Citadel Correspondent

Cards.

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:50:32 GMT

If you are not a Wanton or family (same thing?), and if you have not already sent me your address, and if you have not already sent a note to sharpeslass, and if you would like a holiday card from Chez jedishampoo and sharpeslass, I would love to send you one! I don't care if you live out of the US! Wheee, spreading holiday joy!

Send me a PM, please!

I hope y'all had a lovely Thanksgiving.

In other news, my YTS fic is done, OMG YAY.

Happy Birthday

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:43:42 GMT

Happy Birthday to inksheddings! ::mwah:: Dahling, hope it's lovely!

And Happy Birthday to helliongoddess. Enjoy the new place!

Two Things!

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:47:50 GMT

1. Check out a couple of cool things created by talented people from my prompts! First is a Gojyo & Sanzo fanart chained_lok drew from my prompt of Gojyo and Sanzo, camping out, quiet in the moonlight: Moonlight Pic based on my prompt, gorgeous stuff!

And andmydog wrote Necessity from the livelongnmarry auction and my prompt of Gojyo and Sanzo, pre-journey! It’s a visit from Gojyo to Sanzo at the temple, as seen through the eyes of a temple monk, and I really enjoyed that unique POV.

2. I totally 'ship England/America in Hetalia. So cute! So tragically romantic. England makes such a wonderful tsundere! (Yes, I know history for reals, but for some reason the fictionalized portrayals of national interactions in Hetalia appeal to me muchly.) Apparently it's the most popular pairing, though I prefer it in this order rather than the more prevalent US/UK.

HOWEVER: The few fanfics I've tried to read are, uh, NOT GOOD so far. Even on communities for "Fanfiction awards." Seriously, I've been spoiled by the goodness of Saiyuki writers. Anybody able to point me at some?

Doujinshi Scan: Trickster by Angel Night, 53, NSFW

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:23:40 GMT

Hello! In honor of the 535 festival at bad_friends, I'm trying to get some more of my 53 doujinshi scanned.

Here's "Trickster" by the circle Angel Night. And if you're familiar at all with Angel Night, this one is classic for that circle: a little bit of action and adventure, a little bit of hardcore smut, a lot of gooey love. And great art! Here are a couple of sample pages:

Front Cover

Page 7

Here's the entire dj, scanned and cleaned by me and in a .zip file:

Sendspace: http://www.sendspace.com/file/ay907o
Megaupload: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1ZSIW6JC

I hope you enjoy! Please support Angel Night as you can. And feel free to use or distribute my doujinshi scans as you wish. Share the love! Just please be sure and credit the original circle.

Oh, the other doujinshi I've scanned are here: more 53 doujinshi!

Randomness

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:10:54 GMT

So I thought I might write, and when sharpeslass settled down for a nap I took out my half-finished story and went outside for some quiet writing time...

... and the rock-band behind us started practice. Woe! I may kill them someday, for they often have bad timing, as in when I've just laid down for a nap, times like that. I've got some pointy and/or heavy objects with "noisy teenager" written all over them.

Sometimes the band does not bother me, and they don't usually play too late at night, it's just... why a rock-band whose drummer lives behind US?

In other news, the two of us have watched 1-40 of Axis Powers Hetalia. What's more? We LIKED it. It's totally dorky and non-PC and you name it. Should I be ashamed?

Book Meme

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:09:16 GMT

Things are good! And now I present... a book meme stolen from just about everyone! Most recently I ganked it from teru_bozu_ebi.

1. Pick 10 of your favorite books or series.
2. Post the first sentence of each book. (If one sentence seems too short, post two or three!)
3. Let everyone try to guess the titles and authors of your books.

I've not included a couple of faves but I had to whittle this down... so I left off the most obvious and a couple of favorite non-fictions. Hurry, 'cause #1's a gimme. :)

Ten Book First Lines Under Here!

~~1. The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex.~~ Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, guessed by moshesque!

~~2. We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.~~ The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, guessed by loveflyfree!

~~3. A sea of mist drifted through the cloud forest: soft, grey, luminescent.~~ Cordelia's Honor (or Shards of Honor depending on the edition), first in the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, guessed by ladylotusmoon.

~~4. Up until the winter of 1811, anyone would have described the vicar of St. Charles and St. Jude, the Reverend Charles Armitage, as a very happy man.~~ Minerva by Marion Chesney, correct series and author (OMG) guessed by ladylotusmoon!

5. This time there would be no witnesses. This time there was just the dead earth, a rumble of thunder, the onset of that interminable light drizzle from the northeast by which so many of the world's most momentous events seem to be accompanied. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, guessed by teru_bozu_ebi!

~~6. Sundered from us by gulfs of time and stranger dimensions dreams the ancient world of Nehwon with its towers and skulls and jewels, its swords and sorceries.~~ Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Lieber, guessed by ladylotusmoon (This is the first book in the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series. LOVE!)

~~7. In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part...~~ The Colour of Magic, first in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, guessed by ladylotusmoon.

~~8. The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet.~~ Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, guessed by 7veilsphaedra!

9. "Sally." A mutter. "Wake up now, Sally." A louder mutter: leeme lone. The Stand, by Stephen King, guessed by ladylotusmoon!

10. A January gale was roaring up the Channel, blustering loudly, and bearing on its bosom rain squalls whose big drops rattled loudly on the tarpaulin clothing of those among the officers and men whose duties kept them on deck. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, CS Forester, guessed by loveflyfree!

A Reminder!

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:40:31 GMT

So, please back up your files, everyone. Sigh. My hard drive is dead. For the second time in just about a year, this time on a nearly brand-new computer! What am I doing to the poor things? Ack!

Anyway, the hard-drive was covered under Dell warranty and they're replacing it (phew), but now all my travel plans, purchases, music, bookmarks, unfinished fics, pictures, you name it, are gone.

Sigh. Next time... I WILL back up! I swear!

Fic: The Lost City of Paititi, Part 1, Hakkai/Gojyo, AU, NSFW

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:20:57 GMT

Title: The Lost City of Paititi and the Legendary Golden Phallus
Author: jedishampoo
Rating: NC-l7
Pairing: Hakkai/Gojyo
Summary: When jungle explorers Gojyo Shawn and Hakkai Childs meet, it’s the beginning of a beautiful partnership.
Warnings: Mention of past incest (canon, yo); language; cliffhangers
Author's notes: Written for my dearest kansouame in the 7thnight_smut exchange. She wanted an archaeology adventure/romance in the jungle with cliffhangers. Dear readers, if you know anything about real archaeology or Incan civilization, please ignore such knowledge when reading this story. Mwah to my lovely beta sharpeslass, and to lauand, who very kindly provided assistance with the Spanish; any remaining errors are my own. Loads of love and thanks to rroselavy for her work as the Merciful Goddess in organizing this exchange.

Click To Read The Lost City of Paititi, Part 1

Hakkai put his left foot in front of his right, then paused and breathed. He took another step, right in front of left, and then paused again while his Machiguenga guide slashed his machete, carving into the jungle before them. He breathed again, deeply in the thin air of the high-altitude rainforest where everything was slippery and slimy and hot then cold: step, pause, breathe, step, pause, step-slash-breathe.

Never would he have thought he’d miss the dry air of Egypt quite so very much, or the chilly, far-from-equatorial dampness of home. He’d not trained well for Peru but who’d have known that Genjo would have sustained that injury or that the Club would want someone in South America quite so desperately? But they’d received word of clues to the lost Incan city of Paititi and begged Hakkai to go to Peru as their representative. He’d merely been a replacement for Genjo but he did know the languages and, after all, there were petroglyphs to be deciphered and a golden phallus to be located. A legendary golden phallus, to be exact.

Step-slash-breathe. When his group reached a small clearing Hakkai was so numbly grateful to sit for a moment on a rock in the sun, drying himself like a lizard, that, at first, his brain didn’t register the commotion. He turned and his dulled senses were assailed by a cacophony of gunfire and shouting, a blaze of fire and sunlight on metal. Something slammed into his skull from behind, sharp and hot and painful, machete or club it didn’t matter because his glasses flew off and before he fell he saw, in the midst of it all like calm in the chaos, a pair of binoculars with black hair above and a sly grin below...

***

“Oi! You alive?”

...Hakkai didn’t know where he was or why it was so hot and noisy or why the unfamiliar voice was yammering at him in Spanish. He only knew that his head hurt terribly, so much so that he didn’t want to open his eyes. In fact, he did not particularly even want to be alive.

“Nnnn,” he moaned, hoping the voice would take the hint and go away and let him die.

“He lives! Haha. Will you get that water for me, baby?” the voice said, a deep, drawly sort of voice speaking Spanish with an American accent, the sort of voice that might have been soothing in circumstances where Hakkai’s head did not feel like it was being scraped open with an adze.

“Nnngoawaynnn...” he said, hoping a stronger hint might be more successful in communicating his desire to die alone.

“Hey! And you speak English. Awesome,” the voice said, in English. “Wakey, wakey! I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Damn you to hell,” Hakkai whispered. His arm hurt but he lifted it to his forehead, to shield his eyes from the glare he knew was waiting for him ere he opened them. It still hurt when he did open them. His missing glasses and the pain of his headache blurred his vision, but he could make out a man with a tanned face peering at him from under a pile of shockingly red hair. The man, who was sitting next to Hakkai’s bed or pallet or whatever he was laid out upon, turned to look up at a brightly dressed girl. He took something from her.

“Thanks, María-- hey, you boiled this, right, babe?” the man said to the girl in Spanish. At her Sí, señor Joe he thanked her and turned back to Hakkai. “Water. I’ve got aspirin, too. Here. Oh, man, what pretty eyes you’ve got!”

“Nnnnthankgod,” Hakkai said.

“Oi! Don’t sit up. Just raise your head a little.” El señor Joe shoved something between Hakkai’s lips with two fingers clean fingernails I think and then tilted a cup of water boiled he’d said into Hakkai’s mouth. Hakkai swallowed and swallowed some more and closed his eyes for a second or two...

...When he opened them again, he was alone and the light in the room had changed. Blessedly, his headache was almost gone; the painkillers had helped. He sat up. He appeared to be in a blurry sort of hovel. Further examination revealed his glasses sitting, unbroken, on a scarred, rickety table next to his pallet. Hakkai put them on.

Hovel. Oh, yes. Peru. Paititi, Lost Golden City of the Inca. Golden phalluses. El señor Joe, however, was not part of Hakkai’s long-term memory. Who was he? And had he left in the time that Hakkai had fallen back asleep?

“Hello?” Hakkai called out.

“Hey! You’re awake again, man. You probably shouldn’ta slept with that head injury, but it’s too late to worry about it now.”

There was a rustling and el señor Joe hovered in the doorway, one hand holding the dirty canvas door-flap open against the doorjamb and the other perched on his hip. He was wearing well-cut khaki trousers and a khaki shirt. It looked like he was posing for a glamour shot of “tall, handsome, American explorer.”

His startling red hair was his most striking feature but his face was slenderly pretty-- not usually a word Hakkai might use in reference to a man, but it was a good word for el señor Joe. He had only two tiny scars on his left cheek to keep him from being overwhelmingly good-looking.

“Where am I, please?” Hakkai asked.

“Hey-ey, and you’re British. You’re in Pantiacolla. Peru. I hope you were expecting that part of it, anyway. María here’s brother--” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder-- “found you yesterday, on the trail to Mameria, bleeding. They called me ‘cause they figured I’d know the gringo. So. Do you remember how you got all beaten up?”

“You are... who?” Hakkai asked, slowly.

“Oh, right. Gojyo Shawn.” Gojyo stuck out his tanned hand with its clean fingernails. Hakkai clasped it, still somewhat weakly.

The somewhat infamous Gojyo Shawn. “I’ve heard of you,” Hakkai said, neutrally, and released Gojyo’s hand. “You used to work for UCLA. You’d been pursued to join the Club at one time. And I’ve heard other things.”

“Heh. I hate clubs. And UCLA didn’t believe in-- well. That’s me. Who are you, my pretty-green-eyed gringo?”

Was the somewhat infamous Gojyo Shawn flirting with him? Reportedly he was a bit of a rogue in the world of exploring archaeologists, with a few other rumors surrounding him. No, thank you, Hakkai thought. “Childs. Hakkai Childs.”

Gojyo’s red eyebrows rose. “Oh. I’ve heard of you, too. Good work at Ixtolna. You’re a languages expert. You’re looking for Paititi, too, aren’t you?”

Paititi, the lost city of gold, hidden before the conquistadores had come. Hakkai had been attacked. This man, the infamous Gojyo Shawn, was Hakkai’s rival. Hakkai needed to proceed cautiously. “What makes you say that?”

“No need to get all snooty on me. ‘S the only lost city in these parts that the world’s got a lead on right now,” Gojyo laughed. “Plus, I heard the Explorer’s Club was heading here. Where’s your team, anyway? Don’t tell me you came alone? Lost your funding?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know where they are, but if you’ll please lend me a cellular or satellite phone, I’ll find out. Then I’ll be out of your hair. I thank you for your assistance.”

Gojyo’s brown eyes narrowed. “What the hell? Why the snippy attitude all of a sudden?”

Hakkai sniffed and gave Gojyo a pitying look. “Would you trust you? I’m alone, and don’t wish to divulge my reasons for being in Peru. And I’d heard you were arrested for looting. More than once. Apparently you don’t know how to follow the proper matrices.”

“Yeah?” Gojyo shoved a cigarette between his lips and stared at Hakkai as if daring him to say something about it. He lit the cigarette and pfted smoke out of his grinning mouth around it. “Well, I’ve heard things about you, too. Heard you dated your sister. A fellow member of your Explorer’s Club.”

“What?” Hakkai’s jaw dropped in his shock. What sort of clod would bring up such a thing? “That was... none of your business.”

“Small world we work in, eh? So, again. Where’s your team? Listen. If I’da wanted to kill you, I woulda done it, already.”

Hakkai took a deep breath. What Gojyo had said was true. Furthermore, he and the locals had assisted Hakkai when he’d been at his most vulnerable. He needed an ally, even a disgustingly saucy one. “I came with a Club expedition. I think... we were attacked.”

Gojyo gave his cigarette a satisfied puff. “Ah. Well, jungle’s a dangerous place. But you survived. I’m looking for Paititi, lost city of riches. And I’m gonna find it, ‘cause I have the magic key. I could use a language-man, though. Wanna join me? Get one back on whoever attacked ya?”

“No, thank you. But I would still like to make a phone call.”

Gojyo scowled at him again. “Well, go ahead, but by the time you’ve got another team it’ll be too late. ‘Cause I’ll have found Paititi, already.”

“Found it and looted it?”

“Hah! Just you and the Explorer’s Club wait. I’ve already got the--”

Whatever boast Gojyo was going to make was drowned out by a loud thup-thupping noise that came from outside. There were shouts, in Spanish and Quechua, by the door.

Hakkai felt along his trouser-legs and into his boots. Not there. He looked at the wide-eyed Gojyo.

“I had a knife. A rather large one--”

“You mean the sword?” Gojyo bent down and reached for something outside the door. When he straightened he was holding Hakkai’s-- admittedly large-- dagger.

Hakkai swung his legs out of bed and jumped to his feet. Adrenaline combated his momentary dizziness and he was able to grab the knife before Gojyo could stop him. His glare backed Gojyo out the door.

“Don’t kill me, man. I ain’t judging you for sleepin’ with your sister. I’ve done some kinky shit in my day...”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Hakkai said, and ducked under the door-flap.

***

Outside, the dust of Pantiacolla had been kicked up into the hot, humid air to make a sticky sort of dirt-plaster. The wind was being whipped by the blades of a big, military-style helicopter that hovered over the town center. What looked like the entire population of the town had turned out to join Hakkai and Gojyo, and they all, thirty or so of them, stood in a prayer-circle of shielded eyes to watch it land.

The helicopter touched down and the blades slowed to a more casual fwip-fwip that let the dust settle a little. A handsome, black-haired man in crisp black fatigues stepped out of the helicopter. He grinned at the gathered people in general then looked directly at Hakkai and Gojyo--

-- binoculars, black hair and white teeth--

Hakkai tightened his grip on the handle of his knife. This man was responsible for whatever had befallen him earlier, he was sure of it--

“Ukoku,” Gojyo drawled at the man’s grin. Gojyo’s hand rested in an odd position at his hip, and Hakkai realized that Gojyo had a weapon concealed there. “You asshole. Thought you’d given up and gone to Venezuela this year.”

“God, you’re cute,” Ukoku of the black hair and black suit said, smiling. He pulled off his sunglasses and looked pityingly at Hakkai. “Childs, right? I’ve seen your picture in the Club directory. Ukoku Santiago. I’m pleased to meet you. I heard about the attack on your team and came to offer my assistance.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Hakkai said. He’d heard of Santiago. He was the showy sort of explorer who had a private fortune and didn’t need to rely on grants, who showed up and claimed large, important finds while other, better explorers were begging for funding. Hakkai had never heard that he was dangerous, but in person he looked slick and treacherous and smarmy and Hakkai hated him on the spot.

Ukoku continued. “Many of your men were found dead near Mameria. I was sorry when I heard that. I can offer you a place on my team, however. I could use a languages expert of your skill and reputation.”

Hakkai hadn’t known about his men for sure. He trusted Ukoku less than ever. “I--”

“Oh, g’wan, get the fuck out of here, Ukoku,” Gojyo interrupted. Hakkai glanced over and was surprised to see Gojyo grinning and gesturing with his cigarette. “Get back in your ‘copter and fly around some more-- all you’ll see’s jungle. What I have, you can’t buy with your money.”

“You’re giving me a hard-on by being so goddamned sexy,” Ukoku drawled as he glanced back at Gojyo. “I don’t need to buy anything, and I know you don’t have the Golden Phallus yet.”

“Not gonna be your ultimate sex toy,” Gojyo said. Hakkai thought privately that the Peruvian jungle was certainly queer this time of year.

Ukoku spread his arms into a wide and dramatic pose. “The ultimate key. Our Incan goddess Mama Pacha will lead me to it with her petroglyph porn and her grainy, dragoness fertility, and I’ll squeeze that golden dick into her breadbasket in Mameria, just like her chthonic husband-god Mr. Pachacamac, and Paititi will open to me like Mama Pacha’s flower-strewn vagina. Especially once Mr. Childs joins my team and has a look at some of the fascinating glyphs I’ve photographed.”

He looked smugly at Hakkai, who hated him more than ever, mostly for his smarminess and not for his pornographic interpretation of Incan legend. There was something else, too... “I’m quite sorry,” Hakkai said with a small bow. “I’ve already made arrangements to work with Mr. Shawn, and, after all his help, it would be rude to go back on my word.”

To Gojyo’s credit he didn’t betray his surprise. “Yeah, Ukoku. See ya in Mama Pacha’s open flowery womb. I’ll save ya some sloppy seconds.”

Ukoku merely smiled, small and tight. “Very well. I’ll see you on the Inca Road, gentlemen. If you change your minds, I know you’ve got my number, Gojyo.” Ukoku winked and then whipped around on one heel and slid back into the helicopter through a door held open by two black-suited Peruvians. The vehicle was just as noisy and dusty-messy taking off as it had been landing.

“I’ll be ready to leave in a couple of days,” Gojyo said as he turned to grin at Hakkai. “You won’t regret joining me, gorgeous. I get results.”

“Perhaps I can teach you some archaeological manners.”

“You can try.”

They returned to the hut María shared with her brother and told them muchas gracias for their help and Gojyo slipped them some nuevos soles from his pocket. They gathered the rest of the items they’d found on Hakkai-- not much outside of his bag-- and Gojyo led Hakkai to the camp he shared with his native guide team.

“I’d like to find out what you have,” Hakkai admitted, once they were in safer territory. “I think Ukoku, or his men, were the ones who attacked me. Can your people fight him?”

Gojyo’s smile grew wider. “Not a concern. Ukoku won’t attack me. I have something he needs-- the magic key-- right here.” Gojyo pointed at his head. “I wasn’t kidding when I said he couldn’t buy what I had.”

Gojyo told Hakkai some things he already knew: the legend of how the Golden Phallus of Pachacamac had been lost centuries ago and was supposedly hidden somewhere at the end of the Inca Road. How the Incan town of Mameria had been discovered by the French in the 1970s, and how Mameria had supposedly been a significant farming community of the lost golden Incan city of Paititi. One legend said that, in Mameria, were instructions on how to use the Golden Phallus of Pachacamac to open a hidden door in the Mamerian temple, and that behind the hidden door was the secret to finding Paititi. Stone-writing had indeed been discovered a year or so ago in a temple room of Mameria, but it was writing that could not be deciphered. The Incans had created no system of writing of their own, so the existence of the petroglyphs was a mystery in and of itself.

Until now. Gojyo then told Hakkai something he didn’t know: one of Gojyo’s girlfriends was a professor at the University of Lima, and she’d discovered the “Rosetta Stone of the Incas” near Machu Picchu, city of the gods; it was a silver tablet, supposedly created by Incan clerics, that could interpret the petroglyphs at the Mameria site. And that professor had shown Gojyo the Machu Picchu tablet and her personal analysis of how it could be used for translation.

Professor Yané had not gone on the expedition herself because she was not an explorer, but a digger and cataloguer. She’d asked Gojyo to find Paititi first, and then she would acquire funding and plan expeditions to excavate the city. Furthermore, she’d not sold the information elsewhere or told any of her colleagues at the university. Or so Gojyo claimed. Gojyo didn’t even have a copy of the tablet or Yané’s analysis, only a photographic memory. Or so he claimed.

Ukoku had learned, somehow, that Gojyo had secret and valuable information. Gojyo said he’d already refused Ukoku, both as a lover and as an archaeological partner. Or so he claimed.

Hakkai, when it was his turn to talk, revealed very little, though admittedly he’d started out on this expedition with much less information than Gojyo. The Explorer’s Club had sent Hakkai with a wish for him to attempt to read the Mameria petroglyphs, not from the few, grainy photos but in their native habitat-- Hakkai’s specialty was archaeo-geologic context. Genjo had shared that specialty. Hakkai wondered if one of the responsible members at the Club had known more about recent discoveries than they’d let on.

He was saddened by the deaths of his team-mates, and annoyed by the prospect of traveling with Gojyo. But privately he was feeling a little excited. It had become apparent to him that they stood a very good chance of getting very close to Paititi. What a find-- an unsacked Incan city! And there were petroglyphs that only he-- and perhaps the absent Genjo-- could fully interpret.

For a moment Hakkai pictured Gojyo flirting with Genjo, were Genjo here as originally intended. The thought should have amused him greatly-- Genjo was extremely handsome but not a man to suffer lightheartedness or foolishness of any kind, and his put-downs were legendary. Instead the thought made Hakkai feel rather irritated.

Hakkai banished his own momentary discomfort with a small, secret, extra excitement at the thought of getting revenge on Ukoku Santiago.

***

By the time they’d been on the road a day or so, however, Hakkai was severely regretting his choice.

For one thing, the travel was as difficult as ever. They were on the Inca Road, heading in the opposite direction from where Hakkai had originally planned to go-- why visit Mameria before they had the Golden Phallus? as Gojyo had pointed out-- but it was as humid and hot and cold and slimy as before. The jungle was impenetrable by wheeled vehicles and the high altitude and thick, green-leafed canopy made helicopter travel dangerous, so the area still had to be explored by foot. Knowing that didn’t make it any less horrible.

And for another thing, Hakkai found himself becoming increasingly annoyed by Gojyo. The man, like a native, didn’t seem to feel the discomfort of their travel. The high altitude gave him no headaches and he seemed perfectly happy no matter the temperature. When Hakkai was removing layers because he was frying or bundling up on cold ridges, Gojyo simply wore a light jacket and whistled and walked as if he didn’t feel a thing.

And Gojyo flirted with him. Twice, already, he’d tried to coax Hakkai into stripping naked and joining him in clear mountain streams after stripping naked himself, lean and laughing and pshawing at Hakkai’s annoyance and making the guides snicker with his antics.

“Don’t worry, ‘Kai. I think you’re totally hot but I won’t put the moves on ya unless you ask me,” he’d said, brown eyes gleaming under his wet hair.

“My name is not ‘Kai,” Hakkai had told him.

Gojyo was generally disgraceful, doing that and trying to convince Hakkai to share some of the potent local wine as they sat around their campfire. Each night, instead of resting for the next day, Gojyo and the men would drink and laugh and make bawdy jokes about Englishmen and American women. Hakkai tried to ignore them, but it seemed the Peruvians had a never-ending supply of liquor.

And Gojyo seemed sloppy. He didn’t photograph or compare to sat-photo any of the Inca Road landmarks they passed, just hand-swept ivy or snakes off the stone stelae, glanced at them, and said “yep, we’re going the right way.” Hakkai had been unable to clean up Gojyo’s methods, and Gojyo’s men followed his orders first and Hakkai’s second.

“No use relying on computers out here,” Gojyo told him one evening around the campfire. “It’s not the environment for ‘em. The only electronic doodad I want out here is my GPS beacon. Greatest invention ever.” Gojyo patted the TycoSat beacon he kept in his hip-bag.

“One of them, at least,” Hakkai agreed. He took a sip from his tin cup of wine. He’d given in to Gojyo’s entreaties to have a tipple, wondering if it might not dull his altitude headache, since the natives swore it wouldn’t give him one. It tasted pretty good, at least once his tongue un-numbed itself after every sip.

“The greatest.” Gojyo was slurring.

“I do like to use sonar. Especially to find underground caverns,” Hakkai pointed out.

“Yeah, but you gotta have a laptop to run it,” Gojyo said.

“Well, you should have a laptop, anyway, to catalog everything and for reference.”

“Told ya, I have a photographic memory. I had hippie parents but I was still top of my class at UCLA. When you think you might need it, ask me and I’ll draw you a picture of the Machu Picchu tablet.”

“Ah.”

So Gojyo was not stupid, perhaps, but Hakkai would still wish a little more order on him. Hakkai wanted order and he wanted professionalism. As a scientific field, archaeology had seemed perfect. He’d had some wild travels in his youth but then there’d been that whole ordeal with Kanan and finding out-- well, order and professionalism kept him happy and he had a good reputation and success with funding and with expeditions.

Until this trip. It felt like a boys’ adventure novel.

Another reason you chose archaeology, Hakkai’s brain reminded him. Hakkai took another sip of booze to quiet his brain. Gojyo was not quiet, was chanting something into the fire.

“Mameria. Mah-meeee-ria. Ma-meeeria.” The moonlight and the light from the flames made Gojyo’s hair seem even brighter at night than it did during the day. Hakkai wondered where such a hair-color had come from; he’d gone to school in Scotland but he’d never seen hair like that. It was natural, at least it seemed so, based on Gojyo’s nude swims. Yes, Hakkai had looked, but how could he not have? Gojyo may have been a bit of a mess but he was certainly worth looking at.

“It’s pronounced ‘Mah-meh-ria,’” Hakkai told him, looking away and out into the moonlit jungle. It was cool and clammy at night and he was glad for the fire, for warmth. The native men tossed cubes of a local resin into the fire and the resulting smoke both smelled good, like sandalwood, and kept the mosquitoes away. Not to mention the jaguars. “Mah-meh. You do speak Spanish.”

“I know. I just like saying it.” Gojyo took a deep draught from his cup of booze. “Mameeeria. It sounds like something. Boobs. What’d Ukoku call it? The breadbasket? Mama Pacha was the planting and fertility goddess. She’ll like having her golden dick back.”

Hakkai rolled his eyes. In addition to his other vices, Gojyo was too...sexually overt. The problem wasn’t that he made it clear that he liked both men and women; Hakkai had been experimental in his own youth. The problem was that Gojyo never turned his overt sexual charm off. Even as a very young man Hakkai had quickly realized that sex only led to trouble. Big trouble, in some cases.

Gojyo seemed to be reading his mind. “Can ya tell me about what really happened with your sister, man?”

Hakkai rolled his eyes again. He was, surprisingly, not angry at Gojyo’s nosiness; it was just one of those things that one didn’t discuss, even in impolite society. “Are you being prurient? I told you: it’s none of your business.”

“Just askin’,” Gojyo grinned, unabashed. “Told you I’d been kinky myself.”

“It wasn’t kinky!” Hakkai retorted before he could stop himself. The booze was loosening his tongue. He set his cup aside; one of the guides grabbed it quickly and finished it for him. Still, he’d already said too much. He might as well finish the conversation for good. “We’d been adopted separately. It was a misunderstanding. There were no offspring and it’s over and-- well, it’s still none of your business.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, ah.”

Gojyo grinned, his smile too real and his teeth brighter than the moon in the dark, prettier than his hair. “I’m glad to know things. It makes me feel more comfortable working with ya, to know ya. Wanna know anything about me? Ask away!”

Why did you choose a scientific field when you’re so clearly not suited for it? How did you get your scars? Where in your hippie ancestry did you get that amazing hair-color?

Sloppy and sexually overt. Order and professionalism.

“No, thank you,” Hakkai said.

They just had nothing in common.

***

Step-pause-breathe. Step-pause-breathe-wince-oww!

