Beautiful Dreamer
Chapter 1: What Happened Last Night?
Cold. He was cold. Genma opened his eyes and looked…across his bathroom floor. The icy tiles pressed against his face, chest and stomach, and froze him. He hauled himself upright, and looked around. How had he gotten into the bathroom? He hadn’t been drinking last night, so he couldn’t have blacked out. Was he sleepwalking? That was a horrifying thought, since he all he slept in was his underwear. Looking at himself in the mirror, he saw the outlines of the octagonal tile imprinted over his torso and the side of his face. “As always, you look like hell in the morning.” He told himself, staring at the haggard image he presented.
Stripping off his boxers, he stepped into the shower. After letting the water run for a few minutes, he realized that it wasn’t going to get warm. He would have to speak to the landlady about this. It was the third time this month that the water heater had decided to break. A cold shower wasn’t his favorite way to wake up, especially after spending hours sleeping on a freezing cold tile floor. Once he shocked himself awake with equally frigid water, Genma stepped out of the shower and dried himself. He started shivering as he walked into his bedroom, the towel wrapped around his waist. The clock read ten until nine, and he had three hours before he had to be anywhere. Therefore, two seconds after he had pulled on a pair of flannel pajamas and thick socks, he burrowed into the covers, pulling them up over his head.
“Mmm. That’s much better.” Within a few minutes, he started to thaw out, and drowsiness came over him. Of course, as usual, his luck did not hold. The telephone rang, shrill and annoying. He poked a hand out of the covers and pulled it from its cradle. “Yes?”
“Are you okay?” He heard Iruka’s voice ask, and he said that he was.
“Why do you ask?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Iruka’s incredulous voice came through the phone, his tone just a little sharp. “You don’t remember showing up at my house at ten at night, in your underwear? Bitching and moaning about your love life or lack thereof?” Genma squeezed his eyes shut, willing that pathetic image out of his mind. “Genma? You there?”
“Not for long. I’m going back to sleep. Can we just forget that I did that? I wasn’t…I wasn’t in my right mind.” He was getting a headache, and he needed to calm down. Before he could hang up, Iruka said that he was coming over and then hung up on his end. He replaced the phone, grumbling under his breath. “Rude bastard.” After ten minutes of trying unsuccessfully to go back to sleep, he threw the covers off of himself and dragged himself to the kitchen to make his morning tea.
He set a cup aside for Iruka, who liked his tea to get slightly cold. The man said he preferred it bitter, which Genma never would understand. If he liked bitter things, why not just drink coffee? Five minutes later, Iruka walked into his apartment without knocking. Raising an eyebrow at him, he said, “Are you determined to get on my bad side today? I told you I was going back to sleep, and you came over, then didn’t even bother to announce your presence by knocking.” The younger man only stared at him.
“I think after last night, I’m entitled to be a little rude.” He closed the door behind himself. At Genma’s confused expression, he said, “Were you drunk? How can you not remember that?”
Sipping his tea, Genma considered the possibility that Iruka could be lying. He remembered the younger man being quite a prankster during his Genin years. Then, he thought, what the hell. If he wasn’t lying, then he could go to see Shizune, and get the whole mess straightened out, and if he was, he could beat the crap out of Iruka and go back to bed. “I was sleep-walking, moron.” Iruka eyed him.
“Bullshit. You were totally lucid. Well, until you broke down and started crying.” Genma’s eyes widened in horror at the very thought. Iruka noticed this. He looked at Genma, seeming to be trying to figure something out. “You honestly don’t remember, do you?” He shook his head. “Man…but you looked awake to me!”
Genma held up a hand to stop the Chuunin’s rant. “Okay. Let’s get past that for a second. How long was I at your house?”
“About an hour. Why?” Iruka reached for his teacup, which he had just seen, but put it down again. “Still too warm.” Genma rolled his eyes.
“I’m trying to figure out where I might have gone. I woke up not long ago, on my bathroom floor.” He rubbed his temples and let out a long breath. His headache was getting worse. “When I left, did I mention that I was going anywhere else?” Iruka shook his head. “Shit.” Well, there was only one way to find out. He’d have to ask around. He excused himself, and went to his bedroom to pull on his Jounin uniform and pick up a fresh batch of senbon needles, a small packet of poison, just in case, and his bandana.
“Where are you off to?” Iruka asked, polishing off his tea with a smile.
“To find out how big of an ass I made of myself.” He opened the door, and Iruka walked out before him. Then, he locked it behind himself. Iruka had obviously decided to tag along.
“You under any stress lately…having any nightmares?” Iruka asked, bemused.
“No, Doctor Freud. I’m not. And I don’t have the hots for my mom, either.” His joke wasn’t lost on the Chuunin, who laughed so hard that he had to wipe a tear from his eye. “What the hell happened last night, anyway?”
--
The previous night, 10:01pm
Iruka looked at the door. Was that a knock? Suddenly, the door shook with the pounding of a fist on the wood. ‘Captain Obvious strikes again’, Iruka thought. He snorted derisively at himself. Then, he went to the door, a blistering set-down prepared for whomever it was that disturbed his paper-grading time. But when he opened it, he gaped at the intruder.
