Kakashi was not all right. And not only because Ryouma was managing to completely kill him at War--and refusing to be a fair and dignified winner, like Kakashi would absolutely be if they ever managed to play a game not based solely on luck. They were seated on the floor, still wearing hospital-issue pyjamas, and surrounded by a tangled nest of blankets stolen from an unused bed. Tsume's clan--all of Tsume's clan, it seemed like--were arrayed around them, doing--various clanly things. They had been for the last twenty-four hours, and Kakashi thought his headache was probably never going to go away.

In retrospect, the floor hadn't been the best choice. It put every member of Tsume's pack higher up than he was, and that wasn't exactly a relaxing thing in a room full of unknowns. Not to mention with Tsume's mother, sister, whatever-the-hell Yasuo was, and various other Inuzuka that kept shoving through the door, Kakashi was out-numbered at least four-to-one. And often more.

Which didn't even count the familiars. Or the nurses.

And Ryouma, with his crutches and his inability to sit still--even though he still couldn't walk--was more of a liability than any kind of help.

Logically, he knew that Tsume's clan weren't about to descend upon the outsider in their midst and rip him limb from limb, but logic didn't go hand in hand with gut, and Kakashi's gut was making some fairly loud noises about proving he Wasn't To Be Messed With.

If the nurses would just give him back his damn shirt, he was sure that'd help.

He adjusted the elastic string on the surgeon's mask they had graciously allowed him, and slapped down another set of cards--which lost to Ryouma's hand. Again. He scowled. "Can we play something that requires at least a nano-speck of actual intelligence to win? I can always go get another morphine drip, if you're scared I'd have an unfair advantage."

"War has an ancient and complex strategy," Ryouma retorted, collecting his cards. "It's not my fault you're no good at strategizing." Or at cheating. If Kakashi wanted to be distracted every other hand by every set of footsteps pacing down the hall, though, that was his problem. Cheating--and winning--was helping Ryouma focus.

And he badly needed to focus. When he'd finally woken clear-headed and in relatively less pain this morning, the nurses had given him a set of crutches along with the information that he'd endured one chakra-surgery on his knee while asleep and couldn't have any more. Okimi, the medic, claimed that natural healing would put less strain on his body and encourage the damaged joint to heal more completely. Naoto, the nurse, added that if Ryouma spent the next two weeks on crutches, at least that would be two weeks during which he wouldn't be landing himself back in the hospital.

He'd taken a hobble down the hall after lunch, and made it back sweaty and shaking and near the point of collapse. Those crutches had to be specially engineered to drain chakra, or something. They were also diabolically designed to skitter sideways at every third step. He'd fallen down twice already. The second time might have been because he'd hurled one crutch at the wall and tried to break the second one over his knee, but the first time had definitely been the crutches' fault.

But the nurses wouldn't listen to his pleas for a real healing, any more than they'd listened to Kakashi's demand for a new shirt. Kakashi had asked twice, and the nurse--the same plump motherly lady, both times--had smiled and said she'd see what she could do, and come back with no shirts at all. Ryouma had been at the point of asking, too, when Yasuo and Tsume's sister came back with her mother shuffling alongside them. And then, with strangers in the room, he'd have died rather than plea for clothes they wouldn't give him. Or let anyone know why he wanted them.

So he kept his back to the door, and hunched over his cards, and focused on playing--and cheating--with a single-minded intensity that left no room for concern about whether Tsume's sister could see his chest. "We could play Go Fish," he told Kakashi. "Or Speed!" He could cheat at those, too.

"So basically any game that a six-year-old could play," Kakashi said grumpily, and looked through his cards. "Why don't we just get out Snakes and Ladders while we're at it? Or Twister? Twister would be entertaining, at least. And you could yell at the nurses again when they tell you to take things slow..." One of the familiars sprawled behind him snorted. Kakashi turned quickly to give it a look, making sure nothing like a challenge was forthcoming, and turned back again when the dog yawned at him.

