Towers of Silence

Towers of Silence
- Forget-me-not
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As Sanzo was sitting there, not knowing what to do or maybe not even knowing how to do it I didn’t know anything myself. Should I take him into my arms…or should I say something? His mind was difficult to read. One time he wanted me to console him and the other time he killed me when I just intended to look at him. It was weird anyway, he seemed out of his mind and not really present, like he was hypnotized.

I leaned forward to softly shake him but he just turned his head and looked through me with these dead eyes. He couldn’t rest like that for the whole day, could he? So I waited for him to get back to reality. Anyway, Sanzo often did that, he just sat back and stared into the air, thinking or dreaming about things… Sometimes he just sat back and took a break from reality. Somehow that kept him sane.

But I didn’t need any break from reality, I liked it as it was, I didn’t want to have a break and therefore miss some minutes with Sanzo. Finally I stood up and went to the kitchen to make coffee and catch a glimpse of Hakkai and his new buddy. They were still sitting there like that, it was unbelievable but they hadn’t moved.

“Coffee anyone?”

“Yes”

If he hadn’t answered me now I would have thought that they both would have slept with open eyes, it couldn’t be possible that they were able to keep themselves awake for the whole night and then be so attentive as to answer me straight after my question. Royo was human, there wasn’t any doubt, so it must have been even harder for him to fight that battle with Hakkai. But this was none of my business, they could have sat there until the world would have ended. As long as Hakkai kept cleaning the house there wasn’t any problem.

After some minutes when I had poured the steaming water into the three cups I put one down on the table in front of Royo and then continued my delivery. When I opened the door I knew that it had been a bad idea to leave him alone. He seemed quite back to normal but he had that look in his eyes which I feared so much. I could almost see him struggling with holding back the tears and although half of his face was hidden by his hair because he was looking out of the window on the right side, his expression made me curse my inability to interpret things appropriately.

I put the cups on the table and went to him to kneel down in front of him. He didn’t even notice me but now I noticed that he was holding his hand, or rather his wrist. I didn’t see any reason for that so I carefully took his hand and pushed it away. The scars had bothered him, his old and almost forgotten scars on his wrist had been bothering him… I traced along them, there were four deep and a lot of scars where he hadn’t cut his flesh that deeply. He had told me about them, the history behind them and why he kept hiding them under his gloves.

He had even asked me whether I found them ugly or didn’t like him because of these pieces of evidence for his dark mind. But of course I had said ‘No’, they even made him more special. I couldn’t tell anything which really bothered me about him because everything just belonged to him like he had been born with that. Maybe he had been born with that stigma of seeing through things. There were many people who were gifted with that but they had learnt how to live with that…Sanzo hadn’t yet. And he probably wouldn’t ever.

So it was my job to remind him of staying alive and to show him the good sides of life. I didn’t have anything to do anyway except of being his slave, there was nothing to do for me, I wouldn’t even think about anything else.

“Sanzo…what’s with these scars…?”

It seemed like my voice had brought him back into our world, into the world of the living. He smiled so beautifully and desperately and looked at me.

“Nothing.”

He kept looking at me and I didn’t know what to do. Now it was like I had seen him for the first time and like I had to talk to him for the first time. Because I really didn’t know what was up with him and what he was thinking about. So I stood up, fetched my cup and sat down on the bed again. Sometimes it was better to leave him alone with his thoughts and wait for him to come to me to demand some attention or some tender loving care.

Actually he rarely came to me to demand some attention, he wasn’t the one who wanted to be eyed and adored; he liked it calmly and sometimes it was his little paradise when he could sit there in the shadows of the night and look out of the window or just stare into the dark. Sanzo wasn’t the one to come to me and ask me whether he was good in bed and therefore maybe get self-affirmation, neither did he show off with his beautiful body or his alluring features. He just felt satisfaction when he looked at me and could tell that I still loved him and when I kept sleeping in the same bed with him.

The more I thought about him like that the cuter I found him. I smiled now and pulled on him to take him into my arms without thinking about it. I cuddled him and he just enjoyed it with his eyes closed and a bright smile. And he didn’t even defend himself from me when I rubbed my head against his.

“Mmmh…”

So I had been right. Sanzo loved to be cuddled and cared for, he still denied that and he would have rather shot himself than asking me to come over and stroke him or just touch him. He was certain that I knew what he needed and this made me proud of myself. Although it was improvising half of the time I mostly guessed right. But, to be correct, there wasn’t much to guess: Either he wanted to feel me on him or he wanted to be left alone. Although the second thing got rarer it still happened sometimes and if I screwed things up then he got serious and ignored me. Sanzo was one hell of a lotto.

“Touch me, Gojyo…”

Well, maybe I didn’t know him that well actually. Not that well as I had wished me to know him. But it was one of the loveliest sentences I have ever heard from him, he wanted me to console him. And of course I fulfilled his wish and began stroking his chest down to his belly. Happily I noticed that he wasn’t that thin anymore. I had gotten used to his slim body so now I knew just from touching him that he didn’t weight 60 kilos anymore.

I took some flesh between my thumb and the other fingers and slightly pinched him. He tried to jerk away but I held him tight with the other hand.

“Time for some cake, don’t you feel hungry? And your coffee is getting cold…”

I bent over him to suck his navel into my mouth and I chewed on it until he was gasping. Then I felt him pulling on my hair and with a wet sound I let go of the flesh. I chuckled because there was a red ring round his navel and I knew that it would turn blue and violet soon because I had sucked pretty hard on it. I felt him touching my head with his front.

“Get me…the cake.”

Sanzo let go of me and I stood up, took the cup and gave it to him. He looked tired and not really good but he wasn’t seriously depressed or in a bad mood. I turned around and hurried into the kitchen to get some of the cake in the fridge. I took a really big piece of it and passed the unlucky couple for the fourth time this morning. I wondered when they’d stop that silly game and start fucking each other.

Sanzo was sipping on his coffee when I entered the room. He had been looking at the door and now that he saw me coming back he seemed relieved. I carefully sat down on the bed because his cup was still half-full and I put the cake on the bed. Now I remembered about the first piece of the cake I had put on the blanket before he…before his mood had changed. Now it was lying on the floor.
When he had finished his coffee he took the fork and the plate.

“Sanzo…what is wrong…?”

He stared at the brown mass in front of him, drawing patterns into the icing. I reached out, took his chin into my hand and forced him to look into my eyes. While I was trying to resist his capturing gaze it caught me again and it was useless to just even try to look down. He swallowed and he desperately looked for some security in my eyes.

“It’s that feeling…it …it consists of nothing and it swallows you and makes you believe that you’re…living in another world, that nothing is real and…that you can’t escape it. You’re just a doll…in this faked reality…”

I knew what he was talking about when he mentioned the doll. I had been thinking that this feeling is just some part of your life, that it’s an exception but that it’s real and…as normal as it can be. And he was right, it felt like dying while you were captured by that terrifying feeling. You felt helpless and that the world would continue going on without you.

“If it’s just that then I’m glad.”

I kissed his cheek and laid my head on his shoulder so that he could bury his head in my hair. And he just did what I had expected him to do.

