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jedishampooTitle: The Haul, Part 2
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jedishampoo
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Hakkai/Gojyo
See Part one for notes and warnings!
The Haul, Part 2
The landing went as normally as most landings went. Gojyo gave the job a little more excitement by using manual-viz for half the navigation, looking out the cockpit view-shield at the landing site. He was half-trying to see the coord-lines and half-looking for people. For Hakkai. Sanzo would never know the difference in the landing, though Goku hollered at him a few times when he thought they were going to hit something. Like Gojyo would; he’d never hit anything. He was that good.
In fact, he’d powered the Dragon down as they’d landed, timing the sequence so perfectly that he didn’t even have to do an exhaust-check before they exited. He hit the code sequence to depressurize and open the cargo bay doors, and both he and Goku unstrapped from their seats and ran out — Goku because he was still new to long-haul deliveries and excited to see new places, and Gojyo because he was still new to meeting someone he wanted to meet.
They were both disappointed outside the doors, however. There was nothing to see and nobody to meet, only the grey crete-steel of the landing pad and grey buildings of different heights surrounding it. The Dragon was a good-sized ship, and she’d clapped through several sound-barriers on the way down. It wasn’t like nobody knew they were there.
“The fuck?” Sanzo was saying to the empty dock. He turned to look at Gojyo. “See you decided to come out, dumbass.”
A sudden low humming noise filled the air. It echoed off the buildings so that Gojyo couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but soon they all saw a car gliding to a stop a dozen or so meters away.
“Is that our client?” Goku asked. “Mister Cho?”
“No, that’s my ride. Dammit.” Sanzo shouldered his bag and walked off across the landing pad.
Gojyo looked up at the Dragon, at least at as much as he could see of her from his current angle. Normally he would take just such a chance to give the girl a good looking-over, to see if she’d picked up any scars or debris the sensors hadn’t detected. Instead, he looked back down and around the landing-pad. There was no movement except for the ZipCar with gov-corp markings on its sides, speeding off with Sanzo inside. Goku and Gojyo were left alone with the cargo and the crete-steel. Gojyo stamped his feet a couple of times, getting used to real ground gravity again.
“The air feels funny,” Goku said.
“It’s heavier than Earth-normal,” Gojyo told him, taking a sniff of the spring-warm atmosphere. He pulled out his lighter and gave it an experimental flick. When the air around them didn’t explode, he lit a cigarette. “Regular old Nitro-Oxy, though. You’ll miss it when we leave.”
Gojyo figured the Board-Legis — or Hakkai — planned to change the air quality with some of the equipment they’d bought. Apparently Huian had been terraformed once, by a radical free-thought group that wanted to go corp-free and sovereign. They’d been big on ideas but short on terraforming know-how, and that was why the new group — Hakkai — was going to have to start over. If Hakkai would ever show up, that was.
“The specs said everything could be run auto,” Goku said after a while, pointing at some hoverskids poking out of what looked like a garage on one of the buildings. “Guess I can just get started.”
“You do that,” Gojyo said. He stamped out his smoke and ran back up the ramp, through the maze of ag-haul and back into the cockpit, to run the area schematics Sanzo had unlocked for him the day before. He found what looked like a living area, not far from where Goku had seen the skids. He ran back outside.
“I’ll be close by. I’m looking for the client. Buzz me if you have any trouble,” he told Goku as he passed him.
“Sure,” Goku said. Gojyo couldn’t tell if he’d said it in a normal way or a way that said he knew what Gojyo was doing and what he was really looking for. Gojyo decided not to ask, just to look.
Gojyo exited the warehouse on the back end to discover a little pool-garden, encircled with painted stone and organic fixtures. It would be real pretty once it had plants in it. On one side of the area stood a transparent enviro-bubble, filled already with growing things. Crete steps, a warmer brown than the grey of the landing area, led down to a glass door into what was clearly a living area.
Gojyo tapped on the door, and the tonging sound it made told him it wasn’t really glass but diamond view-plate, space-grade. It was a smart choice for a corporate buyer making a hostile deal.
Nobody answered his tong, so Gojyo tried the door-panel. It was unlocked, which was not so smart. Inside someone had created a cozy, clean room, with tile floors and real wooden furniture. The air there was already conditioned to Earth-normal.
“Yo?” Gojyo called out in as friendly a voice as he had. “It’s Gojyo Sha from ATI — sweet place ya got here.”
There was still no answer. Gojyo walked further in, keeping his hands up and un-threatening when he saw the security screen recording his entry. He looked down and saw red splotches and smears on the tile floor. Dark red, like old blood. He thought it weird that someone like Hakkai would leave that lying around all unhygienic …
“Yo!” he called again. He followed the trail of dried red, which led down a hallway to a blue-painted door. He reached out to knock, but the door slid open automatically at his movement.
A cloud of something warm rolled out of the room, and it took Gojyo a second to realize it was steam. He was in the bathroom, and a dude was in the bath. A red bath.
“Uh. Hi?” Gojyo said, and stepped forward to have a look. The guy had to be Hakkai. Most of him was submerged in the red water, but what Gojyo could see was thin. Thin and gorgeous. He had a thin nose, thin strands of nearly black hair glued to his forehead, and a thin line of stitches holding one of his eyes shut. The other was shut all on its own. Is he dead? But it looked like the guy was breathing. The red water was lapping slightly at his shoulders. Gojyo poked him on the top of his head.
“Dude, that’s a lot of blood ya got there,” he said.
“That’s the panirynol in the water,” the guy mumbled in Hakkai’s voice.
“Sweet!” Gojyo said, smiling so hugely he thought his face might freeze that way. “You’re alive.”
“Still, I see,” Hakkai said. He opened the eye that wasn’t sewn shut. It was clear and green. If Gojyo hadn’t already been in love, that would have done it.
“Goddamn, you’re gorgeous,” Gojyo admitted, before he could stop himself.
Hakkai looked at him for a second longer and then closed the eye. “I could say the same. I should never have contacted you again this morning. Or yesterday.”
“Man, don’t worry. I’m just here to unload your stuff,” Gojyo said, more than a little disappointed. He backed off as Hakkai sat up straight and reached for a — Spex-lens, Gojyo thought it was called. They’d been a fashion trend a couple of decades back. “And you didn’t call today. It was yesterday. How long you been in the bath?”
“Oh? Ah hah hah,” Hakkai said, and plopped the Spex-lens over his nose. He stood, naked and dripping panirynol-tinted water, and Gojyo would have checked him out in all the right places, but his gaze was drawn to the giant, ugly, barely closed wound on Hakkai’s stomach. Hakkai, meanwhile, was holding out his hands and looking at his fingers. “My wound reopened, but I think this bath should have finished most of the healing. Especially if I’ve been unconscious that long. I’m all wrinkled.”
“Looks like ya needed it,” Gojyo said. He grabbed a bathrobe from the wall-slot and held it out to Hakkai. “Sorry to barge into your bathroom, man. I was worried. Now I feel stupid.”
“Don’t,” Hakkai said in his quiet voice. He tied the robe around his waist and looked at Gojyo through one steam-smeared lens. “I appreciate you waking me up. And I appreciated all our conversations. I only fear being selfish, you see.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gojyo said, even though he already sort of knew. He backed out the door, feeling his face grow warm. He hoped Hakkai would think it was caused by the steam and not that Gojyo was dying of heart-thumping lust, which he nearly was.
Hakkai followed Gojyo into the hallway. His lenses cleared in the non-steamy air so that Gojyo was hit with the full force of one fantastically green eye. “Because I must learn to live alone. I’ve learned to tend my own injuries, at least. But getting to know you has only made that more difficult for me. You shall have to leave, after all. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“What, before I scream on outta here?” Gojyo said, then laughed. Somehow, being here in Hakkai’s space, with Hakkai, had accelerated things to the point where they were reading each other’s minds. Gojyo wasn’t the only one who was perceptive. And Hakkai had tended his own injuries? Gojyo wasn’t surprised, though the thought of Hakkai sewing his own eyelid shut was pretty fucked up. “Yeah, tea sounds good. And we’ll just cool it, I guess?”
“We’ll do what we have to do,” Hakkai said. He looked down at the red-smeared tile and grimaced. Then he headed down the hall and through the room that led to the pool-garden, then down a few steps into a wooden-beamed kitchen. He poked a few buttons in his kitchen power-panel. Somewhere on the counters an autosteamer started humming and hissing. Hakkai unlatched a door-panel and pulled out a couple of cups.
Guilty memory hit Gojyo. “Uh, can you make three? I got a kid back at the dock who’ll want some. We don’t keep it on board.”
“I’m happy to. And you’ve reminded me that I have work to do.” Hakkai pulled out a third cup, and then excused himself to get dressed.
Gojyo looked around the kitchen and around the home, thinking that it wouldn’t be a bad place to be, if someone had to be ‘forming and farming. He’d run away from land-bound living spaces, and it had taken him years in space to realize that those things could be appreciated.
Normally, that kind of appreciation would be done from a get in, get laid, get out perspective, but now he wasn’t so sure that was the best way. He’d planned to settle down at some point, of course, in the distant future. But thinking about Hakkai, and seeing Hakkai all dressed in clothes that looked great but should never be worn to unload equipment, made him sort of want to snuggle in and never get up again. He had it bad — really bad, all right.
Back at the docks, Goku had already cleared out a dozen meters of hold-space. Whatever Sanzo was paying him, he should double it.
“Hi, Mister Cho,” Goku called from behind the controls of a hover-skid. “You got nice equipment! And the organics are awesome! Wait’ll you see ‘em.”
Hakkai smiled at Goku, and Gojyo felt his knees go weak.
“I look forward to it. I’ll have to keep them out of this atmosphere for a while, though,” Hakkai said.
Goku unloaded his skid in record time when he saw Gojyo had something for him. He ran over, and Gojyo shoved a cup of tea at him.
“Ape! Why don’tcha take Mister Cho to see the enviro-rooms now? I’ll take care of some of this,” Gojyo suggested. He wanted a few minutes alone. To settle down, to not be such a pathetic asshole. Or to jerk off, maybe.
When they left, Gojyo decided that hard work would probably be the best medicine for what ailed him. Hakkai was right; he’d have to leave, and soon. And Sanzo would kill his ass if he wasn’t ready when he had to be.
Goku and Hakkai were gone a long time. Gojyo would have had plenty of time to jerk off if he’d decided to do that first. But he’d just stopped loading to take a break when his pocket-comm beeped and fizzled at him. He pulled it off his coverall-belt and tried to answer the hail, but there was only static. Gojyo tried to key in to locate the last trans, but got nothing. It was probably a mishail; the Dragon was right in front of him, and nobody had gone in or out except the three of them, so it couldn’t have been Goku. And Sanzo would have called the ship. Gojyo shrugged and downed the second half of his cold tea, then went back to work.
A few minutes later, Goku came running out of the hold and into the warehouse. He was breathless.
“Sanzo’s in trouble! Gotta go.” Goku took off sprinting in a random direction, then ran back and looked at Gojyo in confusion. “Someone’s gotta unload! Someone’s gotta watch the Dragon! How’m I gonna get there?”
Hakkai came jogging in after Goku. He was holding his side, Gojyo noticed. “Your captain contacted us when we were inside,” he explained. “Apparently there’s been a small attack on the capital. He did say he wanted you two to ‘fucking finish.’ He said he could handle it.”
Gojyo had no doubts about Sanzo’s ability to do just that, but Goku was clutching Gojyo’s arm, hard, digging in with his fingers.
“You gotta stay with the ship! I can go help,” he pleaded. “You have a transport, Mister Cho?”
Hakkai nodded. He pulled a card out of his pocket-case and handed it to Goku. “There’s a small car in that hangar over there,” he said, and pointed off to the left.
