Gensomaden Saiyuki Fan Fiction ❯ Unburied ❯ Chapter 1

“Unburied”
By Viridian5
4/9/05

RATING: R; Gojyo/Hakkai. If m/m interaction bothers you, pass this by.
SPOILERS: Saiyuki vol. 5. Based on events in Saiyuki: Reload vol. 4’s “Burial ‘Goyjo & Hakkai’” but could be read without it.
SUMMARY: Gojyo and Hakkai struggle for understanding.
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as you ask me first.
FEEDBACK: can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com.
DISCLAIMERS: All things Saiyuki belong to Kazuya Minekura. No infringement intended.

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“Unburied”
By Viridian5
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“Home sweet hovel,” I murmured as everything really started to hurt and I sat at the table.

“Mmm,” Hakkai answered as he set the two battered umbrellas in their place. Almost everything had a place since he’d come to live here.

He’d beaten some of the thugs with those two umbrellas, then taken off his limiters and gone full youkai to take out the rest. While I was lying tied up on the floor like some damsel in distress. A guy’s ego could suffer.

“I really did go with them to try to keep you out of it and safe,” I said. “Instead, you got into it and saved my ass. I hate that.”

Hakkai smiled a little, one of the real ones I think. “We could have an equitable exchange of ass-saving.”

“I guess that’s fair.”

“Are you stiffening up?”

“They didn’t beat me that bad, and I’m tough. I just ache a little. I’ll apply a cold can of beer to the worst spots.”

He got that stern schoolmaster look on his face. I would not admit to enjoying that look or the voice that went with it as he said, “Gojyo.”

“I’m fine.” Tough and manly! I suffer in noble silence! I’m feeling embarrassed that I had to be saved by my mild-mannered roommate!

My mild-mannered roommate, the one who really was trying to put his past as the guy who killed a thousand youkai and half his village behind him.

But, you know, he’d come for me, for me, while Banri had skipped off to leave me to die for his sins just as I figured he would because that’s what people did: they used you and skipped out on you when they didn’t need you anymore. Or Jien sacrificed so much to protect me, then finally killed our mother and couldn’t deal with it and left me. I didn’t want to be protected like that, not by anyone.

But this was different, and I didn’t know how.

Shit. This was why I avoided deep thinking. You got into tangles and knots doing it. No benefit to it.

“A doctor should look at you,” Hakkai said.

“It’s too late at night for a doctor. This is piddling stuff.” My mother used to hurt me worse.

“Then... I would like to take a look at your injuries. Just to make sure that they’re not worse than you think and need immediate attention. Please take off your shirt.” He said it cool as you please with that light look on his face like it meant nothing, the look he wore most of the time.

He was like some dark pool or something. Looking at his surface, you didn’t see anything move. It looked calm. But if you fell in, you might never hit bottom and you saw all this stuff going on underneath. Sometimes, willingly or not, I took a dip and saw something.

“Hakkai! I never knew.”

“You won’t distract me.”

I went around shirtless or almost shirtless all the time. No big deal. I’m comfortable in my own skin, thank you. “Fine.” I took off my shirt and tried not to twitch as he stood behind me where I couldn’t see him. I jumped when he touched a sore spot.

“They threw you to the floor more than once, didn’t they?” Such a light voice.

“You don’t have to rub it in.” I felt hot breath at the back of my neck. Was he crouching down for a better look at something?

“Gojyo, when I returned tonight and you hadn’t returned, I had a bad feeling about you.”

Which sounded like nothing until I remembered him hating himself for not somehow feeling that his sister/lover was in trouble when the youkai came for her. Unknowing, he played with his students. Coming home to find her gone and the apartment ransacked had been the shock of his life. So him saying that he had a feeling about me when he hadn’t felt anything about her was big. Maybe too big for him to handle. Definitely too big for me to handle, because what the hell did it mean?

“Nah. I left with some rough guys, and you were suspicious of them from the start.”

“You spend your days and nights with rough people. If I worried every time I thought you might be in rough company I’d spend my entire life in anxiety. You could have simply stayed out late at cards, drink, and women, as you tend to do. Yet I knew you were in trouble.”

“And that you had to come to help me?” That still surprised me.

“Eventually I came to that conclusion.”

“Funny guy.” Scary guy.

He had a light touch. The spots he brushed hurt a bit more at first, then less than before. Yeah, my spine had taken the brunt of my falls to the floor more than once.

I could feel him staring at me, and it made my shoulders twitch. Made other body parts twitch too, which worried me. I’m a ladies man. What I did with a few guys in the far distant past couldn’t be called sex. “Business” or “survival” made better descriptions. My interests didn’t run that way, no matter how pretty the face, no matter that at least half the town figured that Hakkai and I were already fucking and Banri had taken one good look at Hakkai and decided that I’d started playing for the other team. I was just having an instinctive reaction to being stared at, touched, and breathed on.

I wished I could see Hakkai’s face, as if that would make a difference. Would his pleasant mask break to show lust if he felt it?

