Chapter 4: Drunken Intervention
The clatter of the key in the lock was wrong. It wasn’t Hakkai’s careful jiggle; it was a metallic scrape, followed by a thud against the doorframe. Then the door swung open, hitting the wall with a bang that made the small shrine in the corner rattle.
Gojyo stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the dim hall light, reeking of cheap beer and cigarettes. A lopsided grin split his face. “Miss me, you bastards? The game was a shitshow, so I—” His voice died.
His bloodshot eyes scanned the room, skipping over Hakkai on the futon, past Sanzo who had snapped upright in the bedroom doorway, and landed on Goku.
Goku was sitting propped against the headboard, the giant U-shaped pillow enveloping him, a half-empty bowl of broth on his lap. He looked pale, tired, younger than his years under the soft glow of Hakkai’s paper lantern.
Gojyo’s drunken brain tried to process. The pillow was ridiculous. The careful way Goku was sitting was wrong. The tension in the room was a physical layer, thick as smoke.
“The hell’s with the nest?” Gojyo snorted, lurching inside. He fumbled in the pocket of his jacket, pulling out a crumpled bundle of fabric. “Saw this at the conbini. Thought of you.” He tossed it.
It unfurled in the air—a tiny, bright red onesie with a cartoon robot on the front—and landed softly on Goku’s chest.
Goku looked down at it. His fingers touched the cheap, soft cotton. He said nothing.
Gojyo’s laugh was too loud for the quiet room. “For when you finally grow up, kid. Or for when you kidnap one, whichever comes first.” He stumbled toward the low table, aiming to collapse onto a cushion. “Got any beer left, Hakkai? I’m parched.”
His knee hit the table edge. The surface rattled. The bottle of prenatal vitamins, standing next to the new, neatly labeled binder, tipped over with a plastic clatter and rolled.
It stopped at Gojyo’s feet.
He looked down.
His eyes, slow with drink, read the label. His brain assembled the words. Prenatal. Advanced Formula. For Mother & Baby.
The silence that followed was absolute. The hum of the refrigerator seemed to swell to fill the entire world.
Gojyo’s head came up. His gaze, sharpening with a terrible, sobering clarity, moved from the bottle to Goku’s face, then to the onesie still draped over his hands. He looked at Hakkai, whose expression was calm, prepared. He finally looked at Sanzo, who hadn’t moved from the bedroom doorway, his face a carved mask.
“What,” Gojyo said, the word flat and hard, “is this?”
“It’s mine,” Goku said, his voice small but clear. He held the onesie up a little. “This… and the vitamins.”
Gojyo stared. He opened his mouth, closed it. A dozen jokes, crude and dismissive, clearly flashed behind his eyes and died unspoken. The evidence was too specific, too damning. The pillow wasn’t for comfort; it was a medical device. The exhaustion on Goku’s face wasn’t from a late night; it was a deep, biological drain. Sanzo’s defensive posture wasn’t just usual irritability; it was a guard stance.
“You’re shitting me.” It wasn’t a question. It was a plea.
“He’s not,” Hakkai said softly, removing his glasses to clean them on his shirt. A deliberate, calming gesture. “He’s ten weeks along. We’ve seen the doctor. We’ve heard the heartbeat.”
Gojyo flinched as if struck. He took an unsteady step back, his boot crunching on a forgotten rice cracker. “How? I mean… what the actual fuck, Hakkai? That’s not—” He gestured wildly at Goku. “He’s a guy!”
“We are aware,” Sanzo said, his voice like ice cracking.
“But… how?” Gojyo’s eyes were wide, darting between them, searching for the punchline, the reveal that this was some elaborate, twisted joke.
Goku pulled the waistband of his sweatpants down an inch, just below his navel. The skin was still smooth, flat. But there was a faint, dark line beginning to form, a vertical shadow he’d noticed that morning in the shower. A line he didn’t used to have. “I don’t know how,” he said, simply. “It just is. They say it’s… progressing. Fast.”
Gojyo stared at that line, the biological truth of it a slap. All the crude jokes he’d ever made, all the easy assumptions about bodies and functions, evaporated. This was in a realm beyond his understanding. His eyes lifted to meet Goku’s. He saw the fear there, yes, but also a stubborn, bewildered acceptance. And he saw the plea: Don’t make this weirder. Just see me.
The drunk, boisterous shell of him cracked. Something else, older and fiercely protective, shifted inside. He’d found Goku years ago, a scrap of a kid who didn’t know how the world worked. Some things never changed.
