Heaven Knows Everyone Is Miserable Now
Chapter 16: Spellbound
The nights were no longer dreaded for their darkness or the perils of the unknown. Threshold crossed, the nightmares belonged now to the day, rendered in the ugly faces of the rotters that bid their time to bite, to feed, to follow the sounds of life so as to take it for themselves. Gintoki slashed through them in record time, wasting no time in the interim between their growls and dragging feet. He found himself always in a hurry, jerking his leg in the passenger seat, willing the scenery to blur to oblivion. Jirocho's Subaru had suffered much of his impatience. The car had heard so many variations of his curses, it was a wonder it didn't run on his foul mouth.
Hijikata, a stickler for duty and propriety, made sure they kept going in the right direction, obsessing over the tiniest details — the state of the roads, the probability of horde blocks, gas consumption, their daily intake of water and food, the ever dwindling condition of his supply of cigarettes. By day, everything was an excuse to keep his mind focused on the reason why he and Gintoki were stuck together: the search for Jirocho's medication. Gintoki understood Hijikata's intentions well enough. It was easier, albeit necessary, to apply themselves to their immediate concerns than it was to wait for the tip of the sun to fall under the horizon and force them shut in a room somewhere with only their mutual hunger for company.
As promised, Gintoki took only what Hijikata let him, night after night. From Hijikata's lips, the taste of his mouth. From Hijikata's skin, his salty sweat. From between his thighs, the pure taste of him. It didn't take Gintoki long to learn Hijikata had never been with a man before, but the lack of experience didn't deter either of them. Gintoki was eager to please and Hijikata desperate to prove himself. Nail scratches and red marks joined the other bruises marring Gintoki's body, which he was considerate enough to return, though the fresh memory of them, the sucking, the biting, the tonguing, made him lightheaded during the day. He replayed the nights in his head like an addict, aware of how long he had gone without proper release since the outbreak began. Every day, his own words mocked him. You're afraid of it too, right? How good it might be. And now it seemed the consequences he had neglected before had come to stay.
After exchanging the truths they had previously kept to themselves and which had cinched the deal on their new arrangement, the communication between Gintoki and Hijikata had ceased. They talked of the miles they still had to go, how little water they had left; they discussed what places warranted clearing, what useful supplies they found worth keeping. All of it background chatter to fill the silence since nothing about their nights had a place under the sun and the more time passed and the more they travelled without a word said about them, the more unreal those nights seemed, the more coveted.
Originally, Gintoki had estimated their journey to the clinic to take four days. Maybe less if they were lucky enough to find the roads in good shape and the rotters sparse. They had kept to the planned schedule despite the odds against them, yet, from that stormy night onwards, time seemed to expand and contract without logic. Restlessness infused the air. No matter what discipline Hijikata instilled in them during the day, no matter how long they pored over the map, or how swiftly Gintoki dispatched the rotters, they ended up going in circles, lost in forest roads, chancing upon unexpected little villages, some places smaller than villages, comprising only a stretch of road, half a dozen houses and a gas station.
Thoughts of ailing Jirocho and Pirako's anxious face weren't enough to pierce the balance Hijikata and Gintoki clung to, each seeking from the journey redemption and forgiveness in their own way, yet finding themselves deprived of both, thrown off course by the feelings borne of their reckless plunge into new levels of intimacy. They knew that to burst that balance was to send all their efforts to hell, to yield to those feelings which had awoken more powerful than any allegiance they had to Jirocho and Pirako, and shamefully, to Shinpachi and Kagura. Gintoki, for one, knew first-hand how easy it was to submit himself to his senses. He had done it before, living in thrall of his most basic needs while enmeshed in the throngs of the undead. Reason told him it was best to confine his urges to the nights where he and Hijikata abandoned themselves to each other like animals. Where past, present and future dissolved into immediate pleasure that required nothing but the eclipse of everything else — sweet bliss.