The natives had absolutely lied, and when Hakkai finally found the Golden Phallus and found Paititi and didn’t need their guides anymore, he would kill them all. With his bare hands. Because the local liquor had, indeed, given him a hangover worse than his previous altitude-headache. And to top it off, Gojyo was trying to get them killed.

The TycoSat receiver had told them they were within a few kilometers of the area they’d agreed upon as their first search-zone and the probable location of the Golden Phallus. Hakkai looked right at the relatively flat path heading east to sloping Mount Catinti, which was near their destination. Then he looked to the left at the narrow, treacherous path up a mountain and across rocky ridges, the one that Gojyo claimed was the actual Inca Road.

“The Inca used to go up this running. Or with llamas,” Gojyo pointed out as he pointed up the mountain. “It’s part of the road we need to follow. C’mon-- it’s perfectly safe.”

“It wasn’t safe hundreds of years ago, and it’s certainly not safe now that centuries of erosion have had their chance to work on it. We can reach Mount Catinti via this flatter path, and then, hopefully, backtrack just a few hundred meters.” Hakkai glanced up from his folded-out map to look at Nunco, their lead guide. “Can we backtrack to the Inca Road from Mount Catinti?” he asked in Spanish.

“I don’t know,” Nunco shrugged.

“See? He doesn’t know,” Gojyo pointed out. “I do, though. I got good instincts for these things.”

“El señor Joe has very good instincts,” the normally-taciturn Nunco confirmed.

It was true, Hakkai had learned. He’d been impressed already by Gojyo’s choice of narrowed-search zone, his choice of team, and other things he’d done on instinct. But Hakkai had also decided that Gojyo was often suicidally reckless. Why else would he bathe naked in possibly-piranha-infested mountain streams in Amazonia? Hakkai liked bathing with his nice, shallow, collapsible bucket. Why would Gojyo travel without most necessary electronics? Hakkai terribly missed his laptop and cellular phone, both lost when he’d been attacked.

And why did Gojyo have to choose this path? Hakkai preferred safer roads. He’d climbed mountains before, but always in very dry climates, climates sans slime. And never with headaches this bad.

Hakkai looked at Nunco. “Would you actually follow this path he’s chosen?”

“Sí.”

“Dammit,” Hakkai muttered. He folded and stowed his map and pulled out his sturdiest ropes. “We’re doing it very slowly, then.”

“Of course,” Gojyo said. Hakkai made the mistake of glancing at him. Gojyo was smiling so widely and standing just so with his boot propped on a rock and leaning toward Hakkai on his knee and looking so incredibly sexy that Hakkai had to look away quickly. He looked back up at the mountain to sober his thoughts.

The first stretch of the path was an ascent that hugged the mountain in a spiral, centimeters wide like it’d been cut into the rock with a very small chisel by a very patient and very slender person. The Inca had been excellent road-builders; Hakkai could not believe that this was part of the Inca Road. None of the archaeological treatises or reports he’d read on Peruvian expeditions had mentioned such a location.

But then, none of the previous explorers had found the Golden Phallus, either. Or even the end of the Inca Road. Just jungle, and sometimes death.

They went up single file. Gojyo had chosen the front position and no one had argued him for it. They all clung to one length of rope, lightly in case one slipped step caused a man-avalanche down the mountain.

Every ten steps or so Hakkai could hear a chink and a thunk as Gojyo or someone up above him drove a metal spike into the wall or, somewhere below him, pulled the lowest spike out. If the men had carried a little less liquor then they might have managed more mountain-climbing supplies, Hakkai thought uncharitably. They might have to come back this way, eventually, and pre-planted rope-spikes would make the dangerous descent a little more safe.

Step-chink-thunk-winceow, step-chink-thunk-throb--

“Haha ha!” That last had been Gojyo, somewhere above him. “Oi, Hakkai!”

“Yes?”

“There’s a stela in the wall, about fifteen meters above you. Look it over when you go past. Ha! I knew this was the right path.”

Hakkai sighed and resisted the urge to growl in frustration. “How exciting it must be for you to be always right,” he called up.

“I love it when you’re all British and dry at me.” Gojyo sounded fond and happy, and for a few minutes Hakkai felt happy, too, as he imagined Gojyo’s smile. He nearly forgot the peril of his situation. He even chuckled when he passed the stone shield-idol set into the wall, its design only lightly eroded. It showed a stylized picture of a man on a vertical path. Incan for Beware Steep Road?

A few minutes later, Gojyo must have reached the top. “Whew,” he called down. Then, “Holy shit!”

A few minutes after that, Hakkai crested the top as well. They stood on a little flat plateau next to--

“Oh, bloody hell,” Hakkai said.

The narrow path continued along a ridge-- after about a twelve-meter gap across a river-chasm. Far below them, rainforest-fed rapids thundered through a rocky canyon.

“Already takin’ care of it,” Gojyo said. He’d borrowed Nunco’s crossbow and was holding it in both hands, aiming with a string-tied arrow at some little stone protrusions on the other side of the chasm. The protrusions were eroded but it was clear they’d been purposely cut: they were centuries-old anchors for a rope bridge. The rope and wood had long ago rotted away. Gojyo lifted his aim slightly toward some vines hanging above the stone rope-holds.

“You’ll never do it,” Hakkai said.

“I’m a great shot. Very cool all around,” Gojyo boasted, and fired. And he was a fantastic shot; the arrow thunked into the rock just over the vine, then fell behind it. The vine curled around one of the rock protrusions, and a few twine-jerks by Gojyo had anchored the rope to it. It was then a simple matter to tie the rope to the rock on their own side of the chasm. Gojyo looked at Hakkai.

“Last is most dangerous position this time. I’ll take it.”

Hakkai understood: they didn’t have enough rope to leave any of it here, either, and whoever went last would have to swing over and bring it with them.

“Then I shall go first,” Hakkai volunteered.

Hand over hand and dangling from the rope, Hakkai swung across the chasm. The canyon was relatively narrow and dark, with slick vine- and slime-covered walls, but so deep below him that it felt wide, gaping, like if he fell he’d be swallowed up like an amoeba in the mouth of a hippo. Hippos were terrible, bad-tempered creatures. He avoided them whenever he was in Egypt--

“Gotcha!” Gojyo called over as the rope knotted around Hakkai’s chest tugged and took up the slack; they would catch him if he fell. And he was almost to the other side.

“I’m there!” Hakkai called back as he traversed the last few rope-grabs and gained purchase on the rock-remnants of the old Incan bridge. He climbed up and looked back across to see Gojyo giving him a thumbs-up and a wide grin.

“You’re almost as cool as I am!”

One by one the group came across until only Gojyo was left to clean things up. First he tied the anchor rope, held by Hakkai and the others, around his chest and under his armpits. Then he bent to loosen the rope hitched to the bridge-stones on his side of the chasm, preparing to swing over on both ropes.

But he had no support above him and he must have stepped onto a weak rock; the edge of the cliff crumbled under his boot and since he was bent over, he fell head-first.

“Gojyo!” Hakkai called reflexively, even though it would do no good. In the seconds he had before Gojyo fell to the limits of the rope Hakkai prepared himself to catch him, digging in his feet and gripping the rope with the men behind him as tightly as he could--

But it was worse and worse: before Gojyo could fall he became head-and-neck-tangled in a jumble of vines lining the wall and the rope he’d already untied. He hung from the knotted mass, limply, and he was going to asphyxiate if he hadn’t knocked himself out on the rocks or snapped his neck, already--

“Gojyo!”

Hakkai had always counted himself lucky that while he could be frightened, he never panicked. Still, he passed a horribly crystal-clear and terrible few seconds while he pulled his knife from his boot-sheath and tipped it over his shoulder, taking only a second to aim before flinging it in Gojyo’s direction.

In those seconds Gojyo must have awoken, because his eyes opened and then widened as he, in order, realized his predicament and spotted Hakkai’s knife flying towards him. But Hakkai was also a very good shot; the knife sliced through the ropes and vines that had caught Gojyo’s neck, and Gojyo swung forward on the anchor line in a yelling tangle of limbs, rope and vine.

“Waaaaahhh--” Thunk!

Hakkai let Nunco and his men hold the rope and he ran to the edge of the cliff to look over. Gojyo was hanging about ten meters below Hakkai, looking up at him. He was a little bloody and wide-eyed, but alive.

“We’re going to pull you up,” Hakkai told him in a very calm voice.

“Yeah-- huhhuh-- please-- huh,” Gojyo huffed.

When Gojyo was dragged to the top of the cliff, Hakkai was right there in front to grab his arms and pull him the rest of the way. Gojyo closed his eyes and sighed and didn’t climb to his feet but flopped on top of Hakkai, wheezing and shaking. And Hakkai wrapped his arms around Gojyo and thought it would be a shame if the world were to exist without Gojyo in it.

“Thank you,” Gojyo said after a minute or so, pushing himself off Hakkai and back to his knees. Hakkai sat up, breathing, letting the emotional moment dissipate. They needed to get going.

“You’re welcome,” he said in his same very calm voice.

Gojyo just stared at him with a strange expression. “Oh, God. You’re so cool. Wow.”

“Haha,” Hakkai said, and thought about standing, but couldn’t look away from Gojyo.

“Oh God,” Gojyo said again. “Please ask me to come on to you. Because I think I’m in love with you.”

“Indeed,” Hakkai said, feeling a little apprehensive again and scooting back on his heels infinitesimally.

“The way you winged that knife-- oh, yeah, here--” Gojyo broke the uncomfortably intense eye contact and reached behind him and under his jacket. He then presented Hakkai with... his knife.

“I can’t believe you caught it,” Hakkai said, nonplussed. He took it from Gojyo and examined it. It was definitely his. There was a small nick in the blade where it had caught the rock wall. Hakkai couldn’t help it: he smiled in admiration, and laughed, and wanted to laugh like he’d never laughed before, and then realized that Nunco and the other men would likely think him crazy and after that realized that he didn’t care, because maybe he was in love, too--

Gojyo rolled off his heels to sit on his rear and continued. “Well, I saved that but I lost the TycoSat.”

Gojyo’s words sunk in and Hakkai’s mirth dissipated. “You what?” he asked, just for verification.

“I lost the TycoSat,” Gojyo said sheepishly. “I didn’t seal the top of my bag before I fell, and it fell out. I watched it as it plummeted prettily towards the river. Down there.” He pointed over his shoulder, completely unnecessarily.

“That,” Hakkai said and stood, taking a deep breath. “Was very sloppy.”

“Don’t I know it--”

“We’d better get going,” Hakkai said, and began to help the men coil the rope.

***

For another day and a half or so they worked their way-- more carefully than ever-- across narrow, exposed ridges. Gojyo smiled and joked like always but his front wasn’t perfect, and Hakkai could tell he was feeling a little hurt at Hakkai’s not-quite-rejection of his not-quite-confession of love. Or maybe Hakkai had just become more sensitive to Gojyo’s moods.

Hakkai found it much easier to be professionally annoyed than to be slightly soppy, which was where he’d been headed. So he replied professionally and coolly to Gojyo’s suggestions and to Gojyo’s grins and regretted it a little, but knew that he was ultimately saving himself a world of trouble.

After yet another day they followed the sparse road-evidence markers down off the ridges into a deep, shadowed and jungle-forested valley. It wasn’t outlined on Hakkai’s area map and since they had no GPS or computers and couldn’t see the sunlight, they couldn’t verify their position. Gojyo still swore they were still headed in the right direction. It was chilly and dark, sort of like Hakkai’s continuing mood.

“The satellite system would be quite useful right about now,” Hakkai pointed out. They stood next to a low, cold, rushing stream and Hakkai was using a penlight to try and find the stream on his map. It was raining and now and then a drop made its way through the leaf-canopy to plop onto Hakkai’s map.

“Yeah,” Gojyo said. He looked down at something cupped in his palm and then up, as if trying to find the late-afternoon sun through the thick forest-covering and the clouds. They still had their compasses but the mountainous terrain and the Andes’s own gravity made those less useful than they should be.

“The stream is not drawn on the map, as I’ll assume it was an aerial map. But if we just came down this ridge, then we should be here...” Hakkai held out the map with his finger pointing to where he thought here was. Predictably, despite Hakkai’s dry snark about the lost GPS, it was right in the center of Gojyo’s red-zone, the area they’d set out to search. Gojyo’s instincts were... well, they were sickening. And awesome to behold.

“Well, to work,” Gojyo said. “Start sweeping the underbrush, looking for entrances or something, anything. A low temple that’s been covered by jungle. An entrance to an underground cavern. Something.”

“A sonar system would also be quite useful right about now,” Hakkai pointed out, still a little jealous.

“Yeah, yeah. Your British disapproval is sapping my will to live, man,” Gojyo said with a bland expression.

Hakkai was surprised at the stab of sadness he felt at that expression; he’d meant to be dry and snarky, but he hadn’t been prepared for the guilt associated with it. What had happened to I love it when you’re all British and dry at me?

Why did he care about Gojyo so much, or what Gojyo felt? He tried to tell himself that he missed the camaraderie, but just like he’d never been good at panicking, he’d never been good at fooling himself. He’d never been good at avoiding trouble, either.

“Shit-- Ouch!”

Hakkai looked over to see Gojyo examining something on the ground. Gojyo flicked on his torch and pointed it between his booted feet.

“Well, well,” he said in an interesting voice. It was an interesting enough voice that Hakkai forgot his own angst for a minute. He carefully stepped through the undergrowth in Gojyo’s direction.

“What is it?”

The wavering circle of Gojyo’s torch illuminated a grayish-tan lump that was half-buried in the dirt. Hakkai flicked on his own torch and Gojyo hunkered down to dig the lump out, carefully, with his fingers and a small pick.

“Willya look at that.”

Hakkai looked. It was a piece of decorative wall in the Incan style, about half a meter square. On it he could see an eroded, curved line with some straight bits leading from it, and a suggestion of tiny, oblong clusters...

“That looks like part of a sun-and-grain motif,” Hakkai said, waving the torch to follow the pattern in the brick. “Like in the pictures I’ve seen of Mameria. It looks broken on the edges, like it--”

“Like it fell,” Gojyo said. He stood and grinned at Hakkai, and it was his full grin, open and sunny like his half-downtrodden attitude of the last day or so had never existed. Hakkai felt an answering excitement-- because it signified a find, of course.

The climb up the opposite side of the valley was steep but productive. Up there more daylight squeezed through the leaves and they found more ruins, stones in little piles as if they’d been shaken loose by an earthquake. Something major existed, or used to exist, nearby. Hakkai itched to take digitized photos of them all and then to collate them on his contextualized software, to see them as they might have looked when they’d been erected. The light was fading but he couldn’t stop trying to find more of them; they were close, so close--

“Oi, Hakkai!” Gojyo called at one point, his voice muffled. “Come see this. It’s weird.”

Hakkai followed Gojyo’s voice through the brush and broke through into a clearing. His heart leapt into his throat when he saw it: it looked like an arch built into the hillside, like an entrance to the underworld. The ground was clear around it and the sky was clear overhead in an almost perfect circle cut into the tree-canopy, so narrow that it would only be visible from straight above. Grain-and-sun designs twisted down the sides of the stone arch and more groups of oblongs decorated its top, looking like... like... snake scales. Dragon scales. They dripped from the rain, now slackening.

“Beautiful and powerful,” Hakkai murmured. Was it a monument to Pachacamac, dragon husband to Mama Pacha? This could be the door to the home of the artifact, certainly. Except-- it didn’t seem to go anywhere except into dirt. Gojyo kicked the ground inside the arch, and it was ground like any other.

“Do we dig, señor?” Nunco asked.

“No,” Hakkai said. He was staring again at the outline of the arch, its position, its up-and-around dragon, the little markings inside his scales and the hint of water-creature and waves that surrounded him...

“No, señor?”

“Gojyo. Draw me the symbols from the Machu Picchu tablet, would you?” Powerful but alone, searching for her grainy, dragoness fertility. Ukoku was a twisted bastard but he had poetic vision. This was a story about a mating dance. The Incans’ written language was buried in their art, like so many cultures Hakkai had seen, thousands of years apart and thousands of miles away... “Gojyo. Do it now.”

“Ha-- yessir.” Hakkai heard Gojyo digging through his bag, heard the flap of paper. “Gettin’ dark. Suppose we should try and camp here.”

“If only we could get in. But this is not the door,” Hakkai said.

“Hakkai?” Gojyo had an odd tone to his voice. “How’d you know that?”

“I just--”

His explanation was cut off by a thup-thup-thup-thupping, loud and growing louder. Leaves and dirt whipped off the ground into a cyclone of detritus. They were so close to finding... Hakkai was so close to reading the words that weren’t there... why hadn’t he had Gojyo draw the key earlier?

“Shit! They’re shooting! Get the hell out of here, you guys,” Gojyo yelled as gunshots rang through the forest and pinged off the rocks, the gorgeous stone art that Hakkai was trying to read, thank you very much--

Gojyo grabbed his arm and yanked and ran and perforce Hakkai ran, too, stumbling through the underbrush. Nunco and his fellow countrymen scattered.

“Stop shooting, idiots!” a voice blared in Spanish, an oily voice that Hakkai recognized even over a loudspeaker. Hakkai risked a look over his shoulder and saw a helicopter hovering above the steep hill, Ukoku hanging out one half of the cockpit. It couldn’t possibly land; they’d have to have been desperate, and perhaps crazy, to bring it down through that narrow opening in the trees. “Climb down, grab the gringos, don’t kill them or you get nothing. Hey, Gojyo! Thanks for leading us here, though I almost lost you when your beacon took a dive into a gorge. Lookie lookie, there’s a whole mess of caverns under here--”

“Asshole!” Gojyo stopped running and reached into his jacket pocket to yank out his pistol. As fast and accurate with bullets as he was with arrows, Gojyo fired off two shots: one shattered a device in Ukoku’s hand, and the other glanced off the helicopter’s windshield but didn’t break it. Whoever had been shooting at them before started up again.

“Stop shooting, you morons--” Ukoku shouted.

“Shit,” Gojyo said, and took off again. Hakkai followed, almost laughing with the danger and the adrenaline and the excitement of their find. Suddenly Gojyo twisted and grabbed the front of Hakkai’s shirt and pulled and fell, and Hakkai went down after him.

Thump! Thump-crack!

Silence.

END PART 1

The Lost City of Paititi, Part Two

Fic: Lost City of Paititi, Part 2, Hakkai/Gojyo, NSFW

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:10:44 GMT

Click to Read The Lost City of Paititi, Part 2

“’Kai? ‘Kai, you okay? Oh, God, please be okay.”

Hakkai breathed a lungful of dust and coughed. It was pitch-dark. He was lying prone on what might have been Gojyo, given that it was warm and moving and speaking to him.

One after the other Hakkai gave each of his extremities a twitch, testing them. All seemed to be attached and in working order, if a bit sore. “I-- kaff-- think I am. Though my name is still not ‘Kai.”

“Yeah, yeah. Here.” Hakkai heard a click and then light shone into his face, blinding him in the dark. “Oops. Guess I make a pretty good cushion, anyway. We’re even on the rescues now, yeah?”

“Even?” Hakkai tested the ground on either side of Gojyo to be sure it was solid, then climbed carefully off of him. If Gojyo was counting rescues, then Hakkai would rescue Gojyo for free. That shot at Ukoku had been... amazing. A moving target, hit dead on. Dead sexy, it had been. Hakkai should tell him--

“Look!” Unaware of Hakkai’s solidifying admiration of him, Gojyo swung the light about the chamber in which they’d landed. About five meters above them was the hole they’d fallen through. It was covered in vines and as long as they didn’t shine a light directly upwards, then they might not be discovered too quickly by their attackers.

But the walls-- the walls were etched and carved and spiraled and the carvings went into the floor and up the other wall, a sinuous dragon of a story, more of the story that had started outside on the false entrances.

“Gojyo, you need to draw the symbols for me. I suspect we are very close to our legendary phallic artifact.”

“Wha--? Oh, yeah. Awesome. Still have the one I started.” Gojyo dug through his bag, then borrowed Hakkai’s penlight and stuck it in his mouth so he could prop his writing tablet on his knees. Hakkai took the larger torch and crawled about the chamber, looking for its edges. The room was somewhat squarish in shape, its walls pieced together without mortar in the Incan style. Over the years some detritus had fallen through the opening, and some of it was moving--

“Oh, my,” Hakkai said, and Gojyo turned to look at whatever the circle of light had illuminated.

“Holy fuck!” Gojyo screamed. The spider scrabbled off out of the light, up the walls, perhaps. Gojyo scrabbled over to cling to Hakkai’s shoulder. “Oh, God. Kill it.”

“Well, it’s gone now,” Hakkai said, waving the torch about the room, now spider-free. “You’ve never displayed any signs of arachnophobia before, and we’ve seen plenty of spiders.”

“None of ‘em were as big as my fucking head.”

“You’ve not spent much time in the Middle East, have you?” Hakkai asked, trying to dislodge Gojyo’s fingers from their death-grip on his shoulder. Ukoku had been right about another thing: God, Gojyo was cute. Absolutely adorable. “There are sand-spiders ten times that large in the Arabian desert. Draw the picture.”

“I’m-- I’m not sure I can concentrate.”

“Oh, bloody hell.” Hakkai set down the torch and grabbed the sides of Gojyo’s face and held him still while he kissed him. If the way he opened his mouth and breathed Hakkai’s name at him as he kissed him back were any indication, then Gojyo had forgotten the spider for a moment or two. Gojyo tasted a little like dust, a little like cigarettes and a lot sexy.

Hakkai had started the snogging session with a purpose in mind but it was dark and his own blood was pounding in his ears and Gojyo’s small puffs of breath through his nose were deafening-- It was a few minutes before he pulled back to breathe, still holding Gojyo’s cheeks.

“Oh, man,” Gojyo whispered in the dark. “I’ve been wanting to do that since... well, but I thought, uh--”

“That I didn’t care for men?”

“Nah, ‘cause you woulda said something about that right off the bat, I’m betting. That you just... weren’t interested.”

“Ha. Foolish. I’m interested. I’m more than interested.” Hakkai glanced around the chamber. He still had his small bag, but he’d given his backpack to Juan while he’d been examining the stones. He wondered if Gojyo had a tent in his pack. “In fact, when we get out of here, with our prize in hand, we’ll find a nice place to camp and then I’m going to fuck you until you can’t walk tomorrow.”

“Uh,” Gojyo sigh-moaned and closed his eyes. He lay a warm, long-fingered hand on Hakkai’s shoulder. “God. How about right now?”

“You don’t mind the spider, then?”

“Good point. Let’s find our golden dick.”

Gojyo let Hakkai push him away, but he smiled around the penlight as he drew. Hakkai’s belly felt pleasantly warm with anticipation of all kinds. He kept an eye out for the spider, just to be nice. Gojyo’s drawing was completed very quickly and yet was very good. Hakkai traded lights with Gojyo so he could closely read the clearly-drawn symbols.

“Oh, my,” he breathed as he read. Professor Yané’s find was a treasure, indeed. Hakkai didn’t even need her analysis. It was written in glyphs that looked to be evolved from Mayan, which Hakkai could read, and interspersed with some of the markings Hakkai had seen in the carvings here and at Mameria. It was a letter: a bilingual letter. He began to voice his thoughts aloud. “A means of communication between... someone in the Incan empire. Extremely learned priests, perhaps?”

Gojyo was watching Hakkai closely. “Do you know what it says? Some of the symbols looked Mayan.”

“You’re very right. Yes. But...” Hakkai trailed off as he took the larger torch back and looked around the chamber. The figures drawn into the story on the wall had been trying to come alive for Hakkai since he’d seen them; suddenly they jumped out at him, screaming their tale. “They are... Hah. Well. How fascinating. Ukoku was right. These stories are pornographic.”

Gojyo’s eyes widened. They shone in the scant light from the penlight. “You’re kidding. That’s awesome. It’s like... the priests learned to write, so they could write porn.”

“Why else?” Hakkai murmured. He read the story across the walls and ceiling, craning his head back and forth until the story disappeared into the floor and did not continue anywhere in the room. He aimed the torch into that spot. “The story breaks off... here.”

Gojyo crawled over and began brushing his fingers along the wall. “So you gonna read it to me?”

“It’s very simple. The deep water beckons to Pachacamac but so does his ample-breasted dragon-wife, who only wants to plant grain for humans, day in and day out. He’s planning to plow her furrows for her before the rains come.”

“Can’t disappoint him. Watch this.” Gojyo flipped the penlight around and jabbed the non-lit end into a spot on the wall just at the end of the pictorial story, like punctuating a sentence. There was a short, sharp grinding noise and a two-finger-or-so-wide gap appeared in a section of the wall. Gojyo dug his fingers in and pulled until he’d widened the gap to about half a meter wide and tall.

“Well done, Gojyo!” Hakkai said as crawled over and shone the light through the opening, following the story. Gojyo hovered behind him, and Hakkai could almost, without looking, feel Gojyo’s smile. Odd that mere words, spoken aloud in all seriousness, could charge the psychic atmosphere between them so acutely. They’d touched briefly and casually so many times on this journey, but now every bump and nudge surged into Hakkai with sexual electricity.

He wanted Gojyo so very much. Wanted to join his sloppy, exciting world. Gojyo would have to learn monogamy, however, because Hakkai hated to share.

The story of mating gods continued downhill through four more rooms, each progressively smaller and the text progressively more explicit. Hakkai summarized it aloud. “Pachacamac, mid-coitus, has changed positions several times, now. Mama Pacha-- poor girl. She’s apparently doing a handstand while he-- ah-- plows her fertile ground from above. He’s sprouted tentacles as well. There’s a lengthy passage about her enormous breasts dangling to the ground. She seems to be enjoying it, however.”

“Sexy.” Gojyo opened yet another door. The door sighed and Gojyo and Hakkai sighed with it, long and slow like in climax, when it revealed a cubbyhole. Inside was wedged an oblong greenstone box.

Gojyo looked at Hakkai, then gently slid the box out of its niche. There was an electric tinge to the air that was not necessarily connected to their sexual tension; Hakkai could hardly believe they’d actually found it. He didn’t even insist that Gojyo wait and document the exact positioning of the box and then wrap it and carry it to a safe location or any of the things he should have done. He just held his breath until Gojyo gently lifted the lid.

And there it was, a gold cylinder with a knobbed end, the entire piece about a third of a meter long. The Golden Phallus, very phallus-like and very golden. It was decorated with scales and was as shining and untarnished as the day it had been sealed away, centuries ago, and--

“Holy fu-- man, it’s huge!”

“It’s large enough, I suppose,” Hakkai said. He picked up the lid and read the symbols engraved into the stone.

Gojyo didn’t touch the phallus or lift it out of the box, just stared at it, mouth agape. “No, really. It’s massive. God-sized. Heavy fucker, too. We’ll have to leave the box.”

“Yes,” Hakkai agreed, when Gojyo looked at him for confirmation. Gojyo was learning procedure, just as Hakkai had decided not to care. Oh, how he was going to enjoy this partnership, enjoy the teaching and learning. He had a feeling that Gojyo might be quite biddable, given the correct impetus.

Some of his lusty thoughts must have shown in his gaze because Gojyo still didn’t pick up the phallus, just stared at Hakkai. His gaze flicked to Hakkai’s eyes, his mouth, his hands on the greenstone lid.

“Do you want to know how the story ends?” Hakkai whispered, watching the way Gojyo licked his lips, shining in the light of the torch. “It’s written on the box.”

“How?”

“The mighty dragon god’s orgasm lasted all night.” Hakkai couldn’t help it; he set the box-lid aside, then reached out to tuck a loose strand of Gojyo’s insanely beautiful, red hair behind his ear. Gojyo’s temple was lightly sweaty under Hakkai’s fingertip. His hair was soft and clean. It was all that bathing.

“Uh. Damn.” Gojyo closed his eyes and lightly clasped Hakkai’s hand where it tangled in his hair.

“Apparently he’d been chewing coca leaves.”

“What about Mama Pacha?”

“He boasts that her orgasm lasted three nights.”

“Coca leaves?”

“No. Pachacamac was very skillful.”

“Yeah?” Gojyo’s boldness reasserted itself: he sort of tackled Hakkai back onto the dirty floor of the small chamber, clasping his wrists and kissing him with his dusty, smoky lips. The stone floor was hard and Hakkai’s head still ached but he didn’t care. He was content for a while to be covered in Gojyo, dirty, hard, desperate, sloppy. Hakkai pried his wrists free and grabbed everywhere he could: Gojyo’s shoulders, his head, his bottom, inside his shirt.

After a few minutes Gojyo came up for air. He kissed Hakkai’s nose, his forehead, and, when Hakkai removed his glasses and set them aside, his eyelids.

“I knew when I first saw you that I was in trouble, man.”

“Mmm?” Hakkai murmured, enjoying the feel of tall, handsome, American explorer under his grabby fingers. Inside Gojyo’s shirt his skin was slightly sticky and very real.

“Mmm. I got a thing for people who’re smarter than me. Mmm.”

Gojyo was being very distracting, nuzzling Hakkai’s ear in a chill-inducingly skillful way, licking under Hakkai’s jaw as if trying to take Hakkai’s pulse with his tongue. Still, Hakkai managed to wedge his hands between them to unbutton Gojyo’s shirt and pull it open.

