He's given up on getting Lee Tae-gun to not call him "shi". If Lee Tae-gun had been the only person he'd met from Quasar he'd think Quasar was just like every other guild, but thankfully he knows enough about both it and Lee Tae-gun to know that this is just what he's like. He's even wearing his piercings for this! In the office! In an interview! And Lee Tae-gun didn't even make a face about it, despite looking otherwise extremely stuffy!

"I'm game for pretty much everything."

"I'd like it if, uh, could you be a bit more... specific...?"

"Sunbae, I'm really queer and not particularly prudish. We can snuggle if you want, and we can have sex if you want." He'd say 'you can't scare me' but actually the quiet types always end up being the kinkiest and Si-yeon is kinky but he knows there are people who are kinkier than he is.

"O-oh. U-um." He flushes red. "I see. I, uh. I am also. Comfortable with. Uh. The standard guiding practices."

Yessssssss he knew Lee Tae-gun was into him he was so right. "Then that works out great for us, doesn't it?"

It requires most of Dasol’s brainpower to actively avoid connecting any dots at all vis-à-vis Si-yeon being excited about pairing off with a very strait-laced guiding partner for intensive backlash mitigation work. He manages, though! Thanks, self-loathing!

“It sounds like you had to put up with a lot to develop the rapport you needed,” he offers diplomatically. “To get him to relax and… work with you.”

“Why’d you stop?” Bored of him, probably. He deserves someone more confident and playful.

"I met my current partner, and we're a lot more compatible than I was with Lee Tae-gun. We stayed together until Tae-gun had a few prospective partners lined up so I wouldn't leave him in the lurch, though, and from what I could tell he was also a lot more compatible with his next partner than he was with me."

See? Bored. I knew it. He found someone better and that was that. Sasha and Yulya would have done the same by now, too, if we had been stationed somewhere with more resources.

“Congratulations on finding an ideal match. Was it… similarly difficult to become comfortable with them?”

"—oh it wasn't difficult to become comfortable with Tae-gun at all. Behind that tough exterior he's a sweetie, newcomers are always intimidated by him until they get to know him and then they realise he's just very shy. 

"And my new partner was... a different beast altogether. She was actually tougher to get used to than Tae-gun, by a lot, though for a completely different reason."

“In Russia, they generally don’t allow that level of intimacy across sexes in case it takes a valuable esper off the board for nine months.”

Clearly, he is developing whiplash in his self-restraint muscles from this conversation. “I’m sorry, that’s not relevant. I think maybe I’m just uncomfortable… advertising myself.” And why’s that, bitch? You’re so good at it when you’re not intending to! “B-but I can work on it.”

"...do they not use birth control? Also most combat espers can't carry a pregnancy to term anyway, the stress of combat and backlash usually deal with that, but like, Chun-hee has an IUD.

"Anyway, uhh. I don't know I feel like I still haven't gotten through to you that you don't need to do anything to convince me to work with you here...? You still seem to be expecting us to drop you if you're too inconvenient or something and I'm not sure how to convince you otherwise, help me out, here, where's the disconnect?"

Are you allowed to tell me about people's IUDs?

"Pardon my—" he shakes his head, collects himself, and proceeds more slowly. In Russian again. "You seem like you appreciate more forthright speech." He came all the way across the bay just to find the most Russian-talking Korean he could. There's some humor in that, to be saved for later when he isn't scared out of his mind. "They said the same thing in Russia, okay? Klimka—my recruiter—he said the same things. 'Oh, we need you. Oh, you're special. Oh, we'll be the only ones to take care of you. Oh, nobody else will appreciate you. Oh, we will be understanding of your condition.'" He stretches his words out and drops his pitch into that melodic cadence his former captain used, and raises his eyebrows while lowering his eyelids and gesturing with his fingers. Sasha loved this caricature.

"They did. Klimka did his best to get me things, but eventually I still ended up shut in a cement cellar for days at a time because they just couldn't ... make it work. Make me work." He sighs and looks down again. "I was too broken. And—I hated that. Call me a wimp or a pussy or whatever, but I just couldn't take it after a while."

"Forgive me for being impudent, Si-yeon, but why would I believe you could make any more of me than the government of Russia?"

"Oh several reasons.

