monkey vs. robot
The first assault: simple, direct. His target sat on the edge of the bed, reading the newspaper -- although by now Goku was just about sure that it was one of those times when the actual reading part was long over, and now Sanzo was just holding the newspaper to avoid eye contact. For his part, Goku didn't try to make it. He just sat next to Sanzo in the way where on top of Sanzo would almost be more accurate, petting his chest, nibbling his ear. And he really did try to be careful not to bump Sanzo's glasses askew, but sometimes you can't help these things. And he was just about to get to Sanzo's throat when Sanzo turned his head and Looked at Goku, down through the lenses, and, well, that kind of Look would wither just about anything.
He quit in mid-nibble and limped away. Round one to the defending champion.
The second assault: subterfuge, and then conquest from behind the lines. Which was to say, first he'd stretch out with his head in Sanzo's lap, all innocent-like, and then see what he could do from there. He got about as far as the head-in-the-lap stage more or less successfully, but his sense of enormous pride was cut short when Sanzo, with perfect stoic detachment, responded by using Goku's head as a blotter for the documents he was writing.
Round two to the defender, and an immediate face-washing in order.
The third assault: blatant innuendo. He plucked the cigarette and the lighter from Sanzo just before the two could come together, and when he slipped his lips around the filter he made sure Sanzo could see Goku was thinking very hard about the lips that had just been holding it, and maybe something else he could put there instead. He inhaled the breath that caught the paper alight like he'd been doing it all his life, and he could have sworn that victory was within his grasp; there was that tiny sneaking light of speculation at the back of Sanzo's dour poker face, as Goku handed back the cigarette, and if only he hadn't at that exact moment noticed just how utterly disgusting cigarette smoke tasted. Sanzo only paid attention to his hacking and spluttering long enough to snort and call him a kid, and then that was the end of that.
Round three, defender. Game and match.
But if there was one thing Goku had decided about fighting, it was this: even if he wasn't going to win it, well, he might as well do some damage on his way out.
Sanzo turned, eyebrow raised, when Goku flopped down on his back from the other side of the bed; his cigarette burned in one hand. "What now?"
"Nothing," Goku mumbled, and shut his eyes. He let one arm fall over the other side of the mattress, where it dangled, and kept the other hand on his belly, rubbing it absently. He was kind of hungry, but as Sanzo had said once, that was like saying the ocean was kind of wet.
He heard Sanzo start to say something else, but whatever it was stopped when Goku's hand passed the waistband of his jeans and went lower. It seemed like hours he'd been half-hard now, and the erection came the rest of the way into being without much encouragement at all. Just being around Sanzo could keep him half-hard all the time, though, it seemed like. If not more than half. He pressed the back of his hand over his mouth and sighed.
If Sanzo had said something right then -- something dry and disparaging and Sanzo-ish -- if Sanzo had just turned away and picked up the paper again... well, Goku didn't know what he would have done. Stopped, probably, and slunk away to his own room to finish what he'd started, and maybe even stayed there to sulk the rest of the night through, depending on just how strong the rejection. But Sanzo didn't. When Goku cracked his eyes open, it was only for a few seconds, but it was enough to see that Sanzo was sitting very still, watching him, cigarette in hand. Watching him pretty intently, even. And he'd thought he was hard before.
He fumbled the zipper open somehow, and got his hand inside, and after that it was serious; serious enough for him to arch his back and turn his head so the covers rumpled up under his hair, and for little drops of sweat to prick out of his skin at his temples. The flesh under his own fingers just kept getting harder when he thought about Sanzo sitting there, over him, looking at him. Finally he had to open his eyes again, to take another look, and he did and Sanzo was still watching and he stared into Sanzo's eyes, and Sanzo met the gaze, but then Sanzo looked somewhere else and it took him a minute to realize that now Sanzo was following his hand instead, and then he whimpered and then that turned into a moan, and it was full of nothing but Sanzo. And just vaguely he noticed that Sanzo wasn't smoking anymore; the cigarette was a long tube of ash in his hand. That made it come close, very close, all at once.
The problem was that he was just completely fascinated by Sanzo's body. He'd seen Sanzo completely naked maybe all of three times, but the mystery only heightened the attraction. He wanted every inch of it; he wanted to take it over and trace it and memorize it until it was his as much as it was Sanzo's, until he could make it do things Sanzo had never even imagined it was capable of. He wanted to explore Sanzo like you'd explore a mountain. He wanted to draw maps. Instead of the names of towns and rivers and roads and bunches of trees, the legend would be full of the spot you couldn't touch without warning him or Sanzo would kick you across the room, and the small pale expanse of skin you could blow across and make him shiver, and the small indented curve where you could just barely touch your tongue and breath would hiss in through his teeth and his hips jump toward you a few inches. Just a few. Just enough.
But then, he knew he wouldn't ever make a map like that, because he'd never want to share it with anybody else; and maps weren't much good if no one ever used them to find their way. And anyway, every time Goku wanted to start exploring, Sanzo... the bastard... would just sit there and read the newspaper.
Goku's free hand wandered absently across his chest, scoring it a little with his short nails through his shirt, hungry; then it slid to the side and reached across him to where Sanzo's hand rested on the bed by his hip, and he decided in a vague heat-hazed way Sanzo's hand was a much better idea. He brought it to his lips and covered his mouth with it, kissed it and licked Sanzo's palm and started sucking on his forefinger and that right there was the end of any possibility of stopping. Sanzo's finger was long and callused, square-tipped, big rough knobs for knuckles, and it was hot sliding down into his mouth. He thought he heard some little low sound in the back of Sanzo's throat, too, but that could've been just his imagination. And Goku probably sucked on it a little more showily than he really needed to -- hard and wet, flicking his tongue across the tip and under the bottom -- but no, actually, he really needed to. Sanzo's finger still tasted a little like tobacco and newsprint, and neither of those were ever going to be Goku's favorite tastes in the world, but it mostly tasted like Sanzo, and that was Goku's favorite taste in the whole world, absolutely, no contest. Better than shrimp tempura. Even the really good kind.
Sanzo didn't just taste like skin and sweat and oil; there was something a lot deeper to it, something a lot more... Sanzo. Like there was this Sanzo-ness just underneath the skin that just burned out through his pores. Like he could lick Sanzo's skin and taste what made him Sanzo. And where it always seemed like that was the strongest was in Sanzo's cock, even if there it was mixed with that other taste, the sex-taste: saltier and more bitter, like brine -- but not at all bad. And okay, so at least Sanzo's finger was a good bit smaller than his cock, and a lot less challenging to suck, but he still wished he had Sanzo's cock instead, because difficulty aside, that was infinitely more rewarding. Even when he had to content himself with Sanzo's finger, he couldn't help thinking about it. There just wasn't anything else like the things Sanzo would do when Goku had his mouth around him. Not like the low, rare, half-breath moans; not like the faint twitches in Sanzo's thighs with Goku's body tucked between his knees. Not like the fluttering of his stomach muscles, when Goku would put a hand there sometimes, just to feel the way they shifted under Sanzo's skin. Not like the taste of salt and sweat and Sanzo, and the bitter undertaste almost like tears, but really not like that at all, not like anything else at all. Not like the thick rough fingers that would settle and brush slowly through Goku's hair, and then clutch at it, hungrily, when he was just about to come...
But the one who came then was Goku, hard into his own hand, the cry he let out muffled by Sanzo's finger buried in his mouth.
It only took him a few minutes to get himself back together enough to roll over, and bury his head in Sanzo's lap. Neither of them noticed when the column of ash hit the floor. And he found Sanzo hard, unzipping his jeans.
Victory was, as usual, sweet.