[fic] Balloons 3
Oct. 8th, 2010 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: Balloons
Rating: none
Pairings: 39, past Sanzo/Koumyou
Genre: AU WAFF
Wordcount: 50k, total.
Warnings: Koumyou is dead. Also, before the pairings squick you out, for the purposes of this fic Koumyou was never Sanzo's father figure. Might contain wacky adventures.
Summary: Sanzo hates the park, Hakkai, Gojyo, people and the world. He likes his OCD and his job as a professional Internet troll. He likes his unapologetic, rampant atheism. The universe sets out to prove him wrong.
Author's Note: Very loosely based on the (awesome and amazing) movie Up! This is actually a “light” version of the bunny – the original explored the pitfalls of reincarnation and crushed your soul.
The story is finished and will be posted whole over the next three weeks, maybe a little more (there is sixteen chapters, total). Doing it like this, because a/ I need a pick-me-up right now, and b/ have internet issues, posting the whole thing in one go would be a pain, c/ I figure this will make reading easier for you. So, enjoy!
This is one of my favourite parts, as Sanzo gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome, followed by a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming. :) Edited, because I accidentally posted the unbetaed version. XD
Betaed bykispexi2, who graciously stepped in to help. <3 Thank you, hun!
Sanzo woke up in the back of a moving van. His hands and feet were free, there was no sign of blood, and he still had all his toes and fingers, though the former he inferred from the fact that his shoes were still on and there was no suspicious dampness within. Somewhat nervously he checked his head for ears. They were still in place. His head didn’t hurt much and, aside from the tendrils of sleepiness, he felt he was fine. He hoped he was fine, at least.
Somewhere to the left there was a groan and then a bark.
“Could this get any worse,” Sanzo asked the ceiling, as Goku picked himself up to a sitting position and started scratching Dug behind the ears.
“We could’ve been shot. That would be bad.”
“I am astounded by your perceptiveness. What else would have been bad, do tell, otherwise I might stick my fingers in the sockets just to see if candy falls out.”
“Don’t go wailing on me; this isn’t my fault!”
“What, so it’s mine now?”
“Hey, I’m hardly worth a kidnapping. You’re the guy who lives in the posh house.”
“It’s not like you live in such a lousy neighbourhood, either!”
“Yeah, but my flat is a shoebox and I’m on disability.”
Dug, feeling left out, woofed.
“Awesome. The dog has an opinion.”
“Where are we, by the way?”
“In a stuffy, moving van. That has light in it. That’s all I know.”
“Oh.”
“You presence of mind astounds.”
******
The ride was long. Goku curled up on the convenient heap of rugs and fell asleep again, with one hand still buried in Dug’s fur. Dug, being a simple-minded dog and therefore unable to understand the circumstances, snuggled into his master and also slept. Sanzo watched the two of them with envy. He’d slept so little during the past two years, no more than four hours at a time, and only their kidnapper, and anyone hired by him to do the monitoring, knew how long they’d been out.
He was counting the bolts on the van’s door for the seventh time when he remembered to go through his pockets. He had no mobile phone -- unsurprising, since he exited the flat without one -- but he did have his wallet. Whoever kidnapped them, clearly thought that leaving them cash and credit cards was a great idea. This was potentially a blessing in disguise; if they were so stupid that they didn’t think to leave them without means to travel, they deserved to fail at kidnapping and whatever it was they planned to accomplish by the kidnapping. Ransom seemed less and less like an option, given that Sanzo, being over twenty-five and of sound mind and administrative skills, was the sole manager of his trust fund and whatever he earned on the side was also his alone. It would have been infinitely more sensible to just break into his house and force him to cough up the account numbers at gunpoint.
Blackmail was always an option, but since everybody and their mother knew the great soon-to-be prime minister had a fag for an only son, hardly worth the kidnapping. Which left what, exactly? Possibly some extremist demanding that daddy dear step down, but whom were they kidding? Sanzo’s father would notify the police first, and then play the media into such a frenzy of sympathy that even when a video on which Sanzo was gruesomely executed appeared on YouTube with the explicit message that this was because his daddy didn’t care enough, his career prospects would have soared.
Which reminded Sanzo that he ought to send mum a postcard.
The van rolled to a stop eventually without a clue as to why. Sanzo couldn’t hear anything indicating a pit stop, or the noises of a petrol station, so restocking was out. In fact, the only sounds he could hear were the occasional snores and, every now and then, a very precise, military stride.
