by Princess of Pain

Part IV: The Wrong Side of the Bed

Sanzo awoke into a world that, thanks to his immediate and crushing hangover, he hated even more than normal. His head felt like a rotten tooth; his stomach, like a slip of paper spun around in the wind. He couldn't feel his feet. His mouth tasted like someone had come into his room in the middle of the night and laid a thick, dirty shag carpet over his tongue.

The unconventional monk groaned, then winced as the sound sliced into his consciousness. Fuck, he could practically hear himself blink as his eyelids fluttered open. He thought about turning on the lamp, so that he could hobble to the bathroom and put a deposit in the porcelain bank. He got a strong mental image of a vampire dissolving in a ray of sunlight, and decided against it.

Slowly, he sat up, swinging his legs off the edge of the bed. He was still fully dressed. There was no one else in the bed with him, and the sutra was still tucked beneath the mattress. His pistol was still beneath his pillow. Good. A few less things to worry about.

Shakily, the false priest stood up, his knees wobbling, both his hands cupping his temples. His head felt like it had too much blood in it. Oh, he was never going on a bender like that again. Not without due cause.

He was halfway to the bathroom when Sanzo remembered the reason why he woke up in the first place. There was someone knocking at the door.

Shuffling like a zombie in a cheap horror movie, the monk eventually made his way to the door. The floorboards creaked and shifted under his bare feet. He didn't bother using the Judas-hole; his eyes were not focusing enough to see through something so tiny. Instead, he pulled it open a few inches.

One of the hotel clerks. Short, mousy guy. Eyes bulgy, freaked out. Okay. "What... what do you want?"

"Sanzo-sama!" The guy bobbed excitedly. "You're the Sanzo priest, right?!"

Shit on a brick. Sanzo wished that he wasn't so goddamn irresistible. "What."

"Sanzo-sama, there's a terrible emergency!" He wrung his hands. "A bunch of schoolchildren were kidnapped last night! Their teacher's dead! A band of youkai're taking responsibility! They say they want you and your sutra, and if you don't show up by noon, they're going to start killing hostages!"

Sanzo had no clue that Hakkai had spent a sleepless night staring at his dead lover's back as she slumbered in the bed beside him. He didn't know that Gojyo had gotten abysmally shitfaced, and had fallen asleep underneath Goku's bed, or that Goku had been drinking himself. And he didn't know what any of them would say or think about this particular lovely situation. Further, he didn't give a rat's ass. All he wanted right then was an answer to one single question.

".... what time is it?"

"Um... quarter of six, I think. Now, Sanzo-sama--"

"Listen, you odious little cum-rag, as you have never listened before."

The way-too-nervous man, perhaps stunned by Sanzo's ability to cuss a blue streak, snapped his mouth shut.

"It's not even six in the morning. The sun hasn't even thought about getting up yet. I have one bitch of a hangover. I can barely see straight. I just woke up. I haven't even had my morning shit yet, which, judging from how bad my stomach is cramping, is probably going to be legendary. Now you are going to turn around, walk away, and thank every single god that I am currently too fucking tired to appropriately unleash my holy wrath on your hick ass. You may come back and lodge your stupid requests in an hour, when I am done with my morning coffee and my morning smoke and my morning paper and my morning bowel movement, even though it's still the fucking middle of the goddamn night. And if you come back two seconds sooner than that, I will pop your eyes out and skullfuck you. You are dismissed."

Sanzo grinned as he watched the clerk learn how to fly, and test this new skill down the hotel hallway. It was a truism: that whenever life handed him lemons, he was always careful to cut the lemons into neat slices, and squeeze the juice into someone else's eyes.

*~*~*

After the monk completed his morning routine, he decided it was time to rouse the slaves and get them to work.

He hobbled down the hallway, his movements still hampered by the all-encompassing headache that was turning his cranium into so much jelly. He passed by door 6, only slamming a hard fist against it in his version of "knocking", and bellowed something about idiot monkeys waking up for breakfast.

