Hunting for Wild Hanyo by itainohime

Index

Chapter 1: Hunting for Wild Hanyo
Chapter 2: Giving Up the Ghost
Chapter 3: Restitution

Chapter 1: Hunting for Wild Hanyo

by Princess of Pain

NOTES: This one involves possible character spoilers for Gojyo and Hakkai--if you don't know about their various pasts, this will either make no sense or completely ruin you.

This fic's conception is related to "Thing", but only because of a similar challenging premise: write about a character from an anime without narrating from that character's perspective. In this case, I was writing about the Gojyo/Hakkai pairing without having either Gojyo or Hakkai as narrators or main characters. It's really hard to do, especially without wandering too much with my original characters. That would have been fun, but their purpose was to tell a story about Gojyo and Hakkai. Perhaps they'll pop up again someday.

*~*~*

"There’s a trick to it, you know."

Yukiko quirked one of her eyebrows at the insatiable blonde seated across from her.  She was a newcomer to these parts, and to this particular bar.  It had completely surprised her–that the ladies who occupied such a dump made it a policy to keep as clean and gorgeous as possible.  Take Shiori, for instance; she was clad in a glitzy red dress that stood out in the dark bar like a ruby in a coalmine.  Her long, blonde hair was meticulously curled and bleached; her face was carefully made up; her manicure was fresh, and her jewelry was surprisingly genuine.

She looked (although Yukiko was far too polite to say such a thing) like an extremely high-class call girl who’d gotten lost in the armpit of the red-light.

Pretty much all of the girls who weren’t cleaning-witches or bar-hags were dressed as good as Shiori.  Their dresses and jewels glimmered in the darkness like the scales of some rare rainbow-fish.  It sure made all the local men (who, naturally, put forth no such effort) happy… but for all of her, Yukiko couldn’t figure out what they bothered for.  Were they actually trying to impress the clod-kickers and the fat merchants?  Surely they had better taste than that.

“A trick to what?” she replied at last, taking a delicate sip of her ale.  Shiori had immediately come over to her the instant that she’d sat down at the bar–whether because the curvy blonde sensed competition or companionship, she couldn’t tell.

Shiori dropped her a slow, mischievous wink.  “Hunting for Gojyo.  That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?”

Yukiko blinked.  “Um… what’s a gojyo?  Is it like a snipe?  I did that when I was twelve, thanks.”

The stunning blonde practically cackled.   “Oh, no.  Gojyo’s not a snipe.  He’s quite real, and he’s quite worth the hunt.”

“Gojyo’s… what?  A guy?  What a weird name.”

“It sounds better when you’re screaming it in the throes of passion, I assure you.”  Her dark indigo eyes glittered.

“You don’t mean to tell me…”  Yukiko made a gesture around the bar, where all the rare fish glittered in the darkness.   “You can’t mean that ALL these women came here to fight over ONE guy, can you?  What’s with him?  Does he have chocolate-flavored spunk, or something?" (1)

Shiori laughed–Yukiko couldn’t decipher whether it was at her, or at her joke.   “Better.  Look, honey… are you a tourist, or what?”

“Are you kidding me?  If you try and tell me that people come here to look at the farmers and the forest, I’ll laugh in your face.  I just moved here last week.”

“Why?  So you could stare at the farmers and the forest all the time, instead of just in the summer?”  When Yukiko dropped her gaze and didn’t respond, Shiori continued.  Her voice had the lilting, carefree tones of a child on his first day of vacation.  “The only pleasure the men in this town hope to get is from their work.  And the only pleasure we women have, lucky us… is Gojyo.”

Yukiko felt like making a smart remark about how men, generally, do not need encouragement to believe themselves to be the Buddha with a bullet.  But… She was interested by the fact that a seemingly smart woman like Shiori, along with all the other women in this bar, were all so obsessed with one man.   And it didn’t seem like the blonde was lying… thus, she held her peace, and took another drink.

“The rules are simple.”  As she listed them, she ticked them out on her elegant fingers.  “One, you never call attention to his hair or his eyes.  I’m going to tell you right now, no one knows if he dyes his hair that shade of red, or what.  The most plausible rumor about his eyes is that they turned that color after a fight, but we don’t know that, either. (2) He’s extremely sensitive about people mentioning the hair or the eyes.  I heard about a girl who screamed out something about it right in the middle of The Act, and he actually got up and left her there.  It’s the only sure way to drive him off, so don’t spoil it for the rest of us.”

Yukiko pictured a man with candy-apple-red hair and bruise-brown eyes.  Probably a brawny guy, too, if Shiori mentioned his fighting so casually, and if he was that virile.

“Two.  If you’re not interested, don’t come here.  There are other bars, but this is the one he comes to every night.   Again, don’t spoil it for the rest of us.

“Three.  No hard feelings.  Gojyo’s like a cheap carnival ride; everyone’s going to get a turn eventually, as long as you don’t have three legs or a penis.   Even if you don’t get him one night… well, there are other options, aren’t there?”

Yukiko turned red.

“So don’t get bent out of shape if some girl gets him first.  We don’t work off jealousy here.”

“So this guy DOES have chocolate-flavored spunk,” Yukiko said, trying to sound as carefree as Shiori, and not like she was dying of curiosity.   “And the equipment of a god.”

“Absolutely,” Shiori said, and Yukiko struggled to decipher whether or not her sincerity was false at its core.   “Number four: does smoking bother you?”

The brunette looked up.  Cigarette, cigar, and cigarillo smoke curled in thick blue swirls around the dim lamps hung from the ceiling.  The air was just as rank with tobacco as it was with spirit-fumes.  “Not particularly, no.”

“Good.  Even if it did, I’d advise against mentioning it around Gojyo.  He’s the most determined smoker I’ve ever seen.  He once nearly beat this guy to death for coughing in his face and telling him to put out the cancer-stick.”

Yukiko wondered if hunting for Gojyo wasn’t going to be hazardous to her health.  “Is that all?”

The blonde nodded, her curls bouncing along.  It made Yukiko think of a myth she’d once heard about a golden apple given to a goddess–This woman’s hair looks precisely the way that apple’s peel would seem, she thought.

“Oi, oi!” a heavily-accented voice at the door suddenly declared.  “Who’s ready to lose at poker?”

Suddenly, all the women in the bar took up a unified battle cry:

“GOJYO-SAAAAAAAAA~AN!!!”

***

“I haven’t seen him around,” Hikaru said.  Her violet-painted lips were pulled into a well-accomplished pout.   She stirred a fingertip over the surface of her glass of merlot.

“Me either,” Shiori said.  She was wearing a seafoam-colored dress this evening, and wore it well–although, as far as Yukiko could see, she could have worn a maroon-and-orange-striped toga and still looked stunning.

The brunette quietly nursed her ale.  She had allowed Shiori to play dress-ups with her.  She was sure she looked positively glamorous in the tight black number that her new friend had poured her into, but she really couldn’t care less.  Sure, Gojyo was hot–probably the most attractive man in the entire village.  But his weird hair and scars put her off.  Not to mention that he had no fashion sense, and probably thought he was the gods’ gift to this lousy world… all of which, of course, she was too polite to voice.

“I heard,” the slender redhead declared, “that he’s living in sin with an out-of-town woman.”

“You never!” Shiori said.

Hikaru wisely nodded (looking wise was probably a huge strain on the girl).  “I heard it from my ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s niece.  Her third cousin’s uncle-in-law is a nurse for Dr. Hiro.  He says that Dr. Hiro ran over there a week or so ago to take care of some girl Gojyo picked up on the way home.”

“Who went with him that night?  Wasn’t it Riko?”

“No one did,” Yukiko said.  “That one girl broke the first rule of Gojyo-hunting, remember?”

“That stupid bitch!” both her companions snapped at the same time.

“But that doesn’t mean that he’d actually shack up with somebody, does it?” Hikaru said.  She took a worried gulp of her wine.

“Of course not,” Shiori said.  “Gojyo’s destined for bachelorhood.  It would be just plain rude for some girl to keep him all to herself, don’t you think?”

“Or a man,” the bartender said, topping off Shiori’s Scotch.  Yukiko rather liked him.  She had no idea what his name was, or anything about him; but he was swarthy and tall–her usual type.  Not to mention that he seemed to share her sense of humor… the one she was far too polite to voice.

Hikaru turned a color two shades deeper than her wine.  “How can you say such a vulgar thing!  Gojyo–“

“He’s straight-on as an arrow,” Shiori said, that carefree tone never vacating her voice.  “What on earth would give you that idea?”

He gave a shrug.  “Your ex-boyfriend’s ex-whatever’s got it wrong.  That, or you heard what you wanted to hear.  Dr. Hiro treated some guy Gojyo found on the way home last week, not some girl.  A rather pretty fella, from what he said.”

Yukiko smirked.  She could probably have fit her head into Hikaru’s mouth, it had unhinged so completely.  Even Shiori looked mildly horrified at the very idea.

“Gojyo’s not a pervert!”  The redhead drained her glass of wine, as if the proof of her love’s sexuality could be found at the bottom of the glass.

“He’ll be back,” the blonde said, ruffled feathers notwithstanding.  “He never leaves for long.”

Yukiko tried not to laugh.

