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"Hakkai?"
He groaned. Bright golden sunlight was invading his eyelids, creeping between them to assault his poor, aching eyes. The converted youkai clapped his hands over them, like a child playing at peek-a-boo.
"You all right, man?" Gojyo. Concerned.
"Wake up, asshole. If we don't hit a town soon, I'm gonna kill something. I need more smokes." Sanzo, naturally.
"I think my stomach is starting to wrap around my spine!" He didn't have to guess who that was.
"I'm terribly sorry," he mumbled. Or he would have been, if he wasn't lost in a kaleidoscope of torment. His head felt like it was filled with broken glass. His mouth tasted like cooked sake, and his neck had a crick in it so stiff that he had difficulty raising his head up and holding it steady.
As he sat up more firmly in the car seat, his stomach performed a nauseating flip. He had difficulty mentally grasping what was wrong with him, even after he managed to squint his eyes open, and saw the empty bottles of sake in every single one of Jeepu's cup-holders. Yes, they'd been unable to find a hotel the night before, and had camped out in the car. Yes, they'd had a bit much to drink, more to blow off steam than anything else. Yes, Hakkai had laughed rather hard at the attempted fight between Gojyo and Sanzo--"attempted" because they had both gotten too drunk to do much more than half-heartedly slap each other, like preteen girls. He had laughed because in spite of drinking two bottles all his own, he was dead sober, and not making a fool of himself.
Yet... he seemed to have a... what was the word, he should remember it, Gojyo had them all the time... hangover.
He hadn't had a hangover once in his entire drinking life.
"If you're really sorry, then crank up the fucking car and get going," the monk in the shotgun seat snapped.
In spite of his personal haze of agony, Hakkai produced a smile. "As you wish, Sanzo-sama," he said, voice poisoned with false cheerfulness. As he turned Jeepu's key in the ignition, he wondered whether or not he could overdose on aspirin were he to eat an entire bottle.
***
Ten minutes later, Hakkai was screaming on the inside.
Goku and Gojyo were fighting. Again. This was normal, and to be expected, but did they have to be so loud about it? He was pretty sure that even on a normal basis, they didn't scream this much.
Things were not helped by Sanzo, who, of course, felt it necessary to intervene. Brandishing his paper fan, the monk bellowed that the two backseaters needed to shut the fuck up, lest they endure fates that not even the hell-sufferers could imagine. He did this, of course, directly into Hakkai's ear, transmitting more pain to the converted youkai's hungover brains than the monk could ever hope to inflict upon his other teammates.
For emphasis, Sanzo took a swing at the kappa and the saru with his fan. Both dodged it, screaming that Sanzo was losing his touch--normally, they never could avoid that silly weapon of his. And, normally, Hakkai was never touched by its wrath.
Today, though, was quickly shaping up to not being his day, as Sanzo clobbered him soundly with the paper fan.
Goku and Gojyo, who had never witnessed such an event, both immediately fell silent mid-jeer. Crimson and golden eyes were wide with comic shock. Even Sanzo, his arm frozen mid-thwack, seemed a bit nonplussed.
Hakkai did not notice; his headache had taken on epic proportions, till it seemed the size of the entire Middle Kingdom. A white migraine haze had taken over the world, and he barely felt the steering wheel whip out of control in his hands.
"Oi, Hakkai!" Sanzo, he supposed, his voice both furious and a little panicked--the way he'd sounded when his driver had last fallen asleep at the wheel. Behind the monk, he could hear Gojyo screaming and Goku half-shrieking, half-cackling in that utterly annoying fashion he had. He couldn't hear them. Hearing required functional, living brain cells.
"HAKKAI, YOU STUPID F--"
Sanzo's bellowing was cut off, by a loud, metallic-wooden thunk.
***
"Sanzo, I'm sorry."
"Hmph."
"Listen, I honestly didn't--"
"Shut up, you goddamn pansy."
"That isn't fair! It's not that you hit me especially hard. I just have a bit of a headache--"
"Puss."
"Listen, I didn't mean to crane Jeepu, and it's a lot harder on him than it is on you!"
"Pfft. Right. The little flying rat gets carried for the next few days, because it's throwing a fuckin' hissy. And I get to walk."
"He was hurt!"
"Aww, did the widdle dwagon huwt his widdle fo'head?"
"Oi, Sanzo-houshi-sama," Gojyo's silken accent interrupted, "do you think you could close your eyes, focus real hard, and not be a raging cock-gobbler for ten minutes?"
This time, the paper fan found its intended target.
