Over the years, they'd worked out many little unspoken rules and rituals. Benign but somehow important practices that defined them as a couple and knit together the edges of their relationship.

Raidou was chef, and Genma the sous-chef, except for a few key dishes, where Genma was master and Raidou apprentice. Things like chocolate mousse, and his mother's wild mushroom and burdock ricepot. But Raidou was the one who actually cared about food. Other than for those few specialties, it was Raidou's kitchen.

When they went to the store, Raidou wheeled the cart and Genma tossed things into it. Genma never chose the produce - that was Raidou's responsibility - but he did choose the meat. Ice cream flavor was a mutual decision.

Another shopping ritual: Genma always tried to sneak something completely unnecessary into the basket. Sometimes it would be something there was no way in hell they needed, like sanitary napkins or baby formula. Sometimes it would be something he wanted but had no reason for, like blue light bulbs or little shuriken-shaped, rainbow-colored sticky notes. Sometimes he'd find something intriguing that Raidou would veto on principle if he noticed, but would happily use if Genma managed to get it home with them. Things like butter-rum flavored lube and candy-cane stripped, mint-scented condoms.

Raidou, in turn, usually tossed in something bizarre in the food department. He was always trying to get Genma to eat new things. "Broaden your horizons, Gen-chan," he'd say, while offering him chocolate-covered royal jelly nuggets with bee larva, or ginger lilly blossoms preserved in salt and licorice, or miso and vinegar smothered jellyfish strips. The rule was if Genma would try it, whatever today's it happened to be, then his weird-item of the week would be allowed. (They'd even found a use for the sanitary napkins - the ultra-absorbency ones made fairly decent field dressings: peel off the paper and stick one to an elastic bandage, then apply to whatever gaping gash the enemy's blade had created. Plus it made them very popular with their kunoichi comrades. Got an unexpected visitor while out on patrol? If Genma or Raidou was on your team, you had nothing to worry about.)

They had routines at home, too. Genma always took his bath first. He liked it hotter than his lover could stand on his burn-scarred flesh, and being slightly smaller, he sloshed less water out of the tub that Raidou did.

They'd piss with the door open, but bowel movements were private. And they always put the lid down before they flushed. Genma remembered it as having started with Raidou, who had once lost a gold nipple ring down the loo. Raidou insisted Genma had initiated that practice because he wanted someplace to sit in case he needed to watch his lover wash his face, or paint his nails while Raidou shaved, or whatever his reason of the moment was for crowding into the bathroom with him.

Some of their friends found the lid closing peculiar, especially in a household of men. The habit carried over, too, so that when they visited friends' houses, if they used the toilet, they shut the lid when finished. You could tell Raidou or Genma had been in your house if the toilet lid was closed even though it wasn't bathroom cleaning day.

Raidou always bought the new underwear, both his own and Genma's. That was a habit they were both clear on the origins of. Raidou liked the way Genma looked in briefs, so when they were young and first starting their romance, he had secretly snuck into Genma's apartment and replaced all his bikinis and boxers with the soft, cottony, yet oh so manly undergarments. Genma had complained loudly at first, but the reaction he got out of Raidou when he wore the things was more than enough to convince him to just let his boyfriend pick his underwear.

Some of their routines were a little less benign.

If they were just back from a mission, whether they'd been on it together or been out solo or with other teammates, they swapped laundry. Raidou did Genma's, Genma did Raidou's. Unless one or both had been injured. It was bad luck to wash your lover's blood down the drain, no matter how much of it was still happily circulating in his veins and arteries. If the dried blood stiffening the sleeve of Genma's uniform was his own, if the rust-brown blotches on the calf-wrappings were Raidou's, then the laundry got sent out. The extra cost was well worth the benefits: less obsessing over how you should have been able to protect your beloved, fewer nightmares of watching the rusty swirls take your mate's life away with the flowing water.

If Raidou woke up screaming in the middle of the night, Genma would get a cold - icy cold - washcloth and sponge his lover's mottled, wrinkled, melted-looking skin until the memory of the fiery pain had receded and Raidou's teeth were chattering with the chill. Then he'd wrap the larger man in his arms and cradle him under layers of blankets until his breathing slowed to normal and his eyelids started to droop. He'd hold him so that Raidou's burned face was pressed against Genma's broad chest, where his steady heartbeat and murmured, soothing words could lull Raidou back into sleep again.

If it was Genma whose brain tormented his sleep with nightmares, Raidou would shake him awake, get him up and lead him through the halls, turning on every light in the house. Then get back in bed with his lover and stroke his hands and fingers. Remind him that every bone was in place, every joint bent only the ways it was intended to. If the once-shattered knuckles still ached, if Genma's eyes still roved and his teeth dug a bloody line into his lower lip, Raidou would bring Genma a cup of ginger tea and the bottle of small, white pills, and hold him in his arms and rock him and whisper to him until the drug took effect.

Always, in the morning, they went on as if nothing had happened. Not that they ignored each other. In fact, the first question of the day would be, "You doing okay?" As long as the answer was affirmative, they made no further mention of the night's little drama. It was part of being there for each other - giving each other space after the crisis was over.

Genma was a flirt, and sometimes that bothered Raidou. He couldn't help himself, really, he'd think, watching Genma stand at a club, hip-shot and grinning with that senbon waving around, just screaming "come hither and let me take you in my mouth." Women flocked to him. Men flocked to him. He just had a natural, animal appeal that no amount of casualness could hide.

