Under Cover (Challenge #20: Clothes; Hakkai/Gojyo; PG-13)
Title: Under Cover
Author: opalmatrix
Warnings: Gojyo's mouth, references to m/m
Pairing(s): Hakkai/Gojyo
Spoilers: nothing much
Notes: Written for saiyuki_time challenge #20, Clothing. Time allowed: 50 minutes. Time taken: about 45 to actually write. Thanks to smillaraaq for getting me started: a couple of things I've written recently were already about clothes, so I was kind of stuck this time!
Summary: Under the influence of some beer, Gojyo considers Hakkai's usual uniform.
Goku was babbling at the supper table again. This time it was about grasshoppers or some such - they're hard to see 'cause they're the same color as the grass. Gojyo didn't mind it too much when the monkey got like that because it reminded him of himself as a kid, telling Jien stuff. And then Hakkai got his schoolteacher thing going, explaining how it was called protective coloration, and then he started in on other examples, including predators who camouflaged themselves so that they didn't look dangerous.
And that's when Gojyo looked at Hakkai's neat and tidy Assistant to the Great Priest Sanzo outfit, and laughed.
"Really, Gojyo," said Hakkai, mildly, and went on explaining sand vipers and river pike and other deadly things in disguise.
And that's exactly what was funny, because didn't that just describe Hakkai perfectly? Because there was no one who would look at that uptight get-up, almost like a uniform, and that white sash - I'm a Buddhist layman, after all, Gojyo - and think that Hakkai was at all dangerous. Let alone - and Gojyo was not ashamed to admit this to himself - the most dangerous one of the four of them.
And come to think of it (thought Gojyo, as his third beer hit bottom and he began to feel really mellow), that wasn't the only thing that Hakkai kept under wraps with his clothes. When Banri had come slithering back that time, he'd mocked Gojyo about Hakkai: thought you couldn't stand buttoned-down types. Hah! Little did Banri know (or Gojyo, either, back then) what a total freak Hakkai could be in bed (or out of it - Hakkai liked to find interesting places to do it). That fact made Hakkai's normal look - all covered up, halfway up his neck, down to the wrists and the soles of his feet, and even part of his face with that monocle - something else entirely to Gojyo. When all those layers started coming off, and all that pale, smooth skin (and that amazing gnarly scar) started to show, it was so fucking special. It always turned him on - like switch. Even one bare shoulder was enough, sometimes.
Of course that's what Gojyo had on his mind when he followed Hakkai up the stairs to their room later - watching his buddy's butt only barely hinted at beneath his trim, tidy trousers. Maybe even the back of the guy's neck is enough! And then the light gleamed on the last part of Hakkai's disguise, the part Gojyo hadn't been thinking about: the three little stripes of metal on his lover's ear. Because Hakkai was the only person Gojyo had known who could get a little too naked.
But maybe, deep down, Gojyo really liked that, too.