Hakkai

Sex used to mean Kanan. He didn't know what it meant now but it hardly mattered because it wasn't something he ever did or thought about much or even expected to do in the future. The future-- one with sex in it-- seemed hazy and far away and impossible to reach tonight. It was raining-- pitter-pattering in soft rhythms on the glass and dripping in an eager, cold-sounding trickle from the leaky gutter outside his bedroom window. The night and the rain stretched drearily ahead. The house was quiet; on some nights, maybe if Gojyo wasn't here or if the weather was bad, Hakkai began to flounder. Then he'd know that at some point in the evening he'd gone wrong and he hadn't noticed it happening.

Somewhere in the interstices between the waking hours when he felt useful and well and happy and the night-time hours when he lay in bed looking up at the ceiling he'd lost himself.

Gojyo was out, presumed living. The irritating whine of his own thoughts filled his head, packing themselves until it was so full in there it seemed like the things he was thinking might spill out of him in some sort of corporeal form. He willed them to stop as hard as he could but it was impossible to order or to follow them and they multiplied until tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes. If the night went on for much longer or the silence got any louder he might end up kicking through the footboard of the bed or smashing his fist through the window in an effort to make it stop. Terrified, he held himself rigid to make sure this didn't happen. It wasn't the violence or pain he was scared of, but the way that it was boiling up inside him, fighting his control.

On a good day he could think about his own strength and not get upset. He knew it came from deep down and that it fed on flesh, bone and hot, possibly insane, anger. The last he'd apparently been born with -- oh, how surprised they'd all been-- and had then, depressingly, acquired even more of.

Visualising this mass of seething power as a small damp puddle, as Sanzo had dryly suggested, didn't work all the time. Too often it was hard not to see his true self, instead, as a lake of something flammable and poisonous and corrosive.

The blankets rustled too loudly, the rain pattered away to itself, uncaring and unaware of the fraught, messy world it fell into. Lucky rain. His toes were cold where the sheets had been pulled out from under the end of the mattress-- he'd tucked them in carefully that morning, but they always came out because he tugged them out with his feet, not liking the sensation of them being constrained. He didn't know why he bothered tucking them in, except it was what he always did.

Under the covers he forced his breaths to slow-- they were coming in quick shuddery bursts that hurt his lungs and made his head swim. He clung onto the memory of Sanzo talking slowly and clearly while he'd sat with his eyes shut; Sanzo instructing him to empty his mind and to think of himself in a safe place. His chest rose and fell in deep slow breaths, just as he'd been taught at the temple. He continued to keep very still, only letting himself relax, muscle by muscle, until the fear slowed and then began to roll back.

It seemed like hours later that he was able to sit up without thinking that to do so, or to move in any way, would impel him to hurt himself in some horrific, painful manner. He looked around the room, at the shadows and the bit of light that came under the door where he'd left it on for when Gojyo came home. There was still no movement there. It wasn't often that Gojyo was out so late these days and Hakkai forced himself not to wonder what he was doing and, to his gratification, succeeded quite quickly this time.

He lay back down and folded his hands calmly on his chest. Sanzo had got the breathing from some book on relaxation, he'd said, but Hakkai knew Sanzo must know more than what could be found in books because Sanzo could do things with one hand that a far bigger man would find impossible with his entire body.

Breathing was good now. The hot blast of rioting fear and madness was banked down to a fading, dull glow and he imagined his mind clearing like the summer sky after a thunderstorm, clouds fading away like mist, sleep falling from Gojyo's eyes with his first drink of coffee in the morning. Mixed metaphors, he thought to himself, smiling for the pleasure of it. His youkai self sliding back to where it normally lived-- under the trapdoor in the very bottom of the cellar that stood underneath the bright tall house that Cho Hakkai had built for himself to live in: right at the top where, handily, no one could get to him unless he opened the door first. Where the visit was conducted on his terms with strict rules about not wandering around half-naked, not using beer cans for ashtrays and leaving when you were asked.