“I have also felt like that once in my life and I have woken up again from that nightmare. I know what you are talking about but somehow…that’s just normal when you‘re tired or stressed…like your brain tries to backup while you are conscious. It’s called ’depersonalization’ but I don’t think that you are really insane. It’s that bit of insanity which keeps you sane…”

I lifted my head again and he had to lift his as well. I licked over his lip and kissed him deeply. And I immediately felt better because I felt him touching me. I sighed and he breathed in the air I exhaled and I felt his desire and desperation so I just embraced him tighter and held him like I always did it when he was close to be shattered by life. He was just a born pessimist, damned to suffer for his whole life.

“Sanzo…don’t do such things to me, you know that I can’t handle them.”

“But…I also feel it when I have just woken up, when I’m drinking coffee or when I’m just lying on the bed…”

His voice dropped and he sounded so desperate.

“I am insane, I’m a fucking lunatic, I have gone mad!”

He was screaming and twisting in my embrace and it hurt because he was yelling into my ear so I moved my head away from his and waited until he had calmed a bit.

I petted his head and kissed him until he seemed to be present again. It was always a wrestle for life or death when he began to suffer from his dark part of his soul. If Sanzo once was to choose between death and life -all despite of his deep love which was mine only- he would choose death. He didn’t slash his wrists or kill himself with the scripture because he knew that I would prevent him from dying and that I would feel really bad after his death. He knew very well that I’d also kill myself. I didn’t doubt that he really loved his life as it was now, I didn’t doubt his love for me, he had always been honest, but he had enough of that life.

He had seen so much, suffered through so much which a man wouldn’t be able to bear in one single life. You’d just need three lives to fill these with the strokes of faith and desperation he had to cope with. Despite his love for me he would choose death. Because it was the easier way and people are programmed to search for the easiest ways in life.
Besides he had gone so far that his pain could only be cured by more pain, he searched for distraction when I was whipping him or fucking him that hard that he was bleeding.

I hadn’t known about this at the beginning of our relationship, I had just thought he was an average man with a subtle taste. I had thought that he enjoyed the pain and that it helped him to empty his head but I hadn’t realized that he was only longing for pain when he was hurt. There had been several occasions when I had offered him a session -he always took the offer- but there had also been several occasions when he had begged me to hurt him.

I didn’t feel that way at all. I enjoyed our games because I loved him and because the pain made me hard but Sanzo partly also loved it because it made him aware of his weak body which could be ruined so easily. Of course he also got hard while being whipped or nearly choked but I think that was just his body, doing that with him. I had heard about that thing with the adrenalin causing you a nice load of trouble but also making you hard. Every human being reacts like that but some are just not aware of the nice effects of that trouble.

If Sanzo would fall into a coma I was sure that he wouldn’t wake up anymore. It even had been difficult to make him rise when he had been ill, he still had been able to hear my words then and maybe got new hope again but just imagine he couldn’t hear me anymore…
Human beings were so vulnerable, they didn’t need that much as a Youkai needed to fall on the floor and never rise again. That one time when that Rikudo had almost killed him…I had already come to like him so I was seriously worried about him because it was awful to watch the blood flowing from his stomach, forming a red lake and while growing bigger taking the chance of reanimating him with it…I had really feared to lose him there.

Sooner or later he would give in. He couldn’t live like that forever. Just every day brought along a new reason to worry and to get desperate, just every day made it worse. He wasn’t able to bear that all, he would last for some more time like that but one day it would get too much and crush him. My love was simply too little than to keep him happy. And Sanzo didn’t need ‘more’, he could live without the gods and he could live without any belief in anything. At least up to now. Maybe he needed that ‘more’. But I was sure that I wouldn’t be able to offer him that if he once asked me about that…you just needed something to believe in your life, otherwise it was…worthless.

I had told him to believe in me if he hadn’t anything to believe in but now I think that this was not enough. It only tore him apart more when he was forced to live for my sake because there was a certain pressure. He had to stay alive because if he died I would have died as well and he loved me enough to want me to live on. Maybe this was his way for not committing suicide. Of course I would kill myself if he did that, as I already had said.

I watched him eating the cake now and he seemed rather happy again. If I showed him now what I had been thinking about or if I showed him how I was feeling now I was sure he would have gotten depressed again. So I tried to hide that all behind an indifferent expression and behind my hair. I had to laugh about that because I knew why I wore it long. I always told people that I didn’t know why it had come this way with my hair but I did know. It was like a curtain, like a wall, protecting me, giving me shelter and a possibility to hide behind. It was silly but it worked like that.

So I hid behind my hair again and tried to act as normal as possible. One day I would see him dying. Whether he really killed himself or whether he died because of a disease or just because he had gotten too old for this world, I had always liked the thought of getting old with him, I would see it happen. Because I wasn’t human. He was doomed to suffer from his humanity and I was doomed to suffer from my inhumanity, it was so ironic that it hurt.

And Sanzo currently wasn’t able to console me. He had to bear his own thoughts and worries. That was all a farce. We had never been asked before we were born whether we wanted to live on this earth but once we existed it was wrong to kill ourselves.

I stood up to leave him alone there. He wasn’t a little child anymore which you had to watch the whole day because it did whatever came to his mind. Sometimes everybody needs some time to be alone. I had never felt the urge to be alone because I had been lonely all my life long but now that urge was really strong. And maybe I understood him now: sitting there in the shadows of the night and staring out of the window or into the black air, enjoying and drowning in the pain and life and just thinking about nothing.

Without saying a word I left him and I think he understood. He knew that I didn’t go the kitchen to make some more coffee; he must have been sure about this. I had heard the clattering of the fork hitting the plate all the time but now it had stopped. Maybe he had been finished with eating and torturing himself by that or maybe he couldn’t eat anymore because of the lump in his throat. Or maybe this was just what I felt. I wasn’t in the mood for crying now, I wouldn’t have even been able to do so if I had wanted now and instead of crying I felt my swollen throat hurting.

I opened and closed the door and turned to the left to walk along the aisle and get to the balcony at the end of it. I opened the slide door and stepped out. The wood felt cold and moist under my feet and I went to the balustrade to lean on it and stare at the little lake in front of me. It was a hazy day, foggy and cloudy and you couldn’t see far because of that. There was reed growing around the water and although it was just a bordered pond it looked like a natural Zen garden. I bet Hakkai also cared for that and arranged the things.

In the middle of the pond was one of those little houses of sandstone which were built as homes for the demons. It was rather big but not that big that you could get into it and wooden ways were leading to the hill in the middle. They went up and down, into the water and up again, giving shelter to the fish in that pond. They were beautiful, some koi carps, big and very old and they were slowly swimming there like they would live forever and had all the time in the world. I hadn’t really been aware of that pond or maybe I had forgotten about it somehow and now I regretted that I hadn’t paid more attention on it sooner. It was really a place which was nearly radiating loneliness, peace and just silence…

Their big eyes were always half closed, their mouths eternally sad and their fins leisurely fanning the water. Although there wasn’t much action, they were beautiful to watch. How they led their lives, calmly and never in trouble; if they had had the mind of a human being they surely would have been happy. None of them looked like the same, there were some with black and brown stains, some with red and white stains and some with black and reddish brown spots.

I searched for my cigarettes in the pockets of my pants and I was happy when I found the lighter and a nearly crushed one. Nevertheless it was still lightable and I lit it and enjoyed it. I hadn’t smoked for days because those incidents had prevented me from enjoying a smoke in silence. I didn’t really need this shit actually. I was just a chain smoker because I had too much time in my life.

