thenearshore | Terrible Idea Theater proudly presents...

The phone rings. The phone rings, and Hakkai, halfway through scrolling down today's entries on the BBS, flicks a glance at the caller ID, and drops it onto Bon, who's lolling on his feet and biting through a large bone of uncertain origin.

The dog tries to roll over, and Hakkai, after an intense few seconds spent diving for the still-ringing phone in an ocean of thick, moving fur, rescues it and picks up the call with a reflexive stab of his thumb.

He's having second thoughts before he even lifts it to his ear. But --

Well. He hadn't expected Gojyo to be the one to call him.

He's not making the least effort to hide the wariness in his tone as he says, "Hello?"

He's not going to pick up. He's vanished; it's a wrong number. He's there, and staring at his phone, and he's thinking about all the ways Gojyo's fucked up every interaction they've had so far and he's decision whether he wants to let it go to voicemail or if he's just going to block the call while it's still in--

And then Hakkai picks up, and Gojyo's throat goes dry.

"Um. Hi. ...It's Gojyo."

Hakkai closes his eyes, and leans back, all the way until his head hits the top of the sofa cushion with a soft sound of compressing foam. The phone is still against his ear.

"Yes," he says, "I know."

He's tempted to go silent after that, and see what else Gojyo has to say -- but his chest hurts, as though someone's grabbed a vital organ and twisted to see what happens, and he opens his mouth again before taking the time to think better of it.

"Did you remember something else?" He can hear the bitter edge to the question, but he refuses to regret it. Why else would Gojyo want to talk to him, after all? He doesn't sound hurt, and he hadn't called when he'd had his arm cut off with a chainsaw, so it's unlikely he'd come to Hakkai for help if he were hurt.

At least it's not a text at three in the morning, this time, he reflects, and opens his eyes again to stare up at the ceiling.

Or maybe Hakkai will see right through his bullshit and call him out directly.

"That's not..." His mouth snaps shut. This isn't how this is supposed to go, dammit! He's supposed to invite Hakkai over, get him drunk, be in control, but here they are, not ten seconds into their conversation and Hakkai's already got him unsteady.

No wonder they've fought so much. Hakkai knows him too damn well, doesn't he?

"No." And, in a rush: "But I want to, and I want your help doing it."

"No!" It's a snarl, instant and furious, and Hakkai sits up out of his defeated slouch so fast that Bon and the cat who'd been sleeping by his side disappear in furry streaks towards the door. His hand clenches on the phone, hard, and his voice drops to a harsh whisper.

"I'm not going to help you destroy yourself."

He's not. He can't; he's been terrified of it since he first saw Gojyo ask him for a boxed lunch without a flicker of recognition behind his smile. He can't believe what he's heard, can't believe, even after every stupid thing Gojyo has done, that he would dare.

Okay, so. That probably wasn't the best way to phrase that.

"I'm not that stupid! Geez." He laughs, weakly, pacing the sticky floor. That was one hell of an intense response -- it's making him feel a little warm, actually. Warm and cared for.

Shit he's messed up.

"You can tell me about me when I was a god, though. Right? That's safe." And that will tell him about who he was when he had his memories, which is a loophole he's still proud of having discovered. "Say yes."

Hakkai doesn't say yes. His breathing is uneven, rasping against the receiver as he tries to claw back the surge of furious panic and leave enough space for him to think.

At last, low, he says, "It blighted you when I was sick." His recollection of that conversation is fuzzy at best, blurred by fever and confusion, but he remembers Gojyo in his hallway, remembers the purple smear on his neck as he backed away.

It should be safe to tell Gojyo about himself as a god-- but where's the line? What would make him think about things he shouldn't know, and what might Hakkai let slip?

It's not as obviously a request for suicide by best friend as it had sounded at first, but it might come to the same thing in the end.

"I got blighted because I was feeling bad for naming that poor guy Asshole," he retorts. But it's a gentle retort. Gentle-ish, anyway. "I've been watching the phone chatrooms, and I've asked enough questions myself."

Does he have to prove to Hakkai that he's learned information about his past self and been unharmed for it? Fine, that's easy enough. Pride is for suckers. "I know I got so drunk that I disappeared once for two whole days and nobody thought anything of it." There. See?

