"G'way," Ryouma mumbled into his pillow.

Something licked his ear.

He rolled over and stared up into a sharply pointed, silky-furred face. Shiba licked his nose, and bounced. And yapped.

Ryouma winced. "I thought we kinda agreed to get along, last night. You still planning on busting my eardrums?"

The tiny dog tilted her nose in the air, offended, and bounded off the bed. She strutted across the floor, took her stance in front of the door, and yapped.

"All right, I get the point!" Ryouma scrambled through the tousled sheets and across the cold right side of the bed, where the dent in the pillow had already begun to fade. He had a very vague memory of Tsume leaving as soon as the room was light enough for him to blurrily see her face as she said goodbye; he couldn't remember if he'd even said anything before he collapsed back into sleep. Maybe that sleeping pill hadn't been a good idea, after all.

But he hadn't done anything. He knew that for sure.

He hit the floor with one bare foot, scrabbled for his crutch, and shoved himself up to his feet. Foot. Whatever. His braced knee ached, even when he put no weight on it; he tried to ignore it, and hobbled for the door.

If he'd expected anyone, it would have been Kakashi, come to retrieve his dog. Maybe Raidou or Genma, wondering if the rumors were true and he hadn't died after all. Maybe even one of the administrative chuunin, reminding him that he wasn't registered as having a summons and pets weren't technically allowed in HQ...

It was Ginta. Short, pale, bruised, bandaged, and--leaning on crutches?

"The hell?" Ryouma said blankly. He scrubbed his free hand over his face and up through his messy hair. "Look, this copy-cat thing really isn't cool. Just 'cause I go get myself banged up is no reason for you to do it, too. I thought you're supposed to be the awesome one?"

"I am the awesome one," Ginta countered. He stared past Ryouma to the absurdly decorative little dog that eyed him from the door. "I also thought I was the gay one, but it seems all evidence lately points to you deciding to take that role on for yourself. Have you got her a pink rhinestone collar yet?"

It wasn't quite how he'd wanted to start the conversation. "I.... Look, I would have come by sooner, but I was on a mission while you were out getting yourself fucked over, and when I got back they were dicks and made me stay inpatient until my arm healed enough I could use these stupid things." Lies. Half-truths. It was always easier to talk about the things that weren't so important.

"You know, we had a date. If you're gonna go gay, then a date with me is a decent way to get started in your new lifestyle. And that new place, Cuppa Heaven, has this caramely almondy mocha-y thing with whipped cream and enough sugar and caffeine to drive three genin into seizures. You'll like it."

He glanced up at last. Ryouma was in a t-shirt and boxers. He always slept naked. Was he that badly off that he'd fallen asleep without undressing? His eyes flicked away from Ryouma, back to the room he couldn't really see. He should have thought this through more. What if Kakashi was in that room? Or Tsume? But he hadn't sensed anyone other than Ryouma.

"You might want to put on pants before we go."

"I think," Ryouma said, closing his eyes briefly, "I need another three weeks of sleep before I'm ready to deal with that. Never mind about the pants. Who says I'm going gay? Kakashi loaned me the dog. She's a babysitter or something, in case I have a seizure or a panic attack or--or go renegade, or whatever. I dunno."

A belated memory struck him; he banged his head against the doorframe. "Wait, it's not about that porn video, is it? That was a joke. Not even a very good one. I mean, I did pretty much get Kotetsu to admit he'd pay for a video of you and me getting it on, but joke, right?" Dammit, he was babbling again, nervous tension ratcheting higher. It was way too early for critical thinking.

He tried not to think about why he was getting nervous, either. Ginta wasn't hitting on him. Just because he'd messed around with one man--twice--didn't mean he was gay, anyway. It certainly didn't give him any reason to get defensive.

Pants were still probably a good idea, though.

He backed up, narrowly missing both squishing Shiba and falling over. "Shut the door behind you and just stay there, will you? I'll get dressed if you'll tell me what the hell you're talking about."

"Don't hurt yourself, you big idiot," Ginta said almost by reflex. He edged in the door, pushed it shut, and leaned back against it. For Ryouma to allow him into the apartment at all, given his flinchiness about his private space, was, he supposed, a sign that some things were still right between them. But that nervous babble...

"Are you having seizures or panic attacks or thinking of running amok? I didn't think they'd let you out of the hospital with that."

