Saiyuki fic - Gingerbread Castle, part 1
Jul. 19th, 2007 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
new_kateTitle: Gingerbread Castle
Parts: 1 of umm 5 I think. Will be about 20 000 words overall - I have just 5 or so pages left to write, if I can only get my ass in gear *sigh*
Fandom: Saiyuki
Spoilers: Through Burial
Summary and warnings: Alternative timeline in which Gojyo isn't the one who finds wounded Gonou in the woods (yeah like I can manage to not write 58 anyway). Also m/m, creepiness, gore and adjective abuse.
Many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hibem for beta!
Prologue
Walking was a torture, rhythmical and controlled, comforting. He took step after step, making bursts of agony blossom from inside, wash over him and obliterate all thought. It was safe while he drifted over the edges of his own mind, clear of the consuming fires within, and he was strong enough to prolong this for as long as it took to get to the place of rest he knew waited for him. He felt himself closing in, shrinking into a bright dot on a spiral. He kept walking, clutching his fluttering life with both hands, pressing it back as it wanted to spill out and tear him to pieces. No thoughts, just pure instinct of a dying animal trying to reach the sanctuary, soul memory charting his course, body memory keeping him moving like a clockwork toy with broken springs.
So close now.
His foot twisted on a rotting tree trunk and he slipped in the mud and fell, losing the momentum. He forced air in and out of his lungs, clawed at the dirt, willing himself to get up, but his limbs wouldn’t remember how. The silence of the rain-drenched forest crashed around him, suffocating and empty.
So close.
Primal fear hit him for the first time in months, a flash of the self-preservation instinct he almost forgot he had. He was dying alone, and as much as he deserved that…
There were soft, muffled sounds of steps approaching, feet sliding in the slush, and he let himself hope, selfishly, stupidly. He opened his eyes, intently peering thought the dim fog, and saw long beige robes, a delicate pretty face, hair golden even when soaking wet, crimson mark proudly displayed between childishly round eyebrows. The disappointment he could not explain flooded his chest, and he moaned out loud. The stranger knelt before him, staining wet robes with mud and filth, tilted his head and blinked like a curious bird.
“Hey, Mister, are you dying?”
He was too weak to great the young man appropriately, but he did manage a polite smile.
*-*-*
One year later
Usually, if Sha Gojyo woke up in an unfamiliar bed with a pounding headache it just meant he’d drank way too much the night before, enough to pass out after hopefully mind-blowing sex with an undoubtedly charming woman he picked up at the bar. That was a little awkward, since it meant she’d expect him to make conversation and remember her name when she wakes up, but not too bad in itself. Only this clearly wasn’t one of those times.
He’d been lying awake for what felt like hours before he gathered enough courage to use his voice.
“Hello?” he called out. It sounded shaky and pathetic, pretty much the way he felt. “Hello, anybody there?”
He strained to lift his head, but couldn’t see much more than before. The room was still dark. The huge toy clown sprawled on a chair by the door was still staring at him with those stupid button-eyes. When Gojyo woke up, first glimpse of that damn doll nearly made him scream from the shock.
Now that his eyes were used to the dark he could see more details. Heavy drapes on the wall, probably concealing a window. A volley ball and a toy train under that single chair. A teddy bear nailed to the wall with a dagger through its chubby neck. It was deadly quiet, no sounds from the outside, be it town buzz or woodland noises. From time to time he could almost catch disjointed echoes of tinny carnival music somewhere at a distance, but that could’ve just been his imagination.
He dropped his head back on the pillow, surrendering to a dizzy spell that probably had something to do with that throbbing bump on the back of his head. At least the bed was nice, big and soft. It smelled too strongly of lavender, and the heavily embroidered pillow covers weren’t all that pleasant against his neck and cheeks, but he could’ve been comfy here. If only he knew where he was and how he got here, and especially if he wasn’t tied to the fucking bed spread-eagled. At least he still had all his clothes on, thankyoudeargod, only his boots were gone, and the ropes weren’t too tight, or he would’ve lost the feeling in all his limbs by now. As it was he could hope he’d still have the strength to fight when whoever strung him up like this came back to do whatever it was he had in mind.