***

The bar seemed much dimmer than usual.   Sure, the place was normally darker than a carload of assholes, but without all the glittering rainbow-fish swimming through the crowd in search of their prey, it was downright dismal.   Yukiko noted (not without some measure of satisfaction) that almost all of the women who were badge-carrying Gojyo-hunters had stopped making an appearance here.  The few who were left–Shiori and Hikaru among them, naturally–no longer bothered to dress their best.  Even Shiori was only wearing a pair of jeans and a dark, simple blouse; Yukiko had been convinced, over the month or so that she’d gotten to know the other woman, that the blonde didn’t own anything but evening dresses.

And they all figured he’d come back, she thought–again, with an odd glint of satisfaction.  Guess we can all make errors of judgment, eh?

Why she still came here, she really didn’t know.  Maybe it was to gloat over the stupidity of the other women.  Maybe because she just allowed herself to be dragged out here every evening by Shiori.  Or, perhaps, because she kept resolving to give that cute bartender her number, before someone else snatched him up.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when that same accented voice piped up at the doorway: “I’m in the mood for hearts tonight, boys!  Who’s ready to lose?”

Hikaru leapt up from her barstool, squealing (or so Yukiko thought) like a stuck pig.  Even Shiori, the picture of placidness, looked for a second as if someone had jammed a good-sized hatpin up her ass.  Both women–as well as the remnants of the hunting party–immediately surrounded the ever-popular redhead.

Yukiko gave Gojyo a cursory glance, blinking in surprise when she got to his face.  “Did he actually cut his hair ?” she murmured in surprise, despite herself.  “He looks like a complete dork with it short.  What’d he do that for?”

The tall-and-dark bartender switched out her empty bottle of ale for a freshly-opened one.  “Mourning, or so I heard.”

“Mmm?”  She didn’t care about what Gojyo did, really she didn’t, but at least the ‘tender was talking to her.

“Remember that guy he was shacking with?”

Yukiko nodded.  She had never seen this infamous ‘boyfriend’, but gossip had revealed him to be a younger man with short brown hair, green eyes, and apparently, a willingness to get his ass thoroughly kicked.

“Disappeared.”

“Why?  Lover’s quarrel?”

He gave her a quiet smile.  “No one knows.   But Gojyo’d been buying for two for the last month.  Then, suddenly, he’s only shopping for himself again.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“Most of the food-stand owners are regulars,” he said.  “It’s part of my job to listen, don’t you know?”

“Oi, Gojyo, why’d you cut it all off?” Hikaru whined, loudly enough to draw Yukiko’s attention.  The redhead had failed to highlight her hair over the last few weeks, revealing Hikaru’s locks to be as brown as Yukiko’s.  She was drawing her fingers through what was left of Gojyo’s flaming-red locks… which wasn’t much.

He gave her a grin.  “Don’t you like it, lovely?”

“Of course I do!  But I miss running my fingers through your–“

“It was like power-steering for oral sex,” Shiori said, that same carefree smile on her face, effectively cutting Hikaru off before she broke Rule One. (3)

“Ah, Shiori, I missed you, too.  Got a light, sweetheart?”

“Guess it must have been a lover’s spat,” Yukiko said to her ale before draining it dry.  “Plenty of chicks willing to be the rebound, though.”

***

Months passed, as they tend to do.  Gojyo didn’t move to another bar; after a time, he began to frequent his old one every night, as per his old habit.   Yukiko considered clearing out and finding a new hangout, but then, she noticed an interesting phenomenon that made staying there worthwhile:

In the first two months or so, Gojyo rarely took a woman home.  After that, he never took anyone at all.

Yukiko found this to be incredibly amusing.  Much of what was happening around the flame-haired man was amusing her.  So many of the bubble-headed bitches that hung onto him like white on rice deserved to have their hopes ruined, at least a little, and that was precisely what was happening.

She and Iyoichi (that was the tall-and-dark bartender’s name, which she only learned after drinking at his establishment for four months) both traded idle gossip on the subject.  Gojyo wasn’t the only thing they talked about, but he got brought up a bit, usually in response to Gojyo going home and being forced to listen to his harem whine about who broke what rule.

Apparently, Gojyo began buying for two a couple of weeks after he showed up with a close-cropped hairdo.  After another couple of weeks, his new roommate began doing the shopping… and taking out the trash… and practically everything else.  “The woman’s-work,” Iyoichi had said with a smirk.  “And it’s been my experience, my friend, that two men who live together are never just roommates.” (4) Yukiko had not been able to suppress a cackle.

The food-stand owners said that his name was Hakkai, and even though such a name was sinister (and probably false, in Yukiko’s opinion–who the hell named their child “destruction”?), all of them talked about how he was the kindest, most polite young man they’d ever met.

Most of the men who drank there had nothing bad to say about Hakkai, either.   He was apparently the man to go to if you needed help, for almost anything at all–you merely had to ask, and he’d probably try to move a mountain for you, stranger or friend.

All of the women conceded that he was polite, kind, pretty, and helpful.  But all the ones who drank in Gojyo’s bar would violently bitch the instant that the object of their affections left.

“I hope that green-eyed, panty-waist bastard fucking chokes!” Hikaru was heard to spit out on more than one occasion. (5)

***

Six months had rolled by–spring shifting quickly to summer, then to fall.  Specifically, it was at the end of October when Shiori made her final declaration on the subject.  Previous to this, she’d remained the portrait of calm and resolve, certain that eventually, Gojyo’s libido would get the better of him and that he would cave in to the call of the Wild Thing.   Apparently, though, he had become a sexual camel: no one had seen what color the sheets on Gojyo’s bed were in four entire months.

Shiori made her declaration when the three women were busy making their Harvest Eve costumes.  Harvest Eve was a charming festival native only to tiny spit-towns like this one, where hayseed traditions ruled the day.  From what Yukiko had deciphered, it began when everyone dressed up in silly or scary costumes.  The kids ran around, got candy and pulled pranks.  The adults ran around, got drunk and pulled boners.   Yukiko had never been much of a seamstress, but she knew enough to make a simple green body-suit, which she was currently stitching up.

Hikaru wasn’t smart enough to do anything with a needle but prick her fingers; Shiori was working on both their costumes.  Hikaru–who was going heavy on the dye-bottle now, and had turned her hair a dark plum–entertained them by complaining about the fact that Hakkai existed.

Suddenly, Shiori looked up from her needlework.  Her face was perfectly made up, from the pink lip-gloss to the shimmering stuff about her eyes; even when she’d slacked in Gojyo’s absence, Yukiko had never seen the blonde without fantastic makeup.  “We’ve got to do something,” she announced.

Hikaru stared at her, utterly puzzled.   Yukiko didn’t blame her.  The purple-haired woman had been mid-bitching-sentence, and was not capable of switching gears so quickly.   “…huh?”

“We can’t just go off quietly into the good night,” the blonde said.  “I’m certainly not willing to surrender him so easily.  Are you?”

Hikaru, probably still not sure what the hell Shiori was talking about, nodded.  Then shook her head.  “Um, no.   Right?”

“Right,” Shiori said.  It was beyond Yukiko how the blonde kept her patience around Hikaru.  “Yukiko?”

“Working on my costume,” the brunette said.

“Come on, Yuki-chan,” her friend said, smiling coyly.  “What do you say?”

She sighed.  “More hunting for wild Gojyo?”

“Precisely.  We’ll flush him out at the festival.  We can at least get an answer as to why he’s ignoring us.”

Maybe he doesn’t like girls anymore, she thought.  But, of course, she was too nice to say that out loud.  “I guess I won’t have anything else to do.  What are you two going as, anyhow?”

“A couple of yamanba," she replied. (6)   For the first time in a while, her happy-go-lucky voice didn’t sound like an act.  “You?”

“A kappa.”  She held up her body-suit, which was almost done.  “All I need is a bowl to strap on my head.”

***

Shiori and Hikaru, she supposed, were still running around the festival.   Yukiko had done the sensible thing, based on what little she knew of hunting.  It’s one thing to run around a forest, trying to track an animal–any at all.  It’s another to find their stomping-grounds and lie in wait.  Most animals like having their lairs, and if one can find it, it’s practically written in stone that said animal will run straight into one’s sights.

It made things easier, knowing where he lived.

Why she was doing this, she wasn’t entirely sure… nor was she sure why she didn’t share this bit of info with her friends.  If she was honest with herself, she supposed that it was because she wanted to prove–if only to herself–that Gojyo wasn’t going to be coming back to be their walking, talking dildo.  He was like a lion, one that had run away from his pack of lionesses to set up house elsewhere.

Iyoichi had even put his finger close to the pulse of the matter the last time they’d spoken.  She’d said something about how she really didn’t care less about the flame-haired man, and he’d responded with, “Of course you do.”

“What are you running on about?”

He’d shrugged, as was his habit.  “You can’t hate Gojyo, no matter how much you try.  That’s all.  Deep down, something stops you.  You, Yukiko… You just don’t think you’re one of the dumb whisky-whores that hangs on his every fucking word.  You think you’re smarter than that, so you dump on him whenever you can.  But you pick at him too much to not give yourself away, don’t you think?”

She’d sputtered and blustered.  It was true, of course, which didn’t stop her from denying it any more strenuously.

Maybe I want to prove I can’t have him, and maybe I want to prove that none of them can, she thought, rubbing at her neck.  Shiori, who thought her costume was hilarious, had insisted she actually put water in the bowl on her head, and holding her head erect was taking its tool.