Now it was me, running from him, avoiding his presence.
I remembered about these situations when he had left me alone in our room and I had always felt so bad that it hardly could have gotten worse. And I couldn’t even say that I was causing his downfall because he was the type of suffering lifelong, no matter whether he loved someone or not. Maybe I had just delayed the outburst but it would have happened anyway.

Now the fish sent bubbles of air towards the surface where they disappeared with a faint sound.

There was nothing to do but wait. And waiting can kill you. It can kill your mind. Waiting and living on made it worse.
I knew that Sanzo was happy for most of the time but no matter how blissful it was, he always relapsed into that sad mood, there was no possibility of changing that. Indeed nothing had changed at all. Either he was on cloud number seven or he felt depressed as hell after sex. Nothing had changed.

Sanzo had a character which ran in circles, he always came back, whatever you did or wherever you led him to, he always came back to those old familiar thoughts. Somehow he had managed to live on, aimlessly and tired of it but he had lived on. Maybe he didn’t even care anymore whether he was alive or not. And this would have been the worst which could have happened.

They were moving to the surface, sticking out their little mouths, sucking in some air and diving down only to exhale and watch the pearls of air floating to the surface again.
I bent down and put my hand through the wooden bars to reach into the water. I moved my finger in slow circles and when the fish had noticed that something was going on there they came swimming towards me and they gently sucked on my finger because they mistook it for food. As they were moving around my hand they didn’t mind being petted, normally those fish weren’t used to human touch or even presence but they didn’t fear me at all. They trusted me. I wondered if they knew that I was a water sprite…

I felt him standing in the doorway.
This was when I knew that I didn’t need any time for myself. I have never needed time for myself and I didn’t now. I felt that he knew about how he was going to end. Maybe his genes were responsible for that. Or maybe he was just suffering so much from all the traumas in his life.
But I decided to grow old with him. Damn him.

I was so deep in thoughts with which I was cursing the world and universe that I hadn’t heard him coming closer and suddenly he was leaning on my back.

“If you leave me now then it was all waste-of-time…”

I felt his breath on my skin through my hair. I could tell who was talking to me just by feeling him breathing on my skin by now…

“I have…done it just for you. It’s a special thing. And it’s not just worth some money…but also everything of me because I put everything into that which I could sacrifice for you. I want you to take it and I won’t accept a ’No’. I have done it just for you and either you keep it or you throw it away so that nobody will ever find it again. If you should decide to do so I will follow and nobody will ever find me again either. I will force you to take it, to wear it. Because I don’t want to follow and run away any more. And you won’t be able to take it off anymore once you’ve put it on anyway. You’d have to chop off your limb if you wanted to get rid of it.”

He paused and I was confused about this sudden speech and even a bit scared about what he was talking. His words had intimidated me, I had to admit that, but that was just his way of talking.

“My soul is flowing in that and it will always remind you of me…”

He was that quick that I just realized half of the things he did now. First he caught my wrist of the right hand which was still hanging into the water, then he tightened his grip on it so much that I had to stretch out my fingers in pain and with his other hand he violently shoved something over my ring finger. It hurt like hell because it was too small at first but after he had finally passed the second knuckle it fit perfectly. Still a bit too tight for something like that but not uncomfortable. He still held my hand and my fingers so that I couldn’t see what he had done.

“I won’t ask you whether you like it or not, as I have already said, you won’t get it off any more. Never.”

He was now leaning on my back again, drawing back his hand so that I could take a look at my still aching finger. I had gotten so sore there that it had nearly started to bleed from that violent pushing and shoving. But what I saw made me forget everything.
Deep black, interrupted with fine violet shimmering lines, winding around the ring like waves.

At the moment I didn’t know which was more beautiful: the ring or the feeling that he had forced me to wear it forever and that he had branded me as his property. It made me indescribably happy and sentimental, thinking about both. Even if he was that ill, that desperate and depressed and so shattered and already insane I would love him. I’d die with him. It annoyed me to no ends that I always got so sentimental but I had to cry now again. It wasn’t out of desperation and sadness but it was happiness and beauty.

He had laid his head on my shoulder and now caressed my cheek. I clenched my fingers and huddled up against his hand.

“I’d never think of getting it off, Sanzo…”

He whispered softly into my ear.

“You couldn’t anyway.”

That little thing fascinated me. And just the idea, he had thought about going to someone and asking him to do that for him to give this to me…

“What’s that violet…?”

“Amethyst. My eyes.”

Now I wasn’t free anymore, I was his, his property, indicated by that ring. I belonged to him and no one except of him could ever claim me any more from now on. I was so happy about this that I forgot about that sad feelings and thoughts I had had some minutes ago. Sometimes you just need to look into the sun to get new hope again. And no matter how much you hate it for its lightness, you will always be glad for one single ray when you have passed months of darkness. And I saw him cheering up as well; whatever I felt he felt it too and whatever he felt I also felt that.

But maybe that’s just life. When you have reached a point where it can’t get any worse everything will turn all of a sudden and you will see everything from a different point of view.

“Whenever you feel like that again…just tell me…and I will bring you back into my world.”

“I will.”

He had closed his eyes and put his hand on mine and now seized it.

“Please tell me that you like it…”

He squeezed it tighter and dug into my hair with his nose.

“…I couldn’t stand the feeling in case you shouldn’t like it.”

I hadn’t really expected him to ask me whether I liked it or not after his warning from before. But this was just another proof of how much he cared for and about me. And there was no way of not liking it.
I was searching for the right words to tell him that I liked it but words even seemed to offend this beautiful gift, there were no words which could have described my feeling.

I heard him sobbing in my hair and he gripped some of it and pulled on it to just live out his pain.
In the end we always ended up crying and weeping and sobbing, mostly because of happiness and relief. It was a really wrecked relationship we led but as long as it worked I accepted those conditions if they had to be there. I accepted everything for him, pain, fear and sadness if he just stayed by my side. And Sanzo did the same, it wasn’t necessary for him to do that but nevertheless he always did, in most cases he suffered even more than I did although I would have done that for him.

I looked at the ring, the lines were still flowing around it…from now on, I swore that I would look at it every time I was sad or had to bear bad times. I sighed. I did that quite often the last time but I couldn’t stifle it.

“Get up, you’ll fall ill again…”

I dragged him up and we left the balcony, leaving the fish, staring at our backs and leaving the fog, becoming even denser.
I could tell that he wasn’t entirely healthy yet from looking at his face. Did that never stop? It was time to get better now, how long should this bother him… If he didn’t cheer up in his mind he probably wouldn’t get better that quickly again. When we had reached our room I guided him to the bed and made him sit down there.

We should have stayed at home yesterday. Of course it had been special but I would have driven him every single day to the city if he had asked me.
Maybe Hakkai had left something for us in the fridge …there was always something because once he cooked a meal he cooked for 10 people and we could live from that for about one week. So I turned around and hurried to the kitchen.

I expected Hakkai and Royo, still sitting there and staring but when I found the table and the seats and no Hakkai and Royo I was curious. Seemed like we had missed the climax. But I didn’t care what they did, whether they had decided to take a walk or were just having fun in Hakkai’s room. Just imagine the scene when I would open the door of his room and see them, obviously occupied with nice things and then Sanzo would come and smack me for watching other people fucking around. He’d get jealous as hell, as said by Royo.

