Break of Day
by Hth

	"Aaagh!  This is such bullshit," Gojyo muttered, giving his 
lighter a vigorous shake and trying again to spark it, while his other 
hand batted jewel-red hair out of his eyes.  "I'm just gonna cut it the 
fuck off again.  Shave it.  I hate this!"
	Hakkai's toast popped up, but he prudently waited for it to 
cool before he grabbed at it.  "You would never do that.  Shave your 
head," he clarified, as Gojyo half-turned to fix one curious eye on 
him.  Hakkai studied his toast.
	Slowly, Gojyo smiled, and Hakkai bit his lip to keep from 
smiling back.  It was too early in the morning for this, for their 
peculiar dance of intimacy and pretense.  He would give too much of the 
game away, if he faced down that dangerous grin while he was sleepy and 
hungry and all too fresh from shadow-play dreams.  "You never know.  I 
could tattoo my head.  That might look cool, neh?"
	He couldn't help but smile at that image, tiger-stripes across 
Gojyo's scalp that matched the rakish scars on his cheekbone.  
"Distinctive.  But think of all the disappointed young ladies."
	Gojyo collapsed in a chair, one bare foot slung up on the 
kitchen table, and Hakkai resisted twin urges to nag at him about 
putting his feet where they ate, and to touch that vulnerable-looking 
spot behind his anklebone, where his pants rucked up and left pale skin 
exposed.  Gojyo closed his eyes in sheer pleasure as he took a long 
drag off his cigarette.  "Yeah," he admitted on the exhale.  "Still, 
though.  It's just short enough that I can't tie it back and just long 
enough to be in my face all the time.  I'm sick of waiting for it to 
grow."
	Hakkai laid the toast on his plate, and his plate on the table. 
 As he pulled up his own chair, he paused to brush a wayward lock of 
Gojyo's hair softly off his forehead.  Gojyo didn't twitch, but he 
looked up at Hakkai with puzzled eyes that for no clear reason suddenly 
betrayed his real age.  Sha Gojyo the scoundrel, the seducer, the 
shark.  Sha Gojyo, son of demons, bad-luck charm, glib liar and 
graceful, easy killer.  The teenager.  It was so easy to forget.  "Be a 
little patient," Hakkai advised.  "I like it long."
	"Do you?"
	Strange how their could be so little artifice in Gojyo's 
brilliant eyes, and yet Hakkai could never quite grasp what lay behind 
them when Gojyo's mood turned thoughtful.  He pulled his hand away and 
averted his own eyes, shrugging slightly and tossing the hint of an 
amiable smile over his shoulder.  "Oh, yes," he said pleasantly.  "It 
suits you.  A little bit wild, you know."
	That seemed to please Gojyo, and he flicked the ash off his 
cigarette with a self-satisfied little flick to his wrist.  "A little 
bit wild?  As if you know anything about *wild,* sensei."  He extended 
his leg as he spoke, managing to nudge at Hakkai's arm with his toe 
from across the table.  It looked like a slightly awkward position, but 
Gojyo held it easily, inhumanly strong and fluid in his movements.
	Hakkai couldn't help but blush, and he was happy to let Gojyo 
think it was the teasing that caused it, rather than the unconsciously 
wanton way Gojyo was sprawled out at the breakfast table.  "I'm not a 
teacher anymore," Hakkai reminded him.
	"You still lecture like one.  'Educational opportunity!'" Gojyo 
mimicked, holding one finger up to discreetly command attention -- an 
old classroom habit of Hakkai's.  From another life.
	He smiled, looking down at his toast to help disguise the edge 
of bitterness.  "One ungrateful student -- no tuition."
	Gojyo laughed easily.  "I bet I'm the first student you ever 
had who paid you with his poker winnings."
	"I'm sure you are."  It was hard to stay bitter around Gojyo.  
"How much did we take last night, anyway?"  Gojyo's half-guilty look 
was answer enough, and Hakkai rephrased with a little sigh.  "How much 
did you make it home with?"
	"There was this girl--"
	"Oh, Gojyo."  He would have laughed, but Gojyo really needed to 
be taking this more seriously, not less.
	"Oh, *Hakkai,*" he threw back, rolling his eyes toward the 
ceiling in exaggerated bliss.  "This *girl!* You shoulda seen the way 
her lips--"
	Hakkai held up both hands in a half-desperate protective 
gesture.  "Please, no.  I understand; she was irresistible."
	"Irresistible," Gojyo repeated, breathing out another slow jet 
of smoke.  The sparkle faded from his eyes as the smoke dissipated, 
leaving something restless, a mere glimpse of that endless hunger that 
half-slumbered in Sha Gojyo, fattened on pleasure and wild risk alike, 
but never wholly satisfied by either.  Almost cruelly, he stubbed out 
his cigarette.  "I loaned her some money."
	He nodded carefully.  No sense arguing now; the thing was done, 
and anyway, Gojyo wouldn't be Gojyo if he could refuse a lady in 
distress.  "I'm sure she will always remember you fondly for it."
	Gojyo's mouth curved in a smile that was cruel and sensual in 
equal proportions, eerily indicative of his divided nature.  "Oh, I 
know she will."  He swung his foot down, rising from his chair with 
animal grace.  He arched his back in a long stretch, and Hakkai looked 
politely away from the lean, strong lines of his naked torso.  Not that 
Gojyo had much sense of modesty, but...but perhaps he should.  If not 
for his own sake, then for the rest of the world's.
