sexy_sha | (no subject)

(no subject)

Hakkai thought he was dead.

Gojyo tore thought the Hotel, hunting down every place he thought Hakkai might go. The big library, the small library, the library with all the books bound in green. The really big library. The gardens. The other gardens. His room. Hakkai's old room. Sanzo's room. Bars 1-63.

Nothing.

Hakkai had already killed him once, and now Hakkai thought he was dead. As angry as Gojyo had been at the way Hakkai had treated him, that was nothing in the face of the possibility that Hakkai might hurt himself... or worse. What would he do if he thought Gojyo was gone for good? And what would Sanzo do in response?

As the days ticked by Gojyo grew increasingly frantic in his search, running up one hall and down the next until he collapsed more than once. "All right!" he shouted at last, leaning against the wall in the middle of an empty hallway, dripping with sweat and out of breath from his search. "All right, you fucker, you win. You want us to screw? We'll screw. Just let me find him."

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"I would prefer not to count."

So he knew. He was the one that Hakkai had watched bleed out into the snow. It had been someone else he hadn't been able to save. The memories were still far too fresh in Hakkai's mind for comfort.

He remained silent until the rest of his groceries were put away, then turned to take in the sight of that familiar redhead sitting on the edge of his neatly made bed.

"... you remember everything, then."

He could still remember the feel of the cold knife blade ripping through his wrists. It almost itched, that memory, deep down almost in the bone itself. Unconsciously, he rubbed over the spot with his thumb.

"This is gettin' to be a habit," he chuckled wryly, trying not to let his horror show. Hakkai looked... fuck, he didn't have a big enough vocabulary to describe how he looked. Really really bad didn't even begin to cover it. He should have been faster. He should have made his deal with the Hotel sooner. He should have...

"An' I've got this shit monk always telling me about attachments an' shit. As much as I don't want to do anythin' he says, I think I'm gonna quit this habit for a bit, whaddya say?"

The motion caught Hakkai's attention, his green eyes flicking to follow it. It made him stiffen a bit as he thought back to how it had felt in the snow. Cold... still so damned cold.

Forcing his gaze away from the motion of Gojyo's thumb, he idly scanned the room as if looking to see if anything was out of place.

"I'm certain he's not too happy with me right now. I left without saying a word to him."

Following Hakkai's eye, Gojyo quickly snatched his hand away, cramming it into the pocket of his jeans. Fuck. So much for not giving Hakkai any reminders.

"Yeah? Fuck that guy, it's what he deserves." Had there always been so many sex toys on that shelf? Not just the usually neon jelly dildos either, but cuffs and gags and floggers and all kinds of... accessories. Gojyo didn't seem to notice.

"He made you sleep on th'floor because he didn't want to be alone. Bastard's worse at holdin' on than any of us are. He can deal."

It was, but each time Hakkai tried to clear it off, more of the toys just appeared when he wasn't looking, each new set a little more perverse. He'd stopped even trying after the fifth reappearance. It just wasn't worth the time.

Shrugging, he shuffled off towards the little fridge and bent to retrieve a beer. Without really looking as he stood back up, he tossed the beer towards the redhead, knowing it was what he'd prefer.

"I really don't care anymore."

Gojyo caught the can with ease, holding it loosely in his lap as he waited for the agitation to settle out. Hakkai was even harder to read than usual, and it was really starting to get worrysome.

"About Sanzo?"

Of course he was hard to read. He wasn't himself. He hadn't been for days.

Sighing, he reached up to rub at the back of his neck and for a moment, he let his weariness show.

"He's someone else I'll lose. I can't have that happen anymore. It's easier if I just don't entertain such attachment..."

Someone else? But... but he always came back. If he was even who Hakkai had been thinking of.

"That sounds an awful lot like you're givin' up," Gojyo quipped, trying for a light, joking tone. "Think you're takin' this non-attachment thing a little too far there, Hakkai!"

Gojyo's tone didn't even shift Hakkai's expression, not that he really had one in the first place. He hadn't even put on his usual smile, which was a sure sign of something being not quite right.

"Perhaps I am giving up. I really don't know anymore. I came back in from the snow that day and I felt... lost. More alone than I had since I lost Kanan. I don't even remember how I made it back to Sanzo's room after that."

When he'd seen Hakkai alive and... and alive, he'd thought that things would be fine. But this? This was far, far worse than he'd imagined. This wasn't Hakkai's familiar smile-while-bleeding pose. No, this was coldly logical.

And Gojyo was so fucking tired of cold.

"But you know it's not real." He didn't even bother with smiles and joking tones - this was far too serious a subject to fuck around with, and he didn't want to risk being misunderstood. "Whether this place makes me a ghost or a fucking kappa or makes me my mom's caretaker for the better part of a decade, you know that none of it's real. You know this."

