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.

"But like, I already did the editing, I'd have to undo it. I'd have to be very sure, to want to."

...ok, no, that's just in fact exactly as bad as his brain had been predicting it. 

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 'editing'. ...and please tell me to stop asking if I'm making you uncomfortable."

"I can change the subject if I need to. It's a notebooking thing, I - write a feeling or an attitude or whatever out into all its component parts and sorta... kitbash it into something more convenient. But that makes it sound kind of trivial and it's not, I like myself at least under all the backlash and the process only works if I'm also okay with whoever I'm trying to turn into, so I need a really strong reason and I can't just be a complete chameleon whenever it'd be useful to be different for a month and then back. It'd be a lot, to - be the kind of person I was, and an esper. That stakes my sanity and health very concerningly on one specific relationship, which would be a troubling concept in the best of circumstances, and I don't even know if you'll like me once I'm not your only source of pleasant experiences in the world."

That's fucking insane. 

He's not gonna say that. 

"I'm not—asking anything of you. We're not in a relationship, I don't have any rights to ask anything. I'm just—" What is he just. "Explaining, I suppose."

"I mean, we're in a partnership, and if you'd rather I not go hook up with Sparkler that's a pretty trivial ask, just - planning not to and committing not to are different things, and I have no obstacle to the first and all this baggage about the second."

He knows that the Haru in his head that's using words in twisty ways isn't real but he sure is loud. Let's get him out of Jaeha's system: Haru sure can plan not to but then if it happens, whoops, it happened, he hadn't planned it but he didn't commit so it's fine.

But Jaeha sounds disgustingly clingy and jealous and that's a great way to drive people away and besides Haru doesn't even like him so what right does he have to ask for anything? Especially something like this, which Haru finds so precious, how could Jaeha ask him to limit the tools he has available for dealing with his backlash and feeling like himself again? The person who likes the other one the most always loses, and that's him. That's Jaeha.

King of losers.

So he's kind of stuck. If he asks he'll come off as needy, if he just says "it's fine" he'll come off as insecure, and so he has to figure out a way to communicate that he's not asking that'll be—not either of those. He knows he's been thinking this a lot but he really wishes he could be using his powers here.

It's a good thing Haru is lying on him and not looking at him because it gives him time to think for a second without looking—bad—