| [Feb. 21st, 2015|04:36 am] |
Hakone judged other cultures all the damn time, but for once Ryouma didn't feel much like calling him out for it.
He rubbed his bad knee, and tried not to wonder what'd happened to that green-eyed shinobi, with his silken chakra and his smile. Chuunin-level at most, despite his control and his age—he must have been six or seven years older than Ryouma's eighteen, too old for teenage recklessness. Nowhere near valuable enough to escape censure, or worse.
Ryouma hadn't known about the threat of castration until afterwards, when Yoshinoya-taichou was reaming him out. He still felt a little sick at the risk he'd run.
Hakone was continuing the story. Ryouma pulled himself together, and listened.
"I can feel the other ninja getting closer. Suna guy is still kind of paralyzed, and Ryouma looks clueless. So I'm like, 'Now would be a good time to get dressed, and pretend you weren't just boning this dude, before his buddies get here.'"
"Took a while for the light to dawn," Ryouma admitted. "I'd never been to Wind Country, at that point. But I looked around, and all that well-ordered chakra was going fireworks with panic. So I figured his teammates finding him with another man was maybe the problem, and that was one thing I could solve without throwing anybody out the window."
"And suddenly," Hakone finished, "there's a super hot chick standing in front of me."
Katsuko's good elbow dug into Ryouma's side. "You did not."
"I didn't know how soon his teammates were coming!" Ryouma protested. "We didn't have time for clothes. And anyway, two completely dressed men in a hotel room with a rumpled bed would've been just as bad. Hakone'll vouch for me: I'm pretty good at henge."
Hakone chuckled. "He is. I know I stared. And I think I blushed."
Which was still more dignified than Ryouma's erstwhile bed-partner, who'd made a noise like a squashed frog. At least he'd stopped trying to scramble under the bed and started making a determined effort to find his clothes.
Katsuko cackled quietly.
Hakone grinned at her. "The other ninja are in the hall now, almost at the door, and I'm thinking, 'How do I want to play this?' But there's really only one way that works. I grab Ryouma's arm and just start reaming him — her — out for missing the check-in."
"So when these three burly Suna nin loom up over his shoulder," Ryouma cut in, "Hakone makes like he doesn't notice them for a second, he's too busy giving me the tongue-lashing of a lifetime. I'm doing my best meek-meets-defiant, and my scholar's got his pants on and his brains mostly together. His teammates aren't paying much attention to him, anyway, once they get an eyeful of me."
"As distractions go," Hakone allowed, "it was a damn good one." He mimed his reaction, glancing over his shoulder and tipping his head up slowly as if just noticing the three other ninja towering over him. "If you'd seen these guys, you'd have thought the Akimichi had a branch clan in Wind Country. They were huge. And I'm thinking, 'If this doesn't work, this is going to get messy.'" |
|