AN: I'm posting this chapter a couple days earlier than I expected to celebrate 100 reviews and to thank all my readers and reviewers for giving this little piece of fiction so much attention and positive feedback. (You would have had it last night if my server and fanfic.net had cooperated!) THANKS! Enjoy the end of Part II!

Part II Chapter 8

"Hakkai-ai-i!" A triple cry of warning: from Goku on his left, the look in his eyes defeated and stricken as no amount of fighting save that with Kami-sama had ever made him feel; from Sanzo on the jeep, anger and disappointment warring in his face, his gun point blank in his direction; and from Gojyo, behind the jeep, blood-red hair windblown around his face, blood-red eyes wide with shock and agonizing fear.

Another series of split-second images broke through Hakkai's bloody paralysis: himself telling Goku not to fear being as strong as he could for those who relied on him; his own and Goku's hands working together to heal Sanzo's mangled body; Sanzo shooting Chin Iisou's seed from Gojyo's body, spilling his blood to save his life; himself serving as Sanzo's shield and Sanzo shooting through his shoulder to end Kami-sama's life; Gojyo's hand over his own on Jeep's steering wheel in the desert; the touch of Gojyo's hand on his shoulder, lending him strength to finish a healing; Gojyo's eyes meeting his through the veil of red hair and rain, insisting that he live beyond the pain.

Only a second had passed in bloody longing to die. Another in the call back to life. The youkai were two seconds closer, claws and weapons raised, when Hakkai swallowed the choking fear and bloody bile that had frozen him and spread his palms wide toward his attackers, his ki rapidly surging and blasting the two killers almost upon him. Sanzo's gun took out a third, and Gojyo's shakujou the last.

Hakkai recharged immediately and let fly two more blasts into the last of the youkai climbing over the jeep toward Sanzo and Gojyo, then ran to help Goku, who had been struck from behind by his last attacker when he paused to scream his frantic warning. He had rolled to his back as he dropped and had swung Nyoibou into the face of the youkai, crushing his skull. But he was slow to regain his feet.

He was sitting on the ground, dazed, holding his hand across the back of his head, when Hakkai squatted beside him. "Goku—"

The young man dropped his arm and tilted his head back. "Hakkai, why… "

Hakkai took Goku's hand and bowed his head. "Forgive me, Goku."

Their eyes met and Goku thought he saw some of what had passed through Hakkai's mind. "It's okay. But don't ever do that to us again."

"I promise I won't. Are you okay?"

"A little dazed. I'll be fine."

Hakkai helped him up and they walked together to the jeep, Sanzo and Gojyo waiting there, both torn between relief and anger. Hakkai met Gojyo's eyes briefly and saw that his fear was giving way to anger and frustration; his friend would not be able to give him the quick understanding that Goku had. He bowed his head, said nothing, and climbed into the jeep, waiting for the others to follow.

They were all shaken, but Gojyo became so angry in the face of Hakkai's reticence that he couldn't trust himself to speak. He slouched in Jeep's back seat smoking one cigarette after another, his eyes burning into the back of the dark-haired man in the driver's seat in front of him. Goku wanted to cool Gojyo's barely-contained rage, to explain Hakkai's feelings, but he didn't know what to say.

Their destination was near, and Sanzo suggested they drive there and get rooms immediately. Hakkai shouldered his pack, called Hakuryuu to follow him, and disappeared silently up the stairs to his room the minute Sanzo paid for it and handed him the key.

They had gotten two rooms, with beds enough for all of them. Sanzo and Goku had removed themselves a pace or two from the fuming redhead and were debating which of them should share which rooms, given Hakkai's and Gojyo's present foul moods. Goku insisted that they put Gojyo and Hakkai together to work this out.

"You can share the room with that damn fool tonight," Gojyo snarled to Sanzo, finally breaking his silence. "But first he's gonna get a fucking piece of my mind!" He grabbed his own pack and stalked up the stairs, Hakkai already well out of sight.

Not wanting the encounter, but certain Gojyo would follow him, Hakkai had left the door slightly ajar. He was sitting on one of the beds facing it, his head in his hands, elbows propped on his knees, when Gojyo slammed into the room.

Hakkai looked up, brushing his hand back through his hair. "We have neighbors. I suggest a little more care for noise," he admonished.

His polite tone increased Gojyo's anger proportionately, but the redhead closed the door quietly, the latch clicking loudly in the heavy silence that descended as he tried to bring his feelings under control.

"What the HELL was that, you goddamn fool?!" He tossed his backpack roughly onto the other bed and loomed over the other man.

In spite of his position below him, Hakkai managed to look evenly at Gojyo, his lips drawn in a tight line, his face a mask. "What?" he feigned ignorance.

"You know damn well what," Gojyo ground out.