From her vantage point in the bushes, she could see into one of the windows of Gojyo’s glorified hovel.  Hakkai was sitting at a table.  Apparently, he was about as excited about the Harvest Eve celebration as she was; he was sans costume, reading from a book–she couldn’t make out the title.  The infamous, wild Gojyo was elsewhere.  This room was clearly a combo kitchen/den, and was surprisingly neat and clean.  Before she’d struck out on her own, Yukiko had lived with a boyfriend for five months, and she couldn’t recall his half of their bedroom ever being as tidy as Gojyo’s house.  Not that the redhead could take credit.  If Gojyo had cleaned this place at all before the green-eyed man moved in, then she was a pink-feathered duck.

Yukiko waited for the flame-haired man to make his appearance for about twenty minutes.  She was amazed at how… docile Hakkai was in that time; all he did was turn pages, breathe, and smile.  It was almost creepy.  He didn’t do any of those things that people do in the comfort of their own homes, when no one else is around.  He didn’t grab at his crotch, or “scratch” his nose, or squirm around in his seat, or (as the old boyfriend had been fond of saying) sit on any barking spiders–things which, in Yukiko’s experience, no man could go without doing for more than thirty seconds. (7)   It was almost as unsettling as the fact that his smile never wavered, like his book was one long joke… or like he was practicing the expression.  There was something inhuman in his Zen-like state of serenity–

Both Yukiko and the man she observed nearly fell out of their respective seats when Gojyo slammed the front door open.

Great goddess, he must move fast! she couldn’t help but think.  And quiet.  I didn’t see or hear him coming!

The red-haired man was in full costume.   Somehow, it didn’t surprise Yukiko to think that Gojyo would relish this rather silly holiday.  He was dressed as the sort of devil the nuns of her childhood had scared her with: not nuns in togas, but in habits, preaching the virgin goddess and her Son, rather than the Buddha.  His mask was a hideous, skeletal thing, the same color as his now-chin-length hair.  Above it, he had somehow gelled his hair and twisted it into approximations of horns.  The rest of him was in some tight red material.   Yukiko suspected that he had sacrificed a pair of longjohns for his nefarious desires.

Hakkai said something–what, she couldn’t hear.  Gojyo didn’t seem to, either.  He completely ignored his roommate and marched over to the kitchen area, out of Yukiko’s viewing convenience.  When he returned, he was carrying a large, slender knife.

She never could read lips, but she didn’t have to understand what Hakkai was saying; she wondered it herself.   What the fuck is he doing with that knife?

Gojyo sat himself down at the table next to Hakkai, pulling off his mask as he settled.  Gin blossoms were beginning to bloom in his cheeks, and his mouth was pulled into that easy, stupid, charming grin which Yukiko resented.   With the mask gone and the horns still in place, he looked a fool.  Yukiko could clearly hear what he said: “I need to make this fucking thing more functional.”

She watched, unsure if she was bemused or put off, as Gojyo used the knife to dig a small hole in the hideous false visage.  He slipped it back on, revealing that the hole he’d made was placed around the creature’s mouth.  He parked a cigarette in the hole and lit up.  The cigarette bobbed as he spoke: “Aaaah… now that’s better.”

Yukiko had to clap one of her hands over her mouth (no mask here; she’d painted her face to give the appearance of green and blue scales) out of paranoid fear that one of the men would hear her hysterical giggles.  She might not like Gojyo, but that was rather funny.  Hakkai must have thought so, too–he appeared to be laughing.  One pale, pretty hand was cupped around the green-eyed man’s mouth, like he didn’t want to show his amusement.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” Gojyo said.  She couldn’t tell if his words were slurred from the beer in his blood or the mask on his face.  When Hakkai responded, his voice was so soft and unassuming that, unlike Gojyo’s drunken drawl, it didn’t project through the window.  It gave Yukiko the odd feeling of listening in on half a phone conversation:

“It’s a perfectly reasonibible–reashun– ree-son-ay-ble–thing to waste my time on, fuck ya very much.  What?  Oh, about twenty bucks.  You like it?  It reminided me of you.  Yeah, that one time when I woke you up by–hey, now, that’s unfair, iddn’t it?  Swearta God I will.  Seven.  I think.  Maybe ten.  I dunno, man, y’ start to forget after the fourth or so.  I like oblivion, actually.  ‘s quiet.  How come you c’n read the same damn book five times?  Ya already know how it turns out, don’t’cha?  I will not.  OK, fine.”

Gojyo suddenly arose from the table and walked off, back towards where he’d gotten the knife before, presumably.   Hakkai looked off after him, his lips moving in a quiet dance of speech.

Yukiko was beginning to lose interest, when a loud crash jolted her out of her apathy.  Both her and Hakkai’s eyes flew wide open at the noise.  While she tried to crane her neck to see what the hell Gojyo had done, Hakkai nearly killed himself trying to get out of his chair and over to where his roommate had fallen.

That drunk is gonna break his fool neck! she thought, leaning ever more precariously to the side.  Or stab himself to death with that stupid kni–

Her lap was suddenly filled with cold and wet.

"YIPE!"

***

Yukiko took a long, healthy swig from her glass of ale, like all her talking had made her thirsty.  It was good stuff–not as good as the hooch at Iyoichi’s bar, but neither was it Budweiser.  In fact, she rather liked this watering-hole.  It wasn’t dark, and most of the inhabitants here were a bit closer to her age.  It also had a band, rather than a worn-out juke that only played warbling folk songs.

It amused her to note that this aquarium now held most of the rainbow-fish that used to swim in Gojyo’s bar.

She looked over the edge of her ale-bottle at her audience of three.  Her eyes were sparkling with some private joke… or, perhaps, at the looks on their faces.  Iyoichi, Shiori, and Hikaru were all practically falling out of their seats.  Their drinks (DisAronno, mint julep, fairy’s blood) were forgotten at their elbows.  For the moment, it seemed that nothing existed beyond their quiet collection of chairs, and whatever it was that Yukiko was going to say next.

Shiori broke the silence.  “So what happened?”

The brunette took another sip of ale.   “Well, I nearly got caught, standing up and swearing like I did.  You would have, too, if you’d dumped a bowl of ice-cold water into your own lap.  Neither of them noticed, as it turned out.  Also as it turned out, standing was the best thing I could have done for myself.  It helped me notice that there was a kitchen window.”

“And you, being curious, snuck on over.”

“Of course.”

“Women,” Iyoichi said, an affectionate tone in his voice.

“Was Gojyo okay?!” Hikaru asked.  “What were they doing?!”

Yukiko smiled.  She was too polite to say.

~TBC~

~POSTSCRIPT: Can you say "sequel"?  I knew you could!

Can you also say "footnotes"?~

1 -  My homage to “Ten Things I Hate About You”; though the original question was about whether a girl was possessed of beer-flavored nipples.

2 - If one is struck hard enough in the eye, the iris will turn either dark red or brown, from burst blood vessels and a permanent contraction of the pupil, I believe.  The most famous example of this is David Bowie.

3 - A direct theft–er, reference–to Ghastly’s Ghastly Comic.

4 - I know this from personal experience.  Oh, God, don’t I know it.

5 - It took Hikaru three weeks to come up with a sentence that long.

6 - A Japanese mountain-witch.

7- “Sitting on a barking spider” being a slightly more polite and colorful description of “farting”.  Call me crazy, but I couldn’t bring myself to put the word “fart” in any sentence involving Hakkai in any way… then again, I just did.   ^^;;

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Chapter 2: Giving Up the Ghost

Part 2: Giving Up the Ghost

by Princess of Pain

~NOTES: 58/85 obviousness abounds, as well as references to Hakkai's past. This took forever as fics go, mostly because Hakkai 'talks' a LOT. It's a lot easier for me to write Gojyo, since I sympathize with his character more--don't ask me why, it just works that way. Writing Hakkai is hard. I guess it's because I view Gojyo as being more tactile and simplistic--he's a doer, not a thinker. And I see Hakkai as being far more intellectual.

At the same time, this isn't the Hakkai presented in the series, which also would have made things easier. This is Hakkai when he's only been Hakkai for about 6 months or so, and with his past not very far behind him, he has a lot less control and a lot more problems dealing with things. The silly bastard also refused to let me edit things down, and insisted on composing gigantic, epic paragraphs. So here we are, and I hope you enjoy it. Despite its difficulties, it was fun to write.~

And until that moment in time, Hakkai did not believe that a heart as small as his could contain that much... everything.

It was not supposed to be this way. The blood in his monstrous veins pounded that message through his system. The words throbbed at his temples, thrummed in his brain, tingled in the nerves throughout his body. It made his right eye and the scar on his stomach ache in a distant, reminiscient way.

This was not supposed to happen. He was Cho Hakkai, and though that name granted him a new chance at living like a normal person, the ghost of Cho Gonou simply would not permit it. He was making new memories here, with Gojyo and with the townspeople, and he was the happiest six-month-old there ever was... but you couldn't live as one man for 19 years, and not have difficulties burying him. Gonou was a restless ghost who walked and moaned and gibbered, mostly when it rained, but occasionally whenever Hakkai was trying to let go and be happy. A ghost who reminded him of what he'd done, who he'd lost, and how despicable both of those things made him.

Both things also explained why this wasn't happening.

