cigsandbeer | IC INBOX

"I was hoping I could get you to smile, and not even at me."

But that's what Gojyo thinks of him, of course.

"I'll temper my fucking expectations in future."

Hakkai hasn't even gone far: he turns, jar of jerky snacks in hand, to look at both of them with a faintly pinched expression around his mouth.

"...Here," he says, opens the jar with a decisive twist of his wrist, and hands one dragon-snack to each of them. "Feed Jeep."

It's not that he thinks they're obligated to get along -- it's been a difficult day for all of them, they're both tipsier than he is -- but, really, he'd turned his back for less than thirty seconds....

Gojyo rubs his neck, accepting the jerky with the air of a scolded kid.

They're never gonna manage to get along, are they? At least not unless they go total teetotaler.

Jedao does not look scolded at all; just sort of sad and deflated and bleary. He's drunker than both of them. He meets Hakkai's eyes as he takes the jerky.

"You were right, I think," he tells Hakkai, heavy with older conversations. When Hakkai told him maybe you should stop trying. It was always asking too much, Jedao wanting to be friends with him, and removing jealousy from the equation doesn't actually change that. It's not that he's Hakkai's husband that Gojyo doesn't like: it's Jedao. It always has been.

But they've got what they wanted most, Gojyo agreeing to stay in Hakkai's life. That's the important part.

"Now where did he get to?" he mumbles, as if he couldn't pinpoint Jeep in the room with his mothsense, and just happens to have his back to him, and stumbles out into one of the new rooms, the one he asked for thinking secretly of Edwin, if he ever comes home. He leaves the jerky on the table in there and curls up in the reading nook, looking out the window at the stars.

Whatever Hakkai's said in the past that Jedao's answering now-- well, the way he looks when he says you were right strongly suggests that Jedao's deciding to take it in a way he hadn't meant it.

But it's been a lot: it's been a lot for all of them. He sighs, as Jeep comes circling down around the two of them with a chirrup to steal the treat in Gojyo's hand, and sets the treat-jar down on the endtable before he lets his elbows rest on the back of the couch.

"Maybe we should all go to bed," he suggests ruefully. "It's late."

Jeep steals the treat, and Gojyo finishes the rest of his glass in one swallow.

"Yeah, I'll... see myself out."

He stands up. He's drunk, but nowhere near drunk enough not to manage the walk home.

Edited 2025-10-27 03:46 (UTC)

"Gojyo," Hakkai says, and reaches out to catch his upper arm, tugging him to turn towards the couch and meet Hakkai's gaze. "Thank you. For calling me, and helping bring him home."

Yes, they'd had another awkward clash of personalities, but that doesn't mean Gojyo hadn't helped and it doesn't change anything Hakkai had said to him earlier.

But he isn't going to insist Gojyo stay, regardless. He's had a few drinks, but nothing like enough to make Hakkai worry about him walking a few levels up.

It's only very reluctantly that Gojyo meets Hakkai's gaze. He fucked up again - what did he even say wrong? - and this is never going to work and he needs to... either go and think really hard on what Hakkai has confessed, or absolutely not think about it ever again.

"Y-yeah, no problem. Next time I'll just... dump him on the couch and leave."

Come home with us. Gojyo is such a colossal fuck-up.

"You don't have to, you know."

Leave, that is. But Hakkai had promised he wouldn't push too much, not more than Gojyo wants him to: he shakes his head a little, letting his gaze fall, and gives Gojyo's arm a slight squeeze before he lets go.

"...Anyway. You were going to watch a show together, sometime later."

The image comes to mind: what if Gojyo stays. He and Hakkai could sit together on the couch, without Jedao there to make things weird, and maybe they could--

They could maybe--

Nah. Jedao is in the other room, and he's sad, and he needs Hakkai.

"--No, I do. You gotta attend to your husband."

...You know what.

"'Sometime later', at least one of us probably gotta stick to just one drink, as much as it pains me to say it."

Jedao and Gojyo being drunk together just seems to always end in 1) Jedao running away crying, or 2) in a fist-fight. It's becoming something of a pattern.

Gojyo has an extremely good point. Hakkai hesitates, then sighs, and ducks his head in agreement.

"You're probably right about drinking together."

Sober meetings only. Until they can get past all the things they're struggling with, at least. And for now....

"I'll see you tomorrow?" he offers to Gojyo, in lieu of insisting he stay.

