(Love simply because)
Chapter 2: Pieces Parts
Hakkai falls into the arms of Nii Jienyi in the unlikely circumstance that the healer becomes ill and requires medical assistance that no one else can offer. At least, that’s what Hakkai believes. Warnings: Hakkai/Nii, melancholy, mild angst, language, slightest implication of possible 5/8.
The contents of the frying pan hissed and spat angrily, the stove burner being lit far too high for the grease to simply lie placidly where it was supposed to. The whole place reeked of burnt food, for this was the fifth or sixth try at frying this morning. A pair of discarded batteries set a little too close to the stove, removed from the fire alarm after the second plate of bacon had caught fire.
“Ow, shit!” He jerked his hand from the cooking tool, and began to massage the injured limb with his other hand. Glaring at the bacon, he reached out to flick off the burner before moving away from the stove and collapsing into one of the kitchen chairs. It wasn’t like cooking was hard, it was just simply something he’d never wanted to learn how to do, let alone do for anyone. Especially when one those he was doing it for didn’t eat meat, and the other was simply a bottomless pit on two legs.
Gojyo lit a Hi-Lite that he extracted from his front vest pocket, and kicked back in the chair so his feet rested on the table. He closed his eyes, the nicotine working to calm his nerves. Releasing a breath, he could almost hear Hakkai scolding him for having his feet on the table and for smoking in the kitchen.
Angry at that thought, the redhead shifted into an upright position and allowed his boots to clatter back to the floor where they belonged, “It’s not like he’s coming back.”
“You talkin’ to yourself again?” the words were mumbled by a great yawn that came from the younger brown-haired boy, “and did ya burn sumthin’?” his face twisted as he spoke, his nose crinkling at the smell.
Goku ducked the piece of burnt bacon that was hurled at him, grinning as he grabbed a chair, flipped it around, and took a seat so he faced the table while straddling the backing.
The boy stared at Gojyo for a few moments, chewing on his lip, before he cut the silence with another question, “Hey… What did you mean by what you said earlier, Gojyo?”
“Huh?” The older man quirked an eyebrow, teeth clutched to the cigarette as he spoke.
Determination crept into his tone, golden eyes flashing with fierce hope and ignorant belief, “That he’s not coming back. He is coming back, right? We all agreed he was, remember? Sanzo even said-“
“-Shut the fuck up!” Gojyo slammed his fist on the table, standing and knocking his chair over as he did so, “Just can it you idiot! Your fucking precious ‘Sanzo-sama’ ‘s been lying through his teeth to you for the past month!”
The cigarette smoldered on the wood floor of the kitchen as Gojyo headed for the door. Goku remained at the table, staring after the angered kappa with dull confusion and an acute sense of loss pulsing through him.
The first thing that registered in Hakkai’s mind was the pleasant sensation of being warm. Muffled by sleep, his mind drifted carelessly through a realm of partial reality and half-dreams. He vaguely attempted to recall what it was that had happened to him earlier, but he simply remembered the color of white and a feeling of safety.
With a yawn too lazy to be typical, he opened his eyes and blinked away the few seconds they needed to adjust to the absence of light and sleep. He was once more in the bed, white covers pulled up around his shoulders. He carefully pushed back the comforter, pulling the underlying sheet out from under his shoulder and side before laying that one aside as well.
Sitting upright and looking around the room, he identified that it was the same room from earlier. The bed was pushed against the far wall, with a wooden table and chairs closer to the center, and a desk and chair towards the adjoining space of the far wall and the left wall. The right wall made an obtrusive corner, which broke off and led into the kitchen. He assumed that beyond the kitchen were the bathroom and the front door.
Drawn back by the chill that hung in the room’s night air, he tugged the bed sheets back around himself, turning onto his right side with his back against the warmth of the other. The situation struck him as oddly familiar; a small house with barely enough room for the furniture it held and certainly not built for two to live separately.
Another yawn cut his thoughts short, and, unsatisfied with his position in the manner of a particularly picky cat, he rolled over again to rest his head on the other’s pillow. The faintest reek of nicotine touched him, and a troubled smile faint as the dawn crept into his face. He wrapped his arms about his own shoulders, trying to suppress the sudden feeling of cold that reached down his spine and into his heart.