Maybe that's what this place really was. Maybe it didn't care about the sex so much as hope. Maybe it ate that hope right out of you until there wasn't anything left. If that was the case, then Hakkai was in ever more real danger than any of them knew.

"It's not real?"

That blank expression curled in on itself, shifting into a frown before Hakkai pushed away from the wall and started towards Gojyo. There was no real malice in his step or stance, but there was something aggressive and not quite kind in it, like a cornered animal trying to make its last stand.

"Not real? The blood I had to wash from my hands seemed real enough. The bruises you left on my face were real enough. I was ill after you were a kappa, thanks to you snacking on my liver. That was real. Your mother molesting me while I tried to heal her? That seemed quite real as well."

By now, he was standing over Gojyo, eyes boring into him as if daring him to suggest otherwise.

"I looked for you. After you left. Every day, I looked for you. Then, one day, Sanzo came back to the room smelling of you and sex. I know, we're not 'married' so I have no real claim, but I won't deny that that was the first time I felt truly jealous. After that, you still didn't return, so I stopped looking. I stopped hoping. I just stopped."

He might have come looking for Hakkai out of concern, and he might even have wanted to make peace, but Gojyo would never back down when cornered. Meeting Hakkai's glare with his own, he raised his right hand so that Hakkai could clearly see his bare forearm.

"You see any scars there?" And of course there weren't any... at least, none but the old familiar ones, faded to a pearly grey-pink. "I cut to th'bone on this side, halfway down my arm." And t had hurt, god, so badly. The blade had been so cold, and then the wound itself had pounded with heat, throbbing with his pulse. "You see any cuts?"

The motion pulled Hakkai's attention down to the smooth skin of his offered arm and for a moment, the urge rose to move his hand and slide his fingers along the skin he knew would be warm. Green eyes lingered there for a long, silent moment before he dragged it away and off into the room in general. The proof wasn't there, but it was still so damn vivid in his mind...

"... if nothing is real, then how can I be sure that you are?"

It hadn't been real, but it had felt like it. Gojyo knew as well as Hakkai how hard it was to shake the feeling off. It had only been a few days, but it had felt like ten years alone in that house, caring for his mother. Ten years of hard labor, of hard words, of never being touched except in anger.

His skin crawled with the need for contact and so without letting himself think bout whether or not it was a good idea he reached up and caught Hakkai's arm, pressing his palm to Gojyo's bare and unmarked forearm.

It's whole, see? It was just an illusion. She died, like she was supposed to, and I never cut myself. It wasn't real.

"I dunno," he admitted at last. If you couldn't trust your own memories, what could you trust? "Do you want me t'be here? You want this to be real?"

The one thing all their experiences had in common (as far as Gojyo knew)... the Hotel had never changed them for the better. Could they use that as a metric? If it was good, it was real? Could they really trust that?

It felt like a trap, but nothing else made sense. "'Cause lemme tell you, I sure as hell didn't want t'be suckin' your guts out your ass."

The contact made his fingers twitch. He was right... Gojyo was so warm. He always was. Right then, he wanted nothing more than to wrap that warmth around him and bask in it, all along, for as long as he could manage. It almost surpassed want and headed straight to need, not that he would admit such a thing.

He didn't need. He didn't.

Without thought, he let his fingers slide along Gojyo's warm forearm before he stilled them, fingertips pressing against his pulse.

"... what do you want?"

That was the $64k question, wasn't it? What did he want? To not get turned into a thousand creepy versions of himself would be a good start. To go back to China and finish their mission -- he was supposed to die there, on the road, trying to save the world, not here. Not in the snow, in the cold.

He wanted Hakkai to stop looking like somebody was jumping on his grave, and for Sanzo to never have to be anywhere near a fuck-or-die room and for Goku to never find out where they'd been trapped and he wanted Dokugaku to live through the upcoming fight and he wanted all the pretty girls he'd met so far to ind nice boys to settle down with and he wanted Hakkai to never let go of his arm and he wanted those fingers elsewhere and he wanted to be able to touch Hakkai without it being the Hotel's fault and he wanted...

...he wanted...

Hakkai.

Wrapping his long fingers around the curve of Hakkai's hip, Gojyo rubbed the ball of his thumb just over the very edge of the bulge of Hakkai's dick. He'd let Schuldig fuck him (don't think about it, don't) and he'd turned Hakkai away. It was only fair that he offer Hakkai the same he'd given up to the mindreading asshole.

"Can I start with this?"

What if Hakkai wanted something more than fair?