He smiled to himself, seeing behind his eyelids Gojyo sprawled barefoot, shirtless and crimson-haired on his imaginary clean-swept floor, a floor that he always saw patterned with sunlight. He opened his eyes in surprise to realise that his hand had drifted down between his legs and that his fingers were stroking lightly and in little circles over the sensitive places that he remembered, back when sex used to mean her, the only person he'd ever--

He stopped and let go; pulled his hands away and folded them back together on his chest. After a minute he got up to wash them so that he wouldn't have the sharp musky smell of himself on his fingers. It would take time. Lots of time. Sanzo had muttered that at the beginning and it was something Hakkai understood. It wasn't possible for your old self to just die. You couldn't be reborn again a third of the way through your life and not remember the past. He couldn't forget that he was as different from humans as a fox from a rabbit. Hakkai had to work at it, sweat at it and sometimes it just went wrong, like tonight. He could accept that.

So he lay quiet and let the silence fall. There was no reason now to monitor his own breathing. He was all right because he knew that the silence wouldn't eat him alive and it wouldn't show him the madness of his thoughts, but instead would deliver him out the other side into the morning, when it would be sunny and Gojyo would be here.

Gojyo

Like the teenager he'd been only a few years ago Sha Gojyo was necking in the street with a stranger. They were standing in the dark under a dripping tree and Gojyo was kissing a man for the first time in his life. He'd been thinking, and his inner voice had backed him up loudly on this, that he ought to find out if it was any good, kissing other men.

You should see what it's like, it had said, because one day... and his handy inner voice had fallen silent, terminated because Gojyo wasn't that stupid and he knew that there was a time and a place for things and kissing a strange man was what he should do, as opposed to kissing any other man he might happen to know. Because this might get it out of his blood.

And he was bored, yeah, and anyway it was always good to try stuff out. He had to admit, it was getting him off. He was kissing this man and this man had a fine mouth, a damn sexy, hot mouth and a tongue that-- uh--

He let himself be backed up against the tree and this man was pulling his coat open to reveal Gojyo's lack of shirt. There was a soft laugh and then warm lips and a tongue tracing his collarbone all the way along, to the hollow of his neck. He arched up, wondering what would happen next. What did happen were hands snaking under his coat and over his hips to stroke his ass and a long muscled thigh pushing between his own. The hands forced him closer and he spread his legs so he could ride a little against this guy's leg, pinned between him and the tree. He lost himself in the thrust of their hips as they moved together, hard, needy kisses echoing their slow, tantalising grind until Gojyo pulled back, breath shuddering and his skin hot with lust.

'You're so gorgeous,' the man whispered against his mouth, his breath then shivering on the trail of kisses he left on Gojyo's neck and Gojyo had to lean his head back against the bark and laugh at the words. How many times had he come out with that line? He could hear his own voice saying the same thing, loaded with the same slightly hoarse want. God, it sounded corny, but at the same time it produced a twist of exhilaration in his belly that sent his hands groping for more contact. He was done with slow.

The curves were missing and his arms remembered smaller ribcages and more slender shoulders but he could adjust-- it was easy. His arms were fuller, stretched around harder muscle and heavy shoulder bones. Everything was hard, everything. Gojyo moaned. This guy had given up on the neck, had bypassed nipple licking totally and was fucking his mouth with his tongue- pushing it in then drawing the tip back teasingly, then pushing in again in a blatant, unmistakeable suggestion. That tongue was a promise of what he could have, what this stranger wanted to do to him. Gojyo had thought about it, was thinking about it now, what it might feel like to be opened up and have that thick, hot flesh push inside him. His breathing got ragged and the slow, steady thrusting of this guy's hips made him want it, and made him scared.

''Wanna fuck?" the man said, all hot breath and gasps against his mouth, none of it lost on unneeded words.

'Just-- uh, a hand job,' he managed, trying for nonchalance, as though he did this every night with men and it was nothing new.

'Yeah.' It was agreement, low and lecherous.

One of his hands twirled tightly in Gojyo's hair, hinting that he was gonna yank it if he wanted to. Gojyo thought that was funny, but it made his balls tighten all the same and he groaned at the hand that was digging its way under the waistband of his jeans.

What a gentleman, Gojyo thought, just coherent enough to enjoy the irony, but only just, because the guy had started up with the tongue fucking again and he'd fumbled at Gojyo's belt and had got his zipper open. Gojyo's blood pounded in his ears and he was so turned on he was dizzy with it; this was serious now and it was with another man and he was about to touch another man's dick. It was hard to get a buckle and a zipper open when your fingers were shaking so much but it wasn't any more difficult than opening the things women trussed themselves up in. Then it was done and he didn't wait for the invitation, but curled his hand round thick solid flesh that jumped under his fingers as he squeezed.

