🦔gangnag: but

🍸nomu?: yeah. but is right.

🦔gangnag: well someone better tell him as soon as he steps out

yoo-min-max: @SenSoJoo and I are on it, we're siloing for another couple of hours barring emergencies and we're keeping an eye on it

taegun fan no. 1183: god. i'm so, so happy they're okay, but. god.

💤Zzzzgirl: yeah. yeah. and this is the first week of the confluence. my heart's going to explode if it keeps at it like this.

yoo-min-max: yeah

...but he thinks that's enough chatting for now. He sends the commscreen away and sighs.

"Hyung..."

"What wouldn't I do to be in their silo right now, though, like, you know that espers are fit and all but seeing both of them, like that? And Tae-gun's not even just fit, he's hung, too. That guy's truly got it all."

"Hy—" He starts but then cuts himself off when he sees Yoo-min's face. "Hyung..."

Yoo-min closes his eyes and squeezes Seungjoo against his body, tightly. "Please don't leave me, Seungjoo. Please don't ever leave me. I don't know what I'd do without you. I'd, I don't, I—"

"I'm not going to leave you. I'm here. I'll always be here."

With Hye-jin no longer actively destroying an S-rank dungeon, they manage to get her backlash under better control after a couple more hours, by which point Tae-gun himself is pretty much fully in control again—to the extent he can ever be, with his omnipresent oceans of backlash while touching his partner. It's still not enough to completely negate the debt Hye-jin's incurred, but she's no longer at risk, even if she's not fully comfortable yet. They'll... probably need to do this again, and more, but for now they're just resting in his bed. It's been over eight hours since they've entered the dungeon, and they're exhausted.

"I lose my cool," Tae-gun says, still snuggling her for the guiding. "I lose control and it's, it's. Anger, impulsivity, loss of filter, this. It's the opposite of cold. I—" He pauses, and sighs. "I get a little bit of steering power, if I think to do it before it gets really bad, and I usually aim for this, because it's... If I'm like this I'm too, too far gone to make mistakes. I lock myself here, and the security systems don't let me out, and they're not difficult to get around, I'm just too, too... that... to have the higher faculties necessary to do so. Less so when I'm angry, and the most powerful man in Korea should not backlash into anger. And I... the other things...

"Well, you know most of the things I didn't want to tell you, by now. You can ruin me, if you want to. I'm truly in your hands."

Hye-jin at least tries to pretend to be a sensible person, and has insisted on getting them some goddamned water. She nearly spits hers out at his statement, though.

"... You dove into magic dungeon lava to save me. Why the fuck would I ruin you?" Sigh. "Don't answer that, just. Just. I won't, okay?" Huff. "No need to be so damned dramatic, you know. I'd guessed what your backlash was in the first week we partnered. You'll notice I haven't told a soul."

"...you... guessed it?"

"Yes! I would have phrased it as - loss of emotional regulation and self control, and wouldn't have managed to figure out it was only thematically hot emotions without seeing it more in action, but. I did see you backlashing, multiple times, before we got the split silo set up. I wasn't trying to figure it out, actually I was actively trying not to, but. ... Look it seems obvious when I see how much your power is about control?"

"...I guess." Pause. "Then—did you—you knew that that—the face I made at you. The. Korea. One."

"I - I mean, sort of? It's not weird for partners to be attracted to each other? And I always hated when people read into every little thing I ever did, looking for ways to neaten and pare down my life to fit in their cute little dollhouses. I didn't want to do that to you."

He buries his face in her shoulder.

Hug. And pet, he likes being pet.

"I'm also not going to, to. I-if you want to do this sort of thing again, I am," and she looks away and he can hear the embarrassment in her voice, "um, supportive of that decision. If you'd like to call this level of guiding a one time emergency thing that we should avoid ever doing again, that is also fine, and I'd support that, too. You haven't... ruined anything with me, or something? We still get to say what we want our partnership to be."

"So you don't think it's... awful? That I'm. Not there. When I'm backlashing...?"

Honestly, she'd argue that he is in fact still there when he's backlashing, that the emotions that are being magnified are still his, it's just he's so hung up on his 'self' equating to 'control' that it feels like he's absent. But he wouldn't agree, and furthermore that is not an argument she particularly wants to start, especially not right now.

"No? Why would I hold your backlash against you, ever?"

"Not... holding it against me. I just mean... You know, people usually want to have sex with, um. Other people."

"... You're going to have to expand on that train of thought a bit more? Do you mean like, you're afraid my vagina is now magically sealed by pact to only accept one penis and feel weird about it being yours, or...?"

"....what?"

"Your sentence was confusing first! Are you asking if I'm going to want to sleep around, because right now the answer is probably not? I don't know how to pick up people at bars or, or, whatever it is people do, my dating and romantic life is incoherent screaming and hiding under the bed. Maybe eventually? But I've got like half a decade of Japanese celebrity good girl deprogramming to do."

"—oh. No, not that. I mean that, uh, if. I mean if I'm backlashing. I mean that you'd—you might want to have sex with me but that's not the same as having sex with. That."