He turned abruptly, his movements suddenly purposeful despite the alcohol. He yanked his worn leather wallet from his back pocket, flipped it open, and dumped the entire contents onto the low table. A few crumpled bills, a handful of coins, a condom in a shiny wrapper, a lottery ticket. The pathetic sum of his immediate life.
“Alright,” he said, his voice rough. He swept a hand over the meager pile. “So that’s it. You’re having a kid.” He looked at Sanzo, a challenge in his red-rimmed eyes. “You got a plan, priest? Or are you just standing there looking constipated?”
Sanzo didn’t rise to the bait. “We’re managing.”
“‘Managing’?” Gojyo barked a laugh. “You got a binder and a fancy pillow. You need stuff. A lot of stuff. A crib. A car seat that isn’t a deathtrap. Doctor money.” He jabbed a finger at the money on the table. “We’re gonna need way more than this, dumbass.”
The word ‘we’ hung in the incense-scented air. It wasn’t a question. It was a declaration.
Goku’s breath hitched. He’d been braced for mockery, for disgust, for the chaotic energy of Gojyo’s disbelief. This blunt, practical allegiance was something else.
Hakkai smiled, a small, genuine thing. “I’ve started a list. The immediate concerns are nutritional and structural support. The longer-term financial logistics are… daunting.”
“Daunting,” Gojyo echoed, scooping his coins back into his wallet with a scrape. “Yeah. That’s one word for it.” He looked at Goku again, his gaze lingering on the dark line now hidden by fabric. “You scared?”
Goku nodded, once. “Yeah. My back hurts. And sometimes… it feels like things are moving inside. Like I’m not me anymore.”
Gojyo nodded as if this made perfect sense. “Sounds shitty.” He sank heavily onto a cushion, the fight gone out of him, replaced by a weary focus. “Okay. New rules. You don’t lift anything heavier than a remote. You eat what Hakkai tells you. And you,” he pointed at Sanzo, “stop smoking in the apartment. That shit’s gonna be a baby. It doesn’t need your nasty haze.”
Sanzo’s eyebrow twitched. “You reek of an entire brewery.”
“I’m leaving. The point stands.” Gojyo hauled himself back to his feet. He glanced at the red onesie, still in Goku’s hands. A faint, awkward redness crept up his neck. “That’s probably the wrong size. Or something. I don’t know.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ll see what I can pull together. Know a guy who does furniture delivery. Might be able to get a discount on a changing table or whatever.”
He was at the door before he turned around again. His bravado was gone, leaving something raw and uncomfortable in its place. “You call. If anything freaky happens. Any time. I don’t care if it’s 3 a.m. and you think you felt a weird bubble. You call.”
Then he was gone, the door clicking shut softly behind him, a stark contrast to his violent entrance.
The silence he left behind was different. It was no longer heavy with a secret, but stretched thin over a new, sprawling reality. They were four now. Not two with two bystanders.
Goku looked down at the little red onesie. He traced the silly robot’s face with his thumb. “He didn’t even ask who the… I mean, how it happened.”
“He knows it doesn’t matter,” Hakkai said, settling back with his book. “It’s here. That’s the only thing that concerns him.”
Sanzo finally moved from the doorway. He walked to the table, picked up the forgotten condom wrapper from Gojyo’s pile, and tossed it into the trash with a look of distaste. Then he picked up the few bills, straightened them, and placed them deliberately on top of Hakkai’s binder.
A seed fund. Pathetic and essential.
He walked to the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and looked at Goku. “He’s going to be insufferable.”
Goku’s smile was weak but real. “Yeah.” He leaned his head back against the pillow. The fear was still there, a cold stone in his gut. The phantom squeeze from earlier lingered in his muscle memory. But the room felt less like a sickroom and more like a command center. Mismanaged, underfunded, besieged. But manned.
He closed his hand around the soft cotton. Outside, they heard the distant roar of Gojyo’s motorcycle failing to start on the first try, then catching with a furious, defiant growl. The sound faded into the city’s hum, a promise of return.
The sound faded into the city’s hum, a promise of return. In its wake, the apartment felt both larger and more confined, the reality of Gojyo’s stunned acceptance solidifying their new perimeter. Goku stared at the closed door, the cheap red fabric still soft in his fist.
“He called it a baby,” Goku said quietly. He hadn’t realized the word would stick in his throat like that. “Not a ‘situation’ or a ‘problem.’” A profound, simple designation that was somehow more terrifying.
