Commentary On "Laws Of Reciprocity"

[redbrunja]

smillaraaq requested commentary for "Laws of Reciprocity", which was quite a good one to ask for, because it says more about me that you should possibly know.

You can read it without commentary here.

So, there's this chick named pzb, right? And she's made of win. For the past three weeks she's heard more whinging about tests and studying and the stresses of my life than anyone who isn't in my head should ever have to, while providing awesome smut at exactly the right time to keep me from melting into a puddle of twitchy, psychotic college student.

So now that my finals are done with, she gets fic. It's strange fic, but it's fic. (And I'd love people's input into whether I should cross-post this or just let it loiter on my personal lj.)

[Okay, I am not kidding about pzb's powers of timing. The time that prompted this fic, I had a horrible day, told her about it, found out more bad news that was so frustrating that I didn't even bother telling her about it over im, and she magically had smut for me. Because she is just that awesome.]


Title: Laws of Reciprocity
Author’s Note: This is probably one of the stranger pieces I’ve written and to be quite honest I’m not totally sure it works. This fic is written third person omnipotent, practically has a narrator, and the tone used is the exact same one the I use to write my essays. Consider yourself warned. Dedicated to pzb.
[On reread, I realized the sense of academic writing and omnipresent voice wasn't as strong as I remembered. I'm actually a bit sad about that.]


Cho Hakkai always discovered new and unpleasant facts about Yaone’s prior paramours quite by accident.

[I like the alliteration here, plus the subtext of 'paramour.' I've heard that word used as a synonym for 'lover' as in 'beloved' and for 'that guy/girl you were fucking.' Hakkai means it in the later sense.]

For example, the fifth time they had sex (and the second time they did so in a bed) Yaone attempted to perform fellatio on him, which both parties found mutually satisfying, until shortly after her lips touched his cock, when he reached down to tangle his fingers in her hair and she flinched.

(Hakkai’s mental image of what past event could have instilled that reaction in her was remarkably accurate: some uncaring lout expecting her to suck him off, grinding his prick into her mouth with an utter disregard for his partner.  This supposition entered into his head quite unprompted once at the precise time that a horde of murderous youkai attacked; no one else besides him managed to spill enemy blood, and neither Gojyo or Goku complained.)

[I like the idea of Hakkai not letting anyone else get any fun, and the others being too freaked out to say anything.]

She flinched, her teeth dragged lightly along his skin, and his traitorous body adored it, even as his mouth said “stop,” and Yaone scuttled backwards, scrunching up the sheets and already apologizing.

[I kind of love this scene, of Yaone moving back, because this is one of the few fics where I have them rather awkward with each other.]

She stopped only when Hakkai laid his fingers against her lips, whispering affirmations into her mouth. When he’d asked what he’d done wrong, she’d looked in astonishment.

“Nothing,” she’d said, looking shocked at the very idea. “I’m sorry I-”

Hakkai kissed her then because if he heard her apologize one more time he would have bolted from the room to murder her other sexual partners, and since he didn’t even have their names yet, it would have been rather unproductive.

[And we've got to be efficent when we're committing mass murder.]

Hakkai continued to be very careful that her mouth never went below the scar across his stomach. Yaone suspected this by their eighth lovemaking session (the kitchen of a hotel) and was sure of it by the tenth (Hakuryu’s backseat) and felt the twitch of unequal pleasure between them.

[I had a lot of fun imagining where and when they had sex during the course of their relationship. I imagine that they don't spend THAT much time in hotel rooms, considering.]

The twelfth time they had sex, when Hakkai kissed his way across her belly, she caught his chin in her hand and stopped him.

“If I can’t.....” she blushed furiously.

Hakkai nibbled at her skin, and said quietly. “You didn’t seen to enjoy it.” What he meant was: Your eyes looked bruised and I could read your history in your winces and I’ll never ever ever let my touch be unpleasant to you.

[I wish I had more to say about the above line - I think this is Hakkai tapping into his Kanan-angst and Yaone's sexual angst.]

“But it is really unfair for you to– if I’m not–”

Hakkai distracted her with his fingers, but when he tried to lick into her she slid away.

“I must insist,” she said firmly, pressing against the metal of Hakuryu’s side. And then, her voice small and vulnerable, she asked, “was I so inept?”

[*points* Personal fear, right there.]

Later, unable to sleep, Hakkai turned on the bedside lamp and wrote down a list of crimes against Yaone committed by lovers not him matched with the various punishments they deserved. He did this partially as a way to organize his thoughts, and partially to make sure that he didn’t forget about anything when he finally teased the names of those men from Yaone’s lips.

