[Generic Disclaimer: Saiyuki and all the affiliated characters are copyright to Kazuya Minekura. No profit has or will be made off of this fiction.]

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~Lemon Drop~

Summary: In which musings on candy play a part in the deeper meaning of things. It's just candy, right?

Warnings: PG-13: fluff, misuse of candy references, language...all in a day’s work!

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It was Hakkai’s fault, upon retrospect. He and Goku had gone out for supplies, and the green-eyed youkai had decided it was okay for Goku to get a bag of candy.

The boy was happy. The monk was not.

“Do you have any idea how hyper he’s going to get?” the blond grumbled as they watched the monkey sort through his gift.

Hakkai shrugged it off. “It’s only a small bag. Everyone deserves a little treat now and then. He’s been working really hard lately.”

Gojyo laughed, tilting his chair on its back legs. “I think you just volunteered to deal with the coming sugar rush.”

He shook his head. “You two can be so mean...”

“Whatever...” Sanzo rolled his eyes.

Goku, who had been sitting off to the side, brought his bag to the table the other three were sharing.

“Enjoying it?” Hakkai asked.

Goku nodded happily, dumping the contents of his bag onto the tabletop. “Yeah! Thanks Hakkai!”

He began to sort the candy into piles by type. Gojyo leaned over. “Obsessive-Compulsive much?”

Goku frowned a bit. “Shut up, stupid kappa. I’m thinking.”

He laughed. “What’s there to think about? You’re sorting candy. That should be easy, even for a brainless monkey like you!”

“Gojyo...” Hakkai shook his head. He turned to Goku. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’re you thinking about?”

“The candy,” he replied simply. “It’s us.”

“Metaphorically?”

“What? What the hell are you babbling about saru?” Sanzo asked, lighting a cigarette.

“Look,” Goku explained, “all the candy in this bag. They’re all different types, but they’re thrown together for some reason. We’ll start with the jawbreakers. They’re me, cuz I’m tough. Unbreakable.”

“More like your hard head...” Gojyo smirked. Goku stuck out his tongue.

“The licorice is the kappa,” he continued. “Licorice is red, and it wiggles a lot.”

“Wiggles?” the redhead raised an eyebrow.

Hakkai took a piece from the licorice pile. “It’s also pleasantly agreeable,” he smiled, sticking the candy in his mouth. Gojyo grinned.

“Hakkai would be a peppermint, because he calms and soothes, but can get spicy too.”

Gojyo snagged a peppermint from the pile. “Spicy? I like it.” Hakkai went a bit pink.

“Stupid water sprite! Stop stealin’ my candy!” Goku yelled.

“Screw off monkey,” he dismissed the boy, eating the mint. “You didn’t say anything to Hakkai!”

“Yeah well, Hakkai’s Hakkai!” he shot back.

“What about the lemon drop?” Hakkai asked, eager to stop the building argument. He pointed to the remaining pile.

“They’re my favourite,” Goku beamed.

“What do they represent?”

The boy ate one of the candies. “Lemon drops...hmmm...I guess they’d be Sanzo, cuz they’re gold and—“

“—And you like to suck on ‘em?” Gojyo interrupted.

“Gojyo!” Hakkai gaped.

“Pervert!” Goku glared at him with fists clenched.

Gojyo laughed, but was abruptly silenced by a familiar fan to the back of his head. He rubbed the wound, realizing the monk was still there. He hadn’t talked in so long; the other three forgot he was still paying attention.

Sanzo stood, eyes narrowed, and walked to one of the double rooms. He went inside, leaving the door open ajar. Out of view from the others, he paused in the doorway when he heard Hakkai speak again.

“What were you going to say?”

“I was –going- to say,” Goku glared at Gojyo, who smirked again, “that lemon drops are Sanzo, because they’re gold like him. And they’re sour, but I like ‘em anyways.”

Hakkai smiled. Sanzo shut the door.

---

Despite Gojyo’s earlier comment, Hakkai did not have to deal with Goku’s sugar rush, if he had one at all. Goku decided to room with Sanzo, who was lounging on his bed with a cigarette, minus his robes. Goku smiled, shutting the door behind him.

