Translocating himself away from the kid with the bloodline limit from hell took more energy than Kakashi really had to spare, especially with two dogs in tow. He landed in an awkward tangle of legs and limbs and fur on the third floor corridor, and felt the world lurch sideways. The jutsu wasn't quiet; a loud crack echoed away, fading with slowly dissipating smoke.

"Bloody hell, kid--" Pakkun began, half-squashed under Kakashi's shoulder. He got cut off when a door slammed open and nearly decapitated him.

"You," snarled a voice from somewhere above them.

Kakashi shoved Hoshika off his chest and levered himself up onto one elbow. Hayashi Eisuke glared down at him, hands planted on the hips of his tartan bathrobe. Kakashi tried not to groan.

"Even when you're not here you're a pain," Eisuke snapped, face reddening. "I am trying to sleep--"

"It's after ten," Kakashi interjected.

"But you just persist. If it's not one of your idiot mission partners banging around to complain, it's young men showing up at ridiculous hours in the morning! Being loud. And obnoxious. And now it's you again, creating havoc in the corridors! I spent the last forty-eight hours deciphering code! I wish to sleep."

As neighbours went, Eisuke had mastered the basics of disliking Kakashi faster than most. Some days, that was not quite the blessing the copy-nin pretended it to be.

Hoshika growled. Pakkun snorted. Kakashi staggered up to his feet, dragged a hand over his face, and tried not to give too much thought to the young men comment. "Look--" he tried.

"Have you been crying?" Eisuke demanded, raking him with a sharp glance.

Kakashi felt the long muscles up his back go rigid. He had his mask up, his hitai-ate down--how could Eisuke tell?

"No," he said flatly.

"You have. Your eye's red! Don't lie to me, boy. In fact, I demand you tell me whoever got you upset so I can find them and ask them what they're doing right!"

Hoshika's bristled, fur rising in a long jagged line down her spine. Her lips peeled back, revealing sharp teeth and mottled gums. Pakkun growled, a deep bass rumble from the centre of his chest.

Eisuke didn't bat an eye. "And then," he declared, "I will have them recommended for a meda--"

Hitting a nerve cluster probably counted as overkill, but Kakashi had gone past caring and out the other side. He caught the shorter jounin before the man hit the floor, grabbed a double handful of plaid robe, and dragged him back into his room. Eisuke's bed was tucked into one corner, covers thrown back so violently they'd spilled onto the floor. Kakashi dumped him on the mattress, arranged him in the recovery position so he didn't accidentally choke on his own tongue, and slammed the door behind him on his way out.

Pakkun blinked up at him. "Uh..."

"I can banish you," Kakashi said.

"Shutting up. Got it." The pug traded a worried look with Hoshika. She pinned her ears back and whined.

"And you," Kakashi said, heading for his own door. Hoshika silenced herself and followed, fur flattening down. Pakkun trotted behind her.

Kakashi unlocked his door, cancelled the seals, allowed both dogs in, and set everything up again with the careful precision of the barely-awake. Then he walked to his bed and sat down on the floor beside it, leaning his back against the wooden frame. Hoshika curled up next to him.

"Kid," said Pakkun carefully. "I really think you should sleep."

Kakashi pulled a leg up and wrapped an arm around it, bracing his forehead against his knee. Exhaustion dragged at his bones. He thought, briefly, of Shiba glaring at him with bright black eyes, still covered in Ryouma's scent. Reaching out to clones that weren't even close to an echo of the real thing. Talking to a stone that had given him nothing but seven years of silence while the names grew weathered and faded.

"Yeah," he said, and heard Pakkun sigh heavily and curl up by his foot. "That'd be nice."

Ryouma never found the dog, or the man who'd been yelling. He wandered Konoha's winding streets anyway, until his armpits ached and his lungs seared and sweat glued his sweatshirt to his skin. Two hours or so after dawn, when he was trembling too badly to take another step, he took thirty more and found a tiny little shop serving hot coffee and cinnamon rolls the size of a man's head.

