For a moment Jedao's mouth turns into a little 'o' of shocked outrage; he imagines grabbing Gojyo by the hair and shaking him like a naughty puppy.
"That's how I caught you, you know," Jedao points out, reaching to grip his hand in Hakkai's hair instead, not to hurt, but to let him feel the pressure, the not letting go. "Being so needy. And he wants to be needed, too. And he knows you have me. That's why he's so upset."
And Hakkai is trying very hard not to need him, to promise Jedao that he'll be okay either way, to be able to do the right thing if Gojyo doesn't want, as if that might be the problem.
"Even if you're set on being noble about it, maybe don't tell him that right away," Jedao advises, dryly.
"I know better than to tell him I don't need him. Unless I'm trying to hurt him," Hakkai confesses, his voice small. "But sometimes, I don't..."
He trails off entirely, for a long moment, resting his head against Jedao's hand, feeling the solidity of his grip.
"Sometimes, it's hard to believe that anyone in the universe but you needs me."
He has to tell himself it's all right, that they don't. That Eiffel had appreciated them, but not needed them, and it's all right that he was happy to go with Shaw and Neal. That if Gojyo doesn't want to be with Hakkai forever more than he wants his hometown, his friends, Sanzo and Goku down the street forever, that's all right too. He can't let himself need more than he can have.
Jedao pulls him down and rolls over him, so he can feel all Jedao's weight over him, not just the strength of his hand, kisses him deep and slow for a long time, lets the soft sounds of wanting each other be more important than words.
"You have me," he whispers at last, resting his forehead against Hakkai's, breath to breath, noses brushing. "You have me, and he doesn't, so you've got a better chance to be brave."
Hakkai kisses him back passionately, almost desperately, pliant under his weight. His hands settle to either side of Jedao's waist, slip up to his back to keep him close.
"I know," he whispers back, his gaze sliding away from Jedao's in shame. He's being selfish, to be so afraid of Gojyo's reaction.
His thumb brushes Hakkai's temple gently, the very edge of his real eye, the tenderest possible pressure on a terribly vulnerable place.
"I know that I can survive being desperately, unremittingly unhappy, because I've done it," he admits, the quiet awful truth that is the closest thing to I don't need you that he could ever say.
"But I don't want to. I don't ever want to do it again. And I won't ever do it again. You gave me that, before anything else, made me believe I was allowed to - want to be happy. Allowed to choose to be happy. To have a home. And it's not my home without you. And he gave that to you, first, even if he never said it, just by bringing you home. So - it's okay, if your home's not whole without him."
His thumb brushes back a fringe of Hakkai's bangs.
"And I don't think it's protecting you anymore, not admitting it all the way even to yourself."
"I know what I can survive, too," Hakkai says, quietly. There's a stillness to the way he's lying stretched out under Jedao's weight, to the way he lets his head rest against the pressure of Jedao's thumb, under his eye.
He remembers the way his own thumb had felt, almost in the same place, before Goku had pulled his hand away.
"I know... love isn't always enough. Home isn't always enough. Family isn't always enough, to make someone stay. And I know that even if I could live through losing everything again, I don't want to, and I won't allow anyone to make me."
His voice is soft, a little distant, musing.
"So I... if I had lost Gojyo. At home, not knowing you. It really would have killed me. I used to think about it a lot, when we were traveling.
"I want him to be part of my life, part of our home. But I need to... I need to remind myself that it's not life or death."
Jedao nestles down a little, nuzzling Hakkai's cheek and his neck, pressed closer than eye contact would allow; he slides his hands over Hakkai's, laces their fingers, holds him down there, too.
"It's not. I'm yours, and you're mine, and I'm with you for always. Even if you live a hundred thousand demon-blooded years, then in sixty trillion years when all the stars have turned to iron and I go down to John at the bottom of the universe, I'll be wearing your ring on my other hand and carrying around your skull with me in a box, because there still won't be any home for me without you. And I won't be without you again," he whispers, raw and wild and certain as the relentlessness of time.
"When you die I'm going to pluck out your eyeteeth and your glass eye and one fingerbone and carry them in the chambers of heart. I'm going to figure out how to shapeshift a real human heart just to hide your teeth in. I'm going to kiss you when you're dying, and steal your very last breath, to hold one more memory of the taste of you. There's no losing me, there's no escaping me, not in any world or any eternity."
He bites Hakkai, slow but then harder, like he almost can't bear to let go, enough to bruise for a little while even with youkai healing.
"But I also want you to have all the home you can stand, before then. I want you to grab it and hold onto it. So - it's okay to say you need him. Even if it's only the kind of need that's to live happier, and not to live at all. It's okay for that to be enough."
