Hakkai falls into the arms of Nii Jienyi in the unlikely circumstance that he becomes ill and requires medical assistance that Nii alone can provide. At least, that’s what Hakkai believes. Warnings: Hakkai/Nii, melancholy, mild angst, eventual M/M

A cup was pushed into his hands, the warm ceramic seeping into his numbed flesh. He released a heavy sigh, opening his eyes to stare down at the muddy liquid. It was a mug, not a cup - he realized belatedly and couldn’t help but shake his head. Where had he gone that he couldn’t tell the difference between drinking apparatuses?

“Far, far away”, his mind answered him.

“Almost beyond return,” came his own conscious assertion. “A little bit longer without medication or without the right treatment and…”

He couldn’t let himself think of that option, for the end result was always the same in that train of thought. He had promised that he wouldn’t depress himself any more, and he intended to keep that promise. He didn’t need to slip any further from those he loved.

“Loved? Surely that isn’t right. I still do love them - it’s not that I don’t. Just… perhaps not in that sense of the phrase.”

His grip on the cup wavered and shook enough as he raised it from the table to force him to set it back down with a click-clack. His shoulders were hunched forward, pushing his whole upper body slightly over the wood-grain table. His elbows rested on the uneven surface, protected from splinters by the long sleeve of his green shirt. His clothes were wrinkled from wear, his hair having lacked the proper attention to sit perfectly straight.

He stiffened as a hand was laid on his shoulder, turning his green-eyed gaze to look up at the one that had touched him in surprise. His face softened and a nervous smile found its way onto his lips. A hand reached around his right arm, and gripped his hand about the mug so that fingers interlaced in support.

Hakkai’s grip was steadied.

A conscientious chuckle fell from the brown-haired man’s mouth, but he made no protest to the other’s aid in bringing the warm mug to his lips. His eyelids closed as he took a ginger sip, the one behind him not encouraging him to drink any more than he wished to try and handle.

He coughed at the taste of the liquid. The hand on his shoulder moved back slightly to reassure him.

“C-Coffee?” he stuttered out, surprised at the difference in the consistency of the warm drink compared to the tea he had been expecting.

A chuckle sounded from behind him that faded into a quiet voice, “Yes, it’s what we have around here. Perhaps I should have warned you.”

He nodded numbly in response, taking another ginger sip from the mug. It was odd that he would find comfort in the strange voice, or perhaps that wasn’t necessarily true. The other spoke of strange anecdotes while he worked; Hakkai often got the impression that perhaps he just enjoyed hearing himself talk, but wasn’t one to complain about the company. The other never asked him about his past or his scars or why he hated the rain. Hakkai found nothing strange about the higher-pitch of the voice while it was laughing, or the lower tones it encompassed in common speech. He had often wanted to simply drift away in the varying chords of it, to allow it to take him to other places.

The black haired male was patient in Hakkai’s attempt to drink the fluid placed in front of him, and time clicked away at an increasingly slower pace. Eventually, Hakkai lowered the half-emptied mug with the aid of the one behind him and leaned back against the wooden chair so that his head brushed the lapel of the other’s coat.

“I can’t possibly thank you enough, for everything that you’ve done for me.”

“It’s nothing to worry about. It’s been paid for.”

Had his mind not been so muddled by the medication within his drink, he might have wondered what that payment had been. But as it was, he found his eyes closing not of his will. The arm from his shoulder shifted down and across his chest, catching him before sleep had allowed him to collapse in the hot coffee mug. He raised a hand to rest on the supportive arm, his last image that of the teal-eyed doctor Nii Jienyi leaning over to pick him up and out of the wooden chair.

Hakkai awoke to a rapid clicking noise and the now-familiar thrum of instruments. His head swam slightly as he sat upright, the movement disturbing the sheets that had covered him. Blinking wearily, he moved the covers from where they had pooled about his waist and shifted his feet to touch the cold tile floor. He sat still for a few moments, his eyes not wanting to adjust to the presence of light. During this time, he occupied himself with the steady click-click-click, which had only paused once when he had sat up.

