Shit List
by Helena Handbasket

            Tequila was on Gojyo’s shit list.  Big time.  And so was the sun, which blazed wickedly into his throbbing eyes.  And so was Hakuryuu, whose negligent dearth of shock-resistors meant his aching body, especially his head, was constantly being subjected to bumps and jerks.  And so was Goku, who looked a tad green about the gills and kept making “halumph” noises that wracked his form, like he was about to hurl.  This made Gojyo want to hurl – all over Sanzo’s stupid, shiny head for making Gojyo get in an open-air jeep with a hangover.

            It had been one of those mornings when Gojyo woke up hammered without realizing it, gliding through life in a hazy interpretation of consciousness.  The hangover had struck around one o’clock, just after they’d hit the road, and he’d spent the last few hours feeling like he’d just been drop-kicked down the stairs into the deepest pit in hell.

            “It’s a beautiful day,” Hakkai sighed from the driver’s seat, glancing about the landscape with serene pleasure.

            Sanzo’s contemptuous grunt summed up just what Gojyo thought about that remark.  It would have earned Hakkai a spot on his shit list if he wasn’t already on there.  Kinda.  Probably.  Anyway, his driving was on the list, even if he himself might or might not be exempt.

            The problem was that Gojyo couldn’t remember whether Hakkai should be on his shit list, because his memory of the previous night was one big stretch of alcohol-sodden blank.  He remembered getting drunk at the bar and drunker in his room.  He remembered sneaking tequila to Goku in increasing quantities, and that the evening had degenerated into shirtless wrestling and markering, despite Hakkai’s apparent sobriety.  All three of them were covered in barely-legible symbols of a highly insulting nature.  But the latter part of this event was blurred into an incoherent jumble, and Gojyo was painfully curious about how the incident had ended and just how much of an ass he’d made of himself.

            As the jeep trundled along, making it feel as if they were driving over a landscape of boulders, Gojyo squeezed his eyes closed to shut out the sun and tried his damnedest to reconstruct the previous evening.  An image leapt to his mind’s eye, of Gojyo trying to kiss Hakkai and being pointedly rebuffed by a turned head.  Bad sign.  This rejection was contradicted by other images, of Hakkai naked and writhing on the sheets, hands gripping Gojyo’s hair, of Gojyo pinned down by his wrists while Hakkai’s free hand slithered possessively across his body.  Of swollen lips and livid, dripping cocks, and smooth, pale ass cheeks, flesh slightly indented as they were parted to make way for a probing tongue.  He saw the lean muscles of Hakkai’s arms and how they trembled slightly under the strain of supporting his weight against the mattress.  He felt his own knees pressed tight against his shoulders, and in another flash the boneless contentment of being thoroughly sated, arms wrapped around broad shoulders and a mass of black hair tickling his nose.

            Gojyo saw all of this, but except for the part about him being rejected, it was nothing new.  These were familiar dream-images, increasingly intense in recent months; the kind that made him wake up sweating in the middle of the night and sneak off to the john for an emergency toss.  None of it had actually happened, which was kind of a relief.  He just hoped that he’d had the good sense to pass out before making any foolish propositions, or that, despite appearances, Hakkai had been drunk enough to forget said propositions ever occured.

            Because the thing was: Gojyo wasn’t interested in Hakkai that way, not really.  Because Gojyo wasn’t gay.  Sure, just the thought of Hakkai splayed out on a bed, naked and willing, made his dick twitch like a hyperactive kid jacked up on sugar, but it was a complicated issue.  Sanzo might think he was the one in charge, and when it came to the quest and opening doors that were closed to the unwashed masses he probably was, but the reality of their lives was day to day existence: eating, drinking, sleeping, getting from one place to the other… and in that realm, Hakkai was the one calling the shots.  Hakkai was the boss of them, and that was okay because Gojyo knew that without him their party would be a hot mess in a ditch.  The thought of fucking Hakkai was appealing because it meant that for once, Hakkai would be submitting to him.  Gojyo could take control, make him beg and plead and emit amusing noises.  This wasn’t about flinging himself into some homo soap opera – it was about relationship equity. 

            As he pursued this line of reasoning, Gojyo glossed over the fact that his fantasies cast him as the fuckee as often as not, but argued to himself that this was just a clever ruse on the part of his subconscious to convince Dream Hakkai into submitting to his dominant whims.  Yeah, that was it.  Dream Hakkai wasn’t stupid, and Gojyo was willing to undergo a little give and take if it got him what he wanted.

            With a little smile of satisfaction, Gojyo cracked his eyes open and pillowed his hands behind his head, less perturbed by his pounding headache than he had been before this stint of introspection.  Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught Hakkai glancing back at him, and his heart leapt and thudded.  The thing went crazy over just a little look, stupid organ.  That did it.  His heart was on the shit list too, for making him admit that, okay, maybe he was just a teensy bit gay.

            *          *          *

            “Spill it, monkey.  What exactly happened last night?”  Sanzo stood with his hands on his hips, head framed in the deep gold corona of the afternoon sun.  They had pulled over next to a brook so they could wash up before they hit the next village, a particularly vital undertaking given that all four of their faces were marred by the stark black of permanent marker.  Gojyo had wandered off to take a leak somewhere downstream, while Hakkai was busy scrubbing his forehead with abrasive mud from the riverbank.  To Goku’s dismay, the monk had waylaid him before he could make his escape.

            In response to this inquiry, Goku offered a non-committal shrug.  “Nothin’.  We just got a little goofy and wrote on each other, that’s all.”

            “That much is obvious,” said Sanzo, keeping his voice to a low growl, quiet enough so Hakkai couldn’t hear, “but did anything else happen?”

            “Else?” Goku parroted.  “Like what?”

            “Like were the other two acting… oddly?”

            “Well, Gojyo was drunk off his ass and he didn’t throw up.  Does that count?”

            “No.”

            “And Hakkai doesn’t usually write on people…”

            A bulgy-veined hand gripped its fan menacingly.  “Goku…”

            He took a timorous step backward, instinctively wary of the fan despite the innocuousness of the beatings it generally doled out.  “Look, Sanzo, I don’t know what you’re asking.  Gojyo passed out, then me and Hakkai stayed up talking until I got sleepy and he put me to bed.”

            “And then what happened?”

            “Um… I went to sleep.”

            Sanzo closed his eyes, as if to summon a store of patience that Goku knew was non-existent.  “Let me spell it out for you, ape.  I need to know if anything happened between Gojyo and Hakkai.  Anything…” his words failed him here, and he resorted to a vague hand gesture that Goku understood, but would never admit to understanding, represented a hearty ass-pounding.

            “Seriously,” said Goku before the gestures could become more graphic.  “Like I said, I went to sleep.  But what’s the big deal?  If they did…” Here an imitation of Sanzo’s gesture, “what would be the problem?”

            “The fucking problem is that our priority is the mission, and if those two start…” gesture, “-ing, they’re going to fuck everything up.  We keep getting distracted by bullshit that has nothing to do with Gyumao’s resurrection, and I want it to stop.”

            “You’re such a control freak,” Goku retorted.  “Sorry, but I can’t help you.  I don’t know anything.”

As Sanzo inspected his features for any hint of prevarication, Goku did his best to maintain a look of pure, wide-eyed innocence.  He’d told the truth, technically, and that was all he was going to spill.  Telling Sanzo about the “Property of Cho Hakkai” label that had been meticulously inscribed on a very intimate region of Gojyo’s anatomy wasn’t going to get him out of a beating, and it would put Sanzo in an even fouler mood.  Goku had only seen the writing because he and Gojyo had been lounging in the hot springs that morning, so Sanzo was unlikely to ever find out about it, and that was just as well since it was the type of thing he always blew out of proportion.  For Goku, playing dumb was the obvious solution.

            “You’re worthless,” Sanzo hissed.  “Get out of my sight.”

            Goku didn’t have to be asked twice; he shot out of range before Sanzo reconsidered a violent application of his fan. Scrambling down the sloping bank, he squatted next to Hakkai, copying his movements as he dug his fingers into the silt, filtered the finer grains in the stream, and rubbed the coarse remnants methodically against his skin.

            In truth, Goku was kind of curious about what had happened the night before.  All he could be certain of was that the removal of pants was involved, which actually sounded kind of fun.  It might have been just an extension of their innocent game, but Goku had seen the way Hakkai and Gojyo had been glancing at each other, all sly with lowered lids whenever the other one wasn’t looking.  He knew exactly what was on their minds; it had been obvious, yet not so overt as to compel him to make a diplomatic withdrawal that would betray his lack of cluelessness.

            The other guys always treated him like a kid, assumed he never thought about sex, but he was a teenager, after all.  One of the reasons he was so fixated on eating was the fact that he could get food every day.  Sex?  Not so much.  Not ever, in fact.  Gojyo’s offhand comment about throwing him naked into bed with Sanzo had jarred him temporarily out of this self-protective mindset, his furious blush masked by the reddening effects of the tequila.  After that, thoughts of sex had taken over his brain, which sucked because he wasn’t going to get any, but that latent ache was somewhat alleviated by good-natured wrestling.  Not that there was anything sexual about grappling with Gojyo and Hakkai, but it had felt nice for once just to be touched, to feel the warm weight of another body pressing against him.  And his enhanced awareness had also made him more acutely conscious of the subtext behind actions and gestures, making the electricity of unresolved tension between the others palpably obvious.

            So, something had probably happened between them the previous night, and Goku was cool with that, since it seemed like they were both really into it.  Hakkai was the kindest person he had ever met, and while Gojyo could be a blowhard, he always showed his true loyalty when it counted.  Besides, Gojyo’s companionship made their long journey a lot more fun.  Goku wanted them both to be happy, and if they found happiness in each other, then all the better.  And that was why he hadn’t said anything to Sanzo, who masked his overprotective nature with an outward pretense of indifference.  In a misguided effort to shelter Hakkai and Gojyo from heartbreak, the monk would probably try to stamp out their one chance at happiness.

            Splashing water on his face, Goku looked up at Hakkai with one of those everyday smiles that didn’t really mean anything, and Hakkai smiled back, his forehead rubbed red and raw by the abrasive silt.  Despite his efforts, the permanent marker was as evident as before.

            “It’s not working,” Goku murmured, rubbing the sensitized skin of his cheek.  “We’re not going to get this stuff off.”

            Hakkai sighed.  “I feared as much.  I guess it’s on to Plan B.”

            “Plan B?”

            “We need hot water and plenty of soap.  That means an inn.”

            “But Sanzo said we couldn’t stay at an inn until the writing wore off.”

            “He said that, yes,” Hakkai smiled, “but just suppose we should happen to have an unusually bumpy journey, so we’re all sore all over from the ride.  And imagine that we chance to pull into a village just around the time we’d be bedding down for the night.”

            Goku chewed his lip in thought.  “Sanzo’d be as miserable as the rest of us.  He’d probably give in and let us stay in town.”

            At Hakkai’s meaningful nod, Goku’s eyes widened with enlightenment.  “You mean you’ve been driving rough on purpose all day, just to trick Sanzo into letting us off easy?”