"It was a mistake, Gojyo. Please leave it."

"Mistake my fucking ass!" His voice was rising. He struggled to keep it down. "You stood there just waiting for it!… No. No, actually, you invited it!"

"It was a momentary lapse, Gojyo. I know it's hard for you to understand, but I realized my mistake. I made up for it." This was all true, but he knew his words alone weren't convincing. "It will never happen again." His tone changed on that last—the confrontational tenor gone, penitent.

Gojyo hardly noticed. "Momentary lapse… You made up for it… You scared the living hell out of me, you asshole!"

Hakkai couldn't help but see the overwhelming anxiety behind the anger. He met Gojyo's eyes fiercely, but said nothing.

"I know you, Hakkai. I know exactly what you were doing. But I thought we were way past your thinking like that anymore. You damn well better have changed your mind. For good. Because if you ever try anything like that again, I swear I'll kill you myself!"

Hakkai couldn't help smiling bitterly at the irony. "The end result would be the same, yes?"

Gojyo couldn't remember ever being so provoked by this man for whom he had come to care so much. Before he realized what he was doing, he closed the distance between them and raised his arm to swing at him, the full force of his fear and anger behind the blow.

Hakkai stood up, but made no move to stop him or defend himself. Hakuryuu, however, squawked angrily and flew into Gojyo's face.

Gojyo nearly fell as he curbed himself in mid-swing, turning on his heel and slamming his fist into his own hand. He stood sideways to Hakkai, staring distantly out the window, hands clenched at his sides, broken arm throbbing.

"Fine, you self-centered bastard. Have it your way!" He spat the words out in a seething undertone. "No matter if you give up and the rest of us get killed trying to complete this stinking mission without you. No matter that after all these years of my trying to help you get over your screwed up hang-ups, you just go ahead and take the fucking easy way out the way you tried to in the first place. No matter to you if your fucking self-sacrifice leaves me with the same pain Kanan's death left you with! I'll be the one left alone this time, after all. And you'll finally be free… free of your goddamn relentless guilt… free of ever having to feel anything again… free of me.

"And if my grief drives me to kill a thousand fucking youkai because what they did to you—and what you did afterward—made you immune to ever taking the risk of loving me or anyone else, then it won't be on your head this time, will it?" His voice turned to ice, his red eyes fire. "I just hope there's no fool Gojyo there to pick up the pieces when I finally turn my knife on myself. Because I don't want to inflict on anyone else this hell of wanting someone so much who so badly doesn't want to be wanted."

He turned to leave; paused, shaking, desperately wanting Hakkai to stop him, but fearing that if he did, it would be only out of a sense of further self-sacrifice, not because his feelings were returned. He had said too much—couldn't stop, once he had begun, the flood of words and feelings he had held in check for so long.

When the silence behind him grew deafening, his back and shoulders stiffened with resolve. "I'm done. I can't do this anymore." He strode the few paces to the door, turned the handle, and wrenched it open before the silence was broken.

"Gojyo." He froze on the threshold in mid stride. He couldn't look back, knew that the pain Hakkai would see in his face would force him to make a decision that he had to make freely if he made it at all.

Long minutes passed before Hakkai crossed the room so silently that Gojyo felt rather than heard him come up behind him. Hakkai hung there without another word for what may have been only a minute, but felt to Gojyo like a lifetime. The half-youkai's throat was constricted, and he felt as though they were shrouded in thick fog. He could feel Hakkai's breath on the back of his neck, alien, it seemed, when his own breath was entirely suspended.

"Don't go." Hakkai's voice was thick, barely above a whisper. But his hand on Gojyo's shoulder was heavy and sure as he pressed him to turn back.

Red eyes searched green ones, but their owner stood still, waiting, arms at his sides, afraid to move.

Hakkai caressed Gojyo's face, his thumb tracing the double scar on his cheek. Gojyo released his long-held breath, leaned almost imperceptibly into the other's gentle touch, raised his own hand and placed it over Hakkai's, holding it in place.

Green eyes burned into red ones. "You don't have to beg for my love, Gojyo. You have it. It's not true that I don't want you. Not true that I don't want you to want me. I have never wanted to be free of you. I wanted you… to be free of me."

Gojyo closed his eyes, his throat constricting again, relief flooding through him, but every muscle in his body still taut.

"But you can't ask me not to be scared," Hakkai continued. "If I take the risk you ask of me, you can't expect me not to fear what I might do, what I might become, if I give myself to you as I did to Kanan and I lose you as I did her. Goku helped me see that I can love again. That it's you I love. You've shown me, over and over, that I can be loved again. But I can't… face… that kind of loss again, Gojyo." His voice broke with the struggle to put his feelings into words.

Gojyo's hand closed more tightly over Hakkai's, and he turned his face into it, kissing his palm.

