DISCLAIMER: What's the purpose of this tradition, really? To keep us
humble? I admit it freely: I don't own Saiyuki. Consider my tou koued. To
remind us not to sell to each other for money? Hey, all I'm looking for is
a nice review. Or, you know, however many you nice people feel like... um.
Yeah. Please? (hopeful smile)
Notes: Well, I warned you guys I might be swamped, and I am. But, having finally gotten an entire weekend off, I'm taking some of it to update--the site, as well.
On another note, I don't want to come off all desperate here, but I'm really struggling with chapter ten, which is going to be the chapter where they work out what to do. If anyone wants to tell me whose POV they'd like to see that sequence from (a why would be good, too), it might help me to make up my mind.
Review responses below.
WARNINGS: spackle or AU fic, as you like. There will be hormones flying -everywhere,- and even I don't know where they're all going to end up, or what the rating will end up being. Er, and this is also the Fic Where Nightfall Tries To Get Over Her Dislike of Foul Language. If it's too much, I apologize.
--------------------
In Hir Wicked Style
by Nightfall
Part eight: Honshin
--------------------
Kanan had poked her head out to tell everyone how long dinner was going to take, so the exiled started a poker game. The premise was that the snippy comments from the kitchen about being left out would be less pointed about cards than a planning session. Given what the comments were already, no one wanted to provoke them into getting worse. Besides, the Gojyo-man had said he wanted to see what would happen when either two or none of the players were guaranteed to win. He hadn't explained that, and she and Sanzo had cautiously decided not to ask.
The beast cheated right, left, and center until Honshin decided she'd seen enough and called him on it.
"Well, yeah," he shrugged, unperturbed. "Man's gotta keep in practice somehow, and I make a living offa this. How'd I give it away?"
"You didn't," she smirked, bold as brass the way the playboys liked it, and handed him back his bandana.
He only gaped comically at her for a second before grinning right back, delighted. "Too bad we have to send you home, sister. You and me could clean up, especially with those two to help." He raised his voice. "How about it, O-hime-chan? Wanna help us bilk the masses?"
"No, thank you, Gojyo-san," Kanan called back politely. "I'm not very good at Honshin's games--Gonou, I need that!"
"It will suit the dish better if you add it after the broth has boiled."
"I thought you said you wanted a smooth texture."
"For the jiaozi, yes, but in this case..."
Meanwhile, the cards Gojyo was shuffling had exploded all over the table. Paying no attention to his fumble, he gawked at Honshin. She raised an eyebrow back; -she- wasn't picking them up. Their Sanzo was staring, too, more discretely.
"Scuse me," the other redhead said hastily. He shoved his chair back and darted into the kitchen, almost tripping over his own feet on the way.
"I'm not that graceless, am I?" Honshin asked Sanzo, who favored her with a reassuringly dour I'm Not Here To Flatter Your Vanity look and didn't answer.
Gojyo was back before Honshin even had time to be relieved, dragging an unresisting Hakkai by the elbows. Honshin couldn't imagine anyone glomming Kanan like that and surviving, but the green man seemed quite pleased about it. He leaned back into the Gojyo-creature's hands as though they were the only thing holding him upright, and his expression was one Honshin had never seen on a man, a kind of delicately pained amusement that looked a hell of a lot like Flirty Virgin to her.
"Heeei, Hakkai," the Gojyo-thing breathed into those frivolous earcuffs, "are we sure about these chicks?"
"What do you mean, Gojyo?" the Hakkai-man returned in more normal tones, with no regard for whatever secrecy his friend was trying for.
Not that he had what she'd call a normal voice. Kanan's voice was a harp, silky and jarring and sharp on the staccatos. She could make the most inane things sound dangerous even to someone who'd known her for years, and half the time it was just habit. She was worse than Sanzo that way--Sanzo also sounded like she was biting back fury half the time, but she always meant it. With Kanan you had to pay attention. This guy, though, was a glass harmonica, all velvety ripples and sexy spine-tingling vibrations that could leave you bleeding out the ears with no notice at all.
"Didn't you hear O-hime-chan say she can't play cards? I bet she can't drink worth a damn, either."
