Counterclockwork

by Mitsima

Note: Even though this is an AU, the names are the same for the sake of convenience. I won't make it an issue if you won't.

For Timmonsgray, whose idea sprouted Siamese twins.

There was something about the sunset that unsettled him. Every day he would go to work as the sun was rising. Every day he became unsettled as the light shining through his office turned a hue of bloody orange. Why is it, Genjo Sanzo thought to himself as he pushed himself away from his desk and lit a cigarette, why is it that I can't...or that it feels like I should be going somewhere? Why...

Fiddling with his lighter, Sanzo tried to burn those thoughts into oblivion. He was somewhere, if his fancy business card and recent promotion had anything to do with it. And he was on his way to more somewheres. Better somewheres.

No doubt there would be a glass ceiling somewhere in the deal, but he wasn't going to think about that right now.

An endless city stretched out beneath his window, the pale granite buildings momentarily painted by the coming twilight. It all seemed to close in around him. And so to escape that feeling, Sanzo shifted his vision to see his own dull-faced reflection in the glass staring back at him in contempt. And so to escape his own critical gaze, he closed his eyes.

Sanzo knew very well that upon opening them, he would find an incomplete picture, whether it was himself or the sunset-drenched city. There were times when he would look at his reflection and the image would just change for a millisecond. He attributed it to all the work he fastidiously did on the computer. His job required that he stare at the blasted thing for the entire day. Who's to say that some of the images wouldn't carry over to the window for the five minutes he wasn't glued to the machine?

He slouched, sighing out the smoke. Sleeping would be nice, but he couldn't go home until finishing up the report he left half-done. Besides, he would start to dream again. That was another story altogether. Vivid, yet easily forgotten. Though I remember that it was raining. He wouldn't be able to describe them to a shrink even if he tried.

The phone rang. Sanzo made no move to pick it up. It rang again. And again he didn't respond. I'm not their babysitter. Whatever it is, they can do it on their own... Again it rang.

"Hello?" But it wasn't Sanzo who responded and he almost toppled out of his chair. When had somebody come in? That voice, though, it was almost recognizable.

"I'm very sorry, but he's in a meeting right now. It will only take a moment and he won't be long. Not long at all." With a voice like that sunset, Sanzo thought as he gaped at the gentle-faced, gentle-voiced young man talking on his phone. The other's green eyes seemed to laugh at his expression.

"You had better be my new fucking secretary," Sanzo grumbled as the intruder put the phone back on the receiver.

"Cho Hakkai," the man introduced himself. "Fellow sunset-looker from the window right below yours, but on a professional level, editor-in-chief for the local paper. I believe you flick ashes down my way every now and then, but that's the extent of our relationship."

"How did you..."

"The security guard pointed it out one day to me. He said that another man in the building and I would just stop working at the exact same time every day to stare out the window. I hope you don't mind, but I inquired as to your identity."

"I mind," he snapped, narrowing his eyes. "I very much mind."

"Would it help if I told you some things about myself? That way we would be even," Hakkai offered readily as he leaned across the desk like an excited child ready to play a game. "You might even have the advantage in such a situation given that I know nothing more about you than who you are. Really, and it says so in the lobby index, too. I would have found out myself eventually, but it just so happens that I was in the mood to be lazy and inquisitive."

This…Cho Hakkai didn't look like he'd leave any time soon. Sanzo checked his watch. There was time yet before he had to get going; enough time for a smoke and hopefully by the second cigarette was finished, this writer would be gone. Two cigarettes. That was the limit of his patience when it came to dealing with people who had nothing valuable to offer him. Cho Hakkai was the epitome of such a person.

Sanzo walked out onto his office balcony with a new cigarette and a bottle of water.

"Alright, shoot. I haven't got all day." Might as well humor the guy.

"Um…I'm twenty three…"

"I don't care about your age. Try again."

"I have a degree in journalism."

"Try again."

Worry was starting to etch lines in Hakkai's face and he shifted from one foot to the other, thinking of something to say that wouldn't earn him a third strike, bite-the-dust social defeat.

