by Princess of Pain

Part III: Puttsun

NOTE: "Puttsun" is Japanese onomatopoeia for "the sound of a string snapping". In slang, the word is used to describe someone who has 'snapped', or lost their mind; such a phrase is transliterated as "His last string snapped".

SECTION: 3 of 7.
SPOILERS: A somewhat more concrete reference to Goku's past, which will go right over the head of someone who doesn't know what it is.
WARNINGS: This section contains profanity, as well as an attempted rape scene. This is not a lemon. If you are uncomfortable with the implication of rape, please, don't waste my time and read this. I will say that I tried to approach the subject as seriously as possible.

*~*~*

"Hakkai!" Sanzo's tense fist hammered on the door with "85" painted over its Judas-hole, producing a noise like muted gunfire. "No more games, open u--"

The door opened. Sanzo was mid-knock, and was thrown slightly off-balance at his fist not reaching its target. A pale hand shot out from the crack in the doorway, gripping onto his. It felt like it was made of bands of steel.

"Stop... knocking." Hakkai had his usual unruffled appearance. There was something that seemed off about him--something about the expression hidden deep in his eyes--which Sanzo could only attribute to being locked in a room with a madman for a few hours. The youkai gripped Sanzo's hand even harder, like a man falling off a cliff who grips onto an outcropping of rock. "He's finally asleep. Please don't wake him up."

The monk had to grab Hakkai's wrist and pull in order to get the converted youkai to release him. Damn, did he have a grip. "Asleep?"

Hakkai stepped out of the hotel room, quickly shutting the door behind him--but not before casting one final paranoid glance into the room, to verify what he was telling Sanzo. "Yes, asleep."

"How the hell did you manage that? Did you chi-blast him into oblivion?"

His smile was tight. "No. I cooked for him."

"Oh, so you drugged him. I see."

"No, tempting though it was. He ate until he vomited. Then he kept eating until he did it again. He's had at least one laughing fit, and has tried to jump out the window four times. He hasn't made an attempt on my life in the past thirty minutes, though. I convinced him that he wanted to lie down and let me read to him, until he finally drifted off."

"Maybe he and Goku switched places," Sanzo said dryly.

"Did you find him?" Hakkai distractedly scanned over Sanzo, probably noting the bloodstains on his robes. And, in true Hakkai fashion, not saying a word about it until he got an answer.

"Yeah. He looked like a voodoo doll. I patched him up a little, but he needs to get all of his wounds sealed, and that's gonna take your magic touch."

Hakkai's face fell. Even his smile drifted away, like a cloud being pushed out of the sky by a hot wind. "Oh, God. Gojyo is the culprit, then."

"Looks that way. Listen, I'll sit at the door and make sure Gojyo doesn't get up to too much monkey business while you're gone. Doesn't seem like me being in the same room with him would be a good idea, since the fucker clearly has forgotten his place. I'll take care of Goku when you're done; just make sure he doesn't lose any more blood than he already has, all right?"

The youkai nodded, then ran both hands through his hair. Given how much Hakkai's hair tended to spike on a normal basis, it didn't affect its appearance much, but the fact that Hakkai was actually expressing the stress he was under in any small fashion... Sanzo felt mildly stunned. "Yes. I'll be back as soon as I can. Thanks very much, Sanzo."

"Shut up and hurry back. These floorboards are murder on my ass," he griped as he sat down.

"I would hate for you to be uncomfortable," the brunette said over his shoulder, as he jogged down the hall towards the other hotel room.

As he lit a well-earned cigarette, Sanzo once again wondered whether or not Hakkai was back-handedly making fun of him.

*~*~*

Light. The first thing he saw when he woke up. Through his eyelids. A veiled red blur of light through the mist of capillaries and skin. His heart leaped up a little. It felt overwhelmed with a nostalgia, a want--too big to define, too vague to name. The way he felt whenever his diadem was not wrapped firmly around his skull: the creeping approach of memories marching ever closer to the foreground of his mind, like a marauding army approaching a castle.

He eagerly opened his eyes, seeking the completion of the collage of memories that swam up in his brain, and was met with disappointment once again. The light was not golden, like the sun. It was as green as a grape. It also seemed to be working with the maddening itch that was wrapping up his torso in what felt like a coat of insects, and he hated it until he realized that there was someone standing behind the light--and that it was someone he knew.

"Hakkai!" Goku smiled, in spite of the near-torment that his friend was putting him through. He looked down at his stomach, and saw the green light working into the wounds, the skin pulling itself back together and sealing off. It made him feel more than a little urpy. "Where's..."

"Sanzo is playing zookeeper for the moment," Hakkai said, his grin as bright as always. His eyes were curved up along with his smile. "Once your wounds are done closing, I'll be taking his place, and Sanzo will be here to care for you."

"... right. So what's really going to happen?"

