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“Have you eaten?”
This question, once as foreign as learning a new language, has become something Yohan is used to hearing on the daily anymore. It’s always spoken with gentleness, and usually with the smell of food already filling the house as Yohan returns home. Whether Gaon greets him at the foyer or he finds Gaon in the kitchen or study, it’s always with that natural smile on his face. It’s become routine at this point.
Even now, when Gaon’s lifestyle has become so much busier than Yohan’s, it’s still that same way. Gaon comes home from work, or from minding the upkeep on the home his parents left behind, and he promptly gets started cooking. Even if Yohan has been at home all day, Gaon is the one who heads into the kitchen and cooks. It’s not like he’s required to do it, and Yohan knows Gaon knows that—he just…does it. It’s something like a habit for him, and when pressed with questions as to why he’s so persistent about it, it’s always either ‘well, I’m a freeload here, so…’ or ‘if I don’t, all the two of you will eat is ramyeon or frozen dinners’.
On top of that, both Yohan and Elijah have gotten to enjoy his cooking for quite some time now, and they’ve both swallowed their pride right along with their meals and admitted Gaon’s cooking is better than either of their stubborn personalities can withstand. Yohan might not even be too proud to beg at this point.
Regardless, Gaon is away at his other house at the moment, and Yohan has decided it’s about time he learned to return the favor. In light of the fact that he’s legally a dead man, it’s not like he has much going on in his life nowadays anyway. So the least he can do is help out with meals from time to time.
The good thing about cooking is that it’s something that can be learned, and Yohan is very good at learning things. He has ordered a couple of cookbooks, and currently has himself occupied with a palette of vegetables and an open book with instructions for how to make one of the supposedly ‘foolproof’ recipes in the book titled 101 Foolproof Korean Dinners for Even the Greenest Cooks. See? It’s even in the title.
But Yohan has never in his life so much as chopped an onion. For this pork rice bowl recipe, he needs several different vegetables. Yohan is staring down at a head of cabbage, a single carrot, a bundle of green onions, a green chili pepper, a white onion, and a small pile of garlic cloves. Somehow, he has to dice all of this up. Slicing the pork was easy enough with a video tutorial pulled up on his phone, but searching for videos on how to cut each individual vegetable is taking a significant amount of time.
At this rate, dinner is not going to be ready by the time Gaon gets home.
“…Do my eyes deceive me?”
Even the composed Kang Yohan tenses at that voice. Did he just think Kim Gaon into existence? His first response is to quickly flip his phone over onto the counter after pausing the video and turn to face Gaon. By the time he’s facing his former assistant judge, his expression has regained its usual formality, and he looks as polite and calm as ever. He shrugs.
“Have you eaten?” He doesn’t bother trying to answer the faux-shock on Gaon’s face. He’s already embarrassed enough that he doesn’t know what he’s doing with cooking anyway. “I just figured I’d prepare you something for once.”
“Have you ever cooked before?” Gaon approaches without requesting permission, and Yohan gets to witness in real time as he takes in the sight of the cookbook, the cutting board and knife, and the amalgamation of vegetables spread out on the counter. He also notices the upended phone, but when he reaches for it, Yohan guides his hand away.
“Show me how to cut these,” he instead says as he directs Gaon’s hand toward the knife. He notices in the side of his periphery how Gaon turns his gaze up from the knife to look at him, and then he catches sight of the tiny smile on the younger man’s lips.
“Okay, sure,” Gaon replies. “Let’s cook this one together and then you can make it for the three of us next time.”
Yohan can’t even protest to that, honestly. He can follow directions like no other, but when the recipe itself just says ‘chopped’ or ‘minced’ with regards to how to prepare the vegetables, he’s already fighting a losing battle.