There was a louder snapping sound, and Hakkai registered the movement of white lab coat and yellow shirt as the doctor rose from his seat after closing his laptop and began to move to the bedside.

“Good morning,” Hakkai would have chirped the greeting had his throat not been dry, causing his voice to catch and come out sounding more tired than he really felt.

Nii pressed the back of his hand to Hakkai’s forehead as he spoke, “Of course it is, you are finally awake.” Hakkai’s eyes agreed to finally cooperate, and he could make out the details of the other’s face. He often found Nii to be as unreadable as Sanzo, as was the present case. The man wasn’t smiling nor frowning, but held a neutral inflection that was opposite the concern that sifted through the teal depths of the other’s eyes.

“I apologize, have I slept long?” he paused before continuing, “I don’t remember falling asleep, isn’t that strange?” He wished his voice didn’t sound so strained, but it hurt too much for Hakkai to speak loudly.

Nii appeared to not mind the other’s quiet tone. He glanced over his shoulder towards the electric clock that hung lopsidedly on the pale wall across from the bed, “Just over fourteen hours; a standard side-effect of the drug that you needed to take.”

“Oh my!” he blinked up at Nii, baffled at the length of time he’d spent sleeping, even considering the drugs.

“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that much sleep in an evening before,” he laughed a bit as he spoke, but it was more than his voice that was strained, and his embarrassment snuck out from under his control. The traces of pink on his cheeks caused Nii to chuckle amusedly.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of; you can’t possibly think to control the effects that drugs can have on your body.”

Hakkai nodded, looking down at the tiled floor his bare feet rested on. Absently he wondered where his shoes had gotten off to, as his socks lay discarded near the head of the bed.

“I suppose so. But that doesn’t necessarily make it any easier. It doesn’t help that I still feel tired.”

Nii seemed to consider a moment, and then took a heavy seat on the bed beside Hakkai, reaching out to rub his back as he spoke, “If you’re still tired, then you should get back to sleep.”

“I couldn’t do that. I’ve slept too long already.” He paused after his words, being hit with the feeling of déjà vu. He dissolved it into a hesitant chuckle at his own expense.

“I guess I’m just being silly.”

“Not at all, not at all. If you’re up, though, you might as well eat something.”

Hakkai considered the doctor’s drawl for a moment before agreeing. As Nii rose and headed away from the bed and disappeared around a corner, the green-eyed healer was made fully aware of just how hungry he was; an insistent sting of emptiness wormed its way up from his stomach, and he took a breath to steady his swimming head before rising to his own feet.

The world pitched as Hakkai stood, his hand clasping the headboard to keep his mind from getting the better of him by throwing him to the ground. His hunger had disappeared to be replaced by an uneasy queasiness that was just as persistent in making itself known.

He felt bile come to the back of his throat and crouch like a tiger watching prey, enhanced by the sudden noise and smell of something being fried. Despite his sickness, he took a few shaky steps towards the sound, assuming that he was heading towards the kitchen. Another few steps and he was able to rest with a hand on the table in the middle of the room, a few more and he clung to the back of Nii’s chair at the desk. Finally it was the wall he clung to, staring into the next room.

Nii was standing near the stove, one of the burners running with a frying pan over it. There was the bright sizzle rising from the pan as something was being fried, and the aroma he now found pleasing. His stomach settled as he surveyed the cramped cooking area; there was a smaller table in the middle of the room - Nii’s lab coat slung over the back of one of its chairs - across from the bright blue built-in counters that connected the stove and the refrigerator. Cabinets hung over the countertops, with glass and wood framing that revealed their contents even when closed. Over the stove was a metallic mass of a microwave, which Hakkai guessed to be double-shelved because of its bulk.

After his surveillance of the room was complete, he turned his attention back to Nii. The other was wearing the same yellow lapel he typically did, the sleeves pulled up past his elbows with the cuffs rolled back inefficiently so that one side had already started to slip back towards his wrist.

The doctor turned slightly, offering a small smile towards the green-eyed man. Hakkai smiled back, a bit embarrassed that the other might think he had been staring, even if he had been doing just that. Nii made no inclination to mind this hough, and shortly turned back to the frying pan.

