The nightmares hadn't come. At least, not in the way Ryouma had expected them. Kuromaru didn't even appear. Tsume did, but only to hold a lengthy argument with Kakashi and Hitomi-sensei over whether Ryouma tasted like plum jam or apricots. When it became evident that none of them was going to have sex with him--or with each other--he wandered away in search of coffee. The halls were long and dark, and he had an uneasy idea that he was going in circles, and that maybe there really wasn't any coffee to be had. Ever.

He woke with a jerk and a half-swallowed curse. He was slick with sweat, and his mouth tasted violently foul. His head ached, and his sides were oddly cold...

Kakashi and Tsume were gone.

The door was closed. Had it been open when he fell asleep? He rubbed his eyes, hard, and swung his gaze around the room. Door, bathroom door, table and chairs, no, chair--

Corner. Chair. Kakashi, curled in on himself. Bed. Kuromaru, sleeping. The leaden lump in Ryouma's chest began beating again.

"Apricots," he croaked, and swung his legs off the bed. He hissed as his bare feet hit the tile, but now that he was breathing, other urgent needs were beginning to force themselves to the forefront of his attention. "You're insane," he said, and tottered into the bathroom.

When he came out again, knotting the waist-strings of the too-big pajama pants and limping a little on a stiffened knee, Kakashi hadn't moved. He was still hugging his legs to his chest, still staring sightlessly at the tiled floor between his chair and the bed. Ryouma rubbed his left shoulder, fingers slipping smoothly over the slick twisting lines of new tissue that should have been scars, and stepped closer.

"Kakashi?" he said quietly. "Hey. I didn't kick that much, did I?"

Kakashi didn't flinch; his control was far too tight, but his fingers clenched a little, pressing white marks into his arms. He didn't look away from the floor. He knew he was making a spectacle of himself now, but the alternative--looking up; seeing--was far worse. If he unwrapped his arms, it felt like his insides would tumble out and splash over the floor.

But Ryouma was awake. He was fine. He was walking and talking and apparently mobile enough to use the bathroom--not the actions of a dying man. Kakashi grabbed onto that logic and threw it against the images dancing around inside his skull.

It didn't really help.

He took a dry breath. "I--" almost killed you. He bit his lip and tried again. "You--" nearly died.

It didn't matter. Ryouma was still alive, practically healed even, and just because Kakashi had relaxed his rules once--

People didn't die just because you slept with them; the human population would have disintegrated eons ago. They didn't die even if you'd said you might sleep with them again. They definitely didn't die just because everyone else had--

Behind its scarred eyelid, the sharingan reacted to his rising tension by spinning a nasty wheel of pain. Kakashi saw Ryouma fall, most of his body a tortured, bleeding wreck, and turned white.

"You were too hot," he forced out, desperate to make the man go away--but not far enough to lose him. "And yes, you kick. You're too hot and you kick, you bastard. Tsume's family took her out, so go back to bed and sleep. I'll sit here and cool down."

"If I'm hot," Ryouma pointed out, "I should be the one cooling down." He jittered, rubbing his shoulder, flexing his hand. Coffee, his headache snarled. Kakashi, he told it, and took a step closer.

Kakashi was still staring at the floor.

"I saw her family earlier," Ryouma said, just a shade too quickly. "Tsume's sister came in before I fell asleep. Just checking up. She said she'd take Tsume to meet her kids later, couldn't bring 'em in here..."

One more step. He was close enough to touch Kakashi's shoulder, now, if he reached out. His bare shoulder. They'd left off the hospital pajama top for Kakashi, too; maybe it was a new fashion. It could certainly enliven the nurses' rounds. They probably had tea in the nurses' station and gossiped over the relative merits of different patients' pectorals.

He looked down at his own, and somehow didn't flinch. The wrecked dragon alone merited a revenge in blood and fire, but even the dimpling of damaged muscle was gone, now, vanished with the nightmares he hadn't had after all.

Kakashi, though... Ryouma was pretty sure he recognized that glassy stare. Not all nightmares came with sleep.

"You shoulda just kicked back," he murmured, and very carefully laid the tips of his fingers over the stone-still curve of Kakashi's shoulder. "I'll even give you a free shot now, if you want."

Kakashi stopped breathing.

The touch against his skin was barely there, but it still pulled a rising wave of tension from his knotting stomach up. His shoulders rose, hunching. His hands jerked together, hard fingers wrapping around opposite wrists, pulling his knees closer; he barely noticed the sting from his freshly bandaged dog bite.

Common sense told him nothing could happen if Ryouma got close; lightning wasn't going to crash down from on-high and blast the older ninja apart. The universe didn't work that way.

As far as Kakashi's gut cared, common sense could go drown itself. He twisted his head down and away, focusing intently on the clean tiles, making sure he could see nothing of Ryouma. With almost obsessive precision, he began to find patterns in the carefully laid stone, following them past the waking-nightmare.

"Rookie," he said in a voice he barely recognized as his own. "Let go."

Kakashi's voice rang so brittle with cold that it should have cracked. His shoulder bunched beneath Ryouma's fingers, muscles knotting, chakra coiling so tight and controlled that it almost vanished beneath his skin.

If he spoke, Ryouma thought, Kakashi might shatter.

He shook off the absurd notion, and didn't pull away.

"C'mon," he said. "You're passing up a rare opportunity, y'know. I won't offer again. Hey, look at me, will you? I saw the mirror in the bathroom, they didn't mess up my classic beauty that bad--"

He let go, then, but only to creak into a crouch beside the chair. His stiff knee protested; he told it to go screw his headache. He could get a decent view of Kakashi's face from here, or at least of one eye left unguarded by mask and knee and tousled hair.

He'd seen corpses with less grief in their eyes.

"Kakashi," he said. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Kakashi snapped, louder than he meant to. His jaw clenched. Very carefully, he kept his gaze fastened on the floor and modified, "Nothing you can fix."

There were flecks in the tile; chips grooved out of the stone. If he followed one to the next to the next... There, a thirteen-sided shape. A triskaidecagon. He rattled off the multiples of thirteen silently, until he fumbled the maths and everything fell apart.

That was okay. He just had to start again. Find a fleck and follow it to the next one...

His line of sight slid over too far, grazing the edge of Ryouma's bent knee, the shape of one hand. He jerked back, looking away, but not fast enough. This time it was nails, torn free from the bleeding beds of Ryouma's fingers. They never grew back right, once they were ripped out.

But Ryouma's had, because Haruichi had fixed everything.

He had. And lightning wouldn't strike.

Kakashi pushed back, weight settling onto his heels as muscles clenched. The chair creaked. Ryouma was still to one side of him; far too close, but not actually in the way. If Kakashi moved fast, the door was right there...

But that left Ryouma unguarded. Alone in the room, with nothing but the unconscious wreck of a former-dog. Kakashi grit his teeth hard enough to hurt.

"Get away from me." He searched desperately for an argument that would make Ryouma leave. The sharingan flared, making bright pain ooze hot down the side of his face, and showed him nothing but weak points. "I'll tear off the rest of that tattoo if you don't get away."

Ryouma didn't move.

"Now."

"Gonna use your fingernails?" Ryouma scoffed. "'Cause I'm not exactly seeing any skinning knives lying close to hand..."

If he was mocking, he couldn't flinch.

But even derision couldn't shield him from the loathing in Kakashi's voice, or the pain in the eye that still wouldn't meet his. Nothing you can fix, Kakashi said, and he sounded as if he believed it. As if he meant to stay there, curled up on himself, shrinking small enough for the world to forget.

As if he thought that saying Go away would make Ryouma forget.

"Not a chance, bucko," he said softly. "You passed that up when you came to get me. When you pulled me out. When you stayed. You think I'll back down where you didn't, you got a world of re-thinking to do. Look at me, dammit!"

If he grabbed Kakashi's ankle, he could yank his leg down and bare half that masked face, force the copy nin to look at him.