Hakkai breathes in, once, sharp and softly, but doesn't respond aloud. He can't: salt water spills from his eyes, the real and the false alike, where he still does have working tear ducts tucked in alongside smooth glass. It draws warm tracks down his face to either side, drips into his ear under the wholly mundane influence of gravity, and if he could bear to move he'd shake himself like a wet dog to throw it off.
But he can't move any more than he can speak. He feels like nothing, like he is acutely and terribly unworthy of the universe-spanning declarations Jedao is offering him, but he believes each word. The contrast leaves him shuddering in Jedao's grip, unable to make any promise that could match it: feeling loved for all his filth, and feeling helplessly guilty for his own unworthiness.
Jedao kisses the bruise and squeezes his hands, tight as he can. He means every word of the universe-spanning declarations. But at the same time, he hardly knows what he's saying, except for the ways he does: he's not even five years old yet, so he doesn't have any idea what it will really mean for him to outlive anyone, except that in the deep-down places where he's determinedly not thinking about it. He's terrified of it, except for Hakkai's love bracing him against it, making him brave.
He kisses Hakkai's pulse in his neck, and brushes his tears away with the edge of a sheet, moving it with little mothpushes so he doesn't have to let go even for a moment.
Hakkai shudders, at last, all over and convulsively, as if his nerves have suddenly remembered how to work.
"I couldn't give you as much as you give me," he whispers, and squeezes Jedao's hands back, equally hard. He's only a man, after all. Only a half-ruined fool, good at all the things he doesn't ever want to do again. But-- he can love Jedao. That much, he knows how to do. That he can be proud of.
"But you have all of me that I can give you. Until the stars are iron." He leans up, ignoring the way his eyes still sting and water, finds Jedao's mouth and kisses him as if he could drink him down, as if he could protect Jedao from ever having to live without him. He can't, and he knows it. But they can make a home before then. With Edwin, and... perhaps with Gojyo, too.
"You give me what I need," is all Jedao says, and he's said so much but that's the truth, right down in the marrow. Hakkai looks at him and sees someone worth loving, Hakkai who is so prickly and cautious, who notices every time, all the little ways Jedao tries to be careful, who sees him, sees the best of him. Hakkai, whose real hands are claws for not letting go, who makes Jedao want to let Hakkai take care of him.
He kisses back, and kisses back, and kisses back, easy and clear, and doesn't let himself think about the future at all; then, he'll have this moment to think about.
He's no less ashamed for it, doesn't see himself as any better... but, if he gives Jedao what he needs, at least he has the right to be here. He lets himself be lost in the kisses, lets his hands roam across Jedao's back and up under the hem of his shirt, spreads his fingers over Jedao's belly and counts the knobs of his spine.
It makes him remember that his hands are clean. Not metaphorically, but Jedao had washed them, had cleaned every particle of the real blood away after he had stopped seeing blood that wasn't there. It's all right, to touch Jedao with those hands, no matter how he might hesitate with anyone else.
Jedao shudders and gasps and moans for it, pressing into every touch, wants Hakkai's hands on him, always, always. He peels his shirt off almost without breaking the kisses, all the skin that feels so much more like his now, a few small starburst scars from when he's been shot, and a shiny racing-stripe burn down the outside of one arm from the library fire, and he shudders more when Hakkai touches them, all yearning hunger.
Hakkai keeps trading kisses with him, sweet and open: he doubts himself so often, fears being cast away or left behind by the people he--
The people he does need. The ones he doesn't want to live life without. But Jedao he can trust. Jedao would never: not because they're married, not because of any of the marks of possession Hakkai wants to draw all over him, the graffiti of bracelet and ring and little leaf shaped cuts. None of that could hold him, but he wants to be kept, and that will.
He finds Jedao's nipple, the one that had been lost under a sheet of scar tissue before, and tweaks it, just a little meanly.
"Fuck me?" he asks, soft against Jedao's mouth, and drops a little bite there, on his full lower lip.
Jedao has wanted to be kept before; he wants it as a rather foundational desperation, in fact, but that doesn't mean he'll let himself have it from just anyone who wants to keep him. He chose for Hakkai to keep him, which is a stronger order of certainty altogether.
He yelps a little, surprised by the jolt of sensation, the raw right newness of it, hips jerking against Hakkai, and then he laughs, bright silly delight that Hakkai can play on him so easily.
"Yes, love," he promises, working on Hakkai's clothes.
Hakkai wriggles, only sort of helpfully, as Jedao gets the last of his shirt buttons open; he kicks his pants off, taking every opportunity to press close against him, to kiss the places on his shoulders that aren't scarred anymore, to nibble his way along Jedao's collarbone. He doesn't bother taking off his shirt, leaving it open and puddled around his torso as his hands explore and caress.
He's smiling in echo of Jedao's laugher, more relief than anything else, although it's not without joy.