But those heightened states of being had begun to seep into daytime. Perhaps it was the fact they were alone with only one another for company that made them so taken with each other, so untethered to the limits they had tried to establish for their own safety. The word 'obsession' made rounds about them, but neither spoke it nor dared think it, because what else could explain their delay? What else could justify the passage of time where no antiseptic was found, no clinic? When nothing happened except the unbearable wait for night to come?
To accept obsession was to succumb to life as it was. To forget the places and people they needed to get back to. The deliverance neither Gintoki nor Hijikata could afford to relinquish.
The road ahead was empty, surrounded by equally empty fields where the wilderness had advanced over abandoned crops. Gintoki waited in the car for Hijikata who had stopped at a run-down convenience store to search for cigarettes. Fallen leaves littered the place which had once served as a pit stop for local farmers.
Gintoki tried to ignore the hard-on pressing against his pants, ruing the second he'd turned aside to watch Hijikata exit the car and let his eyes fall on the curve of his ass. He probably had less than five minutes before Hijikata returned, with or without his beloved cigarettes and in no better mood either way, given the circumstances — which promised a definite turn for the worse if he came back to find Gintoki wishing his tent pole away. So Gintoki zipped down his fly and jerked himself off quickly. Pre-cum soiled his fingers. The rush of excitement at getting caught inebriated him. He came so fast he could hardly believe it. No matter how much they spent themselves at night, every morning they awoke refreshed, craving more, as if their bodies had soaked up the pleasure, starved of it.
Gintoki barely had time to clean up before Hijikata's sulking figure came into view. He found a dirty cloth stashed in the pocket of the car door to wipe himself with and zipped back up, striving for the most unaffected expression he could muster as Hijikata sat down behind the steering wheel.
"Nothing." Hijikata grunted, banging the door shut.
Fresh from his high, Gintoki couldn't help but smile at Hijikata's irritation now that he knew a little more about his oral fixation. He reckoned his silence must have pricked Hijikata's interest, because Hijikata turned aside before starting the car, gaze wary but familiar, hankering for a fight. An excuse to vent out the nicotine withdrawal.
They didn't trade many glances during the day. In fact, they avoided eye contact except on particular occasions when they couldn't risk making a sound. Such was not the case now.
Gintoki's half-lidded eyes met Hijikata's after raking him from the waist up, not so much undressing him in his mind but recalling the sounds Hijikata had made when Gintoki had trailed his tongue up Hijikata's chest and toyed with Hijikata's two puckered buds between his teeth. How red and swollen they had become.
The words came barreling out of Hijikata's lips before Gintoki could formulate speech.
"Not here."
Gintoki had never been very good at taking orders. He loathed Hijikata's past as a policeman for that very reason. Authority didn't take well with him and, Gintoki had recently discovered, only fueled his desire to unmake Hijikata. To have Hijikata squirming under him, mewling and clawing at his back. The image of Hijikata with his head thrown back, expression half hidden in the shadows, yielding to Gintoki's touch, ring forgotten, the bare thread of its necklace dangling from his neck, was imprinted to the back of Gintoki's eyelids. Yes, he had been greedy, but he had never imagined the depths his greed could reach. He hated this version of Hijikata he couldn't touch. The wall he put up when the lights came on. Being denied of him reminded Gintoki of everything else the world had denied him.
Anger twined with lust. The gentle side he kept for Hijikata at the darkest hours of the night when he held Hijikata close, withered away. The worst of his temper flared. Gintoki took deep breaths to steady himself. He recognized the tempestuous feeling possessing him. It was the same one he let take over him when he pistoned into Hijikata like he wanted to dig his wife's name out of him. When the choir of voices inside Gintoki's head whispered to him all the vulgar thoughts bound to push him further over the edge. How she had never had Hijikata like he had, on all fours like a mutt, moaning into Gintoki's mouth like he couldn't be parted from it, as if their breaths were one and the same.
Hijikata's scowl deepened as Gintoki leaned over. He grabbed Gintoki's chin to push him away, but Gintoki's lips parted to take in Hijikata's fingers.