He reached door 7, and regarded it with a certain degree of suspicion. He had no idea of the debauchery that Hakkai and Gojyo had reveled in the night before--all he cared about was that Hakkai had been a good boy, and not made any damn noise. Now, he faced the rather unsavory prospect of throwing open the door and finding the two of them naked, or engaged in early-morning shenanigans that he really did not want to think about. Fuck it. If he found them that way, he could kill them. It wouldn't be hard. Two well-placed bullets would do it.

Sanzo kicked in the door.

His hangover-addled brain did not, at first, believe what his eyes were telling it. There should have been some scrap or sign of the redheaded kappa in this room--beer cans, empty cartons of those shitty cigarettes he liked, piles of butts in the ashtray, clothing in a pile on the floor, something. No such luck. The only sign that Gojyo had been there at all were his shoes, lined up neatly by the bed, next to Hakkai's, and a set of woman's pumps.

No, wait. Hold up. Either Hakkai was making money in a rather questionable fashion, or those shoes didn't belong in this picture.

Bloodshot, violet-stained eyes cast his glance over the room. The ashtray was empty, but there were a few stubs of cigarette in the wastebasket. Hakkai's clothes--his green overshirt, black undershirt, arm-bracers, pants, socks, layman's sash (motherfucker had more layers than an onion)--were all draped on the night-stand. Curled atop of the clothes was a snoring Hakuryu, who lay next to a monocle and a small, thick cross.

Wait just one fucking second.

Sanzo finally permitted himself to look where his eyes had been avoiding: the bed.

All right, either Gojyo finally got some sense and dyed his hair brown, and suddenly cut it all off (also wise on his part), or Hakkai had taken someone else to bed with him. A... a woman, from the curves beneath the sheets.

Woman. Hakkai had taken a woman to bed. And not Gojyo.

Sanzo laughed, then screamed: "GET THE FUCK UP, YOU LAZY BITCH!"

Hakkai was staring at him, green eyes completely blank. He'd been awake the entire time, of course. The woman beside him shifted, groaned, buried her head beneath the blankets.

"It's a brand-new day, Hakkai," he said, his face twisted in a grimace. "I've got a hell of a hangover, and you've got a mission to complete. So--"

Quiet: "I'm not going."

"I didn't give you an option, did I?"

"You are not my boss, Sanzo, and you are no longer my leader." His voice was alien. "I am not going to continue heading West. I am taking Kanan and Hakuryu, and heading home. I'm sorry that you will be without a vehicle, but you can probably afford a down payment on a car with your holy credit card."

Sanzo blinked. He was not hearing this. Hakkai had been known to be a smartass, and he'd more than once torn him a new asshole if he didn't agree with some decision Sanzo made, but this... this was just plain bizarre. "I," he said, his voice thick with spent liquor and with the screaming he'd just done, "did not give you per--."

Kanan, his migraine-encrusted mind whispered. Then, more sure, more shocked, Kanan? KANAN?!

"Cho Gonou, the murderer"

"killed a thousand youkai"

"murderer"

"we understand it had to do with"

"killed most of the people in his village"

"something about"

"murderer"

"kanan"

The voices of the Sanbutsushin smoked up in his consciousness. He suppressed them. Kanan. No, that wasn't right. Kanan was dead. This was a fact of life, like The Saru is Annoying, The Kappa is a Pervert, and Hakkai is a Bastard. Kanan is Dead. Sanzo knew that any attempt that had ever been made to resurrect a human being was unnatural--the dolls that Hazel claimed were reinvented humans were proof of that. Nervously (though he would never admit such an emotion), he looked her in the eyes.

Innocent, clear green. Confused, wide, frosted with long, pretty lashes. She wasn't a trick of Hazel's, then.

But she was dead.

Genjo Sanzo-houshi, the 31st holder of his sutras (sutra), was not a person who felt it necessary to accept the evidence of his eyes. He was just stubborn and angry enough to refuse to acknowledge that black wasn't white, or that the sky was blue, if it served his purposes. He, therefore, declined to believe that this was Kanan. But that wasn't the point--what was, was that Hakkai was under the mistaken impression that he was leaving.