I'm starting to scare him. Good.

"Well I ran away from home one time when I was fifteen. I followed the river northwards from my house…"

"Try ag-"

But Hakkai didn't stop. "…and saw a bunch of bully-type kids teasing a younger boy…blonde…because he didn't want to go swimming. He tried to look tough even though he was outnumbered five to one or so. He didn't even scream when they beat him up and threw him in the water." Sanzo felt his mouth go dry. Nobody was supposed to know about that… "It was just about the cruelest thing I've ever seen, but I didn't do anything about it at first. I just watched as this kid floated down the river like a dead log. He was alive, but he merely floated as if he were waiting for someone to pull him out. Nobody did, and then he stopped trying to float. That was when I did something about it."

A flash of light blinded him for a second when Hakkai pushed his glasses up higher on his nose. He took Sanzo's silence as yet another strike. "Looks like this isn't my lucky day. You're bored with me already. Maybe you should ask the questions this time. I won't feel so inadequate that way."

…how I almost died and woke up on the shore of the river. Did he save me?

Okay.

You win the benefit of the doubt.

I'll extend my patience to four cigarettes.

"So where do you live? Let's start with that. I've never seen you in the parking lot. Perhaps you commute. You look like one of those environmentally conscious types." Sanzo said offhandedly, slaking his thirst with a half emptied bottle of water. He knew he shouldn't be wasting his time, but hell, the world could get along fine without him for fifteen minutes.

"As of now, right across the street. See that hotel there?"

The five star?

"Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work. I never would have known that editing a newspaper would rake in enough cash for that type of thing." He alternated between small, dignified mouthfuls of water and thoughtful drags of the cigarette, taking in even amounts of both.

"Oh, but I'm not rich at all," the other replied humbly. "It's just that…you only live once. There's no harm in indulgence every once in a while."

For some reason that train of thought just didn't sit well with him, so Sanzo pushed the conversation down a safer path. "So you're taking some sort of vacation, am I correct?"

"You are correct, in a sense," Hakkai's eyes momentarily darkened beneath reflective lenses. "Easier to say that I was escaping the rain."

"Is there anything about the rain to be escaping from?"

Not that Sanzo should be talking. He hated the rain. Without really digging for the reason, he absolutely abhorred it. There was no concentrating when it rained. No sleeping or eating, just tons of coffee and tons of cigarettes. It was a bad cure for the symptoms of the weather, but a bad cure is better than no cure.

"You mean aside from the fact that last week's storm leaked into my bedroom? Aside from that, no, there's nothing to run away from."

And that was that. The book was closed right there and then and neither of the two mentioned it again in conversation. The day was winding to a close and with it went the sunset. But the truth of it was that the light was dying out well before the day. Storm clouds clustered over the city, carried by an unexpected wind from the west.

Perhaps the timing of everything was just right. The position of the sun in the sky. The refraction of the hovering droplets of water. The tide in the harbor and the puddles of grease that were smeared across the pavement. This reflecting that reflecting this reflecting that-

The same light crusading across different surfaces until the world glowed like fire despite the coolness of the air. Never had the sky been so fierce, short lived, and so dreadfully unnoticed by the world save for the two men who sat there in each other's company.

The phone rang and when Hakkai went to answer it again, Sanzo stopped him. "Leave it. Kumiko's shift is over and she's forwarding all calls to my phone. Let the answering machine take it. I'm not here anymore."

"It is that time of day when people head home, isn't it?" He had this far-away look in his face that told Sanzo he was thinking really deeply about something. It took a minute, but his afternoon revelation finally emerged. "Have a drink with me?" Hakkai suggested as he gestured across the street. "My treat."

Sanzo counted the number of cigarettes left in his packet. He was just finishing his second one.

"Fine."

There was a bar. It was a nice bar with nice music and a good singer that did what every good bar singer did, and that was not intrude upon the thoughts of the patrons. Her voice was the paradigm of all ambiguous background noise and Sanzo liked that.

Stop this world, it's not making sense. Stop the show. Hold the phone.

Better days this girl has known. Better days so long ago.