"One, Quasar itself, as a company, is richer than the Russian government. We don't need to count pennies and only spend our effort and energy on superstars. We're rich enough everyone in our employ can have decent working conditions by just doing their job. Russia is a poor, backwater country that clings to ideals built in a broken past who can barely pay their workers what they're worth, that's so bad to live in they have to censor the internet because they know if everyone knew what the rest of the world was actually like without any propaganda they'd leave. They do leave.

"Two, we're not pretending to be religious and adopting insane social and sexual mores that make no sense as a consequence.

"Three, we have free speech. If you post something on the internet about how terrible your working conditions are, the ones who get shafted are Quasar, not you. I'm not going to say it's all roses and money and influence don't matter because it's not and they do, but you're coming from a context where criticising the people in power is dangerous and arriving at one where it's commonplace. Still not as commonplace as in the US, Koreans are really bad at the whole, like, sticking out thing, but in a way that makes them a lot more sensitive to it when it happens. 

"Four, I actually don't think you're special, nor that no one else will take care of you or appreciate you. I think just about any guild in Korea would offer similar terms. We offer better terms, because, again, richer than Russia, but the service you offer isn't special. It's normal. It's a normal service that has a normal going rate and that makes you very employable under very pleasant conditions, because the bar you need to meet for employing you to be valuable to us is actually very low. We don't employ you out of charity, we employ you because the amount of money it costs us to have you on our payroll is more than made up for by the service you provide. That's, like, almost tautologically true. And that remains true even if you don't try to bend over backwards to make yourself as small and unobtrusive as possible."

"... I want windows. Giant windows. They can be tinted or on the 30th floor or whatever but I want windows." His eyes mist over, and he rocks back and forth in his chair. "And cotton sheets! Full cotton, no plastic! And... and soundproofing so I can scream as much as I want when it hurts!" His eyes go wide, though he still can't see through the water in them. "Oh! Earplugs! I want earplugs so my partners can't hear me! And—and—" He jumps from his chair, hair flopping at an impudent angle, giving him the mien of a half-starved rooster. "Morkovcha! I want two kilos of morkovcha available for snacks! And—" 

Ha Si-yeon is probably just staring at him, not that he can tell. Dasol thrusts his arms out toward him, to touch, to be reassured he is still there, and then he pulls them back into his stomach and doubles over and cries. "Tell me to stop, Ha Si-yeon-nim! Please, tell me to stop! Don't pretend! I'll do it anyway! Just don't lie to me."

"I mean no that all seems pretty reasonable. I mean I guess I don't know what 'morkovcha' is," he says, butchering the pronunciation. "If it's the name of a type of passenger plane then having two kilos of it for snacks would probably be a bad idea but...

"...do you want a hug?"

No, I want to fuck until I can't feel my legs and drink until you don't remember this conversation. He nods but doesn't move closer.

He'll move closer to wrap his arms around Dasol.

They're slightly compatible. He's kind of surprised.

So is Dasol, who was rather banking on there being a certain amount a miasmic displeasure to the contact, because the opposite of everything feeling wrong and dangerous is feeling really, really right and safe and—

Oh, fuck.

Dasol scoots back a bit and twists his hips to prevent—you know what? Hell with it. He'd already told Ha Si-yeon what happened when he was guiding. Serves him right for asking! Yeah! It's his fault for being so nice and kind and patient and hot and thoughtful and compatible. Comforted by the thoughts of justice, Dasol squeezes Si-yeon tighter, buries his face in the man's improbably coiffed hair, and cries.

And cries.

And cries.

"Yeah. Second door to the left," he says, gesturing.

And Si-yeon's power is very versatile. So versatile, in fact, that when the thing he wants is to attach this unobtrusive microphone that looks like plastic wrapping of some kind of cheap candy, the kind you step on while walking down the street and only notice when you get home, to the sole of Sasha's shoe, well. He can just do that.

"Ugh, thank god." He stands up, shaking his legs out and turning to go. As he does, he gently punches Yuri—more like places his fist against Yuri's ear—letting the contact linger as long as he can for the guiding—which, practically speaking, is exactly enough to get that little thrill of release but no true relief. "Don't sell your soul to the handsome devil while I'm gone, okay?" And then he's walking as fast as he can without losing too much face toward the second door on the left.