“You knew I was smarter than you just by looking at me?” Hakkai murmured against Gojyo’s breastbone, which he’d been taken by a powerful urge to lick.

“Ahh! Mmm,” Gojyo said. He pushed himself up onto his hands and stared at Hakkai with his adorably fond look, then shoved his crotch into Hakkai’s hip. “Good instincts.”

It was impossible for Hakkai to resist such humble arrogance. He stroked Gojyo’s belly, exploring the tiny scars and scratches of this journey and other ones, all of which Hakkai would learn about, eventually. Gojyo’s stomach muscles fluttered under Hakkai’s fingertips and he closed his eyes and uttered short ahs as Hakkai traced his erection through the khaki of his trousers.

It had been quite a while since Hakkai had been with a man, but then men like Gojyo were not so common. Hakkai unbuttoned Gojyo’s trousers and yanked them down over his bum. He hooked a leg around the back of Gojyo’s knee to hold him still, then stroked his cock, lightly, then firmly when Gojyo’s hips jerked into his grip, watching Gojyo’s enraptured expression. It wasn’t the ideal location for a leisurely fuck, but there was something to be said for the view.

“Ah,” Gojyo breathed. “God, I love your hands. Stare at your gorgeous fucking fingers. Oh, God.”

Gojyo was trying to kiss Hakkai and gasp endearments at him and unbutton his trousers all at the same time. He mostly succeeded with the gasping. Still, it was enough to please Hakkai; his chest ached and his cock ached and there was only so much leisure one could take in such circumstances. He grabbed Gojyo’s hips and jostled them a couple of times.

“Roll over, Gojyo-- Ah--” Hakkai broke off when Gojyo’s fingers stroked his cock through his trousers. He caught Gojyo’s wrist to stop the distracting torment. “On your back, be a good boy. Unless you prefer it on your knees.”

“Uh. Oh, you did say fuck me. Man.”

“That is my plan and you’re going to follow it for once,” Hakkai told him with a smile.

Gojyo rolled off, quite biddable as predicted. “Yessir.”

They adjusted themselves in the tight stone space. Gojyo flopped onto his back, squeezed in next to Hakkai, and kicked off his boots, then dragged off his trousers.

“I wanna watch you,” Gojyo explained, and tugged at Hakkai’s hip. “Wish it wasn’t so dark. God, I love your eyes.”

“I’m glad,” Hakkai told him. He kicked off his own boots then rummaged in his bag, wedged between Gojyo and the opposite wall, for his aloe gel. He held the tube up, catching the edge of the torch-light so that Gojyo could see it. “Unless you have something better?”

“I don’t even care,” Gojyo whispered.

Heat churned in Hakkai’s belly. He rolled atop Gojyo and kissed him again, glad for the leverage and the chance to set the pace, more slowly this time, tasting Gojyo’s tongue and inhaling the clean sweat-scent of his hair.

Gojyo wasn’t slacking: he fumbled at the fastenings to Hakkai’s trousers and slid his hand into the open front to clasp Hakkai’s cock, his strong fingers hot and sticky with sweat, and Hakkai moaned and Gojyo’s hand suddenly halted--

“Holy fuck. No fuckin’ way.” Gojyo’s voice sounded slightly panicked.

“Spider? It’s gone,” Hakkai whispered against Gojyo’s lips, trying to calm him.

“No. Your--” Gojyo pushed Hakkai’s shoulders up a bit and stared down between them. “Uh.”

“Oh, I think it’ll be fine,” Hakkai said, smiling into the dark. He squeezed the aloe-gel tube, cool onto his hot fingers; oh, that should feel nice, for both of them--

Gojyo’s legs clenched about Hakkai’s hips as if he was trying to close them. “No wonder you didn’t blink when you saw the Golden Phallus thingum. You’re like-- I’m not sure it’s going to work.”

“Shhh,” Hakkai whispered, and stroked his gel-covered fingers between Gojyo’s buttocks. Gojyo’s thigh-lock slackened a bit and Hakkai pressed one finger against the small opening, then nudged it inside. “Here I thought you were nearly fearless.”

“Ahdamn! I got my limits.” Gojyo’s grabbed Hakkai’s shoulders, fingers digging hard. Eventually, with a little stroking, his thighs slackened. Oh, he was so lovely and tight around Hakkai’s finger. Hakkai gave his own cock a quick smear of gel-- it did, indeed, feel very nice-- and hoisted Gojyo’s legs.

“Do you want me to fuck you?” Hakkai whispered. “Do you want me to stop?”

Gojyo licked his lips. “Yes, no, yes, no, just do it. Please.”

“Yessir,” Hakkai whispered in an imitation of Gojyo’s accent. It took a few seconds of work, rocking his hips back and forth, but eventually everything fit and his cock was buried inside Gojyo, so tight, so alive.

It may have been a while for Hakkai but Gojyo knew what he was doing and made it easy; he eased his knees over Hakkai’s shoulders and touched Hakkai’s hair and grabbed and pulled it whenever Hakkai rocked into him just right. When Hakkai’s hands slipped on their mingled sweat he shifted to lock his knees around Hakkai’s hips, leaving Hakkai free to fuck him, free to let the ache grow in his chest and thud in his belly. Gojyo ran his lovely fingers over his own cock and over the scar on Hakkai’s belly, the old scar from his wild youth and Gojyo’s touching it felt like love, not pity.

God, this was so much better than then. Gojyo’s face under him was blurry but Hakkai felt adored, so un-boring, in those half-closed eyes, those parted lips.

Gojyo, as always, read his mind. “Forget think-- Ah! I know I’m in love with you. Ah, yeah,” he mumbled at Hakkai between breaths.

Hakkai leaned down to kiss Gojyo quiet, because maybe he felt it, too, but he couldn’t say it. There was a world of trouble in every millimeter of Gojyo’s body, tight and slick and he moaned unformed things into Gojyo’s mouth and was glad it was all gibberish.

“Mmmph, mph,” Gojyo said back into Hakkai’s mouth and tensed his hips and sticky-slippery fluid joined the sweat mashed between their bellies. Hakkai mmphed back and the ache spilled over, hot release that pulsed through his body for a few moments but felt like longer.

Hakkai let his mostly limp flesh slip out of Gojyo, then let his body collapse for a minute or so while he breathed Gojyo’s hair and Gojyo breathed his in return. Once he’d caught his breath he considered rolling off to clean up. Then realized where they were and that there was a lack of room to roll and that he really didn’t care, anyway.

“That was awesome,” Gojyo whispered after another minute or so.

“I know,” Hakkai whispered back. He felt more relaxed than he had in days...weeks. Years? Perhaps. Being respectable had been a good idea, and had worked when Hakkai had needed it to. But Gojyo had incredible luck and incredible intuition on his side. Perhaps between the two of them they’d make the world’s greatest archaeologist. Hakkai foresaw a decent team, at least.

“Why do you want to find Paititi?” Gojyo whispered at him after another few moments’ pause.

“Vanity, I suppose?”

“’Cause it’s there, right?” Gojyo said with a laugh in his voice. “It’s lost. Someone’s gotta find it.”

“Yes.” With the excitement of finding the phallus of Incan legend, and of... well, Gojyo, and life, Hakkai had almost forgotten that this was not originally to have been his mission. “Even someone like me.”

Gojyo ruffled his hair. “I like excitement. You’re plenty exciting. I’m no martyr for archaeology, though.”

Hakkai, perhaps by having his sweaty head plastered to Gojyo’s, had started reading Gojyo’s mind in return; he was thinking about Ukoku, also, perhaps waiting for them with his men and his guns. “Nor am I.”

“And here I thought he wouldn’t go after me. We’ll get outta here and take our chances, yeah?”

“It sounded like he wants us alive,” Hakkai pointed out. “So, yes. In the morning, though.”

“Yeah. Rocks and jaguars in the dark are not my style, even with your knife and your hauling skills. I’d like a fire, though. A giant-fucking-spider-repelling fire.”

“Hmm. I don’t suppose it matters, if we are to not fear being caught.”

“I want a cigarette, too.”

“Nasty habit.”

“I’d say get offa my back, but you’re not on it. By the way, I think I could still walk.”

“What? Oh, yes. Haha.” Hakkai remembered his earlier threat-slash-promise. He dragged his wrist from under Gojyo’s back and held it up in the light-beam from the torch to try and read his watch. “I’ve got at least six hours to change that.”

“You’re kinda spooky when you laugh,” Gojyo said.

“You think so?” Hakkai said. He found his glasses and stared down at the no-longer-blurry Gojyo.

“Hot, though. Wanna change it now?”

“Don’t be so bloody impatient,” Hakkai said and climbed off to start gathering their things for the move to the other room. They had plenty of time, and he wasn’t planning to sleep.

***

The first thing they did the next morning, after they’d climbed out of the cavern, was head down to the stream they’d explored the day before. They cleaned up as best they could-- they were both very, very sticky-- and refilled their water bottles and ate granola bars and brushed their teeth.

Hakkai had lost his toothbrush and used Gojyo’s toothpaste and a bit of cloth. Gojyo offered his toothbrush but Hakkai waved it off as unsanitary. Gojyo pointed out that Hakkai’s mouth had been doing any number of unsanitary things the night before, but Hakkai ignored him. Gojyo just didn’t understand.

After a while they crawled up the stream-bank, trying to be as quiet as possible. There were no sounds of helicopters, gunfire or men shouting, only the normal sounds of the jungle-- distant monkeys, wind above the trees, and drops from an earlier rain. They could see no dead bodies, dropped packs, or even much trampled underbrush. In fact, there were no evident signs of the altercation the evening before.

No sooner had they crested the hill, however, than they heard excited shouts in Spanish. A group of men were gathered in a small clearing at the top of the hill.

“Señor Joe! You are safe!”

“I apologize, sir. I apologize.”

“You’re all idiots. Hello boys.”

This last was said in English and in Ukoku Santiago’s cynically smarmy tone. Hakkai began to reach for his knife and then realized that it didn’t matter if he had it or not, both because they’d agreed not to fight and because Ukoku did not look to be a threat. He was sitting on the ground, legs tied in front of him and his arms bound behind him.

“Señor Joe!” Nunco ran up to Hakkai and Gojyo, grinning and rubbing his hands together. “You see? We have won!”

Gojyo glanced at Hakkai with a bit of a wild grin, then looked back at Nunco. “I see it, guy. Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

It appeared that Ukoku’s head hired thug, Rion, was Nunco’s second cousin from Cuzco. They’d discovered this fact when Ukoku’s men had climbed down the helicopter ladder to chase Gojyo and his group-- the cousins had recognized each other in the midst of the clash. Gojyo and Hakkai had already disappeared but it seemed Rion and his men had been quickly convinced to switch sides and abandon their wicked boss.

“Rion knows my mamá will tell his mamá and then he will be in trouble. Trouble not worth the money,” Nunco explained.

“I would have paid you enough to move out of the country,” Ukoku interjected. Then he added, almost sotto voce, “Idiot.”

Hakkai decided to let Gojyo and Nunco and Rion hash out the details of their new arrangement. He walked over to stand above Ukoku, tied up in his black fatigues. Hakkai put his hands on his hips and stared.

“Why, how can I help you, Mr. Childs?” Ukoku smiled up at him.

“Why did you attack me and my expedition, specifically?” Hakkai asked. When Ukoku narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth, Hakkai added, “because, you know, my picture is not in the club directory.”

“Such accusations, Mr. Childs. Or may I call you Hakkai? For I wish to be so very friendly, and would never--”

“I saw you, the first time,” Hakkai interrupted. He fingered the knife in his boot. “I could untie you after I slit your throat and call it self-defense. You are a murderer in Peru, or at least an accomplice to murder, and if you are dead you can’t bribe away the charges.”

Ukoku’s eyes widened for a half an instant, then he rolled his gaze to the sky and sighed as if lamenting his long suffering. “I never meant to kill you, dear Hakkai. Just frighten you into joining me. Yesterday, I only wanted to talk. The men here are quite trigger-happy, however unfortunate that may be. That is all. Did you find the mighty Pachacamac’s phallus, by the way?”

Gojyo had wandered over. He pulled the Golden Phallus out of his backpack, unwrapped it and waved it-- carefully-- above Ukoku’s head. “Sure did. Star of many a sexy legend. Pretty, ain’t it?”

“Yes, a very grand penis and very golden. Surely you’ll let me watch as you use it, at least.”

“Fuck you. I’m considering leavin’ you here.”

“I was wondering how we were going to drag him through the jungle,” Hakkai said. He smiled at Gojyo. Just having Gojyo near improved Hakkai’s mood: he took a moment to admire the view of Gojyo’s grin and his slightly wet and sticky clothes and his lovely hair, rather unkempt after their impromptu bath.

Gojyo shook his head. “We don’t have to. We have the helicopter. It’s over there. The guys chopped out a little clearing.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of downhill, the opposite side the hill from where they’d spent the previous day.

Hakkai’s good mood evaporated a bit. “I thought they couldn’t be safely flown here. I’d sort of been hoping these fellows had crashed, as a matter of fact.”

Gojyo shrugged. “Nunco swears by Rion’s pilot. I trust his judgment. Mostly. Besides. You want a dangerous coupla hours by helicopter, or a dangerous week trompin’ back through the jungle?”

Hakkai breathed deeply of the thin, humid air, glanced around at the impenetrable-looking green forest, and heard the buzz of insects and the roar of a jaguar somewhere in the distance. He exhaled in a sigh.

“I did agree that I was also not a martyr for archaeology. The dangerous couple of hours by air, thank you.”

“Hooray! Mameria today, then,” Gojyo said. He carefully re-wrapped the phallus and stowed it in his bag. Then he stared at Hakkai with a rather stupid-looking grin.

But Hakkai was confused. “Mameria? I’d thought it was terraced and also only accessible by foot.”

Gojyo waved at Ukoku. “Our friend here paid his guys to carve out a clearing a few days back. Awfully nice of him, wasn’t it?”

“Mameria today, then,” Hakkai echoed, possibly with an equally-stupid smile at Gojyo.

“You guys are turning me on to an incredible degree,” Ukoku told them, looking back and forth between them with a licentious grin.

“Shut up,” Gojyo said.

“Do fuck off,” Hakkai said, at the same time.

***

The helicopter was perhaps overloaded a bit and the air was thin, so the couple-of-hours trip to the dig-site at Mameria felt to Hakkai like the threatened week, only hovering over the chasm. Thankfully he’d had very little to eat. He also had the satisfaction of seeing Gojyo’s perpetually-saucy grin go white at the edges once or twice when they dipped almost to the trees.

Gojyo went up front once to use the radio to call Yané. When he came back, he just squeezed into the floor-spot next to Hakkai and closed his eyes. Hakkai couldn’t possibly sleep, but having Gojyo near made him feel better. He was becoming entirely as soppy as he’d feared.

And having Gojyo’s thigh pressed to his distracted Hakkai somewhat with memories of their sex-marathon the evening before. Gojyo had promised retribution for the use and abuse Hakkai had heaped upon his poor body. Hakkai was looking forward to that.

Finally they landed. Hakkai exited to scenery that at first looked little different from the site they’d left: green jungle carpeting steep mountains, the sun above diffused pale-yellow in the humid air. Further examination revealed more of a shape to the mountains, however. They’d landed on a plateau above a semi-circular valley, its sides overgrown but still visibly terraced and stepped in the Incan agricultural fashion.

Hakkai followed Gojyo down a path that had been slightly worn into the plateau by recent human presence. The edge of the plateau sloped down to one of the crescent-shaped terraced fields, where the largest group of people Hakkai had seen in over a week was gathered.

“Gojyo, querido!”

A dark-haired woman peeled off from the group of thirty or so people and jogged in their direction, arms outstretched. She was wearing khaki shorts and an unbuttoned khaki blouse over an undershirt, and had one of the most astoundingly female figures that Hakkai had ever seen. Soon she was plastered onto Gojyo, peppering his face with kisses. Gojyo caught Hakkai’s gaze over her head, once, and his eyes begged Hakkai to understand. Hakkai just smiled back at him, feeling not the least bit threatened but willing to allow Gojyo to think he did.

“Yané, babe. Hey!” Gojyo eventually held the woman at arms’ length and her effusive greeting calmed itself a bit. “Yané. This is Hakkai Childs. From the Explorer’s Club. We’ve been workin’ together. Hakkai. This is Professor Yané Delgado, from the University of Lima’s department of archaeology.”

“Childs?” Yané-- Professor Delgado-- said in a strong accent. Gojyo looked at her, and her eyebrows lifted in some sort of understanding. She turned and stretched her hand out to Hakkai. “Gojyo say he had a translator, but did not say who. I have heard of you, señor Childs. Many good things.”

“You are Gojyo’s benefactress,” Hakkai said as he shook her hand. “I am pleased to meet you, Professor Delgado.”

“Hakkai’s seen the drawings, Yané. He read ‘em like that,” Gojyo said, snapping his fingers. “And where we found the phallus-- you should see--”

She mostly ignored Gojyo and clung to Hakkai’s hand. “Please call me Yané. How many languages do you speak, Señor Childs?”

“Oh, I lost count after the first few dozen. I can read more than I can speak, however.”

“You lost count? God, that’s hot.” Gojyo was staring at Hakkai, his mouth rather slack and drooly-looking.

“Aaahhh! Gojyo! I get it,” Yané shrieked and released Hakkai’s hand at last. “Oh! Show me the golden phallus. I am so pleased that it actually exists. I knew I could trust you to find it if it did, Gojyo.”

Gojyo laughed. “You have such weird priorities, Yané. Here.” He pulled the phallus out of his bag and handed it to her bundled in its cloth. Yané cradled it like a baby and peeled back the wrapping.

“Oh! How exciting. Oh. How... large and... very Incan. Oh! I have brought the Policía Nacional with me.”

“Awesome. You’re a genius, Yané.”

Hakkai looked at Gojyo. “The National Police? For Mr. Santiago?”

Gojyo shook his head. He accepted the careful return of the phallus from Yané. “Nope. Remember how you accused me of being caught looting? Well, I’ve learned from my past mistakes. Now I got lotsa impeccable local witnesses. See? You did clean up my act some.”

“I did? Oh.” Hakkai felt a little drooly, himself. He revised his private estimate of their future effectiveness as a team. How would they ever get any archaeology work accomplished if they were constantly behaving like a couple of sexually-deprived eighteen-year-olds?

“Aaaahhh! We have work to do,” Yané shrieked again in her over-excited way, waving her arms and gesturing them down the hill to the group of people she’d been with earlier.

Hakkai could now see that at least a dozen members of the group were wearing black uniforms with a yellow stripe. The other ten or so people were dressed more like himself, Gojyo and Yané, and were introduced as various archaeological colleagues and recorders and surveyors. They eyed Gojyo and Hakkai with some awe, then began the work of photographing and measuring the phallus. Hakkai told himself he did not regret the return to proper archaeology, and that the future held plenty of excitement. It was sure to, if he spent it with Gojyo.

About a dozen of them hiked, single-file, down the edges of the terrace to an arched opening in the hill: the previously-discovered Mamerian archaeological site Hakkai had originally been sent to view. Teams from several world universities had been painstakingly excavating the area for the past year. Yané led Hakkai and Gojyo directly to the most recently-discovered room, the one with the untranslated petroglyphs.

“I was pleased to discover the Incans had writing,” Yané said, and gestured Hakkai towards a carved and pieced wall. “Even if it is naughty. Ha! My amigos were very surprised to hear of your translation at the caves-- but then, even I like to keep my secrets until I am ready to reveal them.”

Yané continued, her eyes gleaming with an excitement that Hakkai could feel resurging in himself. Hakkai could see how she’d been attracted to Gojyo and his work-style-- beyond the obvious, of course. He briefly hoped that the text here was a little more intellectual than the text in the phallus-caverns had been, but his hope was quickly dashed when he spotted the carvings, the sexy way they fit together. Even the layout of the room was vaguely womb-like.

“Ah.” Hakkai looked at Gojyo, who winked as if to say, go ahead; we’re all adults here. This heretofore-unknown talent for mind-reading was certainly an odd but useful phenomenon, Hakkai thought. “After his sunset-to-sunrise ah, climax, Pachacamac rested for a day. His ample-breasted dragon-wife was so energized to plant seeds for humans, that she convinced Pachacamac to stay near her forever, hidden in the city and ready to-- ah-- plow her furrows whenever she demanded.”

“She pussy-whipped him,” Gojyo murmured so that only Hakkai could hear.

“Ahaha,” Hakkai coughed. He pointed at the expected break in the story. “You’ll need to activate a door, right there.”

“But we have scanned this area with all our equipment. There is no door,” one of the academics pointed out.

Gojyo kneeled and pulled a biro from his pocket, then jabbed it into the wall as he’d become so skilled at doing. There was a collective gasp as the wall, which looked like a decorated pile of unmortared blocks, slid open as one piece. Several of the men joined to shove it aside, gently, while the more reserved members of the party protested and snapped desperate photos or hurried to video-record the event.

The opened wall revealed a chamber about man-height but only centimeters deep, which explained the teams’ inability to locate it using equipment. The chamber contained only a stylized wall carving...of an ample-breasted, wide-hipped and dragon-headed female figure. Her legs were quite obviously spread and raised and between them was... a hole.

“That’s--” Yané began, and Hakkai turned to look at her stunned visage and open mouth. The other archaeologists wore similar expressions.

“Not typical of Incan design, I know,” Hakkai supplied her. “My first guess is that the writing system was a means of communication between a very select group of priests.”

“Pervert priests,” Gojyo added.

“Pornographic priestess, koo koo koochoo, boys.” This last was Ukoku, handcuffed but present by the grace of God and Gojyo.

“I told you to shut up, asshole. You’re lucky I let you come,” Gojyo pointed out.

Ukoku nodded and grinned his sardonic grin and Gojyo looked back at Hakkai. In fact, Hakkai quickly realized that everyone was staring at him-- rather breathlessly, it appeared-- and waiting for further direction.

“There are no more words,” Hakkai said. “I think it’s obvious that we should...”

“Plow Mama Pacha’s field for her,” Yané said, in Spanish. Most of the gathered men chuckled and coughed a bit sheepishly. She gestured at the hole in the wall with an elegant hand. “Gojyo?”

Gojyo unwrapped his bundle for the last time, and Hakkai was proud of Gojyo’s hardly-lascivious smile as he inserted the Golden Phallus into the stone vagina and then eased it in gently with one finger. Hakkai held his breath. Everyone held their breaths.

The ground began to rumble beneath their feet. Tiny cracks appeared in the ceiling of the petroglyph-room and dust shook down upon them, golden-tan on their collective dark-haired heads and Gojyo’s red-haired one. Archaeologists began edging nervously towards the exit and Yané shrieked-- in fear or excitement, Hakkai couldn’t tell-- and people began running.

Soon only he and Gojyo were left, and Hakkai laughed. He was hot and sticky and lightheaded and an excitement, tenfold what it had ever been before, electrified his limbs and thumped in his belly and jolted his pride into overdrive. Whatever happened, whatever they found outside, he and Gojyo had proven a legend and read the legend and pieced the puzzle and survived, and they’d done it together.

“Mama Pacha was indeed goddess of the planting and fertility. And of earthquakes,” Hakkai yelled at Gojyo over the passioned rumbling of the Earth.

“Let’s get the hell outta here. I’ll make it worth your while,” Gojyo said, and grabbed Hakkai’s hand.

END.

References: There really is a legendary lost Inca city of Paititi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paititi
There is also an expedition this year by Frenchman Thierry Jamin to find Paititi, and his Internet logs (translated) provided me with much great info: http://antisuyu.granpaititi.com/
Here’s an interview with Gregory Deyermenjian, another explorer, which also provided some great stuff: http://books.google.com/books?id=9nNGMjm8VmgC&pg=PA285
In the name of literary adventure I took some liberties with facts about Incan civilization, though I tried to incorporate many things I learned about the Inca in my research (their excellence in road-building; their amazing non-mortared architecture). I also wanted to include Peruvians and did my best writing those from another culture. See an awesome picture of Machu Picchu at: http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=274. If you're interested please read more about the Incan civilization, because it's fascinating stuff.

Fic: Karma Bums and the Weirdest Night of My Life, AU, Sanzo/Homura

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:19:47 GMT

Title: Karma Bums and The Weirdest Night of My Life
Author: jedishampoo
Rating: NC-l7
Pairing: Sanzo/Homura
Summary: AU: It’s California in 1958, Daddy-o; Homura and his band of merry Buddhists find a strange golden-haired dude who’s got a secret that’s like crazy, man. ~8500 words.
Author's notes: For dear helliongoddess in the 7thnight_smut exchange, for the prompt of humor and Zen Buddhism. HG, I had so much fun writing this, you just don’t even know. This fic was inspired loosely by Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, a story of Zen Buddhism and the Beat Generation. The result is insanity and I apologize in advance. I also apologize for my loose interpretation of Buddhist principles. Thank you so much to my beta, sharpeslass, and thanks to rroselavy for all her work on the exchange! (I’m fixing my other exchange offering, beware it!)

Karma Bums, and The Weirdest Night of My Life

What you’re going to read here is a true story. The people involved were real people, too, and unfortunately they might try and tell you that I was crazy and totally drinking too much wine and smoking too much weed in 1958, or that I’m just full of shit in general and it never happened. To answer the first charge, I hereby swear that I remember nearly everything in my life clearly, no matter what I was smoking or drinking, and what I didn’t see I was told. As for the second charge, fuck you, assholes, ‘cause you just don’t want anyone to know about it.

I’m going to tell this story ‘cause I want to and because the little wife has just bought me this electronic typewriter and told me that it is time to do my part to earn her and her cooking by writing again, no poetry allowed. “This is a poetry-free typewriter,” says she. So here goes:

Oh, before I start, I’ll promise right here that I’ll do my best to write it like a proper story-- in case you were worried you’d have to be listening to my voice the whole time. So. Again:

As I already said, sort of, it was 1958 when the weirdest-ass shit I ever saw in my life went down. I was a total bum then, dropped out of college and hanging around Homura and his crowd of differently-flavored Buddhist Bhikkus. At the time I said I was there to search for myself but mostly I was there for the substances and the poetry and the sex. This was pre-free love, but we were still pretty free with our love, so there you are.

Anyway, Homura was Homura Taishi, at least that was his Buddhist name and the only name I ever knew him by. He was, simultaneously, the coolest of the cool cats and the baddest of the bad asses in Santa Monica in 1958, an ex-professor of philosophy and ex-military man-turned-Zen Buddhist. Homura was a gorgeous dude in his mid-30s. He had one golden eye and one blue eye and was all black hair and fine features and he wore tight jeans and tight black shirts and black juju beads from Japan. The girls all wanted to fuck him and the guys all wanted to be him (and let’s not be sexist, some of the guys wanted to fuck him and some of the girls wanted to be him, but I’ll digress no more, maybe). He was the guru of Santa Monica. At least, until the weird-ass shit.

I’m gonna start this story with the night after Homura found the Golden Cicada.

It was a weeknight, probably Tuesday because The Hole was closed, I do remember that, and we were all at Homura’s place. Homura was sitting on his big armchair with his chin resting in one hand, staring off into space, looking like the lonely prince he was on his lonely throne. The rest of us were sitting around on cushions piled all over the floor, like pashas, drinking and joking and working ourselves up into some really good bullshit poetry.

There was Sheen, who was Bernie Sheen, with his long silver hair and his eyes always half-closed so he always looked half-stoned. He was one of Homura’s two best pals from forever; the other was Zeno, AKA Art Zeno, who had wild orange hair and who’d lost an eye in the Navy and wore an eye-patch like a pirate.

Then there was me, Joe, nee Joseph Shannon but reborn Gogo Jo as Homura called me, and Ku, or Gogo Ku, born George but also renamed by Homura when he joined the Sangha, a cute, gold-eyed-brown-haired kid, younger than me. You might think Homura had a thing for calling people “Gogo” but we were the only two I knew of.

Then there was Eight, my best buddy back then and still my best buddy now: Hakkai Jones, half-Japanese, half-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant, reborn Eight as in the Eightfold Path. Then there was Ko and Gene-Fu and Ruby-- the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever known outside of my wife, Ruby the ebony goddess in her black skirts and leotards-- and her friends Sheila and Edith, pale as Ruby was dark. There were other people there, too, but I won’t bore you with all of their names.

***

“The first noble truth, my friends, is that all life is suffering,” Homura said when there was a lull in the general gaiety. He smiled at his friends as he shared Truth with them like he shared his wine. “I suffer, therefore I am alive. You suffer, therefore you are alive. Yet you are also the dream. The suffering is the dream and it has already ended. Understanding that is enlightenment. When I meditated today, I felt closer than ever.”

“Dig it,” said Zeno. He was talking to Homura but staring at Ruby Smith.

“Yeah, dig it,” said Sheen, from his quiet corner behind Eight and Gogo Ku.

“I dig it, too, big daddy,” said Gogo Jo, he of the long red hair and long legs and cuddled up to the aforementioned Ruby. Gogo Jo was a little foolish and a little fond of the muggles and the booze, but he was a good soul and Homura had high hopes for him. Gogo Jo grinned and raised his glass of wine. “The dream has stolen my sufferings. And I’m dreamin’ of a white Christmas.”