The Inuzuka were not here to attack, he reminded himself for the fourteenth time, and re-focused on the sour thread of Ryouma's scent, picking it out from beneath the medley of others. Ryouma smelled about as good as Kakashi felt--and in significantly more pain, now they'd taken him off the morphine. The medics had doused him with something else, but an aspirin to a ninja was like chocolate to a fish: completely useless.

Up on the bed, Tsume looked just as happy. And the seals her sister was drawing made the air stink of blood. Yasuo was scribbling notes, now, in a pen that was far louder than any pen had a right to be. The mother was staring blankly at the air in front of her, the corners of her lax mouth glistening shiny with saliva. The dogs--not his dogs, and that made things so much worse when he didn't have the chakra to bring them back--twitched and stirred, making him turn to check them again.

And then the door banged open, and the Inuzuka teenager who smelled like a constant Challenge slouched in, followed by a woman Kakashi didn't recognize. And yet more dogs.

Seven-to-one.

Kakashi threw down his cards, very limited temper frayed past the point of tolerance, and bristled. Given that his hair was, in a very real sense, already pre-bristled, the look was quite effective. "Can your family go away?" he demanded at Tsume. "You only need one of them to paint you. The rest are just cluttering up the room and driving healing people insane."

He would bite all of them, if he had to.

Tsume stared at him for a long moment as the entire clan fell silent, motionless. Waiting.

She took a breath, shoulders squaring, eyes narrowing, and opened her mouth to speak.

That's about when Kiba and Hana tumbled into the room, shouting gleefully.

"Ma! Ma! Tanaka-obasaan's visiting and she says she's gonna--"

"I got an A in reading! Look! Look!"

"--So I'm gonna go to Chouji's house--"

One little body, waving a single sheet of paper like a banner, leapt onto the bed and scrambled quickly up. The other stopped speaking, freezing above the card game before plopping himself down between the two men and grinning first at Kakashi then, when Kakashi didn't grin back, at Ryouma. "Do you know Go Fish?" Kiba asked hopefully.

"Go Fish is a baby's game, Kiba," Hana said disdainfully. She settled herself next to Tsume, carefully not touching her, and proudly presented her paper. Not only was there an A, but there was a gold star.

Tanaka paused, leaning against the doorway. She was older than Tsume by almost fifteen years, and it showed in the lines of her face. She was tall for a woman, with eyes as pale as Tsume's and hair just as wild. Leggier, longer, harsher, and nearly reeking with the same alpha her sister had.

She eyed Kakashi. "I think," she said huskily, "that's a 'no.'" Then she turned to Tsume and smiled, though it still had edges. "Hey, baby. Did a number on yourself, huh?" Her gaze flicked to the other bed. "And your familiar, too. Well done."

Tsume bristled, and gave a teeth-clenched smile back. Hana slipped off the bed to stand beside Kuromaru and stare at him, frowning.

"ANBU's a bad idea," Tori murmured under her breath.

"Maybe Kakashi has a point," Tsume snapped back.

Taro snickered as only teenagers could.

"Tanaka," Yasuo said mildly as her familiar walked in, stiff-legged. "It's a hospital. Dialing it down might not be so bad."

She took a breath and relaxed slightly. Some of the alpha eased out of her shoulders.

Tsume's muscles unknotted, and she settled back against her pillows.

"I play Go Fish," Ryouma assured Kiba. He collected Kakashi's cards and added them to his own much larger pile before he handed the deck to Kiba. "And I haven't been a baby for twenty years. We don't talk about me having to get carried all the way home this last time." He shot Hana a grin that edged perhaps just a little too wide. Whatever was going on behind his shoulder, it was leaking through to the kids as well.

And to Kakashi, who had stiffened nearly to the point of shattering. One hand braced against the floor, ready to shove him up to his feet. The surgical mask fluttered as his nostrils flared, seeking a secret information Ryouma couldn't share.

