thenearshore | /man in black lyrics

Who: Gojyo and anyone who wants to stop by!
What: Hanging out, having adventures, engaging in healthy coping habits
When: Any time of any day from May 12-15ish
Where: chez Dinosaur
Warnings: Homo-antagonistic language in the Niles thread.

He's never going to sleep again. Which is fine -- he knows from experience that he can go weeks on end with only a few hours of sleep snatched here and there between youkai attacks. It won't kill him. He doesn't even feel all that tired, not really. He more feels like he's asleep and dreaming than anything else -- everything is at a bit of a distance and his reactions are slowed, like the air's gone thicker or something. Like he's a little drunk, even though he hasn't touched a drop since his return. It's weird and unsettling, but he's sure it'll wear off. And even if it doesn't, it's not something to bother anybody with. He's been enough of a bother already.

So during the day, he sticks close to Hakkai -- he's worried the other man enough already by vanishing, so it's the least he can do to stay near (and if that means running errands or sitting quietly in the back of the classroom while school is in session, he supposes that he can manage). And at night, when he wakes after only an hour or two of sleep, he tracks down Asshole and drags the half-man out to the porch with him, for company while he smokes pack after pack and watches the moon.

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His hair falls in his eyes as he ducks his head, and he clenches his jaw briefly. It's frustrating. He knows Goku makes it through, and that it's not to his own credit. He knows things get better, somehow, but he also knows the last thing he can recall between the attack on Goku and when the team had somehow managed to get back together was-

No, he can't afford this. He has to be stronger than this.

Sanzo shakes his head as if to clear it, and it's an act of will to force something akin to calm on himself. He focuses, instead, on the question Gojyo asks.

"The next thing I can remember is the aftermath of a battle." There's a tight control to his voice now. There had to be. "We had to recover before hitting the road again." Read: it had nearly killed him, something he'd gotten entirely too used to.

Okay, yes, talking about the details and not the near-loss of Goku, good. Good call.

"My memories cut out right, uh. After." They'd taken his limiter off, and then there had been a fight where Gojyo was sure he was going to lose everyone he cared about. It hadn't been a good night. "I told you I owed you a punch in the face and then got them out of town. Next morning I woke up here."

Which, now that Sanzo's got some more of his own memories back, probably goes a long way towards explaining Gojyo's confrontational attitude when they first met here, yeah?

Somehow, knowing he'd deserved Gojyo's erratic hostility does help, but not in a good way. He doesn't know if he can pick up on the flicker of sympathy, but Sanzo suppresses it before it can turn into guilt. No wonder he'd been so fucked up.

"You broke my damn neck. That's something I remember that you don't," he grumbles around the filter of his cigarette, though it's not an entirely correct statement. It's not the event that he can recall, exactly, but something in the aftermath with Goku and Gojyo bickering. It's strange, but some things were just too far into that bizarre void of memories, the ones that didn't cause the insidious existential dread that wondering about other parts of his life did. "You and Goku kept arguing about it. Why the hell I have to remember that bullshit and you don't, I don't fucking know."

It's a safer topic to address as jarringly clear as it is to avoid dwelling on the reminder of Goku's mortality.

That is not a safer topic.

"I what?!" Forget this manly side-by-side lack of emotion or eye contact -- Gojyo pulls back and fixes Sanzo with a look that's somewhere between horror and disbelief. How mad had he been? Yeah, he bets he and Goku argued about something like that -- he's lucky the monkey didn't return the favor!

Edited 2016-11-19 23:04 (UTC)

It's certainly safer for Sanzo, at least. He glances over at him, lips pressing together in a flat, disapproving line.

"It was incompetence from both of you idiots." He should probably feel bad for letting Gojyo get the wrong idea, but can't bring himself to. He still couldn't put it all together, but he knows that much, though he doesn't know what accounted for the rest of the damage he'd suffered. He'd never been so thoroughly broken before that time, he thinks, but it isn't like he can be sure. "Don't think you could do it on purpose."

"Oh, so I fucked up and accidentally broke your neck?" he grumbles. "Gee, thanks Sanzo, that's so much better." He takes a deep drag of what's left of his cigarette, blowing the cloud up into the starry sky.

"You've really got a way of makin' a man feel competent an' needed." It does help, though. The journey's dangerous, and shit happens. Hell, it's even possible that Gojyo and Goku weren't to blame at all, but that they just didn't get to where they needed to be in time. That's the kind of shit Sanzo would still lay at their feet, the asshole. "Remind me why we're friends again?"

It's precisely the kind of shit he'd lay at their feet, but that was just part of how things worked with them. Grinding his cigarette out beside him, he shrugs with a distinctly affected carelessness.

"Who said anything about that?" It's easy to let go of the tension when he can fall into a familiar pattern of banter. No small part of him feels relieved to know that it is meant to be familiar, and maybe that influences his response more than it should. "This is a team, and I won't accept you forgetting why. We've gone through too much bullshit to allow that."

If you knew what to listen for, it's entirely too sentimental coming from him.

Entirely too sentimental. That was practically a word-hug. "You got it, teammate," Gojyo purrs, stabbing out his butt on the edge of the stoop. He didn't actually think Sanzo would hold his jab about abandoning Goku against him, but it's nice to have it confirmed. They are a team, and part of being a team is calling one another out on their shit.

And the other part is teasing each other in lieu of expressing actual emotions when other members of the team are feeling down. That what families do, right?

Gojyo had made the entirely wise decision to sit just out of arm's reach.

This doesn't do much to stop Sanzo. It's almost instant, and his paper fan is in his hand and colliding with Gojyo's head with a sharp crack. He'd fallen out of the habit of using it somewhere along the way, but he still kept it up his sleeve. Clearly, this is why.

"Damn moron."

"Ow!" The fan barely hurt, but his overreaction is part of the routine, isn't it? He cradles the back of his head in one hand and turns on Sanzo with an indignant growl.

"What the fuck what that for, you shitty sham monk?!"

"Discipline." The answer is entirely too calm, as if his response is the inverse of Gojyo's. Glaring flatly, he goes after him again for good measure, quick as a snake.

The truth is, deep down, it's actually surprisingly centering to get into it with Gojyo. He offered a certain contrast to his own nature, and there was something very important about contrasts.

Maybe he'd remember one of these days.

/man in black lyrics

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