#1 Motion:
Gojyo was always in motion, restless and impatient; sometimes it made his head hurt to watch him fret when he was forced to remain still, and sometimes it amused him.
#2 Cool:
It was strange how quickly Hakkai could calm Gojyo down, take the edge off his anger with just a few words.
#3 Young:
For all his worldly-wise ways and street-smarts, Gojyo had a strange innocence, a naïve belief in the goodness of people; it made Hakkai realise just how young he was, and made him feel older and more jaded somehow.
#4 Last:
Gojyo once inquired what his reaction would be if Gojyo was killed on the journey: 'Gojyo, I don't really want to discuss this at all,' Hakkai said, dangerously soft; which was far more of an answer than Hakkai needed to give; that was the last time they ever spoke of it, but Gojyo never forgot.
#5 Wrong:
He gave up on arguing with Hakkai, because the man never admitted it when he was wrong, which was too damn rare for Gojyo anyway.
#6 Gentle:
Hakkai's fingers were always gentle when they healed his wounds, feather-light touches of chi and skin.
#7 One:
'I don't share,' Hakkai said very evenly, 'if you are to have any part of me, I will be the only one you have anything of,' and Gojyo agreed, still dazed from disbelief and joy.
#8 Thousand:
A thousand miles they have journeyed together, and more, and Gojyo thinks that the proverb is wrong, so wrong, because if he had taken that single step and gone on past the dying man on the road, none of this would ever have happened.
#9 King:
When he was in the mood, Gojyo could spin long, convoluted, suspenseful and fantastical tales of ghosts and kings and quests and fair maidens; it called strongly to the storyteller in him, and often made him wonder what Gojyo could have become if he had received the care and love he deserved.
#10 Learn:
Hakkai was a teacher, and a good one, but he didn't share Gojyo's talent of keeping himself supple, relaxed, able to accept joy and sorrow and move on; and so, quietly, without the half-breed noticing, he learned.
#11 Blur:
He only has to close his eyes to remember that day when Hakkai rescued him from Banri's gang of thugs; the youkai, brutal and beautiful, merely a blur, and blood everywhere, and thinking that he didn't know this man, not even a little.
#12 Wait:
He was unused to having someone waiting for him; it was always a shock to enter and find the house lit; to feel a different presence in a place where he had always been alone – even when there had been others there with him.
#13 Change:
It was when he slipped his limiters off willingly for the first time that he realised the inevitability of it all; once again, he had bound himself to another, with potentially equally disastrous consequences, once again made himself vulnerable to loss, once again made the decision to kill; once again, he loved, even if it was slightly different this time – how ironic – it seemed that people didn't really change after all; youkai or human, Gonou or Hakkai, sister and soul-mate or dearest friend, he had made the same choices again.
#14 Command:
Some found it strange that a man like Kenren, who was supposedly irresponsible, erratic and rebellious, had been given command – and even stranger, won the loyalty of those who followed him; but the man had a dangerous kind of charisma to him that drew people irresistibly.
#15 Hold:
He soon discovered that Gojyo would rather hold him than be held; he didn't know why until he had to leave him once to answer the door and returned to see his hands clutch restlessly, frantically at the sheets, eyes shut tight as if he were trying to recapture something.
#16 Believe:
'This is very hard to believe,' Gojyo said shakily, arms vice-tight around Hakkai, and the healer decided mentally that that insecurity had to be the first thing to go.
#17 Vision:
'I can't cleanse the past; that's not for me to do,' and he stroked a fingertip down Hakkai's palm in a wiping motion, replacing the vision of blood with hot, painful life, 'but maybe I can show you that not all the memories you have of these hands have to be bad.'
#18 Attention:
'Really, must you have the attention span of a flea?' Hakkai asked him once, even his infinite store of patience running low; 'Sorry, just admiring the view,' Gojyo leered in reply as his eyes fixed immodestly on a passer-by: without even looking at him, Sanzo delivered a fan to the head for the comment, and almost, almost grinned when Hakkai made him his favourite meal for dinner in unspoken thanks while Gojyo glowered mutely.