“You even bought a cookbook?” Gaon teases as he closes it and scoots it aside. “You’ve got a good memory, so let me just show you.” He’s got no qualms about coming in close enough that he’s just about shoulder-to-shoulder with Yohan as he starts with the cabbage. “We won’t need this whole thing,” he says as he slices it in half and reaches for a paper towel. After wrapping it up in paper towels, he sets the wrapped-up half aside and begins chopping the other half. “You want to get the bits of the stem out before you start,” he says as he cuts the half into two more halves and then slices diagonally to do just as he’d instructed. “Afterward, it’ll be much easier to cut too.”
Gaon definitely makes it look easy. He slices the cabbage thinly, from one side of each half to the other, and then dices them up even further. He’s a natural with the big knife in his hand. Should Yohan be concerned about that? Probably. Is he? Not really.
Either way, once he’s satisfied with that, he slides the chopped cabbage into a bowl and reaches for the carrot. He places it onto the cutting board and extends the knife out to Yohan. “You try. Cut it in half lengthwise, and then slice at an angle to create thin strips.”
Yohan’s expression says everything. “You’re going to need to be more specific.”
“Start with the half, then,” Gaon encourages, all-but ignoring Yohan’s request.
Begrudgingly, Yohan obeys and slices the carrot in half just as he’s been told. He then lays the carrot down on the flat end of both halves and studies it. Typically, these are cut into julienne-esque shapes, right? So all he really needs to do is cut them long and thin?
“You really don’t know how to go about the next step?” Gaon questions around a soft laugh, and Yohan can’t stop himself from raising both eyebrows almost threateningly at him.
“Are you going to tease me or are you going to help me?”
Gaon shrugs. “Both, probably. I can’t help it, though—you’re good at basically everything. It’s nice to see you stumbling for once.”
No, it isn’t. It absolutely isn’t. Yohan doesn’t wear embarrassment well, but he can’t deny that he’s feeling it a bit in the current moment. At the very least, Gaon is lighthearted and playful about it and Yohan can tell that he’s not actually looking down on him for it.
“Who said I was good at everything?” Yohan questions, scoffing a bit to himself.
Gaon just returns that little scoff. “Nobody had to.”
From that point, it doesn’t take long for the two of them to have all the vegetables chopped and be ready for the next step. By now, Gaon has gotten the rice cooker running and is frying pork and vegetables. For the most part, he’s taken over the process of cooking, but he mutters little pieces of advice every so often, a la ‘you want to give the ginger and garlic some time to sear before adding the meat’ and ‘it goes by really quickly once the meat’s cooked—come add the rest of the vegetables’.
Yohan’s used to being in control, but he is definitely not right now, and he’s surprisingly okay with it. It’s fascinating to see how methodically Gaon works. He very clearly knows exactly what he’s doing, and it shows in how calm he is as he switches from task to task, occasionally asking for Yohan to pass him various different things.
“Dish out the rice in bowls, okay?” Gaon requests as the sweet-savory smell of the sauce fills the kitchen when it hits the pan. “It’s almost finished—there’s banchan in the refrigerator, too.”
Right…banchan. Yohan hadn’t even thought that far ahead. He scoffs softly, almost scoldingly, at himself, before he does as he’s asked. This has become less of a lesson in cooking and more of Yohan helping and following orders, but he’s also observant enough to have seen a lot of things Gaon has done. He’s confident he can recall it for the future, but he’s also not satisfied with leaving it the way it is.
He’ll cook a meal for Gaon and Elijah on his own one of these days. And he’ll have it done just in time for Gaon to get home and enjoy it rather than be forced to help out.
For now, he gets to work setting the table as Gaon hollers out into the study for Elijah to come down. In minutes, the entire spread covers the table as it usually does when Gaon cooks for them, and Elijah enters the room with the same subdued look of excitement on her face that she and Yohan both tend to sport when it’s time to eat.
“Go ahead and eat,” Gaon encourages, as per usual, and both Yohan and Elijah dig right in. As it always is, the meal is delicious. Yohan is silently proud of the fact that Elijah doesn’t seem to notice anything different in the meal. In fact, after all-but devouring her portion of it, she hums thoughtfully and turns her gaze up to Gaon.
“Don’t overthink it or anything,” she starts as she swallows another bite, “but I think your cooking might be why I no longer hate Korean food.”