Sanzo picked up the abandoned broth bowl, his movements stiff. “He’s an idiot. But he’s useful.” He carried it to the sink, the clatter of ceramic too sharp for the room. The physical echo of the phantom squeeze seemed to linger in Goku’s abdomen, a mute reminder that biology didn’t care for useful idiots or command centers.
Hakkai retrieved the binder, opening it to a fresh page. “We should capitalize on the momentum. The nutritionist, Maya, is expecting a call tomorrow morning.” He wrote ‘Gojyo – furniture/logistics’ in his neat script, then underlined it. “We’ll need measurements. Your height, weight, baseline metabolic estimates.”
“I’m hungry again,” Goku interrupted, the declaration soft and slightly confused. He’d just eaten. The fullness was still there, a deep anchor in his pelvis, but beneath it a hollow, gnawing sensation had ignited. “Not for broth. For… something with crunch. And salt. A lot of salt.”
Sanzo turned, leaning against the counter. His gaze was analytical, dissecting. “That’s the second time in an hour. Your system is burning through everything.”
“It’s building a skeleton,” Hakkai said, matter-of-fact. He rose and went to the cupboard, pulling down a bag of rice crackers and a jar of pickled plums. He placed them on the table with a soft click. “Eat slowly. Let’s see if it stays down.”
Goku shuffled to the table, his movements careful, wary of that deep internal pressure. He cracked a cracker; the sound was explosively loud. The first taste was bland, then a flood of sheer, chemical need. He ate three in rapid succession, the crumbs scattering like snow on the dark wood.
“The squeezing feeling,” Goku mumbled around a mouthful. “It’s gone. But everything feels… crowded. Like all my organs are having a party and my lungs aren’t invited.”
Sanzo’s cigarette was halfway to his lips before he remembered Gojyo’s decree. He cursed, placing it back on the packet unlit. A minor surrender that felt enormous. “Describe ‘crowded.’ Is it pain, or pressure?”
“Pressure. Up here.” Goku gestured just below his ribcage. “And I have to pee. Again.” He pushed himself up, a hand going instinctively to the small of his back where the twinge had become a constant, dull companion.
They watched him shuffle to the bathroom, the door closing with a definitive click. The silence between Sanzo and Hakkai was now professional, a strategic hush.
“The physiotherapist,” Sanzo said, his voice low. “It can’t wait.”
“I have a name. She specializes in spinal and pelvic stabilization for…” Hakkai searched for the word.
“For people whose bodies are doing impossible things,” Sanzo finished, his tone flinty. He picked up the tiny onesie from where Goku had left it on the chair. The cartoon robot grinned up at him, a stark mockery of the complexity it represented. “He’s fixating on the sentiment. The object. It’s easier than the physiology.”
“It’s a symbol,” Hakkai corrected gently. “It makes the abstract concrete for him. A baby wears clothes. Therefore, there will be a baby. It’s linear logic. It comforts him.”
The toilet flushed. Pipes groaned in the walls. Goku emerged, looking no more relieved, blinking under the lantern light. “It’s not working,” he said, frustration bleeding into his voice. “The pressure’s worse when I sit. Only feels okay when I’m like this.” He demonstrated a slight, awkward squat, knees bent, hands braced on his thighs.
It was a posture of simple biomechanical relief, but it looked primal. It looked like someone trying to make space inside themselves. Sanzo’s clinical detachment fissured. He saw the strain in the line of Goku’s shoulders, the unfamiliar negotiation with gravity.
“Floor. Now,” Sanzo ordered, moving the coffee table aside with a scrape. “On your hands and knees. Try that.”
Goku complied, lowering himself with a grunt onto the tatami mat. He rocked forward onto his palms, his back arching slightly. He let out a long, shuddering breath. “Oh. Yeah. That’s… that’s way better.” The relief in his voice was palpable, immense.
Hakkai nodded, making another note. “Takes the weight of the uterus off the sacral nerve and the inferior vena cava. Textbook.”
“Don’t call it that,” Goku muttered, his face toward the floor. “Don’t call it a textbook. There isn’t one.” He rocked back slightly, a slow, instinctive movement. The loose fabric of his shirt dipped, revealing again that newly dark line bisecting the skin of his lower back, a stark topographic marker of change.
Sanzo watched him. He didn’t see a medical marvel or a problem to be solved in that moment. He saw Goku, on all fours on the floor, trying to breathe through the sheer physical occupancy of his own body. The protective fury that rose was hot and directionless. There was nothing to fight.
His phone buzzed on the table, a harsh digital chirp. A text from an unknown number. Heard from the redhead. Don’t buy anything. Have a crib. Storage unit B-14. Code 5567. Be there tomorrow 10 a.m. - J.
