RSS Feed

 Home
 Most Recent
 
 Authors
 Titles
 Help
 Search
 Log In
 
 

Noli me tangere by wongkk
[Reviews - 2] Printer Chapter or Story

- Text Size +
Behind closed doors

Sanzo had known that this moment would come.

He had always known that, one day, the boy would have grown old enough, bold enough, - maybe wise enough, and perhaps desperate enough, to challenge the tacit rejection in Sanzo’s attitude. There would come the day when Goku would confront Sanzo, try to persuade him or wear him down. Or even force him.

The boy’s behaviour had been getting worse recently, getting noticeable. Even in public, he had been looking at Sanzo for far too long; he had been sitting too close to him and putting his hands where it was awkward for Sanzo to avoid brushing against them. It was all very adolescent. And it made Sanzo feel old.

Feeling-old-Sanzo was sitting by the open window, staring at the night sky as though he were drinking it dry. He wasn’t even smoking. Just using his eyes to refresh the thirst of his battered soul.

There was a knock on the door. Then a “Sanzo?”

There was no light in the room and Sanzo remained silent, but the monkey came in anyway, walked over and stood next to him. For a moment.

Then, the moment he had expected came: Goku leaned towards him and slid an arm along Sanzo’s shoulder, under the golden hair and into the warmth of his neck.

The priest shrugged angrily and snapped, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Goku tightened his hold on the monk and his breath came forward like a spy, as he said softly, “You know what I’m doing. I’m touching. Sanzo -”

Sanzo stood up suddenly, breaking the boy’s grip. “No.”

“Why not?” The question was a demand.

“I can’t.” The answer was a fact.

Goku brushed up against Sanzo again, stretching out for his hands – which the monk put behind him, out of reach.

“You CAN, Sanzo. You just won’t. You just won’t let yourself.”

In the dark, Sanzo could sense – almost smell – the boy’s wanting. Wanting to give. Wanting to receive. Wanting to feel and be felt. Wanting to comfort and be comforted. And just wanting.

“Why can’t we, Sanzo? Hakkai and Gojyo do it. I’ve seen Gojyo put his arm round Hakkai’s shoulders, and he doesn’t get pushed away.”

“It’s different for them. They are - more equal, not least in their freedom.” Whilst Sanzo was speaking, Goku moved round him and took hold of the priest’s hands, trying to find a response in the limp fingers.

“But just holding wouldn’t hurt anybody. Why can’t we, Sanzo? It wouldn’t hurt anybody – and it would stop me hurting.”

Sanzo snatched his hands away from the boy’s insistent grasping. “Tch! Don’t give me such a ridiculous argument! If you are hurting, it’s because you’re making your own wounds; self-harming. Don’t blame me for that!”

Goku raised his voice. “It really does hurt Sanzo. I’m so – so crushed with trying to hide it all the time. It’s there every minute, every day. It really does hurt me!”

“Goku, most people have this type of hurt when they are growing up. Most people want somebody to touch, or to hold, in the way that you do.”

Sanzo took a step back and braced himself to deliver a rational, but simple, explanation. “It’s just that most people aren’t continually travelling, so they get to know a larger range of people and can make better choices. I agree it is hard for you, because the only people you’re with, long enough to get to know well, are Hakkai and Gojyo and me.”

There was a short pause and then Goku announced firmly into the darkness, “It wouldn’t make any difference. It wouldn’t matter how many people I knew, or for how long. You’d always be special. You’ll always be the sun for me!”

“Goku! No-one’s that special! You have to trust me: you can feel the same way about anyone else who attracts you. It just doesn’t seem like it when you don’t have any experience.”

Goku tossed his head. “How do you know what it’s like? You don’t have any experience. You’re a prie -”

“We’re not talking about me, idiot! It wasn’t me who came into your room and put my hands where they weren’t invited. Tch! If you even have to start this discussion with someone, there’s something not right with the situation. Can’t you see that? If you have to ask someone - if they are not willing to give to you without being asked - what is their giving worth? And what is your taking, except wrong?”

The monk began to turn away, to take a step towards the door. Goku caught his arm roughly and wrenched him back. Sanzo could feel the boy shaking as he almost shouted, “How can it be wrong when I love you so much? When I’ve got a Sanzo-shaped hole in my heart? It really hurts to have a hole like this!”

