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Fifth Beat
Day 10

It was a soft, pleasant day on the cusp of spring and summer, with gentle winds blowing from the south, floating over the fields and the wild grass in smooth undulating waves.

Dark red hair flew over his face and caught on nose and mouth, and he wiped it back behind an ear, with small, pudgy hands, claws blunted and a little torn and cracked from the rough sort of boyish play that would have to stop when he got older.

The breeze kicked and he heard before seeing the flap of a long and elegant skirt, carrying in the wind. Pale blue, her favorite color. He'd always remember that.

And her voice, as she spoke, that familiar frequency that would never leave him no matter how the years and centuries passed, no matter how long the absence.

"It's nice to get out, isn't it, Kou?"

He knew she smiled, even if he couldn't see her face. He approached her respectfully, the grass so thick and tall that it made movement awkward and loud next to her silent grace. Looking up, he could just barely make out her features under glare of the sun.

She took his hand. She had fine, rounded nails, like a human. He wished he could have been granted nails like that, not these ratlike claws that had to be filed down for his own safety.

There were a lot of differences between them, that he had inherited from his father. He didn't like a lot of them. He didn't like his father very much, come to it. But he never said it. Even expressing the feeling to his mother would make her sad.

But she loved his hair, because it was her hair. And though there was argument she had insisted he be allowed to grow it as long as he liked.

He felt her eyes on him and his gaze left her hand, up to her face.

Warm, sweet smile, like a thousand glowing suns. Every beautiful thing in the world, everything pleasant and nice and comforting, all wrapped up into one. He could have worshipped it.

In the back of Kougaiji's mind, a somber sadness was trickling in, unpreceded and unwanted, and it wasn't leaving.

Something telling him, soon enough this was all going to leave him.

He gripped her hand tighter.

Still she smiled at him. "You're so beautiful, Kou."

To hear her say it wasn't so bad.

"Still..." she went on, turning her gaze from him to the south. "For such a nice day, it looks like it'll rain later."

He followed her gaze to the horizon, where the clouds bundled up in angry dark swirls.

The wind began to pick up.

A single first rain drop, like a solitary tear, fell, and struck him above the brow. He flinched and blinked.

When his eyes opened, his view had shifted, but though abrupt it felt a natural transition. He was still in the fields outside the castle, but it seemed smaller now, for having grown a considerable few feet in height.

He saw the little boy a hundred feet or so away, standing by his mother. Himself, and his own mother. Seen from the outside.

Something bright in the corner of his eye commanded his attention, and he turned and found Sanzo standing there beside him, healthy and alive, standing tall so impressively that it didn't matter if he was almost shorter than Kougaiji, he could have towered over him. Lips pressed into a thin pensive line, eyes only barely readable. Hands tucked together in thought in the folds of his regular priest robes, though he was absent his sutra.

"What are you thinking?" Kougaiji asked him.

"I don't know," Sanzo answered distantly, voice no different than what the prince had always heard in his head, and not his real voice at all.

The rain fell harder. And this time it fell on different ground, hundreds of miles away from where the little boy stood with his mother. They were gone now. But Kougaiji saw a different child.

The boy was younger than the young Kougaiji had been, barely older than an infant, golden hair and peach skin. Standing up from a squatting position, up to knees and elbows in mud, clutching onto some small amphibian snatched from the reeds.

There was something strange about him, apart from obvious physical similarities. His hair glowed even under the cloud cover, and despite the mud and the poor peasant clothes designating status he had flawless, smooth skin, as though he had been bred of kings and born in a palace.

Regal associations were entirely appropriate. He had a bearing about him that was simply not natural for an infant, moved with far too much composure, the mere turn of limbs and how his eyes blinked having some unearthly quality to him.

The intensity of his stare alone, even focused on the small squirming creature in his hands, was something to behold. Perfectly engrossed in his play, too absorbed to notice or mind the rain. Or notice the footsteps behind them.

Beside him, the adult Sanzo began to edge back. Watching him, Kougaiji saw his mouth part, his quiet thoughtful eyes turning into worry, and then, sick horror.

"I don't remember this," he said tersely, a quaver in his voice Kougaiji was sure he didn't want seeping through. "I don't remember this happening."

It wasn't a denial. Not at all. He knew what was about to happen, and knew that this was part of his past, even if it had always been a part experienced through third-hand accounts. This much came to Kougaiji uncommunicated, the knowledge coming spontaneously without a need for explanation.