What he didn't like was the fact that above the bar was a glass ceiling and beyond the glass ceiling he could catch a hint of lightning through the glare.

"…so in the end, the interview had turned into a recorded session of self incrimination."

"Sucks for him." Sanzo stared at the little triangle of Midori Sunrise that sat at the bottom of his martini glass. The skewered melon ball looked like a washed up buoy on an alien planet, but that was just his drunken mind making pointless observations. "He should have just pulled out a smoke and shut up."

"Is that your roundabout way of telling me that I'm a source of unimpressive conversation?" Hakkai smiled apologetically. "I guess I get carried away sometimes. All the time."

"No. That's just my way of saying that I'm going to smoke now, whether you want me to or not."

That said, he tapped at the box, picked out the first cigarette, and lit it on the candle of dark blue wax that sat between them, floating precariously in a bowl of water. He went to put away the pack in his front jacket pocket, but reconsidered and offered one to his host.

"No, thank you. I'm trying to quit."

Sanzo pocketed the cigarettes. "Too bad. Can't think of any better vice to keep."

"Don't taunt. I'm not exactly the most controlled person when temptation conveniently offers itself," Sanzo felt the temperature in the room rose a few degrees as the editor shifted his gaze to size him up, the beginnings of a certain intent conjuring itself from the lazy circles Hakkai drew on the tablecloth with his finger. "Because I believe that vice, or the definition of vice to be specific, is something on which I have a very lose grip."

Counterclockwise. That was the direction of Hakkai was tracing, Sanzo noted, giving that hand a good hard stare as the eyes of that same body looked him up and down, in, out, and around the corners. Sanzo shifted uncomfortably and decided that this next drag was going to be a long one; enough for him to breathe out a cloud of smoke to obscure Hakkai's convenient view. But before that happened. The cigarette was plucked from his lips.

"What's up with you, Hakkai? You should have just taken when I offered."

"But this tastes better."

Sanzo shot him a bitter look. "Suit yourself." Another ray of lightning marauded across the clouds, which was soon accompanied by the deep echo of thunder in the distance, after which a noisy splatter erupted as the sky decided to drown out the languid voice of the background-noise bar singer with a torrent of rain. "Comes like a fucking parade just to turn my day into shit."

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

"I should have consulted the forecast before taking you here when your car is two blocks down in the parking lot. And it looks as of neither of us has an umbrella."

Shit. Oh fucking shit.And then I'm on the drunker side of things…shit.

"And let's not forget the fact that you're quite drunk."

"Thank you, Sherlock." He scrubbed at his eyes. If he hadn't known any better, he could have sworn that all this was leading to exactly where Hakkai wanted it to go. "Let's just sit here until I sober up." And he wasn't going to go there. No. Not tonight and not ever.

"I'm sure a walk in the rain would help clear your mind, if you're up to it."

"Shut up." In a fit of irritation, Sanzo gulped down the rest of the Midori and slammed down the glass. "Don't even suggest it. The answer is no."

Hakkai had just about finished the cigarette and was now stubbing it out neatly in the ashtray beside him. That was number three. "I was going to suggest that you brave the rain and get yourself killed on your way home. When you die, I'll be the first to know and you can be sure that your name will be first in the obituary section. Bold lettering at no extra cost and a short sum-up of how tragically short your boring little life was: young, successful businessman gets pounded by a semi after leaving a hotel, drunk and utterly depressed around," He smiled wanly and reached forward, taking Sanzo's wrist in order to check the time. "Eight-fifteen in the evening. But that doesn't have to be the case, Sanzo. Not only will I do your dignity the favor of not printing the story, I can stop that from happening. So what do you say? I'll even take the couch."

"No need."

In his memory sloshed the rush of a river. Another crash of thunder and Sanzo flinched, finally noticing that Hakkai was tracing circles again. This time on the sensitive skin of his wrist, working his way tenderly under the cuff of his sleeve.

Dumbly, he stared at his hand in Hakkai's as if it were a specimen for observation cut off from his own being. "If your grip on vice is questionable, then so is your understanding of altruism."

