The Gossip Game: Chapter 6
Chapter 6: Tender and Tough
“I’m home!” yelled Genma, to his empty house. Having a big house was great until you were lonely. A week ago he had come home from his meeting with Iruka to find a note that said simply:
G
Mission. 2-3 days. Miss you.
R
He was happy Raidou had left him a note at least, considering otherwise he would have assumed Raidou had just gone home to the apartment he was paying for and not living in at the moment. What a weird relationship, he thought, considering the man hadn’t slept in his own bed once since they’d left the hospital, even though the relationship was so new. It was disorienting.
Genma’s house was huge and old and empty. It hadn’t seemed so a week before, when he’d woken up to Raidou muttering next to him in his sleep and had to wake him up. Carefully, so as not to suffer accidental death or anything. He grinned at that thought, thinking of Iruka, and how well his friend had recovered from the depression he’d been in not so long ago.
Iruka. Always Iruka. In his head, right there, all the time, even now. Genma went downstairs to his basement training room and peppered a target with senbon, trying to clear his mind. When that didn’t work, he moved on to more physical training, beating his punching bag into oblivion. Genma had never been good at handling being alone. That was how he’d gotten his bad reputation in the first place, hopping from one bed to another after his breakup with Iruka. It wasn’t about the sex. Well, okay, sometimes it was about the sex. Just as often, however, it was about just wanting to not be alone. Now he was with Raidou, and he was happy about that, but he was alone at the moment and he didn’t like that at all.
Sighing, he stripped out of his sweaty clothes on his way upstairs to shower. The cool water felt good on his overheated skin, and he had to force himself to get out and dry off after what had been way too long a shower. He was going to freeze himself solid doing that one of these days, or so his mother had told him when he was a kid. After drying, he slipped into a worn out pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. The t-shirt gave him another fit of nostalgia, with the words “I don’t have to be witty, I can kill you with my tongue” emblazoned across the front. A gift from Iruka of course, with his strange taste in clever t-shirts.
He flopped down on the floor in his favorite room, the large open one with nothing but cushions in it. He liked to work here, if he brought things home with him, but he also liked to spend time here just resting, or reading, or meditating. Tonight he did nothing, just lay in the middle of the floor staring at the ceiling, trying to keep his mind clear. He didn’t want to worry about Raidou, didn’t want to find himself wondering what the mission was and how dangerous it was and why he was later than he’d expected. He didn’t want to think about whether Raidou would come home with new scars or not come home at all perhaps. He thought these things anyway, and before he knew it he was shaking all over, just lying there. He couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. They were shinobi. He had never freaked out like this over Iruka, even when Iruka had for a while been doing missions just as dangerous as his own. He hadn’t felt this way about any of his friends or bedmates, simply accepting the risk as part of life and grieving then the inevitable did come. So what was this panic, this terror that turned him into a shuddering mess?
Raidou frowned as he entered Genma’s house. The traps weren’t set, which wasn’t a good sign, but the secret alarm signs Genma had told him about weren’t going off either. What could have distracted Genma so much he forgot to set his traps? Raidou carefully entered the house, moving from room to room silently, his sword out. The sight that met his eyes when he entered the back room made him even more unsettled. Genma, lying on the floor in a t-shirt and sweatpants, shuddering uncontrollably. There wasn’t any sign of any other presence in the house, though, so Raidou simply said, “Genma?”
He wasn’t prepared for the flying mass hurtling at him, and had to drop his sword to avoid impaling Genma on it. Was Genma… crying? He was, sobbing uncontrollably and just hanging onto Raidou with all his strength. Raidou sighed and eased the man sideways a bit, keeping one arm around him while the other reached down to pick up his weapon and sheathe it before anyone got hurt accidentally. Once that was taken care of, Raidou wrapped both arms around Genma and eased them both down to the floor, so Genma was essentially sitting in his lap.
“You’re late,” Genma managed to get out once his sobs subsided.
Raidou sighed, running a hand through Genma’s still damp hair. “I shouldn’t have said how long I’d be gone. It seemed like an easy mission, but things didn’t go as planned. I’m fine, though. Not a scratch on me.”
Genma huddled closer. “I’ve never worried about someone so much in my life, Rai. Never. I haven’t cried like this since…” Then Genma realized when the last time he had cried like this was, and he pulled back just enough to reach up and caress the scarred part of Raidou’s face. He felt stupid suddenly. “I love you.”
Raidou smiled and kissed him gently. “Yeah, I know, Gen-chan.”
Genma shook his head. “No, Raidou, you don’t know. The last time I freaked out this bad was when you got these,” he said, caressing the scars again. “I love you. I love you. And I’m an idiot for not knowing it.”
Raidou’s mind reeled. His mission really hadn’t gone as planned, and he was pretty exhausted even though he had managed to come through with no injuries. He wasn’t ready for some kind of major emotional epiphany, but here it was, and his heart felt like it was going to burst. So this was what it felt like to be loved back, he thought vaguely, and then hugged Genma to him tightly. “Love you too, Gen-chan,” he said simply.
The two of them sat there like that for a long moment, just resting. Raidou ignored the urge to pull away the first few times he felt it, but finally had to give in. “Genma, I’m dirty. I’m tired. Will you let me go long enough to shower?”
“No. But I’ll shower with you,” replied Genma, with no trace of a leer at all. Raidou was rather impressed actually, and a little worried.
“Fine. Let’s go,” replied Raidou, nudging Genma. Genma didn’t budge, however, and Raidou sighed, gathering his courage. “Gen-chan, wouldn’t you rather have me be this close to me naked and wet?”
