A/N: My first attempt at fanfiction, in the Saiyuki fandom or otherwise. Much much thanks to itainohime for beta-ing :D

~*~

They had found the calligrapher by mistake, seated next to a stall that sold apples and pears.

To punish Goku for having eaten the last of the rations two days ago on the road, Sanzo had decreed that the golden-eyed heretic would be placed on a strict diet for seven days- at the next town they came to, he would have to stand in the market, spin around twice, and point to a food vendor with his eyes closed. Whatever that vendor sold, be it crickets or candy, he could eat only that food for the entirety of the week.

Goku had pointed to the tailor’s shop.

To spare the 500-year old youth a week’s worth of eating thread and fabric, Hakkai had suggested they visit a fruit vendor instead. Sanzo decided seven days with no meat was sufficient enough punishment, and the four of them had followed Goku to the apple-and-pear stall, watching in horror as twelve large sacks of fruit were very quickly charged to the Gold Card.

“You really think you’ll eat that much, bakasaru?!”

“I think the better question is- will it last him past the first night?”

Goku opened his mouth to retaliate to Gojyo’s query when he caught sight of a sheaf of papers resting on a box by the vendor of the stall. Dropping an apple in favor of the papers, he snatched them up and thrust the whole bundle in Sanzo’s face.

“Ne, Sanzo! What’s all this squiggly writing?”

“That’s calligraphy, moron. Don’t shove things at me.”

The elderly vendor smiled at Goku’s attempt to puzzle over the characters. “It’s lovely, is it not? My family were highly respected scholars and they passed the teaching of Chinese calligraphy down to me.”

Gojyo made a face of disinterest. “Not much use to you if you’re still here selling fruits, Grandpa.”

“Oh, but I don’t seek to follow a scholarly path- it may seem a simple pleasure but I find it gives me great satisfaction to create my art.”

“Art, huh? I wish I could do that, too…” Goku mused, studying the various sheets.

That’s how the Sanzo-ikkou had ended up lugging to the inn twelve sacks of apples and pears, plus the groceries for everyone but Goku, plus a box of calligraphy supplies and paper that the old man had been kind enough to offer. Somehow, everyone but Sanzo had a parcel to carry. “Oi, bouzo! You think you could help with this? Don’t punish us for Fruit Boy’s crimes!”

“…I have a foot cramp.”

Upon returning to the inn, Sanzo had retreated into the relative sanctuary of his and Hakkai’s room, muttering that under pain of death, no one was allowed to disturb him for the next three hours. Double death was promised for any inquisitive monkeys.

~*~

Half an hour after the edict, Goku was seated on his bed, a brush pen in his hand and papers strewn in a sea of ink and parchment around him. It had seemed simple enough at first, but following the calligrapher’s model became increasingly frustrating- the last ten sheets were filled with what started out as calligraphy and had then turned into doodles of bigger and bigger meatbuns.

At last it was too much.

“Damnit! This stuff is too hard!”

Goku flopped onto his stomach and hurled the brush pen at the door, narrowly missing Gojyo’s forehead as the hanyou entered the room. Hakkai was a step behind him, having finally convinced his friend that the bar was closed whether he liked it or not.

“Hey! Watch where you’re throwing shit, stupid saru!”

A flurry of curses, muffled by a pillow, were his only response.

Goku lifted his head, a look of defeat evident upon his sun-kissed face. “I can’t do it, Hakkai! It’s too hard and all my writing looks like snakes and gets smudged.”

Hakkai picked up a sheet of meatbun doodles, smiling at the despondent youth. “You know, Goku, I was a schoolteacher once upon a time. I could teach you, if you like.”

Goku’s eyes lit up with delight- “Na, Hakkai! Could you really? I was trying to write something for Sanzo!”

Much to Gojyo’s displeasure at losing his companion, Hakkai agreed. For the next hour the brown-haired youkai and his pupil sat on the bed, continuing their lessons as Gojyo napped on the other side of the room.

~*~

“Eh…Hakkai?”

The green-eyed man looked up from mixing the ink, turning his gaze to Goku. The eager pupil was laying stomach-down on the bed, his cheek resting on a blank sheet of paper as he waited for his teacher to finish.

“Yes, Goku?”

“I was thinking…you seem really good at this teaching stuff. Do you ever miss it?”

The surprise evoked at such a question was imperceptible to the casual observer, and fortunately Goku’s head was still turned away or he’d have seen the slight strain of Hakkai’s smile. “I do, to be honest. Teaching and taking care of the children in my village was one of my greatest joys, and I sometimes miss that interaction.”

Goku shifted, crinkling some of the paper across which he was sprawled. “You take care of us, sort of. Helping me out like this and making sure Sanzo rests when he’s hurt and Gojyo…well you do lots of things for Gojyo, don’t you?”

Hakkai smiled, and the strain was replaced by a twinge of amusement. “Aa, I suppose I do.”

“’Cos he’s like a big kid, right? He calls me childish but I think I’ve grown up a lot, ne, Hakkai? If I get this calligraphy stuff down, I can show Sanzo and he’ll see how I’ve grown…” Goku drifted off, and his eyes fixed on the slowly setting sun, just visible outside the window. “Sometimes I want to say things one way and I don’t know how, so I don’t say them at all. Then Sanzo calls me stupid when I don’t answer, but I’m not stupid, you know? I have the answer; I just can’t say it right.”

“I know you’re not stupid, Goku. Sanzo knows that, too. You wouldn’t believe it, but sometimes he doesn’t know how to say certain things, either. If any of us were so eloquent, we’d never take the time to think about what we were saying.”