None of the villages he'd ever lived in celebrated Harvest Eve. He'd accepted the concept but declined the practice. The very idea of humans pretending to be demons struck him as ghastly and ironic. Gojyo had gone, as he'd known he would (it was such a Gojyo holiday), and that was all as it should be. He had been enjoying his book; he'd just gotten to the bit where the main character had to choose between the life of a child and continuing his quest when the door slammed open. (1) Gojyo needed to fix his mask, and *that* was as it should be. He'd asked the costumed man a few questions--where he had procured the mask, how many cups of sake had he drunk--then suggested that he put away the knife.

Gojyo did, and everything was fine until the redhead fell, pulling out the knife drawer on his way down. Blades clattered down around the hanyo, like the rain at the end of the world.

Hakkai's heart had stopped. He could not tell if Gojyo was bleeding--he was wearing far too much red for blood to show--but he was moaning, like a man in love with his worst enemy. If he could have teleported to Gojyo's side, he would have.

Even then, everything was still mostly fine, because the other man wasn't hurt. Then Hakkai had helped him to his feet, and Gojyo had put his arm around Hakkai's shoulders--to give himself balance, of course--and now he was standing, and his arm had slipped off of Hakkai's shoulder, and his hand was still there, the fingers lightly curled around Hakkai's ear and feathering against his hair, the rough callous of his thumb brushing against his cheek. Gojyo wasn't letting go, in fact he seemed to be holding on, and that smile? It wasn't his silly grin, or his casual one, or the one he wore sometimes when he was angry but knew he was wrong. It was the lilting, slow, and slightly predatory smile which Gojyo always saved for whatever woman he'd settled on for the night, and no, this was NOT in the game plan, and this wasn't how Hakkai's life was meant to be.

He swallowed. It hurt; his throat was constricting. Somehow, he managed to bargain with the muscles permitting him to speak. "Gojyo, I think it's time--"

The tip of Gojyo's tongue flicked out, as if he tasted something sweet in the air. "Yeah. It is."

Something in Hakkai relaxed; something else knotted up to take its place. It was true that the hanyo's fingers were still weaving into his hair and tickling that little hallow behind his ear, but that would soon stop, and everything would go back to--

"It's high time I did this," the redhead whispered, and pushed forth, lips seeking--

Many times over the short duration of their relationship, Gojyo had both discovered and nearly stepped over the Line. Until this night, the hanyo had shown remarkable adeptness at toeing this internal Line that Hakkai had drawn in the dust which made up his soul. Throwing his arm over Hakkai's shoulder, talking to Hakkai while he was reading, leaving the door open while he used the bathroom... and, every so often, giving him a look which he didn't like. More than any other violation of his personal space, that look had bothered him. Gojyo, in those moments, looked like a man who'd just crossed a desert contemplating a glass of water.

And now, in the seconds before Gojyo's lips reached his own, the hanyo did not cross over the Line so much as he tried to erase it.

This kiss, if it could be called that, lasted for less than a second--such a negligible segment of time. The youkai nonetheless reacted as though his friend had clobbered him with a cinderblock. He tore out of Gojyo's grasp, his feet nearly entangling, his head reeling. He stumbled away from Gojyo, his feet engaging in the most ungraceful steps they'd ever take. One hand wavered over his mouth. He felt like he'd just finished off a cup of tea, only to be told that it had been made with nightshade.

O no, this wasn't the way things were supposed to go for Cho Hakkai at all.

The hand which had just been toying with Hakkai's hair (and did he have gooseflesh rippling across his arm? What do you think?) drifted down to the kitchen countertop, as if Gojyo needed the extra balance. That awful, predatory smile was still there, but a shot of confusion was layered into it. He was almost squinting at Hakkai, as if his incredibly symbolic eyes were viewing him through a veil of smoke. "... what?"

"You..." Hakkai's voice box was not working. Even if it was, what would he say? Was he disgusted with Gojyo for being male? Was he furious over the affront to her memory? Should he laugh at the joke, or hit him for... for making things as they should not be?

Gojyo appeared to be having the same trouble. He opened his mouth, then shut it again, only producing a silent puff of air. Confusion was now dominating his features.

"You're drunk." He'd meant his voice to sound matter-of-fact. Instead, it sounded almost... shrill. Like he was an animal close to panic.

"I guess." The hanyo ran a hand through blood-colored locks. His horns collapsed, then mutated into limp bangs once more. He'd seen Gojyo make that gesture before, and knew that the other man was expressing the birth of anxiety (and how open was Gojyo, how honest, how unable to say or do anything that was not just what he wanted, and wasn't that the problem?). "Or maybe I'm playing at it. Maybe I wanna be more drunk than I am. So that if you shoot me down, we can both have something to blame it all on."

"Gojyo--"

"Never happened." And as he watched, Hakkai witnessed something extraordinary: a shield went up in Gojyo's eyes. One second, those ruby-passion-colored orbs were full of Gojyo's heart--and the next, they were as empty as his own soul. He would not have believed the other man capable of building such a wall, and so quickly. The idea hurt. "I saw something that wasn't there. I'm sorry."

"... saw?" He was a regular chatterbox that night.

"Yeah. False hope, man. No problem. I'll pretend like I'm too drunk to remember, and you can hide it away wherever you store bad memories." Gojyo was still smiling, but it was the defeated grin he wore on the rare occasion when a woman turned him down. "Nobody has to know."

"I'm sorry, that isn't good enough," he said, automatically bookmarking a potentially offensive statement with an apology. "False hope for what?" Hakkai had not been this confused since he'd received his new name. He'd stood there in the Temple of the Setting Sun, staring up at the Sanbutsushin, utterly tongue-tied. Then, it had been over the idea that anyone would find enough worth in his life to spare it... and maybe, this time, that wasn't far off, either. And not only did Gojyo's fragmented words confuse him, the fact that he'd just been kissed for the first time since...

"Digging for compliments?" Silence. "Hakkai... you can be really thick, you know that? Why the hell do you think people kiss? I fucking like you, stupid. You're smart, you're kind, you're unbearably attractive, and you take good care of me." The wall in his eyes was still there, but Hakkai had the impression that Gojyo was peeking around it. "I kissed you because you're the only person I've ever met who did all four of those at once, and because all of those things make me like you. There. I goddamned said it, and now you can't take it back and make like it never happened."

Hakkai thought to argue with him. Was he not living proof that almost anything could be eliminated? Any corpse, even one as restless as Gonou's, could be buried. All it took was a will and a spade. Yet he understood what Gojyo meant (and wasn't the fact that ken passed between them so smoothly part of the problem as well?). Most days, the murders he'd committed rested heavily upon his empty heart... but at night, it was always the words which kept him awake. Gonou, you have such beautiful hands. We're not alone anymore, are we? I'm sorry, my love. I can't ever go back. Goodbye, Gonou. Words which drifted through his mind, like poisoned clouds in the skies of Hell.

That kiss could be forgotten. It had only lasted for such a short time (but long enough for him to taste the other man's habit of cigarettes, the cold kick of sake, and another taste which he could only presume belonged to Gojyo). It was already buried in a mass grave of spent seconds. But those words--had anyone ever tried to so clumsily compliment him before? Would he have noticed?

And now, Gojyo was looking at him, expecting anything at all. Hakkai wanted to scream at him. "What do you want from me?!" he'd say. "I'm not anything you say I am, and I'm not anything you transmit to me with your eyes! I am nothing, and that is all I have to give!"

Instead--and how his voice remained still and level was a mystery to himself--he said: "Perhaps. You need some rest; you're hardly standing up straight. Let me put you to bed."

Incomprehension and hurt settled firmly onto the hanyo's features, as if he were fitting on another devil's mask. It upset Hakkai, to see that. But it would be all right, because they would sleep, and in the morning Gojyo would ask if he did anything embarrassing while he was on a drunk. Hakkai would say no, and both of them would be baldfaced liars. But that would be fine, as long as he wasn't--

"Bed, then," the hanyo grunted. The hurt still lingered in that proud face. For a moment, Hakkai wanted to... "I guess... it could be hitting me harder than I thought."

The two liars gave each other knowing smiles.

*~*~*

Hakkai did not realize his own foolish mistake until he brough himself to walk out of the bathroom.

After making sure Gojyo didn't cut his feet or trip on the way to the livingroom, politely turning his head while the other man slipped out of the remnants of his costume and into the soft, amorphous pants he slept in, and ensuring that Gojyo was comfortable in the bed, he'd beat a quick retreat to the bathroom. It was the only place in Gojyo's cabin that was actually partitioned. (2) The bed was haphazardly stuck in the corner of the livingroom, which bled into a mini-kitchen--no walls. Fine for one person, but it was impossible for two to maintain any sense of privacy. He took as much time to get ready for bed as he could, in order to think.

Of course, he didn't think at all, once he realized that all of this thoughts were circling like buzzards around a particular set of words. All things led back to Gojyo's easy, accented voice, saying, "Why the hell do you think people kiss?"

So he stepped out of the restroom. Gojyo was out, over, and gone. His back was turned to Hakkai, but the youkai could see the slight shifting of ribs, indicating sleep-breathing. The other man's telltale red hair splayed like a hand across his pillow, his bangs still crookedly jutting up to join his antennae. Hakkai could see every shadow seeking refuge in the hard, muscled curves of Gojyo's back; the hanyo typically slept with the sheets only draped over his hips, like somebody's arm wrapping around a lover in sleep.

The self-evident occured ot him as he made these observations, summed up in the thought: Gojyo is sleeping on my side of the bed.

