Training around a hangover was a unique and never forgotten experience. Much like syphilis. Or being barbecued alive.

Kakashi was starting to think he'd prefer the latter.

The sun was high and absurdly hot for February. He gave it an unfriendly look with one grey eye and set himself back into a loose guard. Feet planted firmly, hands held steadily in front of him. Sweat marked two dark V's down the front and back of his black top. Grass stains lent a slightly green look to similarly black pants. The clothes weren't typical ninja gear, they were loose and light-weight--perfect for training.

They were also going to get burned in a fit of pique if he couldn't master at least one full set of kata in the next hour.

Kakashi moved, chakra rippling under his skin as he slid from one pattern to the next. A strike, a block, a counter blow. Weapons flickered between his fingers and vanished, integrated neatly into something that was almost a dance, if dances were designed to practice a perfect form of violence.

He didn't stumble, but every so often he checked--brought up short by one pain or another. A week could give you a lot of healing, especially if you happened to hang around in a village staffed by ninja medics, but a lot wasn't all.

And there was still the hangover.

Kakashi scowled behind his mask, skin prickling beneath the cloth with heat and sweat, and swore for the thirtieth time that if he ever ended up at Ginta's place again he wouldn't touch anything that had even been near alcohol. He cursed his headache for good measure, and kept moving.

He wasn't thinking about waking up tangled with the man. Not at all.

Block, kick, punch, side-step, wince, check, punch, keep going...

He only remembered he was supposed to be meeting Ryouma when the man's chakra flared slightly in the distance.

"Ah," said Kakashi, pausing mid-strike. "Shit."

Personal barbecue was definitely the best option.

There were at least thirty training fields within and surrounding Konoha's walls, and if Ryouma had to check all of them there would be murder committed. Fortunately, only about ten of the training fields were small enough for personal or small-group use, and five of those were, during certain hours of the morning, reserved exclusively for ANBU.

Ryouma found Kakashi in the second one he checked. Even if the copy-nin hadn't been sweaty, grass-stained, and breathless, he wouldn't have looked his best; he had twigs in his disheveled hair, mud streaked on his knees, shadows smudging his bloodshot eye. Ryouma's ripped jeans, ancient Shuriken Force tee-shirt, and brown hoodie seemed positively elegant in comparison. He leaned against a handy tree, nose crinkling, and watched Kakashi try to catch his breath.

"You seemed a little too excited about this for me to believe you were planning on blowing me off. Your thing with Ginta run a little long?" His lip curled. "An' here you wouldn't go out to a movie with me..."

Kakashi blinked. "Ouch," he said finally, and tapped a hand over his heart. "I'm wounded. Right here." He dropped both hands and gulped a breath of air. "Or that might be you. How come I'm the one with the headache and you're the one that's pissed off? I'm not that late..."

He glanced up at the sun and did a quick calculation. "...or maybe I am. Uh, there was a rabid group of sheep with evil intentions? They were going to take out a school. I got slightly sidetracked by the attack of lambchops."

A glance at Ryouma's face suggested humour was just digging a deeper grave. Kakashi scratched the back of his neck awkwardly and wished things were simple again. That he didn't care whose feelings he hurt. That he wanted to hurt feelings, in fact.

Dammit.

His bag was next to the tree supporting Ryouma. He weighed the likelihood of actually getting punched, and headed over to fish out a water bottle. He took a gulp through his mask--which was no feat for the unpracticed--and dumped the remainder over his head. Then he shook.

Marginally cooler, significantly damper, and slightly more headachy, he glanced at Ryouma through dripping hair and tried a different approach. "So... do manly ninja apologise and claim memory lapse and idiocy? Or do we just backslap or high five and throw testosterone around? Because I can do either, but if there's touching I'm warning you I haven't had a shower yet."

This was fascinating. He just had to keep a straight face, and Kakashi kept talking, digging himself in and out of holes, switching to a new spot whenever he got in too deep. He was making jokes at his own expense, not at Ryouma's. He was offering to high five?

He must've got laid. No wonder Ryouma hadn't been invited.