Ginta would love this place, he thought. Kakashi would probably smell it from two streets away and refuse to go near.

He left half of his cinnamon roll uneaten, and went out again.

Kakashi wasn't anywhere along the riverbank, or at the Hokage's palace, or in the hospital. The training fields were beginning to fill up now, with genin teams or chuunin friends or solitary jounin. Ryouma met a young man in ninja blacks digging through a garbage can, a red-faced girl sneaking home in yesterday's clothes, an elderly kunoichi throwing rubber rings for an arthritic pig, and several civilian children racing not to be late for school. He got another coffee and stopped by the hospital again, just in case.

No Hatake. Not even--unusually--any ANBU. Three white-haired men, but one of them had run awry of an ageing jutsu, and the other two were retired shinobi with prostate trouble. Ryouma snickered briefly at the thought. It was far too easy to see Kakashi as a querulous old man complaining about everything, especially his hospital check-ups.

It was almost impossible to think of Kakashi--or himself--actually living that long.

He threw his empty coffee cup away in a bin outside the hospital. The sun was up well over the horizon now, climbing towards noon. Maybe Kakashi had gone on a mission. Maybe he'd--

Could summons live without their summoners?

Ryouma didn't bother trying to run with his crutches. He dragged up his recovering chakra, slammed it through the seals, and translocated a block up the street into the main lobby of ANBU HQ.

"Hatake Kakashi," he panted, before the world had even stopped spinning. "Is he out? Did they give him a mission yet?"

The chuunin behind the desk blinked, visibly decided against questions, and checked her register. "He's on medical leave for the next week," she said. "He's not even allowed to leave Konoha."

"Thanks," Ryouma said, and bolted for the elevator.

He had to lean against the wall when the door closed; even his good leg wouldn't quite hold him up anymore, and his crutches kept skittering sideways. He focused on breathing. It was easy to forget...

The third floor hallway was empty again. The interior lighting never changed; it might have been five-thirty again, instead of ten-thirty. He thumped down the hall, reeled to a halt just outside Room 309, and hammered at the door with all his weight behind it. "Kakashi!"

Chakra flickered. A dog barked.

That was the way breathing worked.

Hoshika reacted faster than Kakashi could track, lunging to her feet with a startled bark and scrabble that almost knocked him over. He planted a hand on the floor and caught himself as Pakkun leapt up, swearing gruffly.

For a confused second, he thought it was Eisuke again, already awake and coming back to yell some more. But the voice was far deeper, like gravel and crunching bone, and the scent rolling through the door was achingly familiar...

"Ryouma?" he said, lifting his head to stare at flaring seals.

"Hokage's balls, brat!" Pakkun yelped, as Hoshika stalked over to sniff at the door jamb. "Are you trying to give us a collective heart attack?"

Kakashi braced his head against his knee again. "Stop," he said.

"But--"

A low snarl through salt-streaked cloth silenced both dogs. Pakkun sat abruptly down, ears flat. Hoshika hesitated by the door, an inaudible whine curling in her throat. One paw lifted and scratched gently at the wood. Kakashi snarled again. She lay down.

He hadn't cried at the monument. He'd wept later, when a bloodline limit had torn a hole in his chest. But the jutsu was gone. He couldn't fall apart now just because he was tired enough to hurt and Ryouma had come back, smelling like black metal and storm clouds.

He didn't miss Ryouma.

He wasn't worried.

"Go away, rookie," he said, and closed his eye.

He wasn't--

Ryouma stared at the door, solid dark-stained oak with a tarnished brass plaque glinting just below his eye-level, and clenched his aching jaw on an entirely rational fury. Go away, rookie? As if the past week had never happened, as if Ryouma hadn't chased Kakashi up to a wind-torn rooftop, as if he hadn't pinned Kakashi flat and practically sworn he couldn't be driven away? As if the bastard hadn't heard anything he'd said. As if leaving Shiba--first a pest, then a protector, and then a friend--had meant nothing, and taking her away had meant even less.