Shiranui Genma stood at his door, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, which had little puppies on them. He also was without his ever-present senbon. Iruka raised an eyebrow. “If this is your way of asking me on a date, the answer is no.” He bit his lips to keep in the guffaw that tried to come out, and then swallowed his laughter when he saw the absolutely miserable look on his friend’s face. “You look like shit. Get in here before someone sees your ass.” He pulled Genma into his living room, and sat him down on the couch. “What’s wrong?”
“Lonely.”
The man usually seemed fine, so Iruka didn’t know why he was so depressed. Neither of them had an active romantic life, but they had no time for it at the moment. While Iruka at times made jokes about just giving up and taking holy orders, Genma had a sense of humor about his single existence. Or, at least he seemed to. Now, looking at him, Iruka was tempted to just slap him. No one had a right to look that miserable when they were healthy and in their prime.
Then, Genma proceeded to cry. He recounted the last six dates he had been on, and how they had all been abysmal failures. Iruka didn’t think it was that surprising, seeing as two of them had been with Anko, and the others with women from other countries. “Why doesn’t anyone like me?” He asked, his voice cracking. By this point, Iruka was thoroughly distressed. He wanted to knock the man out so that he would stop his blubbering and not hurt himself, but he might regret that later. Like when Genma would turn him into a human pincushion.
“Baka…people like you. You’re just…busy, like me.” Genma leaned on him, putting his head on Iruka’s shoulder. He was acting like a child. It was all he could do to just pat the man on the back and tell him that he was just having a bad night. Things went on this way for some time, and then Genma suddenly stood and walked out of the door, scrubbing tears from his face with the back of his hand. Iruka simply stared after him.
--
“Damn. I knew I was pathetic, but not that bad. Shit. Do you have any aspirin?” Iruka laughed at him, and he invented a few new curses for the man. “Screw this. I’m going to see Shizune. She’ll know how to deal with this.” They were just passing a small baker’s shop when a hand tapped him on the shoulder, he turned with a glare, thinking that it was Iruka. Genma was just about to clobber the ponytail-wearing Chuunin, he found himself staring deeply into two very red eyes. Blinking, he said in a rather awkward fashion, “Ohayo, Kurenai.”
She was smiling at him. Why was she smiling like that? For that matter, her hand was still on his shoulder. Genma schooled his face to be calm, willing it not to seem at all as confused as he felt. When Kurenai leaned in and kissed his cheek, though, he was stunned to say the least. Her voice came out sounding partly amused, and part…what the hell was that in her voice? “Good morning to you, too. Would you mind coming over to my place again tonight? But this time, wear something more than those cute underwear, okay?”
After the woman turned and sauntered away, leaving both Genma and Iruka staring after her, the two men turned to one another. Genma was blinking slowly at nothing at all, trying to allow what had just happened to actually register. Iruka smirked just a little, and scratched the side of his face in thought. “Well, that’s one question answered. Too bad you don’t remember going over to her place. She seems to like you.”
Genma’s elbow somehow found its way into Iruka’s stomach. “Can it, Umino.” He was not altogether sure why he reacted in such a violent way, but he was sure that if he had gone over to Kurenai’s, something untoward had gone on. He now recognized the hidden sultry note in the woman’s voice, which made him want to bite his knuckles to restrain himself as he looked at her retreating back. Iruka, who was just recovering from the elbow to his guts, looked up at him, that smirk back in place.
“I don’t think so, buddy,” The younger man shoved him hard. “Move your ass, Shiranui.” Genma looked blankly at Iruka, who rolled his eyes. “Go after her, you idiot!” When he still did not move, and had that dumb-as-dip-shit look in his eyes, Iruka smacked his head. “Do you need me to draw a diagram for you? That woman just came on to you. When have you ever turned down an open invitation?”
Growling under his breath, Genma started walking in the direction of the hospital again. Over his shoulder, he said, “Since now. I don’t know what the hell happened last night. For all I know, she tied me up and anally raped me with a strap-on. Do I want to go into something like that blindly? Hell fucking no.” Iruka fell onto his rear-end, apparently unable to cope with the image of Yuuhi Kurenai doing any such thing. The stunned, disgusted, and slightly curious look on Iruka’s face was enough to make up for Genma being deprived of his sleep. His mouth had hung open for a moment, eyes glazed, then there was that almost sick little smile at the corners of Iruka’s mouth…that was a little scary.
He could hear feet scrambling over the hard-packed earth of the street, and after a moment, he looked back. Iruka was chasing Kurenai. Blinking, he faced the way he was walking once again. He didn’t know what was more disturbing: the fact that he came up with that off the top of his head, or that Iruka seemed interested in whether it actually happened or not. Genma gave a little shiver and started walking again.
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Chapter notes: Hey you guys. I hope you like this story. I really have been itching to do this main pairing. Simply because I think that Genma and Kakashi are the two hottest men in the entire series, and Genma’s usually portrayed as a sex-pot…I dunno why. Maybe it’s the oral fixation? But anyhow, the first couple pieces of this are going to kind of introduce the story, so just sit back and enjoy the build-up. There is a bit of hetero in this, so don’t get too shocked.