I opened the fridge and peered into the white. And there were really some things waiting there for us to be discovered. I could have chosen between meat with rice and…some more rice and…more rice…damn it, Hakkai had a real fixation on that… But there was also something with potatoes and cheese and some vegetables…it looked like stew, oh my god. And Hakkai wasn’t really famous for his stew. Maybe it wasn’t stew at all, it just looked like it, potato sludge looking like stew but not being stew, damn it, Sanzo had to eat that and that’s that.

I took the plate with the foil and opened the cupboard to search for the mayonnaise. Firstly Sanzo really liked it and secondly…or rather that firstly, the calorific content of Mayonnaise was staggering. I generously poured a little mountain of that white thing on the potato-squash and then mixed it up so that he wouldn’t notice my intention. I put the bottle back into the cupboard, took the plate and a spoon and went back to our room.

Whenever I left him to come back again after some minutes he was always sitting there in the same posture like it was a ritual: His back was resting on the headboard, his head was bowed and he was staring at the sheets. And when he would hear me entering he’d look up without smiling or scowling. When his eyes met mine this time I had to smile, sometimes he was so predictable but sometimes he didn’t let you look through him at all.

When I had sat down and put the plate on my thigh he suspiciously eyed it.

“And I should eat that or what?”

“Well, I hadn’t planned to pour it over you…”

“Idiot.”

Now he was scowling. But he was waiting for me to take some of that awful squash and put it into his mouth. So I did that and while chewing he grimaced.

“This tastes horrible, is that Hakkai-stew? And…”

I hoped he wouldn’t notice that this meal consisted of potatoes and for the other half of Mayonnaise…I bet he would have hit me if he had found out about that. Somehow he still refused to put on weight. But I wanted him so much to be my sweet little honeybee. While he was still protesting against that food I shoved another spoon full of that thing into his mouth.

“You have to eat up because I don’t know where our dustbin is currently situated.”

He had to smile about that and the potatoes nearly dropped on the blanket while he was clutching at his mouth. I really made him eat up and after that I just put the plate on the floor. Hakkai would come and take it. Oh my, it was so unfair to treat him like that, he really always cleaned up after us…But honestly, I was too lazy to get up and put it into the kitchen sink. At least not now because I was enjoying a stuffed and annoyed Sanzo.

I bet I could have done everything I had wanted to do with him now and he wouldn’t have defended himself because he was so full. Merciful Goddess, thank you for the mayonnaise. That Kanzeon must have laughed her ass off while watching us.

“Damn it, I feel sick…”

He was lying on the blanket, his feet comfortably spread apart, one of his hands somewhere between his thighs and chest and the other on his head, playing with his hair. I bent down until I touched the sheets with my belly and teasingly bit his flank. One time, two times, he wasn’t doing anything. I took some flesh between my teeth and pulled on it.

“What?!”

Ow, I had pissed him off.

“I’m also hungry…”

I licked over his skin and he laid his head down again.

“Then get yourself some of that gross potato-mayonnaise-thing.”

How could I have been that foolish as to really think he wouldn’t notice, he was an expert in that? Once he had used to put it into whatever he ate at the moment…soup, bread, beef…everything but into his coffee.

“I…didn’t want…intend…”

“You thought I wouldn’t notice…idiot. I’m just doing this for you and I wouldn’t do it for anyone else on this world.”

I snuggled up against his flank.

“Yes, but you are just skin and bones, I can’t really have fun with you…”

Maybe I should have thought one more moment about what to say. Because this was definitively the wrong choice of my words. And I immediately perceived that when he turned to the side, offended and sick of me. He showed me his back and I couldn’t do anything except of staring at it. I began to stroke it and felt his soft hot skin warming my cold fingers.

“I…it wasn’t meant like that.”

But he kept lying there in silence, only allowing me to caress his shoulder blades and trace his spine down to the tailbone. When I had reached that nice spot he arched forward to escape my touch and growled in annoyance. There wasn’t much to be done with him now; I just would have to wait until he had calmed down again. It was like I had put my foot in his mouth and I felt embarrassed now.

I moved away from him and also lay down on the bed, my arms crossed behind my head and my feet also crossed. As I was staring at the ceiling I heard him coughing. He was so easily offended, you didn’t have to say much to insult him or make him feel bad because he wasn’t used to hearing such words from me. It wasn’t like I had really offended him but…no, somehow it was like that. I had told him that I didn’t enjoy him in bed; at least this must have been what he had heard in this complaint.

I understood him, reacting like that, because he was trying hard on pleasing me with eating all that stuff I brought him and he was really fussy about his body this time and it was difficult to talk about that subject. Maybe this was all wrong. If he liked himself as he was I also should have liked him as he was. He had really lost some weight because of the illness but I think that just came at the right time to his mind and helped him to reach his aim.

Sanzo could go on sulking for days; I had had to experience that more often than I had wished to. He just ignored me and everyone, even Hakkai who never had a clue why he was acting that strangely. And by pouting he just made me want him more than usually. It seemed like a challenge, he was telling me by not saying anything to try to make him kiss and stroke me again. But mostly I failed. He was stubborn, he was the most stubborn man I had ever met in this world.

I didn’t want him to occupy the sulking-corner for days now so I decided to try something. Either he was just more annoyed or he gave in or he started a fight with me because I had upset him that much. I personally wanted him to fight me, it was always great fun to tease him with that and when he was sitting on my chest, pinning my arms down on the sheets because I had been careless for one moment the punches and hits had been worth the picture then.

Mostly I was the one, sitting on his chest, rubbing my cock on his belly and keeping his hands down and sheepishly smirking at him. I wasn’t human and I was stronger than him but what he lacked of power he compensated with cleverness and smartness so it was always uncertain who’d win the dominance battle. I enjoyed winning as much as I enjoyed losing because for me there wasn’t anything to lose or to feel bad about it.

But when Sanzo was lying under me, desperately trying to free his arms from my grip I knew that he felt hurt, that I had hurt his pride. He was aware of the fact that I was stronger and therefore easily could defeat him and sitting on his chest and demonstrating that power was like a punch into his guts. He knew that he couldn’t do anything against it and he shouldn’t have felt hurt by that because I wasn’t out to demonstrate my power with that. It was just some silly fight.

But he hardly gave up on old thought patterns so I had to expect such a situation every time we started fighting. I wished him to turn around and hit me and invite me to hit back and I wished I would be careless for a moment so that he could sit on my chest. I turned to the side, quickly moved closer, put an arm round his flank and belly and teasingly bit his neck. Damn, I didn’t know what had been waiting for me now and I prepared for a lot of pain, considering his state of annoyance.

Either he fought with annoyance or with wild fury against me and the second one was much more dangerous and worth being scared of. By now I cursed myself for provoking him and maybe sending him over the edge, I should have left him and let him sulk until he’d give it up by himself.
The hit with the bony elbow hurt like hell and I would have thought that my cheek was broken if this had been possible. With a prompt- and quickness I hadn’t expected from him after that lunch he moved around and I saw his eyes, slits, gleaming. Gods, he was furious.

He showed his teeth at me and his face was contorted with anger but even now he looked so beautiful… One second of staring into my eyes, intimidating me, threatening me, killing me and I felt the next fist colliding with my face. I had to collect my thoughts again and now start my defence; otherwise we would have been forced to change the dirty red sheets after that little game. I instinctively brought my hands up to my face to prevent him from hitting it again but he just dug his nails into my ribcage and turned me on my back.