"What are you-"
"You really piss me off," Gintoki's voice rang clear as Hijikata pulled his fingers away, drool dribbling off them, "Acting all prude when you know you'll be quick enough to beg me later."
Red flushed Hijikata's cheeks. The furrows between his brows deepened. He opened and closed his mouth without the words for a clever comeback. So stupid and endearing, Gintoki couldn't help smiling.
He fisted Hijikata's crotch, closed his whole hand over the bulge growing there.
"I'll be quick." Gintoki lied.
Hijikata grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pushed him away.
Gintoki jostled into his seat, hissing at the sudden pain in his arm. Hijikata had helped him take out his stitches, but the wound remained sore. Over closer inspection, Gintoki found it bleeding. He cursed and wiped at the excess blood with his shirt before he noticed Hijikata's dismayed expression and the hints of affection lodged in there, hiding behind his haughty exterior.
"I'm… it's your own damn fault!" Hijikata stammered.
If only he knew.
"I should be a mirror." Gintoki muttered under his breath.
The whisper stumped Hijikata. He was so distracted trying to figure out what Gintoki had meant that he was unable to escape Gintoki's grip on his necklace. Gintoki tugged at the string until it bit into the skin of Hijikata's neck, suffocating him, paralyzing him.
Then the voice inside Gintoki's head returned. Hungry, destructive.
Let him have her then.
And Gintoki dove into Hijikata's groin, fingers slipping past the waistband of his pants, taking hold of Hijikata's already curving cock which grew harder by the second as Gintoki took ownership of it. Hijikata's fingers dug into Gintoki's hair, not to stop him, not to hurt him, but to hold him in place. Gintoki swallowed him whole without preamble, remembering the texture, the taste. What followed, he already expected. Hijikata's hips bucked. He fucked Gintoki's mouth at his own pace, fisting Gintoki's silver curls with leisure, tighter whenever he felt one of Gintoki's low chuckles flutter against his cock.
Hijikata's ministrations stole the thread to Gintoki's plot. His mind turned into a hazy plane where only Hijikata's low, guttural sounds commanded him. He lost the grip on the necklace and his hand slid towards the source of the moans. Gintoki's fingers tumbled past Hijikata's lips to be readily sucked on, fingers which Gintoki had spoiled with his own release minutes before. Hijikata's tongue was hot and wet around Gintoki's fingers as he craned his neck left and right, riding the waves of pleasure Gintoki worked on him. The sloppy frenzy of Hijikata's suckling was enough to make Gintoki hard again.
But a bang against the car window startled them. Hijikata's hands detached from Gintoki's scalp, and Gintoki withdrew from Hijikata's throbbing cock with a trail of saliva and cum dangling from his chin.
The rotting face of a woman banged against the window of the driver's seat. Blackened fingers tackled the pane of glass separating them.
Gintoki untangled from Hijikata's lap and growled low in his throat, lower than the rotter hungering for their flesh. He steadied Hijikata with a hand on his chest, pushing him back into the car seat, and wiped the goop from his chin with the other.
"Stay here." his voice came out raspy, almost a whisper.
Hijikata grunted a nondescript reply, the disturbance already paling his flushed complexion.
Outside the car, the rotter shifted towards Gintoki, roused by his approach, but it barely had time to snarl. In a rare display of anger, Gintoki struck the rotter's head with a rock. Bits of her jaw went flying along with rotten teeth, disfiguring her already gnarly features. She stumbled back and contorted on the floor, angling to rise. Gintoki hit her twice more until she stopped moving, and brain matter poured out of her broken skull.
When he straightened back up, his eyes met Hijikata's inside the car. They drove the rest of the way in silence.
