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Yo-han would like to say that he's pleasantly tipsy or pleasantly drunk, but there's nothing quite pleasant about his current sobriety or lack thereof.
He's leaning back in his desk chair, robe open to expose a deep v of his bare chest while nursing a crystal tumbler of whiskey. It's less than half full and not the first he's had since starting.
When he drinks from it, the amber liquid burns on the way down. He can hardly feel it anymore.
Yo-han's stare is blank, unfocused somewhere on one of the many bookshelves lining the study walls. He doesn't try to make out titles; he remembers where certain books are. There's a storm raging outside, and blearily, Yo-han finds irony that the weather so perfectly matches the uncomfortable feelings swirling just behind his ribs.
He supposes this is what it means when people say, "you reap what you sow."
Yo-han knows he only has himself to blame. People are like animals, you can condition them to respond in specific ways, and that's precisely what he'd done, hadn't he? He'd set up mysteries, truths wrapped in deception and disillusionment. Yo-han had built mistrust into the very foundation of their relationship. His intention hadn't just been subterfuge, though mostly, he'd wanted Ga-on to feel challenged, to listen to Yo-han and not believe, and then come face to face with the reality he was right.
So why now, after all that, should he be surprised when the dominos fell the only way they could.
Yo-han can't even recall how their fight had started, now that his veins are swimming with liquor. Something over justice? Martyrdom? Ga-on's little cop friend and hypocrite mentor? Thinking of those possibilities makes him laugh; a short, barking sound ruefully falls from his lips. And it had been such a good day, too, until he'd inevitably put his foot in his mouth. He'd placed a landmine on the ground and then stepped on it, expecting the thing not to blow up in his face.
It had been that way for... weeks now. Most days had been good. Maybe the awareness of that, the ease in which he was able to move around his own home, as he'd watched Ga-on teach Elijah how to flip pancakes, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, had spooked him into such thorough self-sabotage.
Yo-han hadn't meant for it to happen like this. He hadn't meant for it to happen at all. It wasn't even until mid-morning light caught the edge of Ga-on's smile as he'd turned over his shoulder to catch his eye that Yo-han realized how deeply he'd allowed himself to slide down the slippery slope of feelings. All it took was for the younger man to gesture to him with a cock of his eyebrow and a wave of his spatula, and Yo-han's heart gave a painfully hard thump.
Love.
The roots of that damned emotion burrowed through the husk where his heart used to be and refused extraction. The funniest part, he realizes only now in hindsight, was that he'd been the one to allow the seed to plant itself. He'd chosen to keep Ga-on close, and when all the signs had pointed toward growing sentiment, concern, and affection, he hadn't pushed away hard enough for it to be effective. He hadn't even really tried. Or maybe he had, and the stubborn, beautiful man Ga-on refused to be turned away.
Another laugh comes bubbling up, but when it tumbles out, it sounds very close to a sob instead, and Yo-han chokes to keep any that might follow inside where they belong, where he should have kept the words that had caused this whole drunken pity party.
"You never believe me!" his own words are a roar. "If I told you right now that I love you, would you even believe me?"
The moment that lingers after his unwitting confession sucks the energy out of the room, plunging them into a painfully empty silence. Ga-on had become statuesque by Yo-han's question and the older used every ounce of control he'd learned throughout his years to make it seem like he'd intended to ask it, to spread his chest open and show the most disgusting vulnerable parts of himself. He doesn't know why he'd even let that question move from his head into the air between them, charged from a shouting match where there could be no victor.
It had been a fight to keep himself composed, not to look away as everything in Ga-on's eyes reflected back to him. When he'd opened his mouth, Yo-han hadn't needed to hear what he would say. It was all over his face. He wouldn't.
"Leave." He knows his tone had been frigid, but that was the intention. Show nothing, and they cannot use your weakness against you, and Ga-on would undoubtedly now know that he was Yo-han's biggest weakness of all.
The fact the younger man hadn't even tried to protest only reinforced the conclusion Yo-han had drawn. The icing on the cake was that the singular time Yo-han would have gladly accepted being punched in the face where otherwise he'd never tolerate it is the one time he'd manage to upset Ga-on enough that violence wasn't his first reaction.
