Title: Simple Promises
Author: BitterEloquence
Disclaimer: You know, I bribed Genma with a nice shiny new senbon and he still turned me down...drat!
No matter how hard he scrubbed and tried to dig at the caked blood beneath his fingernails, Genma found to his chagrin that it would not come off. The young jounin eyed his pink and now raw hands with open dismay as he knelt down at the edge of the sluggishly running creek and stared down at the distorted reflection of a man with eyes as austere as a blast-zone.
It was a boyish look of surprised horror in a face far too young to contain such pain and sorrow.
Blood was splattered across his uniform and caked with dirt and leaves from where he'd had to climb through the underbrush to get the drop of the trio of missing-nin he and Raidou had come across by accident. Their third teammate lay dead and cooling not three feet away from Genma and it was his blood that the jounin could not seem to wash from his hands.
He needed a cigarette.
No, he needed a hot shower and some bleach. Maybe that would take the disgusting rust tinge from beneath his fingers.
A hand fell to his shoulder and Genma had a kunai in his hand faster then the eye could follow and was slashing wildly at the owner of that hand His wrist was caught in a tight grip as the grim-faced Raidou studied his best friend with something akin to pity in his eyes.
The other jounin's face; also splattered with blood, the smooth skin of his features having gone a tad pale beneath his tan as he forced Genma's unresisting hand down.
"I can't...can't get it off." Genma whispered his tone almost child-like and lost. This had been his first time as squad leader and it was never easy to loose a man. Ironic really, that he, who had graduated the Academy two years before his elder Raidou, would be the one to fall apart. Raidou sighed softly and settled beside Genma before taking one hand in his own calloused grip.
"You're doing it wrong." The dark-eyed man murmured in his typically calm and solemn voice. A wink of light across metal could be seen as he pulled a long slender needle out of nowhere. Where he pulled the senbon out of was uncertain but he delicately held Genma's hand in his own and inserted the slender needle beneath the other man's nail to catch those stubborn and now ground in clots of rusty colored blood and dirt.
It was telling sign of the bandana-wearing jounin's trust in his friend that Genma did not recoil when Raidou lightly scraped that sharp needle beneath the sensitive and tender undersides of his nail. "Thank you..." He whispered softly before pulling out a battered pack of cigarettes with one hand. He shook one out before stowing the pack away once more. His free hand snapped open his lighter with practiced ease and lit the cigarette hanging lazily from his lips all without the aid of his second hand. The faint trembling of Genma's hand barely ceased as he greedily took in that first puff of smoke and poison.
Raidou wrinkled his nose distastefully and continued to clean Genma's nails for him, the faint trembling of Genma's hand betraying how upset he truly was. "You're killing yourself..." Raidou muttered with a dour expression. A mirthless little smile curved Genma's lips as he turned his head to blow the smoke away from Raidou's direction.
"Everyone's gotta die sometime, Raidou. And I'm sure I'll be long dead before this catchs up with me." Genma flicked the ash from the cigarette with a lazy snap of his wrist before Raidou dropped the hand he'd been tending and caught that one, beginning the same process on it. The honey-haired jounin lapsed into silence then, Genma's gaze drawn inevitably to the body of his now dead teammate and friend. "We'll all be dead by then."
"...I don't intend to and I plan on seeing to it that you're still alive to be a cranky old bastard with me." A rare smile curved Raidou's lips then as he looked up from his work. An answering smirk curved Genma's lips as his attention was drawn back to Raidou.
"Oh you do, do you?"
"Uh huh so you might as well stop smoking that crap and conserve your health while you can, because I have no intention of sitting beside a bed watching you choke on oxygen twenty-four hours a day." It was not often that Raidou talked of the future, perhaps it was because he knew the grim reality of their existence or perhaps he simply did not like guessing at where his life would lead him. Whatever the case, the shock of hearing his normally down-to-earth and downright stodgy best friend talk like that...well it was enough to keep Genma centered in the here and now as the honey-haired jounin chuckled softly before taking another drag from the cigarette.
"I don't know...we'll have to see..."
Of course, six months later, those plans of Raidou's for the future nearly changed forever. The man had been caught in a burning building while on a mission to rescue the daughter of a local lord. Raidou fell trying to get a wounded Genma and their target out only to have a burning beam collapse on him. By the time the time Genma managed to pull him out from underneath it, Raidou had suffered burns over nearly thirty percent of his body.