"No one said anything about altruism. Would it make you feel better to know that I'm asking you to stay for purely selfish reasons?"

"Not very."

"Then let me tell you what you prefer to hear. I want to save your life. Will you let this fool at least pretend to be a hero? Humor me. I'm drunk too."

"Fine." He felt like a broken record. Spinning, spinning, spinning…

Clockwise, though. Freaky things are heard when a person twists a record counterclockwise. Clockwise, Sanzo told himself drunkenly. I'm moving clockwise.

"Good. My room is on the ninth floor."

The suite was luxurious, but far from unique. Sanzo took of his coat and hung it on the rack as he followed Hakkai inside. A marble coffee table sat flanked by a tactfully chosen couch and armchair. On its smooth surface lay a pile of dictionaries, thesauruses, books in Latin, books in German, Chinese, and god only knows what other languages. That's not to say that Sanzo was surprised. He wasn't. Not in the least.

"Wait here," Hakkai said, gesturing towards the couch. "Let me see if there are extra blankets in the closet for myself. I'm sure there are." His voice disappeared as his retreating back dissipated within the darkness of the adjoining bedroom.

Sanzo utilized this opportunity alone to inspect the room. Two glasses of partly finished beer sat near the sink of the small bar. One cigarette butt rested clumsily broken in the ashtray, cold and barely an inch off it. Everything indicated a conversation cut short.

"I thought you said you were trying to quit," he called out. His voice sounded hollow, as if he were alone in a cave.

The empty space answered him succinctly. "Not mine." A closet was pushed closed. "I had a meeting here with one of the new staff writers. He has a bit of an attitude, but the man has…talent, if you will." Hakkai finally emerged with an armful of linen and unceremoniously dropped them on the couch. "He can get to where the story is faster than anyone I know. Fast. I like that. The news industry is a breakneck one, so I appreciate someone who can jump right into fray without reservations. Get to the body before the dogs tear it apart."

Something about that metaphor was truly very disturbing.

"So you're the type of guy who likes to dig up dirt." He lit up the fourth cigarette and settled into the armchair.

"Not true. I'm the type who likes to shake up the dust. You may think I'm crazy for dumping my theories on someone I just met, but hear me out. Things, institutions, people…give them enough time and a layer of dust will settle. They take the form of something else. Give them even more time, and you get more dust and a different form than the previous one."

Like reincarnation. He waited silently for Hakkai to go on.

"Time changes things on the surface and everyone starts to believe that those mounds of dust are mountains that have been there forever. They forget that what they see now are merely shells of burning cores. It's deceptive. I'm a hypocrite, Sanzo. I report the present, but I don't believe in it simply because I feel that it is just a mask for a heavier past."

Sanzo rubbed his temples.

How did it come to this? First they were strangers. That was just this morning, in fact, and come the turning of the clock and they were brought together by the mere observation of a disinterested third party who had nothing better to do than to make notes on the late afternoon habits of the building's workers. Like two comets in the night sky that by chance crossed into the same confined visual space of a cheap telescope.

It was that random, but that was all it took. After that point, it evolved from sunset, to small talk, to spirits, to…

Well now he was in Hakkai's hotel room.

All of a sudden, Sanzo felt compelled to analyze the paintings on the wall, interesting as they were. They hung in a row. Three, to be exact: two green and one red, all of them depicting a leaf. Perhaps if he squinted they would morph into something else, but for now, Sanzo decided that he wanted them to be leaves.

And so they were leaves.

Green. Red. Green.

That was the order.

It was symmetrical. Sanzo liked symmetry. Symmetry meant order. Like clockwork though for some, namely one Cho Hakkai, the clock wound the other way. "Where do I factor in, then?"

"I don't know," Hakkai responded honestly. "You just do. The boy I talked about earlier today, that was you, wasn't it? Which means that you started factoring in a long time ago. I can't explain it clearly, but I simply figured that I might find something important with you. That I might finally hit the bedrock."

He didn't have the slightest idea what to do with me, so he resorted to getting me drunk. Now I'm in his room after having agreed to spend the night. Let's get this clear, once and for all: no.

