Saiyuki (Gojyo/Hakkai)
Jul. 10th, 2008 09:49 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
lauand.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
kinkfest
Title: Licking Our Wounds
Author: Lauand
Beta: Bookofnicodemus
Rating: NC-17 in the future, PG-13 for the present part
Warnings: Violence?
Prompt: Saiyuki, Hakkai/Gojyo: Cowboys and Indians - "...Now once upon a time in the west/Mad man lost his damn mind in the west " 17th June.
Word Count: 2.669
Summary: Once upon a time in the west…
A/N: I must apologize for the delay. This prompt was due the 17th and I haven’t even finished it yet. Here’s the first part. I’ll try to draw a fanart, too, as compensation for all the inconveniences. Sorry again. Thank you very much to Books for the help, the corrections and the awesome job with the different accents. You know I love you.
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If there was something he had learned fast in life, it was that you can’t afford the luxury of falling down in the middle of a fight. You lose your feet, you lose it all. It was really a pity that the guys beating him up hadn’t thought of giving him an option. He really hated to be held down by some guys while the rest delivered the blows. He didn’t mind the pain so much as the impotency, the defencelessness, the sheer injustice of it. A well placed punch made him exhale abruptly and reconsider. Well, maybe he minded the pain, too. Fuck.
He was tough, but he didn’t stay standing for long. Gritting his teeth, he tried to cover himself as best as he could as the kicks rained on him and he hoped madly that their legs felt sore enough to stop before they really killed him.
“Hey Brian, there’s a guy lookin' o'er yonder.”
They had gotten tired of laughing and taunting him a while ago, so the words managed to enter his ringing skull without having to travel through mocking words or cruel chuckles. The blows stopped for a moment.
“Bah, s'just a greenhorn.”
“But he could call the sheriff.”
“So what? We’re doin' nothin' wrong.” The voice betrayed a hint of vacillation, though.
He tried not to move, not to groan, not to breathe. He just thought as hard as he could, ‘go away, go away, go away…’
He couldn’t hear any steps, his head buzzing and throbbing as it was, but the foreigner had to have done something because he could sense more light through his tightly closed eyelids - indication that the bullies had stepped back and cleared the way.
“Brian, that guy’s creepy, let’s go.” Another voice addressing the same person. Probably the leader.
‘Yeah, Brian,’ he thought, ‘go away. Please.’
Whom he supposed was Brian grunted and probably signalled or something, because this time he was able to hear their boots grinding in the dirt.
“Second warning, mongrel,” Brian told him, “and you know… third time's the charm.”
He hated the mocking tone, but he hated the good-bye kick a helluva lot more. And what he really, really loathed was the bastard’s saliva on him as Brian spat on him. There was something burning inside him and it wasn’t only his bruised innards.
‘I’ll kill you,’ he silently promised. Aloud, he said nothing, too focused on breathing.
Again, he was unable to hear the guy getting nearer (he hoped they hadn’t busted his ear permanently or something) but when he had panted nine or maybe ten times more he could hear the greenhorn from somewhere above.
“Pardon me, but are you quite all right?”
The voice sounded so polite, so courteous… he felt like laughing. He doubted his belly could withstand it right now, so he didn’t. He managed a whisper.
“…Fantastic.”
Again, a body blocked the light. It was nearly a relief.
“I don't mean to doubt your word, but… forgive me, but you don’t look it.”
He tried to swallow, but his own spit was viscous and tasted like blood. Disgusting. He panted some more and wondered how he had managed to end up having small talk with some foreign weirdo while he was in the process of dying in a dirty alley of a lousy, miserable town.
“You should… you should have seen the other guys…”
He could barely hear himself, but the guy had to have caught his words because the man commented on them.
“Oh, are you trying to tell me they got away the worse for wear?”
He tried to lick his lips but his tongue wasn’t very wet at the moment and it was getting stuck to them. Keeping his body as immobile as he could (it hurt enough as it was) he murmured his reply.
“No, I did…” he panted some more and attempted a grin, “…but they were… fucking… ugly…”
The stranger let out a polite chuckle.
He felt the caress of fabric on his skin, wiping that bastard’s spit away. Suddenly, he felt like swearing eternal love to the man who thought of cleaning the humiliation before the blood. He fought to open his eyes, at least a tiny slit. He wanted to see the guy.
It took him a while to focus his sight. The man really was a greenhorn - all elegant clothes, expensive looking glasses and a bland smile. And a fucking hideous bowler hat. The guy was taking something out of the inner pocket of his jacket.
“Here,” the man offered, “drink this.”
There was no way in hell he was going to stop clutching his belly, so the guy delicately lifted his head with one hand and tipped the small bottle against his lips with the other.
He coughed as he choked on the liquid. If he could have chosen, he would have taken choking to death over the searing pain the sudden contraction of his abdomen provoked in his belly. He hated being beaten. Hated it.
