Chapter 23: Never Giving Up

"I'm getting too old for this job," thought Genma as he left the last bar of the night, his head swimming with gossip and the conversation he'd had with Kakashi halfway through his evening. He had a horrible headache, and he was starting to wish he'd drank half as much alcohol as he'd pretended to this evening. At least if he had, he'd be drunk enough to just pass out and not deal with the pain in his head.

Instead, he found himself knocking on Kotetsu's door. The spiky-haired man answered almost immediately, and Genma didn't doubt that his chakra was pulsing with the exhaustion and pain he felt, and had alerted his friend to his presence. My friend, because he is, now. He wasn't back in the old days, whatever else happened between us, but now he's my friend, him and 'Zumo both.

The affectionate look he gave Kotetsu must have been strange or amusing, because Genma found himself being laughed at and swept into a hug. "Come on. Ruka's not here, but you go in and rest, and I'll go grab him for you, if it's him you're here to see?"

Genma considered saying 'no' for a minute, because he really wouldn't mind Kotetsu's company, but he felt he had to talk to Iruka before Kakashi could. "Yeah, I really should talk to him. I talked to Kakashi tonight."

Kotetsu arched a brow, considered asking, then shook his head and ushered Genma in. "Go sit down. Or lay down, hell, you look exhausted. I'll find Ruka, he's probably just at 'Zumo's place."

Giving Kotetsu's shoulder a grateful little squeeze, the older man made his way into the apartment and flopped down on the couch, his eyes immediately closing to try to keep out the light, hoping the pounding in his head would dull. Kotetsu took the hint, hit the light switch on his way out, and took off at a run.

It couldn't have been more than ten minutes later that Iruka came through the door, took a look around the dark room, lifted Genma's head and slid beneath it, so that it rested on his lap. He knew the tokujo was awake, but his lover hadn't said anything when he came in the room, and Iruka knew what that meant. His hands reached out automatically to slide the bandana off the man's head, start rubbing at his temples, pressing soothing healing chakra into the touch.

Genma didn't know why it worked when Iruka did it. He couldn't manage it himself, but it wasn't just that. None of the medics seemed to be able to manage getting his headaches to go away either, which the psyche-nins had interesting things to say about, mostly along the lines of "it's in your head in more ways than one."

But Iruka's touch and chakra soothed the pain, and Genma let himself relax into it, for several long moments, simply rested his head in his lover's lap and let himself be soothed, taken care of. He didn't want to mention what he wanted to speak with Iruka about until after his head felt better, and he wondered if that was greedy and selfish of him, but… maybe it's okay to be, in small ways, sometimes. As long as I'm not in the things that matter.

When it was done, when he could open his eyes and not feel like his head was going to explode, Genma did so, looking up into the sweet face of the man he'd been in love with for so many years. "Thank you."

The younger man gave a small smile, brushed his hand through Genma's hair, and asked softly, "Do you feel okay now? You look tired."

Genma turned his head, rubbed it a little against Iruka's leg. "Tired, yes. From work, and from… thinking too much. I saw Kakashi tonight. He bought me a beer."

"Oh? Did he say something to you that upset you?" Iruka's mind was spinning. He had mentioned that he was having dinner with Kakashi to his boyfriend before, so that wouldn't be news. And somehow he just couldn't see Kakashi saying anything to upset Genma on purpose.

"No. It wasn't him." He didn't cause my headache. Izumo did by suggesting you date Kakashi, Kotetsu did by telling me, I did by telling Kakashi it was okay. Not Kakashi himself. Not you either.

His voice went soft, and he opened his eyes and looked up into Iruka's. "Ruka, love, when you told Zumo and Tetsu that you missed Kakashi, they didn't seem to think it was in a way that was going to just get better with time, or that could be fixed by being friends with him again."

Iruka gave a quiet little sigh, shook his head. "Gen-chan…"

A smile spread over Genma's face. "It's okay, Ru. I'm not upset. Or hurt. I promise. But you might be upset at me when you hear what I told Kakashi tonight."

Iruka's eyes grew a little wary, but he sat still, Genma's head still head in his lap. He wound fingers into soft honey hair and waited, not sure what he expected to hear, but a little worried. If he's trying to just hand me back… he can't do that. I made my own choice.

Genma didn't go straight to what he'd told Kakashi. He knew better, knew what it would look like, how the reasoning would be misunderstood. Instead, he started with heading off the questions he knew Iruka would have.

"Ruka-kun, I like the way things are right now, you know? Us not living in the same place, spending time with our friends, those sorts of things. It's really nice to ease back into things, give ourselves time to figure out where we are in our own lives, not just jump in and devour each other." He nuzzled against Iruka's leg, reached out a hand to capture the one in his hair, holding onto it. He was trying to be careful, to present the subject the right way, but the circumspectness was starting to make him feel like a liar, and he couldn't have that.

"I don't understand why, if you'll be involved with Kotetsu and Izumo, if we both are, you can't just make your dinner with Kakashi a date. You two are really good together, were really good together, and you're the one who thought he needed you to only be with him. He… he could do this, what we do, you know?"

Genma just barely managed to get a hand under himself in order to keep his head from hitting the floor. He lay stunned for a moment, not sure what had happened, and then looked up at the man who had just so violently ejected him from his lap.

Iruka was standing across the room, eyes wide. It was obvious he hadn't dumped his boyfriend off the couch on purpose, simply moved himself without realizing that Genma's position depended on his own. He stood against the wall, and through the small amounts of light coming from the other room, Genma couldn't see his expression.

"He can? Did he say he could?" Iruka asked quietly, and he wasn't looking at Genma, though shame was creeping up within him that his lover had fallen because of him.