Honshin grinned nastily. "Wanna bet? Hey, -Kanan!-"
"Shut up," Sanzo said wearily, eyeing Hakkai with a neutral cast in her eye that spoke approving volumes. "There isn't enough sake under Heaven."
The lovely man chuckled nervously, still looking pained. "I'm afraid that might be true," he admitted. "Gojyo, Cho-san wouldn't have learned to play cards when I did; I don't think the girls in the orphanage had much interest."
"You said it was a knack," he accused, scowling horribly. Rowr. With thicker eyebrows or a heavier jaw he would have looked like a thug, but as it was...
It was nice to know she would have made such a handsome man, but there was no point in trying to do anything about it. Kanan's echo seemed a little conflicted--fair enough; so did Kanan--but her own was pulling an 'it's platonic really but damn if I can keep my hands off you' act that would have been wholly pathetic if he hadn't had such a relaxed, unselfconscious air about him. Or if his target hadn't greeted it with such complete equanimity. As it was, Honshin, unusually, didn't feel the need to box both their ears and show them how it was done. All it made her feel was a serious yen for her man.
"Admit it," Gojyo said, continuing to scowl. "You're just an ordinary shark."
"But I only play for money when there's no other choice," he pointed out equitably, just making a point, and glanced back at the kitchen. "Gojyo, I really should get back..."
"Forget it," Honshin waved at him. "She hates people trying to help anyway."
The thin lips pressed together worriedly. "That's what I'm afraid of, Honshin-san."
Honshin had to press her lips together hard not to laugh at him. The world was going to be different on the road than in the smoky circle of bars that had been her life until Kanan, of course, but she wasn't used to men cooking at all, except for carelessly dumping cans of things into a pot when they had to. Sometimes they remembered to open the can first.
"Sharks are only occasionally rapacious," the man-priest droned out a little irritably, as though he'd wanted to say it earlier. "They're only hungry every week or so." As a statement it lacked something, Honshin thought, but Hakkai was sending him an amused, betrayed look. Gojyo's jaw dropped, too, and a stunned, bemiracled bemusement at support from the monk crept over his face.
"Brr," Honshin shivered, curling over at Sanzo's elbow. "I can't stand it-- too creepy. They look like -us.- Make 'em stop, Sanzo."
"Don't you think it's sexy?" Sanzo drawled in a voice that made it clear that she herself was to remain unimplicated in Honshin's lust-fests.
"Hell, yeah," she enthused, bouncing upright with a flair that drew every male eye in the room, although the green ones politely averted themselves almost as quickly as the purple ones disdainfully flicked away. "Tell you what, though, it makes me miss my man."
"Your man?" the Gojyo-creature asked, his gruesomely familiar eyes jerking up to her face with such a tinge of big-brotherly horror that she nearly laughed at him, too.
"Singular?" the man-priest put in, but since the jab was so clearly aimed at her echo, she ignored it.
Anyway, the green man was silently scolding his priest with a quizzical eyebrow already. He turned back to her and courteously asked, "Is it permitted to enquire?"
She was opening her mouth to answer when the door got kicked in from outside. The men turned as one to, on a scale that went from scold to bellow, utter variants on 'Lilin' before stopping short and staring.
"JIEN!" Honshin squealed, and tackled him.
She had him flat on his back and was tonguing his tonsils before she realized he wasn't kissing back. He was, in fact, lying there like a lump in a labcoat. Pulling back, she demanded, "The hell's the matter with you?"
Behind her, three voices faintly oh-deared. She recognized two of them.
Appalled, Jien choked, "What did that bastard Homura -do- to you?"
She sat back on his strong stomach and grinned down at him cockily. "Got his pansy kami ass kicked, for starters."
"My entrance," the skinny guy next to them mourned in a quiet monotone. His legs were skinny, anyway. He looked vaguely familiar, but Honshin couldn't place him. "Doku, focus."
"Uh--yeah, Kou, just--um--Gojyo, get off."
"Guhwho?" she repeated blankly, not moving, then blinked. "Oh! You're -their- Jien."
"Whose Jien?" the man named Kou--another redhead, but full youkai--asked blankly.
