01-04-08 Dusty Fireflies 3x5x8 SanxGojxHakk
They fit together well, Sanzo mused, biting plastic wrapping from a cigarette and tasting nicotine and cardboard between his lips.
Gojyo was too bright and impulsive and wrapped up in blinding emotion, all action and word and rarely thought. Light and motion, like the play of lanterns on a screen, too swift to follow, darting like a firefly's muse.
Hakkai was too melancholy, the secret locked in the dusted box, ever looking over his shoulder, all sad sweet smiles and hidden thoughts. Sanzo never understand what passed underneath that curtain, and he wasn't so certain that he wanted to know.
Sanzo…Sanzo was the river, deep and cold and clear, with bitterness in its currents for those who delved too deep, or perhaps not deeply enough. The coldness of snow in its undertow, and dark shapes along the rocky bed. It was not a place where the light-hearted swam, or looked for bright pebbles.
And sometimes, Sanzo wondered if he was really needed, really wanted, or whether he was just another part of the journey, another passing fancy to savour and note down in the mildewed pages of an old diary. Maybe he would become words in a book, memories in a drawer, and Gojyo and Hakkai would pass into the sunset- together.
In twenty years' time, would they remember that he liked Marlboro cigarettes and pickled ginger and broadsheet newspapers, or would it be a half-forgotten remembrance, something bitten back in the shape before words?
The three of them fit together well, but Gojyo and Hakkai fitted even better as a pair.
Quiet recollections and mah-jongg in the twilight, Oolong tea and crumpled zinc beer cans amongst the dinner dishes. That was what entered his head when he thought of the two of them together.
Sanzo put his feet up on the empty table and opened out his newspaper. There was a crossword. He found a pen in one of the bags and licked the tip until ink welled through.
Sometimes, he heard them talking in the minutes before dawn, his part of the bed cool and crisp as they huddled together on the other side and murmured in soft, secretive voices, and he was left to stare up at the ceiling and wonder when the sun would break the night.
When Hakkai came in quietly, laying shopping bags down with the rustle of plastic, Sanzo said softly, "What do you and Gojyo talk about?"
"What?" Hakkai pushed his monocle further down his nose and opened another bag. "What do you mean, Sanzo?"
"When you think that I'm asleep."
The rattling stopped for a heartbeat, and Hakkai straightened. "-Nothing. Just-" He shrugged. "The journey. Places. People."
"I see." Sanzo held the paper out flat and crossed off a clue. A packet of cigarettes tumbled onto the empty table by his feet. He wondered if it was a gesture. Maybe he read too much into actions because he said so little himself.
"I am deeply sorry if you feel-"
"Forget it." Because really, if Hakkai was going to speak in that measured, impersonal, achingly polite tone, he could just forget the whole damn conversation.
Sighing, Hakkai rolled up the last plastic bag and pulled out a chair beside him. "Sanzo, what's this about? You know that we don't keep anything from you-"
"Don't you?" Sanzo wrote in the final clue.
They needed Gojyo here, the third part of the triangle, for his anger and light and exuberance, because this conversation felt as cold and brittle as frost, and right at that moment in the universe, the door opened.
"Gojyo!" Hakkai's relief was palpable, and warm.
Sanzo turned to the sudoku. He should have learnt his lesson. In this life, you took warmth where you could, and then you moved on. That was it. Nothing was permanent, nothing was real, nothing could truly bind you.
The other two had been whispering with soft heat, and Gojyo now turned to Sanzo, one hand clenched on his hip.
"You think you're just another phase, monk? That this is just some damn pastime, and you're the fool stuck in between? That what you think?"
Sanzo hated it when anyone stepped so close, like they were reaching into his soul, everything abruptly nauseating and frustrating and invasive. He didn't respond, and with a sudden, hard movement, Gojyo stepped closer and wrenched the newspaper from his hands.
"For fuck's sake! You just hide behind your newspaper like normal, why don't you? As if what's going in someone else's damn life is more important than all of this. Why do you have to keep on pushing away? You treat the- this like it's a game."
Maybe it was. Sanzo wasn't sure that he really understood love and sex. Perhaps he had the wrong rulebook for this game. He didn't know where the lines were, or had been.
"I don't know," Sanzo said honestly. I don't know why I read about other peoples' lives to escape my own, or push you away, or look at the wrong fucking rulebook. Maybe there never was a rulebook, and I'm just blind to it all.
Gojyo and Hakkai both sighed, almost in unison, and Sanzo felt again that sour connection between the two of them, love and trust and something else that he couldn't quite name. For once, he was the outsider, looking in through the frosted window.
Later that night, he put his head on Gojyo's shoulder and felt Hakkai's arm cross his waist, and it was almost a mutual apology, but not quite.
"I understand what you're feeling," Gojyo said softly, heavily. "I don't like it, but I can understand it."
Sanzo bit his neck.
"Sanzo-"
"Are you ever going to use my fucking name?"
"What?" Hakkai sounded tired and confused.
Gojyo smiled into the back of Sanzo's neck. "Genjo."
It sounded good in his mouth as Sanzo twisted round and kissed the last of the fading sound from his lips. He could hear Hakkai laughing quietly, and kicked him under the bedcovers. They lay down together as the dawn broke through the shadowed night and rinsed the room in pale gold.