He opened his mouth, which was full of all the reasons why Hakkai wasn't going anywhere, when the converted youkai sat up. His voice and eyes still had that blank emptiness to them, which was really starting to hike up his hackles. He was about as lively and bright as a shikigami. Speaking of those, the only times that Hakkai looked this way were when he was close to becoming Gonou again. Sanzo unwillingly got a vision of clattering mah-jongg tiles.

"Sanzo, did you actually mean it when you said that any one of us could leave at any time, or were you merely exercising your hypocrisy?"

His reasons died.

*~*~*

"She needs a place to rest, and that's with me."

Still only semi-conscious, Gojyo groaned. No, he didn't want to go over this again--he'd been picking all that shit over mentally for what felt like aeons, and he wanted to let it go. The side of him that had begged him to sympathize with "Kanan", though, proved to be masochistic. It insisted that he remind himself of just how unworthy he proved to be.

Nothing. He was nothing compared to her.

"... how? How the hell could it possibly--"

"She explained to you."

"Yeah, but something's not fucking right here, Hakkai--"

"I don't care."

"... what?"

"I don't care what you think. I know my own heart. It tells me that she is genuine, and that I am heading back East with her."

"So. So, that's it then. You just want me to pack up my shit and toddle on out of here."

"Yes, that would be best."

"Goddamn it! Are you really serious? Are you actually booting me out?"

"We've established that."

"What about the quest, man? How the hell are we supposed to get West without you? Haven't we already proved that we'd fall right the fuck apart without you here? We need you."

"I made a promise to her, first. I owe more to her than I ever could to any of you. That is as it is. I'm sorry for misleading you. Please, understand--"

"No. No, fuck your sorry. Fuck that, and fuck you. Get out of my life."

Jee-crawlin-hova, but his head hurt. How much did he drink last night?

The bed above him creaked, as Goku shifted, snoring loudly and muttering something about breakfast.

"Shut up, saru," he groaned automatically, groping into his pockets for a cigarette.

He dropped his lighter when the door suddenly flew open, and off its hinges. He looked between his feet, which were protruding from the edge of the bed. All he could see from his vantage point was the lower half of a pair of denim-clad legs. The monk. Damn it all.

"Get up! We're leaving!"

Sanzo stomped back to his room--presumably, to pack, and to readjust the icicle that he'd mistaken for a suppository.

Gojyo rolled out from beneath the bed. He needed to be out from under to properly light his cigarette anyhow. From on high, beneath a pile of blankets: "... is it time to eat?"

"No," Gojyo said, slowly pushing himself to his feet. With the cigarette clamped between his lips, he felt more grounded. "It's time to tell Sanzo what's going on."

They found the monk sitting on his bed, reading-glasses perched on his nose, examining the local paper. He glared up at them over its edge. "That didn't take long. I was starting to think I'd have to light a fire under your asses to wake you up."

Gojyo bit back the smart reply he desperately wanted to say. Whether he liked it or not, Sanzo was their fearless leader on this stupid quest, and Sanzo needed to know what had happened. "Look, Sanzo-sama," he said, inflecting the superlative, as always, with sarcasm, "some pretty heavy shit went down last night, and--"

"I know." He snapped his paper to smooth out a wrinkle, and somehow, made the motion both snobbish and dismissive. "We need to get walking. There's some business about a bunch of youkai holding hostages, and I want to be out of here before they start kicking up too much dickens."

"Hostages?!" Goku cried weakly.

"Youkai? They after the Scriptures?"

"Such a bright boy. Of course they are, shithead. What else?"

Again, Gojyo had to withhold well-justified bitchery, although this conversation was starting to make his antennae go kinky. "Then why aren't we fighting them?"

"Because," he said, his voice that of a parent explaining something to a stupid child, "we no longer have the time. In case you missed it, Hakkai's not traveling with us anymore, which means that Hakuryu is gone. We've got no wheels. Believe me, I would dearly love to stop in every single backwater redneck village from here to India and solve all their problems for them, but that is no longer an option. We don't have time to fuck around and fight a bunch of youkai who aren't directly attacking us. We'll be lucky to walk in a day how far Jeepu could have taken us in an hour, and that is one fuck of a cramp on our schedule, and furthermore, I have a raging bitch of a headache, and I'm sick of everyone questioning my goddamn decisions. Don't you have some packing to do?"

