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You wake up gasping for air.
It burns and it’s tight, but you suck in air and you’re not getting enough. It’s the only thing you can feel, and even though your eyes are open, you can’t see a damn thing.
Your lungs feel shriveled like they’re dusting away and if you don’t get enough air you’ll surely die. There’s nothing you’re thinking of except staying alive and sucking in air. You still can’t see, and you feel yourself blinking to awaken your pupils, but there’s nothing except a bright, white light that won’t go away.
It’s then that you feel the cold. And fuck, it’s even worse than the burning in your lungs. It’s like your skin is on fire and a thousand needles are continually poking at your skin. It’s like torture. Something like a panicked gasp chokes out of your throat, and you blink even more to try and see where you are.
There are too many senses at work right now and at the same time, it feels like your body has shut down. Cold, hot, burning, dry, wet. Where are you? What is this feeling? What is happening?
You tell yourself to just keep breathing and keep blinking. The cold starts to settle in your bones, and it feels less like burning. It’s somehow worse, and when the bright white light starts to dim and your vision is blurred, that’s when everything really hits you.
You’re shivering furiously. Now you realize you’re kind of wet and cold, but how did that happen? You choke again on your air, trying to keep it steady despite your quaking body and it’s so fucking useless and now you’re frustrated. Because what the hell is going on?
Then, your ears start to work. It’s a ringing that turns into something muffled by cotton balls or water, and you start to yearn to hear whatever is going on.
“…Come on…stay with me…”
A deep voice is near, and it keeps talking over the sound of…hitting rocks? “Please…please—fuck, dammit. Please…”
You try to speak, but it comes out like a choked cough again and something like a whine. Your throat burns even more as you try to speak, but evidently, it worked because you feel heavenly warmth above you then.
It’s radiating off of whoever is now hovering above you, and on top of the coldness of your skin, you feel warmth pressing on your face…hands. They’re holding your face and somehow transferring all of their warmth to you, and you try to will it to thaw your bones. You crave it, you need it, you are desperate for whatever is holding you right now.
“Stay with me, stay with me…” they say, and the words are clearer so you can hear the panic in their voice.
Your blurry vision can only make out so much. It’s mostly darkness, but there’s also an orange glow around the person standing above you as they roam their hands all over your body. You feel almost drunk with how disoriented you are and you’re way too overstimulated, but you force yourself to make out who the person is.
“Stay with me, stay with me…”
That deep, smooth baritone is louder now, and it jolts your memory awake.
A mission. A group of rogues. Genma. That’s him. You can smell him he’s so close, like sweat and rain and home.
“G-G-G-n-nnnn…” you try to say, but you’re shivering so bad that it’s all you can manage.
“Yes, I’m here. Stay with me, please. Fuck, you’re so cold,” he says, and you try so badly to make out his eyes that you can only imagine are full of fear. He sounds so scared. You’ve never, ever heard him sound like this before in your life.
The cold is unbearable, and you’re finding yourself needing more of his warmth. Wishing he could just pull you into him and stop the shivering. What has you shivering so bad in the first place? You can’t even remember.
Everything is confusing, and you squeeze your eyes shut, moving your head around to try and jiggle your memory back. Genma, mission, rogues, over the snow, through the mountains…
“Hey, come on,” Genma’s voice is far away again, and you realize you started to disappear. “Focus, stay with me. Fight it.”
His voice and touch bring you back. His hands move back and forth from your face to your arms. Your eyes flutter, trying to focus on his face that’s blurring together in the orange glow.
And then you realize you aren’t feeling better. You keep drifting away because you’re hypothermic. Genma is trying to get you to fight it, to stay with him.
“Please, fuck, come on. Fight harder. Stay awake,” he almost growls in desperation, and it makes you want to cry. His fear is making you scared. Probably because it’s hard to hear him like this. Genma is always light, warm, joyful. Not panicked. Not scared. Not like this.
