"Oh," he breathes, taking in the sheer fragile vulnerability on his Sanzo's face. He bends his head the tiny amount necessary to brush his lips over one closed eyelid, then the other.

"I don't want to be apart either," he says. "When I thought that-- when I wasn't sure if your tether had held--" He can't articulate it, not really. That yawning chasm of grief and uncertainty had swallowed everything by the time Koumyou had found him.

"I am so, so grateful that it did," he says instead, his voice rough. He brushes a strand of pale, damp hair away from Koumyou's face and leans in to kiss him again, this time between his eyes.