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Distant Water
(chapter two)
by Nightfall

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It took every shred of self-possession Hakkai had to keep his eyes from flying open and not to show that he’d almost had a heart attack from the surprise. Half of the surprise, of course, was that he had been surprised, but he was sick, after all.

“Gojyo,” he asked pleasantly, “how long have you been standing there?”

Gojyo just dimpled at him in that impudently roguish way that usually made him feel that all was right with the world. Clearly, Gojyo had been present for the kissing lesson. His temple, quite apart from the assault being visited on it by the dedicated youkai with the sledgehammer, began to throb.

He smiled back, sweetly. “Do you know something, Gojyo? I don’t think it’s possible that I’m Hakkai today.”

Gojyo’s eyes went so round that Hakkai could see the crimson in his irises even with the sun behind him. Although Gojyo was probably the only person in the world who knew how to fear (which let Goku out) and didn’t feel even apprehensive at the memory of Cho Gonou, even with him the ghost had power. Seeing this made Hakkai feel marginally better.

“After all,” he went on gravely, “if a person is sick in bed, what would Hakkai do?”

“Er... bring beer?” Gojyo said hopefully, but was worn down by Hakkai’s second-best ‘you can do better than that’ look. “Bring tea,” he admitted.

“But Gojyo,” he said, frowning thoughtfully. “I can’t bring myself tea if I’m sick.”

“I guess you can’t be Hakkai, then.” By this time Gojyo clearly knew he was being railroaded into fetching tea, but he was always good-natured about things like that. Sometimes Hakkai longed, in a dreamy sort of way, to find whoever had starved this man and made each display of straightforward affection a victory of petrified valor. He thought perhaps it might be pleasant, since Gojyo was really too unassuming to act for himself, to draw their two fragile lungs out with his hands, slip them out whole from between white ribs and let them dry in the free air.

But these were thoughts he was meant to have left in a cold blue hall, stripped away from him with his shackles, and so he let them pass away. In any case, he preferred for people to feel comfortable around him, and such sentiments could turn the eyes to glacial, kindless vacuum.

Gojyo was already clambering in through the window in his graceless, sauntering way. He meant people to understand he didn’t care what they saw when they looked at him. They all tried to prove such different things, all but Goku.

His voice was warm, jokey, just playing along. It was almost a pity, what Hakkai meant to do to him, but that complacent smile had sealed his fate. “It’s too bad. We can’t not have a Hakkai around. I guess I’d better do it, huh? I’ll see what they have.”

“If you would be so good,” Hakkai beamed at him. “Some very weak tea would be much appreciated. And perhaps you could also give me a book from my backpack. The little tan one with ‘Way of Virtuous Lightness’ on the cover.”

“Schoolteacher,” Gojyo teased, rummaging though his pack. “War Art,” he read slowly, “Figures. No. Red something Dream... Oh.” He snickered. ”Hakkai, you closet lech. I knew you had to have hidden shallows somewhere. You’re going to read that to me sometime, right?”

Hakkai sighed, but he had to smile. “It isn’t a steamy romance novel, Gojyo.”

Gojyo looked up at him and blinked. “It’s not?”

“Well...” He had to admit, Gojyo had him there. “There’s a little more to it than that.” He wasn’t going to fall for it and blush, though, and it was preposterous anyway that anyone should think he of all people was an innocent in just about any area.

“So you can skip the boring parts,” he said dismissively, and went back to rooting through the back. West Journey--aw, geez, Hakkai, you kidding?”

“It’s very instructive,” he said sedately. “Besides, didn’t you ever have a book you often read as a child that you’d be glad to see again?”

The appalled look Gojyo gave first him, then the tome, and then shot back to him was almost worth getting sick for. “You’re unnatural,” his friend informed him firmly, and fished out a smaller book as he chuckled. It hurt his whole upper body. He didn’t care. “Virtue something—aha! Tao Te Ching. Catch.”

“I’m very grateful, Gojyo,” he said, inclining his head graciously as he received it from the air.

“Hakkai,” Gojyo corrected him, grinning. “You must be sick if your memory’s so shot you can’t remember I’m being Hakkai.”

“Ah!” he smiled angelically. “Of course. Well, then, before you get the tea you’d better go to Sanzo’s room quickly and stop him from shooting Goku. Since you’re Hakkai.”

Gojyo’s jaw dropped again in sheer, flatfooted disbelief, which was worth getting sick for, and he was about to protest. Then he deflated, and flopped a defeated hand a couple of times in resignation. “Fine, fine. But I want a nice marble headstone with a grieving naked chick on it.”

“I think you’ll find,” Hakkai suggested mercilessly, “that a little thoughtfulness can work wonders.”

