Gensomaden Saiyuki Fan Fiction ❯ Diary of a Smutty Sanzo ❯ April 17th- Realization ( Chapter 1 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

“Are you sure you’re not the sun?”
She had asked me one day while touching my hair before I slapped it away, causing her to pout.
“My hair might be bright and golden, but you of all people should know that I’m not as warm.”
My gaze never even went to her as I said it, proving that I could be icy cold.
She still pouted.
I couldn’t see the expression; I didn’t have to. I knew this woman well enough and knew what sort of moods she’d get set into depending on what I, or anyone else, might say to her.
When she didn’t get her way, when she was losing to her grand plan, such as now, she sulked like a child.
“You used to be warm…to me.” Her voice softened, the scent of hope on the wind. “We used to be…”
This time I looked at her, a malicious smirk crossing my lips as I stubbed out a cigarette.
“Things change. Fires can’t burn forever, you know.”
I paused and added on for good measure. “Most of them, anyway. It wasn’t a mistake; it just never should have happened.”
I had meant to walk away at that point, but when men falter, so disappears their chance.
She grabbed my arm, fingers gripping tightly into my sleeve.
Shaking her off, as I wished to have done, only would have made things worse.
“Is it because you’re a priest?”
“It never was about that.” I replied too abruptly, too truthfully.
And there she went, pouting again, and damn if I shouldn’t have turned my head the other way. How annoying that face became after seeing it time and time again, pleading to me that it could all be worked out.
I remained cool, though she very well knew how easily I could turn on her. She could press those buttons, and she had several times in the past.
Eyes the color of a glassy sky gazed at me expectantly. As if she asked me to explain what it had been about.
Hell if I knew, I probably would have told her.
I didn’t know, though, and while it’d been no real secret that the only faith I had placed in my line of work was in that I would kill any demon bastard to cross my path, I seemed to hold an unfathomable lifeline which connected me to my ‘priesthood’.
“I know…sometimes things just don’t work out. They can’t be forced, I know that, but maybe we could just try-”
“-Then you should stop trying to force it.” I snapped and she recoiled, hurt.
For once, I didn’t feel a surge of guilt.
She had brought this upon herself, storming into my world, dragging along her companion, and had all but thrown herself upon me.
I had been skeptical and wary of them both- of the strange magic they had once held, and she and I bumped heads and locked horns more than once.
Somewhere along the line, anger and irritation had become something more…rage turned into fierce passion.
It made sense to expend that abundance of energy somehow if it meant I couldn’t murder the wretched woman.
As a high priest, I had renounced the act of sexual intercourse, though with all due respect, it had never been a personal goal of mine to hold such a title to begin with. That had been a bestowment of which my late master doted, and only as an honor to him did I accept.
The woman of my scorn finagled me somehow into her lustful traps.
We made love, several times over the course of a truly dysfunctional relationship.
And of course, as those which are woven with frayed edges, it began to unravel just as rapidly as it’d been pieced together…
She irritated me like no other.
Meddlesome, bratty, spoiled, and quite the attention-whore.
Her plights always seemed worse than what anyone else could have possibly been through.
Except myself, it would have been said. She found my master’s death the key element in winning me over, in getting into my head and unlocking the emotions I’d kept hidden.
Her actions, however, were so often contradictory to anything she ever spoke. A child trapped in the body of a woman.
I had given her much time, but patience never was one of my virtues.
She tried to change me when I preferred my solitude.
I collapsed.
I blew up.
I drove her away with my temper.
And still, she returned to me like an abused spouse who is determined to die by the hand of the one hurting them.
She could see it. The way I looked at someone else differed so much from the way I looked at her.
“You should tell her you care so much.”
No.
I shouldn’t.
If I never admitted to it, it wouldn’t be true.
And this one, with her opaque blue eyes, thick neck, long lips, and wide forehead…She would only hold it against me and this ‘other’.
“Sanzo, do you really-”
“-Lian, don’t.” I cut her off before she could continue to beg me.
Lian, the one I loved and loved to hate, went silent.
Pouting again.
The ‘other’ was her alleged best friend, one I could barely stand.
She had crashed upon us alongside Lian, and while she never afforded to be so forward as the brunette before me, her personality had still driven me up the wall.
A natural sort of beauty without over exaggeration, that young woman possessed such a strange, silly spirit, she wore such a ridiculously patient smile, even when on the inside we all knew she felt like screaming.
Maybe it had been the day she had broken down and shouted at the top of her lungs the anger she held inside…that I had realized she hadn’t been so different from myself, after all.
“Ayami is afraid of you.”
I knew that.
I abused that young woman.
I chided her, insulted her, and shouted at her.