This hadn’t been a really good start for me this time because I absolutely hadn’t been prepared for that shower of quick hits. Irrespective of any damage he’d cause and any wounds which would be left after that fight he was thrashing me, not even giving me time to move my hands to reach out for a blow. In order to reach out I had to present him my face but I risked that now and I was even that quick that he hadn’t found the time to hit my cheek again.

I just sent my hand into the air and I didn’t know what I would hit and when I felt his flesh giving way I looked up and saw him bending over and coughing. Maybe I had hit the pit of his stomach and now I feared that he’d throw up what he had eaten shortly before. But I saw him clutching his mouth and with an offended and enraged look he faced me again.

I was allowed to hit him, just as much as he was allowed to hit me when it came to such fights. He was already craving for revenge and he reached out but I grabbed his wrist just in time and prevented him from hitting my throat. Shortly after catching his hand I felt his knee in my side which made me gasp and free his hand.

I didn’t know what he was fighting for, I never knew, but he wasn’t about to stop that quickly once he had begun the battle. Maybe I had really pissed him off by just not leaving him alone and maybe those words weren’t really the reason for this fight but rather that I hadn’t respected his wish to be alone or at least not to see me.

Anyway, respect was one of the main principles of his thinking, we could only hurt each other that much and love us that much because we respected and tolerated the other. And even when I was forced to lick his toes or when he had tied me up and came up with things I really hated but had to stand because I didn’t have a choice and couldn’t escape him, then human dignity was still untouched. I felt humiliated and uncomfortable but my pride was never hurt by that. We knew how to act and hurt each other without offending the other.

Some people maybe would think that this is impossible, that it is choking your pride while forcing your lover to do things he doesn’t really like or can enjoy but that’s a completely different thing. He could slap and hit me and I wouldn’t feel hurt but if I had been lying on the floor and he’d spit on me in earnest - this would have hurt me. And this was the case when he had taken revenge on me for that night: He had let me sit on the window sill and lick my own pee, this had touched my pride. Just as much as I had dared to touch his that one night.

I felt his hand seizing my throat and this was not good. I was so careless this time, something had to be done about that. I concentrated hard and collected all my strength and then I sat up with a jerk and shoved his hand away. He fell back and I took advantage of that and the next second I was sitting on his chest, causing him to empty his lungs and pressing his arms into the pillow and holding his feet down with one of mine. But he escaped my leg and I knew that this was going to be painful now. He surely wouldn’t miss that chance and hoping that he would hold back was of no use.

When I felt his knee making my spine bow I also felt that stabbing pain in my stomach. I fell forward by the force of that blow and I felt his face under my chest. In addition to that my forehead had hit the headboard and I felt paralyzed. But Sanzo immediately put one hand under my shoulder and braced it against my chest to be able to breathe properly. I felt his belly pressing against my groin, moving quickly up and down from sucking in the air. He was out of breath and so was I.

No one had won this time. And I was glad about that. Now I felt his hand which held me up into the air trembling from exertion and I propped myself up on my elbows. I was looking down at his hair, that beautiful blond mass and mess. It moved slightly as he was panting harshly. Sanzo must have stared at my chest or maybe at my nipples, his hands were lying on the blanket and his dick was pressing against my thighs. When I noticed that I prayed to the gods that I hadn’t also gotten hard in the meantime because he certainly would have felt that because my own cock had come to lie on his belly.

I was thinking about some words to show him that I hadn’t meant it like he had interpreted it. I just had made a joke about it but it was obvious now that Sanzo currently couldn’t take any jokes about that. He took it too seriously just as he took everything pretty seriously.

“Asshole.”

…

“Pretentious dick.”

…

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it…?”

“Yeah, it’s been quite a while.”

I let my gaze slide over the bed and when I looked at my forearm I noticed the scar there. My bandages were too short to cover this one as well so it was visible for everyone. But this didn’t bother me, it was a relic of a comfortable scene, it wasn’t one of those scars under the bandages.

“Hmh…you remember that scar there?”

He pushed himself up with his feet to look at the spot at which I was pointing with my finger. With unease I felt his cock rubbing against my thighs and now it was dangerously close to mine.
But of course he knew about that scar. It was one of his. While he looked at my arm I enjoyed the situation. I was lying on top of him, skin on skin, wet and so hot that I barely could suppress the urge to lick over his swollen cheek. I watched him trying to remember.

“It’s…it’s left from that incident with that Ginkaku-kid…right? When that Youkai-idiot had tried to kill me by pulling me over the edge of that cliff…”

I had to concentrate on not drooling on him.

“Right…”

He yawned so that I could see his throat and teeth and while almost showing me his tonsils he stretched and tensed and arched up. Straight into my twitching cock. He sighed and put a leg round my back to keep him in that position. With his right hand he reached towards my back and put it under the pants to grope my ass and pull him up a bit more. Suddenly he shoved a finger up my ass and my pelvis sank down by reflex while I had to groan.

“Sick pervert.”

My head was lying on his face, I was panting and making his eyes wet with it. I tried to put my hands round his head to press it against mine. After those fights we were always back to normal, it seemed like we needed them to get rid of our bad mood.

We remained like that, Sanzo wasn’t about to say something and neither was I but he pulled out the finger and put his hand on my back and I laid down on him. We were just lying there, gathering our strength and lost in thoughts about the old times.

“Why did you save me?"

His hair smelled marvellous and I was sucking on some strands of it. I hoped that he didn’t notice that because he would have called me ‘sick’ for a second time for chewing on his hair. I could remember clearly about that night. Minutes before we had nearly been fighting each other because we had quarrelled all the time. And then I had seen him disappearing behind that rock. I had hurried to call on my Shakujyo and waving the chain to get him.

He was able to get hold on it but he was too heavy to be pulled up because that Youkai was still hanging on him. Then he had shot that bastard and because of the loss of that weight he had nearly dragged me over the edge as well. He had protested and complained about my inability but that hadn’t been my fault. Finally I had been able to pull him up from there and he had been so merciful as to climb the last part up by himself.

I had been lying there and he had been sitting there, smoking. My arm hurt because I had wrapped the chain around it and it hurt anyway because I had overstretched it or something like that. Sanzo had been a bit heavier at that time. Then he lit my cigarette as well and we kept smoking there in silence. He had asked me then why I had saved him but I hadn’t been honest. I had told him that I’d have to pick up everything which someone had dropped but I had wanted to say something different. I hadn’t had the courage yet to tell him.

Somehow he must have known about that because he had never asked again until now. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to deal with the truth behind that but I was sure that he didn’t mind anymore now. And now I had the courage to tell him. I hadn’t loved him by that time, it had taken me some eternity to realize that I loved him but at this time I hadn’t known yet. I had just liked him, maybe already more than that. Not for nothing there’s that saying ‘The quarrel of lovers is the renewal of love.’

Of course I would have saved Hakkai and Goku as well but…it was different with Sanzo. I hadn’t saved him because he was my companion of whom I just had gotten used to but because he was my companion of which I had gotten fond of.

“I had saved you because I would have saved everybody who would have fallen over the edge of that cliff. There was no particular reason for saving you.”

I was a devil. I knew that he was going to be disappointed about that but he wouldn’t show me that, not if he had to go to hell for not showing me. Now he wanted me to say that I had done it because I had already loved or liked him, he was just so predictable. And I couldn’t lift my head now to see his face because then he would have known that this was all part of my plan. He said nothing.

