Time challenge: Essences
My first try at one of these: I usually edge uneasily away from writing challenges, but scent is my favorite sense, so couldn't resist.=)
Failed miserably at the time constraint, taking a full ten minutes longer than given. Sigh.
He'd never admit it to any of them (gets quite enough pervy-ero-kappa remarks as it is), but Gojyo loves the way they smell. And it's nothing to do with sweat or dust or when they last had a chance to bathe. Must be the half-youkai nose, he guesses. He's the only one who doesn't mind when they all have to share a room, because when he wakes in the middle of the night--and he does that more often than he'd want you to know--he can take in the scent of them all sleeping around him, and then he's okay, then he's home.
Sanzo always smells like sandalwood smoke, not just tobacco but honest-to-gods sandalwood, no matter how long it's been since he set foot in a temple. He smells like hot sun and like something that makes your spine tingle, like raw power, like magic. If Gojyo ever decides to risk his life for real and grab a kiss off the guy, it'll be smack on that red chakra spot, because he's positive it would taste totally unbelievable--better even than the Bosatsu did--and this smell is like that taste.
Hakkai smells cool and dark. How he manages this Gojyo's never sure, spending day after day at the wheel of a jeep with no roof (and whose idea was that, he'd love to know), but the guy never tans or even sunburns, and he always smells like the floor of a forest, like the bank of a lazy river. Good grooming, or youkai magic, no way to know. Sometimes this is nice and soothing after a day in the sun, and makes you think of green leaves and summer rain; sometimes it has a rank, rotten edge, like a pond you'd better not drink from. He sometimes ends up in Hakkai's bed on the first kind of night, but never, ever on the second.
And Goku...fascinates and, tell ya the truth, unnerves him just a little, 'cos the hanyou's never smelled anything like him. It's not youkai or human or even animal; he smells like earth and stone, the warm, mineral, slightly metallic scent of a big rock that's stood soaking up the sun all day, giving off radiant heat you could bask in. It smells good, it smells wholesome and natural but--not alive, really; not like anything living and breathing; and it gives him the same supernatural shiver that Sanzo's does, only a dozen times stronger, because you can't take in that scent and not feel in your gut that the kid is a god.
He wishes there were a way to ask one of them, any one really, so, what do I smell like? 'Cos he hopes it isn't just smokes and beer and road dust, or the last babe's perfume, or blood.
Maybe he'll find a way.
(Hakkai, out of a dream, half-lifts his head; smells sandalwood and warm stone and sweet, fire-orange river lilies; and sinks back to sleep.)
Failed miserably at the time constraint, taking a full ten minutes longer than given. Sigh.
He'd never admit it to any of them (gets quite enough pervy-ero-kappa remarks as it is), but Gojyo loves the way they smell. And it's nothing to do with sweat or dust or when they last had a chance to bathe. Must be the half-youkai nose, he guesses. He's the only one who doesn't mind when they all have to share a room, because when he wakes in the middle of the night--and he does that more often than he'd want you to know--he can take in the scent of them all sleeping around him, and then he's okay, then he's home.
Sanzo always smells like sandalwood smoke, not just tobacco but honest-to-gods sandalwood, no matter how long it's been since he set foot in a temple. He smells like hot sun and like something that makes your spine tingle, like raw power, like magic. If Gojyo ever decides to risk his life for real and grab a kiss off the guy, it'll be smack on that red chakra spot, because he's positive it would taste totally unbelievable--better even than the Bosatsu did--and this smell is like that taste.
Hakkai smells cool and dark. How he manages this Gojyo's never sure, spending day after day at the wheel of a jeep with no roof (and whose idea was that, he'd love to know), but the guy never tans or even sunburns, and he always smells like the floor of a forest, like the bank of a lazy river. Good grooming, or youkai magic, no way to know. Sometimes this is nice and soothing after a day in the sun, and makes you think of green leaves and summer rain; sometimes it has a rank, rotten edge, like a pond you'd better not drink from. He sometimes ends up in Hakkai's bed on the first kind of night, but never, ever on the second.
And Goku...fascinates and, tell ya the truth, unnerves him just a little, 'cos the hanyou's never smelled anything like him. It's not youkai or human or even animal; he smells like earth and stone, the warm, mineral, slightly metallic scent of a big rock that's stood soaking up the sun all day, giving off radiant heat you could bask in. It smells good, it smells wholesome and natural but--not alive, really; not like anything living and breathing; and it gives him the same supernatural shiver that Sanzo's does, only a dozen times stronger, because you can't take in that scent and not feel in your gut that the kid is a god.
He wishes there were a way to ask one of them, any one really, so, what do I smell like? 'Cos he hopes it isn't just smokes and beer and road dust, or the last babe's perfume, or blood.
Maybe he'll find a way.
(Hakkai, out of a dream, half-lifts his head; smells sandalwood and warm stone and sweet, fire-orange river lilies; and sinks back to sleep.)