The footsteps started carefully, quietly, not sneaking or rushing but actually trying to approach innocently. Disarmingly. Then, when close enough, sprung into action, boots slipping up on the muddy ground and wet reeds but propelled ever forward on pure momentum.

The hands swooping down with a brown sack, catching up arms and head first, the little child too startled at first to even scream, and when he did, was already on his side with his legs being tied up with some kind of rough rope, other hands he could not recognized tugging at the sack to loop around more around waist and arms and neck. Squirming and howling with terror, sobbing for a mother now lost to memory. Whose hands he felt pushing him forcefully down when he tried to move.

Kougaiji's own heart was racing, eyes twitching as it came to him far too behind schedule that the panic the boy was feeling was in his own system, and that as the seconds passed he felt less and less himself standing from a safe distance with the adult Sanzo, and more and more his own useless hands clawing at the inside of that damp sack, twisting legs and screaming his voice raw as he was picked up, and tossed.

The water of the Yangtze river hit him, numbing cold at the back of his neck and in his ears and down his throat, siezing, paralyzing, his arms and legs stiffening and falling out of his control long before he began to choke, the current pushing him down and under, sound going cottony in his dying hearing, everything going dark.

He kept thrashing, or trying to, the effort growing harder with every second ticking by, heart thudding with desperate pain. Barely registering when the poor knots came undone and the ropes drifted away, his range of movement free once more, but useless as the sack twisted around limbs and his constricted throat. Muscles screaming, crying, sobbing as he kept trying to reach out, find purchase of something, somehow get free--

The sharp explosion, first of sound and then light, the water over him growing turbulent as something plunged down beneath the surface--

A single arm, white sleeved with black armwarmer, strong and powerful, swooping down toward his dimming vision with hand outstretched, and him only thinking to somehow push to reach it--

"Wake up, you little shit!"

Real pain, true pain, not simulated by a dream, breached through and ripped everything away in a second. Kougaiji recoiled and clutched at a throbbing side, wheezing and feeling like he'd cracked a rib.

"Get up!" the intruding voice yelled again, hand coming down and yanking roughly at an arm, pulling Kougaiji out of his fetal position and forcing his eyes open through the pain, open wide into the visage of Dr. Nii hovering over him with murderous rage. He continued to pull at Kougaiji's arm until throwing him completely out of his bed, to land heavily on the floor, and still dragging him--

The growl started low in Kougaiji's throat and rose up with sudden verocity, ripping his arm out of the scientist's grasp. "Don't touch me!"

If Nii would have at some point honored such an order, it wasn't now, still radiating fury as he bent down to grab a handful of Kougaiji's hair, yanking his head up and tearing at small sections.

"Tell me what you did, you little shit!"

"Did what?"

"Don't fuck with me, brat!" He threw his head down and released him in the same action, all but snapping the prince's neck with the violent motion. "The room! What did you do to the fucking room?!"

Kougaiji tried to pick himself up, finding the utter futility of this in robes, nevermind that his side still felt like it had been punched in. "What room? What the hell are you talking about?"

Dr. Nii took the liberty of pulling him up himself, grasping the front of his court robes with two fists and hauling him up right, close to his own face, so that Kougaiji could smell the cigarette smoke clinging to him.

"The room, you shit. What did you do to it?"

Kougaiji strained to study the wild expression, and when realization dawned, it came accompanied with a sudden fear. Something must have happened to Genjo.

He swallowed a dry, sticky throat. "I didn't do anything."

"You're lying."

"I swear it."

"I don't believe you," Nii growled.

Kougaiji steeled his gaze on the scientist until their eyes were completely locked. "Give me a damn truth serum and the answer'll be the same. I didn't do anything."

He wished he knew what had. But how to express that without indicating he had some sort of interest in Dr. Nii's blackbox project, that was difficult.

As it turned out he didn't need to. Eyes twitching with the unaccustomness of someone else being able to match his stare, Nii turned sharply away and released him.

"Come with me. NOW."

~*~

The room had changed.

Kougaiji sensed it long before he arrived, dragged along by the wrist by a guard acting on Nii's orders. It felt similar to how Sanzo had described sensing Gyumaoh on his aural radar, senses telling him even from a distance that something, somewhere, was grievously amiss. So amiss, that if he hadn't been pulled over the threshhold into the room, he would never have entered. It felt wrong in an unplacable way, back of his neck tingling as tiny murmurs in the recesses of his brain hissed that this was NOT the place to be.

