"A stupid one! I should have quit after sixteen, maybe fifteen, and I thought I was on top of it and I was just going to be incredibly annoying for a while but those fucking gargoyles -"

Pet pet pet. "You're okay, Haru-ya." Maybe next time Jaeha should come with. He's not gonna say that. While Haru himself is freaking out like that is not the time for Jaeha to express that receiving a message saying that his partner was a fucking suicide risk was terrifying—

—he's so self-centered—

"Tell me what you want me to do. Do you want to just hug me? Do you want to have sex? Do you want to talk? Tell me what you need, Haru-ya."

"Ugh it probably makes the most sense to fuck my brains in but I'm not actually in the mood, apparently near death experiences are a turnoff. Maybe in half an hour or so. I don't even know how to get our shirts off without unacceptable levels of letting go of me. Don't let go of me. Would you kiss me?"

"Of course I'll kiss you. Whenever you want."

His poor Haru. His poor, poor Haru.

Kisses are good. Punctuated by apologies.

He doesn't need to apologise, it's okay, he's okay, Jaeha will be here for him for as long as Haru wants him.

In another twenty-six minutes Haru is ready to have his brains fucked in.

Jaeha is, perhaps surprisingly, also not incredibly in the mood, because near-death experiences of the man he—of Haru—are also a bit of a turnoff, but he can get it going easily enough. It helps that it feels so nice and right and Haru said he needed him and Jaeha can live in the fantasy that he meant it in a different way than just the purely pragmatic one for today.

He's pretty subdued afterwards. Wants to be read to. The next thing on his list is Watership Down, his old English teacher thought he'd like it.

Jaeha can read to him. Jaeha... could probably project illusions to him of it, actually, to complement the storytelling, but he is not going to suggest it. He'll just do his best to read it in a way that is compelling and entertaining.

He's more himself - his still backlashed and illiterate self, but himself - by the time Hazel and Fiver set out from their original warren. "I should have," he says, "some kind of check-in protocol in any dungeon where the monsters have unconventional senses or the dungeon itself is pulling psychic shit, let alone both. Ugh."

"Do you want me to write that down for you?"

"Please."

He does. "Do you want to discuss ideas for that, or leave that for later?"

"That's about as far as I got ideawise. Fucking gargoyle stalactite dungeon, did they kill it yet?"

Commscreen... "Yeah, seems like it."

"Good. I don't want to be seeing that one again in a year." Sigh. "I guess I should reconsider the 'talking to rescuees' thing, it was - like, I should have bailed out sooner, that was my primary mistake, but I was talking to them and the last one said something stupid and I was just -" He shivers and squeezes closer. "I thought, wow, that's stupid, good thing it doesn't matter that she thinks that, and -"

His poor Haru.

(There's a part of his brain that is relishing being able to provide relief for Haru. He is shouting that part down because Haru ALMOST DIED.)

"Maybe an automated check from your comms system could help? Every ten minutes or something?"

"I'm not sure I'll pay attention to it if I know it's automated."

"Something in the center of you vision saying 'please review your brain', maybe? I'm not sure. If I had been there—but there's not much point in what ifs."

"You can't fly and my carrying capacity isn't unlimited, so I'd have been leaving you behind to grab people, but I could've taken mini-breaks and checked in, I guess, and gotten a second eye on my backlash load."

"Yeah. And—you noticed I was real immediately."

"Yeah. I used to have the worst time when I noticed Yamanaka was real, since, like, I couldn't do much about that. - this was when she was doing a dungeon with me, I've never gotten all the way to solipsism without her on hand between now and my awakening."

"Now you can. I'll always be happy to be real for you, Haru-ya."

Kiss. "I'm warming up to the 'ya' thing."