The moment Gojyo's touch turned sexual, the fingers sliding along his skin stilled. In the back of his mind, he knew his body would want it. Hell, he wanted it, but he was still chilled to the core and he wasn't sure he'd ever thaw out again, even with Gojyo touching him.

The coaxing touch pulled his gaze down to rest on Gojyo's scars and for a moment, another memory rose in the back of his mind and made his stomach twist before he forced his green eyes back to meet crimson.

"... why? Why do you what that from me?"

Why did he want sex? What a crazy question! Sex was sex, and it was...

But this was a place where he and Hakkai saw things differently, wasn't it? Hakkai thought it was just sex (which sickened Gojyo's stomach. The best he had to offer, being dismissed as "just" anything), so how could Gojyo explain how much more it meant to him?

Frowning, he weighed his words carefully before replying.

"When I try to say stuff, important stuff, it usually comes out wrong." His thumb stroked over the edge of Hakkai's dick again, pressing a little more forcefully against the heavy cloth. "This, I don't get wrong. I touch you, an' you respond, and I understand what you want, and you know what I want. There's no words gettin' in th'way."

The conversation was verging on too deep for him to handle, but he pressed on a little further anyway. "It's not just sex... and I swear t'god, Cho Hakkai, if you laugh at me for this I'm gonna kick your ass until it's a whole new shape."

Hakkai dealt in words. Words were something he could mold into another facet of his mask and that just made hiding easier. What he wanted... what he needed was more. He needed someone to be there; to keep him from thinking too deep or too hard. He needed someone to be there when his thoughts turned darker than they should.

He knew what he needed. The physical, while amazing, was fleeting. Hakkai needed someone to ground him.

There was no laughter in that guarded gaze that watched him. It was almost calm, but still far too wary. Before he could even think, he absently licked at his lips before breaking their locked gazes.

"And how do you know that the way a body responds is the truth? Around here, that can be easily influenced."

"Yeah, I've noticed," Gojyo replied dryly. His thumb never stilled, stroking gently back and forth over Hakkai's cock. It wasn't a touch meant to arouse, though... not really. It was more of a caress than anything else, soft and soothing. At least, that was the intent.

But, fuck. How to say what he meant? Making him use words to explain how he wasn't good with words was a hell of a thing to do to a guy.

"But we're not always gettin' dosed with fuck gas, right? Sometimes, when I touch you, you respond because you want to." His mouth quirked off to the side in a self-mocking little grin. "Okay, I'm pretty sure that's why. Ninety percent sure."

Such gentle stroking was something Hakkai wasn't used to. It had been so long since anyone touched him gently. Even the time he'd spent with Sanzo had been edged with almost desperate temper, barring the coaxing kisses he'd pulled from their blonde companion.

He could argue that it was just a natural reaction, or the drugs that seemed to be a habitual add on to daily life in the hotel. It would be so easy to say that's all it was, but he really did his best to keep from lying to Gojyo. After all, of anyone, the redhead knew more about him than anyone else.

Sighing, he fought back the urge to slide his fingers through Gojyo's hair.

"... you're right."

"I'm sorry," Gojyo chuckled, swirling the ball of his thumb over the thick root of Hakkai's cock. "I didn't quite catch that. You want t'say it again?"

Sighing, Hakkai stepped back and glanced away. The teasing grated on his already raw nerves. He didn't want to play like that, even if it was Gojyo's way. Maybe once his mind was settled again and he had a little more sleep to smooth away the dark shadows under his eyes and in the back of his mind, then he could quip back with his usual teasing smile.

Not now, though.

Fuck. ...See? He speaks, and it all falls apart.

Tapping his cigarette out (it had turned into one long column of ash, Gojyo quickly lit another off the butt end, eyes never turning from Hakkai's face.

"So what about you?" he asked, once his smoke was lit. He crushed the butt out cold in the bedside ashtray and perched the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Hakkai had accused him of hiding behind his smokes, and he needed to smoke... but at least he could do what he could to stop it from being his focus.

See, Hakkai? He does listen. And he does try.

"What do you want?"

What a question.

Hakkai wanted so much. He wanted to see his home one more time,e ven if he knew that the mission they'd all been sent on would mean his death in the end. If it happened, it was alright, as long as he was with the people that mattered the most to him. He wanted his companions to be safe and be able to return to their own homes after they were done. He wanted to spend lazy mornings in bed with his best friend, and cold evenings playing cards with his companions. He wanted the perfect cup of tea and the chance to savor it, then follow it was cheap beer and a good long fuck.

He wanted so damn much.

Reaching up to scrub long fingers through his own hair, he closed his eyes and moved to sit next to Gojyo.

"I want to believe you're really here with me and I want you to stay if it's true."