“I thought you were already asleep.”

“Does it bother you that I’m not?” Sanzo asked.

“What kind of question is that?” Goku sat on the other bed, watching his guardian, “Of course it doesn’t!”

“It doesn’t matter,” he extinguished the spent cigarette in the ashtray beside the bed.

Goku frowned. “Are you okay? You seem more upset than usual. Is it about what Gojyo said about the lemon drops? Cuz I—“

“Forget it,” Sanzo interjected. “Trust me. I don’t take –anything- Gojyo says without a grain of salt.”

The boy looked at him meekly. “Are you mad at me?”

“Not presently, no.”

He sighed in relief. “That’s good.”

A silence pervaded. That was fine for Sanzo, but it was awkwardly uncomfortable for the normally talkative monkey. He bit his bottom lip, anxiously searching for something to break the tension. Golden eyes finally settled on the bag of candy on his lap.

“Oi, Sanzo...want a piece of candy?” he got up and walked over to the monk, holding out the bag.

Sanzo looked from boy to bag thoughtfully for a moment. He started to reach for the bag, and then stopped. “No thanks. Go to bed.”

Goku frowned. “C’mon, I want you to have one. Just one?”

The monk sighed. “If I take one, will you shut up and go to sleep?”

“Probably not, but I won’t bother you about it anymore,” he smiled.

Sanzo growled, stuffing his hand in the back and extracting a candy. Goku laughed. The blond looked at him questionably, popping the candy in his mouth swiftly.

“You got a jawbreaker,” the boy smiled.

“So?”

Obviously Sanzo hadn’t been paying attention to his earlier conversation with Hakkai and Gojyo. He shrugged, deciding not to bring it up. “No reason.”

Sanzo knew very well what Goku was referring to. “Jawbreakers...they’re annoyingly hard to break. And they have a tendency to change you from the inside, without you even realizing it sometimes.”

The brunette tilted his head questioningly. “What do you mean, change you?”

Sanzo stuck out his tongue. The candy had turned it orange. Goku blinked. “Oh. I didn’t even think of it that way...”

“The question is,” the monk continued, “whether or not a person should –let- it affect them.”

Goku was becoming increasingly aware that this was another metaphor. Sanzo didn’t muse philosophically on candy without an ulterior motive.

“It’s just candy,” the boy shrugged, unconvincingly.

“There are times when you have to let things affect you I suppose,” Sanzo went on, choosing not to comment on the brunette’s last statement.

Goku found it hard to speak. “R-really?”

“It’s your own fault really. The candy doesn’t know how it’ll change you. But you go on with it anyway,” he shrugged. “You’ve no one to blame but yourself.”

“But...why is it such a bad thing?” Goku gripped the bag harder, trying to calm himself.

Sanzo looked at him. There was a look in the boy’s eyes he saw often, but never really thought about. “Lemon drops, huh?”

Goku’s face flushed. “Y-yeah.”

The look bothered him for some reason. It was too innocent, too pure. Open and honest, not trying to hide the expression in any form. “Stop looking at me like you want to kiss me or something.”

“But I –want- to kiss you!” His eyes widened. Had he gone too far?

Sanzo’s words came unchecked as well. “Then do it then.”

Before either had time to consider their words, Goku closed the distance between them. There was a sort of desperation in it, like a long-awaited event had finally come to pass. The boy's mouth tasted of lemons, and Sanzo tried rather unsuccessfully to suppress a shudder from the sour-sweet taste. Goku leaned back, searching for some sort of reaction in his guardian’s face. His expression was unreadable, as always.

“S-sanzo?” he ventured finally, “Are you mad at me now?”

“Not presently, no.” He pulled the boy to him, joining their lips together again.

When they parted again, Goku started. He smiled and pulled the half-melted jawbreaker out of his mouth. “I think this is yours.”

Sanzo shifted, leaving space for another person on the bed, should one take the unspoken invitation. “Keep it. I’ve had enough candy for one night.”

Goku laughed, crawling into the bed next to the blond. “I’d like to see you on a sugar rush.”

“I don’t do sugar rushes,” came the reply. “You’ll be enough hyper for the both of us.”

[~:.:~]

[owari]