            “’Trick’ is such an ugly word,” said Hakkai.  “Let’s call it ‘strategy’, shall we?”

            Goku leapt to his feet, clapping gleefully.  “Ha, ha!  Gojyo’s been hungover since we hit the road.  He’s going to kill you when he finds out.”

            Hakkai’s eyes twinkled.  “Then let’s keep this just between us.  I’ll make it up to him some other way.”

            I bet you will, thought Goku, and with a triumphant grin he scampered back to the jeep.

            *          *          *

            Although his hangover had finally subsided, it seemed to Gojyo that the second leg of their day’s travel was even rougher than the first.  It was like they had run over every bump and pothole on the continent.  Add to that the prospect of roughing it that night, per Sanzo’s high and mighty orders, and Gojyo was simmering in self-pity by the time a violet dusk fell across the plain.

            He still hadn’t pieced together the events of the previous night, but Hakkai wasn’t acting like anything significant had gone down, and he certainly wasn’t pissed off, so Gojyo couldn’t have done anything offensive – pathetic and desperate, maybe, but nothing offensive.  Hakkai was the kind of guy who always let you know when you were on his bad side.  It was never anything histrionic, just a blade-like narrowing of eyes that said, “You know what you did, asshole,” and left you wallowing in shame for a couple of days before he got over it.  So… no bridges burned.  That was good at least.  There was still a chance that at the next opportunity Gojyo could achieve relationship equity by filling up Hakkai’s ass with some good, old-fashioned half-demon dick.  The thought sent a shudder of pleasure through his body, and suddenly he knew for certain that nothing had happened between him and Hakkai.  Drunken lout or no, that wasn't the kind of thing he was likely to forget.  He let himself drift into a pleasantly sensual dreamworld where Hakkai eagerly submitted to his every sexual whim until they hit a particularly bad patch of road and he was peremptorily dumped on his ass, bruising himself on the hard jeep bed while Goku snickered in amusement.

            Gojyo’s muffled swearing triggered a similar sentiment in Sanzo, who said, “Your driving sucks, Hakkai.  We should stop for the night while there’s still something left of us.”

            “Just a little bit further,” came the response in mollifying tones.  “We’re low on supplies, and I think I see a village in the distance.”

            “What village?  I don’t see anything.”

            “There on the horizon.  Can’t you see the flicker of torches?”

            “Tch.  There’s nothing, Hakkai.  You probably got bits of bug splattered on your monocle after that ingenious detour through the swamp.”

            “No, no, I see it too!” Goku prompted.  “Right at the base of those hills.  Please, Sanzo?  If you’re going to make us sleep outside, we should at least have a decent meal.”

            Sanzo narrowed his eyes dubiously, and Gojyo squinted into the darkness, but he saw no sign of the alleged torches.  Still, if it got him a hot meal he sure as hell wasn’t going to complain.

            At length, Sanzo relented.  “Fine, we’ll go to the village.  But everyone put your cloaks on with the hoods up.  If anyone sees our faces like this, you’re all vulture meat.”

            Half an hour later, they rolled into a village so tiny it barely qualified as such.  Though it was still fairly early, all the houses were dark, and Gojyo marveled that Goku and Hakkai had been able to see the scant flickering of the torches that lined the market promenade from so far distant.  They passed a number of shops, all of which were locked up for the night.

            “Oh dear,” murmured Hakkai, “this appears to be one of those communities that has instituted a curfew since the demon uprising.  Nothing will be open at this hour.”

            Sanzo snorted in irritation.  The hard day’s drive had been rough on all of them, but he seemed particularly put out.  “Well, this was a waste of time.  Keep driving, Hakkai.  We’ll camp in the woods at the outskirts of town.”

            “Wait!” Goku cried.  “I see a light down the street!  Something’s open!”

            Gojyo’s gaze followed the implied path of Goku’s pointing finger, and with effort managed to make out a single glowing window standing out in the stretch of blackness.  As they approached, the diffuse light illuminated a worn wooden sign, swinging slightly in the night breeze.  'The Cozy Home Inn.'

            Hakkai pulled up to idle in front of the inn and shook his head in disappointment.  “Looks like we’re out of luck.  This is the only place that’s open, and they won’t feed us unless we’re customers.”  With a sigh that Gojyo recognized as not wholly ingenuous, he shifted the jeep back into drive and prepared to chauffer them away.

            “Just wait a second, okay?”  Sanzo pinched the bridge of his nose as he considered whether his authority or his comfort was more important to him.  Finally, he decided on the latter.  “Listen up, dickheads.  We’ll stay here tonight, even though it’s more than any of you deserve.”  His expression was threatening and severe, but it was pretty hard to take him seriously with a drawn-on curly-cue moustache taking up half of his face.  “Gojyo, you’re the front man.  Slap on that butt-ugly headband of yours, and you’ll look about as normal as you ever do.”

            “Yes, sir,” Gojyo replied with facetious exuberance, reaching behind his head to tie the fabric of the headband in place.  With a deft leap, he vaulted out of the jeep and trotted around to lean against the passenger door.  “How’s this?  Do I look respectable now?”

            “Not remotely.  You’re still a leering pervert, but at least it’s not explicitly written out.  Dimmer minds just might be fooled.  Now shut up and go get us some rooms.”

            With a broad grin, Gojyo swiped the charge card out of Sanzo’s proffering fingers and shrugged into his hood, swaggering into the dim but relatively blinding light of the inn.

            The girl working there was kind of cute in an ordinary way, just plain enough to be easily swayed by his trademark charisma.  “Evening, Gorgeous,” he purred.  “I’d like your four best rooms, please.”  Here he flashed the credit card, its shimmering surface making the girl’s eyes go wide.

            “I… I’m sorry, sir,” she stammered.  “But we’ve only got two rooms left.  There’s a silversmith convention in town.”

            Gojyo scoffed.  “A convention?  In this backwater shitho… I mean… In this lovely bucolic hamlet?”

            She shrugged.  “It’s just a small convention.  Besides, we only have five rooms in total.”

            A sigh.  “Well, we’ll take what we can get.  They’re doubles, right?”

            “You mean doubles, like, with two beds?  Or one big double bed?”

            Gojyo lifted an eyebrow.  What kind of an innkeeper didn’t know what a double was?  Still, her question opened the field for some interesting possibilities.  Him and Hakkai forced to share a bed, a mainstay of his enforced-realism fantasy scenarios.  Sanzo had been rooming with the monkey lately whenever they had to double up, so it should be easy to pull off.  Trying not to sound too eager, he asked, “Well, which have you got?”

            She looked down shyly, tracing a line in the dust that blanketed the counter.  “One of each.  Is that still okay?”

            Gojyo rewarded her with his most rakish smile.  “Actually, that sounds perfect.”

            *          *          *

            Gojyo had fucked things up as usual.  It hadn’t even occurred to him to barter with the innkeeper or ask one of the other patrons to switch rooms.  He’d just paid the exorbitant asking price and come back to the jeep having secured one fewer bed than they needed, scowling defensively when Sanzo snatched the credit card back from him.

            “Silversmiths’ convention,” Gojyo explained with a shrug.  “What can you do?”

            “I’m sure it will be fine,” said Hakkai, infuriatingly tolerant as usual.  “It’s only for one night, after all.”

            “So…” Goku chirped before Sanzo could retort.  “How are we going to… um… you know… pair up?”

            The smile that flickered across Hakkai’s lips at that remark was so fleeting that Sanzo might have imagined it.  More obvious was the gleam of expectant hope in Gojyo’s eyes when he suggested, “Hakkai and I can take the shitty room.  The monkey didn’t get much sleep last night, so he could use a bed to himself.”

            Twenty four hours ago, this would have been just the solution that Sanzo suggested.  He’d prefer to room with Hakkai, frankly, but the walls in these no-name inns were notoriously thin, and he cringed at the thought of listening to Goku and Gojyo bickering all night.  And that morning in the baths, he’d seen the telltale inscription “Property of Sha Gojyo” trailing down Hakkai’s lower back and onto his ass.  He didn’t know how far their drunken scribbling had escalated, but if those two weren’t already getting busy, Gojyo certainly wanted to take things in that direction.  And that numbnut Hakkai would probably be too polite to turn down his bestest pal, even if he wasn’t interested.  It was Sanzo’s sacred duty to nip this bullshit in the bud, which meant first and foremost deterring all prospects for big boy sleepovers.  See also: “the walls in no-name inns are notoriously thin” and “things that make Sanzo cringe.”

            “That’s an idiotic solution,” Sanzo growled, dismissing Gojyo’s suggestion out of hand.  “Of the four of us, you and Hakkai are the largest.”

            Gojyo grinned and wiggled his eyebrows pruriently as he rested an elbow on Hakkai’s shoulder.  “You noticed, eh?  Well don’t feel bad.  We can’t all be titanic specimens of…”

            “Will you shut the fuck up?  My point is that I know these places, and the beds are never full-sized.  I doubt you both will even fit on that thing.”  It was a weak argument, Sanzo knew, but he was desperate.

            “Fine, then.  We giants will take the double, and you two pipsqueaks can cram onto the single bed.”

            “Not a chance.  I am not sharing a bed with anyone.  Hakkai and Goku will share.  Gojyo, you’re with me.”

            “But…” Gojyo’s face fell, and Sanzo felt a surge of satisfaction at the knowledge that he had just squashed his pathetic hopes of getting lucky.  Besides, this rooming situation would give him the opportunity for an up-close look at whether Gojyo’s declared personal ownership of Hakkai had been reciprocated.

            *          *          *

Their rooms were situated on opposite termini of the hallway, so Sanzo and Gojyo parted ways with Hakkai and Goku at the top of the steps.  Gojyo’s incompetence had at least abated long enough for him to convince the girl at the desk to have dinner brought directly to their rooms, and Sanzo had made Hakkai adjust his headband so that none of the writing was visible.  Now at least one person in each room would be able to put up a guise of being marginally normal.

            But as they shuffled down the hall, it became apparent that their faces were the least of their problems.  The rumbling snores of silversmiths crashed out into the corridor like brutish waves at high tide; the rooms didn’t have fucking doors.  Just a flimsy curtain hanging from a metal bar.  Great, Sanzo thought.  We’re spending the night in a fucking shower.  And, in fact, this had been an apt assessment.  Their alleged double room wasn’t much bigger than a shower stall, just large enough to accommodate two skinny rats’ nests posing as beds.  There wasn’t even room for a chair.

            With a grunt of contempt, Sanzo flopped down on the bed nearest the window, turning his face to the wall when the kitchen girl arrived with their meal.

            “Just put the tray in the hall when you’re done,” she said meekly, justifiably ashamed of the squalor to which the inn’s patrons were consigned.  Gojyo thanked her and wordlessly held out the tray for Sanzo to take his bowl of tepid gruel.  He was in a shitty mood, thanks to Sanzo’s efforts to separate him from Hakkai, and he sank onto the foot of the bed in surly silence, knees spanning the tiny space between the beds to brush the side of Sanzo’s mattress.  He scooped up some gruel with the crude wooden spoon and let it slop back into the bowl in a wet spatter.  After a few attempts, he managed to get some into his mouth, but grimaced and spat it back into the bowl, setting it hastily on the floor.