This isn't going to work. He's not pacing any longer, standing at the pitted and bullet-shot bar, nails digging into the fake wood. Nothing's going according to plan, but Hakkai hasn't hung up yet. Maybe there's a chance?

"If you want to see if that blighted me, you'll have to come to Kinyobi."

"That's not why you disappeared," Hakkai murmurs, and scrubs a hand over his face, briefly, hard. Gojyo wants to know. It might be true that there are things Hakkai can tell him safely, things that won't blight or destroy him. It's certainly true that Hakkai doesn't know which will, and which won't.

(Gojyo's face, surprised; Gojyo's throat, a welter of blood. He wishes he could stop seeing it.)

"I can't -- I won't tell you," he says, slowly, "without precautions. Let me name you."

He hasn't thought it through before the words are out, but it falls together when they are. It's how Gojyo had known, telling him about what was happening at home, when to stop. It would mean Hakkai would feel the sting the moment anything went too far.

"I'll release you, once you've heard enough. But I have to know when to stop."

So instead of strong-arming Hakkai into showing up and getting drunk, Hakkai's coming here, voluntarily, and he's naming Gojyo in the process.

Shit he needs a drink.

"Deal," he agrees, before he can think of all the reasons why he should argue. There's the clink of bottles as he fishes beneath the bar for the case of American rice beer that's buried under grimy police tape and dust from all the fighting. The power's out in the bar, so the taps are down -- it's warm bottled beer, or the hard stuff, and he's not quite ready to start drinking whiskey at ten in the morning. Not yet. He'll save that for later in their conversation, if need be.

"I get to pick the name, though. Sha." He pops the bottle top off with the counter-mounted bottle opener, and takes a short swig. It's frothy and hoppy and exactly what he needs. Breakfast of champions. "Th'one for gauze."

That's much, much easier than Hakkai had expected it to be; he'd expected a fight over it, if not an outright refusal. Does Gojyo want to know that badly? Or has he remembered something, after all?

(And, if he wants so badly to know what happened when he was a god, what did he remember?)

But he's given his condition, and Gojyo agreed.

"Sha," he agrees. Not the one for sand, but the one for gauze. The name that Sharak had given him. "You found out she's gone."

He gets to his feet, the creak of the couch springs loud in the silent room, and takes a deep breath to push back the sense of being wound so tightly that at the next turn he'll snap. After all, he'll endure. This isn't even the worst idea he's had in the last-- oh, say, two days, he reminds himself, and his exhale is almost a laugh.

"When do you want to meet?"

He doesn't need to touch the back of his neck to know that there's guilt-blight blooming across his skin. Yeah, he knows she's gone. He told her to vanish, and she did. And maybe she'll be back in a few days, like Hakkai always seems to... but for some reason he doesn't think so. He thinks she's gone, dead, however spirits die. Just like Genjo, and Ekko, and the dozens of others who have passed through in the months he's been here.

He won't make that mistake again.

"Now." The next swig of beer nearly chokes him -- it's a little too warm to chug, but he forces it down anyway, eyes watering as the bubbles scratch at his throat. Just one beer, he promises himself. Just one beer -- he needs to keep a level head. "And bring some shrine water."

"You know, it's not your fault." The fear is ebbing away, now that he knows he is going, and exhaustion wells up behind it. Of course it's not Gojyo's fault that Sharak disappeared, not any more than it had been Hakkai's fault losing Elsa, then Gojyo, then Ukoku and Yuri--

-- Although, really, he wishes he could take credit for Ukoku.

He moves, quietly, to the backyard where the fountain boils up like a spring from its unpolished stone base, pouring down to the basin below. He keeps bottles here, and he fills them, one by one: three total. Even without the risk of talking about Gojyo's past, there may be pain to go around.

"I'm on my way," he adds, quietly, over the sound of water splashing. "Five minutes?"

He knows it's not really his fault. If he could make people disappear Hakkai would have been dead weeks ago.

"Yeah." He takes another swig, emptying the bottle. He blinks at it in confusion -- it shouldn't have drained that fast -- and then, with a shrug, reaches under the bar for a second one. "The door's still got police tape on it. Teleport straight in."