Hakkai laughed. The light first dimmed, then faded altogether. Goku could still see bright balls and spots of rainbow light in his vision, making the other youkai look like he stood in a psychedelic haze. "Gojyo is not exactly fond of Sanzo at the moment. It would be unwise for either of them to be in close proximity; I'm not sure who would kill whom first."

Gojyo. His heart felt like a plate that had just been emptied of food. "He hates me."

The other man's eyes were bright and serious. "No."

"Yeah. Look at me." Goku did not have to look to know that most of his clothes were shredded, and that the tatters that remained were stiff with his own blood. He also did not have to try very hard to remember how the blades of the shakujou had felt when they were hooking into him, or the expression that had been in Gojyo's eyes--like looking into the windows of an empty house.

"Gojyo is not himself, he--" Hakkai suddenly paused. He was thinking of something, Goku could see that, and he could see that whatever the thought was, it was a bad one. The other youkai actually paled, and his eyes darkened to the color of dried nori. His mouth mutated from an easy smile to a single hard line. "He is not in control of himself. Something is not... there. Don't worry about it. We'll work on helping him, but in the meantime, you need to regain your strength."

Goku hated that. The others never told him anything; they forgot that he was their teammate, not their kid brother or their son or their disciple. Treating him like he was stupid. He was just as smart as all of them, maybe smarter than Gojyo, but he never got a chance, and it wasn't his fault that he, more often than not, got proved wrong when he contradicted them all. But Hakkai would not believe him if he said so, so he laid back, let it pass. "Tell... tell Sanzo that I'm sorry he keeps saving me."

The smile returned. "He knows."

Goku shut his eyes, and in the darkness, began to seek the light once more.

*~*~*

Hakkai shut the door behind him, then turned the door-handle's inset knob, locking it. He felt a bit like a psychiatrist who was sealing himself in his patient's room in the sanitarium. He even had a guard: Sanzo was already arranging to move Goku to a nearby, unoccupied room, so that the monk could keep an ear out for Hakkai, should he be needed, and an eye out for Goku. Safely within shouting distance.

Things had already collapsed significantly, when he had to think of Gojyo this way. Like a wild animal--utterly unpredictable.

For instance, the hanyo was actually awake when Hakkai reentered their hotel room, but made no attempt (as he had many times earlier) to escape his prison. He was sitting on the bed, still perfectly naked, still tattooed with blood. He had three lit cigarettes in his mouth; the smoke was pluming up and making it hard to discern whether or not the top two-thirds of his head still existed. He held a fourth in his hands, since he was running out of room in his mouth, and was meticulously trying to light it. It was a challenge, Hakkai imagined, to try and see through the smog the hanyo's smokes were producing.

Hakuryu was tied up on Gojyo's lap, like a pork roast. The tiny dragon's maw was muzzled firmly shut. He looked up at Hakkai with a panicked expression--one that the youkai could read easily enough (as any owner could read the emotions of their pets): "What is he doing to me, and why haven't you stopped him yet?"

"Gojyo," he said, the tone of his voice that of a parent addressing a wayward child. He didn't know if he wanted to attempt to rescue Hakuryu or make Gojyo stop his imitation of a chimney. Finally, he decided that the latter might be easier, if he could work it correctly. "One cigarette should be more than enough."

He thought that Gojyo was looking in his direction. The cigarettes bobbed, anyhow. "I want to smoke."

"I can tell that. People will think that there's a fire if that smell gets out of the room, though, and then they'll take all of your cigarettes away."

The hand attempting to flick the Zippo to life froze. "They can't."

"They would."

"I hate people. I want them all to die."

"Yes, Genjo. Shall I get you an ashtray, so you can stub out all those extras?"

"No. I want to smoke."

"Did you want to tie up Hakuryu?"

"Noooo..." Gojyo dropped his lighter and his fourth cigarette, and began to obsessively pet the dragon, running both his hands from the crown of his skull to the tip of his tail. Hakuryu's eyes actually got wider, and he attempted to sink in-between the hanyo's legs and onto the floor. This made Gojyo look like a Bond villain conceived while Ian Fleming was on an acid trip. "What I wanted was just to pet it. It's so damn cute. But it wouldn't let me pet it, so I tied it up what good."

"Why don't you let Hakuryu go?" His voice was persuasion summed up in sound. "I think he'd rather be with Sanzo."

"WHAT?" He stopped mid-pet. His eyes were huge and fiery, with the sheer wrath that invoking the monk's name managed to produce.

"Oh, haven't you noticed? Hakuryu very much prefers Sanzo over almost any of us. He--"

"TRAITOR!" Gojyo jerked up and away from the dragon, permitting him to reach his goal of the floor. Hakkai moved forward, picking the poor thing up and cradling it close, trying to pretend like feeling its soft-leather scales shivering under his touch didn't leave him more than a little angry at the hanyo.