            “Hey, remember that time we ran out of provisions and Hakkai made Twig Stew out of shit we picked up off the forest floor?  That was way better than this.”

            Deciding that Gojyo’s assessment of the culinary fare was probably accurate, Sanzo scowled and lowered the bowl to his lap.  They sat for a long while in awkward silence, with Gojyo pretending not to be annoyed and Sanzo staring at him intently.  Gojyo and Hakkai sleeping together was a fucking disaster waiting to happen, and Sanzo was determined to figure out exactly where they stood.  If it was a one-time thing, or even a sometimes thing, it might be tolerable, but if they started flinging around terms like “relationship” or, god forbid, “soulmate”, there weren’t enough bullets in the world for what he was going to do to them.

            It had to happen sooner or later, so Sanzo broke the silence.  “Fess up, cockroach.  What happened last night?”

            Gojyo had been off in another world, and didn’t register the question right away.  “Eh?”

            “Last night.  The marker.  What did you jerk-offs get up to?”

            “Other than the obvious, damned if I know,” Gojyo shrugged.  “I got stone cold drunk and passed out.  End of story.”

            “Don’t give me that blackout bullshit.  You must remember something.”

            “Well, I don’t,” protested Gojyo haughtily.  “And what’s it to you, anyway?  It was just a dumb game.”

            “A game, huh?”  Eyes narrowed dangerously, Sanzo leaned forward and flung the bowl of gruel at Gojyo’s chest, making him recoil in disgust and pluck at the wet fabric, holding it away from his skin.

            “What the fuck, dipshit?  This is my only shirt.”  The entire garment was soaked with the chunky, moist substance, and Gojyo wriggled out of his shirt, taking pains not to let the wet mass touch his skin.  He flung it aside, and it hit the ground with a damp splat.  Primly brushing at his chest to wipe away the excess moisture, he glared daggers at Sanzo, who sat calmly surveying the spectacle.

            “’Chain-smoker…  Womanizer…  Lush…’” Sanzo read.  “So it was a state-the-obvious competition.”

            Gojyo scowled and folded his arms defensively across his chest, covering as much writing as he could.  “This isn’t funny.  The whole town’s shut up for the night – how am I going to get my shirt washed in time to hit the road tomorrow?”

            Sanzo couldn’t have cared less about Gojyo’s sartorial difficulties.  “Turn around,” he ordered.

            “What?  No!  If this is some sick game to sneak a look at my gorgeous bod, then I’m not in the mood to play.  Not with you.”

            “Turn.  Around.”

            “Fuck you.”

            Sanzo was determined now, singularly fixated on finding out just how dysfunctional his group had become.  If the “Property of…” inscription Gojyo had scrawled on Hakkai hadn’t been returned in kind, he could let the incident slide.  If it had… well, Sanzo wasn’t sure what he would do.  Gojyo was being noncompliant, but the monk wasn’t afraid to get rough.  He leapt across the scant inches separating their beds and tackled Gojyo to the mattress, overcoming him with the element of surprise.  As Gojyo flailed and swore, he flipped him over, eyes trailing down his bare back for any sign of the target inscription.  It wasn’t there, but that didn’t mean much.  The writing on Hakkai had stretched far below the confines of his upper body.

            Gojyo had stopped struggling once Sanzo relaxed his grip, but he tensed up again when Sanzo ordered, “Take your pants off.”

            He could hear Gojyo’s breathing, hard and angry.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?  Are you possessed or something?  I’m telling you that this is not funny.”

            “Good, because I’m not joking.”  He cocked his gun against the back of Gojyo’s head.  “Now just do what I say, and we’ll be done soon enough.”

            “Oh, you’re bringing out the rape clichés now.  Does Goku fall for that one?”

            There were so many things disturbingly, twistedly wrong with that statement that Sanzo was half-tempted to pull the trigger.  If he could start the conversation all over again, he might have taken a different tack, but it had been a long, hard day, and he was pissed off, and Gojyo was famously uncooperative.  Sanzo just needed to know for sure.  If he wasn’t in complete control over every aspect of their quest, he felt certain it would end in disaster.  And it wasn’t entirely his fault – how hard was it for Gojyo of all people to take his fucking pants off?

            As his thoughts wandered, Gojyo took advantage of the situation and flipped over beneath his pinning legs, making a grab for the gun.  Sanzo pulled his hand away and up, pointing the revolver at the ceiling and holding it out of Gojyo’s reach.  With his free hand, Sanzo fumbled with the fly of Gojyo’s pants – why did he have to be wearing this tight man-whore leather bullshit instead of his usual baggy khakis?  Who was he trying to impress?  Oh yeah, Hakkai.  He was deluded.  If Hakkai hadn’t noticed him after all these years, then a little form-fitting fabric around the ass wasn’t going to help.  Finally getting the last button undone, Sanzo jerked the pants downward and stared.

            Gojyo, meanwhile, was more concerned about the preservation of his life than his modesty.  He managed to get hold of Sanzo’s wrist and wrench the gun away, tossing it onto the other bed, where it thankfully failed to go off.  He gripped Sanzo’s shoulders and tried to push him away, but Sanzo was too close to his goal.  There was nothing written on Gojyo’s thighs, and he was about to try and flip him over again, when a blur of black caught his attention.  Using Gojyo’s shoves to his advantage, he rocked backwards, gripped the back of Gojyo’s thighs, and pushed them towards his shoulders so he could read the inscription that ran from the base of his balls down the inside of his thigh.  The words were blurred, and he tilted his head in an effort to read them, but Gojyo’s hands shot out, gripping his hair.  They remained in that position in a tension-filled standstill until Sanzo fell back, defeated not by Gojyo but by Goku’s allegedly permanent ink.  The words of the inscription were smeared beyond recognition.  He rolled off the bed in surly indignation and went to retrieve his gun.

            Gojyo glared at him, hitching his pants back up over his hips.  “What the fuck?  All that trouble just to get a look at my balls?”

            “I don’t give a shit about your balls.  I just needed to check something.”

            “Oh really.  And did you ever consider, oh, asking?”

            Sanzo folded his arms.  “Would you have taken your pants off if I had asked nicely?”

            “Hell, no.  Then I would have known you were possessed.  Somehow, it’s a lot easier to picture you as a rapist than, you know, polite.”

            “Thanks for that,” said Sanzo bitterly.

            But Gojyo wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm – he was pissed as hell.  “You crossed the line, Sanzo.  You’re a fucking psychopath.  I’m sleeping in the jeep.”

            Sanzo sighed dejectedly and lay back on the bed.  “Do what you want.”

            Gojyo swiped up his jacket and disgusting shirt, and stomped the few steps over to the curtain.  When he was halfway out, he turned back to inquire, “What were you looking for, anyway?”

            Sanzo was too tired to think of a snide comeback.  With a weary exhalation, he said, “I was trying to figure out whether you had slept with Hakkai.”

            “Yeah?  Well if you find out, let me know, because I’m pretty fucking curious myself.” 

            In his desperation, Sanzo sat up, taking one last stab at the truth.  “Tell me what he wrote on you.  I need to know what Hakkai wrote on your leg.”

            “How the fuck should I know?”  Gojyo folded his arms and glared back at him petulantly.

            “Because it was written on your leg.”

“Look, asshole, if my face could reach down that far, I’d spend a lot more time indoors, if you know what I mean.  You’re out of luck, and I’m glad.”  He turned, then, and Sanzo listened to his receding footsteps until they disappeared down the stairs.  This was all Gojyo’s pants’ fault for blurring out the pen marks with their smarmy, leathery tightness.  Those pants were definitely on his shit list.

            *          *          *

            Goku’s expectations for the quality of the room were low, but they were destroyed in a spectacular fashion once he actually saw it.  It was just a bed shoved into a largish closet, with maybe six or seven inches between the mattress and the wall on either side.  Sanzo had been right – it was smaller than a normal double bed, but it could still have probably accommodated both Gojyo and Hakkai.

            The way the whole rooming situation turned out was just… weird.  Goku wasn’t disappointed, really.  He liked Hakkai, and he never got to bunk with him, so that part was exciting, but he’d enjoyed rooming with Sanzo these past few weeks and had been looking forward to spending some time with just the two of them.  As gruff as he could be, there was something oddly comforting about Sanzo’s company.  How did the old saying go?  A man who lies all the time is more reliable than one who tells the truth most of the time.  Well, that’s what Sanzo was: someone who always said the opposite of what he was thinking, at least when it came to emotional stuff.  Every time Sanzo said “Shut up” Goku heard “Your quirky chatter is endearing”;  “Go away” translated to “I am appreciative of your presence on this journey”; and “Don’t touch me” meant “If it weren’t for this gosh-darned sexual repression, I’d be all over you like white on rice.”  Well, maybe not that last one, but it was fun to dream.

            But selfishness alone wasn’t fueling Goku’s disappointment.  He also felt bad for Gojyo and Hakkai, who he was sure were eager to be alone together, if the previous night’s flirtation was any indication of their feelings.  They probably hadn’t gotten together, what with Gojyo passed out and everything, but tonight might have been their chance.  He wondered whether he should have just told Sanzo the entire truth, but he had a feeling that doing so would have only made things worse.  Sanzo clearly suspected something, and in his typical fashion he was acting out to contradict his fundamentally romantic nature.  Or he was genuinely being a total weirdo control freak, which was just as likely.

            As Hakkai took in the room with dumbfounded dismay, Goku fell back on the bed, which squeaked weakly like the ghost of an elderly mouse-demon and sunk down about eight inches under his weight.  His entire peripheral vision was filled with an off-white swath of poorly laundered sheets.  Hakkai squeezed himself between the mattress and wall so he could sit on the side of the bed, but the added weight caused a severe imbalance in the depression of the mattress, and Goku rolled involuntarily toward it, arms flailing, until he came to a halt, nose smashed inescapably against Hakkai’s rear.  He tried to push himself away, but gravity was not to be defied, and he lay wedged there until Hakkai obligingly rose and sidled away, leaving Goku to roll back into the central depression.

            “This mattress sucks!” Goku exclaimed, wriggling in place amid the springs’ protesting groans and squawks.  He didn’t generally keep a shit list, but if he did, this bed would be on it.

            Hakkai nodded and sighed.  “It’s just for one night,” he said, chanting the words like a mantra.  His eyes drifted to the hallway, which was visible beneath the curtain that fell about a foot short of the floor.  He was thinking of Gojyo, Goku thought, but there was no help for it.  It was impossible to argue with Sanzo when he got in one of his moods.

            They tried their best to get settled, but since the bed was the only furniture, and there was barely enough floor space to house their boots and small bags, let alone unpack their belongings, this mostly consisted of attempting to sit down on the bed without crashing into each other or being drawn into the mattress’ unholy gravity well.  After about half an hour, their dinner arrived, a wholly unpalatable, thin gruel.  Hakkai toyed with his uncertainly, but Goku ate hearty.  It was disgusting, but edible was edible.