But Kakashi hadn't wanted to be touched. Hadn't wanted Ryouma to touch him. Ryouma couldn't blame him.

Just for a second, when Ryouma's voice rumbled out low and smooth, folded around an odd sort of nickname, Kakashi fought the urge to reach out and grab hold; to reestablish the touch that had been the background hum of the last two days, ever-present and weirdly comforting.

But then that voice snapped into a command, and Kakashi made a mistake; he listened.

He looked.

And that was where the world fell down.

Blood smeared over Ryouma's mouth, bright red and obscene; bruises darkened his face, beaten into the hollows of arched cheekbones, the delicate skin beneath black eyes. Kakashi froze, breath catching on a startled hiss. He couldn't stop himself from looking down. Couldn't fail to see the glistening sheen of bright jewelled colours split apart by naked wounds.

--tear off the rest of that tattoo--

Muscles fibres trembled as Ryouma's heart pulsed beneath them. He could see the layers of strength, ripped open and laid bare. See where the acid had run.

See what he'd caused.

What he was going to do again.

Tile squeaked as the chair slammed back and toppled over. Kakashi hit the ground on his hands and knees, scrambled up, and fled.

Shock might dull shinobi reflexes, but it couldn't destroy them. Ryouma swung out of his crouch and lunged for the door almost before Kakashi was fairly through it. He lost two seconds not smashing through the sliding door as Kakashi slammed it behind him, and by then the copy nin was staggering up the hallway, faster than most men could run.

Ryouma didn't have to be faster. He just had to follow.

He dodged a gurney, nearly piled into a nurse pushing a wheelchair-bound young woman whom Kakashi couldn't have seen but had somehow avoided, yelped "Getting some fresh air!" at the startled nurse, and made it to the stairs a full flight behind Kakashi. His long legs helped, here, despite his sleep-stiffened left knee; he managed three steps to Kakashi's two, and he was only a few steps behind when they burst out onto the flat roof of the hospital under a cloudy March sky. The roof was deserted, without even the usual fluttering white lines of drying sheets. Ryouma seized Kakashi's shoulder four steps away from the door, and spun him around.

He didn't even get a chance to speak.

The sharp wind whipped the scents away, replacing them with the convoluted tangle that was Konoha on an active day. Kakashi could hear nothing over the pounding blood in his own ears. He made it to the roof mostly on instinct and desperation, searching for somewhere safe to hide and think, and completely failed to notice the man following him.

Until a hand landed on his shoulder.

The threat shocked straight through the ragged remains of his common sense, wrenching both eyes open and both hands up even as he turned--

And found Ryouma.

In the red-nightmare realm of Obito's fully-open sharingan, he looked exactly like he had when Kakashi first found him; barely alive, mostly broken.

This time Kakashi didn't have mission-focus to fall back on. There was no armour to lose himself in. No destination he had to reach, or enemy he had to beat. They'd gotten home. He'd brought them back.

And Ryouma was still bleeding out on the bare slate roof.

It wasn't real.

He couldn't make it stop.

Kakashi tore himself away, covered his face with both hands and screamed.

When the foundations of your world start to crumble, there isn't a whole lot of time to stand and stare. Instinct, not thought, spurred Ryouma's muscles into movement. He ducked around Kakashi, stumbled as his left knee nearly gave out, and grabbed at the other man's wrists anyway.

Kakashi had screamed the moment the Sharingan eye opened. And the corded tendons leaped out on the backs of his hands, now, as if any moment his fingers would slip and gouge out that spinning eye. Ryouma's grip tightened, dragging the clutching fingers back. He saw a splintered glimpse of one wide grey eye, one blood-and-black whirl, and then Kakashi screamed again and wrenched back, lashing out. His foot caught the inside of Ryouma's stiff knee with an ugly crack.

There must have still been some dregs of painkillers floating through Ryouma's system. He barely felt the stab as his weakened knee collapsed, and he hit the roof still clutching Kakashi's left wrist in his right hand. One savage tug was enough to overbalance the other shinobi. Ryouma caught an elbow in the teeth, but Kakashi went down.

"Freak," Ryouma snarled, and dove for a submission hold.

Kakashi hit the roof on his knees, kiltered sideways by Ryouma's lock on his wrist, and tried to twist away. His head ducked down, eyes squeezing tightly closed. Ryouma's grip became a vice, yanking him back. He struggled, fighting blind, and the other man's weight crashed heavily into his chest, a knee driving hard into his solar-plexus.

For a choked moment, air went away. He fell backwards and hit the roof, losing skin as cold black tar rasped it away. Ryouma didn't grant him the necessarily half-second to recover; the older ninja landed on him, most of his weight on Kakashi's chest, hands grabbing his wrists to rip them down and pin them by his sides.

Oddly, it was the insult that hurt more.

Kakashi strained, desperate to get away, and didn't manage to budge Ryouma an inch; for a man who was bleeding, the other ninja was putting up a much better fight. Something warm dripped lightly onto Kakashi's stomach, rolling away down his flank. He stiffened.

"Get off." The words came out on a strangled hiss. His heels dug into the roof. "Get away!"

Ryouma licked blood from his spit lips, turned his head, and spat. "No way. You weren't screaming at the sight of me yesterday. What the hell happened?"

Kakashi's hips flexed beneath him in an attempted bridge. Ryouma ground his knees into the gravelly rooftop and shifted even more weight forward, pinning Kakashi's chest down. "Payback, genius. You wouldn't let me break. Now open the other damn eye, and tell me what's wrong!"

"I'm being a freak." The words spat out like a curse, twisted up in a scream. He wrenched a knee up and hammered it into Ryouma's lower back, knocking him forwards. The older ninja corrected immediately, re-settling his weight. Kakashi hit him again and got nothing but a grunt this time; Ryouma had braced himself too well.

It wasn't often Kakashi lost a fight; Sadao had been the last, and that wasn't exactly a memory he treasured. He threw himself against Ryouma's hold, bucking and kicking, wrenching his hands...

And got nowhere.

Ryouma was bigger and heavier, and Kakashi didn't exactly have enough chakra--or the ability to put his hands together--to force him away. He didn't dare attempt to open his eyes for a genjutsu.

Which left him with options numbering zero.

The fight drained out of him, worn away by exhaustion and climbing fear. He fell back against the roof, panting through his mask.

Ryouma didn't let go.

"I can't--" Kakashi groaned, hating himself. But there was no other way out. It wasn't even real--and he still couldn't convince himself. There was blood on his chest. He knew it wasn't his. "The sharingan--it doesn't let me forget. I can't..." He swallowed hard, eyes tightly closed. "Can't stop seeing you. How you were."

Ryouma hadn't promised he wouldn't die. He'd just said it was worth living before the end, trying to do it without regrets.

And Kakashi had been stupid enough not to say no.

All his screams were gone, the words came out a whisper. "I'm sorry."

Ryouma wet his lips. Tasted blood again, and caught a trickle just before it dripped. Kakashi's elbows were hard,, and he hadn't been pulling his blows. He'd been trying to get away--from Ryouma, from his own eye. And when he couldn't escape either of them...

Very carefully, Ryouma loosened his grip. Flattened his right hand against the rough tarred roof, on the far side of Kakashi's body, and pushed himself up far enough to see the set jaw and the clenched-closed eyes, the masked face painted in lines of strain. The thin cloth of the mask fluttered with each rasping breath, outlining the shape of fear.

Ryouma's head pounded, and his split lips throbbed. He thought, vaguely, that he'd probably scraped both his knees. Likely skinned Kakashi's back raw.

"I'll tear off the rest of that tattoo if you don't get away."

Was that what Kakashi had been seeing?

He straightened and locked his elbow against the weakness that trembled in his muscles, and freed his other hand. He wiped his lips and chin clean against the back of his wrist, ran his tongue around again for good measure, and then batted gently at the sharp line of Kakashi's chin.