Hakkai took a small step closer. "I can't do this without being so scared it hurts. But please… don't let my fear drive you away." His breathing had slowed and was coming in ragged gasps.

Gojyo took Hakkai's head in both of his hands, winding his long fingers into the silky hair on either side of his narrow face. "You damn fool," he smiled deeply into the emerald eyes. "I haven't let that happen in four fucking years. Why would I let it scare me off now?"

He leaned in to kiss the slighter man, more gently than he had so often imagined their first kiss. Hakkai hesitated for a fleeting second, then pressed closer, wrapping one arm around Gojyo's back, tangling the fingers of his other hand into Gojyo's long hair. He yielded to the pressure of the lips on his, and they drank deeply, for a minute, of each other's mouths and tongues.

Gojyo forced himself to back off, reluctantly, when Hakkai began to tremble uncontrollably at Gojyo's yearning for more. He wrapped his arms around Hakkai, ignoring the pain in his arm, tenderly stroking Hakkai's shoulder and lower back with soothing hands to still his tremors. "I can't promise you that nothing will ever happen to me, Hakkai. But us cockroaches are damn hard to kill. And I can promise that I will never leave you as long as it's in my power to stay."

Hakkai returned the protective hug in equal measure, resting his head on Gojyo's shoulder, Gojyo's head resting against his. Slowly the trembling subsided, and his heart rate and breathing slowed to match those of the man who embraced him. They stood together in each other's arms for a long time as darkness gathered around them, each exquisitely sensitive to every nerve in the other's body, to each other's smell and touch, to the smallest of changes in each other's breathing and posture.

Gojyo was motionless, afraid to awaken and discover the fragile moment was a dream. When Hakkai finally lifted his head, Gojyo subtly tightened his arms around him. Hakkai mirrored the possessive movement, locking Gojyo more tightly in his own arms to allay his apprehension. "I've made you wait a long time. I'm not going anywhere," he reassured him.

Hakkai's whispered breath on his neck made Gojyo's breath catch, his heart race. When the touch of Hakkai's lips followed the warm breath, first on his neck, then on his jaw, he could no longer hold back the need and longing he had so long suppressed. His arms tightened again into a crushing hold, his hips straining against Hakkai's. And when Hakkai's next caressing kiss reached his mouth, Gojyo returned it with the ferocity that had taken every ounce of his will to withhold minutes before. His mouth closed hungrily over Hakkai's, his tongue forcing entry into his mouth, tasting, exploring, demanding.

Hakkai met the demand with equal intensity, Gojyo's fervor releasing the passion that had been too long constrained behind his reserved façade. His kiss was bruising in response to Gojyo's exploration, his embrace unyielding as he steered them across the room.

Gojyo winced and cried out as they fell to the bed, at once in pain from the jar to his injured arm and in nearly unbearable ecstasy. Hakkai backed off slightly, breathless, concern in his eyes. "I've hurt you."

Gojyo managed a husky, "No. Don't stop," and pulled him back into the kiss. They strained against each other, and with the same instinctive sensitivity to each other's needs and feelings that they shared in fighting and in simple conversation, their hands tore into each other's clothing and found the burning places on each other's bodies that seared breath from their lungs and drove them surely and swiftly to frenzied climax.

It was Gojyo, afterwards, whose breathless panting resolved into uncontrollable tremors as they lay beside each other, spent. Hakkai turned to face him and closed his arms around him, pulling him close. He caressed his back and hair until the trembling stopped and their breathing and heartbeats slowed and synchronized until they seemed to share breath and pulse.

They drifted into sleep without thought for what might come later. For now this was more than enough.

***End Part II***

***Next up: Part III, First Kiss: Sanzo***

No cliffhanger this time, Blades of Ice, Kitiara, and Bakasaru Boi!  So you can stop sulking, BB (for the time being, anyway--*evil grin*).  ^_^
K.Firefly, I hope you aren't too disappointed that Hakkai wasn't hurt and Goku didn't heal him per your suspicion of foreshadowing. ^_~ .
Still think I'm twisted and cruel, Crimson?
Katie, nice to see you back these last two chapters—I thought I'd lost you. I hope you feel that your patient waiting has paid off.

Welcome to "Awakenings" and thanks for your recent reviews, Beachan, Usagi 1313, ethereal-tenshi, "anybody home," and BlueJadeAL.

And to all of you who have stayed with this and brought me over the 100 reviews mark, THANK YOU!—especially to Me-Nuriko, Naye, Bakasaru Boi, Mabaroshi, Fogwolf, and Gallatica, who have faithfully given me reactions to nearly every chapter—but also to any of you who have taken time to leave a comment or two or three or four. Your reactions, responses, and critiques are much appreciated! I hope you will find Part III as enjoyable as you have Parts I and II.