He couldn’t see the ropes around his wrists and ankles, but they felt weird, bumpy and knotted. They dug strangely deep into his skin, pressed against the bones and hurt an awful lot, but that was nothing. The real problem was - he couldn’t cut them. As soon as he came to he called a shakujyo into his numb palm and tried to angle the long shaft to slice himself free, but the blade kept slipping off the ropes uselessly. He tried pressing harder, sawing at his bonds patiently, attacked different parts of the ropes, but felt no give under the blade, no change in the hard, slippery surface. In the end, fumbling the weapon awkwardly, he nearly drove the crescent blade into his own wrist, and bleeding to death on this bed wasn’t on his list of preferred ways to die. He gave up, dispelled the shakujyo and settled down to wait, trying to pay no attention to the chafing of the ropes, the ache in his strained joints and the pounding in his head. The cloying smell of cotton candy was seeping into the room from outside, making him hungry and nauseous.
But nothing was happening, nothing at all. At first Gojyo was hoping that the kidnapping psycho would just forget all about him. But now that the dashing escape wasn’t likely the idea of being left here to rot with that clown doll watching scared him shitless.
“Hello?” he tried again. “Hey, if you…”
A face appeared overhead, filling his whole field of vision, and words stuck in his throat.
“Hi Mister,” sing-songed a clear high voice. “You’re so stubborn. I’d come talk to you earlier if you asked nicely, you know.”
“Who are you?” Gojyo asked, trying not to shiver. The guy was young, sweetly smiling, dressed in robes like a monk, and all that should’ve been comforting, but wasn’t.
“You’ve been naughty,” the man said gravely. “You tried to stop me from catching bad people.”
“What?”
Last thing Gojyo remembered before this freaky room was… oh fuck. Yeah. That huge black thing tearing into a bar and jumping his mark. He pulled the man free of the claws, screamed for everybody to get out and cut into the monster’s thick hide with his shakujyo. Not that he though that’d kill it, but he needed to give the girls and the drunks time to get their assess out of trouble. And then –
“He was a bad, bad man. And because of you, he almost got away. I think you should be punished.”
“Who are you, man? What’s your name?” Gojyo pleaded, forcing a meek smile. If he could talk this weirdo into cutting him loose, he’d take him for sure. He could play nice if he had to…
“I’m your god now,” declared the blond. “I think you can be my new favourite toy. We’ll play later and see! For now, be good and keep quiet, or I’ll be very cross.”
He slithered off the bed and soundlessly moved to the doorway, and Gojyo flinched so hard the ropes cut deep into his skin. There was someone else there, leaning on the doorpost, watching him silently with mutely glowing green eyes.
“Do you like what I’ve found?” the blond asked him. “He’s so pretty!”
The man nodded. Gojyo swallowed, pulling on the ropes, but he couldn’t move more than an inch in any direction. Could only lie still and smile bravely, pretending he wasn’t spread there helpless like butterfly on a cobweb. The blond giggled and skipped away. The other one stayed.
“Hey,” Gojyo said. “Hi. So, my name’s Sha Gojyo. Could you just, maybe, untie me?”
The man didn’t move, didn’t even blink.
“He’s a weird little guy, huh?” Gojyo tried. “A little creepy, but cute. Not really all there, looks like…”
“He’s just a spoiled kid,” the man shrugged. “If there is a madman in this castle, that would probably be me.”
He slowly turned and walked away, stepping softly. Gojyo closed his eyes and breathed in deep, fighting the panic. It was all going to turn out fine in the end. Somehow.
*-*-*
There was nothing to do to but rest and save his strengths. Gojyo put all his will into trying to fall asleep again and had just managed to dose off when a warm heavy weight dropped on his stomach, making him scream and try to buck it off. The blond giggled and squeezed Gojyo’s sides with his knees.
“What is it? Wanna play rodeo? I was planning something else, but if you insist…”
“Get off me,” Gojyo hissed. The man was completely naked under his robes, and he was straddling him right where Gojyo’s tank top was riding up, touching skin to naked skin.
“Say ‘Please, Kami-sama, get off me’,” the blond demanded, rhythmically rocking on top of him.
“Yes, whatever, please with sugar on. Look, just get off me and untie me and I promise, no hard feelings, I’ll leave and you’ll never…”
“But I don’t want you to leave,” pouted the blond.
“Okay, I’ll stay. Did you want to play? We’ll play, anything you like. Just untie me. I need to take a leak. Like, right now. You don’t want me to wet your bed, do you? It’ll stink.”
“Ask nicely.”
“Please, untie me.”
“Say ‘Please, Kami-sama’,” insisted the man.
“Please, Kami-sama,” Gojyo echoed dumbly. That was easily the weirdest prayer he’d ever said. “Untie me and let me go to the bathroom.”