Night came. Holed up in a hovel of a house, Hijikata and Gintoki carried out their daily rituals apart. Hijikata dined his last packet of instant chicken soup, while Gintoki washed himself out back with what was left inside an old water tank. Washing done, Gintoki returned inside to find the house empty. He heard the front door close as Hijikata left, whether forever or just out for smokes, Gintoki couldn't tell. Resentment and shame prevented him from going after Hijikata, but he did not hear the Subaru start up, nor the latch of the car door close, which meant Hijikata had not touched the car or escaped to its confines. He would come back, Gintoki told himself, though he did not need convincing. A part of him knew the only way they would ever separate again would be through death, even if that came at each other's hands.
Pirako's plea echoed in the back of his mind, as did his answer. A simpler time.
Slumber eluded him. Gintoki waited for Hijikata in chaste quietude, pondering his earlier loss of control and whether he had taken things too far. He recalled Hijikata's eyes through the window-pane, the elated glimmer in his expression gone and replaced by horror. Had Gintoki blanked after picking up that rock? Had he verged upon the creature he had been before? Let himself become more of the Crow?
Don't try to become one with the dead.
The front door thundered shut. Hijikata had returned. No luck with the cigarettes again, Gintoki figured. He could see in the dim glow of the candle he'd lit and placed by the window how Hijikata's eyes blazed with emotion, how the night stroll had done nothing to quench the turmoil inside him. How he had ended up at the very spot he'd attempted to escape from. Nothing but the same answers to the same questions. The easy way out.
"No smokes? Not even the shitty menthol ones?" Gintoki's light tone dropped another log in the fire.
"Are you fucked in the head?" Hijikata put the candle out with his fingers, "Playing the waiting housewife to those sickos out there?"
"Welcome back, dear," Gintoki replied in an affected manner, "Brings back memories, uh?"
Hijikata's fists rumpled Gintoki's collar in a second. Gintoki had not expected the remark to hit so close so quickly. Giddiness pooled at the bottom of his stomach. His back hit the floor as Hijikata straddled him with his thighs to hold him in place.
"No matter what you do, this is where we always end up," Gintoki said, silver hair shrouding his expression, "Pointless to be mad about it."
"Shut your trap," Hijikata hissed. He released Gintoki's collar as soon as he felt Gintoki's hands cover his; pulled them back as if burnt.
"Isn't this why you came back?" Gintoki said, aiming to hurt, to throw the shame Hijikata unconsciously set on him back to its source.
"You know it isn't."
Gintoki hummed a nonchalant reply, body limp. Above him, Hijikata trembled like a rubber band pulled tight at both ends. He was all nerves and strained muscles, fighting the instinct to grind against the warm body underneath him; mind and body at odds. The nicotine withdrawal seemed to ground him to essentials. It sieved Hijikata's personality to basic wants and needs that transcended the net of morals and sensibilities he used to keep Gintoki at arm's length.
Stealing his cigarettes had been a risky move. Gintoki still wasn't sure this had been the goal he'd had in mind when the idea had first come to him. Taking Hijikata's ring had been deliberate, a pledge of survival. The cigarettes, however, would prove to be much more than a prank to lighten the mood.
"Then get off me." he said.
The request puzzled Hijikata. He stilled, unprepared for a second push.
"Get off."
Gintoki couldn't well be blamed for his inability to stop harassing Hijikata at every turn. They breathed the same air, shared the same cramped spaces, ate the same paltry rations. Nothing in the world could reach Gintoki without passing through Hijikata first. Not even his inner demons. They were blurring into each other.
Hijikata's hand closed around Gintoki's jaw. A tiny shiver of pleasure ran down Gintoki's spine.
"Don't boss me around."
It was one of those moments where Gintoki damned the night and the candle Hijikata had put out. He wanted to see the expression on Hijikata's face as clearly as he felt it consume the narrow space between them. He twitched underneath his clothes; recognized the haziness of desire clouding his judgment. With one deep inhale, he tried to steady himself, hyper-aware of the place where Hijikata's crotch sat above his.
"So earlier in the car," the words left Gintoki's mouth slurred, "Did you get hard watching me bash that creeper or did she remind you of your wife?"
The hand holding his jaw clenched. Gintoki grinned.
