thenearshore | Terrible Idea Theater proudly presents...

Right. That memory. That was the one memory that he'd had returned while he was awake. It hadn't been a bad memory, all told, but the situation surrounding it isn't something Gojyo wants to revisit right now. He drinks deeply, trying not to think how close he came to blowing his brains out.

"I hate him." He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, not setting the bottle down, and when he looks up to meet Hakkai's eye his own are growing more and more red-rimmed. "I hate him so goddamn much, he had everything." Now the bottle gets slammed onto the bar, although Gojyo's still maintaining a death grip on the neck. His emotions are swinging wildly between anger and jealously and a bone-deep kind of grief, and he doesn't know if he wants to kiss Hakkai, or punch him, or run out the front door and never look back. "And everytime I remember something I feel myself turning more and more into him, and that's..."

Kiss Hakkai, and then cry into his shoulder. That's the current plan. He takes a swig of gin instead, glares hard at the bottle, and knocks back another shot.

"I hate this. I fucking hate this."

I hate him. He had everything. I hate that I'm turning into him... the anger, Hakkai thinks distantly, is Gojyo's. He can't tell who the grief belongs to, or who gave it permission to go rummaging through his vital organs with those icy hands.

He looks down at his hands, and doesn't fool himself about who his other feelings belong to. They predate Gojyo's new name. Disgust at his own uselessness; petty resentment, that Gojyo's so eager to disown the self who had been Hakkai's friend.

If he's being honest, he recognizes the grief, too.

"I'm not helping," he says, quietly, and tries to force it all down into numbness. "I should go."

He's not even alive, and it feels like he's dying. It's like there's this other him, this perfect (flawed, disgusting, crass and violent and taboo waste of skin) person haunting his every move. There's a ghost leaning over his shoulder, mocking every move he makes, and the ghost is him.

But how the hell to put any of that into words?

Nodding is simpler. Nodding will send Hakkai away, which is how it should be. Hakkai doesn't love him, he thinks, and he's actually surprised by how much that bolt of grief hurts. Hakkai loves that other Sha Gojyo, the one whose corpse this Gojyo's been running around wearing. "Yeah," he manages to force out; his eyes are fixed firmly on the bullet hole in the bar top. Ayumu, he thinks. He needs to call Ayumu. He needs to beg her forgiveness. "Yeah, maybe you should."

Hakkai has managed to stand with his guts literally torn out. He can, therefore, do it when the pain is metaphorical.

He lets his clasped fingers fall apart, setting one hand on the counter as he slips off the bar stool and straightens to his full height. He's careful, careful to stay straight-backed and keep his feelings off his face.

Before he left, he'd said, he'd revoke Gojyo's name. He has the childish urge to refuse. To cling. Not to let go, not ever, not while Gojyo has that look on his face like he's drowning on dry land.

(Won't stop until you've killed him too.)

"I wish you'd stop hating him," he says, quietly, "for not hating me."

-- and he lifts his hand, heavier than he's felt it in a long time, to start tracing the strokes of the character for gauze.

Hakkai stands up, and Hakkai walks away, and Gojyo stares at the oily liquid sloshing around the inside the gin bottle and tries very very hard to pretend that when it's all inside him he'll feel better.

Hakkai stops walking away, and Hakkai speaks, but his words don't make any sense. Gojyo raises his head (it's so heavy -- when did his head get this heavy?), and strains to focus on Hakkai's face. "Why would I hate him for that?" he asks, and were he more sober he'd be absolutely humiliated by how childish and simple he sounds. "I don't hate him 'cause of you." The room is starting to tilt slightly, and he braces himself with one hand flat on the bar. "'Cause he loved you, that's stupid." He lifts the bottle to his mouth, but the smell wrinkles his nose and he sets it carefully back down. "I hate him 'cause he's a person, an' I'm not. And he's got... things. You. And... That he knew, and he..."

His voice trails off as his face goes a peculiar shade of green. Eyes wide, he vanishes behind the bar to be repeatedly and violently ill.

The words die on Hakkai's tongue, and the spell dies as his hand sags back to his side.

Gojyo, from the noises on the other side of the bar, is being sick all over the floor.

That's his fault for pulling out the gin, Hakkai thinks, turns, and sinks down, back against the bar. He slides until he lands on bloodstained floorboards where he puts his face in his hands and laughs, and laughs, to the accompaniment of the sound of retching.

That is what happens when you don't eat for two days and then try to drink the entire bar.

He's making a huge, disgusting mess on the floor, and all he can think of is how angry Tsuzuki is going to be when he comes in and sees what Gojyo's done. I'll clean it up! he tries to say, but all that comes out is more gin. And vodka. And beer.