Hakkai woke again before the sun had managed to peek through the small curtained window above the bed. Rolling towards the side of the mattress, he slipped out from under the covers and tentatively touched the cold floor with his bare feet. With a small shiver that was less from the cold and more from the shock of being away from the sweltering confines of the bed, he stood up and headed towards the kitchen.
Despite his lack of knowledge in regards to the layout of this house, he managed to navigate around the furniture in the pre-dawn dark, through the kitchen, and to find the restroom down the hallway. He flipped the light switch in the bathroom on, balking as the tiled room was filled with artificial yellow light.
He carefully closed the door behind him, and then moved to the mirror hanging over the sink. He took a moment to straighten the crooked thing, and stared at the creature that peered back at him. His hair was mussed and stuck out at odd angles, his face strung-out across his cheek bones from lack of nutrition and the illness that had struck him. He was far too pale to be healthy, and was surprised that there were the traces of a four o’ clock shadow rising through the sides of his face.
Glancing around the bathroom, he spied a change of clothes laid out over the towel rack next to the dual shower and tub. Hakkai chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment in indecision before moving to the ceramic tub and starting the water. He tested the temperature before pulling the shower curtain across the front of the tub and switching the stream from the tub mouth to the overhead stream.
He folded his own clothes as he undressed, setting them on the edge of the sink before stepping into the shower. He made a grab for the bar of soap resting in the soap dish, rinsing it in the shower spray as he adjusted where the water was falling according to his own height. He winced as water raced over bruises he hadn’t known he’d possessed.
Hakkai took a good look at his forearms, where bruises prominently resided, having previously been covered by his long sleeves. Most of them were yellowed, though a few had turned purple and blue in places.
“Was I really that sick to have needed so many needles?” He silently questioned himself, becoming even more grateful to be alive and as able as he was.
He scrubbed away at his forearms, wanting to erase any trace amounts of the various smells that medicine carried. He bit his tongue as the soap suds burned certain puncture wounds, shoving the area under running water as soon as he could to wash away the stinging.
The shower gave him time to think, to formulate more of his own concepts of what had happened. Now he could vaguely remember being brought to Doctor Nii Jienyi for treatment of his illness. He couldn’t remember where this treatment had taken place, though he knew it wasn’t in this house. Or at least he assumed it wasn’t in this house. This place certainly didn’t seem to have the capability to keep him stabilized when the hospital hadn’t been able to.
“That’s right, there was a hospital, too.” That was nothing more than a blur of clouded memories, garbled with misplaced sounds and smells; like breaking glass and screams, like blood and gunpowder.
Lacking shampoo, he lathered the soap in his hands and massaged it into his scalp. He knew his hair smelled of cigarettes and gunpowder, which weren’t scents he wanted clinging to him if he could help it.
He stepped under the direct spray of the water to begin to rinse his hair, and was immediately tackled with a sharp pain in shoulder that caused him to yelp and step back. Hakkai looked down at his shoulder in confusion, brushing a strand of dampened, soap-filled hair out of his vision.
The skin near the top of his right shoulder was blackened around the edges of a wound, where stitches were rising out of the flesh as they looped back inside to seal up said wound. The pain rose from deep inside the wound, as if there had been bone or muscle damage.
“Where did this come from? I wasn’t bothered by it yesterday…”
He lifted his hand towards the wound to use his chi to take a better look, but was startled out of his concentration by the sound of the bathroom door opening and closing. He turned to face the shower-curtain and the shadow of a person beyond that, their footsteps muffled by the shower spray next to his ear.
“Are you alright? You really shouldn’t be moving around like this,” the voice drifted to him through the protection of the steam and the plastic curtain, and the feeling of being cornered finally gripped him. He took a step away from the curtain, stopping as his back brushed the cold stone of the wall. Goosebumps rose along his arms from the contrasting temperatures.
“Y-Yes, of course. I won’t be much longer,” he found his voice to lack body, but was grateful that at least it was able to come from him.