	He jerked with surprise as Gojyo passed almost unnoticed behind 
him, his large hand falling lightly on Hakkai's shoulder.  "She was 
more your type than mine, anyway."
	It hurt, somehow.  Hakkai bit his lip once, hard, and then 
answered in a casual voice, "Do I have a type, you think?"
	"You know."  Hakkai could feel a little shift in the muscles 
running from the heel of Gojyo's hand to his wrist and on up his strong 
arm.  A shrug.  "She was sweet.  I could introduce you."
	A bolt ran through Hakkai at that thought, mingled thrill and 
pain.  He tried to imagine this woman, the kind of moist and sensual 
lips that might draw Gojyo's eye, the kind of sweetness that could be 
so quickly bent, in a single night, into the shape of Gojyo's 
imaginative desires.  Her hypothetical face swam in his mind, mingling 
uneasily with the memory of Kanan's face. *Sweet.* Sweet.
	How sweetly she'd smiled, as she clutched the hilt of the 
dagger with whitened knuckles.  Her playfulness, the way she'd sneak up 
behind him and place those soft, tiny hands over his eyes, how she'd 
squeal as he gave her chase through the trees behind the school, and 
sigh in happiness when he caught her up, wrapped securely into his 
arms, lifted onto her toes with her weight laid squarely across his 
chest.  Her sweet, sweet voice, breathy and bird-like as her mouth 
brushed his ear, sending chills down his back. 
	And this girl, Gojyo's cast-off?  Had she giggled shyly into 
his ear as Gojyo bent over her, fresh-grown locks of summer-red hair 
tickling the bridge of her nose and the corner of her eyes?  In his 
mind, Hakkai saw his friend lifting her up easily over him, lowering 
her slowly, bearing her weight easily, his hands warm on her face as 
she shivered and slid small hands under his back, cupping the blades of 
his shoulders.
	What was Hakkai's *type,* he wondered?  Sweet girls with honor 
as high as the sky, more willing to die than to help lift half of this 
brutal burden of guilt and sorrow from her lover's shoulders?  Or girls 
with lush and knowing mouths, well-tutored by a teacher no less expert 
in his field than Hakkai had once been in his own?  Raggedly, Hakkai 
wiped a hand over his face, willing himself to let go of the unfamiliar 
longing that gripped him at the thought of this unknown woman, who 
would work lips and tongue slowly down his neck, across his nipples, 
and into the hollow of his navel...just as she'd learned, pressed naked 
and trembling against Gojyo's body.
	Gojyo saw the gesture and misinterpreted it, standing back 
quickly.  "I'm a moron," he said gruffly.  "It's too soon."
	"No, you...."  Hakkai smiled, sickly.  "Your heart is in the 
right place, Gojyo, as always."  He pushed his plate away, no longer 
hungry.  "I'm done with love," he said, unexpected force thrumming in 
his low voice.
	The silence was awkward; he knew that Gojyo, ever the hopeless 
romantic, however hard he tried not to dream sweet, secret dreams of 
deathless love, was restraining himself from arguing.  "Well," he said 
after a minute, briskly, as though he meant to change the subject.  But 
then his voice softened, and he said, "Guess you must've had quite a 
babe.  Tough act to follow and all."
	"Tough act to follow," Hakkai repeated, half-listening.
	Gojyo withdrew quietly from the kitchen, leaving Hakkai slumped 
over the kitchen table, eye to eye with his half-eaten toast, a hundred 
thoughts quarreling with one another to be the one that would finally 
break through his thin control.
	At long last, Hakkai stood up, gathering up his dishes and 
Gojyo's as well, without thought of complaint.  He was not a man given 
to complaining.  Things were what they were -- things, and people, too. 
 Hakkai had no defense against utter despair except that, except to 
take life as it came to him and find something to love.
	It got easier with practice.  He could love Gojyo, now, for the 
very things that might otherwise have driven him slowly mad: the 
uncivilized, unpretentious whole of him, his dark moods and his cruel 
sarcasm, his untidiness and his endless whoring and spending.  Hakkai 
had come, not all that slowly at all, really, to love the man, and the 
life they lived, Gojyo bouncing aimlessly between brawls and wagers and 
bedrooms, Hakkai following along out of mingled affection and ennui.
	The strange thing was that one thing was getting harder and 
harder by the day -- the one thing that he'd believed would never be 
less of a burden on him.
	It was shockingly difficult now to think of Kanan, *sweet* 
Kanan, without a slow burn of resentment, like a brand applied to flesh 
on the inside.  Because he knew, now, that you lived through pain for 
one reason and one reason alone: for the sake of the smile you couldn't 
bear never to see again.  Wherever you might have found that smile.
	Kanan, for whom Hakkai had sacrificed his very humanity, his 
own honor and all of his peace...had never known a smile that she 
couldn't surrender.  For *honor's* sake.
	For honor's sake.  Sweet Kanan.  Hakkai shuddered, alone in his 
kitchen, with the sudden force of missing her and hating her.
	A little laugh caught like bile in his throat as he thought of 
an apple cart, and a smile like the red sunrise, the kind of smile that 
could make a man fiercely pleased to have lived to take in the sight of 
it.
	The best thing about having damn little honor left was that he 
had nothing left to die for, and so many reasons to live.