"I always knew you'd love me too."
Sanzo – my own personal sun – looks at me with that scowl on his face like I've just said something dumb like usual, peeking over the rims of his little reading glasses from where he's sitting on 'his' bed on the other side of the room, newspaper in hand. I know it's a weird thing to love, but that look on his face isn't a bad one. It means he heard me, instead of just ignoring me like he used to before he admitted it.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" The rustle of the paper as he folds it closed to look at me a little better, his long fingers coming up to pluck the glasses from his face and dangle them carefully against his knee.
"It means what I said it'd mean." I smile at him from where I'm stretched out upside-down on 'my' bed, dropping my hands to the carpet beside my head. "I knew you'd love me too, 'cause you always get mad at me an' it's different from how you get mad at everyone else."
I grin wider when he rolls his eyes, tilting his head a little without noticing it while I just keep looking at him upside-down. He looks like he's about ready to argue with me again, but he just presses his lips together, making them all skinny and stern-looking, before frowning a bit and sighing like he's given up on whatever he wanted to say.
"Alright, let's hear it, whatever idiocy it is."
"I mean…like…you get all mad at me an' you hit me an' stuff, but it's not like you get mad at everybody else. 'Cause you're usually mad at everybody," I don't bother pausing as he frowns a little deeper, obviously about to say something about how he gets mad because everybody's an idiot, "but that's the kinda mad you get when you know people're gonna get hurt but you don't care an' they can just go off an' do it. You get mad at me like you're mad I'm gonna get hurt an' you don't want it to happen. An' that means you were gonna love me like I love you 'cause I get mad at you for gettin' hurt."
That gets me another kind of sigh. The kind that means that he's kind of given up and that I've made a point, even though he thinks it's a weird one. He even gets up off of 'his' bed and makes his way over to 'mine' so he can sit down on the edge and I can sit up properly in time for him to ruffle my hair, even though he's still frowning. It's the frown that means he isn't really all that happy that I figured something out about him. Sanzo doesn't like it when people figure him out, even me.
"You've got a pretty fucked up sense of standards, monkey."
"I know." I can't help but grin, moving to hug him and making a happy noise as he hugs me back, no matter how reluctantly. "But they're mine. An' I like 'em."
And later, when he's asleep and I'm snuggled in as close as I can get to the warmth of his body, I can't help but feel even happier. Our bed could be anywhere in the world, and I'd still be comfortable, right here in his arms, just like always.
I knew he'd love me, eventually.