Well, this was worrying. Sanzo stepped over Goku and tried the door. It was locked. A sudden inspiration told him to look under the rubber, which covered the space by the door, and bingo – he discovered a screwdriver.
“Sanzo?” Goku asked behind him, but Sanzo paid him no mind. The crude lock gave after a repeated stabbing and fell open with a clank. Sanzo held the door for a heartbeat, praying the noise didn’t attract any of the soldiery types. When no attention was apparent he opened the door wider and looked around.
It was sunny. It was beyond sunny, in fact – when his eyes got used to the glare it became evident that they were in the middle of some sort of desert and eggs could be fried on any given stone. This was worrying, as Sanzo had no idea where around London such a desert could be located. The terrain indicated nowhere in particular, it was just sand and more sand, in any given direction.
“Tell the dog to be quiet,” he said, and, as quietly as he could, stepped out of the van. Far in the direction of the sun there was a small hut with an antenna sticking out of its rooftop. It would only be sensible to expect a satellite phone inside. His reasoning didn’t really get much further than that, because just then he heard footsteps approaching and – out of the corner of his eye – he saw a cloud of dust on the horizon.
Not for the last time Sanzo wondered what the hell was he doing there. If it turned out he was starring in some reality show designed to fuck with rich people, he was going to be pissed and sue. If this was some sort of a game, he was going to shoot first and than sue. As it was, in the absence of a gun, he settled for stabbing the nearest tyre with the screwdriver, grabbing Goku’s hand and running like hell.
“Run!” he yelled, as though his plan wasn’t obvious enough.
It wasn’t one of his best ideas, he supposed, dragging a cripple along with him for the run for his life. The only thing he was hoping for at the moment, since hoping for the alarm clock to ring and wake him up from this nightmare was clearly too much, was that Goku’s disability didn’t extend past his vision and his brain.
That, and the dog had enough brain cells not to trip them both.
They ran, through the blinding sun and the sharp edges of some plants Sanzo wouldn’t care about even if he were a botanist. The sun was merciless; as it had fried the surface of the plateau for thousands of years, it glared on their heads now and, slowly but surely, Sanzo knew he was succumbing to the heatwave. His breath was shortening, it would only be a matter of time before he lost his footing and tumbled into a scorpion breeding ground, such was his luck that day.
To his utmost annoyance, though Goku’s hand was clammy in his what he heard of his breath over the wheezing sound of his own weren’t the rasps and gasps of a terminal cancer patient he expected, but the measured exhalation of an athlete.
The fucking cripple was in much better shape than he was, Sanzo realised with no small amount of irritation, though his inner voice of sarcasm and reason piped up to remind him this was his own doing, entirely – an hour a week in a park was hardly a workout.
Dug howled all of sudden and dug his paws into the ground, leaving Sanzo a fraction of a second to yell a profanity and try and stop. His flailing accomplished one thing – he shoved Goku aside, into a protruding rock as it turned out, which quite possibly saved all of their lives.
Dug’s paws fought to find purchase on the slippery sand, but the flimsy layer of dust atop naked rock offered none, and with a howl he went over the cliff, Sanzo following suit.
For a moment, which tapered into an eternity at one end, Sanzo could hear nothing aside from the roaring of blood in his ears. Then it occurred to him that his right arm was strained to the point of the tendons ripping in half, and that the fingers of his left hand were going numb.
Then he heard his name, then the dog’s.
Well, fuck, he thought.
“Sanzo! Dug!”
“Shut up,” Sanzo said with effort and opened his eyes. He closed them immediately. Fuck, fuck, fuck, bad idea. He tilted his head as far as his shoulder, which screamed in pain, would allow and opened them again.
Well, it could have been worse. He was hanging from the very edge of the cliff. If he’d taken Hakkai’s offer way back and gone to the gym, he might have been able to pull himself up now. “If” being the keyword.
“Are you okay?”
“Shut up.” Sanzo took a breath, or at least tried to, because what arrived in his lungs wouldn’t be enough to oxygenate a monkey’s brain. Very carefully he started swinging his left arm, mentally willing the dog to shut the hell up. He could barely think as it was. “Stay where you are, I’m throwing Dug.”
“Shit, Sanzo, you’re barely alive-”
“Shut up and catch the damn dog!”
