FIC - Saiyuki: Things to drink for

[lauand]

Ha, ha, remember when I asked for prompts to write drabbles? Well, it wouldn't be the first time I wrote a ficlet instead, but today I overdid it and it became a full-fledged fic. Who knows, maybe next year it will be a fucking epic.

So, yeah, this happened. Thank you to
daegaer  and
7veils  for the prompt ("drinking with elves") and the support!

Edited: Now betaed thanks to the magnificent
avierra! Hope you like it!

Title: Things to drink for
Author: Lauand
Beta: Avierra
Rating: I don't think it even reaches PG-13
Warnings: None
Pairing: 58
A/N: Written for the Christmas prompt “drinking with elves” provided by the lovely Daegaer and also approved by 7veils. Thanks, as always, to Avierra for her amazing beta-ing.



“You're preetteh...” Gojyo slurred.

“And you're drunk,” the elf replied. “Go home, Gojyo.”

Gojyo frowned. He didn't remember giving the elf his name. But, well, they were magical creatures, so Gojyo shrugged and brought the glass back to his lips.

“You're also preetteh,” he said when he was done drinking. He wouldn't want to offend the other elves. They were, as already stated, magical creatures. “You too. And you.”

The elves were looking at him weird, but Gojyo didn't mind. He was more than used to people looking at him weird.

“Cheers,” he said, lifting his glass once again.

“Shit, so glad you've arrived, Mr. Cho, it's fucking Christmas Eve, you know, and I've got to close the bar, my kids are going to murder me if I don't get home soon, but he's been hissing at me every time I try to suggest he leaves and I've never seen him fucking hissing before; you know, normal people don't do that... do normal people do that? Not that I see much of that here... normal people, I mean, for some reason there's always--”

“Thank you for calling me, Ms. Cheng,” Hakkai smiled; with time he had managed not to do it too hard. “I'll take it from here.”

He looked at the table were Gojyo was currently getting wasted. He seemed to be immersed in a deeply fascinating conversation with the little Christmas decoration that Cheng Shu Fang had put up this year.

Hakkai sighed.

“You... you are the preetteeest of all!” Gojyo was sure now.

“Why, thank you, Gojyo.”

Wait.

“Wait,” Gojyo said.

He squinted.

“You sound like Hakkai,” he asserted. “You're not an elf.”

“I'm afraid I'm not.”

“Crap, you're Hakkai.”

“Let's go home.”

Gojyo curved his body around his glass to protect it (not that Hakkai had tried to take it from him or even looked at it, but you could never trust a Hakkai: they were cunning). He then proceeded to hiss.

“Please, stop that,” Hakkai said.

Gojyo hissed again.

Hakkai flicked Gojyo's nose.

“Ouch!” he protested.

To be fair, Gojyo had to admit that Hakkai hadn't tried to guiltrip him into behaving for the bar owner's sake or suggest he was making a nuisance of himself. Not even that he was being pathetic. He just stood there, looking at Gojyo with an unreadable face, exuding a patience so thick you could nearly touch it.

Gojyo looked back at him with a hurt expression. He always seemed heartbreakingly vulnerable when he did that, much more than anyone else Hakkai had ever met, little kids included. It nearly made him regret flicking his nose, only, Hakkai knew that wasn't what had put that look on Gojyo's face, or what had laid Gojyo bare before him. Causality and correlation. Gojyo didn't look one hairbreadth away from breaking because Hakkai had flicked his nose while he was getting shitfaced in a bar during Christmas Eve. Gojyo was getting shitfaced in a bar during Christmas Eve because Hakkai had pushed him one heairbreath away from breaking.

“Please,” Hakkai pleaded with more tenderness than he was usually able to display, let alone feel. “Gojyo.”

Hakkai reached out, offering his hand to help him stand up.

Gojyo pouted and got up without accepting the help.