"Like hell," he growled, and grabbed the doorknob.

Blue sparks bit his fingers. He swallowed a yelp, snatched his hand back, and sucked on his scorched fingertips while he studied the door. Kakashi kept protective seals painted all over the inside of it, he remembered vaguely, the kind it took days to set up and seconds to activate. Maybe even the lethal kind Namikaze Minato had once set up over the trap door of a hidden bunker, on a rainy night when a rebellious teenager had nearly lost his life trying to prove a point...

Namikaze-san hadn't needed ink to anchor his seals, just chakra and will. Chakra was the main component of any seal, anyway. Without a ninja's energy soaking into the symbol and slipping through artificial pathways, a seal was just a splot of ink on the wall, as useless as the kanji from which it was derived.

He tucked his crutches a little more firmly under his armpits, and studied his hands. For the last eight years, they'd lit with killing glow that fed not just on flesh, but on chakra. Kuromaru still lay in the hospital, one ear and one eye and most of his chakra gone...

But he wasn't dead. Wasn't. And Tsume was healing, and Kakashi wasn't hurt, and Ryouma's jutsu had saved far more Konoha lives than it had ever taken.

And with a touch more Water chakra, to cool Fire's destructive fury; a thread of Wind, to narrow the effects from physical to immaterial...

The Serpent hand-seal in the Dragon's place, narrowing the jutsu's focus. Better add Horse there too, before Ox, to stabilize. Eliminate the second Dragon entirely. Reverse Boar. Finish with another Serpent, after the Dog, and if it worked--

Well, if it didn't work, HQ would have what was left of his hide.

He didn't much care.

Kakashi could probably feel his chakra building, molding. He didn't much care about that, either. A twist there, a double-back loop here, a current of spiritual energy weaving a cool, tickling pathway between his fingers. The chakra built to a visible glow, as it always did with the Nikutai Tokasu, but this time it stayed a pure vivid blue, instead of haloing his hands with the greenish black of putrescence.

On the other side of the door, a dog whined.

"You can't chase me away, Kakashi," Ryouma said clearly. "And I don't feel like leaving. You wanna keep your door?"

The dog whined again. There was no other answer.

"Fine," Ryouma said. "You can pay for it."

He leaned forward, tipping precariously on his crutches, and flattened his glowing palms against the door.

A jagged web of blue fire flashed like lightning from ceiling to floor, sparking across the backs of his knuckles, sizzling on the cuffs of his long sleeves. The hair lifted on the back of his neck; he swallowed convulsively, suddenly aware of exactly how likely this was to be lethal--

The light flickered out. A faint scent of burned paper and scorched wood touched his nose; the door under his palms was warm, smoking a little. On the other side, claws scrabbled across the floor.

Ryouma wet his lips, rebalanced carefully on his crutches, wrapped his bad knee in stabilizing chakra, and kicked the door in.

If Kakashi had been the type of man prone to heart attacks in moments of crisis, he would have had a full coronary event when the seals on his door flared bright blue, then retina-burning white, and finally lashed themselves apart with a crack of light that scorched the wood and seared long black streaks across his ceiling and floor.

Hoshika threw herself away from the door, fur standing on end. Pakkun's teeth bared in a startled snarl. Kakashi lunged to his feet, chakra spilling into his hands as he yanked on it and tried to keep breathing. Those were Minato's seals--he hadn't expected--Ryouma had just killed himself--

The door ripped off its hinges.

In the gently smoking wreckage, badly braced on his crutches and drenched with sweat, Ryouma did not look dead. Furious and half a step from falling over--but still very much alive. He took a halting step into the room, then another, then pressed his back against the wall, ribcage heaving.

"Fucking hell, brat," said Pakkun faintly.

Caught in the overwhelming tidal wave of his own relief, Kakashi could do nothing but stare. White chakra crackled on his fingertips and snuffed itself out. Distantly, he was fairly certain he could feel his knees about to give way. Hoshika pressed herself against his side.

