| Stand Your Ground [closed to Kakashi and Ryouma] |
[Apr. 19th, 2009|04:29 pm] |
[[Set on March 22nd, around two weeks after The Safest Place You've Found and Straighten Up, Face the Day]]
Kakashi was late to the briefing.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the Intel agent shuffling his files behind the desk wasn't forty, greying, married, and male. Ryouma rearranged all his conversational gambits, tried the safe ones and then the more edgy options, and still got nothing more than grunted monosyllables and, once, a flicker of a scowl. He wouldn't have even known it was Kakashi they were waiting for if the Intel agent hadn't unwisely asked him, just after he entered the tiny briefing room, whether he'd seen Hatake in the hall.
In retrospect, Ryouma probably shouldn't have pounced with questions. (He's back from his mission? When'd he get back? How come they're sending him out again? Who're we killing? Sure you're not setting me up for another ambush this time?) The briefer shut up tighter than any bank vault, and Ryouma eventually shoved the chairs aside and started doing one-handed push-ups just to keep himself awake.
He was on twenty-three when the door opened, and he counted twenty-four and twenty-five out of sheer stubbornness before he looked up. "Welcome back, genius. Got tired of running?" He rolled into a crouch, chest heaving as he caught his breath. The view was better, from here; he could actually see a narrow slice of Kakashi's pale face and a single grey eye between the mask and hitai'ate.
"Or'd you just miss my scintillating conversation an' supernatural good looks? I gotta warn you, I'm going masked this time." |
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| Watch Me Burn [closed to Kakashi and Ryouma] |
[Apr. 19th, 2009|05:10 pm] |
[[Takes place immediately following Stand Your Ground.]]
Thirty-six hours later, Kakashi was still the pretty one. Chestnut-haired and chocolate-eyed, lean in leather so tight it might have been painted on, he was drawing admiring gazes even before he paid the bouncer at the door of Club 69 and gave up his jacket at the coat check. The mesh shirt glided over pale muscles masked by the liquid curves of a tribal tattoo that covered his entire left shoulder blade and half his upper arm.
He still looked dangerous, but it was the kind of danger that drew men hungry for a thrill.
Ryouma gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the hungry gazes, the naked lust. The naked people were harder to ignore--some guy was dancing on a stage on the lower level in little more than a feathered G-string, and a few of the dancers on the floor around him seemed to be following his example. Most of them really didn't have the physique to pull it off. Perceptions got skewed in Konoha, Ryouma was beginning to realize. Sure, you saw other civilians on missions and in the streets, but for the most part the people you interacted with--the only ones you got close to--were young and lithe and supremely fit. There were a few of that type here, but for the most part...
His gaze was caught, in a sort of fascinated horror, by a man dancing on the fringes of the crowd, near the bar. Surely no one was actually that fat and still mobile? And--oh, no--he was pulling off his shirt--
"Kakashi," Ryouma murmured. "Lend me a kunai. I need to gouge my eyes out." |
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| Straighten Up, Face the Day. [Closed to Kakashi] |
[Apr. 19th, 2009|07:04 pm] |
[Backdated. Takes place the morning after The Safest Place You've Found]
Ryouma tried to wake him when the sun began to set; a quick touch to a shoulder bared by ANBU blacks that completely failed to startle Kakashi into actual wakefulness. Long fingers hesitated, then settled and squeezed. Kakashi mumbled something vague, eyes slitting half open, before rolling loosely over and burying his face into the soft fur of Hoshika's belly.
"Gotta try harder than that, kid," Pakkun yawned, curling back into a ball of brown fur at the foot of the bed.
( Ryouma did. ) |
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