"I really need to start hanging out with normal people," Ryouma informed him. "The kind who talk with their mouths." He flattened his own hands against the blanket-shrouded floor and twisted, dragging his braced leg after him. If he turned to look over his left shoulder, that side of his chest was almost invisible...

He doubted anyone would be looking at it, anyway. The tall, rangy woman in the doorway mirrored Kakashi's tension, and Tsume wasn't much better. Everyone in the room--except Kiba, who was messily shuffling cards and chattering to the world at large--was focused on the two women, as if the air between them was charged with an energy Ryouma couldn't see.

He hated being left out.

He hated the tension in Kakashi's shoulders and Tsume's smile even more.

"Hey, babe!" he said brightly to the woman in the door. "Wait, don't tell me--Tsume's aunt, right? The fangs totally give it away," he advised her. "Gotta say you've got points over her in the legs and tits department, though. Good for you! It's great to see an older woman keeping herself in shape."

If his cheerful leer didn't drive her out of the room--or get him kicked in the teeth--he wasn't sure what would.

There was a beat of silence. Then Kiba whipped around to look at Yasuo and shouted, "See, Pop? He says tits, too!"

"But you are not allowed--" Yasuo began, as voices erupted.

Tanaka smiled at Ryouma. It wasn't friendly. "And you must be Tsume's new adoptee. Nice of her to take in the slow ones." Her familiar growled.

"Okay, stop," Tori said, but not even Taro--cackling--listened. She wasn't anywhere near an alpha.

Tsume wavered between protesting that her legs and tits were just fine, damn it, growling at Ryouma for attacking family, laughing her head off at Tanaka's flounder, and protesting that she and Ryouma weren't anything but friends. None of them really won.

Kakashi was half-way through turning to give Ryouma a much-used 'are you insane?' look, when the room exploded with noise, Tsume's scent twisted six different ways, and--

The bitch in the door insulted Ryouma.

If Kakashi could have summed up his particular train of thought from the moment Ryouma had spoken, it would have gone something like: surprise-confusion-jealousy-anger, and then careened to a halt somewhere around hell no.

Riled up by Pack emotions swirling around from a whole clan's worth of dog-people, he didn't much stop to question the thought of Ryouma being his--and possibly Tsume's. It didn't matter; either way, the bitch didn't get to insult him.

He narrowed his one open eye at her and snarled.

Tanaka snarled back, coming out of her lounge against the doorframe.

Yasuo was up and between them before anyone could move any further, arms spread as if he could hold them apart. "Stop," he snapped, with enough force to get their attention, but without any alpha and the challenge that might provoke.

Tanaka's eyes narrowed, but she paused. "Tsume, I'll see you later," she said finally, edging away. "Taro, you coming?"

"Nah, I'd rather stay."

She smiled her wintery smile at him. "Taro. You're coming."

With a glance around, possibly for support, he sighed and slouched out after her.

"Never a dull moment," Yasuo muttered, relaxing finally.

"She had a point, though," Tori murmured.

Tsume growled at her. It didn't phrase the pregnant woman.

Kiba sighed heavily. "Are we gonna play Go Fish now?"

"I wanna be on Ryouma's team!" Hana announced, bounding over to him before being suddenly overcome by a wave of shyness. She linked her hands behind her back and swayed. "Can I?"

Tori looked at him sharply. "So. You're pirate-zombie-kun, aren't you?"

"And he was part of a gang!" Kiba added proudly. He turned, wide-eyed, to stare at Kakashi. "Are you part of his gang?"

Kakashi jerked, still bristling, and then blinked in absolute bewilderment at the kid. Ryouma interrupted hastily. "He is now!" he announced, and took his life in his hands by reaching out to ruffle Kakashi's hair. The copy nin didn't bite his wrist off, which probably meant he was safe to leave around the kids now. That snarl hadn't--

Ryouma wasn't sure what that snarl had meant, but it had made something down his spine go hot and cold and bizarrely primitive, as if two age-old instincts had got their signals crossed. Maybe there was still some leftover morphine in his system.

