Like This
By Yami no Ichigo
Pg-13, GenmaxHayate, Angst?
For Sammi, the red flip-flop, because she wrote a NeijiNaru for little old me and in return for the duration of this fic I'm her biotch. - Aren't you happy?
It started like this:
1. With Sake
The sun shines on his dark hair, soft and lanky, just long enough to brush against his chin, but short enough not to get in the way. He holds onto a sake cup, fingers pale and weak against the baby blue porcelain in his fragile hands, he smiles softly, so, so softly sweet that it hurt Genma to watch, that it made him so annoyingly happy that that smile is for him and that in the hazy shimmer fog of his sake soaked memories he can see that true smile, that slipped out, just a little bit, for him.
Hayate would laugh, just a little, a small spark of a chuckle that would vibrate in his throat and he'd think about how pale Hayate was, how delicate he seemed under that heavy Chuunin vest and how much he wanted to kiss those high shadowed cheeks. He'd think that even though it was such a small stupid joke that it didn't matter because Hayate liked it, because Hayate smiled and really, that's all that's important.
Hayate tossed his head, jerking his hair out of his face and he lifted a trembling hand to Genma's face, kissed his face with kunai calloused fingertips that whispered confessions to his skin.
Really, that's all that is important.
2. With Ballet
He reminds Genma of a ballet dancer he once dated, just standing there, by the window, a hand touching the sun warmed varnished wood, sickly green vest taken and resting peacefully on a chair right by him, he slips his other hand into his pocket and turns to the blond, a graceful dance in one movement. Hayate doesn't quite smile when he half turns and he feels like he's disturbing something, then the man walks to him, his footsteps not quite tapping on the wooden floors, Genma's eyes watch his bare feet for a moment, see how pale and elegant they are, the high arches, the well formed toes. Then Genma remembers that Hayate hates his feet when he stops and those toes squirm, he looks up and the man starts walking again.
He's nothing like her, the ballet dancer he met in Wind Country, he's strong, he's self conscious, he's a man...
And...
When he kisses with the warmth that seems so shockingly misplaced in his strategically clammy looking skin, it's nothing like dancing at all.
It's being alive.
3. With Spring
He asked Hayate once, when winter's coat of snow melted into the warm green grass of spring, when the trees of Konoha village wept from the ice still clinging to it's branches, if he really did feel sick. Hayate shrugged; of course, because that was who he was and he just smiled that hurting smile and the blond just sighed, turned away and pretended that really it didn't hurt him at all.
Hayate held his hands, his own kissed cold from the stubborn winter air and airbrushed pink along the knuckles and damn but he never felt his heart jump like that when he led Genma's trembling hands to his warm neck, skin pale underneath the hastily wrapped Konoha issued scarf that they both wouldn't admit they hated.
"No, I don't feel sick at all."
It's like this:
4. In the mornings
Genma makes breakfast, rice and omelets on some days, a sunny salad with just enough crispy noodle things to annoy Hayate without him going overboard and just stabbing it with a fork, on the side. Genma is a morning person, he smiles and laughs and jokes as Hayate stares at him in a slight daze, mind like a TV with bad reception, fuzzy and raining with a thunderstorm of static. He holds onto his cup of coffee with a death grip and until Genma could chase away the early morning hate with his kisses and crispy warm cold touch he'd just satisfy himself with the caffeine.
Genma turns toward him then, Hayate finally lets go of his cup and slumps backwards onto the wooden chair that he wished he could hurl out the window in a flaming blaze, he drags his tired eyes to that smiling face and the smell of food moves over like a fog to him.
"Wakey, wakey." Genma smirks, annoyingly happy and awake. Hayate wants to throw something at him, the coffee? The chair?
Then Genma kisses him gently, on the mouth, cheeks, forehead, nose.
Wakey, wakey.
Hayate pours the orange juice down his pajama pants and satisfies himself with the scream.
5. In the afternoons
He sleeps, because he's tired and really just very lazy, his hair is unbound and spilling over his pillow like rays of gold melted sunlight, black bandana clutched tightly in one hand. Hayate doesn't make a sound when he's like this, he sits still and watches as Genma breathes slowly, his chest bared and gleaming, bandana wrapped hand resting on a tight belly and that mouth that isn't serious and isn't happy is slightly open, thin and hard, a man's lips, but they look so delicate in the bright light of an afternoon sun.