***
The Sanzo-ikkou walked through what seemed to be a never-ending forest. Hakkai trudged behind the others, the wounded and still-grumpy Hakuryu riding on his shoulder. His headache ebbed and flowed like a hellish inner ocean, the crick in his neck made his spine feel like it had fused into one solid beam, and there would be no relief in sight. They might reach a village, but not until after nightfall, and Sanzo wouldn't let them stop to rest until his idea of lunchtime.
Lost in vaguely hateful thoughts directed towards Sanzo--not that this was precisely Sanzo's fault, but it was easier to blame the monk than it was to acknowledge a small series of accidents--Hakkai did not feel time pass until the blonde declared it time to stop for a break. Everything was a blur of misplaced anger, and slapping at the mosquitos that seemed to only want to drink his blood.
He immediately excused himself to a nearby stream, under the pretense of washing up. Once there--blessedly alone--Hakkai pulled off his monocle, resting it carefully atop a small rock. When he crouched down, red clay grimed into his pants--and there was no way that was ever coming out. Oh, well. He would get a new pair in the next town.
He splashed his face with blessedly cool water, drinking a bit, then used his sash to dry his face. He forced himself to take measured breaths, relax, and calm down. Being angry would not help his headache. It would only make him more tense.
He looked down at his own reflection. He never understood what people saw in him. Everyone from various strange men and frighteningly familiar women, to more intelligent beings, like Gojyo, commented on his supposed beauty. He did not see that beauty in himself, if it was even there. He wondered if they were all projecting what they wanted to see upon him.
... wait. Was that…
His tapered fingertips touched against the uppermost of the thick silver cuffs that adorned his left ear. The three youryoku limiters were, he guessed, rather stylish in addition to being absolutely necessary. Normally, they were a guiltless and bright silver, like bits of the moon.
Now, the one on top was... undeniably... totally... tarnished. The silver cuff had small mottles of dark yellow and gray. Compared to its mates, it appeared to be rotting. How had he not noticed before?
Mentally, Hakkai swore. Now it wouldn't just be new pants; it would have to be silver polish, as well. And enough privacy for him to remove the cuff and polish it without anyone seeing his half-shifted form. Beauty or not, he took pride in his personal appearance, and to be less than perfect was inconceivable.
He started to stand up, resting his hand on a nearby rock for balance. As he pushed himself up, he felt the flat coolness of his monocle beneath his palm, and heard a soft 'crunch'.
***
After a horribly meager lunch, they were off again. Their rations had gotten skewed along the way (Hakkai guessed that Goku had probably taken double-rations without telling anyone), and there was only enough food for three. Hakkai had immediately declined to eat, on the grounds that his headache made him less hungry. This was a lie, but he knew that the others needed it more than he did. Besides, he now had the fun of his monocle being somewhat broken.
The lens wasn't cracked, nor was it scratched--that would have been far too expensive and too cruel for words. Instead, his clumsiness had broken the soft plastic padding of the nose-piece. All that remained was a rough metal square. This was merrily cutting into the bridge of his nose already.
He smiled brightly, and refused Gojyo's repeated offers to split rations.
The ikkou moved on through the forest, intrepidly marching over tangled knots of roots and thick clumps of grasses and dead leaves. Their movements were marked by Goku's steady complaints of hunger, Gojyo's steady stream of insults directed at Goku, Sanzo's smoky silence, and Hakkai's continual slapping at the cloud of no-see-ums that followed his every movement.
The relative silence was viciously murdered by an all-too-familiar bellow:
"Sanzo-ikkou, hand over the Scriptures!"
"God damn it, you'd think they'd eventually come up with a new way to threaten us," Gojyo said. He dropped and stomped out his cigarette. His shakujou appeared in his hands.
Goku called for his nyou-ibo, holding the staff up threateningly to the tightening circle of shadowy enemies that surrounded them. "Screw that! I don't care how they do it, as long as they keep coming! I need my exercise. I'm a growing boy."
"And a tub of guts," Sanzo grumbled, methodically checking his pistol for spent shells.
Hakkai supposed that this was his cue, to say something clever or cute to complement the others' statements, but he did not feel up to meeting this standard. Instead, he muttered to Hakuryu, encouraging the dragon to take shelter up in a nearby tree. The gods knew that, with the way his luck was going, a stray chi-blast would reduce the little dragon to a deep-fried delicacy.
"If you're not going to surrender," the voice commanded, "then we'll just have to take it by force, won't we?"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," the monk snapped. "Get going already. I don't have all day."