“That’s… that’s not whisky…”
The man smiled but he missed it, too concentrated on breathing and keeping his guts fucking quiet.
“No, it isn’t. It’s a tonic I make myself. I could sell you a bottle when you’re recovered and have checked its effectiveness.”
If he had had the energy, he would have snorted.
“Fucking great… a snake-oil salesman…”
And then, he finally passed out.
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Some days, you wake up to the feeling that, if you open your eyes, you’ll regret it. He had learned with time that those kinds of premonitions were more often than not based in truth.
The light was dim. Golden, like the afternoon sun, but weak enough to tell him he was indoors. For a moment, he thought he was back home, in the tent, light filtering through the top of the tipi. The sun wasn’t reflecting on tanned hide, though, but on a wooden wall. He frowned and that sharpened his headache. Where was he…? He looked around and the slight movement reawakened the pain.
“Fuck…” he swore.
He didn’t try to sit up. Things hurt enough as they were. Little by little, he remembered. Oh, yeah. The beating. The greenhorn. That son of a bitch’s spit.
It occurred to him that it would be a good idea to find out where the Hell he was, but at the moment he was too tired and in too much pain to truly care. Trying to ignore the headache, he fell asleep again.
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The next time he awoke, the disorientation barely lasted a second. It was very dark, but he didn’t need to see his surroundings to remember the wooden wall and the small space he had seen when he had come to before. With a grunt, he pushed his legs out of the bed and sat up. It hurt, but not as much as he thought it would.
With another grunt he tried to stand up. Bad, very bad idea. He supposed the world was spinning but it wasn’t as if he was seeing it, so he just stumbled, closed his eyes and leaned on the nearest wall until the vertigo passed.
There was a horrible taste in his mouth. From experience, he realized it was blood. It always tasted that bad after a while. With his tongue, he checked his teeth. Some of them were not exactly happy, but there were all there, present and accounted for. Small mercies and all that.
Not exactly knowing where he was going (or even where he was), he felt his way out. After some searching, he found a latch and supposed it was attached to a door. Good.
The air was cool outside. And it carried some whiff of food that made him remember how hungry he really was. Maybe he could convince Mary to pass him something from the inn’s kitchen. If he could find the inn, that is.
He carefully climbed down the three wooden steps that were just outside the tiny room and took a look around him.
He had just come out of what looked like a charlatan’s wagon. He had seen them before. It wasn’t parked in town, though. He could see the lights at some distance, not too far from where he stood. Another mouth-watering whiff and the distinct orange of a fire’s light made him turn to the other side of the wagon.
Barely limping but with a hand pressed against his belly, he saw the greenhorn tending a sauce-pan on the little fire. It was weird how he hadn’t heard the cracking until he had actually seen the flames. Maybe they had actually busted his ear after all. With luck, it would only be the temporary buzzing in his head that clouded his senses.
He couldn’t see why he shouldn’t offer himself an invitation to dinner; after dragging his sorry ass all the way to here the foreigner probably wouldn’t mind feeding him too terribly, so he gingerly took a seat on the ground at the guy’s side.
“How do you feel?” The weirdo asked without stopping his stirring of what looked (and smelled) like some kind of broth.
“As if I had been beaten up.”
The foreigner nodded, as though he had been expecting that answer. He probably had. He had been there, too.
“I checked you out and didn’t find evidence of internal haemorrhaging.”
“Thank fuck, because that sounds awful.”
A chuckle resounded in the night air. Somehow, it sounded forced.
“I meant bleeding, on the inside. It’s the main cause of death amongst participants in the kind of activities you’ve seen yourself involved in lately.”
He had to admit that the guy was good at tiptoeing around the facts.
“Are you a doctor?”
“I was once,” the man smiled and, deciding the soup was ready, started to serve it with a ladle in two china bowls. It wasn’t the typical dinnerware one kept in a travelling wagon. “But now I work in the… pharmaceutical branch.”
“Uh-huh,” he hadn't planned on offending; at least, not until he had finished his bowl of soup.
The man handed him a spoon and they fell silent as they ate.
“Are you Irish?” The stranger asked out of the blue, some time later.
He frowned and looked down at himself. Suede moccasin, check. Buckskin leggings, check. Buckskin breechcloth, check. Tanned, bared torso, check. Beads and leather bracelets, check. Feathers and beads in hair, check. He was so accustomed to it that he couldn’t feel it against his brow anymore, but he would bet the headband was in place, too.
“Are you stupid?”
The greenhorn didn’t seem offended. The man just smiled and his glasses caught the reflection of the fire.
“No.”
He knew what was coming, so he let the bowl down. He was nearly finished, anyway. The stranger didn’t disappoint him.
“You happen to have a reddish hue of dark hair. That’s uncommon amongst the Indian folk.”
“Not so uncommon, you know.”
“And your features don’t entirely fit the classic native American’s physiognomy.”