Half of a wall was missing. Not broken or crumbled or caved in, simply gone, leaving jagged cuts in the surviving stone. Wires and cables rained down from a gutted ceiling rather appropriately akin to entrails. Computers the size of small houses had been moved up to ten feet from their original positions. Some of the smaller ones were on their sides, spewing sparks and tiny flames. Assistant scientists were scurrying madly to rescue paper print-outs and douse fires before they spread to other consoles.

But none of that was anything compared to the stasis tank.

Previously, the circular tank with a diameter of around thirteen feet had held the blackbox, Genjo Sanzo, roughly halfway up, held up primarily by the arms and suspended by a variety of cables, wires, and tubes. There were additional wires, sensor patches, or cable restraint over every few inches of his body, making the human come off like a very overelaborate voodoo doll.

Now half the wires were gone, littering the bottom of the tank, floating in scraps in the stasis liquid, or simply vanished. Sanzo's arms that had once been held up taunt overhead were now fanned out from his sides, most of the cables radiating down in thick coils like the skeletal remains of bird wings. The only cables still suspending him from the lid of the tank were the ones connected to his vertebrae; a good many thick, perceived necessary wires hung shredded and useless from the roof of the tank, which, like the ones hanging from the ceiling, arced down in intertwining loops.

In the middle of his astonishment, Kougaiji found himself thinking that the arrangement seemed somehow very familiar. And he wished he knew why.

This could not have been the work of an outside individual. Those large supercomputers easily weighed tons, and even moved a few feet was a considerable effort...

Few feet...

Before he realized what he was doing, Kougaiji began to examine with his eyes the arcs of movement along the floor, looking for a specific pattern. Any pattern at first, but the more he looked at it, the more it looked like...

"Well?" Dr. Nii barked, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"Well what?" Kougaiji shot back, with only the slightest pause. "You still think I did all this?"

The human's throat rumbled, too much glaring resentment to qualify as a growl. "Then who do you suggest did?"

"How the hell should I--"

"According to the cameras," Nii interrupted, "apart from us, the only one to ever enter this room is you, prince."

That's 'your highness.' Say it, you fucker.

"If you've got cameras, what's with the interrogation?"

"They were corrupted," Nii told him venomously. "The last few hours before total melt-down are completely unreadable. Where were you at eight last evening?"

"Sleeping."

Eyes narrowed. "You're doing that a lot lately, aren't you?"

Remember your tone, HUMAN.

Kougaiji froze at the thought, shocked at this sudden racism he never knew he had in him, no matter how much Dr. Nii had a habit of bringing that out of people.

He glanced in the direction of Sanzo's tank again, apprehensively. As much as he could see, Sanzo's eyes were closed, but he still could be awake, even if the line seemed to be dead on his end.

But before he could even ascertain the priest's state of consciousness, that sense of familiarity crept up again. It only compounded with a desire to exit the room with all possible speed; the more he looked, the more it seemed he was actually looking at something he'd not only seen before, but memorized to such thorough detail that it was forever burned into his brain. But how come he couldn't place it?

He knew with sudden certainty that no one could have done this to the room but Sanzo himself. But even that should have been impossible.

Kougaiji realized that Dr. Nii had been talking for some time, but this only occured to him as a fist gripped his hair and twisted.

"Are you listening to--"

"I SAID DON'T TOUCH ME!"

The scream was so shrill it banged against the entire hall, save for the wall that was only half there, and every occupant of the room looked up from their frantic salvaging in shock. Nii, two feet farther back than he'd stood a second before, clutched an aching hand and looked ready to go for Kougaiji's throat.

Kougaiji turned his own stinging hand into a warning point. "You do that again, I'll fucking kill you. I don't care what kind of pet you are to Gyokumen."

Not entirely to his surprise, Nii smirked like Kougaiji had said something amusing. "You forget your place, boy."

How far had things gone, that even an usurper's lapdog had this much power over him?

Or rather, how far had he let things go?

"Get him out of here."

Not again--

"I'll let myself out," Kougaiji said coldly.

The scientist's head tilted. Like he was disappointed to hear this amount of readiness. Still, he recovered, saying, "And if you value your life, you won't be back, do you hear me?"

Do I need to?

No, Sanzo answered sleepily.

"Fine, then."

