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Part 2
There came a time much later when summer had to admit
it had been defeated. It was a grudging retreat, leaving stuck humid days
in its wake, all wind and damp draft. The heat lingered longest, trapped
and drawn tight around the air like a possessive blanket, shut you in and
weighed down on your skin, pulled leash and noose around your neck.
Construction finished as the first of the yellowing
leaves started their autumn snowfall. This was a new wing for the novices,
a necessity of the times and the misfortune that Genjo Sanzo's popularity
was such that enrollment was swelling with the young aspiring. Most were
not expected to last a year, but it wouldn't do to have the overflow camping
out in the garden in the meantime.
But it was yet to be occupied, still unfurnished
with the floorboards rough and dangerous and a draft Goku hadn't been able
to track down. Sanzo stood in the center of the floor with arms folded
into too-hot sleeves while he watched the younger man work, interjecting
occasionally through his cigarettes that a draft was good for a novice
hall to have: it built character. He cited the leaking cesspit he'd grown
up in with fifty other frustrated young boys at Kinzan. Goku answered nothing
and kept looking.
They were alone again, the two of them. Goku working
while his old master stood back and watched and unconsciously played with
the edge of his hair. They talked little.
The lamp was burning low and cast long flicker shadows
around the room, reduced Sanzo's sight of his charge down to a fluid flash
and flutter of images, like one of those picture shows. The light threw
lines of brass shine accents on the edges of forearms and pectorals, grounded
muscles in pools of black shade, shifting as the lines shifted, stretched
and twisted over sturdy broad bones.
He had a build much like Dokugakuji now; a great
irony in itself. Leaner, though, with long arms and broad hands. Rough
like the scuff of the floorboards, always baked from the sun that by evening
they scorched and marked the priest's skin, in those moments before panic
took over and they swept away.
The moments were lasting longer. But the tension
was stretching with them, waiting terrified for the snap. Goku's hands
would shake as they traced the lines of Sanzo's stomach and his breath
would quicken against the monk's throat, almost begging to be interrupted
before he overstepped his place.
They never mentioned that either, in their talks.
Those brief touches in the night hours with the air still hot and thick
and breaths loud in their silent empty room. Sanzo would never have known
what to say.
"Given up yet?" he asked the earth sprite, watching
him stop and glare at the western wall.
"Nah, I found it," Goku said. He squatted down and
leaned closer to the gap, glaring like he was memorizing the image of it,
so he could find it later. "I'll come back with some pitch tomorrow. Should
do the trick."
And that was it. That was all they said. That was
the last of their formal exchange for the evening.
A moment later Goku was stepping away from the wall
and walking to him, picking up their lantern that it caught the glow of
his diadem beneath the mat of his hair. His eyes were brighter. And it
was in noticing that Sanzo was nearly too caught up to notice the brush
of the earth sprite's bare arm against his shoulder, just the back regions
of his senses picking up that warm dense heat, firm, sunbaked stone smooth
but rough but smooth and it sent a strange shiver down the priest's spine.
Such that he barely realized his own arm darting out and catching the edge
of Goku's shorts, the curve of his waist, felt the hard muscle shifting
thread by thread under the press of his fingers.
There was the smallest of jolts, that shudder of
realization that he'd never done this before. Had never touched his skin
this way, for however many months he'd watched and wondered and couldn't
stop thinking, in those back depths of his mind, what it must be like.
After that there was a hand at his shoulder. Forearm
pressed against his collarbone, wrapped possessive around his neck. Shining
unnatural eyes bearing down at him with their own self-possessed glow,
two points in shadow. Sanzo could remember days when those eyes were looking
up at him from below, wide and trusting, not this gaze now. That was a
gaze like Gojyo wore to Hakkai, or Dokugakuji to his little king, that
warm smile like dark chocolate, smooth and calm and leaning in to things
they knew and had waited too long to get to.
Goku's lips were hard and cracked when he kissed
him, rough and bruising, and the angle started to hurt almost immediately.
Sanzo was pressed against his bare chest, felt the air forced out of him,
wrapped his arms around the taller man's chest just as a defense to keep
standing when legs failed beneath him and balance left. And he thought
to himself just how long it had been, really been, and how completely unlike
all the others Goku's mouth really was.
The heat was oppressive before. Now it knotted.
Coiled and bound and trussed, brought the thought that for as impossible
as it was to wear these clothes before, it was an outright necessity to
get out of them now, as soon as possible. He wanted it. He wanted,
the whole thought of which was terrifying. But he wouldn’t let go, and
neither would the boy.
Although, they decided it was best to move somewhere
else for this.
(21:45, 12 July 2005)
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