"Kakashi's got a tattoo, too, see?" he told the kids. "It's a new gang. Lots more fun than the old one. Better food. Exciting people. Free medical care." He tapped the black brace wrapped over his new, un-torn pajama pants. "Cool appliances!"

Kiba pounced, all eagerness and questions. Hana hung back a little, her own question still darkening her warm brown eyes. Ryouma held a hand out to her, beckoning her in. "C'mon. Normal Go Fish doesn't do teams, but I know this top-secret version that does. We can be Team Awesome!"

"I wanna be Team Awesome!" Kiba complained.

"You can be Team Droolface," Hana said loftily. But her grin nearly overtook her face as she bounced into Ryouma's lap and leaned against his chest with her back to his tattoo. He relaxed just a little, and looked up at Tori.

"Hope Kiba didn't bite too many people after that. How long was he a zombie for?"

Yasuo leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. "Long enough that the principal called me in to have a little chat about Inuzuka-fangs and how well they pierce skin," he said dryly.

"They're ninja kids!" Tsume defended. "They should toughen up!"

"Yeah!" Kiba chirped, and tried to crawl into Kakashi's lap in imitation of his big sister--who was looking at Ryouma with doe-eyes.

Ryouma was staring at him--which is the only reason Kakashi managed to smother any violent knee-jerk reaction before he accidentally pinwheeled Kiba across the room. He froze instead, acutely aware of a roomful of pale blue eyes on him, and leaned carefully backwards. Kiba settled contentedly on his lap, unaware of the rigid tension behind him, then he twisted around.

Kakashi found himself confronted with a wide pair of baby-blue eyes. "You think they should toughen up, too, right?" the boy said cheerfully. He looked over the copy-nin's face and finally appeared to notice all wasn't well. "I promise I won't bite you.

Puppy, Kakashi told himself, and forcibly re-wired his mindset. He could deal with puppies.

"Because I'd knot your arms behind your head," he returned, deadpan, and earned a laughing kind of snort.

Slightly encouraged, he leaned forwards again--just a little. Kiba slouched back and settled against his chest, demanding they pick a better team name.

Kakashi lifted an eyebrow at Ryouma, still feeling the memory of a hand big enough cover his entire head messing with his hair, and hoped the girl in his lap bit him.

"We can be team--" he hesitated, picking and discarding ideas. "Awesome-est. Like them, but better."

Of course, that meant he'd have to learn to play Go Fish in the next twenty seconds. Preferably without anyone finding out he didn't know how.

"You can't be Team Awesome-est," Hana said disdainfully. "That's not even a word!" Then, before they could react, she twisted to look adoringly at Ryouma and confided, "Kiba always smells nervous when you ask if he has something, and he's got something that's really close."

"Cheater!" Kiba bellowed.

"Am not! Just 'cause you haven't been practicing your scenting--"

"Enough," Tsume grumbled, and they both settled down into giving each other dagger-looks.

"So, Ryouma," Tori said casually, keeping a wary eye on his broad back. She'd been close enough to catch Tsume's scent riot when Tanaka had insulted him. There had been too many emotions to pick out one, but too many was nearly as telling as a single clear whiff. "You have any brothers or sisters?"

"Tori..." Tsume warned.

Tori looked innocent. "I'm just making small talk."

"No," Ryouma said. He reached around Hana to retrieve the card deck from Kiba and tap it straight. The kid hadn't done a bad job of shuffling, but Ryouma cut the deck in half anyway, shuffled with a fancy riffle, and bridged the cards together again. It helped, to have something in his hands.

"No siblings," he told Tsume's sister, as he tapped the deck straight. "Nor parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, or elder relations. Lots of old girlfriends. Mostly I'm footloose and fancy-free."

"We said we'd adopt you," Hana objected, cuddling into the curl of his arm.

