thenearshore | /man in black lyrics

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/man in black lyrics

Who: Gojyo and anyone who wants to stop by!
What: Hanging out, having adventures, engaging in healthy coping habits
When: Any time of any day from May 12-15ish
Where: chez Dinosaur
Warnings: Homo-antagonistic language in the Niles thread.

He's never going to sleep again. Which is fine -- he knows from experience that he can go weeks on end with only a few hours of sleep snatched here and there between youkai attacks. It won't kill him. He doesn't even feel all that tired, not really. He more feels like he's asleep and dreaming than anything else -- everything is at a bit of a distance and his reactions are slowed, like the air's gone thicker or something. Like he's a little drunk, even though he hasn't touched a drop since his return. It's weird and unsettling, but he's sure it'll wear off. And even if it doesn't, it's not something to bother anybody with. He's been enough of a bother already.

So during the day, he sticks close to Hakkai -- he's worried the other man enough already by vanishing, so it's the least he can do to stay near (and if that means running errands or sitting quietly in the back of the classroom while school is in session, he supposes that he can manage). And at night, when he wakes after only an hour or two of sleep, he tracks down Asshole and drags the half-man out to the porch with him, for company while he smokes pack after pack and watches the moon.

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"Oh, I'm sure we've had worse breakfasts," Hakkai says, in the most innocent possible tone, and glances over at Sanzo. Sanzang's scolding Gojyo, which will, Hakkai can only hope, restrain him. It's just possible that Sanzo can be threatened into good behavior.

(He doesn't really want Hakkai to explain that statement with Sanzang in the room, does he? Does he?)

He glances over at Gojyo, after a stare calculated at just long enough to make his point clear, and adds, "Really, Gojyo, everything seems to be all right here. Shall we leave them to their privacy?"

Nobody wants Hakkai to explain that statement with Sanzang in the room. Between the gun pointed at his face, Sanzang's chiding, and Hakkai's polite threat, Gojyo's keeping his mouth shut. Barely.

He nods, waggling his fingers at Sanzo as he heads back into the hallway. The second that door is shut, though, he's going to crumple over and laugh until his chest aches.

Hakkai shuts the bedroom door quite firmly behind himself and leans back against the doorjamb, waiting as Gojyo collapses in hilarity.

It is good to see him laugh that hard after the last few days. He's probably needed something really ridiculous to lighten his mood, and Hakkai can't imagine anything more ridiculous than stumbling over Sanzo and Sanzo's charming female alter ego curled up in bed together. Not at the moment, anyway: but then, it's late, and he's feeling tired and foolish, so his imagination might not be at his best.

After a few seconds, he comments mildly, "I'm not sure how good his aim will be through a wall."

The rage and embarrassment he's feeling have to be Sanzo's, and fuck, it's such a relief to have it confirmed that everyone's okay. At least for the moment. Gojyo takes a deep breath and nods, eyes still watering with muffled giggles as he heads further down the hall, out of range of the gun he swears he can still feel trained on him.

"Sanzo and Sanzang!" he whispers at last, once they're a ways away from the bedroom door. "Can you believe it? She got him!"

"She's a very nice woman," Hakkai offers. And Sanzo's a very prickly man, but it's not all that surprising that he'd wind up attached to one of his gods, and someone who'd been so unfailingly solicitous and supportive of him.... Is it?

He gropes, frustrated, for memory. Something, anything: this is a joke he doesn't entirely get, and he wants to. He wants all that past he's lost, with an intensity that's fierce enough almost to pull him past the terror that strikes a moment later. It would have been enough, if it weren't for how well he knew the feeling already, and the fact that he knows just as well that he's just stung Gojyo and blighted himself.

Damn it, he thinks, suppresses a jolt of savage frustration, and smiles faintly at Gojyo. "Ah. I'm sorry."

She's a very nice woman... and something about that is upsetting enough that Hakkai's stinging him? That is Hakkai's doing, isn't it? But that's not really a question -- of course it's Hakkai.

"What was that for?" he asks, his voice gone soft with worry. It wasn't anything to do with Sanzang, or with Sanzo, it wasn't concern that Gojyo was going to get shot or anything... getting stung was usually guilt, but what the hell was there for Hakkai to be feeling guilty about?

Without waiting for a response, Gojyo drapes an arm companionably around Hakkai's shoulders and begins steering him toward the holy water fountain down in the courtyard below. "If it's gonna blight you more to talk about it, then don't say anything, okay?"