            “You going to eat that?” he inquired once his bowl had been licked clean.  It was difficult trying to point at Hakkai’s untouched meal without tipping over, but he managed it somehow. 

            “Be my guest,” said Hakkai, obligingly handing over the bowl.

            Goku finished off the second portion as Hakkai looked on with something akin to astonishment.  When he was done, he set both bowls on the tray and placed it outside the door.

            “I guess I’ll turn in,” Hakkai said, edging warily back onto the mattress.  “We should get some rest – I have a feeling Sanzo will turn us out early tomorrow.”

            Goku nodded absently, and then a thought struck him.  “Hey, Sanzo’s pretty picky about his food.  D’you think he finished his gruel?”

            “I seriously doubt it.”

            “Then I’ll just run down the hall and check.  No use it going to waste.”

            “As you like, Goku.  Just turn down the sconce when you come back in, okay?”

            “No problem!”

            As Hakkai maneuvered his way precariously beneath the covers, Goku ducked through the curtain and went trotting down the hall.  One more bowl of gruel would satisfy him, and he could sleep through the night without his rumbling stomach keeping Hakkai awake.  As he approached Sanzo’s room, however, he was beset by odd noises – hard breathing and grunting that didn’t quite sound like a fight, but made his heart skip with worry that the others had been attacked.

            Knowing Sanzo’s dislike of abrupt entrances, and having nowhere to knock, Goku peeked through the curtains and beheld a sight he would never have imagined was possible.  Gojyo’s pants were down around his ankles, his knees pinned to his shoulders, and his fists gripped handfuls of golden hair as Sanzo’s head bobbed and twisted between his legs.  Aghast, Goku tried to simultaneously cover his eyes and ears, which only resulted in him smacking himself in the face.  Sanzo and Gojyo?  It seemed impossible to believe, but he could hardly deny the evidence he had seen, however briefly, with his own eyes.  He whirled away and sprinted down the corridor, stopping at the head of the stairs to catch his breath.  Thoughts swirled in his head, one after the other, and it took him some time to filter them into any rational semblance.

            Sanzo and Gojyo.  What the hell?  So that was why Sanzo was so oddly keen to room with Gojyo, and why he was so insistent on learning what had happened the previous night.  All that talk about a relationship between Gojyo and Hakkai and how it would damage their quest was just bullshit to cover up his own jealousy.  Sanzo wasn’t sexually repressed, he was a fucking hypocrite.  And he’d never taken an interest in Goku because… because… he wasn’t good enough, or he thought of him as a kid, or he had some freakish redhead fetish.

            And what about Gojyo, that asshole?  Goku wasn’t always the sharpest needle in the haystack, but it seemed pretty obvious that Gojyo had been leading Hakkai on, making him think that there was some possibility for them to get together.  Poor Hakkai was back in the room, probably dreaming about Gojyo, while the man of his dreams was busy getting head from a Buddhist monk.  What a dick.

            This sucked.  Everything about it sucked.  Gojyo and Sanzo sucked – literally in at least one of their cases – and Goku had just had his heart broken without realizing there was anything to break, because there was still potential in unfulfilled fantasy, but this mess had just closed the door on everything he had hoped might eventually come to pass when he grew up a little – if he grew up.  And how the hell was he supposed to tell Hakkai?

            Goku sniffled, and without warning, the tears came, flooding out in a visceral expression of all his disappointment and empathy.  What the hell was this?  He never cried.  Never.  He couldn’t tell Hakkai what was going on, not yet, but he needed someone he could be close to, someone to take away the hurt, someone he trusted.  And right now, the only one left that he could trust was Hakkai.  Fighting to hold back, to take his crushed dreams like a man, he shuffled back to the room, quietly turned down the sconce, and scooted into bed, rolling immediately into the well unavoidably created by Hakkai’s weight.

            He tried to just lie there and drift off to sleep, but a sniffle escaped before he could stifle it, and the concern with which Hakkai whispered his name broke his control.  Rolling onto Hakkai’s chest, he wept like an infant as Hakkai’s arms hesitantly enfolded him.  Hakkai didn’t pry or try to make him speak, just hugged him helplessly and stroked his hair, uttering consoling shushing noises into the cold, dark night.

            *          *          *

Sanzo rose with the dawn, feeling surprisingly refreshed despite the drama of the previous night.  Turning on his side, he saw that Gojyo’s bed was undisturbed – the oversensitive prick had really spent the night in the jeep.

He still wasn’t sure what to do about the Hakkai and Gojyo situation – the inscription he’d been looking for had been blurred beyond recognition, but something had been written there, which was enough evidence to support his suspicions.  He just wished he knew where they fell on the spectrum of dysfunctional relationships.  For instance, if the lost inscription had said, ‘Hakkai’s hot piece of ass’ it would be an entirely different story than something akin to, ‘With this bullshit Sharpie tattoo, I thee wed.”  And then there was the intermediate ground of, ‘If you can read this, you and everyone you love, and everyone you’ve ever met are about to be slaughtered by an insanely jealous, psychopathic demon.’  Sanzo was thinking facetiously, mostly, but he decided he might want to watch his back around Hakkai for a few days, just in case.

Maybe Goku was right.  Maybe his compulsive need to control every little detail of their journey had led him into rash behavior.  Maybe the wisest course was to keep his nose out of it and let things ride.  Whatever was going to happen would happen, and no matter how much he wanted to control it, there wasn’t a lot he could do in the end.  He couldn’t really kill Hakkai and Gojyo – there’d be no point – and as much as he hated to admit it, they were both valuable to the group.  Indispensable, even, though he’d shoot himself before admitting that out loud.  He’d have to just let them do their thing and hope they didn’t turn into even bigger headcases than they already were.

With this fresh attitude, Sanzo rolled out of bed, bones still aching from the previous day’s bumpy ride, and shrugged into his robes, meticulously arranging the Maten scripture around his shoulders.  The first step towards moving on would be to get the hell out of this backwater burg.  A couple of packs of cigarettes and a six pack would see Gojyo through his disgruntlement, and things would go back to normal, except for the possible fact that two members of his team were fucking like bunnies, but that was something Sanzo had decided not to think about anymore, so he wished his brain would stop bringing it up.

He padded down the hallway, still filled with the snores of slumbering silversmiths, and made his way to Goku and Hakkai’s room to suggest they forego the over-easy gruel and hit the road early in order to hit the next village in time for a reasonable lunch hour.  Parting the curtains, he was about to shout them awake when he noticed that they were enfolded together, forming a disgustingly perfect picture of connubial contentment.  They were lying in a pile at the center of the bed, close enough to share the same skin, and Goku was sprawled over Hakkai’s chest, snuggled in warmly beneath the thin sheet.  He made a whimpering noise in his sleep, and Hakkai roused, lifting his head just far enough to regard him affectionately before planting a kiss on his forehead and smoothing his hair.  Hakkai then bundled Goku more tightly in his arms and lay back on the pillow, as if to drift back to sleep.

Now that was just wrong.  What the fuck was Goku thinking, snuggling up with that psycho?  Sharing a bed was one thing – a necessity of the road – but they were taking up less than a fifth of the mattress.  Was personal space no longer a valid consideration?  And what about Hakkai, that pervert?  One night he’s scrawling sweet nothings in the vicinity of Gojyo’s balls, and the next he’s shacking up with the monkey.  And Sanzo had thought Gojyo was the resident whore of their party.  He shook his head.  It was always the quiet ones.

Sanzo’s carefully formulated plan to just shut the hell up about the interpersonal relationships of others flew right out the window in an instant.  Letting the curtain fall back into place, he pounded on the wall and bellowed, “Wake up, asswipes.  We’re hitting the road now.”

            *          *          *

            Gojyo was awakened by the slamming of a car door as Sanzo hurled himself into the jeep.  The jackass was as delightful as ever.  Goku soon followed, rubbing his eyes sleepily, but Hakkai lingered behind in the lobby, exchanging updated map information with the innkeeper.  Sanzo stared forward unblinkingly, looking even pissier than usual.

            So the monk had his panties in a bunch over the prospect of Gojyo sleeping with Hakkai, eh?  Seemed like as good a time as any for pushing his buttons, especially after that bullshit stunt he’d pulled the previous night. 

            “Hey, Hakkai,” Gojyo called.  “Get that adorable ass of yours out here so we can get going already.”  Heh.  That would get him.  Hakkai glanced back toward the jeep, his brow furrowed in perplexity.

            But rather than the explosion of wrath he’d expected, Sanzo simmered in stony silence, and the outburst came from Goku.  “Don’t talk to Hakkai that way, asshole.  Show a little respect.”

            This, surprisingly, got Sanzo’s attention, and he whirled around in his seat.  “Oh, so you’re Hakkai’s great protector now, are you?  One night with that deviant, and you’re licking his boots.”

            “Deviant?  Ha!  You’re one to talk,” Gojyo retorted.  Then, turning to Goku, he said, “Tell the truth.  Has Sanzo ever touched you in a naughty place?  I can get puppets if it would be less traumatic.”

            “Shut up,” growled Goku, his voice unusually low and dangerous.  “Don’t you dare talk to me about…”

            “Leave him alone,” Sanzo snarled, “and don’t go projecting your fucked up misapprehensions onto Goku.  He has nothing to do with…”

            Goku interrupted, his voice dripping with venom.  “You have no right to defend me.  Just shut up.  Both of you.  You’re both assholes.”

            Hakkai chose this particularly awkward moment to meander up to the jeep.  “Everyone ready for another joy-filled day on the road?”

            *          *          *

            In the end, their hasty flight from the village was not to be.  When they reached the terminus of the main road, where the high walls surrounding the village parted to form a stone archway, their path was blocked by a small crowd of men yelling something that was indecipherable over the mélange of voices.  Sanzo swore under his breath as Hakkai brought the jeep to a slow halt.

            “What now?” the monk grumbled, his features taking on that squinty, twisted expression that signified impatience.  “Are these assholes going to block the road all day?”

            “Looks like it,” Hakkai replied.  He’d already noticed the packs of food and refreshments stashed in the shadows of picket signs bearing slogans like “Less Gold for Silver” and “We’ll Show You Our True Metal.”

            “Well, can’t you find another way out of town?”

            “Sorry.  I’ve just been going over the maps, and this is the only road into the mountain pass we need to follow.”  Curious about what was going on, Hakkai ignored Sanzo’s skeptical scoff and flagged down a passing villager, who had wandered over to gawk at the spectacle.  “Sir, could you possibly tell us what’s happening here?”

            “It’s the silversmiths,” the young man replied.  “There are mines up in those mountains, and they think our wholesale prices are too high, so they’re blocking the pass today so nobody can get to work.”

            “Ah,” Hakkai frowned, already fearful of how Sanzo would react to this news.  “And how long is this supposed to last?”

            He shrugged laconically.  “They should be gone by tomorrow.”