Beer before liquor, never sicker! The rhyme jangles around in the front of his brain, bright lights that blot out his vision. His foot slips, and he lands hard on one knee right at the edge of the puddle he's making. The whole room is shaking now, swaying back and forth, and he's got nothing to hold on to as he's sick over and over and over again. It has to stop eventually, right?

Right?

Gojyo's still vomiting as Hakkai's laughter trails into silence, and since Hakkai has no idea how long it has been, that worries him. He shivers, shaking off the last remnants of hysteria, and forces himself up and around (not over, as he knows what he'll land in) the bar.

And reaches down, grabbing a swaying Gojyo's shoulder to steady him.

Really, he'd love to flee.

The reek from the puddle, alcohol and bile, and ... alcohol, and bile (has Gojyo not eaten anything? How long has it been since he ate anything?) is almost overwhelming. Hakkai makes a face, keeps a hold on Gojyo's shoulder, and contemplates the fact that he doesn't have a single remedy on him for alcohol poisoning.

It's much easier to think about, just now, than literally anything else.

As much as it feels like he's just going to be sick until the heat death of the universe, eventually his stomach does manage to empty itself of all contents. He heaves a few more times, the action a habit he can't break, but finally that too subsides, and he slumps back on his heels, head rolling on his neck like its been broken. It'll be a wonder if tomorrow he remembers Hakkai showing up at the bar, much less any of the rest of this.

It'll be a wonder if tomorrow he doesn't kill himself to get rid of the hangover.

"M'okay," he slurs, patting around at the back of the bar, looking for something to hang on to. There's no way he's standing on his own right now. "Gonna go lie down, s'fine."

Gojyo's head lolls to the side, boneless as a dead man's, as he sits back, and Hakkai freezes for a moment before he can claw for enough practicality to stop him from running away, again.

Practicality provides a message he doesn't want to listen to. Gojyo, it seems, hasn't showered, hasn't eaten, has at least one recently healed stab wound, and is so drunk right now that Hakkai suspects putting him to bed will test whether shinki can choke on their own vomit.

Not that there is much left in Gojyo's stomach to vomit, at the moment, of course.

He's tipsy himself, vodka and gin unhelpfully sliding their way into his own bloodstream, but a full youkai's metabolism leaves him more clearheaded than he would strictly like to be. So does having eaten breakfast -- he hasn't seen Gojyo this self-destructive in years.

Gojyo's feeling uselessly for a handhold across an empty shelf. Hakkai slides his other hand under Gojyo's armpit, and heaves. He's recently reset his bar for bad decisions fueled by alcohol, and he still knows this is a bad idea even before he opens his mouth.

"I'm not leaving you here. You'll have to sleep it off at my place."

Hakkai -- or Gonou, or whoever he was at the time -- never met the Gojyo who'd predated Banri. There were entire weeks spent in this kind of state, back when he was younger, dumber, and a lot less dead. Banri, for all his flaws, had been a stabilizing influence... not that Gojyo remembers this.

Hoisted to his feet, Gojyo blinks rapidly, trying to force the room to come into focus. The room rudely refuses. "Like hell," he mumbles; his feet are backwards, and it's making it really hard to walk. "What kinda girl do you think I am?"

Keep him upright and moving, Hakkai. If he slows down again, he'll be out for the count.

"The sort who has a bottle of vodka for breakfast." In other words, an idiot. Gojyo's stumbling barely averages out to forward motion, and Hakkai stops a few paces from the puddle of vomit and closes his eyes.

There's a clumsy fuzz welling up around the edges of his own mind, and it's worse without vision to distract himself from it. He takes a breath, trying not to choke on the reek, and gets a better grip on Gojyo.

He focuses on his shrine, and: blink. He stumbles as his feet hit the ground, and doesn't open his eyes: blink again, and he's in his own front hallway, Gojyo's weight bearing down on his shoulder.

There's something to be said for being a god, at times. It's far easier to haul a sloppy drunk home from the bar.

His own eyes tightly closed as well, Gojyo's just getting used to the feeling of Hakkai's warmth pressed against his side when the world shifts, and shifts again. "Urp," he protests, clinging to Hakkai's chest as the ground tilts up beneath his feet. "Blaah."

If the guest room is stocked with a toothbrush, that would be a blessing.

He's still on his feet, though. It'll take more than all the booze in his bar to put Sha Gojyo on the ground. Not much more, granted, but he's standing, and even moving his feet voluntarily to keep up with Hakkai. He's doing great!

And then a figure glides into view, white hair, pointed ears, and a face that Gojyo can't image ever forgetting. It's Banri. It's fucking Banri, here, in Hakkai's house! Gojyo sucks in a deep breath, momentarily clearing his head, and he strides forward to punch that (imagined) smirk off Banri's asshole face.

