Raining Monkeys
~*Pancake*~
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Just the slightest hint of shounen-ai, blink and you'll miss it. ^^;; Mostly language, sorry kiddies, and Sanzo is more than likely OOC, cause his head is so fucking hard to get in to. ^^;; If I continue it will be yaoi, so you are forewarned.
Notes: Just an idea that came to me while listening to two songs that came to be the whole inspiration of this fic. Plus it's really rainy here, and cold, so that helped. I'm sorry in advance if it sucks, I hope you'll forgive me for that. It's my first Saiyuki fic - you can tell, ne? ^^;; I'm still trying to decide if I should go on with it, because I have a few ideas forming for if I do. It's not like I can go to school since I'm so fucking sick, so I may. "....I would like to thank Ashley-sama, AKA The Lady Stryfe, AKA Phoebe, AKA The Girl With The Over-Inflated Ego for helping widdle ol' me with beta-ing (a term she still doesn't understand, btw). It was a great asset to my fic, and I thank her. Although, I've never seen so much olive (her editing color) before. I do disagree with her opinion of Goku having "an upside-down roadkill beaver" hairstyle, and "child-like shortness", but I'll forgive her, seeing as she hasn't seen very much of Saiyuki. After all, she did take time from her busy Friends-waching obsession to pass down her college-educated knowledge to help me with my fic. Eh. For what it's worth; it was worth all the while..." (She wrote it! Not me! I loff Goku the mostest!! ^^;; )
Enjoy!
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Fuck.
Violet eyes, half glazed in some distant reverie, flickered back to life. His cigarette had dwindled down to his pale fingers, the burn registering in some distant part of his still-conscious mind. The butt was crushed against the window that he sat against as he looked out into the bleak gray weather that always accompanied the rain. Which caused frail wisps of steam to rise as embers were extinguished. He watched it with mild interest, needing something, anything, to keep him from returning to the state he had been in. The rain had never been his friend, always bringing up some bad memory - there were so many now, too many. Fuck the rain and how it always got the best of him; how it always took away the best things he had - you couldn't smoke in the rain, after all.
It was a simple April shower, a sign of a prosperous spring to come, but the monk had long since stopped caring what kind of rain it was. Any rain, any sign of rain, reverted him back to his windowsill, to smoke it out. If he was lucky enough to have beer with him, it was all the more better, since getting as drunk as possible was the best escape. There was nothing good about it, the rain. There was never enough of it to wash away the blood that covered him, and even then he didn't know if he wanted that. At least being covered in blood was a surprisingly warm, satisfying feeling, whereas being completely wet only left one cold and vulnerable to diseases that would only hinder.
But most of all, no matter how much it rained - cats and dogs, frogs, fish, cows even - it never rained monkeys. Fucking monkeys.
Another smoke was lit and placed between thin lips as the monk took in a shaky breath - blame it on the weather - and let the nicotine soothe fraying nerves. Not as good as beer, but it would do. Violet eyes closed as the breath was slowly let out, the smoke creating a comfortable haze around him. Goku would have hated it, he had always hated the smoke, and maybe that's why it had become such a habit - just to spite that damn, stupid monkey.
Fuck monkeys.
How long had it been since he had last seen his? A few years - three, maybe even four, by then. He couldn't remember. After he had come back to the temple alone, time blurred together in a smear of rainy days and those that didn't have enough significance to be worth remembering. The few days that weren't rainy, he remembered, were filled with the annoying red-headed kappa and Hakkai, who insisted they come at least once a month to check up on him. As if he couldn't take care of himself without someone else to watch over him. It wasn't that he minded their company, after their trip to the West, he had grown to welcome the drawl of the gambler and the smile of the brunette. It was just that there were only three of them; they were incomplete. And that always reminded him of the absence of the fourth, a wound that was still too deep to bear.