"Mm, yeah, but I seen the hell-hound your family summons. Or Tsume does, at least. Useful fellow to have around, but I'm not sure I'd like him breathing down my neck. Or that he'd enjoy it, either."

He tilted his head back, angling a sideways grin at Tsume. Little was less funny than the enormous black-faced wolf who'd torn at least one of his torturers apart, whose eyes had glowed like the heart of the sun and whose genjutsu'd image had kept even Shiki off their backs, for a time. But they'd survived that together, the two of them, and if anything, it should have brought them closer together--

But Tsume was looking down at her hands, now, and every Inuzuka in the room was staring at her.

"You summoned the Wolf?" Kiba demanded in delighted horror. "Oooh, Pop's gonna be mad!"

Tsume's eyes flicked up along the edge of the ceiling when Tori moved, trying to catch her eye.

The rest of the room stayed quiet.

"Oh, relax," she snapped finally. "It all worked out, didn't it?"

"The Wolf, Tsume? I thought you had more sense than that!" Yasuo nearly shouted.

Hana and Kiba both whipped around to look at him, wide-eyed.

"Your clothes smelled like demon but I'd hoped there was a better reason than--"

"We're alive, aren't we?" Tsume shouted back. "It's not forbidden for me."

"It wasn't safe," Tori cut in, setting aside the bandages. "You could have--"

"Have what? Waited for rescue I wasn't sure was coming? While Kuromaru rotted to death and Ryouma was--" she stopped as she glanced at him, nearly choking on the words in an effort to keep from saying them. Not her story. Not hers. "I'm alpha. It worked."

"Just because you're alpha doesn't mean He won't kill you," Yasuo growled.

Kiba sniffled and curled back into Kakashi's chest. Hana's eyes flicked back and forth with each new speaker, riveted.

"Well, He didn't this time. Be glad." Belligerent, Tsume settled back in her bed, arms crossed over her chest, and glared at nothing.

"This is why you shouldn't be in ANBU," Tori snarled. "You just about got yourself killed, you nearly got Kuromaru killed, and--"

Claws closed around her throat, and even fatigued with chakra loss they still dug into flesh. Tsume's growl spun dangerously through the room.

"Stop," Yasuo barked.

Silence fell. Kiba buried his face in Kakashi's sternum and inhaled, small fists pressed to his chest. Arms wrapped around the small boy, and a twist of confusion held the child's tears at bay. "You smell better'n them," Kiba warbled into pale skin.

"Mom?" Hana asked slowly. "I thought you couldn't really summon the Wolf..."

Tsume rubbed a hand over her face. "Most can't, cub. But--"

"Your mother is a fool," Tori interrupted, sliding out of her chair and away from arm-reach.

Kakashi growled, Tsume growled, Yasuo stood, mouth opening to try and restore peace again--

And Kuromaru whined.

All attention diverted.

"Kuromaru!" Kiba yelled, scrambling out of Kakashi's arms and flailing toward the bed. "He's 'wake!"

Relief swirled, heady and overpowering, through the hospital air. Nearly without thinking Yasuo opened a window, letting out the rapidly built anger-scent, and offered Tsume a hand to get from her bed to her familiar's.

It was a little weird to find himself taking Tsume's side against her family--especially when he didn't know what the hell the argument was even about. But Tsume was his. Not the same way Ryouma was his; but somewhere in the last few days she'd garnered herself a place in his pack, and he was done arguing with that. It was too exhausting to fight his own instincts.

So when her family turned on her, and her pup squirmed around in his arms and smelled like a tide turning bad, Kakashi didn't bother figuring out what was right or wrong; he just wrapped an arm around Kiba and got ready to stand up and bite someone.

Until Kuromaru shattered the tension by returning to the land of the almost-alive.

In a second, Kiba had yanked himself free and no one much cared about yelling anymore. Kakashi folded his arms across his bare chest and got carefully to his feet, staying to one side as people were loud and excitable and moved faster than he really wanted them to. Moved faster than he could comfortably track.