And, with nothing left to say, he hangs up. The bar seems stifling in the silence, and he finds himself pacing again, opening all the upper windows in the front (they only open a crack, but that bit of light and air and noise is better than nothing), pulling down police tape, staring in gut-churning rage at the bloodstains on the ancient wood floor. It's not all Ayumu's blood, he knows... but some of it almost certainly is. How is he ever going to make it up to her? To Tsuzuki?

It takes less than five minutes: the fourth time Hakkai catches himself trying to think of a reason not to go, bottles of shrine water in hand, he gives up on combing his hair and just goes. His temple to the smaller, brightly painted mortal shrine; the shrine to a spot on the old, dark wood floor of Gojyo's bar. The windows are open, and sunlight streams down from them, dust floating thick in every beam. The street smells don't drown out the scent of stale blood.

He's very still, for a few seconds, standing in the beam of unexpected sunlight where he'd landed.

"Good morning," he says at last, politeness its usual refuge, and turns to set the three plastic gallon bottles of water on the bar. The bodies, at least, are all gone, the pools of blood scrubbed away -- but the building must have been closed up after that, and the smell lingers.

Gojyo's behind the bar when Hakkai arrives. Putting that barrier between them wasn't intentional -- he was just fetching another beer -- but he's grateful that it's there nonetheless. It feels safer, having something solid to cower behind. In the mid-morning sun, the blight on the back of his neck stands out stark and angry. It's not a huge patch -- he could cover it with one hand -- but it's big enough.

"Hey." Does he invite Hakkai to sit? Offer him a drink? Instead, he reaches for the nearest jug of temple water. It's probably rude to get named by a god and immediately make them feel your blight, huh? "Lemme wash this off, then you can name me."

He looks exhausted. It's been a few days since Chikusa and Ken broke him out of jail, and his wound is healed, but with the bar closed up (and, more importantly, stained with his friend's blood) he's been sleeping rough, and it shows. There's dust and grime on his jacket sleeve and all down his pant leg, and the dark circles under his eyes belie just how much sleep he's been getting. "Thanks. For coming, I mean." He hoists the jug. "And for this."

Gojyo looks like hell. The set of Hakkai's shoulders -- posture so perfect that it's obviously defensive -- sags, and he rests his hand on the edge of the bar between them. His mouth quirks before he looks up to meet Gojyo's gaze.

"You're welcome. Let me get it?"

Nodding at the jug, he adds, "It's hard to see the back of your own neck."

It's easier when someone helps. And, of course, it will be easier for him to see more than the stark purple edge of it if Gojyo agrees; easier to see if any of it had burrowed deep enough to start sprouting eyes.

His gaze moves from the jug to Hakkai's face and back before he nods, frowning. It's a vulnerable position Hakkai's asking him to take, and not for the first time Gojyo wonders just who created blight in the first place, and why they chose to put it somewhere the shinki couldn't see. Somewhere that requires bowing to treat it.

Gods are assholes, it his takeaway from that.

"It shouldn't be too bad," he offers, coming around from behind the bar with careful casual steps. He's lost some weight -- they kept forgetting to feed him in jail, and the last few days he's just been eating what he doesn't feel guilty about snatching. He stops in the middle of the room, right in one of those dusty sunbeams, and holds out the jug. Sure, he could have leaned over the sink, but maybe temple water will help clean away the blood stink. "Try not to get it down my back, okay?" That means he'll have to lean way over, staring right now at those bloodstains, but that's fine. That'll help keep his mind on track.

The dust glitters around Gojyo like gold, bringing out the scarlet in his buzzed hair, the dirt on his jacket, the shadows around his eyes. The blight, clutching bruise-purple fingers towards the front of his throat. Sunlight can be cruel, Hakkai reflects, and reaches out to take the jug from his hands.

Sunlight reminds him of how much he shouldn't have willfully ignored.

He steps to Gojyo's side, a little too fast, sick at even the appearance of being bowed to, and reaches to pour. The water's icy, straight from his backyard fountain; he's keeping his hands a minimum of six inches away from skin while he pours, and silently cursing his own sense of guilt.

"Ah-- if you could duck your head a little further forward?"

The water's damn cold! Goosebumps flare across the back of Gojyo's neck as the first splash hits, and he sucks in his breath in shock. "I should send you home with this beer," he jokes, bracing his hands on his thighs, widening his stance a hair, and bending even further forward. The water drips down his chin and puddles on the stained wood, and he likes to imagine that he can see the blood bubbling away, as if the water were that peroxide shit in the brown bottle. "Get it nice and chilled."