“Except that I had gotten to really like you. Maybe I would have dropped someone of the townsfolk and I wouldn’t have been upset that much if Hakkai for example had been hanging there on my chain. Of course I would have been upset and worried because he’s my friend but…and that’s really not fair to say and it’s below his dignity but if I had had to choose whom to help first I would have decided to help you first and then help him if you both had been in danger. Hell, but don’t tell him about that.”

“It’s difficult to explain but I know what you mean.”

The last words had come out very slowly and I knew that there was trouble on the way again. I saw his heart aching, his soul weeping and his eyes dying, I saw him craving for someone to care about him. I knew that this someone was I but I couldn’t just think of the explanation of his mood. I had told him that I had liked him very much and this should have cheered him up but somehow…this had gone wrong.

He put his hand on my head and petted it.

“Would you do me a favour?”

I was waiting for him to ask me to bring him some cake or some coffee but he surprised me.

“Could you fetch the whip and hurt me? Just…until I lie on the floor…”

But I wasn’t that stunned about that wish. Again he wanted to drown his pain in physical pain but it was time to teach him a lesson. It couldn’t go on like that. He had some serious problems and they just became bigger and got more despite my love and devotion to him. Say a word about his body and he’ll sulk for weeks, mention Komyô or even worse, Goku, and he’ll faint right then and there…leave him alone for a minute to get some fresh air without him and he’ll think you had left him. Look at another man and he’ll get inferiority complexes, reprimand him and he’ll smack you for that and ignore him and he’ll die of depression. If I had been a psychiatrist I would have been rich as hell in a day.

All those bad things, those difficult idiosyncrasies were compensated by his love, blind trust and almost naivety. But I think I was the one being naïve here. Sanzo didn’t want me to pity him or to offer him some advice how to make it better, he wanted me to free him.

I sat up and leaned forward so that my hair was softly touching and brushing his skin. I had been watching long enough and it was time to care about that instead of worrying about it all the time and doing nothing against it. I stared at him with a serious expression and he looked at me with a tired gaze.

“No.”

He blinked.

“What…?”

Now he saw my swollen cheek and lip and he lifted his hand to softly touch it. But when I began to speak again he took it away.

“Fight fire with fire, right? That mostly works, honey, but sometimes it’s better to just pour some water into the fire to put out the blaze.”

He looked guilty now, like a child which was reprimanded. He had understood me all too well and he looked helpless and lost.

“But…I-”

“I know that it’s not the main reason for what we are doing but sometimes you are glad to be distracted from your worries and sorrows by pain, right? You enjoy the freedom and the helplessness and the passivity but sometimes that’s just faked. While suffering and feeling the physical pain you believe in your freedom but after such sessions I…I’m always sad to see you more broken and damaged than you have been before. Even if you tried to hide it from me. I know that this is just sometimes the case but nevertheless it happens. I just want to help you.”

I stroked over his chest and bent down to kiss him. He shyly kissed me back and I knew that he was uncertain what to do now. He tried to put his hand on my head but I took it and held it.

“Now I’ll show you that this asshole knows more than just how to properly make you hurt.”

I started at his throat, gently kissing him there down his neck and his collar bone and with my hand I stroke his ribcage. Still bony but better than some days ago. With my tongue I moved further down to his nipples and circled them and then carefully took them between my teeth to make them go stiff. I was anxious not to hurt him, just to let him enjoy that other possibility of pleasure. While I was nibbling on his nipples and really causing them to go stiff he was lolling in the pale sunshine which still reached the earth through the fog.

When they were wet and stiff I continued my way down and with my hand I caressed his cheek now. I even heard him swallowing and his breath came in little puffs like he was holding back something. Of course I knew what that was. When I had arrived at his navel I looked at the violet and green ring around it. That would last for another 5 days like that and I smiled. I stuck my tongue into his navel and moved it around there.

He gasped and arched up and I had to lift my head a bit not to cause him another mark on his beautiful belly. With one hand I held his hips and with the other I stroked his flank and teasingly squeezed it from time to time. In addition to his heavy breathing I heard another sound mixing up with it. That was what I had wanted to show him. I continued licking his navel and then slowly moved further down and took the fluff of his light blond hair between his navel and groin into my mouth and pulled on it. After making him all wet there I kissed his navel once again and unbuttoned his pants.

His breath came in jerks but not from my teasing and kisses, it was something else which excited him. Or rather what made him tremble and clench the sheets. When I had finished undoing his pants I pulled them down but just a bit so that his cock was still covered with the fabric. I had been looking forward to kissing him there and that tan down fluff was just a delight of the eyes. I stroked his upper thighs and then slowly moved closer and moved my fingers through that hair. He liked it just as much as I liked that and I had to admit that I often did that when I was just dreaming and thinking about things, just stroking myself there…

I whispered his name that loudly that he could still hear it from above there and I heard him breathing hard and whining. One step further and I pulled his pants down to free his cock from them. He was trembling all over his body and his cock was already twitching and I even saw a little pearl on the tip of it. I licked it off and he stifled a moan and lifted his pelvis. But I wasn’t done yet, there was more to do than just kissing his torso.

Now I licked along his inner thighs and he tensed up and I felt his hard muscles. He had really delicate thighs, they were more beautiful than those of a woman. I rubbed my head on them and scattered my hair across them and then I leaned against it and sent my breath against his sensitive skin there while touching it with the tip of my tongue. He was restlessly moving around, just little moves but I noticed that his ease now had slipped and faded completely. I moved my hands over his belly again and finally moved back a bit to get into the right position of sucking him off.

With one hand I took his cock into my hand and first licked over it from his hair down to the tip of it. When I came to the oversensitive parts of it he squirmed and groaned, now not able any longer to suppress his cries.
And then I took him into my mouth, slowly and careful not to touch him with my teeth. A long moan left his lips and he nearly sat up. He was still making those whining sounds and I knew that I was on the right track. Slowly I drew back, seeking to touch every inch of his hot skin. At the tip of his cock I stopped and suckled on it and a series of groans and cries penetrated my ears. It was so lovely to listen to him.

I stuck out my tongue and encircled the tip with lazy and thorough moves. I had never had spent so much time on caressing his cock as now, it was fascinating and so pleasing. I really didn’t need to fuck him or to be touched by him, I just felt so satisfied by making him happy with that.

I opened my mouth to take him in for a second time but this time I already closed my mouth on his tip and let it slide in until I felt it touching the back of my mouth. In my former life I had already learnt to concentrate on not gagging while sucking people off and I was glad now that I was able to do that. I stuck out my tongue again and now licked, as good as possible, over the little spot between his cock and balls. Now that I held his cock with my mouth I took the other hand away from his fluff and softly squeezed his balls with it. I stroked and caressed them until I felt him clenching his ass and arching up with a groan.

But he hadn’t come, I knew how to treat him and how to prevent him from coming. I slowly drew back and let his hard cock fall from my mouth. And I carefully avoided looking at him, I wanted to keep that for the right moment. I knew anyway what he was doing, what he was feeling and my picture in my head had to be enough for that moment now. I sat up, closed my eyes and unbuttoned my pants as well. Then I pulled them over my legs and let them drop on the floor. I looked serious, I couldn’t have looked different anyway and I knelt down again with still closed eyes.