Next to Yohan, Gaon chuckles softly to himself, before he bares all of his teeth in a wide, knowing smile. “Is that so, Elijah? What if I told you I didn’t cook this one by myself?”
It’s a good thing Elijah has already swallowed her food, because the look on her face there tells Yohan that she would have spewed it across the table at him and Gaon if she’d had anything in her mouth. “Who else could have?”
Gaon just shrugs. “Well, I don’t see Mrs. Ji around here anywhere, so…who do you think?”
The realization hits in lightning speed, and Yohan is glad Elijah hasn’t thought to take another bite just yet. She stares her uncle down for one, two, three seconds, before she huffs to herself and takes another spoonful into her mouth. This time, she winces visibly and scoots back from the table a bit.
“That’s awful. You can tell how inexperienced you are.”
Yohan can’t stop the incredulous look that works its way onto his features at that response. Only Gaon and Elijah have ever really been successful at putting that look on his face, but it’s definitely here now. “Excuse me? You were all-but inhaling your food just a moment ago.”
“Don’t get offended,” Elijah retorts, her tone intentionally stuffy. “I was just eating the parts Gaon cooked.”
Next to Yohan, Gaon is struggling desperately not to start laughing outright. He somehow manages to compose himself and speaks up around a series of light chuckles. “Go easy on him, why don’t you? He tried his best.”
Yohan didn’t just try his best, thank the both of you very damned much. He did well. Gaon had praised him several times during the course of the process. For several moments, he’s stuck just gawking between the two, before Elijah finally speaks up and wheels back away from the table.
“I’ve got studies to do. Bring me dessert later only if Gaon makes it.”
Yohan is left gaping as his niece wheels away and heads into the elevator. Once she’s back on the second level, Gaon stands up. When Yohan directs his attention up to the younger man, he witnesses a soft smile. “So, she liked it. You’ll make dessert too, right?”
Of course Yohan will. Now that the dust has settled on the situation and he’s processed Elijah’s response a bit, it’s all-too-easy to recognize that she was just trying to avoid praising him. He’ll come up with something sweet to feed her for dessert, and she’ll know it was from him too. With that in mind, he nods affirmatively in Gaon’s direction. “With your help, of course.”
But rather than dive right into cooking, both men instead work together to clean the kitchen. Washing dishes isn’t something that has escaped Yohan’s level of expertise. Rich or not, he’s not too spoiled to clean up after himself. He and Gaon work in tandem, one of them washing while the other rinses, clear until they have everything clean and are now staring at the inside of the refrigerator to decide what to make for dessert.
“Something simple,” Yohan clarifies quickly, because he can almost literally hear the gears turning in Gaon’s head. “Preferably without too many steps.”
“You’re worried about messing up?” Gaon questions with a soft smile. “You’ll do just fine—you’re very good at following directions, surprisingly.”
Yohan elbows him, and he jumps. That response is satisfying enough that Yohan lets the couple of cursewords that follow slide. Gaon shifts to the pantry, before he speaks up. “Butler, do we have pat?”
“Yes, Master,” Butler responds—Yohan is finally starting to adjust to hearing it call Gaon that, “in the farthest cabinet.”
“Ah, thank you,” Gaon replies. Sure enough, he finds exactly what he’s looking for. He proudly plops a bag of red beans on the counter, and starts searching around for other ingredients. As he does so, he mutters his suggestion to Yohan. “Danpatjuk is pretty simple, and I already know Elijah enjoys it.”
Yohan has no reason to protest. He is a bit compelled to open up his cookbook once more and see if danpatjuk shows up in it, but instead resists when Gaon approaches him and shoves the bag of beans at him. On pure impulse, he accepts the bag and cradles it in his hands.
“You’ll want to rinse off the beans and then start boiling them in water. Have you boiled things before?”
“Of course I have,” Yohan grunts in response. “I’m not that inexperienced.”
“You’re definitely not that inexperienced,” Gaon replies with a smile, “but you are defensive.”
