Chapter 7
"Sanzo, what are you doing up?" Hakkai murmured against Gojyo's hand before lowering it to the bed with infinite care. "You shouldn't strain—gods, what time is it? I think I fell asleep…"
"Bathroom," Sanzo blurted, trying to hide his shock over waking up to such a cozy scene. "I need the bathroom."
"Downstairs," Hakkai said, frowning a little. "Last door to your left. The kitchen will be at your right."
Sanzo turned quickly and fumbled his way down a narrow passageway. He had no recollection of going to their room—damn, he had not even asked Hakkai where Gojyo (and therefore Hakkai himself) was lodged. He must have been sleepwalking. And the nightmare that had prompted this humiliation was still quite vivid: he had been trying to reach out for Gojyo—a dead Gojyo—at the bottom of a dark pit.
"Sanzo?" Hakkai called from behind him. "Can you manage the steps on your own? I have a chamber pot here, there's no need—"
"Piss off," Sanzo growled, still struggling to find his bearings. Fuck, where was his room again?
"Ask Goku to help you, then, " Hakkai insisted. "Don't put pressure on your injury."
His injury. Sanzo had forgotten about it. He was aware of an uncomfortable throbbing in his hip now that his physical condition had been brought back to him, but the crippling pain of the last few hours was mercifully gone. Even exhausted, even unwell himself, Hakkai had done an excellent job.
"Sanzo?" Hakkai called again, more forcefully. "Ask Goku—"
"Okay. I will. Go back to bed." The passageway continued past a wooden staircase he remembered vaguely—he had been carried up to his room almost unconscious—and a small group of monks was gathered there with a lantern and a pack of cards. Sanzo glared at them, annoyed by their silent perusal. He did not know which door led to his room, but asking was out of the question—bad enough that most likely these men had seen him searching like a drunken idiot for his youkai and then had heard Hakkai mentioning a chamber pot. To avoid their scrutiny, he decided to head to the ground floor.
The steps had to be negotiated slowly; with Hakkai fawning over Gojyo and Goku sulking somewhere unknown, Sanzo knew that he would wait a long while for rescue should he have a fall. To take his mind off the indignity of having literally fled from some anonymous men's eyes, he began cataloguing what he had already learned of this particular wing. Too many doors. Not enough windows. The wooden paneling on the walls and on the low ceiling was an invitation to disaster in case a candle or a lantern was knocked over—and the risk of a fire explained their scantiness.
No wonder Goku was so edgy; he would feel terribly trapped in here.
Where was Goku, by the way?
Angrily, Sanzo pushed guilt back. So, yes, he should have been more careful when handling his charge earlier. Goku always got clingier and dangerously unstable in the wake of his fugue episodes and Sanzo had not been able to calm him down yet. But what could one say to a demon hundreds of years old who acted like a jealous toddler because mommy shared bed with daddy? It was thatridiculous.
Almost as much as his going to Hakkai and Gojyo's room because of a bad dream.
He stopped at the foot of the stairs, giving his eyes time to grow accustomed to the dark. There was a single oil lamp burning on this floor. The monks were all upstairs, or so it seemed. One youkai… One single fucking youkai and their world was reduced to a coffin-like hiding place. But then, one youkai was more than enough to raise havoc. Had not a mere half-breed done so with Sanzo's life?
Deciding he could make use of the bathroom after all, Sanzo seized the lamp from its hook and advanced to the left, images of Zenko possessing Gojyo dancing before him. Buddha, but he would enjoy killing Zenko. A bullet in that fucker's balls, just because, and another between his eyes, not necessarily in a straightaway sequence, and everybody's immediate problem would be solved. He snorted, then froze, his fingers held in midair above the bathroom knob. His gun… He did not have it on him. It had been left in his room, wherever his room was, tucked, along with the scriptures, between the bed frame and the mattress. He remembered doing that as soon as he had been awake enough to think. How could he have wandered off without such vital parts of himself? He must go back upstairs and he must go back now!
He pushed the bathroom door open instead.
Unsurprisingly, the tiny room consisted of just a hole in the floor. But it was clean, or within the limits of what could be expected of a communal lavatory that catered to the needs of several trapped men. There were some buckets and pans with clean water aligned along the wall, indicating that Hakkai's efforts at the well had also been directed to this place. Only Hakkai would think of cleaning bathrooms in the middle of a crisis.