Yo-han is sitting, pathetically trying to drown out the grief crawling like insects under his skin.
He's failed.
Frustration rears up, ugly and furious, and Yo-han can't stop himself from shooting up from his chair, hurtling the glass across the room, watching its trajectory before it hits the wall and shatters with a loud crash.
Yo-han is tired of rotting everything he touches, especially the things that matter.
Once the sudden tantrum is out of his system, Yo-han takes stock of his newest destruction.
The shards of crystal scatter around the study, and Yo-han has a thought to walk all over them, self-flagellation, but he doesn't. Regardless of what some might think, he's never been a glutton for pain, and Elijah would worry. Instead, the drunk man staggers to his feet, swaying slightly, and then carefully gets to the ground to pick up the larger pieces. Mrs. Ji doesn't need to clean up his messes like this, not when she's cleaned so many already.
He's got two shards in his hand, clumsily grabbing for another and cutting his finger in the process, when a touch to his shoulder makes him jerk and whip around, ready to fight regardless of how the world tilts momentarily under his knees. Immediately that instinct drops away when he takes in the half silhouette of the person who has caught him unaware.
Ga-on, soft-eyed, looking concerned and a bit like a drowned rat, is staring down at him. Yo-han is momentarily at a loss, but he tries hard to shutter himself away, take his momentary weakness, and push it into himself how he's mastered. He drags up the anger instead, always sizzling inside his core, but when the scowl pinches onto his face, Ga-on drops beside him on the ground and takes his hands, even the slightly bleeding one, and carefully extracts the crystal pieces.
"I told you-"
"You say a lot of things." Ga-oh cuts him off and puts the shards to the side before taking up Yo-han's hands again, it makes the older man swallow, and while he's derailed, there's another barb on the tip of his tongue. Ga-oh doesn't let him throw it out. "You talk in circles and double meanings and cryptic warnings." He's not meeting Yo-han's eyes, gaze lingering on the red staining the skin of his finger, trailing sluggishly from the cut. Yo-han wants to rip his hand away but is intoxicated and suddenly tired. Weak. He wants Ga-on to say his part and then leave him in the relative silence his too-large home offers.
Ga-on seems ready, and he finally raises his eyes to meet Yo-han's.
"I don't know if I would believe it if you said you loved me because half of the things you say are to manipulate me," he's not wrong, but Yo-han can't help if it hurts a little, the consequences of his actions. And Yo-han would like to think he never does it because he wants Ga-on worse off. He only wants the other man to see things as he does. "But…" Ga-on's lips lift in a wobbly smile, and Yo-han tells his liquor-dumb brain not to hope. Hope hurts. Hope ruins people like him. "But I know how you act. When you think Elijah or I aren't looking, it's different than how you are outside these walls. I know what your intentions are even if your methods aren't the same I would choose, and… and more than any of that, I'd like to." Ga-on says that last part softly, and a crack of thunder half steals it. Yo-han hears regardless and has to force his brain to make the connections he's never dared to imagine could be actualized.
This is Ga-on, having left to do God knows what but returning, being honest. He's saying Yo-han's words are trash, but his actions are, somehow, what make him transparent. And it's not just him laying Yo-han bare, but himself, saying where he stands but, more importantly, where he'd like to.
Yo-han feels frozen, unable to move, blink, or breathe. For once, he thinks that Ga-on is the most dangerous of them because kindness? Kindness can be just as sharp as malice. It merely slices differently.
Ga-on, seeming to realize that Yo-han might be too far gone on alcohol, strung out from their previous fight, isn't going to get far in an actual conversation. He sighs softly and curls his fingers around Yo-han's wrist before rising, bringing Yo-han carefully with him.
"Let's get you and the floor cleaned up. We can talk in the morning."
Yo-han follows, thinking as Ga-on, still soaked from the rain but gently tugging him along to where the first aid kit is, might also let his actions betray him too. How he always comes back, no matter how harshly Yo-han pushes, how Ga-on situations himself into Elijah and his lives like it's easy and not the uphill battle Yo-han knows he makes it.
Maybe… just maybe, if Ga-on were to say he loved him too, one day, not now, not really, Yo-han would believe it too.