"Have it on good authority that manly ninja chestbump," he said, leaning down to snag what looked like a towel out of the bag. It turned out to be a clean tee-shirt--black, like everything else Kakashi seemed to own. He tossed it over anyway. "Seeing as I already filled my sweat and shower quota for the day, though, I won't take you up on that. Did Ginta liquor you up just for the fun of seeing how talkative you get when you're hungover?"

Kakashi caught the t-shirt and glanced at Ryouma's broad chest. "That's fortunate," he said, after a mild vision of getting thoroughly rib-bruised. "I'd hate to lose my last eye to a violent nipple poke."

Ryouma was bantering back. In Kakashi's--admittedly limited--experience that generally counted as forgiveness. He relaxed a fraction and turned his back to change t-shirts with some relief, using the old one to get rid of as much sweat as he could before he dragged the new one on. He crouched to stuff it back into his bag and searched for deodorant while he thought over Ryouma's question.

"Probably more for the fun of seeing your apparently psychic abilities," he said finally, pulling out a spray can. He wasn't planning to leave Konoha any time today, so he didn't need to worry about going scent-neutral. And something that claimed to be Phoenix was probably a lot better than Eau de Training Field. "You think this contains actual phoenix? Or is it just a marketing ploy? Because I can't imagine giant fire birds are easy to blenderize..."

He sprayed himself and tried not to look as though he was avoiding any questions. Particularly ones he didn't know the answer to.

"If your head hits my chest," Ryouma said mildly, "you're doin' it wrong. And I'm pretty sure only the daimyo could afford deodorant actually made out of mythical bird." Anyway, product names never had anything to do with what was actually in them, did they? Ryouma used a brand called Fresh Rush. If there was actually some non-smelling and very fast animal out there called a rush, he'd never heard of it.

Granted, there was a whole world out there of animals he'd never heard of. Most ninja didn't exactly make a hobby of zoology. Ryouma mostly paid attention to what he could eat, what he could play with, and what might eat him.

Of course, people were always worth paying attention to. A group of gi-clad men had stopped at the entrance to the training field and were having a low-voiced, furious argument. Ryouma pushed himself away from the tree. "Looks like someone else wants to use the field. You think you can postpone your shower long enough for coffee? It'll probably help the hangover."

And all talk of Ginta was done. Kakashi didn't give himself away by heaving a sigh of relief, but some of the lines under his mask eased. He picked his bag up and slung it over one shoulder, shrugging until it fell neatly into place against his spine. "You still want coffee?" He asked, surprised. He glanced at Ryouma, and then raised a slightly cynical eyebrow. "Quick question. If we went to a place that didn't house caffeine, would you still be interested in..." in what? "catching up?"

A little prickle ran down his spine. Kakashi frowned slightly, following Ryouma's line of sight to the men he'd noticed. Something didn't feel quite right. He'd learned to pay attention to those feelings.

The men--three of them, he realized--were looking at him and Ryouma both. Something about the body language was off. Kakashi tipped his head slightly, clearing his only field of vision, and studied them without making it obvious.

Something distant in his head went click. He canted his weight, shifting sideways to feel the heft of weapons under his clothes pressing against flesh. Checking he still had them.

The men were hunting.

"You know them?" he asked Ryouma.

"Hey," Ryouma said indignantly, "I can get coffee on my own." And had done so barely an hour ago, but Kakashi didn't need to hear that. "I tracked you down 'cause--"

Because I was worried about you. Because I spent the last week trying not to wonder if you were all right. Because Sadao's dead and you know who did it, and someone made sure it wasn't me.

"'Cause coffee's always better when someone else is buying," he said, and grinned.

The grin didn't have much force behind it. His eyes were already skidding back to the knot of men hovering just beyond the pillars that marked the entrance to this training ground. Their argument had cooled into resolve; they started forward, spreading out a little as they came. All three were wearing forehead protectors. All three were apparently unarmed, but it'd be a poor ninja who went anywhere without some bit of steel tucked away. The tall one, in front, let his hands hang just a little too casually close to his waist, as if he were ready to grab for a hidden knife. The other two, one blond and one almost too brawny, kept their hands free and easy, equally ready to dive for a weapon or flash into seals.