"Yeah, um...

Breakfast is good?"

.........;;;

"Breakfast," Hakkai agrees with a quick smile, and turns to accompany Gojyo to the door before he goes to check on Jedao in the spare room.

"...I can't believe you let him go again," Jedao mumbles. "I did think about putting a message on the terminal screen but that seemed like it might freak him out more."

"I'm not going to make him stay if he wants to leave," Hakkai says, a little stiffly, settling into the window seat beside Jedao. He'd asked Gojyo to stay, first. And Gojyo had been right that Hakkai should take care of Jedao, too, who had been the first one to be drunk and upset and need to come home - even if they were all distracted by other revelations, after that.

"He wanted to stay. He wanted some time alone with you," Jedao murmurs, quiet and a little remote. He was watching through the cameras, of course. Jedao often doesn't understand Gojyo, but he knows what that smothered wanting looks like.

"I just...when I've run away on purpose it's okay to tell him that I can wait." That Gojyo can come first for a bit, even though he assumes otherwise, no matter who Hakkai is married to.

He reaches for Hakkai anyway, accepting his presence and his comfort even if he didn't need it right now.

Edited 2025-10-30 14:57 (UTC)

"Maybe, but... he said not now."

Hakkai slides his arms around Jedao's waist, pulling him close, and adds, "Tomorrow isn't so far away. But I'll remember, next time." That it's okay to let Gojyo know that Jedao needing space doesn't mean he has to go, if he doesn't want to.

But that can wait for tomorrow: right now he's here, and he's glad Jedao is willing to accept that comfort from him.

"It's the only thing he wants from me," Jedao says quietly, voice quavering just a little bit. He meant to say I don't know what he wants from me but he does know: nothing. Space. Jedao wishes they'd let him give it.

"I'm sorry."

"I thought it was going all right, until I got up," Hakkai sighs: he can't see the cameras, himself, unless he has them up on the screen. He's not sure what it was that went wrong behind him, but he knows there was something.

"I'm the one who messed it up," Jedao admits. "I tried...it doesn't matter what I tried. You were right that I shouldn't, I'm always too much. I just...he doesn't wan't me to be fake, but he also don't want me to be sad when he rejects me. Instant contempt, no matter how quiet I try to make it. Like, let me a little disappointed, fuck. But he doesn't want me to even want to be friends with him. Or he doesn't want to have to notice it. But I'm not allowed to hide it either."

He's rambling, drunkenly.

"He just...he wants me to be gruff like you guys, enough to ignore. He wants me to not be me, and he wants me to not care about him so that he doesn't have to feel bad about not wanting to deal with me."

Hakkai listens to the drunken rambling, still curled close: after a moment, a little rueful, he murmurs, "I think... I didn't see, but what I heard him say... I'd have interpreted it as 'I'm not rejecting you so don't be sad about it.' Not, 'Don't be sad when I reject you.'"

Admittedly, Gojyo never quite says what he means. But Hakkai's learned how to interpret over the years, and he's usually confident about it.

Jedao snorts.

"If that's what he means, then he's even more in denial about how he feels about me than he was about you."

"Well, I don't mean to say he was saying yes," Hakkai points out. "I still don't know what you were asking. It sounded to me like he was trying to say that you took what he did say harder than he meant it, that's all."

"Just because he didn't mean it doesn't mean it isn't true," Jedao says truculently. "It's not that he doesn't like me, it's just all the things I say and do and feel and want that are too much or embarrassing or whatever."

He scrubs his face with a hand. "It took me a minute and a trick question just to wheedle him into sitting in a room with me long enough to watch a bunch of epic all-girl softcore. I feel dirty." Gojyo's right, is the thing: it is pathetic, Jedao reaching over and over for someone who doesn't want him.

"... what I meant, before," Hakkai murmurs, capturing Jedao's nearer hand in his to give it a reassuring squeeze, "is that you don't have to always try, because if he's shy of what you're offering, I hate that it hurts you when he turns it down. Not that he doesn't want you around. Not that you're too much, or... any of that. That I do think he'll get used to the idea, but it's going to take some time, and... it's okay, if it takes that time."

He falls silent for a long moment, then adds, a bit wry, "But maybe your technique is better than mine, actually. When you were in my shoes, you'd gotten him into bed long ago."

Hakkai might possibly be giving him too much space.

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