            “So there’s no way into the mountains until then?”

            “Nope.  Suits me fine.  I get the day off.”  He flashed Hakkai a boyish grin and turned to cheer loudly for the protesters.

            Sanzo, however, was not ready to give up.  “This is unacceptable.  Just drive straight at them, Hakkai.  If they know what’s good for them, they’ll get out of the way.”

            “Sanzo!  I can’t…”

            Before he could voice further protest, he was again addressed by the villager.  “Oh, give the guys a break.  It’s just one day, after all, and they work hard.  Who knows – one of them just might be responsible for that sweet bling of yours.”

            As Sanzo glanced perplexedly around the floor of the jeep, muttering, “What the hell is a ‘bling?’,” Hakkai’s hand went instinctively to his demon limiters.

            “Well… I do appreciate the craftsmanship of this… bling.”  Feeling that he had no other choice, Hakkai maneuvered the jeep around and began driving back to the inn, telling Sanzo apologetically, “It can’t be helped.”

            Sanzo twisted in his seat to address Goku.  “You see what I’ve been telling you?  It’s one delay after another.  At this rate, we’ll never get West.”

            “Don’t talk to me,” said Goku coldly.

            “And you,” Sanzo said, rounding on Hakkai, undoubtedly in order to mask the sting of Goku’s dismissal.  “What’s with the ‘bling’ talk?”

            Hakkai was half-distracted, considering the significance of Goku’s suddenly brusque treatment of the man he usually adulated.  “Huh?  Oh, that.  It’s just an expression the young people use.”

            “Yeah,” prompted Gojyo, who had been huddling in the backseat with uncharacteristic sullenness.  “Get with the times, you old fart.”

            *          *          *

           ‘Young people.’  Tch.  What kind of bullshit was that?  First Hakkai starts sleeping with jailbait, then he’s suddenly all hip with the slang.  How the hell old was he?  Twenty one?  Twenty two?  Too young for a mid-life crisis, anyway.  When Hakkai spoke, Sanzo glared at him with vitriolic contempt.

            “Perhaps we can use this time to figure out how to get the marker off our skin,” he suggested in that fucking demure sing-songy way, like he was trying to make Sanzo feel better.  All that shit was doing was pissing him off.

            “Try rubbing yourself all over with leather,” Sanzo snarled.  “It worked for Gojyo.”

            This statement prompted Goku to launch into a series of gagging noises.  What the fuck was his problem?

            Hakkai looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to elucidate, but Sanzo was too pissed to oblige.  Giving up, Hakkai turned inquiring eyes on Gojyo, who mumbled, “He means that some of the writing got blurred out by my leather pants.”

            “Ah,” said Hakkai, arching an eyebrow.  “Well, then, maybe some tanner’s oil might help…”

            Sanzo exhaled dismissively.  “Or maybe Gojyo pissed himself and that’s what did the trick.”

            “Oh yeah?” Gojyo countered.  “Well maybe I should piss on your face and see if it helps that little moustache problem of yours.”

            “Ew!” cried Goku, clapping his hands over his ears.  “Take that pervy shit somewhere else.  You guys make me sick.”

            Hakkai interrupted again before Sanzo could summon a scathing retort, that fucking diplomat.  “I’ll head to the marketplace and see what I can find.  If we’re going to be stuck here all day, we might as well make the most of it.”

            They had just pulled up in front of the inn, and Hakkai got out of the jeep, dusting off his hands in evident preparation for a delightful morning of shopping.  If he came back wearing a leisure suit and gold medallions, Sanzo would have his gun ready.  As Hakkai wandered off casually into the crowd, Sanzo called after him, “Stay away from the village kids!  If you get arrested, I’m not fucking bailing you out!”

            Before he could feel even a hint of satisfaction at this pointed barb, Sanzo felt a hard shove from behind, and turned to see Goku glaring at him with nostrils flaring.  “What the hell is your problem?  Hakkai’s just trying to be helpful, but as usual you just shit all over him.”

            Sanzo wasn’t going to dignify this accusation with a reply.  “I don’t like your attitude,” he snorted.  “Go to your room.”

            “It’s not even a room!” Goku yelled.  “More like a closet!”

            “Then get back in the closet.”

            “No!  I’m not going back there, and you can’t make me.  I’m going with Hakkai!”  Here, he sprang out of the jeep and went trotting after Hakkai like an abandoned puppy.  The kid’s senseless devotion was truly pitiful.

            As if Sanzo needed anything else to piss him off, a low chuckling drew his eyes to the back of the jeep.  “What’s so fucking funny?”

            Gojyo smirked.  “So Goku’s out of the closet for good.  No wonder you’re so excited.”

            “Fuck off,” Sanzo snapped, turning to watch Hakkai and Goku shuffle down the dusty road.  This was intolerable.  He’d hated the idea of Hakkai fucking Gojyo, but Hakkai fucking Goku was infinitely worse.  And he was pissed at Gojyo for his smart mouth and his melodramatic overreaction to Sanzo’s perfectly innocent and reasonable demand of trouser-removal.  He glanced back at Gojyo, who was watching Hakkai’s retreating form with a pathetic expression of longing.  Sanzo smirked.  If nothing else, the situation provided the perfect recipe for not suffering alone.

            “Don’t bother,” he said, snapping his fingers in front of Gojyo’s face to draw his attention away from the departing pair.

            Gojyo swatted his hand away irritably.  “Huh?”

            “Don’t bother pining.  Your would-be boyfriend has found a new fuck-toy.”

            Shaking his head and scrunching up his face in confusion, Gojyo replied, “Wait, my what has a what-what?”

            “Stop playing dumb.  I saw what you wrote on Hakkai, and I know you want to jump him, but you’re too late.  You’ve been cock-blocked.”

            “Yeah, by you, asshole.”

            “Nope.”  Sanzo tilted his head indicatively toward the end of the block, where the last flutter of Goku’s cape was disappearing around a corner.

            With an incredulous laugh, Gojyo shook his head.  “The monkey and Hakkai?  You’ve gotta be joking.  I know you like to fuck with people, but next time come up with something plausible, man.”

            “You didn’t see them in bed this morning.”

            Gojyo rolled his eyes.  “They woke up in bed together.  Now there’s a shock.  Or maybe it’s because you ordered them to share a bed.”

            Sanzo scoffed.  “You’ve shared a bed with Hakkai before, right?  Had to double up while you guys were on the road?”

            Eyes narrowed in justified paranoia, Gojyo answered, “Yeah.  So?”

            “So, did you ever wake up sprawled all over him like a blanket?”

            “Um…”

            “Was there nuzzling and kissing and hair fondling and…”

            “Shut the fuck up!”  Gojyo bellowed.  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.  Hakkai isn’t like that.  He wouldn’t…”

            “I’m telling you, with the amount of space those two were taking up, they could have slept in a coffin and had room for a spare.”  Sanzo snorted mirthlessly at his own analogy.  The prospect was pretty appealing right now.

            But Gojyo just waved away his claims in insistent, misguided denial.  “Take your head games and shove them up your ass.  I’m going to get some smokes.” 

            Gojyo stomped off, clearly agitated despite his desperate objections, and Sanzo lit up a cigarette of his own, feeling vaguely comforted by the notion that he’d just made Gojyo just as miserable as he was.

            *          *          *

            Goku and Hakkai returned with supplies around midday, and set about trying to scrub themselves clean at the cistern behind the inn.  Sanzo watched them from the second story window for a while, but their cordial chatting as they scrubbed themselves down, all shirtless and soapy, swiftly began to grate, and he decided they needed a chaperone.  He stomped out of the back door and greeted them with the growled inquiry, “Is it working?”

            “I think so,” Hakkai said, swiping a layer of suds off the spot on his stomach that once had said, ‘anal retentive.’  He offered Sanzo a faint smile, like he was so fucking innocent, or like Sanzo was an idiot, and tossed him a bottle of amber fluid.  “First apply the oil, then scrub your face down with this soap.  It should do the trick.”

            Eyes narrowed, Sanzo snatched the bar of soap Hakkai had tossed out of the air and sniffed it dubiously.  He had never smelled anything ranker in his life.  “I’m supposed to put this on my face?!  What is this crap?”

            “It’s a special soap made from yak fat that’s supposed to be good with oil-based stains.”

            Great.  He sniffed the soap again; it smelled like the bar had been pressed into shape by insertion into the rectal cavity of the yak that had provided its substance.  Still, there was no denying that Hakkai’s face and chest were scribble-free.  He’d just have to endure it.

            As Sanzo scrubbed, he noticed that Goku was glaring at him whenever he thought he wasn’t looking.  Like he had anything to be pissed about.  He was the one running around with a promiscuous twenty-something in a mid-life crisis.

            “Here, Hakkai, let me do your back for you,” Goku offered sweetly.  So that was how it was, was it?  He was just going to take this whole sordid mess and throw it in Sanzo’s face.  It was intolerable.

            Fed up with those two jackasses, Sanzo inspected his reflection in the filthy kitchen window, scrubbing violently at the lingering traces of nose hairs that adorned his lip.  Once they were reasonably invisible, he set down the fetid soap and stomped primly into the dim interior of the inn.

            *          *          *

            Gojyo had been lingering in the alley for a while, waiting for Sanzo to leave.  He couldn’t be around that asshole right now.  Once all was clear, he strolled into the open and grabbed the oil and soap Sanzo had left behind.  Stripping off his shirt, he looked expectantly at Hakkai, who offered him a guarded smile – a mixed signal at best.  Goku’s lip curled up into a feral sneer and he began to scrub more vehemently at Hakkai’s shoulder blade, on which Gojyo vaguely remembered having scrawled the phrase ‘cock tease.’  Those two were certainly acting cozier than usual, he had to admit, but that didn’t make Sanzo any less full of shit.

            No one spoke until Hakkai hissed in pain and said, “Careful, Goku.  Your nails.”  As Goku murmured his apologies, Hakkai reached back to gently draw one of his hands over his shoulder, assiduously inspecting the overgrown fingernails.  Glancing over his shoulder, he offered, “We’ll cut these this afternoon, okay?” 

            “Okay.  Thanks, Hakkai!” Goku smiled affectionately, a little too thrilled about being drawn into Hakkai’s fastidious grooming habits, and went back to his work, but his eagerness ebbed as he glared up at Gojyo with increasing frequency.  “Hey, Hakkai?  Do you mind if we face the other way?”

            “Huh?  Why, Goku?”

            “It’s just that…” his fingers began to tremble as he gripped the foul-smelling soap, sinking into it in shallow indentations.  “I just can’t look at him right now.”

            Hakkai looked concerned, but acquiesced, scooting the low stool on which he was perched around to face the other direction. 

            Pausing only to glower back at Gojyo, Goku began to scrub vehemently at a set of symbols written on Hakkai’s lower back.  Gojyo didn’t remember those, and craned his neck to see what they said, but Goku blocked his view.  All he could see was a set of shallow, reddening scratches that provided the only evidence of the now-eradicated ‘cock tease.’

