Devotionals

The dingy old curtains didn't do much to mute the brash light of midday. Hakkai and Gojyo had been laying there since right after breakfast clean up, collapsed on the couch in a sweaty heap after kitchen-turned-bathroom-turned-living-room sex. Gojyo figured it was a testament to something that Hakkai hadn't pulled away yet, muttering about laundry and stains and all sorts of other excuses. He liked to believe it was a testament to him, but dumb as he was Gojyo knew better than to overestimate himself when it came to Hakkai. He still had trouble believing it ended up like this, with them tripping over each other in his shitty little house in Chang'an and Hakkai nagging him on trash day.

When they got home to Chang'an, Gojyo expected Hakkai to start on the Indestructible Wife Project. Instead he marched into the house they shared, rolled up his sleeves and shook his head. "It really isn't so bad," he said, looking at the caked layers of dust and talking through a grin affixed like plate armor. "In fact, I think it was worse when I first woke up here, ahaha."

It was like they hadn't left at all. Sanzo might have something to say about that, something about how nothing really ends or changes, and for once, he might be right.

Gojyo and Hakkai fell back into their routine like it was something they both planned. Maybe it was, but somehow, neither of them could quite re-adjust to the dimensions of the house, lost in the extra space. They kept bumping hips and knees in hallways, always at the wrong place at the wrong time. Hips and knees turned to hands and thighs, and then lips. Just like that, they were kissing, neither of them pulling away or asking things they maybe should have asked. They ignored any questions and better senses. Sometimes two people have a moment where they both know the truth at the same time, like calling a bluff in cards but so much warmer. Sex happened after that, mostly quiet, mostly in the dark, but not because either of them were ashamed. At least, that's what Gojyo hoped. Today was their fourth time together, each time different than he thought it would be, creative with fingers and mouths and movement and the blessed, smooth heat of inner thighs. This was their first time outside the bedroom and in the light. Gojyo could see everything - at least everything that was visible.

Other than some kicked-aside clothes, the living room was spotless, and Gojyo grinned at the thought of their first kiss. It happened in this room, right by the potted plant that seemed to require more gentle handling than Hakkai himself. Now, only a few days later, they were naked and tangled on the couch. Hakkai was stretched out above him, catlike and content, absently tracing the line of Gojyo's collarbone, shoulder, inner arm. Handfuls of bright persistent light illuminated Hakkai from behind, catching his hair on fire, making his limiters glint and the vivid green of his eyes strangely glow. He was in shadow, but still so bright. Gojyo's eyes hurt looking upon him.

"I think," said Hakkai, as if drawing a conclusion after an exhaustive debate, "That I would like to build a temple to your elbows." He rubbed his fingertips over the joint in question, a hard, tough little angle on a slender, sharp body.

"My elbows." Gojyo wiggled a little bit until Hakkai shifted his weight and he could properly sit up. Better to move anyway, they were starting to stick to each other again.

"Yes. You have divine elbows."

There were several things that could be happening right now. Hakkai could be joking. His sense of humor was a little bit weird sometimes. Gojyo could be hearing him wrong. Maybe at some point during the journey West he hit his head and bright sunlight triggered auditory hallucinations. The last option, of course, was that Hakkai had completely lost his mind. Always an option. Damn it, he knew it. Hakkai was only with him because one of them hit his head at some point and now...

"Is something wrong?" Hakkai's voice broke through the reverie. His tone set off all kinds of alarms in Gojyo's head. Crap. He'd stumbled over the guilt-tripwire. He was in for either a night of cold silence or a long lecture.

"Nah," said Gojyo, stretching out and settling again, arm over his eyes to shield them from that invasive sun. He grinned blindly upward. Knew Hakkai was close enough to catch it. "Just thinking bout the blueprints we can send our friend the Exalted Tightass. Temple Gojyo. Got kind of a ring to it. But why stop at the elbows? I think we oughta build a temple to my dick. It'd be massive. And I'd much rather have you worshiping it than my elbows."