Hakkai would've had to head that way himself regardless, and if Gojyo's steering him, that puts Gojyo there too, which is all the better. He's going to have to have his own blight cleaned off too.

The worst thing about being a shinki is that his errors inevitably hurt someone else.

"No, it won't," he said, rather gently. "I just tried to remember too much. It's fine." He does know better, after all. He'd hurt Elsa enough learning better that he shouldn't have let that particular lesson slip.

Ah. Yeah. That would do it.

"Can't imagine what it's like." Heading down the stairs with his arm around Hakkai's shoulders in the middle of the night sounds like a perfect plan for falling and cracking his head open, so at the top landing he pulls back, bumping shoulders with Hakkai briefly in the process. "Takin' a smart guy like you and tellin' him not to think, not to... to figure shit out?"

They really would have been so much better off if Hakkai had kept his memories, and Gojyo had given his up. He's not the thinker, or the planner. He's not the smart one. It was smart of their captors to wipe Hakkai's mind, but if they thought it would stop him from figuring out how to destroy them, then they didn't know Cho Hakkai.

"But you'll get there." He's sure of that. If Sanzo could do it, so can Hakkai. It's only a matter of time.

Hakkai starts down the staircase, one hand trailing absently along the banister. It's not that anyone's told him not to. He'd had to go looking to hear anything about the consequences, and even then, what Bishamon had told him hadn't been clear.

He smiles a little. Well, he's learned by trial and error. There's only so much blight any one shinki can take, and pushing too hard reliably blights him. All he can do is wait, and hope that the few glimmers of memory turn into more. He'd been the one assuring Gojyo that he was bound to remember more soon, barely a quarter-hour ago.

It's just that he can't think about it in any detail. He can't do anything to make it happen.

"I'm sure I will." It won't make a difference what he believes, as long as whatever it is gives him the strength not to push. "... In the meantime, I'll try not to sting you."

Much.

"Oi, you know I don't care about that shit." It's not the sting that's the problem -- it's the buildup of blight and the fact that they don't know where the limit is. A little bit of weird bruising on the back of the neck isn't a big deal, but how far can they push it until it won't wash off?

"Just, y'know." He can't actually say be careful, but it's clearly implied. "With both you and Sanzo remembering things... and everyone else, too, that's got to be a sign that whatever spell or power brought us here is gettin' weaker, right?" And the weaker it gets, the easier it'll be to break free and go home.

"Maybe," Hakkai agreed. "But there are still new gods arriving." Was the spell for each of them different, and weakening to different degrees? Are disappearances the result of it fraying too badly to maintain someone's presence here?

After all, a few shinki had vanished just after getting a part of their memories back.

He almost raises a hand to the back of his own neck, and stops himself before he spreads any blight to his fingertips.

"I care about it," he adds. They don't know how far it can go before it's gone too far. And while it doesn't hurt for Hakkai -- although it will, if unchecked, destroy him in the end -- it does hurt and weaken Gojyo, and that can have unfortunate consequences long before Hakkai is lost into a monster's mind and body.

Gojyo just shrugs at that. Yeah, there's new gods arriving. There's really just too much they don't know. Maybe everyone who comes in at the same time is controlled by the same spell, or maybe there's a spell for each world -- some worlds definitely have more people coming in than others -- or maybe each of them was brought here individually... or maybe it's all just one big spell, some kind of security feature that was triggered when Amaterasu died. The old gods aren't talking, and there's no way to know.

He catches Hakkai's movement out of the corner of his eye and reaches to stop him from touching his blighted neck. Hakkai's hand stops, but Gojyo's doesn't, and he rests it on Hakkai's shoulder. They're almost to the fountain anyway.

"Let me see?"

"If you'd like." He reaches up to brush his hair away from his neck, ducking his head forward. He's still only wearing the plain knit undershirt he'd worn to bed, so that should be enough to show the blight, assuming it's in the usual spot.

Maybe he should find a pitcher in the kitchen and move it to his bedstand. Or Gojyo's... but his clothes are still in his own bedroom, in any case.

Thinking of inconsequential things does help distract him from pushing at the edges of his memories; he considers the pitchers he's seen in the kitchen for a few moments, looking at the hallway floor, where stripes of moonlight falling through the windows paint it blue and grey.