It was an odd thing to forget. Gojyo and Hakkai had shared that bed since before he'd been renamed. He recalled almost having a heart attack when, on that first night in this cabin, Gojyo climbed in beside him. Now that he knew Gojyo, he was ashamed to know that he had believed that the hanyo was going to either rape him or proposition him. In his injured state, he couldn't have fought back. He nearly asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, when that smooth, dark voice had shattered his illusions. "A whole shitload of never-agains," he'd said. "I'm never carrying another dude to bed again. And I sure ain't gonna sleep with one again, but I'm also not gonna sleep on the floor in my own damn place." Gonou had smiled and quietly apologized for the inconvenience. And when he'd come back after his trial, they'd continued to share bed-space, there being nowhere else in Gojyo's pad to comfortably sleep.

The quandary: would he be able to rest in the same bed as the hanyo?

The answer: no sir. O no. Sleep that close to the voice who asked him why he thought people kissed, to the tinge of nicotine and alcohol and Gojyo--things which he could smell in the air, feel in his skin, taste on his tongue? No thank you, no way. That was too great a burden for one evening.

Hakkai, feeling like the world's largest living marionette, walked to the bedside. Long, delicate-seeming fingers found the lightswitch, flicked it off, plunged them both quite fully into the night. His unclean hands picked up what was technically Gojyo's pillow. The floor was his domain that night.

He screamed when a strong hand pressed like an iron shackle around his wrist. In those wild moments, with his nerves already sheared and his eyes unused to the dark, he imagined that some thing was here to claim his bloody hands, his desert soul, and his hole of a heart.

"Oi, oi!' it said, as his eyes slowly revealed it to be Gojyo. "You're too high-strung, Hakkai. Your ticker's going to stop doing its job one of these days if you don't relax."

"I'm sorry," he said. A river of babble pulsed against his lips, more words than he'd been able to muster the entire night. "I don't think that sharing the bed is a good idea tonight. I mean, I think you should be sleeping with one foot on the floor. It helps to keep you from having a hangover. And you can't do that if I'm in the way. You know, I'm not that tired. I just got to a good part in my book. I'll stay up and read in the bathroom, so the light--"

The hand around his wrist loosened, but did not let go. Gojyo's fingers pressed against his pulse. "Maybe you are having a heart attack." He was let go. "Read, if you like. But you're dreaming if you think you're crashing on the floor."

"Gojyo, it would be best."

"My entire ass. I don't sleep on the floor, and I by-God don't let my friends do it. You think you're more stubborn than me? Bring it. If I have to pick your unconscious butt off the bathroom floor and drag you here, I will. In fact, if I have to kick your butt unconscious first, I will. The gods love drunks and fools, and I think I've proved I'm both."

Needles of pain bristled from the playful-sounding words.

Hakkai doubted that Gojyo could defeat him, but neither was he eager to find out... and he didn't doubt that the hanyo would try. A smile which was becoming reflexive took over his face. "Best not to tempt the love of the gods," he said, and set his pillow back in place.

*~*~*

Morning.

After a ridiculously long, sleepless night, the sun was finally threatening to break through the east horizon. Pale gold light, as insubstantial as a promise, drifted through the windows in slanted squares. Gojyo was now lying on his back, legs slightly spread, arms crooking against his torso, like he was cradling an invisible baby. The hanyo had flipped from his back to his side to his back a total of 23 times.

Hakkai had watched, and he had counted.

He'd been right: there was no sleep for him in Gojyo's bed. He laid as if in a coffin: feet neatly together, hands stacked atop one another. Sleep had not occured to him. Only thinking, and idly watching Gojyo rest. The lack of it wore on his mannerisms as no alcohol could, loosening the lips of his mind. He could normally control his thoughts. He could direct them into an endless doublethinking loop, thinking about the caboose of a train of thought without examining the boxcars. He lied to himself. But insomnia reaped a small crop of honesty.

Gojyo had kissed him, and Gojyo had done it because he... liked him. It was a difficult idea to accept. The only other person who had ever liked him enough to kiss him was dead, and sometimes, he wondered if Kanan had killed herself because of the monster he had become in her absence. If Hakkai had been in the redhead's shoes, he would have run away from himself. He was a disaster waiting to happen--wreckage that threatened to collapse onto anyone silly enough to get too close. The three small metal cuffs on his ear proved that.

Two hours into the long night, this thought popped up: Gojyo wants to be crushed.

It made sense. The endless chain-smoking, a freight-train of beer and sake, the insane promiscuity... and Hakkai. He knew enough about Gojyo's past to know that self-destruction might well be on the other man's mind.

But Gojyo, even though he made his living gambling in that stinking bar, had actually been drinking a lot less recently. He'd come home smelling of a few beers, but not like he'd bathed in Kirin. And hadn't Hakkai noticed that, in the same span of time, Gojyo had not once asked for him to keep clear of the cabin? The bedsheets had not borne the pungent odor of sex and perfume in a while.

All right, so he didn't like him because Hakkai was a bad person to be around. He could almost hear Gojyo scoffing, saying, "I've had the everloving tar knocked out of me since before I could remember, because I was a bad person to have around. Don't talk to me about stupid shit like that."

He could almost hear him say, "You're smart, you're kind, you're unbearably attractive, and you take good care of me. I kissed you because you're the only person I've ever met who did all four of those at once..."

Damn. Back to that.

The compliments made him uneasy. They unsettled his stomach, making it feel full of feathers. He supposed that he was smart, but Hakkai could not grok the other three. (3) Gojyo had been taking care of himself since he was barely a teenager. And he knew for a fact that "kind" and "attractive" were not words that belonged to a murderer.

In his mind's eye, he saw himself six months ago. Shampooing the food and beerstains out of the carpet. Polishing and buffing the kitchen floor. Cleaning out the mini-fridge of its spoiled and spilled contents. Dragging bags filled with squashed beer cans, bad food, and an endless supply of spent cigarettes and crumbled, empty packs to the corner. Washing dishes crusted with archaic spaghetti sauce and crumbling bits of ramen. Patiently dusting, plastering, painting, wiping, polishing, and repairing the cabin over a period of weeks. (4) Towards the end, Gojyo gave up offering to help him, although he never stopped looking around the place with quiet amazement. He'd accepted the changing of his bachelor pad into a home with something approaching good grace and gratitude.

So, maybe, Gojyo wasn't as adept at caring for his own needs as Hakkai wanted to believe. And wasn't Gojyo taking care of him, as well? He thought about all the times that he'd found small bundles of yen in the cabin. The bills were always creased and smoky, and there was always a note attached in Gojyo's slow handwriting, asking for some little thing at the store, and insisting that Hakkai keep the rest. The bundles always had at least three times the amount of yen needed, and whenever Hakkai brought home a new book, Gojyo would always grin. The hanyo wasn't very good at thanking, anymore than he was at things involving honest human interaction, but he managed it in his own way.

A million little memories began to flicker in Hakkai's mind, like a movie he hadn't asked to watch: Gojyo staying up until dawn with him on nights when sleep was too hard to find, playing poker and telling the dirtiest stories he knew; Gojyo's almost-apologetic face the last time he'd asked Hakkai to leave the cabin for a few hours; Gojyo never going for more than fifteen minutes without doing something to try to make Hakkai laugh; Gojyo passionately arguing the benefits of smoking. His spastic bouts of anger which never lasted long, his good-natured grumbling as he lost to Hakkai in cards yet again. Hakkai happened to know that Gojyo peed sitting down, and that he sometimes wore the ugliest clothes possible if he didn't feel like being hit on; he knew that Jien had taught Gojyo how to burp on command, and that the hanyo could reproduce over half of the alphabet in belch before he fell over laughing.

He had never realized before how carefully he watched the other man, and how he catalogued almost everything he did. Stupid gestures, little facial expressions, meaningless bits of trivia... had he really been storing this all away?

At that moment, Gojyo had turned from lying on his back to his side. Twenty-one, Hakkai thought, then nearly laughed out loud. He felt weirdly soothed, as if an unseen hand made of calm had massaged his heart. So much of what Gojyo had said still sounded like a foreign language to him, but did it have to matter? Gojyo had his reasons.

And Hakkai had his.

You're sharp, he thought, his emerald eyes examining the way that the hanyo's lips slightly parted in sleep. You're not smart, but you're quick. You have more compassion than a saint. And you are...

... and this was where his brain fetched up, like a record with a deep scratch. Gonou was not just a restless ghost at this point. He could have been a solid being, standing next to the bed, screaming in Hakkai's ear. After everything he'd done, he didn't deserve to feel so calm, so sure, so close to happiness. He did not, in fact, deserve anything. Was not his soul as dry and empty as a broken bottle in an abandoned yard? Were not his hands so stained and bloody that they could never hold anyone again, not without leaving crimson handprints that would never wash away? Was not his heart too small and hard to feel anything approaching happiness?

Kanan was where those things were. Her death had skinned his inner being and sucked it out, leaving behind only the shells. He was a puddle of water which only gave an illusion of having depth; what he had belonged to the dead, not to himself or to the living. And what he was thinking was a blasphemy to her memory, and to everything they had made. Doesn't everyone teach that blasphemy is one of the surest routes to Hell that one can take?

... then again, was he not already going to Hell?

Would one more sin matter?

And maybe, if he...

Hakkai waited until the hanyo completed his twenty-third revolution, when it was morning, and insomnia's job was complete. He was sure that his eyes must look rather wild, but he did not care. He didn't know if he felt guilt or crazy anticipation clawing through his bones, but he could not be moved to care about that, either. He did not think; he was tired of it.