"You must have a death wish."
"Only if it's you doing the killing."
Hijikata kissed him. A mesh of lips and teeth tugged hard at Gintoki's mouth, hoping to silence him. He was too delirious to pay any mind to the gasp he let out, jubilant at the reaction. Garbled thoughts ran through his mind. So Hijikata didn't fear him. The hollow stare inside the car after the rotter had jumped them had not been aimed at Gintoki, but at Hijikata himself — at that sea of grief he could not emerge from. Hijikata would rather face Gintoki and let the frenzy ruin him than show weakness. How befitting. The thought kindled Gintoki's curiosity, which was, in itself, a bottomless pit demanding nothing but total surrender.
"Oi, you're serious." Gintoki rasped, pulse picking up with more than the shots of wanton lust racing through him.
"Make me forget. Make her go away."
Hijikata's pleading wrenched Gintoki's heart like a knife at his back. Unfortunately, Gintoki was not afraid to pull the knife out and use it.
"Why should I?" Gintoki said. He exchanged their positions and pinned Hijikata under him, hands clasped around Hijikata's wrists, "When I'm trying to pry her out of you."
"You fucking bastard-!"
Hijikata broke into a blubbering mess as Gintoki finished what he had started earlier that day. He stroked Hijikata's cock to full hardness before taking it all in and sucking him off until he was on the brink, pre-cum pooling at the tip and shaft slick with his spit.
"What are you waiting for?" Hijikata grunted, hips jerking. He let a few curses fly and reached his hands out to bury them in Gintoki's curls, but Gintoki stopped him.
"Close your eyes."
Gintoki slithered on top of Hijikata, placed his hand above Hijikata's eyes and hushed him with sloppy kisses as he fingered himself open. A loud moan escaped Hijikata's throat as Gintoki pushed himself down on his cock, breath quivering as every inch stretched him wider and wider and his nerve endings thrummed an echo of Hijikata's throbbing erection.
"Was she a prude like you," Gintoki's breathless voice embraced the darkness of the room as if he stood upon a stage; the corners of his lips curled as Hijikata's cock scraped closer to his sweet spot, "Or did you let her go wild… and ride you like this-"
Hijikata's first thrust robbed Gintoki of speech. He let out a choked sob. Tears of pain welled up in his eyes, but he kept his palm over Hijikata's, willing the name to spill from his lips as he imagined himself in his wife's place.
"Shut. The. Fuck. Up."
Each word followed a thrust upward into Gintoki's insides. It had been a long time since he had been on the receiving end. He could feel himself loosening and closing around Hijikata's cock, crammed full, biting back pride and a torrent of humiliating sounds as flashes of pleasure rippled through him, edging him closer to the finish, bringing out the sadistic side of this nature.
"C'mon, Hijikata… call her… I know you want to." Gintoki taunted him, building up the courage to move his hips.
"Fuck you."
Hijikata tried to remove Gintoki's hand from his eyes, but Gintoki fought back, fixing Hijikata's free hand above his head. Their fingers intertwined.
"Don't. You'll break the spell."
At last Gintoki rolled his hips. He bounced on Hijikata's cock with a slapping rhythm of ins and outs until his entire body perspired with the effort and Hijikata's swearing gave way to quick, shaky breaths.
Unable to think, and struggling to keep with Gintoki's pace, Hijikata clamped his hands over Gintoki's ass. He dug his fingers into his hips and met Gintoki's bucking hips with eager thrusts that made Gintoki lose his balance and tumble forward into Hijikata's embrace, unaware of his arching back, which dipped shamefully at each thrust, led by nothing but impulse and the unrelenting friction of their bodies pressed against his leaking cock.
Hijikata dug him out with erratic speed, desperate for release. White spots clouded Gintoki's vision. His mouth burned with the taste of Hijikata's tongue and the lingering traces of the pre-cum he had licked before. He heard Hijikata call out a name over and over. Not the one Gintoki wanted to hear, not he one he wanted to wring out of him, but the one he had heard time and again the previous nights while he plundered Hijikata to the depths. The last thoughts Gintoki had before his orgasm seized him were how sweet his name sounded on Hijikata's lips, how utterly hers had been eclipsed from these moments. A whirl of contradiction.