~*~

What did you do? Kougaiji asked, after he'd finally been released and outrun the few persistent guardsmen, taking random passages in the vague hope he could wind up somewhere safe.

Huh?

Don't do this to me. Tell me what you did.

Fucked up, actually.

Kougaiji had to laugh at that, disturbing a passing scullery maid with the sudden outburst.

If that's your idea of fucking up, I'd like to see what happens when you succeed.

Not likely to happen. Escaping and all.

Puzzlement.

You can't, Kougaiji told him plainly. Even if you got out somehow, you realize what your body's like? It's dependent on all that wire crap to live.

No I'm not.

Yes you ARE. Why are you hooked up to it, then?

I found out about that. Painkillers, nerve neutralizers, estrogen supplements--

You're growing breasts?

FUCK you. It raises pain tolerance and passivity. Give it some goddamn thought before you think like an ass. Definite defensiveness in that one. Kougaiji couldn't help the grin.

AND growing breasts.

When I get out, the first thing I'm doing is kicking your ass, faggot boy.

It was at this point that Kougaiji both physically and figuratively arched his eyebrows at several points:

1. Sanzo had somehow reverted back to a reasonable fascimile of his normal self.

2. Either he was a very good guesser, or just had a knack at insults that accidentally hit a bit too close to home.

3. He was very serious about all of this.

You can't get out, he said again. Even if you could break out of the tank, the shock of it would kill you.

He'd given some serious thought to this, admittedly, when he was alone and out of range. So he'd already established with himself how futile the effort would be.

So had Sanzo.

I know all that.

Then don't waste thought on pipedreams, Genjo!

I'm saying there may be ways around it. The only thing that's really standing in the way of that is your father.

Which was not the sort of thing to have mentioned when going down a flight of stairs.

Come again? Kougaiji asked, after a pair of squires stopped gawking long enough to inquire whether he was all right and if he would like some help getting up.

You idiot.

Kougaiji frowned at this remark. There were so many ringing emotes of amusement shaking up the frequency that Kougaiji was sure Sanzo was really, physically laughing in his tank right now, as best as he could manage. Probably baffling the hell out of Dr. Nii.

Hold on here; my father's not awake yet.

Not on the physical plane. That's about all that's blocking him. He's already got a good share of influence on the aural fields. That was why I fucked up.

He stopped you?

To put it mildly. It's a good thing he's not at full power at the moment, or I'd be nothing but a red cloud in that tank right now.

He should have been at least intrigued by this recount, at least surprised to hear of his father actually doing something when he hadn't been around much even when things were a lot less complicated, 500 years ago.

But instead he found himself almost physically sagging with a sudden depression.

Sanzo produced the emote counterpart of a frown.

Has it never really sunk in for you?

Is there no way to stop it?

{I would have thought you would have just gone along with it.
{You could have voiced concerns a bit sooner.
{No, we can't.

Oh.

His mind ran blank. Completely unsure even what to think.

As his feet stopped, he looked up and realized what hall he had just emerged into.

His mother's endless pleading stare bore down at him from the stone. The loops of charms and talismans swarming around her like a net. He couldn't so much as touch them, much less dispel them. Much less get to her. He wasn't strong enough. Perhaps Gyokumen Koushu was, perhaps she wasn't, but in either case that option was gone now forever.

The word "failure" rang in his skull until Sanzo ordered him to stop.

Kougaiji tried and failed to smile, and came off only with a pained little expression.

Do you know what my mother did, to wind up trapped like this?

What?

Nothing. She had done nothing, to anyone, ever. All she was was beautiful and kind. Her marriage to my father was a political arrangement. Strengthen border ties, that sort of thing, you know. She didn't want to. And they didn't get along very well.

He paused for a moment, until the sting behind his eyes subsided.

But she was the Queen of Demons, so that was enough for those people. Me, I can understand why they'd want to put me away, apples and falling from trees and all that. But my mother was innocent.

There was radio silence for the longest time Kougaiji was sure, and actually slightly hoping, that he'd fallen out of range. But then:

I know.

He couldn't help the coughed dry sob, before regaining himself.

Do you? You know, I recognize it now, what you did to your room. The wires. You. The ley lines. It's modeled after her.

I know it is.

Why did you do that?

I didn't. Your father did.

My father did.

It's communication. I understand. That'd be his style. 'See this? This is out of your power. Stop trying.' I can as much save you as I can save her.