"Hey, genius. You got nothin' but a busted knee and a fat lip to apologize for. I'm sorry. I should've... Okay, look. That eye memorizes whatever it sees, right? So open it up again and have another look. Damned if you'll see me running around Konoha without a shirt again until I get my tan back and this tattoo fixed, but I'm all right. So long as you got nothing against patchy. Damn, boy, you got enough scars, you gonna begrudge me mine? C'mon." He opened his palm, cradling the side of Kakashi's face. "Maybe I'm not so pretty anymore, but I'm alive. You can see that. Just gotta look."

Kakashi shivered once and picked up his hand, wrapped his fingers hard around Ryouma's wrist. He didn't push the other man away, he just held on, feeling a swift pulse beat beneath his fingertips.

Ryouma wanted him to look. Kakashi couldn't think of anything he wanted to do less. But the words eddying around him were smooth and sure, threaded through with the calm whiskey-rumble of Ryouma's normal voice.

He smelled like pain--but only a fraction of it. Enough acid-bite for bruises and scrapes, a bloody mouth, maybe, but not the wreck of half a chest laid open. Kakashi turned his head carefully sideways, finding Ryouma's palm by feel, and pressed forwards, inhaling deeply.

Stress, worry, an old familiar twist of sour fruit and bitter sage. Beneath that was Ryouma's own scent; heat, oiled wood and sharp steel, the distant drift of a storm over sunny forests.

No agony.

Kakashi tightened his grip, steeling himself, and let his eyes open the barest crack. For a moment, he saw nothing but blurry skin--Ryouma's chest up close. Red edged around his vision and he tensed, pressing white marks into Ryouma's wrist, but man's scent didn't change. Still no agony.

Kakashi opened his eyes.

Red and black spiralled together as the sharingan sharpened and focused, seeing chakra laid over flesh, pulling memory together with the real world. For six shattering heartbeats, Ryouma's skin ripped open and bled. Acid tracks slid down his arms and over his shoulder, eating away his ANBU brand. Raw muscle pulsed in open air.

And then it melted away.

The nightmare collapsed in on itself and slid neatly into reality, leaving Kakashi with nothing to look at but healed wounds and Ryouma's worried face. He swallowed hard and let the sharingan close, sheathing it before his chakra drained away.

"You're wrong," he croaked finally, and reached out to lay his free hand very carefully just below Ryouma's heart. "You're still pretty."

Nothing but warmth beneath his fingers. Relief came with laughter, low and shivery and half a step away from something much worse. Kakashi gasped a breath and let it shake him apart.

There was a raw edge to Kakashi's laughter, just on the safe side of hysteria, that scraped like fingernails down Ryouma's spine. He shivered involuntarily, and tried to ignore it the way he ignored the painful grip grinding the bones of his wrist. Kakashi's eyes: those were important. The Sharingan squeezed shut, with a few tears glistening on the light lashes. The right eye, rain-grey and sword-sharp, fixed on Ryouma like a drowning man's hope of shore.

No one was supposed to look at Ryouma that way. Not when both of them knew it was a false hope anyway.

But he'd come back this time. Tsume and Kakashi had brought him back together, and if either of them wanted hope, he'd do what he could to give it.

"Well, yeah," he admitted, tossing his head back in a deliberately exaggerated flip that did absolutely nothing for his too-short hair. "Supernaturally gorgeous's a bit of a step down from god-like, but it's still probably too much for you lesser mortals to handle. Does your hum-drum life feel blessed and enlivened yet? Ouch!"

Kakashi pulled his fist back and braced it against the roof. "I'm feeling vaguely queasy now," he said, trying hard for deadpan, "does that count?" He shoved himself up a little, balanced on one hand, and found himself face to face with Ryouma, who was still leaning over him.

For a shaky moment, the sudden urge to get closer and shove his face against the other man's neck, to prove that Ryouma's scent was really telling him the truth, swamped Kakashi. It seemed like an impossible fever-dream that Ryouma was really healed and whole and okay enough to make stupid jokes.

But he was there, in living breathing colour.

Kakashi made himself take a slow breath and, instead, peeled his fingers reluctantly away from Ryouma's wrist. He put his second hand flat on the roof, bracing himself better. The wind ghosted over his back, stroking scraped-raw flesh with icy fingers. He winced.

The laughter was almost gone, now, just a trickle remained clinging to his ribs. It ebbed slowly away, taking heat with it, and left feeling him cold and suddenly tired. Ryouma didn't look a whole lot better.

"You're an idiot," Kakashi said abruptly, fighting the impulse to lean again. "What kind of moron goes chasing after his apparently insane teammate when he's half-naked, and only recently rescued? If you get pneumonia I'm going to have no qualms about sleeping with you and really getting you killed next time--not one." Distantly, he felt his brain catch up with his mouth and realized what he'd just said. He hesitated, then threw himself onwards. "Or something. Get off."

"Not actually on you," Ryouma pointed out, but he shoved himself straight anyway, rocking back to sit on his heels in a rough parody of seiza style. The cold wind rifled through his hair and chilled his sweaty skin. He shivered.

"Besides, if I'm the idiot, shouldn't I be the one not making any sense? Sleeping with someone doesn't--"

He paused. Licked his lips again, tearing the new blood clot. "As long as you keep it in the village, sleeping with someone doesn't get them killed. And I don't take it out of the village."

Even with Tsume, he'd only wanted answers--and perhaps, if he was honest with himself, the hope of something to come. He wouldn't have taken it further. Too many bloody memories lay down that road.

Kakashi pushed himself up into a crouch, scraping his bare feet on roof tar. He braced with one hand, settling on the balls of his feet, and felt just a fraction more steady--ready to spring up and run, if he had to.

He frowned slightly and cut that thought away. The eye was fixed, he was done running. Ryouma wasn't hurt anymore; Kakashi just had to make sure it stayed that way. Make sure he stayed away.

Freak.

"I know sex won't get your partner killed," he said as calmly as possible, gathering himself back together. "There's no logical reason it would. Especially if you're..." he hesitated. "Safe. And in the village. Like you said."

Something pulled a little on his chest. He glanced down and found a drying smear of red, leading to a clotted scarlet bead just below his ribcage. Ryouma's blood; just one drop, cast off from his mouth. Kakashi stared at it, then rubbed it violently away.

"Or coming back from a mission," he continued, talking mostly to himself. "That works, too. Why did you change what you said?" He looked up, catching Ryouma's eye, and gestured at his mask. "Your scent changed, just as you said it."

Which was cutting a little personal, but they'd already gone through that and out the other damn side.

"What's wrong?"

"Other than you threatening to kill me with sex?" Ryouma tried a teasing grin, but couldn't make it any further than a grimace. The bad joke sounded even worse under the cold grey sky than it had inside his own head. And while Kakashi might have only been asking out of idle curiosity--or, more likely, as a desperate attempt at diverting attention--the Copy Ninja deserved the same honesty Ryouma had demanded from him.

Nothing you can fix, Kakashi had said, and Ryouma didn't believe that any more than he believed they were both going to live to a ripe and decrepit old age. He was pretty sure opening up old wounds wouldn't fix anything, but maybe honesty would.

"Knew a girl once," he said, and corrected himself. "Loved a girl, once. Takamichi Misao. I only learned her family name afterwards... She had the longest black hair, and she smiled like the sun coming out. I was seventeen. Chuunin. She was twenty. She was my first second time." He chewed the inside of his cheek, glancing away over the broken, jumbled expanse of roofs stretching out all the way to the Hokage Monument. "We'd--been together maybe a month when we got a mission together. She might've asked it for a favor; the guys in the mission office all-- Well. She let me stay over at her place the night before."

