A Small Morning

Hakkai woke to the pleasurable sensation of Gojyo sucking on his lower lip. He lifted his eyes and found the red-haired man looking back through heavy lids.

“Mm.” Hakkai took two fistfuls of the red hair that fell all around his face and onto the pillow as Gojyo pulled on his lip with his white teeth. Hakkai locked his hands around the back of Gojyo’s neck and drew him down for a kiss.

“We have to go meet Sanzo and Goku today,” Gojyo said, pulling back and running his hands up under Hakkai’s tank top. “For the start of some mysterious journey.”

Hakkai tugged on his ear clip. “I think it must be this.”

Gojyo frowned and licked almost absently at the lines defining Hakkai’s abs. “You think it’s about your ear piercings?”

Hakkai chuckled and shook his head. He ran silky strands of Gojyo’s red hair through his fingers as he said, “No. I was referring to my power limiter. And all of them; the very need for them. I think we’re finally going to do something about the insanity that’s poisoned all the youkai.”

“First of all,” Gojyo said, sitting up and settling on his heels, “why do we have to do something about it? And secondly, what in the world could we possibly do?”

Hakkai smiled and sat up, too. He tugged on Gojyo’s hair again, playfully, and then stood. “I don’t know. That’s why Sanzo’s the priest and not me.”

Gojyo snorted at Hakkai, whose back was already turned. Hakkai went into the bathroom and started to fill the tub.

“Some priest!” Gojyo shouted over the noise of the pouring water. Hakkai waved his hand at Gojyo without turning around. “Some priest,” Gojyo repeated under his breath. “Smokes and drinks as much as I do.”

Hakkai heard Gojyo’s muttering, but he didn’t say anything. Gojyo had a point, but about this coming journey, Hakkai was certain. Gojyo had not spoken to the young Buddhist that Sanzo had sent as a messenger. The boy’s eyes had flicked from Hakkai’s face to his Limiter like a metronome, not stopping once as he delivered his message from memory. Somehow the boy had known Hakkai was youkai and had recognized the ear clip for what it was. If a mere adolescent initiate had could sense the controlled youkai energy that surrounded Hakkai, then it was a sure sign that things were beginning to change again.

Hakkai stripped and stuck an exploratory toe into the water in the tub. Finding it hot enough, he stepped in and stretched out in the bath. Gojyo whistled tunelessly from the bed room. The noise got on Hakkai’s nerves for some obscure reason and he slid down the ceramic sides of the bath tub until his head was under water.

There. Submerged as he was, ears blocked, eyes closed, his psychic insight was enhanced. If he concentrated hard and let his mind reach out and drift over the long miles to the west, he could feel it. Somewhere out there was the origin of the insanity that had overtaken all youkai one year before.

It was a shadow in the East, a cloud of madness that was like fog trying to creep in through the cracks in his consciousness. It blurred the senses and blinded one’s perception, closing and darkening the eyes of those with the power to see.

When the boy had recited Sanzo’s request—well, demand, really, considering Sanzo’s wording and implied attitude—that they make a journey with him, Hakkai had not even been all that surprised. A part of him had been waiting for this, he realized. In fact, he had started to get impatient.

A muffled noise came to him then, on many levels, so he lifted his head out of the water. Gojyo, naked and gorgeous, bent over the tub with his hair brushing the porcelain rim.

“Huh?” Hakkai gasped, pushing his wet hair back and wiping his eyes.

Gojyo leaned forward and put a kiss on Hakkai’s chin. “I said don’t drown yourself without telling me what you’d like to be wearing when you’re buried.” Gojyo stood and turned to face the sink.

Hakkai snorted and began soaping up. “Bury me naked.”

Gojyo laughed and turned back around to answer while he pulled a comb through his hair. “So you can meet your maker with your dignity intact. Gotcha.”

They were both silent for a while, Hakkai finishing up in the tub while Gojyo put his hair in a low pony tail and shaved. Hakkai didn’t have to shave every day like most men. His facial hair grew in very slowly and he only had to put a razor to his face once or twice every month or so.

Finished with his bath, Hakkai stood and spoke while Gojyo scraped lather and hair from his cheek. “I was attacked on my way back last night. An entire gang of youkai. There was even a little kid with them, but none of them had their Limiters on.” He looked over to meet Gojyo’s eyes in the mirror. “They were all insane. If Hakuryuu hadn’t driven us out of there fast, they would have attacked, I know it.”

Gojyo was silent for a while as Hakkai emptied the tub and stepped out to dry himself off. As he cut the last strip of lather off of his cheek, Gojyo said, “Something like that happened to me last night, too. I was playing poker with this guy, and he lost a hand and went psycho. He tossed the table and I thought he was going to be trouble enough, but then his ears grew and his fangs came down and his eyes—well, let’s just say he wasn’t dealing with a full deck anymore. I—I had to use the jaku jou on him.” He jerked his shoulders up and down as if to shrug away his discomfort. Gojyo was a competent and skilled fighter, but Hakkai knew that did not mean that the other enjoyed using that sharp steel crescent blade on living flesh. Hakkai could sense his guilt.

“The youkai that attacked me weren’t wearing their Limiters,” Hakkai said. They kept eye contact through the mirror for a long moment, then Gojyo shook his head and looked down. His hands were tightly gripping the edge of the sink and his arms shook.

“I think that even youkai with Limiters are starting to be affected by this madness. Why else would they choose to take them off?”

Hakkai walked past Gojyo toward the bed room, but he paused on the threshold to say, “I think it’s a good thing that Sanzo’s decided it’s time to make this journey.”

Gojyo looked over, eyebrows up, before pursing his lips and nodding agreement. Hakkai left the bathroom to get dressed. Noon was approaching, as was their meeting with Sanzo and Goku, and more than anything Hakkai did not want to be late.