He watched Ryouma crutch to his bed, take off the brace, gingerly pull jeans on over a swollen, black-bruised, scabbed-up knee. Both knees were scabbed, actually. "You gotta get some knee pads for your gear," Ginta observed.

Avoiding Ryouma's question.

The dog came over and sniffed at Ginta's ankles. He reached down to pet her, and froze. Kakashi's dog. Kakashi gave Ryouma one of his dogs. It made Ginta's stomach knot.

"I'm gay. You're sleeping with the guy I thought I was trying to date. If that's not gay, there's not much that is."

Ryouma's hands stilled. He stared down at the sharp lines of his scarred knuckles, curled around the edges of the brace, and saw his hands skimming over sleek muscles and pale skin, tangling into silver hair...

"I'm not sleeping with him," he said, and buckled the brace on over his jeans. "I gave him something he needed. It's not-- If you guys had something going on, that's between him and you. I'm not involved, and I'm sure as hell not in the way. He's--"

Just become the one guy I can turn to when the world's falling down.

"He gave me life," he said, quietly. "That's all."

"Gave you life? When did you turn into a soap opera character, Ryouma?" Ginta's hand was still held out for the dog, who started growling at him as soon as he spoke. His crutches were splayed out at a wide angle to support him as he bent over. He still wasn't looking at Ryouma. "Oh yeah, that's right, when you started sleeping with Kakashi."

He could hear the nasty edge to his tone. Undeservedly nasty. Was it really Ryouma's fault? It wasn't like Ginta'd ever told him he was serious about Kakashi. He wasn't serious about Kakashi. It was the forced closeness of that mission in December. It was a few weeks of fantasizing about a sexy fellow ninja with an interesting sense of humor. It was compassion and empathy over a shared experience, and guilt over not having killed Sadao three years ago so that Kakashi never had to have that experience. It was one drunken makeout session. It was nothing.

The dog growled again, and for a second Ginta almost sent it flying. It wasn't the dog's fault, either, he told himself, glaring at it. Kakashi's fucking dog. If that didn't show Kakashi's true feelings, nothing did.

He needed to forget he ever knew him. Forget all of this. Focus on something else. And Ryouma had just come back from yet another mission where he'd gotten seriously hurt.

"You better stop needing people to save your life, or I'll get the rest of Team Badass recalled to Konoha so we can collectively kick your ass for being a stupid rookie. You're not some weak ass idiot, Ryouma."

"No," Ryouma said tightly. He wrapped his fingers in the hem of his tee-shirt and tugged it off over his head in one sharp movement. "Stupid rookie, sure, but they didn't kill me. They took me down and did what they wanted, but Tsume came for me before they got what they wanted."

He pushed himself back to his feet, shirt dangling from his hand. The harsh overhead light leached the brilliant color out of the ragged remnants of his tattoo, turned the new scars sallow. "It looked better a week ago, back when Kakashi found us. Raw meat and acid burns. They've still got most of my fingernails, I guess, and two of my teeth. And I bet you can guess who was there in the hospital when I woke up screaming. Who fought me down and brought me back. Again."

He snared his voice back just before it broke into a shout, and fought to catch his breath. Shiba's growl wove a low, constant counterpoint, theme music to a friendly conversation gone terribly wrong. Ryouma whistled sharply to her. She backed away, without taking her eyes off Ginta, until her silky side pressed against his ankle. He could feel her trembling. Dammit, he could feel himself trembling.

"Yeah," he said bitterly, tossing the shirt back on his bed. "It'd make a great soap opera. Sure felt like hell while I was living it, though."

He'd done this. Fought with Kakashi when he hadn't intended to fight. Ruined things by doing it. Ginta stood up a little straighter, tugged at his hair, and tried to act deliberately. A shinobi who lets his emotions dictate his actions, his grandfather used to tell him, didn't deserve his name chiseled into the hero's stone.

An illusionist. That's what he was. A genjutsu specialist. A ninja. He needed to remember that. See the hidden truths under layers of lies. What he could see right now was that Ryouma was angry. Frightened. Guilty. Hurt.

Kakashi had saved Ginta like that once. Now he'd saved Ryouma. Maybe that was just what Kakashi did. Maybe he saved people, and then shoved them away. Maybe Ryouma would be shoved away. Wasn't that half of what Ginta'd been so angry about? That Kakashi was playing with Ryouma's heart? Ryouma, his friend.