Gojyo worked fast. The message was pure logistics, no questions, no sentiment. An offering of a crib, a concrete container for the concept.
“It seems,” Hakkai said, reading the message over Sanzo’s shoulder, “we have an appointment with a crib.”
Goku, still on the floor, turned his head to look at them. His hair fell into his eyes. “Is it a nice crib?”
The question was so naive, so divorced from the discussions of nerves and veins and metabolic rates, that Sanzo almost laughed. The sound caught in his chest, strange and foreign. “We’ll see tomorrow.”
He moved to sit on the floor beside Goku, his back against the couch. He didn’t offer a hand, didn’t utter comfort. He just sat there, a solid line of heat and presence next to Goku’s arched form. Hakkai resumed his seat, the scratch of his pen the only sound.
They stayed like that for a long time, a silent triad orbiting the simple, profound fact of Goku’s relieved breathing. The city’s noise was a distant river. The phantom squeeze was a receded tide. For now, the pressure was managed. For now, they had a crib to look at. The next tangible thing. The narrative could only move forward one concrete, ridiculous, essential object at a time.
The crib was in Storage Unit B-14, but it wasn’t alone. It was buried beneath a monolithic landscape of someone else’s forgotten life. A cracked leather recliner sat atop a mound of cardboard boxes. A bicycle missing a front tire leaned against a stack of yellowed magazines. The air was thick with the smell of dust and damp concrete.
“Charming,” Sanzo said, his voice flat in the cavernous space.
Gojyo, looking distinctly green and clutching a takeout coffee like a lifeline, kicked a box labeled ‘Xmas.’ “J said it was in the back. The dark wood one. See it?”
Goku saw it. The curved headboard poked out behind an old television. His lower back throbbed in sympathetic protest. “We have to move all that?”
“We,” Sanzo said, stripping off his jacket, “do. You stand there and narrate.”
Hakkai was already assessing the logistical puzzle, glasses glinting in the weak overhead light. “If we shift the chair to the left, we can create a pathway. Gojyo, take that end.”
The next twenty minutes were a symphony of grunts, sliding cardboard, and Gojyo’s creative cursing. Dust motes danced in the strips of light from the open door, settling in their hair and lungs. Goku watched, hands pressed into the aching small of his back, feeling utterly useless. His body felt like a sentient bruise.
Finally, the path was clear. The crib emerged from the shadows, a sturdy, old-fashioned thing made of dark cherry wood. It was simple, with high, slatted sides. One of the drop-down rails was slightly askew.
“Hinge is loose,” Sanzo observed, wiping sweat from his brow with a forearm.
“Nothing a screwdriver can’t fix,” Hakkai said, running a hand over the smooth wood. “It’s well-made. Solid.”
Gojyo smirked, sipping his coffee. “Told you J had taste. Probably stolen from a fancy hotel.”
“I don’t care,” Goku whispered. He stepped forward, his fingers reaching out to touch a slat. The wood was cool and smooth. He could imagine a blanket here, a tiny form there. The phantom squeeze in his gut seemed to pulse, a reminder of the eventual occupant. The abstraction of the ultrasound image, the kicking foot, suddenly collided with this physical object. A vessel. A container for the impossible.
His throat tightened. He blinked hard.
“Hey,” Gojyo said, his teasing edge gone. “It’s just a wood box, kid. Don’t get all weepy.”
“Shut up,” Goku said, but there was no heat in it. He took a deep, dusty breath. “How do we get it home?”
Dismantling the crib was a more intricate operation. Hakkai directed with calm precision, labeling each bolt and bracket with bits of masking tape. Sanzo’s hands, usually meant for sutures or lighting cigarettes, were surprisingly deft with a wrench. Gojyo held pieces steady, his hangover gradually receding under the focus of the task.
Goku’s job was to sit on an upturned crate and hand them tools. The pressure in his abdomen shifted from a squeeze to a deep, pervasive ache, as if his insides were slowly being stretched. He kept his mouth shut, passing a screwdriver to Sanzo.
Sanzo’s eyes flicked to him, then back to the bolt. “Talk.”
“It’s just achey,” Goku said.
“Where.”
“Everywhere. Like all my ligaments are soup.”
Sanzo paused, the wrench hanging from his fingers. He looked at Hakkai. “We’re calling the physio as soon as we’re back. Not tomorrow. Today.”
