Raidou/Genma, one-sided. One shot. PG for some swearing. Wrote this quite a while ago.
Genma talked in the most unique way, Raidou mused. His tone was lazy and hardly varied at all unless he was angry, but somehow it conveyed just what he wanted, and some that he probably wasn't aware of. He had the rare ability to not-quite ramble in long, run-on sentences that meant nothing and everything at the same time, or to slice someone to pieces with a single word, aimed as deadly as one of his senbon but twice as cutting. Most of all, though, he seemed completely unaware of his own eloquence, if that was the right word.
Genma talked and chatted to everyone, but even though it wasn't by much, Raidou was the exception. The jounin didn't chat or talk flippantly to Raidou, he confided in him. Now, with Genma, there wasn't much of a difference, but Raidou noticed it and wasn't sure if anyone else ever did.
The difference was in the way he used the pronoun "I" more then "we" with Raidou, and in the way he kept his senbon sticking out in a perfect straight line from his mouth even when his lips were moving, like he did when he was content. With other people, Genma would trace spiky shapes in the air while talking, as he did silently on the battlefield, when his needle had to be replaced every kill.
He also looked at his best friend, really looked at him, not through, around or above like he usually did with Ebisu or Iruka or Aoba. And when he did that, Genma talked with his eyes too.
It annoyed Raidou slightly that Genma couldn't see that. The jounin honestly thought he was clumsy and thick-sounding, with a knack for tripping over things that hadn't been there when other people walked by.
"I mean, come on man, did you see the way that flippin' thing got tangled in my feet? I swear Iruka just stepped over it like that-"
Raidou's eyebrows had raised a couple of millimetres, which was enough of a change in his expression for Genma to notice, and he had stopped, smiling quickly and languidly.
"Nah Rai 'm an ugly bastard with an oral fixation in more ways than one and two fuckin' left feet."
Teeth glinted around the needle.
"No, Genma-"
"I don't have a problem with it man, you know, be happy with who you are and all that shit-"
And Raidou learned through experience that a determined Genma couldn't be deterred from what he thought was right. Even if it wasn't.
About the tripping though, Raidou maintained that Shirinui Genma never tripped, per se. He simply changed his path, be it by a sidestep or a neat crouch and swift turn. When he did start to fall Raidou felt the anticipation, the tightening in his chest, waiting for an impact that never came. Instead, with an elegant twist and something quick with his ankle Genma was on the move again, sometimes walking backwards smoothly as he talked to his friend.
And, while he was at it, Raidou could also maintain that Genma's ugliness was non-existent. In fact, quite the opposite applied through the scarred ninja's eyes. So much so that, when on the front line with kunai falling like rain and the smell of blood on the wind, the sight of Genma whirling and parrying through shining silver bolts of needles, swooping and jumping and all the time watching Raidou's back while he watched his in return in his own way, he sometimes seriously reconsidered his lifelong strategy of finding a nice civilian girl and settling down once this was all over and the blood was permanently washed off his sword.
If simply for the reason that Genma was not a nice civilian girl in any sense of the words.
He was skin-shredding threats and easy smiles and elegance incarnate.
2008
Hope you liked it! I'd love to hear your comments.