The chance of Hakkai forgetting why he abhorred her past ‘boyfriends’ was infinitesimal, but he worried about these sorts of things: the increasing ecological footprint of humanity, the socioeconomic ramifications of the Minus Wave, Genjyo Sanzo’s borderline anorexic eating habits, whether Sha Gojyo would ever realize that his playboy ways were likely a result of a psychological drive to gain the love and acceptance that his mother denied him. (Tangentially, Hakkai wished to inform his friend of the fact that he was missing out on some very earthy pleasures by refusing to maintain a relationship with a woman who actually liked him: Hakkai had noticed a distinct upward slope regarding the way emotional and intellectual intimacy interacted. To be specific, there was a positive correlation between pleasure derived from the sex act [axis x] and time one has known said sexual partner [axis y].)

[Okay, that line, "Hakkai had noticed a distinct upward slope regarding the way emotional and intellectual intimacy interacted. To be specific, there was a positive correlation between pleasure derived from the sex act [axis x] and time one has known said sexual partner [axis y]"? This whole fic was written to get to that line. It was the first thing I knew this fic was going to have, and I can still remember walking into the south door of my dorm on my way back from the gym repeating it to myself so I wouldn't forget.

I have no idea where I got increasing ecological footprint of humanity - I think it was talked about in one of my classes, and I distinctly remember someone mentioning how bad Sanzo's eating habits are. The socioeconomic ramifications of the Minus Wave just seems like something Hakkai would worry about. Also, regarding Gojyo - I think Hakkai has a remarkable grasp of his own, and others, psychological issues. He's still crazy.]

Hakkai had moved on from detailing what he would like to do to Villain A (responsible for Yaone responding to his profession of love with, “Hakkai, please don’t feel the need to lie to me,”) to Villain D (responsible for linking oral sex with force).

[I think if Kou had any idea of what Yaone's boyfriends were like, he'd order her to never date.]

He was fairly sure that Yaone herself was responsible for her firm insistence on intercourse being tit for tat, and jotted a note (Yaone re: reciprocity = more orgasms).

[I want a boyfriend to punish me like that.]

Then he went back to pondering–

““D is equal to castration plus heated poker inserted forcibly into the gullet?’” An incredulous voice said behind him. “Dude, what the hell kind of algebra is this?”

Hakkai’s eyes widened and he snapped the notebook shut.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said calmly.

“Well,” Gojyo ruffled his hair and flopped down onto the bed beside Hakkai. “I was, and then my roommate started giggling.”

“I do not believe I was giggling,” Hakkai said firmly.

“Um, yeah, you were,” Gojyo said. “Now who are we killing?”

“I don’t know what–”

Gojyo snorted. “Hakkai, it’s late, can we please skip this part? The part where I say something’s bothering you, you say I’m imagining things, this goes on for five cigarettes? Let’s just skip to the hypocritical questions, okay?”

“’Hypothetical,’” Hakkai couldn’t help but correct.

“Those too,” Gojyo agreed. He got up to rummage about in his bag and came back with a pack of Hi-Lites and a book of matches.

He settled himself on the foot of the bed, lit up, and said, “Come now, tell the wise and handsome Gojyo-sama everything.”

[Gojyo is awesome. I think he measures all time based on the time it takes to smoke a cigarette or play a hand of poker. And I want Hakkai to teach me math.]

“Hypothetically speaking,” Hakkai began, straightening his spine and folding his hands in his lap. Gojyo made a get-on-with-it gesture, “let’s say someone had a lover who found oral relations less than pleasant.”

Gojyo waited. After a while the ash threatened to fall off the end of his cigarette, and Hakkai reached for the ash tray and handed it to him. “Is that it?” Gojyo asked, tapping his cigarette against the ashtray’s rim. “Is that even a problem? There’s a billion other things to do with the ladies, like-”

[writing non-repetative smut would be much easier if I had a better idea of what Gojyo would have said right here. This one was of those times when I cut away because I'm not totally sure what Gojyo would say, and I think you, Dear Reader, could imagine something more entertaining that I could write.]

Hakkai coughed politely. “Yes, well, the difficulty comes when she prefers that her partner refrain also.”

“Okay,” Gojyo puffed on his cigarette, “that’s a little odd, but if it’s not her thing....”

“That’s not it at all,” Hakkai responded, sounding put-out. “It’s quite clear she enjoys it but she doesn’t wish for her lover to....” he made a vague gesture with his hand. “...if he won’t let her.....”

“What did you do to get punished twice?” Gojyo asked and then caught himself. “I mean, the hypothetical you. Or the hypothetical whoever.”

“I touched her hair,” Hakkai admitted softly, like affection was a sin, and Gojyo’s mind constructed the scene effortlessly. His mental image was close in kind but extremely distorted in degree. However, he was remembering an old friend and visible swelling and two men he’d beaten to death in an alley years ago, and can be excused for the inaccuracy.