"You!"

Alas, the stride is really more of a tumble. He manages to get free of Hakkai's grip, only to discover that he's too drunk to stand under his own power. Gojyo goes down like he's been poleaxed.

You! Gojyo yells, and Hakkai jerks to a stop just as Gojyo goes over face-first towards the floor. It slows him down too much to make the catch before Gojyo hits hardwood.

Banri? What he's remembered, what he called Hakkai over, is Banri?

Of all the damned things. Asshole is staring down at Gojyo with his usual lack of expression; Hakkai rubs his face.

"Open the first guest room, please, Asshole."

The white-haired youkai inclines his head and heads for the stairs. Hakkai kneels beside Gojyo to peel him off the floor and drag him up to bed.

When he wakes up it's still light outside, or maybe it's light outside again. He's got no idea how long he was out -- all he knows is that something shat in his mouth and punched him in the head and that even his own heartbeat is far too loud.

And, when he opens his eyes, he realizes he knows something else. He knows who the man in the corner of the room is.

He's aware enough not to call out to Banri -- just barely, but barely is enough. With a groan, he hauls himself up to a sit, rubbing his hands over his face as though that'll wipe away the last however many hours. (All it does is remind him just how long it's been since he washed his face, or his hands either, for that matter.) Fucking Banri. Here, a broken shinki, with no memories at all.

"Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy," he creaks out, immediately regretting the effort. Did he get in a fight? He sure feels like he got in a fight. He'd gone back to the bar, he remembers that much, and he'd looked around the place. Seen Ayumu's blood on the floor (and Tsuzuki's, too? He doesn't know how Tsuzuki is, doesn't know what happened to either of them, and a sick dread clutches at his gut.) He'd called Hakkai -- Hakkai had been there.

And then?

A quick glance under the blankets confirms that he hadn't managed to lure Hakkai into bed (although where his shirt's got to is anybody's guess). So he's hung over, possibly beaten up, in Hakkai's house.

With the ghost of his dead traitorous roommate watching him sleep.

"Ugh, get out." He buries his face in his hands, breathing slowly. It doesn't help. "Don't come back without breakfast."

Hakkai had, stubbornly, not let himself hang around his temple waiting to see if Gojyo woke up, and what he actually remembers of their conversation. He'd put him to bed (though he'd been unconscious well before his head hit the pillow) instructed Asshole to keep an eye on him, and gone about his daily business.

The buzz had worn off an hour or two after lunchtime, giving way to a headache in the deeply annoying manner of drinking done too early to sleep through, and by the time he's finished answering prayers, tutoring, and putting the braised pork in the oven to cook, his mood has gone sour for the day.

He's sitting at the kitchen table with a book when Asshole walks in and looks at him. Hakkai looks back, blinks, and sets his book down as he focuses on a particular one of the four names he can feel hooked in behind his breastbone. Asshole hasn't just abandoned his post. Gojyo's awake.

He'd left a glass of water and a hangover remedy pill on the nightstand in the guest room. The water, by now, is definitely going to be warm, so another glass (with ice) is the excuse he picks for heading upstairs.

"Stay here," he informs Asshole, who does, and climbs the stairs to Gojyo's room.

The water's been gratefully consumed, but the mystery pill is still sitting on the side table. It's not that he doesn't have the impulse to eat the unknown drug (he does), and not that he doesn't trust Hakkai to have left him something beneficial (that's not how Hakkai would hurt him). It's that he's pretty sure if he puts anything in his stomach, it's going to come back up. The water's even giving him a bit of trouble.

He can hear somebody approaching, a louder tread than Banri's ghostly glide, and for a moment he has the childish desire to fall back into bed and pull the covers over his head. He refrains. Barely.

Instead, he swings his legs around to the side of the bed, and slowly, carefully manages to get to his feet. The walk back to the bar will clear his head some, he assures himself (it's a lie, but he's willing to believe it for the time being), and once he's there, there's a lot of cleaning and repairs that have to happen. That'll keep him busy for some time.

He just needs to find his shoes first.

"I'll be out of your hair in two minutes," he promises Hakkai, as soon as the other man enters the room. His vision is still bleary -- lights are too bright, everything's a blur -- but it shouldn't be this hard to find his boots. Where are they? "You see my boots?"

Still shirtless, still completely unshowered, and bleary-eyed, Gojyo's on his feet and looking for his damned shoes. Hakkai stares at him for a long moment, and allows himself the space to hate everything about this situation, and also himself.

Moment finished, he sighs, and holds out the glass of cold water.

"Take that pill," he advises. "It's for hangovers; it will help. Your shoes are downstairs by the front door, and..."