“Thanks! Oh, here.” Goku pressed a chip into Hakkai’s hand. As Goku sprinted off again, Hakkai held the chip up at Gojyo with a raised eyebrow.
“The invoice,” Gojyo said.
“Ah. And do you want to go help your captain, too?”
“Eh.” Gojyo supposed he should, but Sanzo — and Goku — were right: someone needed to secure the ship. She was valuable and would be vulnerable if another buyers’ war made its way to their location. And Gojyo couldn’t think of a single damned thing that Sanzo and Goku, together, couldn’t take care of.
“I assume they’ll be fine?” Hakkai said before Gojyo answered, reading his mind — or his expression.
“Yup,” Gojyo said.
“Ah hah hah. So what would you like me to do?”
Gojyo looked at Hakkai’s nice clothes, at the way Hakkai was leaning to the side just a bit, favoring his injured half. Then he thought of Hakkai sewing his own eye shut and tossing himself into a panirynol bath for two days.
“Wanna take care of the organics? You’ll know how to set the systems.”
“Good idea. Ah — I should mention. Or perhaps I shouldn’t, but then I feel too comfortable with you.” Hakkai stepped closer as he talked, until he and Gojyo were only inches apart. He continued in his low, serious voice. “If your captain is involved in what I fear may have happened, then I, and thus possibly your ship, may be targets. I have — she has — enemies. I’d thought that I — or she — had taken care of the issue, but it seems I was mistaken.”
Gojyo tried to process, then spoke instead.
“Er. I thought she was already — uh—” Gojyo stopped at Hakkai’s wince, embarrassed to bring up that kind of pain.
Hakkai shook his head once. “Another she. One I’m not as — ah — close to. What will it take to make your ship secure?”
Gojyo looked at the Dragon, half-unloaded. “We’ll have to finish this, definitely. Organics first. After we’ve transferred all the cargo, the Dragon’s got systems that’ll hold off a hell of a lot. I made sure of that. And dude — you’re gonna have to tell me the whole story, sometime.”
“Sometime, perhaps,” Hakkai said, looking wistful for a second before he jogged off toward the ship.
***
They had at least four hours of work ahead of them, and Gojyo worried that it’d take them six without Goku. But Hakkai kept up his share of the work, and they unloaded at a good clip. Hakkai handled the plants and Gojyo ran the hoverskid, getting the equip. Now and then Gojyo checked the cockpit messages, even though he’d set the outgoing transcomm to his pocket-comm freq, just to see if Goku or Sanzo had called but couldn’t get through. They hadn’t.
Gojyo only took real breaks when it looked like Hakkai was going to collapse for sure, but that was only twice. On one break, Goku transed in to say he’d found the city. Apparently that had been hard to do, because the city was small and the surrounding countryside was full of nothing.
They chatted while they worked, like they’d gotten used to chatting. Hakkai didn’t tell Gojyo the whole story, but did tell him about the land. The water was good and the air was breathable; it only needed the right soil treatments and vegetation in the right places to clear it up in Hakkai’s valley. Doing it alone wouldn’t be impossible, but it wouldn’t be easy.
The giant — and expensive — Agri-Trax-Four that the Dragon had hauled out here would do a lot of the work, Gojyo knew. It would chem the soil and drop plant-seeds, given a skilled driver. Gojyo had grown up around them and knew them inside-out. He drove Hakkai’s down the ramp and into the warehouse, teaching him some of the controls.
“I’ve read the instruction manuals, but that’s it,” Hakkai admitted, seeming to stare at Gojyo rather than at the controls. “And I’ve read about Saturn Epsilon Four, in case you wondered.”
“Oh,” Gojyo said, realizing at last that Hakkai was staring at his hair. Enough generations eating food grown in the right cocktail of chemicals had tweaked the genes of Gojyo’s ancestors. “Heh. In my blood, you know. ‘S the color of dirt, right? Red dirt. Looks pretty nuts from space, in the right orbit.”
“It’s … very attractive on you,” Hakkai said.
“Uh,” Gojyo said, and punched the controls for park slowly and deliberately, even though Hakkai wasn’t looking at his hands. He only hoped Hakkai wasn’t looking at his crotch. “Read a lot, do you?”
Hakkai sighed and unlatched the door. “Not anymore, I won’t. I’ll be learning to do. Like you have.”
“Won’t get rich like that,” Gojyo said, opening his own door.
“You certainly don’t do it by teaching,” Hakkai said from the other side of the vehicle as he climbed out. “You have to kill the right people in the right circumstances, it seems. Their property doesn’t even go through probate if you can prove deal-breaking or revenge.”
Gojyo met Hakkai in front of the A-Trax and stared at him. “Dude — Hakkai — that is seriously messed up. Just saying shit like that, all of a sudden. You know that?”
“Does it bother you?” Hakkai asked, stepping closer.
Gojyo thought about it. It didn’t, really. But it didn’t matter whether it bothered him or not, in the end, and he wasn’t sure how to say that without saying it in those words. He was saved from having to try by the fizz-beep of his pocket-comm.
“Gojyo! Gojyo! I found Sanzo. You there?”
“Yeah.” Gojyo whipped out the comm and looked at it. There was no viz, but the sound was clear. He could clearly hear lasers being fired and the distinctive boom-ping of Sanzo’s projectile gun.
“We’re holed up. We can’t drive out yet, but we will. You should—”
“Take care of my fucking ship, you hear me?” Sanzo’s voice cut in.
“Aye-aye,” Gojyo said. He looked up at Hakkai, who had a strange expression on his face. Gojyo somehow felt guilted into adding, “Take care of yourselves.”
“Whoever you are, get away from my fucking ship,” Sanzo said, and with a fitz, the transmission ended.
Hakkai was still looking at him. “You are all so very, ah, unique,” he said. “But you know what you’re doing, where you’re going. I’m envious.”
Gojyo was a simple guy. He was getting a little frustrated at all the mystery and guilt. Hakkai seemed to want to be lonely. “You know, dude, whatever happened to you, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. The mega-corps are bastards, but it’s still a free—” He stopped talking when Hakkai touched his arm because suddenly his heart was lodged in his throat, blocking the words.
“Not for everyone. I wish I could explain why. Maybe I will.”
“Sometime,” Gojyo said. He looked at Hakkai, looking back at him. Hakkai’s black hair was sweaty and sticking up in weird directions. He looked hot. They had work to do. Gojyo sighed. “We’d better finish. One more load each oughta do it, you think?”
Hakkai agreed quietly. Half an hour later, they were done unloading. Fifteen minutes after that, they’d locked the warehouse and Hakkai had set its security systems. Next up was the Dragon, but Gojyo had a dilemma: did he lock her up from the inside, or the outside?
Hakkai answered the question for him with his spooky mind-reading powers. “Must you stay with your ship? Because my home contains a hub for all of the security and camera systems on this dock. It would be a good place to dig in and from which to monitor the situation.”
Gojyo grinned. “Sounds good.”
Hakkai’s eyebrows rose. “Oh. Somehow, I thought you’d put up more of a fight.”
Gojyo felt his cheeks heat again. Hakkai had that kind of power over him — Gojyo, the former sexiest man in the universe. He patted the Dragon’s hull to distract them both. “I told you, I build good systems. Anything she can’t handle, I sure as hell couldn’t. It’ll take a few minutes to set ‘er up, though.”
“Do what you have to.” Hakkai looked away, up at the stars that were just peeping out in the twilight. “I’ll go get started. And I think I should make us something to eat. I haven’t eaten in two days, after all.”
He headed off towards his house, looking up as he walked instead of looking where he was going. Gojyo looked up, too, and felt a little wobbly at the sudden static perspective on the universe. Everything was wonky from down here, and with no astrometric instruments on hand, he couldn’t even have named any of the stars, not even any of his own. And Altair was on day-side.
Gojyo had used to read stuff, when he’d been made to. He’d read that people long ago had named Altair, had thought it was separated from Vega by the Milky Way. It wasn’t, though; it’d just looked that way from old Earth.
Gojyo shook his head at himself and jumped onto the ramp to make one last trip into the Dragon, to get his beam-pistol out of the arms-locker. He was glad, not for the first time, to have a real gun and not a stupid pebble-shooter like Sanzo carried. On impulse he jumped in for a two-minute shower. He wondered if Goku was having a hell of a good time fighting, whoever they were fighting, alongside Sanzo. Goku longed for adventure; on this trip he’d gotten some.
Gojyo closed up the ship and tapped his personal codes into her bay-door panel. Then he programmed a special warning message for Sanzo in case he showed back up before Gojyo did; the asshole may have been the captain, but Gojyo knew the ship and her defenses better than anybody. Then he headed for Hakkai’s place.
He had to go around the locked warehouse to get in through the garden. As he neared a dark, little side-pathway, he could hear a rough voice that wasn’t Hakkai’s, talking shit.
“Can’t believe I actually got you now, you bastard,” the voice said.
Gojyo slunk along the walls, tiptoeing towards the sound of the voice, checking behind him to be sure he wasn’t being followed. He rounded into the garden and saw them, standing in the open doorway — Hakkai and a stranger, their backs to Gojyo. The guy was a big one, taller even than Hakkai, who was nearly Gojyo’s height. The guy was definitely beefier. He had one thick arm around Hakkai’s shoulders and had wrenched Hakkai’s arms behind his back.
“If I’d had both my eyes, I suppose I would have seen you there and been able to kill you,” Gojyo heard Hakkai say.
“I coulda lazed you where you stood, smartass,” the guy holding him said. He wrenched Hakkai’s arms more roughly behind his back until Hakkai grunted. “But I wanna kill you up close and personal, like you did my associates. My hands, and a knife.”
“Ah,” Hakkai said, sounding bored.
That was when Gojyo saw the knife the guy was talking about, glinting in the dim light of the garden. It was pressed against Hakkai’s throat. The guy wasn’t doing much killing, though, just yapping. “Heh. Can you believe my buddies taking care of your friends in the city said you weren’t worth it? I think you are. Worth dying slowly. And painfully.”
Gojyo rolled his eyes. What an asshole. Gojyo lifted his beam-pistol and took aim.
“Duck, Hakkai,” he said. Hakkai ducked, and Gojyo fired.
“What?” the asshole blurted and started to turn his head. That was why Gojyo’s laser-shot sliced him in the side of the throat instead of the back, and why there was more blood involved than Gojyo had planned.
Hakkai turned and watched his attacker fall off of him, gurgling and spurting blood. The guy dropped his knife to try and grab the wound on his throat, but it wasn’t gonna do him any good. Gojyo shot him again in the head, just to put him out of his misery.
Hakkai looked down at the body for a silent few moments. Then he said, in a thoughtful voice, “Now, this one is tricky. He clearly wanted revenge. But you’re the one who killed him, and his revenge was not focused upon you. This looks like a case for the probate courts to decide.”
“Dude, you are so fucked up,” Gojyo said.
Hakkai straightened his Spex-lens and rubbed his upper arms. His smile was a little crazy-looking. “My, how squeamish you are, Gojyo. I’m surprised.”
“Aw, man. Does that mean this won’t work?” Gojyo laughed. He stepped over the dead body and stood right in front of Hakkai, real close, closer than he’d dared to before. With half-jerking motions that probably looked like he was trying to stop himself — and he was, a little — Gojyo reached out and touched Hakkai’s bicep. Hakkai just looked at him, not saying anything. Gojyo could feel Hakkai’s tension through his fingers.
“You okay, man?” Gojyo asked — whispered.
“Yes, I—” Hakkai began, then just stared at Gojyo for a few seconds, his one good eye seeming to burn a conduit into Gojyo’s brain. Then he said, “Oh, fine,” and grabbed the sides of Gojyo’s face and kissed him.
Even though Gojyo had practically been begging for it, Hakkai’s mouth was so hot and quick and hard that Gojyo just stood there like a dumbass for a couple of seconds. Then adrenaline kicked him in the balls and he caught up, opening his mouth and kissing Hakkai back.