This time he did manage a faint grin, quirked sideways by the memory of lust. "You remember being seventeen. And she was probably just as horny as me, if you can believe that. We got the mission done, anyway. Still in Grass Country, coming back, but she said it'd be all right, and I--"

He'd been a fool. Seventeen years old, and trying to patch up the pieces of his broken heart after Hitomi-sensei had dropped it with such disdain. And then Misao had smiled at him, and flirted back, and ran her clever hands up under his shirt when he kissed her...

He'd never tasted alcohol, but he'd been drunk on the taste of her, on the touch of her hands and the scent of her hair, on the heady sensation of someone who wanted him. And lust drowned sense as readily as liquor did, because when she'd pulled him down into the long grass without even setting a bunshin to scout or a trap to ward, he'd gone willingly.

And gotten her killed.

"I brought her tags back, for her mother," he said quietly. "Swore after that I'd never take it out of the village. I kept that promise pretty well, so far."

He'd kept the promise to himself about not letting anyone else get too close pretty well, too--until now.

As Ryouma talked, his scent eddying gently into the watercolour palate of sadness, Kakashi fell out of his crouch, finally settling down with his legs loosely crossed. The position was oddly reminiscent of his brief school days; a student listening to a teacher's story.

Not that Ryouma was a teacher, or Kakashi was learning a lesson. If anything, he felt a little vindicated in some dark, unhappy way. Sex did get people killed, and there was the proof.

He scrubbed his hands tiredly over the uncovered half of his face, and raked them back to mess up his hair. It stood up in dirty spikes, still stained with old blood and whatever else he'd picked up dragging Ryouma and Tsume out of their own personal hell.

"You're kind of an idiot," he said eventually, without the sympathy Ryouma's story probably deserved. "Who falls in love after a month? That's your problem, rookie. You bound up to everyone like a--like a stupid eager puppy. All big eyes and wagging tail, asking for people to love you and handing your heart out to anyone that'll take it--running on to the next when they throw it back broken."

He was being a bastard now, but he couldn't make himself stop. Not even for the hurt washing over Ryouma's face--there and gone like a juggler's trick.

This was another reason not to get close; you only gave someone better knowledge of how to knife you. And Kakashi was good at slotting the pieces together and shaping a blade, especially when he was tired and sore and someone was asking too damn much.

Telling too damn much.

"And I'll give you half a guess about what I was doing at seventeen," he went on, feeling the wind drag over his raw back. "It was pretty much this, without the endless attempts of everyone to make fucking friends.."

Which didn't even begin to cover riverbanks--or what'd happened on them--but he'd already said enough. More than enough, judging by the way Ryouma smelled now.

Kakashi throttled a sigh, tangled up between anger and exhaustion and the stupid persisting desire to go over and lean against the other man until his scent warmed up again--which would completely defeat all the points he'd ever tried to make.

He rubbed his face again.

"Look, let's just go inside before a nurse has kittens. You can--sleep or something and I can glare at people and Tsume can sniff you until her drugs wear off and we'll all be happy."

It was as close to an apology as he could manage.

"I thought you had something against being happy," Ryouma said dangerously. His hands clenched in the soft, washed-thin fabric of his pajama pants; cloth gave somewhere, with a tiny sound like a shredding heart. "I didn't ask you to love me, anyway. I think I'm damned well smart enough to know you're not capable of it, even if I wanted--"

He clamped his jaw shut, dropped a hand to the roughly tarred roof, and shoved himself to his feet. Tried to, at least. His knee buckled under him, pain stabbing through the film of drugs. He shoved chakra ruthlessly into the damaged joint, and somehow didn't pitch onto his face.

Kakashi was on his own knees again now, wide-eyed, reaching out. But he stopped just short of touching, drew back, and folded his arms across his shiver-chased chest. Ryouma wasn't sure if his words, his glare, or Kakashi's innate bastardy had more of a hand in it.

Kakashi was a bastard, he reminded himself firmly. He was sarcastic and snide and infuriatingly superior, and Ryouma had never liked people who made it clear they didn't think much of him. Kakashi wouldn't know gratitude if it bit him in the ass, and he had even less of an acquaintance with friendliness. He didn't want friends.

That was just too bad.

"Thing is," he said, gripping his aching knee as if the pressure that whitened his knuckles would ease the pain, "I'm not seventeen anymore. And neither are you. And I'm not making the same mistakes, but you just keep on repeating 'em. I'm sure as hell not giving you my heart yet, so you can damn well stop trying to break it!"

"Better broken than dead," Kakashi flung back, before his brain woke up and snapped his mouth shut. He ground his teeth together, knifing his jaw painfully sideways, and took a breath. He was the mature veteran. Ryouma was the dumb injured rookie trying to keep his knee together with two hands. Kakashi was technically above his insults.

Technically.

He tightened his folded arms, feeling the scraped skin across his back sting and pull as his shoulders spread. The minor hurt was strangely focusing. He did it again.

Yet, Ryouma had said. Not giving you my heart yet.

Beneath anger and worry--how badly hurt was Ryouma's knee?--old, familiar fear stuck itself to Kakashi's ribs and pressed his lungs flat. How had they gone from a few missions to a riverbank to a rescue to yet?

Why, of all things, was love in the conversation?

Because you brought it up, you freak, thought Kakashi wearily, and resisted the urge to rub his eyes. He should've just cut Ryouma off the moment he'd started talking about past sweethearts and the way they'd died.

"I may be making the same mistakes," he said flatly, getting to his feet, "But I'm the guy with one of the longest ANBU careers on record, so I'm doing at least one thing right. And of the two of us, I'm not the one who looks half crippled."

Ryouma's face was pinched white with pain. His knees were bloody. He'd had half his chest ripped open not a day ago--Kakashi shook his head sharply when the full-colour mental picture tried to reform--and more than that besides. He definitely wasn't ready to be debating relationship philosophy; especially not half-naked on a windy rooftop.

"I'm not worth your damn heart, Ryouma. So keep it with the rest of you and take it inside. And you better be able to walk, because I'm not carrying you."

"It's your fault," Ryouma pointed out, gritting his teeth. The pain in his jaw was a useful distraction from the pain in his knee. He might even be able to walk, if he could keep the chakra reinforcement steady...

"If you treat my heart like you did my knee," he ground out, feeding a little more chakra into the tendons, "I'm keeping it nice and safe, thanks. Dammit." He took a sharp breath, straightened, and tested his weight. His knee screamed at him, but the hum of strengthening chakra wouldn't let it buckle. Or bend. Oh well. Maybe he could just slide down the bannister...

He took one lurching step, and didn't fall over. A little blood tickled its way down his shin. Maybe he could blame it all on the fall. An old injury acting up, stiffening his joint, a clumsy step, a sharp fall-- The nurses would totally believe him.

Hah.

"I don't believe you," he told Kakashi, quite calmly, and took another step. Seven to the door, maybe. He wasn't exactly managing his usual long stride. If Kakashi ran again, he wasn't sure he'd be able to follow.

"I think I'm a pretty good judge of character. I also think you're a jerk. But I don't sleep with people I don't like. And I don't think I care what you think."

Which was quite possibly the biggest lie he'd ever told, but he wasn't sure he cared about that, either.

"You realize I can smell you lying, right?" Kakashi said, torn between the conflicting desires to help Ryouma out, or give him another solid kick. Or possibly put his head in his hands until the world made sense again. "But you just said about four different things, and I'm not sure which one I want to be the lie, so I'm going to do us both a favour and skip past that entirely. Why are you limping so badly? I didn't kick you that hard."

He stepped carefully closer, tense as a nervous horse, and gave Ryouma's wounded knee a sharper look. It was skinned--both knees were bloody from the roof tar; same as Kakashi's back--but that wasn't a limp-worthy injury, and Kakashi was pretty sure he hadn't kicked hard enough to break anything.

Of course, Ryouma had just woken up from a coma, and he was standing shirtless on a bare roof. Knee aside, he was getting paler by the minute, and now Kakashi was really looking, he could see Ryouma shaking.

