Title: Senbon
Characters: Gekkou Hayate, Shiranui Genma
Rating: T
Warnings: Expletives, one reference to oral sex in the past tense.
Notes: This is a response to Sweetbriar's 'Needles'. It needed to be done.
Genma lay on his back, naked, staring at the ceiling, with one arm wrapped around Hayate's shoulders. The kid had just given him the most incredible blowjob he could remember having gotten from anyone, and he was enjoying the way the world rippled, vaguely.
"I seem to recall having made you a promise once. It was a few years back, I think." His voice was lazy and calm.
"What?" Hayate was mildly annoyed that Genma had started talking, but he wasn't going to say that. "Come down, first. You're not making any sense."
"No, no. I'm serious." Genma pulled his senbon out of the side of the mattress and stuck it back in his mouth. "You asked me why I used senbon if I hated needles so much. I promised I'd tell you the answer to that, someday."
"And today is that day? Right now?" Hayate looked amazed, now, on top of his annoyance. He cuddled closer to Genma's very warm body, draping a leg over the older tokujou.
Genma decided to be a jerk, of course. "Yep! Here comes your answer. Take it or leave it."
"Fine, I'll take it. I know I'll never get it out of you again." Hayate sulked, thoroughly unamused. He wanted to go to sleep. Well, actually he really wanted Genma to get him off so he could go to sleep. It was going to be impossible to sleep in this condition.
"Senbon came first. Mom always said it was my father's doing — not that I knew him — but I guess he'd left one behind when he left. Mom put cork ends on it and gave it to me while I was teething, so I wouldn't chew up her paintbrushes. Guess that stuck." Genma chuckled dryly. "Himura Yuudai-sensei taught me how to use it as a weapon when he saw me wandering in the village with it. I must have been five or six. He was probably in his thirties, then. He was the the senbon specialist before me. That man they called in to bring me back after that one time —" He refused to talk about the psych eval like he refused to discuss the Kyuubi attack. "— that was Himura-sensei. I'd forgotten he wasn't dead, or I wouldn't have tried that. I really got my ass reamed for that one."
Hayate just stared at Genma somewhat confusedly, large dark eyes expressing doubts about the assassin's sanity. He figured that if he didn't say anything at all, this might go a little quicker. At this point, he really just wanted the sleep.
"Needles came in after that stay in the hospital. Do you know how many ways there are to insert a needle improperly? I got to find that out the hard way. Those little round scars up and down my arms aren't senbon accidents." He smiled wickedly. "You only asked if I'd ever had blood drawn. You never asked about the drips. You know if they miss, they can inflate your entire arm like that? I almost lost the right one to it. The skin was peeling for days afterward." His hands clenched slightly at the memory. "Five drips, I was on. Caught something in the field while I was waiting for them to dig us out of the wreckage. Five at once, and they kept missing trying to get them in. Rai had it even worse, but thankfully, he was delirious for most of it. Doesn't remember a thing. But I sure as hell do.
"And there's the difference. A senbon is a weapon. An obvious weapon. A needle is a torture implement disguised as a healing tool." He shuddered. "Fucking hate needles."
He glanced down at the sudden wheeze from the vicinity of his chest to find Hayate desperately trying to stifle hysterical laughter. "What?"
"You —" wheeze "— once?" cough hack wheeze snicker "Once? I'm there all the time!"
"You see? This is exactly why I wasn't telling you." This time, Genma sulked. "That's why I said it was amazing that you kept going back and hadn't lost your mind, yet. I don't get it, it's just the way the world works."
Hayate's snickering-wheezing fit was cut off in a sharp squeal as Genma flipped him onto his back and pinned him to the bed. "Now, didn't I have something better to do than bitch about the distant past?"
"Genmaaaa!" It was only a half-hearted whine of complaint.