"You don't feel the same way, do you? How dense."

"No. I don't," Sanzo clipped out before brusquely standing up and accidentally jarring the table at his feet. The impact caused a pile of books to come crashing down. A dusty scroll that was tucked securely in a separate box fell to the floor and unraveled across the carpet.

Just the mere sight of it made the air he breathed in heavy as lead; like the room was suddenly turning into one bit tar pit and was starting to sink into the floor. Hakkai made no move to retrieve it. "I bought it off a museum a few years back. It cost me a small fortune, but now I have it, just like I have you." The certainty in his voice was terrifyingly final.

"No!" Sanzo shook off the heavy sensation and headed for the door, angrily stubbing out the fourth cigarette even though he had only taken an inch off it. "I'll take my chances with the semi."

But in a matter of seconds, Hakkai had his body pressed against the wall, chest to chest with his own, his breath tickling the skin of the other's lips and chin as a hand snaked cleverly up the back of Sanzo's shirt while the other worked out the buttons.

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you leave. Not until you understand at least a fraction of what I'm trying to tell you. When you have a man who defines vice so loosely as to send meaning into oblivion…"

And Sanzo, too absorbed in the touch, the alcohol, and in Hakkai's words to stop the inevitable.

"When you have that man and turn him into a hypocrite who doesn't care for the present yet lives it as if it were the only one left, loosely speaking you have a man who desperately …desperately wants to sleep with you simply because it felt like a thing of the past strong enough to bubble its way up to Now."

It totally escaped Sanzo how this nonsense was turning him on, making him dreadfully hard. But there he was.

"When was the last time you had sex, Sanzo? Was it with a man or woman?"

"To answer both questions," he managed to say through all the clouds that were starting to form in his mind and mouth. "I'd say it was none of your fucking business."

Hakkai chucked against his skin and he pushed the fabric of Sanzo's shirt off his pale shoulders with a gentle gliding of the hands. "I suppose you're right."

It felt unfair that Hakkai was still fully dressed, but the clouds in his throat silenced him, as did the wet feeling of Hakkai's mouth on his neck, behind his ear, and he suddenly found himself biting back a moan.

"It seems that your body is remembering something?"

What was with this guy?

"I thought you were supposed to be fucking smart or something," Sanzo panted, keeping his wits in check and trying his damnedest to ignore the heat pooling in his groin. "Just because I'm…it doesn't mean anything, okay?"

Even though…

Hadn't he lived this moment out once or twice in his fantasies, by himself, forecasting inexplicable details that now seemed to come straight to life, right out of his mind?

…it was raining then too.

There was a hand undoing his belt and it took a couple of seconds to realize that it was his own. The other –traitor, he mentally cursed- was buried in soft locks of brown hair. Hakkai kissed his collarbone, worked his way down to Sanzo's chest and, on his knees, landed a quick bite at his hip. Holy fuck, it feels...

Then- then Hakkai stopped.

"Wait a second…"

Sanzo wanted to bang his head against the wall.

"What's this?" he traced a thin line of raised skin on Sanzo's abdomen. "Did you have surgery recently, or sometime in the past?"

Say something mean, really mean and mocking and cutting, but he didn't when he saw Hakkai's severe expression.

I'll humor him.

That's what you said a good five hours ago.

"It's a birthmark. You think it means something?"

And for once this evening, the man who could talk a mile a minute didn't know what to say. A strained silence stretched between them as Hakkai put a tentative hand on his own stomach. "No," he finally lied. "Probably not. Knowing me, I'm just trying to read into it too much." He fell silent again.

Sanzo took the opportunity to really analyze the silence this time. It was as if Hakkai had turned into a totally different person, quick as the flipping of a switch and it didn't even look like Hakkai had registered the change. The darkness shifted around them with the flickering of the lights, an indication that the storm outside was getting stronger. Finally, the concentrated absurdity of it all started chipping at the edges of his rational mind.

Maybe he was right after all about that mountains of dust shit he was spouting out earlier.