A prayer had begun to knock around in his brain, like a prankster wildly banging on a door, then hiding in the bushes. And as the pale gold light wove into the air of the cabin, he quietly verbalized it.

"Kanan," he said, his voice softly reverent, as it always was when he spoke of her. "Kanan... I... just for a few minutes... I think I am going to live for myself."

Yes, that was it.

Hakkai reached out his hand, and wrapped an arm around Gojyo, pulling the sleeping man tight against his own body.

~TBC~

POSTSCRIPTUM: And this is how it will go, m'loves... if I get one single review for this part of HFWH, then I will do the next section. Just one. I'm not digging for too much, am I? ^_^;

1 - Hakkai is reading the first book of the Dark Tower cycle, by Stephen King. And I am a nerd.

2 - As my friend Margie says, "cabin" is real-estate-agent slang for "piece of shit".

3 - Hakkai has also read "Stranger in a Strange Land", and my nerdiness is complete. I am now the nerd Zen Mistress of all that is, was, and shall be again. Bow, bitch.

4 - I just moved. Most of this was crap I had to do to my old apartment, which was about the same size as Gojyo's place. I feel Hakkai's pain.

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Chapter 3: Restitution

by Princess of Pain

Part 3: Restitution

~NOTE: I just noticed that I frequently deal with Gojyo and dreams in fanfiction. No reason why. That just keeps bobbing to the surface when I write for him. ^^;

I am also incapable of just flat-out writing a lemon. I can't do it. Whenever I start into something knowing that it's going to become porn, I write as much of an explanation as I can give as to WHY the characters are going to jump between the sheets--witness my first actual lemon, "Just Defy My Love", which is 5 pages of porn and 6 of conversation/thought processes. And "The Fine Art of Surrender"--at least half of its 850-odd words are thoughts/explanations. So, you'll have to scan down for the pr0n. Sorry.~

Gojyo, in spite of one might believe to the contrary, was not much of a dreamer. Oh, there was always the occasional nightmare; those were unavoidable. But when he slept, as a rule, he slept like the dead. Nothing happened between the time his eyelids--usually weak with alcohol--slammed shut, and when they opened again. It was a central reason, in his opinion, for staying awake as late as possible. Sleeping was boring.

What wasn't boring, on that particular night, was how he found himself waking up. He couldn't ascertain a reason. One second, he was deep in the blackness behind his eyelids, and the next... he was in his bed. The cabin was cast over with the dull gold light of the dawn, a color that always (not without a shot of discomfort and longing) made him think idly about that stupid monk, chanting his sutra for the living. He was lying in bed, like usual, with some chick wrapped up behind him. Which was unusual, because that would mean that he'd kicked Hakkai out of the cabin for an entire night--

One second, he thought, the sleep falling away from his mind, like a mist burning off the surface of a lake from the heat of the rising sun. That's not right at all.

He hadn't kicked Hakkai out. He hadn't even been out that late raising hell. All of that stuff--the things that didn't happen--had gone down, and then they'd both gone to bed.

In the same bed.

Which narrowed down the identity of the person who was spooning him considerably.

Gojyo wasn't certain if he should be irritated or fascinated. Hakkai had gone out of his way to spectacularly turn him down a few hours ago, not to mention act marvelously paranoid about being anywhere near him afterwards, as if the hanyo would ever possibly be capable of harming him. Gojyo had known, from the moment that they met in the rain, that such a thing was out of his reach... as stupid and cheesy as that sounded, it was true. But that was beside the point. The point was, Hakkai had rather showily turned him down, and was now all but humping his leg, now that he thought that Gojyo was asleep and defenseless and unawares.

Maybe he should flip over and holler "Boogidy-boo!" in his face, just to see how huge Hakkai's eyes would get from bullshit fear. That might be satisfying, but now, the youkai was practically cuddling him, lightly nuzzling into his neck and pressing the palm of his hand against the slim muscle of Gojyo's stomach. Maybe he'd just pretend to be asleep for a little while longer. After all, he'd been actively fantasizing about Hakkai doing something very much like this for a few months now; he didn't have to break the spell quite... yet.

So he laid there, keeping his body as limp as possible, his telltale eyes still shut. This was not as simple as it sounded. If nothing else, Sha Gojyo was a man who, incredibly early in life, learned that love and sex were the same thing: his mother had loved Jien, and he knew all about what they did whenever Jien managed to drag her away from him and into her bedroom. He soaked up sexual affection the way that hardcore alkies suck up liters of liquor. It permeated everything he was, until his every action became nothing more than an underlying pursuit for his next orgasm. When he was touched in all but the harshest or most innocuous of ways, his first and strongest urge was to smooth-talk whoever was doing the touching between the sheets.

And when he was already between said sheets, and he could feel the heat from Hakkai's body soaking through the youkai's pajamas and radiating against his own, and he could even feel each (slightly ragged) breath that Hakkai took, and Hakkai was touching him with a gentleness that he'd not experienced in years, if ever... it took every scrap of self-control he had to not flip the youkai over and fuck him into the mattress.

Hakkai's hands looked so delicate. It was quite uncanny, really. The first time he'd noticed, it had been when Hakkai was still Gonou--one of the first times they'd played at cards. He'd found himself fascinated with watching Gonou shuffling the deck, flipping cards over, laying down his hand... all his movements were so artful. Gojyo's fingers were bony and blunted, whereas Hakkai's were slender and tapered, almost like a woman's, but not wimpy or effeminate. Merely beautiful. Now that he knew that those hands were responsible for the deaths of well over a thousand assorted youkai and humans, he knew that they weren't weak... but that did not change his opinion of them in the slightest. Beautiful hands, delicate-seeming ones.

Graceful hands that lightly stroked over the bare skin of his stomach and chest, feeling him out, getting a sense of what he felt like--testing out the differences between their bodies. Gojyo was jaunty and angular and muscular, thin but hard, with very little padding residing anywhere on his person. Against his dark skin, Hakkai's hand probably looked like it belonged to a ghost. The youkai ran his fingertips almost reflectively over Gojyo's chest, one finger accidentally brushing against one of his nipples, and it took a lot of effort to hide the slight hitch in his breath that that brought up.

Hakkai nuzzled a little deeper against his neck, his mouth unconsciously pressing against the crook between Gojyo's neck and the back of his skull in an unintended kiss. Gojyo could feel his hair shifting and moving slightly in time with the youkai's breathing. Normally, he slapped anyone who fooled around with his hair, or even joked about it... but now, with Hakkai pressing his nose into it, scenting him out, maybe closing his eyes from the simple pleasure of him... maybe it wasn't so bad. Certainly, it combined with Hakkai running his hand down his side and cupping his hip wasn't bad at all.

The youkai pressed himself closer against the hanyo, bringing out the lines of his body in stark relief against Gojyo's back. He could feel the subtle motions in Hakkai's shoulders as he continued to explore Gojyo's body with his hands, and the shifting of his neck whenever the youkai nestled into his hair. He fought to keep his breathing deep, rhythmic, and sleepy. It was a losing battle. Especially when Hakkai started to actually kiss up his neck and the sharp lines of his jaw. And it was nigh impossible when Hakkai ran those full, sweet lips of his over his scars, those ugly fucking things that no one else ever even dared to look at for too long, much less touch. The women he'd taken to bed had been afraid of them, in a weird way, like they were going to jump off his face and bite them if they got too close. It made sense, that Hakkai wouldn't care, even though he'd told the other man precisely how he'd gotten them, even though after years and years they were still rough and thick and made it hurt to grin.

Hakkai froze mid-kiss, which was what made Gojyo realize that he'd uttered a low, quiet moan.

He had to smirk. His big mouth always did get him in trouble.

He could feel Hakkai shrinking away, his friend struggling to unwind his arms from around Gojyo's body, his brain probably working overtime to come up with a plausible reason why he'd be doing something like this. You're not getting out of this one, Gojyo mentally promised the other man. He took Hakkai's hands into his own (relishing the quiet gasp of surprise from his bed-mate) and guided them back to where they'd left off: examining the jutting curve of his hip-bone, and the slight depression of muscle between where his stomach ended and his hips actually began.

He didn't have to look at Hakkai to know that surprise was running through the youkai's mind--after all, wasn't Gojyo letting him get off rather easily, considering what had gone on several hours before? The truth was, he wasn't nearly as bitter about that as he'd like to be. Had Hakkai been anyone else, he'd probably have been more angry... but, like it or not, he understood his friend's thought processes. Hakkai needed to be in control. When Gojyo had come on to him earlier that night, control had been quite firmly taken from him. He'd panicked. It was natural enough. And as long as it was with Hakkai, Gojyo didn't think he'd mind handing over the reins.

Particularly when Hakkai was just this damn good with his hands. Gojyo had no idea if the youkai was playing around with his chi to make those seemingly-insignificant touches all that more electric, but whatever he was doing, it was working. He practically purred, his hands still cupped over Hakkai's more delicate ones, directing them to where he wanted to be touched.