But Genma was no fool. He'd feel Raidou's eyes on his back, and when the flirting got a little too close to crossing some invisible line between just goofing around and rather too serious, he'd reach for his partner, pull him close and drop a long, deep, grindingly possessive kiss on him. It was a gesture that said, "He's mine, I'm taken, and you don't have a chance." Then he'd pull Raidou onto the dance floor where they'd crush themselves together in the middle of the crowd, and simulate mating so thoroughly that they'd be in danger of being asked to leave or getting arrested for public indecency.

When Genma did that, Raidou thought he knew, just for a moment, what it must be like to be his lover. To have hungry eyes on you, wanting you so intensely. And he reveled in it, knowing that Genma was all his. Later at home, Genma always said the one thing that Raidou never understood: "You're so pretty, Rai-chan. Pretty, pretty Raidou." And Raidou would chalk it up to alcohol and testosterone, but for Genma it was the truth. Raidou was pretty. Pretty eyes, pretty body, pretty soul.

Sometimes they fought, as all couples fight, and just as for all other couples, there were certain predictable patterns to the ways they fought, to the things they argued about. One of the most common conflicts would start like this: Genma would come home from a mission with some angry-looking but seemingly superficial injury. A kunai slice across his forearm, or a long, deep groove where a chakara-charged shuriken had blasted along his thigh, or a swollen, twisted ankle. And Raidou would say, "You should get that looked at."

Genma would insist it was nothing. That he'd already cleaned it out or taped it up, and anyway it had pretty much stopped hurting. And Raidou would point out that it looked inflamed, and what if it were poisoned, or infected, or broken? Which would only make Genma insist harder that it was nothing to be concerned about. It would escalate, eventually, to the point that Raidou would be pissed and Genma would be pissed.

"You baby me too much! I'm a grown fucking man, I think I can decide for myself if something hurts or not!" Genma would gripe.

Raidou would come back with, "You never give these things the attention you should! What about that time with your knee? And the time before that when you had that skull fracture?" And he'd stand there with arms crossed and a skeptical glare.

At which point Genma would tell Raidou to get over himself. That was the past. This was no big deal! And he'd storm off to do some training on the injured body part, just to prove it was alright.

And Raidou would shout at the door, "Fine. Go ahead, idiot! Make it worse! But don't come crying to me when you end up at the hospital!"

Later, one of two things would happen. If Genma was right, and it was no big deal, he'd come home from his workout cooled off, and Raidou would see that he really wasn't limping all that much, the cut really wasn't all that bad. And by way of apology, he'd cook something Genma was especially fond of, like oden with kabocha, or pumpkin curry. And Genma, in his own concession, would let Raidou fuss over the injury a little, let him re-bandage it with his special antiseptic salve, or make Genma sit with his leg propped up under an ice pack while they ate dinner.

If Raidou was right, it was a little uglier. But only because if Raidou was right, then some time that night it would become obvious that it was broken, or infected, or poisoned. And then they'd have to deal with it. If Genma limped home from his workout with the joint so obviously deformed it would take an idiot not to know it was broken, or during dinner he suddenly couldn't hold his chopsticks because his hands were going into spasm, or he suddenly turned green and barely made it to the toilet, then Genma would apologize, and Raidou would help. He'd piggyback his ailing lover to the hospital, sponge his fevered brow, hold his hair out of his way while he vomited, and clean him up when he soiled himself (diarrhea being an unfortunately common effect of many of the more frequently encountered poisons.)

Genma would whimper and look embarrassed and pathetic, and Raidou would be worried but calm and effective. And once the crisis was past, Genma would tell Raidou he was sorry, again. And Raidou would say not to worry about it, it hadn't looked all that bad to start with, there was no way Genma could have known at first that it was broken, or infected, or poisoned. And all would be forgiven.

Of course when the tables were turned, and it was Raidou who came home a little roughed up, Genma was just as tender a nurse. Maybe even more so, because he'd be thinking about all the times Raidou had looked after him. And maybe he was even just a little more paranoid about making sure Raidou was alright, because he remembered the days and weeks of watching his lover recover from the burns that had scarred his face and body, back when they weren't quite lovers yet (but oh how he'd wished they were.) How terrifying the blackened, oozing wounds had been. How much more terrifying the medics' dire pronouncements of ten-percent survival rates, with massive infection, not the injuries themselves, being the real problem. Having got him back once, the idea of losing him again was just too scary to contemplate.

So Genma fretted over every bump and scrape that Raidou came home with even more than Raidou did about him, and Raidou couldn't understand how someone who could take such spectacularly poor care of himself could be so obsessive about someone else. The fact that Genma couldn't somehow extend to himself the concept of danger, well maybe it was just a blind spot, and maybe it was healthy denial that made it possible for him to go back out and do his job day after day. But it was that threat of loss that was really what the fights were about, on the most fundamental level: I need you too much/You need me too much/And the world might stop turning if something bad were to happen to you.

So every day when the sun rose again, and found two shadows side by side, the second most important practice of their partnership would begin - they'd kiss each other good morning. And every night that their darkened room concealed two shadow warriors side by side, they'd engage in the most important ritual of all ? they'd tell each other, "I love you," and kiss each other good night.

ooo ooo ooo

For Kiki (aka AMidnightSunrise aka Hey-Diddle-Diddle), for the SenbonSanta Gift exchange in the Scars and Senbon GenxRai LJ Community, Winter Holiday 2005.

Special Thanks for Momo, Winter, Bite, and Telosphilos for beta reading.

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