Sanzo was fucking proud of himself. He’d managed to get all that out and hoist the dumb mutt into Goku’s face, so that not even the visually challenged moron could miss it, before his arm finally gave and he lost his grip on the rock.
When, two seconds later, he was still hanging and not splattering on the jagged rocks below, he was very, very surprised. Goku was holding him, he realised, and not just that: he was pulling him up by the arm, which really couldn’t take any more abuse.
Sanzo blacked out when his shoulder gave one final screech of agony and the bone popped out of its socket. He came to a little later, judging by the lack of any change whatsoever, except his position. Blessed horizontality. He was lying on top of the cliff, by some miracle, with his face pressed into the ground. When it occurred to him he was breathing dirt, he flopped onto his back wearily
Goku was very close, judging by the enthusiastic dog-noises coming from Sanzo’s right. He risked a glance and regretted it immediately when the sun shoved golden ice picks through his brain. The second attempt was slightly better – he could now see a golden spot hovering over a darker shape, both of which were making yippy sounds. Though his vision still was bleary, Sanzo could tell Dug was doing his best to lick the skin off Goku’s face. Fucking animals.
“Sanzo,” he heard and opened his eyes for the third time, preparing for the worst glare of the sun yet, but finding the celestial body of malice completely blocked by Goku’s head. “Sanzo. Oh god. Thank you so much!” Goku kept murmuring thankyous and clearly his brain had gone, because in between the fervent gratitude, he started kissing him like there was no tomorrow.
Figures that the only action Sanzo had seen in over two years would taste of dog.
“Stop that,” he said without much enthusiasm.
“Thank you for saving Dug,” Goku said one more time, gripping Sanzo’s arm so tightly Sanzo could practically hear his capillaries bursting. “Thank you.”
Sanzo stared at the sky. “If you so much as breathe a word of it to anyone, especially Hakkai and Gojyo, I will kill the dog and make you watch.”
What do you know, the idiot laughed through the tears.
“You wouldn’t do that,” he said as if he had the slightest inkling what Sanzo would and would not do. As if he knew Sanzo!
“I sure as hell would. Do you want to know what I wouldn’t do? I certainly wouldn’t risk my life to save a goddamned mutt.”
“Dug is pure-blooded.”
“Shut up.”
Goku wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, which he then put on Dug’s head. “How’s your arm?”
Sanzo sat up cautiously. His left wasn’t too bad, hurt like a bitch, but other than the purplish colour of the pads of his fingers, it was fine. His right, on the other hand, ha-ha, very funny, made him want to scream with each move. “I’ll live.” It was moving, he realised with some surprise. Despite the pain, he had free use of his right hand. This went against everything he knew about dislocated shoulders. “It works.”
“Oh good. I thought it’s okay, but I’m not a medic or nothing, so I was worried.”
“It must’ve popped right back in,” Sanzo said out loud and flopped right back onto the hard ground. At this point, if they got caught, their captors would have to do all the work, not Sanzo, because he couldn’t move a muscle to save his life.
Fuck, his arse was just rescued by a blind guy. This had to be a new low.
Then the chasing party caught up and Sanzo decided that being thrown in the back of a desert truck, onto a pile of relatively clean bags, side-by-side with a dozen bottles of mineral water was the best part of his day. Even with the dog deciding that he was its new best friend. He fell asleep seconds after draining a whole bottle of water – he was only conscious long enough to feel Goku curling up next to him, close enough to touch, and then he was out of commission.
He was too exhausted to dream, though he found some comfort in the shapeless, nameless cloud of warm light that surrounded him as soon as the drifted to sleep.
******
Sanzo was woken by a very annoying and, unfortunately, very familiar voice. He only had enough time to think “thank god, it was all a dream,” before he realised that his everything ached like a bitch and he could barely move as a result, his mouth felt like something crawled inside it and died, and everything in the vicinity smelled of dog.
“Is he okay?” Hakkai asked, presumably because he had been blinded in the recent past.
“I think so. We had a bit of trouble,” Goku said. Sanzo could feel Dug wag his tail in enthusiasm, just begging to be allowed to speak and recount their little adventure.
“Shut up,” Sanzo said sitting up. He hurt. His arms hurt. His legs hurt. He was, inexplicably, hungry. He wanted to kill something. Three people yelled and said his name in unison. “Goddamned class reunion.”
Hakkai smiled politely from his corner of the van. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” he asked, as though that was the etiquette when you found yourself sitting in a locked container on its way to fuck knows where.