            Back muscles tensing, Goku scrubbed harder and harder as he moved lower down Hakkai’s back.  Whatever it said, that particular inscription apparently went further down than the others, because soon Goku was plucking at Hakkai’s waistband, pulling it back to gain access to the flesh below.

            Hakkai glanced over his shoulder with a look of discomfort.  “Just leave it, Goku.  I’ll get that one later.”

            “No!” Goku insisted, not so much petulantly as with a pleading insistency.  “I have to get rid of this.  It doesn’t belong there!”  Huh.  Maybe Hakkai’s OCD was contagious.

            Another furious scrub, and Hakkai hissed again as Goku’s sharp nails broke the skin.  Hakkai flinched at the pain, and Goku fumbled, losing his grip on the soap.  He acted on instinct, lunging to retrieve it without processing the fact that the soap was slithering down the inside of Hakkai’s pants at the time.  Hakkai leapt to his feet, startled at the unexpected groping, but that just pushed Goku’s arm further down.  There followed an awkward sequence of repositioning until Goku slowly – reluctantly? – drew his arm away, and Hakkai shook his left leg spasmodically until the soap emerged from beneath his trouser cuff.

            Whether or not Sanzo had been bullshitting him, this was more than Gojyo could take.  “Hey, watch the grabby-hands, pal,” he shouted at Goku.  “At least buy him dinner first.”

            Goku was flushed, obviously mortified by the incident, but his blush of embarrassment swiftly shifted to anger, and he shouted, “Fuck you, pervert!” and ran off.

            Well.  That was kind of extreme.  What was with that kid today, anyway?

            Hakkai sat in silence on the stool, a faint red stain blossoming at his waistband.  Gojyo mentally added Goku’s nails to his shit list for impudently marring such a beautiful backside.  But before Gojyo could fully enjoy the view, however tarnished, Hakkai turned slowly to face him, eyes narrowed.  There it was.  That Look.  That knife-edge glare.  Uh oh.  Gojyo had no idea what was going on, but he knew he was in deep shit.

            Hakkai strode up to him angrily.  “What did you do to him?”

            “Me?  What?  Nothing, I swear.”

            “Well, there must have been something.  Something you did, or something you said… he’s not usually this temperamental.”

            “I promise, I didn’t say…  Well,” he admitted upon further recollection, “I may have implied that Sanzo sexually molested him, but hey, you know.  That’s nothing new.  Besides, you’re his new zookeeper, apparently.  Shouldn’t you know what’s wrong?”

            “He won’t talk about it.  All I know is that he left our room last night, and when he came back, he was bawling.  Bawling, Gojyo.  So whatever it was, it must have been pretty bad.”  He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.  “I’m going after him.”  And at that, he turned on his heels and followed Goku into the alley.

            Gojyo shook his head in bewilderment.  For all his faults, Goku wasn’t usually a total pussy, so what on earth could have gotten the kid so worked up?  Something from last night…?  Then enlightenment dawned.  Gojyo’s eyes widened and the soap dropped from his lifeless hand.  Oh, he thought in horror.  Oh, shit.

            *          *          *

            When Hakkai found Goku, he was huddled behind a trash can, arms hugging his knees.  He knelt down beside him and reached out a tentative hand to touch his shoulder.  “Goku?  You okay?”

            “This sucks,” he mumbled, barely comprehensible behind his folded arms.  “This really sucks.”

            “Do you want to talk about it?”  It felt like a really odd thing for Hakkai to be saying, especially considering the way he bottled up his own stock of misery, but he couldn’t bear to see the usually imperturbable Goku in so much pain.

            “Yeah,” Goku sniffled.  “Kinda.  But kinda not.  ‘Cause if I talk to you about it, you’re gonna get hurt.  And I don’t wanna hurt you.  You’re the only one that’s ever nice to me.”

            “I can take it,” Hakkai assured, settling in to sit beside him.  “It’s okay.”  He couldn’t imagine what had happened to make Goku break down like this, and he was a little wary about finding out, but he couldn’t just let him wallow in misery.

            Goku took a few deep breaths, steeling his nerves, and then it all came out in a flood.  “Last night I went to Sanzo and Gojyo’s room and they were… Sanzo was…”

            Hakkai stiffened, not liking the direction this revelation had taken in the slightest.  “Sanzo was what?”

            “Sanzo was…” Goku sniffled.  “He was… you know… giving him a blow job.”

            No, this couldn’t be right.  Hakkai shook his head.  “I don’t think so… you must have made a mistake.”

            Eyes bright with anger and unshed tears, Goku looked up at him.  “They were both on the same bed.  Gojyo’s pants were around his ankles, and Sanzo had his face, like, buried in his…”

            “Okay, I get the picture.”  Hakkai murmured, warding off further details with his hands.  Under his breath, he murmured, “All too vividly.”

            Goku gave a mirthless little laugh.  “Not much room for interpretation, huh?”

            “Apparently not,” said Hakkai, his eyes drifting to the dingy wall of the alley.  The whole incident seemed ludicrously improbable, but this wasn’t the kind of thing Goku could just make up.  And those tears were definitely genuine.  He wouldn’t have thought that Gojyo would go that route, nor Sanzo, in fact, but he’d been mistaken about people before.  And if Gojyo really didn’t remember what had happened…

With a sigh, Hakkai put his arm around Goku’s shoulders, his chest overburdened with sympathy.  The previous night, he hadn’t asked any questions, just held the boy as he wept until he drifted to sleep.  He’d known it was something bad, but never suspected a broken heart.  “I’m sorry, Goku.  I know you feel… I know that Sanzo is special to you.”

            “It’s not like I expected anything to come of it,” Goku murmured, either not noticing or not caring that Hakkai’s remark had exposed insight into his true feelings.  “Sanzo thinks of me as just a kid, and, whatever, that’s my curse, I guess.  But I suppose I always kinda hoped that if he couldn’t be with me, he would…”

            Hakkai drew back, examining Goku’s features.  “He would what?”

            “He would get together with you.”

            Despite the melancholy atmosphere, Hakkai actually laughed.  “What would make you think that?”

            Goku shrugged.  “I dunno.  Because he respects you.  He listens to what you have to say in a way that he never does with the rest of us.  Respect is one thing… one thing I never get from him.  So I thought maybe that was what he was looking for.”

            “Oh, Goku.”  Hakkai shook his head and rested his hand against a tearstained cheek.  “He may not show it, but Sanzo respects you too.”

            A laugh intermingled with the sniffling response.  “So he respects both of us, yet Gojyo is the one who gets his dick sucked.”

            Not exactly enthused about processing the reality of this remark, Hakkai just sighed and cradled Goku against his shoulder, saying, “It’s a strange world, sometimes.”

            Goku relaxed into his arms as the faint trembling in his body died away.  At length he asked, “But what about you?  Aren’t you sad to know that Gojyo was…”

            “Not sad,” Hakkai corrected.  “Just disappointed.”  What was the point in telling the truth?  It would only make Goku feel worse.

            “But I’ve seen you two together.  There’s more than just a spark there, I know it.  How could that asshole treat you this way?”

            Hakkai’s voice became stern, and he turned Goku’s cheek to face him.  “I need you to understand that there is nothing between Gojyo and me but friendship.  Yes, it might have looked like it was heading in another direction, but reality doesn’t always conform to our expectations.  Gojyo has made no commitment to me, and no promises.  He is free to do as he likes, and I can’t have you hating him for a betrayal he never committed.”

            “But… but you guys…”

            “Listen to me, Goku, there is no us.  Yes, something happened, but it was a one-time thing.  Moving on is the only way to get past it.”

            “But why did this have to happen?” Goku demanded, and the knowledge that all the selfish tears were gone, that these were shed only for him, almost broke Hakkai’s heart.  “Why did it turn out this way?”

            Hakkai hugged him tightly as he wept into his chest.  “Sometimes things just don’t work out the way we want.  I’ll get over it.  We both will.”

            *          *          *

            Sanzo was finishing off the end of his pack over a stroll around the slum that billed itself as an inn, when the murmur of familiar voices caught his ear.  He flattened himself against the wall and peeked into the alley, espying what appeared to be a disturbingly intimate conversation between Goku and Hakkai.  He was about to turn away in disgust, but the next statement halted him in his tracks.

            “Listen to me, Goku, there is no us.”  Hakkai was saying.  “Yes, something happened, but it was a one time thing.  Moving on is the only way to get past it.”

            Goku was in tears, the poor bastard.  “But why did this have to happen?  Why did it turn out this way?”

            That heartless jerk Hakkai had the gall to wrap his arms around Goku and pull him into a hug.  Sanzo hoped he hadn’t just stumbled across the preamble to a sympathy break-up fuck.  “Sometimes things just don’t work out the way we want.  I’ll get over it.  We both will.”

            The utterance of this trite cliché was the last straw, and Sanzo stormed into the alley, ready to fill Hakkai full of bullets without further provocation.  “You’re dumping him after only one night?  How dare you, you insensitive prick?  Who the fuck do you think you are, toying with his emotions like that?”  He flung the remnants of his cigarette at Hakkai’s face, but it was swiftly batted away by Goku, who rose to his feet in a protective stance.  The little cretin had no clue how horribly he’d just been used.

            “What the hell are you talking about, Sanzo?”

            "You've been jilted, you idiot.  Wise up."

            "Oh nice,” Goku spat.  “Just rub it in, why don't you?"

            Sanzo sighed and took a deep breath.  As moronically as Goku was acting, he couldn't help but feel sorry for the kid.  "Look, you want me to beat the crap out of him?  Because I will."

            "Ha.  Hakkai'd kick your butt into next week!"

            "Why are you defending him after he...?"

            "Hakkai didn't dump him," came a voice from the other end of the alley.  “You did."

            *          *          *

            It had taken Gojyo a few minutes to work up the nerve to go after Hakkai and Goku, and by the time he got there, Sanzo was already making a fool of himself.

            "What the hell are you talking about?" The monk demanded, looking more than willing to gun down both Hakkai and Gojyo in quick succession.

            But Gojyo wasn’t easily deterred.  "Near as I can figure, the ape caught a peek of your little dominant-aggressive display last night and ran off before I got the chance to tell you off.  He got the wrong fucking impression, and it’s all your fault."

            Hakkai lifted his eyebrows in wary surprise, head tilting away from the dirty wall of the alley.  "So you and Sanzo weren't..."

            "Hell no!"  Gojyo grimaced at the thought and shuddered.  "C'mon, man, I have some standards."

            "Yeah,” scoffed Sanzo.  “Standards of skank."

            Goku was still skeptical.  "So if it wasn’t what I thought it was, what exactly were you doing to Gojyo?"

            "I just had to... check something.”  Sanzo flushed red and said hastily, “It's not important now.  Besides, whatever you saw, there was no reason to overreact and go jumping into bed with Hakkai."

            "Something that, I repeat, you ordered him to do," Gojyo helpfully reminded him.

            Hakkai was quick to point out the obvious. "I think he means bed bed, Gojyo."

