| [Oct. 19th, 2013|04:25 am] |
Either Kakashi was much more tired than he’d thought, or Ryouma was messing with him. Which, yeah, made sense, since Ryouma was talking about flowers and food and hadn’t kicked Kakashi out, even with a golden chance in front of him.
On the other hand, free dinner.
“All right,” Kakashi said.
Ryouma’s eyes flicked wide, briefly startled—Kakashi awarded himself a point—then his mouth curved in a slow, warm smile. “You promised. You can’t back out later.”
“See, this was a nice moment, then you made it creepy,” Kakashi said.
“You’ve slithered out before,” Ryouma said mildly. “I figured I’d start with promises before we moved to chains.”
“Not any less creepy,” Kakashi said, after a moment.
Ryouma shrugged. “You can always kill me if you get too far out of your comfort zone.”
Man had a point.
“There is that,” Kakashi said, and took a hidden sip of his tea, employing the quick-handed dance of no-face-here. “The team might complain, though, since you’re our glorious bug-zapper.”
Ryouma mouthed glorious bug zapper silently, as if he needed a second go at processing that, or maybe just because Kakashi had called him glorious. Then he said, “Well, there is that. Guess I’ll have to work on refining it to get mosquitos. Make myself indispensable.” He checked on the coffee and poured himself a cup, adding enough sugar to juice a small child into an infinite hyperactive frenzy. Cradling the mug—blue, chipped—between his hands, he leaned against the kitchen wall, and said casually, “Sounds like you’re more or less resigned to Team Six, if you care about them complaining.”
Was he?
Kakashi tapped ragged fingernails against his own mug—white, also chipped—and looked down at the ripples shivering through his tea. “We survived a mission with a single-handed fight against a demon mother and her literal army of children. I couldn’t kill her; you did. The lieutenant took the demon egg out of that man in a field hospital, alone, while injured.”
Katsuko had torn the demon queen’s eyes out, and turned the tide of the mission with her army of clones. And then there was Raidou, calm and sure no matter what curve came at them; he’d slept less than anyone, and he’d flattened Kakashi into the dirt with his taijutsu.
“I’d be stupid not to see the potential here,” Kakashi said at last.
Ryouma smiled crookedly. “Well, we were kind of trying to impress. I’m sorry you actually missed my fight. It was very dramatic. I made a ten-minute speech and everything.”
“Are you sure ‘dramatic’ is the word you want for that?” Kakashi said.
“You can’t criticize if you weren’t there,” Ryouma said breezily. He sipped his coffee and added, more quietly, “I know it was bad underground. Thanks for what you did. I couldn’t have made it through the queen’s armor in time if you hadn’t given me an opening already.”
Kakashi nodded once, acknowledging that. “I think it was bad everywhere.”
But they’d both seen worse. And would do worse, most likely, in the service of Konoha’s shadow soldiers. Better not to dwell.
“If we’re trading stories, you missed me goosing the demon queen,” he said. He could smile at the memory now, in vicious pride. “That’s got to be one for books, right? Making a mountain-monster run.”
“I think you have to kill somebody famous from another village to make it into the Bingo Book.” Ryouma shifted his coffee into his off-hand and braced the other at the back of his neck, tilting his head back and sideways to crack his neck with a sound like a branch snapping. “Don’t think demons count. Major oversight.”
“Poor planning,” Kakashi agreed. “You should write them a note.”
Ryouma lifted a single, ironic eyebrow.
“Or not,” Kakashi said, remembering. Ryouma was still illiterate, and Kakashi still had no idea how he functioned. “Did someone translate the Bingo Book for you, or did you just look at the pictures?”
Ryouma gave him a flat stare over the rim of his mug. “Bedtime stories. Every night.” |
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