Chapter 2: Seen and Unseen
"Are you sure you want to go home alone?" Iruka asked Raidou for about the fifth time as they were leaving the hospital.
"Iruka, stop!" Raidou replied, rubbing his eyes wearily. "Just let me go home and get some rest, and I'll see you in the morning. Genma's fine, I'm fine, we'll be fine, okay?" Then he paused, having a moment of insight. "Is Kakashi back from his mission yet, Iruka?"
Iruka sighed. "Not that I know of, though he should have been back tonight. You're right, I'm the one who doesn't want to be alone. Go on home, though, Rai, I'll be all right."
Raidou grinned. "Are you suuure?" he asked teasingly, dodging the fist that went flying by his face and taking off at a run. Iruka, laughing, turned the other way to walk home slowly.
He blamed his lack of perception on the sedative in his system and the stress he'd been under, when he failed to catch the familiar chakra until he was already in his apartment. "You were out late, Sensei," came the quiet voice, directed at him from his couch where a tall, lean man with messy silver hair was sprawled. He was dressed in nothing but a smile, but even the smile went away when he saw Iruka, and caught the smell of blood coming from him. "What's wrong? What happened?" he said, jumping up and crossing the floor quickly.
Iruka shrugged. "Genma came home in bad shape from his mission. He had to use an Umino Special, and Sakura's paranoid about it, so she won't let anyone see him yet. Rai and I were at the hospital for a while. Sakura says he'll be okay, but I guess it was a messy situation, and I've spent the past few days doing his job for him, and it was just too much stress for me."
"I'm sorry. If I'd known, I could have been there with you, but I came straight here and figured I'd wait for you." Kakashi paused, thinking. "If you didn't get to see Genma, why do I smell blood on you? And what do you mean, doing his job?"
The Chuunin shrugged off his vest, took Kakashi's hand, and led him over to the couch, where they sat together in silence for a moment. Kakashi pulled off Iruka's hitae-ate and hair-tie, and then managed to get his shirt off without any protest. He didn't see any injuries, and there didn't seem to be any blood on Iruka's clothes, but his nose didn't lie. Still, he had to be patient with Iruka, so he counted off time in his head, trying to decide how long to give his lover before he decided something more serious was wrong and he needed medical attention.
"I shouldn't really tell you about Genma's job, you don't have the clearance," Iruka said, so softly Kakashi barely heard him. "Just… if you see me dressed like him, I'm doing his job, and don't bother me, okay?" He paused, then held out both his hands, showing the tops of them to Kakashi. There was a bit of dried blood crusted between his thumb and his first finger on each hand. "Acupuncture. Calming myself down. You know how that particular pressure point tends to bleed more than some others, and the sedative I keep on the senbon when I'm playing Genma tends to make it bleed more. Nothing to worry about."
Kakashi leaned down and kissed each hand, softly, then wrapped Iruka into his arms. His mind was spinning. He and Iruka had only been together a short time, and too much of that had been spent with him away on missions, and he still felt out of sorts whenever he realized how much about Iruka he didn't know. Not only was Genma apparently doing some kind of secret work, Iruka did it as well, and dressed like Genma to do so? And who exactly was going to be fooled by Iruka dressed as Genma? It was obviously some kind of either intelligence or guarding thing, but why would Iruka and Genma in particular be doing it? He remembered Iruka telling him he had special clearance in terms of Genma, now that he thought about it, but there had been other things on his mind at the time and he hadn't really thought about it.
Iruka relaxed back into Kakashi's arms, feeling Kakashi's bare chest on his back. He grinned a bit, thinking how his lover had been waiting for him naked, and was a little sad that he'd wasted that opportunity. Kakashi didn't say anything about it though, just held him and let him rest, and pretended not to know what Iruka was talking about when he said, "Thank you."
Quite a bit later, Iruka shifted and turned around so he could see Kakashi's face. "Hey, Kashi, if you didn't know about Genma's job, why did you want me to give him that rumor about us?"
