AN: Hello all:) I disappeared for awhile, worked on my writing a LOT, then got a new name and came back! This is my first time in like a year I'm posting on again. Hopefully you like this well enough! Please review me.
Also, this story is in Gojyo's POV; so nobody is confused:) And I have strange titles... Don't judge me.
DISCLAIMER: Story from Saiyuki, as are Gojyo and Hakkai. I just love them lots and write about them.
INSPIRED BY: Drilled A Wire Through My Cheek by Blue October
PRIVATE BOMB
It felt like a dance, this thing we did. You ever hiding and ever smiling and ever deluding everyone that you're alright. Everyone but me, who's seen the face behind the smile and the man that face belonged to. It's like when you first woke up from your coma and started to talk to me, you didn't know how to act or believe or even feel, having just gone through so much ((too much, though I didn't know at the time)) so you smiled even though you didn't mean it. And you never quite stopped. And I never stopped you, because it wasn't my business. Not until it started to bother me, anyway. Not until I realized, after I saw your real smile that first night we played cards together, how much it bothered me that you felt you had to hide. I'd seen right through you, down to the inside. Literally, as I had found you with most of your guts staining the ground. How dare you presume to hide from me. At first I didn't care, then I did, then I stopped- It almost wasn't worth the effort. You'd built up that wall around yourself so securely that even you couldn't get out. Couldn't stop the smile that only touched your lips and never reached your eyes.
Everyone could see how bad it was killing you. Hiding from that night and running from the memories. It took me many months before I realized that everything you did was a subtle motion in a desperate yet soundless plea for the ache in your heart to alleviate, at least a little. The way you took care of everyone else so you didn't have to think about yourself. The way you cooked because you never got to when she was around because she loved it too much. The way you did all our laundry even though we never asked, how you drove, booked hotels- everything. Down to the way you fought, depending on spirit energy manipulation instead of a weapon, like the knife you used to take so many lives that night we also happened to meet. It's like you were trying to completely mirror your old life, turning everything around. What you refused to do as that man you now did so with fervor. What you would have first never thought about you now couldn't stop thinking about. Because if you thought hard enough, you didn't remember that night. Except when the rain came, pouring memories into your head with its inane buzzing that slowly cracked the thin veil of sanity you held.
I can remember a lot of odd things, like the day my brother and I got lost in the fog and he told me not to cry, or certain times when my mother was exceptionally horrible to me, but I also remember the first time we shared a bed. I claimed the couch most of the nights. Since you were living with me, we needed another bed but we also needed to eat. Your job as a teacher and mine as a gambler could only get us so far, but I liked that couch and wouldn't even let you think about sleeping on it. But that winter night, when the heater was on the fritz and even all the blankets only seemed to make things colder, I can remember you tentatively calling my name from the other room. When I didn't answer, you got up with a blanket around your shoulders, shuffled into the living room, and proceeded to tug my frozen hide into the bedroom a couple of feet away.
Until then I had always been adamant about giving you space. I knew that after what you'd been through, you needed time and room to heal. I never asked about what happened, but let you come to terms with it before hesitantly telling me what had transpired. I never pushed you to start a new life or find a new person to love, but let you realize that you needed those things more than you thought, then take the initiative to start them. All the while I was behind you, subtly pressuring yet reassuring you as well that it would be better this time. This new life of yours wouldn't turn out like the last. But it seemed like every time you thought you might be ready to face your new life, the red staining your hands anchored you back to your old one, to your old thoughts and feelings and the guilt that ate at you. And you let it, because you thought you deserved it. But everyone always suspected you were a bit of a masochist anyway.
That night we shared a bed, we shared more things than we meant to, I think. I know I certainly never expected things to turn out like they did. The bed was already small, but with two grown men in it, the space seemed to shrink dramatically. Minds almost as frozen as our bodies, we curled close together in an attempt to ward off the cold. I can still remember the way your bangs brushed my cheeks, and how my breathing would disturb the locks of spiky hair you could never tame.
It seemed we lay that way, arms and legs tangled and body's pressed close for a long time, both of us too cold to sleep. When we had finally stopped shivering, I felt like I was drunk off your body heat and soft hair that would brush my face. Never mind that I had been harboring strange feelings I would later recognize as love for you for months, back then I didn't even think. I just pressed my lips to yours when your head tentatively rose and your emerald eyes met mine. If you were shocked, it only showed through the slightest of pauses before you started to kiss me back. Because this was the new you, and the new you craved the love and attention you were starving yourself from, all because you felt unworthy.
Our bodies pressed together harder, and suddenly I was on top of you and making you writhe and pant and moan with the desperate longing that my heart was screaming with. Your eyes held regrets at first, like you were losing a piece of yourself, but as we kissed and I touched you, the yielding behind those emeralds faded and you gave yourself over to the pleasure. I couldn't remember a night I had felt so alive, making you feel.
When we both collapsed back down to earth, gasping and panting and sweating, I turned and curled up close to you. I lay my head on your chest and I could feel your heart beating rapidly, excited from everything that had just transpired. I smiled and waited for it to calm. At one point it was going so slow I thought you were dying on me. But as fear overcame me and I lifted my head in alarm, I realized you were just asleep. So I lay my head back down on your chest while my fingers contended themselves to dancing along the flat planes of your pale stomach, sometimes brushing the large scar that brought us together that rainy night so many months ago.
I felt my own mind drifting as I listened to your heart. You'd told me once you felt like you didn't have a heart anymore. First you had surrendered it to gain the power necessary to save the one you loved more than life, then when you finally gained it back she slaughtered it brutally by driving your own knife into her belly. I told you that you did so have a heart, because you were sitting at my kitchen table and, damnit, I wasn't some creep that hauled dead bodies around and let them eat at the same place I did. You had blinked, a little confused, then smiled warmly. Another rare, genuine one that made me fall a little harder for you, if that was even possible.
It seemed like you always hid the rain that poured inside of you behind your smile. But even though you felt that it was rusting away your heart and soul and insides, I knew that a tiny spark remained, if only because of those rare times that you would truly smile at me. I knew I was right too, because I always am.