            "I know what he means.  What I'd like to know is what he's been smoking.  First he attacks me, then he gets his scripture in a twist over the idiotic idea that you were boinking Goku.  Seriously, I think we should have him committed."

            Goku looked up with wide eyes.  "Sanzo... you thought Hakkai and me were..."

            Relief dawned briefly over Sanzo's face before it was replaced by his customary sneer.  "So let me get this straight – no one here is fucking anyone else?"

            Goku laughed and shook his head, and Gojyo confirmed that nothing so preposterous could possibly be going on, but when he glanced questioningly at Hakkai, the response was vague, and he demurred with a faint shrug.

            "That's it," growled Sanzo, snatching Goku by the shoulder and dragging him away from Hakkai, "we're switching rooms."

            *          *          *

            "What happened to 'You guys are too big to share that bed'?"  Goku and Sanzo were sitting side by side in the double room, feet extended to rest on the opposite bed as Goku finished up Sanzo’s helping of gruel.

            Sanzo grunted.  "They’ll still be uncomfortable.  Serves 'em right."

            Spoon in mouth, Goku tilted his head contemplatively.  "You know, with that shitty mattress, they're going to be all over each other – whether they want to or not."

            "Whatever."  Sanzo took a deep drag of his cigarette and exhaled towards the window, belatedly forgetting that it didn’t actually open.

            Goku coughed through the cloud of smoke, then laughed and eyed Sanzo with greater acumen than he wanted to think about.  "I thought you didn't want them sleeping together," he taunted in a sing-song voice.

            "Tch,” said Sanzo, which was the closest he was going to get to opening up.  “I guess there are worse things.  The fucking silversmiths that forced us to spend an extra night in this rat hole are much higher on my shit list than those two jokers right now."

            Goku nodded absently and set his empty bowl on the tray that was resting on the other bed.  “Yeah.  The food here sucks.”

            Typical, thought Sanzo.  We spent the day at each others’ throats and won’t get a decent night’s sleep, and Goku’s fixated on the inferior cuisine.  He thought about everything that had happened – his anger at Hakkai, his bitterness towards Goku for his sudden allegiance switch, and realized that in the absence of Hakkai’s breaking the kid’s half-millenium-long stretch of celibacy, the over-the-top devotion act didn’t quite make sense.

            “So tell me,” he muttered, “why exactly did you latch on to Hakkai so easily?”

            Goku looked down and fiddled with the buttons on his shirt.  “I dunno.  After what I saw, I guess I thought he was the only one I could count on.”

            “That explains why you turned to him for comfort.  It doesn’t explain why you suddenly became his lap dog.”

            “I didn’t…” Goku began to protest before realizing the fundamental truth of Sanzo’s words.  “I guess it’s because… and don’t get mad… because I realized that he’s the only one that’s ever nice to me.”

            Sanzo winced.  The statement struck home, but he wasn’t going to acknowledge it.  At least, he wouldn’t have if that simple statement had not been a glaring red flag indicating the extent to which he had taken Goku for granted, and how easy it would be to lose him.

            “I know you don’t mean to hurt my feelings,” Goku continued.  “You’re just being you.  Same thing with Gojyo.  It was just… nice to be around someone who listened to me for a change.  Hakkai… I know he’s done bad things in the past, but he’s gentle, and I liked that.”  He looked to the side and plucked a piece of lint off of the bedspread, flinging it onto the floor.  “Maybe I needed it.”

            Frowning, Sanzo contemplated in silence for a moment.  Could he really let Hakkai show him up?  Ultimately, he decided that a little gentleness wasn’t such a bad thing once in a while.  As long as it didn’t get to be a habit.

            “Come here,” he ordered, and reached out tentatively to take Goku’s head and draw it in to rest comfortably against his shoulder.

            Goku got over his surprise quickly enough to heave a contented sigh, and scooted closer, the warmth of his body, stretching across Sanzo’s side.  He was happy to just sit there in quiet satisfaction, his head resting lightly against Sanzo’s shoulder.

            Though the atypical closeness at first made Sanzo tense, Goku’s uninhibited comfort was infections, and he eventually relaxed, daring even to tilt his own head to rest his cheek against Goku’s mop of soft hair.  This isn’t so bad, he thought, and they sat together in companionable silence as the sun dipped behind the village’s ragged skyline.

            *          *          *

            “Well, that was a bucket of awkward.”  Gojyo was leaning against the wall, since the small slice of floor not taken up by the tiny room’s dubiously named double bed left room for little else.  Hakkai was stretched out on the bed, hands folded behind his head.

            “I’m just glad we sorted everything out.  You wouldn’t think it could be possible to have so many misunderstandings in one day.”

            Gojyo snorted.  “Are you kidding?  Four idiots with our issues?  I’m amazed it doesn’t happen more often.”

            “Good point,” Hakkai chuckled, stretching languidly and rolling his neck to work out the kinks.  The careless motion emphasized the grace of his sinewy form, and Gojyo found that his mouth was suddenly dry.  They had more to talk about – a lot more – but he hadn’t quite worked up the balls to address the unresolved questions between them.  He needed an opening, and in the meantime it was easier to talk about other topics.

            Taking a seat at the foot of the bed, his mind drifted to Sanzo and Goku and what they might be talking about right now.  “Do you think he realizes?” Gojyo asked.  “Sanzo, I mean.  Do you think he knows why he got so bent out of shape when he thought you and Goku had become an item?”

            “Does it really matter?”  Hakkai sighed.  “It’s not like he’ll do anything about it.”

            “I suppose you’re right.  You gotta feel bad for the kid.” 

            Gojyo flopped backward onto the bed, too quickly to heed Hakkai’s alarmed warning of “Watch out for the…!” and before he knew it he had rolled violently to the side, face planted against Hakkai’s chest.  He flailed gracelessly for a moment, but the indentation was too steep, and he was irrevocably pinned, his whole body covering Hakkai’s, except for his feet and shins, which were jutting out over the baseboard.

            The impact had knocked the breath out of Hakkai, who coughed and sputtered under his weight as Gojyo tried to scoot himself upwards into a slightly less inconvenient position.  This turned out to be a bad move, or perhaps a very good one, as the motion pressed his groin against Hakkai’s thigh, keeping a constant pressure as he slid himself into place.  By the time they were face to face, he was already hardening under the friction and unavoidable contact.  Hakkai noticed it too – how could you ignore something like that? – but he was too polite to say anything.

            “Well that clears up another mystery,” Gojyo murmured, trying to cover his embarrassment with conversation.  “If you and Goku looked anything like this this morning, I see now why Sanzo jumped to conclusions.”  At Hakkai’s raised eyebrows, he added, “Not that I believed it for a second.”

            “It’s this bed,” Hakkai explained, “but there were certain…” Here, a diplomatic clearing of his throat, “… differences.”

            Not knowing how else to respond, Gojyo chuckled for a moment until his brain re-engaged and reminded him that he had Hakkai trapped in a full body press.  It was as good an opening as any.

            “So…” he began, trying to sound simultaneously innocent and debonair, “any chance you’d explain what exactly did… or did not… happen between us the other night?”

            Eyes sparkling, Hakkai smiled in a manner that could be only described as ‘coquettish.’  The guy had emotional range, Gojyo had to give him that.  “You really don’t remember, do you?”

            “Obviously not,” Gojyo snorted.  “That’s why I’m asking.”

            Hakkai looked at him appraisingly.  “Well, for one thing, you told me that you loved me.”

            This revelation was sufficiently startling that Gojyo drew away, holding himself up with hands pinned on either side of Hakkai’s shoulders.  “I… I did?”

            “You did,” Hakkai confirmed, one eyebrow lifted, his expression bearing an undercurrent of wary affront.  “Or was that just the tequila talking?”

            After a moment of consideration, Gojyo lowered himself down, resting on his elbows rather than his hands.  He could feel the heat of Hakkai’s shoulders charging into his forearms.  The truth was, he hadn’t really thought about it that way, not sober at any rate.  He’d spent so much time rationalizing why he, as a straight guy, wanted to sleep with Hakkai that he’d completely neglected the issue of why he, as a straight guy, wanted to sleep with Hakkai.  They’d been so co-dependent for so many years that he no longer thought it odd that their identities had become intertwined in his mind.  They depended on each other, and it seemed only natural that he should think about Hakkai whenever they were apart, that he would obsess over the little details of their interactions, that he would laugh at the worst of his jokes and glow with pleasure when the favor was returned.  Gojyo had never known love, not really, and it was just possible – likely even – that he’d been too stupid to recognize it when it had finally come along in the form of a bump in the road with its intestines hanging out.

            “It was the tequila talking,” he admitted at last, but before Hakkai could get angry he added, “but I don’t think it was lying.”

            His rising hard-on, the palpable heat between their close-pressed bodies, and the expression of bald relief on Hakkai’s face made his subsequent decision easier and more natural than he could have ever imagined.  He stretched his right arm out, lowering himself so that his weight again rested fully on Hakkai, and crooked his elbow so that his forearm rested above Hakkai’s head, where the fingertips of his pillowed hands tickled Gojyo’s skin.  It didn’t matter to him anymore what had happened in the past, whether Hakkai had rejected his drunken ass the other evening and retired to his own room, because now, at least for one night, they were bound together and alone, and from the look on Hakkai’s face, all signs pointed to “yes.”

            Tentatively, he lowered his head to brush his lips against Hakkai’s.  It was the faintest glimmer of a kiss, an experiment just to see if this could really work.  The experiment had explosive results: every nerve ending in his body was instantly afire.  He kissed Hakkai again, more deeply this time, and felt him respond, fingers scrabbling for a grip on Gojyo’s arm above his head.  When they finally found their mark, Hakkai slid one hand slowly up Gojyo’s arm, ghost-touches that gave him goosebumps.  The hand meandered up his bicep and over his shoulder, fingers combing into his hair from the base of his neck and rising to rest against the back of his head, exerting a sudden, intense strength that pressed them closer together.  Hakkai’s other hand, meanwhile, slid down his wrist and across his palm, twining their fingers together and squeezing tight.

            This glut of sensations had nearly sapped Gojyo of his capacity for rational thought, but his brain managed to catalogue the surprising intimacy of their clasped hands, the indescribable interplay of heat and softness in the motion of Hakkai’s lips, and the raw intensity of desire betrayed by the hand fisting in his hair, forbidding him to break contact as if under penalty of death.

            Sex was one thing, but this was an embodiment of raw need, of emotions taken out of the abstract and given physical form and power.  Had they been bound together by restraints of steel, Gojyo would not have felt any less capable of moving away.

            His free hand roamed down Hakkai’s side, fingers kneading into hard flesh, and without thought or intention, he found it had slipped between body and mattress to massage the round flesh of his ass.

            Hakkai gasped at the first hard squeeze, hips bucking involuntarily, and his leg shifted to the side, giving Gojyo’s hand better access, and allowing him to slip one thigh between the parted legs.  The protrusion of Hakkai’s hip was now rubbing against the length of Gojyo’s shaft, and for a second his brain posed the possibility that sensation couldn’t get any better than this, but then it realized that it could, in fact, get better, that they were still fully clothed and Gojyo was already nearing the brink, and how the fuck was he supposed to survive the rest without his head exploding from sheer, unbelievable, body-wracking pleasure?

