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kinkfest
Title: The Empty Hours
Author: opalmatrix
Fandom: Saiyuki
Warnings: Some disturbing imagery (Hakkai POV, so no big surprise there)
Rating: PG-13/T
Word count: 1972
Pairing(s): Gojyo/Hakkai
Spoilers: Nothing much
Notes: Prompt - Saiyuki, Gojyo/Hakkai: domesticity (without a relationship), longing, UST - It was at night, especially, that he missed Gojyo the most, when it felt as though his scars might break open and consume him if he was alone. This is set after the Burial arc. Beta by smillaraaq and lady_ganesh.
Summary: There's so much to do during every day. At night, however, it is quite another matter.
Hakkai was always up at dawn, or shortly afterward. In an old house, even a small one, there was always plenty to do. And the dust from the road nearby didn't help, of course. He swept the floor, every day, and dry-mopped it. Every other day, he damp-mopped it, and once a week, he scrubbed it properly: down on his knees with a bucket of soapy water, with floor cloths to take up the dirty water and dry the floor afterward. The dusting had to be done regularly, or it would get away from him entirely, and the better pieces of wooden furniture needed to be waxed and polished on a proper schedule. The curtains had to be taken down and washed monthly, and of course, there was the regular laundry: his sheets, and Gojyo's from the old sofa, and their clothes, and the dishcloths, and the towels from both bath and kitchen.
In the late morning, he would start cooking Gojyo's breakfast. (He himself had already had a frugal meal of leftovers hours before.) Sometimes it was a Western-style meal of fried eggs and toast with butter, but on other days, he prepared miso soup, rice with furikake (it should have been umeboshi, but Gojyo didn't like them), and a rolled omelet or a bit of grilled fish. When things were going especially well, he made dumplings and buns filled with meat or vegetables, or sesame seeds and sugar. There was always tea, of course: a full pot of it, usually green, but sometimes - especially in cold weather - he made Chinese Oolong or even Indian tea with spices.
When Gojyo was finished eating, there were the dishes to do. Often he persuaded Gojyo to dry them, and he felt a certain quiet pride that sometimes, nowadays, he didn't even need to ask. Perhaps they would play a few hands of cards together afterward. When Gojyo was settled for the day - possibly with some repair task, often just with his magazines or his cards and a nap later on - Hakkai would go out to give Goku his lessons and do the day's marketing. Then there was dinner. Although it was usually just the two of them, Hakkai always prepared a proper meal, with meat or fish, and fresh rice, and starters or side dishes: vegetables, homemade pickles, dumplings. Sometimes he even made sweets afterward: steamed sponge cake, cookies, almond pudding, or (especially if Sanzo and Goku were visiting) fresh fruit fritters in hot syrup.
And then, unless they had guests, he would bid Gojyo a smiling goodbye, and the man who had saved his life and his sanity would head off to the gambling house, where he would earn their living by playing cards or maybe mahjong - and drink beer and maybe liquor, and smoke a full pack of cigarettes, and often take some young woman to bed for a few hours.
He almost always came home again before dawn.
After Gojyo had left, Hakkai would do the dishes slowly. He could actually wash and dry them quite rapidly, but it helped to have something to occupy his hands. His mind was free to wander, of course, and that was the problem. He had realized, quite early on in his tenure as Gojyo's housemate, that Gojyo's absence was impossible to ignore. How could a lack of a person be something so solid and tangible? And yet it so: the lack of Gojyo's presence was a looming mass in the little house.