"You can't do that." Goku saw the look in Gojyo's eye, and--perhaps recognizing it as the look the hanyo had gotten last night, right before he'd tried to sock the not-quite-youkai--took a few steps towards Sanzo.

The monk's glare might have set his newspaper on fire. "Fuck you. When the Sanbutsushin come down from the Temple and give you divine authority, I'll admit that even though you're an asshole, you can talk about what I can and cannot do. I will leave when I like, and you are not going to keep throwing monkey wrenches into this trip just because your boyfriend left your half-breed ass out on the curb." He stood up, leaving the newspaper on the bed. "Now--"

Gojyo slugged him. Not nearly as hard as the torpedo-punch he'd launched at Goku last night, but hard enough. The monk's skin felt like ice beneath his knuckles. Sanzo was thrown back onto the bed, a purple-red bruise immediately incarnating on his pale face. Fine blonde hair fell into wide, shocked violet eyes. Gojyo had been angry at Sanzo before, and he'd hated him before, but never quite like this--because, even though it felt good to get that hit in, he knew that the only reason why he'd ever, ever get a lick in on Sanzo would be because the monk had never expected for Gojyo to hit him.

Never. To Sanzo, he was a good little dog who could be briskly beaten into obedience with that stupid fan, but not a dog who would ever bite back. Sanzo wasn't the slightest bit afraid of him, or intimidated by him, or impressed with his fighting skills. The monk had ducked quicker punches than his, and the only reason why he'd gotten away with it was because he was never supposed to have tried.

And Sanzo lay before him, spread over the bed, his shock being swiftly overtaken by his own anger. This was what Hakkai was supposed to do--stop these inevitable clashes from happening. And Hakkai couldn't care less, something that made Gojyo--

The monk was pointing his pistol at him. Once again, Gojyo found himself staring down the barrel of that little snub-nosed gun.

"That's it. I've had it. I'm going to kill you this time, you fucking kappa."

"Hey, now--" Goku.

"Shut. Up."

The monk stood up slowly, pushing himself from off the bed with the stiff, deadly grace that accompanied every move he made. He held the gun like a gangster--sideways, his wrist cocked. The muzzle dug into Gojyo's throat, a cold circle of metal against hot, panicked skin, as Sanzo leaned in closer, leering, eyes like bonfires, lips drawn back in something like a smile, close enough to kiss. And what flashed before Gojyo's eyes was not his own life (because he was constantly fighting with every single ghost of his past, it wouldn't make sense for death to imitate life). It was the quiet revelation that one of the reasons that he was so infuriated by Sanzo--one of the reasons why their discontent had flared up so strongly into strong dislike, and occasionally, hatred--was best summed up with his statement of almost four years ago: "You know, it's a real shame that you're a monk."

He hated Sanzo because he wanted the same thing from Sanzo that he'd always wanted from Hakkai.

And Sanzo hated him because Sanzo wanted to fuck him.

The barrel dug into his throat a bit deeper. All Gojyo could see was those violet eyes, burning lily. He picks on Goku because he wants him, he thought, his mind reeling into these thoughts in the seconds before the bullet hit the bone, and he picks on me because he wants me. If they ever fucked, it would be one hell of an explosion: clawing, biting, grappling for who was fucker and who was fuckee (and he already knew how likely it was that Sanzo would ever be the fuckee), twists, rips, rough and hard, Sanzo's teeth sinking deep into his neck as Sanzo shoved him down into the bed, too sexy to be rape, too nasty to be love. Searing, conquering, a battle between teeth and nails and dirty want.

He wouldn't have believed anyone who'd said that his last thoughts on Earth would be of the false priest, especially thinking of Sanzo--

A loud, resounding THWAP! echoed through the hotel room.