He edged closer to Ryouma, and told himself he was just being protective. Ninja didn't do uncertain.

Ryouma didn't do uncertain. And yet here he was doing it anyway, curled in on himself over a suddenly empty lap. Hana was hovering at the side of Kuromaru's bed, just as excited in stillness as Kiba was in wild activity. Tori and Yasuo hovered just as protectively over Tsume as they helped her take the two faltering steps to her companion's bedside. Voices battered his ears.

Kuromaru's screams rang even louder in the dead silence of memory.

He couldn't see through the forest of bodies and legs. Couldn't stand on his own, without dragging himself closer to the bed or something else stable enough to grab. Someone had propped his crutches against the far wall, where no one else would trip on them, where he couldn't get to them. He set his teeth and tried to struggle up anyway.

It didn't work.

Kuromaru whined again, a sound almost like words.

"Help me up," Ryouma rasped at Kakashi. His throat hurt. "Please."

Under the tangled roar of voices, that one quiet request cut through like a blade. Kakashi was crouching before he really registered the words, hands on healing skin before he'd figured out a hold. Ryouma was already grabbing onto him, long-fingered hands finding Kakashi's arms and wrapping around muscle and bone hard enough to ache.

"Hang on," Kakashi muttered, and splayed his own hand across Ryouma's naked back; the other went around one heavy biceps. Ryouma pulled, scrambling to catch his balance, and Kakashi managed to drag him up to his feet. None of the Inuzuka seemed to notice them. Kiba was busy trying to crawl onto Kuromaru's cot; Tori was busy yelling at Kiba; Hana had one hand against her aunt's hip, anchoring herself; Yasuo was supporting Tsume, and Tsume--

Tsume was bent over the little cot, brushing matted hair back from Kuromaru's heavily bandaged forehead and murmuring to him like nothing else in the world existed.

Kakashi ducked his head for a second, staring at the floor, then Ryouma put too much weight on his injured knee and staggered. Kakashi braced him up before he fell, smelling fear and hurt and feeling fingers biting too hard into his skin.

"Easy," he said, and managed to get himself beneath Ryouma's arm, pressed against his side and steady enough to keep them both upright. "Take it easy."

"Easy, cub," she nearly crooned, skimming filthy hair off a brow too like her own. "Kuromaru? You there, big guy?"

He whined, keened in a human throat, and opened one pale, dilated eye to look around before closing it again.

"It's all right, you're fine," Tsume soothed. Distantly, she felt Yasuo slide away from her, heard him saying something about a doctor. She ignored it.

"We home?" Kuromaru slurred, face pulling up in a grimace under heavy bandages. One hand rose, wobbled through the air, claws dragging at the white gauze before Tsume caught his hand, linking their fingers.

"Yeah, home. Home and safe. Don't move, all right? You were hurt. We're all right, but don't move."

He whined again. A single eye opened, his head rolling as the cot dipped. Kiba had escaped Tori's arms and crawled rapidly over the bed, nearly collapsing on top of the human wolf's torso.

"Easy, cub." Kuromaru's voice rumbled deep for just a moment, an echo of predator and forest. "Watch y'r elbows."

Tsume laughed, nearly broken at the sound of his almost-growl, the annoyance that couldn't be faked. Annoyance that a brain-damaged familiar wouldn't have felt so easily at an over-exuberant cub. The world swam and spun with relief, and she clutched his hand hard, her other one wrapping around the bars alongside the bed.

He was awake. And he was thinking. And he knew them.

Ryouma's hand spasmed tighter, crushing muscle against bone, and then released. He still couldn't breathe. Something in his chest hurt worse than his knee.

The Inuzuka, even Yasuo, were generally short enough for him to see over their shoulders. Ryouma had a clear view of Kuromaru's bandaged face, of two clawed hands linked like lovers', of Tsume's bent head and a smile too close to tears.