“This is Hakkai, Satan-in-training,” Sanzo said, grabbing Goku’s arm and jerking him in the appropriate direction, “That’s his minion, I’ve forgotten his name, and this is the guy who’s been harassing me. He says his name is Goku, I have yet to see a photo ID.”
The dog barked. Sanzo rolled his eyes. “The mutt’s Dug.”
“We can see it’s a dog, does it have a name? Mine’s Gojyo, by the way,” Gojyo told Goku holding out his hand and waiting expectantly. “Oi, hello? It’s not that dark in here.”
“I’m blind,” Goku said, once more displaying endless patience for his condition. Sanzo, were he bothered by the mundane details of human interaction, would be wildly jealous. He started using language fit for a dock the second someone mentioned his apparent lack of social skills. “It’s dark enough for me. And his name is Dug, not Dog. He’s my guide.”
Gojyo, instead of shutting up and mulling over his faux pas, like a sane person would, grinned. “That makes a world of difference. Hey, why are you even here, I didn’t know Sanzo knew any people other than us? Unless this is some freaky dating service, which still doesn’t explain what are we doing here?”
Sanzo didn’t have to look at Goku’s face to know his smile was as radiant as the core of Chernobyl power plant. “Right now Sanzo is my hero. And I really have no idea. I was walking Dug when I saw Sanzo and we both woke up in the back of a van.”
“Sanzo’s your hero? For fuck’s sake, kid, rethink that! I know he seems cool with his nihilistic attitude and smart-ass commentary, but that’s nothing to be admired in the long run.”
“Shut up,” Sanzo said, seeing that Goku was about to recount the embarrassing tale of dogs and cliffs and pain in the sun.
“There’s a story, right? I totally want to hear it!”
“You can’t. Now all of you shut the fuck up.”
“C’mon, Sanzo!”
“No.”
Hakkai looked up from where he was rubbing circles into the fur on Dug’s neck. “Gojyo, if it’s a secret, then it best remain a secret.”
“Come on, it’s killing me here. Don’t tell me you’re hanging around him for his looks, ‘cause I’ve gotta say, it’s not worth it!”
Goku grinned. “Nah, from what I understand he looks like the lovechild of Moe the bartender and Krusty the Clown. He sounds like it, at least.”
This time even Hakkai looked up, first to exchange glances with Gojyo, then to stare at Sanzo, who scowled. Once upon a time he might have been proud of his looks, stressing “might”, because if he was vain it was because he was a grade smarter than anyone he had ever met, save for Koumyou. His looks were secondary, which, in retrospect, might have been precisely because they attracted the attention of every moron and their dog, present company included, thank you very much.
“Dude,” Gojyo said, following the syllable with a sentence so ridiculous Sanzo immediately forgave him three future offences – such a level of idiocy deserved a little leeway, “Hey Hakkai, don’t we have any decent pictures of Sanzo to show him?”
Goku bit his lip and before Gojyo had the chance to realise what he’d said, the monkey burst out laughing. Even Sanzo couldn’t stop a snigger, which evolved into an actual laugh when Gojyo’s brain caught up to his mouth – wheezing and gasping – and smacked him upside the empty head. “Oh Jesus fuck,” Gojyo said, mortified for once, and Hakkai joined in on the mirth, chuckling to himself while his partner fumbled for apologies.
“You love the taste of your own foot, don’t you,” Goku said, when he finally caught his breath.
“I’m sorry,” Gojyo said.
Goku reached out and patted his head, the way Sanzo had seen him pat the dog from time to time. “Don’t worry about it. It was funny.”
“So making fun of you not being able to see is okay when it’s funny? Why hasn’t anyone sent me that memo before? So many wasted years walking right past people in wheelchairs when I could have been laughing my ass off…”
“Hey, laugh all you want, but I’m the guy with a trained dog on a short leash.”
“Please, like the mutt could hurt anything bigger than a fly.”
“Oh, so he could hurt your brain then.”
“Why you little!”
“I can tell they are going to be best friends, can’t you?” Hakkai whispered in Sanzo’s ear as they watched a scuffle break out.
Sanzo could see that, and for some reason the thought made something in his chest tighten. A moment’s consideration revealed it was his heart that suddenly decided to develop an opinion, after years and years of keeping its attention focused on pumping blood alone.
“I like him,” Hakkai added, and Sanzo damn near socked him one.