Sanzo and Gojyo both reeled back, the pistol safely withdrawn from the hanyo's vitals for the moment. "Ah, shit!" they both snapped, each lifting a hand to touch to their suddenly sore heads. Gojyo felt overwhelmingly confused; the only person to wield the paper fan was Sanzo, but the monk couldn't have done it.

They both looked to Goku.

The saru had picked up Sanzo's newspaper, folded it into an approximation of the infamous paper fan, and dealt with their fighting in the only way he knew how. He still held it up threateningly, his narrowed, heretical eyes visible above the accordioned paper's title.

Gojyo gaped. He couldn't resist sneaking a look at Sanzo; the monk was equally stunned. A thick smear of newsprint stood out on his pale face.

"Kanzeon in a kayak," he softly swore.

"Did you just--" Sanzo began.

"Shut up!" Goku yelled, cutting his mentor off. "Just... just shut up!"

One could practically see Sanzo's hackles raising up. "What did you just say to me."

"I SAID SHUT UP!" The windows rattled from the mighty force of the saru's lungs. Gojyo heard the slight popping sound of Sanzo's jaw going completely slack. Gojyo could sympathize. Goku did not often attempt to usurp the monk's almost-always-unquestioned authority, but then, Sanzo had become increasingly unbearable since Hazel had popped up. It appeared that Goku's skin was not as thick as his skull. The monkey waved his makeshift fan, as if for emphasis, as he continued to rant:

"Holy shit, what the hell is the matter with you two?! You're supposed to be the grownups! You're supposed to be the mature ones! And you're acting like a couple of idiot kids! You guys might not like each other, but there's a lot more important things going on here than that stupid shit!

"Sanzo said that there were hostages, right? There are people in trouble, and they're really real people, not just--not just things! They ain't part of the quest, but they need our help! And we've helped plenty of people before when it wasn't something that we should've done, and the only reason why you don't want to is because you're upset about Hakkai leaving, Sanzo! And Gojyo, just because you're pissed about it too doesn't give you the right to shit all over everyone else and feel sorry for yourself! We can worry about that crap later, because right now, what matters is that there are people in trouble, and we're the only ones who can do something about it!"

The youth stopped, catching his breath. His fake fan fluttered to the creaking hardwood floor. He looked from hanyo to houshi, as if seeking confirmation that his words had sunk in at all.

Slowly, Gojyo felt a grin creep over his face. Goku was a stupid kid most of the time, but he couldn't help but admit that the saru was right. Hakkai had to, at least for the moment, be disregarded. Not that Gojyo was (or ever could) really let him go... but there was something else going on here, that required his attention.

Sanzo sat back down on the bed, his pistol disappearing beneath the pillows. He lit a cigarette. "All right, Goku," he said, his voice surprisingly mild. "What're you going to do?"

"We," the not-quite-youkai started, then looked over to Gojyo. He wanted backup. Of course, his master plan did not extend towards what the hell he intended to do.

Gojyo tapped a cigarette out of his own battered pack, felt his pockets for a lighter, then cursed when Sanzo's Zippo bopped him in the nose. He glared balefully at the monk as he lit up. Not that glaring ever even scratched Sanzo's surface. Tossing it back, he spoke, his words embodied in a cloud of smoke: "Well, if they've got hostages... we need to remove them, don't we?"

"How the hell do you plan on doing that?" Sanzo's voice dripped scorn, as if he already knew that Gojyo did not have a plan.

The redhead grinned at his traveling partners. "Quite easy, you stinking monk. All we have to do is give them the sutra."

~TBC~

Next section: "All Good Things". A great fight. A fine cigarette. A smooth shot of sake. Love. Recent events teach that all of these things are simply too good to last, but Gojyo might learn different by the end of this next chapter.

~AFTER NOTES: A summary of this chapter could have, conceivably, included the notation "... and Sanzo proves that he is Spider Jerusalem's bastard son." I realized at some point that when I write Sanzo, I do tend to make him a bit Spider-esque with his vulgarities. The way I see it, though, if Sanzo were allowed to say things like "faggot", "cum-rag", and "fuck me hard" on television or in manga, he would say them. Frequently. ^^;;~