To keep her away from me, to keep her out of my head where Lian had once managed to get into.
She’d look at me with fathomless almond eyes framed by black-chocolate hair, and those rose petal lips would begin to say something…and she would turn away and leave me alone, cowering.
Even now, in knowing that her childhood was riddled with pain, I wanted to push her…to hurt her and make her hate me.
Fear me.
“Ayami is an idiot.”
“So am I.”
I glanced down at Lian and said nothing, which was always better than openly agreeing.
Ayami had been through enough, her spirit broken too many times to count.
A whore by trade, fallen into a relationship with our demon slayer, Cho Hakkai, to no surprise. The pair had been attracted from the start, but it had taken so much for them to admit to their feelings for one another.
I had approved inwardly.
It had taken that woman’s soul to bring about the realization that his world had not ended the night his twin sister, his lover, had died.
So how could he love Ayami and then turn her away so harshly?
Of course, she was brash, and rude, and sometimes inconsiderate of others, though we all were…we all are.
He toyed with her emotions, making her wait while she tried to help him through a dark time, only to tell her that he had never loved her to begin with.
Really, it’d been a cruel lie. He’d loved her, but he’d been broken.
I should have taken advantage of the intermission, of the shattered heart he had caused Ayami. After all, I’d slowly changed how I treated her.
For a short time, I helped her, and tried to ease her pain.
Yet she cried for Hakkai…every single day for months…and then turned to the arms of someone else.
Not mine, but that hanyou.
He loved her, too. Truly. Better than Hakkai did, and took care of her better.
They were happy, even if I’d been furious that my own arms had been completely disregarded.
Yet who was I to get in the way of love? I watched like an overprotective older brother, and Ayami regarded me as such, though her fear of me still so evident…
Then one day my protectiveness didn’t reach her.
Sha Gojyo became jealous of her patched relationship with an ex-lover…and he hit her.
Not a swipe of a newspaper over the top of her head.
Not a friendly jab to the ribs with his elbow because they were horsing around.
He hit with his fist. Scared her. Made her cry. Bruised the very skin that he had undoubtedly worshipped when they made love.
I couldn’t stand that he, a former womanizer, had robbed Ayami of anything human that she had left inside.
He had changed so much for her. Dropped most of his vices all for her sake.
Then he ruined it the moment he set violent hands on her.
I wanted to murder him. I wanted to rip him apart limb by limb.
Ayami begged me not to hurt him.
She held a forgiving nature that I may never comprehend, a foolish tendency to have for one who had tortured her so…and yet…
“I think you love her.”
Lian smiled in a way that said she had completely lost me.
Maybe she hadn’t, but I’m not the sort to start a relationship out of pity’s sake.
I glared at her, despite the rightness of the statement.
“Ayami is like an annoying little sister.”
A lie- I hadn’t thought of Ayami as my sister for some time.
“An annoying little sister that you would do anything for just to get her to scream your name in bed.”
“That’s insane. And sick.” I muttered, crossing my arms.
“Tell her how you feel. She still respects you, Sanzo, and she needs someone who will treat her like-”
“-Like shit? Because that is how I treat her, Lian.”
I spat, cursing inwardly.
I wouldn’t be another to add insult to injury.
I had hurt Lian and it wasn’t a burden I cared to lay on Ayami as well.
Never mind that I had swore to never again care so deeply about another human being that I couldn’t bear to lose them…
The day that damned monkey came into my life that had gone out the window. I hadn’t known it just then, but I hated him for it; all the same, I don’t know what I’d have done or where I’d be if it hadn’t been for Son Goku.
He said I’m like the sun, too.
That no matter where I go, what wrong I’ve done, he’d be there to follow me around like the impish idiot he is.
Even so…
…Perhaps I owed him my life.
The way I care about the brat, though, is no less than the way a father might care for his son…the way my master had looked after me.
At times, it made me wonder if Goku and Ayami were cut from the same cloth. It was genetically impossible, I know, yet there remained many similarities between them.
Or maybe it was just the Aries in them which linked them in such ways…Not that I buy into all that zodiac mumbo jumbo.
Lian cleared her throat, reminding me that she still stood there.
“What? I’m not saying anymore on it, so just drop it.”
She shrugged.
“Fine. If you won’t let yourself have her, then let me have you. At the very least…”
I glared again but it doesn’t stop her.
“…At least you’d be keeping yourself away from the whore you truly desire.”
My hand nearly lost control; I keep myself steady from striking her at the insult toward the young woman who was supposed to be her friend. Lian’s sensitive body could react poorly even to the mildest of scuffles.
Lian smirked, patting my shoulder.