As much as he'd like Gojyo, and all of the pain and awkwardness having him in Hakkai's guest room brings back, to be out of his hair (at least for a while, at least until he has to deal with it) he has to admit this may be his only chance to try to set things right. Or, if not right, then less wrong. He's been aching over everything he's ruined for long enough.

"... you don't have to leave that quickly."

The water he'll take -- anything Hakkai held out to him he'd take -- although it requires two hands on the cold, condensation-slippery glass to bring it to his lips. It's so cold it's a shock, and he briefly considers whether he could get away with just pouring it over the top of his head.

Hakkai probably wouldn't like that, though.

"Your shinki. Asshole." He takes another sip of water -- it's so cold, and feels so good in his mouth. He swallows carefully, licking his lips to save every drop of the sweet water, and sets the glass on the end table. "You know who he is?"

Well, if he'd doubted what it was that Gojyo remembered, that's enough to make him certain. Hakkai eyes Gojyo, who still hasn't reached for the hangover medication, sighs a little, and picks that pill up too, holding it out.

"Yes," he says. "Do you?"

He meets Hakkai's eye, the blank, knowing look of a man who can see only too clearly what the future holds. But if Hakkai wants him to eat the pill, he'll eat the pill. Into his mouth is goes, and he chases it with a larger swig of the cold water. There. Done.

He glances at the door as he sets the glass down again (holding it is just asking to drop it), but there's no sign of Banri. "I know his name," he offers -- Banri's not anywhere nearby, right? "I know why I named him Asshole." He turns back to Hakkai. "If you know who he was, why do you let him stay here?"

"Well," Hakkai says, "it's rather gratifying to call him 'Asshole' and order him to clean my kitchen."

Petty schadenfreude aside, though-- he shakes his head, glancing back towards the bedroom door. Asshole is nowhere in sight, and Hakkai had ordered him to stay in the kitchen, so it's unlikely he'll show up to overhear.

His voice drops to a quieter register, almost resigned, as he continues. "And not only has he forgotten what he did, he's not even the same person who did it. What would be the point in taking it out on him?

"Sometimes, it's nice to have a familiar face around."

Especially when it's just a familiar face -- and when it's not anyone whose mind he'd mourn the loss of.

Ordering him around, Gojyo can understand. But waking up every morning to discover that the man who tried to murder your boyfriend has been watching you sleep? That he just can't get behind.

He shoots a quick glance at Hakkai, in case the man could tell that he'd just thought the word boyfriend with him in mind, but Hakkai seems oblivious. It's been awhile, but he's pretty sure the god-shinki connection isn't that revealing. And a good thing, too. Hakkai can have his exhaustion, his headache, and his frustration -- that other recalled memory is Gojyo's, and it's not for sharing.

Sharing his feelings never ends well.

"I guess," he agrees at last, rubbing a grimy hand over his grimy head. God he's gross right now. Maybe he'll find a river to fall in on his way back to the bar -- it's not like he's got clean clothes anywhere anymore. There's spilled maraschino cherry juice all over his meager belongings at the bar, (courtesy of a stray bullet) he's lost his jacket, his boots are theoretically at the front door... He lets his head fall back, eyes closed, and sighs heavily at the ceiling. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you've got terrible taste in your shinkis."

"Are you including yourself?" Hakkai murmurs. "I haven't revoked your name yet."

He feels foolish, and exhausted; after a moment, he looks away from Gojyo, and adds, "The bathroom is down the hall. I can lend you a clean shirt."

Maybe they are just circling one another, hopelessly and forever, he thinks, remembering Gojyo in one of his shirts, in Elsa's temple, months ago. Maybe he should learn how to say what he means, instead of sulking like a toddler when no one understands him.

In exactly the same mild, helpful tone -- he's trying very hard to ensure it's exactly the same -- he says, "I'm afraid that you hate who you are around me so much you'd rather die than let me get too close."

A shower and a clean shirt sounds amazing. Getting wet and naked in Hakkai's house and then wandering around in his clothes sounds... dangerous.

But apparently Hakkai's in the mood for dangerous. Gojyo was starting to turn, to find some way to politely refuse the shower -- maybe he'll just throw up some more, and Hakkai will get disgusted and kick him out -- when Hakkai drops a bomb on him. If he could name the jolt that slices through his chest, he'd probably call it fear.

"What... what am I supposed to say to something like that?" His voice trembles as though he's laughing, but this isn't a funny joke at all. "It's not just you," he continues, his mouth apparently having decided that his brain is taking too long to process this information. "I hate who I am when you're not here, too," he quips. "Does that help?"

Terrible Idea Theater proudly presents...

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