He was awake. Did he know?

Ryouma had never considered himself a coward. Couldn't quite believe what he was hearing himself say now. "I gotta get out of here. Kakashi--"

Yasuo shifted, a flash of movement in Kuromaru's peripheral vision. The maimed head jerked up, single blue eye fighting to track him. Ryouma froze.

Tsume said she understood. But Kuromaru wasn't human; Kuromaru wasn't her. He'd sacrificed himself to save his companion from her partner, and then they'd sliced his ear off and cut his eye out of his skull and held him down while Ryouma pressed a red-hot blade to the bleeding wounds...

He choked on bile. Clenched his aching teeth, and tightened his grip on Kakashi's arm again, and tried not to remember how he'd felt when Shiki returned his vision so that he would see it when they took his eyes.

Kuromaru had seen it.

"I'm sorry," he gasped. It wasn't enough. Wouldn't ever be.

But he had nothing else to offer.

Kakashi flashed a glance over the gathered Inuzuka, but only Yasuo was watching them, blue eyes glittering like wary chips of glass in his pale face. Kuromaru had subsided again, pulled back down by Tsume's careful hands and the drug-lines still snaking into bruised flesh. The kids were squealing and excited; Tori had her hands full trying to contain them.

Which left only Ryouma, smelling like blistered bone and candy-sweet devastation against Kakashi's left shoulder. Ryouma who could talk anybody in circles, but had fallen down on the same two words that choked them all sooner or later.

"Hang on," grunted Kakashi, fighting to brace Ryouma up while the man himself struggled to stand on his own two feet. "Stop--"

Kuromaru's cot was too close to the door, surrounded by people Kakashi didn't nearly begin to trust. If he steered Ryouma that way, someone was going to panic. It was even odds as to who.

Then three doctors rushed in through the door.

Kakashi flinched back, arm tightening around Ryouma's ribs, and made a snap decision. The room next to this one was empty; he had at least enough chakra to move them ten feet sideways. And no one was paying attention.

It was the work of half a second to twist, get his hands around Ryouma far enough to put them together, and work the right seals for a speedy translocation. Chakra gathered with a snap. The room lurched and jerked sideways--

And they crashed down on a freshly made bed with a burst of smoke.

Kakashi blinked once and let his head thump back against the wall. Sudden and wonderful silence filled the air. "That should do it," he rasped, and pressed his fingers into Ryouma's panic-hot skin. He could feel a heartbeat thrumming far too fast. "S'okay," he said quietly, trying to be soothing rather than overwhelmingly relieved. "S'okay, Ryouma. Take a breath?"

Breathe. Right. He could do that. He could bury his face in the hollow between Kakashi's throat and shoulder and narrow his world to pale skin slick with sweat, a low voice murmuring over his hair, the smell of faint soap and fresh sheets and salt.

Kakashi hadn't been there when the world went black and red with horror. He'd come afterwards to break the nightmare, to capture Shiki, to offer hope and healing. He'd had his own nightmares to fight, but they hadn't beaten him.

He wasn't all that much stronger than Ryouma was.

Breathe. Ryouma gasped for air, tasted skin. An arm pressed solid against his back, pulling him in, grounding him with touch and tension. Another hand snared his wrist, pinning his own hand between their bodies. He threw his head up, seeking air, and found the hard line of a jaw shielded by a flimsy surgeon's mask instead. Elastic bands cut across finely stubbled skin. Kakashi's own breath hissed between his teeth; his fingers clenched around Ryouma's wrist.

"He's not dead," Ryouma told him fiercely. "I didn't kill him. He'll live and he can hate me, but he'll live. You brought us back." It made sense in his head; why couldn't it work in words? "He has Tsume. She'll take care of him. He'll take care of her. I couldn't--"

He broke off. Breathed. Cold air, flavored with the taste of a hot drink in a snowstorm. The paper mask fluttered against Kakashi's mouth, momentarily outlining the clean angle of nose and lips.