The scars on his body were shocking. New ANBU tattoo ruined by pinkish tears that looked like burns. The dragon half gone, eroded away to freshly healed skin and long reddish puckers of dense scar. Fresh lines, still purplish, to match the single long gash Ginta remembered from their mission months ago, on belly and ribs.

No fingernails. Pulled teeth. That broken knee.

Of course Kakashi had saved him. Of course he'd needed saving. Ginta should be grateful, not angry.

"I'm an ass. I always have been, you know." Ginta took a deep breath and tugged at his hair again. Deliberately put his weight into his injured ankle. "A total ass. It's genetic. I was born this way."

"No, you were born short and squalling," Ryouma corrected. "You just added assery to the list later." He took a few halting steps away from Shiba and leaned against his closet door while he dug a clean tee-shirt out of his dresser. "Look, if you'd said something--well, no, maybe I wouldn't've done anything different. I can be a bastard, too."

He hadn't thought Ginta would come knocking at his door like a cuckolded husband, that was for damn sure. He hadn't thought at all, really, which was the problem.

Although if Ginta really had been a cuckold, there'd probably have been fewer insults and more knives. Maybe he was the wife of a cheating husband?

Dammit, he wasn't going to cry, was he?

"I don't think you've lost your chance, if that's what you're worried about. I'm not--it's not like we're in a relationship, or whatever." Ryouma gnawed on the inside of his cheek. "You might try getting a tattoo. He--likes those."

"I was breech. Ass first. It was a sign," Ginta said. And was that an apology? Maybe? He held his tongue and didn't ask why Ryouma had decided to not just sleep with a guy after all his insistence he was straight, but to sleep with that particular guy. It didn't matter. It didn't matter because he didn't need to be thinking about Kakashi any more.

Kakashi had made it clear he wasn't interested. In Ginta.

And made it clear he was interested in Ryouma.

Ginta found himself staring at, and hating, the dog. Too cute for its own damn good. Acting like he was some kind of threat to Ryouma. Acting like he didn't have any right to be there, with his friend. His friend.

"I don't need to make myself look like you to compete," Ginta said. "And I already got a tattoo. Same as yours. When that heals you can get it re-inked." He touched his left shoulder a little diffidently. "Anyway, I'm over him. He can do what the fuck he wants. I don't give two shits. In fact I don't even give one. Screw him."

He finally looked up at Ryouma.

"You wanna go get that coffee?"

"The one with enough sugar to give three genin seizures?" Ryouma struggled into his tee-shirt, tugged it down over his belt, and reached for an ancient brown hoodie that zipped up the front.

The same one he'd worn that day with Kakashi, when they'd gone for coffee and ended up on the riverbank...

He dropped it on the floor and went for another instead, the dark blue one with the stain shaped like Fire Country over the chest. Now that he had money--and no one to spend it on, at the moment--he really needed to get some new clothes.

Later. There were other things to focus on, now.

"I'm game for coffee any day," he said, re-emerging from the neck of his hoodie. Even after a week of hospital convalescence--most of it spent on a liquid diet--the sweatshirt was looser on him than it had been a month ago. "And I'm not even sure I want that tattoo re-inked. It looks pretty bad-ass right now. Dragon's another matter." It didn't look bad-ass; it looked pitiful. He'd figure something out. Later.

Right now there was Ginta, and a light tenor voice that seethed with bitterness like straight black coffee. Ryouma's anger had burned itself out, leashed back from striking at a man who didn't really deserve it--no matter how much of an ass he was. Ginta's seemed to be feeding on itself, burning low and long.

There was more there than a man who'd lost out in the game of who's-sleeping-with-whom. In the little Ryouma had learned about Ginta in the last two months, fidelity and devotion to a single man--any single man--hadn't figured very highly. From the stories he'd told, he didn't take much of anything seriously. So why this? Why now?

He hitched himself around, still leaning against the frame of the closet door, and asked directly, "How come you keep trying to convince yourself you don't care?"

It didn't sound like Ginta's attempt was working very well anyway, but that was probably something Ryouma didn't need to say right now.

"I don't care," Ginta said with a stiff-shouldered shrug. His eyes were cold blue glass chips in a defiantly smiling face.

And Ryouma was giving him a look he'd seen before. A look he'd seen up in that hideaway above Camp Cholera, when Daisuke came back late smelling of perfume and insisted he had just been patrolling. Or when Arata tried to hide bloody bandages and a limp.