“I know I’m being a pain in the ass as usual, but what I said is true, isn’t it? Ayami is a whore, Sanzo…it’s her trade, after all.”
“Yes you are a pain in the ass.” I grumbled sourly around a second cigarette. “And trade or not, a friend doesn’t usually stoop to calling another friend by words like that. Even if it was true.”
“Ayami forgave Gojyo, you now. He made a mistake once, but are you so sure he won’t do it again? It doesn’t take much to plant a seed of jealousy and watch it grow.”
“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Lian?” I stared at her as menacingly as I could manage, biting down on the cig in my mouth.
She lifted her eyebrows as though insinuating she had no idea what I could mean by that. “Whatever. They’re taking time apart right now. Thought you’d like to know. Maybe it’d give you time to plan and…make a move.”
“…good for them. I’m fine where I am.”
I exhaled, watching smoke rise into a fine veil to cloud my vision.
I heard Lian sigh and she leaned against the rail of the veranda.
“You’re stubborn. You should take that chance, or else you might lose it altogether.”
“Enough!”
A half-wasted Marlboro tumbled from my lips, hitting the grass with a sizzle and I stomped on it.
Lian gazed to me, stunned, and I knew then I had her full attention.
“It’s none of your business and it’s none of my business. Ayami has asked nothing from me so I’m going to stay out of it. I’m a priest-”
“-not like you ever acted like one-”
“-a priest!” I couldn’t help yelling it that time. I had to convince myself of it, not just Lian.
For once, I’d wished, she would hear me and actually listen.
“I shouldn’t have those kind of relationships anyhow. Not again. What I feel is nobody else’s concern but my own.”
I didn’t deserve something so precious…
“Fine.”
Her blue eyes flashed at me, grey for a moment, and I watched her leave me alone, watched as she purposefully swayed her hips as enticingly as possible. A hidden desire to have me follow her through the door.
It’d have been her last offer to me only for a short while.
The house was bound to drive me mad, surprising that it hadn’t already with everyone living inside of it.
A gift from the Sanbutsushin for completing our mission, destroying Gyumaoh and retrieving what was rightfully mine.
Some gift. At times I really thought they meant to punish me, somehow.
My only sanctuary had been my office, where nobody else could enter unless with my explicit permission.
When on the brink of losing my mind, I would escape there, and that time, it seemed most welcoming.
Taking a back route, preferred to keep away from Lian, I found myself startled out of my anger.
Doe like eyes met mine in a surprised manner, our bodies having nearly collided as we turned the corner.
Ayami…
Her cheeks were tinged pink and stained with a salty wetness.
“Sanzo, you scared me.”
“I gathered.”
I could have kept walking. I should have.
Her red-rimmed eyes bothered me too much to leave.
“Is something wrong?”
She smiled to try and belie her appearance.
“What makes you ask that?”
My finger touched a stray tear and Ayami flinched under the minor contact.
Fury roiled through me at myself for having always been so rough; at Gojyo for scarring the security she had once had.
“You’ve been crying.”
It’d been a rarity, long ago, to see this woman shed tears. She’d used to hold it in so well, and lately, given her troubles, she seemed to always be crying.
Ayami shook her head, ashamed.
“It’s nothing. Going to your office?”
“Yeah.”
“Ah. I’d…hold off on that for at least an hour. Wear a Hazmat Suit, too, when you do go in. I’m sure there are things you’d rather not touch without one.”
She left me confused, though certain I’d discover her meaning.
After she walked away, my stomach dropped.
My office? Stay away?
Why would Ayami have been to my office to be able to tell me that in the first place?
Unless there had been an issue she wanted to see me about…or had that been wishful thinking?
Continuing on my way, I came to a window which gave me a direct view of my ‘sanctuary’.
At first I couldn’t see a damned thing that could be so upsetting, but then a small motion caught my eye on the far side of the room.
From my desk…
Who the hell?
Moving around to a closer window provided me with a vision I would rather have never seen.
The obvious reason for Ayami’s tears.
Lying on her back upon the surface of my workspace was an unfamiliar woman, her long dress pushed up over her stomach. She had her legs drawn up and spread, her head back in pleasure, lips drawn into a smile.
Between her thighs moved the face of a red haired kappa, his hands molesting the rest of her body.
I couldn’t see what he did in detail, yet I didn’t have to in order to understand it. Somehow I doubted she’d swallowed an earring and he was trying to fish it out with his mouth on the other end.
Keeping a mental note to burn my desk, I couldn’t decide what to be more repulsed by:
Gojyo’s escapades on my desk, or the idea that he had hurt Ayami once again.