"Who's Jien?" Jien asked in his 'if you don't stop pretending you don't know better than this your ass is ragweed' voice.
"She must have mistaken you for someone else," Gojyo said helpfully, hauling her up by the collar, and pulling--well, his brother, she supposed, and not hers--up with the other hand.
"Gojyo," Jien said, relieved, and then, "Gojyo?!!"
"Get off, you bully!" she said indignantly, attached herself to Jien, and scowled at him.
"Oi, oi," he protested, peeling her away again. "There's a limit to fraternizing with the enemy, you know..."
"I'll fraternize with my brother all I want," she said and, winning a moral struggle with the Kanan in her head, stuck her tongue at him.
"Gojyo," Jien said again, weakly, looking from one to the other. "Yaone, was that morphine you gave me?"
"No," the purple-haired chick said. "There really are two of him."
"Watch who you're calling a him, sister," Honshin said, affronted. "Just because some of us don't need chains to keep our bras up..."
"Baby, you curve like the Yangtse," Gojyo said comfortingly, and poked her ribs to make her squirm. "See?"
"Well, that's Gojyo," Jien affirmed, looking perplexed, and chain-girl giggled like a lady behind her hand.
"And this is Honshin-san," Hakkai said helpfully, holding out a chair for her in a very definite manner, "and Dokugakuji-san and Yaone-san and--"
"Kougaiji," Sanzo finished for him sourly, and Honshin blinked. How did she know skinny-legs? "Don't introduce me to someone I already killed, Cho."
"Oh!" Honshin exclaimed, smacking her fist into her hand. "That youkai dude with the fire thingy and all the minions. I remember." The dude's eyebrow twitched. "Hey, Jien, how come you guys haven't nailed him yet?"
Jien sputtered.
"Dokugakuji is my man," Skinny-legs said, a hint of anger breaking through the monotone and his confusion at being told he was dead. Or maybe it was about being called a dude. Honshin thought he might have been somebody's son.
"Oh, so you nail him?" she grinned. "And bondage-chickie here is your woman?"
"Yaone is my alchemist!" the youkai glared, flushing, but the Yaone-chick didn't look like she much minded.
"Sanzo?" Hakkai said brightly, and a little hastily. "Either one of you. Might I borrow your harisen for a moment?" The priests exchanged a look, and in the end it was Sanzo who handed over her fan. "Thank you, Sanzo- san," he said. "Gojyo, perhaps you would care to do the honors?"
"Oh, sure," Gojyo grinned, and took it. Still grinning, he whomped her over the head with it, and amiably suggested, "Zip it."
[end part eight]
-------------------------------
OMAKE!
The SEME At The End Of This Fic
- starring lovable, placid old HAKKAI And adorably vague but considerably older TENPOU-
Tenpou: Goku, I think Konzen might be a bad influence on you.
Goku: Huh?
Tenpou: Never mind. Very well, if you wish to fight, I hope you don't mind if I don't hold back.
Goku: Oh, sure! It wouldn't be any fun if you did! (heart)
Tenpou: In that case...
(whistles)
(enter a short yellow-eyed kami with an enormous spider attatched to the front of his head)
Goku: ??? .... !!!!
Nataku: Marshal, that wasn't a very respectful summons.
Tenpou: My apologies, Toushin. However, there's someone here who would like to see you.
Nataku: ...Goku!
Goku: Waaai! You remembered! (heart)
Nataku: Come on! I still haven't showed you the Field of Blue an' Purple Flowers, or the Really Cool Place Under the Stairway to Heaven, or That One Tree With The Crooked Branch, or...
(drags him off.)
Hakkai: (sigh)
Tenpou: (griiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin)
[end part eight]
----------------------
Review responses!
Me-Nuriko: No, only the four (or eight) of them stepped into Homura's world, so only the four girls stepped into the world we're familiar with. I like 58--I do! A lot! It's just that 38 is more complex and interesting.
stitcher2ficcer: mm, antics. (grins) Hope you're enjoying Kou!
OptiMoose: Despite the kissing here, you should be safe for a little while, at least. I'll try to remember to warn you before things heat up. :-) I think the Sanzette is more of a Gojyo thing, though--I'll check and see if he's got enough of a death wish to say it out loud. (grins)
And thanks also to merf and incandescens, who even manages wordplay in hir reviews! Hee!