"Dammit, Ryouma," Ginta blew his hair out of his face and looked up at his friend again. Big, far too skinny, pale, bruised and scabbed and bandaged. He needed some sympathy and a few good meals. He needed a friend.

But Ryouma'd completely betrayed him, even if Ginta couldn't really explain how in a way that made sense even to himself. He was furious with Ryouma, and his damned dog.

And he didn't really have anyone else to talk to at all.

"You don't call a man on his bluff when it's all he has left." There was despair in his voice now, edging the defiance. "You let him save face and go kill himself quietly in private after the fact. It's basic etiquette. I know you have the whole street urchin thing going on for you, but you've been a ninja long enough to know how to fake being civilized."

Ryouma's eyebrow quirked in disbelief.

Ginta rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to fucking kill myself. If I'd been going to do that, I'd have done it over my ex, Tomoya, not fucking Hatake Kakashi."

"I got the whole street urchin thing going for me," Ryouma agreed. "I still don't swear my lid off over somebody I claim I don't care about. I'm pretty sure Hitomi-sensei included that in her lessons on being civilized."

She'd actually smacked him with a palm of raw chakra every time he used a word she considered unfit for polite company, but he was pretty sure that wouldn't work so well on Ginta. And that wasn't the point, anyway. The point was that Ginta was pissed at Kakashi, pissed at Ryouma, and--still wanted to go for coffee?

The man made no sense.

"Hitomi-sensei undoubtedly also told you it's impolite to point out faults in others." Ginta swayed back and forth on his crutches, waiting for Ryouma to be ready to leave. Still not looking at his face more than he had to. "But that doesn't seem to stop you much. Actually I kind of get the impression you make up all your own rules as you go along, and as long as you're playing by them, you're happy."

The stain on Ryouma's sweatshirt was as good a place to look as any. Blood? Coffee? Oil? It was so thoroughly embedded in the fabric that it might as well have been part of the weave. Maybe it was bile.

That was certainly what Ginta felt like at the moment. Filled with bitterness. Stained. Somehow the whole situation with Kakashi and Ryouma made him feel filthy.

"Are you coming or what?" he snapped, and pulled the door open. This had probably been a bad idea. He should just go take another mission, to someplace father away, until he got his stupid head together.

At the moment, Ryouma could think of few things he wanted to do less. Rather, he could think of a lot of things he wanted to do more, like reorganizing his CD collection or doing a month's worth of laundry. Expensive coffee wasn't worth getting snarled at.

Preserving a friendship might be.

Tsume said that a friend was someone who came when you called. Had he been calling?

Had Ginta?

He hobbled back to the bed, picked up his own crutches, and found himself staring down at Shiba. She licked her nose and stared back up at him.

"You're probably better behaved than both of us," he said. "Feel like a walk?"

Her absurd ears perked forward; she yipped joyful agreement, and danced just out of range of his crutches while he turned himself around and headed for the door. He only almost fell down once before he reached it, and that was totally the carpet's fault.

Ginta was nearly jigging with impatience by the time Ryouma managed to close the door behind him, lock it, and loop the key-on-a-chain back around his neck and under his shirt. Ryouma battled a perverse desire to move even slower. Instead he said, as mildly as he could, "You never got your nose out of joint about my rules before. Or said I should play by everybody else's. What rules am I breaking this time that've got you so pissed?"

Compared to Ryouma's clumsy stumbling, Ginta was the picture of grace, swinging along the hall on his much shorter crutches. "Don't tell me this is the first time you've ever injured a leg badly enough to need these," he said, tossing a wry look in Ryouma's direction. "It's not all that much harder to channel chakra into the tips to keep them steady than it is to channel it through a grappling hook or whatever. And besides you have a decent sense of balance. At least try not to walk like a spaz? You're just gonna throw your back out and end up in bed again if you're not careful."

He felt like he was on a delicately balanced board, one moment tipping one way, the next the other. Was he angry at Ryouma? Concerned about him? His friend? His rival? What? Why did he care?

"It's not rules. I mean it can't be about rules. Isn't that what being a ninja is? Having our own codes that have nothing to do with the civilian world's rules? We obey our Hokage, and outside of that we make our own rules. We never leave a man behind. We have honor. We..."