Ryouma let a little of his chakra leak out as they approached, brushing against theirs. All three of them were jounin-level at least, and the tall one had the honed intensity he'd already learned to associate with ANBU. The faces still didn't look familiar, but he hadn't yet met more than a third of his ANBU comrades--and in a ninja village, where a henge came naturally as breathing, a face could lie anyway.

"Never seen 'em before," he said, crossing his arms. From here it was a half-heartbeat slide for his fingers to meet in a seal. "Looks like they're planning on an introduction anyway."

"I have to buy?" Kakashi turned to stare at Ryouma. "When did we say that? Was that always the plan?"

In front of them the three ninja closed in, arrayed in a way that prevented any kind of escape--unless Kakashi or Ryouma decided to turn and flee into the Forest of Death. That was never a good option.

"Sharingan no--" one of them began.

"Shut up," interrupted Kakashi absently, still looking at Ryouma. "How much coffee are we talking about? Because I'm not here to feed your habit, y'know."

"Hatake," snapped the middle man. His chakra coiled neatly under his skin, a few tendrils slipping free to brush the edges of Kakashi's own energy. He had no doubt Ryouma was under similar scrutiny.

"I'm busy," Kakashi told him, drawling automatically. The impulse to be an ass was almost a kneejerk reflex. "Come back later. Preferably when I'm not here."

The two men standing either side of the middle-man scowled, fingers twitching at their sides. Itching to start something. The middle-man remained impassive, but something darkened behind his eyes. Kakashi slid an apparently disinterested gaze over them, then flicked his attention away dismissively. The scent of anger hung heavy in the air.

"Are we talking about food, too?" he continued, letting the words drop into spreading silence. "Because I'm not made of money--"

"Must be the new boyfriend," said the blond man on the left, neatly derailing Kakashi's train of thought. Sharp blue eyes drifted over Ryouma.

The man on the right studied Kakashi, making him itch slightly. "Doesn't treat you too well, does he?" A nod indicated Kakashi's still-healing bruises.

He froze. "What?" he said finally.

Ryouma had been building up some kind of refreshingly clever retort about how it wasn't a habit and Kakashi owed him one anyway, and they could certainly do lunch if Kakashi liked, although in that case Ryouma would have to pay for himself because this wasn't actually a date--but it was hard to focus on clever quips with the three intruders drawing nearer, chakra-sensing in return. They stopped just a few meters away, barely out of close range. They didn't look friendly.

In his days on the street, Ryouma had been in much more than his share of gang dust-ups and street fights. They always began this way, squaring off, bantering, insulting. But this wasn't just some territory dispute. They might almost have been challenging Kakashi, except why were they bringing Ryouma into it?

And... Boyfriend? New boyfriend?

"Oh, I'm just a friend," he said sweetly. "Your sister'd be pissed if she thought I was cheating on her."

Who were these guys? And why in hell's name did they think picking a fight with Hatake Kakashi and Tousaki Ryouma was a good idea?

"I doubt it," snapped the muscled man to Kakashi's right, effectively dropping the Copy-nin's opinion of him by a few more points. "She'd be happy to get rid of you."

The middle-man sighed. "Focus, please."

Kakashi crossed his arms, hiding the wrist that still ached. The fingers that were still clumsy. Anger bubbled under his ribs, adding another layer of drawl to his voice. It almost lilted when he spoke. "Yes," he said, softly. "Let's get back to your clear mental health issues."

The middle-man's eyebrows furrowed, hooking down over his eyes. A muscle in his jaw flickered. "Gou." He shifted back onto his heels. "We're here about Gou Sadao."

Kakashi went very still.

"He was a friend," snapped the blond man. Something painful shifted across his face for a flicker-second, then it was gone.

The third man's lips pulled back, baring teeth. "We want to know why you killed him."

Boyfriend, Kakashi thought distantly, as the world did a distinct lurch under his feet. They thought Ryouma was his new one. So who did they think the old one--

Sadao.