The blond hopped off him, pulled a short sceptre from somewhere and twirled it about. The harsh pressure on Gojyo’s wrists and naked ankles was gone, replaced by pain when blood rushed back. For the next minute he was busy holding back moans and fighting the urge to curl up into a ball and pass out. He didn’t even make note of how exactly that freak cut all the ropes at once. Or where’d he gotten all those strings of red beads he was suddenly draped in.
Gojyo slid off the bed, unsteady on his numb legs. The blond pushed back the curtain, revealing not a window, as he hoped, but a tiny en-suite bathroom. It didn’t have any windows either.
“How convenient,” Gojyo said, limping inside. “No door, eh?”
“I won’t peek, promise. I had to take the door down because some guests kept hiding from me in there. So rude! Hurry up, okay?”
Gojyo pulled the curtain over the doorway, and took the longest piss of his life. Then he stuck his head under the faucet and drank as much tepid, rust-smelling tap water as would fit in his stomach. He was still hungry and dizzy, but quenching his thirst made him feel strong again. Slowly, quietly he began to work his frozen muscles and tense joints, loosening, stretching and warming up for a fight. The blond was small and looked frail, but he moved fast, and Gojyo made it a point to never underestimate his opponents. He’d seen what happened to people who underestimated Sha Gojyo.
When he came back out the blond was sat on the empty bed, juggling the sceptre and two tennis balls in the air.
“So, Mister, ready to play?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the flying objects.
“Sure,” Gojyo said, calling the shakujou forth so fast the rush of yourekou nearly skinned his palm. “Tag – you’re it!”
The blade swung down, slicing perfectly through the guy’s thin neck, and the blood burst out, covering everything, large droplets scattering around like heavy, shiny beads.
“Too slow!” someone laughed behind Gojyo’s back, and before he could turn something hit him, hard, stinging, in many places at once. The pain was so piercing he stumbled forward, right into the… Only…
There was no corpse. There was no blood. Just beads, damn red beads everywhere. He twirled around, ignoring the flaring pain in his back, blade at the ready, and faced the laughing blond who looked unscathed, not a single scratch.
“More?” he asked, raising the sceptre.
This time Gojyo ducked some of the beads, maybe five out of twenty. They were too many and too fast, and they hurt so much sinking into his flesh he couldn’t even tell how deep they were going. He attacked again, and the guy’s amused face crumpled into beads right before his eyes. But at least this time he threw himself down on the floor just in time to avoid most of the blast from behind when the blond materialised there again, hopping in place and squealing with delight.
“You are so cool! Let’s go again! I knew you’d be the best to play with!”
“Fuck this,” Gojyo moaned, pushing off the floor. Blood squirted out of his wounds and hit the bare stone with a splash. “Play with yourself, sicko.”
He let the shakujou dispel and darted out, through the door, down the narrow corridor. The blond moved almost soundlessly, but the beads whistled tearing through in the air, so with the distance he was putting between them he could duck the shots in time. Gojyo got to the corner relatively cheaply, even though his throat started filling up with blood and he couldn’t quite get enough breath. He swallowed and swallowed and sped up even more. He turned at random, led by the instinct, and ran with all he had, the way he’d run from thrown stones as a kid, the way he ran from the dogs they set on him at the town he lived in a couple of years back. He was much better at fighting now, but he never forgot how to run.
He reached the top of the wide winding staircase and bounded down, trying not to slip on the white marble steps. The angry screams from above seemed to mean that he guessed right and this was the way to freedom. Gojyo allowed himself a smirk, jumping several steps at once, and that’s when the blond finally went for his knees.
His kneecaps exploded in a burst of pain and blood, and his legs just gave up, heavy and useless. He crashed down, hitting at least two dozen steps on the way, and ended up splayed between two flights of the stairs. He thought about crawling to the edge and trying to at least roll down another flight, but he had no strength left. One of his shoulders was shot through as well, and every time he tried to move that arm his vision blanked from the pain. Even breathing was too much to take. Maybe it was his broken ribs cutting his insides on every inhale, maybe his lungs were just full of prayer beads. He couldn’t tell, and he no longer truly cared.
It had to happen sometimes, it might as well be like this, he thought, and closed his eyes.
*-*-*
“Fix him, fix him, fix him!”
Gojyo flinched as the voices approached, but thought better of trying to fight. He pressed against the floor and continued to play dead.
“Oh my. Look what you’ve done. I don’t know if I can mend all this.”
