FicWad

Disclaimer: See chapter 1

Chapter 2: Fooled Me Twice, Shame On Me

The next day, it was as if nothing had ever happened. The stupid monkey ("Don't call me a monkey!") still squabbled with him over everything that may or may not have been on his breakfast plate. Hakkai still half-heartedly tried to keep the peace while nagging Sanzo to have something besides coffee for breakfast. Sanzo still snapped at Hakkai to stop mothering him and drank his coffee around his paper.

Gojyo, on the other hand, was a mess. It was like the entire world had turned upside-down, and everyone except Gojyo had just begun to calmly walk on the ceiling. Yeah, next time the universe decides to reverse the meanings of "up" and "down", it should really send a memo.

When Goku got away with stealing a third slice of bacon from off of Gojyo's plate, Hakkai's brow furrowed in concern. "Gojyo, are you alright?"

"Hm? Oh. Yeah," Gojyo muttered, tearing his eyes away from the hand that was now holding a cigarette around the newspaper, tapping the cinders into an ashtray. How can he be so calm? Gojyo wondered angrily. His own cigarette had felt foreign in his fingers that morning, as if he hadn't been smoking for the last fourteen years. His lips had clamped it too tight. He'd had to hold the flame before his face for an eternity before it had lit. He'd finished it in two drags. It just seemed like something should have . . . .changed. But nothing had.

Geez/, he thought to himself, /I sound like such a girl. And yet he had no appetite that morning. And he couldn't seem to take his eyes off those hands-the only part of Sanzo he could currently see, thanks to the robes and the stupid paper that was still covering his face. He didn't know if he wanted him to lower that paper or not; as it was, he was totally off-kilter. If he had to look at that face across the table, he knew he'd give something away.

He really was acting like a girl. He was back to being thirteen years old with that girl who lived down the street, trying to figure out just what you say while you put your pants back on. But this was /Sanzo/, not some girl he'd picked up. He couldn't just leave in the morning and never see him again. He couldn't just give him a wink and a smile and ride off into the sunset (figuratively and literally speaking). He was going to have to deal with him all day everyday for a looooong time.

And on top of that, Sanzo just didn't do stuff like this. Sure, it was rare for Gojyo to spend any time with Sanzo, so it's not like he could say for sure, but he couldn't imagine Sanzo going down to the bar and picking up somebody. And the monk certainly didn't seem like he would be messing around with any of them, just for the damn inconvenience of dealing with them afterwards, but clearly he would. He had. With one Sha Gojyo. He almost groaned and buried his face in his hands from the plain impossibility of it, but then Hakkai would never leave him alone.

Maybe Sanzo really didn't have any feelings on this at all. Maybe he considered this more convenient, because he wouldn't have to go pick somebody up. It certainly didn't seem to have any effect on him. Suddenly, the paper came down.

"8:00. We're going."

"Whaaaa!? Sanzo, I'm not finished with breakfast!"

"If we let you, you'd eat straight through to lunch, you bottomless pit."

"I would no-how cool would that be?"

"Tch, baka. Get moving."

Gojyo rolled out of his chair and into a stretch, but made no complaint as they headed for the door.

"Gojyo?" Hakkai looked at him from the table, where he was picking up Goku's forgotten cape He didn't voice the question, but the redhead knew what he was asking. Is there anything you want to tell me? And he tried to keep eye contact, he really did. But he never could with Hakkai, so his eyes skittered over to look at a suddenly very interesting spot near the toe of his left shoe. "It's fine, Hakkai."

"What happened?" He asked quietly.

"Nothing." What was he supposed to say? "Well, Hakkai, I just slept with the almighty pain in the patella Genjyo Sanzo, which seemed like a pretty good idea at the time but now I'm acting like a friggin' school-girl virgin about it and golly gee I just don't know what to do"?

Even if he wasn't looking straight at them, he could see the hurt in the brunette's eyes. Gojyo mentally swore. Guess he had a right-they'd been friends for almost three years. They'd both thought they were past secrets. But all Hakkai did was nod once and start to walk toward the door.

"Hakkai."

He barely turned his head.

"I can't tell you. At least not now. I will when I can, okay?"

Hakkai shrugged, pretending at carelessness, "You don't have to explain yourself to me, Gojyo."

"Only if I don't want you all pissy."