Of course, it was all in his mind. Hakkai knew that. The clever brain that had allowed him to finish high school at sixteen and his teacher's course at college the very next year went rogue without something to keep it busy. With nothing but memory and the persistent scent of Gojyo's skin musk and smoke (so much easier to detect than it would have been when Hakkai was still human), Hakkai's mind could conjure the very image of Gojyo's lanky form, the swell of muscle at the top of each arm, and the wiry sinew below, tapering to blossom at the bony wrists into large, clever, gentle hands. The long, long legs of which Gojyo was so proud, and the strangely delicate bones of his feet, with their long toes and the soles hardened by a lifetime of cheap shoes or none at all. The hollow belly ridged with muscle, the flat, hard plates of his chest, and his long neck, in which the complexity of tendons and cartilage showed clearly through the tanned skin of his throat. The sweet vulnerability of the back of that neck, revealed by the parting of the long, richly red hair, and turning again, Gojyo's long, strong jaw, his generous mouth, the straight and noble line of his nose, his elegant cheekbones, the one marked with the twin scars that belied Gojyo's apparent ease with life. And finally those eyes, those deeply red eyes, two pools of wine in which ... .
Hakkai almost dropped the second teacup onto the hard surface of the drainboard as his fingers curled. There was no reason, no reason to think of his friend in this way. Hakkai was a man who had loved one woman and lost her; Gojyo was a man who enjoyed one woman after another for a day or three and seemed immune to anything more enduring. There was no chance that Gojyo would ... .
He had to finish the dishes. He washed each spoon, each chopstick with care, and dried everything completely and put each thing where it belonged. He folded the rest of the wash that he had brought in earlier in the day, put all the linens in the cupboard and the clothes in the battered dresser. He fluffed his pillow and turned down the sheets, set out his pajamas, and made a mental note to buy more toothpaste next time he went to town. Then he made up Gojyo's bed on the couch and checked that the light over the front steps had not burned out, so that Gojyo would not trip when he came home drunk, as he usually did.
There were his accountancy books, and a book on anatomy that the doctor in town had let him borrow. But the columns of figures that he meticulously copied from the pages of exercises were interrupted by a sudden memory of Gojyo's laugh, and the anatomical diagrams gave him disturbing thoughts of opening Gojyo up and folding himself inside, so that they could never, ever be parted. Hakkai buried his face in his hands. He had never thought of himself as normal, but surely there were limits?
Ten o'clock came as a relief, but only because it meant that he could occupy himself with another set of tasks: washing up, brushing his teeth, stripping and putting his clothes into the laundry basket, putting on his pajamas. He checked the porch light one more time, turned off all the lights but one in the main room, and shut the bedroom door and got into bed.
He made himself read a chapter in the literary novel that the school principal had recommended, although it might have been a list of hardware prices from the way it held his attention. And then he put his bookmark precisely between the pages, set the book on the bedside table, and turned off the lamp.
The room was dark and quiet and cool. A tiny thread of moonlight showed between the curtains. Hakkai put his hands behind his head, elbows fanned out to each side, and stared at the ceiling. There was the water stain shaped like a fish, and the one shaped like a lotus leaf. There was the crack that was approximately eight inches long, and the one that was only three and a half. He closed his eyes. And on the inside of his eyelids, Gojyo stepped from the shower - he had not bothered to close the door - and water dripped down his back and trickled between the twin mounds of his firm buttocks ... .
He gasped and clutched his own hair, grateful for the pain that brought him back to himself. He ran his palms over his face, over his chest. This was real, this was all, there was no red-haired lover who would stroke him like this - No! Not again! On his belly, he could feel the hard roughness of his scar through his pajamas. He knew what it looked like without looking: it was reddish and dull pink and brown, twisted, ridged like a river bed left dried in the sun after a particularly bad storm. That was him: he was that scar. It should break open, spread wide, roll back and apart and enfold him, hide him away, make him a part of itself, ugly and hard and insensitive, so that he should never feel this longing, this hunger, this need for what he could never have from the man who had already given him so much more than a sinner such as himself deserved.
His heart was beating loudly - pounding, in fact. There was no need for it: why did he even have a heart? But it reminded him of breathing, and of breathing exercises. Sanzo said ... Sanzo would be disappointed in him if he died. And Goku would miss him.
And what would Gojyo do, if Hakkai left him - again? Not even a lump of useless flesh could do that to such a loving, giving friend.