“Crazy,” said Zeno in his dark way, but Homura smiled. Truly, Gogo Jo was a wonder, a koan personified, for nearly everything nonsensical that fell from his lips was worth its weight in meditative ponderment.

“More wine, please,” said Eight Jones politely, smiling with both his eyes and his mouth behind his horn-rimmed glasses and his goatee. Eight was Homura’s proudest addition to his circle of astonishment and like-mindedness, brought to him by Gogo Jo. Eight was half-Asian and studious and kind and yet had a dark past he chose not to discuss. Homura could see it in Eight’s eyes now and then, defeat like Marshal Tian Peng’s on his last day in heaven before he was reborn to suffer again.

Striving for Nirvana was part of their communal suffering. Striving meant expending that most basic of Buddhist tenets-- personal effort-- and sharing the charity of dana. Homura would give and give to these people until Karma saw to it that they only gave back or to others. Karma, which depended on both spirit and actions, had been both cruel and kind to Homura. It had been cruel in what it had taken away before Homura had found the True Path, then kind in the charitable gift of many things: this house his refuge, given to Homura by a deceased friend and colleague at the college; the money that allowed him to share wine and food and wisdom; these friends and followers. And the incredible gift he’d received only the day before.

“I found something last night,” Homura said. “Someone. A true Bodhisattva, I am convinced. Who would like to see him?”

“What?” Zeno dragged his gaze away from the beauteous Ruby to stare at Homura with a wide eye.

“Homura,” whispered Sheen.

“I wanna see,” Gogo Jo and young Gogo Ku slurred in unison.

“Me, too,” said Ruby. Edith and Sheila giggled.

“Please,” Eight said, and swallowed his wine with refinement and delicacy.

When everyone had stood and gathered and quieted, Homura led them into his bedroom. And there he was, Homura’s precious rescuee, stretched out supine upon the bed. Even the bandages wrapped around the man’s head did not disguise his beauty, his soft golden hair, his delicately strong chin. Homura had only caught a brief glimpse of his rescuee’s violet eyes and wild gaze before the light had gone out in them, a light that was still out, as the man yet breathed but had not awoken. Homura had also glimpsed the red chakra upon the man’s forehead, his mark of chosen-by-Buddha.

“Pretty,” Gogo Jo said, echoed by Edith and Sheila’s laughter. “But kinda bent.”

“Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom, on thee shall press no ponderous tomb. This, my friends, is the reincarnation of a Golden Cicada of the Chinese Heaven, I am sure of it.”

“What’s his story?” Zeno asked as everyone returned to the living room. He hooked a thumb in the direction of the bedroom. “You shoulda called me. I coulda helped.”

“Not what you think, Zeno, my friend,” Homura told him. He saw that everyone was re-seated and comfortable on their lotus-pillows and that everyone had refreshment before sitting down himself. “It was a terrible and glorious December thunderstorm on the coast last evening, as you may have seen yourself or read in the newspaper. I was driving the coastal highway, coming home from a day-long meditative sojourn on the rocks at Sugar Moon Cove, and the night was thick and dark like death, the rain so very violent and viscous that I was going to stop my vehicle to meditate rather than struggle against it, when, in a brief stab of lightning’s illumination, I saw this man in the road. He had crashed his motorcycle. I brought him back with me. He had no identification, no money. Doctor Ravenwood came by this morning and bandaged him.”

Homura did not tell them about the dark, slithery forms he’d seen hovering over the figure in the stabs of lightning previous or the smaller white flashes like fireworks or gunfire, because he couldn’t be wholly sure he hadn’t imagined them. What he hadn’t imagined was the orange-fire explosion of the man’s motorcycle on the rocks below the highway.

“Super-murgatroid, what a crazy bind,” said Gogo Jo.

What Homura also didn’t tell them was about how he was thinking of his sad, dead Rinny. You see, Homura had a dark past himself and was a lonely prince because he’d lost his first love when he was in college, before he’d joined the military. Oh, in case you didn’t guess, it’s me, Joe, jumping in here ‘cause I don’t wanna speculate in Homura’s voice about what happened to Rinny, but here’s what I understand: he was a young, earnest college student on scholarship at some school back east, and she was a rich girl at one of those women’s colleges, Vassar or whatever.

Cue meeting at a concurrent camping trip in the Catskills, cue instant love. Cue her snobby parents refusing Homura because he was from the wrong side of the tracks. Aaaand what’s the worst thing you can do to young lovers? Keep them apart, of course.

“I shall kill myself if I can never see you again,” weeps Rinny, born Rina or Rinarei VanDerSnoot or something like that.

“Don’t worry, darling, be patient and our love will be fruitful,” says Homura.

“No!” cries Rinny. “I will kill myself, I shall take these pills!” Cue Rinny’s parents sending her to Terre Haute, Indiana for therapy, electroshock or whatever. By the way, I later heard that kind of thing happened to a lot of girls in our pre-free-love scene. Doing free drugs, or free sex, wasn’t as easy for the ladies to get away with in those days as it was for us guys.

Anyway, back to Rinny, who gets out of therapy after faking out her white coats or whatever. She runs off in daddy’s car and drives and gets almost to Santa Monica and takes some more pills and at some point decides that she can’t choose between Homura and her parents.

“Homura, my love, your name will be on my lips as I fall, always I think of you. Remember me ever as I was before, in the Catskills.”

Yes, the twit wrote that on a piece of paper and then shoved it in the glove-box and drove her car off the cliff on the California coastal highway, somewhere near Sugar Moon Cove. “Snatched away in beauty's bloom, on thee shall press no ponderous tomb,” truly enough, thank you, Lord Byron.

Anyway, that’s the story of Homura’s sad past from my point of view and now I’ll go back to the real story. Oh, before I forget, Homura always told us who we were reincarnated from, or who he’d guessed. I was a heavenly general, once, and Homura was a prince of war, which wouldn’t have surprised me at all. We all liked what he had to say so there wasn’t any reason to call bullshit or anything.

***

“Golden See-what?” Gogo Ku looked confused. Homura smiled at him, his innocent pupil whom he adored. Gogo Ku’s huge, yellow eyes showed-- more than most people’s ever could-- that he was already enlightened but unaware of it.

“Cicada. Those locust-like four-stringmen of the summer evening,” Homura told him. “This particular one, however, was a Mahayana Bodhisattva, not my flavor of Buddhism but a being which I embrace on a spiritual level. Order and duty were his job.”

“Whatta gig,” laughed Gogo Jo.

Eight was sitting next to Gogo Jo, and put a hand on his shoulder as if to quiet him. Eight was ever practical. “Is he in a coma? Perhaps he should be in a hospital?”

Homura shook his head. “My friend, does he look as if he would be cared for by our middle-class conservatory? At least here he may have a name, and he will be accepted for as long as he wishes. And Dr. Ravenwood assures me he will recover.”

Eight subsided and poured more dark wine-- wine that looked to Homura more like blood than ever-- for himself, Gogo Jo and Ruby.

“I’m glad you saved ‘im,” Gogo Ku added with a sweet grin. Edith grinned back at him and did not giggle, for once.

Homura watched them both with silent approval. Sheila, as well, was edging ever closer to Eight. It was the closest the two girls had gotten to any of the male members of Homura’s group-- outside of the orgies, of course. Girls so often were taught to value their childbearing bodies over their own minds and souls. Homura was glad they were finally learning to join in.

He was much more glad to sit back and reflect upon his golden rescuee, his rescuer. He couldn’t wait to discover his real name and give him a new one if he wished; to hear his voice, to know what he knew, to know what had happened on the coast in that storm. Around Homura his gathering gained a life of its own, as his gatherings usually did.

“The Hole tomorrow, right?” someone said.

“Louie’s bringing his axe and Rogeroo’s promised the skins, he’s totally gone on those,” someone else raptured.

“Gogo Jo’s bringing the weed, joy.”

“Bash’ll be a blast, tootin’ my way into the jar, cats.” That was Gogo Jo, as expressive as ever. “Still-n-all, why save it for The Hole?”

“I hear that, cat. See crack-ed ceiling, find my way home in the lines, the black on white path.”

Homura closed his eyes and sighed. That was spontaneity, the beautiful exhalation of creative spirits in creative times. The world shined most brightly right before its end.

“Yah, Haiku!” came several shouts.

“Weren’t no haiku, that came from the mind, not the heart.”

“’S where it comes from. Haiku comes from the mind at rest, see, and speaks to the heart.”

“More wine, please.”

“Essence of seeing the essence of the thing, man.”

“Fan flays my tired flesh, my soul spatters and, uh--” That had been Gogo Jo, for once at a loss for words, it seemed. “Soul splattered sprayed like kicked-out gravel--”

“Jesus Christ, do you assholes ever shut the fuck up?”

Homura’s eyes flew open at that, the deepest, smokiest, sexiest voice he’d ever heard.

It was his Cicada, his violet-eyed Bodhisattva, golden and bandaged and beautiful and leaning on the bedroom doorjamb, wearing only his torn jeans. He lit a cigarette and glared at them all.

***

The guy told us we could call him Sanzo. Sanzo, not-so-secretly known to Homura as the Golden Cicada. Sanzo was a Jap-sounding name and he didn’t look Oriental in the slightest, but then our Buddhist names weren’t the most westernized, either, so we didn’t press him. Homura wouldn’t have pressed Sanzo, anyway, was just staring at him all stupefied. Anyway, Sanzo had a gripe and a smoke and a sip or two of water and then he fainted onto Eight. Sanzo was a tough bastard but he’d had a helluva crash out on the highway.

Oh, speaking of Eight-- he called a few minutes ago to see how the new typewriter was doing and I told him what was up. He says he’ll back me up on this story, so, again, fuck you to the rest of you lying assholes who aren’t Eight. Eight also told me something else that I never knew until now. It was very interesting and weird and somewhat connected to this story, but I won’t bring it up now because it would only confuse things.

So: Sanzo. Helluva crash. Fainting. It took a few more days of healing before Sanzo was up and about for any length of time. And since Sanzo’d griped about the noise of us Bhikkus, it was at least a couple of days before we could all gather at Homura’s again. We had The Hole, of course, and some great jams there and all, but The Hole was public and the Sangha was a select and private sort of group whose members understood each other and sometimes had group sex, and so soon we were back at Homura’s, Sanzo or no Sanzo.

***

...Beat! beat! drums! -- blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley -- stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid -- mind not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man...
Beat! Beat! Drums! By Walt Whitman

Sanzo pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, closed his eyes, and raised his eyebrows. He raised his eyebrows again. His headache eased a little. He opened his eyes and sighed at having to look at the collected idiots. It was his own fault for venturing out of Homura’s pad’s second bedroom, and his annoyance was his punishment.

Truthfully, though, he was too bored to sit in the bedroom any longer, having spent a few days in there. He wasn’t yet healed enough to leave the house in case he ran into them; he’d have to give it a few more days and accept Homura’s admittedly abundant generosity until he felt strong enough to hit the road. Besides, Sanzo thought that perhaps Homura, and maybe one of his two old-guy buddies, might be good in a fight.

So he was staying here for now, and that meant it was either the bedroom alone, or the idiots.

There were about fifteen idiots, not counting Homura. They were mostly male and they mostly did nothing but drink and yak and screw and smoke marijuana and make up their own Buddhist philosophy. Truthfully, most westerners made up their own Buddhism, and Sanzo understood that this was because they didn’t have local temples and gurus and they didn’t understand the Asian mindset.

Sanzo had met a few exceptions in his years on Earth-- mostly Europeans or Australians backpacking in China before the party came down on outsiders. Homura came close. Even that guy, however, was confused on some things, and he was passing on his confusion and self-centered angst to his followers like it was a head-cold.

Their confusion was not Sanzo’s problem, however. Sanzo begged some booze off the closest-to-reasonable-it-seemed of the entire tribe, Eight Jones. Eight handed Sanzo a glass of blood-red wine and then stared at him for a full thirty seconds, eyes wide under his black-rimmed glasses. Sanzo finally ventured to speak to him in a low voice.

“So how did you end up in this racket?” Sanzo asked, waving his wine at the collective misguided idiocy.

Eight stared back as he answered calmly. “Joseph found me bleeding on a railroad track a year or so ago. I was trying to kill myself, you see. I’ve since changed my mind. Where Joseph goes, there go I.”

“Yeah? Good for you,” Sanzo muttered. He edged away. Across the way Homura was gesturing at him from his chair, the only piece of furniture in the entire goddamned room. Sanzo narrowed his eyes and gave Homura an annoyed look. Homura smiled beneficently and bowed his head. With a grunt, Sanzo gave up and went over to sit against the wall next to his host.

“You need something?” Sanzo asked.

“I’m so pleased to see you join us. I’m so pleased you are feeling better, Sanzo, my Golden Cicada.”

“I’m not a fucking cicada so don’t call me cicada,” Sanzo bitched, then sighed. It wasn’t Homura’s fault Sanzo had been injured, and he’d done Sanzo a good turn by plucking his ass from the road. Homura my have been only unknowingly helping himself in the long run, but Sanzo owed the guy a civil reply, at the very least. “Thank you for taking care of me, by the way.”

“You are so welcome. All are welcome here, within reason.” Homura fingered the beads at his neck above his black shirt, a black shirt very like Sanzo’s. Sanzo’s silk shirt had been torn in his attack-slash-accident a few nights back and re-stitched by one of Homura’s girls, Sanzo hadn’t been told which.

Sanzo sipped his wine and lit a Lucky and looked around the room. He shuddered a little when his gaze roved over Eight, and again when he saw that utter dumbass Gogo Jo. Gogo Ku caught his eye and Sanzo felt compelled to give the kid a short nod of acknowledgment, though he could never have explained to anyone why.

“Why are those two double-fives?” he asked Homura, for something to say.

Homura’s interestingly and differently-colored eyes widened in something that looked like glee. “You speak Japanese, then?”

“Ah. Maybe a little.”

Homura stared at him, more intently even than Eight had. “Because of the five precepts they embody for me. The precepts they will one day embrace when they learn to find their own ways and discover their own states of enlightenment. I hope they do so before the end of it all, which I feel is near. If only they could learn to lack wine and bodies and shoplifting and lying; I suppose they are innocent of killing, unless one is vegetarian and embraces the Ahimsa principle of nonviolence--”

“You’re attaching importance to the wrong things, you know. You think that Zen is just-- shit, nothing. Never mind.” Sanzo had been goaded into accidental speech but still had absolutely no intention of getting into a discussion of Buddhist principles with Homura or any of his followers. That was a job for someone else. Sanzo had his own job to do here in California, and he’d always been shit at teaching others, anyway.

He was saved by a yell from the gathered idiocy.

“I’m wigging out! That’s crazy, chickie!” It was Gogo Jo, shrieking at Ruby, who shrieked back at him.

“No lie, baby. My daddy’s a Baptist preacher from Georgia. Why you think I ran outta there to California?”

“Witch doctor, man,” someone said, blowing useless slang like this group seemed to love to do. God, Sanzo hated California, so very much.

“I told the Witch Doctor I was in love with you, baby,” Gogo Jo sang, oohing and eeeing and ahhing until Sanzo wanted to shoot him, so badly his fingers itched for his lost pistol. Ruby seemed to feel the same way. She glared at Jo with her hands on her hips.

“You tryin’ to say something, baby?”

“Ain’t never, ain’t never, you’re eighteen-karat chickie-kee, I’m booted when you look at me.”

“Shut up, fuck,” Sanzo moaned.

“Om mani hatsu may oon, what’s the sound of one hand clapping, om?” Gogo Jo was on some kind of idiot’s roll. “I feel a tantra comin’ on. Homura, my friend, hates the Bhikku’s ritual, he says, but it focuses me, baby. Focuses me right on you.”

“Mmmm, om mani, baby,” Ruby murmured, apparently forgiving Gogo Jo and climbing onto his lotus-legged lap and pulling off her shirt. She had lovely, smooth, brown skin and firm rounded breasts, breasts she shoved onto Jo’s undeserving red head.

And shit! Sanzo’d already had to listen to all of them going at it last night. His hard-on had gone away eventually, but it had still been annoying as hell. Sanzo looked for the wine-jug and watched as Sheila knocked it over when she leapt onto Eight. Sanzo crawled over and rescued what he could, taking a swig or two or three straight from the bottle while Eight removed his glasses and got kooky with Sheila. Gogo Ku and Ko doubled up on taking care of Edie and soon the entire room was one fast-and-loose mass of naked skin, oohing and ahhing and mming just like they had the previous night.

Hell, even those warhorses Zeno and Sheen were getting hot and heavy in there, and Sanzo couldn’t even tell if there was a girl between them or not.

“Are you not well enough to join in?” a smooth voice asked. Sanzo whipped around to see Homura, also not involved, just staring at him from his chair. His golden eye looked like it was glowing.

“Ah. Not my bag-- shit!” Sanzo hated when he caught himself speaking Californian; he was picking up this remedial class’s bad habits. “Not my hobby, I mean.”

“I would ask if you abhor the sensual along with our other four aforementioned verboten precepts, except I’ve seen the way you drink,” Homura said. Sanzo opened his mouth to say that he didn’t know what the fuck Homura was talking about, but Homura continued before he could say it. “I’ve seen your chakra and know a little of what it means. I would know you by your aura anyway, Golden Cicada, and there’s something special in your eyes. Tell me what you know. Please.”

Sanzo sighed and glugged another gulp of wine straight from the bottle. “I’ve traveled in the Far East a bit. That’s all and I have nothing to teach and I’m still not a cicada,” he said, grudgingly.

“You also have a warrior’s body and reflexes,” Homura said, his eye as glowy and distracting as ever when Sanzo looked at him.

“I’m not discussing my body with you, either. Or my reflexes.”

Around them, some of the oohs and ahhs and mmms and babys and sounds of skin hitting skin were heading towards a crescendo. Sanzo’s dick twitched in sympathy, and maybe envy, inside his jeans and he thought, well, fuck it all and he leaned against the wall to watch the action.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in sex; he just wasn’t into group sex. He could enjoy the show but would never be part of the show. Homura would be surprised if he traveled a bit, saw what monkey business the monks got up to in Shanghai or even Sri Lanka. The five precepts be damned, the folks here weren’t necessarily sinning on their way to enlightenment.

The world was large and varied and there were many rights and who was to say Homura would be wrong, if only he wasn’t swearing up and down that what he was doing was related in any way to Zen. Sanzo had seen Zen temples in Japan and Ch’an temples in China, and you never saw a more ritualized or strict bunch of old, grumpy motherfucking monks telling their initiates what to do. It was nothing like the freedom and self-determination that Americans seemed to apply to everything so happily.

Sanzo was surprised at how much he liked Homura, anyway. Homura was misled and overly angsty concerning his own past and a little self-satisfied at times, but he’d never refused anyone anything, at least not that Sanzo had seen or heard in his time in Santa Monica. Sanzo respected that.

It was more than clear that Homura liked Sanzo in return. He liked Sanzo way too much, in fact. Sanzo decided that when he left he’d do it quietly, to cause as little fuss as possible; he’d get his job done and find another hog and be on the road before Homura could worry about him or look for him.

“Why aren’t you--?” Sanzo waved at the general mass of idiot-fucking.

“Mmm. Sometimes,” Homura murmured. “Tonight I’ll just watch with you.”

Sanzo couldn’t say it wasn’t arousing, or that it hadn’t been a very long time since he’d screwed instead of killed something. He watched and thought about touching himself. He thought about being one of the guys fucking a girl, then thought about being one of the guys fucking a guy.

He could feel Homura’s eyes on him, like a physical caress, a golden touch and a blue presence. Homura spoke of auras; Sanzo knew auras and Homura’s chi was robust and usually unfocused. Tonight, however, it was focused tightly, on him-- Sanzo.

“Ting tang, mmm baby walla walla bang-- ah! Ah!”

“Just shut the fuck up and fuck already,” Sanzo sighed, and lit another Lucky.

***

Oh, hell. Ruby. What a doll. She dated Zeno for a while after I got clean, and now she’s back in Georgia going to school and being married to a lawyer in her tiny Georgia town and being a mom. And I hereby apologize to my wife, both for Ruby and for the brief bits of poetry laid down here. It was a part of the time, sweetheart.

And you’ll like the next bit, I promise. Before everything got all fucked up.

***

And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again; a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom...
Darkness, by Lord Byron

Homura looked around the close-pressed, sweaty crowd inside The Hole, and wished he’d stayed home with Sanzo. Sanzo Sanzo Sanzo, grumpy and glowing and unlike any being Homura had ever known or seen. Sanzo’s entire being breathed destiny, while Homura had merely been waiting for the dream of suffering to end. Was it any wonder a sad being such as himself was so drawn to Sanzo?

The music at the club was good; the usual guitar-man and drum-thumper had been joined by a couple of African sax-men passing through town on their way to L.A. Their skin was blacker than night and gleamed with lights and sweat and their cheeks were puffed as they broke it down into burning solos until the crowd called wild, wild at them.

Between tunes Homura’s friends took their turns on stage, beating out poetry so brilliant that even the band-men were stomping and crying “preach it!” There were new people and the regular crowd alike and it was Rome before the fall, the very end of it all, surely, because such raw and free commingled emotion could never be topped.

And still, Homura thought of Sanzo. He thought of how he’d caught Sanzo cross-legged on the bed with his eyes closed and his palms and forefingers pressed together, gathering his gorgeous aura. Sanzo had jumped off the bed when Homura had entered the bedroom, as if he’d been caught masturbating or as if Homura had been a threat.

Even the incipient creative spontaneity of Armageddon could not compete with that. Homura needed to be home with Sanzo. He peeled himself out of the sweaty crowd and sped home with the top down on his Chevy.

When he stood on his own doorstep Homura could hear Sanzo through the open window, speaking to someone. He went inside and Sanzo was on the phone. Sanzo turned and rolled his eyes when he saw Homura looking at him sadly. He said thanks and hung up.

“I used your phone, thanks. I called collect,” he added.

“You’re welcome, and unnecessary. What I have is yours. Always.”

Sanzo turned and walked into the bedroom. He emerged after a few moments carrying his leather jacket. Homura had cleaned it himself.

“Why aren’t you at your club?” Sanzo asked.

“I couldn’t let the world end without saying goodbye to you,” Homura told him. He feared Sanzo more than he’d ever feared another person, and still he told Sanzo that thing, left himself vulnerable.

“Well,” Sanzo said, and lit a cigarette. “You’re just in time. I have to go.”

“Please don’t.” Homura had known it was coming, but that didn’t stop his chest from tightening or his belly from churning like they hadn’t in fifteen years, because he’d just then realized that he’d been numb or dead for a very long time. He’d just realized why he felt alive again.

“What do you want, then?” Sanzo asked. He stared at Homura hard, unflinching, his stare like jewels.

“Love me like I love you.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I know.” Homura was empowered in his fear, because nothing could ever top it. He stepped close and clasped Sanzo’s shoulders and kissed him. Sanzo sighed and it was resignation and annoyance and his breath was smoke and humid like August evenings and fireflies.

“You’re making me something I’m not,” Sanzo said when he pulled back after a few moments. He was still close, searching Homura’s gaze from three inches away, five of his slender, strong fingers clasping Homura’s cheek.

Homura flattened his palm against Sanzo’s belly for a reply, felt the warm silk of his shirt and his taut skin just beneath. “And...?”

“Shit,” Sanzo said. He jabbed his cigarette into the ashtray on the chair-arm. “I can’t love you or stay. Get it?”

“I understand. No love, no stay. Touch me, my--”

“And no cicadas,” Sanzo interrupted. “I hate fucking locusts.”

“No cicadas,” Homura agreed.

Sanzo kissed not like a Bodhisattva at all, but an earthly being, tongue and summer-night breath. Homura was afraid and overjoyed and turned on all at once for minutes like precious drops of time.

In the master bedroom they stepped apart and watched each other undress, like a skin-peeling contest because they both wore their clothing so tightly. Sanzo was perfect, slender, all wiry muscle under smooth, golden skin. Here and there his perfection was enhanced by tiny, gleaming, diamond-like scars. Homura wished Sanzo wasn’t leaving, because he wanted to learn about all of them.

“You say you won’t teach and it saddens me,” Homura murmured into Sanzo’s sweaty, soft hair when they had stretched out on the bed for a few minutes, kissing and getting sweaty above the covers. “You could. You are an old soul.”

“You’re still looking for something I’m not. Here, old man.” Sanzo clasped Homura’s shoulders and yanked sideways until Homura rolled over to his stomach. Sanzo taught with his hands, pulled Homura to his knees and in his straightforward way jostled his dry, silky cock hard into the cleft of Homura’s buttocks. “What do you have for this?” He jutted his hips again and pushed his finger against Homura’s anus.

Homura shoved his hand into his bedside drawer and found the closest jar of lubricant, courtesy of the university’s medical department and always handy because all manner of love was welcome in Homura’s house. Sanzo grunted his approval and Homura breathed and sank his face into the pillow and felt his knees slide apart on the sheets and his body stretch for Sanzo, Sanzo, Sanzo, grumpy and grunting and his heartbeat a part of Homura with the first thrust, the second, and the drawn-out, thumping pause that followed.

Sanzo’s breath hissed into his hair from behind, into his ear, as his breastbone rode Homura’s spine and his fingers clenched about Homura’s cock.

“Your-- hah--” Sanzo said and thrust. “Nnnihilism is your revenge, but don’t drag them into your selfish, blank Armageddon.”

“No,” Homura breathe-moaned at the feeling of Sanzo’s cock thudding into him, the aching life behind his own testicles where all had been numb. “I see that now.”

“Their paths will only fall, unguided, into disease, addiction, and madness.” Sanzo’s voice was harsh and thick.

“I know.”

“Good.” Sanzo stopped teaching and fucked, back and forth. The sound of Sanzo loving him without loving him was not only harsh breath and the slap of skin, it was giant brass gongs in ancient temples and wooden beads clacking and chants-- ah, the feel of sweaty hands stinging his hips and the smell of pine and myrrh.

Homura was glad to be a poet, to remember being fucked like it was a song or a movie. It would be his favorite of either for a very long time. When Sanzo’s voice broke high on his breathed ahs, like singing, Homura uncoiled and came, and came, and came, shuddering until Sanzo jerked into his body that last time, then a last-and-a-half, breathing hard.

Sanzo stayed for a smoke, at least, stretched out naked next to Homura on the bed. He taught a little more, dropping crumbs that Homura devoured.

“You should travel,” Sanzo told him, exhaling smoke into the thick scent of sex. “I’ll bet you were in the Navy. Tour of South America and Europe.”

“Yes,” Homura said. He didn’t even wonder how Sanzo knew. “I’d love to see Africa. Asia.”

“Do it,” Sanzo said, and extinguished his cigarette. “Fuck,” he added, when they heard the front door open and heard drunken laughter.

Sanzo flew out of bed and yanked on his jeans and his shirt, right over his sticky, come-covered belly. He was out the door of the bedroom before Homura had even crawled out of bed. Homura supposed he would never learn all he wanted to about Sanzo’s astonishing reflexes.

“Homura! We brought some new chums back with us,” someone called as Homura was pulling on his own clothes. He thought it was Gene-Fu, probably. Homura dressed a little more quickly so he could greet his new guests with some pride of presentation.

He forgot all presentation when he heard Sanzo bark, “Don’t invite those bastards in! Shit!”

Homura sprinted out of the bedroom to see what must have been a dozen very pale strangers shoving their way into his house, their twisted smiles growing evil fangs and their eyes glowing red and their skin sparkling in the light like quartz. Gogo Jo and Ruby were on the floor where they’d tumbled and they were scrabbling out of the way backwards on their hands like crabs. Sanzo stepped over them and stood looking at the pale newcomers.

“Too late, goddammit. You let ‘em in,” Sanzo said.

A tall and terrifyingly beautiful, white-skinned man slithered his way to the front of the... pack, Homura supposed he could call it. “Oh, it’s you, asshole. You ain’t dead. You’ll be the first to die here.”

Sanzo, very slowly, bent his knees and distributed his weight between his front and back feet. Then he stretched out his arms and curled his fingers and closed his eyes and took a deep breath and Homura held his own breath, unable to speak for waiting.

Sanzo yanked his arm back and then whipped it forward lightning-quick, hitting the white-skinned man on the chin. It looked like a mere flick but the man flew back into his buddies like he’d been whacked with a sledgehammer. Before Homura could blink, Sanzo had a sliver of wood in his hand and another wrist-snap embedded the sliver into the man’s chest. Sanzo kicked and sent it home. The man screamed and started... melting into a gooey puddle-stain on Homura’s floor.

Sanzo was already on the next man with another sliver of wood-- a stake-- and he’d killed another of the pale invaders-- a vampire. They were vampires, and Sanzo’s golden hair was flying and he was killing vampires with his hands and feet and reflexes and pieces of wood from Homura’s spider-infested log-pile out back.

He wasn’t able to marvel at this for long, because suddenly, all of them-- Homura’s part of the Sangha-- were being attacked at once. Homura and Sheen and Zeno were fighting alongside Sanzo and those who couldn’t fight stayed the hell out of the way.

