Title: In Over My Head

Date: Began August 19, 2003... Finished August 19, too. O.o

Anime/Manga: Gensomaden Saiyuki

Notes: This idea came to me while drawing a very sweet fanart, which the fanfic is based on. ^^

Rating: PG

This is all set in Hakkai's POV.

~Hello! It's me! Of course there's yaoi in this!!~

______________

I can remember the first time he kissed me.

It was a rainy evening as we all were in our hotel rooms... accept for me, who was sitting at the table in the tiny eating room, looking over the map and making sure that we were on the right route.

I sighed. I could feel that someone else was in the room, but he seemed to refuse to move and he just stood there by the stairway, staring at me. My back was to him as I remained in my seat at the table next to the window,

At the point, I really had no idea who it was. It could have been Gojyo; could have been Goku; could have been Sanzo. Secretly, I kept hoping it was the one that I was thinking about... the one that I kept dreaming of.

I acted as if I didn't know the other man was there at the stairs. I just continued tapping my pencil in thought over an estimate at how long it would take us to reach the next town.

I heard his footsteps as he slowly advances toward the table. I turned to greet him, but the next thing I knew, he had grasped my chin and covered my lips with his. I didn't know who it was at first. But then the color of his hair became focused in my eyes. My eyes slowly slipped shut and my hands went to the back of his head. It was then that I realized just how much I had longed for those lips.

"Gojyo...," I murmur once our lips part and he is staring at me as if I were the one that had surprised him. "What... did you do that for?"

The other man refused to answer, for some reason, and he moved to pull me into a warm, comforting embrace that made me feel like my energy left me entirly and I could just fall asleep like that. His hands were so comfoting over my trembling body as I began to shake.

"Why...?" I asked him again, my tone trembling as hard as my hands. How in the world could someone love such a horrible person like me? With all that I have done, and everything that I have felt, how could anyone possibly feel that way for me? Gojyo wanted to kiss me. He wanted to hold my blood-stained body and kiss my blood-stained lips.

I pulled out of his arms then and went around to the other side of the table, gingerly placing my fingertips to the cold surface of the wet window as the rain droplets ran down the glass.

"Hakkai...?" He inquired from the other side of the table. His voice... it sounds almost innocent, so soft and full of emotion. He says my name like he needs me, urgent. But he's fooling himself. How in the world could he...?

I took my fingertips from the glass and turned my hand over to stare at my palm. The lightening outside, when it flashed, illuminated every detail of my hand with shadows of the lines running over my palm. I heard the thunder crash... and neither one of us moved. He didn't jump at the sudden roar of mother nature as she furiously unleashed her wrath over the world. The thunder followed so close after the lightening. I felt a shock, even through the floor.

Suddenly, he was behind me yet again, putting his arms around my shoulders and putting his head next to mine, his scarlet tresses falling over his face and I could see the blood-red color from the corner of my eye; how every single strand looked so red, so crimson, that it was as if someone had written in fine point with blood.

I told him once, that his hair and eyes reminded me of the blood that stained my hands. It was only later that I found out why he looked so shocked and hurt when I told him that. Amazing that we think of them as a reminder of the same thing: Blood.

All of a sudden, I felt ashamed of what I had said and what I had done; ashamed of my own thoughts and ideas and ashamed of myself, altogether. I slowly let my hand down to rest at my side, but Gojyo's long, slender fingers gripped my wrist and pulled my hand up again and with his other hand, he pointed to my palm and stated:

"Your life-line looks so much longer, Hakkai."

And he was right. The ink that Goku had drawn upon my palm with to extend my life-line had long since faded away entirely, but the feeling of the black mark across my hand stayed and I felt as if my life had increased to the legnth of the mark.

"It does... doesn't it?" I inspected and whispered back to the other man, tilting my head slightly to rest it upon Gojyo's temple. "But tell me one thing: Why does it matter?"

He moved backward so that my head lay on his shoulder and he supported me me from behind, his arms around my waist.

His eyes... So red, just like his hair. But they were so exquisetly beautiful, how, in his iris, he had so many different shades of crimson patching their way into a circle around his pupil. Have his eye-lashes always been that long? It feels as if I am seeing him for the first time.

He blinks, and it's then that I notice how his lashes frame his eyes. Even his eyebrows, such a deep shade of crimson.

"Why does it matter...?" I ask him again when I heard no answer from him.

He began to remove his hands from my waist and he broke his gaze from me to the stairs as he murmurs,

"I'll go back upstairs and forget this whole thing if you want me to."

"No, no, Gojyo..."

"Then why do you want me to stay?"

"I want to hear you answer me. Why does it matter that my life-line is longer?"

I placed my hands over his.

"Because," he said, "I want to live out the rest of my days with you... and I want that period in time to be as long as it possibly can."

My heart must have stopped then, along with time itself, and all that mattered was Gojyo, right in front of me. It seemed as if I was disconnected from the rest of the world, like anything that happened was part of a dream and that when I woke up, I would sob if it were not the truth, not real.

"I love you...," I stated as another bolt of lightening shot across the night sky, splitting it in two.

The thunder rolled over the horizon and must have lasted an eternity, of which we spend just looking at each other, standing still, just like time.

"I love you, too," he murmurs into my ear once the thunder had died down to a slow, soft roll.

I'm in over my head But he can get me out.

"Let's go back upstairs and get some sleep," the half-breed whispers as he pulls away from me and walks to the stairway.

"Wait, Gojyo," my words fell from my mouth instantly.

"Yes?"

"Let's stay here... and watch the rain for a little longer."

He smiled at me.

He can get me out when I'm in over my head.

~Owari~

One-shot fic. No continuation. Check my ff.net profile to find my other stories and please read and review.