He clutched Hakkai’s sides through his sweater. It was good, real good, and Gojyo didn’t know if it was because it’d been a while or because it was Hakkai. The voice in the stars, real under his fingertips. The hot breath in his mouth.
In a moment of stupid panic Gojyo stumbled backwards. He tripped over the dead dude and snapped the two of them out of their clinch.
Hakkai lowered his hands and stared at Gojyo. Gojyo stared back. Hakkai backed off first — not a surprise. His lenses were all skewed.
“Pardon. It seems I was overcome,” he said, his one good eyed unreadable in a flash of light off his lens.
Gojyo felt his limbs go limp. He wanted to say, well, fuck you, too. But just ‘cause he was pissed off didn’t mean he didn’t still want the guy. So instead he said, “Me too, I guess.”
Hakkai straightened his lenses and looked around. “We should get inside. I need to cook something.”
“Uh. Okay.” Gojyo shook his fingers out, then rubbed his stomach. Hakkai had been warm. Warm and thin and taut and fucking bizarre. Not knowing what else to do, Gojyo kicked the blood-spattered body lying on the ground. “What do we do with him?”
“Leave him there as a warning,” Hakkai said. He keyed a code into the door-panel.
Gojyo followed him in, feeling numb and spacey, like the thick atmosphere was fogging his brain. He liked Hakkai, a lot, weirdness and all. But he was gonna have to leave sometime. He should leave sooner better than later. He wondered when the hell Sanzo and Goku were going to get back so they could get the hell out and Gojyo could go somewhere nice and pay for sex. Hakkai had been a good kisser.
He supposed he must have followed Hakkai into the kitchen, because suddenly they were there and Hakkai was taking something out of a white cooling unit and dropping it into a white ZipCooker on the grey counter. The room was totally clinical-looking. It didn’t seem like a very Hakkai room. Gojyo wondered when he’d decided he knew what and who Hakkai really was.
Gojyo felt his brain snap back into reality a bit. Hakkai liked him. Gojyo knew that. He leaned his butt against a white-topped table and watched Hakkai taking plates out of the cabinet. Hakkai was frowning a little.
“You know, man,” Gojyo started. Hakkai paused and was stared at him, the white light all weird and glinty on his lenses again. Gojyo swallowed. “I used ta think I was really sexy.”
Hakkai snorted. Gojyo gaped at him. Then, to make it worse, Hakkai snorted again and covered his mouth to try and hide it. When Gojyo glared, Hakkai waved his free hand at him.
“I’m sorry. You are. Very sexy.” He calmed his shit down into a regular smile. He sighed at Gojyo. “I keep doing that, don’t I? Being aggressive, then backing off.”
Gojyo crossed his arms. “Yeah, you do.”
Hakkai pushed his Spex up the bridge of his nose with one finger. “Does it annoy you?”
“Yeah,” Gojyo said, trying not to smile back.
“I should stop that.”
“Yeah.”
Hakkai rearranged the plates on the counter a millimeter or two. Then, with just as much precision, he walked the few steps over to Gojyo and laid his palm flat against Gojyo’s stomach. His fingers were long and deliberate.
Gojyo didn’t move, couldn’t breathe when Hakkai did that, or when he slid his fingers under Gojyo’s shirt. Gojyo closed his eyes and focused on the touch, warm fingers on his bare skin.
“Warm and real,” Hakkai whispered. “Though I do like your voice, Gojyo. I wanted to capture it and keep it.”
“Uh-huh.” A chill shuddered its way up every inch of Gojyo’s skin from his boots to his scalp, made worse by the sense of Hakkai’s body moving closer, his warm breath on Gojyo’s lips.
This time the kissing wasn’t so hard and sloppy, just nice and slow and breathy. Hakkai had a thing for his hair, Gojyo guessed; Hakkai shoved his fingers up under Gojyo’s hair-tie and held on as Gojyo kissed him back, licking the insides of Hakkai’s teeth. They made little, satisfied hmms at each other. Somewhere, something mechanical hummed along with them.
Things didn’t stay so slow and easy, though. It was like a haul: long periods of calm and then shit happened all at once. Hakkai tried to pull Gojyo’s shirt off over his head at the same time Gojyo was trying to do the same to Hakkai’s sweater. He was doing the crappier job, running it hard up Hakkai’s sides ‘cause he didn’t want to let go.
Hakkai was thin but Gojyo could feel the taut strength in his body, muscles wrenched tight like ship conduits, nothing like he’d imagined a teacher-type to be. Neither was Hakkai’s thigh, shoved between Gojyo’s legs as he pushed him against the edge of the table, pressing against Gojyo’s cock through his pants. Gojyo rocked his hips, working the keen ache against Hakkai’s knee. He vaguely remembered a dream — pressure, gravity, Hakkai’s voice.
“Let go, Gojyo,” Hakkai said. He was breathing heavily, but then Gojyo could hardly breathe, either. He released Hakkai’s sides and opened his eyes. Hakkai winced when he yanked Gojyo’s shirt off over his head, and Gojyo looked down to where Hakkai’s wound was. Where he’d been grabbing just a few moments ago. The humming noise was getting louder.
“You all right?” Gojyo asked, hiking up Hakkai’s shirt to look at the wound. It was still ugly, but it didn’t look any worse.
“I’m fine,” Hakkai told him. He removed his lenses and set them on the counter. Then he removed his shirt, looking like he was trying not to wince again. He fell forward onto Gojyo, kissing his mouth, his nose, his chin, kneading Gojyo’s bare shoulders with his palms. The humming noise had reached a fever pitch, and Gojyo was going to orgasm in his jeans from rubbing his crotch against Hakkai’s hip like that.
Somehow they managed to get their shoes kicked off and their pants down before disaster struck. Hakkai was making it hard, though, the way he was grabbing Gojyo’s cock and staring at his face, all close up, with his one good eye. His gorgeous green eye.
Somewhere, in his haze of sex and breath and humming noises, Gojyo realized he was the one with his ass on the table. He didn’t care, though, as long as it happened fast. He wanted Hakkai any way he could have him. Being captured, even.
Then he got a look at Hakkai’s cock, standing stiff against his stomach — almost to his jagged wound-scar. Gojyo swallowed and grabbed Hakkai’s hands, which were pulling Gojyo’s thighs up like he was gonna fuck him that instant. It wasn’t a horrible idea, but a bad idea, at least.
“Hey. Hakkai? Lube — in the pocket of my jeans—” he managed to huff against Hakkai’s mouth.
Hakkai licked sweat from Gojyo’s temple. “Ah. Yes, you’re right—”
“The front pocket.”
“Of course. Just a moment—”
“What the fuck is that noise? Oh, hell,” Gojyo said as Hakkai bent down, his breath on Gojyo’s cock.
But Hakkai was there for other business. “May I borrow your shoe, Gojyo?”
“Huh?”
Hakkai picked up Gojyo’s boot and tossed it. It hit the ZipCooker in the side, shutting it off. The cooker slid along the slick, grey counter-top until it was hanging a couple of centimeters off the edge. It stopped, staying upright.
“Phew,” Gojyo said, then hell again, when Hakkai swiped the cleft of Gojyo’s ass with his suddenly cold, lube-coated finger.
Gojyo’s ass met the table again and again as Hakkai finally got around to fucking him. He was noisier than Gojyo would have thought he’d be, grunting with effort, and Gojyo groaned aloud with taking it and with trying to get leverage off the table to get closer, close enough to eat Hakkai’s sweaty hair. Once may be all they’d get, he knew. Hakkai had to stay, he had to go, or maybe he wouldn’t. If Hakkai kept saying Gojyo like that, rough and hot in Gojyo’s ear, he might stay forever.
He didn’t see stars but he felt them, gravity, making him heavy, slow, huffing, stupid. Hakkai didn’t even have to touch his cock; he just had to keep fucking him just like that, just there, while his hand slid around on the table next to Gojyo’s head.
“I’m sorry, Gojyo,” Hakkai said after a while, his voice sounding tight.
“Why’re you — Ah!” Gojyo said and came, clutching Hakkai hard, everywhere. His question was answered when he felt Hakkai shudder and jerk between his thighs. He climaxed right afterwards, watching Gojyo, intent and intimate and grunting quietly in the hum-free kitchen.
There was only the sound of their breathing for half a minute or so — that and the feeling of Hakkai dripping sweat on him. Gojyo felt all rubbery and unable to move. Gravity. Ground gravity, Hakkai gravity, sucking his strength.
Then Hakkai pushed himself up with what looked like some effort.
“We never checked the security systems, Gojyo,” he said.
Gojyo chuckled. Hakkai: fucked-up and awesome. “Nope,” he said. “Uh. How are ya?”
Hakkai kissed Gojyo’s chin in a very sweet way. Gojyo felt melty to go with the sinky-rubbery. “Sore, but I think you were worth it.”
“’Course I am,” Gojyo told him. His stomach growled. He couldn’t help it. He was a guy.
“Nor have we eaten.” Hakkai stood. Like he wasn’t naked and glistening with sweat and Gojyo’s come, he plucked his Spex-lens from the table and put them on in a very prim, Hakkai-like way. “Why don’t you check your ship? The vid-line runs to a compartment offset from the main room, by the front door. I’ll rescue the food from the cooker.”
“Uh. Okay,” Gojyo said and stumbled off into the front room. He found the compartment Hakkai had told him about; it was filled with shiny new electronics. It took only a few seconds to see that the ship was fine and there’d been no movement on the grounds. Being naked while fiddling with the nice equipment was a hell of a lot of fun. Gojyo had business elsewhere, though, so he hurried.
Back in the kitchen, Hakkai was still naked and was arranging something on plates. He had a great ass, great for looking at, but at the moment Gojyo was also interested in the food. He walked up and took a closer look from over Hakkai’s shoulder. Hakkai had put what looked like some circles of compressed bread on the plates and was laying what looked like vegetable slices on top of them. In fact, they looked like —
“Dude. Hakkai. Are those radishes?”
Hakkai turned to look at Gojyo, the lens over his bad eye a little smeared with … something. “Yes. There seemed to be a lot of them, so I brought a few in. They make a very tasty sandwich.” He shoved one of the little stacks into Gojyo’s face.
Gojyo took the sandwich and examined it. Hakkai was staring at him, so he shrugged and bit into it. And damn if it wasn’t tasty, all right. He grinned at Hakkai and chewed.
“It’s the sauce in the cooker,” Hakkai told him.
Gojyo took another bite. “That’s it. I’m stayin’,” he said.
“Hmm.” Hakkai picked up his own sandwich and took a bite. He chewed and swallowed without saying anything.
Gojyo was just wondering if he should have said something so stupid when a fritzing noise came from the direction of their feet. Gojyo’s pocket-comm had been in his clothes, and it was going off. He scrambled to grab it as a tiny voice said, “Where the fuck are you, asshole?”
Gojyo thumbed the two-way. “Yo, Cap’n. Still alive, are ya?”
“Tch. Alive and done with this fucking place,” Sanzo said. “We’re cleaning up here and then heading back. Be there in the morning. My ship better be fucking whole and unloaded with you ready to go when I get there.”
“Aye-aye,” Gojyo told him. “And o’course she’s good. What kinda loser you think I am?”
“I don’t have all goddamned night,” Sanzo said, and fitzed off.
“We have a few hours, at least,” Hakkai said when Gojyo looked at him. “At the very least.”
Gojyo thought about it. He was already a long goner where Hakkai was concerned, he knew that. But land was … land. And Hakkai — who knew what the hell was going on with him? He sure hadn’t said. Gojyo had a feeling that if Hakkai could tell him, he would. But he couldn’t, so he didn’t. Gojyo could respect that.