“Well, I already said that--”
“It’s not a bad thing.” The stranger interrupted him as though sensing his discomfort and trying to reassure him. “The mixed blood, I mean. You can be a lot of things when your heritage is so rich.”
He narrowed his eyes at that. He didn’t need reassurance, and despised being patronized.
“You can be many things when your heritage is poor, too.”
The foreigner put his bowl down in the dirt, realizing his words had been misinterpreted and turned against him.
“My apologies if I offended you in any way. It wasn’t my intention, and I’m sorry.”
The guy was so solemn, looking somehow real for the first time, that he just shrugged.
“Never mind.”
After that, he stood up as gracefully as his sore body permitted him. He fixed his eyes in the fire instead of looking at the man he was directing his words at.
“Listen buddy, I’m thankful for the meal and--”
“You should go to the sheriff, you know.”
He frowned. The annoying habit this weirdo had of interrupting every time he opened his mouth was starting to piss him off.
“What for?”
The face of the man was placid when he answered.
“To tell him what happened, of course. Beating people is illegal.” The stranger’s eyes were so fixed on him that he couldn’t help but stare back, as though called by that intense look. “I barely remember their faces, but I think you could recognize them.”
He wanted to laugh at this swindler’s naivety.
“Yeah, well, thanks for the interest and all, but I don’t think the sheriff gives a rat’s ass for--”
“Sheriff Samuels is an honest man. Bad tempered, but honest.”
The guy had done it again, butting in in the middle of his speech. He scowled in earnest.
“Look man, it’s not a big deal, get it? Maybe he caught me palming cards - because I sure as Hell was - or it’s possible that one of his buddies found out that I had slept with his sister once…" and with the eldest son of another, too, but there was no way he would be telling that to this weirdo. “What I’m trying to say is that they had one or two good reasons to hit me, see? And I’m not going to the sheriff to whine about how mean those big guys were to poor little me, you know.”
This time, it looked like the stranger had been making an effort not to interrupt him. The man just sat there calmly and, after a couple of heartbeats, the guy asked, “Do you really think that’s the only reason they were using you as a punching bag?”
He froze at that. For a moment, the memories echoed in his head, mixing with the buzzing and the daze. Those insults, those kicks, the spit, the warning, the hate…
“Yes,” he lied.
He hadn’t been carrying anything, so he was free to go whenever he chose. And he thought that there was no time like the present.
“Okay,” he started, taking a step back, “thanks again,”
He had already turned his back on the stranger when that calm voice stopped him in mid-stride.
“Wait.”
He turned again and watched the foreigner stand up and walk towards him. Now that he saw him when they were both standing, he noticed how tall the charlatan was. Nearly as tall as him. The spectacles and the darkness didn’t get to conceal how green the guy’s eyes were.
“We have yet to introduce ourselves, sir.”
This time he didn’t repress the laughter. No one had ever tried to call him ‘sir' before.
“You can call me John,” he said, as he took the man’s outstretched hand to shake it as the white men did.
“John…” the hanging intonation implied that the stranger was prodding for a complete name.
He couldn’t know for sure if the man was mocking him or not. How probable was it for an Indian mongrel to possess a family name?
“John Johnson,” he improvised. “And you?”
The man was strangely reluctant to release his hand, even if the shaking had already taken place.
“I’m Harry.”
“Harry…” he prompted back, not out of curiosity, but for a strange sense of symmetry. The guy smiled that odd grin that screamed its falseness and answered.
“Harry Harrison.”
He felt like snorting. Instead, he just crookedly smiled, hand still linked to that weird, weird man that was starting to feel familiar in a twisted, not entirely healthy way.
“What a coincidence.”
“Isn’t it?”
Grinning knowingly, they finally let go each other’s hands and John Johnson started his way home to the shabby cabin he had built out of wood and adobe in the outskirts of town.
He looked back for a second just to see Harry Harrison's dark figure neatly silhouetted by the small fire, next to the swindler’s wagon.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 06:05 am (UTC)I like!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-16 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-12 12:34 am (UTC)But... but...
OMG, there could be so much more to this! What a tease you are, to post this snippet! It makes me curious about what might happen next. XD
no subject
Date: 2008-07-16 12:13 am (UTC)I've got already planned out the rest of the fic, I just need to sort out a little incongruence and to find the time and mood to write the fic down.
I'm really glad you liked this first part, though ^^.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-12 02:41 am (UTC)“But now I work in the… pharmaceutical branch.”
Hee. How very fitting for the "swindler" to be a traveling snake-oil salesman. I really like what you've done with the prompt, and look forward to reading more.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-16 12:16 am (UTC)I hope to get the next part soon, because I really liked writing the first one.
Thank you very much for your comment!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-28 03:22 am (UTC)MOAR! MOAR! MOAR!
Please?
XD
no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 02:13 pm (UTC)Thanks for your enthusiasm!