“Please, please, Hakkai! I didn’t mean to – it was fun, he was so tough and strong, and then… Please, fix him.”
Someone – that other guy – crouched next to him. Gojyo tensed, bracing for fingers probing his wounds, his torn body being handled, hurt more. But all that came was heavy, thick, penetrating warmth that enveloped him and reached inside him, almost but not quite burning, almost but not quite washing away all the pain. He moaned and pushed up into that, into the searing clear heat, feeling his skin and muscles hum and move as if pulled together by gentle luminous strings.
“What…”
“Shhh. Just relax, Gojyo. I’m trying to heal you.”
“You, guh, aah,” the heat rippled, and he somehow, without looking, felt open hands hovering just above him, generously pouring life and light into his torn flesh. “Ugh, feels nice.”
“Tell me if it hurts.”
“No. Itches. But – in a good way. Nnnh.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t expect this to happen. Kami is much better with children,” said the guy, and Gojyo shivered even in the middle of all this glow, thinking about that blond jerk getting his hands on some hapless brats.
“There isn’t a lot I can do about the blood loss, unfortunately.”
“Will he be all right, Hakkai?” whined Kami.
“Not entirely, not for a while,” hands moved, did something, and Gojyo lost the last of his pride and whimpered out loud, feeling the beads slide and pop out of him one by one, here and there. “But he will survive. I’ll try to make sure there are no scars. Oh…”
He touched the wet mangled mess of Gojyo’s knees, sighed and cupped them in his palms. Gojyo willed himself to stay still and not scream too much as bone shards moved inside his joints like creepy living things, finding their way back into kneecaps.
“You will be limping for some time, Gojyo, I’m afraid,” said Hakkai. “Really, Kami-kun, you should be more careful. Didn’t we have that talk about spilling blood? Look how messy it is. I don’t like looking at it at all.”
“I’ll mop it all up, promise,” said Kami, sulking.
“It’s not that simple, Kami-kun. It’s blood. It’s not enough to just mop it up. Gojyo’s clothes need to be laundered. With bleach. And, oh, his hair is soaked through.”
“No, it’s not,” said Kami. “It’s dry. It’s just red.”
“Ah,” one of Hakkai’s hands gingerly touched his scalp, flinched back straight away. The man rose and stepped back, hastily. “So it is. I didn’t notice before, in the dark. I can’t say I approve.”
“I’m sorry,” Gojyo whispered quietly, biting his hand. There was a patch of new pink skin on his wrist, in place of the round wound he had there a minute ago. It didn’t look like it was going to scar.
“Okay, Hakkai, be like that,” Kami seized Gojyo’s wrist and pulled him up with unexpected strength. Gojyo went limp and refused to cooperate, not even sure he could stand up yet. “We’ll play downstairs, where you can’t see us.”
“You’ll kill him in a matter of hours if I don’t supervise,” said Hakkai. “Kami, I don’t think you can keep him.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” screamed the blond, dropping Gojyo like a sack of potatoes. “I’m not letting him go! No one leaves this castle! If you don’t want to play together, then fine…”
“Hakkai,” said Gojyo, twisting around to face the man. Here, in bright light, he looked young and eerily handsome, but Gojyo suspected that anyone standing between him and Kami would look like an angel right now. “Please don’t leave. Look, if the hair bothers you, cut it all off, whatever. Don’t leave me with him.”
“Yeah!” said Kami, happy and bouncing again. “We can shave his head! Make it all shiny! Or, ooh, we can dye his hair, maybe pink, or black – I even know how we can make it black…”
Hakkai didn’t answer. He kept looking at Gojyo, dismayed, possibly disgusted. His face was too still for Gojyo to tell for sure.
“Your eyes,” he said finally. “Your eyes are…”
Gojyo flung an arm across his face and curled up in a ball, because when that happened, begging was useless. But nobody even touched him, and the silence was stretching long, growing unbearable.
“Company,” said Kami suddenly. “Can you feel it, Hakkai? We have guests. Hey you, go to your room, I’ll deal with you later.”
They left swiftly, heading downstairs. Gojyo could feel their footsteps echoing through the long staircase. When the sounds had died in the distance he decided to get up and try to sneak out of this nuthouse while he still had all his limbs intact. Right after a little rest.
Part two
Parts: 1 of umm 5 I think. Will be about 20 000 words overall - I have just 5 or so pages left to write, if I can only get my ass in gear *sigh*
Fandom: Saiyuki
Spoilers: Through Burial
Summary and warnings: Alternative timeline in which Gojyo isn't the one who finds wounded Gonou in the woods (yeah like I can manage to not write 58 anyway). Also m/m, creepiness, gore and adjective abuse.