Smiling (maybe too hard this time, but he couldn't give a damn right now, it wasn't as if Gojyo didn't know him already), Hakkai refrained from touching his drunk friend, not even when his wobbling threatened to defeat Gojyo's sense of balance once and for all.

“Merry Christmas, Ms. Cheng,” Hakkai greeted when they passed her by.

“Thank you, Mr. Cho,” she replied, her relief making it obvious she wasn't only thanking him for the well wishes.

Gojyo managed to stagger through the bar without falling on his face or bumping into anything (practice, Hakkai was sure) and only stumbled once a little bit when they reached the street.

The night was cold and dark. Hakkai liked it that way. No snow this year. A pity; it would have made the landscape beautiful.

“I wasn't asking anything of you,” Hakkai said before he was aware he wanted to, “it wasn't a demand. Just... information. How things are. How things have been for a long time. It doesn't have to change anything.”

“It changes fucking everything,” Gojyo grumbled.

Hakkai was too elegant to outright snort, but Gojyo could still hear the air going out faster from Hakkai's nose at that.

“Gojyo, how long have we been together?”

“We're not together,” Gojyo snapped. Then he mellowed: “not together-together, I mean. Just... together as in... you know, together. A together-not-together kind of together.”

“Please, don't think I don't appreciate your ability to pronounce a three syllable word while seriously inebriated, I am honestly impressed, but I think you can stop saying 'together' now,” Hakkai reassured him. “I already knew what you meant.”

Gojyo winced.

Only the sound of their footsteps on the gravel could be heard for a while.

“I've hurt you,” Gojyo mumbled, at last.

“No, it's just...”

“I'm sorry.”

“Gojyo...”

Hakkai didn't finish the sentence, but it still got Gojyo thinking. In spite of Hakkai's words, things had already changed. That's why they were one foot apart right now. Okay, that was Gojyo's fault, but still, it was because of that. His eyes went to Hakkai for a second. The man had his gaze fixed ahead of him, not looking back at Gojyo, his expression obscured by the night.

Gojyo looked back to the ground he was stepping on. It felt weird, keeping his distance. Of the two of them, it was actually Hakkai who shunned physical contact more often than not. Gojyo was always touching him, he had from the very start, when nobody else had dared to. Gojyo didn't really know how to walk home drunk without leaning on Hakkai anymore.

And well, Hakkai was at least a bit right. Things themselves hadn't changed, had they? Just Gojyo's attitude towards them. Things were still... what they were. It wasn't as if Gojyo hadn't known, as if Hakkai's feelings had caught him unawares. It wasn't... fuck, it wasn't as if he didn't feel the fucking same. And it wasn't as if Hakkai didn't know that, either. It was just that them being left unsaid made it possible to pretend they weren't there. It was that what Hakkai had changed. Not the facts or the way they both knew about them.

“Fuck it,” Gojyo said.

Without even checking how it would be received, he passed his arm around Hakkai's shoulder and leaned his drunk-ass weight on him, as he had done millions of times before.

Hakkai said nothing, but Gojyo still felt pressured to reply.

“'M scared, a'right?” he muttered.

Hakkai kept silent still. He just put his arm around Gojyo's waist to better support him.

“What if I change,” Gojyo continued, “what if I become dependant on you?”

Hakkai was good at listening, he was good at knowing what Gojyo didn't say.

“I won't leave, Gojyo.”

“You don't know that.”

Hakkai didn't protest that. No one would have been able to. And Hakkai could be a filthy liar when it suited him, but he would never be so cruel to Gojyo as to be untrue about this.

“You're a gambler,” he said instead, “make a bet.”

“It's only money when I lose at poker, you know.”

Hakkai didn't reply, but they were close enough to each other now for Gojyo to feel him nod.

“Also, shit, I don't want to be gay.”

Hakkai nodded again, but this time Gojyo could tell he was grinning.

“I'm serious, man.”