"Oh?" said Hakkai, lips twitching like a laugh was very nearly escaping past them. He took Gojyo's right hand by the wrist and pulled it upward toward his face. He blew warm and then cold air over the soft, uneven folds of Gojyo's inner elbow. Maybe it was the pheromones, the sweat already on his skin, or maybe it was just Hakkai, but Gojyo shivered involuntarily. He swore aloud when Hakkai pressed a clever point of tongue to the inner joint. He took his time there, drawing patterns or writing his name, Gojyo couldn't quite be sure. Hakkai's free hand clamped over Gojyo's left bicep. He rubbed at the inside of Gojyo's elbow with his thumb. Gojyo squirmed, trapped by Hakkai's weight.

"Hhh-hakkai! Stop it!"

Hakkai was naked and evil above him. Gojyo could feel him getting hard, knew Hakkai could feel him doing the same. Something about his smile let Gojyo know he didn't care.

"I like to see you opened up to me. It doesn't feel good?"

I don't know.

"It fucking tickles!"

"Perhaps prayers tickle the gods," Hakkai said thoughtfully. "I wonder."

Gojyo's face was hot. He wasn't sure he liked it like this. Hakkai hovered over him with a heavy look. Gojyo knew that look. It was one Gojyo usually gave girls, though there hadn't been a girl in years. A worm of doubt and disgust suddenly made itself known in Gojyo's guts, uncoiling and sending a distinctly-unsexy chill through him. He felt like someone threw a cup of ice water over him, sending all warmth and excitement packing. "I wonder what the hell you're going on about half the time."

"Worship," Hakkai informed him indulgently. He studied his nails like he was seated at the kitchen table instead of straddling his best friend's growing erection.

"I don't have a problem with stuff like that, fetishes, but it's good manners to let a guy know ahead of time. I thought you were all about manners."

A darkness flickered over Hakkai's face, and then he smiled like a kid putting on a mask for the school play. "It's not a fetish," he said oh-so-carefully and clearly. "It's how I feel. This is..."

The pause lasted far too long.

"...What is this? Hey. Hey." Gojyo rubbed Hakkai's forearm like that would keep his friend from rapidly retreating. "I'm sorry." Why did he always apologize, when every apology was always too little, too late? It made him want to scream in helpless frustration, but instead he repeated it: "Whatever I did, I'm sorry."

"So am I," said Hakkai, climbing off Gojyo and looking around for his clothes. And Gojyo wondered how the guy ever won a game of poker, because when something upset him, really upset him, it always looked like the world was about to end. It didn't matter how much he smiled.

"Shit." Gojyo rolled over on the couch, pushing his face into a pillow. It was one of three decorative throw pillows. When the fuck did Hakkai sneak those in? "What the fuck did I do?"


Hakkai, naturally, did not tell him what the fuck he did, unless he was pounding it out in Morse code chopping vegetables for dinner. Judging from the sounds of it, though, his blows were far too random and angry to be interpreted as a pattern, even if Gojyo had known how to parse it. But if he'd known how to speak Hakkai's language in the first place this wouldn't have happened.

After dinner, Gojyo tried to help clean up but was deflected at every turn. Hakkai had his system down too damn well. He didn't need Gojyo there messing it up. Shoving his hands in his pockets, Gojyo dismissed himself to the bar in town.

He'd had enough of this minefield tonight.


Town was depressing. Gojyo had calculated the absence of Hakkai to be better than the presence of pissy Hakkai, but his math was off. All the girls he used to woo by the lap full of just asked where his handsome friend was. So did the bartender, the shopkeeper and everyone in between. Everyone sensed they were a pair. They were the heroes that cured the Minus Wave, sure, so maybe some exaggerated stories of their team had enhanced the idea of their partnership. Like they were a matched set.

Like one shouldn't be without the other.

The weirdest thing was no one even seemed to question it. They were concerned, asked if Hakkai was sick. Well, no wonder. The guy was always in town squeezing loaves of bread, volunteering at the school and chirping with fishwives. Hakkai was probably more popular than Gojyo was: no one ever treated him like a bum.

Gojyo wondered if people asked Hakkai where he was when he went out alone.