I would give a lot to see that.

Hakkai’s light touch brushed my shoulders. “I’ve been denying certain truths or overlooking them in the hopes that they would go away.”

“That makes it easier to get through life.”

“Not really. Ignoring truth just makes it fester. You knew that Banri would betray you in an instant yet ignored it and continued to be friendly with him.”

“I never had much choice in associates.”

Hakkai’s fingertips went still on my skin. That made me shiver when the caressing hadn’t? “I suppose.”

“It was kind of funny seeing you almost break him in half earlier today.”

“He upset me.”

“I couldn’t imagine.”

“Having left you to die in his place, he should hope his path never crosses mine again.” Light voice again.

Hakkai might kill or break Banri. He could be so dangerous with or without the limiters. His youkai form didn’t scare me, having been raised by youkai and being half myself. I remembered the vine-like pattern his skin had showed and thought it was very attractive. Small, rounded ears and blunt fingers still didn’t look as natural to me, and human women still seemed more exotic. The power and rage Hakkai had that way didn’t scare me either, even though he didn’t seem to entirely control them.

Lots of people figured I didn’t have any sense.

“He was a bad influence on you,” Hakkai said, sounding almost amused.

“Hey, it was a pleasant drunken haze.”

“For the whole time you hung out with him?”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t see where this was heading, but I felt some wicked undercurrents.

“But I was... jealous of Banri. You were so easy with him.”

While Hakkai and I had been uneasily dancing around each other, especially lately, the tension so thick between us I could barely breathe. “That’s ‘cause Banri didn’t mean anything to me, just like I didn’t mean anything to him. There’s no reason to be jealous.”

Then I realized what I’d just implied. From the way his hand suddenly clenched on my shoulder, Hakkai might have realized too. Hurt, surprised, I made a small sound of pain that I wished I could take back.

“I’m-- Is that what it was?” Hakkai murmured, then he put his arms around my neck and settled his chin on top of my head, rubbing it against my hair, which felt good and like something I really wanted. A while back I’d chopped off my hair after Sanzo had told me that Hakkai was dead, and how many hints did I need about my feelings when I did that in mourning for someone I barely knew?

Me, the ladies man. Heh. ‘Sucker” was more like it. Or maybe “moron.” Then again, how would I recognize love without having it rubbed in my face first? Hadn’t had much experience with it.

And falling for this guy in particular was another mistake on my part, because Hakkai’s sister would always come between us. How could I compete with dead, martyred perfection, the woman Hakkai had killed over a thousand people for? She hadn’t even been dead all that long, not to a guy who’d obsessed over her enough to do the kind of damage he’d done in her name.

He cooked, cleaned, and killed for me. I didn’t need it, but I should take it and be content. Besides, it would be better if he didn’t share my feelings. Really. That way, I wouldn’t have to change my life any more at all.

The hug sure felt nice, though. If he wanted to hug me whenever, I could be content with that, I guess.

“What did you intend to do next?” he asked lightly, his voice soft as shadow.

“Maybe have a beer, then take a shower and go to sleep.”

“On the futon?”

“Yeah. I haven’t slept in my bed since I brought this injured guy home and put him in it. You might know him.” I got tempted sometimes to crawl in next to him because it was my bed, but I usually came home late and reeking and didn’t want to wake him. Besides, sometimes I didn’t feel up to showering first before flopping down wherever. And he smelled like soap and tea amidst the clean sheets. I never wanted to, I dunno, dirty him.

Right now we both smelled of blood and sweat. Better than the blood and entrails thing he had going the night I first met him.

“There’s room for you in it,” he said.

Whoa. “Yeah?”

“After we take a shower.”

His dead sister might not be as big a stumbling block as I thought. “Just ‘a’ shower for the both of us?”

“I doubt there would be enough hot water for two showers.”

So practical, such a crock of bullshit. Hakkai spent so much time showing an “oh dear” and “pardon me” nature that you could forget how the guy could move when he wanted to do something. You usually didn’t see it coming until after it had already happened.

“Damn, you move fast,” I said. Stealthy too.

“Is it a problem?” he murmured into my hair.

“I have no problems.” Aside from him seeing how excited I was, but he’d been around town enough to get the rumors that I was like that a lot of the time, so it should be okay. Then again, he might like the idea. “You’ll have to let go of me.” A shame, that. But I was stiffening up a bit from getting knocked around.

“Of course,” he answered with that little “ha ha ha, how silly of me” air he sometimes did. When he let go and moved away, I felt cold.

As we went in and stripped, I just about choked on the tension, just as I’d been choking on it for most of the time since Cho Gonou had died and come back to live with me as Cho Hakkai. This didn’t have the usual slow, lazy pleasure of sexual tension, because I always had a feeling that I knew where that would end up. This was completely unpredictable. He was.

I didn’t want to look too far down but too far up would lead me to his face, which I didn’t think I could take, so my eyes ended up settling on his scar. It had healed pretty well, considering, but it would be ugly for the rest of his life. When somebody ripped you up bad enough to send your guts gushing out, it tended to leave a mark.