Notes: Well, I warned you guys I might be swamped, and I am. But, having finally gotten an entire weekend off, I'm taking some of it to update--the site, as well.
On another note, I don't want to come off all desperate here, but I'm really struggling with chapter ten, which is going to be the chapter where they work out what to do. If anyone wants to tell me whose POV they'd like to see that sequence from (a why would be good, too), it might help me to make up my mind.
Review responses below.
WARNINGS: spackle or AU fic, as you like. There will be hormones flying -everywhere,- and even I don't know where they're all going to end up, or what the rating will end up being. Er, and this is also the Fic Where Nightfall Tries To Get Over Her Dislike of Foul Language. If it's too much, I apologize.
--------------------
In Hir Wicked Style
by Nightfall
Part eight: Honshin
--------------------
Kanan had poked her head out to tell everyone how long dinner was going to take, so the exiled started a poker game. The premise was that the snippy comments from the kitchen about being left out would be less pointed about cards than a planning session. Given what the comments were already, no one wanted to provoke them into getting worse. Besides, the Gojyo-man had said he wanted to see what would happen when either two or none of the players were guaranteed to win. He hadn't explained that, and she and Sanzo had cautiously decided not to ask.
The beast cheated right, left, and center until Honshin decided she'd seen enough and called him on it.
"Well, yeah," he shrugged, unperturbed. "Man's gotta keep in practice somehow, and I make a living offa this. How'd I give it away?"
"You didn't," she smirked, bold as brass the way the playboys liked it, and handed him back his bandana.
He only gaped comically at her for a second before grinning right back, delighted. "Too bad we have to send you home, sister. You and me could clean up, especially with those two to help." He raised his voice. "How about it, O-hime-chan? Wanna help us bilk the masses?"
"No, thank you, Gojyo-san," Kanan called back politely. "I'm not very good at Honshin's games--Gonou, I need that!"
"It will suit the dish better if you add it after the broth has boiled."
"I thought you said you wanted a smooth texture."
"For the jiaozi, yes, but in this case..."
Meanwhile, the cards Gojyo was shuffling had exploded all over the table. Paying no attention to his fumble, he gawked at Honshin. She raised an eyebrow back; -she- wasn't picking them up. Their Sanzo was staring, too, more discretely.
"Scuse me," the other redhead said hastily. He shoved his chair back and darted into the kitchen, almost tripping over his own feet on the way.
"I'm not that graceless, am I?" Honshin asked Sanzo, who favored her with a reassuringly dour I'm Not Here To Flatter Your Vanity look and didn't answer.
Gojyo was back before Honshin even had time to be relieved, dragging an unresisting Hakkai by the elbows. Honshin couldn't imagine anyone glomming Kanan like that and surviving, but the green man seemed quite pleased about it. He leaned back into the Gojyo-creature's hands as though they were the only thing holding him upright, and his expression was one Honshin had never seen on a man, a kind of delicately pained amusement that looked a hell of a lot like Flirty Virgin to her.
"Heeei, Hakkai," the Gojyo-thing breathed into those frivolous earcuffs, "are we sure about these chicks?"
"What do you mean, Gojyo?" the Hakkai-man returned in more normal tones, with no regard for whatever secrecy his friend was trying for.
Not that he had what she'd call a normal voice. Kanan's voice was a harp, silky and jarring and sharp on the staccatos. She could make the most inane things sound dangerous even to someone who'd known her for years, and half the time it was just habit. She was worse than Sanzo that way--Sanzo also sounded like she was biting back fury half the time, but she always meant it. With Kanan you had to pay attention. This guy, though, was a glass harmonica, all velvety ripples and sexy spine-tingling vibrations that could leave you bleeding out the ears with no notice at all.
"Didn't you hear O-hime-chan say she can't play cards? I bet she can't drink worth a damn, either."
Honshin grinned nastily. "Wanna bet? Hey, -Kanan!-"
"Shut up," Sanzo said wearily, eyeing Hakkai with a neutral cast in her eye that spoke approving volumes. "There isn't enough sake under Heaven."