He sighed.

"Yeah, you look really safe. Same way the ocean looks really orange." He edged closer again, ready to dodge a blow, and unfolded his arms. He held out one hand and managed to keep it steady. "Look, I--"

He hesitated slightly, pinned by a hot glare from angry black eyes, and then reminded himself that ninja feared nothing; they just did the job.

"I got your hide all the way home, didn't I?" he said, a little softer. "Killed the bad guys, saved the good guys, hung around when I should have gone home. I earned my stupid freakout, you bastard, even if you don't think so. And if that bit about you liking me for--whatever crazy reason you've come up with wasn't the lie, then you can put up with me doing this."

He reached out and grabbed Ryouma's wrist, sliding neatly underneath his arm with a sidestep, and tucked himself against the bigger man's side. Pulling Ryouma's arm over his own skinned shoulders was a minor agony, but he hissed a quiet curse word under his breath and managed, locking the other ninja's wrist into a solid grip.

"Be angry all you like, but if you do something stupid in the next minute I'll kick your other knee out and drag you down by the hair."

"I think I've run my limits on stupid," Ryouma admitted. He tried not to relax, but it was murderously hard when his shaking muscles took the extra support as a sign that they should attempt to give way completely. He dragged up more chakra he couldn't spare, and had to curl his arm around Kakashi's neck when his other knee wobbled.

"I need caffeine," he decided, and reached for the door to the stairwell. "And no, you didn't kick me that hard. Just taking the free shot I offered you earlier, I guess. I just--that knee's bad, sometimes. Broke it when I was a kid, and it's stiff in the mornings after a bad mission, sometimes." He'd fought hard enough and run far enough to stiffen up sixty old wounds, and collapsing into a coma immediately afterward probably hadn't helped.

They hobbled two steps into the dark stairwell, and Ryouma's outflung hand found the light switch neither of them had bothered to hit on the way up. He looked down at the forbidding flight of stairs, and swallowed another swear word. "If there's a hell, I hope that old bastard's roasting in it. Not you," he added hastily. "That bit wasn't the lie." He took a tentative hop toward the first stair. "I could slide down on my butt?"

And end up with a broken tailbone, like as not. This day just kept getting better. Ryouma sighed, and tipped his head briefly against Kakashi's. "Maybe we should try your option, after all."

And there was that lurking desire to get closer again--except Kakashi was already close. Close enough, in fact, to turn his head a fraction and inhale just as Ryouma leaned against him, so he caught a full breath of the other man's scent.

Exhaustion. Pain. Anger. Frustration. And beneath all of that, the twist of something familiar enough to pull him back to a better memory: falling asleep in the sun, stretched out on a broad, comfortable chest with a hand smoothing slowly down his back...

"Some days," Kakashi muttered very quietly, shaking his head, "I hate your scent. It's hard to stay justifiably mad at you when you smell like--dognip. And I'm not dragging you anywhere by your hair, I'll get gutted."

He pushed Ryouma against the wall, still not moving the man quite as gently as he should--he was still mad, even if he wasn't furious--and then stepped down in front of him. It was only two floors down; he'd carried Ryouma a lot further than that before.

Though, admittedly, he'd done it fully clothed. With shoes.

He hooked his hand back and found Ryouma's wrist again, tugging him forwards. "Climb on, and don't wriggle. Or argue. I got you all the way back, so I can damn well get you down the stairs." He glanced over his shoulder. "And you can entertain me by telling me who the old bastard was, if he isn't me. Because anyone who can annoy you that much can probably give me tips..."

"No," Ryouma said, more sharply than he'd meant. He took a deep breath and let it out again. "He's dead. You wouldn't want his tips, anyway. Unless you're planning on getting kicked out of the shinobi corps for drunkenness on duty, and then--"

He bit his tongue, fighting down the old anger. He'd already lost his temper once in the last five minutes; he shouldn't be doing it again. Especially not when the scars were nearly fifteen years old. That was a lifetime's worth of forgetfulness he'd never quite been able to manage.

"Reason I ended up on the streets," he said at last, very precisely, "is 'cause my mom died when I was three years old, and my granddad drank himself to death when I was eight. That's five years I spent learning that liquor's thicker than blood. I ran away, once, after-- After. Went back 'cause I was too scared and stupid to think of something else. That's when he broke my knee."

Kakashi was still staring at him, the clean line of jaw hardening under the black mask. His tightening fingers dug white marks into Ryouma's wrist. Ryouma couldn't read that cold, narrowed grey eye. Pity? Scorn? He'd been a chuunin when Ryouma had still been a terrified boy, creeping back to the only home he knew...

He jerked his gaze away, and refocused on the bared, bent back. Kakashi's shoulders were scraped raw, blackened with a few dots of embedded tar. There was no way that touching it wouldn't hurt like hell. He said as much, and added, "Maybe I should just risk my tailbone, after all."

"Because a broken bone makes more sense than a sore back," Kakashi pointed out, unwilling to relent. "I don't care what kind of painkillers they've got you on, you're not that stupid. Get on."

He eased his grip on Ryouma's wrist a fraction, just enough to make the marks of his fingerprints blossom from white to red on cold skin. Ryouma wasn't looking at him anymore; Kakashi kept his own gaze where it was, fixed on the stubborn line of Ryouma's mouth. The hard-carved planes of his face, where tan skin stretched tighter than it should have. His cheeks were almost hollow, his eyes still bruised; he'd lost more weight than he could really afford.

And now his scent had gone sour, too. Curdling to rotten squash as he spoke about a man who'd hurt him--and maybe more than that, if Kakashi had read that broken pause right.

The cloying fear stuck to his ribs crisped away, replaced by the sharp burn of anger--this time not directed at Ryouma. Someone had hurt his pack.

Even if, technically, he didn't want Ryouma to be his pack; that didn't matter to his gut. Ryouma was his.

But the bastard that'd hurt him was already dead--there was nothing Kakashi could do about it.

He dragged a sharp breath through his nose, forcing himself to calm down all over again. "Mayonnaise is thicker than water, too," he said, a shade obliquely. "My father killed himself the same time your granddad did--or close enough. To hell with the both of them. Now will you please climb up before we both freeze to death and I have to hurt you in the afterlife?"

"You," Ryouma said, after a long moment studded with the staccato beats of his racing heart, "make less sense than I do. Which is a lot of not-sense." Kakashi jerked at his wrist, tugging him away from the wall; he nearly lost his balance, and lurched hard against the other man's side. Kakashi didn't make a sound, but a shudder chased itself across his ravaged shoulders.

This really wasn't going to work. Maybe he could hold onto the stair-rail and hop down three flights... But if Kakashi saw that as a viable option, he would have suggested it before he offered to carry a man he didn't really like. At this point, if Ryouma brought it up, Kakashi would probably knock him out and haul him down all the same.

Maybe there was another option, though. He was a ninja, and a damned good one. His chakra hadn't recovered to anywhere near his normal levels, even before he spent most of it reinforcing his knee, but a little energy still simmered in his pathways. He dragged it up and shoved all the Water chakra he could manage into a thin film tickling under his skin. Focusing took far more effort than usual; he nearly bit his tongue in concentration. But when Kakashi finally succeeded in hauling him piggy-back onto his shoulders, a cool mist of chakra danced silk-thin between them, separating skin from skin.

If he was focusing on maintaining that, Ryouma figured, he wasn't passing out. And he wasn't paying much attention at all to his searing knee. He spared just a slice of what remained to pant, "Never did like mayonnaise much. Too greasy. Think I'll stick with water. Blood ties haven't done either of us any good, far as I can see. Maybe ninja spill too much of it to care."

"You get philosophical at the weirdest moments," Kakashi said tightly, focusing on finding his balance and keeping it. Ryouma might have lost more than his fair share of weight in the last week--enough to make his ribs feel like a set of knuckles against Kakashi's spine--but he still outweighed the copy-nin by at least ten pounds, and ten pounds was a lot when it was all lying heavily on red raw flesh.