"Am I just a fool to everyone?" he asked the silence. Not caring if all Sanzo got was white noise. Not even wanting to hear Sanzo now.

The silence answered back.

"No."

~*~

Dr. Nii ran a nervous hand through his hair and tried to look smooth about it. He was vaguely aware that chewing the butt of a long-dead cigarette was not helping in this regard.

There was a phrase about this, about excrement and fans and the one hitting the other, but he really had never experienced it first hand. And he just didn't know how he should be handling this.

Blackboxes, despite the mystique of their name, were not implicitly dangerous. The term merely meant that you knew exactly what an object did, just none of the steps in how it got there. And that was the case with this priest. It was the same process tried and tested on lesser holymen, shamans and enigmatic hermits and whatever else the footsoldiers dragged in, so it should, logically, have worked here. Same principle. Same model class. That sort of thing.

So far, that really wasn't working out. And as much as he'd like to blame the royal brat, there just wasn't any solid evidence suggesting that he could. The boy might've been a mage, but summoning ferocious beasts from the netherhells still couldn't have achieved something like this. At least not so neatly.

It seemed slightly as though someone or something had frozen time to a singular molecular instance, and then just... changed a few things around. Rearranged the computers. Shifted some cables around. It all still worked, it had just moved, was all.

"A few of the tubes were disconnected," an attractive young female assistant was telling him. "But all of them nonessentials."

He would have said "that's lucky," except that there was actually such a great number of nonessential processes going on and being fed through that the chances of anything severing the crucial components was very nearly nil. So many things had been put in as needless precautions, the stupid fear of what would happen if this or that et cetera et cetera. One huge mess of liability, in the end; one he could now safely ignore.

Instead, he said, "Fine. We'll leave them."

"Yes sir," said the assistant, head bowed to a clipboard as she scribbled a note.

This was still very suspicious, he knew. There was something afoot here, and it involved Kougaiji, and it probably meant having to go over the surveillance tapes himself, unless another clue cared to present itself shortly.

Still, for the moment, at least it was all still working more or less. So,

"Well, that'll do for right now. Coffee, anyone?"

Because really, leaving at all possible speed seemed like a hell of a good idea right now. He wished he knew why.

As the last of the scientists exited to lunch with a finalistic slam of the room door, Sanzo opened his eyes.

~*~

Kougaiji whirled around so sharply he nearly lost his footing and stumbled.

That in itself was almost tragic to watch, the prince at the end of his self-coordination. His physical condition was nipping at the heels of emotional state in terms of downward spiraling, it seemed.

Dokugakuji suppressed the sigh.

Kougaiji saw him immediately, he knew, as he stepped out of the shadows, and though the terrified look on his face indicated he wanted terribly to run and hide, it was a few seconds' pause before the prince finally said, "Leave me."

"No dice."

Eyetwitch, a small twitch of the mouth, like he wanted to start speaking but the words existed elsewhere. Then, a stronger spasm, eye pulled away toward the floor.

"Just-- Go. Please."

But this was just wrong. This went beyond nervous tics. Even as Dokugakuji studied him in preparation of a response, he twitched again, fumbled with his hands, even mouthed a word Dokugakuji couldn't catch...

"What the hell's wrong with you, Kou?"

"--hut up, I, look, just--"

He lurched forward, clutching his head.

Dokugakuji was there in a second, before a second, arms extended to catch Kougaiji as he fell, and right him again.

A moment in which everything froze, except a minute twitching of muscles under high tension. Then, it all broke, as Kougaiji twisted away under the grasp and stumbled back. "Don't touch me!"

It didn't sound like Kougaiji's voice.

"Kou--" Dokugakuji began.

"Shut up!" he was shouting, pained and desperate, cringing back and trying to cover his ears with his hands. "Stop! Stay away! Don't! Leave me alone!"

"What's gotten into you?!"

He bent forward, hands on his temples now, as though fighting off a headache so bad it bowled him over in pain. "it...... dok.... underst..... to me an..."

What's happening to him? Dokugakuji thought, watching the scene unfolding in front of him with growing horror. It's like he's possessed!

Another full-body twitch, and that was all that Dokugakuji could stand for. He crossed the space between them and gripped Kougaiji bracingly by the shoulders.

A strangled scream, only animal, and arms lashing out so fast they were nothing but a blur. Sharpened claws sang half an inch from Dokugakuji's nose, even as he ducked back.