It's in the usual spot. Usual color, slightly bigger than he'd expect, but then again, since when did Hakkai do anything by halves?

"It's big," he murmurs, tracing just beyond the edge of the discoloration, his touch light but still checking for any signs of a wince or twitch. It doesn't hurt, does it? "This is just from right now?"

It doesn't hurt. It doesn't feel any different from the rest of his skin at all, in fact: Gojyo's fingers brushing lightly across the nape of his neck and down onto his shoulder feels like nothing more than Gojyo's fingers on his neck and shoulder. It's a startlingly intimate gesture.

He manages to hold still for a few seconds for the touch -- stubbornly refusing to twitch -- before a shiver he can't repress jolts down his spine, and he pulls firmly away to hide it, letting his hair fall back over the blight.

"It should be," he says, crossing his arms as he turns back to Gojyo, and managing a dry tone. "I hope you weren't actually touching it?"

That sure didn't seem to be a cringe of pain. Good. When the blight gets bad, it hurts, and that's the only indicator Gojyo knows of to tell when it's getting too bad to cure with holy water.

He returns Hakkai's dry comment with a dry look of his own, raising his unblighted fingers and waggling them at eye level. But his deadpan annoyance doesn't last more than a few seconds -- he's not stupid, okay, he's not gonna stick his hand into blight, but even if he did he could just wash it off, and besides, isn't it his job as Hakkai's god to make sure Hakkai doesn't get blighted, so maybe contaminating himself will help Hakkai remember not to do stupid shit to get blighted in the first place?

Okay, there, better.

"Are we gonna have this conversation every time you get blighted?" He tries to smirk, but it doesn't quite make it up to his eyes -- this shit is scary, okay? And he hates feeling so useless. "Is this the part where I tell you to take your shirt off?"

"Are you going to try to touch it every time?" There's too much worry in Gojyo's eyes for his smirk to be convincing; Hakkai adds, in a gentler tone, "I'm fine."

It doesn't even hurt, after all. It's other people he hurts when he gets careless about his thoughts or feelings, and he can't even allow himself to regret it without compounding the problem.

He raises his eyebrows at Gojyo, and adds, pointedly, "Then it's where I tell you to take yours off, too." The last time they'd had this conversation, he'd been almost a stranger to Hakkai: a compelling stranger from the beginning, but a stranger nonetheless, and one Hakkai hadn't felt himself willing to order around.

As Gojyo's shinki, on the other hand, it's very nearly his place.

Was that a challenge? It sounded like a challenge.

His smirk gets a lot more real as he reaches one arm back, grabbing his shirt between his shoulder blades and yanking it up and over his head. Bare-chested, he holds out his arms for inspection.

"See? No blight." Well, none that can be seen, anyway. He waggles his eyebrows and adds: "You'll have to trust me about the rest of it."

"I don't have to," Hakkai mutters, in a tone that's much closer to mild annoyance than the flirtation the words suggest. If he's stung Gojyo, there's blight somewhere on him from it. He doesn't know if it's usually on the back on gods; it'd been on Elsa's arm, once, but Gojyo's arms and chest are free of any purple blotches.

He's not about to demand Gojyo take off any more clothing, though. He sighs, and steps out the back door, holding it open for Gojyo to follow.

The fountain burbles pleasantly a few paces away from the back door. As soon as Gojyo's not actually going to be hit by the door (perhaps a second sooner; he can dodge) he heads for the fountain, stripping off his own shirt with punctilious gestures.

What? ...Hey! He's just trying to lighten the mood! Gojyo catches the door with a somewhat hurt frown just before it hits him, and trails after Hakkai into the courtyard, keeping his distance.

"What's the problem?" Okay, so, maybe it wasn't the best choice to be flirty after just telling Hakkai that he wants to put their flirting on hold. "Why are you...?" But it's his default, Hakkai should know th--

...right, Hakkai doesn't know that. Hakkai doesn't remember Gojyo's quirks because Hakkai doesn't remember Gojyo. Fuck.

He leans against one of the columns, not quite facing Hakkai (and so giving the other man his privacy, if that's what he wants), and rubs a weary hand over his face. "I say flirty shit when I don't know what else to say,"he apologizes. "I didn't mean anything by it."

The annoyance in the set of Hakkai's shoulders ebbs out on his exhale, which just barely misses being a sigh. He folds his shirt and sets it on the edge of the fountain, sitting down as he fishes for the metal cup on its chain.