Gojyo shot him a wounded, betrayed look. Knowing himself, however, to be less than immune to puppy-dog eyes and not being a fool, Hakkai had already settled back against the headboard and was leafing though his book. There was nothing for Gojyo to do but sigh like a martyr and leave.

When he finally made it back with the tea, several hours later and somewhat the worse for wear, Hakkai was asleep, the book fallen open on his chest. His face was still pale, even more than usual, and his dark hair was spiky and damp. There was still something a little heavy and strained about his breathing, too. He looked peaceful, though, like he’d fallen asleep to a good joke.

Gojyo took a moment just to look at him, and he might have taken it even if they hadn’t been alone. He almost never got to see him when he wasn’t trying too hard, never got to see him messy or haphazard or grimy with anything but blood, never got to see him look like something that belonged to the red earth. Hakkai could be graceful two inches off the ground, and Sanzo might start crooning love songs before the porcelain bastard would admit to sweating.

He set the tea down on the bedside table. Picking the book up to put it away, he looked curiously at the page it was open to. His brother had insisted he learn to read well enough to get by, and he wanted to see what was so important that Hakkai could force himself to read it even when he was feeling bad enough not to sense a fully grown water demon eavesdropping on him.

“Five... make people eye something... five something else makes people’s ears something else... and a mouth--makes people’s mouths open? Something about land makes people’s hearts crazy? Disaster needs money? Hakkai, what the hell is this?” Not getting an answer, except for one green eye lazily peeling open, he sprawled himself down against the side of the bed and plowed on. “Er... people walking... correct... I give up.”

“‘The five colors,’” Hakkai said, yawning and reaching for the tea, “‘blind the eye.’”

“They do?” Gojyo asked, raising an eyebrow.

“They do,” Hakkai said firmly, putting his cup down and rubbing his eyes with splayed, elegant fingers. “And ‘the five tones deafen the ear.’”

“Even I know there’s more than five tones, ‘Kai,” he said reprovingly, and Hakkai smiled, looking warmed and almost happy . He usually did when they glossed over his name, but the kid hadn’t caught on yet. Fortunately, the monk hadn’t noticed yet either, or he would have gone all self-conscious and stopped. “They use eight in the south. And they don’t make you deaf. Unless it’s ape-face trying to sing, in which case forget I said anything. Meshi-meshi my ass,” he grumbled. Who made a song out of food-food-food? It would be like singing about gold, for pity’s sake; a more selfish passion there never was. And the excitable twit danced to it, too, right out in public where no one could avoid looking at him.

“But if you listen to Goku talk, Gojyo,” Hakkai smiled, full speed ahead in teacher-mode and doggedly ignoring his tangent, “you might think that Sanzo speaks in a monotone.”

Gojyo eyed him. “He doesn’t?”

Hakkai eyed him back, disappointed. “Gojyo,” he said helplessly, and shook his head. He took the book back with one hand, and had some more tea with the other. Gojyo watched his eyes to see whether they would lighten to jade, as they often did when he was reading. This text must have been a special favorite, though, because instead they had darkened to lush, mossy depths he had to turn away from. “‘The five flavors only open the mouth.’”

“That doesn’t,” Gojyo said in disgust, finding something else to look at in the form of a crinkled package of elderly rice crackers that the kid had left on the floor during his watch. “I wouldn’t touch it unless I were starving. Why’d you get the plain kind?”

“Well, that’s why. I have to keep something around you won’t fight with Goku over, Gojyo,” he said, looking up mildly. Gojyo snickered, and he smiled back and cast his eyes down again. “‘Racing, farming, hunting--they make the heart feral.’”

“Farming does?”

“Perhaps over land disputes. Or wandering livestock. ‘Exotic gold, money--they hinder the journey.’”

“Now that’s just bull,” Gojyo said firmly. “We’d be dead in the water with monkey-boy to feed if we didn’t have the gold card.”

“It doesn’t mean grocery money, Gojyo,” he said patiently. “We’d go faster without the sutra--or at least, if no one knew we had it. And if we didn’t need to stop at every town for food. And cigarettes. And beer. And--”

“All right,” Gojyo laughed, tossing his hair back impishly. “I get it, I get it.”

“‘So the sage is for the stomach, not the eye--he denies that and chooses this.’ I was thinking of Goku.”

Snorting, Gojyo patted himself down to see if he had any cigarettes on him--he didn’t--and said, “Monkey-boy would shoot himself before he denied his stomach.”

“Well, yes. It’s supposed to be the other way around, I think, Gojyo. After all, we’ve been fooled by our eyes before.”

“Oh, and great sage-master-whatsisface knew about a bratty ape who thinks with his stomach and sees with his nose?”