Yohan resists the urge to threaten to upend the entire pan of water and beans over Gaon’s head, instead focusing on getting them onto the stove and turning the heat on. Afterward, he turns just in time to see Gaon pass by and lower another smaller pot of water onto the stove.
“For the rice balls,” Gaon explains. “They go really well in danpatjuk.” He notices that Gaon has also gathered a few other spices in a little arrangement on the counter, along with rice flour.
Even Yohan knows that now, they play the waiting game. Water doesn’t boil super quickly, so they’ve got some time to burn. Yohan glances down at his clothes. He’s dressed rather casually, but perhaps not enough for cooking without an apron. It’s surprising that he’s not wearing any of the food he’s prepared just yet, and he’s grateful for that fact, because he’s not crazy about the idea of staining his white button-up or the forest green scarf around his neck. He has at least taken the liberty of tucking the tips of the scarf into his breast pocket to avoid making a mess.
“You’re a very clean cook,” Gaon observes aloud, apparently noticing the way Yohan is looking down at his own shirt. “It’s a good habit to get into, so you’re starting off strong. Are you contemplating changing?”
Yohan shrugs. “I have time to, right?”
“Yeah,” Gaon replies with a smile, “go ahead. Go get comfortable.”
Yohan doesn’t have to be told twice. He nods his agreement and heads for his room. As he enters and finds himself back in solitude, he looks about the dark walls of his bedroom. Yohan remembers many a time when this darkness manifested itself into his nightmares and memories and gave him a sort of loathsome feeling toward this house. At times, those memories still tend to come back and torment him. He still feels disgusted with the home.
But he also can’t ignore the fact that welcoming Gaon here permanently has warmed the house up considerably. Even the darkness of these walls doesn’t stand a chance against that playful personality, those home-cooked meals, and the encouragement of togetherness that Gaon brings out whenever he has the chance to. He has brought new life to the Kang Mansion, and Yohan can’t imagine how existing in this place would be without the other man around—for himself or Elijah.
He knows without having to pry it out of Elijah that she agrees, too.
Either way, Yohan does dress down a bit. He settles himself comfortably in something much looser—a dark red tee-shirt and red and black plaid flannel pajama pants. He’s not as concerned about getting these covered in flour or red bean paste as he is the white shirt he’d started out with initially. Either way, once he’s satisfied, he heads back out.
By the time he reaches the study, he notices music playing. It’s a soft, tinkling kind of music that reminds Yohan of what might be playing in the background at one of the many get-togethers he had had with the chaebols. A frown works its way onto his features as he enters the kitchen once more. Gaon is busying himself with draining and rinsing the beans. By the time Yohan approaches, he’s added fresh water to them and put them on the stove once more.
“What’re you listening to?” He questions, watching as Gaon takes the other pot of boiling water and pours it into a bowl of rice flour.
Gaon just shrugs as he works. “I asked Butler to put on some music and this is what he chose.”
The music isn’t bad. It’s peaceful—probably ideal for background noise while Yohan and Gaon work. It reminds him of something he’d hear while sipping away at champagne and talking absolute nonsense to people he doesn’t give a damn about in regard to subjects he doesn’t really care for, clear until he’s practically falling asleep and ready to head home.
Butler apparently notices this acknowledgment, because it speaks up there. “Would you like to hear something else, Master Yohan?”
Yohan gives the question some thought. He notices briefly that Gaon is watching him as he works. “No, this is alright. Do you like this kind of music, Butler?”
“It would seem so, Master,” the AI responds. Yohan crinkles his brow, before Gaon gestures for him to come over.
“Turn the heat down on the beans,” Gaon instructs. Yohan obeys without questioning it, before he moves to stand at the other man’s side once more. “We’ll make and cool the rice balls and let the beans simmer until they’re soft enough to turn into a paste.”
On second thought, maybe Yohan shouldn’t have changed clothes. He’s wearing a red shirt that’s probably going to be dusted white by the time he and Gaon are done. Despite that thought, though, he moves in and does exactly as Gaon demonstrates. Rolling squishy rice into spheres is an easy task, and it’s also mindless enough that Yohan allows himself a chance to properly enjoy the music playing in the kitchen.