Maybe the fact that Gojyo had not been laid in several months was making it more intense. He'd rapidly gone from getting his rocks off on a nightly basis, to coming home to Hakkai after the bar--having dinner, shooting the shit, arguing over whose turn it was to do the dishes. After wishing Hakkai a good night, he'd wander into the bathroom and slip into a fire-hot shower, where he would fiercely masturbate himself into a coma. There was something humiliating about being unable to jerk off in your own damn bed, and there had always been a hint of anger coloring over his lust, violet layered into crimson. The anger mostly being directed at his bed's occupant, the one he thought about more and more as he loved himself. The one who was probably lying there with hands neatly folded or holding a book. The one who had no idea that about three meters away, his roommate was on his knees, his forearm pressed hard against the cold tile, the heat of the shower's spray turning his dark skin a blushing red, his free hand either wrapped firmly around his own cock or (in later times) pressing experimental fingers inside of himself, softly groaning, lost in something that wasn't quite pleasure or pain or fury or love, but a weird chimera of them all, at once.

The loneliest part about it was that, naturally, he was alone. There was no one to distract him from his hole of a life, only himself and his pathetic fantasies. When it was over and the shower turned off, he had to go back to his bed, where Hakkai had no clue that he'd just been imagined with his lips wrapped around Gojyo's cock, or any of the other, kinkier ideas he'd come up with. He had to go back, and sleep beside him--looking, but not touching; smelling, but not tasting.

Not like now, in other words.

Now he was turning over in the bed, his body pulling the sheets awry, pressing his mostly-naked self up against Hakkai's, relishing the sight of those green eyes (had he ever seen eyes that extraordinarily bright and clear before?) widening in surprise at the sudden feel of Gojyo's hard-on tight against his stomach. Yes, I've got one of those, too, the hanyo thought, a wicked smile on his lips as he ground his hips up against Hakkai, his arms tangling around the youkai, pulling him into hesitant, hungry kisses.

It was strange, how different Hakkai felt. When Gojyo pressed up against someone in a bed, he was used to the springy softness of breasts, smooth and delicate skin, voluptuous curves, lips soft and sticky from whatever glosses and dyes they bore. He did feel mild surprise at feeling the frank flatness of Hakkai's chest lying like a mirror image against his own, and at the discovery that, however pale and soft Hakkai looked, his skin was still stretched over lean muscle. And that, however mild he normally seemed, his kisses were made of fire.

Gojyo was not usually the type of lover to mentally chronicle every aspect of his sexual escapades. It was not, as he'd once drunkenly observed to Hakkai, the sum of the parts. It was only (and he'd grinned at the double entendre) the whole that mattered. He preferred to relinquish himself to his drug of choice, permit everything to mix and swirl into a crimson mosaic in his mind.

Tongues tangled, licked, ran over clavicles and necks, gave exploratory kitten-licks behind ears and between youryoku limiters. Clothing--Hakkai's pajamas, his own shapeless sleeping-pants--fell in a heated heap off the bedside, along with one of the pillows. His hands tried to absorb all of Hakkai at once: cupping his face, running blunt nails down his back, tracing apologetic fingertips over his scar, rubbing against his pale, almost-nonexistent nipples. Hakkai actually bucked up against him, and gripped onto his ass like it was a double-pommeled saddle. Hakkai made the most delicious little moans--smothered, lustful noises, as though he were afraid of interrupting Gojyo's deeper growls. Then, suddenly, Gojyo was rolled onto his back, laid out and vulnerable, and the converted youkai's beautiful hands were finally wrapped around his cock. Hakkai's green eyes darkened, as they did whenever his emotions boiled over, and intently stared at the hanyo's face as he gave him a few slow, experimental pumps.

He wanted a show, Gojyo supposed, and the redhead gave it to him. Sunset-blood eyes slipped shut, as a sinful smile curved his lips. His back arched off the bed just the slightest bit. His hips ground up in time with Hakkai's hot, silken strokes. No, it wasn't the best he'd ever had, but he'd been coming for the last month to fantasies about those hands and now, oh holy God, the youkai had leaned down and was giving the head of his dick a gentle suck, his hands still working him over, and Hakkai was pushing back his foreskin and licking over his glans, emerald eyes shut, his face flushed and placid, and who was putting on a show now?

It took almost more willpower than Sha Gojyo possessed to weave his fingers into Hakkai's hair and give it a tug, pulling that extraordinarily-apt mouth away from where the hanyo wanted it. Almost, but not quite. His lover sat up, his mahogany hair catching dark-aurum highlights in the morning sun, his face a question mark.

In answer, the redhead reached over to the night-stand, and pulled out the box of condoms that he always kept in its drawer. He was promiscuous, and he was horny, but stupid he was not. Besides, he'd nearly exploded into Hakkai's mouth, and ending this... whatever it was... already would be no fun at all.

He produced one of the condoms and tossed it to Hakkai, who was now flushing substantially harder. As he returned the box to its place, he withdrew its mate: a smallish bottle of lubricant. Girls, Gojyo had learned very quickly, did not always juice the way they were supposed to. Girls were also occasionally prudish (or weird), and protected their womanly virtues by using the back door. In any case, he'd learned to keep the stuff around. It had come in handy recently, in the shower, when he'd stopped bothering to pretend that he didn't desperately want Hakkai any way that he could get him.

He rolled back around, and caught the converted youkai admiring him. Hakkai didn't look at people, so much as he looked through them, as a rule. His kindness and attentiveness were a veneer over his self-loathing and his distrust of everyone, something that Gojyo understood completely. Now, though, that verdant gaze scrutinized his body: dark skin dimpled and criss-crossed with mostly-faded scars, tight muscle strung beneath, hard and lank, everything from the blood-red hair on his scalp to the nearly-black hair curled around the base of his throbbing (at least Christ it felt like it was) hard-on. He grinned. It was flattering.

Dropping the bottle, Gojyo took the still-wrapped condom from Hakkai's pale fingers. He really didn't seem to know what to do with it, the poor bastard. He pulled it free of its casing, and, his own eyes never leaving Hakkai's, he slipped it onto the head of the youkai's erection.

Leaning down, his sanguine hair shifting and fanning across his lover's shapely hips, Gojyo wrapped his lips around Hakkai. The youkai made a sweet, strangled sound as he pushed down, rolling the condom on with his lips and his tongue. A girl had done that to him--Shiori had been her name, hadn't it?--six months ago, and Gojyo had come instantly, mostly from surprise.

Once he'd pushed it as far as it would go, he adjusted it slightly with its fingers, sucking softly. The taste wasn't much beyond the latex, but the way that Hakkai's hands tangled into his hair, and the way he softly moaned as he thrust himself deeper into Gojyo's mouth...? That was divine. It made up for anything that might have transpired the night before, with a bullet.

He sat up, and it was his turn to admire his lover. A sexual blush was blooming like kinky roses on Hakkai's lips, face, neck, and even his chest, giving him a slightly feverish overcast. His eyes were almost black. But it was the look in those eyes that drew Gojyo in. Hakkai, perhaps realizing for certain that he would be the one doing the taking, no longer seemed unsure or nervous. He had the smallest, keenest smile on his face, one Gojyo had never seen before, one that spoke of sex, and need, and despondency. How many nights had Hakkai denied himself of even the empty self-pleasures Gojyo had taken? How many times had Hakkai lain awake after a whispered good-night, listening to the constrained moans coming from the shower, not allowing himself to consider that the hanyo's cries and his own stiffening cock were cause and effect? Then lying there and staring at Gojyo, smelling the sex that hadn't quite washed away over the hot smell of water and soap, watching but not touching, feeling how hard he was against the tented bedsheets and his pajamas... and only rolling over to go to sleep?

Gojyo was kissing him without realizing that he'd moved to pin Hakkai back against the bed, sucking on his tongue, biting playfully at his lips. Hakkai moved like a miracle beneath him. His taut stomach felt perfect against Gojyo's cock, and his lips were hot and pliant, and his hands were just as artful and loving as they were deadly.

The hanyo fumbled for the dropped bottle of lube, found it, uncapped it. The stuff was godawfully cold on his fingers, but there was a promise of warmth when it was over. Still pinning Hakkai back, Gojyo slipped a finger inside of himself. A shudder passed through his lean body at the planned invasion--precisely why, he couldn't have said, other than how queer doing it to himself made him feel. Not to mention that, once you got used to it (as he had assured many a virgin), it felt so fucking good that it really deserved its label as a sin.

He bit down hard on Hakkai's lip, feeling a little flushed and embarrassed himself for the first time in years. Hakkai, once he realized just what Gojyo was doing, braced the hanyo with one steel hand on his hip; the other knotted itself into his hair (and if the youkai had been anyone else on the motherfucking planet he would have sucker-punched him). The brunette sounded like a god of sex, his moans rough, seeming designed to make Gojyo's need throb and pulse in time with his vocalizations.

Two fingers now, and that should do it--Hakkai was not all that thick. He lightly scissored inside himself, hitting that spot that had brought him to shuddering, near-screaming orgasm the first time he'd discovered it. He arched and strained against Hakkai, his teeth latching onto his lover's elegant neck, his eyes screwed shut from the sharp pain layered over his self-inflicted ecstasy, like a fine alcohol with an acid chaser.

Who flipped over whom? He couldn't have said, but they were a momentary tangle in the sweat-stained bedsheets, shifting so that Gojyo was the one on his back, and Hakkai was firmly straddled between his legs, their members rubbing all in a tease against one another. Their bodies felt sealed together--Gojyo's thicker chest against Hakkai's, the youkai's smooth hips against the hanyo's angular ones. Red clashed with green. There were so many things that Gojyo wanted to say in those moments of silent anticipation, so many stupid things that he was supposed to be too cool to even think of. And what would be the point? Hakkai was apparently operating on the ideal that nothing would be said, at least, not yet. Verbalizing equalled acknowledgement. They could acknowledge later, once it was done and too late to ignore, and by talking, it would make it impossible to take back.

