Disclaimer: Saiyuki ain't mine.
Sound of the Night
Chapter 4: Hakkai's Thoughts
Hakkai knelt with his face on Gojyo's bed, trying not to feel like shit.
It wasn't working.
He couldn't even say why he had said those things to Gojyo, specifically calculated to hurt. The words came in that moment of utter clarity, utter coldness, where he could say anything, do anything, and not care.
Unfortunately, those moments never lasted long.
Hakkai knew that Gojyo had never been able to keep his tongue between his teeth about things that were bothering him, and he wouldn't sugar-coat it either. Gojyo's words had had the acidic sting of truth.
Hakkai wished that life could be rewound like a videotape. He go back, before he'd ever said anything to Gojyo, before Sanzo had ever claimed his lips with his caged anger, before they'd ever gone on this insane trip, before the Minus Wave had ever began to cross eastward...
He couldn't go back any further. No matter how much he wanted to undo some parts of the past, he couldn't go back to before he'd met Gojyo.
It was funny, really. The very events that had ended his old life had given birth to his new one.
But it was futile to think like this. Everything was done. The past was set in stone. All he could do was atone, atone, atone.
Pain is something like an addiction. Once you've drowned in it once, no matter how many times you're saved, you keep jumping in again. You bump into someone else drowning in the same well and you both drag each other down, deeper, deeper. You're both searching for the bottom of the well, the bottom where it all ends as the last bubbles of air escape from your lungs and you die.
Hakkai never talked with Sanzo about the past. They never said anything. The were just together, but alone, dragging each other down. The sex hadn't changed that. It had just been one more atonement. Hakkai could imagine that Sanzo was punishing him in the darkness of the night. It was nothing more than a physical act, carnal, devoid of passion.
At least, that's the way it had started out. The problem with being a man who had only ever fucked one woman, the one he had loved more deeply than anyone else, is that sex became an expression of love rather than a physical act. Hakkai was sucked into Sanzo's pain, knowing that he wouldn't be able to do anything about it, but maybe, in a moment of purely physical sensations, Sanzo would forget it. Maybe.
Sanzo hurt, he hurt, and he drove the needles even deeper into his own flesh with ever passing day. Soon the needles would be driven completely into his heart, and then he would be gone. He'd be as cold and emotionless as he pretended to be. Hakkai couldn't stop the needles. He just hoped to slow them down.
They said nothing to each other. They conveyed nothing to each other. When they were together they were still alone, which is where both of them wanted to be. It was their silent agreement.
Hakkai had broken it only once, with Sanzo's name.