***

Sanzo was wielding the power of Shaolin Buddhist kung-fu, my friends; martial-arts fighting skills with the power of chi behind them. And yeah, the sparkly assholes were vampires, all right. I’ve already said that this is all true and I’ve already told you that Eight will back me up, but I thought I’d reiterate those things just in case.

Sanzo, you don’t like me telling all this, fuck you, too, come see me. I’m in Reno, on Plumb Street. And Eight, by the way, has just told me about his chi and some of the study suggestions you mumbled to him all those years ago, you pair of stingy motherfuckers. Eight says he can do some very interesting things with his chi and he’s promised to show me tomorrow, and he lives on Liberty Drive, in case you want to come looking for him, too.

I’ll finish the tale, now that I’ve said these things. Sweetheart, I hope you liked the sexy man-on-man parts of the story, anyway.

***

Sanzo hung from the light-fixture on the ceiling and kicked a stake over to the eye-patched and fierce Zeno, who was doing a decent job of fighting one of the UDMFs (Quick note from Joe: Un-Dead-Mother-Fuckers).

He took a quick glance around. He thought there’d been fourteen to begin with. He’d killed five, already, and Homura and Zeno and Sheen each had one. That left six and holy fuck, he wished he had his pistol but even more he wished that utter dumbass of a Gogo Jo would shut the fuck up. The dumbass was hovering in a corner with his arms around two squealing chicks and was watching Sanzo with wide eyes and blathering a running commentary on the action in idiotese like a damned sports announcer.

“Sanzo is like Mickey Mantle, baby, bejeezus lightning, all my scratch is on the Golden Locust in this rumble, tump tee tump. And he’s laid on a murder for two more, like wow--”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sanzo ground out as he dropped to the floor and rescued two of his last few stakes from the liquefying chests of the unholy bloodsuckers he’d just killed.

“Just makin’ the scene, joy.”

Sanzo decided to ignore further idiotese. He flipped his toes outward and pressed his forefingers together and breathed; dan dao, dan dao, single saber technique times two, and two more were dead with two to go.

A tall UDMF screamed and charged at Sanzo, one clawed hand outstretched to rend for maximum blood. Sanzo let chi flow to his wrists as the creature’s claws glanced off the heel of his left palm, made hard as a steel bridge-- xiao pao quan, small cannon fist-- then, as the vampire’s momentum carried him past, his wrist was as fluid and smooth as river-water flowing under the bridge-- xiao hong quan, small flood fists. Sanzo landed one blow on the back of the UDMF’s neck and another on his chest, the second including a stake to secure the creature’s ultimate destruction.

Sanzo could feel the one diving in from behind him in the flow of the room’s air-currents. He leapt straight up, letting the UDMF stumble underneath so he could land with his feet on the vampire’s shoulders, one foot on either side of its jaws. A quick knee-twist broke its neck. Before it could heal, Sanzo drop-kicked a stake into its thorax. He preferred southern tiger-style for its speed, but its offshoot, monkey-style, was good for jumping attacks.

The only two UDMFs still alive were being occupied by Sheen and Homura, so Sanzo killed them easily from behind.

Gogo Jo started clapping in the resulting few seconds of silence. “Made in the shade, pumpkin-butter.”

Sanzo had already made a vow to ignore the idiotese. While his more human companions caught their breaths he began counting the dead, slime and human. There were fourteen stains on the floor, and two dead men. Gene and someone he thought was called Ron-ton.

“Tumpty and jeeze. Now I wanna fuck, you know?”

“You’re fucking next,” Sanzo told him, heading into the corner with his fingers outstretched.

“You may kick ass but you’re a real bringdown, man,” Gogo Jo said, then slid his fingers across his lips in the universal quiet gesture, thereby saving his own, pathetic life.

***

For the third time, I’ll swear this is all true.

Sanzo split not long after threatening my poor life. He said he’d already called his bank to wire him money for a new motorcycle. He didn’t even want a ride from Homura or a bag to carry shit in or anything; he just wanted to leave. The vampires were the reason he’d come to southern California, and once they were dead, he said he wanted the hell out. Don’t ask me; I always thought it was a great place to live.

He talked to Homura for a minute or two but I don’t know what they said to each other; Homura never told me. But after the night of the vampires, Homura’s Sangha sort of dissolved. Homura became different. He was less down all the time. He wanted to travel. He kept offering to put me back into college. I never did go back before Homura left town to travel. Eventually, of course, I went back to school on my own, and I think he’d be glad to know but I never saw him again to tell him.

Eight, still called Eight because he’s still Buddhist, talked to Sanzo, too. And, as you all know, it’s only just recently that I found out what that was all about. While I was in college, Eight was off studying kung-fu. I’ll admit that I’ve always wondered why Eight was so straightened out when he found me after graduation, but I never asked ‘cause I was just glad of it.

Sanzo didn’t talk to me at all, just flipped me the bird on his way out the door. Back at you, bro.

END.

Thank you for reading!

Glossary:
Ahimsa: Principle of non-violence toward other living beings; why so many Buddhists are vegetarians.
Double-fives: “Gogo” can be read like “fivefive” in Japanese. The Five Precepts are not killing, not stealing, not lying, not engaging in illicit sex acts, and not drinking intoxicating beverages or substances.
Bhikku: A seeker of enlightenment/follower of Buddha
Bodhisattva: one who’s attained enlightenment but chooses to wait for Nirvana in order to help others seek it.
Koan: A phrase used during Zen Buddhist meditation.
Muggle: Slang for marijuana-- really!
Sangha: Buddhists as a group-- all of them.
Witch doctor: Slang for a Christian cleric.
Warning: A lot of Gogo Jo’s slang was found on the web, and a lot of it I made up. Please pardon me for that but damn, it was fun to do.

References:
You can read about Shaolin Buddhism here: http://www.shaolintemple.org/buddhism.htm
Lord Byron poem “Snatched:” http://englishhistory.net/byron/poems/snatched.html
Lord Byron poem “Darkness:” http://www.poetry-online.org/byron_darkness.htm
Walt Whitman poem “Beat! Beat! Drums!” http://www.poetry-archive.com/w/beat_beat_drums.html

Gmail

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:08:00 GMT

Gmail appears to be down.

What do I do? ::hyperventilates::

ETA: Gmail appears to be back, YAY!

7thnight - Go!

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:58:52 GMT

Hey there, lovelies! If you're a fan of Saiyuki but haven't joined 7thnight_smut, join! (To join, visit the profile page and if you've over 18, apply and the Merciful Goddess will let you in.) There are tons of stories posted... tons of excellent AU to read this weekend, yay!

I've barely scratched the surface so far, but let me give a shout-out and thanks to the anonymous who wrote me a nummy Gojyo/Sanzo AU of sexiness, A Gentleman's Agreement. It's a post-Regency/pre-Dickensian tale of titled con-men. The historical language use in this is crazy-cool-- they sound polite but they're speaking low cant, yay! And there are two other 353s there.

And I love het in Saiyuki fandom, so I'm also telling you to read a Sanzo/Lirin story, Things We Can't Untie. Yes, Sanzo/Lirin! A distressed spirit attaches itself to a reluctant psychic. What an awesome prompt & the result is yay! This story is unique to the fandom, I think, with its 1970s Ireland setting and its sweetness and sexiness and recent-historical subject-matter viewed with a critical eye but given a light touch. Love.

Must also rec Morrow's Island Horrors, a steampunk version of Gaiden featuring action, adventure, and the extremely manly and nommable Spymaster Corbett (Tenpou) and Captain Shaw (Kenren). Awesome stuff.

And Two Gentlemen of Bohemia, Tenpou/Nii and sharp eastern European humor and golems and vaudeville, genius!

There are tons of awesome stories in the exchange that I haven't even read yet... zombies, humor, romance, wild west, rock-bands, you name it. I'm going to try and read and review them all. Go, read, give love to the authors who worked their butts off on these stories.

Fic for Indelicateink: Perfect Kiss, Hakkai/Gojyo, AU, NSFW

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:29:33 GMT

Title: Perfect Kiss
Author: jedishampoo
Pairing: Hakkai/Gojyo
Rating/Warnings: NC-l7; mentions drugs
Summary: AU: Director C.G. “Chaz” Hakkai auditions a model for the lead role in his upcoming popcorn flick. About 4400 words.
Author’s Notes: For artist extraordinaire indelicateink, from my gift meme, and posted for half a day on the Saiyuki Anon Kink Meme IV. Prompt: Hakkai/Gojyo; intoxicated sex; 1986, a back booth of a nightclub, producer!Hakkai has his way with coked-out!male model!Gojyo. I saw this amazing prompt and then found out it was indelicateink’s, yay! Yeah, sorry, not remaining anon long, but I wanted to post her gift! :) Thanks so much to sharpeslass for her awesome ideas for backstory and names and, of course, the beta! You rock! Title from the New Order song, “Perfect Kiss.” (If you wanna hear it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQgsc6J15Xo)

Club Manna smelled like hairspray, smoke, and sweat. And it was blue. Blue lights flashed like stop-motion strobes on the throng of dancers. The drinks were blue, the deejay was playing Blue Monday and the club owner’s girlfriend, Missy, was wearing a blue dress. Chaz followed her through the blue blue blue and thought about turning around and taking a cab to the liquor store and then heading home to his couch and VCR and non-blue décor. Or, there was always the San Pedro Bridge.

Then Chaz remembered the money.

“Roger said to, like, put you in the Crystal Parlor,” Missy yelled over her shoulder, chin half-hidden by the poofy blue sleeve of her dress. “And I’ll totally serve you myself, Mr. Hakkai.”

“Call me C.G.,” Chaz yelled back. He smiled.

It was false, of course, but necessary. What he felt wasn’t important, only what he needed. One thing he needed was the use of this club for his movie. He was making a popcorn movie, hopefully with the next popcorn-movie star, and hopefully he’d make a lot of money and feel alive again and his next project could be real.

This movie, though-- this movie would be fake and the final, action-packed sequence would be shot here in this club with its lights and smoke machines and giant video screens. This place was the perfectly authentic sort of phony he’d been looking for, the type of place where people went to be plastic on purpose. People like the tall, purple-haired man shimmying his way to the edge of the dance floor.

His path crossed Chaz’s momentarily and Chaz realized the man’s hair was red, only turned purple by the Blue Monday thump thump thump-thump lighting. The man was good-looking and was wearing a ridiculous and ridiculously tight leopard-print silk button-down. He raised his arms and pumped his hips at a girl and his shirt rode up, exposing his navel and his flat, sweaty stomach above the waistband of his low-slung leather pants.

Chaz was more interested by that strip of skin than he wanted to be. He hadn’t had a real fuck since-- had it been a whole year since she’d died? He’d stopped screwing starlets and cow-eyed male models when he’d started living with Karen, and then she’d killed herself two years later and here he was.

The man saw Chaz staring and ogled him back, eyes wide and dilated by dark or drugs. Chaz looked away.

Chaz briefly wondered if Giorgio ‘No-Last-Name-Just-Giorgio’ was already here, somewhere. Chaz didn’t know what Giorgio looked like and he really didn’t care. He only knew Giorgio was a former model building his film resume, and he’d been recommended by his casting director, Kim, as the sort of cheaply-bought, up-and-coming, “edgy” talent that a popcorn action-flick like Burning Fury needed.

Missy led Chaz around the edges of the warehouse-sized room, finally stopping in front of a black-mesh-metal curtain. She yanked it aside. “The Crystal Parlor. So, like, whaddya want to drink?”

Chaz peeked inside the booth. It was horseshoe-shaped and had wide seats. It was big enough for a party of eight or so. A mini-chandelier cast flickering, false candlelight over a black-marbeled table. “Is the champagne blue?”

“Wha? Oh, haha. No, like, for sure. Moet or Cristal?”

“Cristal, please.” Chaz slid into the booth and folded his hands atop the table. He stared at his fingers for a moment or two, then remembered to glance up and smile at Missy. She smiled back and ducked out of the booth.

Chaz had sold most of his artistic integrity but he’d yet to compromise on production values. He wanted this club. Once this Giorgio was hired or rejected and gone Chaz would talk to Roger the Owner, get Roger the Owner’s people to contact his people. Then he’d let his PAs start making plans, blacking out club dates, arranging the sort of things that Chaz hated to arrange.

The curtain wobbled like someone was kicking it.

“Yes?” Chaz called.

The curtain opened, letting in blue light and thumping bass and Missy with two bottles of Cristal on ice and two glasses. Then it closed again and the thump droned back into mere ambiance. Chaz opened one bottle and poured a glass, drank it and poured another. He would definitely have his cinematographer change the lighting, else he’d have to rename the project Burning Blue Fury. Furious Blue Burning. Blue Furies Burning.

“Oi, are you C.G. Hakkai?” The mesh curtain scraped aside without warning and the man Chaz had seen earlier, the tall redhead, was hovering in the opening. He stared intently at Chaz with his dilated eyes. Brown. They were brown. “Hey, I, like, saw you on the dance floor. I can’t believe you’re him. You’ve got an Oscar? You look like a college student or something. You’re like... like--”

“You’re Giorgio, I assume?” Chaz said, slowly. He didn’t stand but he offered his hand. Giorgio took it and gave it a quick shake. His palm was surprisingly unsweaty. “Just Giorgio, like the perfume.”

Giorgio nodded. He slid into the other side of the booth and scooted around the horseshoe until he was only a couple of feet from Chaz. “Yeah, haha. Not my scent, though. Too Hollywood, you know? Not that Hollywood ain’t great ‘cause, like, I love it here in L.A., you know? Hey, C.G., is it okay if I smoke?”

“Haha, yes.” Chaz examined Giorgio. He was fantastically handsome. He had high cheekbones marked with two tiny scars that only barely kept him from being too pretty. In the fake candlelight his hair was so dark red as to be nearly as purple as Chaz had first thought it, a gorgeous but unlikely color, like something one could buy from Manic Panic, one of those brands of wild haircolor that Karen had used to use when she was in a mood. The stuff was crap and washed out or wore out, everywhere, on the sheets and the shower-curtains and light-colored clothing.

“Thanks, man. You smoke? Nah? Smart of you.” Giorgio lit a cigarette, then laid it in the ashtray. He flattened his palms on the black tabletop and clasped his fingers together-- long fingers-- then unclasped them, then tapped out a few beats of the new song-- Pet Shop Boys? Opportunities?-- then twined his fingers again. He had sexy hands. He was bouncing like he was trying to dance while sitting down. Chaz was lightly amused watching him. If he were not merely a plastic, coked-up commodity, Chaz might have been more than amused.

Karen had been real. She’d given “Iodine Roses” the genuine pathos it had needed and that was why it had been such a beautiful film. Chaz should never have forced her into “Dayglow Nantucket,” but he had, and it had flopped horribly and she had killed herself. People said that Chaz was a wunderkind who’d peaked too early. Who in the hell won an Oscar for direction at 23? they asked. He’d soared and he’d crashed.

But Burning Fury; that would make money and with money, you could create all the art you wanted. Burning Furious Blue Burns...

“I have fifteen minutes,” Chaz said.

Giorgio nodded. “I can, like, tell you about myself if you want, but I don’t feel like I’m in an audition, or I guess it’s really a job interview, because, seriously, you look the same age as me. When you were walking in with that chick in the blue dress, I thought you were like some rich kid out for a night on the town. Man, your eyes are green. I saw Iodine Roses, though. That was great stuff...”

“Your accent is Midwest, under the California,” Chaz said, interrupting. He didn’t want to hear this... person’s cocaine-fed, gushing commentary on his art. He poured champagne into the clean glass and Giorgio took it with a nod.

“Yeah, totally. I’m from Rochelle, Illinois. Hour or so from Rockford, three hours from Chicago... spent a lot of time in Chicago.”

Chaz had been an orphan from the Midwest, once. “How was your childhood, Giorgio?”

“Pretty goddamned shitty,” Giorgio said and grinned. He put out his cigarette and lit another. “Spent a lot of time on the street. But, it’s over and now I’m living my own life, you know? Movin’ up. Keepin’ it real.”

Whether or not Giorgio was real remained to be seen. However, Chaz decided then and there that he would hire him. He was utterly gorgeous and begging to be used. Chaz wanted to. Chaz wanted to use Giorgio to make lots of money. He wanted to. So many things.

“There are no drugs on my movie sets, Giorgio,” Chaz told him.

Giorgio waved his cigarette and grinned. “No prob. Only takes a coupla days to get offa coke, right? Takes a lotta energy to live the life I do, you know. If I quit this semester at NYU will you pay for me to re-register after the premiere?”

A college student, as well as model and actor and commodity? How frighteningly normal. Chaz was very deliberately not intrigued. “If I decide I want to hire you, then no excuses, and yes.”

“Gettin’ ahead of myself?” Giorgio smiled again, his teeth straight and white and saucy and stunning in the light of the mini-chandelier. He drank more champagne, lit another cigarette, and unconsciously ran his finger under his nose.

“Have you read the script, Giorgio?” Chaz asked, like he really cared. And since he was not to care he poured himself another glass of champagne.

“The-- oh, yeah. Phil gave it to me. Phil Brown. Kim’s brother’s boyfriend. Hah, I’m, like, dropping names, right? Feels more like a job interview or an audition now, yeah?” Giorgio stopped chattering for a moment to inhale from his cigarette. He closed his eyes when he exhaled. Some hidden ventilation-- a filter in the ceiling, perhaps-- sucked the smoke up in a twisting stream and whisked it away like it had hardly ever existed. “Ryan Roberts, that’s the role Phil said Dustin said Kim said you were lookin’ to fill. I hated the fucker when I first started reading but we got the background and I was thinking. He had it all, you know? Like, the wife, the career, money, fences. I mean, the fucking dogs. Then that shit happened and so, yeah, he’s an asshole ‘cause of that, you know? Me, I kinda understand him, ‘cause I got that in reverse--”

“Mm-hmm,” Chaz said, feeling uncomfortable for a moment. Instead of thinking or listening or caring he watched Giorgio’s face and his hands as he stabbed the air now and then for emphasis, all ten fingers spread wide like they’d been surprised. Not that it mattered, but Chaz liked Giorgio’s eyelashes; those were real. He liked his fingers, too. Too bad the cocaine was talking through them.

Chaz had heard that cocaine enhanced sexual pleasure and caused impotence. He wondered if those two things were always mutually exclusive.

“At first I was surprised to hear it was a... well, a you-film. But, like, after I read it and thought about that bastard Ryan Roberts and his fucking dogs and his wife, man, there’s this... I dunno.” Giorgio paused when Chaz popped the cork on the second bottle of champagne and refilled both their glasses. Giorgio was tapping the table in time with the new song: Move Your Ass and Feel the Beat, You Spin Me Right Round. Chaz felt it more than he heard it, thump de thump and every song sounded the same when reduced to bass and electronic drums. “It means something under the action-flick surface. I’m glad Kim told me to come tonight, that you’d be cool with that when you were here to check out the joint. I’ve been here before. Few times, hah, you know?”

“Is it always blue?” At Giorgio’s blank look, Chaz said, “The club, I mean.”

“Oh. This month, yeah. Hah,” Giorgio laughed and lit another cigarette. His smile was. He was. He had great lips. “You know, you don’t say a lot but you’re real intense. You talk through your, like, facial expressions. And, like, you turn your head a certain way and your glasses focus just so, and I swear I can see your straight into your head through your eyes and read your mind, yeah?”

“Hmm.” Chaz sipped his-- sixth? seventh?-- glass of champagne. It was all bubble, very dry and light and it fizzed into his brain like liquid Valium. He wondered if Giorgio would do men. Chaz bet Giorgio would do anything if asked properly. He was that kind of eager, that kind of I-can-take-this arrogant. Because Chaz’s mind was not readable through his glasses and his expressions were blank: hadn’t he always been told so?

Chaz decided he wanted Giorgio’s fingers, wanted to teach them about real life. He wanted Giorgio’s mouth. He wanted him to shut up and save it for the camera and to learn disappointment. Commodities didn’t always realize their own place in the hierarchy of the world, but Chaz had a Ph.D. in failed potential. He’d been an idealist, once, and had forgotten that power, money, and lust ruled the world. He appreciated power more because he’d been powerless.

Giorgio leaned closer. “Tell me if I can’t say that, C.G. ‘Cause you probably just wanna know what stuff I’ve been in or maybe not, because I still don’t know how like an audition this is. I mean, for modeling jobs I send photos and they call. Sometimes we don’t even send photos and they call, guess it’s those couple of flicks I did--”

“No. No,” Chaz said, halting the tirade without specifying what he was saying ‘no’ to. He wanted. He would. “But I do have a question for you.”

Giorgio lit another cigarette. “Yeah?”

Chaz leaned forward and grinned. For the first time in months he didn’t want to die at all. His pulse thudded hard, dun-thump, dun-thump, sharp like the music, and his dick was already thick and aching between his legs. “How badly do you want to be in this movie?”

Giorgio’s eyes widened when he saw Chaz’s grin. He leaned back and rubbed his nose again. “Depends. What do you want from me, C.G.?”

“Call me Chaz.”

Giorgio licked his lips and Chaz watched and took another sip of champagne dun-thump, dun-thump.

“All righty, Chaz. What do you want?”

“Would you, say, give me a blow-job?”

Giorgio’s eyes widened just a little and he tossed back the rest of his champagne before answering. “Oh, heh. So this is the casting couch, yeah? Where’re the cameras?”

Flippant and flimsy, full of powdered confidence. Chaz refilled Giorgio’s glass.

“Well, would you?”

Giorgio stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette and lit another. He gathered his hair in one hand and flipped it up and down as if fanning his neck. He looked at Chaz. “You know,” he began, then paused and released his hair. He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. Perhaps he was trying to read Chaz’s mind. “Yeah,” he said, finally.

“Do it, then,” Chaz said. He leaned back against the black vinyl seat, presenting his crotch and the erection pushing obviously against the front of his tight slacks. Giorgio was shallow and attractive and that was all and Chaz was more interested than he’d been in a very long time. “Suck my cock.”

“Woe is me. Such evil in the world! I shoulda never left my small-town home,” Giorgio said with perfect disingenuousness. He braced his hands on either side of Chaz’s thighs and leaned forward until his breath was hot on Chaz’s belly through his thin, forest-green silk shirt. He bumped Chaz’s cock with his chin and watched Chaz the whole time he did it.

“Hah,” Chaz breathed down at him.

“You smell good,” Giorgio said, then glanced away and down to focus on his audition. He one-handedly unfastened Chaz’s black, Italian-leather belt, then the buttons and zipper on his black, Italian-made slacks.

This was the world, Chaz thought to himself. The world as it had been before Karen and Iodine Roses and only he had changed. He lifted his hips a little so Giorgio could pull his pants down just past his ass. Thump, thump, thump-de-thump went Chaz’s heart and he closed his eyes as Giorgio’s pressed-close chin and fingers brushed and teased his erection. He anticipated the feel of Giorgio’s wide mouth on his cock.

There was a soft, warm press against his parted lips and Chaz gasped a little and opened his eyes but Giorgio had already pulled his mouth away.

“Sorry. Couldn’t help it,” Giorgio said and then his wide grin was back between Chaz’s legs and oh, fuck, sucking hard at the head of Chaz’s cock.

“Ah!” Chaz gasped again. As Giorgio gave another hard suck or two or three, Chaz grabbed hard at the top of the leather booth-seat to hold himself still.

Thump de thump went the pounding music that all sounded the same as other music and his pulse, echoing in his ears. Giorgio was a real pro, or something. His fingers were perfect, perfect for the part and they brushed his balls inside his slacks and circled the base of his cock while Giorgio sucked. Giorgio’s hair swung forward to hide his skill and to tickle Chaz’s lower belly, exposed by the hiking edge of his Japanese silk shirt.

“Ah--” Chaz breathed and closed his eyes again.

Giorgio was good but he was too good, too slow and loving. Chaz wanted. He wanted to get off. He wanted to come, not relax back into the seat and feel his thighs fall open to the limits of his half-on slacks. The burn of pleasure was a slow and tender swell like he hadn’t felt in forever. It would almost be too much when it finally broke.

“She killed my fucking dog,” Chaz sob-mumbled into the thick, thumping atmosphere.

Giorgio made a choking noise and the slow sweeps of his tongue on Chaz’s cock paused for a moment before resuming. Chaz thought again about what he’d said.

“Stop,” he said. He opened his eyes and pushed Giorgio away. He’d sunk down on the seat until they were nearly eye-level with each other.

“You wanna fuck me, then?” Giorgio said.

Chaz had been about to halt the whole proceeding out of annoyance with himself and his own sordid desperation but his cock was still hard, jutting up and flushed purple-red against his bare, pale abdomen. Giorgio was wiping his lips and grinning. Some of his sweaty hair was stuck to his face.

“Yes,” Chaz said, instead.

So Giorgio crawled up Chaz’s body and buried his face in Chaz’s shoulder, kissing his neck and making mmmmyeah sounds. Chaz shoved his hands under Giorgio’s shirt and into his pants, groping everything he could reach.

Things were a little wild and unfocused for a few minutes. Chaz began to wonder if he’d let his control of the situation slip. He was wondering how to regain it when Giorgio again seemed to read his mind. He pushed himself off Chaz and to his knees, straddling Chaz’s thighs, and peeled his ridiculous leopard-print shirt up and off.

Chaz’s fingers nearly shook as he unbuttoned and unzipped Giorgio’s pants. Giorgio had a great body, long and fuckable and fantastic. Of course, male models usually did, but Giorgio was refreshingly not cow-eyed. Intoxicated, perhaps, but that was nothing new in Chaz’s world, the real world.

“You’re a natural redhead,” Chaz pointed out when he saw the hair around Giorgio’s clearly-not-impotent-cock. Giorgio nodded and laid his long fingers atop Chaz’s. Together, they slid his leather pants down his hips.

“You wanna dye it for the movie?”

“We’ll see if you get the part,” Chaz said.

They’d barely gotten Giorgio’s pants past his ass when he grabbed his own dick and began to stroke it, up and down, a lazy-slow, hip-swirling dance for Chaz’s benefit. Then he clasped Chaz’s cock in his other hand and worked them together, matching his own half-time stroke pace, watching Chaz with his dark eyes. Chaz held onto Giorgio’s ass and didn’t move, couldn’t move.

“How’re you doin’?” Giorgio said, low and sexy, barely audible above the thump-thump of whatever new song was happening outside the booth.

“My dog was called Jip,” Chaz breathed. “She killed him, too.”

“You’re, like, totally deranged, man.”

“Hm.”

“Oh, yeah.” Giorgio said after a bit. He released his own dick and reached into the pocket scrunched at his thigh. He pulled out a little foil packet and tore it open with his teeth. The Crystal Parlor filled with the scent of fake-cherry lube, the kind of stuff one could find in any men’s room at any bar in L.A. Chaz was not fond of artificial fruit scents but he was in no position to complain.

Or maybe he was. Giorgio was being too fucking slow and so Chaz grabbed the packet and squirted it on his dick. Smoke and fake cherry and sweat; the smell of sex in the real world. He would make so much money, he could have anything. He wanted. He wanted to fuck Giorgio.

“Get your pants off, Giorgio,” he ordered.

“Yes, Mr. Director. Sir.” Giorgio climbed off to scooch his bare ass backwards on the booth-seat, a pretty picture of skin and black leather on black leather. Chaz kneeled between Giorgio’s legs. Then he pulled off his glasses and folded them into a neat triangle on the table-top. He made sure the cigarette in the ashtray was extinguished. He quite messily left his own slacks half on because he was the director and this was all very sordid and it was supposed to be, dammit.

Chaz dug his fingers into the soft skin behind Giorgio’s knees and pushed until Giorgio’s thighs were hugging his ears and he was staring up at Chaz with his mouth all soft and slack. He was more limber than that Australian ballet-dancer Chaz had fucked, long ago. She’d been expatriate Russian or something, called Vlana. Somewhere in the periphery of Chaz’s vision, the mesh curtain wobbled.

“No, thank you,” he called, and started fucking Giorgio, limber limbs and tight ass and long fingers grabbing in Chaz’s hair. Giorgio held him like a lover and Chaz held onto the leather seat-top, trying to keep his knees from sliding but they slid, anyway. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the rhythm in his head and his body and not the one thumping in the air, everywhere.

Giorgio was warm, breathing flesh, not plastic at all. He breathed hot up onto Chaz’s face, moaning nnns with every thrust and sometimes nnnnyeah when Chaz was sharp and quick with his fucking. Chaz had almost forgotten sex could be more than painful and desperate and lonely.

“Keep going. Nnnnyeah. That’s it. You feel so good, God,” Giorgio gasped at him, saying all the right lines to make Chaz want to fuck him harder, to work the pleasure-ache higher.

“Burning--ahhhBlue Fury,” Chaz told him, snapping his hips harder, his timing more jerky as he neared the point where he had to come.

“You’ll make it nnnngood,” Giorgio said. Then he said “Ahfuck” and Chaz felt Giorgio’s calves seize up under his forearms and sticky come smearing in the sweat between their stomachs. Chaz kept pumping, body wrenched tight, until he finally came as well, and it was hard and very, very good.