Many thanks to
hibem for beta!Prologue
Walking was a torture, rhythmical and controlled, comforting. He took step after step, making bursts of agony blossom from inside, wash over him and obliterate all thought. It was safe while he drifted over the edges of his own mind, clear of the consuming fires within, and he was strong enough to prolong this for as long as it took to get to the place of rest he knew waited for him. He felt himself closing in, shrinking into a bright dot on a spiral. He kept walking, clutching his fluttering life with both hands, pressing it back as it wanted to spill out and tear him to pieces. No thoughts, just pure instinct of a dying animal trying to reach the sanctuary, soul memory charting his course, body memory keeping him moving like a clockwork toy with broken springs.
So close now.
His foot twisted on a rotting tree trunk and he slipped in the mud and fell, losing the momentum. He forced air in and out of his lungs, clawed at the dirt, willing himself to get up, but his limbs wouldn’t remember how. The silence of the rain-drenched forest crashed around him, suffocating and empty.
So close.
Primal fear hit him for the first time in months, a flash of the self-preservation instinct he almost forgot he had. He was dying alone, and as much as he deserved that…
There were soft, muffled sounds of steps approaching, feet sliding in the slush, and he let himself hope, selfishly, stupidly. He opened his eyes, intently peering thought the dim fog, and saw long beige robes, a delicate pretty face, hair golden even when soaking wet, crimson mark proudly displayed between childishly round eyebrows. The disappointment he could not explain flooded his chest, and he moaned out loud. The stranger knelt before him, staining wet robes with mud and filth, tilted his head and blinked like a curious bird.
“Hey, Mister, are you dying?”
He was too weak to great the young man appropriately, but he did manage a polite smile.
*-*-*
One year later
Usually, if Sha Gojyo woke up in an unfamiliar bed with a pounding headache it just meant he’d drank way too much the night before, enough to pass out after hopefully mind-blowing sex with an undoubtedly charming woman he picked up at the bar. That was a little awkward, since it meant she’d expect him to make conversation and remember her name when she wakes up, but not too bad in itself. Only this clearly wasn’t one of those times.
He’d been lying awake for what felt like hours before he gathered enough courage to use his voice.
“Hello?” he called out. It sounded shaky and pathetic, pretty much the way he felt. “Hello, anybody there?”
He strained to lift his head, but couldn’t see much more than before. The room was still dark. The huge toy clown sprawled on a chair by the door was still staring at him with those stupid button-eyes. When Gojyo woke up, first glimpse of that damn doll nearly made him scream from the shock.
Now that his eyes were used to the dark he could see more details. Heavy drapes on the wall, probably concealing a window. A volley ball and a toy train under that single chair. A teddy bear nailed to the wall with a dagger through its chubby neck. It was deadly quiet, no sounds from the outside, be it town buzz or woodland noises. From time to time he could almost catch disjointed echoes of tinny carnival music somewhere at a distance, but that could’ve just been his imagination.
He dropped his head back on the pillow, surrendering to a dizzy spell that probably had something to do with that throbbing bump on the back of his head. At least the bed was nice, big and soft. It smelled too strongly of lavender, and the heavily embroidered pillow covers weren’t all that pleasant against his neck and cheeks, but he could’ve been comfy here. If only he knew where he was and how he got here, and especially if he wasn’t tied to the fucking bed spread-eagled. At least he still had all his clothes on, thankyoudeargod, only his boots were gone, and the ropes weren’t too tight, or he would’ve lost the feeling in all his limbs by now. As it was he could hope he’d still have the strength to fight when whoever strung him up like this came back to do whatever it was he had in mind.
He couldn’t see the ropes around his wrists and ankles, but they felt weird, bumpy and knotted. They dug strangely deep into his skin, pressed against the bones and hurt an awful lot, but that was nothing. The real problem was - he couldn’t cut them. As soon as he came to he called a shakujyo into his numb palm and tried to angle the long shaft to slice himself free, but the blade kept slipping off the ropes uselessly. He tried pressing harder, sawing at his bonds patiently, attacked different parts of the ropes, but felt no give under the blade, no change in the hard, slippery surface. In the end, fumbling the weapon awkwardly, he nearly drove the crescent blade into his own wrist, and bleeding to death on this bed wasn’t on his list of preferred ways to die. He gave up, dispelled the shakujyo and settled down to wait, trying to pay no attention to the chafing of the ropes, the ache in his strained joints and the pounding in his head. The cloying smell of cotton candy was seeping into the room from outside, making him hungry and nauseous.