The blight is a few days old, blight on top of blight on top of blight. The purple is a rich, sickly dark color, and there's definitely spots where it's starting to bulge. No eyeballs yet, though. He -- they -- caught it in time. Still, there's a lot of it. It's working its way up into the base of his hairline, and it disappears a finger's length beneath the collar of his jacket. "Did you get it all?"

"Don't tell me you're drinking it warm," Hakkai teases, and adds another splash right at the curve where spine meets skull, wiping away the last of the old-wine stain there. "--It's under your collar."

He takes a step back, giving Gojyo (and himself; standing so close raises the hair on his arms, as surely as putting his hands under a raised blade) a little space.

It's hard just to be around him, and Hakkai hates it. His face sets for a moment, too still, before he continues in a light voice.

"Can you take it off? Or I won't have a choice but to pour water down your back."

Hakkai's voice doesn't sound quite right, and Gojyo's pretty sure he knows why. I remembered, he wants to say. I know who we were, it's fine. I was wrong before. It's fine. But that's the punchline to today's talk, not the intro. There's too many things he needs to confirm first.

Still. A bit of a show can't hurt, right?

"Sure," he agrees amiably, straightening up and shrugging out of his jacket and long-sleeved shirt without the slightest shred of modesty. He's not as sexy as he thinks -- skinniness aside, he's in real need of a shower. A trickle of ice water rolls down his spine and he twitches, swearing under his breath as he bends back over.

Hakkai always comes to his rescue, doesn't he? Every time he's asked, Hakkai's come running, even if they'd been fighting. Even when he asks for something that Hakkai clearly doesn't want to do, like this, he's never said no. Not unless it would put Gojyo in danger.

He's been really unfair to the man, Gojyo thinks. He's got his work ahead of him, mending all these bridges. "Is this good?"

Gojyo's jacket and shirt come off with an easy flourish -- even unwashed and exhausted, he apparently can't help himself. There's a knife wound on his stomach, closed but still marked out in fresh pink skin, and.

Hakkai's breath goes out of him as though he'd been punched. He'd thought the dark streaks above Gojyo's collar were part of the blight; the color is almost the same, dark rust red against wine-purple. They're not. His youkai mark is back, twining around itself in that fiery curl between his shoulderblades.

"When did--"

There's no minus wave here. He'd know if there were; even with his limiters on, he can feel it as a distant pressure, can sense when it's stronger and weaker. He'd certainly have known the moment he took them off.

The blight obscures most of the top half, a few fingers'-breadth worth of purple blotting out the curls. Hakkai's hand clenches tighter on the handle of the plastic jug, and relaxes, deliberately, as it lets out a creak.

It's an effort to force himself to take the step closer, to lift the jug and pour another stream of clear, cold water over the last smear of blight. There's a part of him, buried deep, that's hoping, as he does, the mark beneath it will wash away too.

Hakkai pauses, and Hakkai gasps, and Gojyo cranes his neck around trying to see the other man's face. The hand not supporting his jacket and shirt goes to his side, where the knife wound is nearly healed and hardly tender at all. Is that what Hakkai's stressing about?

"This?" He pats it, gently but not gingerly, as Hakkai pours more water onto his neck. "It's nothin', don't worry about it."

The coil on the back of his neck stands out in sharp relief when the blight is finally washed away, the old-blood red dark against Gojyo's skin.Gojyo shakes the water out of his ears and peers back at Hakkai again.

"Hey, say something."

It doesn't, of course, wash off. Hakkai sets the gallon of water down with care before he fumbles it, and sits down next to it, on one of the bar stools. It's stiff, possibly with someone's old spilled drink, possibly with blood.

"Have you looked at the back of your neck lately?"

What he can't say: I've seen that mark before.

What he can -- what he can't avoid, because one glance into a mirror would give it away -- is that Gojyo has a youkai mark now, and he hadn't before.

He wants to put his face in his hands, or, possibly, run. He doesn't; he doesn't move, for a long moment, until he shifts enough to cross his legs, and clasp his hands on his knee.

"You have a youkai mark. It wasn't there before."

Terrible Idea Theater proudly presents...

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