He lay atop Giorgio and breathed for a minute or two while Giorgio caressed his head with gentle fingers. Giorgio was huffing like he’d run a footrace, while Chaz’s breaths were slow and long; he was as relaxed as a yogi. He tasted sweat on Giorgio’s forehead. He’d needed something, earlier. He’d needed to prove something. It seemed not to matter at the moment. Giorgio’s rush of chatter had slowed, at least.

“I would never take something to make me hyper,” Chaz said.

Giorgio laughed softly. “Nah. You need to relax, you know? But we all got our crutches, I guess.”

“Yes.” Chaz realized that Giorgio was not a mind-reader. He was just very insightful. Chaz had not appreciated power until he’d been powerless. And only when he was relaxed could he fully understand how wound-up and miserable he’d been.

He felt Giorgio ruffling his hair. “She’s, like, gonna be back. The blue-dress chick,” Giorgio said.

“The owner’s girlfriend,” Chaz said. He pushed himself off of Giorgio and straightened his clothing. He unfolded his glasses and put them on. He watched Giorgio as he squirmed back into his pants, feeling a surprising fondness for him.

“Can you act, Giorgio?” he asked.

“Heh. I’m no Harrison Ford but I ain’t bad, you know,” Giorgio said as he pulled on his shirt.

Flippant, but not really flimsy. Chaz poured them both more champagne. He used some to dampen a napkin and then rubbed it on his shirt, trying to banish some of the semen-stains. How very sordid. His foot began tapping on the floor as the dance-music beat relentlessly thumping outside the Crystal Parlor finally found its way into his bones. It was another dance song by that dance-music band. The ones who did the blue song. Let’s go out and have some fun. “This movie will never be truly good, however,” Chaz felt it worth mentioning.

Giorgio shrugged and lit a cigarette. Smoke twirled up and away from his smiling, scarred, gorgeous face. He sank down onto the booth seat, practically slipping under the table. Chaz realized he was looking for his shoes. “I think it could be, if you’re in charge. Are you gonna, like, call me, by the way?”

“You have the part,” Chaz told him. He sipped his champagne. “Robert Ryans. Ryan Roberts.”

“Oh, okay. Whatever. You’re still gonna call me, right?”

Somehow, Chaz wasn’t surprised in the slightest at Giorgio’s attitude. He’d somehow known, earlier, that Giorgio wasn’t one to be motivated by the obvious. He’d just been too bitter and desperate to care. Still, he had to ask. “Do you even want the part?”

“‘S a job. There’re lots of jobs. I wanna work with you, though.” Giorgio stopped fiddling under the table and straightened. “Are you mad?”

“No,” Chaz said. He was looking forward to working with Giorgio, too. He had a bad habit of getting involved with his actors. Furious Burning Bluebirds. Club Manna and Roger the Owner and Roger’s People could wait another day or so. “I think I’d like to dance. Then maybe, afterwards, we could get something to eat and talk.”

Giorgio grinned and scooted closer. Chaz kissed him.

END Thank you for reading!

Whew!

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:20:48 GMT

It's rainy and cloudy today and I'm GLAD. Yesterday it was 109, and today? 78 DEGREES, WAHOO! I've been out and about (going to a kids b'day, meeting the seamstress who's making my Gyokumen Koushu costume) and it's been lovely driving without sunglasses and with the windows rolled down.

(Last weekend I went somewhere and wanted to weep at every stoplight, because it was so hot and sunny the sky was washed-out blue without a cloud in sight and by the time I got home after an hour of driving and sitting at stoplights I was overheated and wanted to faint on the couch.)

Have 3/4 written a Saiyuki fic on an anon meme prompt, yay! Thanks to some necessary concrit from sharpeslass, I think I have a handle on it, now.

And only a few more days for 7thnight_smut stories to go up, YAY!

Happy Saturday.

Fic for Error256: Detection, Attack, Capture, Consumption (53, NSFW)

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:55:46 GMT

Title: Detection, Attack, Capture, Consumption
Author: jedishampoo
Pairing: Gojyo & Sanzo
Rating: NSFW (yaoi, language)
Summary: Gojyo’s sexy bandaging technique makes his medical attention all the more special.
Author’s Notes: Gift-ficlet for the wonderful error256 because she has given so much to the Saiyuki community (and especially lately to the 53 community) with her steady stream of awesome, nommable artwork of all the boyz. This was written to a story-prompt from error, but a little bird wrote her for me so I could attempt to make it a surprise. I added a weird POV and outline that I hope work here. Thanks to ~~my little bird~~ caeseria for the beta job and to sharpeslass for reading, also! I touched it last so all final mistakes are mine. ♥♥

Some prey organisms adopt evolutionary antipredator adaptations to increase their chances of survival. Crypsis, or camouflage, is one method these organisms might use to help avoid detection as prey.

So maybe, since every youkai in Togenkyo bar three-- well, maybe two-- was after him, you’d think that Sanzo might have learned to disguise himself. But no: he plopped his goddamned sutra right over his shoulders all visible and magical and shit, and he wore fucking white and gold so that, even in the haze of pre-dawn where the light was nothing but a thin, silver line on the horizon, he stood out like a whorehouse with a neon budget. Then he went traipsing around the countryside, alone, when he probably should’ve been sleeping.

Gojyo knew this because he was following Sanzo. He was following Sanzo because he was concerned. And maybe he was nosy. ‘Cause maybe he wanted to see if Sanzo was going out to jerk off or sneak food or whatever else he thought he had to be alone to do.

Whatever the case, if caught, Gojyo would say he was merely keeping an eye on Sanzo’s safety. If, by chance, he happened to satisfy his own curiosity and gather some tasty blackmail information at the same time, then that was merely a bonus and nobody else had to know.

Sanzo made it all the way out of the quiet mountain town and about a half-mile up a steep little trail before he was attacked.

“Ahahaheehee, we’ve found you! Give us the scripture, Genjyo San-- urgh gurgle--”

There was a flash of chain and blade. That’s what had caused the urgh-gurgle.

Blam! Blam! Blam! Sanzo’s weapon joined the fray.

“Aieee! Shit, ya stupid monk. Watch where you’re shootin’--” Gojyo pressed his back against Sanzo’s, figuring it was the most bullet-free place to be at the moment.

Sanzo didn’t appreciate the assist. “Back off, idiot. You’re too close.”

“Hey, don’t shove me--” Gojyo yelled, too late. He grabbed Sanzo’s robe as he toppled over.

“Aaaauugh!”

“Arghshit!”

Thumpthump crack thump crack thump--

Despite being inanimate, the cliff had camouflaged itself very well. The edge was covered with trees and branches and looked like undergrowth rather than the opening to a gaping chasm. Thankfully it was also more of a really steep hill than a cliff, or Gojyo and Sanzo might have been killed as they tumbled down through the brush and over the rocks to the bottom.

Half a minute or so later they’d stopped rolling and grunting and thumping. Sanzo was blessedly unconscious. Gojyo found himself on his back, sprawled atop what felt like blessedly solid ground. He kept his eyes shut while he tested each of his limbs to be sure they were (a) still attached, and (b) working. They were both. He risked opening his eyes.

Most of what he was sprawled over was flat, rock-strewn ground. Part of it was Sanzo, trapped under one of Gojyo’s legs. Gojyo hefted his leg off and righted himself and kneeled over Sanzo to have a closer look.

Sanzo’s eyes were closed. He was scraped and covered in dirt and yet his hair shone and his cheeks had a healthy, pink glow. He looked as peaceful and gorgeous as Gojyo had never seen him, like he was sleeping, dreamless and pain-free. One might almost forget how deadly and bitchy an asshole Sanzo could be when he was awake.

Aposematism, or warning coloration, is a secondary defense mechanism that warns potential predators of the existence of another primary defensive mechanism, such as unpalatability, poison or sting. The coloration is often quite beautiful despite its deadly warning.

Sanzo didn’t wake when Gojyo lay a hand on his chest. He was breathing, however, his chest moving slightly with every breath. It was as close as Gojyo had ever gotten to Sanzo for an extended period of time without being yelled at or hit with the fan.

“Stupid fucking monk,” Gojyo cursed, just for the hell of it, but did it quietly, in case their attackers were looking for them. He slid his fingers through Sanzo’s hair and felt bumps but nothing catastrophic. Further examination revealed that one of Sanzo’s arms was stretched out over his head at a weird-ish angle. Gojyo lifted the arm gently by the wrist and Sanzo moaned, though he still didn’t wake up. Gojyo laid Sanzo’s arm back down.

Then he looked down at the rest of Sanzo and cursed again. Even in the morning half-light he could see a dark blot seep-spreading across the lower half of Sanzo’s white robe.

“Dammit, dammit,” Gojyo whispered and found the opening to Sanzo’s robe and yanked it open. Sanzo wasn’t wearing his jeans or, in fact, any underwear. Gojyo hardly had time to give that fact the attention it deserved, however, because he could see a chunk of branch protruding from a jagged gash in Sanzo’s thigh. The wound was oozing with Sanzo’s pulse, soaking the splintered wood and smearing Sanzo’s lightly-haired, pale skin with angry red.

“Nnnn,” Sanzo breathed, still out.

“Nngh,” Gojyo moaned.

A mile or so away, Hakkai slept more soundly than he had in a long time, unaware that Gojyo could have really, really used his help. Goku was snoring happily as well. He might have been helpful, too, if only to haul Sanzo’s carcass up the hill.

Gojyo looked at Sanzo’s wound and his dirtied robe, then snuck a peek at Sanzo’s dick, curled against his uninjured thigh. Then he looked at his own shirt, washed yesterday and still somewhat clean-ish. With a sigh he shrugged off his jacket, then tore his undershirt into white strips. He folded one strip and took a deep breath.

He gripped the slippery chunk of wood and yanked it out of Sanzo’s thigh. Blood thickly ooze-spurted from the empty gash and Gojyo shoved the folded piece of T-shirt over it. Sanzo moaned and his eyelids snapped open, revealing angry irises that might have been vivid purple except it was still dark out, so instead they looked black.

Sanzo’s voice started out crackly but quickly turned loud and rough. “What the hell are you doing? Back off! Ouchshit!”

“Hold still, monk, hell! Tryin’ to stop the bleeding. And shut up unless you want our friends to hear ya.”

Some predators have an attraction to the scent of blood or the sound of cries of pain, simply because it means that the victim is wounded and is therefore an easy target. Sanzo and Gojyo had actually killed all their attackers but one and that unlucky assassin had been left at the top of the hill in a pool of his own blood, so they needn’t have worried. Still, they didn’t know that, so they worried.

“Back off,” Sanzo whispered. He glanced down at himself and noticed that he was sort of spread-eagled and naked below the waist, that Gojyo was flattening his hand on his bare thigh and that it hurt like hell. At least, though, he could make sure he wasn’t on display for any passing pervert to see. When he tried to use his right arm to shove Gojyo off, however, his arm didn’t work correctly. In fact, using it stabbed his entire body with pain dire enough to make him nauseous. Sanzo barely choked back a shriek. He let his arm drop to his side.

“I think your arm’s broke,” Gojyo told him.

“Hah. Hah. Hah,” Sanzo breathed, hoping he wouldn’t throw up. When he felt stable enough to not do so he tried, very carefully, to shift his left arm from underneath him. The left arm worked fine and did not make him want to shriek or vomit. So he used his left arm to yank the edge of his robe down to cover his flopped-out dick.

Gojyo wasn’t able to choke back his chuckle when he saw that.

“Shut up. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

“Dunno,” Gojyo said, easing some pressure off Sanzo’s wound and lifting the edge of his makeshift pad to see if it had stopped bleeding. It had slowed down but Gojyo wanted to give it another few seconds or so. He pressed again, a little harder than was probably required to stop the bleeding.

“Ow--nngh! What the fuck does that mean? Were you following me?” Sanzo would admit that his head was a little fuzzy from being knocked about, but still knew that Gojyo should never have been with him in the first place.

“Yeah, okay.” Gojyo lifted the blood-soaked pile of folded cloth and held it up for Sanzo to examine, a take a look at that see I’m helping your ass so get the hell off my back, asshole little gesture. Then he dropped it on the ground.

It was only then that Sanzo noticed that Gojyo was shirtless and a little blood-spattered. Sanzo wondered if the splatters were all Gojyo’s blood. He looked at the red-soaked square of cotton. He sighed. Gojyo was such an idiot and why was it his, Sanzo’s, fate to be ever saddled with idiots?

“Why were you following me?” he asked. He tried to keep his voice reasonable and holding only the barest hint of warning. Gojyo was being conditionally allowed to touch Sanzo somewhat intimately, but Sanzo didn’t want it to go to Gojyo’s head or anything.

“I.” Was just curious. Think you’re kind of interesting sometimes. Hate you. Like looking at you, what of it? “Just wanted to see where the hell you were going, monk.”

I was going out to jerk off in the woods in privacy, what of it? “That’s none of your-- hey! What the-- nnnngh!” Sanzo tried to reach out with his right arm and instantly regretted it. When the pain had subsided enough that he could think straight again he swatted at Gojyo with his good arm. The pervert was playing lift-and-spread or something with his legs.

“I gotta bandage this up, then we can get you back to Hakkai,” Gojyo told him. “Bend your damned knees so I can wrap your leg! I’m trying to be nice and help you out, here.”

Sanzo looked up the hill. His Smith and Wesson was probably lying somewhere along their downhill trail of destruction. He’d have to look for his gun, while climbing the steep hill. That would be difficult to do with an open wound.

He dropped his head back onto the ground and clamped his left hand over his eyes. He sighed and relaxed his legs. “Fine. Hurry up.”

“’Kay.” Gojyo inched forward between Sanzo’s thighs. He folded up another square and dabbed at the jagged, nasty-looking wound, brushing dirt from it. He should clean it, he knew, but they were close enough to town-- and someone who knew what he was doing (Hakkai)-- that he wasn’t too worried about it.

He brushed around Sanzo’s thigh a little more, anyway. Sanzo’s leg twitched in a reflexy-looking reaction, and Sanzo made some sort of groany noise under his hand. It didn’t sound like pain-noise, though Gojyo couldn’t be sure. Interesting.

“Hurry up,” Sanzo repeated.

“I got it!” Gojyo threaded a strip of cloth under Sanzo’s leg and around to the top, brushing Sanzo’s ass accidentally. Probably. Sanzo’s leg jerked again. Even more interesting.

Gojyo wondered if Sanzo had been in a hurry to get wherever he’d been going, or if he’d gone pantsless on purpose. He wondered how often Sanzo went around commando under his robe. He resolved in future to create opportunities to robe-check Sanzo.

Then he wondered when he’d gotten so interested in Sanzo’s ass. It was a nice ass, but come on. Gojyo criss-crossed the ends of one white cloth-strip over the folded square atop Sanzo’s seeping wound, then looped another around Sanzo’s thigh. He brushed his fingers over the strips, flattening them just under the curve of Sanzo’s ass-cheek, watching for a reaction from Sanzo. He watched the little muscle-twitches, the part of Sanzo’s lips.

A strike is an attack with an inanimate object or with a part of the body, intended to cause an effect upon an opponent or prey or to simply cause harm to the opponent or prey.

Gojyo slowly and sexily wound a couple more strips around Sanzo’s leg, hoping they would hold till they got back to town.

Sanzo was unaware of Gojyo’s somewhat prurient thought-process. He was trapped in his own sort-of misery as Gojyo’s fingers fumbled around close to his privates. Sanzo could picture those long-ass fingers in his mind-- fingers attached to a pervert, the kind of pervert who flaunted his sexuality for anyone to see or think about.

Sanzo felt more brushes at his thigh and lifted his hand to see what the fuck the pervert was doing. The pervert was leaning over Sanzo’s crotch, his fingers sliding over Sanzo’s skin, his long red hair loose and falling down to swing and tickle at Sanzo’s bare leg. Gojyo tied a soft knot and the sharp pain in Sanzo’s thigh seeped into a general dull ache a little higher up. Oh shit.

Sanzo’s dick twitched. Sanzo’s dick totally twitched under his robe and Gojyo totally saw it. It totally turned Gojyo on, big-time.

Ambush predators, or sit-and-wait predators, capture prey by stealth or cunning, not by speed or necessarily by strength.

Gojyo had two choices in that moment. He could (a) ignore it and pretend he hadn’t seen it, or (b) do something about it. Retreat or attack. Fuck that: he really only had one choice, because situations like this didn’t just sashay his way every day.

Gojyo didn’t do shit half-assed, either. He shoved his hand under the edge of the robe and squeezed Sanzo’s stiffening cock.

“You like it! Hah. Is it the pain or me that’s got you all hot, monk?”

“You-- So fucking dead-- Hah-- Hah--” Sanzo breathed. He foolishly clenched his fist and prepared a punishing right, then regretted it an instant later because he had to breathe a few more times or lose consciousness. Then he swung a clumsy left that Gojyo batted away from his white-toothed, grinning mug and gleeful, red eyes. And in the meantime Gojyo, the fucking pervert from hell, had yanked at Sanzo’s dick a few times until Sanzo was stimulated and hard despite the pain and Sanzo wanted to die or maybe kill Gojyo and then die.

“Embarrassed? Who’da thought. Oh, man,” Gojyo babbled, stroking Sanzo’s dick. Sanzo had a nice dick. It sure looked different all hard, but didn’t most of ‘em? And holy shit, Gojyo was probably like some kinda molester. Still, if Sanzo wasn’t hot for him then he, Gojyo, would have been dead already.

“Idiot, asshole--” Sanzo swung with another left and Gojyo caught his wrist and pinned it to the dirt. Sanzo tried to kick Gojyo with his good leg but he didn’t have any leverage and Gojyo was closing his eyes and slowing the pace of his yanking on Sanzo’s dick, was getting all teasing, slow and sexy, like Sanzo had sworn to himself he’d never really wanted to see.

“Didn’t I say I was tryin’ to help you?” Gojyo whispered. He’d be lucky to get out of this without being Makai-Tenjou’d. Maybe charm overload would help; Gojyo had plenty of charm. “Wouldn’t hurt you to let someone else help you out now and then…”

“Didn’t ask for your help. Nnn,” Sanzo said as Gojyo swiped his thumb over the head of his cock, up under the skin there, spreading slick-sticky fluid over Sanzo’s aching flesh in slow circles. Sanzo found the entire experience to be rather fuzzy and dreamlike. Later he could blame it on his head-injury, but he was damned if it didn’t feel good right now. Besides: he’d come out here to jerk off, anyway, and maybe, at some time in the past, he’d jerked off while thinking about red hair and sexy eyes. If he had, that was his business and nobody needed to know about it.

Their last youkai assassin, the one lying at the top of the hill in a pool of his own blood, finally gave up the ghost about then. It didn’t really matter because both Sanzo and Gojyo had forgotten their attackers in favor of paying attention to more interesting developments. Gojyo’s dick was hard and throbbing inside his tight jeans, getting tighter by the second, but he was having too much fun jerking Sanzo off-- or more accurately, giving Sanzo a nice, sexy hand-job-- to do anything for himself.

Sometimes the predator locks its jaws around the muzzle or mouth of the victim and holds it until the prey has suffocated.

Gojyo kept hold of Sanzo’s left wrist and dragged it up along the ground so he could slide up Sanzo’s body, hover over him face-to-face and capture his sharp hah-hahs of breath from an inch away. He tried to get closer but Sanzo wasn’t having that intimacy. He grunted and turned his head so that Gojyo had to breathe Sanzo’s ear instead.

Sanzo’s breath was coming in threes, ha-ha-ha and his hips were doing a little roll-snap thing in time with Gojyo’s jerky rhythm. He was all flushed and sexy and irresistible. Gojyo figured it might be safe to release Sanzo’s hand, so he did.

He’d been freed and yet he didn’t really care. Sanzo slapped his palm over his own face again, covering his vulnerability. Gojyo’s hand on his dick felt good: there it was, truthful and humiliating. And when he wanted Gojyo to speed it up Gojyo did without being asked to-- he was an idiot but he was good with his hands. The blood-aching burn thickened and built and tensed in Sanzo’s balls and his belly-- Gojyo had unzipped his jeans and was slapping his own meat, fast and hard, breathing hot ahs into Sanzo’s shoulder--

Gotta hurry and come before Sanzo, Gojyo was thinking. “Nnnn,” he moaned onto Sanzo.

Too late: Sanzo tensed and came with a final ha--…ha-ha, breath into his own palm and sticky come all over Gojyo’s wrist and his own thighs.

“Shit,” Gojyo muttered while Sanzo breathed. Too late: he let go his own dick to prop himself up so he could shake the cramps out of his Sanzo’s-dick-hand.

“What are you doing, idiot?” came Sanzo’s low voice. Gojyo felt fingers digging into his hair and then a yank that dragged his head up and nearly brought tears to his eyes. “Finish it.”

“You’re welcome,” Gojyo muttered, looking down into Sanzo’s eyes, finally purple when seen from two inches away and in the newly-arrived dawn sunlight. He shivered at little at the intensity of Sanzo’s gaze. He tried to dislodge Sanzo’s hand in his hair with come-covered fingers. “You’re done, right? Let go.”

Predatory animals often use their usual methods of attacking prey to inflict or to threaten grievous injury to their own predators.

“No.” Sanzo jerk-yanked Gojyo’s hair again as he said it. “Finish. Or do you want to die?”

Gojyo looked confused; he was an idiot even in sexual matters, when it came right down to it. Did he not understand mutual vulnerability, here? Still, Sanzo was sure Gojyo heard the true threat underlying his words: I may not have my gun, but I will again. And I still have a sutra, dumbass. Still, Sanzo noticed that the hard-on sticking out of Gojyo’s jeans hadn’t abated a damned bit. Sanzo yanked Gojyo’s hair again. “Ow! I won’t tell anyone, Sanzo. Swear.”

“I know that,” Sanzo said. And stared.

“Hah,” Gojyo coughed nervously. Sanzo was a scary, deadly asshole, sometimes. The coloration is often quite beautiful despite its deadly warning. Gojyo was so turned on it wasn’t even funny. He waggled his cramped fingers again before wrapping them around his own dick and giving it a test-yank or two that felt fucking amazing. “Ah…”

“Too close. Back off, moron.” Sanzo let go of Gojyo’s hair, then grabbed his shoulder and shoved.

“Yeah,” Gojyo said and rocked back until he was on his knees between Sanzo’s legs, jerking himself off under Sanzo’s intent gaze. Damn if the danger and the watching didn’t make every stroke better than the last, better than it’d ever been before without Sanzo watching. Gojyo gave himself a few hard squeezes and his whole body shuddered and Sanzo sighed and stared. Gojyo stared back: Sanzo’s legs were still spread and there were splatters of come all over Gojyo’s carefully-wound bandages. Damn, it was good to see.

Sanzo had already come but his belly still twinged with pleasant thrums as he watched Gojyo work himself. Gojyo made a fine show of it, that was for sure. Gojyo was too good for his own good, and if that wasn’t the stupidest thought ever thought, then Sanzo didn’t know what was. He wondered if the red growing in Gojyo’s cheeks was embarrassment or arousal. Probably some of both. Still, he didn’t care what Gojyo got out of it: Sanzo wasn’t going to be the only one with his own come on his thighs.

“Hurry it up. And don’t come on me,” Sanzo muttered, finally hauling himself to a sitting position without using his right arm and yanking his robes down over his crotch. He dug his lighter and smokes out of his sleeve, being careful not to jostle his broken arm, and lit a cigarette.

Gojyo, meanwhile, was totally pretending that it was Sanzo jerking him off. When Sanzo let loose his first exhale with an orgasmic sigh, Gojyo smelled the smoke and shot his load, moaning.

Sanzo said hn and watched while Gojyo breathed and tugged the last few tremors of climax out of his tingling dick, and while he wiped his hand and tucked and zipped everything back into his jeans. Then Sanzo just looked away and smoked like nothing special had happened. Sanzo'd liked watching, though. Gojyo just knew.

Still, the atmosphere was all silent and thick and awkward between them as Gojyo dug a cigarette out of his jacket and lit it. God, he wanted to fuck Sanzo. Now he was gonna be consumed by Sanzo, poisonous and bitchy and totally not worth it, and shit, that sucked. Didn't mean he wouldn't try at some point, anyway. He watched as Sanzo, wincing and clumsy, maneuvered himself to his feet. Gojyo grabbed his jacket off the ground and stood as well.

“Oi, Sanzo,” Gojyo said when he couldn’t take the silence any longer. “I said I wouldn’t tell. I mean it. If-- ah, it happens ever. You know.”

Sanzo looked up at the hill. He didn’t answer. He hadn’t yet decided where he and Gojyo stood.

Some prey organisms adopt evolutionary antipredator adaptations to increase their chances of survival. If a signal is not honest, however, predators can quickly learn to ignore the adaptations. True predation results in certain death.

END. Thanks for reading! Concrit & comments are always loved and appreciated.

Did I screw the pooch on the POV or did it work?

TGIF, Nom, and Five Question Meme

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 03:17:58 GMT

TGIF! I had a lonesome but relaxing day at work in which I did not have a headache, yo-- I've had a headache pretty much every other day this week except today, woot! And now I'm being blissfully bad. sharpeslass and I have been on a strict diet for over a month and it's been working... but I was craving. I went to Whole ~~Paycheck~~ Foods Market after work and got half the deli-- veggie sushi, tofu rice-wrap rolls with peanut sauce, fake chik'n curry salad, and some Mediterranean goodies: hummus, baba ghanouj, feta, pita, tabouli, and dolmades, NOM! It's healthy-ish stuff, but the way I've been scarfing it down is not diet-friendly. Comfort food for vegetarians, mmmmm!

And in other news, a Five Question Meme From whymzycal!

"Leave me a comment saying 'SOCK IT TO ME, BABY' (or something similar). I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better. Update your journal with the answers to the questions. Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions." You may also comment without being grilled. :)

1. Who is your most hated character in all of fiction?

OMG I DON’T KNOW and I am ashamed. This one is really tough. I know the character is there in my brain screaming DUH!? at me, but I can’t grasp their name. As I mentioned to Whymzy, I really hated Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. But I also hated Wickham in Pride & Prejudice and Willoughby in Sense & Sensibility-- the two-timing, teenager-raping, money-grubbing bastards. The French sewing-lady in A Tale of Two Cities (the only Dickens book I like). Pretty much everyone in every other Dickens book. Kyp Durron and Qui Xux in the Star Wars extended universe. Kiiilllllll…..

2. What made you decide to learn Japanese?

Because I’m a nerd. I have been into anime since the early 90s and manga more recently, but when I ~~became obsessed~~ fell in love with Howl’s Moving Castle in 2005 I started buying doujinshi.. and realized that I couldn’t read any of them and none of them were translated. So I decided to learn the language if I could. Since I started, though, I’ve been to Japan and it was awesome, being in another country and being able to speak to people (badly, perhaps) in their own language and reading a lot of the signs-- and now I’d like to continue to learn just for the sake of learning the language. Nihongo ga suki desu! (I love Japanese!)

3. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Physically or not-physically? Physically, I’d give myself a teensy bit more T&A (I’m tall, but have not much of T or A). Not physically, I’d like to go back in time and convince my younger, party-girl self that staying in college the first time around would have been a great idea. I could have gotten a bit of an earlier start on my career and life-path. As it was, I graduated college when I was 30.

4. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you pick?

The U.S., still. And hmmm… of all the places I’ve been, I’d say Sedona, Arizona. It’s still close-ish to a city, but it’s warm and absolutely gorgeous. There’s all sorts of mysticism surrounding Sedona and I don’t necessarily believe it, but the couple of weekends I’ve spent there have been some of the most relaxing in my life.

5. Are you a fan of giant robots?

No, I’m not! They’re kind of boring. As a fan of anime, I’ve seen my share of giant robots, too. I guess Giant Robo himself is OK but I really don’t care about him all that much. Oh, and the giant robot from the… not-Disney giant robot movie with the kid… uh, he was OK, but still, not my thing. I’m sorry, robots!

Happy Friday, y'all!

Song Title Meme

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:59:01 GMT

Comment on this post saying you want a letter - I'll give you one, then post to your journal your five favorite songs that begin with that letter - along with downloads if you like. Or music videos...whatever works. You can also comment without being hit with a letter, never fear!

Given to me by rroselavy: the letter G!

Wow, at first it was hard finding G songs from my favorite bands, but after flipping through my CDs I rounded up a few! I'm sure there are more and I'll remember them tomorrow or next week or something.

Green Man (XTC). It's no secret that I'm a fanatic for XTC (the band), so I had to include an XTC song and it was just a tossup between about four of them. I chose this one 'cause I figured I'd listen to it before the others, except maybe Generals and Majors. It's so... world-music/ren-faire sounding, as opposed to most of their stuff, which I'd describe as ex-punk quirky pastoral British pop with clever lyrics (which sharpeslass would describe as "tuneless").

Guilty Beauty Love is Tamaki's song from an Ouran High School Host Club drama CD somewhere. I adore this tune, and it's sooo very Tamaki. I have versions by voice actors from both Japanese and English, but be warned that they were ripped from Youtube and are not bad but are not "car-quality" audio: Guilty Beauty Love (Japanese) (Mamoru Minoru sp?) and Guilty Beauty Love (English). (A note: I thought it was awesome that Vic Mignogna, the English-language voice-actor for Tamaki, took the Japanese song and had it translated and then recorded it. What fan service!)