Hakkai made no attempt to correct his behavior and this time he knew he was staring, albeit rather innocently. The events from the past few days were fuzzy at best, and he innately knew that Nii held the key to what had happened to him. He remembered being ill, more so than he’d ever been in his whole life, but not the extent or cause of that illness. His thoughts moved to the sound of someone crying under a sea of crimson, and his vision blurred.

With a yell he hadn’t realized had even risen from him, Hakkai collapsed to his knees and from there to his hands. His pulse raced under his skin, the vision refusing to slip from his mind. Instead it clung there like cat hair to a black satin shirt, marring the perfection of his mask.

Everything in him turned cold as a prickling feeling inched its way across his extremities. He felt choked and muffled, as if something was strangling him from the inside. Desperation gripped him with a toothy maw, uncovered his greatest fears, and amplified those fears before his mind’s eye. His thoughts once more turned to the same intentions he’d had when he’d met… when he’d met… His mind refused to form the coherent thought of that, refused to let him remember these things it had worked so hard to suppress through countless years of inner turmoil.

Fear built up inside of him more steadily now. It threatened to escalate and overcome even his weak, grasping train of conscious thought and overrun it with pure instinct to act.

He thought he heard himself cry out a second time, or perhaps it was the first time and he was just now realizing it.

It seemed at the very last moment, when he was right on the edge of the abyss of hopelessness, an embrace reached out for him. It grabbed him about the waist and pulled him upright. His back collided with something warm, soft, and comforting, and was held there by a pair of hands securely about his waist. His vision cleared as the warmth spread throughout him, and was shortly after fogged again by the tears he shed.

Nii’s hands wrapped about his waist - opposite hands on opposite hips, crossed over his stomach. His mind weakly stated something about an old wound there that wasn’t quiet healed, but the numbness from the warmth stopped it from settling into him. He felt Nii press his head into his shoulder, the doctor’s chin then moving to rest on the same spot.

Hakkai relaxed to the sound of the other breathing near his ear, to the rush of expelled air passing over his cheek. He let the tears flow without shame; let his body shiver as the other’s breath caused his skin to prickle where the tracks of those shed tears had been made.

For the first time in many years, with Jienyi holding him like this, he felt secure. He felt he could show all the broken pieces of his soul to this man, bare them plainly and without shame, and let the other see the things that were vastly wrong with him. He trusted he could do all of this without worry that this man would turn from him in disgust, and leave him behind to wither in his misery.

He felt like he had finally come to a place he could once again call home.

AN: Wow, this is really different than the goal I had originally set out for. Regardless of what direction Nii and Hakkai wanted to run in, I think their choices were pretty good for the story. Yes, there are lots of unanswered questions and this could probably be a bit of a cliffhanger. I mean, where’s the rest of the Sanzo-ikkou? Where the hell are Hakkai and Nii right now - Houtou, Gojyo’s apartment, some random inn? Of course, there are more important questions that need answers, but I don’t want to give anything away by asking them.

XP This is a ‘Happy Birthday Hakkai!’ piece, despite its melancholy state and the odd sensation that this could be a real angsty thing in the future.

So the pairing that’s hinted here is certainly non-canon, and certainly taking a jump, and certainly taking risks of flames and everything else, but *shrug*. My Hakkai-muse and my Nii-muse fell into each other, literally. And so I knew then I really had to write something that paired the two of them up. Surely, we’ve got a ways to go before anything like that happens, but you’re getting the hints now.

Feedback is really appreciated, but please limit your flames to once per chapter and realize that they won’t necessarily stay put. If it’s a really good flame with nice supporting details, then I might leave it for laughs later on. Your input may influence character decisions, but won’t make me stop or continue it; that kind of decision relies on the muses over here and what they want. Yes, I am controlled by my muses. But it certainly beats having to get everyone to listen to me. ^.^

If you ask questions in your feedback/review, then I will try my best to answer them come the next chapter. But keep in mind that some things just can’t be answered yet because either Nii and/or Hakkai haven’t told me, or it wouldn’t be any fun to spoil it all right away.