But nothing was happening, nothing at all. At first Gojyo was hoping that the kidnapping psycho would just forget all about him. But now that the dashing escape wasn’t likely the idea of being left here to rot with that clown doll watching scared him shitless.
“Hello?” he tried again. “Hey, if you…”
A face appeared overhead, filling his whole field of vision, and words stuck in his throat.
“Hi Mister,” sing-songed a clear high voice. “You’re so stubborn. I’d come talk to you earlier if you asked nicely, you know.”
“Who are you?” Gojyo asked, trying not to shiver. The guy was young, sweetly smiling, dressed in robes like a monk, and all that should’ve been comforting, but wasn’t.
“You’ve been naughty,” the man said gravely. “You tried to stop me from catching bad people.”
“What?”
Last thing Gojyo remembered before this freaky room was… oh fuck. Yeah. That huge black thing tearing into a bar and jumping his mark. He pulled the man free of the claws, screamed for everybody to get out and cut into the monster’s thick hide with his shakujyo. Not that he though that’d kill it, but he needed to give the girls and the drunks time to get their assess out of trouble. And then –
“He was a bad, bad man. And because of you, he almost got away. I think you should be punished.”
“Who are you, man? What’s your name?” Gojyo pleaded, forcing a meek smile. If he could talk this weirdo into cutting him loose, he’d take him for sure. He could play nice if he had to…
“I’m your god now,” declared the blond. “I think you can be my new favourite toy. We’ll play later and see! For now, be good and keep quiet, or I’ll be very cross.”
He slithered off the bed and soundlessly moved to the doorway, and Gojyo flinched so hard the ropes cut deep into his skin. There was someone else there, leaning on the doorpost, watching him silently with mutely glowing green eyes.
“Do you like what I’ve found?” the blond asked him. “He’s so pretty!”
The man nodded. Gojyo swallowed, pulling on the ropes, but he couldn’t move more than an inch in any direction. Could only lie still and smile bravely, pretending he wasn’t spread there helpless like butterfly on a cobweb. The blond giggled and skipped away. The other one stayed.
“Hey,” Gojyo said. “Hi. So, my name’s Sha Gojyo. Could you just, maybe, untie me?”
The man didn’t move, didn’t even blink.
“He’s a weird little guy, huh?” Gojyo tried. “A little creepy, but cute. Not really all there, looks like…”
“He’s just a spoiled kid,” the man shrugged. “If there is a madman in this castle, that would probably be me.”
He slowly turned and walked away, stepping softly. Gojyo closed his eyes and breathed in deep, fighting the panic. It was all going to turn out fine in the end. Somehow.
*-*-*
There was nothing to do to but rest and save his strengths. Gojyo put all his will into trying to fall asleep again and had just managed to dose off when a warm heavy weight dropped on his stomach, making him scream and try to buck it off. The blond giggled and squeezed Gojyo’s sides with his knees.
“What is it? Wanna play rodeo? I was planning something else, but if you insist…”
“Get off me,” Gojyo hissed. The man was completely naked under his robes, and he was straddling him right where Gojyo’s tank top was riding up, touching skin to naked skin.
“Say ‘Please, Kami-sama, get off me’,” the blond demanded, rhythmically rocking on top of him.
“Yes, whatever, please with sugar on. Look, just get off me and untie me and I promise, no hard feelings, I’ll leave and you’ll never…”
“But I don’t want you to leave,” pouted the blond.
“Okay, I’ll stay. Did you want to play? We’ll play, anything you like. Just untie me. I need to take a leak. Like, right now. You don’t want me to wet your bed, do you? It’ll stink.”
“Ask nicely.”
“Please, untie me.”
“Say ‘Please, Kami-sama’,” insisted the man.
“Please, Kami-sama,” Gojyo echoed dumbly. That was easily the weirdest prayer he’d ever said. “Untie me and let me go to the bathroom.”
The blond hopped off him, pulled a short sceptre from somewhere and twirled it about. The harsh pressure on Gojyo’s wrists and naked ankles was gone, replaced by pain when blood rushed back. For the next minute he was busy holding back moans and fighting the urge to curl up into a ball and pass out. He didn’t even make note of how exactly that freak cut all the ropes at once. Or where’d he gotten all those strings of red beads he was suddenly draped in.