The crib, reduced to a collection of polished parts, fit into the back of Hakkai’s car. The empty storage unit felt like a stage after the play had ended. They drove in silence for a while, the reality of the assembled cargo heavy in the space between them.
“So,” Gojyo said from the passenger seat, breaking the quiet. “Kid’s gonna need a name.”
Goku, slumped in the back beside Sanzo, stared out the window. “It’s too early.”
“It’s never too early. Gives you something to call it besides ‘the alien.’” Gojyo glanced back. “Got any frontrunners? Don’t say ‘Goku Jr.’ I’ll throw up in Hakkai’s car.”
A faint smile touched Goku’s lips. “No. Nothing like that.” He hadn’t let himself think that far. Naming made it real in a new, terrifying way. It bestowed personhood. “Maybe… something that sounds strong.”
“Strong,” Sanzo echoed, his gaze fixed ahead. His hand rested on his knee, close to Goku’s. Not touching, just present.
“Yeah. Because this feels…” Goku trailed off, his hand drifting to his lower belly. He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to. The weird, relentless biology of it felt like a siege. A strong name would be a charm against it.
Back at the apartment, the parts were stacked neatly in a corner of the living room. They stood around the pile like archaeologists around a disassembled relic. The next step felt monumental. Where did it even go? There was no nursery, no designated space. Just their crowded, messy life.
“Bedroom,” Sanzo stated, answering the unspoken question. “We’ll move the dresser against the far wall. The crib can go where it is now.”
Goku imagined it, the crib in the dim space beside their bed. He’d be able to reach out and touch it in the night. The thought was both comforting and profoundly unsettling. Their sanctuary was about to be colonized.
The phantom squeeze returned, a sharp, clamping pressure that made him gasp and bend forward.
“Goku?” Hakkai was at his side instantly.
“It’s back. The squeeze.” His words were tight. He braced his hands on his knees, riding the wave of it. It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was a profound, internal compression, a fist of muscle he had no control over.
Sanzo’s phone was already out, dialing the number for Dr. Evans’s service. He relayed the symptoms in a clipped monotone, his eyes never leaving Goku’s curled form. “Ten weeks. Yes. No bleeding. It lasted about thirty seconds. It’s subsiding now.” A pause. “We’ll be there.”
He hung up. “They want to check the cervical length. Rule out incompetence.” The medical term hung in the air, ugly and accusatory.
“What does that mean?” Gojyo asked, his voice uncharacteristically small.
“It means,” Hakkai said, helping Goku to slowly straighten up, “they need to see if his body is holding everything closed as it should. The weight and the growth… it’s a lot of stress.”
The hospital visit was a blur of fluorescent lights and cold gel. The ultrasound wand, a different, more invasive shape this time, showed the grainy foot still waving. The technician measured the cervix on the screen, her face a careful blank. Dr. Evans came in, studied the images, and nodded once.
“Length is stable. Good,” she said. “What you’re experiencing are Braxton Hicks contractions. Your uterine muscle is practicing. It’s just… unusually proactive given the timeline. You need to hydrate obsessively. Rest. The physiotherapist will teach you positions to mitigate the discomfort.”
“Practicing,” Goku repeated dully from the table. The paper crinkled under him. It felt less like practice and more like a warning shot.
They sent him home with a pamphlet and a stronger warning to track the frequency. The apartment felt different when they returned. The crib parts in the corner seemed to mock them. A project for a future that felt precarious, contingent on the whims of an overzealous muscle.
No one suggested assembling it. Not tonight.
Goku went straight to the bedroom, crawling onto the mattress and assuming the hands-and-knees position that brought relief. Sanzo followed, sitting on the floor beside him with his back against the bed. He didn’t speak. He just sat in the dark, listening to Goku’s breathing.
After a while, Gojyo appeared in the doorway, a shadow against the light from the living room. He tossed something onto the bed near Goku’s head. It was the red robot onesie, freshly washed and folded.
“For morale,” he grunted, and then retreated.
Goku reached out, his fingers finding the soft cotton. He pulled it closer, tucking it under his cheek like a pillow. The squeezing had stopped. The ache remained, a constant companion. Outside, the city buzzed, indifferent. Inside, they were three men holding vigil over a collection of wooden parts and a terrifying, powerful practice.
In the living room, Hakkai opened the binder. Under ‘Today’s Date,’ he wrote: Braxton Hicks confirmed. Cervix stable. Crib acquired, not assembled. He paused, then added a final note, not strictly medical but utterly essential: Gojyo washed the onesie. The narrative was advancing, not in leaps, but in these small, defiant, human increments.