"I love you," he murmurs, lifting his hands to frame Jedao's waist - slighter than it had been, his build a little leaner as his body shifts subtly younger to match his mind. "Every inch of you, for always."
It's a look that Jedao is extremely into, and he kisses Hakkai's sternum on his way down, settling where he can pull one of Hakkai's legs over his shoulder to get him ready.
"I love you," he answers back, stroking the long, strong line of his thigh a few times while he floats the lube over from its drawer. "I'm going to be so good to you. And keep you."
"I should deck you out in gold and garnets," Jedao suggests, eyes laughing-bright, mouth warm with grinning as he presses his fingers inside, knowing and steady. "Come home to you lounging around waiting for me."
Hakkai chuckles, breathless, as he cants his hips up for Jedao.
"Jade is more my color," he teases, voice dipping from breathy to a lower rumble. "I could steal that robe of yours and lay about in an open robe and expensive jewelry, however you like me...."
He'd last five minutes of laying about being decorative before he had to get up and scrub a toilet to make himself feel useful, and Jedao surely knows it as well as he does, but it's a charming image.
"But garnets are my color," Jedao points out, groaning softly in appreciation for the image of Hakkai in his robe like that, leaning over to kiss Hakkai's chest as he works his fingers in faster, deeper.
"Then I'll wear your garnets," Hakkai agrees, breathless as he lets his head fall back to bare the long line of his neck. Perhaps in that future, he'd wind up taking over the household if he tried to be a kept man. In this moment he's only too glad to surrender control, to open under the slick pressure of Jedao's fingers and groan as the faster pace stokes the heat growing in his belly.
"And I'll-- buy you jade-- come here, come here," he demands, one hand finding Jedao's hair to drag him up for a proper kiss.
Jedao feels feral looking at Hakkai's neck, and he cups one hand on Hakkai's thigh as he moves, right under the knee, shifts it up, pulls and presses, holding him open. He lets Hakkai guide them into the kiss, eager and messy, groaning as he lines himself up to press in.
Hakkai exhales on a long groan of his own as Jedao presses in, kissing him fiercely. His teeth scrape over Jedao's lower lip, catch and bite for a moment before his mouth goes open and pliant again, and he presses his foot against Jedao's ribs, cants his hips up so that they move together.
He doesn't know how Gojyo will react tomorrow, doesn't know if he can have his old family and his new one. But he doesn't want to lose anyone else without trying.
And at least he knows he has Jedao, no matter what happens.
Jedao moans into the kiss and rocks forward, squeezing Hakkai's thigh as he fucks in harder, fast and deep. He wants Hakkai to feel it for days, wants to give it to him so roughly it rattles the worry off his ribs.
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Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
"That's how I caught you, you know," Jedao points out, reaching to grip his hand in Hakkai's hair instead, not to hurt, but to let him feel the pressure, the not letting go. "Being so needy. And he wants to be needed, too. And he knows you have me. That's why he's so upset."
And Hakkai is trying very hard not to need him, to promise Jedao that he'll be okay either way, to be able to do the right thing if Gojyo doesn't want, as if that might be the problem.
"Even if you're set on being noble about it, maybe don't tell him that right away," Jedao advises, dryly.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
He trails off entirely, for a long moment, resting his head against Jedao's hand, feeling the solidity of his grip.
"Sometimes, it's hard to believe that anyone in the universe but you needs me."
He has to tell himself it's all right, that they don't. That Eiffel had appreciated them, but not needed them, and it's all right that he was happy to go with Shaw and Neal. That if Gojyo doesn't want to be with Hakkai forever more than he wants his hometown, his friends, Sanzo and Goku down the street forever, that's all right too. He can't let himself need more than he can have.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
"You have me," he whispers at last, resting his forehead against Hakkai's, breath to breath, noses brushing. "You have me, and he doesn't, so you've got a better chance to be brave."
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
"I know," he whispers back, his gaze sliding away from Jedao's in shame. He's being selfish, to be so afraid of Gojyo's reaction.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
"I know that I can survive being desperately, unremittingly unhappy, because I've done it," he admits, the quiet awful truth that is the closest thing to I don't need you that he could ever say.
"But I don't want to. I don't ever want to do it again. And I won't ever do it again. You gave me that, before anything else, made me believe I was allowed to - want to be happy. Allowed to choose to be happy. To have a home. And it's not my home without you. And he gave that to you, first, even if he never said it, just by bringing you home. So - it's okay, if your home's not whole without him."
His thumb brushes back a fringe of Hakkai's bangs.
"And I don't think it's protecting you anymore, not admitting it all the way even to yourself."
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
He remembers the way his own thumb had felt, almost in the same place, before Goku had pulled his hand away.
"I know... love isn't always enough. Home isn't always enough. Family isn't always enough, to make someone stay. And I know that even if I could live through losing everything again, I don't want to, and I won't allow anyone to make me."