“You suggesting we fill ‘em?” he said, finally.
Hakkai smiled, and Gojyo wondered if he’d ever be able to leave.
***
This time, and the next, they at least took it to the bedroom. They took ‘em nice and slow, too. They didn’t discuss leaving or staying, just little things, things to fill a few hours.
At one point during a brief lull in the sex, Gojyo picked Hakkai’s Spex-lens off the bedside table and put them on his nose like he’d seen Hakkai do. He couldn’t see shit through them.
“Yes, I need them,” Hakkai told him, taking them back from Gojyo and replacing them carefully on the table. “For depth perception, at least until I can get to a hospital on a — er — larger colony somewhere and have my eye repaired. If I ever leave, that is.”
Gojyo thought he might like to see Hakkai with two eyes, but he wasn’t sure his heart could take it. He brushed his fingers over Hakkai’s temple, just missing the outer few stitches on his injured eye. “Was it a laze?”
“I think so,” Hakkai said. He sighed and crawled down Gojyo’s body to lick sweat out of his navel. Gojyo barely heard him when he continued. “It happened when Kanan died. Things were very hectic.”
Gojyo had decided not to push it, but Hakkai’s tongue was slippery on his skin and his own mouth would go asking questions before his head had told it to. “Do ya miss her? Kanan?”
Gojyo felt Hakkai’s fingers clench on his thigh, then relax. “Always. But it wouldn’t have been real, otherwise.”
Gojyo sighed. He was starting to understand the feeling. “Yeah.”
The Hakkai distracted him by sucking on the end of his cock and making some weird popping noises inside his cheeks, and Gojyo cradled Hakkai’s head in his palms and closed his eyes.
At some point later he must have slept for a short while, because he woke up. Hakkai was gone from the bedroom, though Gojyo could hear him puttering around somewhere.
Gojyo slid out of the bed and went to look out the window. It was still dark outside, but the kind of dark that threatened to start getting light, real soon. It’d been a long time since Gojyo had seen dawn from planetside. He heard clanking from the direction of the kitchen, and thought about going in there to join Hakkai, to sort of watch it together. He didn’t even feel stupid for thinking it.
Then he heard the whoosh of a door and a voice that wasn’t Hakkai’s. It was deep and raspy.
“Looks like you’re up to your old tricks, Mister Cho,” the voice said.
“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t do it?” Hakkai said.
Gojyo grabbed his denims from the floor and found his beam-pistol tangled in them. He primed it and made to run from the room. After a second thought, he went back and pulled on his pants.
He tiptoed out into the hallway. and saw a person looking at Hakkai from just inside the garden-door. Hakkai noticed Gojyo there first and waved him down. Gojyo lowered his pistol but not his guard as he walked over to see what was up.
“How’d they get in here?”
The person turned and looked at him. It was a guy, really tall, with thick, black hair cut to his chin.
“You have company, Cho? Hi, handsome,” the guy said, winking at Gojyo.
Hakkai sighed at Gojyo’s raised eyebrow. “Gojyo, this is Director Guanyin. The other she I’d mentioned to you,” he said. He turned to Guanyin. “Pardon me, Director. The last time I met with you, you were female.”
“And what a wonderful, technologically advanced, galactic society we have, that I get to change my mind,” Guanyin said. “Nice to meet you, Gojyo. Who said you were allowed company, Cho?”
“Gojyo is with Agricultural, Technology and Industrial Company. They brought the supplies I ordered.”
“Just making a delivery,” Gojyo said, looking around. There were several black-uniformed guards outside the diamond-shield door. He knew who Director Guanyin was, all right. The head of the Galcorp board, the official-unofficial head company of the known galaxy. Hakkai was messed up in some serious shit.
Guanyin eyed Gojyo with more interest. “We saw the ship, but I’d heard your captain was in the capital. Lucky thing, too. I hear he took care of some pests for me.”
Like it was fate, Gojyo saw a flash of white and a golden head outside. The next he knew, the door had whooshed open and Sanzo had stomped inside. He looked at Gojyo first, then at Guanyin. “What the hell is going on with your fucking planet?” he bitched at last. At Guanyin, not Gojyo.
“Little respect, Captain?” Guanyin grinned at him. “Black Crow, Inc. had a few more revenge squads than I’d thought. This was the last of them. At least, that’s what my intelligence department tells me.”
“Fuck intelligence.” Sanzo whipped a smoke from an inside pocket of his brown jacket pocket and lit it. Then he looked at Hakkai. “May I?”
Hakkai nodded, but he hit the panel to open the door to the garden. It stayed open.
“Cap’n. Where’s Goku?” Gojyo asked.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Sanzo said. Gojyo stared, and Sanzo tched. “He’s outside, checking on the plants. We’re leaving. I hate dealing in government bullshit.”
Just like that? Gojyo felt a sudden panic, a lack of gravity, letting him float away. “Wait. Don’t we have to clear shit up here?” was the best he could come up with.
“We’re clear,” Sanzo said. And just as quickly and angrily as he’d come in, he left. Gojyo noticed that the guards moved aside respectfully to let him pass. And the dead body was gone.
He glanced at Hakkai, who was looking pretty glazed and stiff.
Director Guanyin spoke. “Your Captain is correct. You’ll have to leave.” He turned to look at Hakkai. “I always liked you, Cho, even if you did upset the balance of power on Mars Colony Four. But I want you focusing on business. You owe it.”
“I do,” Hakkai said.
He looked so miserable that Gojyo felt a sudden, weird clarity. They’d lost this one. He and Hakkai. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t ever come back.
“Gotta get my clothes,” Gojyo said in a slow, deliberate voice, trying to break through Hakkai’s fugue. “You want to help me find them, Hakkai?”
Hakkai nodded. Just as slowly and deliberately as he’d spoken, Gojyo walked to the bedroom, making sure that Hakkai followed him. He was slow as he pulled on his shirt, buckled on his belt, and fastened his shoes.
Hakkai sat on the bed and started speaking all at once, like he couldn’t get all his words out in the short time they had. “They can’t fault me for telling you now, I think. I killed rather a lot of people, Gojyo. When Kanan died. More than is legal. The director was impressed instead of suitably disgusted and released me on her — his — recognizance. He had his eye on this planet and offered me a chance to work off my sentence here. Doing his work. There’s something about Huian that they see as profitable. As part of my release, my inheritances are invested here as well. Since Kanan had wanted to live here, I resolved to do my best. To learn the life, to start over. To be alone forever, perhaps, but to feel that I had atoned somewhat for the lives I took.”
He stopped for a moment, and again Gojyo’s mouth ran ahead of his brain.
“More than was legal? Fuck, that must have been a lot.”
“Indeed it was, I’m ashamed to say.”
“How come I never heard about it? I hear everything.”
“Intelligence departments are used to cover up as well as to discover, Gojyo,” Hakkai said. He said it in his dry voice, and his small smile made Gojyo’s heart want to open wide and swallow him whole. Both of them. The planet.
“They can’t keep you here, alone, forever, right?” Gojyo asked, sitting next to Hakkai on the bed.
“Now I don’t think so, so much,” Hakkai said. He touched Gojyo’s hair.
“I know how to fly ships. And use a comm,” Gojyo reminded him.
“That you do. How long is your next trip?”
Gojyo played with his own fingers in his lap, afraid to touch Hakkai, afraid it might bring him down too much; they didn’t need that. “Next haul is only a few weeks. And this one is only twenty-four, one-way.”
“I suppose I can handle that,” Hakkai said. “You could visit.”
“You could order more stuff,” Gojyo said.
“Break it up in there, gentlemen,” the Director demanded from the other room.
Gojyo stood, stretching like he hadn’t a care in the world even though he had, because suddenly planetside and dawns and food and Hakkai sounded a lot better than freedom and sex in nowhere places. It sounded like … like real life, in fact.
“Well,” he said when Hakkai stood as well. “See ya.”
“My guards have very large guns,” the director yelled.
“I’m coming! Shit.” Gojyo didn’t even get a kiss; they just sort of brushed each other’s palms, like a high-five, and then he left and didn’t look back. He lit up a cigarette for the walk back, one last smoke in the big outdoors before the three-week journey to their next stop.
He neared the Dragon to see that Sanzo had the same idea and was outside leaning on one of the landing pylons, sucking in as much smoke as possible. Somehow Sanzo had uncoded the security lock; Goku was already inside the hold, clearing up and locking the hoverskids.
Gojyo leaned on the other side of Sanzo’s pylon, and they smoked.
“Should’ve stayed on the fucking ship like I told you,” Sanzo said in a quiet, almost non-threatening, voice.
“Nah,” Gojyo said.
The finished their smokes and walked aboard.
***
They were almost a day out when Gojyo began wishing he’d had at least a kiss goodbye. Hakkai was not only a great cook and an awesome, fucked-up guy, but he’d been a great kisser.
He hadn’t transed down planetside, yet. Hakkai hadn’t transed up, either; Gojyo had the freqs locked to know for sure. They’d talk when they were good and ready.
Gojyo looked at the stars, in a black empty that was still brightened to grey by Huian’s sun. They’d reset themselves into familiar positions. It was funny how he could pick some of them out, from up in space. There was Vega; not too far from that was his old home-planet. At least he finally understood what made people settle down, even if he still didn’t know how they could be born somewhere and never leave.
The door whizzed open and Gojyo rounded to see Sanzo coming into the cockpit. At first he thought Sanzo might be kicking him out to use the comm, but Sanzo didn’t even look at him. He flopped into the copilot’s chair, then kicked off the dash and rolled into a three-sixty. Then he rolled again. Gojyo couldn’t help but watch him; he’d never seen Sanzo do anything like it before.
Sanzo rolled to a halt at ninety degrees, scooting until his head was hanging off the back of the chair. He saw Gojyo looking at him and frowned.
“My neck fucking hurts from sleeping on dirt.”
“Uh-huh,” Gojyo said. He turned back to the console and hit the button for vent. He picked one of his few, precious cigarettes out of the pack shoved into the dash and lit up. He heard the snick of Sanzo’s lighter as he did the same.
“Speaking of,” Sanzo said. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling-panel. “There are a couple of cartons for you in the hold. You’d better fucking appreciate it.”
“Oh, I do,” Gojyo said. But he wasn’t that stupid. “What do I gotta do for ‘em?”
Sanzo rolled forward until he was upright. He stubbed out his cigarette into Gojyo’s cup on the dash. “Teach Goku how to fucking fly this thing. If you’re going to be fucking running off on me everywhere, I want someone here who knows how to fly the ship.” With that pronouncement, Sanzo rolled out of his chair.
“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” Gojyo said. He felt suddenly fond of Sanzo as the door whooshed shut behind him. He, Gojyo, was too fucking nice, that was the problem. He paged Goku to get the hell up there. There was no point in wasting time.
.
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END.
Thank you for reading! Concrit, comments welcomed.
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Back to The Haul: Part One
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Author:
jedishampooRating: NC-17
Pairing: Hakkai/Gojyo
See Part one for notes and warnings!
The Haul, Part 2
The landing went as normally as most landings went. Gojyo gave the job a little more excitement by using manual-viz for half the navigation, looking out the cockpit view-shield at the landing site. He was half-trying to see the coord-lines and half-looking for people. For Hakkai. Sanzo would never know the difference in the landing, though Goku hollered at him a few times when he thought they were going to hit something. Like Gojyo would; he’d never hit anything. He was that good.
In fact, he’d powered the Dragon down as they’d landed, timing the sequence so perfectly that he didn’t even have to do an exhaust-check before they exited. He hit the code sequence to depressurize and open the cargo bay doors, and both he and Goku unstrapped from their seats and ran out — Goku because he was still new to long-haul deliveries and excited to see new places, and Gojyo because he was still new to meeting someone he wanted to meet.