Hakkai…
…with Gojyo…
Hakkai and Gojyo.
They were beautiful together.
Stop that! screamed an outraged voice in the back of his mind. Just stop that!
He hung the lamp near the door with more strength than was necessary and went to relieve himself. While he was at it, he checked on his hip. It was sore and very sensitive, but there was a dry and brownish scab covering what only some hours ago had been a gaping wound. He twisted his neck to peer over his right shoulder and found the bullet exit similarly healed. He had been lucky, all things considered. If the bullet had broken his pelvis or—and that bitch of a goddess must be looking out for him—if the bullet had taken another trajectory and caught his spine on its way out, he would be in serious, serious trouble by now. Hakkai worked miracles, but at the same time… Hakkai did not work miracles.
As things had turned out… Here he was, holding his penis in a dark little room, loose borrowed pants pooled at his feet while embodied Death prowled and raged outside. No gun, no scriptures, no teammates—he was alone, naked, and defenseless.
And he had never felt so alive.
The impersonal grip he had on his member changed to a slow, teasing caress. He always became slightly stimulated after a session of Hakkai's chi.
Hakkai.
Hakkai and Gojyo…
Stop!
They would be beautiful together.
How dare you? How dare you how dare how dare how—
If he recast Hakkai in Zenko's role… If it had been Hakkai's smooth, long body possessing Gojyo's…
No! Stop!
He let out a moan. The forbidden images seemed even more alluring when mixed in with his own recent interactions with Hakkai in the boarding house and in his room upstairs. Damn, he was still able to feel Hakkai on himself——Hakkai in himself.
Stop that! What are you doing? What—
What had that bastard Zhou Jun called Hakkai again?
"My pretty one," Sanzo whispered. And there was a stir under his fingers.
No! You will stop! You. Will. Stop. Stop stop stop—
He did stop.
His body was too wrung out to do anything but show a vague interest right now.
He jerked his pants up, searched for and found a ladle, plunged it into the bigger bucket and spent a whole minute washing and scrubbing his hands. He paused when he noticed thin red lines on his palms. He had cut himself with his nails. "And who would've guessed?" he murmured derisively. "Goku and I have something in common after all."
He retraced his way to the stairs, hung his lamp on its hook, and was going to climb back up when he heard a faint noise.
"Goku?" he called, squinting in the direction of the kitchen.
No answer. But the noise… Yes, there it was. A muffled, tapping metallic sound.
Sanzo looked hesitantly at the shadows that waited for him upwards. And, with a curse, proceeded to the broader kitchen passage—he was not going to run back to Hakkai's bedroom like a frightened child. Not twice in a row.
The noise grew louder as he approached the kitchen and there was light in there, streaming down into the passageway from the door left ajar. It had to be Goku, he told himself. Goku, ransacking whatever the monks had in their cupboards.
Licking his lips, he pushed the door open.
Apart from the incongruous bathtub—surely one of Hakkai's deeds—there was nothing perceptively wrong. The window was still barricaded. The walls and the floor were stained, but that was to be expected in a place where generations had prepared their meals. Somebody had been cooking—somebody who had also lit several candles. The tapping sound came from whatever was boiling in a metal pot on the stove.
And the smell…
The smell was awful.
"Goku?" Sanzo raised his voice, annoyed, as he limped to the stove. His hip was starting to protest vehemently at his efforts. "You scolded Hakkai for leaving a pan unattended and now you do ten times worse? Put out these candles…" he trailed off when a single staring eye looked back at him. From within the pot.
A head.
A decapitated head.
The boiling water tossed it back and forth, causing it to hit the metal container—a bucket, not a pot—in which it had been dumped. That was what made the noise that had attracted him.
Heart thumping painfully, Sanzo turned to the bathtub.
From this new angle, he could see what lay inside it. A mangled man's corpse had been put there, both legs folded under it and a hand mockingly placed inside the open stomach, as if the thing was trying to eviscerate itself or hold together its own bowels. The other arm was missing.
Sanzo stepped back slowly, gagging. He tried to run when he gained access to the dark passageway, but his hip refused to support his weight further and he fell jarringly to his knees.
His gun… The scriptures… Hakkai…
He had to get to Hakkai!
He opened his mouth to call for Hakkai—and could only gasp when a pair of strong hands grabbed his shoulders from behind.