Hakkai's hands deftly worked at undoing the various and ridiculously-numbered knots looped around his dragon's body. "I'll be putting him in the other hotel room with Sanzo and Goku, so that you won't have to be near him anymore."

Gojyo nodded fiercely. The cloud of smoke that masked much of his head thickened and bobbed.

Once Hakuryu was free, Hakkai quickly let him out of the hotel room, whispering to him where Sanzo and Goku's room was located, and leaving the dragon to find his way on his own. He could fly just fine, which meant that Gojyo had not damaged the poor thing's wings, or anything else, so it seemed. As for the cigarettes... well,h e was becoming used to making Gojyo want to do things. He locked the door firmly behind himself once more, then observed: "That blood looks rather sticky."

Gojyo looked down at himself. His head divided the thick spool of smoke into two tendrils. "Yeah, don't like it."

"How about if I wipe you down? I'll get a washcloth, the softest one I can find, and wet it in warm water. That'll get all that crud right off. How does that sound to you?"

The mouth containing too many cigarettes grinned. One of the cigarettes dropped out onto the floor. "Okay." Gojyo spat the others onto the floor, then stared at them as they burned small holes into the hardwood floor, as if hypnotized.

Moving quickly as ever, Hakkai stomped out all of the cancer-sticks, picked them up, and deposited them in the wastebasket in the bathroom. He returned a minute later, with the promised washcloth. In that minute, Gojyo had climbed up on top of the vanity. He appeared to have done this so that he could better watch himself as he performed a rather spastic dance, and sang as though he had not a care in the world.

"Gojyo!" Hakkai clapped his hands together sharply. The noise was muffled by the wet "thop!" of the washcloth.

The hanyo stopped mid-wiggle, looking over at Hakkai with an exaggerated expression of surprise. He clearly thought that Hakkai had no business distracting him from his song-and-dance routine. "WHAT?!"

"Clean! Remember?" He held up the rag, like a flag of surrender.

The oversimplification worked. The hanyo hopped easily off the vanity and made his wandering way to the bed, onto which he heavily flopped. He seemed to fall asleep almost instantly. This was fine with Hakkai. It would make his job somewhat easier.

He sat down on the bed beside Gojyo, and began to clean him as promised, though he tactfully ignored any of the bloody areas too close to anything too... personal of Gojyo's. Worry was wearing deep lines into his brow, as well as a host of other demons: dismay, confusion, resignation. His appearance had smoothed itself out considerably since he'd first seen Sanzo, but he still felt disheveled and out of place.

Gojyo was his closest friend who still walked the earth. Hakkai loved him dearly and frankly, for everything that Gojyo had done for him warranted blind adulation, if not dedicated love. And because no one had ever loved Gojyo properly before, and he felt a deep sense of luck that he got to be the first.

They had been living together from the moment they met, and they had been traveling together on this quest for so long, and Gojyo had remained--through everything--the same good friend, who could be counted on for whatever was needed. Both Sanzo and Goku were his friends, but in subtle, different ways. Goku was like the child he'd always wanted; Sanzo was an intellectual ally.

The difference in the end, he supposed, was that Goku needed Sanzo, and Sanzo needed no one. Gojyo, on the other hand, needed Hakkai--in ways that the youkai sometimes didn't understand.

Now, Gojyo needed him more than ever, and there was absolutely nothing that Hakkai could think to do that would save his friend. It made him more than a little angry at himself, and fueled his despair over what could possibly be--

*~*~*

He had closed his eyes because it felt good to lie down. The bed was soft and cradling under his body. He felt tired. Killing Goku and running and all had taken its toll, and he felt like he could sleep. Then something wonderfully warm and wet had started scrubbing all the nasty blood off his skin, which felt more marvelous than the sun, than the food, than the girl. He peeked. Hakkai. Hakkai was such a good friend. He cleaned him up and kept him in food and cigarettes. He had kept their cabin in good upright condition. Hakkai always took good care of him. He loved him so much. Hakkai was beautiful. He had these soulful green eyes that made his heart flip if he looked into them for too long, and a really great ass and hips that swayed just right. He was built more beautifully than any woman. He decided that he wanted to love him. Hard.

*~*~*

Hakkai's thoughts were amputated as the world spun round him. Of all the emotions he'd been feeling, confusion had misted over them all--now, it rose up to the fore. One second, he was sitting on the bed, washing off Gojyo's legs, and the next, he was lying on the bed, and something heavy was--

Not something. Gojyo.

The hanyo was pressed up tightly against him, so much so that he could feel a mixture of warm water and blood soaking into his clothing. Gojyo had one arm riding against Hakkai's throat; the other hand was clapped firmly against his forehead, holding him in place. Their legs were a tangle; his arms were pinned underneath their combined weight. Hakkai could feel every jagged breath Gojyo took, as well as the steel hard-on that was now encapsulated between their bodies.