#19 Soul:
In the orphanage it had always been drilled into him that all men were sinners by default, tainted souls and impure bodies, that there was only one way to erase those sins and purify his soul, and that was to adhere to the laws and morality of the one true God; it seemed strange to him that only in two forbidden loves had he found anything that came close to redemption, to meaning, to life.
#20 Picture:
He was down to loose change once, during a streak of particularly bad luck, when Hakkai slid smoothly into the seat next to his, tsked a few times at his bad play and proceeded to cheerfully fleece everyone at the table, looking the very picture of innocence, while Gojyo lit up and smirked for all he was worth while draping an arm possessively over his shoulder.
#21 Fool:
Hakkai always tried to fool everyone, misguiding, misdirecting, manipulating – it took Gojyo a while to realise that it was an attempt to hide those truths from himself.
#22 Mad:
The danger was always there, of course; perhaps a mixed ancestry or a transformation would not be sufficient to hold the madness at bay; perhaps the things they saw and experienced and had to do would chip away too quickly at what remained whole within them; perhaps, perhaps…… and so they lived for the moment, because there was no guarantee that the next one would not be the last.
#23 Child:
Gojyo had the most curious fixation on children; when he thought the others weren't looking, he would sometimes go play with the children in the town, swinging a baseball bat with great relish – Hakkai could probably guess why he did that, but that would be an invasion of Gojyo's privacy, and he was more polite than that.
#24 Now:
Having loved only two people in his life, there was always the urge to compare them, then and now, Kanan and Gojyo, green and crimson – but Hakkai was wise enough to move on from the past, even if he was not wise enough to leave it behind, and he never did.
#25 Shadow:
When he wanted to, Hakkai could melt into the shadows, be inconspicuous and unnoticed and quietly deadly; it was both innate and learned.
#26 Goodbye:
Gojyo never said goodbye when he left; goodbyes implied that there was a possibility of not meeting again, they implied a readiness to let go, a willingness to be apart, they implied that he couldn't feel Hakkai's presence wherever he went even if they weren't with each other, and that was, very simply, not true and not possible.
#27 Hide:
It wasn't so much that Gojyo hid what he was feeling, it was only that Hakkai never chose to acknowledge it – but he discarded that thought immediately; it was too unlike his friend.
#28 Fortune:
Fortune favoured Hakkai, in cards and dice and other games of chance, and his skill and analytical mind made up the rest; and he began to quote the old adage about luck in cards before Gojyo silenced him with a kiss.
#29 Safe:
He didn't quite know at what point he had equated Gojyo to safety; it was over pretty much before he realised it had begun.
#30 Ghost:
They had their ghosts, families lost and killed, memories linked to red and rain and strangling, beloved hands; perhaps they would never be exorcised, for scars never disappeared; but they could find sanctuary, at least, and that was something.
#31 Book:
'There's not a chance in hell I'm reading any of those,' Gojyo protested when Hakkai handed him an old philosophical treatise; but he had no objections to lying in Hakkai's lap and listening while the youkai read out to him.
#32 Eye:
There were things that Kenren and Tenpou saw eye-to-eye upon, of course, as was normal in any relationship, and when they disagreed their arguments were loud, expressive and of varying length and venom; so much so that those who didn't believe that they were lovers took them for mortal enemies.
#33 Never:
Walking on ice was apparently something Hakkai had never done before, and Gojyo used the opportunity to drape himself all over him all of the morning; in the evening, he saw Hakkai strolling competently across the road to the tree Hakuryuu was perched in, and had to laugh.
#34 Sing:
Gojyo sang in the shower; not very tunefully, not very rhythmically, but it was obvious he enjoyed it, and that delight always made him pause outside the door, shake his head and smile ruefully.
#35 Sudden:
He would have said the realisation was sudden, because until the moment he said it aloud he was quite convinced of the contrary, but when he did, he realised that it had been coming a long time now.