Kakashi smiled. "He's a gossip, and it'd be fun." Then he gave a serious look. "Besides, the fact that you were the first person I'd let have me in that way eased a lot of people's concerns about our relationship, didn't it? My reputation couldn't have looked good to your friends, even or perhaps especially the ones who are also my friends. Besides that, it was the rumor that drew so much attention to you that you didn't really have the option of retreating again without it triggering any alarms, and it distracted you enough to calm you down a bit about the whole situation you were in, whatever that situation really was. Which I still don't need to know."
Iruka's jaw dropped. "You actually thought of all that in the split second before asking me to spread that rumor?"
Kakashi's smile was back, brighter than before. "Well, I am a genius, you know!"
Iruka didn't reply, but kissed him and let his hands roam over Kakashi's still naked body. Maybe he wasn't going to waste this opportunity after all, he decided.
Raidou lay in bed alone, his eyes wide open, even though he was exhausted. He'd had a mission himself that day, and had pretty much just finished reporting in and returned home when Iruka had come to find him, so he really did need rest. Instead, he was thinking about Genma, and about Iruka, and what Iruka had said to him. He hadn't told Iruka how long he had managed to keep the secret of his feelings for Genma, hadn't said that he had only worked up the courage to even hint at such feelings after he found out Iruka was involved with someone else. Even when they were younger, when Iruka had pretty much only been "that kid that hangs out with Genma" to him, Raidou had held Genma more precious to him than anyone else.
It was a strange situation, that. If you asked Genma who his best friend was, he'd say "Iruka" without hesitation. And yet even Iruka had said, "Anything Genma knows, Raidou knows," and that was almost but not quite true. There was the occasional thing Genma didn't tell Raidou, out of respect for someone else's privacy, but the two were together a lot and shared pretty much everything.
Raidou had thought things would get easier over the years. They were older now, old for shinobi, old to still be alive and in this business. He'd expected to find someone else, to let go, to let Genma go whatever way he was going to go. He had dated other people, mostly women, but it never quite worked out. It wasn't fair to them, really, and he couldn't keep it up for long before his guilt made him drive them away. He'd thought Genma and Iruka would always be together, until he realized that they were actually pretty bad for each other as lovers, too intense for any kind of stability. When they'd broken up, he'd thought of saying something, but never found the nerve as he saw Genma flit from one bed to another. Raidou simply didn't know what to say, and as much as he wanted to be with Genma, he was also afraid of adding himself to that list of conquests, or walking in Iruka's shadow for the rest of his life. So he'd said nothing, and waited, and fervently hoped the pain would dull.
He turned to his side, facing a picture on his nightstand that his eyes couldn't make out, but his mind had memorized. Himself and Genma at about twenty, lounging in a tree as if they were some kind of exotic jungle cats. Iruka had snapped the picture without warning, and the flash had startled Genma, who had toppled down, bringing Raidou with him so that they landed in a heap on the ground. Iruka had laughed so hard he'd cried, but Genma had kissed Raidou and apologized, and it was the only time Genma had ever kissed him. Afterwards, neither of them had spoken about it, and Iruka had only smiled, saying nothing, despite the fact that he and Genma had been an item for a while by then.
Iruka had claimed he'd only noticed the last time Raidou was in the hospital, but thinking back, Raidou suspected he'd known before then. Perhaps he'd even known the day the picture was taken, and that was why he'd smiled instead of protesting that his boyfriend was kissing someone else. Or maybe Iruka hadn't known and he was just the kind of person who didn't care about such things. Who knew? Iruka was so open about most things that it was impossible to tell what he was hiding, his constant honesty making him the perfect liar in an ironic way.
Shaking his head to clear it, Raidou told himself he really had to go to sleep. Tomorrow, he'd be able to see Genma, and maybe then he would take Iruka's advice and say something. They weren't getting any younger, and for all he knew next time Genma wouldn't beat the odds and make it back. It was far past time to do something about this damn heartache that had been following him around for as long as he could remember.