But then I opened them and grabbed his knees and lifted his feet up so that they were bent. I kissed his left knee and then while letting my gaze slide over his belly, over his chest and throat I kissed him on his mouth again. Now he didn’t kiss back anymore, he just lay there and let him get carried away by me. I could feel the little puffs of air escaping his nostrils. I knew that he was begging for it. Not for my cock and not for my tongue and either for pain anymore but for something different.

I felt his cock pressing against mine and I knew that it was time to do it. He was ready for it and he would certainly feel what I wanted him to feel. So I moved back and softly pulled his legs up to put them, one after the other, over my shoulders. I took my cock into my hand, took the lube I had taken out of one of the pockets of my pants shortly before I had dropped them on the floor and let a big amount of it drip on my cock. For most of the time we didn’t use any lube because it took too long with that but I wanted him to enjoy this all without the slightest hint of pain.

I rubbed the lube all over my cock, then gripped his right knee and carefully stuck the tip of my cock into his ass. There was no problem so far so I gently pushed forward and waited for him to adjust to it. I felt him shifting and whimpering for some moments but finally he stopped and I knew that he was ready for the next part. I buried my cock to the hilt in his ass but very slowly so that it was comfortable for him. I smiled and bent down until I guessed that his face was just a handbreadth away from mine because I felt his breath on my face.

I exhaled lust and desire and I hoped that my breath was enough to hit his face as well, then I started moving. First I slowly drew back until half of my cock was still in his ass and then I pushed back a bit quicker. I knew that I had touched his sweet spot because he arched up again with a desperate moan. I had to concentrate on not speeding up or opening my eyes and I had to concentrate on listening to him. It was beautiful to listen to his sounds and imagine his picture. Now my breath also came faster and I pulled back and pushed in again and while caressing his legs and grinding my groin on his I whispered his name.

Another sob escaped him and I felt his hands on my flanks, his nails digging into the skin but I think he wasn’t really conscious of that. And I was the last to bother about that. Some more strokes like these and I heard him snivelling and felt his hands clutching my ribs tighter. I had known that he’d do it, sooner or later he would have fallen for it and now it was time for the perfect climax of that.

With all my skilfulness I rode him, touching his sweet spot every time and after searching for his face with closed eyes I stroked his cheek and lips and everything I could reach. Through his cries and moans of pleasure and bliss I heard those desperate sobs and his whimpering and now I wanted him to come. It really didn’t take him long to get to the point where he knew that he’d collapse soon.

He cried out my name in desperation and another moan followed and then he came. He sat up, bent his head, firmly gripped my back and yelled. His feet were also firmly pressing against my hips and he forced me to stay like that, my balls were rubbing against his and he had clenched his ass so tightly that I was also on the edge of coming.

I opened my eyes. And it was so marvellous. A loud cry so full of desperation and sorrow just escaped his mouth and I also felt my tears running down my cheeks. It was just too beautiful to bear it. His head was nearly touching the pillow because he had bowed his back that much and when he looked up again, still desperate and crying, I also came. All his pain, all his worries and sorrows but also his deepest wishes and his true happiness were concentrated in his gaze and I wanted to die right now. It was so beautiful that I wanted to die, to take that to the other world with me, to enjoy it eternally, to see him, smell him, feel him and touch him eternally.

He had shattered the world with his cry, all his pain, so clearly expressed by that, his sad bliss and pleasure so visibly materialized, it was hard not to fall for him and cry after that.

He was crying, loudly sobbing and while still jerking from the orgasm he lifted a hand, laid it on my cheek and then pressed his head against mine. He was making stifled, high-pitched cries, his voice had cracked and he was whimpering and sighing into my ear. But gods, those were the most beautiful moments of my life, there was nothing better than this, this was salvation, this was heaven and paradise. I held him tight and we both buried into our hair, he in mine and I in his, crying our souls off and drowning our worries in sad bliss.

I knew that he wouldn’t stop crying that soon so I carefully drew back to get my cock out of his ass and I put his feet back down on the sheets again. And all the time he had been sobbing and holding me tightly. With one hand I held the back of his head and slowly lay down, me first and with him on top of me. Then I moved to the side so that he was also lying on the sheets and I embraced him again.

When I thought that his tears slowly dried up another attack hit him and he tensed up again and cried and whined just like before. Sometimes the world was just too beautiful and depressing and it got unbearable.
I was also still crying, hit by the beauty of that burial of hopes and wishes, but silently and careful not to disturb or bother him with that. When I heard him calming down a bit again I took his chin into my hands and lifted his head to softly kiss him. It was such a slow and careful kiss but I couldn’t imagine a better one, that was impossible. It was like we kissed each other for the first time, exploring the other and careful not to do it wrong.

This time there wasn’t anything to be done wrong because nothing was wrong, there was just love and affection and desperation inciting our tongues. While still kissing him I opened my eyes to watch him but he had also opened his eyes to watch me. So we just watched each other while softly moving our lips and tongues until we knew that we wouldn’t start crying again.

He closed his eyes and laid his head down and snuggled up to my chest, still slightly jerking from crying too much and too long. He was so beautiful, so special and so irreplaceable…
And there was no need for talking or explaining anything. He knew and I knew. I was so glad that I had him, that I could cry and laugh with him and that he was my honey.

I could tell from his expression that he didn’t regret those moments and that he had liked it, maybe even liked it too much to calm down now. I knew that he had needed such an experience, there was just always pain and hopelessness and you felt a bit better when you got hurt because the physical pain was defeating the mental pain. But this didn’t last long. At the next opportunity you fell back into that bad mood and it was even harder to get out of it then.

This time I hadn’t offered him pain to ignore his situation and melancholy, I just had offered him pure love, clean from any blood and free from any wounds. I was certain that this had been necessary, that this had been a necessity to show him that there was more than physical pain and superficial words. It had been necessary to show him that there was another possibility of consoling him, another form of making him forget and drown and die.

I thought I knew that this had been a rare situation, that he would prefer the pain in everyday life. There was no doubt that indeed this wasn’t a good method to show him my love and of course he knew that he was loved when I whipped him. It was just another form, another way of saying ’I love you’. It strengthened your security and trust and it made you discover your lover but Sanzo hadn’t needed this right now. He had needed someone who was able to help him out of his deep dark hole and build up a new fort. He had been lacking of love, just of pure love, of a warm and welcoming smile and of a source for new hope.

I was glad that I had been able to show him that I loved him without hurting him. It wasn’t a given that I was able to do it like that because I had never tried. From the first time we had kissed each other in that restaurant he had bit my lip and had been longing for me to also hurt him. He was a born sadomasochist but he needed love like anyone else needed it to survive in this world.

He was lying there, silently and with red eyes. Some strands of hair were sticking on his skin because he had wetted them with his tears and I pushed them out of his face. He wasn’t asleep, and if he hadn’t slept for nights he wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep now. His pale skin still fascinated me as it had when I had opened that goddamn door the day when Hakkai had wanted to leave me. First I had thought that this was a boyish woman, glaring at me but the next second I had known that it was a man when he had spoken to me. Whether I knew Cho Gono…it had taken me a moment to concentrate on that and I had hoped he hadn’t noticed how I had been looking at him. I had never seen such a man, such beautiful blond hair, such pale and noble skin and his features so damn alluring.