“Who knows?” Hakkai smiled down at him, amused. “He’d be quite an elderly monkey by now, don’t you think? ‘Deeply living, first of the ancient, I don’t know whose child it is.’”

Gojyo eyed him, and took some tea for himself to hide his face. Something gentle was pulling at his lips, and he was afraid he knew who it was. People could say what they liked about halfbreeds; it was the affable geek in front of him who was the walking disaster. That girl’s luck had run out; he absolutely had to get laid tonight. “Hakkai... you read some damn-all weird crap, you know that?”

Hakkai was cradling his cup and still looked four different shades of green even in his dull lavender nightshirt, but he looked more awake, even enthusiastic, with his hair all rumpled and a book in his lap.

The monocle was cute in a prim sort of way, when you noticed it, but Gojyo wanted to see him in glasses, with damp ink all over his hands and maybe a few absent smudges on his face.

Back in reality, he was favoring Gojyo with a really impressive imitation of the usual ‘I’m about to score a point off you now for your own good, so please be so kind as to permit it’ Hakkai smile, and there was a gleam in his eye that said, ‘I’m about to enjoy myself, and I don’t care whether or not you understand it.’

While he was still eyeing Hakkai warily (it was a valiant attempt, but that sweet mouth just wasn’t made for smirking), his friend said gravely, “‘A great scholar who hears of the way will walk it. An indifferent scholar who hears of the way will step on and off of it. An ordinary man who is told of the way will have a good laugh--but without that laugh, it wouldn’t be the way.’”

Gojyo continued to eye him, tossed his tea back, and stood up. He stooped over and ruffled the less-than-usually-sleek brown hair as though it belonged to Goku, because it was already messed up and he could, as long as he didn’t linger. “Hakkai?”

“Hm?” Hakkai smiled up at him. His face had gone all shut off again, with his eyes closed and his brushtroke eyebrows in false arches, but it didn’t look like an offended kind of polite smile. He might even have been pleased.

He rapped a finger twice, lightly, right where he’d never dared to go, just to make Hakkai blink up at him. It looked like he’d have to pick up some lip salve on the next cigarette run. A pitcher of water on the table probably wouldn’t hurt, either, and--he didn’t have to fall back into this again, though. No gaping, horrific, bloody holes in anyone’s gut this time, just some miserable dead youkai’s flu. Hakkai was fine, as fine as any of them ever got. Still, since he was doubtless going to be the next one to get it--and he was under no illusions about Sanzo prolonging their stay in town to pamper anyone besides the driver--he should probably go ahead and get the stuff anyway.

When he wasn’t being shut out anymore and those surprised eyes were locked on him, he bent down further, his hair swinging down to cut them off from the window. He pressed his lips gently to the older man’s temple, pulled back, and grinned down at his friend’s discreet astonishment, “You read some damn-all weird crap.”

With that, he straightened up, turned on his heel, and left. Hakkai was chuckling behind him as he closed the door, just one or two soft breaths. He wasn’t complaining. Even if it was at his expense, even in a voice still thick and raspy with fever, he couldn’t hear any pain in it.

[end story]

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Best to be like water,
Which benefits the ten thousand things
And does not contend.
It pools where humans disdain to dwell
Close to the Tao.
Live in a good place.
Keep your mind deep.
Stand by your word.
Make fair rules.
Do the right thing.
Work when it’s time.
Only do not contend,
And you will not go wrong.
--verse 8, Lao Tzu’s ‘Tao Te Ching’
Translated by Addiss and Lombardo

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Notes 1. Yeah, I know, kissing was a European thing during the Tang dynasty--if they are in the Tang, which is increasingly dubious--especially the way Hakkai’s talking about it. But maybe he heard about it in his mother-goddess-worshiping orphanage run by the nuns in Christian-style habits and go-go boots. Or read about it in the newspaper. Or on the side of one of those aluminium beer cans you don’t need a can-opener for. Or on a package of cigarettes. Look, they’re going to India in a Jeep, okay? ^_^

2. The other books in Hakkai’s bag are, of course, the Art of War and the classic novels Dream of the Red Chamber and Journey to the West. Before anyone slaughters me for putting Gojyo at a low reading level, let me explain to those who don't know that reading used to be a really high-class and clerical skill even in Europe, where they used words that could be spelled instead of pictographs. Hakkai and Sanzo, who are pretty much the only people we actually see reading, have religious backgrounds and would have learned there. Gojyo not only had a secular upbringing, but he and his brother were both scruffy little kids, and probably not noble. We do see magazines on his floor at one point, but first, magazines and newspapers have a curtailed vocabulary, and second, they were pretty clearly, uh, a special kind of magazine. ^_^;;

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