So you try to fight it, try to fight the debilitating cold that’s weighing you down. You try to cling to his warmth and force it to soak into your skin. You cling to his touch and the way he’s trying his hardest to keep you warm.
“Shit,” Genma says suddenly, and then you’re pressed against his chest. He must have laid down next to you because his arms are so tight around you, but it feels good. He guides your head into his neck, and it’s the sweetest cocoon you’ve ever felt. His cheek is pressed against yours, and his breath against your ear is another warmth you cling to.
“You gotta…gotta come back. Fight it.”
You keep fighting it. You keep fighting the shivers that threaten to weigh you down, you fight the droopiness of your eyes, you fight the overwhelming feeling in your brain and just focus on Genma and his continuous mumbling in your ear. You fight it and cling to him.
After a while, you’re more aware. Your hair is wet, but you have dry clothes on as well as a blanket wrapped around you. The floor is rock hard, but you don’t notice that much with Genma’s embrace swallowing you up. The orange glow has to be from a fire because you start to feel its warmth against your back. And the echo of his voice makes you realize that he brought you to a cave to warm up. He must have changed your clothes, too.
You try to swallow, and it makes you gasp, but you feel Genma’s face move. “Hey, hey.”
For some reason you’re emotional, and Genma evidently picked up on that before you. Maybe it’s the aftermath of shock.
“I’m here, you’re okay,” he says, but all you’re looking at is his chest and can’t see his face. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”
“W-W-W…” you try to speak, but the words won’t come out. “W-W-Wha…”
“Do you know where we are?” Genma asks instead.
You try to say what you know. “M-Miss…mi-ssion…m-m—“
“Good,” he sighs out in relief. “Where is our mission?”
You try to snuggle closer to him, but you’re about as close as you can. Genma squeezes you tighter. You try to focus on him, and maybe it will jog your memory.
“S-S-Sn-ow…” you say. “T-The mountains…F-F-ire…”
“We’re in Fire, yes,” he answers. “On the border. In the mountains.”
That’s right. The border. A group of rouges…
“D-D-Did…we…g-g-et th-em?” You manage. Hopefully, you weren’t on the move and in hiding. That way you can try to warm up before heading back to Konoha.
You feel Genma tense slightly, and hold you even tighter if that’s possible. Something is wrong.
“You did…you got them, most of them,” he says seriously.
“G-Gen-ma,” you say. “I-I do-n’t remem-m-mber…”
Genma is silent for a moment, and you’re trying to remember yourself. Whatever happened, he was having trouble talking about it.
“Two of them…had me cornered,” he starts. “I was pretty chakra depleted. When you came to back me up…one of them was going to catch me off guard. Push me over the cliff.”
The cliff.
You remember.
Pushing Genma out of the way.
The wind knocked out of you as the rogue slammed you with his heavy pointed staff instead of Genma.
Feeling the wind rush past your ears as you fell.
The ice-cold water below swallowing you up into the darkness.
You wince slightly as the memory floods back to you. The river below the canyon was a fast-moving current, full of ice and rock. Genma must have handled the rest after you fell. But how did he…
“I took care of them. Then I sprinted to the bottom of the canyon to find you. You must have been somewhat conscious because I found you on the edge hanging on a rock.”
You don’t remember in the slightest. Your survival instinct somehow stayed intact even though you were floating down the river in freezing water. The thought makes you shiver amongst your already present shivers.
Genma sighs then, and it’s tense. It’s full of worry and fear. Guilt starts to bubble in your stomach because you know the conversation that’s about to happen.
“What were you thinking?” Genma says, and you brace yourself for the speech. “You don’t ever, ever put your life at risk like that. The mission could have been severely compromised because of your actions. Why did you move?”
Why did you move? It’s a loaded question, one you have no idea how to even answer. All you can really think about right now is how cold you are, how tight your chest feels, and how warm Genma is.
“I-I-I don’t…” you whisper, and then swallow the lump in your throat. “I j-just moved.”
“Why did you move?” Genma asks again with more sternness in his tone, and he holds you tighter.