Gojyo nuzzled against Hakkai's face, his scars pressing against innocent, clear skin. He shifted his hips, pulling his legs up in a vertical crouch, and Hakkai, who was a smart boy and caught on fast, slid a bit lower, pressing the head of his dick against Gojyo's entrance. The youkai--now a sunset of blush--opened his mouth to say something.

He cut Hakkai off, saying the one word (other than the other's name) that either of them would speak for some time:

"Push."

The youkai pushed, and Gojyo uttered a fervent, guttural groan as his body clamped down, then gave in, accepting Hakkai inside of himself. Gods, Hakkai felt so much bigger than he looked. Gojyo gripped hard onto his own knees, to keep his legs from kicking up and out. His body curved back into the bed. Oh, this felt quite different from all of the times he'd fucked his fingers, Hakkai was so thick and so hot, and Hakkai was arching back into the air as he began to shyly move inside of him, bending himself nearly in half, his skin rose and gold in the beaming sunlight (and Gojyo had to wonder how many early-morning shoppers were getting an eyeful through the window), his eyes mere slits, his mouth a strong O, and Gojyo's name had never sounded more sensual than it did when it was grunted from Hakkai's voicebox. It made the pain, the dirty pleasure, the lonely nights--anything but the undeniable power Hakkai held over him--disappear.

Hakkai's celibacy had not brought with it forgetfulness. His hips twitched, pulling himself out just a bit, then pushing back home. Gojyo's telltale eyes tightly shut, and he bit down on his tongue, suppressing the possible expletives that came to mind about just how Hakkai always made him feel, now and since the moment they'd met, and how the world had become a haze of erotic agony. He didn't know if he wanted to scream for Hakkai to take it out or fuck him raw.

Hakkai made exquisite, deep moans as his hips found a rhythm they liked: shallow and slow. Just enough to make Gojyo feel full and fiery, just enough for the tip of Hakkai's cock to brush up on that spot that always felt so fucking good--but not enough for any more than that. It made horrible sense, Hakkai being such a goddamned tease.

Gojyo's hands gripped onto his lover's ass, guiding the youkai to something more of his own liking: thrusting deeper, just a bit harder, hurting just a little harsher, the pain making the pleasure stand out that much more, like someone had touched a flame to the network of nerves in his body. His breath was catching in his throat, cutting off his groans before he could exhale them. He felt lost in this, swept up in Hakkai, shoving back against his swiftly-enboldening thrusts, squeezing down around his member, purring at how wide Hakkai's eyes got when he was particularly pleasured, finding a voice, crying out low and loud. Oh, this was much nice than his fantasies had allowed him to believe. Everything in him was gathering and drawing taut already, that familiar bloom of heat spreading up from the pit of his stomach, because Hakkai kept laying the cutest kisses on the inside of his wrists, and Hakkai's face was blushing and he was biting down hard on those full lips, smothering his screams. So Gojyo pressed his fingers against Hakkai's lips, prying them open, and Hakkai--a mischievous glint in his eye that Gojyo found to be mind-bendingly erotic--bit at his fingertips, sucked on them.

His hips sped up, deepening, thrusting his erection in all the way to the base, filling Gojyo up in ways that he had not thought possible, hadn't thought he'd ever deserve, the quickly-overwhelming pleasure actually erasing every moment of pain that his sexual addictions normally only placated. The world disappeared behind his eyelids; he could now longer see, anyhow, only feel Hakkai breaking him down, kissing over his chest, fucking him into nothingness. And when his lover--oh, those hands--started vigorously stroking him off, almost matter-of-factly reaching between their sweating, writhing bodies to grip onto his need and stroke it out of rhythm with his ever-faster thrusts, the promise that had been building up inside of Gojyo became truth. The heat and the tight that had been flaring up in his gut exploded, and he with it, giving himself over to shaking, crying Hakkai's name, fingers pulling the base sheet out of place, body jerking up against his lover's.

When he came back from his scant seconds of nirvana, Hakkai was still a steel presence inside of him. The youkai had forced himself to stop when Gojyo came, eyes widening over the spectacle the hanyo had made. Gojyo had to grin. Leave it to Hakkai to be polite, no matter how horny he was.

Putting a hand to Hakkai's chest, he gave him a shove, forcing Hakkai out of his body. More questions rose up in the youkai's eyes. Gojyo ran his hand over Hakkai's member, rolling off the condom and dropping it to the floor. And, before his ever-neat roommate could complain about the obvious mess, he bent down and took him into his mouth.

The converted youkai voiced a hitching, bright gasp. His hips--he was probably dying for some kind of release--rolled up into the pleasure Gojyo offered, trying to fuck his mouth out of instinct, and the hanyo had to push him back against the bed to get him to stop, or he'd choke. Hakkai tasted so different--there was none of the acid, metallic sweetness, like copper honey, that invaded his tongue when it made love to a woman. He tasted like hot skin, salt and sweet, cleaner somehow, and simply sucking on him pleased Gojyo more than it probably should have. He wrapped his hand around the base, squeezing hard, his other hand thoughtfully cupping his lover's sac. He'd never done it before, but the advantage in blowing another guy was knowing what felt good, and being able to exploit it.

And Hakkai was finally screaming--the noise he'd been dreaming about and dying to hear, the sound of the stuffy uptight neat trip never-out-of-place man finally losing his tight control over himself, screaming as he came, eyes so wide and dark and overcast with finally-accepted lust, hands locking like clamps onto Gojyo's broad shoulders.

Gojyo sat up, reveling in Hakkai's tastes, his body spent and sweating. He felt like he'd been put through a marathon. Hakkai could really wear a guy out.

He rolled back onto the disarray of the bed. The sheets were akimbo. One of the pillows was gone. They were a loose, quivering mass of limbs, shuddering breath, and languid, unthinking kisses (and he was the type who never usually kissed after sex). The whole house probably smelled like fucking and used desire; that was fine with him. It would be proof when he woke up that his subconscious had not suddenly gone weird on him, and delivered a dream.

He fumbled for his cigarettes. For once, Hakkai did not reproach him about smoking in bed. "Now what?"

His roommate seemed to honestly consider the question. "Sleep, I hope. I'm rather tired."

"Hakkai, goddam it--"

"Gojyo, you are kind." The converted youkai's voice crackled from all the screaming it had done. "You are generous and loving, and unselfish, and in need of someone to realize those things. I do, and I love you for them. It frightens me, but it's true. I don't idly fall into bed with someone I don't love."

The redhead felt stumped. He was marvelously sore--all of his muscles ached, especially in his thighs and his backside, and he was going to have problems sitting down on anything without a cushion for a few days. It was a great ache, a terrific pain that his more masochistic side cherished. Yet, somehow, Hakkai managed to find something to say that would make him forget about how tired and wore out he felt. He took a long, satisfying drag, trying to collect what remained of his brain together, and make it produce thoughts.

"I. Um, well then. I, uh--"

One pale, slender fingertip rested itself against his lips, next to the cigarette. Hakkai's smile was gentle, and in one of those flashes he always seemed to get about the youkai, Gojyo understood. Hakkai knew that his stammering hesitation wasn't out of a lack of reciprocation. It was because of how many times Gojyo had loved someone who did not, and never would, love him back. Everyone from pretty little girls he'd crushed on in primary school (before he'd been kicked out), to his mother, to Jien. He'd even screamed out at Jien's swiftly-retreating form how much he needed him to stay, and his last line before his voice had given out was "Please, I love you!" That had only made Jien run away from him that much faster.

He loved to pretend that he didn't understand love, but that wasn't quite true: he didn't understand what it was like to be loved. All the anguish and rejection had built up some very high walls in his heart, in spite of how open and honest he seemed. He could talk about sex in the most frank and elaborate of terms until he was blue in the face, but he was not--at least, not for a long time--going to be able to utter the four words that were the only real response he could give.

Hakkai knew, and he didn't care. How did he come to understand Gojyo so well? It made the hanyo idly wonder whether or not they had known each other in some past life.

"Sleep, Gojyo. I need at least three hours to rest, and now, I apparently must do the laundry today, in addition to everything else." He reached off the bed, picking up his pillow and settling down on his side, the outside edge of the mattress.

"I'll do it," the hanyo offered quietly, a smile crooking his lips at the surprise that crossed over Hakkai's features. That would be the first time that Gojyo had ever offered to do anything around the house. This was truly a historic November. He'd have to mark his calendar. The fact was, though, that he knew just how much he owed to Hakkai... and if he could do one little, stupid thing that would make the youkai's life easier, he'd take the time.

Hakkai was worth it.

The redhead stayed awake and smoked his cigarette as Hakkai drifted off to sleep, all his masks put aside, looking exactly like the newly-minted man he was. He stayed awake, and thought, his mind drifting into the only kind of dreams a dreamless man could engage in, a smile still on his face, his hand pressed down over Hakkai's heart.

~TBC~

POSTSCRIPT: Finally. *dies*

There will be one more section, in which the hanyo-hunters will make their final appearance. w00t.

This section is a kiriban fic for deadbang. Enjoy, me sweet. ^_^

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