The older man sat up, slowly, crossed his legs and rubbed at his temple, but the headache was still gone, thankfully, mercifully. "Not exactly. He said he'd think about it. But I know him. I've known him since before you did, I used to be the person he came to when he needed a friend, you know? He'll ask."

Iruka sat down in the closest chair, not moving back toward Genma any more than he had to, and let his eyes slide closed, his head falling back against the chair. Behind his eyelids, he could see a young man in a mask, only a little older than himself, coming and sitting in Genma's living room. He could see them sitting for hours, not talking, not touching beyond a pale white hand clenched in a larger tan one. He learned that from Genma, the way he dealt with me when we first got together. Everything comes back to Gen-chan, for us both. And neither of us even seemed to remember each other, knowing each other, from before. But we knew each other through Gen then, before we realized it.

He couldn't figure it out, couldn't decide what these things meant, if anything. But it had been Genma who talked him back into the world when he'd been determined to hide out forever a few years ago, and without that, he wouldn't have responded to Kakashi either. Was that what was happening now? Genma getting him into a place where he could, and then handing him over to Kakashi?

"Like us? Like us and Zumo and Tetsu? Not… you're not trying to just give me back?" The voice was very small, and Iruka swallowed, hard, wished he didn't sound so pathetic.

Shiranui Genma had always been fast, when he needed to be. Within seconds he was kneeling by the chair, his hand reaching out for one of Iruka's, his eyes looked up through the semi-darkness into his lover's eyes. "Never. Iruka, never, even if he asked me to. Even if you told me to. I'm never giving you up now, for anything, for anyone. If you leave me, you'll have to expect me to follow you around like a lost little puppy dog or something. I'm not giving you up."

Iruka gave a little nod, squeezed the hand in his own. "Genma, I want to be just us, for tonight. I want to go back to your place, and… I want to feel like old times, you know? I know it doesn't work for us, in the long run, to do that. But just for tonight, tomorrow morning, I want to act like nothing changed, like we never broke up in the first place. Like we're coming up on our twentieth anniversary or whatever it would be."

He thought about it for a moment, did some quick math in his head. "It would be… what… seventeen? Can you image, Gen, if we had stayed together all this time?"

The words hurt. Genma wasn't sure if his lover would understand why, but… back then, it had been a 'mutual decision', but it had been Iruka who had been the smart one and realized after ten years together that they couldn't keep being together, that they weren't stable enough around each other. Genma had said 'yeah, you're right,' and he'd known his younger lover was right, but…

If he hadn't brought it up, I would have stayed with him forever, however much we fucked each other up.

Ten years together, seven years apart, and now together again, finally. Only they almost hadn't been, he'd sent Iruka running back to Kakashi, and it had been Iruka who had come back. And now Genma was asking Kakashi back into Iruka's life, into his own life. And Iruka wanted to pretend…

"Come on, Ruka-baby, let's go home," he said very softly, pressing a kiss to the beloved dark hand he was holding.

They cooked together, moving comfortably in the same space, the meal better called breakfast than dinner for how close to morning it was.

They sat together in almost-silence, as they ate, and then retreated to Genma's 'meditation room', the cushions on the floor still the only furniture, the only room unchanged from the old days, now.

The two men lounged on the cushions, a dark hand playing in light hair, a lighter one tracing a scarred nose.

The kiss started the same way it would have when Iruka was a teenager, they both seemed to move at once, rolled around a bit as they playfully struggled for control, and then Genma was looking down at his lover and grinning as he tickled his sides, shared laughter ringing through the big old house.

Iruka stilled, suddenly, sat up. He touched Genma's hand, said a soft, 'just wait', and looked around.

Everywhere he looked, there were ghosts of himself. The boy with the ponytail making traps, taking pictures, learning how to touch and be touched, how to love and accept love. Everywhere he could see them, him and Genma, making love on this very floor, the infamous event that had been fucking Genma into the kitchen table, the fights, the parties, the long nights of nothing but holding each other after a long time away on missions.

He'd been so young, and so determined, then. Known what he wanted and insisted on getting it, and everyone who knew him had known, it was Iruka who had his lover wrapped around his finger, who pushed and pulled and created that relationship despite Genma's original protests over his age, his innocence, Genma's own history of being 'not exactly a relationship guy.'

He'd been the one to end it too, to sit Genma down and say 'we are destroying each other', and he'd hated himself for it. In the years between that moment and his relationship with Kakashi, he and Genma had been the best of friends, had slept in each other's beds on and off, occasionally had sex.

A part of himself wondered how 'this' was different from 'that'. How if he was living with Kotetsu and Izumo and dating Kakashi, it would be different than just fucking around with Genma off and on as friends, rather than being in a relationship. He turned his head to ask the question.

Genma was still wearing his uniform pants, but as usual in his own home he'd ditched the rest of his clothing. He sat with one leg under him and the other outstretched, long and lanky, and one arm behind him held much of his weight. He had tensed, fearing danger, when Iruka sat up, but the reassuring words had done their job, and now he was merely resting, leaned back comfortably, the smile on his lips touching his hazel eyes, his mouth senbon-free for the moment.

The words died on Iruka's lips. There was nothing that needed to be asked. It wasn't the same, because of that, because of the smile on Genma's lips the equal of which he hadn't seen in their entire time 'apart', a smile he could feel mirrored on his own face. Maybe, just maybe, Raidou had been able to make Genma smile that way, but… Raidou had given him up, over Iruka. And Raidou had his own path to walk now, and seemed well. The sensei couldn't feel guilty anymore. And he couldn't doubt anymore, either, not when faced with that smile.

The flying tackle-hug caught Genma off balance, but only for a second, and then it was back to kissing and wrestling and being playful. He didn't ask what the pause had been about, didn't need to know.

Iruka was in his arms, and that was all he needed to know.