Hayate thinks that he does this on purpose somehow, displaying himself in all of his sleeping glory just to ignite the hunger that burns in his loins, and then really he thinks he doesn't mind at all, because it's an excuse, and really he'd take all that he can get. So he crawls over to him, trying not to make a noise, and he feels six years old again, creeping quietly over to his dad, a ninja game, he'll attack quietly, quietly, but before he does his dad would whip around, grab him by the waist and tickle him with sweet cotton candy smile kisses.
Genma really is beautiful like this, skin tan, eyes closed, and the memories that haunted him would rip away, clean and smooth, a surgery for the past he didn't want to remember when his own horridly pale hands would touch the sunlight of his flesh, he feels like the moon, he feels like a cloud and he feels happy when Genma opens his eyes, grabs him by the waist and tickles him with sweet cotton candy smile kisses.
6. In the evenings
They watch the sun set; they could feel it in their bones. The soft closing of light, the creeping darkness of night, the few struggling finger paint smears of light and a dying sun, blazing bright light right in the middle of it all.
Hayate holds Genma tight, tight, tight, tight, because god, he doesn't want to let him go, because the missions would just keep getting harder and harder, because the light will set on them some day and they'd have to be separated, one way or another and they'd be alone.
Fucking alone.
There are thoughts that say he'd rather die first, because he doesn't want to go through that, no not fucking again, the selfish words that burned and burned in his shivering chest. He doesn't want to be alone, god, he doesn't want to live without him, never without him.
But he wants to live, to never have Genma go through his death, to never have him become alone, to protect him, to hold him, to... to...
Hayate sighs, tired, sleepy, cold and cold and cold.
Genma wraps warm muscled arms around him, to keep him warm, to keep him save... just to hold him...
They watch the sun set, because they could feel it in their bones, because the future is there, blazing, burning, smearing finger paint colors of dusk as a last attempt at being alive.
And it ends like this:
7. In a small room
The news hurt to hear.
Hayate was found dead, mutilated.
I'm sorry.
He's a hero.
A respectable ninja.
He's a good man.
Fuck, I'm sorry.
The room shrunk even smaller, it stretched higher, the shadows in the room spun and spun and spun and he felt like God stuffed him in the wash, he felt his colors bleaching out, he felt the soapy bubbles in his brain.
It stung.
The news still hurt to hear, and even as hands pressed against his back in reassurance it felt like brands burning into his flesh.
He's dead.
He's dead.
Hayate.
Dead.
Fuck.
8. In a funeral parlor.
Not much of Hayate was still on Hayate, the parts that had survived kept on, make-up had been applied, his eye bags were erased and a blush brushed on.
Hayate looked alive.
A laugh, chocking, hurting.
Even more so than when he was alive.
He wore a traditional yukatta, brown, drab and stripped with a darker color.
He couldn't hear what the people were saying, he didn't want to, they dragged him up to say something, a eulogy, a good bye.
He didn't know what to say, or what he said, Genma thought it went something like this.
Hayate never said good bye, it was almost as if he'd been afraid of saying it, nothing else seemed to scare him though. A laugh. Too bad, that... I think, it would be redundant to say what a great ninja he is, everyone said that already so... we'll miss him... I'll miss him...
The words sounded cold to him, empty, and somewhere in that filled room rain fell on his cheeks.
9. In the cemetery.
He brought flowers, rice balls and a bit of incense.
Genma came every day, he read the name chiseled into stone and tried not to get too drunk.
"You're allergic to flowers huh?" He said his voice loud in the silence that stretched tinted orange red in the sunlight that dragged down to peer into the other side of the world.
He tossed the flowers over his shoulder and laughed.
"Yeah... I know... it's supposed to be useless..." he replied to the answer in his head, he's going insane, the sake pounded against his temples and he didn't remember the last time he had sleep.
The pain still burned, bright and sharp, his days blurred together, melting like wax in a pot, colors not quite mixing, and still, just like when he was alive, all his thoughts dragged themselves to him, to Hayate, to his love.
He snorted, really, it's a miracle he's still alive.
Footsteps crunched into the unpaved ground and Genma turned, wary.
A little blond with sad blue eyes and an armful of white orchids walked along side a tall dark haired boy, his eyes sharp and alert, the taller boy's arms had wrapped around the blonde's shoulders and he recognized those whisker marks and that horrible orange jumpsuit.
Blue eyes drifted over to him, and the kid sniffled.
The hopes of a child burned bright suddenly in his mind, out shining the pain that had lived inside for so very long. He turned away.
"Maybe, I should stop acting like a loser, ne, Hayate-kun."
Somewhere, a lazy rustling vibrated through the treetops of Konoha's many forests, like a sake soaked chuckle.
...maybe...