            He shifted sideways, pulling his dick away from the stimulating contact, at least for long enough for it to calm the fuck down just a little, but this movement brought his own hip into direct contact with Hakkai’s cock, which was so hard Gojyo couldn’t believe that he had ever doubted that this might be an option.  How could anyone suppress that kind of want?

            Giving Hakkai’s ass another squeeze, he felt that insistent cock give a definitive jump, and instantly the fact that they were clothed just wasn’t acceptable anymore.  He needed Hakkai naked and exposed, needed to manipulate his cock and watch it as it twitched and strained, needed to taste the sheen of sweat and droplets of come that his efforts had inspired.

            Reluctantly abandoning Hakkai’s hand, Gojyo sat up and stripped off his own shirt.  If Hakkai was as willing as he appeared to submit to Gojyo’s total control, he’d use his own body as the puppet strings. Before his shirt had hit the floor, Hakkai’s hands were tugging at his waistband, so Gojyo turned his attention to Hakkai’s tunic, removing it with mounting urgency as he imagined their bare flesh pressed together.

            In the awkward environs of the sagging bed, Hakkai had difficulty removing Gojyo’s pants, but once they were down past his knees, Gojyo was able to kick them off with little effort.  When he settled back down, straddling Hakkai’s stomach, strong hands shot out to grip his hips, pulling him forward so that Hakkai could take his cock into his mouth.  Gojyo allowed this to an extent, but resisted forcefully when he was just far enough away that Hakkai could do little more than swipe at the tip with his tongue.  Hakkai’s desperate need for him, his thorough lack of customary self-control, was glorious to behold, and Gojyo relished the battle of strength and wills as Hakkai tried to pull him closer while Gojyo kept wickedly away.  Eventually, he relented, easing forward far enough that Hakkai could wrap his lips around the head of his dick.  He almost lost it at the pressure of that soft sucking, and the dynamic sensation of Hakkai’s swirling tongue, but he couldn’t go any further if he wanted to hold on.

            Barely keeping in control under Hakkai’s expert ministrations, Gojyo twisted around, reaching back to undo Hakkai’s belt and one-handedly slip his pants down over his hips.  Hakkai’s cock sprang up in its freedom, and Gojyo issued a soft groan of pleasure at the sight, the physical, evident piece of truth proving that Hakkai’s need was just as great as Gojyo’s.  Amid the dizzying sensations Hakkai was producing with his mouth, Gojyo spat on his hand and wrapped it around Hakkai’s cock, wetting it from base to tip and pumping, slowly at first, then more rapidly as Hakkai fought with increasing insistence to pull Gojyo deep into his throat.

            Teasingly, Gojyo drew away, sliding backwards and flattening his palm to press the length of Hakkai’s shaft against his ass.  As he continued to move both hand and hips, he was momentarily tempted to take Hakkai inside him.  He wanted it, pretty fucking desperately, but tonight, for this first time, there was something he wanted even more.

            Releasing Hakkai, he edged slowly backwards, making his way down the perilous mattress with the utmost caution – he could just picture himself doing something inconceivably idiotic like slipping and impaling his eye on Hakkai’s dick.  And no matter how much he adored Hakkai’s dick right now, he really didn’t want to go out like that.

            As he took said adored object into his mouth and began to – he hoped – dole out a little of the exquisite torture he had just received, his hand slipped beneath Hakkai and between his buttocks, fingering him tentatively.  He didn’t want to startle him, but he wanted to make it clear as vodka exactly what he wanted to do.  Hakkai’s luxurious groan at this two-faceted attack was definitely a positive sign, and by the time Gojyo was three knuckles deep, carefully stretching him, Hakkai’s head was thrown back, his lips pursing and relaxing under the syllables of Gojyo’s name.

            This was another milestone, another Significant Moment, another palpable reminder that, yes, this was really happening.  Gojyo drew his lips away from the shaft and pressed them against its side, murmuring, “Hakkai” through a kiss.

            “Gojyo,” he replied huskily.  “There’s a paper bag on the floor next to the bed.  Get it.”

            Awkwardly, and nearly toppling over in the process, Gojyo managed to lean over and grab the parcel, extracting a small bottle of oil.  Perfect.  Semen and spit worked well enough for lube, but it just wasn’t the same.  Smiling, he looked up at Hakkai and said, “You know what that tequila said?  It was an understatement.”

            Hakkai started to smile back, but soon lost that level of fine motor control as Gojyo returned his attentions to his dick as he slicked his fingers for reentry.  Once Hakkai was prepared, and as relaxed as he was going to get in that state, Gojyo applied a generous amount of oil to his cock, shuddering under his own touch, hooked his arms under Hakkai’s knees, and lifted his ankles up to rest on his shoulders.  Then, with a deliberate slowness derived from the balance of caution and urgency, he pushed himself slowly in, feeling the tight embrace of the muscular ring and the uncanny velvet softness beyond.

            Since the bed offered no leverage, he pressed down on the top of Hakkai’s thighs to push himself further in, while Hakkai reached out to grip his hands.  Once fully buried, he rested there for a moment, steeling himself to remain in control, then carefully drew partway out and thrust.  This motion waxed into a slow, luxuriant rhythm, and he reached around Hakkai’s leg to grip his cock, Hakkai’s hand still resting lightly over his own.  They moved together with a synchronicity born of familiarity, of years of living and fighting side by side, and their cooperative efforts were more perfect than ever, as if everything that had come before was leading up to this perfect moment.

            A short time later, Gojyo learned something about Hakkai that he had never suspected: that he laughed when he came.  It wasn’t the guarded, polite chuckle that escaped from his lips during daily life, lyrical yet wary like the refrain of a bittersweet song, but a full and hearty laugh, that started in his belly and spread out to his limbs so that the spasms of his orgasm lived on after the fact, transforming into a joyful shudder that shook his whole frame and pushed Gojyo that last fateful distance over the edge.

            As he came to completion and his body began to relax, his fist sticky and hot as it was anointed with the last sporadic spurts coming out of Hakkai’s softening cock, Gojyo looked at him with amazement, that familiar face in such an unfamiliar semblance, eyes bright, smile broad, shoulders still shaking with lingering laughter.

            It was the most beautiful thing Gojyo had seen in his entire fucking life.

            *          *          *

            The pair of them lay in a boneless, post-coital heap, Gojyo on his stomach and partially on top of Hakkai, who lay with head tilted towards him, cheek pillowed on his flattened hands.

            Wow, Gojyo thought, but even he wasn’t doltish enough to say something so trite aloud.  It had actually happened, and the reality had made his fantasies pale in comparison.  Sorting out his muddled thoughts, he finally made the logical realization that it hadn’t just happened.  He’d done it.  He’d really just topped Hakkai.  Relationship fucking equity achieved.  He’d won.  Unable to help himself, he dissolved into a low, victorious chuckle.

            “What?” asked Hakkai dreamily.

            Gojyo started to answer, but thought better of it.  “I can’t tell you,” he said.  “You’ll get mad.”

            “I won’t get mad,” Hakkai assured him.  Then, after a pause he added, “Unless this is where you admit that you really did get a blow job from Sanzo.”

            Sticking out his tongue and pulling a face, Gojyo was quick to deny this offensive suggestion.  “No, no, nothing like that.  It’s just that…”

            “What?”  Hakkai rolled out from under Gojyo and onto his side, but he couldn’t maintain the position on the saggy-ass mattress and swiftly rolled back to his stomach, overlapping Gojyo’s back.

            He sighed.  There was nothing for it now.  Hakkai would keep after him until he confessed.  “Look, you’re going to think I’m being stupid, and I want you to know that I’m totally willing to switch it up, but just this once… for this first time… I really wanted to fuck you.”

            Hakkai chuckled bemusedly.  “That’s sort of implied by ‘first time.’”

            “No, no,” Gojyo replied, shaking his head.  “I mean I wanted to fuck you.”

            “Ah,” said Hakkai.  “Just for our first time, is it?”

            “Well, other times too, I hope, but I mean specifically for our first time.  Especially for our first time.”

            “I see.” 

            Hakkai shifted away, and for a second Gojyo was worried that he was pissed off after all, but he soon felt warm hands on the back of his legs, parting them just slightly.  Then Hakkai extended a long, thin finger, and traced out a set of symbols on his inner thigh in slow, deliberate motions, so Gojyo could sense exactly what he was writing: ‘Property of Cho Hakkai.’

            That was the moment when everything clicked into place.  Him and Hakkai.  The tequila.  The marker.  And that original inscription, now an illegible blur, had been what Sanzo was looking for.  He squeezed his eyes closed, bracing himself for the inevitable epiphany.  “So… this wasn’t our first time.”

            “No,” said Hakkai softly.  “No, it wasn’t.”

            “And last time… which one of us… you know…?”

            Hakkai was silent, responding instead with a playful smack across Gojyo’s ass.  It was about as laden with obvious meaning as a slap on the ass could get.

            Resigned to admit his defeat, Gojyo was about to respond, but that relatively gentle smack, constituted the last burden of abuse their ancient bed could endure.  The slats holding up the lower part of the mattress splintered, and it dropped to the floor, sending them both sliding to crash against the baseboard in a tangled heap.

            “Okay,” began Gojyo once he had recovered his senses.  “Let’s call it a draw.”

            And that was when Gojyo learned that Hakkai could laugh fully and unguardedly, absolutely independent of the activities of his dick.

            *          *          *

            The morning came, the silversmiths were gone, and Sanzo was ready to hit the fucking road and get out of this hellhole.  After sending an alarmingly perky Goku down to breakfast, he went to rouse out Gojyo and Hakkai.  At first glance he thought there was no one there, but then he noticed the steep incline of the mattress.  Fucking Buddha on a tricycle.  They’d broken the goddamned bed.

            At his litany of swearing, two disheveled heads peeped out from behind the baseboard.

            “We’re leaving,” he told them with the utmost air of unquestionable authority.  Then he turned away before he could see anything distasteful.

            By the time they were on the road, Sanzo’s foul mood was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that they would soon be out of this crap-ass town, away from its exorbitantly expensive shitty rooms and watery gruel, but as the jeep drew up to the gate, their way was again barred by a big fucking peace-circle of idiot protesters.  As he was about to bellow out his fury at the top of his lungs, however, Hakkai called over a villager, who turned out to be the same snot-nosed loafer they had talked to the previous day.

            “What’s going on?” Hakkai asked.  “I thought you said the silversmiths were only going to be here yesterday.”

            “Oh, these aren’t the silversmiths,” said the boy.  “They’re the ironmongers, who have similar complaints.  But they should be gone by the end of the week.”

            As Sanzo shuddered with uncontrollable fury, Goku leaned forward, resting his chin on his shoulder.  “Sanzo?  Ironmongers?”

            “Shit list, Goku.  The very top.”

End.