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A/N: I apologize for the long wait between chapters one and two here...I wish I had an excuse, but I don't, really. "My grandmother was on fire" and "My house was imploding" only work so many times.

Disclaimer: See chapter one.

Aftershocks-Chapter 2

Gojyo couldn't help grinning like an idiot all day-which was actually a bit of a problem because both Hakkai and the monkey were giving him weird looks, and Goku had actually asked him several times what was wrong.

"Okay, seriously Gojyo, you're creeping me out. What are you smiling at?"

Seemingly out of nowhere, the fan descended on both Goku and Gojyo.

"What the hell!?"

Sanzo didn't appear to have moved, and even now barely turned his head to say, "You're frickin' noisy. Shut up."

"I didn't even say anything!" Gojyo protested.

"Ch."

But the harisen hadn't thwacked across their skulls half as hard as it used to, and that made Gojyo smile again.

"So, how do you want to tell them? I mean, like, over breakfast, or . . ."

Sanzo remained silent-sure, he knew dealing with this would be easier if he and Gojyo didn't have to sneak around, and what the hell did he have to hide anyway? It's not like he'd ever cared about other people's opinions, and he would have had to be a complete idiot not to notice the lack of camaraderie between Gojyo and Hakkai, and how much it was bothering the kappa, but now that he'd agreed to tell the others about it he had no idea what to say.

Even a simple statement wasn't simple-he didn't want to tell Hakkai and Goku that he and Gojyo fucked, the word that he had so cruelly spat at Gojyo all those weeks ago on the hilltop. "Sleeping together" still implied too little, and the word "boyfriend" made him cringe. "Lovers" was just too embarrassing to say out loud. And on top of that, they would have to deal with Hakkai's comments on one side, and Goku's inevitable questions on the other.

"...Maybe we should speak to them separately." Sanzo pulled his shirt on.

"Yeah...I don't think Goku would, ah, appreciate hearing it from me...and Hakkai's been waiting on a explanation for a long time."

"An explanation to what?" Sanzo immediately bristled. If Gojyo had been running his mouth-

"Dude, Hakkai and I have been living together for almost three years now. He knows when I'm acting weird, even if I don't tell him why."

"Hn."

"What, you think he'd be so pissed at me if I'd told him what was going on? He hates being left out of the loop. You know that."

"Then why didn't you?"

Gojyo shrugged, "It wasn't mine to tell."

The hot sun barely countered the cool wind blowing past Jeep's passengers. Fall was clearly on its way. Strands of Sanzo's hair bit at the skin around his eyes like tiny razors. He could only imagine what Gojyo's hair must be like. He snuck a glance in the side-view mirror.

And found crimson eyes staring hotly back, unhindered by the red hair the kappa had been smart enough to put into a ponytail. Apparently, the damn kappa had been watching him in Jeep's mirrors again. This time, however, he didn't seem at all disturbed at being caught at it. In fact, it was almost like he'd been waiting for Sanzo to look. One golden eyebrow rose in reply.

Yes?

I'm gonna pay you back for that smack with harisen.

I'd love to see you try.

Yeah, I figured you might.

'Ch. Baka.

"Okay, so we're getting to a town tonight, right?"

Sanzo made an affirmative noise, since talking was incompatible with brushing his teeth.

"So, we'll just have to take 'em aside and talk to them then..." Gojyo trailed off, probably trying to figure out what to say to Hakkai. Sanzo snorted. Gojyo was lucky he got Hakkai. How the hell was he going to explain this to the saru?

"Hey Sanzo."

"Sanzo spit in the sink and rinsed out his mouth. "What?" He asked around the hand towel.

"Have you even given the monkey 'the talk'?"

Sanzo rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. "Yeah. Sort of."

Gojyo raised his eyebrows, "Sort of?"

"It's not something he was really all that curious about, really. Once I convinced him that, no, we weren't trying to keep secrets from him, he lost interest and headed off to the kitchen."

Gojyo laughed, "Leave it to the monkey!" He whistled, "Good luck on that one, Sanzo-sama."

"We could always trade..."

"No way in hell. You're on your own here, Sanzo, he's your pet."

Sanzo mumbled something about good-for-nothing erogappas, but Gojyo just laughed and, with a quick kiss and a wink, left the room, just before the sun came up.

"Two rooms, so..."

Sanzo grabbed one of them out of Hakkai. "Come on, monkey."