Suddenly he needed to spit. Or throw up. Or stab something. Kakashi's lips skinned back under his mask, baring his own slightly sharper teeth in return. "I didn't," he snarled, sharp and clear. Bile lurked under the words. "But if you don't leave right now, you'll find out exactly what a death at my hands looks like."

The dead man's cronies didn't retreat. Not surprising, if they were stupid--or sadistic--enough to have claimed a man like Gou Sadao as a friend. The tall man's mouth widened in a sick parody of a grin. "And the village'll cover for you, just like it did when you killed Sadao, eh? Konoha's golden boy. Looks like those old rumors really were true. You can get away with murder--and apparently whoever's screwing you can get away with it too."

"You son of a bitch," Ryouma said flatly. He let his crossed arms slide free, closing one fist over the other to crack his knuckles. A quick twist and two flattened palms would form the Monkey, the first hand seal for the Nikutai Tokasu. Not that he planned to use it, but the sight of blackened green chakra was always useful as a threat. "You hang out with a man who'll rape his own teammates, and you--"

The tall man didn't bother pulling out a kunai. He swung straight from the shoulder, with a speed that would have made a striking snake envious. Ryouma didn't quite block fast enough. His lips split against his teeth with a noise like ripe fruit hitting the ground.

His own fist smashed into the man's over-muscled solar plexus without any results at all.

If Kakashi had been himself--fully awake, uninjured, not nursing a hangover and a double training's session of shivery muscles--he would've moved fast enough to intercept that first blow. But he wasn't, and he didn't. Ryouma retaliated before the wildflower spray of blood from his mouth hit the ground.

And nothing happened.

The middle-man grunted softly, and headbutted Ryouma. The sound of skull meeting skull cracked out like shattering wood.

Kakashi snarled. Ryouma staggered back a half-step. The other men moved. Kakashi jerked his hands into seals, breaking his chakra neatly into two shadow clones. The creations lunged forwards, meeting the men head-on before they could reach Ryouma or his attacker. Kakashi followed them, splitting sideways to take on the muscled ninja to the right--the bigger threat.

Don't kill.

The reflex stopped him from pulling out a blade and ramming it somewhere fatal. He spun to one side, letting his clone distract, and went for the man's kidneys and spine with both fists and a week's worth of rage.

Ordinarily, Ryouma fiercely objected to other guys stepping in on his fights. At the moment, he was more than happy to take advantage of the three-second breathing space the clones' intervention offered. Punching hadn't worked; he'd bruised his own knuckles without making the tall man blink. There were always jutsu--but whatever mistakes these thugs had made, they'd done nothing yet to deserve what Sadao had gotten. Unfortunately, without chakra limning his hands and delivering a mortal blow with a glancing touch, his normal taijutsu style was virtually useless. His training session with Tsume last month had already proved that his bastardized version of the Hyuuga jyuuken wouldn't make a genin flinch without a killing dose of chakra behind it.

But he'd been fourteen when he first began to learn the stances of the jyuuken. Before that, he'd had other ways to fight to the top. He used them now.

Kakashi's clones had bought him a little time. One of them vanished in a puff of smoke as the tall man's fist connected. The other clone had managed to land a solid hit on the blond man's throat; it followed its target down to the ground, going for a submission hold. The tall man kicked at it almost casually as he rushed Ryouma, and that clone, too, puffed away.

In the split second of confusion as clone became smoke, while the tall man was still balancing on one leg as he recovered from his kick, Ryouma struck. His own roundhouse kick hit the tall man squarely in the back of the knee. The ninja reeled, leg buckling. Ryouma caught one flailing wrist and wrenched the arm up savagely behind the man's back.

"This isn't the hold your friend used on my teammate," he snarled, loud enough for all of them to hear. "When I came in, Sadao was well on his way to raping an injured man against the wall. I pulled him off. When he tried to strangle Kakashi, I melted his foot and called for the MPs. Neither of us touched him after. You still wanna charge us with murder?"