No. None of that bullshit. This was crossing a line.

He got his hands on him again, but this time not to steady him. Just to push bodily into the nearest wall, hard enough that the air was sure to be knocked out of him.

And then he held him there, as he wheezed and coughed, but eyes fixed firmly on his, wide open and terrified, or stunned, or shocked, or just completely, totally blanked out, his breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps.

Then slower. Little slower. Calmer. Straightening out. Until his lungs didn't shake and his throat wasn't constricting painfully, until he finally settled into stable, slow in and out. Too slow, his adrenaline high dying out at the same time and leaving him with eyes daring to flutter closed.

"There," Dokugakuji said with satisfaction, backing off. The unfamiliarity of the tone of voice stirred Kougaiji up into consciousness a little. He kept eyes locked with him, sensing somehow that it was very important to maintain that contact right now. "Are we a bit better now?"

Slowly, fidgeting a little as he did it, Kougaiji stood upright and pushed himself away from the wall.

"...Let's get you out of here," he told the prince firmly, edging off to one side a bit in an invitation to follow.

Eventually, Kougaiji nodded.

He walked unaided as they exited the hall of Rasetsunyo, out into the empty corridors that may have been midday and might have been midnight for as well lit as they were.

"Tell me what's wrong."

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"No."

"Kou..."

"Listen," Kougaiji said, in slight hysterics, "I don't get it all myself, all right?"

Dokugakuji's mouth twitched into a frown, but he understood now. He'd been going about it all wrong trying to get the prince to talk in this state.

Probably the most appropriate thing to do was to leave Kougaiji to sort this out himself in solitude, but Dokugakuji didn't trust him to do that, not with all that back there.

The only thing to do was just to stay, hold watch over him until whatever demons inside his mind fled. However long that would be.

He looked up in surprise when he found the two of them had made their way to their old war room, thick with dust and the scent of stale paper and sweat. Kougaiji studied the scene as though it was his first time seeing it, trying to piece together what it should have meant to him, to see the decay of this place.

There was a side room, one of many, made up as a temporary bedroom for when evening meetings ran long and the trek back to regular quarters seemed infeasible. Somehow it had escaped the ransacking for furniture that had gone on some time in their absence, so, lacking any other option, Dokugakuji helped Kougaiji seat himself on the edge of a bed.

"Why are you here?" Kougaiji asked, breaking a silence just settling in.

Because I'm your servant, and I'll always be there for you.

no

Because I follow you around like a lost puppy.

no

Because you mean a lot to people. Me, namely.

no...

"Because," Dokugakuji said. Just that.

It seemed to be enough.

They stared at the opposing wall for a few minutes.

"I'm useless," the prince said finally. It was a plain statement, no self-pitying whine. "And weak."

"Don't say that about yourself."

"Everyone knows it. Even the servants in this house treat me like scum. How did I let things go this far?"

Dokugakuji reached out a hand and gingerly touched a shoulder. "Because you're completely fucking worn down."

"'Worn down.' It's like I've been sleeping half my life."

More than, if you wanted to get technical. Five hundred years asleep to twenty-some spent half-awake, but he hadn't had any choice in that. And it was beside the point.

"Think of what you've been doing for the past few years. Hacking away at something and then getting it all thrown out from under you by a fluke. A whole ton of momentum all getting ground to a halt. It's fucked us all up, Kou."

He pushed at his eye sockets with his thumbs and mumbled, "I want things to go back to the way they were before."

Dokugakuji understood. He knew how much the other man longed to be with his mother again, by any means necessary.

But

"Before you met me, you mean?" he asked quietly.

A slight hesitation. Letting one hand fall, the other to hold his forehead. "No."

Dokugakuji couldn't help the sensation of relief, to hear him admit it. Much as the man was always sincere and genuine, he tried not to admit attachment to anyone.

But there was a lot more ground to cover than just that. They'd known each other for years. So,

"Before you met the Sanzo-ikkou, then?"

He grimaced, guilt spreading across his face almost painfully.

"...No."

That's good. He was glad. As bad as things were, memories of those four were too good to just wish away. How often did a person find such a great group of people to have as enemies?

The thing was that events in lives are built upon one another. If Kougaiji had never been frozen, he wouldn't have been around when Dokugakuji was alive, much less any of the rest of them. The meeting of those people, was, too, the start of a sequence of things that wouldn't have happened either.