Seemed like playing a few hands of poker and getting shit-faced was going to involve a lot more thinking about Hakkai than staying home and zoning out in front of the boob tube would. So Gojyo made an early night of it, dragging behind the blue of his shadow cast by the moon.

He didn't always take the long way home, but he was feeling particularly miserable and was in no rush to get back to that box of silence, guilt and confusion. He hadn't taken this road since they returned to Chang'an, but his feet knew the way. They stopped him in just the wrong spot.

This was the clearing, the place where he first met Hakkai: the first person he met who was even a fraction as hopeless as he was, bleeding his guts out all over the ground and not giving a damn. Ready to die, and Gojyo couldn't stand it. At least try to live, asshole. My life might be crap but I'm at least trying.

In the years since he'd seen it, the muddy little clearing had grown up in fresh, sweet grass. Tall clusters of slender flowers blossomed here and there. Their thin white petals were withdrawn in the moonlight like they were shy, holding in their secrets.

Gojyo's mouth went dry. He couldn't shake the feeling that this place was important. He wanted to kneel and thank - thank someone - that he'd been here at the right place and the right time, so Hakkai's life could go on, so his life could go on.

Was this how he was supposed to feel at the temple? That place usually just made him feel like having a smoke and scratching his balls. Here, though... This was really important, what he'd seen right then, the dark laugh in despairing eyes.

I like to see you all opened up to me. It doesn't feel good?

Gojyo sat down cross-legged in the clearing. He wasn't sure why, he just wanted to think a bit. It might have been an hour or so of this thinking before he fell asleep right there in the peaceful clearing.


Hakkai lay on Gojyo's bed, staring up at the ceiling. It seemed that hell was still a mediocre place. He really did hate the hum and flicker of that shabby ceiling lamp, the television set that magnetically attracted dust, the complete and utter lack of interior design. Gojyo's bedroom was the last bastion of his cluttered life before Hakkai, with skin magazines and other tawdry secrets stashed under the bed. Even though Hakkai had claimed the other room in the house as his with a desk and stacks of books and a windowsill bed for Jeep, this was the bed Hakkai slept in.

Gojyo wasn't here. He went out hours ago, and Hakkai knew. He knew Gojyo wasn't returning. So what he meant to do was start packing. He could have his belongings together in an hour or two if he generously left behind his cooking equipment. Hakkai folded his hands over his stomach and imagined packing each piece of clothing, each book, his tooth brush, manicure kit, shampoo, conditioner...

He hadn't packed up his life like that since he left the orphanage. Back then his belongings easily amounted to one box, even though he didn't pack things as neatly or tightly. Sometimes a nun hovered by his elbow or in the doorway, trying to help. He didn't want it.

They did their best with what they had. Hakkai understood that now, as a teacher and a friend of several difficult personalities, and most of all as a grown man who'd seen a lot more of the world. Love is easily given to those who are loving, and for those who were not loving, like Gonou, they could only give care. It was not enough for Gonou. But he had not known what would be enough, back then. He had not yet known Kanan.

The first time he found Kanan kneeling next to their bed and praying, he didn't know what to think. He usually rolled his eyes at such shows of devotion, but Kanan believed so sincerely. And he loved her, even if he didn't understand it. It wasn't until later that night, naked and embracing, that he had the courage to ask about it, touching the gold cross dangling from her neck.

"I saw you praying earlier. Why? You have no reason to believe God is out there, or if he is, that he cares for you at all."

Kanan was luminous in the warm light from the bedside lamp. Her honey hair was soft over her shoulders, spreading and curling around Gonou's world and at the corners of his vision. She took his hand, threading her small, slender fingers through his long, bony ones. "Are you feeling threatened?" She knew him so well, knew to only tease him whilst reassuring him. "Don't worry. Someday you'll understand. I don't need proof to keep believing. Even if nothing but bad things happened, I'd know I was loved. I couldn't help but love back. Faith isn't an obviously mutual arrangement. I believe because it makes me happy to do so, because it completes me. It's a very simple feeling."