Gintoki slumped over Hijikata like dead weight, nerve endings afire after climaxing. The cold darkness of the room enveloped him as he came off his high, and Hijikata's engorged cock slipped out of him with a wet sound.
Defeat tasted too good for Gintoki to keep his mouth shut.
"Of course she married you if you fucked her like this."
Hijikata didn't reply. He brushed Gintoki off him with a rough push and lay staring up at the ceiling with his hands on his belly, sticky with Gintoki's load, chest rising and falling as he caught his breath.
"We can keep doing this if it helps you. I don't care." Gintoki said, unwilling to lose another night to the silence.
"I don't need pity fucks from you."
Bitterness coated Hijikata's voice, a tone incompatible with the warm body next to Gintoki's.
"You are a terrible liar, Hijikata-kun."
"Don't ever do that again."
"Then I'm just gonna have to find another excuse, won't I?"
Gintoki rolled over and reached for the bag he had previously flung into a corner of the room. He rummaged the bottom until he found the cigarette pack he had pinched from Hijikata the day before; early in the morning while Hijikata had been asleep with a single crease disturbing his otherwise ethereal features.
"What the fuck-?!" a dozen other creases adorned his face now, along with a sheen of sweat and the flush of exertion.
"You have become quite the heavy sleeper, officer." Gintoki said. He pulled out a cigarette from the pack and lit it. Shadows moved about the room as Gintoki flicked the lighter. He saw the anger rise in Hijikata's expression, his pupils dilate as he spotted the cheeky smirk on Gintoki's face.
"You piece of shit, and you watched me go around all day looking for them? This is all a big fucking joke to you, isn't it? You fucker!" Hijikata fumbled for his clothes, the room filled with the sounds of rustling fabric, "I don't need you to tell me what you did before all this shit, I can fucking guess, you goddamn pickpocket…" he droned on and on until Gintoki heard him zip up. Only when he was fully clothed, fully shielded from Gintoki's touch, did he enter Gintoki's space.
"Nobody said you could take my smokes."
Gintoki did not dare laugh. He found another outlet for his amusement.
"I just can't help myself," he said.
In the dark, his fingers found Hijikata's neck, guided there by the gravelly sound of his voice which scorched the air with its hoarseness, reeking of sex.
"Open up."
Gintoki tilted Hijikata's chin and although Hijikata shoved his hand away and was ready to blast him with another slew of curses, he was totally unprepared for the monstrous strength of Gintoki's grip as he joined their mouths together and exhaled a puff of smoke into his parted lips.
The scent of tobacco mingled with the heady whiff of their fucking. Hijikata breathed the smoke smoothly, effortlessly. Gintoki felt Hijikata's chest expand against him, his entire body relax. Gintoki's wandering hands crept over the loose shirt he'd put on in haste. Then Hijikata's lips pressed back into his, his tongue wandered out to meet Gintoki's and, aching for more, Hijikata played into Gintoki's game. He slid his tongue across Gintoki's bottom lip, sucked lightly on it while fighting the swelling heat which Gintoki's wispy gasps of pleasure aroused in him, then he plunged his teeth into the tender flesh.
Gintoki cried out. Blood gushed. Its metallic taste filed Hijikata's mouth. Gintoki heard him chuckle at his painful groan.
"Like stealing candy from a baby." Hijikata said, snatching the cigarette from Gintoki's fingers.
"Shit, you're a real bastard yourself!" Gintoki growled. He touched the bruise on his lips and watched as the orange tip of Hijikata's cigarette glowed in the dark and illuminated his silhouette, more perceptible in the dark than ever before, though not as much as his smile, pretentious and arrogant and alive, far removed from the troubled waters of his past. Just his.