"Sadao didn't kill himself!" the other ninja spat, trying to twist away. Ryouma threw the rest of his weight into the hold. Tendons popped.

In a fight it was almost rule number one that said keep your attention on your opponent. But whoever'd written the rule book hadn't had Ryouma for a teammate.

Kakashi froze with his arm around the muscled man's neck, gaze skidding sideways. His chakra lurched as his clones died, making him wince slightly, but he was much more concerned with what Ryouma had just said.

--well on his way to raping an injured man against the wall--

--tried to strangle--

It hadn't been that close.

A little inner voice of honesty sneered at him. It'd been closer, moron.

Beneath him, solid muscles flexed. The man he'd been so careful to bruise in the most painful places reared up and twisted. Kakashi snapped his attention back--

Half a second too late.

A heavy fist cracked against his jaw, splintering his vision. He wrenched one arm up in time to block the second strike, and yelped as knuckles hammered against his still-healing wrist. He threw himself backwards, avoiding another blow to his head, and came up in a crouch.

To his left, Ryouma was still busy breaking the middle-man. Further left, the blond ninja had no one to occupy his time.

In front of him, the muscled ninja was turning, heaving up onto his feet. Kakashi's visible eye widened as he got a good look at the way the man moved.

A taijutsu expert.

Just like Sadao.

"Now is not the time to panic," he muttered to himself. His hands slapped together, fingers twisting as his mind rattled out seals.

Which he didn't have the chakra for.

"Definitely not the time to panic." He fell back, dropping one hand to brace it against torn earth. Energy fizzled into nothing. To his left, the blond man was closing in--his attention split between cornering Kakashi, and rescuing the teammate Ryouma was hurting. In front, the muscled man gave him the steady look of a hunting predator.

You weren't allowed to kill your teammates.

Kakashi's eye narrowed. He took one breath and flipped himself backwards, arcing back up to his feet. The move was just flashy enough to pull attention away from his hands. His fingers twisted again.

He didn't have much chakra.

He had enough for this.

Energy snarled and tangled, looping itself around his hands. Blue light chattered out, lined with an edge of white. Birdsong filled the air.

Kakashi looked up and smiled grimly. In his blistering hand, a chidori glowed. "Back off." He straightened up and flicked his gaze left, freezing the blond man in his tracks. "Or say goodbye to your face."

You weren't allowed to kill your teammates.

There was nothing in the rules about showing them a good illusion.

Kakashi held his ground, and didn't wince as the genjutsu melted his chakra away.

Well, damn. Kakashi was pulling out all the stops. Chidori was an assassination technique--surely he didn't intend to actually use it? This was, after all, the guy who'd chosen to knock out his would-be rapist instead of killing him. It was an odd kind of mercy for a ninja to have, to leave his attacker crippled at best, executed at worst, and pulling out a chidori now instead of then made no freaking sense--

Except it did. Kakashi'd spared Sadao's life, saved him for the village's justice. Just like he was sparing these men's lives now, as he stood tense and waiting with a handful of lightning. Threatening. Bluffing? If he had to, would he strike?

He'd gone for Sadao's throat, when he was blind with fury and mindless with fear. He was a ninja; he was comfortable with killing. But in the end, worn and weary and thinking, he'd chosen not to kill. Ryouma wasn't sure he'd ever understand that decision, but he could play along with it.

"Sadao didn't kill himself," he agreed, as the tall man writhed against his grip. He was already applying all the strength he had into the hold, and he was pretty sure the shoulder was already dislocated. "You want to rip your arm off?" he inquired, threading a little chakra into his fingers. The ninja gasped and went white and very still as more tendons burst and muscles ripped.

Ryouma glanced at the other two men without releasing his grip. They were both frozen, staring at Kakashi's right hand with the eyes of men who are recalculating their chances of death and finding them too high for comfort. "Oi!" he shouted at them. They didn't look away from Kakashi, but at least they were probably listening now. "You want the truth, right?"

"That's what we came for, you basta--" The tall man broke off with a strangled cry as Ryouma twisted a little more.