They were both disappointed outside the doors, however. There was nothing to see and nobody to meet, only the grey crete-steel of the landing pad and grey buildings of different heights surrounding it. The Dragon was a good-sized ship, and she’d clapped through several sound-barriers on the way down. It wasn’t like nobody knew they were there.
“The fuck?” Sanzo was saying to the empty dock. He turned to look at Gojyo. “See you decided to come out, dumbass.”
A sudden low humming noise filled the air. It echoed off the buildings so that Gojyo couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but soon they all saw a car gliding to a stop a dozen or so meters away.
“Is that our client?” Goku asked. “Mister Cho?”
“No, that’s my ride. Dammit.” Sanzo shouldered his bag and walked off across the landing pad.
Gojyo looked up at the Dragon, at least at as much as he could see of her from his current angle. Normally he would take just such a chance to give the girl a good looking-over, to see if she’d picked up any scars or debris the sensors hadn’t detected. Instead, he looked back down and around the landing-pad. There was no movement except for the ZipCar with gov-corp markings on its sides, speeding off with Sanzo inside. Goku and Gojyo were left alone with the cargo and the crete-steel. Gojyo stamped his feet a couple of times, getting used to real ground gravity again.
“The air feels funny,” Goku said.
“It’s heavier than Earth-normal,” Gojyo told him, taking a sniff of the spring-warm atmosphere. He pulled out his lighter and gave it an experimental flick. When the air around them didn’t explode, he lit a cigarette. “Regular old Nitro-Oxy, though. You’ll miss it when we leave.”
Gojyo figured the Board-Legis — or Hakkai — planned to change the air quality with some of the equipment they’d bought. Apparently Huian had been terraformed once, by a radical free-thought group that wanted to go corp-free and sovereign. They’d been big on ideas but short on terraforming know-how, and that was why the new group — Hakkai — was going to have to start over. If Hakkai would ever show up, that was.
“The specs said everything could be run auto,” Goku said after a while, pointing at some hoverskids poking out of what looked like a garage on one of the buildings. “Guess I can just get started.”
“You do that,” Gojyo said. He stamped out his smoke and ran back up the ramp, through the maze of ag-haul and back into the cockpit, to run the area schematics Sanzo had unlocked for him the day before. He found what looked like a living area, not far from where Goku had seen the skids. He ran back outside.
“I’ll be close by. I’m looking for the client. Buzz me if you have any trouble,” he told Goku as he passed him.
“Sure,” Goku said. Gojyo couldn’t tell if he’d said it in a normal way or a way that said he knew what Gojyo was doing and what he was really looking for. Gojyo decided not to ask, just to look.
Gojyo exited the warehouse on the back end to discover a little pool-garden, encircled with painted stone and organic fixtures. It would be real pretty once it had plants in it. On one side of the area stood a transparent enviro-bubble, filled already with growing things. Crete steps, a warmer brown than the grey of the landing area, led down to a glass door into what was clearly a living area.
Gojyo tapped on the door, and the tonging sound it made told him it wasn’t really glass but diamond view-plate, space-grade. It was a smart choice for a corporate buyer making a hostile deal.
Nobody answered his tong, so Gojyo tried the door-panel. It was unlocked, which was not so smart. Inside someone had created a cozy, clean room, with tile floors and real wooden furniture. The air there was already conditioned to Earth-normal.
“Yo?” Gojyo called out in as friendly a voice as he had. “It’s Gojyo Sha from ATI — sweet place ya got here.”
There was still no answer. Gojyo walked further in, keeping his hands up and un-threatening when he saw the security screen recording his entry. He looked down and saw red splotches and smears on the tile floor. Dark red, like old blood. He thought it weird that someone like Hakkai would leave that lying around all unhygienic …
“Yo!” he called again. He followed the trail of dried red, which led down a hallway to a blue-painted door. He reached out to knock, but the door slid open automatically at his movement.
A cloud of something warm rolled out of the room, and it took Gojyo a second to realize it was steam. He was in the bathroom, and a dude was in the bath. A red bath.
“Uh. Hi?” Gojyo said, and stepped forward to have a look. The guy had to be Hakkai. Most of him was submerged in the red water, but what Gojyo could see was thin. Thin and gorgeous. He had a thin nose, thin strands of nearly black hair glued to his forehead, and a thin line of stitches holding one of his eyes shut. The other was shut all on its own. Is he dead? But it looked like the guy was breathing. The red water was lapping slightly at his shoulders. Gojyo poked him on the top of his head.
“Dude, that’s a lot of blood ya got there,” he said.
“That’s the panirynol in the water,” the guy mumbled in Hakkai’s voice.
“Sweet!” Gojyo said, smiling so hugely he thought his face might freeze that way. “You’re alive.”
“Still, I see,” Hakkai said. He opened the eye that wasn’t sewn shut. It was clear and green. If Gojyo hadn’t already been in love, that would have done it.
“Goddamn, you’re gorgeous,” Gojyo admitted, before he could stop himself.
Hakkai looked at him for a second longer and then closed the eye. “I could say the same. I should never have contacted you again this morning. Or yesterday.”
“Man, don’t worry. I’m just here to unload your stuff,” Gojyo said, more than a little disappointed. He backed off as Hakkai sat up straight and reached for a — Spex-lens, Gojyo thought it was called. They’d been a fashion trend a couple of decades back. “And you didn’t call today. It was yesterday. How long you been in the bath?”
“Oh? Ah hah hah,” Hakkai said, and plopped the Spex-lens over his nose. He stood, naked and dripping panirynol-tinted water, and Gojyo would have checked him out in all the right places, but his gaze was drawn to the giant, ugly, barely closed wound on Hakkai’s stomach. Hakkai, meanwhile, was holding out his hands and looking at his fingers. “My wound reopened, but I think this bath should have finished most of the healing. Especially if I’ve been unconscious that long. I’m all wrinkled.”
“Looks like ya needed it,” Gojyo said. He grabbed a bathrobe from the wall-slot and held it out to Hakkai. “Sorry to barge into your bathroom, man. I was worried. Now I feel stupid.”
“Don’t,” Hakkai said in his quiet voice. He tied the robe around his waist and looked at Gojyo through one steam-smeared lens. “I appreciate you waking me up. And I appreciated all our conversations. I only fear being selfish, you see.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gojyo said, even though he already sort of knew. He backed out the door, feeling his face grow warm. He hoped Hakkai would think it was caused by the steam and not that Gojyo was dying of heart-thumping lust, which he nearly was.
Hakkai followed Gojyo into the hallway. His lenses cleared in the non-steamy air so that Gojyo was hit with the full force of one fantastically green eye. “Because I must learn to live alone. I’ve learned to tend my own injuries, at least. But getting to know you has only made that more difficult for me. You shall have to leave, after all. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“What, before I scream on outta here?” Gojyo said, then laughed. Somehow, being here in Hakkai’s space, with Hakkai, had accelerated things to the point where they were reading each other’s minds. Gojyo wasn’t the only one who was perceptive. And Hakkai had tended his own injuries? Gojyo wasn’t surprised, though the thought of Hakkai sewing his own eyelid shut was pretty fucked up. “Yeah, tea sounds good. And we’ll just cool it, I guess?”
“We’ll do what we have to do,” Hakkai said. He looked down at the red-smeared tile and grimaced. Then he headed down the hall and through the room that led to the pool-garden, then down a few steps into a wooden-beamed kitchen. He poked a few buttons in his kitchen power-panel. Somewhere on the counters an autosteamer started humming and hissing. Hakkai unlatched a door-panel and pulled out a couple of cups.
Guilty memory hit Gojyo. “Uh, can you make three? I got a kid back at the dock who’ll want some. We don’t keep it on board.”
“I’m happy to. And you’ve reminded me that I have work to do.” Hakkai pulled out a third cup, and then excused himself to get dressed.
Gojyo looked around the kitchen and around the home, thinking that it wouldn’t be a bad place to be, if someone had to be ‘forming and farming. He’d run away from land-bound living spaces, and it had taken him years in space to realize that those things could be appreciated.
Normally, that kind of appreciation would be done from a get in, get laid, get out perspective, but now he wasn’t so sure that was the best way. He’d planned to settle down at some point, of course, in the distant future. But thinking about Hakkai, and seeing Hakkai all dressed in clothes that looked great but should never be worn to unload equipment, made him sort of want to snuggle in and never get up again. He had it bad — really bad, all right.
Back at the docks, Goku had already cleared out a dozen meters of hold-space. Whatever Sanzo was paying him, he should double it.
“Hi, Mister Cho,” Goku called from behind the controls of a hover-skid. “You got nice equipment! And the organics are awesome! Wait’ll you see ‘em.”
Hakkai smiled at Goku, and Gojyo felt his knees go weak.
“I look forward to it. I’ll have to keep them out of this atmosphere for a while, though,” Hakkai said.
Goku unloaded his skid in record time when he saw Gojyo had something for him. He ran over, and Gojyo shoved a cup of tea at him.
“Ape! Why don’tcha take Mister Cho to see the enviro-rooms now? I’ll take care of some of this,” Gojyo suggested. He wanted a few minutes alone. To settle down, to not be such a pathetic asshole. Or to jerk off, maybe.
When they left, Gojyo decided that hard work would probably be the best medicine for what ailed him. Hakkai was right; he’d have to leave, and soon. And Sanzo would kill his ass if he wasn’t ready when he had to be.
Goku and Hakkai were gone a long time. Gojyo would have had plenty of time to jerk off if he’d decided to do that first. But he’d just stopped loading to take a break when his pocket-comm beeped and fizzled at him. He pulled it off his coverall-belt and tried to answer the hail, but there was only static. Gojyo tried to key in to locate the last trans, but got nothing. It was probably a mishail; the Dragon was right in front of him, and nobody had gone in or out except the three of them, so it couldn’t have been Goku. And Sanzo would have called the ship. Gojyo shrugged and downed the second half of his cold tea, then went back to work.
A few minutes later, Goku came running out of the hold and into the warehouse. He was breathless.
“Sanzo’s in trouble! Gotta go.” Goku took off sprinting in a random direction, then ran back and looked at Gojyo in confusion. “Someone’s gotta unload! Someone’s gotta watch the Dragon! How’m I gonna get there?”
Hakkai came jogging in after Goku. He was holding his side, Gojyo noticed. “Your captain contacted us when we were inside,” he explained. “Apparently there’s been a small attack on the capital. He did say he wanted you two to ‘fucking finish.’ He said he could handle it.”
Gojyo had no doubts about Sanzo’s ability to do just that, but Goku was clutching Gojyo’s arm, hard, digging in with his fingers.
“You gotta stay with the ship! I can go help,” he pleaded. “You have a transport, Mister Cho?”
Hakkai nodded. He pulled a card out of his pocket-case and handed it to Goku. “There’s a small car in that hangar over there,” he said, and pointed off to the left.
“Thanks! Oh, here.” Goku pressed a chip into Hakkai’s hand. As Goku sprinted off again, Hakkai held the chip up at Gojyo with a raised eyebrow.
“The invoice,” Gojyo said.
“Ah. And do you want to go help your captain, too?”
“Eh.” Gojyo supposed he should, but Sanzo — and Goku — were right: someone needed to secure the ship. She was valuable and would be vulnerable if another buyers’ war made its way to their location. And Gojyo couldn’t think of a single damned thing that Sanzo and Goku, together, couldn’t take care of.
“I assume they’ll be fine?” Hakkai said before Gojyo answered, reading his mind — or his expression.
“Yup,” Gojyo said.
“Ah hah hah. So what would you like me to do?”
Gojyo looked at Hakkai’s nice clothes, at the way Hakkai was leaning to the side just a bit, favoring his injured half. Then he thought of Hakkai sewing his own eye shut and tossing himself into a panirynol bath for two days.
“Wanna take care of the organics? You’ll know how to set the systems.”