The tempo has shifted, actually. The music playing on Butler’s speaker is softer and sweeter than it was before. It borders on romantic—like something that would play during a slow dance in a ballroom. Yohan, having not expected that type of song, fixes his AI with a glance of confusion. “Did you change the song?”
“The song changed automatically, Sir,” Butler explains. “It’s item number two on Musicify user totalweddingplanner9897’s playlist, ‘Wedding Playlist’.”
Yohan and Gaon exchange glances. “Did you ask for wedding music?”
Gaon shakes his head.
“Shall I change it?” Butler questions, seemingly unprompted.
Yohan opens his mouth to respond affirmatively, but Gaon cuts him off. “That’s alright, Butler. I’m enjoying this playlist.”
Yohan glances over at Gaon, who just smiles. “The music’s sweet. I like it. It makes me feel warm.”
Those words hit harder than Yohan expects for them to. Gaon has had it rough as of the past year. He’s had it rough for longer than that, really. Warmth is something he probably doesn’t feel all that accustomed to in this big mansion, with just Yohan and Elijah to keep him company. If he says a song makes him feel warm, who is Yohan to turn that away?
“You like slow dance music?”
“I like a lot of music.” Gaon shrugs. “This music kind of makes me wish I was a better dancer, though.”
How convenient that the last rice ball is finished there. Yohan watches it in near slow-motion as Gaon drops it into the bowl, and then takes Gaon’s wrist, guiding him back and away from the counter. He notices the look of surprise coming from Gaon in his periphery, but he doesn’t care. They’ve got time, right? Apparently, the red beans need to soften before they can do much else.
“Butler,” Yohan starts with a soft smile on his lips, “bring the volume up just a bit.”
“Yes, Master,” Butler responds, and the volume clicks up by a fraction.
Yohan holds his hand out palm-up. “Put your hand in mine,” he urges as he slides his other arm around Gaon’s waist.
“Yohan—” Gaon tries. He’s visibly nervous, pulling that thing he always does when he gets like this, where his gaze jumps all over the place. He’s glancing frantically between Yohan’s face and the hand that he has placed atop Yohan’s as instructed, muttering things that are mostly unintelligible, until he finally manages to clear his throat and come out with something that makes some sense. “Our hands are covered in flour…”
“That’s alright,” Yohan replies. “Just follow my lead.”
“Why are we—”
“Because I’d like to teach you something in return for your help,” Yohan clarifies as he pulls Gaon a bit closer to him. As the warmth between them grows more comfortable, he can feel Gaon relaxing. The hand in his slackens a bit, and Gaon brings his other hand up to Yohan’s shoulder.
“Like this?” He questions almost nervously, to which Yohan nods his head.
“A little higher. Don’t be afraid to hold on to me.”
Kang Yohan has never been the type of person to lie to himself. It has always served him best to see the picture as clearly as possible. Reality is so much easier to accept when you confront it head-on, and results tend to come so much more quickly when you aren’t dodging the facts. Yohan had understood very clearly what Gaon meant to him the very moment an implication reached his mind. He hadn’t embraced it straight away, considering everything that had been happening at the time, but in the current moment, he has absolutely no problem accepting it.
He has no problem accepting just how at ease he feels when Gaon’s hand slides up to nestle itself midway between his shoulder and neck, and how the proximity grows more intimate between them. How their eyes meet and the slight apprehension on Gaon’s face is so very endearing to him. How his gaze briefly flickers to Yohan’s chest, and then back up to his eyes.
“I’ll lead, and you just follow,” Yohan instructs, before he finds a rhythm in the music playing and sways out and further away from the counter.
As expected, Gaon doesn’t protest from that point. Yohan predicted some hesitation, and he got it—but he also expected Gaon to eventually decide to go with the flow, as he’s done so many times before. He’s used to rolling with the punches when it comes to Yohan. It just comes with the territory, as Yohan himself understands perfectly.