But Ryouma had done something; a sensation almost like a cool hand sheathed in metal glided down Kakashi's back, soothing painful scrapes. He shivered at the electric tingle of unmolded chakra working its way over his skin, doing the job of a much-appreciated icepack.

"Thanks," he grunted, impressed despite himself--where had Ryouma gotten the energy to do that? Especially now that the other man was on his back, Kakashi could feel him shaking. He forced himself to stop paying attention and get moving; there were twelve steps to a flight, and only three flights down. Thirty-six steps. He could do that in his sleep.

Do them in fours, he told himself, and tightened his grip beneath Ryouma's knees, holding the older man firmly on. Then he stepped off.

Eight steps later, he was half-ready to go back to that hair dragging option. He yanked up some willpower and made himself keep going. The possessive fury from a moment ago helped now; Ryouma was his, dammit, which meant Kakashi had to do this right.

"Family's for civilians and clans," he rasped, speaking to keep them both distracted. "You an' me, we don't need it. Better off without it..."

He made it to the first landing and turned unsteadily, catching his hip against the banister. Sweat stung between his shoulders. He could feel Ryouma's heartbeat thudding against his left scapula.

"Except for my dogs," he added, staggering down the next set of four. He paused to catch his breath, ribcage shuddering. "I like my dogs. They make better family. We should get you a puppy, I think."

"Thought you said I was a puppy," Ryouma said muzzily. He kept getting a mouthful of Kakashi's hair every time he breathed; he wondered if his own tasted quite so badly in need of a shower. Probably worse. The sponge-bath hadn't extended to shampoo. Maybe he could persuade one of the nurses to give them a real bath. They'd have to be extra careful washing Kakashi's back...

He shook himself awake with an effort. "Tsume's kids said they'd adopt me. Last time I was in hospital. I didn't..." He struggled with this thought for a moment, wrapping his arms more securely around Kakashi's neck as they lurched down onto the next step. "I wanted a family, y'know? More than anything. But they just let you down. Leave you behind. I'm sick of bein' that abandoned kid. S'why I run. Girl says she wants me to meet her family, I bug her into breakin' up. Take the first mission for the border. I say I don't wanna leave anybody else behind, but maybe the real reason is I know ever'body's gonna leave, someday, too..."

His chakra shield was wearing dangerously thin. He clawed up a few more shreds of energy from his dimming pathways. "Don't mean to hand my heart out to anyone who'll take it. Can't seem to stop. Don't wanna be alone."

The tangle of thoughts unwound a little; he found a conclusion and seized it. "Thanks for stayin'. You're the first one ever did."

Kakashi had to stop and lean his shoulder against the wall, panting hard as he distantly regarded the remaining steps. They didn't seem quite so important now. Ryouma was good at doing that; he could make the world fade to a distant background with nothing but a word. Or a half-conscious speech.

"Pull your chakra back," he ordered, focusing on something he had an answer for. "I'm okay, you--" He snapped the reflex insult off before it made it past his teeth, and softened his voice. "I'm okay; I don't need it. And you're going to kill yourself trying to make a few scrapes feel better."

For a moment, nothing happened. Kakashi waited the three long heartbeats it normally took for Ryouma to swallow his pride over a command he didn't have to follow, and then bit down a hiss when the ice-jutsu melted away. His shoulders burned.

He made himself focus on other things; he didn't have a lot of chakra left, especially not after the sharinagan's attempts to rip half of it away, but he had far more than Ryouma did. He forced a little to collect in his left hand, pooling under the skin, and let it seep into Ryouma's leg, reinforcing the energy-brace the man had wrapped around his injured knee.

Then he started to walk again.

By the time he made it to the last set of steps, he still hadn't worked out what to say. There was some kind of universal irony at work, he was sure. Only Ryouma would need to be carried back from his attempt to yank someone out of their own red slice of personal horror.

"I'm not going to leave you," he muttered finally, made honest by the new twist to the old ache in his chest. "Not after I've put all this effort into keeping you in one piece. I was... I was waiting until you actually scraped up some common sense and got shot of me. Only a complete masochist puts up with this sort of hassle, you know..."

He grunted and staggered down the last four steps. Ryouma's arms stayed firmly around his neck, broad hands spread over sharp collarbones.

"And unless you plan on chatting to a gravestone, you'll never meet my family. Not that I'm a girl," he added belatedly, and made a determined effort to reach the hallway door. "Now don't you dare pass out before I find a nurse to yell at us both."

"Wouldn't miss it for worlds," Ryouma promised. "Pissed off nurses get me all hot an' bothered. Like when you're sarcastic." He grinned serenely at the wall. Too bad he couldn't see Kakashi's face just now, but that sharp intake of breath was almost as good...

"I could walk, now," he added, just a little too late. "Hop. Stagger. Whatever." He loosened his grip around Kakashi's neck and tried to slide off. Scraped skin stuck and tore. Kakashi strangled a yelp, automatically releasing the heavy door handle to grab at Ryouma's wrists. They lurched against the wall as the door banged shut. Something warm and sticky trickled against Ryouma's chest, where his left nipple had been.

He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw and tried very hard not to throw up.

Kakashi leaned his sweaty forehead against the doorframe and took several deep breaths, feeling his knees tremble. "Only you," he gritted out, "would flirt with a guy and then try to cripple him. There's a time and a place, rookie, and when I'm lugging your weight around is never--are you okay?"

Ryouma's scent had turned rotten, withering down to a curdled mess of nausea and--fear? A sharp spike of bitter iron clawed its way into Kakashi's sinuses, wrapped around a bite of acid. Ryouma's chakra was wavering; Kakashi pulled up a little more of his own and shoved it into Ryouma's leg, boosting that tired flicker.

"If a ride was that scary," he said, making his voice low and calm; as close to soothing as he could manage, "you only had to say. Then I could've teased you up on the roof."

"I been on more exciting wheelchair rides," Ryouma panted, when he could breathe again. "That was nothing. I'm fine. Wrestlin' on the roof was so not a good idea."

Kakashi wasn't skinned, he was just--scraped. Abraded. That was a nice, fancy word for an ugly stretch of skin rubbed raw and bleeding. But kids scraped their knees all the time, like Ryouma had his, and they healed. Shoulders weren't that much worse. And Shiki was dead, and Yuuko was too, and neither of them had ever even touched Kakashi--except that he hadn't seen Yuuko die, and Kakashi's clone had carried Shiki back half-dead to Konoha, and this wasn't helping.

He opened his eyes. Stared fixedly at the tousled mop of silver-grey hair half-filling his frame of vision, the burnished steel frame of the door beyond. Home and safe, and both of them were bound up with a man he'd hurt and who didn't really care.

"Never really been on friendly terms with common sense," he said at last. His throat scratched, and his eyes burned. He blinked, hard. "Not so sure you have, either. Let's get a nurse."

"I can recognize common sense," Kakashi said, hoarse-voiced. "I particularly enjoy the sound it makes whenever it sails by." He freed one hand again and fumbled for the door handle, trying to keep Ryouma steady against his back and the wall--

But the door was already opening.

A nurse shoved his head through and raked both ninja with a disgruntled look. "Was that you making all the racket? What the hell have you been doing with yourselves? You look like death on toast." He blinked. "Oh god, you're Sharingan no Kakashi, aren't you? We've just had people looking for you. Where on earth did you think you'd escape to with a wounded rookie in tow? You're really not very smart for a genius, but we all know that--"

Behind his back, Ryouma was making small, stifled sounds.

"They pass out memos, you know," the nurse continued blithely, "about the most difficult ninja--"

Kakashi slapped his free hand over the man's face, effectively cutting off speech. "The shinobi on my back is injured," he said, very precisely. "I want you to call another one of your people in the very fine white hats and make them bring a wheelchair. Then I want you to shove him full of chakra and fix his knee. Blink twice if you understand, or I'll braid your lips together."

