interpret the slightly more intense attentiveness he's getting and the way Jaeha's almost desperate to fuck him so good he forgets his name. 

(Metaphorically. He knows Haru would be unhappy to forget his name.)

Haru's interpreting that as, broadly, a good sign!

Whether he remembers his own name is unclear, because that's not what he moans during sex.

Good. He doesn't want to come off as needy or clingy. Haru shouldn't know about that until he needs Jaeha right back.

Postcoital snuggles time!

And now Haru will probably be sufficiently guided that he won't try to make more conversation which means that Jaeha does not need to worry about his insane tendency to make himself needlessly vulnerable, right? They can just start to settle in for the night?

Yup.

Cool cool.

So now that he's decided that Johnny boy isn't a threat he has a lot more time to keep working on developing hobbies. Haru may like Civ but after a few games Jaeha's finding it a little dull (lol. lmao.) so he's fishing for more things to do. Currently he's trying to disentangle this paper about the statistical distributions of dungeon appearances by broad category while shopping for groceries and he's having to speedlearn stats to make sense of it and he's starting to think the paper might be full of shit, unclear. Anyway thankfully he has a shopping list and doesn't have to pay much attention to the real world except to dodge people who insist on existing around him and having opinions about the interestingness of a guy with a holographic computer screen. It's easy enough to discourage them, anyway. 

And then back home.

Haru gets home before he does; he comes back to find Haru sprawled on the couch.

Cricket is loafing on his chest and purring up a storm about being petted while somehow simultaneously saying, "And then it turned out that Sinclair was Valen, completely undermining anything the show might have been trying to say about Minbari culture before or since. They didn't even have several other foundational philosophers who might have been real Minbari, it was just the one guy!"

—that's an incredibly adorable scene, what the hell. 

"Tadaima—sorry I thought you were going to take longer in your dungeon—"

"You're right, that does undermine everything about the Minbari - okaeri, this dungeon killed people unusually quickly, I pulled out a couple bodies and then somebody killed it off."

"...oh, I'm sorry, Haru-ya—" Oh whoops that slipped let's hope he didn't hear it anyway Jaeha can put the groceries down and—hmm Cricket is currently in the way but presumably he will move because he likes Haru and knows Jaeha can guide Haru right...?

Cricket gets out of the way once Jaeha's close enough for Haru to grab his hand.

Which he does. "I forget, which one is 'ya'?"