As soon as it escaped his mouth, he worried that he'd just really pissed off the healer with that statement. But he just snorted softly and gave a small smile. "Okay. Just . . .whatever it is . . .deal with it soon. I don't think our little group can take too much tension."

" . . .Don't I know it," Gojyo muttered, as they both left the restaurant.

He caught himself playing the mirror game without even meaning to. He just couldn't stop looking. Granted, he'd always accepted the fact that Sanzo was just way prettier than any guy had the right to be. Luckily for everyone's sake, he was always a complete asshole, so no one had to worry about getting seduced by him. But now that he'd really seen /him, seen all of him, sweating and writhing and panting and trembling and demanding in a voice that he didn't know could sound like /that/, he knew that Sanzo was not "pretty". He was beautiful. It wasn't that he wasn't masculine; he knew the body under him last night had /not belonged to any chick, no matter how flat-chested said chick might have been. It was just that "handsome" didn't fit Sanzo. Never would. His cheekbones were too delicate. His eyes were too big. His eyelashes were too long. To keep him out of Pretty Land, though, those cheekbones were not only delicate-they were sharp. His lips were hard, not soft. There was not a spare bit of flesh anywhere on him. He was too harsh to be pretty, and too delicate to be handsome. Just beautiful.

Just then, Sanzo's eyes turned to the side-view mirror and caught his stare. This time, Gojyo didn't pretend to be looking at himself, or at the scenery. He couldn't look away at all. The look was horribly idle, as if Sanzo had found an interesting bug, but couldn't be bothered to really study it. Gojyo blinked too many times. Sanzo looked away, back to the road, and asked Hakkai something about the route ahead. As if it was easy. As if it was nothing. As if it never occurred to him that it could have been anything else. It just made Gojyo feel more stupid and unsure, and totally virgin/. What was he doing? /He was the playboy. He did the one-night-stand thing. Other people did not do it to him. Certainly not stupid baldy monks. Gojyo made a marked (if failed) effort to not look in Jeep's mirrors for the rest of the day. Just need to make it to the next town. Just until the next town. Then he'll stay in his room with his paper like he's supposed to, and I'll go out and get some random chick like I'm supposed to, and the whole thing will just blow over.

Gojyo was almost sure he heard fate laughing at him.

Why won't that idiot stop staring?

Sanzo's eyebrow twitched as he attempted to keep up a fairly normal conversation with Hakkai, a nearly impossible feat due to a pair of red eyes that he could feel crawling all over him. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this angry at himself. Angry at other people, yes, but this angry at himself? He made it a habit to do nothing that he could berate himself for. He had enough of those gnawing at the back of his mind without adding new ones. Genjyo Sanzo had neither the time nor the patience for regrets. But even he could admit that last night had been the epitome of stupidity.

Hadn't he been telling himself for months not to encourage the stupid kappa? Gojyo already acted far too familiar with him, randomly throwing an arm over his shoulder, making suggestive comments, and generally making an ass of himself. Sanzo always chose not to acknowledge how these habits, which should have been absolutely infuriating, made his skin flush with something that was not anger.

He'd always told himself not to show it. To respond to any of Gojyo's advances would be the equivalent to becoming one of those girls he was always picking up in whatever town they stopped at. Worse, because he should know better. He did know better. And he did it anyway.

Well, it was just a one-time thing. Wouldn't happen again. Couldn't happen again. It didn't matter how much he might have wanted it; Genjyo Sanzo didn't lose control. It didn't matter that he had been horny as hell, and that he just couldn't keep his eyes off Gojyo-his generous smile, his careless, swaggering walk, eyes that promised thousands of things that Sanzo knew well and good he never gave to anyone-what mattered was that he had lost control. But just once. One time. Never again.

It wasn't even that Gojyo was handsome. He was, but that wasn't the point. He had a way about him that should have rubbed Sanzo all the wrong ways-he'd met men that behaved like Gojyo before, and had never felt anything but loathing for them. But while a look from those men had always made Sanzo feel dirty and used, a look from Gojyo made him feel . . .special. As if he was the only one that Gojyo looked at (though he knew that wasn't true), as if he wasn't imagining anything sexual at all (though that was even less true). It made Sanzo angry to feel himself being taken in by someone to whom sex meant less than nothing. He glanced at the side-view mirror.