“Good idea. Ah — I should mention. Or perhaps I shouldn’t, but then I feel too comfortable with you.” Hakkai stepped closer as he talked, until he and Gojyo were only inches apart. He continued in his low, serious voice. “If your captain is involved in what I fear may have happened, then I, and thus possibly your ship, may be targets. I have — she has — enemies. I’d thought that I — or she — had taken care of the issue, but it seems I was mistaken.”
Gojyo tried to process, then spoke instead.
“Er. I thought she was already — uh—” Gojyo stopped at Hakkai’s wince, embarrassed to bring up that kind of pain.
Hakkai shook his head once. “Another she. One I’m not as — ah — close to. What will it take to make your ship secure?”
Gojyo looked at the Dragon, half-unloaded. “We’ll have to finish this, definitely. Organics first. After we’ve transferred all the cargo, the Dragon’s got systems that’ll hold off a hell of a lot. I made sure of that. And dude — you’re gonna have to tell me the whole story, sometime.”
“Sometime, perhaps,” Hakkai said, looking wistful for a second before he jogged off toward the ship.
***
They had at least four hours of work ahead of them, and Gojyo worried that it’d take them six without Goku. But Hakkai kept up his share of the work, and they unloaded at a good clip. Hakkai handled the plants and Gojyo ran the hoverskid, getting the equip. Now and then Gojyo checked the cockpit messages, even though he’d set the outgoing transcomm to his pocket-comm freq, just to see if Goku or Sanzo had called but couldn’t get through. They hadn’t.
Gojyo only took real breaks when it looked like Hakkai was going to collapse for sure, but that was only twice. On one break, Goku transed in to say he’d found the city. Apparently that had been hard to do, because the city was small and the surrounding countryside was full of nothing.
They chatted while they worked, like they’d gotten used to chatting. Hakkai didn’t tell Gojyo the whole story, but did tell him about the land. The water was good and the air was breathable; it only needed the right soil treatments and vegetation in the right places to clear it up in Hakkai’s valley. Doing it alone wouldn’t be impossible, but it wouldn’t be easy.
The giant — and expensive — Agri-Trax-Four that the Dragon had hauled out here would do a lot of the work, Gojyo knew. It would chem the soil and drop plant-seeds, given a skilled driver. Gojyo had grown up around them and knew them inside-out. He drove Hakkai’s down the ramp and into the warehouse, teaching him some of the controls.
“I’ve read the instruction manuals, but that’s it,” Hakkai admitted, seeming to stare at Gojyo rather than at the controls. “And I’ve read about Saturn Epsilon Four, in case you wondered.”
“Oh,” Gojyo said, realizing at last that Hakkai was staring at his hair. Enough generations eating food grown in the right cocktail of chemicals had tweaked the genes of Gojyo’s ancestors. “Heh. In my blood, you know. ‘S the color of dirt, right? Red dirt. Looks pretty nuts from space, in the right orbit.”
“It’s … very attractive on you,” Hakkai said.
“Uh,” Gojyo said, and punched the controls for park slowly and deliberately, even though Hakkai wasn’t looking at his hands. He only hoped Hakkai wasn’t looking at his crotch. “Read a lot, do you?”
Hakkai sighed and unlatched the door. “Not anymore, I won’t. I’ll be learning to do. Like you have.”
“Won’t get rich like that,” Gojyo said, opening his own door.
“You certainly don’t do it by teaching,” Hakkai said from the other side of the vehicle as he climbed out. “You have to kill the right people in the right circumstances, it seems. Their property doesn’t even go through probate if you can prove deal-breaking or revenge.”
Gojyo met Hakkai in front of the A-Trax and stared at him. “Dude — Hakkai — that is seriously messed up. Just saying shit like that, all of a sudden. You know that?”
“Does it bother you?” Hakkai asked, stepping closer.
Gojyo thought about it. It didn’t, really. But it didn’t matter whether it bothered him or not, in the end, and he wasn’t sure how to say that without saying it in those words. He was saved from having to try by the fizz-beep of his pocket-comm.
“Gojyo! Gojyo! I found Sanzo. You there?”
“Yeah.” Gojyo whipped out the comm and looked at it. There was no viz, but the sound was clear. He could clearly hear lasers being fired and the distinctive boom-ping of Sanzo’s projectile gun.
“We’re holed up. We can’t drive out yet, but we will. You should—”
“Take care of my fucking ship, you hear me?” Sanzo’s voice cut in.
“Aye-aye,” Gojyo said. He looked up at Hakkai, who had a strange expression on his face. Gojyo somehow felt guilted into adding, “Take care of yourselves.”
“Whoever you are, get away from my fucking ship,” Sanzo said, and with a fitz, the transmission ended.
Hakkai was still looking at him. “You are all so very, ah, unique,” he said. “But you know what you’re doing, where you’re going. I’m envious.”
Gojyo was a simple guy. He was getting a little frustrated at all the mystery and guilt. Hakkai seemed to want to be lonely. “You know, dude, whatever happened to you, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. The mega-corps are bastards, but it’s still a free—” He stopped talking when Hakkai touched his arm because suddenly his heart was lodged in his throat, blocking the words.
“Not for everyone. I wish I could explain why. Maybe I will.”
“Sometime,” Gojyo said. He looked at Hakkai, looking back at him. Hakkai’s black hair was sweaty and sticking up in weird directions. He looked hot. They had work to do. Gojyo sighed. “We’d better finish. One more load each oughta do it, you think?”
Hakkai agreed quietly. Half an hour later, they were done unloading. Fifteen minutes after that, they’d locked the warehouse and Hakkai had set its security systems. Next up was the Dragon, but Gojyo had a dilemma: did he lock her up from the inside, or the outside?
Hakkai answered the question for him with his spooky mind-reading powers. “Must you stay with your ship? Because my home contains a hub for all of the security and camera systems on this dock. It would be a good place to dig in and from which to monitor the situation.”
Gojyo grinned. “Sounds good.”
Hakkai’s eyebrows rose. “Oh. Somehow, I thought you’d put up more of a fight.”
Gojyo felt his cheeks heat again. Hakkai had that kind of power over him — Gojyo, the former sexiest man in the universe. He patted the Dragon’s hull to distract them both. “I told you, I build good systems. Anything she can’t handle, I sure as hell couldn’t. It’ll take a few minutes to set ‘er up, though.”
“Do what you have to.” Hakkai looked away, up at the stars that were just peeping out in the twilight. “I’ll go get started. And I think I should make us something to eat. I haven’t eaten in two days, after all.”
He headed off towards his house, looking up as he walked instead of looking where he was going. Gojyo looked up, too, and felt a little wobbly at the sudden static perspective on the universe. Everything was wonky from down here, and with no astrometric instruments on hand, he couldn’t even have named any of the stars, not even any of his own. And Altair was on day-side.
Gojyo had used to read stuff, when he’d been made to. He’d read that people long ago had named Altair, had thought it was separated from Vega by the Milky Way. It wasn’t, though; it’d just looked that way from old Earth.
Gojyo shook his head at himself and jumped onto the ramp to make one last trip into the Dragon, to get his beam-pistol out of the arms-locker. He was glad, not for the first time, to have a real gun and not a stupid pebble-shooter like Sanzo carried. On impulse he jumped in for a two-minute shower. He wondered if Goku was having a hell of a good time fighting, whoever they were fighting, alongside Sanzo. Goku longed for adventure; on this trip he’d gotten some.
Gojyo closed up the ship and tapped his personal codes into her bay-door panel. Then he programmed a special warning message for Sanzo in case he showed back up before Gojyo did; the asshole may have been the captain, but Gojyo knew the ship and her defenses better than anybody. Then he headed for Hakkai’s place.
He had to go around the locked warehouse to get in through the garden. As he neared a dark, little side-pathway, he could hear a rough voice that wasn’t Hakkai’s, talking shit.
“Can’t believe I actually got you now, you bastard,” the voice said.
Gojyo slunk along the walls, tiptoeing towards the sound of the voice, checking behind him to be sure he wasn’t being followed. He rounded into the garden and saw them, standing in the open doorway — Hakkai and a stranger, their backs to Gojyo. The guy was a big one, taller even than Hakkai, who was nearly Gojyo’s height. The guy was definitely beefier. He had one thick arm around Hakkai’s shoulders and had wrenched Hakkai’s arms behind his back.
“If I’d had both my eyes, I suppose I would have seen you there and been able to kill you,” Gojyo heard Hakkai say.
“I coulda lazed you where you stood, smartass,” the guy holding him said. He wrenched Hakkai’s arms more roughly behind his back until Hakkai grunted. “But I wanna kill you up close and personal, like you did my associates. My hands, and a knife.”
“Ah,” Hakkai said, sounding bored.
That was when Gojyo saw the knife the guy was talking about, glinting in the dim light of the garden. It was pressed against Hakkai’s throat. The guy wasn’t doing much killing, though, just yapping. “Heh. Can you believe my buddies taking care of your friends in the city said you weren’t worth it? I think you are. Worth dying slowly. And painfully.”
Gojyo rolled his eyes. What an asshole. Gojyo lifted his beam-pistol and took aim.
“Duck, Hakkai,” he said. Hakkai ducked, and Gojyo fired.
“What?” the asshole blurted and started to turn his head. That was why Gojyo’s laser-shot sliced him in the side of the throat instead of the back, and why there was more blood involved than Gojyo had planned.
Hakkai turned and watched his attacker fall off of him, gurgling and spurting blood. The guy dropped his knife to try and grab the wound on his throat, but it wasn’t gonna do him any good. Gojyo shot him again in the head, just to put him out of his misery.
Hakkai looked down at the body for a silent few moments. Then he said, in a thoughtful voice, “Now, this one is tricky. He clearly wanted revenge. But you’re the one who killed him, and his revenge was not focused upon you. This looks like a case for the probate courts to decide.”
“Dude, you are so fucked up,” Gojyo said.
Hakkai straightened his Spex-lens and rubbed his upper arms. His smile was a little crazy-looking. “My, how squeamish you are, Gojyo. I’m surprised.”
“Aw, man. Does that mean this won’t work?” Gojyo laughed. He stepped over the dead body and stood right in front of Hakkai, real close, closer than he’d dared to before. With half-jerking motions that probably looked like he was trying to stop himself — and he was, a little — Gojyo reached out and touched Hakkai’s bicep. Hakkai just looked at him, not saying anything. Gojyo could feel Hakkai’s tension through his fingers.
“You okay, man?” Gojyo asked — whispered.
“Yes, I—” Hakkai began, then just stared at Gojyo for a few seconds, his one good eye seeming to burn a conduit into Gojyo’s brain. Then he said, “Oh, fine,” and grabbed the sides of Gojyo’s face and kissed him.
Even though Gojyo had practically been begging for it, Hakkai’s mouth was so hot and quick and hard that Gojyo just stood there like a dumbass for a couple of seconds. Then adrenaline kicked him in the balls and he caught up, opening his mouth and kissing Hakkai back.
He clutched Hakkai’s sides through his sweater. It was good, real good, and Gojyo didn’t know if it was because it’d been a while or because it was Hakkai. The voice in the stars, real under his fingertips. The hot breath in his mouth.
In a moment of stupid panic Gojyo stumbled backwards. He tripped over the dead dude and snapped the two of them out of their clinch.
Hakkai lowered his hands and stared at Gojyo. Gojyo stared back. Hakkai backed off first — not a surprise. His lenses were all skewed.
“Pardon. It seems I was overcome,” he said, his one good eyed unreadable in a flash of light off his lens.
Gojyo felt his limbs go limp. He wanted to say, well, fuck you, too. But just ‘cause he was pissed off didn’t mean he didn’t still want the guy. So instead he said, “Me too, I guess.”
Hakkai straightened his lenses and looked around. “We should get inside. I need to cook something.”