Girlfriend (Matthew Sweet): I had the hugest crush on Matthew Sweet ever in the 90s and still adore several of his albums from beginning to end. This was his first single, and I remember being thrilled that the music video had anime in it. I stood in line to meet Matthew Sweet at a record store once; it was one of the only times I've ever been star-struck when meeting an idol of mine. I'd planned to look extremely cute and tell him how I worked in a comic store and etc. etc. and instead I stood there and gaped until my friend Shannon talked to him for me and had him sign something. ::sigh::

Golden Years (David Bowie): I have a soft spot for vintage glitter-rock and disco. Think Velvet Goldmine-type stuff. This is an awesome Bowie song, one of my faves and IMHO, the only good part of the movie "A Knight's Tale" is when everyone dances to this song wearing medieval garb. Except for maybe the part with Paul Bettany being naked.

Gold Dust Woman (Fleetwood Mac): Fleetwood Mac was one of my first favorite bands when I discovered music in those pre-teen years. They had a lot of good "G" songs, actually, but I settled on this one 'cause it's awesomely good, Stevie Nicks at her best, and Lindsey Buckingham's guitar is always worth listening to, and the Mick Fleetwood drum beat in this one-- SEXAH.

YAY and BOO!

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:19:56 GMT

YAY: I has finished my fic for 7thnight_smut. It's at this moment being cleared of plotholes and egregious grammatical errors by my beta, sharpeslass. I shall not divulge the final word-count but I'll say it's the longest thing I've written in the Saiyuki fandom. I sure hope my recipient doesn't hate it-- one never knows. Still, I'm just glad it's done. ::phew::

BOO: Apparently Jamba Juice's ad agency has totally ripped off artist/cartoonist David Rees with their latest ad campaign. (Found on urbaniak's journal-- http://urbaniak.livejournal.com/208277.html; warning on that link for language.) I guess some young ad executive was dying for ideas and decided that this Internet cartoonist would be obscure enough to rip off completely. It really ticks me off that this happens so often in our money-and-fame-driven society, though I am shocked it happens in our instantaneous-blogging Internet culture. I mean, maybe there's not much new under the sun. And the original cartoonist was using art from the public domain. But copying someone's stuff exactly? Slimy, I says. (Says the once-hopeful-ad-exec and writer. I changed my mind on careers but I still respect good advertising.)

Update; some gross bugness

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:47:14 GMT

1. Apparently, I have no wax, infection, spiders, aliens, unborn twins, etc. in my ear. The doctor saw almost nothing except perhaps a "little fluid behind," i.e, possibly allergies or congestion? And she saw the same thing in the other ear. So why does the right ear tickle and thump at me so? Argh. I am to take something "D" (either Allegra D or Mucinex D) and use nosedrops for two weeks, and if it's not better, then I get referred to an ENT specialist.

Although she laughed when I told her about my friends' "spider" theories, she said that when working in a free clinic in an indigent area, once, she saw a cockroach in someone's ear. Eww.

1.5. Speaking of bugs, I'm getting the bug-man out yet AGAIN, though we just had him out a few weeks ago. Darn this desert in July! I swear, I don't want to see one more ant or one more giant freakin' water roach in my bathroom. I was squealing like a baby piglet the other night at the giant bug in our airlock (the area between our garage and family room). Ewww!

2. 5000 words on my 7thnight_smut story so far. And my awesome, handy-dandy, live-in beta, sharpeslass, cleared the first 3000 words or so for continuation. Yay!

3. I have like three Dreamwidth invite codes, if anyone wants them. I set up an account there (jedishampoo there also), but I have no intention of posting in places outside LJ for now.

Things Various

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:49:03 GMT

Question: What do you do if you have a fansubbed .avi burned onto DVD (of a non-Region-1-available-anime, I'm a good fan) that shoves all the subtitles down to the bottom of the TV screen and half off the screen when you play it? I really want to watch Gintama but I can't read the fansubs because they are cut off. We've tried changing the ratio aspect on the DVD player but it did not help. Gintama has not been released in the US, has it?

Ahhhh! Holy Moley, I have 3,000 words on my 7thnight_smut story done. And it's barely started. Yeeks, I fear it shall be a long one-- I'm not usually one for writing the over-10,000-word fic, though there are exceptions. Perhaps I shall cheat on the plotty bits. "A few days later, after these paraphrased things happened, Character A said this." Fear my sloppiness and laziness, O Recipient! Heehee. I'm kidding. Mostly. ;)

I have a strange ear thing going on. For a couple of weeks now I've felt like something was tickling the inside of my right ear. And I've been especially deaf, lately, driving sharpeslass nuts saying "What? WHUT?" after every phrase she utters. Last night it was driving me particularly insane, tickling and making thumping noises twice as fast as my pulse (else I would have thought it was my own pulse). It doesn't hurt. Any ideas? I suppose I should go to the doctor. :(

Happy Sunday, y'all!

Fic: In Between, Gojyo/Sanzo, NSFW

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:15:17 GMT

Title: In Between
Author: jedishampoo
Pairing: Gojyo/Sanzo
Rating: NC-l7
Summary: PWP. After the crisis but before the return of routine.
Author’s Notes: Set after the end of Reload, but no real spoilers. Belated birthday gift for caeseria, who is the awesomest ever!

For caeseria's prompt of 53 bj action with a soft and needy Sanzo with pants down. :) Love you sweetie! Whether you wanted it or not, I tried to write them in a more gooey manner than I usually would; not so sure gooey is my forte but goodness, I loves Gojyo/Sanzo. Thanks to sharpeslass for the beta and marking my sentence fragments and for the moral support as I wibbled. About 2400 words.

* * *

For the first time since they’d put him there, Sanzo had gotten out of bed on his own. And he’d done even more than that: he’d gotten out of bed and staggered out the front door and then he’d disappeared. That had been three or four hours earlier. He’d acted like he’d wanted to be alone, so Gojyo went looking for him.

Mount Nowhere was a big place but Sanzo couldn’t move too quickly, beat-all-to-hell like he was. Gojyo found him soon enough, robeless and flat on his back in a clearing some little ways from their cabin in the woods. His eyes were closed like he was passed out, or maybe meditating. His hair was a bit messy and damp, and he had his hands clasped on his chest like he was laid out for his own funeral. The grass was flat in a little outline around him.

He was breathing. Obviously not dead, then. Gojyo stood over him for a few moments, staring, wondering what the hell was going on in Sanzo’s head at any given moment, and trying to decide whether or not it was a good time to give Sanzo hell for taking off in the first place. Sanzo certainly deserved a little hell, after what he’d pulled and what they’d pulled his ass out of.

At the moment Sanzo looked like he didn’t have a care in the world, was laying there all tranced-out. He didn’t open his eyes or even move while Gojyo lurked over him, blowing smoke down toward his face. Like everything Gojyo tried to send Sanzo’s way, the smoke was caught in the breeze and blown off-course before it could reach its target.

That same breeze caught some of Gojyo’s hair that had escaped its elastic band, sending it to tickle his neck. Gojyo shoved his cigarette between his lips and reached up to tuck his hair back in, procrastinating while he thought of all the things he wanted to say to Sanzo.

Maybe there wasn’t really anything to say. The four of them were in one of those weird in-between times, between the crisis and the routine. It was one of those times when Hakkai smiled for real a lot more, when Goku ate his food like a normal human and didn’t fight Gojyo for the last barbecued pork-bun or whatever, when Sanzo let himself heal and glared at them all without really meaning it.

You ever thought about saying thanks, asshole?

“You’re awfully relaxed for someone laying out here all alone and helpless,” Gojyo said, finally.

“I’m not worried about you killing me,” Sanzo said, lips barely moving. Eyes still shut, he sat up and dug his hands into the grass behind him. He winced as he leaned his weight onto his arms. He wasn’t actively bleeding anymore, but there were still blood-stains on his jeans. His bare arms were splotched blue and green and all the other colors of the bruise rainbow.

We see each other in all our pathetic states. Sanzo’d already found plenty of hell on his own. Gojyo sighed and dropped his smoke. He ground it into the grass and dirt under his boot. “Not when you’re beat all to hell, anyway. It’d hardly be worth my time.”

Sanzo only hmphed at Gojyo’s wit, seeming weirdly mellow and un-Sanzo-ish, and then Gojyo remembered they were living in-between, hovering and waiting for real life to return. Sanzo hung his head back on his shoulders and rolled it, cracking his neck. Gojyo watched the uncaring slide of Sanzo’s shoulders, the blond hair turned white-gold in the fading sunlight, bright as it ruffled against the black silk of his sleeveless shirt. Shining and dark all in one package, that was Sanzo. Gojyo eyed Sanzo’s jawline and his eyelashes spread out against his cheeks.

Too bad that so pretty a package came with such a nasty temperament-- nasty most of the time, anyway. Even to Gojyo. Especially to Gojyo, sometimes. This was despite any kinda thing they mighta had before... And there was a question: where did the two of them stand? Where did Gojyo want them to stand?

Gojyo bent down a little and curled his fingers around the back of Sanzo’s neck, finding it as warm as it’d looked and cool at the same time from being on the ground. Another perfect metaphor thingum for Sanzo.

Sanzo allowed it, leaned his head back into Gojyo’s palm. Maybe they were in the same place they’d been before. They all changed and yet never seemed to; maybe the changes were small but felt big at the time? Like, Gojyo still wanted Sanzo, and he should have been pissed off but wasn’t.

Gojyo found himself unconsciously playing with Sanzo’s soft hair, sifting little bits of grass from it, thinking about the skin beneath the black silk. Gojyo knew how he felt. So how did Sanzo feel?

“You look like shit,” Gojyo said, easing into their old brand of foreplay.

“Are you trying to kill me with obvious?”

More sweet nothings. “No,” Gojyo said, and then he kneeled and pushed Sanzo’s head into the ground with the force of his lips. And again Sanzo allowed it, just lay down with his arms at his sides and even kissed Gojyo back, opening his mouth wide, lazily sweeping his tongue along the nearly violent jabs of Gojyo’s kiss. Sanzo was so crazy-slow, so insistent in his laziness, that Gojyo was forced to slow down himself to match Sanzo’s rhythm.

There was Sanzo doing what he did, deflecting Gojyo’s questions that weren’t really and being pretty fucking amazing as always. Sanzo’s mouth was dry ‘cause he’d been lying around breathing the mountain air for however-many-three-hours. Gojyo wet it for him, slowly, since that’s how Sanzo wanted it.

After a few embarrassingly satisfying minutes of making out, Gojyo lay his head on the ground next to Sanzo’s ear. He slid his fingers along Sanzo’s torso, top to bottom, exploring the once-familiar territory of his shoulders where the silk met the skin, then down, toying with the waist-edge of his shirt. Gojyo slipped his fingers underneath, letting the small hairs around Sanzo’s navel tickle his palm. He felt the lazy twitch of muscles under his hand.

“So you need help getting back to the cabin or what?” Gojyo mumbled, nibbling on Sanzo’s earlobe.

“Tch,” Sanzo muttered, and rolled his head to the side to allow Gojyo’s lips and tongue freer access to this neck. “Screw you.”

“I take it that means ‘yes,’” Gojyo said, sucking on the warm skin under Sanzo’s ear, tongue tasting the sweet, irregular and aroused thump of Sanzo’s pulse just under his skin. Sanzo was up for it, all right. Say what you would about their routine working relationship, their bodies had never cared; they worked together just fine. More than fine.

Gojyo’s cock was already nice and hard and getting harder from feeling Sanzo’s body under his fingers. His hand was smashed between them and getting sweaty. He moaned and shoved his crotch into Sanzo’s hip.

“Ow,” Sanzo mumbled. Then, “dammit.”

Gojyo stopped what he was doing and raised himself to his knees a little, lifting some of his weight off of Sanzo.

“I s’pose if you’re hurtin’ that bad, then a reunion fuck is out of the question?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Sanzo said, but didn’t elaborate. Gojyo read it as, yeah, Sanzo was hurting, and didn’t want Gojyo to know it.

But his face was all flushed pink and pretty and he had a tell-tale bulge in his jeans at the crotch. It was kinda irresistible, Sanzo all soft and needy like this. Gojyo had the sudden urge to be really, really nice. He could get whatever he needed later, when things were a bit more even.

Later, later, everything could wait for later when real life started up again. Gojyo pushed his fingers into Sanzo’s belly, ten points of pressure into soft skin he’d discovered on a body that was all lean and tight elsewhere, then roughly unfastened the fly of Sanzo’s jeans and yanked at the hem.

“Bet you wouldn’t say no to a blowjob,” Gojyo smirked down at him.

No, Sanzo wouldn’t. He didn’t say a word, only arched his hips to allow Gojyo to slither his jeans down past his knees. Half-naked and with his cock hard against his stomach Sanzo was beautiful, like he always was, like something worth being nice to.

Gojyo rubbed the dry, hard skin of Sanzo’s cock, watched his half-shirted chest moving with his breaths, and wanted to say something that wouldn’t sound stupid. The best he could come up with was “how’s that?” And Sanzo didn’t answer, just breathed tiny moans that Gojyo had to strain to hear and watched Gojyo with half-closed eyes under fluttering lashes.

The harsh breathing was a good answer, anyway. The sound and the look in Sanzo’s eyes jolted right to Gojyo’s dick and then he remembered it would have to be later, because he sure as hell didn’t feel like stitching Sanzo back up again.

Fine, fine, blowjob as promised. Gojyo was a goddamned saint, really. He got down to business, licked the head of Sanzo’s cock, the skin all nice and hot in the cool air and hard for Gojyo. Gojyo the saint. He slipped his lips around the end, slowly, slowly, and Sanzo’s thighs twitched and Gojyo held them down, pushing the heels of his palms into Sanzo’s skin where his hips met his waist. Goddamn but Sanzo was skinny, and he had bruises all along in there, too, the bruise-rainbow even more pretty up close. He tasted clean, though.

“You have a bath?” he asked from around Sanzo’s cock.

“What the fuck are you trying to say?” Sanzo mumbled.

“Mmph, mph,” Gojyo mumbled back. It didn’t matter. It felt like it’d been forever since he’d done this, since they’d done this; a few months and a thousand or so dead people ago? But here was everyone, alive, and Sanzo was here and shivering under Gojyo’s saintly fingers. He gripped the base of Sanzo’s cock in a curl and sucked it in a little further, fluttering the back of his tongue against the head.

“Ah, shit,” Sanzo coughed, and grabbed Gojyo’s hair.

“Ow,” it was Gojyo’s turn to say.

“Hnph,” Sanzo said, then did something he’d never done before: he slid a hand along Gojyo’s neck to where his hair was gathered and pulled off the tie. Gojyo’s hair fell free and curtained over his face and Sanzo’s fingers curled about his ears, urgent fingers, all rough from handling a pistol.

Sexy. Gojyo moaned around Sanzo’s cock and geeze his dick hurt, all throbbing against the inside of his jeans. He eased back, pulling his lips off Sanzo with a slurp. He was about to ask if it would be okay for him to hump Sanzo’s boot but instead he pfted a little breath against Sanzo’s spit-slicked cock. A return gift for the small touch.

“How’s that?” he whispered, looking up. Then he grinned a smidge. It was obvious that Sanzo wanted to say something nasty or curl his lip but his eyes were desperate. Yeah, it’d been a long time but Gojyo remembered that look, the quivering-on-the-edge Sanzo.

“You--” Sanzo managed to choke out.

“Fine, fine,” Gojyo interrupted and swallowed Sanzo’s cock again, inhaling deeply around the musky-clean skin. Sanzo’s hips rose like they’d been pulled by Gojyo’s breath, and Gojyo could feel under his lips that it wouldn’t take long and he wanted to smile but his mouth was full of cock. A couple more deep breaths and Sanzo’s hip-muscles clenched under Gojyo’s palms and Sanzo’s fingers nearly pulled his ear off and Sanzo came, spurting into Gojyo’s mouth.

Gojyo almost wasn’t ready but he just managed to not-choke it down. He wiped his stinging, streaming eyes and let Sanzo’s semi-limp cock slide from his mouth.

“Kaff,” he said.

“Hn,” Sanzo breathed. He released Gojyo’s ear and covered his face with both hands, elbows pointing at the sky.

Gojyo hovered on his hands and knees and glared at Sanzo for ignoring him after that fantastic, free blow-job. He thought about humping Sanzo’s boot without permission.

You ever thought about saying thanks, asshole?

“Hey--” he began.

“Hn,” Sanzo said from under his fingers, and this time it sounded more like a laugh. “Goddamn, I hurt. The reunion fuck is definitely out of the question.”

Sanzo, in between. Gojyo couldn’t stop his own grin. “Later?”

“... Yeah.”

...when real life started up again. Gojyo gave up hope of humping Sanzo’s leg and rolled onto his back in the grass. Next to him, Sanzo pulled up his jeans. The Mount Nowhere sky above them was more cloudy red-orange than blue. The air was cool when Gojyo twisted his hair off his sweaty neck.

“I s’pose we’ll be back on the road, soon,” Gojyo said after a while, when his body had calmed a little and his dick no longer felt like it wanted to jump out of his pants.

“Mumble mumble,” Sanzo said.

“Now what the fuck are you trying to say?” Gojyo laughed. He tensed when he heard the click of Sanzo’s pistol, but relaxed again when he realized it was just being checked, not being aimed. Where the hell had Sanzo put it? Gojyo certainly hadn’t felt it in Sanzo’s jeans. It was probably best not to ask. “You’re mumbling, monk. ‘S’Okay. My blowjobs have that effect on people.”

Sanzo snorted. “I said, a day or two. Are you deaf as well as stupid?”

“Fuck you,” Gojyo said. The sky was darkening. Hakkai and Goku had wanted to leave Sanzo alone but even they’d be getting worried soon. Who knew when that Ukoku dude might be back? Gojyo pushed himself up to sit and dug his smokes and lighter out of his jacket. He lit a smoke. Behind him he heard the repeated, failed snick of Sanzo’s lighter. Gojyo passed his lighter over his shoulder without looking and felt Sanzo nab it out of his fingers. He smoked, and wondered if Sanzo realized how much he needed them. All of them.

“Here,” he heard Sanzo say, and turned to see Sanzo holding the lighter out to him. His gesture was almost polite. When Gojyo took the lighter Sanzo leaned back on his hands again, and winced again before he could catch himself.

“You’re gonna need help getting back, ain’t you?” Gojyo said, not really a question.

“Don’t be stupid,” Sanzo said.

Which, again, meant yes, please. Gojyo was a true saint. For as long as he needed to be.

END.

Thanks for reading! Comments, concrit, snark, all is welcomed and loved and appreciated.

Random Belated Updates As Per Usual

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:58:25 GMT

I really am behind and I apologize if I've missed something important on your journals, my friends! But I think the PMS was just bad last week and I'm only now coming out of the blahs. :)

Shoot, I had a three-day weekend and like 10 fics I wanted/needed to write, but only got 188 words written ("A Strength" for the 15-minute "58" challenge at saiyuki_time). Now, I've gotten some very kind comments and inksheddings made an excellent argument for brevity when necessary recently, but I'm used to having to force myself to stop writing! I would whine that quitting smoking has made me write less except I've actually completed two pieces since I went off the nicotine. So it's just me and my blah.

I went to Indiana to visit mom a couple of weeks ago. Mom is doing great! I drove her to a couple of her radiation appointments and got to meet her doctor and everything. And I met lots of women with no hair waiting for their radiation appointments and I was glad both because (a) those gals are the survivors, yay! and (b) my mom does not have to have chemotherapy and go through what they went through. Oh, and I shopped. A LOT. I bought three or four pair of shoes and three dresses and probably a dozen tops and a couple pairs of croppy pants and stuff for sharpeslass ('cause I'm a GOOD friend) and OMG, I love Von Maur so much. I wish they had one here. An interest-free charge, and their stuff is about Nordstrom-level nice without the Nordstrom hassle (driving downtown, finding parking, etc).

sharpeslass and I watched some nine episodes of Antique Bakery-- the anime. What a strange little show. The MELODRAMA! The PASTRIES! The GOOFINESS! And yet, it's somehow also manages to be touching at times. I read that they made a Jdrama of it, and removed all the gay. Wha? It seems the gay is the point.

EDIT: OH, and I forgot to mention that I've read Azumanga Daioh 1, 3 and 4 and I loved them utterly. They cracked me the hell up, so much so that I was laughing out loud on the plane. God, I love the teachers. And Chiyo-chan. And Sakaki with the Iriomote Cat.

Other than that, it's really freakin' hot outside. I guess that would be LAS VEGAS IN JULY, but still.

Hope everyone is well. :)

Fic: Ambigrams and Inversions, OHSHC, for minidrag33

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:21:33 GMT

Title: Ambigrams and Inversions (Ouran High School Host Club)
Author: jedishampoo
Pairing: Kyouya/Haruhi (Tamaki/Haruhi & other implied pairing in the background)
Rating: NC-l7; hetsmut, language, misogyny
Summary: Set five years post-series: Kyouya thinks he knows what he wants; Haruhi believes she knows what he needs. About 7000 words.
Author’s Notes: A gift for figure-painter and fanfic-reader extraordinaire minidrag33, from my gift meme a while back, finally finished last night. T, I hope you enjoy it! It is not my OTP and was therefore tough to write, but a little bird told me you liked this pairing. And I relished the chance to create in this adorable fandom. Though please be warned: I left a lot of sweetness at the door. Thank you to my dear sharpeslass for the beta!

It really wasn’t a bad party, despite being held at an all-but-public university. Kyouya had tried the truffle canapés and they were passable. Suzuki had obviously paid through the nose for those and the heart-shaped melons, and for the carver who patiently scooped out the heart-shaped, pink chunks and etched guests’ sweethearts’ initials on them as if they were souvenirs and not something to be gobbled up moments later by the cooing and giggling recipients.

Suzuki was Jyouto University’s chancellor’s son, and this was his birthday party. The board of Jyouto University was hoping to add to its burgeoning medical school. They wanted to add a state-of-the-art hospital, as a matter of fact. Thus Kyouya’s reason for attending the party in question. He rarely socialized anymore, when it wasn’t required. The path he’d chosen made his high-school days of running the host club seem halcyon in hindsight. He and Tamaki hadn’t been working; they’d been playing.

Kyouya popped a piece of melon inscribed with the characters for his own name into his mouth. It was surprisingly sweet and juicy for a novelty-melon. He’d already greeted the host-- yes, his father was very well; no, he hadn’t brought his girlfriend; no, he didn’t need to meet any other cute girls. Yes, he would like a personally-escorted tour of the campus tomorrow to see the proposed site, this lowly one thanks you for your kindness.

Once the war of humble speech was over and the melon was only a sweet memory on his tongue, Kyouya went looking for a drink. Suzuki’s bar made an even better impression than his appetizers: the wine was so good that Kyouya drained two glasses before switching to some excellent sake. He was contemplating the pleasures of switching back again versus a sure headache in the morning when he spotted a familiar set of shoulders. They were attached to a familiar head-tilt, and a familiar air of bored female proletarian.

And there, Kyouya felt his own breath catch for a moment as he looked around automatically for someone who could not be here. It was annoying, having emotions that were predictable and yet inescapable.

He could pretend he hadn’t seen her. It would be unacceptably cowardly, but talking to her would make his evening a little more interesting than he’d planned. Still, it was better to be overly interested than a coward. He walked up behind her.

“All this social-climbing is sure to help your career, Fujioka-san,” he said as he neared. He raised his glass when she turned to stare at him.

“Kyouya-sen-- Kyouya! Hi!” Haruhi’s giant brown eyes were as expressive as ever. They evidenced clear surprise, then genuine pleasure, then suspicion. “Wait. Why so formal?”

“To be polite in front of your friends, of course, Haruhi,” Kyouya told her, gesturing with an elegant pinky toward the pair of trendily-dressed girls staring at him from over Haruhi’s shoulders. She’d been chatting with them when he’d approached.

“Except it wasn’t that polite. This is Kurakawa Saniko, and Shinatoro Mariko,” Haruhi said, waving first at a plainish girl with brown hair in a blue dress, and then a slightly prettier girl with lighter brown hair, also in a blue dress. Haruhi was in her signature pink. “This is Ootori Kyouya.”

The prettier of the -Kos widened her eyes at him. “As in, the Ootori Group?”

Haruhi blew out a pained-sounding sigh while Kyouya nodded at them politely. “Why yes, as a matter of fact.”

The girl shot Haruhi a hard and significant stare. Haruhi rolled her eyes and turned her back on her friends. “Hey. Give me a few minutes to catch up, and I’ll find you later.”

“Oh, fine. Nice to meet you, Ootori-san.” The girls walked off amid a cloud of giggling and a few backwards glances at Haruhi.

“All my social climbing is by accident. One of the drawbacks of being a Suou fiancée,” Haruhi told him, and drained the glass of fruity-looking liquid she’d been holding. She stared at the syrupy dregs of as if grumpy with them for being gone. “I was invited. I didn’t want to come, but my friends begged me to bring them because they thought rich guys would be here. And you had to show up and prove them right. It’s annoying. How are you?”

“I’m well. It’s good to see you,” Kyouya told her. Haruhi looked very fine. She’d let her hair grow a little longer than she’d kept it in high school, and a bit of natural curl flipped at the bottoms. And was that lip-gloss? Being a-- female-- college student suited her, as much as much as her pink dress suited her. It was a fine-quality dress, well-fitted. Kyouya suspected Tamaki’s hand in its choosing. He was suddenly more pleased than pained at her familiar presence, and he smiled at her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked with her wide-eyed, direct stare, the one he’d always found rather interesting in a person who professed such boredom with most of the people she met. “Are you still at the Ouran college?

“Of course. Do you wonder why I’m slumming? Let’s get another drink and I’ll tell you,” Kyouya said, directing her towards the bar with two gentle fingers on her elbow.

“I go here, you know,” she mumbled, but walked with him.

“Suzuki’s father wishes to build a new hospital to make Jyouto University more attractive to medical faculty and students.” Kyouya paused to signal the bartender for two glasses of the red wine, the better-than-expected wine that he was planning to drink quite a lot of after all. “My father’s board of directors may be interested in an involvement. Jyouto could use the improvement, and the Ootori Group can always use the money.”

“It’s a good school,” Haruhi said, still defensive. She held up her wineglass and swirled the red within it, looking unimpressed by the fine film that coated the glass’s sides. She probably missed her idiotic, fruity cocktail.

“An excellent school for pre-law, yes. Only “good” for medicine. It would be a children’s hospital, you know.”

“That sounds worthy, at least.” Haruhi took a sip of her wine, and then raised her expressive eyes at him in a bit of awe. “This is really good. Even I can tell.”

“Your tastes have improved.”

“Another side-effect of being a Suou fiancée.” Her face turned suddenly bleak and she opened her mouth, then shut it, then opened it again, then shut it.

“Yes?”

“Kyouya. Tamaki’s in America.”

“I know.” Kyouya tipped the contents of his wine-glass into his mouth, a healthier gulp than such a fine vintage deserved. It went down smoothly nonetheless.

“Learning languages in Manta Ray. California.”

“Spanish and English in Monterey. There’s a very good aquarium there.”

“I’ve heard that,” she said. Probably she’d been invited multiple times, as had Kyouya-- Tamaki holding out the aquarium as a typically foolish lure. “I miss him.”

Of course she did. Kyouya found himself becoming slightly irritated with her. “Why didn’t you go? He’s only going to be there six months; you could have easily won a scholarship for the overseas semester.”

Haruhi sighed, stared at her glass, then began gulping it almost as deeply as Kyouya was doing with his own. She made a tiny wine-face at the sudden quantity. “It was too late to apply. If I’d gone, Tamaki would have had to pay for my travel and tuition. And he would have. But I’d like to do some things on my own.”

Kyouya signaled the bartender for a couple more glasses. “I received a lengthy e-mail from him when he arrived in America. It was dripping with electronic despondency.”

“Huh. He was all smiles when he left. I was annoyed. And he keeps sending me perky, encouraging notes, telling me to do well on my tests.”

“I’m sure he was-- and is-- trying very hard.” Kyouya wondered if Haruhi was going through denial. Again. In his head he could divine the situation he’d not been present for; watch with his mind’s eye as Tamaki smiled at Haruhi at the airport as he said goodbye, despair warring with his desire to make sure Haruhi had her independence. To make sure she was happy, being selfishly common.

Going against his own nature so as not to crowd her, lest she run away. Did she even appreciate that?

“Crap,” Haruhi sighed.

Kyouya handed her another glass of wine to replace the empty she held. “And here I’d have thought you’d have grown out of sulking, Haruhi. Don’t slump your shoulders. It’s unattractive and makes you look shorter.”

“I am short,” she said, but straightened instantly. Her eyes went wide in that way they had. And slightly accusing. “You never said anything before.”

“Well it didn’t matter when you were pretending to be a boy,”

Haruhi half-glared at him for a moment or two out of the corners of her eyes. “You drink a lot more than I’d have thought you would.”