"Uh, okay. Okay!" Goku struggled to pick up his things and follow the priest, knowing that Sanzo was likely to lock him out if he didn't hurry.

Hakkai just looked after them. "Umm...okay, then. Is there something...going on?"

Gojyo shrugged and threw his bag over his shoulder. The two friends walked in marked silence to their room-they hadn't shared a room since that conversation, or lack thereof, in the tent weeks ago. Hakkai really really didn't like feeling left out. He was as bad as the monkey, he just got quiet and sullen instead of whiny.

The lock was sticky, so they ended up spending three full minutes in the hallway. Gojyo kept debating whether he should put down his bag or not. Whether he should offer to try or not. Neither of them spoke.

Finally the door opened and Hakkai didn't bother to hold the door. The heavy wood hit Gojyo's shoulder as he walked through. Yeah. It was definitely time to fix things here.

Gojyo shut the door behind him and through his bag onto one of the beds. "Hey, Hakkai."

"Yes?"

"We need to talk."

"About?"

Gojyo sighed. Damn, Hakkai, you gotta be this difficult? "What happened a few weeks ago."

Hakkai sat down on the edge of his bed. Well, I guess that's as close to an okay as I'm gonna get here.

"The reason I couldn't tell you before is...it wasn't really my thing to tell, ya know? Well, I mean, it was, but it was someone else's, too. And I didn't want to tell anybody else until that person and I had gotten things sorted out, you know?"

Hakkai blinked. "If you're just going to talk around it, there's no point in discussing it, is there?"

Gojyo bowed his head, "I just...wanted you to know that, before I told you. I wanted to tell you before, but I needed someone else's okay to do that, alright?"

Hakkai looked a bit mollified, but still not very happy. But he waited, patiently as ever, for Gojyo to find the words he needed to say.

"That night, er, the night before we talked?" Hakkai nodded. "Sanzo and I..."

"You and the kappa what!?" Goku made a face.

I knew he wasn't mature enough to handle this conversation. Sanzo tried to ignore the flush creeping over his cheekbones.

"But if you're a guy and he's a guy..."

"I am not explaining the mechanics of it!"

"No! I mean...but he likes girls! And you...aren't a girl." Goku ended lamely, trying to think of what to say that wouldn't get him smacked with the harisen.

Sanzo's eye twitched a bit at that. "If you want an explanation from him, feel free to ask." Away from me.

"Well...I guess that part doesn't really matter." Goku scratched his head a little absent-mindedly. "But....Gojyo? I just don't get it, Sanzo."

Sanzo lit up a cigarette. "You and me both, monkey."

Hakkai's face froze a bit as he digested this piece of information. His mouth worked a bit. He cleaned his monocle on his shirt. "Well. That was a little unexpected."

Gojyo laughed a bit at that. "Tell me about it. I had no clue what the hell I was thinking, what the hell he was thinking, but it happened. That's why I was so screwed up the next morning."

"I don't blame you. I mean...Sanzo?"

"Yeah."

"And you've been waiting this entire time...wait. How did you get his okay to tell me this?"

"Because...it didn't end there, Hakkai. It happened again, the next time we made it to a town. And then it just sort of kept happening. We never really talked about it. That's part of why I couldn't tell you, too. I mean, how can I tell you what's going on if I don't even know?"

"It's okay, Gojyo. You don't have to keep explaining."

"Right. Right." Gojyo ran a hand through his hair nervously. "You just have no idea how insane this whole thing was. Like, I kept waiting for the punch line, you know?

"Not that I'm complaining, but..." Gojyo looked at Hakkai, puzzled by the sly smile on his friend's face, "I thought that I was the only man allowed in your bed?"

Gojyo stood in shock for a moment while Hakkai tried to hold back a noise that sounded suspiciously like a giggle (even though Hakkai would tell you with a too-polite smile and scarily bright eyes that he certainly did not giggle-he chuckled).

Eventually, Gojyo saw his friend's shoulders shaking with repressed laughter, and started laughing himself. Just a low chuckle. But then that drove Hakkai into a loud sputter as he finally started certainly-not-giggling out loud, and that made Gojyo laugh louder because Hakkai sounded so funny when he laughed and tears were hanging on the corners of their eyes before they stopped.

"So," Gojyo thumped a hand on Hakkai's still bony shoulder-for someone who cooked so much, he never seemed to eat enough-"We cool, man?"

Hakkai nodded. "We're cool."