The lovely man chuckled nervously, still looking pained. "I'm afraid that might be true," he admitted. "Gojyo, Cho-san wouldn't have learned to play cards when I did; I don't think the girls in the orphanage had much interest."
"You said it was a knack," he accused, scowling horribly. Rowr. With thicker eyebrows or a heavier jaw he would have looked like a thug, but as it was...
It was nice to know she would have made such a handsome man, but there was no point in trying to do anything about it. Kanan's echo seemed a little conflicted--fair enough; so did Kanan--but her own was pulling an 'it's platonic really but damn if I can keep my hands off you' act that would have been wholly pathetic if he hadn't had such a relaxed, unselfconscious air about him. Or if his target hadn't greeted it with such complete equanimity. As it was, Honshin, unusually, didn't feel the need to box both their ears and show them how it was done. All it made her feel was a serious yen for her man.
"Admit it," Gojyo said, continuing to scowl. "You're just an ordinary shark."
"But I only play for money when there's no other choice," he pointed out equitably, just making a point, and glanced back at the kitchen. "Gojyo, I really should get back..."
"Forget it," Honshin waved at him. "She hates people trying to help anyway."
The thin lips pressed together worriedly. "That's what I'm afraid of, Honshin-san."
Honshin had to press her lips together hard not to laugh at him. The world was going to be different on the road than in the smoky circle of bars that had been her life until Kanan, of course, but she wasn't used to men cooking at all, except for carelessly dumping cans of things into a pot when they had to. Sometimes they remembered to open the can first.
"Sharks are only occasionally rapacious," the man-priest droned out a little irritably, as though he'd wanted to say it earlier. "They're only hungry every week or so." As a statement it lacked something, Honshin thought, but Hakkai was sending him an amused, betrayed look. Gojyo's jaw dropped, too, and a stunned, bemiracled bemusement at support from the monk crept over his face.
"Brr," Honshin shivered, curling over at Sanzo's elbow. "I can't stand it-- too creepy. They look like -us.- Make 'em stop, Sanzo."
"Don't you think it's sexy?" Sanzo drawled in a voice that made it clear that she herself was to remain unimplicated in Honshin's lust-fests.
"Hell, yeah," she enthused, bouncing upright with a flair that drew every male eye in the room, although the green ones politely averted themselves almost as quickly as the purple ones disdainfully flicked away. "Tell you what, though, it makes me miss my man."
"Your man?" the Gojyo-creature asked, his gruesomely familiar eyes jerking up to her face with such a tinge of big-brotherly horror that she nearly laughed at him, too.
"Singular?" the man-priest put in, but since the jab was so clearly aimed at her echo, she ignored it.
Anyway, the green man was silently scolding his priest with a quizzical eyebrow already. He turned back to her and courteously asked, "Is it permitted to enquire?"
She was opening her mouth to answer when the door got kicked in from outside. The men turned as one to, on a scale that went from scold to bellow, utter variants on 'Lilin' before stopping short and staring.
"JIEN!" Honshin squealed, and tackled him.
She had him flat on his back and was tonguing his tonsils before she realized he wasn't kissing back. He was, in fact, lying there like a lump in a labcoat. Pulling back, she demanded, "The hell's the matter with you?"
Behind her, three voices faintly oh-deared. She recognized two of them.
Appalled, Jien choked, "What did that bastard Homura -do- to you?"
She sat back on his strong stomach and grinned down at him cockily. "Got his pansy kami ass kicked, for starters."
"My entrance," the skinny guy next to them mourned in a quiet monotone. His legs were skinny, anyway. He looked vaguely familiar, but Honshin couldn't place him. "Doku, focus."
"Uh--yeah, Kou, just--um--Gojyo, get off."
"Guhwho?" she repeated blankly, not moving, then blinked. "Oh! You're -their- Jien."
"Whose Jien?" the man named Kou--another redhead, but full youkai--asked blankly.
"Who's Jien?" Jien asked in his 'if you don't stop pretending you don't know better than this your ass is ragweed' voice.
