Gensomaden Saiyuki Fan Fiction ❯ At my Back ❯ At my Back ( Chapter 1 )

*Just a little ramble from Gojyo's POV. Some angst, some shounen-ai touches / implications, but nothing explicit. Rated for language. In case you didn't already know, I don't own Saiyuki, it belongs to Kazuya Minekura…and I'm poor, so suing is not allowed.*

 

At my Back - By Theskywasblue

 

I wake up and he's beside me; I can feel his warmth crawling through the fabric of his shirt and into my skin, feel every delicate bone in the ridge of his spine along my own, the blunted points of his shoulder blades pressed against mine.

We should never have been able to fit two grown men into a bed this small, but we always manage somehow. I haven't hit the floor yet.

I guess I was never meant to sleep alone.

I used to share a bed with Jien, my brother, when I was small. Of course I forget…he's Dokugakuji now; but in the back of my mind, no matter how often I fumble through his tongue-twister of a new name, he will always be Jien.

Aniki.

I had my own room back then, of course, but it just wasn't the same. Like all kids, not smart enough or tough enough to look after myself, I was afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone at night; and sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and she would be…

Shit. I can't go there, or I'll be fucked up but good and I'll never be able to get back to sleep.

I always slept in Jien's bed, given half the chance. Jien's bed was bigger, warmer, and safer than my own. With his arms wrapped around me and his breath warm on the top of my head, everything was - right somehow. Even when he wasn't there, when he was…Shit, there goes my mind again; gotta cram those ghosts back into the closet…I would still lie there in the darkness, wrapped in his threadbare blanket and hunt for his scent on the sheets to keep my heartbeat steady.

Of course no one will ever get me to admit that out loud; might as well let that holier-than-thou Buddha-banger cut my balls off.

Jien always smelled like clean sweat; a musky, salty smell.

Now I feel most at home on sheets that smell like soap and green tea.

Jien used to read to me at night, by the glow of a grimy bedside lamp; I'd lay my head on his chest and have his heartbeat and the deep rumble of his voice echoing through his body in my ears.

The story didn't matter.

I wonder if I ever told Hakkai that…I don't think so; but still, sometimes I'll come in late at night (if we're sharing a room that is) and he'll be sitting on his bed with some book in his lap. As soon as I sit down, he starts to read aloud to me, as seamlessly as if I've been there the whole time, listening.

It's not as if I couldn't read for myself if I had the desire, or the patience; maybe it's his teacher persona coming out, or maybe it's just something to fill the silence. His voice is different from Jien's of course, smoother, softer; and it's not as if I curl up next to him on the bed and put my head on his chest (though I'll admit I wonder sometimes how that silky voice would sound echoing from behind his ribs) but somehow the effect that his voice has on me is the same. Whether it's for two minutes, or two hours, I feel like I've come home.

With Hakkai too, the story doesn't matter. It doesn't make a difference if I have no clue what's going on, or if I never hear what happens to the characters at the end. Only those moments with the sound of Hakkai's voice have any meaning for me.

I feel safe when I have him at my back, whether it's in the middle of a battle, or while I sleep.

Before Hakkai, there was no one to miss me when I went away, no one to wish me a good day when I left the house, no one to welcome me home. There wasn't even a reason for me to come home at all.

Usually I didn't.

And to think all this started just because I got sick of sleeping on the floor.

When I told him to move over that first night, he had this sort of bewildered look in his eyes, I still remember it, mostly because I've hardly ever seen it since then; but he didn't object, he just did what I asked, and that was that.

I've been sleeping with my back against his almost every night since then.

It makes me - nervous I guess - to admit that on nights when I have to sleep alone, I miss the warmth of his presence next to me, the sound of his breathing and the quiet noises he sometimes makes while he dreams.

It's strange to think that I never spent a single night at home in my own bed, the tiny, creaking slab in that shit hole apartment near Chang'an, until Hakkai was already in it.

The neighbours back home used to wonder about us. I remember hearing their whispers in the bar. After I brought Hakkai home, after word spread around town (as it always will…damn people with their noses in my business) that I was looking after him, I started getting all these sideways looks from people who hardly even knew me. They only got worse after he moved in with me for good. No one actually came out and said anything to my face of course; I wouldn't have stood for it. They would have just been ignorant and called me a fag.

They don't have a clue.

Then again, I guess Hakkai does have something about him that seems - almost…feminine maybe - and it's more than the fact that he has a pretty face. It's that air of gentleness and kindness around him, perfect selflessness…something I had never experienced, or even dared to think existed, before I met him.

Maybe that's why it hurt so much when I thought I had lost him (even though I hardly knew him at all), or why I still get this knot in the pit of my stomach when we're fighting some asshole demon and I can't be right there to watch his back like I know he's always watching mine.

There I go, thinking too damn much again.

Hakkai's - what's the word he would use…Melancholy - is rubbing off on me.

It's still dark out, I should try and get some sleep before I have to get up and deal with that snot-nosed monkey and that damned pissy monk and the stupid pain in the ass “quest” for another damned day.

Suddenly Hakkai is stirring, and I freeze. Did I make some sound, or some movement without realizing it? Did I wake him? I hate to wake him, especially when he's sleeping so peacefully, with no nightmares.

There are so few nights with no nightmares.

But he doesn't wake up, he just rolls over. That's fine. Drapes his arm across my body. That's okay too. Buries his face against my shoulder. No problem.

After all, when it comes right down to it, no one really wants to sleep alone.

In the morning, we'll laugh it off. I'll make some joke, or he will, and after that we won't mention it again. That's the understanding we`ve had, since that very first night over three years ago now. In exchange, neither one of us has to be alone with the darkness, which lingers both outside and in.

So while we're here, and before the sun rises behind the window, I can sleep, safe and warm…with him, as always, at my back.