It's obnoxious to be flirted with right after being gently put off as though he doesn't know his own mind. It's worse, the way that the apology makes it clear he doesn't know his own mind -- or, at least, he doesn't know Gojyo. Not the way he once had. All he remembers is a single moment, devoid of context, when he had been in love.

Gojyo's right, he admits bitterly to himself: Gojyo is absolutely correct. Hakkai doesn't even understand him well enough to distinguish meaningless space-filling flirting from a genuine overture.

"It's fine," he says, and leans forward, brushing his hair off the back of his neck. "I'm sorry." The water is startlingly cold on his skin, running down to drip off his chin. He refills the cup and empties it over his neck again for good measure.

Hakkai's really annoyed with him. He can see it out of the corner of his eye in the way he's holding himself, hear it in the tightly controlled way he's breathing that means that he's thinking way too hard about something that's making him pissy. But really, Gojyo doesn't need to be reading Hakkai to know any of this. He fucked up, and they both know it.

"Yeah." And the evening had started off so well, too. "Yeah, me too." He risks a glance in Hakkai's direction, to confirm if the other man has gotten all the blight off his neck. The water looks cold; he should have brought a towel. In the morning, he thinks, he'll bring a couple of the big fluffy towels down here from one of the bathrooms. Are there any in the bathroom down the hall? Yeah, there's got to be.

"I'll be right back."

"...Ah?" Hakkai sits back up, wiping a trickle of water away from his neck with his hand (and surreptitiously glancing at his hand to check for blight: no, it's clean. His neck must be, then, too.) "Where are you--"

The door's already falling shut behind Gojyo as he heads inside. Hakkai does sigh, this time, and blots a little of the water with the edge of his folded T-shirt before he pulls it back on. It's knit, it'll dry, and the water in Gojyo's fountain is clear.

It's quiet in the garden, the particular silence of a place without the living world's bats or night-singing birds, or traffic, or buzzing streetlights. It's annoyingly devoid of distractions from the bald realization that he's the one who's made a mistake: he'd misread Gojyo, forced the subject. All while Gojyo's still barely able to sleep a few hours at a time after the trauma of his imprisonment. Hakkai knows how badly he's hurt by having been forgotten. Letting himself ignore that, because he wants so badly to be himself again on a few scraps of memory that he's trying to use their intimacy as the glue, is cruel. Also selfish, and, worst of all, stupid.

If Sanzo's memories are any indication, his own will return, in time. He can learn a little patience, in the meantime, and possibly even a hint of concern for someone else's feelings.

He glances again at the door. It's only been a few seconds, but he's tempted to follow Gojyo regardless. He'd sounded as hopeless as a dog waiting to be kicked with that me too, but he'd said he'd be right back, and Hakkai's already pushed too far past where he's wanted tonight. He keeps the sting of guilt off with a promise to himself to apologize, and half-raises his hand to rub his right temple against the strain gathered there. The sudden memory of the scent of flowers and Gojyo's hands on the back of his neck makes him put it hastily back on his knee.

He really is just gone a minute! Down the hall, duck into the first bathroom, grab the hand towel off the rack, and back to the atrium before Hakkai even notices. At least, that was the plan.

But apparently a minute is too long, because Hakkai's already dressed by the time Gojyo reemerges, purple and gold-trimmed towel hanging uselessly in one hand. He stops, just inside the doorway, a litany of useless! running through his brain. Not for the first time, he's grateful that stinging only goes one way.

"I, uh. Keep meaning to put a towel out here." Not that there's really anywhere to hang it, except maybe on one of the flimsy branches of the little olive tree. Useless! He twists the towel unconsciously, and takes a step back toward the hall. "I'll do that in the morning." With a clean towel. It should be a clean towel, if Hakkai's going to be rubbing it on his neck and hair. One of the extra-fluffy ones from the upstairs bathroom, maybe. "You get it all off?"

Oh. He was getting a towel; of course. Hakkai gets to his feet, heading over to join him in the doorway.

The towel's straining with the force of Gojyo's hands twisting it. He reaches out to tug it gently from his hand; the back of his neck is still a bit damp, and maybe it'll help make this all less awkward to accept his offer.

"I think I did," he says, and ducks his head, brushing his hair off his neck to make it look a little less like a bow. "I can't see it, though. Did I?"

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