"She must have mistaken you for someone else," Gojyo said helpfully, hauling her up by the collar, and pulling--well, his brother, she supposed, and not hers--up with the other hand.
"Gojyo," Jien said, relieved, and then, "Gojyo?!!"
"Get off, you bully!" she said indignantly, attached herself to Jien, and scowled at him.
"Oi, oi," he protested, peeling her away again. "There's a limit to fraternizing with the enemy, you know..."
"I'll fraternize with my brother all I want," she said and, winning a moral struggle with the Kanan in her head, stuck her tongue at him.
"Gojyo," Jien said again, weakly, looking from one to the other. "Yaone, was that morphine you gave me?"
"No," the purple-haired chick said. "There really are two of him."
"Watch who you're calling a him, sister," Honshin said, affronted. "Just because some of us don't need chains to keep our bras up..."
"Baby, you curve like the Yangtse," Gojyo said comfortingly, and poked her ribs to make her squirm. "See?"
"Well, that's Gojyo," Jien affirmed, looking perplexed, and chain-girl giggled like a lady behind her hand.
"And this is Honshin-san," Hakkai said helpfully, holding out a chair for her in a very definite manner, "and Dokugakuji-san and Yaone-san and--"
"Kougaiji," Sanzo finished for him sourly, and Honshin blinked. How did she know skinny-legs? "Don't introduce me to someone I already killed, Cho."
"Oh!" Honshin exclaimed, smacking her fist into her hand. "That youkai dude with the fire thingy and all the minions. I remember." The dude's eyebrow twitched. "Hey, Jien, how come you guys haven't nailed him yet?"
Jien sputtered.
"Dokugakuji is my man," Skinny-legs said, a hint of anger breaking through the monotone and his confusion at being told he was dead. Or maybe it was about being called a dude. Honshin thought he might have been somebody's son.
"Oh, so you nail him?" she grinned. "And bondage-chickie here is your woman?"
"Yaone is my alchemist!" the youkai glared, flushing, but the Yaone-chick didn't look like she much minded.
"Sanzo?" Hakkai said brightly, and a little hastily. "Either one of you. Might I borrow your harisen for a moment?" The priests exchanged a look, and in the end it was Sanzo who handed over her fan. "Thank you, Sanzo- san," he said. "Gojyo, perhaps you would care to do the honors?"
"Oh, sure," Gojyo grinned, and took it. Still grinning, he whomped her over the head with it, and amiably suggested, "Zip it."
[end part eight]
-------------------------------
OMAKE!
The SEME At The End Of This Fic
- starring lovable, placid old HAKKAI And adorably vague but considerably older TENPOU-
Tenpou: Goku, I think Konzen might be a bad influence on you.
Goku: Huh?
Tenpou: Never mind. Very well, if you wish to fight, I hope you don't mind if I don't hold back.
Goku: Oh, sure! It wouldn't be any fun if you did! (heart)
Tenpou: In that case...
(whistles)
(enter a short yellow-eyed kami with an enormous spider attatched to the front of his head)
Goku: ??? .... !!!!
Nataku: Marshal, that wasn't a very respectful summons.
Tenpou: My apologies, Toushin. However, there's someone here who would like to see you.
Nataku: ...Goku!
Goku: Waaai! You remembered! (heart)
Nataku: Come on! I still haven't showed you the Field of Blue an' Purple Flowers, or the Really Cool Place Under the Stairway to Heaven, or That One Tree With The Crooked Branch, or...
(drags him off.)
Hakkai: (sigh)
Tenpou: (griiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin)
[end part eight]
----------------------
Review responses!
Me-Nuriko: No, only the four (or eight) of them stepped into Homura's world, so only the four girls stepped into the world we're familiar with. I like 58--I do! A lot! It's just that 38 is more complex and interesting.
stitcher2ficcer: mm, antics. (grins) Hope you're enjoying Kou!
OptiMoose: Despite the kissing here, you should be safe for a little while, at least. I'll try to remember to warn you before things heat up. :-) I think the Sanzette is more of a Gojyo thing, though--I'll check and see if he's got enough of a death wish to say it out loud. (grins)
And thanks also to merf and incandescens, who even manages wordplay in hir reviews! Hee!