TBC
Rating: none
Pairings: 39, past Sanzo/Koumyou
Genre: AU WAFF
Wordcount: 50k, total.
Warnings: Koumyou is dead. Also, before the pairings squick you out, for the purposes of this fic Koumyou was never Sanzo's father figure. Might contain wacky adventures.
Summary: Sanzo hates the park, Hakkai, Gojyo, people and the world. He likes his OCD and his job as a professional Internet troll. He likes his unapologetic, rampant atheism. The universe sets out to prove him wrong.
Author's Note: Very loosely based on the (awesome and amazing) movie Up! This is actually a “light” version of the bunny – the original explored the pitfalls of reincarnation and crushed your soul.
The story is finished and will be posted whole over the next three weeks, maybe a little more (there is sixteen chapters, total). Doing it like this, because a/ I need a pick-me-up right now, and b/ have internet issues, posting the whole thing in one go would be a pain, c/ I figure this will make reading easier for you. So, enjoy!
This is one of my favourite parts, as Sanzo gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome, followed by a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming. :) Edited, because I accidentally posted the unbetaed version. XD
Betaed by
kispexi2, who graciously stepped in to help. <3 Thank you, hun!Sanzo woke up in the back of a moving van. His hands and feet were free, there was no sign of blood, and he still had all his toes and fingers, though the former he inferred from the fact that his shoes were still on and there was no suspicious dampness within. Somewhat nervously he checked his head for ears. They were still in place. His head didn’t hurt much and, aside from the tendrils of sleepiness, he felt he was fine. He hoped he was fine, at least.
Somewhere to the left there was a groan and then a bark.
“Could this get any worse,” Sanzo asked the ceiling, as Goku picked himself up to a sitting position and started scratching Dug behind the ears.
“We could’ve been shot. That would be bad.”
“I am astounded by your perceptiveness. What else would have been bad, do tell, otherwise I might stick my fingers in the sockets just to see if candy falls out.”
“Don’t go wailing on me; this isn’t my fault!”
“What, so it’s mine now?”
“Hey, I’m hardly worth a kidnapping. You’re the guy who lives in the posh house.”
“It’s not like you live in such a lousy neighbourhood, either!”
“Yeah, but my flat is a shoebox and I’m on disability.”
Dug, feeling left out, woofed.
“Awesome. The dog has an opinion.”
“Where are we, by the way?”
“In a stuffy, moving van. That has light in it. That’s all I know.”
“Oh.”
“You presence of mind astounds.”
******
The ride was long. Goku curled up on the convenient heap of rugs and fell asleep again, with one hand still buried in Dug’s fur. Dug, being a simple-minded dog and therefore unable to understand the circumstances, snuggled into his master and also slept. Sanzo watched the two of them with envy. He’d slept so little during the past two years, no more than four hours at a time, and only their kidnapper, and anyone hired by him to do the monitoring, knew how long they’d been out.
He was counting the bolts on the van’s door for the seventh time when he remembered to go through his pockets. He had no mobile phone -- unsurprising, since he exited the flat without one -- but he did have his wallet. Whoever kidnapped them, clearly thought that leaving them cash and credit cards was a great idea. This was potentially a blessing in disguise; if they were so stupid that they didn’t think to leave them without means to travel, they deserved to fail at kidnapping and whatever it was they planned to accomplish by the kidnapping. Ransom seemed less and less like an option, given that Sanzo, being over twenty-five and of sound mind and administrative skills, was the sole manager of his trust fund and whatever he earned on the side was also his alone. It would have been infinitely more sensible to just break into his house and force him to cough up the account numbers at gunpoint.
Blackmail was always an option, but since everybody and their mother knew the great soon-to-be prime minister had a fag for an only son, hardly worth the kidnapping. Which left what, exactly? Possibly some extremist demanding that daddy dear step down, but whom were they kidding? Sanzo’s father would notify the police first, and then play the media into such a frenzy of sympathy that even when a video on which Sanzo was gruesomely executed appeared on YouTube with the explicit message that this was because his daddy didn’t care enough, his career prospects would have soared.
Which reminded Sanzo that he ought to send mum a postcard.
The van rolled to a stop eventually without a clue as to why. Sanzo couldn’t hear anything indicating a pit stop, or the noises of a petrol station, so restocking was out. In fact, the only sounds he could hear were the occasional snores and, every now and then, a very precise, military stride.