Gojyo slid off the bed, unsteady on his numb legs. The blond pushed back the curtain, revealing not a window, as he hoped, but a tiny en-suite bathroom. It didn’t have any windows either.
“How convenient,” Gojyo said, limping inside. “No door, eh?”
“I won’t peek, promise. I had to take the door down because some guests kept hiding from me in there. So rude! Hurry up, okay?”
Gojyo pulled the curtain over the doorway, and took the longest piss of his life. Then he stuck his head under the faucet and drank as much tepid, rust-smelling tap water as would fit in his stomach. He was still hungry and dizzy, but quenching his thirst made him feel strong again. Slowly, quietly he began to work his frozen muscles and tense joints, loosening, stretching and warming up for a fight. The blond was small and looked frail, but he moved fast, and Gojyo made it a point to never underestimate his opponents. He’d seen what happened to people who underestimated Sha Gojyo.
When he came back out the blond was sat on the empty bed, juggling the sceptre and two tennis balls in the air.
“So, Mister, ready to play?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the flying objects.
“Sure,” Gojyo said, calling the shakujou forth so fast the rush of yourekou nearly skinned his palm. “Tag – you’re it!”
The blade swung down, slicing perfectly through the guy’s thin neck, and the blood burst out, covering everything, large droplets scattering around like heavy, shiny beads.
“Too slow!” someone laughed behind Gojyo’s back, and before he could turn something hit him, hard, stinging, in many places at once. The pain was so piercing he stumbled forward, right into the… Only…
There was no corpse. There was no blood. Just beads, damn red beads everywhere. He twirled around, ignoring the flaring pain in his back, blade at the ready, and faced the laughing blond who looked unscathed, not a single scratch.
“More?” he asked, raising the sceptre.
This time Gojyo ducked some of the beads, maybe five out of twenty. They were too many and too fast, and they hurt so much sinking into his flesh he couldn’t even tell how deep they were going. He attacked again, and the guy’s amused face crumpled into beads right before his eyes. But at least this time he threw himself down on the floor just in time to avoid most of the blast from behind when the blond materialised there again, hopping in place and squealing with delight.
“You are so cool! Let’s go again! I knew you’d be the best to play with!”
“Fuck this,” Gojyo moaned, pushing off the floor. Blood squirted out of his wounds and hit the bare stone with a splash. “Play with yourself, sicko.”
He let the shakujou dispel and darted out, through the door, down the narrow corridor. The blond moved almost soundlessly, but the beads whistled tearing through in the air, so with the distance he was putting between them he could duck the shots in time. Gojyo got to the corner relatively cheaply, even though his throat started filling up with blood and he couldn’t quite get enough breath. He swallowed and swallowed and sped up even more. He turned at random, led by the instinct, and ran with all he had, the way he’d run from thrown stones as a kid, the way he ran from the dogs they set on him at the town he lived in a couple of years back. He was much better at fighting now, but he never forgot how to run.
He reached the top of the wide winding staircase and bounded down, trying not to slip on the white marble steps. The angry screams from above seemed to mean that he guessed right and this was the way to freedom. Gojyo allowed himself a smirk, jumping several steps at once, and that’s when the blond finally went for his knees.
His kneecaps exploded in a burst of pain and blood, and his legs just gave up, heavy and useless. He crashed down, hitting at least two dozen steps on the way, and ended up splayed between two flights of the stairs. He thought about crawling to the edge and trying to at least roll down another flight, but he had no strength left. One of his shoulders was shot through as well, and every time he tried to move that arm his vision blanked from the pain. Even breathing was too much to take. Maybe it was his broken ribs cutting his insides on every inhale, maybe his lungs were just full of prayer beads. He couldn’t tell, and he no longer truly cared.
It had to happen sometimes, it might as well be like this, he thought, and closed his eyes.
*-*-*
“Fix him, fix him, fix him!”
Gojyo flinched as the voices approached, but thought better of trying to fight. He pressed against the floor and continued to play dead.
“Oh my. Look what you’ve done. I don’t know if I can mend all this.”
“Please, please, Hakkai! I didn’t mean to – it was fun, he was so tough and strong, and then… Please, fix him.”
Someone – that other guy – crouched next to him. Gojyo tensed, bracing for fingers probing his wounds, his torn body being handled, hurt more. But all that came was heavy, thick, penetrating warmth that enveloped him and reached inside him, almost but not quite burning, almost but not quite washing away all the pain. He moaned and pushed up into that, into the searing clear heat, feeling his skin and muscles hum and move as if pulled together by gentle luminous strings.