"Yo! You guys even got nice bathrooms?!" he shouts amicably as he closes and locks the door. It's a single-occupant situation, tastefully laid out and immaculately clean and—oh thank fuck there's even a nice big vent gently blowing cool air. There's a nice large sink and hand dryers and towels and the toilets. He'd been in worse hotels.

The lock shachunks with satisfying heft and he leans back against the door for a second with a deep sigh, the cheeky grin on his face melting to the floor. Finally. Peace and—well not 'peace and quiet' exactly. There was already too much of that. But the hideous awareness of Si-yeon being right there with no thoughts was finally gone. All he had to even suggest that anyone was even nearby was the murmur of Dasol's voice through the door every so often. He stood like that for a good thirty seconds, just finding his bearings after... whatever that was.

...That dude was totally flirting. He groans a little as he pushes himself off the door and stumbles toward the toilet. His heel slips just a bit as he clomps across the tile floor, a gummy sensation he barely registers. Man, he's backlashed. Yuri—whatever his new name is. Tassel? Tussle?—Tussle was trying to be all sneaky about heading out and it had taken like, several false starts to find a mind in that subway station that was thinking, I hope to make it to the appointment so he could run. The whole way. On esper juice. And even then he didn't know which appointment so he just had to keep knocking on heads until he found Tussle's thoughts and followed them. Man. Really made him work for it.

And for what? To get flirted at by a foreign government agent! And, like, even if it wasn't full-on flirting, it was not not-flirting and when you're that fucking queer you really owe it to everyone else to be, like, super clear about whether you're flirting because it's very confusing. Mostly for poor Tussle, of course. Little buttfucker can't keep it in his pants on a good day, and Xashiyan was very much not a good day. Not even for him, and was totally straight by esper standards—

He sucks his teeth as he tugs his zipper down, then carefully pulls it back up to free the pinched skin. "Going commando was not the ideal disposition for this mission," he muttered to himself. Tussle had tried to leave before he woke up so he had had to rush. Which had been mostly fine except it hid fucking nothing when he was backlashed and had to piss and was getting not-not-flirted with and—his cock springs gaily from its prison. It bobbles a bit before settling at a jaunty upward angle, and very slightly to the right. Sasha pushes it downward, but it's no use. Up or bust.

"Shit! Come on!" he groaned and looked up at the ceiling. "I'm not pissing all over the floor because of that fucker." He closed his eyes and thought of that one freaky dungeon with the creepy animatronic dolls of Lenin. No boner survived the animatronic dolls.

(What on Earth is that boy doing?)

It's not working. He's so backlashed he can't even hold an unpleasant thought in his mind right now. Everything just sort of sidles past and lands back on whatever the fastest route to feeling good is. Which is, of course, now snuggled happily in his right hand.

Ugh, come on, can't I at least piss first?

He cannot.

He closes his eyes in disbelief. "I'm not fucking jacking it in this fucking snotty fucking pretty-boy twink's fucking bathroom," he mutters, as if giving voice to it might lend it truth. "I am not letting him get me that easy."

Fuck, yeah I am.

Stupid—hnngh!—backlash.

(.........you have got to be kidding him.)

(Boy it's so good he has so much practice controlling his reactions because the emotional whiplash of listening to this and Dasol at the same time is... a lot.)

The problem with being an esper...

is that you get used to having a really good partner to rub off on while he's pretending to sleep...

and then it's really tough to go back to just a hand.

Man, it'd be so fucked if they knew about this right now. 

It's also remarkably difficult to cum when you have that full-bladder sensation already. Like the urges were fighting each other. Now he really wishes he could have pissed first. That would have made this whole business a ton faster.

And he really needed to get out there and save Tussle from this handsome degenerate trying to sucker them into... whatever his sketchy mega-corporate capitalist plan is. Probably something awful. Whoring poor little Tussle out to whomever. There'd be so many takers! Tussles very good at his job.

... what if I'm the one with the important compatibility, though? Would he whore me out?

He gasped a little as an electric zing ran up his abdomen. Some improbably hot... person of indeterminate sex... cumming all over him, like that one time he got Tussle too riled up and—

Oh fuck?! Oh— Oh— OH!—