“Uh. Okay.” Gojyo shook his fingers out, then rubbed his stomach. Hakkai had been warm. Warm and thin and taut and fucking bizarre. Not knowing what else to do, Gojyo kicked the blood-spattered body lying on the ground. “What do we do with him?”
“Leave him there as a warning,” Hakkai said. He keyed a code into the door-panel.
Gojyo followed him in, feeling numb and spacey, like the thick atmosphere was fogging his brain. He liked Hakkai, a lot, weirdness and all. But he was gonna have to leave sometime. He should leave sooner better than later. He wondered when the hell Sanzo and Goku were going to get back so they could get the hell out and Gojyo could go somewhere nice and pay for sex. Hakkai had been a good kisser.
He supposed he must have followed Hakkai into the kitchen, because suddenly they were there and Hakkai was taking something out of a white cooling unit and dropping it into a white ZipCooker on the grey counter. The room was totally clinical-looking. It didn’t seem like a very Hakkai room. Gojyo wondered when he’d decided he knew what and who Hakkai really was.
Gojyo felt his brain snap back into reality a bit. Hakkai liked him. Gojyo knew that. He leaned his butt against a white-topped table and watched Hakkai taking plates out of the cabinet. Hakkai was frowning a little.
“You know, man,” Gojyo started. Hakkai paused and was stared at him, the white light all weird and glinty on his lenses again. Gojyo swallowed. “I used ta think I was really sexy.”
Hakkai snorted. Gojyo gaped at him. Then, to make it worse, Hakkai snorted again and covered his mouth to try and hide it. When Gojyo glared, Hakkai waved his free hand at him.
“I’m sorry. You are. Very sexy.” He calmed his shit down into a regular smile. He sighed at Gojyo. “I keep doing that, don’t I? Being aggressive, then backing off.”
Gojyo crossed his arms. “Yeah, you do.”
Hakkai pushed his Spex up the bridge of his nose with one finger. “Does it annoy you?”
“Yeah,” Gojyo said, trying not to smile back.
“I should stop that.”
“Yeah.”
Hakkai rearranged the plates on the counter a millimeter or two. Then, with just as much precision, he walked the few steps over to Gojyo and laid his palm flat against Gojyo’s stomach. His fingers were long and deliberate.
Gojyo didn’t move, couldn’t breathe when Hakkai did that, or when he slid his fingers under Gojyo’s shirt. Gojyo closed his eyes and focused on the touch, warm fingers on his bare skin.
“Warm and real,” Hakkai whispered. “Though I do like your voice, Gojyo. I wanted to capture it and keep it.”
“Uh-huh.” A chill shuddered its way up every inch of Gojyo’s skin from his boots to his scalp, made worse by the sense of Hakkai’s body moving closer, his warm breath on Gojyo’s lips.
This time the kissing wasn’t so hard and sloppy, just nice and slow and breathy. Hakkai had a thing for his hair, Gojyo guessed; Hakkai shoved his fingers up under Gojyo’s hair-tie and held on as Gojyo kissed him back, licking the insides of Hakkai’s teeth. They made little, satisfied hmms at each other. Somewhere, something mechanical hummed along with them.
Things didn’t stay so slow and easy, though. It was like a haul: long periods of calm and then shit happened all at once. Hakkai tried to pull Gojyo’s shirt off over his head at the same time Gojyo was trying to do the same to Hakkai’s sweater. He was doing the crappier job, running it hard up Hakkai’s sides ‘cause he didn’t want to let go.
Hakkai was thin but Gojyo could feel the taut strength in his body, muscles wrenched tight like ship conduits, nothing like he’d imagined a teacher-type to be. Neither was Hakkai’s thigh, shoved between Gojyo’s legs as he pushed him against the edge of the table, pressing against Gojyo’s cock through his pants. Gojyo rocked his hips, working the keen ache against Hakkai’s knee. He vaguely remembered a dream — pressure, gravity, Hakkai’s voice.
“Let go, Gojyo,” Hakkai said. He was breathing heavily, but then Gojyo could hardly breathe, either. He released Hakkai’s sides and opened his eyes. Hakkai winced when he yanked Gojyo’s shirt off over his head, and Gojyo looked down to where Hakkai’s wound was. Where he’d been grabbing just a few moments ago. The humming noise was getting louder.
“You all right?” Gojyo asked, hiking up Hakkai’s shirt to look at the wound. It was still ugly, but it didn’t look any worse.
“I’m fine,” Hakkai told him. He removed his lenses and set them on the counter. Then he removed his shirt, looking like he was trying not to wince again. He fell forward onto Gojyo, kissing his mouth, his nose, his chin, kneading Gojyo’s bare shoulders with his palms. The humming noise had reached a fever pitch, and Gojyo was going to orgasm in his jeans from rubbing his crotch against Hakkai’s hip like that.
Somehow they managed to get their shoes kicked off and their pants down before disaster struck. Hakkai was making it hard, though, the way he was grabbing Gojyo’s cock and staring at his face, all close up, with his one good eye. His gorgeous green eye.
Somewhere, in his haze of sex and breath and humming noises, Gojyo realized he was the one with his ass on the table. He didn’t care, though, as long as it happened fast. He wanted Hakkai any way he could have him. Being captured, even.
Then he got a look at Hakkai’s cock, standing stiff against his stomach — almost to his jagged wound-scar. Gojyo swallowed and grabbed Hakkai’s hands, which were pulling Gojyo’s thighs up like he was gonna fuck him that instant. It wasn’t a horrible idea, but a bad idea, at least.
“Hey. Hakkai? Lube — in the pocket of my jeans—” he managed to huff against Hakkai’s mouth.
Hakkai licked sweat from Gojyo’s temple. “Ah. Yes, you’re right—”
“The front pocket.”
“Of course. Just a moment—”
“What the fuck is that noise? Oh, hell,” Gojyo said as Hakkai bent down, his breath on Gojyo’s cock.
But Hakkai was there for other business. “May I borrow your shoe, Gojyo?”
“Huh?”
Hakkai picked up Gojyo’s boot and tossed it. It hit the ZipCooker in the side, shutting it off. The cooker slid along the slick, grey counter-top until it was hanging a couple of centimeters off the edge. It stopped, staying upright.
“Phew,” Gojyo said, then hell again, when Hakkai swiped the cleft of Gojyo’s ass with his suddenly cold, lube-coated finger.
Gojyo’s ass met the table again and again as Hakkai finally got around to fucking him. He was noisier than Gojyo would have thought he’d be, grunting with effort, and Gojyo groaned aloud with taking it and with trying to get leverage off the table to get closer, close enough to eat Hakkai’s sweaty hair. Once may be all they’d get, he knew. Hakkai had to stay, he had to go, or maybe he wouldn’t. If Hakkai kept saying Gojyo like that, rough and hot in Gojyo’s ear, he might stay forever.
He didn’t see stars but he felt them, gravity, making him heavy, slow, huffing, stupid. Hakkai didn’t even have to touch his cock; he just had to keep fucking him just like that, just there, while his hand slid around on the table next to Gojyo’s head.
“I’m sorry, Gojyo,” Hakkai said after a while, his voice sounding tight.
“Why’re you — Ah!” Gojyo said and came, clutching Hakkai hard, everywhere. His question was answered when he felt Hakkai shudder and jerk between his thighs. He climaxed right afterwards, watching Gojyo, intent and intimate and grunting quietly in the hum-free kitchen.
There was only the sound of their breathing for half a minute or so — that and the feeling of Hakkai dripping sweat on him. Gojyo felt all rubbery and unable to move. Gravity. Ground gravity, Hakkai gravity, sucking his strength.
Then Hakkai pushed himself up with what looked like some effort.
“We never checked the security systems, Gojyo,” he said.
Gojyo chuckled. Hakkai: fucked-up and awesome. “Nope,” he said. “Uh. How are ya?”
Hakkai kissed Gojyo’s chin in a very sweet way. Gojyo felt melty to go with the sinky-rubbery. “Sore, but I think you were worth it.”
“’Course I am,” Gojyo told him. His stomach growled. He couldn’t help it. He was a guy.
“Nor have we eaten.” Hakkai stood. Like he wasn’t naked and glistening with sweat and Gojyo’s come, he plucked his Spex-lens from the table and put them on in a very prim, Hakkai-like way. “Why don’t you check your ship? The vid-line runs to a compartment offset from the main room, by the front door. I’ll rescue the food from the cooker.”
“Uh. Okay,” Gojyo said and stumbled off into the front room. He found the compartment Hakkai had told him about; it was filled with shiny new electronics. It took only a few seconds to see that the ship was fine and there’d been no movement on the grounds. Being naked while fiddling with the nice equipment was a hell of a lot of fun. Gojyo had business elsewhere, though, so he hurried.
Back in the kitchen, Hakkai was still naked and was arranging something on plates. He had a great ass, great for looking at, but at the moment Gojyo was also interested in the food. He walked up and took a closer look from over Hakkai’s shoulder. Hakkai had put what looked like some circles of compressed bread on the plates and was laying what looked like vegetable slices on top of them. In fact, they looked like —
“Dude. Hakkai. Are those radishes?”
Hakkai turned to look at Gojyo, the lens over his bad eye a little smeared with … something. “Yes. There seemed to be a lot of them, so I brought a few in. They make a very tasty sandwich.” He shoved one of the little stacks into Gojyo’s face.
Gojyo took the sandwich and examined it. Hakkai was staring at him, so he shrugged and bit into it. And damn if it wasn’t tasty, all right. He grinned at Hakkai and chewed.
“It’s the sauce in the cooker,” Hakkai told him.
Gojyo took another bite. “That’s it. I’m stayin’,” he said.
“Hmm.” Hakkai picked up his own sandwich and took a bite. He chewed and swallowed without saying anything.
Gojyo was just wondering if he should have said something so stupid when a fritzing noise came from the direction of their feet. Gojyo’s pocket-comm had been in his clothes, and it was going off. He scrambled to grab it as a tiny voice said, “Where the fuck are you, asshole?”
Gojyo thumbed the two-way. “Yo, Cap’n. Still alive, are ya?”
“Tch. Alive and done with this fucking place,” Sanzo said. “We’re cleaning up here and then heading back. Be there in the morning. My ship better be fucking whole and unloaded with you ready to go when I get there.”
“Aye-aye,” Gojyo told him. “And o’course she’s good. What kinda loser you think I am?”
“I don’t have all goddamned night,” Sanzo said, and fitzed off.
“We have a few hours, at least,” Hakkai said when Gojyo looked at him. “At the very least.”
Gojyo thought about it. He was already a long goner where Hakkai was concerned, he knew that. But land was … land. And Hakkai — who knew what the hell was going on with him? He sure hadn’t said. Gojyo had a feeling that if Hakkai could tell him, he would. But he couldn’t, so he didn’t. Gojyo could respect that.
“You suggesting we fill ‘em?” he said, finally.
Hakkai smiled, and Gojyo wondered if he’d ever be able to leave.
***
This time, and the next, they at least took it to the bedroom. They took ‘em nice and slow, too. They didn’t discuss leaving or staying, just little things, things to fill a few hours.
At one point during a brief lull in the sex, Gojyo picked Hakkai’s Spex-lens off the bedside table and put them on his nose like he’d seen Hakkai do. He couldn’t see shit through them.
“Yes, I need them,” Hakkai told him, taking them back from Gojyo and replacing them carefully on the table. “For depth perception, at least until I can get to a hospital on a — er — larger colony somewhere and have my eye repaired. If I ever leave, that is.”
Gojyo thought he might like to see Hakkai with two eyes, but he wasn’t sure his heart could take it. He brushed his fingers over Hakkai’s temple, just missing the outer few stitches on his injured eye. “Was it a laze?”