"Right. The truth's pretty plain. Your buddy was a sadistic son of a bitch who got his kicks screwing guys he'd beaten up till they couldn't fight him off. MPs said there'd already been reports about him, but nobody could verify it till now. They hauled him off--and I swear he was alive, and not 'cause I wanted him that way--and I got a medic in to clean Kakashi up, and those reports are filed somewhere you probably don't have the clearance to see. I dunno who killed Sadao, but it wasn't either of us. Any of you betting men?"

Both of the others were watching him, now, even if they didn't quite dare ignore Kakashi. The tall man hung limp in Ryouma's grip, panting.

"I'll take that as a no," Ryouma decided. "If you were, though, I'd be laying hundred-to-one odds that the guy who ordered Sadao's death is sitting somewhere in HQ. Maybe even the Hokage's Palace. You think they want guys like that in the corps? You think they can afford to let the knowledge get out that Konoha doesn't just field baby-killers, it sends out rapists to protect some daimyo's pretty daughter? If Sadao committed suicide, it was only 'cause someone wanted to cover up what he did. What your buddy was."

He released the tall ninja at last and shoved him away with more than a little chakra behind the push. The man stumbled, caught himself just before he fell, and clasped at his injured shoulder with a barely-muffled groan. Ryouma bared his teeth in a grin that had nothing to do with humor.

"We didn't kill Sadao. But if you still wanna try to avenge him, I'm up for it."

The benefit about never getting to know people, was that they could never surprise you. Kakashi warped the genjutsu to cover his reactions, and stared at Ryouma. After a second he remembered to close his mouth.

He never would've guessed Ryouma had a talent for public speaking.

Apparently charm had a flip side. A nasty flip side, he thought distantly, when Ryouma smiled like a sword strike and ended his speech with a threat. Kakashi tried not to react to what he'd said.

--got his kicks screwing guys he'd beaten up--

In his hand, the fake chidori flickered.

The muscled man sneered, one large hand rubbing over a bruise Kakashi had strangled into his throat. The middle-man said nothing, but his eyes narrowed in a way that made his whole face ugly. His arm hung at an awkward angle. If it came to another fight, Kakashi was pretty sure Ryouma could finish him off.

The blond man wasn't doing anything. His eyes stayed fixed on Kakashi, but behind them, cognition was happening.

"Sadao tried to rape you?" he asked finally, uncertainly.

Kakashi didn't flinch. "Tried," he echoed, and ignored the way his voice came out hollow. "Didn't succeed."

Because Ryouma had stepped in.

Like he was still stepping in.

Kakashi was getting a little tired of being rescued.

The muscled man spat a noise of disbelief. "Sadao wouldn't do that." Eyes the colour of wet rock flicked to Ryouma, then back to Kakashi. "We know he liked you. He talked about it--" boasted about it, Kakashi filled in, without much surprise, "--Said you liked him back. He was a good guy. If you cheated on him with your new play toy over there--"

Ryouma.

Kakashi stared at the man that moved so much like Sadao, and then, very slowly, started to laugh. It was still a hollow sound. The chatter of the fake jutsu in his hand made it a little brighter.

"Sadao liked no one but himself," he said, when he could speak. "And hurting people. He liked to hurt people. He died because higher-ups wanted him dead, not because we killed him."

Because Ginta had been ordered to.

Because Sadao had hurt him, too.

Kakashi looked at the blond man. The one with pain in his face. "Go away," he said, quietly. The genjutsu was eating his chakra. Weariness settled over him like a grey cloud. "Take your friend to the hospital. Do something useful. Make up for the waste of skin Sadao was.

"You bastards!" the burly man howled. His hand streaked inside his gi, came out filled with steel. Ryouma barely saw the shuriken before they took flight.

And the blond man snagged them out of the air one-handed, without looking away from Kakashi's face. "Calm down, Fujita," he said. His voice was so low Ryouma barely heard it. "I think I want to see those medical records."

Fujita rounded on his friend like a dog at bay. "You don't believe them?"

"I don't know what I believe," the blond man whispered. "But a couple of things...make sense, now."