"...Before you and me?" Dokugakuji asked.

Knowing the risk, knowing the line it was crossing, that the prince had never been asked to acknowledge this aspect of them as a unit, in whatever stage it existed.

The hand fell from Kougaiji's forehead, and he looked up. And turned toward Dokugakuji, eyes wide and pale, so striking and beautiful in ways that would get the warrior killed if he ever spoke of it, calling forth all those complicated urges it wasn't right to be feeling right now.

"No."

He was so beautiful. Every part of him, from that dark Indian skin to elegant long hair, the lines of muscle on that perfect throat...

The hand on Kougaiji's shoulder went to his knee, that couldn't think to jerk nervously at the contact now, as Dokugakuji began to lean in.

~*~

What are you thinking?

Please. Just-- I need this.

You can't be serious. Stop it. Now.

But we haven't-- Not for weeks--

Weeks? Sanzo repeated skeptically, who thought this sounded like a rather short interval, all considering. And at least short in the circumstances.

Listen to me. Kougaiji. Wait-- Stop--

He heaved forward, stomach twisting in an entirely unknown sensation, that pulling urge of desire that had no fucking place in his body.

Goddamn it, Kougaiji! You remember earlier, when you fell down those stairs? Do you know how I knew you fell, when you didn't say anything? Think about this a second!

Then, lungs fighting against the metered pace of the respirator, brain dizzying, head tilted up and back arched, feeling soft, coaxing lips on his, but not his, some other person's, but still feeling it as lips parted and burning hot tongue slipped in, moved around, touched everything, twisted along with his ownKougaiji's tongue that caressed and pressed back into that other mouth. Heart rattling in his rib cage so hard it might just snap through. Or burst.

Goddamn bastard, Sanzo thought resentfully, trying and failing to keep a hold on his senses. He's just like his brother.

...What?

Oh, glad you decided to tune in. We-- Ngh--

There was a pause as the brief reprieve from kissing ended and the two resumed with new intensity.

--don't have time for this, Sanzo thought gruffly, straining to focus enough to form words.

Says who? Kougaiji countered, shortly before his own thoughts were cut short by Dokugakuji's hand roaming very sensitive areas.

Sanzo all but yelped, feeling the unfamiliar hand touch and squeeze places where no one could ever have been allowed to venture, at least not when the priest was fully sober. He jerked against his restraints, no more relenting than their previous arrangement. He could have cried.

~*~

Goddamn you, Kougaiji!

If you don't like it, go away, Kougaiji told him angrily, thoroughly despising this side commentary distracting him right now, with Dokugakuji parting the front of his robes to give him better access to his neck. And murmuring things Kougaiji was expected to respond to, had to pay attention to, had to be able to focus on instead of trying to manage two different conversations.

I can't, you numbskull!

So find another way to tune it out.

How about you stopping?!

I--

He paused, overcome with a heady moan as lips and teeth suckled at a sensitive patch of skin on the side of his throat.

You can wait, he told Sanzo. This can't.

Yes it CAN, dammit! Quit acting like a fucking juvenile.

Not listening.

"Kou?"

"Keep going," he wheezed.

He did. With vigor.

"Ah--!"

Goddammit, stop it! What the fuck are you thinking? This isn't JUST about you here!

"Are you all right? Should I stop?"

I'm not kidding around. Stop this or I'll--

Kougaiji pulled his hands up to grasp Dokugakuji roughly by the shoulders.

"Shut up," he told them both, and pushed his lover down onto the bed.

~*~

Fuck! GodDAMN it! Was he the stronger psychic of the two here or what?! It didn't make sense that that bratty prince should be able to shut off whatever channels he liked but keep this shit going!

He wanted to scream, to yell, to do something, to not want to moan with someone else's pleasure, as hands caressed and pressed and kneaded and a tongue lapped up gathering sweat, lips and teeth left marks up and down neck and shoulders and exposed chest. Didn't want to feel like smirking with someone else's amusement, watching a person pause for a moment in bafflement in how to undo loose robes after so long dealing with tight jeans and no shirts.

Didn't want to get that smirk wiped off that face as hands succeeded, dove in between parted legs and squeezed.

The scream was lost in the dead liquid of the tank and the respirator forced down his throat. His back arched uselessly, tears of agonized arousal in the corner of his clenched eyes.