“I think so,” Hakkai said. He sighed and crawled down Gojyo’s body to lick sweat out of his navel. Gojyo barely heard him when he continued. “It happened when Kanan died. Things were very hectic.”
Gojyo had decided not to push it, but Hakkai’s tongue was slippery on his skin and his own mouth would go asking questions before his head had told it to. “Do ya miss her? Kanan?”
Gojyo felt Hakkai’s fingers clench on his thigh, then relax. “Always. But it wouldn’t have been real, otherwise.”
Gojyo sighed. He was starting to understand the feeling. “Yeah.”
The Hakkai distracted him by sucking on the end of his cock and making some weird popping noises inside his cheeks, and Gojyo cradled Hakkai’s head in his palms and closed his eyes.
At some point later he must have slept for a short while, because he woke up. Hakkai was gone from the bedroom, though Gojyo could hear him puttering around somewhere.
Gojyo slid out of the bed and went to look out the window. It was still dark outside, but the kind of dark that threatened to start getting light, real soon. It’d been a long time since Gojyo had seen dawn from planetside. He heard clanking from the direction of the kitchen, and thought about going in there to join Hakkai, to sort of watch it together. He didn’t even feel stupid for thinking it.
Then he heard the whoosh of a door and a voice that wasn’t Hakkai’s. It was deep and raspy.
“Looks like you’re up to your old tricks, Mister Cho,” the voice said.
“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t do it?” Hakkai said.
Gojyo grabbed his denims from the floor and found his beam-pistol tangled in them. He primed it and made to run from the room. After a second thought, he went back and pulled on his pants.
He tiptoed out into the hallway. and saw a person looking at Hakkai from just inside the garden-door. Hakkai noticed Gojyo there first and waved him down. Gojyo lowered his pistol but not his guard as he walked over to see what was up.
“How’d they get in here?”
The person turned and looked at him. It was a guy, really tall, with thick, black hair cut to his chin.
“You have company, Cho? Hi, handsome,” the guy said, winking at Gojyo.
Hakkai sighed at Gojyo’s raised eyebrow. “Gojyo, this is Director Guanyin. The other she I’d mentioned to you,” he said. He turned to Guanyin. “Pardon me, Director. The last time I met with you, you were female.”
“And what a wonderful, technologically advanced, galactic society we have, that I get to change my mind,” Guanyin said. “Nice to meet you, Gojyo. Who said you were allowed company, Cho?”
“Gojyo is with Agricultural, Technology and Industrial Company. They brought the supplies I ordered.”
“Just making a delivery,” Gojyo said, looking around. There were several black-uniformed guards outside the diamond-shield door. He knew who Director Guanyin was, all right. The head of the Galcorp board, the official-unofficial head company of the known galaxy. Hakkai was messed up in some serious shit.
Guanyin eyed Gojyo with more interest. “We saw the ship, but I’d heard your captain was in the capital. Lucky thing, too. I hear he took care of some pests for me.”
Like it was fate, Gojyo saw a flash of white and a golden head outside. The next he knew, the door had whooshed open and Sanzo had stomped inside. He looked at Gojyo first, then at Guanyin. “What the hell is going on with your fucking planet?” he bitched at last. At Guanyin, not Gojyo.
“Little respect, Captain?” Guanyin grinned at him. “Black Crow, Inc. had a few more revenge squads than I’d thought. This was the last of them. At least, that’s what my intelligence department tells me.”
“Fuck intelligence.” Sanzo whipped a smoke from an inside pocket of his brown jacket pocket and lit it. Then he looked at Hakkai. “May I?”
Hakkai nodded, but he hit the panel to open the door to the garden. It stayed open.
“Cap’n. Where’s Goku?” Gojyo asked.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Sanzo said. Gojyo stared, and Sanzo tched. “He’s outside, checking on the plants. We’re leaving. I hate dealing in government bullshit.”
Just like that? Gojyo felt a sudden panic, a lack of gravity, letting him float away. “Wait. Don’t we have to clear shit up here?” was the best he could come up with.
“We’re clear,” Sanzo said. And just as quickly and angrily as he’d come in, he left. Gojyo noticed that the guards moved aside respectfully to let him pass. And the dead body was gone.
He glanced at Hakkai, who was looking pretty glazed and stiff.
Director Guanyin spoke. “Your Captain is correct. You’ll have to leave.” He turned to look at Hakkai. “I always liked you, Cho, even if you did upset the balance of power on Mars Colony Four. But I want you focusing on business. You owe it.”
“I do,” Hakkai said.
He looked so miserable that Gojyo felt a sudden, weird clarity. They’d lost this one. He and Hakkai. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t ever come back.
“Gotta get my clothes,” Gojyo said in a slow, deliberate voice, trying to break through Hakkai’s fugue. “You want to help me find them, Hakkai?”
Hakkai nodded. Just as slowly and deliberately as he’d spoken, Gojyo walked to the bedroom, making sure that Hakkai followed him. He was slow as he pulled on his shirt, buckled on his belt, and fastened his shoes.
Hakkai sat on the bed and started speaking all at once, like he couldn’t get all his words out in the short time they had. “They can’t fault me for telling you now, I think. I killed rather a lot of people, Gojyo. When Kanan died. More than is legal. The director was impressed instead of suitably disgusted and released me on her — his — recognizance. He had his eye on this planet and offered me a chance to work off my sentence here. Doing his work. There’s something about Huian that they see as profitable. As part of my release, my inheritances are invested here as well. Since Kanan had wanted to live here, I resolved to do my best. To learn the life, to start over. To be alone forever, perhaps, but to feel that I had atoned somewhat for the lives I took.”
He stopped for a moment, and again Gojyo’s mouth ran ahead of his brain.
“More than was legal? Fuck, that must have been a lot.”
“Indeed it was, I’m ashamed to say.”
“How come I never heard about it? I hear everything.”
“Intelligence departments are used to cover up as well as to discover, Gojyo,” Hakkai said. He said it in his dry voice, and his small smile made Gojyo’s heart want to open wide and swallow him whole. Both of them. The planet.
“They can’t keep you here, alone, forever, right?” Gojyo asked, sitting next to Hakkai on the bed.
“Now I don’t think so, so much,” Hakkai said. He touched Gojyo’s hair.
“I know how to fly ships. And use a comm,” Gojyo reminded him.
“That you do. How long is your next trip?”
Gojyo played with his own fingers in his lap, afraid to touch Hakkai, afraid it might bring him down too much; they didn’t need that. “Next haul is only a few weeks. And this one is only twenty-four, one-way.”
“I suppose I can handle that,” Hakkai said. “You could visit.”
“You could order more stuff,” Gojyo said.
“Break it up in there, gentlemen,” the Director demanded from the other room.
Gojyo stood, stretching like he hadn’t a care in the world even though he had, because suddenly planetside and dawns and food and Hakkai sounded a lot better than freedom and sex in nowhere places. It sounded like … like real life, in fact.
“Well,” he said when Hakkai stood as well. “See ya.”
“My guards have very large guns,” the director yelled.
“I’m coming! Shit.” Gojyo didn’t even get a kiss; they just sort of brushed each other’s palms, like a high-five, and then he left and didn’t look back. He lit up a cigarette for the walk back, one last smoke in the big outdoors before the three-week journey to their next stop.
He neared the Dragon to see that Sanzo had the same idea and was outside leaning on one of the landing pylons, sucking in as much smoke as possible. Somehow Sanzo had uncoded the security lock; Goku was already inside the hold, clearing up and locking the hoverskids.
Gojyo leaned on the other side of Sanzo’s pylon, and they smoked.
“Should’ve stayed on the fucking ship like I told you,” Sanzo said in a quiet, almost non-threatening, voice.
“Nah,” Gojyo said.
The finished their smokes and walked aboard.
***
They were almost a day out when Gojyo began wishing he’d had at least a kiss goodbye. Hakkai was not only a great cook and an awesome, fucked-up guy, but he’d been a great kisser.
He hadn’t transed down planetside, yet. Hakkai hadn’t transed up, either; Gojyo had the freqs locked to know for sure. They’d talk when they were good and ready.
Gojyo looked at the stars, in a black empty that was still brightened to grey by Huian’s sun. They’d reset themselves into familiar positions. It was funny how he could pick some of them out, from up in space. There was Vega; not too far from that was his old home-planet. At least he finally understood what made people settle down, even if he still didn’t know how they could be born somewhere and never leave.
The door whizzed open and Gojyo rounded to see Sanzo coming into the cockpit. At first he thought Sanzo might be kicking him out to use the comm, but Sanzo didn’t even look at him. He flopped into the copilot’s chair, then kicked off the dash and rolled into a three-sixty. Then he rolled again. Gojyo couldn’t help but watch him; he’d never seen Sanzo do anything like it before.
Sanzo rolled to a halt at ninety degrees, scooting until his head was hanging off the back of the chair. He saw Gojyo looking at him and frowned.
“My neck fucking hurts from sleeping on dirt.”
“Uh-huh,” Gojyo said. He turned back to the console and hit the button for vent. He picked one of his few, precious cigarettes out of the pack shoved into the dash and lit up. He heard the snick of Sanzo’s lighter as he did the same.
“Speaking of,” Sanzo said. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling-panel. “There are a couple of cartons for you in the hold. You’d better fucking appreciate it.”
“Oh, I do,” Gojyo said. But he wasn’t that stupid. “What do I gotta do for ‘em?”
Sanzo rolled forward until he was upright. He stubbed out his cigarette into Gojyo’s cup on the dash. “Teach Goku how to fucking fly this thing. If you’re going to be fucking running off on me everywhere, I want someone here who knows how to fly the ship.” With that pronouncement, Sanzo rolled out of his chair.
“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” Gojyo said. He felt suddenly fond of Sanzo as the door whooshed shut behind him. He, Gojyo, was too fucking nice, that was the problem. He paged Goku to get the hell up there. There was no point in wasting time.
.
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END.
Thank you for reading! Concrit, comments welcomed.
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Back to The Haul: Part One
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-26 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-26 11:42 pm (UTC)I really liked the atmosphere of the fic - all the terminology and the setting made it seem so authentic! And the way you wrote how Gojyo gradually gets to like Hakkai just from hearing his voice was so realistic - one could really feel all the vast emptiness of the space and this little connection that have, it was so intense!
I really liked the characterisation. Gojyo was really well-written, and I particularly liked his interactions with Goku and Sanzo - too often only the bickering and fighting part is written in fics, and one can't actually feel they are friends, as well, but not so in your fic.
And I absolutely loved how you wrote Hakkai - the whole stitching his own eye closed, and his tragic past, and his wish to atone for what he had done, it really corresponds to his personality in canon, but at the same time it is perfect in the story (if you know what I mean :D).
The ending was so bitter-sweet, I was almost T___T So was all the relationship between Gojyo and Hakkai, really...
All in all, it was a great fic, thank you very much for writing it!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-29 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-30 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 04:24 am (UTC)I'm way behind on commenting.
I really liked this. The SF AU was vivid enough to make me think about C.J. Cherryh (my favorite SF), and yet the voices were very clearly those of our boys. Hakkai was a complete hot mess, as he should be, and Gojyo was his wamr and funky self. I especially liked his sweet elder-brotherly relationship with Goku.
And Sanzo's little "gifts" at the end were perfect.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 03:54 pm (UTC)Thank you so very much! I loved writing Sanzo (and Goku) here.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 08:21 am (UTC)Also, fetishizing Hakkai's voice? WIN. homg yes, of epic proportions. ♥_♥
no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-07 07:48 pm (UTC)I know I'm so, so late leaving feedback, but I like to read your fics more than once before saying anything, usually because I'm too busy flailing and squeeing to say more than, "OMG I LUFF YOU," or something embarrassing like that. And yet, all this time later that's still pretty much all I'm capable of. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2010-10-10 03:24 pm (UTC)