by Princess of Pain

NOTE: This was written for an ill-fated project, under the working title of "One". When the project failed, I changed the title. I feel that this could stand a little editing and expansion; if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

The cloud looked to Goku like one gigantic bruise. It was swollen and nasty, all rotting purple and green and black. His dangerous eyes cautiously kept tabs on it through Sanzo's bedroom window. It wasn't the cloud that really troubled him, although it kept giving birth to coils of light-snakes that had frighteningly loud hisses. It was something he could not define--a thickness in the air. A wet heaviness that made him want to crawl under the neat pine floorboards of the temple and hide. That, more than the promise of rain (which he liked, it was fun to play in, even if Sanzo hated it like poison), more than those light-snakes, weirded him right out.

"Na, Sanzo?"

No response. The monk was stretched out on the bed, glasses perched on his nose, face stuck in those inky papers he liked. Sanzo could be ignoring him, but he might not have heard him. Sanzo was strange like that. One of the abbots (he had no idea of his name; Goku knew his own and Sanzo's, and everyone else was an unimportant blur) had grumbled that a seventeen-year-old sanzo was "too moody and immature" to be a "proper spiritual guide". Goku had only a dim idea of what that meant, but he had no idea at all why they would hold Sanzo's age against him. He himself was older than anyone remembered--even he, in his haze of hunger and desert, had forgotten quite how old he was--and everyone still treated him like a stupid kid.

His scalp itched. It was the wetness of the air that did it. He felt like rolling around in a rockpile to scratch himself all over. He buried both his hands in his hair and gave himself a good, hard, satisfying scratch.

The newspapers crinkled. "Don't get fleas on my bed, bakasaru."

"I don't have fleas!" He sounded indignant, but really, he was glad to have evidence that Sanzo had not gone deaf.

A quiet grumble. Sanzo was in a bad mood. Goku wondered if it had to do with what the abbot said, about him being a teenager.

"Sanzo?"

Nothing.

"Sanzo?"

The newspaper made more dry noise as Sanzo turned a page. "What."

"What's going on outside?"

"Rain, stupid. It's going to rain. Or did you already forget what rain is?"

Goku was beginning to get used to Sanzo's idea of friendly conversation. Maybe the monk's "moody and immature" had something to do with it, but if that was true, it had nothing to do with Sanzo's age. Goku thought that Sanzo had been that way his entire life. "I did not! But it doesn't sound like rain, or feel like rain."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Bright, drilling violet eyes peered at him over the edge of the paper.

"It feels..." Goku fidgeted. He was curled up at the foot of the bed, next to Sanzo's stocking feet and denim-covered legs. His movements pulled the sheets out of alignment. His bright gold eyes were wide and serious, as he expressed his secret fear. "Sanzo, are the heavens gonna... you know, fall in?"

Violet eyes (Grapes, Goku thought, as almost all of the poetry of his soul was written like a recipe) gave him a killing glare, then disappeared behind the cheap, inked paper again. "If you're going to be a moron, do it somewhere else."

"But it sounds loud!"

"Thunder."

"And the light-snakes--"

"Lightning, bakasaru. Don't you know anything?"

"It's not my fault I don't know things. How am I supposed to learn if--"

"Shut up."

Goku went quiet. He felt a little like crying, as he always did when Sanzo handed down such ultimatums. It made him feel about as wonderful and useful as chicken bones and rotten fruit.

One of the light-snakes (lightnings, Sanzo had named them) laid an egg that hatched a sonic boom, and in that moment, Goku learned how to teleport. In one instant, he went from sitting like a good saru at Sanzo's feet, to completely burying himself under the blankets on Sanzo's bed. They smelled light and tart, like lemons, as they settled down around him. His scrawny body was pressed firmly against Sanzo's side.

Outside his cocoon, he heard the newspaper crackle again. He braced himself. Sanzo was going to fold it up and beat him with it, hectoring him all the while. He knew this like he knew that water was wet. What he got was Sanzo's voice, sounding almost (but not quite) amused: "It's just noise, Goku. It can't hurt."

"Doesn't feel right."

Thin patience: "Then what does it feel like?"

"It..." A thick, dreaded mat of earth-colored cowlicks poked out from beneath the sheets. The clunky diadem followed, then a set of golden eyes. Goku found himself with his head almost resting against Sanzo's arm. He could smell dry tobacco leaves and the squeaky smell of vinyl. "It feels like... last summer! Remember how the monks were building that big fountain for that one festival, and it looked so cool, and it was SO hot, and I jumped in? The abbots all wanted to switch me for it, and you told them they could, only they had to catch me, and they finally gave up three days later. Remember that?"

"It was five days, and yes."

"It feels like jumping into that pool. The air is wet."

"Humidity."

"What's that?" He tried to help Sanzo put it into terms that he would understand. "Can you eat it?"

"No. It's too thick to chew." The monk turned back to his newspapers.

Goku knew when he'd been unilaterally turned down. He sighed. Sanzo never played fair. He always treated Goku just like everyone else did--stupid. But it was different when Sanzo did it. When the abbots, or the acolytes and pages, made fun of him, it never really bothered him: they were a bunch of lonely and silly old men who had nothing more to do with their lives than to mock whoever didn't agree with them, and Goku was just aware enough to know that. Sanzo, though, was different. Sanzo normally mocked and rejected everything that the other residents of the temple did, except when it came to picking on him. Then, the monk was as equal-opportunity as everyone else.

When Sanzo called him names or hit him with the fan, it actually hurt.

All the same, the heretic never could be angry with his mentor for too long. Even if it hurt, something stopped him from getting too upset over the things that Sanzo did. He couldn't even say what this something was. Perhaps it was nothing more than flashes of brilliant blonde and stern beauty, that struck him in ways that, as someone just crossing over the borders of teenagehood, he did not understand. No matter the cause, only Sanzo could wound him, and only Sanzo could heal him--which, whether the monk knew it or not, he often did.

Aurum-glittering eyes looked over at the newspaper. Goku did not understand the monk's preoccupation with the news, anymore than he understood why Sanzo hated the rain, smoked too much, or thought it was funny whenever Goku broke something in one of the temple's shrines. To be honest, he didn't really understand most of what was written in the newspapers.

As always, the monkey's mouth worked far quicker than his brain. "Sanzo? What's that character mean?"

He winced back, fully expecting to be struck or to meet a wall of scathing sarcasm as painful as a dunking in a vat of acid. Instead--as before, when he'd hid beneath the sheets--he heard a strangely gentle quality in Sanzo's voice, as he said, "Kaze."

The saru smiled to himself. Sanzo was utterly impossible to predict. There was nothing in the monk that was wholly knowable. On one day, what might normally result in a beating or a quiet slur might result in what was happening right then--Sanzo's gun-calloused fingers whispering over the cheap newsprint, pointing out characters and telling Goku what they meant, only laughing at the monkey's questions. Years later, Goku would see Sanzo smile and promise a youthful acolyte that he would teach him how to play mah-johngg, and the heretic would smile at the familiarity of the monk's stealth gentleness.

Normally, he knew that Sanzo was selfish, and perhaps he was being selfish still, in his casual lesson. Never before, and never again, would the blonde look so absorbed and contented while the skies opened up and wept their saltless tears, crying with joy at the birth of new lightnings to zip across the sky.

~Owari~