Gonou sullied the moment with his lips and need for proof. He was never so calm in his love as Kanan was, as if he was aware of its fleeting qualities and needed to burn up as much time as he could between them. Enough living for all the years they missed, that's what he thought of it as. He was so afraid of losing what he gained that he held on impossibly tight.

Hakkai had started to understand her words that night. Not that he ever really got along with this God fellow (and after defeating 'Him' he was even less impressed), but he was beginning to understand faith. Perhaps he even understood that four-letter, unconditional word.

There was a moment like yesterday in his mind, crystal clear, when everything had accumulated and he understood. In everything Hakkai did, cooking, tidying, mending and pushing his chi to knit skin and bones back together, he was performing a devotional. It may not have been on his knees, but he was giving thanks with everything he had to the ones he owed his life to. He openly displayed his faith to Sanzo, Goku and Gojyo. His first two gods were indifferent and distracted and that was alright. He was happy enough to see them happy, or at least energetic and active.

Gojyo was different, somehow. Gojyo was always different.

The clarity occurred in an inn and a town long forgotten. Even the details of those particular injuries were lost in the blur of blood and noise that made up most of their journey West. Hakkai was healing Gojyo when his fingertips brushed over the insides of his elbows, and Gojyo flinched noticeably. He smiled awkwardly.

"Did that hurt?" Hakkai asked, not understanding.

"Nah," Gojyo muttered. "Just keep going."

He startled again when Hakkai touched there, but tried to hold it in. His expression was a funny one, his whole body vibrating with trapped and squirming energy. It was a moment so perfect Hakkai could hardly breathe. His heart overflowed with a simple and brave emotion that overwhelmed him like an avalanche.

This emotion gripped him now, even as grief, anger and frustration churned inside him in a deadly mire. Gojyo might not come home at all tonight. Hakkai's chest and stomach ached. He tried to imagine a life where they shared this new sexual intimacy, but Gojyo sometimes went home with women. If all that mattered to him was Gojyo's happiness, why did it nauseate him so?

Hakkai became distracted by thoughts with this afternoon. Gojyo's scent was strong on the sheets and pillows. He thought of Gojyo's warm tan skin, his smoky, salty taste. He thought of Gojyo's bitten lips and steady fingers. Only a few hours ago he'd tugged fingers through locks of blood-red and plunged past velvet lips that pulled pleasure from him in arcs and colors

He should leave. He had to. He should. He couldn't keep himself from having that again, couldn't stand the thought of sharing it. What kind of faith left someone jealous? He hadn't changed at all, really. He hadn't.

Hakkai did not notice when the arousal first came on. He seemed to wake up in his own body suddenly, in the middle of a graphic and forceful fantasy of Gojyo's mouth. He wanted to force himself down that throat, claim him and silence the protest in Gojyo's eyes that always appeared when Hakkai grew a little aggressive.

He could worship Gojyo this way too. In a way, wasn't it better? Pushing back and past as Gojyo choked on his enjoyment again and again. He would end his prayer with a sacrifice of his most precious seed, spilling it over lips and chin, even making those strands of red white and sticky.

Hakkai was not the masturbating type. His sex drive was usually so muffled, his need in quiet check. Now here he was, overwhelmed with passion, his face pressed fast to Gojyo's pillow. He was twisted, bent over, stroking over his desperate erection.

He should stop. He had to. He should.

Clenching his teeth, Hakkai came. It wasn't very much in the end, spread over his hand and a little on Gojyo's comforter. It hadn't felt as good as the moments before, really, and the quick rush of heat and feeling drained from him as he knelt on the bed with his limp shame in his hand. As he tucked himself back into his pants, he found he was a bit rubbed raw and sore. Ha ha, ouch. Friction burn on top of such an unsightly mess. He deserved it for his inability to differentiate selfish desire from unselfish devotion.

Hakkai's face and eyes stung. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'll clean it up."


The moon was so bright it awakened Gojyo. He glared up at the invasive light, shielding his eyes. His body was damp with dew and his neck was stiff. Crap. Gojyo found himself wondering how often Sanzo fell asleep instead of meditating. He'd always figured the two were interchangeable, anyway.