“You’re looking at me,” he said, sounding amused.

Good. This was all too serious. “You’re not looking at me? I’m insulted.”

“I’m... looking at your mouth.”

“Wanna get a closer look?”

“Perhaps.” But he took off his glasses.

I suspected that he didn’t really need them, since he’d done just fine without them for the first month I’d known him and one of his eyes wasn’t real now anyway, a prosthetic replacement for the one Drama Boy had ripped out himself, something he better never do again. Maybe Gonou had needed glasses when he’d still been human but becoming youkai had changed that.

Maybe Hakkai didn’t know who and what he was yet and wanted to model himself off the Gonou he used to be before everything had happened. Saving my ass the way he had must have been a big setback to that.

“Hakkai....”

He smiled a little. “I feel dirty, Gojyo. I think a shower is necessary.”

Dirty and useless, Sanzo had called us. “Me too. Not so useless, though, huh?”

“Not at all. I would like you to see a real doctor tomorrow. We can add the cost to the bill we’ll give Sanzo for services rendered.” Being flirty, malicious, and openly assertive just made him sexier.

“Fine. I’ll let some doctor poke me.” As long as Hakkai poked me first and oh damn was I glad I didn’t actually say that because that line was terrible even for me. And did I really want that?

Maybe, with the right persuasion. Probably not tonight after all the ass-kicking I’d taken.

My shower stall was tiny and didn’t put out that much water, which conveniently forced people to be really cozy with each other to actually wash. Made it practical. Kind of like enforced foreplay. Got rid of the awkwardness of who should start off.

I hadn’t felt awkward about sex in forever.

But in the middle of sex, with a willing partner, I stopped having trouble. He felt good to me, firm and healthy under my hands and lips, steady and sure as he touched me back. I missed the softness a woman would have but not much. He wasn’t shy or freaking out, so how could I be? He seemed kind of... relieved. Everything felt so much less tense now.

“I may be too close to see your mouth now,” Hakkai murmured lightly into my ear before he nipped it.

“I’m fine with how close you are.”

While I was just stroking him, working him up, he was actually lathering me up with his soap as he did me. Dammit, I found the scent of his soap sexy? I really had been a clueless moron, but that didn’t matter much now as we kissed and stroked and rubbed against each other. Some worldly monk once told me that it was best to stop dwelling on past mistakes and move on with what’s now. I got the feeling that he didn’t follow his own advice too well but that didn’t make it bad advice.

What’s now was Hakkai murmuring my name, low and breathy and wanting, between kisses as we made each other feel good. I preferred that to the past, no contest.

He came first with his eyes closed and a look of such bliss on his face that I had to kiss him and come myself. We sort of wrapped around and leaned on each other under the spray after that, tired after everything and relaxed.

Then the water turned ice cold and we both girly-screamed and jumped out to get away. Way to ruin a moment. I turned to ask him if he felt okay about all of this, but he had this look of rueful amusement on his face that made me grin and hand him a towel instead.

“Your bed awaits,” Hakkai said.

“Yeah, my bed. ‘Bout time I got some time in it.”

“It wasn’t my fault that you hadn’t been.”

He might even have been right about that, considering how willing he’d been through all the molesting. This was me not dwelling on the past.

It felt good lying next to him under the sheets, maybe a little too intimate, maybe a little too much to do every night, but otherwise good. Perv that I am, one part of me wanted to pull him closer and see what round two would be like, but the rest of my battered body successfully told my dick to shut up by putting me to sleep.

I woke up with somebody. Shit. Must have stayed too long, fallen too deeply asleep. But that kind of looked like my ceiling, just without the peeling bits dangling.

That was my ceiling, fixed. This was my place, my bed, uh, new sheets, and my roommate lying naked next to me. I recognized the nape of Hakkai’s neck immediately. That I could recognize him just by the nape of his neck said all kinds of things about me.

Instead of thinking about that, I just grabbed him by the shoulder and said, “Please tell me that you didn’t fix my fucking ceiling during the month when you were supposed to be resting because your guts had recently fallen out.” Keeping it light and “we’re still roomies,” just in case he woke up horrified at what we’d done. If he wanted to forget anything happened, I could make believe too.

But he looked amused and a little vague, kind of dreamy. Still in the afterglow, like. Not regretful, thankfully. “I... didn’t?”

“Tch. I can’t take my eye off you for a moment. Not that watching you is such a chore.”

He looked more awake now, almost predatory. “Really.” His expression now just about said, “And what else will you be doing to me?”

I had things to prove to his expression. Not that that was such a chore. Grinning, I reached for him and... ow. Ow! Damn!

“Oh, Gojyo. We’ll go see the doctor. It’s for your own good.”

Might as well, especially if being injured got in the way of my sex life. “And yours.”

“And mine.” Hakkai smiled a little. “And we’ll charge it to Sanzo. Then, perhaps, we could return home and make sure you’re in good working order.”

“I could get used to doing that.”

  ***********************THE END**********************

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