They were taking time apart, maybe, but she hadn’t so much as set foot in town to take on cliental as far as I knew.
“Bastard!” I growled, feeling the anger rushing to my temples, pulsating there as I slammed a hand against the outer wall.
I tore my eyes away as he moved on to fucking the woman.
A vulgar thing to admit, but it was true- he had no qualms of where or how he was doing this. It wasn’t love making in the least.
Entering the back door to the house which opened into the hallway, I spotted Ayami seated on the floor outside of her bedroom.
“Why are you sitting out here?”
She didn’t look up.
“Goku is taking his tests in there that Hakkai gave him. He says he likes it in there because it’s brighter and helps him think…I didn’t know where else to go.”
She could be quirky to a fault, sometimes.
“What about Lian’s room?”
“She’s asleep. Hakkai is grading papers. Gojyo…”
Her voice broke and in an instant, without thought, I pulled her to her feet.
“I saw, despite your advanced warning- which I plan on heeding to the fullest extent later on. We’ll wait in my room.”
She tensed beneath my hands but didn’t protest, following me.
When the door shut us inside of my room, I told her to sit, have some coffee, and we’d both brood in silence.
Once again she didn’t argue.
“You’re being uncharacteristically generous, Sanzo.”
“Am I?” Better to behave as though I were oblivious. I played the ‘Hakkai’ card, so to speak.
Ayami stared into the blackness of her coffee, seemingly reluctant to drink it.
I recalled her expression when I’d bent over her shoulder to murmur close to her ear that I hadn’t poisoned it.
She’d jumped nearly a mile out of her seat and then wrung her fingers together.
“Good to know but I didn’t think you poisoned it. You’ve had lots of opportunities… I only said what I said because just about any other day, you would have given me a strained look and left me sitting in the hallway.”
I arched my brows at her, sipping at my coffee.
“Thanks…” she finished softly, looking down again.
“Whatever.”
The coffee tasted like shit- I must have forgotten to change the filter. Nevertheless, Ayami hadn’t said a word of it and drank it down as if nothing were wrong.
Maybe I’d get pissed off if she tried to point it out to me…
“Sanzo?”
“Hn?” I was brooding over my day old paper, pointlessly checking to see if my horoscope had come true for today yet or if it was all bullshit after all.
“Am I…do you think…that I’m a whore?”
“What?”
I couldn’t have looked as shocked as I felt to hear her ask me that.
“I mean, I know…that I was, my old job and all. I meant now… do you still think that? Going through Hakkai; then Gojyo, after doing what I used to be doing…am I whore?”
I regained my composure, settling back into my chair.
To other people it would be a no-brainer. Harlot actions plus two sexual relationships, not to mention she used to constantly point out that if she were still in the business, she’d definitely make work out of whatever attractive man passed us by.
Yet we, on the inside, knew her better than that.
She’d been sold into that business, enslaved by it- while we had inadvertently rescued her from it after a time.
Ayami was really no more a whore than I could be considered.
“So long as you don’t touch Goku, I don’t have a problem with it.”
“Don’t be sick, I’m not a child molester.” She snapped at me, frowning back down at her empty mug.
Granted Goku surpassed the age of twenty-one not long ago, seeing him as a true adult would never sink in until he really acted as one. His five hundred years beneath Mt. Gogyou had left him clinging to a childhood he should have had.
“Why do you do this?”
I spoke before I could catch myself.
Ayami placed her almond eyes on me again. For a moment, I’m lost.
“Do what?”
I pushed away from the table.
“Assume that you are something that nobody sees you as. Forget Hakkai- he’s a trouble to himself enough as it is. Forget Gojyo; he’s hurt you too much, and more.”
She smiled sadly.
“Indeed. I thought you might say that. I’ve been thinking…that I’d move away from here.”
My heart constricted and held there.
She couldn’t…
“Where to?” I remained as vaguely interested as possible.
“A flat I had found in Mi’tou last time we were there.”
Mi’tou…a town that lay nearly two hundred miles south of us.
“Last time we were there? That was at least a month ago.”
“I gave the landlord a down payment…he said he’d hold it for me until next month unless I send and tell him I’ve changed my mind.” Her fingers drummed the mug between her palms.
I searched for the right thing to say.
“Is it suitable?”
She stood and dumped the bit of cold coffee that had grown too cold to drink.
“It’s…good enough. For a whore, anyway.”
Silence…
“Thanks for the coffee…I’d better go.”
She moved for the door.
“Yeah…”
“Sanzo..?” She faced me, getting no farther in her steps.
I’d obstructed her path, not wanting her to leave the room…that house…this town.
Every time I had seen her or thought of her with someone else I boiled inside. I ached.