The glen was in a hush. The spindly white flowers were opened and blooming, casting a sweet and heady scent into the air. In the center of this moon-frosted tableau was Hakkai. The moonlight poured over him like shimmering clothes, though he wore nothing at all. Not even his limiters. As Gojyo had often suspected, the vines that grew from beneath Hakkai's skin really did wrap and curl everywhere.

Hakkai smiled at him. Gojyo wasn't sure how a smile so full of teeth could look so peaceful. He beckoned with one slender claw. Gojyo wondered if he should be worried. These days there was little risk that Hakkai would chow down on him in this form. He found it was the absence of that feral cruelty that really made his stomach sink. Even so, he took a step closer. "What do you want?"

"To see," said Hakkai simply, and drew Gojyo into his arms. Gojyo waited for the pain to start, and when it didn't, he bit his own lip to make sure he was really alive.


Gojyo didn't make it home until the wee hours of the morning. Someone out there must have been watching out for him, because no one found him passed out drunk near the road with his pants around his ankles and the ground nearby a sticky mess. That strange dream still played in his head, intrusively. He half expected for Hakkai to be waiting for him in the kitchen with a cup of tea and a conversation they absolutely needed to have about the direction their relationship was taking. Instead he found Hakkai in the bedroom he so infrequently used, curled up to one side, the sheets pulled up to his ears. Jeep was asleep at the foot of the bed. Hakkai was truly in a sorry state of affairs if Jeep was worried enough to sleep that close. Or maybe he was just planning to ambush Gojyo when he came to check on his friend. The little dragon opened one beady red eye and flicked his tail, spelling out Gojyo's bitey doom should he dare disturb his master.

What a weird fucking night. Gojyo shook himself, trying to relieve the trace memories of claws that were too damn gentle on his hips, and all of the uncomfortable things after that.

I like to see you all opened up to me. It doesn't feel good?

Gojyo threw himself on the bed, barely bothering to kick his pants off as he crawled in. Hakkai had changed the sheets. On the road the smell of laundry detergent was a very assuring one: it meant that the inn actually bothered to change the linens when requested, and that Hakkai wouldn't be politely bawling out the staff about hygiene in the morning. Here, in his own house, it was disappointing. These were the sheets he and Hakkai had slept on the last few nights. He loved lazing around after Hakkai woke up in the morning, relishing their mingled scents. It made him feel protected, somehow. Now the bed just felt empty, the pillow cool on his cheek. Gojyo was disappointed, and it took him nearly till dawn to fall asleep.


The late morning woke Gojyo with the same smells and sounds as always. Gojyo had never really taken the time to appreciate how overjoying and erotic the smell and sound of eggs frying could be. Swallowing a mouthful of saliva, he dressed quickly, running a comb through his hair and even bothering to splash some water in his face in the bathroom before heading to the kitchen. In the few short steps it took to get there, Gojyo imagined Hakkai fussing over the stove as always, and how he'd wrap his arms around his waist from behind, and press his face to his neck and thank him and apologize for whatever the hell it was that happened yesterday.

He stopped in the door frame, blocked by a strong but invisible force. Gojyo could feel Hakkai's frown from four feet away, though his friend didn't even turn to greet him. Sucking in a breath, Gojyo pulled out a chair and straddled it, crossing his arms across the back. He didn't get too close. Not what Hakkai wanted right now, clearly.

"Hey."

"Good morning, Gojyo. You're up early. You were out rather late, weren't you?"

The fantasy of embracing Hakkai was quickly turning into grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking the stupid out of him. Gojyo remembered last night, running his tongue over the inside of his own lip. He'd bitten it at some point. But why he'd passed out in the middle of the clearing was still a mystery. He hadn't been that drunk, after all, he'd been a lot drunker and gotten home fine.

"Say, you don't sleepwalk or anything, do you?" Gojyo shook free the last cigarette from his box of Hi-Lites and lit up a new barrier between he and Hakkai. A smokescreen was just as fine a scrim as Hakkai's apron strings.