Goku lifted his head from the paper, watching Hakkai as the other man watched the sun. “If I take time with the calligraphy, I can say what I mean, right?”

“If you try hard enough, the words will come whether you realize it or not,” Hakkai replied, handing him the dish of wet ink.

Goku picked up the brush pen and began to write.

~*~

It was now an hour past Sanzo’s time limit, but Hakkai had not yet returned to their shared room. Goku had left after producing a copy that he proclaimed was “finished,” and Hakkai had let him go with the promise that if he raided the kitchen he wouldn’t stuff anything in his pockets and get caught red-handed later.

Hakkai was seated across from Gojyo at a small table provided by the inn staff, playing a game of cards that the latter was pre-destined to lose. The hanyou was contemplating the merits of cheating his way to victory when the two heard Sanzo’s door open and close in the adjacent room.

Gojyo tipped his chair back and leveled a glance at Hakkai. “Think Baldy is going out for an evening stroll, or did Goku go in and beard the lion?”

“Well, the lion didn’t say anything about approaching his den after three hours…”

Both men glanced at the door.

“When it’s that quiet, it usually means someone’s asleep or dead,” Gojyo ventured. “I bet it was a silent murder.”

Hakkai administered a light pinch to the hand that was creeping towards the deck. “You have such a negative view, Gojyo. Perhaps Goku just went in to show Sanzo his artwork.”

Gojyo scowled darkly and rubbed the injured hand. “It’s not artwork, it’s writing, and I don’t see anything so special about it. Damnit!” he swore as Hakkai laid down his cards. “Stop rigging the fucking games, Hakkai!”

“You just need to think a little more about your moves.”

~*~

In the adjoining room, Goku was silently awaiting his fate.

When he had initially rushed through the door, Sanzo’s first reaction at the intrusion was predictable-

“BAKASARU!”

His head visible over the top of his newspaper, he had fixed his ward with such a look of malice that at first Goku hesitated, one foot behind him in case he had to dodge the bullet of a gun pulled from seemingly nowhere. Pride at his accomplishment gave him a sudden surge of confidence, and he had stepped forward, babbling a mixed apology and offering.

“Sorry Sanzo, Hakkai taught me to write calligraphy and I did a whole page for you! Do you want to see it? I worked really hard even though I was hungry ‘cos you know two bags of fruit really isn’t much food-”

“Silence or death!”

Goku fell silent, but only for a minute. “Sanzo…”

Amethyst eyes were deadly.

“…you don’t have to say anything about it, just look, okay? ‘Cos I made it for you, and Hakkai told me that if you take time to make something it doesn’t matter how experienced you are because the effort will speak for itself and something else about thinking but I don’t remember exactly since I only ate-”

This time, Sanzo lowered his newspaper and held out his hand, effectively silencing Goku’s flow. “You need to stop talking to Hakkai. He puts strange ideas in your tiny primate head.”

Goku stared at the ground and handed the sheet over, taking a step back for protection.

Sanzo scanned the paper to appease the noisy monkey, his brow furrowing slightly as he realized that the calligraphy actually looked quite masterful. Goku had apparently been inspired enough to sit still and learn something, a feat that puzzled the monk. Outwardly, his face was a mask of indifference that hid his initial surprise. Inwardly, he was just the tiniest bit proud.

Goku shifted his weight, standing first on one foot then the other. He felt that if he stood still he might just fall through the floor and keep falling. The silence was anticipatory and it filled his head like a chorus. Sanzo hadn’t said anything yet, was it really that bad? Beginning to suspect that this was a mistake, he bit his lip and kept quiet, for once. Damnit, Sanzo, just say something… he pleaded internally. He couldn’t gauge any sort of response at all from the monk’s smooth countenance, just the ever-present scowl that had never deterred him before tonight. This was more than just a sheet of calligraphy; it was an offering of something he hadn’t yet missed.

“It’s good.”

The words were impossibly loud, and they brought a flush of pleasure into Goku’s cheeks. Sanzo lifted his eyes from the paper and nodded at the table in the center of the room, accepting Goku’s offering even when neither party knew what transaction had just been completed.

“That doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Sit down and I’ll show you how to fix it.”

~*~

Hakkai lifted his head from Gojyo’s shoulder, listening intently as the waning evening light fell across the room in stripes.

“It’s so quiet over there, perhaps I should check on them…”

Gojyo slitted one sunset eye open and watched his friend’s face become concerned. “I’ll worry when I hear a gunshot. Anyways, it was just a bunch of curvy lines on paper, how much damage could it do?” He pulled the slender man back down next to him on the bed.

Hakkai smiled. “You’re probably right, I just hope Sanzo didn’t take it the wrong way.”

Gojyo shifted, closing his eyes again as the last of the sun disappeared into whatever unseen depths lay beyond the light.

“I doubt he did, those words didn’t even mean anything together…”

~*~

In the other room, the sun had set as well, leaving the two occupants alone and unmindful in the concentration of their lesson.

“No, stupid monkey, you always do the left stroke first…”

Sanzo’s hand closed over Goku’s, showing him the correct method. Curving up and down, over and under and across, the ink told stories and two hands moved as one. The sheet was soon full of a fragmented tale. Over and over, the words made no sense to anyone but master and disciple.

Sanzo priest Goku man earth sun happy sad moon face eye west sky happy happy happy Sanzo priest sun Goku man earth face eye west sky love sun happy happy happy love

“Ne, Sanzo, how’s that?”

“…Better. For a stupid monkey, anyways.”

Goku beamed like the sun, and for once Sanzo had no comment to dampen his joy. The two sat in comfortable silence, reading the words it had taken 500 years to write.

Outside, the harvest moon was orange like a paper plane.