But also, Gaon is simply very adaptable. He absorbs a situation quickly and finds his place in it, in his own unique way. He never really bothers trying to fit in, but he never looks all that unwelcome, either. He hadn’t quite known what he was getting into with the Live Courtroom, and he’d still become as natural there as the chief judge, himself.
In line with that train of thought, Gaon doesn’t look uncomfortable here. If anything, he looks pensive. Yohan notices the way his gaze drops down between them, eyes half-lidded, and his stare almost distant, as if he’s zoned clean out of the present. Despite that, he’s moving along pretty well when it comes to following Yohan’s lead. His steps are a bit awkward, but he’s far from a bad dancer. He has rhythm—now, he just needs knowledge.
“What’s on your mind?” Yohan questions as he moves. He feels Gaon’s hand stammer against his shoulder a bit in response to that question.
Gaon seems to give the words a considerable amount of thought, before he regains focus and smiles at Yohan. Their eyes meet and he shakes his head with that smile still stretched across his lips. “Nothing in particular…or maybe a lot of things all at once. I guess the biggest thing is that I’m just surprised we haven’t done something like this already?”
“Do you mean dancing?” Yohan questions around a soft scoff. “You said yourself—”
“No,” Gaon interjects, “I mean all of this. Cooking together, goofing off to slow ballroom music…just…it’s fitting.”
Strangely, it is. Outside observers might not get the same impression, but Yohan doesn’t think he possesses a bone in his body that disagrees with Gaon. Their relationship has a certain level of push and pull to it, and there’s a special brand of volatility that comes between them from the very nature of how their relationship began, but there’s also something of a domesticity that Gaon has brought to all three of them, and Yohan quite frankly doesn’t care to try and recall what it was like before that domesticity.
That’s exactly why Yohan wants to cook more meals for Gaon, and why he wants to teach him to dance. There are likely a million other things the two of them can do together, or the three of them can do as a family, and Yohan is looking forward to every minute of it.
The good thing about no longer existing in the eyes of the rest of the world is that Yohan doesn’t have anything else on his mind. It’s all about being here for Elijah and Gaon and finally getting to rest after having done the very thing he had started plotting all those years ago. He can settle down, and he can think about what it’d be like to cook meals and dance with Gaon while covered in rice flour. These are freedoms and rewards and he gets why Gaon says he’s surprised it took this long.
Gaon’s attention has been focused on Yohan’s face this entire time, as if he’s pondering what Yohan has been thinking. But in the split second that Yohan’s thoughts clear, he sees that gaze drift downward a bit to hone in on his lips.
Knowing what Gaon is thinking, Yohan cocks an eyebrow, before he lowers his partner down into a dip, effectively catching him off guard. He sees the way those big eyes widen even more and hears the little ‘whoa!’ that falls from his lips as he’s dipped backward, and as Yohan leans in close while he has Gaon almost doubled over backward, his smile morphs into a smirk.
“Focus, Gaon-ah.”
Gaon’s cheeks flush the slightest shade of pink, but his stare never diverts away from Yohan’s eyes. Yohan likes that. Gaon may be clumsier about it, but he’s not exactly the type to double back either. Regardless, Yohan brings him back up, draws him in close once more, and this time pulls him in chest-deep. “Sway to the music. Don’t be afraid to hold on while you do so. It’s just us and the music right now.”
Yohan doesn’t think that bit is really necessary to the lesson, but he wants it no less. He wants Gaon to understand just where he stands in the current moment. It’s just the two of them, chest to chest, hands clasped, with the smell of rice flour and the lingering scent of cologne between their bodies. To Yohan, it’s intoxicating, and he wants to enjoy it a little longer.
Gaon seems to agree too, because soon enough, he frees his hand from the one holding him and instead slides his arms around Yohan’s waist. Yohan feels the gentle pressure of Gaon’s head nuzzled against the crook of his neck—the press of his cheek against Yohan’s shoulder. The music almost feels distant as Yohan reciprocates and brings his own arms around the other man’s frame. He lets his eyes fall shut, and his steps guide the both of them.