Her innocence was stripped so early all for nothing, for the pleasure of someone’s twisted money grubbing hands…and though it had twisted her, it was such a waste in my eyes.
She would go back to Gojyo even though he was fucking some tart on my desk, in my office.
She would go to him and let him fuck her before she took her leave from our lives.
Lian.
Her voice had made itself remembered. Take the chance, the advantage of their current separation…before it was too late.
“You shouldn’t move.”
I stared down at her, intent on changing her mind.
Ayami balked, taking her gaze from me.
“Why not? I’ve spent enough time pestering you, and everyone else. It’s clear that I’ve got no business living here anymore, so why should I-”
She fell silent.
For the first time I tasted her lips beneath my own, soft and smooth and sweet.
Taking no rejection, I pressed harder and felt her give in.
When I broke away, a hand stroking the dark locks which framed her face, I met her eyes with mine which shone with as much affection as I could possible have allowed myself.
She didn’t run away, yet she did look embarrassed and shamed.
“You’re not…” My voice petered out momentarily, husky by the dam I had let break. “You’re not a whore, Ayami. Your heart is too open…but you loved them all the same. That doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“You…” She trailed off, touching a finger to her mouth as she bowed her head.
“That wasn’t your fault. That was all mine.”
“I’m disappointed in myself. In my resolve.” She whispered grimly.
I take her by the shoulders lightly. “What for?”
Her alluring orbs of honey are on me again.
“I’m disappointed that I was thinking…that I wish you hadn’t stopped.”
“Then I won’t…”
I kissed her again, gently…and again on the corners of her mouth, and once more, deeply while I cradled the back of her head with one hand and wrapped her body to mine with the other.
Ayami responded, her arms wrapping around me, embracing me in a way reserved only for the intimately passionate.
Maybe she did it on the rebound, yet I didn’t care. I could have cared less, in fact. If it meant hurting that kappa while I got my own wish, I was game.
Just once, I had wanted to know her, to touch her, taste her, to love her…Just once.
Then I’d have been satisfied momentarily…always hungry for more, but once would have tided me over.
I pressed her against the footboard of my bed, oblivious to what I was pushing into her soft thighs.
The sound Ayami made when she felt my need against her caused me to moan quietly into her neck while my hands roamed over her curves. The way she molded to my palms sent fire through me.
My face flushed as I grew braver, squirming against her as my mouth played kisses at her jaw.
“…Sanzo…”
I’d never hurt her again. Ever…
“…Sanzo…”
Her breath spread over me, invisible and warm, her fingers tugged at my hair.
“Mm…Ayami-”
“-Sanzo, please-”
“-yes…”
“-wait, please, Sanzo, stop!”
As it turned out, her lustful cries had really been her attempts to hinder me.
I backed off. Why not? It wouldn’t go my way.
Nothing ever did…
“Did I hurt you?”
Taken off guard, though I can’t believe it any more than she, Ayami blinked back unbidden tears threatening to spill over.
“No. No, I’m just…”
I finished what she couldn’t.
“You’re not ready to do this, are you? Certainly not with me.”
Her averted eyes answered me well enough.
“I’m sorry, Sanzo.”
“Don’t be.” I replied curtly, smoothing my ruffled feathers as I sat back at the table and picked up my paper again.
Her scent clung to me still.
It did me no better that Ayami moved tableside, and even without looking, I can very much believe she wore guilt all over her pretty face.
“You’re mad at me now, aren’t you?”
“Didn’t say that, did I?”
She laughed, mirthlessly, maybe vaguely amused by my answer.
“You never have to say it, Sanzo…all you have to do is this. Walk away and isolate yourself. I feel…stupid. I shouldn’t have-”
“-what? Shouldn’t have what?” I rebuked, standing again as she recoiled.
I swung myself closer to Ayami, enough to feel the heat coming off her body and it’s excruciating. I began to ask myself if I loved her, really, or lusted after her.
Was I really that tempted by who I shouldn’t have?
“I started it, you finished it. There’s nothing to feel stupid over.”
Ayami chewed her lower lip before running her tongue over it and my stomach flopped and flipped at the small gesture.
Love…
Lustful love.
“Goku’s probably done with his tests by now.” She began to turn away with a forced smile which made me cringe. “Sorry to have been a distraction.”
I didn’t want her to go, to leave here, to leave us…or me, but it would have been for the best.
I refrained from kissing her once more and told myself that it never happened to begin with. End of story. I could go back to despising her, to making her want to hate me so much that she couldn’t bear the idea of setting foot anywhere within spitting distance of me.
And yet, even hours after she had left, my resolve rekindled itself with a desire to have her no matter what.