Honor. Was that what this was about? Or was it just stupid jealousy, like a fishmonger's daughter with a simpering crush, wanting to scratch out the eyes of her rival in love? He wasn't like that.

"I don't know what the deal is, I just... It's stupid." If he'd had a free foot to kick at an imaginary pebble, he would have.

Why did he care? Wasn't that what Ryouma was really asking?

"I have no idea why I care. I didn't mean to. I was trying not to."

"Welcome to the club," Ryouma muttered under his breath. He tucked one crutch a little firmer under his arm--he wasn't walking like a spaz, but if he was going to be waging a war of mutual loathing, he might as well try to win--and somehow kept up. He even managed to turn the corner by the men's showers without falling over and squishing Shiba. By that time, he'd finally figured out something to say.

"Look, I don't think caring's something you can plan out, all maps and troop-markers and strategic maneuvering. It sort of ambushes you. Hell, I wasn't planning for my first love to be ten years older'n me and my jounin sensei. I'm pretty sure you weren't planning for your ex to--be whoever he was, if he was the kinda guy you'd be inclined to kill yourself over. You just gotta react, right? Counter-attack."

From the thoughtful look crinkling Ginta's brow, maybe that tangled metaphor made more sense than he'd thought. He gave it a moment's rest anyway, because he was running out of breath, and the left side of his chest ached as if he'd tried one too many pull-ups. They were nearly at the elevator; Ginta balanced on one crutch and reached out with the other to punch the button. Ryouma stole the chance to lean against the wall and talk, instead of breathing.

"Sometimes you lose. I have, most of the time. The whole thing, I mean, not just the fight about whether or not you're gonna hurt when someone else gets cut. But...it was worth it, most of the time."

Ginta had been following along just fine, right up until that last bit. It was like a field maneuver never went exactly as you planned it. It was like an ambush, and you had to improvise. Hadn't that been exactly what had happened here, with his chest-crushing despair over Kakashi? An ambush was the best description for love he'd ever run across. You just had to hope you escaped, or if they caught you, they killed you quickly, and didn't torture you.

He glanced at Ryouma a little guiltily. Torture was exactly what Ryouma had been through. Kakashi had saved him from it. Who was doing the ambushing here?

The elevator doors opened with a ding, and Ginta swung quickly inside, pressing the 'hold door' button for Ryouma. Staring intently at the mechanical device, and not at his companion.

"You were making good sense right up until that bit about getting cut and hurt. You saying it's worth it to... I don't know. To get his love, no matter who else gets hurt?" His words were sharp, but his voice wasn't. It was quiet, thoughtful. He was puzzling over the whole problem, not lashing out.

"Kakashi's love?" Damn, if that didn't make it sound like they were teenage girls in a soap opera... Ryouma hitched one shoulder up, uncomfortable. "I dunno. I mean--if you're looking for a happy ending, I don't think you'll find it with him. I don't think he could give it if he wanted to."

I'm not worth your damn heart, Kakashi had said, glaring down at him with his masked face set like stone. Which was fine, because Ryouma wasn't giving it.

"He's screwed up," Ryouma said flatly. "Most of us are broken, but not that bad. He'll get you hurt, and then he'll hurt himself over it, because he thinks it's his job to save the world. I bet he already tried to shove you away, right, 'cause he told you anyone who gets close to him gets killed? He really believes it. But he doesn't want to be alone, either. And he shouldn't be..."

He freed a hand from his crutch-grip, rubbed his palm over his face. "He needs more than other people do," he said, finally, fiercely. "He won't believe it, though. You have to show him anyway."

Ginta was silent for a moment, digesting that. It hit him with a shock, the raw emotion he heard underlying Ryouma's quiet words. "You're actually in love with him, aren't you?"

Ryouma looked appalled. "Dude, is your crazy catching?"

Ginta snorted and rolled his eyes. It was so obvious. That protectiveness, that clinging to the other man, insisting on trying to fix him. Insisting he was more broken than most.

Which Kakashi was.

I'm not afraid you're going to die. I know you're going to die, Kakashi had snarled at him that night, with a choke hold just shy of tight enough to kill. But I've got no plans to be the one left hurt enough to mourn you.

The elevator opened, letting them out into a quiet lobby. "You're right about one thing. He didn't just try to shove me away. He told me to go to hell and never come back," Ginta said. "I went to see him, the last night you were in the hospital. You're probably lucky you slept through it. I'm probably lucky you slept through it. Given how you feel about him, I'd have ended up a lot worse than choked and chakra'd out if you'd been involved, too."

