Perhaps Sanzo was a little too caught up in his newspaper-skimming and Gojyo in no mood to do more than keep his heel up on the table and his body flopped in the chair, that neither of them gave the impression they knew Hakkai had just re-entered the kitchenette.

In any case, Hakkai took the four steps it took to pass the cooking nook and round the cramped table, the scrunch and crackle of tin can, plastic, and paper from the two bulky garbage bags he held ruining the silence, until he stood by the only other, wobbly chair facing Gojyo and Sanzo.

"Hakuryu is still a little weak," he informed them. "I'm afraid he will need the rest of the day to recuperate. Would that be all right, Sanzo?"

After turning a page, and before he turned another, Sanzo deadpanned over the low rustle of paper, "Not like there's anything I can do." He glanced up at Hakkai at last, his violet eyes peering from under his reading glasses. "Is Goku with him?"

"Yes. Goku is only too happy to cheer up Hakuryu. And I think Hakuryu appreciates his company."

Sanzo did not say anything more. As a matter of fact, even before Hakkai was done talking, he seemed to have already regained his focus on the seventh-page features.

"Gojyo?" Hakkai then said, and continued even when Gojyo did not bother with any sort of response, "Could you help me with the grocery-shopping?"

The kitchenette fell still for about a minute, no hint of movement other than the repeated passing of Sanzo's eyes over the same string of printed words, before Gojyo made a miffed little sound. "Don't feel like doin' anything today," and although Gojyo was grinding out these words in response to Hakkai, "can't you do that shit with the monkey?" he had his frown screwed on Sanzo as though it was only around Sanzo that he was being this unusually inconsiderate jerk.

"Well, Goku is busy helping take care of Hakuryu," Hakkai's gaze itself had now shifted in Sanzo's direction, as though the monk had everything to do with the words Hakkai was half-murmuring in response to Gojyo, "and it does not seem like you are busy with anything. Gojyo."

The new silence lasted for quite some time, as well, until Gojyo spit out, "I need to fucking hit the sack." He wrenched his foot away from the table, making the three unused tea cups quake in their saucers, and nudged himself forward, arms tucked beneath his chin.

And yet, "Well?" Hakkai smiled, at Gojyo, as though Gojyo had not yet declined him enough.

In the end, Gojyo did no more than snatch his pack of cigarettes from the table and storm out of the room, annoyance glinting in his red eyes.

The entire while, Sanzo remained inseparable from his paper, although his eyes had ceased moving over the text for quite some time now, even as Hakkai's jaw froze for a moment and he remarked, just after his mouth had started to form and call out Gojyo's name, "Oh, I nearly forgot about these." He eyed each black plastic bag in his hands the way he would look at something he did not see.

He made a stiff pivot toward the half-open door and slipped himself out to the small, partly walled yard at the side of the inn. Just before Hakkai was all the way out the door, Sanzo lifted his right leg off his left, crammed his newspaper and glasses down onto the table, and rose to follow, the door squeaking softly when it shut behind him.

In the corner, where the heavy sun rays did not pelt his back, Hakkai was stuffing his bags in the teeming garbage can when Sanzo came standing close by him.

Hakkai looked to his side, his green eyes grown a fraction wider, but then he was quick, as he was wont, to proffer a smile that was unruffled. "There is a lot of trash," he observed, punctuating it with consecutive nods of the head. "And it seems like most of them are from us."

The only time Sanzo drew his scowl away from Hakkai's smiling eyes was when he followed the crawl of sweat down the side of Hakkai's face, and told him, "What do you want."

"Ah?" Hakkai blurted, looking not one bit as bemused as he apparently sounded.

An irritated click of tongue against teeth was Sanzo's only return. Then he stepped forward, enough to make Hakkai take the one step it took for his back to touch the wall.

Sanzo's hands grasped at Hakkai's tunic, the left slipping under its bottom hem.

"Sanzo," Hakkai began, closing a pale-knuckled hand around Sanzo's wrist, "I don't--" but Sanzo cast him a glare and warned,

"Let go."

Although the narrowed gaze he would level at Sanzo gave the impression of defiance, Hakkai did comply and let Sanzo's wrist go, just after Sanzo had started to unfasten the waist of his pants.

"Hold this," Sanzo said and looked up at Hakkai, but it was that precise moment that Hakkai looked down to take the hem of his tunic from Sanzo. He held it up against his belly, only not high enough to bare the rest of the long, harsh-edged scar that stretched across it. The moment Hakkai looked up at Sanzo again was when Sanzo looked down to the gray, unswept ground.

Sanzo lifted the hem of his robe from around his feet and was sinking down to his knees before Hakkai. He laid his hands on Hakkai, the left on his thigh, the right on his hip, and began to open his mouth, tongue sliding out, closing the distance between his face and the nakedness of Hakkai's crotch.

Hakkai folded half the way forward, his mouth moving as though trying, in vain, to take a bite out of something far and unseen. His left hand drifted over to Sanzo's sutra, tentative fingers closing around his shoulder before skirting along the curve of his neck and streaking their way up his light yellow hair. When Sanzo's head began to bob a little faster, Hakkai withdrew his hand and tried to claw at the wall behind him, the elbow of his tunic licking some dry dirt off the brick.

Sanzo pulled Hakkai's hips down that Hakkai made a slight, awkward bent to his knees. Apart from the quickened breath slipping in and out of him, the only thing barely heard around the yard, for about a minute, was the wet sound of tongue and flesh and skin between Sanzo's mouth and Hakkai's writhing hips.

Hakkai uttered a little moan behind his hand when Sanzo stopped at last, swiping his mouth once with the back hem of Hakkai's tunic.

Other than a sparse, uncertain moment of eyes locking together, little time was wasted between Hakkai fastening his trousers and Sanzo pulling himself back to his feet from between Hakkai's legs. Hakkai lifted a hand to Sanzo's forehead, "Hold still a second," drawing away a short, curly strand of dark brown hair stuck to the little red chakra between Sanzo's eyebrows, but it fell from his fingers just as he took a closer look.

The first to speak again was Sanzo. "Take Goku with you," he pulled out something from the wide sleeve of his robe, and the next moment was handing his glossy gold credit card to Hakkai, "Asahi, in can, if they have it. And I've run out of Marlboros so don't take too long." Already he had turned his heels to the door before he even finished talking.

Still, Hakkai was only a step behind him when Sanzo stepped back into the kitchenette. "Are you going to get Goku?"

"Aa."

"I will wait at the front door, then."

"Aa."

"Oh, while we're out, could you see to it that the window remains shut beside Hakuryu?"

"Aa."

Hakkai stilled his feet the moment Sanzo began to wend his way to the upstairs floor. He opened his mouth to say something, only it took him a moment or seven to actually do so.

Five steps up the stairwell, Sanzo's foot almost slammed down on the rotted edge of the wood as Hakkai, down behind him, from the bottom of the stairs, asked,

"Did you say anything to Gojyo, Sanzo?"

"...Hn. Why would I," Sanzo tossed a frown over his shoulder, and continued even as Hakkai would not lift his eyes from the hem of his robe to meet his gaze, "...But he did ask about the sounds you were making last night."

His eyes swung loosely up to Sanzo's as Hakkai whispered, "Gojyo did...?" but at that moment Sanzo had already turned to face forward and resumed his languid climb up the stairwell.

Just as he reached the upstairs floor, Sanzo fished out his fresh, tight pack of cigarettes, tore a hole on the wrapper, and then shook out a stick to light. He did not look when he passed the open door to Gojyo's room and Gojyo cussed his head off at him.

END