You try to shake your head against his chest, try to wrack your brain for whatever answer he wants. “I-I just…I just moved, Gen.”
It’s silent then. The only sound is the crackling fire and its echoes off the walls of the cave. Your breaths are becoming more steady as you try to match them to Genma’s. Though you’re still cold, his body against yours is exactly what you need. The warmth is making you more conscious by the second, and with it are clearer memories of what happened with the rogues.
Why did you move? You keep asking yourself his question over and over again because the answer should be obvious. You’re comrades, you fight alongside each other and protect each other from danger. But while you are comrades, you also have to make smart decisions to make sure the mission runs smoothly. Irrational actions do not go well for shinobi.
So why the hell did you move?
Because Genma being your comrade is not as simple as it sounds.
Because Genma is more than that.
The truth makes you want to sink into the ground. But you’re pressed up against him and wrapped in his arms as he warms you with his touch. And it’s so, so much more complicated now that he asked you that question.
Genma breaks the silence, then. “I wouldn’t have made it.”
You don’t answer, but your eyes flick up to meet his chest again. You don’t feel brave enough to look at his face.
“I was too chakra depleted. If I would’ve fallen off the cliff and into the water, I would be dead right now.”
The thought makes you feel dreadful.
“I thought you were dead,” Genma says, and his voice is rough like he’s having trouble speaking. “I thought you were going to die on me.”
“I’m s-sorry…” you whisper, and your fingers reach to grab his shirt.
He sighs again, and this time it’s shaky. “You saved my life. Thank you.”
You feel brave enough to look at his face now, and your muscles are so stiff it’s hard to move, but you eventually crane your neck to meet his eyes.
Genma isn’t looking at you, just staring into space out and above your head, and the first thing you notice is the blood that starts in his hair and drips down onto his face.
You gasp, moving your hand up to where the wound is. “Genma…your head…”
“It’s alright,” he says, still not meeting your eyes. “It’s just a scratch.”
That makes you frown because if he hit his head he could have a concussion. He’ll have to get it checked out when you both get back home.
When you touch your fingertips to his skin, he doesn’t react. You graze your fingers on his temple, to his forehead, to his cheekbone. He doesn’t move, doesn’t react, just continues to hold you. But when you look deeper into his brown eyes, there’s a softness, a tenderness that you always have to look closely to catch. It’s there, though.
Then, his eyes close and he breathes deeply, turning his head slightly into your touch. It makes your heart race, but you move to cup his face.
“I’m-m sor-ry,” you blurt. “Y-You wouldn’t h-have had to sa-ve m-me if—“
“You saved my life, I saved yours,” he speaks low. “We’re com—“
Comrades he was going to say. But he didn’t. He stopped himself.
Maybe because he doesn’t see you just as his comrade.
Your fingers flinch away from his face like his skin is hot, but you don’t know why. His words made you feel something, made your heart drop and your chest flutter.
It’s a truth…that honestly is a long time coming. A truth that you had buried away for several years, a truth that you weren’t ready to face. A truth that now feels so incredibly honest that it’s too much to think about right now.
Genma seems to have had some sort of realization too because he opens his eye at meets your gaze. Your hand still hovers next to his face, and as he looks at you, the truth you just realized has become a lot clearer.
Did it take a near-death experience for you to both realize your feelings for each other? You two had known each other for years, had been on countless missions with each other and now you’re just realizing that there’s something there. That there’s always been something there. That you two have a connection and a loyalty to each other that’s been unspoken for quite some time.
It’s the reason you moved in front of him. A stupid, reckless reason, but the reason nonetheless.
You try to stop yourself from saying these next works, but it's no use. Your heart is already speaking for you. “I-I w-won’t die…on you. I won’t l-leave you.”
Your fingers graze his skin once more, and his eyes are so loving you want to melt into him.
“You better not,” he says. “Shit…you better not. I can’t lose you.”
You believe him. A feeling as honest as that…how can you not?