The nurse blinked twice. Kakashi released him and slouched against the wall. "Good boy," he muttered, and started to slide down. As falls went, it was more of a controlled knee-buckling than anything else--he even managed to make sure Ryouma's leg stayed straight as they hit the floor.

The nurse gave them a worried look. "Hang on," he said quickly, and ducked back through the door. Kakashi heard him running down the hallway. He twisted to glance back over his shoulder at Ryouma. Wide black eyes, slightly glassy, met his gaze.

"That was easy," he said, with the touch of slightly manic brightness that only comes from real exhaustion. He pulled his hands carefully free of Ryouma's legs and reached back to grab one of his elbows instead, keeping him upright. "Anything else you want, or can I sit for a minute? Because--sitting might be good."

"'m good," Ryouma said, slightly strangled. His throat still hurt; he wasn't sure if that was from suppressed tears, or laughter. "I think," he added indistinctly, "that nurse might be my new favorite person. Except I might have to hit him for thinking you could run off with me in tow. You can let go. I won't fall over." At least, he was pretty sure he could stay upright as long as the stairwell stayed free of strong breezes.

Kakashi was a lot more worrying. He'd pulled partly away when he twisted to look over his shoulder, back muscles shifting with the movement just enough to peel free from their sticky new adhesions. But blood and sweat still glued his left shoulder blade to Ryouma's patchwork pectorals, and Ryouma couldn't think of any way that pulling away wouldn't hurt him like hell.

He was also starting to get fuzzy about the edges. Ryouma blinked hard, and steadied himself with his free hand against the cold concrete floor. "Oh hell no." The adrenaline surge of terror was beginning to fade away, leaving him even more drained in its absence. "I refuse to pass out on the floor," he muttered, and managed to wake himself up a little more. "Shoot, did I say that out loud? I'm fine. You're shaking. I think you need a wheelchair too. Tsume's going to kill us."

Kakashi steeled himself, then jerked forwards. His back made no sound as it peeled away from Ryouma's chest, dripping lymph and tacky blood, but the sensation was something like duct tape getting torn off skin. Duct tape on fire.

With all the personal strength and iron-backbone he possessed, he managed not to whimper--mostly.

"The floor," he croaked, when speaking seemed possible, "is beneath us. Literally. No one's passing out on it. If fact, if you even think about collapsing, rookie, Tsume won't get a chance to bite you, because I'll drag you back upstairs and toss you off the roof."

Never mind that the roof seemed like a million miles away and completely out of reach, it was the threat that counted.

Kakashi twisted himself around, careful not to shove Ryouma's injured leg any more against the wall than it already was, and managed to get himself into a position where he could stay fairly upright without leaning on anything. The very edge of his shoulder just brushed Ryouma's chest; his fingers stayed wrapped around Ryouma's arm.

And then the nurse burst back in before he could attempt to get comfortable.

"Oh, fantastic, you're both still conscious!" The nurse beamed at them and crouched down, hooking a hand under Kakashi's chin before the copy-nin had finished registering his presence; he yanked his head back as the man beamed a small flashlight into his open eye. "And full constriction and everything, wonderful! Now stay awake while I check your friend. And try to stop bleeding, would you? The janitors are underpaid as it is..."

The nurse leaned away and turned the flashlight on Ryouma, just as another medic pushed through the door backwards, dragging a wheelchair with her.

"All right, boys?" she said cheerfully, as if meeting half-naked man huddled at the bottom of a stairwell was a normal event. "Now who wants the chair? I reckon it'll have to be the big fella there; he's just a bit on the heavier side. We can carry the little one--"

"I'm not little," Kakashi protested, stung. "I'm--lithe. And I can walk!"

"Sure you can, poppet," the medic soothed, and swung a kit off her shoulder. "How about we get your back sorted before you try any marathons? And Naoto can take care of..." she faltered.

"Tousaki-san," the nurse supplied, now checking Ryouma's pulse. "And the ninja you just insulted is Sharingan no Kakashi. Make a note, Okimi-san! You can tell your kids about it later. 'Famously stupid ninja was stupid'."

"I don't like either of you," Kakashi informed them grumpily, but submitted when Okimi laid a hand bathed in healing green chakra on his shoulder.

"I like you," Ryouma told Naoto brightly. "Although Kakashi didn't tow me anywhere. I fell down." That was about as vaguely plausible as it was truthful. They didn't need the details, anyway. He craned his neck, trying to see Kakashi's shoulder under the medic's healing touch, and nearly fell over. Kakashi's grip tightened spasmodically on his elbow, and Naoto steadied him with a strong hand.

"Whoa there, Sparky, let's not have a repeat. No one likes to see a double act of stupid." The nurse slipped his arm behind Ryouma's shoulders and dropped his other hand, now hazed with green chakra, to Ryouma's right knee. Scraped skin oozed blood through the tar-blackened hole gaping in the thin cloth of the torn pajama pants. Naoto's fingers danced a careful, tingling waltz around the injury, and then moved across to Ryouma's left knee. "Any particular reason for your ground-eating habits, or was the fight against gravity just too much effort?"

The pad of his thumb touched something that moved. Ryouma sank his fingernails into the cliff-edge of consciousness. "Fight!" he gasped. That was far too close to the truth, but it was all he could manage while the nurse was rearranging his knee-cap.

He'd survived torture. His own medics shouldn't be worse.

"I think," he panted when Naoto finally pulled back, "I want drugs before you do that again. The good kind. Tsume had good ones. Not the kind with the purple elephants."

"Fresh out of purple elephants, I'm afraid," Naoto said. He looked narrowly at Ryouma's face. "Are you normally this pale? 'Cause I gotta say, that skin tone's really not working for you. You'd better hold on until we can get you to a tanning booth. Might even bring your friend along and see if we can get him to look a little less corpsy white."

"It's these pants," Kakashi rasped, fighting against the urge to lean into Okimi's hand. "Blue cross-hatch does nothing for my complexion..." He was drifting slightly, fuzzy attention divided between the cold river of chakra seeping slowly down his back, making flesh prickle as it forced rapid healing to happen, and the clammy warmth of Ryouma's skin beneath his hand. The fight and the hurt had left them both sweaty and overheated, but the March weather had sapped that all away and left a chill in its wake....

Okimi brought him back to the present with a jolt when she brushed her fingers abruptly over his jawline, and then slid them beneath his mask. "Right, poppet, that's about a week's worth of healing done on your back. How about we get this away from your mouth, hmm? It's filthy--"

Kakashi grabbed her wrist, hard. "No."

To his horror, her hand kept moving--and his moved with it, too weak to stop a completely healthy ninja from doing exactly what she wanted. Cloth slipped down his nose. "It's a health risk," she said, and now there was a flash of steel under the cheerfulness. "And you've already got enough to worry about between you without pressing a scrap of mucky fabric right over your airway."

"No," snapped Kakashi, sounding far more desperate than he liked, and pulled his head away. His back hit the wall, brand new scabs caught against rough brick. The medic's hand stayed right next to his jaw, still tugging down.

"Okimi-san," said Naoto, sounding a shade uncomfortable. "If it's that important to him--"

"Then it's still not worth getting sick over," she said brusquely, and fixed Kakashi with a sharp look. "You're not wearing a shirt, shinobi-san. A mask is worth far less than that. Now stop being an idiot."

Kakashi let go of Ryouma, finally, and wrapped his other hand around Okimi's wrist; the double grip was hard enough to make her wince slightly.

"It's my mask," he said, and hated the brittle exhaustion in his own voice. "I'm not letting you take it."

"Oh for--look, I'm not a bloody thief. I just don't want you getting sick. Didn't you notice the great big hospital sign when you came in? You're here to get better."