They’re like that until the music falls silent. One, two, three seconds of complete peace and quiet surround them, and Yohan thinks that maybe it’s for them to collect themselves. This has been yet another big step in the growth of their relationship, and even if they’ve both known for a while what lies between them, they still need a chance to revel in what just happened.
The silence ends when the song changes, and they stop moving. Gaon’s head lifts from Yohan’s shoulder, and Yohan pulls back. His arms slide free from Gaon’s waist, and Gaon’s own hands do the same thing in return. Their eyes meet yet again, and Gaon looks sheepish. Elated, but also perhaps a bit embarrassed. He smiles almost nervously at Yohan.
“Thanks for stopping me from…you know…” he murmurs, laughing a bit. Gaon isn’t very specific, but Yohan still knows exactly what he’s referring to. That split second during their eye contact where it had almost looked as if he was going to lean in and kiss Yohan. Just thinking about it brings that smile right back to Yohan’s lips. “I did that once without thinking before, and I’d hate to repeat what—”
Yohan cuts him off by bringing his thumb and forefinger to Gaon’s chin, tipping it up so that they can make eye contact again. No, Gaon, it’s not like that. It’s not like Yohan doesn’t want it. He’s thought about it far more than he cares to say aloud unprompted. Gaon is in the right to have acknowledged their relationship the way he has.
Yohan cocks his head to the side, raises both eyebrows, and speaks up. “You misunderstand why I did what I did. It’s because I wanted to make the first move.”
He takes advantage of the moment of surprise on Gaon’s face and leans in, capturing those slightly parted lips with his own. He revels in the way Gaon’s breath hitches in his throat, and how he almost seems to freeze for a moment.
And then, like is the very instinct of their dynamic, it intensifies. Gaon inhales sharply and responds almost instantly, bringing both hands up to either side of Yohan’s face. He leans into the kiss, tipping his head, and then deepens it. Yohan’s eyes remain open long enough to witness the furrowing of Gaon’s brow as he parts his lips once more, and then they fall shut to enjoy the moment.
Even Yohan loses himself a bit in it. He doesn’t notice the way his heart is racing or his body tingling clear until he realizes it’s time to catch his breath and his lungs are burning for air. At some point, his hands have moved to the back of Gaon’s head, and once they’ve broken off the kiss, Gaon chuckles softly and uses his own to gently remove them from his hair. His slightly swollen lips curl upward in a smile.
“You’re shaking…”
Yohan knows he is, but he grows starkly aware of it once it’s brought to reality in words. His hands, hanging loosely in between their bodies, almost uncertain where to go, are quivering just barely—probably only the tiniest bit noticeable for Gaon when they’d been in his hair. He hadn’t realized just how much kissing Gaon would do to him. It’s everything to him in the current moment. Gaon and Elijah are everything to him.
“It’s okay…” Gaon reassures, surprising Yohan there. He brushes his fingers across the older man’s face, his eyes a little bit moist. He always has been something of a crybaby. “You’re allowed to respond emotionally to this kind of thing.”
“You’re not doing much better, you know,” Yohan somehow manages, covering one of the hands on his face with his own. He leans in for one more chaste kiss, before he gently pries himself free and nods toward the water. “Let’s focus on dessert, shall we?”
And they do. Almost as if what just happened was as normal as the act of cooking itself (which it was), they continue working on dessert. Gaon gently coaches Yohan through the process of straining and mashing the beans and working them into a paste. The music continues to play behind them. It’s peaceful and normal and so, so very natural for the both of them.
And when they head upstairs in tandem to enjoy dessert with Elijah, the way she looks at them all covered in flour also feels natural.
“Did the two of you fight with it?” She faux-complains, before she nods for them to place the bowls on the table.
And then, like the family they are, they enjoy their dessert together. In between bites of food, Yohan makes sure to let Elijah know he helped cook this one.
She’s surprisingly less bitter about it than she was downstairs over dinner.