When he was younger, Sanzo wanted to find something inside him that he couldn't touch, couldn't hear, and couldn't fathom, but there was too much dust standing in his way. He had tried to wash it away when he was fifteen, but that only ended in near disaster. Sanzo re-found nothing else but the life he was going to lose. Perhaps this was another chance.

Looking to the west before a rainy night- if Sanzo brushed off all the dust from the situation and simplified it to the lowest common denominator, skipped all the coincidences and present seductions, these two natural phenomena were the only things centering him on a narrow path of reality. Everything else suddenly lost significance. With deep voids of nothingness on both sides, he felt that everything would be at its most real if he stayed between the west and the rainy night.

The only thing that bothered him was that Hakkai was there too and the fact that at the moment, the other man seemed to be drowning in his own world.

"Hey, sensei!" Sanzo dropped down and yanked the writer's hair, evoking a pained yelp. "Do you feel that?"

"Yes, I feel it. It hurts."

"Good. When do you feel it?"

"When do I feel it? What kind of question is that?"

"Just answer."

"It hurts now." Hakkai winced and squirmed in his grip.

"And so he learns when he is," Sanzo mocked, but despite the daggers in his voice and the violence of his grip, when he leaned over to kiss Hakkai it was with such a selfless gentleness that he could have been another person completely.

He reached out under the front of Hakkai's shirt, somehow not at all surprised to feel the puckering of an angry scar.

"S…Sanzo…don't-" He tried pull away.

"You were born with that?"

"Yes."

"It's bigger than mine," was the observation. "No wonder you have a complex about it."

Sanzo looked to Hakkai's face for a reaction, and sure enough his words were enough to scandalize the man into a nice shade of scarlet.

A totally different man from the one earlier. Somebody is still sifting through the sand, I take it.

"Does it hurt you, that scar?" There was no point in calling it a birthmark. Like how some incomprehensible things in this world were taken as a given, this mark was a scar no question about it.

The response was quiet, almost inaudible. "No."

Hakkai hung his head, hardly even noticing that Sanzo was undressing him. He sat there listless as a doll as his tie was pulled over his head and the buttons of his shirt undone.

"Would you want to feel it again?" Sanzo halted for a moment in his task to ask. "It doesn't look like something worth remembering. In fact, I'd say it was well worth forgetting. Would you want to remember how it felt to have something claw your guts open?" Just to emphasize his point, he raked his fingers across the large mark slowly, and with morbid deliberation.

Hakkai shuddered with an almost-memory of what could have caused the scar. "No."

"The past is there. The bedrock is there. And you'd tear apart your own world just to find it. Tell me, what do you plan on doing once you get to it? Do you even know? Pants, Hakkai."

"No," and he kicked them off. Yes to that. Sanzo did the same and they sat facing each other in boxers although neither felt the discomfort that would usually accompany a lack of attire.

"Then leave it. Some things in this world aren't meant to be resurrected. I'd rather not waste my breath on the past. And since right now the future's looking pretty fucked up thanks to you, we'll take what we already have, whether you believe in it or not."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes, or I'm walking out that door right now."

"In your boxers?"

Sanzo thought for a moment. "Yes, so that when I die it's going to be your fault I left the world more pitifully than when you described earlier. I'll die young after having lived a tragically short, boring little life. It will all end with a semi as I drive home in the rain depressed, drunk, and half naked. If I can even manage last words, I'll say: this was Cho Hakkai's fault, fellow sunset-looker."

"I should have planned this better," Hakkai responded after a dumbfounded silence, trying to hide a smile. "I didn't know how unfair you could be."

The lights flickered above them. Once. Twice. Before throwing the room into complete darkness. Sanzo reached up and flicked off the switch before the generators brought everything back to light. "We won't be needing it, or are you as forgetful as you are dumb?"

"I don't know how to answer that."

"Then don't. I never asked you to speak in the first place."

Thunder shook the sky with a strength that could shatter mountains. And on that night, under that storm, in that dark, mountains crumbled to give way to yet another rainy night. So it became just another rainy night, so similar to previous rainy nights in centuries past that one could almost say it went like clockwork.