Hakkai didn't reply for several moments, neatly dropping a fried egg into their identical bowls of rice porridge and shaking a little salt and pepper into them. Without bothering to taste them, he placed each bowl on the table, then spoons, then soy sauce and hot sauce, then poured the tea. He found Gojyo an ash tray before finally sitting.

"You're going to fall over if you keep stressing the chair's back legs like that," he said quietly, drinking his tea and not touching his soup. "And you'll break the chair."

"You gonna answer my question?"

Hakkai broke up his egg in his congee and watched the yellow pollute white. "I did quite a bit when I was a child. So I'm told. It's a sign of being psychologically troubled you know, ha ha."

Gojyo stared at Hakkai through the light haze of smoke, trying to reconcile this skittish, folded-up Hakkai with the one from the night before. That Hakkai was fierce in his cloak of moonlight, and hungry.

"Damn it, Hakkai, look at me."

Hakkai did, after a moment.

I've tried everything to show you, the maybe-dream Hakkai had said.

And in those words was the same softness that stained Hakkai's gaze now.

You are the center of my world, and I have no way of knowing you'll never betray me except for my faith. With those words Hakkai had gently pulled him open - and this was the part that made him so sure it was a dream - he placed himself inside. It was like two drops of water joining - nothing painful or ugly, nothing that pierced Gojyo with doubt or disgust. A sense of completion was poured into him until he was like a cup overflowing.

Penetration was something they hadn't discussed, let alone tried. There were plenty of reasons, but Gojyo couldn't think of any, moon-blind and staring at the flowers, wondering if they carried some kind of mysterious horny drug in their scent because - because damn.

He remembered thinking that something this violent could not possibly be gentle, but though the claws dug into his hips, they did not pierce, did not leave marks. In fact, Hakkai handled him with a delicacy that could only be reverence. It's alright, Hakkai said in his ear. You didn't ask for me to worship you, but I can't help myself. I have to give you everything.

Nothing about Hakkai last night had seemed glazed over or sleepy. If anything he seemed a bit too controlled, a bit too talkative. The whole thing felt more like a revelation than sex, but more like sex than a dream.

Weird as it was, he couldn't bring himself to ask the obvious question. The whole experience just felt private, like it would lose resonance if he tried to explain or understand. Shit. Maybe he really did hit his head or lose his mind at some point.

Or maybe this was how people normally interacted with the divine. If that was the case, maybe that jerk-off Sanzo was always in a crap mood because his ass got sore. The idea almost made Gojyo laugh a little, giddy and crazed.

Gojyo rubbed some sleep from his eye, and Hakkai - not dream Hakkai, but this one in the kitchen who gave him offerings of food - laughed over his tea.

"You should put a little more effort into washing your face," he said lightly, "Unless you need me to do it for you."

"Yeah," said Gojyo, not really listening. He decided something all at once. "Okay." He left his cigarette in the ashtray and dropped to his knees on the kitchen tile. He crawled over to where Hakkai sat primly in his chair.

"Gojyo what are you--? I suppose it's a good thing I keep that floor clean--"

"Shut up."

There was so much he should probably say. Maybe apologize for. Because it wasn't Hakkai's fault he shut down and worried about being the girl in this relationship, or the fact that the word relationship itself was practically enough to send him screaming into the woods. That he could worry about something so stupid when a backwater village like theirs so obviously didn't was embarrassing.

And the truth was, he did like being opened to Hakkai like that.

Kneeling on the floor in front of Hakkai, Gojyo took his hand and kissed his palm. He looked up at Hakkai, and saw in his green eyes that all was forgiven. Always would be.

"It's because my elbows are ticklish, right?"

"It's because of everything, really," Hakkai said, rubbing his thumb over the line of Gojyo's jaw. "But I think you're beautiful when you squirm." His fingers caught the back of Gojyo's head, urging him forward a bit. Gojyo pressed his lips to the inseam of Hakkai's khakis. He heard Hakkai inhale sharply.

"I'd like to build a temple to you, too, right in this house," he said, dampening the fabric with his tongue. "Lemme show you all the prayers I'm gonna say."

"If you insist," said Hakkai wryly. He unzipped his pants. "But I'll want to show you some of my own."

"Forever and ever, amen."