It was weird being this close to a guy; Gojyo could feel stubble rasping against his chin and hear the low throaty male sound of his breathing. He even smelled different. It reminded him of his own smell, a mixture of shaving soap, beer, cigarettes and the sharper, acrid note of sex. Definitely not the same curves. Different curves, like a road you didn't know but were hell bent to ride down and fast too, but it was good, really amazingly good to squeeze tight and feel an answering pressure and a gasp into his mouth. He liked that, made it happen again. Having this guy, with his hot, pretty mouth and his fucking sexy dark eyes that might even have been a shade of green moan into his mouth like Gojyo was the best thing he'd ever had-- his skin burned, washed with heat that flooded to his face and down his thighs where wet denim was plastered to his skin by the rain. He was only dimly conscious of the cold trickle of rain down his neck and the rough scrape of bark against the small of his back where his jacket had ridden up and his jeans pulled down.

It hadn't been his usual bar and he'd never seen this man before tonight, not that that was at all unusual for Gojyo's conquests. Until there was a hand slyly curving round his backside, and a sharp, knowing smile had hit him like a hammer between the eyes he hadn't even thought, not even contemplated that he might go outside into the rain tonight and stick his tongue down another man's throat. Although, to be fair, he had, the inner voice confirmed, been toying with the idea forthreeyears a little, recently, because it was sex and Gojyo was nothing if he was not adventurous.

Outside, with a sort of unspoken, tactile encouragement that exists between strangers in bars who want to fuck each other, they walked down the lane to where the houses stopped and the trees began. Gojyo was thinking that going home was absolutely impossible, there was not even the slightest chance of going back there with this guy; Gojyo would rather be staked out in the sun and bitten by ants for all eternity than see Hakkai's face if he turned up with a man in tow. Hell, he didn't even bring girls back. Shit, no. Don't think about Hakkai's face now. But he was and his name sang over and over in Gojyo's mind.

So here he was, splayed against a tree, scrabbling one-handed now at his wet jeans to get them further down so this guy could stroke his balls and squeeze his ass, all the while Gojyo jerking him off with rain-wet, sticky fingers, their knuckles bumping and rubbing against each other as their hands moved.

He pushed up close to Gojyo and everything got that much more intense because this guy made good on his unspoken threat to yank his hair, pulling his head to one side to expose Gojyo's neck to his teeth and lips. With that hand, hard and rough that knew just what to do and how to pull and squeeze just right and then the sharp bite of teeth where his neck met his shoulder, Gojyo could hardly keep his own hand working straight. The guy didn't seem to mind and Gojyo was done caring because something was rushing through him and he was almost there. That mouth on his neck and their breath rasping together--in that second he wanted everything, wanted to be fucked, wanted to suck a dick, wanted to be stripped naked in the rain with another man's come running over his fingers, hot and slippery. He put his head back and it boiled up inside him, his thighs shaking and stomach taut, the muscles there quivering as he heard himself make a sound. Shaking, wound up tight with it for an impossible, long, aching second, wound up tight and delicious, until it burst free and he was gasping with the force of coming, his face tilted up to the rain and his eyes shut. It was sweet and nearly painful and showed him everything he wanted in a second.

He thought he remembered laughing afterwards and this guy looking weirded out, then asking with a small smile, as if he'd worked out that Gojyo had never touched another man before:

'You liked it, then?'

'I guess I did.'

It was something, what he'd done tonight. He wasn't going to do it again though, not until-- he frowned, thinking that he'd know when it was okay.

Walking home alone in the grey dawn he let himself think about Hakkai and what Hakkai might say, even though it was dangerously soon after that. What Hakkai might think if Gojyo said he'd kissed a man tonight who had eyes that might have been green and they hadn't even got to lying down, but that was okay, and it was the best sex he'd ever had, but not the best sex he was ever going to have, up against a tree with someone who didn't have any curves but who sounded, in the dark and with Gojyo's eyes shut tight, like someone finding the thing they'd been looking for all their life.