"Could be," Ryouma agreed. "I might've knocked some of the crazy out. Look, I'm not-- He saved my life, okay? Not just the once. I look up to him and I look out for him, and I'm sure as hell not in love with him. I'm not that insane."

Because love was insane, really. It meant giving yourself over to someone else, embracing disaster with open arms. No matter what Tsume said about family, about loving and losing without regrets, in the clear light of day Ryouma couldn't convince himself it worked that way. You died, or they died, and either way someone broke a little more.

But hadn't he already told Kakashi it didn't matter? Hadn't they already agreed not to mourn?

Doesn't matter, he told himself firmly. This was different--and anyway, only a few days ago he'd promised Kakashi he wasn't handing his heart over. Ginta watched chick flicks. His opinion didn't count.

His story did.

"Kakashi can be a jerk," Ryouma said slowly, feeling his way through the words. "And most of the time his reasons don't come any closer to what I'd call sense than yours do. But he's got 'em. If you visited night before last, that would've been less than a week after he pulled me and Tsume and Kuromaru back pretty much from the dead. I don't think he's come down off the edge yet. Sure hadn't when he left me yesterday." His eyes rested on Shiba, who had bounded across the stained lobby carpet to wait impatiently by the glass doors that led outside. Any other man who wanted to keep an eye on his teammate would have hung around himself. Kakashi left Ryouma with a dog, and somehow expected that to make up the difference.

"If you think he's worth it--whatever you think it is--you'll have to prove to him you are, too," he said. "I dunno as that has to involve choking. He did break my knee, but I pinned him anyway."

"Prove I'm worth it? Worth what? His attention? I thought I already proved it several times over." Ginta shouldered the door open and nearly lost his balance when the little dog raced past his foot. Crutches tried to go one way, the door another, and Ginta a third, for just a second. Then the door stopped moving. He pulled his balance back together, touching injured foot to ground in the process, so his face was contorted into a grimace when he looked up to see Ryouma braced on his own crutches, with one hand flat against the glass.

"Thanks," Ginta said gruffly. "I'm... I've got it." He leaned back against the door to hold it for Ryouma in turn. "And I take it back about walking like a spaz. Obviously we are both supremely awesome on crutches."

He stood still, watching Ryouma's--or was it Kakashi's?--dog peeing on some hint of greenery that was trying to push up through the spring-softened soil. It was just like that, he thought glumly. Pissing on what was good. That's what Kakashi had done. The dog looked up, casting what was clearly an indignant glare, and Ginta looked away.

Ryouma was right, Kakashi was a jerk. He had been from their first meeting. It was just that back then Ginta hadn't cared. And now he did, for whatever stupid reason there was for it. Even if he didn't want to.

"If it's a fight he needs, I'll give him one when I'm not just back from a mission. I was a little over-tired the other night. And my ankle was killing me."

"You can get fights anywhere," Ryouma said impatiently. "He's not looking for a sparring partner, anyway, he's..."

ANBU, male, no strings attached, Kakashi had said. That shouldn't have been so much to ask for. Plenty of men in ANBU took what they could get when they could get it, and they neither asked for nor expected more. Even in the regular service, one-night stands were more common among ninja than committed relationships were, and Ryouma'd heard enough of his comrades bragging in the showers or the cafeteria or the weight room to know that ANBU was no different.

A good lay didn't hang around.

A good friend did.

"He's looking to get laid," Ryouma said, as Shiba finished her business, shook herself vigorously, and settled down on the pavement to scratch an itch. "Just like any of us. But there's a difference between--between screwing on the riverbank while your bunshin keeps watch, and sleeping together. Dating. Hell, there's a difference between sleeping with someone and caring about them. And if you're looking for anything more than a one-night stand, that's when you're gonna need to sit on him to get him to listen. Because he wants someone who won't die on him, and he's certain we will."

And the events of the last two weeks had either carved that belief in stone, or started the first few cracks. Ryouma wasn't sure. He doubted Kakashi was, either.

"Not that I'm looking for anything more than a one-night stand," he added hastily. "We're friends. I mean, I don't do commitment. And I still like girls."

"Ask my friend Genma about that sometime," Ginta said with something like a laugh. "That still liking girls thing even though you sleep with boys. And he's an expert at the no-strings thing."