Through the wall, a loud crash and yell didn't quite manage to grab his attention. Nor did the heavy slam of a door.

The shriek from the corridor almost succeeded. "Hatake!"

Ryouma had seen that face on the battlefield, where shadow-smudged eyes sank deep in strained white faces, where hope mingled with horror. He hadn't expected--hadn't wanted--to see it again. If you broke down someone's door he was supposed to yell at you, and you could have a fine furious fight and get it over with. He wasn't supposed to stand there, wavering on his feet, looking like--

"I was trying to sleep!" a thin, reedy tenor voice screamed at Ryouma's elbow. "Twenty years of service to Konoha! Four years in the ANBU Intelligence Cryptology Department! Forty-eight hours breaking one code! And all I ask is a little peace!"

Ryouma looked down. Down further. It was the neighbor with the plaid bathrobe again, armed with a flimsy scrap of paper instead of a kunai. He had to reach up to brandish the note under Ryouma's nose. "I am filing a complaint! I have no patience for your drama! If you wish to pursue your--your escapades you will do them elsewhere!"

"Go to hell," Ryouma told him.

The man's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment; then he drew himself up like a bantam rooster and stabbed a finger at Ryouma's chest. "You zip up your sweater, you--boy! Hatake attacked me! And you destroyed a door and almost compromised the structural integrity of the wall! Not to mention waking me up. Again."

"I told you where to go," Ryouma said. "If you don't know the way, I can help you along."

Whatever the little man's other faults, he wasn't a coward. He squared his shoulders, gripped his paper, and hissed, "Believe me, when I report this, you won't just be evicted." He backed up two steps into the hall. "You'll be hung, drawn, and quartered! I'll personally see to it that--"

"Tousaki Ryouma," Ryouma said. "Written with the kanji for dragon and horse. Make sure you get it right."

The neighbor's door slammed so violently Ryouma felt the wall shake against his back. He let his breath out slowly and stared down at the floor. Long black streaks scorched themselves across the pale carpet, raying out from the splintered debris of the door. He scuffed his good foot carefully over one of the scorch-marks. It crunched.

"Sorry," he said, quietly. "When Shiba left, I thought-- You could've come if you wanted her back!"

While Eisuke yelled and Ryouma talked him down with the leaden tones of a man hanging onto his temper by a thread, Kakashi slid his fingers carefully into the thick ridge of fur rising like a wave down the back of Hoshika's neck, and clenched his hand. She shifted her weight, letting him lean against her side.

Ryouma had thought--what?

Judging by the wreck of his former door, it had been been worth punching through unbreakable lightning seals for. Minato's seals. How had Ryouma even done that?

Why had he done that? He didn't even like Shiba, unless something drastic had changed in the last few days.

You can't chase me away.

Kakashi had made a choice at the monument; Ryouma hadn't. And with the other man standing in front of him now, shadows hollowed into angular cheeks, desperate anger flickering in wide black eyes, the litter of broken wood splintered around him, it was hard to convince himself that this was really keeping Ryouma safe.

And I don't feel like leaving.

He was wearing the brown hoodie from the riverbank.

Kakashi dragged a hand over his face, felt dried salt sting at his fingers, and tried to remember what being awake felt like.

"I think I want coffee," he said.

"You think--" Ryouma began furiously, and choked himself silent under the dogs' dark stares. Kakashi was leaning on the big shepherd as if he'd fall over without her, and he hadn't yelled. Ryouma had smashed his door in, scorched his walls and ruined his carpet, and Kakashi...wanted coffee.

At least he hadn't told Ryouma to go away.

"Fine," Ryouma said. He shifted awkwardly sideways, found the kitchen counter, and left his crutches tilted against it. If he put most of his weight into the hand he braced on the countertop, he could hitch himself around without even hopping much at all. Cupboard on the right, Kakashi had said, almost a month ago, and apparently he didn't shift things around much, because the can of instant coffee was still there. Ryouma's fingers left streaks on the dusty lid.

