Lipstick Smudges (Challenge #14 Taste) (PG)
Title: Lipstick Smudges
Author: Clorinda
Summary: Three men and a secret. Implied slash.
Warnings: NONE
Spoilers: NONE
Prompt: Taste (#14)
Time taken: 4-6 minutes
Notes: Concrit appreciated a lot. My writing hand feels seriously rusty after a SERIOUSLY long hiatus
Lipstick Smudges
By Clorinda
Three men and a secret. Implied slash.
His collar smells of an indeterminate scent: pungent and familiar. Absently, he rubs it with his thumb to remember what it was. His mind is a blank: a white desert of nothing, snickering evilly at him.
Krhrsh, krhrsh … his skin against the coarsening fabric of the frayed jacket. Female. Oh.
Realization sinks in, wedging past his defensive barriers that are screaming: NO. Hell, no.
A woman. Red smudge that he failed to notice, blending with the tawny brown colour. Lipstick stains.
The jacket was just lying there, tossed across the backseat. Really. Lying there, dusty and waiting to be trampled by an overenthusiastic Goku the next morning. It wasn't Hakkai's fault that he was fussy about these things. It was Gojyo's fault for being careless enough to be snogged all over by a random woman at a random bar- if he was sure of anything, that woman must have been as ugly as sin.
Really.
Gojyo remembered he'd misplaced his jacket around two-thirty in the morning when the sky was coal black. He found it spread across the driver's seat of the Jeep. Funny, said his sleep-numbed mind, Hakuryuu was curled around Hakkai's arm around the campfire … wasn't he?
Then he saw the monk in the vehicle. Typical Sanzo to have his own way and not let sycophantic dragons sleep. Gojyo rubbed the sandman's grit out of his eyes with his knuckles, and mumbled something similar to "Thass mah jacket."
In reply, the said object was tossed into his arms, and he immediately put it on.
Then he shambled off to sleep. He never even saw the tell-tale signs of drunken unfaithfulness on the damn thing.
Sanzo still didn't get his bit of sleep. He closed his eyes and tried to dream of a promised land, with the bitter, acrimonious taste of unknown pity in his mouth, keeping him wide awake.
-- finis --