Abstention

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Part 3
 
 

    To this day Sanzo had no idea how they'd made it back to their quarters undiscovered.
    If they had been seen, it would have made an interesting sight for that passerby. Two figures under the glow of ochre moonlight, trotting and stopping, their bodies nudging close by the walls of careful alleys in coughed moments while the lead one realigned his path. Goku, somehow, had started guiding, hand around his master's wrist in a thick and muscled grip, snug tight and possessive but just short of pain. In shadows he stole kisses, lips touching Sanzo's jaw and ears feather-soft and startling him, that it made the smaller man shrink back without thinking.
    Their sandals tracked leaves into their quarters and they couldn't trouble themselves to care, not after the doors had clacked shut and the dark locked them in. The lantern found a place on the floor. Sandals slid off. Hands found waists and hugged round them, sliding up back and down thigh and anywhere for soft purchase.
    One hand trailed up Sanzo's spine, fingers running and pushing along the ridges of vertebrae up to his neck, digging into the nape of hair and combing out the band on the ponytail. Sanzo felt the thick streams of hair drifting down around his face and grumbled protest, but the voice was lost in their kiss.
    There was nothing virgin in Goku's kiss. Hints of it, how he moved his jaw, how his tongue slid and caressed, seemed reminiscent of those times with Gojyo by the campfire. Sanzo supposed it figured that the kappa would seize on the boy's maturity much sooner than the rest of them, if only to make up for lost chances to bully him as a child anymore. For a moment there, panting into Goku's mouth, there was a pang of something sharp in his chest, maybe jealousy-- but it didn't last long. He lost the room for the thought, when Goku's fingers found the knots of his sash.
    They met the floor soon after that. Beds had been laid out by well-meaning novices earlier, but awkwardly, so close to the table, that distances were misjudged in the haste. Goku's shoulder banged the table leg when they landed, hissing from the lance of pain, and cold tea and dinner rattled with the frightened candles sputtering in split yellow flame. In their startled dance they threw wild shadows on the walls, warping Sanzo's movements beastlike in pantomime, as he threw off the robe and worked quickly with the leather and jeans.
    By the swaying light Sanzo saw his charge's face shift to concern, maybe alarm, clearly not prepared to see this sudden determination out of a man he'd so nervously approached in low hours since the onset of old spring. Still, with the next flicker it had washed away, as much as it could, and Goku sat up, leaning the monk off his lap and down onto the sheets.
    And then paused.
    Goku hesitated, fingers pressed twitching against the monk's chest as he knelt over him, brow knotting.
    It washed over Sanzo slowly, like a languid wave, that for all his libido, Gojyo must have only gone so far with Goku. This was still uncharted territory for the younger man. And that despite it all, they were so angled that Goku's role was obvious; nearly insisted upon, from his actions so far this evening.
    The priest's mouth twitched. He'd never had to guide someone else for this. Gojyo and Hakkai had arrived experienced, nudging Sanzo along however they needed for the moment, not hovering uncertain with fear edging up behind their eyes.
    He knew he needed to say something. If he didn't, it would end here. He could see it. They would part and Goku would crawl to the adjacent bed with head sunk and the life out of his shoulders, and for all either knew, there would never be another chance again. But what did he say?
    In the end, words did not visit at all. Instead, Sanzo lifted a hand, sliding palm up the younger man's arm and shoulder, shaking muscle, so firm and beautiful. He settled his hand around Goku's neck and pulled him down and closer, led his lips and his tongue down to take the path his burnt fingers had the nights before.
    Skill, art-- these were things they could create later. For right now the only thing was to feel, to taste, to move with him as gasps and pants filled still air and the shadows danced their own great show.
    And if it had been one of the others to come to him like this, clumsy in their passion with only ideas and words to go on, he'd not have suffered them. But Goku was not like the others. The form of his body was vibrating with the heat of the air, fingers scarring hot in their wake where they travelled. His tongue was scorching fire. When Sanzo touched him, his staff quivered and burned against his palm, and the priest's movements drove Goku to a wet cry, half drowned in a thick, wordless gasp against the dark and the gold flicker of candlelight. And when the edge of Goku's teeth blended with the suck of his tongue at just that place on Sanzo's member that neither of the others had ever found, Sanzo's whole body arched against him when the world crashed down around his ears.
    It seemed somehow --Sanzo thought, in those fading moments before the candles fled his sight and he drifted into slumber-- that this was no departure, just a return to something familiar. A stronger comfort than he could have imagined, lying there among the sheets, in his charge's slowing shaking arms.
    Goku said words, muffled against his shoulder. Sanzo did not return them. He wasn't sure what to say.
    The heat was not so suffocating now, at least. It wouldn't be for some time. It was autumn now, after all.
 
 

(02:56, 14 July 2005)
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