Fujita stared at him for a long moment. His gaze flicked to Kakashi, and then to Ryouma, rabid with such loathing that Ryouma could almost see the echo of the dead man's mindless brutality. "Damn liars," he said, and spat on the ground at Kakashi's feet. "Cowards. Murdering fags--"

"Fujita," the blond man said.

"You go to hell!" Fujita wheeled, spat full in the blond man's face, and then wrenched himself away in a spurt of translocation smoke. The other man's face, frozen into stone, did not twitch. He didn't even look at Kakashi and Ryouma as he stepped over to his injured friend.

"Come on," he said quietly, tucking Fujita's shuriken away into his gi. "We've still got questions that need answering."

The tall man went with him, still clutching his shoulder. He turned after a few steps, though, and his eyes burned with that same ugly light Ryouma had seen in Fujita's. "Don't think I'll forget this."

"Wouldn't want you to," Ryouma said. "Any time you wanna bring it up again, you know where to find us. Just be sure you know why you're fightin'."

The blond man tugged at his friend's other elbow. They left without another word.

"Damn." Ryouma wiped the blood off his split lips at last, wincing at the coppery sting. "I'm starting to think maybe it's a good thing I don't have many friends around here."

Kakashi held the genjutsu for another second, eyes flickering as his chakra ghosted out to check whether the trio was truly gone. He could sense nothing but Ryouma. With a tiny sigh, he let the illusion melt away. The dance of blue-white over blistered flesh dissolved, leaving a clean palm behind. He slouched slightly, and stuffed both hands into his pockets.

"I wouldn't tell people," he murmured wryly, "they get a bit funny about it. Apparently friends are a good thing." He worked his jaw beneath his mask, feeling the fading ache of Fujita's strike line the bone. It wasn't doing much for his hangover headache. "I'm guessing it's one of those things that make you a complete person. Like eating your vegetables. Or getting an all-weather tan."

Neither of which he did, but he didn't expect Ryouma to pick up on that.

Kakashi glanced at the glob of saliva in the dirt and scuffed his foot, stirring up enough dust to cover it. His wrist ached; he flexed it gingerly and ignored the little spark of pain. It wasn't broken.

"So..." he said carefully, and looked at his teammate. Ryouma's face was blood-smeared and unhappy, but he'd gotten the best of his fight. Kakashi didn't think about how. "Still want to get that coffee?"

"I'm always up for coffee," Ryouma said. He wiped at his lips again, succeeded only in smearing the mess around, and gave up. His sweat-shirt was spattered darkly as well, which was more of a pain. Blood came out decently well from stain-resistant shinobi uniforms, but civilian clothing could be impossible to properly clean.

Eh, well. This hoodie would just look a bit more hardcore from now on.

"I got a year-round tan, or as good as. Don't see what that has to do with anything. Just... Seems like if people think somebody's a friend, they stop thinking about him. Like that guy--he had his doubts about Sadao, and he ignored 'em, 'cause the guy was his pal. He covered for a monster, 'cause they had drinks together on Friday nights."

He stuck his hands in his pockets and started walking for the training ground exit, staring down at the dirt crunching under his sandals as he fumbled through his thoughts. "Maybe I just got the wrong definition of friend. I'd've thought you had to know a guy, not just enjoy his company. Someone who's got your back, and you've got his--and you can still slug him in the jaw when he's an idiot."

He glanced quickly, apologetically, at Kakashi. "If those guys were really his friends, they'd've punched some sense into him years before he started going wrong."

Kakashi grabbed his bag as they passed it, and slung it uncomfortably onto one shoulder. He fell into step beside Ryouma, head cocked slightly as the man talked.

After a second, he amended the thought; Ryouma wasn't talking, he was thinking out loud.

About friends.

Kakashi suppressed a sigh. Everything seemed to be about friends lately. It was on Ginta's mind--enough that it almost made Kakashi uncomfortable to be around the man. Along with... everything else--it was on Ryouma's mind. It was even on Kuromaru's mind. Though the last, at least, had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Hoshika.