Pakkun had followed him into the kitchen. "He keeps his mugs over the sink," the pug rumbled. "Kid, you have any idea what you're doing?"

"Better one than he does, I'll bet." Ryouma slammed the cupboard shut and hobbled a step sideways to the tap. Pakkun danced out of the way. "If he didn't trust me with Shiba, he coulda come and got her. Hell, he coulda not left her with me in the first place."

"He can hear you," Pakkun hissed.

"Good," Ryouma said recklessly. He shoved two mugs of water into the microwave, punched the power button, and turned himself carefully around to lean against the counter, braced with both hands behind him. Kakashi was crouching over the splintered remains of his door, with Hoshika hovering at his shoulder. Ryouma met his eyes without flinching. "I won't be left behind, either."

Fingers stilled against the burned out edge of a former seal, smudging flecks of soot. Kakashi pulled his hand back and got carefully to his feet, forcing himself not to stagger as his balance faltered. Hoshika pressed close, but this time he stepped away.

Ryouma's gaze didn't flicker; steady black eyes stayed fixed on Kakashi's face, slightly narrowed. Even from where he stood, Kakashi could see the tension coiling through clearly overworked muscles, standing out in the sharp edge of Ryouma's jaw, the stiff set of his shoulders. Still braced for a fight.

Kakashi wasn't sure he had much fight left.

It was too easy to think of the riverbank and the hospital. The rooftop and the showers.

Twice in the showers. Catching Ryouma when he'd fallen, head cracked open by a blow Kakashi hadn't stopped--and getting rescued in return, when he'd turned his back on a teammate who wasn't.

How many times had Ryouma said he wouldn't be driven away?

But Kakashi had already give his answer, back at the start. Fifteen years a ninja, seven years a jounin, five an ANBU. Four-hundred and thirty-one missions. One genin team. Sixteen dogs. Eighty-seven genin, chuunin, jounin and ANBU. And one sensei.

I know what being a shinobi means.

One hundred and six. He'd break if Ryouma was one hundred and seven.

He tilted his head back, set his jaw, and grabbed every piece of resolve he had left. "So leave me behind."

Some answers didn't require thought. A kunai in the hand blocked a descending blade; a punch to the gut earned one to the jaw. Kakashi's challenge wasn't any different.

"No," Ryouma said flatly. "We had this out already. I don't want mourners--and I don't wanna be alone in the meantime, either. I think you're the same. Maybe you should've thought it through before you saved my life the first time. Or the third. I'm no martyr. And I'm not crazy, either," he added belatedly.

Ginta's ideas weren't just crazy; they were stupid.

The microwave beeped at his elbow. He ignored it. "Look, I'm not asking you to go out with me. Ginta can do that, and probably give you a better time of it, anyway. I'm just--"

I need you when things fall apart.

He wet his lips. "I'm just asking for a chance."

"To do what?" Kakashi's hands trembled and clenched at his sides, flinching from movement to stillness. Weaved through with false chakra, his pathways burned just enough to keep his focus balanced on the edge of awake. "You don't want mourners--how do you think this works? You show up for a few months, prove yourself so annoying I can't help but notice, then die in a blaze of glory and expect me to forget?"

I've got no plans to be the one left hurt enough to mourn you, he'd said to Ginta. Less than two days and he was already re-living the same conversation--but this time it was so much harder.

"Kid--" Pakkun began, baritone voice rumbling beneath Hoshika's soft whine.

"Too damn late, Ryouma," Kakashi snapped, cutting them both off. His chest ached again, enough to make his eyes burn; this time he was long past caring. "I don't forget anything--I never forget anything. You want yourself remembered as an ANBU hero? Fine, it's already in my head. And when they cut your name in the stone, I'll see that every day, too. I'll even talk to you. And when you don't talk back--"

He broke eye contact, voice choking into silence.

"Take a look around," he rasped, when his throat eased enough to speak. "How many people do you see?"