"... Sanzo, am I really fat?"
Before anyone could think of a good enough bullet of sarcasm to shoot into the monkey's heart, the youkai attacked.
Hakkai's vision was confused, still addled by the headache that gripped his synapses. He heard the rhythmic, familiar explosions from Sanzo's banishing-pistol, and Goku's customary guffaws, coupled with the thuds and thwacks produced by his nyou-ibo. Occasionally, he saw a flash of dark red hair, and viewed a lunatic whirl of chain soar through the monsters.
He summoned up his own glowing sphere of chi--or, at least, he made a good old college try. Mid-cast, he stepped forward, attempting to aim at a youkai who was sneaking up behind the hanyo. When he took this step, the tip of his shoe hooked beneath a thick gnarl of root. The chi-ball sputtered out in shock.
Hakkai pinwheeled his arms, struggling to keep his balance, but it was not to be. He fell, his monocle flying off to the gods knew where, his solar plexus exploding from a particularly hard knot of root slamming up into it. He heard Gojyo crying out his name, and Sanzo saying something about never having seen Hakkai so damned stupid before, before the pain nullified reality.
***
He awakened long after the battle was done with, surrounded by a ring of his comrades. Goku and Gojyo were both clearly concerned. Even Sanzo looked mildly worried, although puzzlement ruled his eyes.
"Are you feeling okay, Hakkai?" Goku sounded almost reverent, as if he were addressing a holy and unpredictable beast.
"You took quite a dive, there," Gojyo said.
"No shit, Sherlock," Sanzo grumbled.
"Keep digging, Watson. You'll find that shit yet."
Before that could escalate anymore than it had, Hakkai grew a smile. "I am fine. I felt a little faint for a moment, but I'm better now."
"My entire ass. You tripped. Man, I've never even heard of you tripping before."
"I'm fine, thank you," he said hastily. He pushed himself to his feet. Hakuryu sat at his elbow; he passed Hakkai his monocle, which he'd held clenched in his jaws. The converted youkai smiled. He appeared to have been forgiven, for the moment. "Shall we be off?"
"Please. I'm going to lose my mind if I don't get a decent smoke soon," the monk declared, already turning around and heading off."
"I think that you're missing the elements needed to lose your mind," Gojyo helpfully observed, before offering Hakkai his hand to help the youkai to his feet.
***
As Hakkai had predicted to himself, they did not reach a village until after the sun had died and been reborn as the moon. He had spent most of the afternoon waving away the gnats and mosquitos that only seemed to be interested in him, and adjusting his monocle, to keep it from cutting too deeply into the skin of his nose. He failed at both tasks.
There were no monks, no overtly religious people, and no excited crowd to greet the band of heroes, all of which they took to be good signs. It meant that they had to pay for room and board, but at least they did not have to perform like circus clowns for peoples' amusements.
They settled on the first restaurant they saw, on the grounds that it provided lots of food. It would have been marvelous, except that they did not have the lemon-pepper chicken that Hakkai had decided on, and the mu shu he settled on instead was so overcooked that he could barely taste anything but carbon.
They then set off for an inn. On the way to this inn, Hakkai managed to find a few road apples with his shoes. When he tried to scrape his shoes clean against the edge of the sidewalk, he only succeeded in scuffing them against the rough granite.
When they got there, Goku, Sanzo and Gojyo all spent about half an hour arguing about who would room with what. Sanzo stalwartly insisted that the other three take one room, and that he should get the other to himself. Gojyo passionately argued in favor of rooming with Hakkai, and said that Sanzo could do whatever he liked with the monkey. Sanzo did not seem to like the innuendo much, as he tried to shoot the hanyo in response.
None of them stood particularly close to Hakkai. The smell was rather strong.
Perhaps his timing wasn't the best, but when the converted youkai quietly requested to use the holy credit card, Sanzo fired off a round in his direction. The bullet put a large hole and a larger smear of powder-burn in his shirt, and only missed him by virtue of some small miracle (on which, he guessed, he spent all of his good luck).
Without saying a word, Hakkai pried one of the keys from a struggling Sanzo's hand, and went into one of the rooms that the monk had rented for the night.
***
The hanyo was gone--bound for bars, cards, and booze, no doubt. At the least, Hakkai would not have to watch Gojyo bringing home the flavor of the night.
The room had a bed with a spring that was loose, that poked him incessantly in the back when he laid down. It had a TV that only picked up images in a hazy static. It had no books, or anything of interest to him, and best of all, when he went to the small bathroom, he found a surprise that had been left in the commode by a previous tenant.