Genjyo Sanzo, the day he left me I swore to memorize his name and look for him if he hadn’t contacted me some days later because of the Cho Gono-case. I knew what the word ‘Sanzo’ meant and therefore I had to be careful about what to say to him and how to look at him because he was a monk of the highest rank. But soon I had found out that he didn’t really stick to the rules of his job. And so I got a bit less impersonal. Running around with a bare chest, leaving the doors open while taking a shower and sitting next to him while eating…he didn’t notice anything.

Or maybe he did and just kept silence about that. In the end I had gotten him, I had reached what I had been longing for because I haven’t given up. Not on such things. Genjyo Sanzo…he was lying in front of me and now had fallen asleep. I couldn’t reprimand him for that, it was comfortable to fall asleep after crying like that and he still must have been tired from the disease.

I pulled on the blanket at my feet and moved him closer. He just complained with a mumbled ‘mmmh’ but the next second he opened his eyes again.

“Oh no…I’ve woken you…”

He inhaled loudly and pulled on the blanket to cover his shoulders with it. Then he smacked his lips, blinked and closed his eyes again.

“Mmmh…Gojyo…”

“Damn it, you are so cute…”

I hugged him and he put his arms round my back. His face was lying in front of mine, his features had relaxed and they were all smooth. I licked over his face, licking off the pearls of sweat and he smiled. It was really a different kind of happiness you felt after such intense moments of pain and after this kind of love. And both were delightful. I watched him doing nothing, just lying there and smiling and dreaming.

All of a sudden the door burst open and I felt a terrible sting in my heart and I would have jumped or fallen off the bed if I hadn’t been paralyzed from the shock. My brain wanted me to fall over the edge but my body didn’t listen. I saw Hakkai stumbling into our room, totally distraught and nervously panting…somehow he looked really funny. I regretted not having a camera in our bedside table. He looked around and noticed me, sitting on the bed and Sanzo comfortably lying there. He made it to the bed, sat down and took my hand as if he wanted me to tell that his pet had died or something like that. Entreating he stared at me and shifted.

“Gojyo…”
He was short of breath and had to stop and swallow and then started another try,” please…please, let me-”

We heard another rumbling and footsteps and this time Royo came running into our room, carrying a rope and a belt. But Royo looked pretty annoyed and when he saw Hakkai there sitting on our bed he glared at him. With slow steps he came nearer. This was one hell of a party.

“What the fuck is up with you two?”

I had to grin and watch Royo look at me.

“He escaped.”

Now Hakkai pulled on my hand and with a terrified voice he whimpered.

“He… he wants to tie me up and whip me…Gojyo!”

I smirked and shot Royo a glance. That was what I had been waiting for all the time since we had dragged him home with us.

“Fine. Congratulations.”

He looked at me, horrified.

“No!!”

I felt Sanzo pulling on my other hand and I bent down so that he wouldn’t have to sit up in order to talk to me. He didn’t say anything for some moments but then he whispered, barely audible “Give him the whip”. Then he snuggled up against the pillow again and waited for me to come back and lie down and hold him again like before. So I stood up, enraptured by the thoughts of Royo, whipping Hakkai and making some non-con-scene there…now I wished I could watch them…just their first time…

I knew that Hakkai wasn’t really such a freak as we were and that he would enjoy just half of the show. There would be some serious non-con part…ah well, but that was Hakkai’s business. Not mine. He had let go of my hand and stared at my back as I walked towards the cupboard. I opened it but in the way that none of them could catch a glimpse of the things waiting there only for us and searched for the whip.

“Royo, come here!”

The next second he was standing next to me and waiting for me to give him another order. While I was searching for it he asked me a question.

“How is Sanzo…ahm Houshi Sama?”

I was stunned that he had noticed what was up with him.

“How did you know…?”

“I just felt that something was wrong with him, I had a bad feeling about him, so am I right?”

“Yes. But he’s getting better. If he hadn’t overstrained his body constantly he would have been healthy already a long time ago. But I can’t help it, he’s…too stubborn to take any advice…”

I started talking with an absent voice and Royo looked down at the floor.

But finally I had found what I had been looking for. I took it and turned around to face Royo.

“Cat O’Nine Tails. I don’t want to see any stains on it and I don’t want to get it back damaged, otherwise you’ll have to buy me a new one. And take this…”

I took the handcuffs and put them into the pocket of his pants.
Royo was in heaven.

“Really? You…I can borrow these from you? Really?”

“Go ahead. And please take him with you. And…”, I bent down to whisper the next words into his ear, ”…take his camera and take some pictures, it’s in the drawer of the black desk.”

We both smirked and I went back to the bed where Hakkai was still sitting, now even more frightened and confused.

“Gojyo, you…can’t do this to me! You…why…”

Now Royo bent down.

“I’m sorry that he had bothered you but he had escaped me and I couldn’t catch him that quickly. He ‘s so impolite and rude, I’m sorry that we have bothered you.”

Then he came closer, took the cuffs and tied him up with them. Hakkai screamed and tried to move away but Royo had already gripped his hand and dragged him out of the room under desperate cries and yells. I stared at the door for some more moments and then I heard Sanzo chuckling. I looked down and saw him smiling and squeezing the pillow.

“That stupid bastard…now he gets what he deserves…”, he nuzzled, still smirking.

Suddenly we heard a loud scream, you must have even heard it from outside the house and we both had to laugh about that. After some more seconds of eavesdropping I also lay down and took him into my arms again.

“Everyone gets his in the end.”

I didn’t answer anything.
After some more moments we had both fallen asleep.


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When I woke up in the morning I remembered my dream. I hadn’t been fast enough to catch him with my chain, he had fallen into the abyss, he had struck the floor and spat blood. His eyes were wide and bloodshot and his cheek was splattered with blood. Dark, almost black blood. Like he had been dead already long before. His hands were lying on the ground, broken like the rest of his limbs. His ribcage had burst and the bones of it stuck out of the torn flesh, blood flowing from it, floating in all directions of the world. His pelvis was shattered and his legs were lying there in strange and gross angles. He jerked and spat blood again and while dying he kept staring at me.

I hated those uncomfortable feelings nightmares always left. I knew that it wasn’t real and that this was just some sick variation of the situation when I had saved him. Nevertheless I knew that this was one of the dreams I would be damned to remember my life long. I sighed and tried to exhale the unease with that. I opened my eyes to see some more enjoyable things. And I smiled when I saw Sanzo. Or rather when I saw his hand on my belly. He was lying behind me, holding me.

I peered at the clock, it was 9 o’clock in the morning, he must have also woken by now. I knew that I’d see the blood on him the moment I would see his face now and that I would act strangely until he’d ask me about it.

“Was it bad?”

I heard him talking with a caring voice. So he knew that I had had a bad dream. I took his hand and pulled him closer and he got the hint and embraced me tighter. I didn’t want to tell him about it; it was embarrassing to explain your dreams to someone.

“I saw you falling down the abyss and…you hit the ground…and you were dead…”

I felt his hair on my neck and he surprised me with a soft kiss on my neck. There was no chance of consoling me because people couldn’t be consoled after having a nightmare, there was no way to make them feel better. You just had to wait until you’d slowly forget about it. But Sanzo was an exception. Somehow he knew how to do that.

He pressed me tighter against him and put a leg over mine. And then he whispered into my ear, determined, firmly and caring.

“But that’s not real.”

Right, nothing was just real; this all was one big dream. There was just the question whether you believed in it or not.

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