Genma blinked, then bolted out of Raidou’s lap. “Well, what are we waiting for?” he asked, and he was definitely leering now. Raidou grinned at him, relieved. He stood, calmly, and followed Genma to the bathroom. When he started pulling his clothes off, though, Genma batted his hands away and did it for him, and Raidou felt a little self-conscious as more and more of his scarred flesh was revealed. Genma merely smiled at him, shucking his own clothing and turning to start the shower and adjust the temperature, then drew him under the spray when it was ready.
As soon as they were in the shower, Raidou felt as if Genma was crowding him again, but he didn’t comment. He even let Genma help him wash, grinning at the overt gropes the other man took as he did so. The more Genma touched him, the less awkward he felt about his body, he found. No one had ever managed to have that effect on him before, though he’d had his share of lovers over the years. By the time they were done with the shower and dried off, he felt cleaner than he’d been in a long time, in more ways than one.
Genma reached for his clothing, but Raidou smiled and batted his hands away. “Don’t bother. Let’s go to bed,” he said, grabbing Genma’s hand and pulling.
“You bloody tease! You know you aren’t going to do anything, but you insist on…” started Genma, but he shut up abruptly when Raidou’s free hand wrapped itself around his cock.
“Not going to what?” asked Raidou innocently.
Genma sputtered, then recovered. “Take me to bed and ravish me?” he asked hopefully.
Raidou laughed, stroking a bit, feeling the flesh beneath his fingers harden. “I don’t know if I’m quite up to ravishing you, Gen-chan, but I can promise you won’t have to take care of this” another slow stroke added emphasis, “by yourself.”
“Fair enough,” conceded Genma, a slow smile spreading across his face. Raidou was touching him, really touching him, and he wasn’t dreaming. It was worth all the worry in the world.
“This definitely feels like being ravished,” commented Genma a few minutes later, after he felt like every inch of his skin had been kissed, licked or nipped at by Raidou. Raidou’s mouth was currently tracing a line up his thigh, and instead of responding Raidou bit him. “I wasn’t complaining!” protested Genma, then wondered if he should complain to get another one of those bites.
“You talk too much,” growled Raidou.
Genma smiled down at his lover. “I’ve been having one-sided conversations with you all my life, what do you expect?”
“For you to shut up before I decide I just want to go to sleep after all,” Raidou replied, but the threat carried no real weight because he knew Genma could see his excitement, had felt his erection pressing against him as Raidou moved over his body.
Genma grinned knowingly, and reached out to pull Raidou up his body. “Okay then,” he said softly, wrapping his arms around Raidou and settling in as if to go to sleep. “We’ll sleep instead.” He gently rolled his hip so that his groin ground into Raidou’s thigh, and he could feel Raidou’s heart beating loudly as if it were in his own chest. He wasn’t expecting what came next though.
“Damn you, Genma,” Raidou whispered harshly. “I spent my entire adult life resisting the urge to just pounce you, and then I finally have you in bed and you tease me like this?” Raidou shifted, and his mouth descended on Genma’s in a passionate kiss. He pulled back, panting, and asked, “You really want to feel ravished, Genma?”
Genma nodded dumbly, thinking that Raidou had finally lost his shyness, and not in a way he had expected. That was all he had time to think before Raidou was kissing him again, and his hands were everywhere, and his thigh was spreading Genma’s legs insistently. The kiss ended, and then Raidou’s mouth was roaming his body again, leaving behind marks as it went this time. It ghosted across his erection tauntingly, and then dove lower, the tongue forcing its way into his body roughly, removed only to be followed just as roughly by fingers.
Genma screamed, and Raidou hesitated for just a second, before Genma bucked his hips against Raidou’s hand. His lip was bleeding freely where he had bitten it, but he was smiling, and he had said he wanted to be ravished. With a mental shrug, Raidou pulled his fingers almost out and then thrust them in again, leaning down to take Genma’s cock in his mouth as he did so. This elicited another scream, and then a moan, and finally a scathing “You call this ravishing?”
Raidou freed his mouth, and laughed, because this was his Genma, the smart-mouthed man who knew exactly where the lines were and crossed them all anyway. Raidou abandoned the cock he’d just spit out, jerked his fingers free, and then shoved Genma’s thighs further apart, moving up between them. He lubed his cock with his own spit before shoving it just as brutally into Genma’s hole, his voice tight as he asked, “Better?”
Genma couldn’t answer, his whole body racked with pleasure and pain. He knew that was going to hurt, but he just couldn’t help taunting Raidou into it, and this side of Raidou that he hadn’t seen before was fascinating him. His eyes didn’t move from Raidou’s scarred face as the other man thrust into him roughly, and he could see so many emotions there, but most of all a relief from the longing he’d felt for years, and a twinge of regret that this first time between them hadn’t come out quite like he’d planned. Genma would talk with him about that later, he decided, and then a brutal thrust hit in just the right spot, and he was screaming again.
The unique mixture of bliss and regret Raidou was feeling was exhilarating, and when it was finally over, Raidou collapsed, exhausted emotionally now on top of the mental and physical exhaustion his mission had caused. Genma kissed him, the blood from his bitten lip passing between them, and Raidou mumbled an apology, which Genma waved away. “You’re perfect, Rai. Perfect this way, and perfect the way you wanted it to be, too. Perfect, always. Loved, always. Just sleep,” he said soothingly, wrapping his arms around his lover. So Raidou slept, and Genma held him, lying awake for a very long time.
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