“Are you certain? You don’t sound well at all.”
“Yes, I’m positive, thanks,” his reply was stronger than the first one, and it surprised him that it was louder than his pounding heartbeat.
There was no vocal reply from the doctor. A few moments later the sound of water cycling through the toilet and then the wash basin running mingled with the constant drum of water from the shower head. The door opened and clicked closed again.
Hakkai released a breath, green eyes closing as his heart raced against the confines of his chest. The pain in his shoulder had been forgotten.
“What is wrong with me? There isn’t any cause for this fear. All he’s done is try to help me,” his own thoughts twisted into themselves, turning the same concept in search of a reason.
He scrubbed at his skin, heedless of the pain that seeped into his arms as he did so. There was nothing his memory could turn up despite his efforts. Absolutely no act of ill will or harm directed towards him or the others…
“Others? What others are there?”
He set the soap back in the dish attached to the ceramic wall before stepping into the direct spray of the water to rinse the blood and suds off of him. He massaged his scalp with his hands, working the soap out of his hair as he ignored the burning in his shoulder. With frustration his only success for his thoughts, Hakkai tapped the faucet head to turn off the water, stepped out of the tub and snatched a towel from off the rack.
He dried himself off, wrapping the first one about his waist and using a second towel on his hair. He didn’t bother to fold the second towel, simply allowing it to drop to the floor of the bathroom in a sopping heap.
Hakkai pulled the yellow shirt on, leaving the top unbuttoned as it was a little small for him. He straightened the collar while looking in the mirror, picking up a brush from off the countertop and running it through his hair afterwards. He dropped the towel from around his waist, slipping on the fresh pair of boxers and then the khakis.
Running a hand over the knees of the khakis to straighten out the wrinkles from being improperly folded, he sighed.
“There is no reason for my earlier reaction. I must’ve just been surprised by him.”
His self assurance failed when he opened the bathroom door to see Jienyi leaning against the door opposite the bathroom, waiting for him. Hakkai’s heart rate rose again, and he stared at the other with misplaced uncertainty.
“How does your wound look?”
Hakkai forced a smile onto his face, one of his false pretenses returning as the masks he usually wore slowly began to fall back into place.
“I hadn’t realized it looked that bad, but then again I haven’t looked at it lately. I’m sure it looks better than what it originally did.” It wasn’t necessarily that he didn’t trust the good doctor; simply that he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to know.
He assumed that his scattered memory was caused by the remnants of medication that his body needed to work out. Regardless of his physical or emotional state, he still wanted a bit of privacy while trying to put things back together.
With a polite bow of his head, he passed Nii and headed down he hall towards the kitchen. Nii’s head turned to follow Hakkai with his eyes, a pleased smile on his face. Nii moved into the bathroom once Hakkai was around the corner and out of sight, picking up after the healer before going to find another change of clothes for himself.
The sound of eggs crackling over a frying pan could be heard as Hakkai subconsciously made breakfast for four instead of the two servings he had intended.
AN: Wow… Bunny Love just had to come on while I was writing the shower scene, didn’t it? Doesn’t help much that Sei mei sen… Something on my mind was right before it, and I didn’t even realize it.
This one took a good bit longer to write than I expected, simply because there’s so much I didn’t want to simply give away. We still haven’t seen our dear hoshi-sama cherry-chan Sanzo-kun yet, and don’t think he’s getting away so easily as to not show his face.
I do know where it’s supposed to be going, don’t worry, and I do have what happened previous written down and what’s intended for the future, more or less. It’s just a winding road to reach those goals.
I do apologize if anyone’s waiting for that rating to actually kick in, but it wouldn’t work too well if I simply jumped to that, would it? Would kind of spoil all the tension between them, or maybe start things we don’t want to happen.
T: I do indeed plan to answer as many of those questions as is plausible. I do hope that this opening gives you a little bit of a glimpse into what’s going on, and I was honestly writing it long before EftW had gotten the first chapter up. Convenient how that works, isn’t it? I’m glad you’re interested, and I hope I can keep that interest. ^.^