the intrinsic magic of mirrors and drunken karaoke

"Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away--"

"That sounds familiar," Hakkai said.

"I don't see how that can be." The man in the mirror pushed up his glasses and sat on his heels. Mist swirled around him, white and thick. It swirled around Hakkai as well, and gave him the disquieting feeling that he might be the one in the mirror.

The others were long gone. Their voices had trailed into searching shouts and muffled calls and silence over an hour ago. The cave was deeper than any of them had thought and carved out into sinuous curves, shadowed niches and unexpected dead ends.

"It does, though."

"Well, perhaps not a galaxy. Perhaps just a place."

"Far, far away?"

"Very far. Very near. Does it really matter? I think it's both."

"You seem confused."

The man looked very like him. It was an observation Hakkai had put off as long as possible. He wondered if the others were facing somewhat disheveled versions of themselves with longer hair and ink smudges on their fingers. Maybe shorter hair in Gojyo's case. He tried to picture Gojyo with cropped hair and glasses and had to smile.

"No, I think you're confused. I'm merely bored. I would prefer your position." The man turned away and stepped through coils of white fog.

Hakkai stepped forward, palm turned out to press against the glass. He stumbled when he met no resistance. He landed on his knees on the other side.

The man turned back. "You're not meant to be here."

"I'm not meant to be anywhere."

"Oh, well." The man helped him up and dusted him off with a wrinkled handkerchief that probably contained more dust than Hakkai did. "Do you know what I miss?"

Hakkai frowned. "What?"

"Doing things I'm not meant to," the man said firmly. "Of course, without consequences, even that's hardly worthwhile."

He put his hands on Hakkai's shoulders and kissed him very hard on the mouth. Hakkai pushed him away. Surprised, he pushed harder than he meant, and the man hit the rock wall of the cave with a hollow thud-crack, ribcage and then skull. He slid down and slumped, head lolling to the right. He smiled.

"Are you all right?" Hakkai asked.

"You should check. Unless you think a kiss deserves violence. Does the one always follow the other?" He laughed a little.

Hakkai knelt to check the back of his head. There was no blood, not even swelling. Nothing seemed tender, or nothing except the vulnerable swell of his parted lips, slickly wet and flushed from being scraped between his teeth. When the man kissed him again, Hakkai let it happen. The third time, he more than let it happen. He bore the man down to the cave floor and pressed hard against, lips and hands on his shoulders and thighs outside his, pinning his legs.

Only, Hakkai wasn't sure it wasn't the other way around.

The man's mouth was unnaturally hot. He tasted of sake and smelled like rotted cherries, late summer, when they've fallen and been crushed underfoot and left for the wasps to lay their children in. Hakkai breathed in desperately and saw a fall of white petals and footprints in the snow. He sank his nails into warm skin, and the man's eyes flashed with something sharp and diamond hard. He bit Hakkai's lip like the clean slice of a sword and sucked hard at the wound until Hakkai found himself coming, hips grinding down in a useless reach for more.

There was something missing when he woke up, alone, but he couldn't have said what.


***

A god, a youkai, and a human walk into a bar.

At first glance, Kanan took the markings across his nose and forehead for bruises or scars. She let him buy her a drink anyway. She attracted people with sad stories to tell, and he had a doozy. She could see it built up behind his pretty eyes.

She drank beers he couldn't afford and played pool with him and smiled and smiled. Gonou said it made his face hurt to smile that much, but she'd never found it painful. She was just a smiler. So was the other guy, not a youkai but with some kind of--tattoo, she guessed--on his forehead. Some kind of something.

He challenged Jien to pool and wiped the floor with him. Then he bought them both a drink. Kanan was feeling warm now with the interior glow of alcohol. Gonou wouldn't drink, so she always drank for him, liked to see even him smile a little when she jumped in the fountain on the way home. She couldn't keep from dancing. Things just made her happy.

"Okay, but on the bar?" one of them was saying. They looked awfully alike, with their dark hair and their black marks. One had pointed ears; the other had blue, blue eyes. She let them help her down, hands at her waist and elbows. The gentle drift to earth felt like flying.

"Maybe we should take her home?" Jien said.

The other man grinned. "You mean your home?"

"Don't really have one of those," Jien said.

"Yeah, me neither."

Drifters, she thought. Gonou used to be like that. Well, not exactly like that. Quite settled in his rooms at school, but always drifting in his head. He always looked so surprised when she followed him, even now, as if his thoughts were dirty back streets or mires where she might get her shoes muddy.

"We should sing," she told them.

"Sing, huh?"

She pointed at the karaoke machine and the little stage with the pink strobe light set up.

"Sake," the man said, and Jien nodded.

It only took two cups before they let her drag them over. She went first, but soon they were doing duets in voices that harmonized perfectly, Jien's weaving low under the other man's. What was his name?

"What was your name?" she asked.

"Not important."

"Not Important, I think you sing very nicely."

He smiled at her, a nice smile, wide, but with a modicum of teeth. "I think you're sloshed," he said.

"Yes! Sing this one, please."

They both looked happier now, she thought. Not Important had his arm around Jien's shoulders, and Jien was leaning against him heavily. Jien's hand pressed into the bared skin of his side where his breath expanded his ribs, in and out, lyrics passing back and forth between them like wind.

Kanan clapped hard at the end of the song and watched them watching each other. Then it was time to go home. She was done, and Gonou worried.

***

Gojyo followed a glimpse of dark hair and a whiff of sake through the mist. The stone walls pressed closer on either side in a way that struck him as untrustworthy. Any wall that close might suddenly decide to get much closer.

"Wait," he called, but it was like following Jien to town when his legs were twice as long as Gojyo's; useless.

The figure ahead of him half-turned, and Gojyo saw a blurred mark on his forehead, a twist of perception, longer hair, still dark. Glasses. Ears that ended in points. And then Hakkai was lying on the ground, right at his feet.

"Fuck." Gojyo nearly fell over him. "Fuck, you okay?"

Hakkai rubbed his cheek and frowned. "A god, a youkai, and a human walk into a bar."

"Huh? You're telling jokes now?"

"No, I think that's the punchline."


***

the end