Well, this was worrying. Sanzo stepped over Goku and tried the door. It was locked. A sudden inspiration told him to look under the rubber, which covered the space by the door, and bingo – he discovered a screwdriver.
“Sanzo?” Goku asked behind him, but Sanzo paid him no mind. The crude lock gave after a repeated stabbing and fell open with a clank. Sanzo held the door for a heartbeat, praying the noise didn’t attract any of the soldiery types. When no attention was apparent he opened the door wider and looked around.
It was sunny. It was beyond sunny, in fact – when his eyes got used to the glare it became evident that they were in the middle of some sort of desert and eggs could be fried on any given stone. This was worrying, as Sanzo had no idea where around London such a desert could be located. The terrain indicated nowhere in particular, it was just sand and more sand, in any given direction.
“Tell the dog to be quiet,” he said, and, as quietly as he could, stepped out of the van. Far in the direction of the sun there was a small hut with an antenna sticking out of its rooftop. It would only be sensible to expect a satellite phone inside. His reasoning didn’t really get much further than that, because just then he heard footsteps approaching and – out of the corner of his eye – he saw a cloud of dust on the horizon.
Not for the last time Sanzo wondered what the hell was he doing there. If it turned out he was starring in some reality show designed to fuck with rich people, he was going to be pissed and sue. If this was some sort of a game, he was going to shoot first and than sue. As it was, in the absence of a gun, he settled for stabbing the nearest tyre with the screwdriver, grabbing Goku’s hand and running like hell.
“Run!” he yelled, as though his plan wasn’t obvious enough.
It wasn’t one of his best ideas, he supposed, dragging a cripple along with him for the run for his life. The only thing he was hoping for at the moment, since hoping for the alarm clock to ring and wake him up from this nightmare was clearly too much, was that Goku’s disability didn’t extend past his vision and his brain.
That, and the dog had enough brain cells not to trip them both.
They ran, through the blinding sun and the sharp edges of some plants Sanzo wouldn’t care about even if he were a botanist. The sun was merciless; as it had fried the surface of the plateau for thousands of years, it glared on their heads now and, slowly but surely, Sanzo knew he was succumbing to the heatwave. His breath was shortening, it would only be a matter of time before he lost his footing and tumbled into a scorpion breeding ground, such was his luck that day.
To his utmost annoyance, though Goku’s hand was clammy in his what he heard of his breath over the wheezing sound of his own weren’t the rasps and gasps of a terminal cancer patient he expected, but the measured exhalation of an athlete.
The fucking cripple was in much better shape than he was, Sanzo realised with no small amount of irritation, though his inner voice of sarcasm and reason piped up to remind him this was his own doing, entirely – an hour a week in a park was hardly a workout.
Dug howled all of sudden and dug his paws into the ground, leaving Sanzo a fraction of a second to yell a profanity and try and stop. His flailing accomplished one thing – he shoved Goku aside, into a protruding rock as it turned out, which quite possibly saved all of their lives.
Dug’s paws fought to find purchase on the slippery sand, but the flimsy layer of dust atop naked rock offered none, and with a howl he went over the cliff, Sanzo following suit.
For a moment, which tapered into an eternity at one end, Sanzo could hear nothing aside from the roaring of blood in his ears. Then it occurred to him that his right arm was strained to the point of the tendons ripping in half, and that the fingers of his left hand were going numb.
Then he heard his name, then the dog’s.
Well, fuck, he thought.
“Sanzo! Dug!”
“Shut up,” Sanzo said with effort and opened his eyes. He closed them immediately. Fuck, fuck, fuck, bad idea. He tilted his head as far as his shoulder, which screamed in pain, would allow and opened them again.
Well, it could have been worse. He was hanging from the very edge of the cliff. If he’d taken Hakkai’s offer way back and gone to the gym, he might have been able to pull himself up now. “If” being the keyword.
“Are you okay?”
“Shut up.” Sanzo took a breath, or at least tried to, because what arrived in his lungs wouldn’t be enough to oxygenate a monkey’s brain. Very carefully he started swinging his left arm, mentally willing the dog to shut the hell up. He could barely think as it was. “Stay where you are, I’m throwing Dug.”
“Shit, Sanzo, you’re barely alive-”
“Shut up and catch the damn dog!”
