| [Apr. 8th, 2017|10:47 pm] |
The crowd had thickened around the bars and on the dance floor. Ryouma saw faces he knew, ducked greetings, dodged one particularly persistent grope. Kakashi knifed through the press, and Ryouma followed him, dropping their glasses off at the bar and moving onto the fringe of the floor.
It was less thumpingly crowded here, further from the DJ and the gyrating boy-on-a-pole, who'd either lost his gold lamé shirt or been replaced by his slightly more exhibitionist twin. They had a clear line of sight to the exits, front and back and rooftop, and a somewhat more obscured view of their officers.
Genma and Raidou still had their shirts on. But Genma's hair was coming down in sweaty tendrils against the back of his neck, and Raidou was grinning fiercely at him, with glitter splashed across one side of his face like a blue bloodstain. The surging crowd hid them again before Ryouma saw if Ginta was still with them.
He turned back to Kakashi. The music hit a pounding bass line and he rolled his hips to meet it. "D'you get to dance much?"
As an opening line, it wasn't nearly his best. Better than Are you sure you're okay with doing this with me, though, or You look like you'd rather be stabbing someone. Kakashi didn't, in fact, look any more murderous than usual.
He looked… intent. His eye glittered under the strobe-lights, focused on Ryouma's shoulders, then his hips. Half-inaudible under the music, he said, "No."
But his shoulders found the beat, and he copied Ryouma's hip roll with a shinobi's lethal, perfect grace.
Maybe three thousand ryou bought you something more potent than the ordinary shot of shouchuu. Only Kakashi'd agreed to dance before he tried the drink, and Ryouma wasn't feeling much drunker than usual. A little loose in the spine, maybe, a little warm in the chest…
Not dangerously so, not yet. He could still keep his eyes chastely on Kakashi's masked face or feet, and tell himself he wouldn't try that hip roll again.
"Think of it like taijutsu. The really basic kata you do at first to warm up, and then y'can add the more exciting stuff in." He tried a more complicated cross-step, and Kakashi mirrored him. Slowly at first, then with growing confidence.
Nothing terrible happened. Dancers ebbed and flowed around them, trickling off the dance floor to the booths, tugging each other out as a new song played or a new partner offered. Stiffness gradually eased out of Kakashi's spine. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and tried a chest pop that surprised Ryouma, until he realized he'd half-seen it on a man beside them five seconds ago. Kakashi was copying the moves around them, blending them with Ryouma's, and finding something new.
The DJ called out and met a roar of approval that almost drowned his words. One song scratched into another, and Ryouma knew this one. He laughed, and raised his voice. "You ever tried to choreo a fight to music?"
Kakashi shook his head, but there was a light of challenge in his eye.
"We used to try stylized sparring. When I was a special jounin, after the war. Watch too many bad action movies and you know you can do better." A fist pump straightened easily into a right cross, pulled well short. "Gives you a chance to show off, here. Pull some moves the civvies can't…"
Kakashi's gaze hooded. He was still bouncing slightly to the music, finding the rhythm in his shoulders and hips. His head tilted, and then he rocked back on one foot and lashed out with the other in a kick that never hit.
Ryouma laughed again, in sheer delight, and countered.
It was a style he knew, one Kakashi'd pulled out in training before: kamakiri, with its short power focus and low kicks. But the moves were syncopated, to match the beat, and when the throng around them pulled back to watch, Kakashi switched without hesitation into an Eastern Stone-style jumping reverse hook kick.
He landed on a down-beat, and danced back from Ryouma's ridge hand strike. He was still moving with the beat, adding a shoulder-roll and a mocking, beckoning hand. It worked for him in a way strictly dancing hadn't, as if he'd finally found the key to unlock the gates of tension and restraint. The lights struck like sparks in his eye and hair, and Ryouma imagined he was laughing, too. |
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