More kisses, sweet and heady and far too transient for Sanzo'sKougaiji's liking, getting pushed up and off and down onto his own back instead. Fingers wrapped around a burning erection, stroking in frustrating slow motions, drawing out every tortured groan.

He felt it but didn't share in it, trapped in his tank, the sensations purely mental and not at all tied to anything going on with his own body. Apart from the small amount of humiliation this spared him it meant little, all the senses Kougaiji's brain was registering just as real to Sanzo's mind as his own. All of it. Everything. Even as his hips bucked and back screamed, something hot and wet surrounding the tip of an erection he didn't have, swirling around and sliding down, all over the shaft, and then, just when it felt like it couldn't possibly get any betterworse, took him in completely. Down to the base, swallowing him up, sucking almost hungrily at the swollen flesh.

Stop stop stop stop

Slight scrape of teeth as the mouth withdrew, electrifying, Sanzo's whimper going unheard as the cold air hit hisKougaiji's wet penis, a disappointment belonging to both of them at this stop in Dokugakuji's ministrations. Then, a slight revulsion, more Sanzo's than Kougaiji's, as the warrior leaned up for a kiss and found his lover's head jerking away.

But he didn't force the issue, sufficing to nibble at the prince's neck some more while hands ran along thighs and pushed hips into the air. Those hot, rough hands, sliding over skin like he could burn it away, coaxing legs and hips and then the rest to shift and turn over, resting on knees with arms tucked under his chest.

Couldn't find the anger right then, couldn't manage to be offended by the suggestion he be taken like a wild beast, even if it wasn't really him it was being done to. Just the fluttering unstable heart, the pleading, the impatience--

And then, oh gods, the pressure, filling him up inside. Sweet, numbing pain, brain screaming there was no way for his body to accomodate something so big, not so fast, not so hard-- if it had really been his body to be feeling it. Kougaiji was already familiar.

Except not, the prolonged absence making every inch of his body shudder with agonizing pleasure, senses picking up a thousand more signals than they normally would, lungs fighting for the permission of breath.

Sanzo felt the effort, the actual effort Kougaiji made not to ejaculate then and there as Dokugakuji pushed that last little bit in. So overcome with this long-missed sensation, so far past coherency even before his lover made the first slide back, to thrust in rough and fast and eliciting a strangled cry from two different people.

He pitched forward, would have staggered and fallen if the restraints could only have permitted it. Caught there struggling pitifully, cries stopped dead before they started, wracked with siezing pleasure he couldn't even properly react to or interpret.

No words now, no thoughts, just the stinging hiss of static punctuated with violent explosions of ecstasy mixed with brain-addling pain as Dokugakuji picked up speed. Unlubricated, rough contact only tolerable because of familiarity, and the shared knowledge that they weren't planning to make an evening of this.

Could hear the prince's cries in his head, as thrusts grew harder and faster, every nerve singing like filaments in a lightbulb just before they go out. Brought to the very edge of everything--

--And over.

In that moment two different people virtually a mile apart both threw their heads back and screamed, or else choked and failed to, numbing orgasm washing over and through, like being taken away on a current.

Sanzo lolled his head forward painfully, dimming vision looking down at his own body, unmarked and untouched, equipment limp and shut off as it had always been, no cloud of white in the water to compact his humiliation. And somehow, feeling like he'd just been cheated.

...Bastard.

~*~

Sick, wet squelching as Dokugakuji withdrew let Kougaiji know that he had come to his climax too, though when this had occured, before or after his own, he had no idea. Glad that his lover had gotten something out of the deal, but not stable enough to really care about details.

This time he didn't resist when Dokugakuji leaned up to kiss him, even reciprocated as much as he could, eyes kept open because to close them meant to fall asleep. He seemed to be doing that too much these days.

He was pinned under him, arms trapped under his own body, still panting and shuddering in the afterglow, and loving this warmth too much to let it leave.

"Thank you," he murmured near Dokugakuji's ear, as their lips parted.

"Sleep," the other man encouraged. "I'll be here."

"'Sleep,'" Kougaiji repeated distastefully, turning his head a little. "All I've done is sleep."

"Then try it again, and do it right this time." He nibbled a bit on an ear lobe, gently tugging at the long earring with his teeth. "And don't wake up until you feel better, okay?"

"It might be a while."

"I'll be here."

"Is it all right?"

"Yes."

"Doku?"

"Yeah, Kou?"

"Thanks."

He let his eyes close. And for the first time in many days, he did not dream.

-----

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