Ryouma raked in one last breath, reached up, dragged the mask down, and tasted life.

Kakashi's head hit the wall again, but this time he wasn't paying quite so much attention. One of Ryouma's hands was against his jaw, tangled in the surgeon's mask with Kakashi's own hand still wrapped around his wrist; the other was half crushed between Kakashi's body and the wall, clamped hard around the copy-nin's upper arm.

And then there was Ryouma's mouth.

It wasn't a gentle kiss; it was barely a kiss at all. Ryouma had grabbed and lunged, and Kakashi was fairly certain that distant clack had been their teeth meeting. He froze for half a second, taken by surprise, then grabbed back automatically, hands tightening around Ryouma's wrist and against his broad back. Sweat slipped beneath his fingers. The air still smelled like panic and hurt and--

And he should really start focusing on that mouth.

As a coping mechanism, there were worse things in the world than sex. Much worse things. Even if they were exhausted, they were still ninja, and they'd been ninja on edge pretty much since Tsume's first relative had shown up. And that didn't count Kuromaru waking up and kicking Ryouma right in his brand new guilt complex.

If Ryouma needed solid proof that he was still alive--needed something to focus on other than whatever was twisting through his head... well, Kakashi had days when he needed the same.

Besides, even with desperation scraping his scent raw, Ryouma still smelled really good. And now he was clutching hard enough to bruise, breath short and sharp, and Kakashi could do this. Exactly this, because this was what sex was for.

He released Ryouma's wrist, grabbed the back of his head, and let his relief burn into something else.

Tsume looked up when chakra flared through the room, her gaze catching Yasuo's past the three doctors coming in.

Yasuo ducked into the corridor, but didn't even get out of sight before returning and gesturing to the room next door.

Tsume dismissed the two men from her thoughts, growling as one doctor tried to push her aside. He glanced at her, then nodded once and went around.

"Kuromaru?" he called, pulling away the bandages that wrapped around his head and partially covered his only eye. "Can you tell me what clan you're from?"

"Inuzuka," Kuromaru croaked hoarsely, eye watering as the doctor shone a light into it.

"Good, good. And the current Hokage?"

"The Third. Sarutobi Hizuren." He pulled away, mouth twisting up in a growl. "H'rts."

The doctor turned; the other two had left, replaced by a single nurse. "Get a morphine drip up here with a patient-control pump."

Tsume kept her fingers wrapped around Kuromaru's as they set up more painkillers and checked him, asking question after question to see how his mind was working. When he started to fade they stopped, assuring the room at large that everything was as good as they could have expected. That they'd run more tests when he was stronger. That they shouldn't worry.

They left. Tsume worried. Yasuo brought a chair over so she'd sit, and, shaking, she lowered herself into it. She didn't let go of Kuromaru's hand.

"The coyot?" Kuromaru asked on a sigh, single blue eye glassy.

"He's around. He's fine."

Kuromaru's free hand lifted again, pawing at his face before Tori caught it and drew it back down. She wrapped it around Kiba's body, scooting the boy up higher on the human-wolf's thin chest. Instinctively, Kuromaru left his hand there, holding the cub close.

"I can't see," he whimpered, turning his head until his gaze, further hooded by bandages, had traveled the room.

"I know." Tsume's voice broke. Yasuo's hand feathered over her shoulder.

"It's okay, Kuromaru." Kiba's small hand petted over the blankets covering the familiar. "Ma will make it better."

Tsume choked out a laugh, Kuromaru's scream echoing in her ears. "Yeah. All better," she said bitterly.

Yasuo's hand tightened on her shoulder: warning and support all in one. "It'll be all right," he said softly, and pulled up another chair. "Kuromaru, everything will be fine. But you've been hurt..."

And while the man's soft baritone spoke calmly and with all the assurance a broken wolf needed to hear, Tsume laid her head on her familiar's shoulder and tried not to cry.