The healer-nin could do little for Raidou by the time Genma managed carry the stumbling and feverish Raidou home; their mission was complete. Thus was Raidou's once smooth and handsome face marred forever with that horrible burn scar that traveled down his neck and across his torso to his hip.
To say Genma had felt guilty and responsible for that would have been a vast understatement. Of course, he tried to hide it beneath a thin and brittle veneer of arrogance and sharp humor. "So what the fuck's up with this picture?" He challenged Raidou once the other man was more lucid and not quite so drugged. Raidou was covered from his face down to his waist in thick white bandages and the sight of his normally strong and unshakable friend lying there left Genma chilled to the bone. "You get on my case about smoking too much and then go throw yourself in a fire..."
Raidou of course saw right through Genma's façade and saw the scared and haunted man eaten alive by guilt. "And I can say..." Raidou painfully bit out, the still healing skin of his face protesting such movement. "...is that it sucks and you should stop smoking so much." There was a decidedly disgusted sniff and wrinkle of his nose that could be seen even through the bandages. "You look like shit."
"Eh...probably." Was Genma's quiet agreement as he settled back into the chair beside Raidou, one hand seeking out his friend's uninjured one so he could squeeze it tightly. "Don't do that to me again, okay? You said we were going to be crotchety old men together, remember? So stop pulling stupid stunts like that." Genma's voice sounded harsh but the fear was there, as well as the guilt as he reflected once again that if not for him, then Raidou probably would have gotten out of the building fine.
The dark-haired jounin watched Genma for a long moment before the corner of his lips quirked up, a gentle squeeze finding Genma's finger before the other jounin relaxed into the bed. "We'll have to see about that. Go get some sleep, Genma, I'm not...going anywhere for now."
But Genma took little comfort in Raidou's words and as the weeks melted into months during which his best friend recovered, Genma nearly spent all his free time with his friend. He was taking solo missions these days and smoking nearly a pack and a half a day when he wasn't on a mission or visiting Raidou. Each time he went to visit Raidou; the man wrinkled his nose at the acrid smell of smoke clinging to Genma's clothes and told him he needed to stop smoking.
However, things changed within the first day of Raidou's release from the hospital.
Genma was helping his friend walk back to his apartment, Raidou's arm gingerly place across his shoulders, and Raidou's head ducked was he refused to meet anyone's eye. The dark-haired jounin was very self-conscious about the still red and angry looking scar that marred his cheek, neck, shoulder and a fair portion of his torso. It looked as if someone had taken a candle and just melted his face like wax, it left the dark-haired jounin a lot more uncertain, and his confidence more shaken then he let on.
His best friend seemed completely unaffected by the scarring however and treated Raidou with the same amount of playful needling that he always treated his best friend. About halfway to Raidou's apartment, he felt the keen need for a cigarette and he shook one out. "You should stop smoking; it's bad for your health. And you stink of it so I know you're smoking too much," Raidou commented, dark eyes bleak as he regarded Genma.
"Yes, Mother." A smirk could be seen as he flicked open the lighter and then the strangest thing happened. As he clicked the lighter to life, Raidou flinched when the fire sprang to life within two feet of his face. Never mind the fact that he had known it was coming, he still flinched as a haunted look filled those dark eyes. Genma froze as a wash of guilt and dull horror ran through him.
Genma grimaced as he noticed Raidou's reaction and his hand tightened on the lighter, staring down at it as if it had become a poisonous snake. The barely smoldering cigarette was spit out then, crushed beneath his foot as he looked tensely at the other jounin. "Maybe you're right, maybe I should stop smoking." Of course, the fact that Raidou flinched like that had driven a spike of pain through Genma's heart and he found himself unable to subjugate his best friend to such an obvious and sadly, unexpected but understandable phobia. Instead, he patted around his uniform for a stick of gum or anything to put in his mouth.
The other three times he'd tried to quit, it had been the need for something in his hands, an oral fixation that had driven him to start smoking again, but this time he had a damned good reason to stop and eventually, he found a senbon in his pack, which he pulled out and nibbled on cautiously. He found he rather liked the cool feel of it against his lips and grinned at Raidou, the needle clenched tightly between his teeth. "Does it suit me?"
"Please tell me that's not the senbon you use to clean your nails." Raidou snorted and tightened his arm around Genma's shoulder in silence gratefulness, the unspoken. 'Thank you' hovering in the air. Genma's arm came around Raidou's waist and squeezed lightly in answer. 'You're welcome' It didn't need to be uttered as they continued on their way to Raidou's house.