[This is a reference to another, unwritten story, 'Forget Me Not']

“Fucker,” he muttered, taking a hard drag off his cigarette. Hakkai winced.

“Not you,” Gojyo said in weary tones.

Hakkai looked down at his folded fingers.

“Well, you always could...” Gojyo realized who he was talking to, and then decided not to suggest that idea.

[...Handcuff her to the bed and go down on her, whether she wanted to you or not.

If Gojyo had finished, Hakkai probably would have a.) hit him or b.) looked so ashamed of Gojyo that he would have rather gotten a smack. Also, if Hakkai had tried this, Yaone probably would have kicked him in the head.]

Hakkai looked at him, and then his mind went back to pondering how best to convince Yaone to repudiate her obsession with egalitarianism.

“It’s almost as if she has a score card in her head,” he said musingly.

[I do this all the freaking time. I have friends who 'give' more than I feel that I do, and I hate how I feel indebted to them, like I have to pay them back in this tit-for-tat way. I did it with my ex-boyfriend to. I can only hope that it was a mental process everyone else was unaware of. There's a psychological term for it, "norms of recprocity, only in my head *points to title*]

A scorecard was exactly what was in Yaone’s head. She kept track of everything regarding the social exchange of their relationship: who was more inconvenienced by their meetings, who brought the other food and the effort that had gone into making said sustenance, who had given the other more orgasms, etc. (Regarding the latter, Yaone was slightly annoyed that the refractory period post-climax favored the female; she seemed to perpetually trail behind Hakkai in that area.)

[I had four people try to help me make that last sentence clear, and I ended up going with the phrasing that they discommended, because if it was going to be unclear, it was going to be clear to ME at the very least.]

“Like, how good you are?” Gojyo asked, thinking of a couple women he’d bedded.

“No, more like who has given whom more pleasure.”

Gojyo chuckled. “That sounds like a fun game.”

Since the whole obsession with reciprocity sprang from Yaone’s need to make sure Hakkai didn’t receive less pleasure than she did, enabling the dissolution of their relationship to occur without unpleasant debts being owed, it wasn’t a fun game at all. (It was Villain B who was responsible for this particular schema regarding how affairs ended, which Hakkai didn’t find out until the twentieth time they had sex, when, post-coital, he’d gotten her nicely soused on peppermint schnapps and vanilla ice cream.)

[He got her drunk on purpose. And Yaone has really, really crappy taste in men in this fic. 'Schema' also another word I got from my psych classes.]

Hakkai’s lips twisted.

Gojyo thought for a moment. “So she didn’t hate it until you touched her hair?” he clarified.

“Yes, that’s right...” Hakkai started and then, “Goyjo, that’s a lovely idea!”

“Uh....” Gojyo said.

Hakkai tapped the tip of his finger against his lips. “If she’d be willing, that would solve everything nicely.”

Gojyo opened his mouth to ask, and then decided against it.

“Glad to help,” he said, patting Hakkai’s knee and retreating to his own bed.

The thirteenth time they had sex, in another hotel room (on an evening when Gojyo had bad luck with cards and didn’t make enough gambling to cover a room at the second hotel in town, which left him with the choice of interrupting Hakkai, sleeping on the floor of Goku and Sanzo’s room, or sleeping in Hakaryu. Willingly sleeping in the back of a Jeep while it lightly rained when there was a warm soft bed right there clearly won him the Best Best Friend Ever Award, Gojyo was sure, and decided that if he got sick from staying out all night in the rain, he was damn well going to cough on Hakkai until Hakkai caught his cold).

[I kind of want to drabble this - Gojyo sick and coughing on Hakkai in punishment.]

Yaone looked at Hakkai levelly.

“You’d like me to handcuff you to the bed?” she clarified.

“That’s correct,” Hakkai responded.

She nodded consideringly, mentally tabulating how far ahead she could get on the ‘who had given the other more orgasms’ scorecard with that scenario.

“And you’re quite sure about this?” she asked.

Hakkai leaned back, threaded his hands through the slats of the headboard and clicked the handcuffs closed.

“Well, then,” Yaone said, pulse rate increasing, “if you’re sure.”

Much, much later, limp and well-fucked, the tiny fraction of Hakkai’s brain that could still function considered how a situation that usually boded ill (i.e. being bound and at the enemy’s mercy) should be so exquisitely pleasurable.

[I'm not totally happy with the last line - I wish I had a way to make it sound a little more academic, but I wanted to end on an up-note, and make it clear that many orgasms where had and issues resolved with Hakkai's little plan.]