Sanzo was fucking proud of himself. He’d managed to get all that out and hoist the dumb mutt into Goku’s face, so that not even the visually challenged moron could miss it, before his arm finally gave and he lost his grip on the rock.
When, two seconds later, he was still hanging and not splattering on the jagged rocks below, he was very, very surprised. Goku was holding him, he realised, and not just that: he was pulling him up by the arm, which really couldn’t take any more abuse.
Sanzo blacked out when his shoulder gave one final screech of agony and the bone popped out of its socket. He came to a little later, judging by the lack of any change whatsoever, except his position. Blessed horizontality. He was lying on top of the cliff, by some miracle, with his face pressed into the ground. When it occurred to him he was breathing dirt, he flopped onto his back wearily
Goku was very close, judging by the enthusiastic dog-noises coming from Sanzo’s right. He risked a glance and regretted it immediately when the sun shoved golden ice picks through his brain. The second attempt was slightly better – he could now see a golden spot hovering over a darker shape, both of which were making yippy sounds. Though his vision still was bleary, Sanzo could tell Dug was doing his best to lick the skin off Goku’s face. Fucking animals.
“Sanzo,” he heard and opened his eyes for the third time, preparing for the worst glare of the sun yet, but finding the celestial body of malice completely blocked by Goku’s head. “Sanzo. Oh god. Thank you so much!” Goku kept murmuring thankyous and clearly his brain had gone, because in between the fervent gratitude, he started kissing him like there was no tomorrow.
Figures that the only action Sanzo had seen in over two years would taste of dog.
“Stop that,” he said without much enthusiasm.
“Thank you for saving Dug,” Goku said one more time, gripping Sanzo’s arm so tightly Sanzo could practically hear his capillaries bursting. “Thank you.”
Sanzo stared at the sky. “If you so much as breathe a word of it to anyone, especially Hakkai and Gojyo, I will kill the dog and make you watch.”
What do you know, the idiot laughed through the tears.
“You wouldn’t do that,” he said as if he had the slightest inkling what Sanzo would and would not do. As if he knew Sanzo!
“I sure as hell would. Do you want to know what I wouldn’t do? I certainly wouldn’t risk my life to save a goddamned mutt.”
“Dug is pure-blooded.”
“Shut up.”
Goku wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, which he then put on Dug’s head. “How’s your arm?”
Sanzo sat up cautiously. His left wasn’t too bad, hurt like a bitch, but other than the purplish colour of the pads of his fingers, it was fine. His right, on the other hand, ha-ha, very funny, made him want to scream with each move. “I’ll live.” It was moving, he realised with some surprise. Despite the pain, he had free use of his right hand. This went against everything he knew about dislocated shoulders. “It works.”
“Oh good. I thought it’s okay, but I’m not a medic or nothing, so I was worried.”
“It must’ve popped right back in,” Sanzo said out loud and flopped right back onto the hard ground. At this point, if they got caught, their captors would have to do all the work, not Sanzo, because he couldn’t move a muscle to save his life.
Fuck, his arse was just rescued by a blind guy. This had to be a new low.
Then the chasing party caught up and Sanzo decided that being thrown in the back of a desert truck, onto a pile of relatively clean bags, side-by-side with a dozen bottles of mineral water was the best part of his day. Even with the dog deciding that he was its new best friend. He fell asleep seconds after draining a whole bottle of water – he was only conscious long enough to feel Goku curling up next to him, close enough to touch, and then he was out of commission.
He was too exhausted to dream, though he found some comfort in the shapeless, nameless cloud of warm light that surrounded him as soon as the drifted to sleep.
******
Sanzo was woken by a very annoying and, unfortunately, very familiar voice. He only had enough time to think “thank god, it was all a dream,” before he realised that his everything ached like a bitch and he could barely move as a result, his mouth felt like something crawled inside it and died, and everything in the vicinity smelled of dog.
“Is he okay?” Hakkai asked, presumably because he had been blinded in the recent past.
“I think so. We had a bit of trouble,” Goku said. Sanzo could feel Dug wag his tail in enthusiasm, just begging to be allowed to speak and recount their little adventure.
“Shut up,” Sanzo said sitting up. He hurt. His arms hurt. His legs hurt. He was, inexplicably, hungry. He wanted to kill something. Three people yelled and said his name in unison. “Goddamned class reunion.”
Hakkai smiled politely from his corner of the van. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” he asked, as though that was the etiquette when you found yourself sitting in a locked container on its way to fuck knows where.
