Sundance

12. Happy ending (Tobirama)

We talked.

We talked for a long, long time.

I didn't know how long we had made love, guessing it was an hour or so. But what really blew my mind was the conversation we had afterwards.

I told Izuna everything.

I told him about how I'd been a high achiever. How I'd graduated with full marks from high school. How I'd gotten a scholarship to go to MIT. How I had excelled there. My career as a swimmer. How it came to an end. My excellent working career. How something had been missing. How I'd not only withered but rotted. How I'd self-harmed because I was desperate to feel something and how ashamed I was about how classical that was. I just wanted to feel something. How I'd contacted Madara, gotten the job. Everything.

Everything except the true reason I'd joined the circus.

"Tobirama." Izuna used his fingers to put a strand of my hair behind my ear. He looked beautiful. 

"What?"

"I know who you are."

I didn't understand.

"What?" I said again, stupidly.

"I know who you are."

Shit.

"Izuna..."

"Will you tell him?" he asked.

I was searching his soul for any trace of anger, any trace of disappointment that I'd kept a secret like this from him. From Hashirama.

"I have planned to", I said. "But I don't know. I don't really like the way I believe he's been treating you."

Izuna was quiet for a while, thinking. I could see the intelligence in his soul. I suddenly had no doubt that this man could do everything, exactly everything he set his mind to do.

"Hashirama wasn't cruel to me", he explained, meaning it. "He's a very emotional person. He sometimes got blinded by love. Tobirama..."

"Mmm?"

The sun was rising outside the little window of Izuna's trailer.

"I think Hashirama would love to find out he has a twin."

Izuna thrived to be in a healthy relationship. Or whatever it was that was going on between us. We didn't have a label on it.

"It's just so nice to be allowed to like you", he said. "I'm so tired of obsessing over definitions."

I didn't really bother me either way. If he'd desired a definition, I would've been up for it. If he didn't, that was fine as well. I was just happy to be allowed to like Izuna, just like he said he was happy to be allowed to like me. I hadn't really been in any long-term relationships, being too obsessed with my career and then being too depressed to even have the energy to think about a relationship. What I soon realised was that what Izuna desired and needed was a man who loved him fearlessly, who didn't need him to give them attention at all times in order to feel safe themselves, who didn't need him to call them his boyfriend to be satisfied. And I learned within myself that I could be that man.

"Have you always known you like men?" Izuna asked one day.

We were at a lake close to our trailer park where I had been swimming for two hours. He had been laying there, just watching. I was afraid he was bored out of his mind but figured if he didn't want to watch me crawl for two hours, he'd go somewhere else. He didn't. We were now sitting together on the shore, enjoying the summer sun. I was completely naked, laying in Izuna's lap. He liked taking care of me as if he was a top, I'd noticed and I let him explore this part of himself. In bed, I topped, but softly. It suited us immensely, and both felt that each time brought our hearts closer together. Soon, they would be wound up in a tangle that would be very, very hard to undo. It didn't scare me, but I suspected it scared Izuna a little. He was a scarred man who had just realised he was scarred as he was now experiencing balm.