"No, I'm not." Kakashi dug his fingernails into soft skin, pinching off a vein and the nerve beneath it, and jerked a glance at Ryouma. "I'm here to watch his back. Now get off me."

Okimi's fingers went white. She yelped and jerked both hands down, yanking Kakashi's mask down to his chin with a small sound of ripping cloth, and pulled away. He released her and covered his face with one hand. "You--!"

"You!" she snapped back, and shook her hand out. "I should have you sedated and tied down."

"Some days," Naoto confided quietly to Ryouma, "this job is better than pay-per-view. How does morphine strike you?"

"Sounds good all round," Ryouma said, and sank his fingers into the ragged hole torn over his right knee. A sharp tug of his wrist ripped the flimsy fabric halfway down his shin. He spared his other hand from propping-up duty, and gave the fluttering cloth another savage wrench. The entire leg tore away. He stared at it for a moment, blinking, and then fluttered it tentatively at Kakashi's face. "Uh. Here. Have a veil. Headscarf. Thing."

"That was hospital property," Naoto said in delight. "You're going to be in trouble."

"It was torn anyway," Ryouma pointed out, unjustifiably proud of this bit of fuzzy logic. He angled a glassy glare up at Okimi. "His face is sacred. Religious. Heathens aren't supposed to see."

Naoto sniggered, and reached out to drag the wheelchair closer. "You sure you haven't started on the morphine already?"

"Positive," Ryouma said. "World hasn't gone away yet."

"Oh well, then, I guess we can let you have another dose." Naoto shifted his grip, hauling Ryouma's arm over his shoulders. "Right, count of three and we're going to try beating gravity at its game. Okimi-san, can you leave His Holiness alone for a minute and come hold the wheelchair ready?"

Ryouma had given him a pant leg. Kakashi took it automatically with his free hand, then stared at it for a moment. It draped limply between his fingers, torn raggedly along the seam and stained with Ryouma's blood.

It was quite possibly the best gift he'd ever been given.

Okimi shot him a mildly poisonous look, still flexing her hands, and got up to help drag Ryouma to his feet--which meant for a precious moment, no one was looking at Kakashi. He slipped the tattered remains of his mask over his head, and quickly tied the make-shift strip of fabric over his mouth and nose. It bunched awkwardly and didn't cover his throat at all, but it was almost clean, and it smelled like Ryouma.

No one had ever given him a mask before--they'd just tried to strip the other one away. Kakashi pressed his hand over his face, flattening thin cloth against his mouth and nose, and inhaled the scent of a weary storm. For just a moment, his eye slid closed...

"Don't you dare fade out on us, Slim."

He jerked and snapped back, blinking to find his vision filled with Okimi's middle-aged face. Behind her, Naoto was wrestling Ryouma into the wheelchair--now braced back against the wall--and chirping something about opiates and religion. Something to do the masses...

Fingers snapped in front of his face.

"Hatake! Focus!"

He twitched and looked back at Okimi. "I am," he said, and added something rude in a canine undertone.

"Don't growl at me, dog-boy. We're going back to your room. Can you stand, or do you need a lift?"

From her? He'd rather chew glass.

"I'm fine," he muttered, and braced one hand back against the wall. The other stayed over his face. "Help Ryouma--he still needs chakra."

"We know what we're doing," she said shortly, clearly trying to keep her temper. He noticed a certain lack of pet names, now. "Come on, stand."

"Yes, ma'am," he spat, and forced himself upright on principle and sudden anger alone. For a moment, the ground stayed beneath his feet.

Then it didn't.

Okimi caught him before he smacked into the wall. She dragged his arm over her shoulders, bracing him up with a practiced gesture. "Just stay upright," she ordered. "I'll steer. C'mon, Naoto-kun."

Ryouma missed the transition between stairwell and hallway, somehow. He could have sworn he'd only blinked, but when he forced leaden lids open again Naoto was wheeling him down the hall, with Kakashi staggering alongside. Leaning on a heavyset woman twice his age, masked with a shredded bit of bloodstained fabric, the copy nin looked faintly ridiculous. The dark scabs pulling across his shoulders looked anything but.

"Hey," Ryouma murmured. "You good now? Gonna be okay?"

Naoto overheard him, and misunderstood. "You'll both be out of here inside a week," he said cheerfully. "Less, if you don't mess up that knee anymore, Tousaki-kun. The patella's just hairline fractured, but I've laid a healing in it anyway. You'll be on crutches by the time you're ready to get out of bed again."

"Great," Ryouma said. "I can beat people with my crutches, instead of wrestling them." He tried to catch Kakashi's eye, but they were on his blind side. And then they were at the door to their room, and Naoto was hauling him out of the chair again and into the bed beside Kuromaru. Ryouma struggled briefly to help, and then just to move on his own. It was predictably useless, and left him sweating and breathless.

Naoto produced a knee brace from somewhere, wrapped it around Ryouma's leg, and then started briskly setting up a morphine drip. He was humming. "Opiates and religion," he told Ryouma brightly. "Does His Holiness go on the bed by the other fellow?"

"N'," Ryouma said. It was an effort just to force out that much. He tried harder. "With me."

Kakashi didn't say anything. He just pulled himself free of Okimi, staggered towards the bed, and managed to collapse on it in a kind of controlled fall. He was careful not to tangle any of Ryouma's new wires or tubes, or accidentally kick the man in the knee again.

"Cute," said Okimi. Kakashi ignored her.

"Pretty adorable, if you ask me," said Naoto, hanging up a second bag of morphine on a new stand. He fiddled with a needle for a moment, then leaned down and tugged Kakashi's closest hand gently towards him. "If nothing else, bud, this'll help you sleep. Just enjoy the pretty colours for a bit, m'kay?"

Kakashi flipped a vaguely rude sign at him with one finger, but didn't protest when the needle slid into his skin. Naoto taped it down and released his hand. "Reckon that should do it," he said cheerfully.

"Yeah, right," replied Okimi, which was roughly when Kakashi noticed something being locked around his ankle. He lifted his head just enough to look down, and found himself staring at the padded restraint cuff tethering him to the foot of the bed. Ryouma's uninjured leg sported the identical piece of bondage.

"You've got to be kidding--" Kakashi began, and shut up abruptly when Ryouma rolled over with a vague mumble and snuggled against his side. Ryouma's eyes were already closed, but his hand moved up and settled between them, long fingers splayed over Kakashi's ribcage. He buried his face half into the pillow with a long sigh, and settled down until his still-short black hair tickled Kakashi's throat.

Kakashi blinked.

"I've changed my mind," Naoto said quietly. "That's the adorable moment."

Kakashi twisted just enough to glare at him, but got nothing but a deep chuckle for his trouble. Even Okimi's expression had softened a bit.

"Get out," the copy-nin managed, and curled the arm without an IV in it unthinkingly over Ryouma's shoulders. The soft flutter of breath against his neck was already evening out into a steady rhythm. Ryouma muttered something again, and Kakashi was almost sure he heard 'coffee' in the curl of breath against his skin. "Now," he added, pulling up just enough energy to bristle slightly.

"Leaving, boss," Naoto laughed, and pushed Okimi out the door. "Enjoy your nap."

The door clicked behind them, cutting out the noise from the ward. Kakashi relaxed, feeling warmth and blessed numbness trickle through his veins.

"An' stay out," he mumbled. Ryouma was already asleep, radiating a surprising amount of warmth for a man who'd been shivering only a few minutes ago. Kakashi looked at his face, grey gaze drifting over the slice of cheek and angular jaw he could see...

Very carefully, he pulled back just enough to catch a glimpse of Ryouma's bare chest--and saw nothing but skin, edged by the dark colours of half a tattoo.

"Gonna be fine," he answered finally, and lay back down. With nothing but the sound of soft breathing in the air, and reassuring warmth pressed against his side, he was asleep within seconds.

This time, he didn't dream.