“This is Hakkai, Satan-in-training,” Sanzo said, grabbing Goku’s arm and jerking him in the appropriate direction, “That’s his minion, I’ve forgotten his name, and this is the guy who’s been harassing me. He says his name is Goku, I have yet to see a photo ID.”
The dog barked. Sanzo rolled his eyes. “The mutt’s Dug.”
“We can see it’s a dog, does it have a name? Mine’s Gojyo, by the way,” Gojyo told Goku holding out his hand and waiting expectantly. “Oi, hello? It’s not that dark in here.”
“I’m blind,” Goku said, once more displaying endless patience for his condition. Sanzo, were he bothered by the mundane details of human interaction, would be wildly jealous. He started using language fit for a dock the second someone mentioned his apparent lack of social skills. “It’s dark enough for me. And his name is Dug, not Dog. He’s my guide.”
Gojyo, instead of shutting up and mulling over his faux pas, like a sane person would, grinned. “That makes a world of difference. Hey, why are you even here, I didn’t know Sanzo knew any people other than us? Unless this is some freaky dating service, which still doesn’t explain what are we doing here?”
Sanzo didn’t have to look at Goku’s face to know his smile was as radiant as the core of Chernobyl power plant. “Right now Sanzo is my hero. And I really have no idea. I was walking Dug when I saw Sanzo and we both woke up in the back of a van.”
“Sanzo’s your hero? For fuck’s sake, kid, rethink that! I know he seems cool with his nihilistic attitude and smart-ass commentary, but that’s nothing to be admired in the long run.”
“Shut up,” Sanzo said, seeing that Goku was about to recount the embarrassing tale of dogs and cliffs and pain in the sun.
“There’s a story, right? I totally want to hear it!”
“You can’t. Now all of you shut the fuck up.”
“C’mon, Sanzo!”
“No.”
Hakkai looked up from where he was rubbing circles into the fur on Dug’s neck. “Gojyo, if it’s a secret, then it best remain a secret.”
“Come on, it’s killing me here. Don’t tell me you’re hanging around him for his looks, ‘cause I’ve gotta say, it’s not worth it!”
Goku grinned. “Nah, from what I understand he looks like the lovechild of Moe the bartender and Krusty the Clown. He sounds like it, at least.”
This time even Hakkai looked up, first to exchange glances with Gojyo, then to stare at Sanzo, who scowled. Once upon a time he might have been proud of his looks, stressing “might”, because if he was vain it was because he was a grade smarter than anyone he had ever met, save for Koumyou. His looks were secondary, which, in retrospect, might have been precisely because they attracted the attention of every moron and their dog, present company included, thank you very much.
“Dude,” Gojyo said, following the syllable with a sentence so ridiculous Sanzo immediately forgave him three future offences – such a level of idiocy deserved a little leeway, “Hey Hakkai, don’t we have any decent pictures of Sanzo to show him?”
Goku bit his lip and before Gojyo had the chance to realise what he’d said, the monkey burst out laughing. Even Sanzo couldn’t stop a snigger, which evolved into an actual laugh when Gojyo’s brain caught up to his mouth – wheezing and gasping – and smacked him upside the empty head. “Oh Jesus fuck,” Gojyo said, mortified for once, and Hakkai joined in on the mirth, chuckling to himself while his partner fumbled for apologies.
“You love the taste of your own foot, don’t you,” Goku said, when he finally caught his breath.
“I’m sorry,” Gojyo said.
Goku reached out and patted his head, the way Sanzo had seen him pat the dog from time to time. “Don’t worry about it. It was funny.”
“So making fun of you not being able to see is okay when it’s funny? Why hasn’t anyone sent me that memo before? So many wasted years walking right past people in wheelchairs when I could have been laughing my ass off…”
“Hey, laugh all you want, but I’m the guy with a trained dog on a short leash.”
“Please, like the mutt could hurt anything bigger than a fly.”
“Oh, so he could hurt your brain then.”
“Why you little!”
“I can tell they are going to be best friends, can’t you?” Hakkai whispered in Sanzo’s ear as they watched a scuffle break out.
Sanzo could see that, and for some reason the thought made something in his chest tighten. A moment’s consideration revealed it was his heart that suddenly decided to develop an opinion, after years and years of keeping its attention focused on pumping blood alone.
“I like him,” Hakkai added, and Sanzo damn near socked him one.
TBC