“What…”
“Shhh. Just relax, Gojyo. I’m trying to heal you.”
“You, guh, aah,” the heat rippled, and he somehow, without looking, felt open hands hovering just above him, generously pouring life and light into his torn flesh. “Ugh, feels nice.”
“Tell me if it hurts.”
“No. Itches. But – in a good way. Nnnh.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t expect this to happen. Kami is much better with children,” said the guy, and Gojyo shivered even in the middle of all this glow, thinking about that blond jerk getting his hands on some hapless brats.
“There isn’t a lot I can do about the blood loss, unfortunately.”
“Will he be all right, Hakkai?” whined Kami.
“Not entirely, not for a while,” hands moved, did something, and Gojyo lost the last of his pride and whimpered out loud, feeling the beads slide and pop out of him one by one, here and there. “But he will survive. I’ll try to make sure there are no scars. Oh…”
He touched the wet mangled mess of Gojyo’s knees, sighed and cupped them in his palms. Gojyo willed himself to stay still and not scream too much as bone shards moved inside his joints like creepy living things, finding their way back into kneecaps.
“You will be limping for some time, Gojyo, I’m afraid,” said Hakkai. “Really, Kami-kun, you should be more careful. Didn’t we have that talk about spilling blood? Look how messy it is. I don’t like looking at it at all.”
“I’ll mop it all up, promise,” said Kami, sulking.
“It’s not that simple, Kami-kun. It’s blood. It’s not enough to just mop it up. Gojyo’s clothes need to be laundered. With bleach. And, oh, his hair is soaked through.”
“No, it’s not,” said Kami. “It’s dry. It’s just red.”
“Ah,” one of Hakkai’s hands gingerly touched his scalp, flinched back straight away. The man rose and stepped back, hastily. “So it is. I didn’t notice before, in the dark. I can’t say I approve.”
“I’m sorry,” Gojyo whispered quietly, biting his hand. There was a patch of new pink skin on his wrist, in place of the round wound he had there a minute ago. It didn’t look like it was going to scar.
“Okay, Hakkai, be like that,” Kami seized Gojyo’s wrist and pulled him up with unexpected strength. Gojyo went limp and refused to cooperate, not even sure he could stand up yet. “We’ll play downstairs, where you can’t see us.”
“You’ll kill him in a matter of hours if I don’t supervise,” said Hakkai. “Kami, I don’t think you can keep him.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” screamed the blond, dropping Gojyo like a sack of potatoes. “I’m not letting him go! No one leaves this castle! If you don’t want to play together, then fine…”
“Hakkai,” said Gojyo, twisting around to face the man. Here, in bright light, he looked young and eerily handsome, but Gojyo suspected that anyone standing between him and Kami would look like an angel right now. “Please don’t leave. Look, if the hair bothers you, cut it all off, whatever. Don’t leave me with him.”
“Yeah!” said Kami, happy and bouncing again. “We can shave his head! Make it all shiny! Or, ooh, we can dye his hair, maybe pink, or black – I even know how we can make it black…”
Hakkai didn’t answer. He kept looking at Gojyo, dismayed, possibly disgusted. His face was too still for Gojyo to tell for sure.
“Your eyes,” he said finally. “Your eyes are…”
Gojyo flung an arm across his face and curled up in a ball, because when that happened, begging was useless. But nobody even touched him, and the silence was stretching long, growing unbearable.
“Company,” said Kami suddenly. “Can you feel it, Hakkai? We have guests. Hey you, go to your room, I’ll deal with you later.”
They left swiftly, heading downstairs. Gojyo could feel their footsteps echoing through the long staircase. When the sounds had died in the distance he decided to get up and try to sneak out of this nuthouse while he still had all his limbs intact. Right after a little rest.
Part two
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Date: 2007-07-19 04:19 pm (UTC)I can't decide who's creepier here, Hakkai or Kami-sama. I'll bite my nails For Gojyo until the next part!
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Date: 2007-07-31 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-19 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-07-31 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-19 09:11 pm (UTC)Yaaaaay you wrote more AU!
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Date: 2007-07-31 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-20 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-07-20 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-05 05:07 am (UTC)You're scaring the snot out of me. This is really well-written, and I'm going to have to read the rest of it!
Poor Gojyo, poor Hakkai ... and poor warped Kami-sama ... .