This, right here, is why Sanzo doesn’t usually bother.
He rolls his eyes and makes no move to take the cigarette. “Don’t smoke it then.” He says dismissively. “Burn it, throw it out, keep it, give it to someone else. I don’t care. I wouldn’t be handing out shit to strangers if I was worried about my resources.” He’s on the verge of leaving it like that, but what the hell, he’s come this far. Besides, annoyingly enough, the words of the monk who handed him his first pack of cigarettes have been brought to the surface. And well… .
“It’s only just a cigarette if that’s the only meaning you give it,” he informs the other. It’s something too few people think about. How limited their meanings are, how much they limit things, others, or themselves. “It’s a wish, or a prayer. If you want it to be.” He shrugs. “Or it’s just a goddamn cigarette.” Hell if he knows. Hell if he can tell the guy what it should be to him.
Sanzo walks away again, tossing one last option over his shoulder, “Or it could be your karma.”
(Though the guy doesn’t look the type to have black karma choking his lungs.)
Hell. If these damn cancer sticks did shit for his frown lines, he’d tell the other to smoke it for that.
★— It was a thoughtful gesture in hindsight, even though it seemed at that point in time the other man seemed to be extremely keen to walk away from Steve, even after giving him something. He truly hadn’t given it much thought beyond that until the other man said -- it was a gift, after all, and he shouldn’t have been looking a gift horse in the mouth, particularly when there were few people that would actually associate with him, yet alone talk and GIVE him something.
He gazed at the stick in his hand, absorbing everything that was said to him before tilting his head curiously--
❛ What do you mean, Karma? Ain’t that y’know-- the whole idea that if something bad happens, something good happens to balance it out? ❜