He gathered up the last tatters of his will and breathed in, and out again. Who would have thought it was so hard to take a breath? Even an insect could breathe; even a worm. He counted his breaths, slowly, so slowly: one, two, three ... seven hundred and fifty-eight. There: there were footsteps on the path, coming from the road, up the steps, at the door.
And suddenly the empty hell of the little house was full of life: the thump of Gojyo's boots as he dropped them on the mat, the click as he turned off the light in the kitchen, his uneven steps as he crossed the floor to the sofa. Hakkai rolled out of bed, stiff and sore as though he had fought something far more substantial than his own thoughts, and opened the bedroom door.
Gojyo looked up from the sofa, the whites of his eye gleaming faintly in the darkness. He smelled of many flavors of smoke, of sweat, and of sex and cheap perfume. "Hey," he said, and he sounded glad to see Hakkai.
Hakkai leaned against the door jamb, exhausted and jealous and soothed all at once. "How did it go?"
"Good. Real good. Tomorrow, let's go get that wok you wanted. And those new quilts that Tongei had in th' window." And his smile was sweet and beautiful, even in the dimness of the room.
"Really? That well?"
Gojyo's eyes were already falling closed. He put his head down onto his pillow and curled up like a child. "Yeah," he breathed: "Real good." And he was asleep, with his blanket still folded over the back of the sofa.
So careless, thought Hakkai, crossly, and went over to cover him up. Gojyo smiled again in his sleep.
As Hakkai lay down again in the bed behind the closed door, the only pictures in his mind's eye were that smile, and the one that Gojyo would no doubt give him when they went to the shops tomorrow afternoon: proud, warm, and pleased to be able to provide for the two of them. When he heard his own blood drumming slowly in his ears, it was only a reminder that he was alive. And for the rest of the night, at last, that didn't seem like such a terrible thing.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 02:38 am (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:17 am (UTC)I'm so glad you liked it!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 11:17 pm (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:23 am (UTC)XD
I'm really glad you liked it that much!
"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:20 am (UTC)Heee, I always think of cooking with Hakkai! The definitive Hakkai-says-it-with-food fic was probably Zilch's former kink meme one that began 'Hakkai spells "I want you" in an alphabet of food.' (I'm happy you enjoyed the story.)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 03:59 am (UTC)*drowns in the words*
*sticks in memories*
no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 01:21 am (UTC)Awww, thank you! I'm so happy you enjoyed it!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 05:00 am (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:22 am (UTC)I'm happy it made you happy!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 05:40 am (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:25 am (UTC)Yeah, Hakkai can be awfully intense. He just sort of took over and drove for this one! I'm glad you liked it. (Was that your prompt?)
Re: "The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 08:09 am (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:25 am (UTC)Aww, thanks! I'm glad you liked it.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 04:15 pm (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:26 am (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's tough for me when they're not together ... .
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 07:30 pm (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:28 am (UTC)Thanks! Poor Hakkai - he's such a mess. I can't imagine how he'd deal with an unrequited love situation for very long.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 01:51 am (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:31 am (UTC)Oh, thank you very much! Hakkai is a very disturbing character, and sometimes he just takes over when I'm writing.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 03:58 am (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:32 am (UTC)They do need that extra little nudge in this one! It's tough on me when they're not together. Thanks for reading and commenting!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 07:47 pm (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:33 am (UTC)Awww, thanks. Hakkai without Gojyo to balance him is a complete mess! I do hope they both figure it out soon.
Re: "The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 09:24 am (UTC)Re: "The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 12:05 pm (UTC)Go right ahead! But remember that this is just the fic account - you already have my regular account mutually friended.
Re: "The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-24 04:52 pm (UTC)"The Empty Hours"
Date: 2011-10-05 01:35 am (UTC)And thank you again! I was really worried about this one because, you know, how many times have I already done 585 domestic? But Hakkai sort of took over, and it all came tumbling out.