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A Different Kind of Hunger by keraha
II. Hakkai Gojyo slips his arm around the townsgirl and he whispers in her ear. She blushes, but Hakkai knows that at the end of the day, she will slip out of her room, out of her dress, and into Gojyo's arms. Gojyo has asked Hakkai more than once why he doesn't go out with that girl over there, or why he didn't take the other girl when she was clearly mooning over him. Gojyo runs his hand through his hair when Hakkai exasperates him, and it happens often when they come to the subject of girls. They have come to an unstated compromise. Gojyo will get the girls and Hakkai will not. Hakkai knows that Gojyo loves women for their curves and their gasps in his ear. He is trapped in the sensuality of flesh and the rhythm of bodies. Hakkai understands the love that Gojyo has; he has known it before. Hakkai now knows that it is not for him. Hakkai goes to his room. Sanzo is there as he always is, and Sanzo ignores him as he always does. He smiles and says a pleasant "Good night, I am just getting a change of cloth. There is a bath nearby." Sanzo looks at him-- he is wearing spectacles and Hakkai is always reminded of the first time Sanzo put them on. Old, he had thought. -- and says nothing. With his clothing bundled under his arm, Hakkai goes to the empty room and fills a bucket with water. The water is warm, and he knows that by the time he bathes, it will be cool against his skin. Hakkai undresses, and there is nothing romantic about it. He imagines that Gojyo must be skilled at stripping, ripping his shirt over his head, limbs tangling in cloth, reaching naked flesh with the desperate movements of lust and woman coinciding. Hakkai is not like that. He takes off his clothing efficiently and folds them into neat piles. He puts them where the water will not spill and stands naked for a moment. There is a scar on his stomach, and he has gotten so used to that subtle rise of flesh. He looks at it, and he thinks Kanan. He runs his hand down his stomach, and he thinks, more insistently, Kanan. He recalls images of his sister. She is beautiful. She waits for him to come back from the school, their small house filled with the smell of soup made from too ingrediants and too much water. She smiles at him the first time he touches like that. Floodgates open in his mind, and he drowns himself in Gonou. He is human, he is in love, he is with Kanan. He is happy and he feels the deep burning in his limbs of loveloveIloveyouKanan. He remembers how they had always been close. How they held hands as children, how they hugged, how they kissed, how they grew. How her breasts rounded and her limbs lengthened and how she fit in his arms and how they held hands and hugged and kissed again and how it was so much different. His body remembers, and he draws his hand along his stomach. The warmth of his hand is loud against his skin, and he leaves it there. Once, he had made himself come, imagining Kanan's hesitant touch. He had thrown up afterwards, a bitter taste in his mouth and Gojyo's hands supporting him as he leaned over the grimey toilet. Afterwards, Gojyo had given him a glass of water and no chance to talk about it. Hakkai had appreciated it, and he had never tried again. He was not Gonou and it was unfaithful on too many accounts. He could not get himself to dirty Kanan. She is all that he was not. And he knows he cannot lose that. Hakkai shakes his head. No. No more Kanan. He is Hakkai now, and he has Gojyo and Sanzo and Goku. (He never has women, only dirty sheets in the morning and Sanzo's apathy. He used to have Gojyo's searching look asking why like this, why never with a woman? But no more. Not any more.) He is a new man. He gathers the bucket of water in his hands, then spills it over his head. The water beads on his skin and trails down, running over the scar and the flesh below it. Hakkai shivers at the cold. He is a new man. |
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