YEAH like i mean besides the fact that his greatest motivation when drunk is "look sober, behave normally" and the fact that he makes all kinds of dangerous and upsetting decisions stone cold sober as well
Really, Chikusa, alcohol isn't the problem here. The problem is that when you push Hakkai far enough, rather than lying face-down on the floor for several months, he just starts making worse and more drastic decisions
I'm just seeing Ayumu going about her business, she sees a text from Chikusa asking about all of this and she just... immediately goes off to hide in the hot spring
Honestly, Hakkai's not saying "not ever," here, he's saying "in the heat of a fight you started and escalated in the middle of dinner less than two hours after regaining consciousness, this isn't a request I'm going to take seriously."
if he ever meant it seriously, she'd ask him to name her and release him and probably try to relieve Chikusa a bit since she does feel somewhat responsible for putting him the position he's in there (it's Ayumu, of course, she'd feel responsible)
but yeah, honestly, depending on how this thread goes he's very likely to go talk to Gojyo about that naming/releasing question afterwards without the kids around to add conflict
some of the emotional aspects of the situation just go over her head a bit yet she keeps hearing about it from Chikusa lol and I imagine whatever Gojyo says at the bar
also she doesn't want to give her honest opinion unless asked for it because she doubts either Hakkai or Gojyo would appreciate her particular brand of harsh realism on their relationship
She is but it goes further than just that with her. She thinks their personalities are a bad match, their relationship is toxic, and they have no future. She also doubts there's any genuine love between them and it's not just lust and obsession.
so there's the "love yourself and let it go" aspect and more mundane aspects? she also sees them as wanting different things (which adds to her opinion that they wouldn't have a happy future)
though honestly, she still might doubt that they were that functional before and there weren't deeper issues and cracks that just hadn't come to the surface yet
hakkai wasn't communicating, gojyo was freaking out and trying to push him away, hakkai came real close to packing his bags and disappearing into the night
(but no honestly the thing that really makes a difference is for them to get to the point where gojyo recognizes that hakkai's not going to suddenly realize he can do better and walk away, and hakkai recognizes that gojyo's not pushing him away because he doesn't like him)
(honestly, that'd just make Ayu wonder why the issue hasn't been fixed when they've known each other so long with full context and that it hasn't been as a sign that they're unsuited for each other)
(she's way too pragmatic and cynical to appreciate it. she might be more approving if she'd had more opportunities for genuine bonds growing up but alas)
pft. the funny thing is, if she'd actually talked to hakkai about it, he might rant about the "lust and obsession" thing a little, because this has been really rubbing him the wrong way with gojyo, too. he wants the trust between them back! he wants to be able to rely on gojyo to check him when he's stupid, and vice versa.
And he hates that Gojyo keeps making it so much about sex, because while he would be okay with friendship + sex, if one half of that equation has to go, no sex is fine, no friendship is unbearable.
Ha! Yeah, Hakkai's not the biggest fan of that either. He's not holding it against Gojyo because he basically sees it as Gojyo's self-hatred metastasizing onto everyone Gojyo associates with his past, but if, you know, somebody wanted to punch Gojyo until he quit being stupid like that, he has no objections
she's dealing with a lot of stuff, too, and while she did snap and try to break Hakkai's nose, it was also an extreme circumstance and it'd been building up for a while. plus she apologized and hasn't done it since haha
(gojyo does find fighting to be strangely cathartic, which unfortunately is one of the ways in which he and hakkai are not alike. hakkai only wants to fight people he wants to kill)
> Chikusa: So you've made all these life choices while sober? Christ.