The youkai was, at this juncture, grinding his teeth in impatience. No, nothing specific had gone horribly wrong. Nothing that he could complain about without getting an apathetic "So what?" from the rest of the ikkou. Especially from someone who did not even voice it when something was honestly, terribly wrong. If he didn't complain when he felt like his sanity was crumbling--or when his pain over his past was overwhelming--then why would he complain about his monocle being broken?
He laid down upon the bed, and watched the fuzzed-over television set, as it followed the exploits of a bumbling demon-killer and his rubbery, red-corn-syrup-drenched foes. As loud as the protagonist's chainsaw happened to be, it was not loud enough--even on full volume--to block out the noises that began to leak over from Goku and Sanzo's room.
For the first time in a long time, Hakkai wished himself dead.
***
After what felt like hours, the never-ending flood of thumps and cries mellowed to a slow trickle. Hakkai didn't understand why Sanzo always fought to keep Goku away from himself. He always seemed to enjoy the other's company quite thoroughly whenever they bunked together.
He stood up. The television had long since turned to a screen that read only PLEASE STAND BY, but he'd continued to watch and meditate on it, trying to keep himself from walking over to the other hotel room and strangling them both. He clicked it off.
Hakkai stretched. His back needed to pop, but it refused, and only cramped that much harder when he tried to work the kinks out of it. He grunted in frustration as another knot of muscle formed between his shoulderblades, where he couldn't reach to massage it out. "Damn it," he muttered vaguely, not realizing that he'd sworn aloud.
He tried to make his way to the restroom. This was normally a simple operation. "Normally" meaning that, on any other day, lance-like splinters would not jut up from the floorboards and crucify his foot. This, of course, was not any other day, because that was exactly what happened.
"Fuck!" he snapped, nearly falling over onto the bed. The loose spring jabbed at him as he bent over, picking out the splinter from between his toes. The thing looked like a weapon one could use against a dragon. He dropped it to the floor. That was all right. It came out clean, didn't it? It hadn't stuck, and that was a good thing, because little fragmented splinters were the worst. Yes. He should count his blessings. After all, he was still alive.
He looked over his shoulder. He had a sudden paranoid fear that some mischievous devil had heard his thoughts, and was actively working to contradict that last assertion.
As he looked, he took another step towards the bathroom--his vague need to use it was becoming more urgent. Because of that, he did not see Hakuryu peeking out from beneath the bed, or–
"KyuuUUUU!" The miniature dragon squawked like a chicken as Hakkai's feet became inexplicably entangled in his neck. Pet and master both tumbled to the floor, Hakkai cracking his head against the night-stand on the way down.
"FUCK!" Now thoroughly pissed off, Hakkai cradled his wounded skull. He typically would have put Hakuryu's concerns before his own, but the idea of the dragon being wounded did not even enter his aching, abused head. Sensing how uptight his master currently was, the sometimes-car decided it was wiser to disappear, and crept back beneath the bed.
He heard the door open, then shut. "Hakkai? You all right?"
Gojyo. Not nearly as drunk as Gojyo normally was when he returned from the bars, and not smelling like cheap perfume and sex, either. Thank the gods.
The converted youkai did not blubber or bemoan at any given point in time. Now, though, as he sat back down on the bed, he could not fight off the nearly-whiny tone that needled into his voice. "No. I am not all right."
The redhead shrugged off his jacket and chucked off his boots. "You want to talk about it, or something?"
Why haven't you noticed already, you bastard? Hakkai fought that back. Gojyo was observant, but he wasn't perfect. There was no reason to assume that, today of all days, the hanyo would have noticed anything wrong. "I... I have just had a rough day. I don't think talking about it would solve anything."
"Rough day? You're not still bent out of shape about the fight, are you?"
"No, not that. Just... a lot of little things. Can we not talk about it?"
"Sure," he said, amiable as always. His A-shirt joined his jacket and boots on the floor. Hakkai did not have the energy to admonish him about his sloppiness. "Anything I can do to, you know... take your mind off it?"
A stone would have been able to feel the innuendo dripping from the boki kappa's words.
The converted youkai thought about that one, as Gojyo walked over to the bed. Sex wasn't a driving need, not with him--their libidos often clashed. Tonight, though, he needed something, and since he couldn't get drunk…
"I think you can."
The lantern was blown out.
***
Ten minutes later:
"I swear to God this has never happened before!!"
"... that's it. I'm moving to Australia."
-end-