And there it began, the way it always began: when they weren’t talking about Tamaki, the one thing they had in common, they poked at each other, looking for a reaction, or information, or whatever it was that made each others’ company most bearable. Interesting. Even exciting.

Kyouya pushed his glasses up to sit just so on the bridge of his nose. “Ah. But you see, this is training. Every good businessman should learn, early on, how to drink and to drink well. Have you said hello to your host?”

“I haven’t talked to him yet.”

“How rude. He was only a little drunk when I spoke with him.”

Haruhi looked around. “Mariko and Saniko have got him. Wow.”

Kyouya let his gaze follow the direction of hers, and he saw the –Kos, blue and lighter blue, on either side of the sweaty, pink-cheeked Suzuki. They were finding great amusement in whatever they were doing, which appeared to be holding Suzuki upright. “They really do have him.”

“Tag-team. Those tramps. Hee,” Haruhi giggled uncharacteristically. Her eyes widened in embarrassment and she put three fingers over her lips in a gesture that was just feminine enough to be attractive without being too silly. Kyouya had always known what Tamaki saw in her. “Wow. This wine is really good.”

Kyouya took her elbow in his fingers again. “Why don’t we sit down?”

“Good idea.” Haruhi let him direct her through the crowd to a couch along the wall. There was a little table in front of the couch; she grinned at him when he took her glass of wine and visibly extended his pinky as he set it on the table. Her grin was so cute that he hardly felt silly doing it.

Sitting side-by-side on the couch, backs to the wall, they had a good view of the entire room. In the few minutes they’d been chatting, the party had become a bit more crowded and rowdy as everyone sampled the liquor and then went back for more. And more.

Kyouya spotted a couple of young men he hadn’t seen on his first circuit through the room, mentally comparing them to some photos on file in his head. Connections of connections. He dug his palm pilot out of his pocket and scratched a couple of notes across the glossy screen. If he was in the mood, later, he’d probably introduce himself.

When he looked back at Haruhi, her expression could not quite be classified under eye-roll, but definitely counted as wry. “What? I told you this was a business engagement for me.”

“Nothing.” She looked down at her chest and fiddled with some of the pink flowers at the bodice of her dress. “You and Tamaki go to the same school, but I never see you, anymore.”

“I see him. When he is in Japan, at least.” He and Tamaki didn’t share any classes, but sometimes they met for dinner or even smallish parties on the rare weekends Tamaki wasn’t off visiting Haruhi.

“I see him, too. He flirts with all the girls in my apartment building.” Still she fiddled. Something on the front of her dress was fascinating her, though Kyouya couldn’t quite see what it was. Perhaps she was stymied at the slight cleavage the well-cut dress had given her? At least her chest was no longer concave.

Kyouya mentally bit his tongue to keep from mentioning that fact aloud. “Are you jealous?”

“No.” She stood a little shakily, chin still planted on her chest. She grabbed her glass of wine. “Hey, excuse me for a minute, would you? I need to find the restroom. And maybe I should get some water.”

“Go powder your nose,” Kyouya told her. “I’ll get the water.”

While she was gone Kyouya fetched a couple bottles of water as well as another glass of the red wine-- he might as well make full use of it while he was there. Then he ran into one of the fellows he’d seen earlier, one Fujishiya Tezo, second son of those Fujishiyas, and he took just a moment to introduce himself.

It was a few minutes before he returned to the couch and discovered that Haruhi hadn’t yet found her way back. He sat and took alternate sips of wine and water and heard a small commotion in the already-noisy room.

“Fujioka! You cutie. I heard you dumped your boyfriend,” a loud, lusty voice slurred.

“That’s stupid. Let me go.” Haruhi sounded calm but annoyed.

Kyouya stood and found a little scene playing out only a few steps away. The other young gentleman he’d tried to identify in his own brain earlier-- one of the Gakuiin family of Kyoto, he believed-- had Haruhi in a sort of half-friendly-hug, half-attempt to rub himself all over her. The grin plastered on his shiny face was wide and sloppy.

“Betcha I’m better in the sack than he was. Smart girl like you, you know it, right? You look hot tonight, you know? Cutie,” he repeated.

“Not hardly,” Haruhi said, and looked as if she was about to do something unthinkable with her refilled glass of excellent wine. Kyouya stood and called over to her.

“Haruhi. Am I to I take it this overly familiar behavior is unwelcome?”

“Yes. But I can take care of it.”

Kyouya ignored her. “You heard her, I believe?” he said to the enthusiastic suitor-groper.

The guy watched Kyouya’s approach somewhat blearily. “New date? Sorry, Fujioka-san, didn’t know.” He released Haruhi and stepped back for a quick bow. “I’m Gakuiin.”

“Ootori,” Kyouya said with a lovely smile, and nodded. He dropped his arm across Haruhi’s shoulders. Why waste time explaining that he was not her date, and that he was in fact rescuing him from Haruhi’s unfeminine wrath? Let Gakuiin think that he, Kyouya, was sleeping with her. Improving one’s status in the eyes of one’s colleagues wasn’t all about business acumen. Life and work were the same thing, after all.

“Oh, hell.” Gakuiin bowed and backed away. “Excuse me.”

“Thanks,” Haruhi told him as they sat back on the couch. “But I could have gotten rid of him.”

“Used to it, I suppose?” Kyouya asked. The room was warm; he was warm. His arm tingled. That had been fun. Was fun. Overly interesting, as always. “I see you haven’t lost your touch.”

“I don’t do anything, I swear. It’s just, in college, they’re a lot less polite. And more drunk.” As if rejecting that lifestyle, Haruhi pushed away her wine and picked up the untouched bottle of water.

“Remember what I said about good businessmen? The poor boys are just learning now that they’ll hardly have any other joy in their puny lives.”

“Sounds like the Shadow King is bitter.” Kyouya was watching the crowd but he could feel Haruhi’s gaze turned up to stare at him. It would be that wide-eyed, direct stare, too. It was too bad he’d never slept with her before she’d become off-limits. It might have been fun.

Life and work, fun and business, exploring one’s options. Only Tamaki had ever given Kyouya something for Kyouya. Her boyfriend. Her fun. Truly, she’d always been off-limits for Kyouya.

“No, I’m not at all.” Kyouya finished off his wine and decided that he actually felt pretty good. Bitterness belonged to everyone else; puny lives, boring lives, lonely lives. “Are you and Tamaki sleeping together?”

She jerked a little as if startled, but ignored the question. “You miss Tamaki, don’t you?”

“Not really.”

“You can take your arm off me, now.”

Ah. No wonder he’d been so warm and tingly; he was still snuggling on her, caressing her bare shoulder at the straps of her dress. Her warm skin made a nice contrast on his fingertips to the little nubbed fabric flowers stitched into the strap. He released her, but it was too late. He couldn’t get the question or the idea out of his head: Haruhi and Tamaki, fucking like bunnies.

“Well, are you?”

“Geez, Kyouya. Why do you care?”

“I suppose that answers my question.” Prurience? He always sought information. Some information was just more interesting than other information.

“Nnnnn...” she moaned. She was sulking again, but caught him looking sideways at her and straightened against the couch. He noticed that she hadn’t asked him to move his thigh from where it rubbed against the side of hers. “We’ve been engaged for two years…”

“And will be until you finish law school?”

“No, probably undergrad at least. He’s got the company to come back to. It’s a long time, no matter how you look at it.”

Kyouya adjusted his glasses again and turned to look directly at her. It was hot in the room and she had a slight shine of sweat at her temples and below her ears. Interesting. Exciting. “I wasn’t making any judgments about what you two do when you’re alone. Though you should be careful, of course.”

“We are. I am. Argh! Why are you making me talk about this?” Haruhi tilted her head back and gulped down half the water in her bottle. Her lack of an Adam’s apple was completely evident when her neck was all stretched out like that, slender and feminine. How had anyone, for an instant, believed that Haruhi was a boy? Kyouya believed that most people were stupid, but usually people’s gonads knew more than their brains.

“I’m not. I just asked a question.”

Haruhi re-capped her bottled water and looked directly at him again, wide eyes deliberately un-calculating. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

“Yes, for now.” Kyouya turned to examine a loud noise in the corner of the room-- Haruhi’s tramp friends and their host, screeching in laughter. Suzuki was not long for the party, but then the booze and food and beautiful people had all been provided; parties like this could continue long after their hosts had passed out or found more private pursuits.

“For now. You’re so cynical. What’s she like?”

“She’s suitable in every way that matters.” Sachie was rich, educated, and well-bred. She bored him sexually, but his father liked her father. What more was there to say? He wasn’t in the mood to talk about Sachie. He hadn’t decided if he was going to marry her. Why should he marry or even date if he didn’t wish to?

“Do you love her?”

“No. Not really.”

“That’s too bad.” Haruhi sounded sad. Kyouya glanced at her and she was staring down again, this time at her fingers tapping in her lap rather than at her own cleavage. One, two, threefourfive, six, seven, eightnineten pale-pink, painted, short fingernails. The fingernails of an honor student. Fingers that were slim and efficient and that knew all sorts of things. Very basic things that he did not.

Whatever occupied her thoughts in those moments was interrupted by the commotion, which had moved over to stand directly in front of them. Kyouya didn’t have to shift his head at all to see the two blue dresses and a black suit in the middle, sweaty face and sloppy grin intact.

“Ha- Ha- Haruhi,” Plainer–Ko stutter-giggled over the general background giggling of the other two drunks. “We’re going to help Suzuki-chan here back to his room. If we miss you tonight, I’ll stop by tomorrow, ‘k?

“Go on,” Haruhi waved the water-bottle at them. She nodded politely at Suzuki. “I’ll probably leave soon.”

“You’re not join-joining us, Fujioka-san?” Suzuki mumbled. One of his legs wobbled and the other -Ko caught him, giggling.

“Next time, Suzu-chi,” Prettier-Ko said, and patted him on the shoulder. “Bye, Haruhi.”

“Later.” Haruhi downed the rest of her water and shook the empty bottle at Kyouya. “I think I’m done here for the night.”

“Next time?” Kyouya asked, finger poised on the bridge of his glasses in a significant pause.

Haruhi rolled her eyes and mumbled something that might have been “men,” and may have been mumbled in a disgusted tone. Surely she wasn’t lumping him in with the rest the idiot male population?

When she didn’t respond further, Kyouya gave his glasses one last twitch. “Have you learned martial arts yet, or shall I at least walk you back to your dormitory?”

“Apartment.” Haruhi looked up at him tilting her head just the slightest bit, narrowing her eyes. “Are you drunk? Your face is a little flushed.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“No,” Haruhi said. Definitive, blunt, as if the idea was ridiculous. She had somehow become possible, real again, as so few people ever had, yet he was no threat whatsoever. “I was just asking.”

“No, I’m not drunk.” Kyouya had very good locks on his psyche. A few drinks weren’t going to break them.

“I’m not, either, but I’m a little tipsy. Uh. I’m glad I ran into you tonight. Will you walk back with me?”

“Of course.” They stood. Kyouya didn’t touch her until they passed Gakuiin, whereupon he celebrated the occasion by slinging his forearm over her shoulder again. Gakuiin nodded at them with downcast eyes when they passed.

“You can be so funny sometimes. When you want to, Kyouya.”

He was funny. She had slightly sticky shoulders, soft skin and that tight dress, and he was funny.

Still, she didn’t ask him to remove his arm as they left the Suzuki mansion and walked out into the comfortable fall night. It was not too warm, not too cool, merely perfect for a Saturday-at-university evening out. They were both quiet as they walked the tree-lined sidewalks. The soft sound of music from other parties blended to form a background accompaniment.

“My apartment is only a couple blocks away,” Haruhi said, breaking the silence. She grinned up at Kyouya. She was so oblivious to her own feminine power, the strength of her giant, gleaming eyes, her slightly parted lips. Kyouya wondered who’d started it: her, or Tamaki? Had all the flirting with her dorm-mates made her say, touch me if you like?

Why hadn’t she gone to America? Surely she’d not always been that selfish of her own time and means.

“All right,” Kyouya said.

“Is your girlfriend pretty? Tamaki says he’s never met her.”

“She’s exceptionally pretty.” A cool breeze ruffled Haruhi’s wispy hair over his bare wrist. “A little boring.”

“You should find someone who’s more exciting to you, then. One thing I’ll say for Tamaki is that he’s never, ever boring.”

“Hmm.” Did Haruhi even know how close her candor came to the heart, sometimes? How close she’d always come whenever she chose to examine him, to make him most bearable to her? Except that once: you won’t do it, she’d said. Oh, wouldn’t he have? He hadn’t meant to, no, but anything had been possible in those days. Because they’d known nothing.

She turned up the walkway of a large, bricked building, and they climbed the steps to its wood-and-glass doors. Kyouya looked up: the building’s architecture had arches and nooks, some bit of style over function. Decent-looking student housing, he could report to his father.

Haruhi didn’t step out of the circle of his arm, didn’t turn and say, well this is it, I guess, G’night! She just tapped a code into the keypad set into the brick next to the door. It clicked open. “Do you want to see?” she asked.

“Why not?”

Did she even have a clue how suggestive that was? Did she know the sensual tilt of her own chin, or the way she’d bumped closer into him every three or four steps? Did she know how easy it would be to break his best friend’s heart when he wasn’t there to walk her home himself? Kyouya slid his arm from her shoulder to hold the door open for her.

“Down the hall. I’m glad I’m on the first floor. The elevators are really old.”

She walked, he followed. Haruhi stopped in front of a door that looked like all the others except for the number on the tiny, bronze plate nailed into its center. Another code punched into a keypad, another click. Another threshold without the expected coy goodnights. Kyouya crossed it behind her.

Haruhi slapped the wall inside and a light blinked on to illuminate a small stove. They stood in a kitchenette. A tiny table and two chairs were shoved against one wall. A partially-open door led off into a darkened room.

“You did say apartments,” Kyouya murmured. Not dormitories. “Not bad.”

“Another side-effect of being a Suou fiancée. Or perk, I guess I should say. It’s all mine.” Haruhi put her hands on her hips and looked about the kitchenette, turning her upper body slowly from side to side as if stretching.

“The benefit of privacy?”

“You could say that.” She stared at him, her eyes an unwavering gleam in the half-dark. “The kitchen lights are burned out, though.”

Déjà vu. Kyouya wordlessly took hold of her shoulders and turned her, then shoved gently but firmly until her back was pressed against the wall next to the light-switch. She didn’t resist or say a word, just stared up at him.

“So. Have you considered cheating on my friend?”

“No, why should I? I love him. He’s great in bed, too. Uh. Perfect.”

“Hmm.” Kyouya shoved his lips against hers and kissed her. When she didn’t protest or push him away, only clenched his shoulders and kissed him back, he pressed more closely and slid his tongue between her parted lips. He’d been trying to be rough but she was so casual and unresisting that he slowed down and took his time. She would. She would. She would totally break Tamaki’s heart, and not know how she did it--

Kyouya kissed her until his heart was thumping in his ears and under her fingertips at his jaw. He pulled away an inch or two to look at her. Her eyes were closed, her lips wet and shining to match the sweat-sheen of her skin, her chest moving up and down visibly with her breaths. Kyouya was more breathless himself than he’d intended to be.

“Is he?” he whispered, pressing forward slightly with his hips.

“Yes,” she said, her warm breath puffing against his face. Her hips moved forward, back, forth, outpacing him. The knobbly flowers on her dress rubbed his thighs through the thin fabric of his light suit, scratching uneven lines onto his tender skin. “Um. Hot. Do you want to know how?”

“N-- No.” Maybe. With every word and every hitch of her breath and her hips the blood rushed more furiously under his skin, tightening his belly and making him feel light-headed, less in control.

No. He knew what he was doing. Testing Haruhi. To shut her up he bent over until he could push his tongue into the soft skin just under her jawline.

Too easy, she was too easy. She released his jaw and laid her palms against his sides under his jacket. Not pushing him away, just touching, the very tips of her fingers lightly exploring his ribs.

“Are you sure about-- hah!” Kyouya felt Haruhi’s gasp when he slid one hand into the front of her dress. There was not a lot there but the soft flesh under his fingers was all her, no padding, nothing unnatural, there had never been anything unnatural about her. She spoke again, her almost normally-blunt tone softened to a whisper. “Do you want to-- I mean, did you really, then?”

“Does it matter?” It didn’t to him, not anymore. He wanted her now. Her nipple was hard against his palm, bits of her were digging into his thighs, and her skin tasted like sweat and good perfume. “None of us knew anything then.”

“It was so easy. Oh, wow!” Haruhi gasped again when he pressed his erection into her stomach, showing her how much he wanted her. “Um. Not in the kitchen.”

Kyouya yanked his hand out of her dress and backed off a step or two, shrugging off his suit-jacket as he did so. He watched Haruhi kick off her shoes and walk to the partially-open door. Just over the threshold she turned and looked back at him. For a moment there was a crease between her brows, a slight downturn in her lips, a glint of something unreadable in her eyes. Guilt?

Kyouya just watched her watching him. He loosened his tie. As if in decision, she straightened her shoulders. Ah, guilt overcome. Kyouya dropped his tie and jacket over the back of one of her kitchen-chairs.

Perhaps he was a little drunk, because his own guilt was minimal. Still, it was her job to say No, and she’d said Yes. Easy. He kissed her first and kicked off his shoes second, then toppled both of them onto the futon spread across the high, tatami-matted floor. Did she leave the damned thing out all day? When Tamaki visited, did they even bother to say hello before they stumbled in here and started grabbing each other everywhere at once?

“Ah!” Kyouya mumbled, realizing that being splayed on top of her slender little body and aching into her felt great, but that simply shoving his hand up her dress and between her thighs-- no matter how much she squirmed-- was not going to get the job done. It also displayed a lack of finesse. He almost didn’t care.

“Wait, swee-- Kyouya. Sit up for a second, would you?”

“Yes,” Kyouya mumbled and sat up, light-headed again. There was an order to this and he wasn’t following it. In the scant light from the door he could see a night-stand, and he removed his glasses and set them on it.

Then he propped himself on his hands over her. She was close enough that she was only a little blurry. He groped behind her for the fastening to her dress, and she arched her back to help as he unzipped her, pressing her thigh between his legs and rubbing it against his cock until it throbbed and ached, the protruding fabric flowers each an acute contact of their own on his hot skin.

“Ta-- Uh, Tamaki bought me this dress…” she said. Strangely, it sounded like a question. Guilt again?

“I know. Ah. I can tell,” Kyouya told her.

“Oh. Okay.” She sounded… relieved?

Kyouya hooked his index fingers under the straps of her dress and smoothed them down her arms, over her fingers, down her stomach. She was braless underneath. Slender, tender, all female. He’d never been deluded, not for a minute. She wriggled, helping him yank the pink dress down over her pale hips.

When she lay back and stretched out, mostly naked, she stared at the ceiling as if embarrassed, her eyes huge in the dark. She whispered something that sounded like heywhite. Hey why? Yay wine? A while?

Kyouya didn’t care. He leaned down to kiss her breastbone, and there was sweat and perfume there and her tiny breasts were adorable, not his, maybe, but adorable. He didn’t even unbutton his shirt, just pulled it over his head and kissed her again, losing thought in the feel of her warm, wet little mouth and tongue and her moans humming against his lips.

Her hands on his back were half-hesitant, half-sure, her little nails, one, two, threefourfive, six, seven, eightnineten of them digging into his shoulder-blades when he slid his palm down her belly and under the hem of her silky panties.

“Ah!” Haruhi gasped. “You always. Took care of us, too.”

“I suppose. Yes,” Kyouya said, wondering what she was talking about. She was so tight and wet around his finger. He curled it up inside her, felt her muscles clench everywhere she touched him.

“In your own way.”

“Mmm.” Why was she talking to him? Rationalization of some kind? He hooked her panties down over her ass and past her thighs. She did a little acrobatic knee-bend, kicking them away while he unbuttoned his pants to get them off before he came inside them instead of her. She clenched her knees against his ribs on either side and he loved how she didn’t stare at the ceiling like get on with it but grabbed his hips and rubbed his skin hard and screw it, having his pants at his knees was fine--

Haruhi was giggling. “You’re not wearing underwear.”

Still talking, too. “You have discovered my secret,” he said, and shoved her knees to her chest and shoved his cock inside and she was all slick and clenchy and not his and God, it had been too long since he’d been with someone who kept his dick hard and who didn’t make him want to fall asleep mid-fuck and who knew him.

Haruhi was gasping and he was gasping and he just rocked in and out and she was too tiny and too skinny and tight and perfect: Kyouya had gotten used to pretending that he was fucking other people. Yes, he’d wanted to, five years ago. He’d wanted to screw her into the mattress in Nekozawa’s guestroom and show her that she was a girl and he was not and that naivete and bravado were not her weapons but that the grip of her cunt was, and that she’d made his life more interesting and more difficult by being there.

“That’s… That’s…” she moaned, and he moaned back into her sweaty hair, breathing perfume that he’d not chosen for her but would have. Maybe he was grabbing her knees a little too hard as he pounded into her but they were slippery with sweat and he was going to lose his grip if he didn’t.

So he dug his toes into the bamboo mat for purchase and she yanked his hair with both hands, pulling his head up and staring right at him with her huge eyes and he shoved into her so hard and fast that his testicles slapped against her little ass and she pulled his hair harder and he gasp-laughed into her mouth. Pain for pain; it was only fair.

There was no way he could pretend she was anyone else. And he’d wanted to screw Tamaki’s mother, too, God, she’d looked just like him and fuck, he was going to come; every inch of him was stretched thin and throbbing, sensitive to the point of hurting, his gut and his balls tensed and tight, even his ears and lips as Haruhi gasped short, sharp ahs into them. It was terrible and exquisite to screw someone who couldn’t pretend to save her life. Couldn’t she just pretend she wasn’t enjoying it?

He let go one of her knees to jam his hand between them, down between her thighs where their mingled sweat stung a cut on his finger and there, her whole body jerked again.

“Ah!” Kyouya coughed, feeling every movement everywhere. Why didn’t she pretend she wasn’t enjoying it? The tiny world was her skin and his, and he almost didn’t know where he stood, where he was going. “So… do you-- ah-- love me?”

“Ungh-- N… No,” she moaned at him, high-pitched and tight like the rush of blood through his entire body--

“Ah. Hah, I’m--” he said, and his ass seized up and shot forward and over the edge, and his muscles went sluggish all at once but he managed to rock in a couple more thrusts. Better in than out, she was built for it… “I’m. Ah!”

In his mind’s eye he could see the picture even as he did and felt it, him poised above her for a few heart-stopping seconds before release; then the pounding of his blood resumed and flowed and he could breathe. Kyouya flopped down on top of her and shoved his face into the pillow while his body untwanged. He didn’t want to look at her. He felt her fingers, all ten of them, combing through his hair in slow strokes.

“I’m so sorry,” Haruhi whispered after a minute or so and kissed his forehead.

“Why are you sorry now?” Kyouya asked, idly, when he had breath and strength again to push himself up and off her. He rolled onto his back and arched his hips, pulling his pants up and fastening them over his sticky stomach. His shirt was somewhere around here. She’d failed the test, and he was breathless and his chest ached and he wanted to find his shirt.

“I’m sorry that I don’t love you,” Haruhi whispered from somewhere in the blurry dark behind him. “I’m sorry that you’re unhappy.”

“Hmm.” Kyouya found his glasses first and slid them on, listening to her steady breathing as it slowed. The room focused a little. He had to lean half-over her to grab his shirt from where it was crumpled above her head, white against the white sheets. She was staring at the ceiling but caught his eye when he glanced at her. “I can take care of myself, “ he told her.

“Yes,” she said, sounding frustratingly unconvinced.

Kyouya wished he’d brought a bottle of water with him. His throat was dry. Maybe Haruhi had one in her refrigerator. He crawled to the door and climbed out of the room.

The fridge was sparsely stocked with cheap, easy food. Common food. Was she determined to be selfishly common forever? At least she had a couple bottles of water. Kyouya grabbed one and unscrewed the top with a single, hard twist and guzzled half of it in one go. It was so cold that he soon had a tight headache to match the tightness under his breastbone.

The door creaked behind him and Haruhi climbed out. She scraped out the chair that didn’t have Kyouya’s jacket and tie draped over it and plopped down with a sigh. She’d scrambled into an old t-shirt and shorts and looked so like her old, comfortable self that Kyouya became unguarded for a moment.

“So now I have more than one secret to keep from Tamaki,” he said to her. But the droop and shine of her eyes was so pitying that his comfort edged into comfortable anger. “Though I do owe him enough to hurt him now if it protects him, ultimately.”

“I’ll tell him,” Haruhi said. She tapped her fingers on the table. “He won’t be completely… happy about it. But he’ll understand.”

Kyouya stared at her, unable to move for a moment. The comfortable anger edged into a much more uncomfortable uncertainty. “Understand that you have considered cheating on him?” he said, echoing the words he’d said to her earlier in this very room.

“No. I do love him,” Haruhi said in a low voice. She propped her elbow on the table and leaned her chin into her hand. “And he cares about you. So he’ll know.”

“Know what?” Uncertainty, suspicion; Kyouya found none of it comfortable. He waited for her answer.

“I’m sorry. I thought you’d know,” she said.

Kyouya stared at her for another moment or two or three or five. Her words earlier… Nearly everything she’d said. How had he been so blind? She'd pitied him. Guile from the guileless. He supposed someone in that relationship needed it. Absolute honesty at all times was dangerous. It was painful.

“Dammit,” he spat. He shoved his feet into his shoes and grabbed his jacket and tie and yanked open the door and stomped out.

“Kyouya-- wait!" Haruhi called behind him.

“Good night, Haruhi.” Another door, another click behind him.

He walked. The comfortable night was a little too hot after all. He wished he didn’t smell like her, he wished he didn’t know what her perfume tasted like, he wished he’d been a coward. Tomorrow, when Suzuki asked him in that humbly coy way that men had if he’d had a good night talking with Fujioka-san, Kyouya would smile in the same humbly coy way and say yes and he’d wish inside that he hadn’t. But life and business were too much the same thing.

He wished that he didn’t know that Tamaki would understand. Dammit.

***

End. Thank you for reading! Concrit, comments, all are appreciated very much.

* Note: Title from sharpeslass, thank you, dahling. It has something to do with two people looking at the same work/word and seeing completely different things in it. Awesome!

Brief Updates

Fri, 22 May 2009 17:57:04 GMT

1. Almost off for a weekend of poolside relaxin' at sharpeslass's parents' house. They cook really well, too. Sometimes too well; I'm on a diet, dammit. My Wii Fit is telling me that I am not losing enough weight. My "sexy jeans" did not want to fit this morning, also telling me that I'm not losing enough weight. Sigh. Don't tell me I have to do the celery-and-Diet-Sprite diet that made me so miserable when I was in my early 20s? Probably not happening. I was super-thin but super-cranky and hungry. ;)

2. I am soooo jealous of my fangirl sisters having fun at Anime North. ::sends hugs through kansouame and caeseria to you all, because I've hugged those two in person:: Have tons of fun, despite my jealousy!

3. If you want to, say good or bad things about me at the ANONYMOUS WRITING FEEDBACK MEME. Say whatever you want, and be truthful as you please-- I love concrit. I love flames. I love nice things. I put my name up a couple of days ago but hadn't yet put it in my journal. Or join in-- I can't hardly recognize but two or three names on there. Let me ~~say stupid things~~ squee at you anonymously.

My entry is halfway down on page 19, and I know I'm not doin' it right but the other way just seems too fraught with "comment in wrong place peril."

http://trivialaffair.livejournal.com/41152.html?page=19#comments

Have a great holiday weekend, all you in the US! The rest of you just have a plain old awesome weekend. :)

Cool Stuff For ME

Tue, 19 May 2009 16:15:37 GMT

If I'm not careful, I shall make this the Journal of Squee! Even after my bounty of last week, I have received a couple more absolutely cool things that I want to share.

First, the incomparable storymistress ladylotusmoon surprised me with an anime Ouran High School Host Club fic for my birthday! Awesome. It's Tamaki/Haruhi (worksafe) and very sweet and clever, incorporating some of the rose imagery that I loved so much from the anime, as well as a wonderfully IC and funny discussion between Tamaki and Kyouya that I could just see. Go read it-- it's called Red Japanese Rose.

Then, I received an amazing little painted warrior-ess from minidrag33, who does some really awesome painting of very small figures. There are pictures under the cut-- thankfully she takes better up-close pics than I do!

minidrag33 said the figure is "Finari," and here's one of her good photos, taken by the painter/gifter:

She's living in my antique printer's box; it's one of those wooden trays they used to use in the old days to hold the letters for printing, and I got it when I was a teenager to hold little things. It's proudly displayed by the stairway when people walk in our front door. So my girl is not tucked away, but is sitting next to some of my prized possessions, like the Occupied Japan figurines I inherited from my grandmother and that neat little antique brass-slipper ashtray you can see in my crappy, out-of-focus photo:

Isn't she adorable? Look at the detail! And I love the little grass stuff she's standing on, and her "I dare you" stare.

Thank you so much, everyone! If you are not careful, I shall SQUEE again at you.