If the saru had gone and gotten himself killed during the journey, at least they could have moved on knowing as much. But as far as they knew, he was as far away from danger as any of them could have been; catching up on the five hundred years he had been deprived of his original home. He was back in his place among the gods and the immortals, taken there by a friend that was thought to never recover. Safe, and undoubtedly well-taken care of.
Why, then, had they not heard something from the monkey? He had spent his first few years with Sanzo learning how to read and write, because if he had been taught it before, he had forgotten it in his five hundred years of captivity. Yet there had not been any word from the golden-eyed teen. Not one fucking word. How hard could it be, to take a few moments to write to his friends?
To his fucking Sun.
The idiot had probably forgotten all about them, just like he had forgotten about his previous owner. It was probably better that way for all of them. But just like the other two, too strong a bond had been formed to be so easily broken. How many times had the monkey begged him never to leave? How many times had he said that he owed his life to his Sun, his savior, and that there was no way the blonde would ever get rid of him?!
Fucking liar.
Hypocritical and manipulative had never been words that Sanzo had associated with the boy, but his nicotine-induced thoughts easily pieced them together. The boy had obviously used his position to get Sanzo to pity him enough to free him and take him in, and then the first chance he got, he skipped away freely. Now he was probably stuffing his face with feast after feast after feast, just because he could. Just because he was that fucking special.
He hated the gods, more so now than when they had taken his own guardian away from him. Had it not been for them, he never would have had to take in such a dumb animal. Had it not been for them, he wouldn't have had to tote him all the way to the West with the other two. Had it not been for them and that damned trip, he wouldn't have had to realize so much about himself and those he traveled with. Thus, he wouldn't have had to make friends, and thus he wouldn't have had to lose them, and thus he wouldn't have been hurt by that loss. Granted, he had made a point to never stop living for himself, and himself alone. He had just begun to care more about others than he would have liked. Especially that whining, bratty monkey.
Fucking idiot.
The dumb animal had wormed his way into a heart that hadn't wanted such intrusions. He had unwittingly dodged every barricade that Sanzo had so carefully put up after his last loss, and even when he got as close as the last, he still burrowed deeper, refusing to mean any less to his keeper than what his keeper meant to him. And before either of them knew it, they each stood as the center of the others' world, one quite happy of having gotten so far, and the other never wanting to be so close.
The sun, as warm and comforting as it was from the earth, had the power to kill anyone who got so close, and Goku had learned that the hard way. Though the monkey had managed to grow in mind so quickly over their journey to the West, he was still the child that Sanzo freed from the eternal stone prison, and always would be. The times when Sanzo could see the wear of five hundred years of loneliness and living in general, had become far too frequent toward the end of their journey. He could protect the child from the mountain, but the jaded youth was beyond him. While he had always wanted the boy to grow up more quickly, he'd be damned if he lost Goku to the other idiots of the world, or even the gods.
Fuck the gods.
He never wanted to see the light fade in those expressive eyes. He never wanted him to lose that spirit and vigor that made him Goku, that made him the bakazaru. Mostly because it had taken the monk so long to get used to Goku in the first place, and he wasn't sure he could handle a change. It was also because he didn't want the monkey to turn out like him. That was why he had pushed him away, forced him back to the heavens with harsh words and cold indifference. And yet, if he came back changed in any way...
But of course, it was already too much to hope that he would ever fucking come back.
He lifted a pale, gloved hand to tangle with golden strands as he laid his head back against the wall, and then let it roll forward to rest on the cool pane of the window. He hated thinking about the past, because he always felt that pang of regret for words that he should have told the youth, things that he had stupidly expected Goku to get on his own. Goku should have left with a smile on his face, if he had left at all. Sanzo knew that if he had been able to tell the monkey even a fraction of what he felt he wouldn't be sitting contemplating the absence of the monkey, but rather contemplating whether or not he should throw the idiot out, nursing another saru-induced headache. And with that thought a ghost of a smile passed over drawn lips.
Fuck.