Still.

He waited until Ryouma wound down, and banished a flicker of surprise when the man gave him a look with sorry written all over it. He didn't understand the apology.

"So," he said finally, slowly, as he tried to organize his thoughts. "Friends are a good thing, unless you're essentially pondscum on the flotsam of life, and then they're a pain in the ass for your enemies?" He tried to work that out around his headache and gave up. "That or you're trying to persuade me that that next time you need to hit me, it'll be a good thing. Not that you're my friend," he added quickly, and looked away.

"Hey," Ryouma objected, "I didn't say you were my friend, either." He might have thought it, once or twice... But friendship needed to go both ways; that was kind of the whole point.

"I'm taking applications right now, but it's a tough process. Not sure you'd get through the part about Shared Interests. I mean, sure, you said you'd join my pirate crew, but how d'you feel about zombies? And I'm pretty sure you hit on me once. That might automatically disqualify you. 'Course," he added, as a new thought struck him, "you might've confused the two types of hitting, so maybe I could overlook that..."

He rubbed at his mouth again, and sneaked a glance sideways. Kakashi looked... Well. Masked.

Ryouma had forgotten how much he hated hanging out with people who wore masks. It was the ultimate poker-face. It was unfair.

"Do you realize," Kakashi said, after a moment to process everything Ryouma has said, "that you babble worse than Ginta does? I think that might be a record."

He wasn't sure how well Ryouma would buy a misdirection--or even a non-answer--but it was worth finding out.

Mostly because he had no idea how to answer. He didn't want to be friends. He was pretty sure he didn't want to hit on Ryouma--the last time he could blame on blood loss, exhaustion, and misunderstanding a question. This time... things were already complicated enough.

Of course, if that was a guaranteed way to shake Ryouma away...

Kakashi filed the thought in the back of his head for later consideration. A back up plan was always a good thing to have.

"And I'm fairly certain zombies would take you into forbidden jutsu territory. They banish you for that, y'know."

"Nobody babbles worse than Ginta does," Ryouma said, with absolute certainty. "I ran half a dozen missions with him, when I was stationed up in Lightning Country." Of course, only one of those had actually been with Ginta--or Seishi, as he had been then. Most of the time Ryouma and his team had acted as guides, facilitators, diversions, and back-ups for the ANBU missions. Twice, they'd saved the day. They'd also spent a lot of downtime playing cards, trading stories, and utterly failing at prying personal information out of each other. Ginta was a certified Master of Babble.

Ryouma could admit, though, that he was good at it. And while Kakashi seemed to be avoiding at least half of his rambling, at least he'd picked up on one of the other topics. At least he was talking, not closing into himself, not deciding he'd made a bad decision and striding off. He might not be a friend, but sometimes he could be good company all the same.

And since he'd mentioned zombies, Ryouma decided to run with it. "I wouldn't be creating the zombies," he said breezily. "I'd be a leader of the elite strike team taking 'em out. Just a sword won't take 'em down, y'know. Slice the head off, and the body keeps walking. You gotta burn 'em--or melt 'em. I figure I'll be a hero. You're a ninjutsu user, too, so you can join in. Save the world! Win the admiration of lots of nubile--uh, virile young men."

Apparently misdirection worked.

Kakashi blinked as Ryouma's thoughts skidded through some bizarre mental curve and skipped from Ginta to zombies to attractive young men. After a moment's thought, he decided not to question it.

But in all the wordage, there was something interesting. Ryouma had been stationed in Lightning Country, and he'd worked with Ginta. Kakashi filed those thoughts away with the others, and hefted his bag onto his left shoulder.

"Already saved the world once," he said thoughtfully, effectively throwing a crowbar in Ryouma's path. "Well, helped save it, if you count taking down a demon. There weren't so many virile young men as there were funerals, if I recall right." His free hand lifted, stiff fingers brushed over his hitai-ate. "And I usually recall right."

He smiled at Ryouma, as if he'd said nothing of real note, and glanced away to the looming buildings of Konoha. It felt a little like a test. He waited to see how his companion would react.