At just half past noon, the sun should have been bright, but it had a watered-down feeling. Thin grey clouds were scudding across the sky, with heavier, more menacing cousins in the northwest, promising cold rain or a late snow. He headed for the street, assuming Ryouma and the dog would follow. No sense standing outside in the icy wind when hot coffee and pastries waited just a few hundred meters away.

"You know the whole thing with Kakashi... It's not a one-night-thing with you, obviously. I mean the river thing was day, so maybe that doesn't count..." Ryouma didn't laugh. Probably too serious a topic to make light of, Ginta thought. But what else could you do? If you couldn't laugh at it, then you had to cry. And he refused to let this stupidity make him cry. "I never even got to the one-night stand stage with him, so honestly if there's advice about dating him to be given here, it's to you, not me."

Or maybe Kakashi was the one who really needed advice, with his fucked up ideas about death. He wanted someone who wasn't gonna die, maybe he should get involved in the hunt for Orochimaru.

"He doesn't give you or me enough credit. I told him that, actually. His stupid shit about thinking we can't keep ourselves alive really pisses me off."

"I know Genma," Ryouma said absently. "He lives two doors down. I know all about his...stringlessness. And frankly I'd rather sleep with Shiba."

Shiba looked sharply up at him, decided he was joking, and yapped disapprovingly anyway. Ryouma grinned down at her, but it quickly faded. Ginta had a point, but...

"I can see where Kakashi gets the idea. You lose enough people, you figure eventually you'll lose everybody else." More selfish, perhaps, than the excuse Ryouma used for breaking up with one girlfriend after another--but maybe it was more honest, too. "'Course, I'm not saying he's right about you and me. I got damn good reason to know neither of us are that easy to kill." He'd seen 'Seishi' sliced nearly in half, bleeding out on an elegant rug on the embassy floor. He'd carried the dying man out, felt hot blood soaking through shattered armor to leave a stain Ryouma never had been able to get out of his flak vest. He'd watched the slender ANBU spend the next three days fighting for his life, while the medics from Konoha raced to meet them and Hiroyuki poured out his chakra like water. While Ryouma's team bore their own injuries in silence, and watched anxiously as their Cloud trackers drew ever closer.

Seishi--Ginta--had survived that. Ryouma had made it back from his next sight of Mount Rishiri with half his chest and most of his fingernails and two of his teeth gone, but the important thing was that he'd made it back.

That was Tsume's fault, of course, and Kakashi's, and Haruichi's. But Ryouma figured he deserved some of the credit, too. He hadn't broken--when it counted, at least--and he hadn't died, and he was hobbling freely on Konoha's streets again, with the wind whipping color into his cheeks and shredding the clouds overhead. He hit a patch of watery sunshine and threw his head back to soak it up.

"We're alive right now," he said. "Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes he realizes it, too."

"Yeah, you don't want to sleep with Genma," Ginta agreed. "Besides, I am sharing his bed, on occasion. Completely string-free. Unless you count the fact we have repeat engagements. But that's not the same as being lovers." He slanted a look up at Ryouma, scrutinizing him. "But that still doesn't mean you should poach him, too. Even if I was the idiot who told you to go talk to him." He wasn't sure whether he was joking or not any more. He wasn't sure it mattered, either.

Someone came out of the coffee shop, a couple of young kunoichi--genin, maybe? They were laughing together, but stopped when they saw the pair of men on crutches. Even in civilian clothing, Ginta thought, there was no hiding they were ANBU. Or maybe it was just that any young, muscular men with obvious injuries and an aura of tension about them were enough to stifle a teen girl's mirth. The girls held the door open, casting curious glances their way. Ginta could practically hear their thoughts about missions to kill babies.

"It was a three legged race mission gone tragically wrong for both of us," he told them with a grin that could have broken glass. They giggled nervously and wouldn't meet his eyes. "My buddy and I here, we almost won it, but at the last minute someone cast a massive earth jutsu and split open an earthquake fault. The finish line disappeared into a chasm, and we were lucky to get out alive."

More giggling as Ginta breezed past them, into the enveloping scents of roasting coffee laced with cinnamon and nutmeg, and something else. Something warm, like baking bread.

He waited until they were inside to look at Ryouma again.

"You better keep coming back alive, too. Whether or not he ever gets it."