//"Goku has been granted a... pardon, so to speak, and we would like to have your permission to take him back home."
Home? "What the hell do you need my permission for? You're the ones who dumped him on me in the first place." Violet eyes glared into the gold of Nataku's, so guarded and unlike Goku's, but he could feel the other lift to look at him with the slightest tinge of hurt in them.
"Sanzo --" He had always hated how the younger drew out his name in such a whiny way. He hated how he almost reacted to that tone.
"You are his keeper, Genjo Sanzo. It's only natural we need your permission."
Sanzo gave a slight snort, crossing his arms over his chest lackadaisically. "Don't you think it's about time he starts making his own choices? He's not exactly a child anymore."
"Maybe so." Nataku kept a kind smile on his still-boyish features, something he must have been taught to do, being whom he was, when talking to the hardheaded types like Sanzo. "Humor me, then."
A golden eyebrow lifted at the raven-haired god, surprised at the gall of the boy, god or not. It would have been so much easier if the boy in question had not been there, eagerly watching his master. Giving Goku up to anyone else had always been out of the question before, and yet now that all was said and done, he had no use for the monkey.
That didn't mean that he wasn't extremely tempted to tell them to fuck off, that the monkey was his and would remain so until he was dead. But Goku had been forced to watch his keeper be killed in front of him once, and the boy had been much younger than Sanzo was when his own master was taken from him; being the monkey that he, was Sanzo could only guess how hard that had been. It was Goku's well being on the line, and Sanzo knew that this time giving up the monkey would be better for him. Better to break ties now when he could give him into more capable hands.
"Take him then. I'm not a fucking babysitter. I sure as hell don't want to spend the rest of my life taking care of a saru." He waved a hand flippantly, turning his back to the two, to try to escape before Goku said something that would make him change his mind. He had been right to refrain from telling the youth his feelings during the journey; otherwise it would not have been so easy.
Even though his retreat was quick, he could hear the monkey give a choked whimper. "F-fine then! It's not like I want to spend my life with some ill-behaved monk who doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself!" Sanzo did not have to look at the boy to visualize his expression, teeth and fists clenched against any other emotion that would threaten to show. He tried so hard to be strong, to not be some simpering child since he knew how much Sanzo hated weak people.
The monk didn't look back as he made his way out of the inn to load his pack into Jeep - the least they could have done was waited until they had gotten home before taking Goku from them. Then, as if the heavens were expressing the loss that the monk refused, it rained on them for three good days.//
But Goku was not there.
Fucking monkeys...
The gods had swept him away, showing Sanzo that there was something better for the monkey than himself.
Fuck the gods...
And the rain would always be there to remind him of that, of the solitude that he could not seem to fully escape from.
Damned fucking rain...
"Sanzo-sama! The Three Aspects request your presence right away." The monk had obviously been hurried out to his separate pavilion, out of breath and soaked in the downpour.
What the fuck...?
"There is a god with them, a boy..."
'San~zo...'
"Fuck." The word was hardly uttered, and if the man outside had heard it he chose to ignore it. The rain had undoubtedly drowned it out. "I'm getting dressed. I'll be there in a second." He bit out, grabbing for his robes and something that might spare him from the despised wrath of nature. The messenger left without another word.
'I'm home...'
His harisen caught his eye in his haste to leave, and with the lightest of smirks he tucked that into his sleeves. Not one word in three fucking years. He deserved a good hit for that.
Shut the fuck up, bakazaru...
Sanzo half-expected to see a pig flying overhead as he made his way to the main temple; it was fucking raining monkeys, after all.
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Notes (again ;; ): Sorry about the last line. It's sooooo cheesy. ^^;;; Please drop me a line (if by line I mean review. ;; ) and give me some feedback. Based offa the reviews I get I'll decide whether or not to go on. I feed off of reviews, good and bad alike, so I love you all! ^__^ *Bounces off to hide under her rock*