(A/N: This is a silly slashy one that I couldn't resist when I saw the hour and theme prompt)

4:00 AM

(Hour theme: Improved luck or victory over a specific set of deterring circumstances)


The first time Hakkai took the sutra off Sanzo's shoulders while undressing him, it was something of a disaster. The sutra, it appeared, did not care to be handled by Hakkai. Sanzo managed to claim the damage to the room had been the result of a demon attack, and Hakkai was careful to explain his injuries in the same way. Sanzo then designated the incident Not To Be Spoken Of, Ever, but Hakkai was not intimidated. He knew the sutra was powerful; he would merely need to be more careful around it.

Unfortunately, Hakkai's unique blend of energies combined with Sanzo's state of mind when Hakkai was undressing him proved to be a volatile combination. There was the time they blasted a hole in the wall of an inn and had to claim it was a chi blast gone awry. There was the time the sutra seized on a man on the other side of the inn and they had to pretend they'd suspected him of something. And there was the time it happened at 4 am and neither of them were quick enough to come up with an excuse when Gojyo and Goku burst into the room, looking for assassins. Goku had been confused, but Gojyo had just busted up laughing and hadn't stopped for nearly a week, despite Sanzo's frequent threats to execute him.

The root of the problem was that Sanzo was so uptight, Hakkai couldn't just remind him to take the thing off himself. Sanzo didn't like being without it, for understandable reasons, and he also didn't like to acknowledge they were about to have sex. He preferred to pretend it was something that was just happening by accident, a little beneath his notice and something he certainly wasn't emotionally invested in. So Hakkai would have to sneak up on the sutra.

He tried modifying his own energy by removing a limiter, but that resulted in the hole in the wall. He tried not touching it directly, sort of sliding it off with Sanzo's robes, but that didn't fool the sutra. There were times when Hakkai almost wished someone would succeed in stealing it.

A sentiment which he might have expressed to clearly one of their half hostile, half friendly run in with Kougaji's team. Something in his expression, or one of his companion's, caused Yaone to look mildly scandalized and demand, "Don't you all understand how important this sutra is?"

"Hey, it's flashy, but it's not a big deal," Gojyo said with bravado.

"It's super powerful," Goku replied more forthrightly.

"It certainly puts a damper on my sex life," Hakkai reflected-and only after seeing the shock on the Kougaji team's faces, and the murder on Sanzo's, did he realize he had spoken out loud. "That is..."

He never did manage to come up with an acceptable way to fix his sentence. But, since to prevent Hakkai making another such statement Sanzo finally got it into his head that he had to ditch the sutra before things started heating up, Hakkai could honestly say it was worth it.