His voice is soft, a little distant, musing.
"So I... if I had lost Gojyo. At home, not knowing you. It really would have killed me. I used to think about it a lot, when we were traveling.
"I want him to be part of my life, part of our home. But I need to... I need to remind myself that it's not life or death."
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
"It's not. I'm yours, and you're mine, and I'm with you for always. Even if you live a hundred thousand demon-blooded years, then in sixty trillion years when all the stars have turned to iron and I go down to John at the bottom of the universe, I'll be wearing your ring on my other hand and carrying around your skull with me in a box, because there still won't be any home for me without you. And I won't be without you again," he whispers, raw and wild and certain as the relentlessness of time.
"When you die I'm going to pluck out your eyeteeth and your glass eye and one fingerbone and carry them in the chambers of heart. I'm going to figure out how to shapeshift a real human heart just to hide your teeth in. I'm going to kiss you when you're dying, and steal your very last breath, to hold one more memory of the taste of you. There's no losing me, there's no escaping me, not in any world or any eternity."
He bites Hakkai, slow but then harder, like he almost can't bear to let go, enough to bruise for a little while even with youkai healing.
"But I also want you to have all the home you can stand, before then. I want you to grab it and hold onto it. So - it's okay to say you need him. Even if it's only the kind of need that's to live happier, and not to live at all. It's okay for that to be enough."
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
But he can't move any more than he can speak. He feels like nothing, like he is acutely and terribly unworthy of the universe-spanning declarations Jedao is offering him, but he believes each word. The contrast leaves him shuddering in Jedao's grip, unable to make any promise that could match it: feeling loved for all his filth, and feeling helplessly guilty for his own unworthiness.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
He kisses Hakkai's pulse in his neck, and brushes his tears away with the edge of a sheet, moving it with little mothpushes so he doesn't have to let go even for a moment.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
"I couldn't give you as much as you give me," he whispers, and squeezes Jedao's hands back, equally hard. He's only a man, after all. Only a half-ruined fool, good at all the things he doesn't ever want to do again. But-- he can love Jedao. That much, he knows how to do. That he can be proud of.
"But you have all of me that I can give you. Until the stars are iron." He leans up, ignoring the way his eyes still sting and water, finds Jedao's mouth and kisses him as if he could drink him down, as if he could protect Jedao from ever having to live without him. He can't, and he knows it. But they can make a home before then. With Edwin, and... perhaps with Gojyo, too.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
He kisses back, and kisses back, and kisses back, easy and clear, and doesn't let himself think about the future at all; then, he'll have this moment to think about.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
It makes him remember that his hands are clean. Not metaphorically, but Jedao had washed them, had cleaned every particle of the real blood away after he had stopped seeing blood that wasn't there. It's all right, to touch Jedao with those hands, no matter how he might hesitate with anyone else.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
The people he does need. The ones he doesn't want to live life without. But Jedao he can trust. Jedao would never: not because they're married, not because of any of the marks of possession Hakkai wants to draw all over him, the graffiti of bracelet and ring and little leaf shaped cuts. None of that could hold him, but he wants to be kept, and that will.
He finds Jedao's nipple, the one that had been lost under a sheet of scar tissue before, and tweaks it, just a little meanly.
"Fuck me?" he asks, soft against Jedao's mouth, and drops a little bite there, on his full lower lip.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
He yelps a little, surprised by the jolt of sensation, the raw right newness of it, hips jerking against Hakkai, and then he laughs, bright silly delight that Hakkai can play on him so easily.
"Yes, love," he promises, working on Hakkai's clothes.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
He's smiling in echo of Jedao's laugher, more relief than anything else, although it's not without joy.
"I love you," he murmurs, lifting his hands to frame Jedao's waist - slighter than it had been, his build a little leaner as his body shifts subtly younger to match his mind. "Every inch of you, for always."
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
"I love you," he answers back, stroking the long, strong line of his thigh a few times while he floats the lube over from its drawer. "I'm going to be so good to you. And keep you."
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
"I've always wanted to be a kept man," he says, laughter in his voice.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
"Jade is more my color," he teases, voice dipping from breathy to a lower rumble. "I could steal that robe of yours and lay about in an open robe and expensive jewelry, however you like me...."
He'd last five minutes of laying about being decorative before he had to get up and scrub a toilet to make himself feel useful, and Jedao surely knows it as well as he does, but it's a charming image.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
"And I'll-- buy you jade-- come here, come here," he demands, one hand finding Jedao's hair to drag him up for a proper kiss.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
He doesn't know how Gojyo will react tomorrow, doesn't know if he can have his old family and his new one. But he doesn't want to lose anyone else without trying.
And at least he knows he has Jedao, no matter what happens.
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves
Re: the week after Eiffel leaves