“Then stop digging it deeper, monkey! Stop thinking about me so often; stop looking at me so much. Stop trying so hard to get closer to me, to touch me, to stroke me. Stop imagining THINGS about me – and with me. Remember all my – my flaws. Remember how many times I hit you and shout at you and refuse you the food you want to eat!”

The priest shook off Goku’s hold and stood squarely in his face. “If you want to look at me, see me as I am. Do you understand?” By daylight, the bleakness in Sanzo’s eyes would have shown that he was all too practised in this technique for un-love, but it was night and his expression could not be seen.

“But you’re so beautiful, Sanzo.” The words should have been a compliment, but the voice sounded defeated, thwarted, hopeless.

Sanzo waved a hand towards the window. “So are the stars. So is the moon and the mountain – and your breakfast.”

Goku said “Don’t. You’re teasing me.”

Sanzo sighed. “I’m only teasing you a little. You have the same cup to drink, whether you take it with sugar or not.” And in the dark, and because he thought it fair to console where he had denied, he put his arm around Goku’s shoulders.

The boy turned into him and began to lower his face into the curve of Sanzo’s neck, reaching with his lips for the soft skin under the priest’s ear. The priest held him off, gently but with such strength that it would hurt both of them to close the distance between. “Goku, I can’t do this. Don’t you understand? If I did, I would no longer be the Sanzo that you say you love. If I did this, I would be too weak to be your sun.”

Although he could see nothing, Sanzo knew that Goku was crying now. Sure enough, the heat of a tear landed on the back of the priest’s hand.

“Come on, Goku. You’re tired. It’s time to go to your own room and get some rest.” He had spoken kindly but there was no reaction. “Come on.” He would have added, “I’m tired too” but it would have been a lie.

He moved the reluctant body slowly towards the door, in what felt like an awkward parody of dance. Goku’s weight was leaning into Sanzo’s grip as though he had half-fainted, or had forgotten his body. “Come on,” repeated Sanzo without emotion. “You’ll only feel worse if you stay here any longer.”

He could have added, “I’ll only feel worse if you stay here any longer,” and that would not have been a lie.

By the rushlight in the corridor, he watched the unhappy figure shuffle its feet to the stairs.

Goku did not look back. His eyes were blinded by his tears and by the opaque despair of knowing that, despite anything Sanzo said and despite the reasons that Sanzo had held like a shield against him tonight, in the morning, he – Son Goku - would wake to a day in which Sanzo was the only sun and where Sanzo was killing him with his radiance.

Sanzo saw Goku out of sight and then quietly closed the door. He stripped off his top and then his jeans, folded them carelessly and threw them onto a chair.

There was a rustle and an unhurried creak as he climbed into bed.

The sheets were very cold. It was his own fault; he had left the window open for so long. He lay on his back, feeling the slight damp of the mattress pushing its chill into his flesh. He lay with his eyes wide open, staring through the darkness at the ceiling.

In his throat, he could still feel the discomfort of the hard lump that Goku had put there – as though the confused creature was giving back a piece of the very rock from which his supernatural being had, so many years before, been delivered.

Sanzo’s whole body was tense, tightened on a rack of emotions which he could not afford to release.

Could he have handled the situation any better?

Probably someone else would have managed better, but, for Sanzo, he had done all that was possible. He had not been angry, or unreasonable, or unsympathetic to the boy’s youth. And he had not allowed Goku to hear any of the pain which came from his own past affection and loss, and which howled inside him like a wolf baying at the moon of his sanity.

In his role as guardian and protector, he had done everything he could.

His whole body was tense, rigid against the urge to follow after Goku and to let the selfish, animal appetite for warm, physical comfort win for once, just this once -.

Only he knew it would not be just the “once”: inevitably, the “once” would begin a disastrous unravelling of all his discipline, the one and only thing in which Genjyo Sanzo could truthfully answer, “I am” when his beloved master commanded him, “Be strong.”

In the black air of his unsleeping, Sanzo’s ears still reported to his consciousness. There was silence.

There was silence save for the sound of his own heart-beat, repeating its call from the lonely cave beneath his ribs.

Calling again and again to the man who already given everything – even his life - in reply.

Skin Design by Amie of Intense-Illusions.net