#36 Stop:
'Stop,' he whimpered desperately, overwhelmed by the sensation of too many hands, the two caressing him now, the two that had touched him before, the one that had ripped him apart, memory and reality colliding in agony; but Gojyo didn't, patient and loving and far, far more perceptive than Hakkai was: and when he finally broke through the fog of the past and became one with the present – waking up, almost, to warm callused hands and intense crimson eyes and soothing silky words and careful lightning-touches – it was the sweetest sensation in the world.
#37 Time:
Gojyo had long ago lost count of how many times he had almost told him, almost touched him, almost held him, almost, almost……only to back away, because it wasn't time.
#38 Wash:
'I'll wash it out,' Hakkai offered diffidently the first time they came from battle blood-stained, and that was how he took the first step to becoming absolutely indispensable to all three of them.
#39 Torn:
He watched Hakkai and Sanzo draw closer when it rained, huddling together instinctively like wounded animals, and was torn between wanting to understand that pain and praying he never did.
#40 History:
He read old histories and books on military strategy, and on occasion talked about them with what Gojyo thought was suspicious familiarity and expertise; when he asked Hakkai whether he'd ever been in the army and neglected to tell them, the healer only ahaha'd and said maybe, in a previous life.
#41 Power:
Sanzo might be the leader, Goku the strongest fighter; but Hakkai was the mediator, the glue in their fragile little group, the one who kept it together and planned and thought things out and got them out of tight spots and kept them from going at each others' throats; he was the soul of the group, he held the true power, and all three of them knew it.
#42 Bother:
Cleaning was such a bother; he was aware of the location of the objects necessary to his work, which was the point of organisation, and thus knowing, he felt no need to maintain some standard of neatness that had been arbitrarily decided by traditional societal mores and rearrange items that were perfectly fine where they were in any oth–
Whereupon Kenren hit him with a large dictionary, and Tenpou meekly set to work.
#43 God:
Neither of them believed, not really, not anymore, but sometimes things had to be accepted whether one wanted to believe in them or not, and right about the time they saw Kanzeon for the first time they were strongly reminded why they hadn't wanted to believe.
#44 Wall:
There were places in Hakkai's mind where no one was allowed, not even Gojyo; walled off and secure, the worst (and sometimes, the best) of him remained carefully locked up.
#45 Naked:
'Damn it, don't hide from me!' and Gojyo ripped off the monocle, furious; in that moment, he felt more naked than he would have if the redhead had stripped him.
#46 Drive:
It was accepted that as long as he wasn't injured, Hakkai was the driver; Sanzo took an unexpected liking to driving after defeating Kami-sama, but his style had Hakuryuu transforming defensively into dragon-form every time the monk approached the driver's seat; his glare told them all to keep quiet about it, but Gojyo teased him anyway.
#47 Harm:
Everyday, he tried to make them believe he was harmless; smiling, eyes crinkled shut, hands open-palmed and loose, amicable and good-natured; it would have worked, except that Gojyo knew that the smile concealed many things, that closed eyes guarded unrestrained emotion, and Hakkai open-palmed was a hundred times more dangerous than Gojyo was.
#48 Precious:
Gojyo tried never to attach significance to anything, to make anything indispensable, because whatever he found, he lost; but Hakkai was too precious to let go of – even the thought was unbearable.
#49 Hunger:
Hakkai cooked, and cooked, and there was always a faintly bitter taste to everything of his that Gojyo ate, because while Hakkai's food filled his stomach he did nothing, nothing, about the hunger in his eyes.
#50 Need:
'I must never need anything,' Tenpou said; 'I may desire, but desire is controllable, is ephemeral, while the truth of need is that it shapes the one who needs; it is impossible to change or control or erase – it is a dangerous thing, it ties one to life, destroys objectivity, warps rationality, and so I must not need…' and all the while, his hands roamed restlessly over Kenren, proving him a liar in silent indictment.
A/N: thanks to sohmamomiji, my sole repeat reviewer (sigh. I did expect this to be better received). There will be one more 85/10K, and the last one will be mostly 10K if I have anything to say about it – it's also my personal favourite and thus reserved for last place, which should give me time to finish it and polish it.