And caught red eyes staring into his own purple ones, dumbfounded. Sanzo tried not to show his surprise-he'd been expecting a knowing look, now that Gojyo, well, knew/. He'd been afraid that Gojyo would take license to behave even more boldly, to behave toward Sanzo as he would to anyone else he would have talked up. But these events must have shaken up the kappa almost as much as they had shaken Sanzo himself, because Gojyo had been quiet all day. Even now, his eyes ventured nothing; they just blinked a little too rapidly. /Idiot/, Sanzo thought, /Whether this means anything to him or not, if he reveals it, he's dead. He should know at least that. And with that, he forced himself to look away and continue his conversation with Hakkai, who remained blissfully ignorant of the thoughts going through two of his companions' minds.

"We're actually making pretty good time, Sanzo. The town's obviously too far to make it by tonight, but we should make it by tomorrow at dinner, no problem."

Sanzo grunted his approval, and promptly decided to take a nap, if those eyes in the backseat would stop undressing him for half a second. He almost laughed. How on heaven and earth was he supposed to make this a one-time thing if the kappa kept looking at him that way?

/Shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT! /Gojyo swore to himself. They were camping tonight, which meant no chance to talk to Sanzo. At least, not unless he was very creative. Whenever they camped, the arrangement was the same as when they had only two rooms at the inn-the monkey bunked with Sanzo, and he stayed with Hakkai. Gojyo wished that the arrangement made a little less sense so that they'd be able to scramble the room assignments. But on the rare occasion that they did get scrambled, it was always Hakkai and Sanzo together, leaving Gojyo with the chimp, so that wouldn't work either. Damn.

Gojyo had never gulped down his dinner so fast in his life. Even Goku stared in shock, which, naturally, started another bout of insults between the two of them. But Gojyo's mind wasn't on besting the monkey, for once. He just wanted to get away from that campfire as quickly as possible. Granted, camp-outs were generally early nights, anyway, since there really wasn't anyplace to set out a game of cards, and not enough light for Hakkai and Sanzo to do much reading by, but it was barely dark when Gojyo proclaimed that he was tired and headed off to the tent. Hakkai and Goku both had their eyes turned toward Gojyo's retreating back-one concerned, one just plain confused-so neither of them saw the singularly peculiar look that flitted across Sanzo's face.

It took a little over an hour before the others banked out the fire and started heading to bed, Goku and Sanzo to one tent, and Hakkai slowly walking towards the one he was sharing with Gojyo. The "door" opened slowly.

"Gojyo?"

"Yeah?"

"Figured you couldn't possibly be sleeping. What on earth is going on?"

Gojyo groaned and threw a bronzed arm over his eyes in a gesture of utter defeat, "Hell if I know."

To his credit, Hakkai was being incredibly patient. He'd waited all day, and even now sat down and starting unlacing his shoes. He changed in silence, and it was only when his clothes were neatly folded, shoes perfectly parallel and even, and monocle folded carefully inside his headband that he decided Gojyo wasn't going to speak and started the conversation himself.

"What I don't understand is that a fight with him really wouldn't bother you like this, not normally. You two always argue-you insult him, he fires the gun at you, and the argument's basically over. There are very few variations to the pattern. But something out of the ordinary has happened here."

Gojyo decided to answer that rather obvious observation with more silence. Then a deep sigh. Then silence again.

"What happened? What did he say?"

Gojyo sort of laughed. " . . .Nothing." It was true, or nearly so. There had been practically no words exchanged during the whole thing. There were a lot of times he'd wanted to say something, but he was certain that if he had, he would have been kicked out and, strangely enough, that bothered him. The fact that that bothered him bothered him.

" . . .Alright."

He watched Hakkai lie down in his sleeping bag. He kicked off his own boots and socks, letting his headband and vest join them in a rumpled heap to the side of the tent. The rest of his clothes stayed on-it got friggin' cold out here at night. Crawling inside his own sleeping bag, he looked at his friend's back miserably. He had never wanted to tell Hakkai something so badly, but never had the topic been so forbidden. No, not even when they talked about their pasts. This little group, with all its many, many issues, balanced like a pyramid of acrobats on a unicycle. Blindfolded. Any little thing out of the ordinary could upset it. Aw, hell, who was he kidding. This was a big thing. This was huge. And strangely enough, the thing that mattered most to him was whether Sanzo would admit that.

Definitely spend too much time with the chimp . . . Gojyo thought, shutting his eyes.

And not nearly enough time with his owner. The naughty part of his brain answered.