Black wings of panic spread in his heart. He immediately tried to break Gojyo's grasp, but that was like trying to stop a falling boulder by holding up one's hands: between the four unofficial members of the Sanzo-ikko, Gojyo was the one with the most effective pinning techniques. If he pushed up at all, Gojyo's forearm introduced itself to his trachea, and his arms were twisted too firmly behind himself to be of any use. His throat felt like it was on fire; his limbs were already numbing, drained of blood.

Gojyo, grinning like a maniac, leaned down and ran his tongue over Hakkai's lips.

The hand clamping on his forehead turned him loose, in order to reach down and give his overshirt a sharp yank. The four slender clasps holding it closed tore like threads; with a few harder pulls, the shirt itself started to give way with a loud ripping noise, exposing more of Hakkai's throat and the undershirt which he was now profoundly grateful to be wearing. The youkai had never felt so naked before in his entire life. His bare skin was crawling with horrid anticipation.

"I love you so fucking much," Gojyo said. His voice was like a hail of broken glass on concrete.

Hakkai lost his mind in a wave of fright. He opened his mouth to scream; Gojyo's free hand clamped down over his mouth and jaw. He bucked wildly against Gojyo's body, ignoring the fact that with each motion, his throat was more and more in danger of being crushed, that the air he managed to gasp into his lungs was thinner and thinner; he felt like he was breathing through stone. His monocle slipped off his nose from the effort and disappeared into the pillows. He barely noticed. He was more concerned with the hanyo placing sloppy licks and rather painful bites on his neck, like a drunken vampire, then attempting to rip off his undershirt with his teeth. Hakkai, all helplessness and panic, screamed against Gojyo's hand, and got a taste of leather and copper in his mouth for his pains.

"You ffffffffucking tease," his attacker growled. "You can't look as good as you and not know it. You know but you think you're too fucking good for me. I know you."

The hand clamped over his mouth disappeared. Hakkai attempted to scream once again, and found himself shrieking against Gojyo's lips. The kiss was grinding, like running into an iron wall, full of teeth and tongue, Gojyo tasting like twenty years of cigarette tar. Hakkai felt the rest of his undershirt give, tearing into a jacket, leaving his chest and stomach revealed. The hanyo uttered a grating, throaty moan at the sight of him. His scar felt like it was on fire. Gojyo took a moment to give his nipples a brutal twist, before pushing his hand down between them, fumbling with the fly of Hakkai's pants.

Oh, nightmare. This wasn't happening, Gojyo was not fucking his mouth with his tongue, and he wasn't pulling his pants just low enough for what he wanted, and Hakkai wasn't not able to fight back, and this whole day was a hallucination, and Gojyo was certainly not jerking his--

"OI, PRICK-LICK!"

Attacker and victim both stupidly looked over to the doorway, from whence the voice had come. There stood Sanzo. He had completely shed his bloody robes, and stood before them in sandals, jeans, and his under-shirt and arm-warmers. Hakkai had no idea if Sanzo's expression would be best defined as horror, disgust, fury, or some unholy mating of all three. Above him, Gojyo was completely still, utterly intent.

Sanzo took a drag on the cigarette that naturally dangled from his lips. He cocked his head slightly askance, his chin tilted upwards in his typical expression of holier-than-thou pride. "Let me tell you something, Gojyo. I went out with your mom last night, and I carried her home like a six-pack."

"DEAD." The hanyo was out of the bed in a flash, erection wilting, the very picture of hatred. His shakujou manifested in his hands.

"She gives head like an opium whore."

Gojyo's response was an incoherent verbal expression of godly anger and hatred. He threw himself at Sanzo, who wisely skipped back--as was his habit in battle--and took off down the hall, screaming out insults that even a soldier would never consider saying.

Hakkai laid back in the bed, mostly naked, totally violated. He felt mutilated and raped. He didn't know how Sanzo knew what was going on--he couldn't imagine that he'd made enough noise for the monk to hear them--and he didn't know how he could express to Sanzo his gratitude, for being the only person who could have stopped Gojyo from himself. His thoughts kept circling about what he'd been thinking about just before Gojyo had rolled him onto the bed, and about how that had in the last five minutes become a lie, and that they might never be friends again: either he would hate Gojyo for what had happened, or Gojyo would hate himself.

Whatever was responsible for this... Hakkai knew that he was going to visit every ounce of his wrath upon it, if only because of what it had just made his friend do to him.

Hakkai permitted himself to lie motionless for a few more seconds, before pulling up his pants and abandoning his shredded shirts.

~TBC~

Next section: "Sanzo's Razor". In which Hakkai and Sanzo discuss Medieval philosophy, and Sanzo gives Gojyo 48 hours to live.