“You don't have to,” Hakkai said. “Be gay, I mean. It's not how sexual orientation works. You were probably bi from the start. Or maybe pan. Never acting on it doesn't change who you--”

“Yeah, yeah, got it, cut it out, teacher.”

They fell silent for a while after that. It was less cold, walking like this. Gojyo felt better, more himself instead of less with Hakkai's shoulders under his arm.

“Gojyo, I meant what I said before. It was just information. Nothing has changed, nothing has to change. I don't need anything from you. I'm okay with your 'together'.”

“Mm.”

Gojyo hated thinking. He hated thinking sober, which was why he drank, and he hated thinking drunk, which was why he drank more. He just hated it. But Hakkai always made him do things he hated, like the dishes or using a fucking ashtray. Or the coasters. Holy shit, the fucking coasters, what kind of sadist had invented the godforsaken, thrice damned, stupid, fucking coasters?

“I hate coasters,” Gojyo said, just because it was the truth.

Hakkai took the non-sequitur in stride because that's what he did. Take Gojyo's shit in stride.

“Yes, Gojyo.”

“But I fucking use them.”

“Yes, Gojyo.”

The asshole was smiling.

“You're smart,” Gojyo grumped, “make the fuckin' connection yourself.”

There was a small pause.

“Yes, Gojyo,” Hakkai's voice sounded a bit hoarse. Gojyo couldn't say if he was holding his laughter or his tears or what. Gojyo stopped walking. Not to make sure, just to get his point accross. If he was going to do this, he wanted to know for certain he wasn't going to blunder and fuck up too badly. So he halted. And Hakkai, linked to him as he was, halted with him.

Gojyo hated thinking, so he didn't; he just closed the inch that separated their heads and kissed delicately Hakkai's cheek. He then pulled apart.

Hakkai didn't react. Except he looked... darker?

“Are you blushing?” Gojyo said at the very least one octave higher in pitch than usual, “for a peck on the cheek? For fucking real?”

“I...” Hakkai looked at him like a deer in the headlights for a second. Then his expression changed. “Well, you're blushing, too.”

“I'm not! Or I wasn't before! It's your fault! Your embarrssment is embuhrressing and it embarses me!”

“Oh, so four syllables is the limit!” Hakkai declared with an inexplicable amount of joy.

Gojyo looked confused for a second.

“Whut?” he squeaked, before catching the drift and determining Hakkai was an asshole. “You're an asshole.”

Hakkai --the asshole-- was looking at him weird. But not like the elves, or Gojyo's mother, or the people who knew what his red hair and eyes meant. Weird in a Hakkai way. Intense-weird.

“Gojyo...” he said before moving to face him, disengaging his arms and letting his hands cup Gojyo's cheeks instead.

Gojyo gulped.

“Gojyo...” Hakkai repeated as he came closer and closer, his thumbs stroking Gojyo's face while his mouth came to rest barely an inch from Gojyo's. Gojyo could feel Hakkai's breath on his lips, soft, caressing him rhythmically, at a faster pace one would expect from a tempered man like Hakkai.

Here we go, Gojyo thought, anticipation tying knots in his stomach, this is it.

Then, little by little, Hakkai came closer still and Gojyo closed his eyes, trying to keep his heartbeat under control. He then felt Hakkai kissing the tip of his fucking nose. Gojyo's eyes snapped open.

“I'm sorry I flicked your nose, Gojyo,” Hakkai said before releasing him and starting walking again.

After a second, Gojyo's brain kickstarted again and he rushed after Hakkai.

“You're a fucking asshole,” he insisted before passing his arm again over Hakkai's shoulders. “Com'ere. Let's go home.”

Hakkai didn't say his typical 'yes, Gojyo', but Gojyo could hear it anyway in the way he put his arm again around Gojyo's waist.

They reached the house just before the first snow of the season started falling.

THE END

Also posted at https://lauand.dreamwidth.org/135736.html, if you'd rather read it there or want to enter a discussion with
comments.