"Me," Ryouma said. "Pakkun. Hoshika. I don't see you trying to drive them away."

"Don't give him ideas, kid," Pakkun growled.

"He's getting 'em fine on his own," Ryouma snapped. The sharp edges of the countertop bit into his fingers; he clenched his hands tighter, and heard the cheap laminate groan. The microwave beeped again. He loosened his grip, reached back without looking, and hit a button at random. The machine started up again with a steady purr. Ryouma dropped his hand to the counter again and leaned back against it. Even without his knee trying to buckle under him, he thought, he would have needed something to lean on.

"I asked around the mission office, a while back," he said at last. His voice almost trembled from the effort of keeping it steady. "I ran two A-ranks and an S, my first month in. You know how many rookies score those kind of stats? You ran two S-ranks, your first month, but ANBU was less than half-strength then, and no one's matched you yet. No rookie's ever run more than two missions with you, either. Reiko said she thinks it's cause no one's good enough for you. Well, I'm damn well good enough, and you make up for me when I'm not--and I do the same for you. If I get killed hanging around you, it'll be because the other guy was better--maybe even good enough to take you out, too, 'cause I'll be damned if I'll leave my teammate without someone at his back. So you can just stop trying to protect me from myself, all right? I don't need a baby-sitter or a bodyguard. I need a friend."

Kakashi flinched back half a step, mouth opening on a retort--and snapping shut again when he couldn't find one. Hoshika planted herself behind him, lean body solid and warm against the backs of his thighs, blocking and supporting all at once. He almost fell over her before swift chakra rose up and caught him, seeping from healthy canine coils into chilled skin.

The apartment smelled like overheated coffee and desperate rage, worried dogs and dawning exhaustion--his or Ryouma's, Kakashi couldn't tell anymore. Across the room, leaning against the counter with white hands and shaking knees, Ryouma looked half a breath from falling and never getting up. His eyes burned black in the pale cut of his face.

And they were talking about friends.

Again.

If there had been anything left in him but the last fleck of stubbornness needed to stay on his feet, Kakashi would have laughed. Loud and long and probably hysterical, until some nice lady in white scrubs came along to jab him with a needle and make the world spin away.

He dragged a hand over his face and into his hair.

"I've had one friend in my life," he said, hoarse-voiced, and felt Hoshika stir behind him. Pakkun's ears came up. "One. And I sucked at it. I was a teenager and--stupid. And I swore I'd protect her with my life." Minato had been a teacher. Obito had been an enemy and a lesson and a weight on young-jounin shoulders. But Rin...

"Two years; I kept her safe for two years. And then I let a monster eat her." Behind his hitai-ate, the sharingan stung and bled salt-water into cloth. His voice caught. "But before that--I wasn't a good friend. I drove her insane most of the time; wasn't around enough, couldn't talk to her. Came home injured so often it made her cry--and she was a medic. They don't cry much."

He bit his lip with sharp canine teeth, stopping the words before they cracked him in half. Dragged a breath that smelled like sour tide and tried to think.

"If you want a friend--go somewhere else. Find anyone. Someone who'll do it right. Ginta would take you in a heartbeat. And Tsume. Her kids are half in love with you already..." He lost the battle with words--with breath--and strangled into silence. It felt too much like tearing his chest open, braiding grief into a noose and hanging himself. He'd lost Ginta. Lost a hundred and six people before him. Spent seven years in front of a memorial, saying sorry any way he could.

Called up a clone and twisted it into something wrong.

"I can't--" His vision blurred and went away; he closed his eye. "I--"

Ryouma was still on his feet. Three months a rookie and better than most. Half his chest ripped away less than a week ago and he'd still come around to find Kakashi and yell at him. Stuck close and refused to be driven away.

All for a man who'd done nothing but mess up in every way possible.

Small paws rested against his shin as Pakkun balanced on his hind legs and leaned against him. "Kid..." he said softly.

Ninja didn't cry. ANBU didn't break. Geniuses were never wrong.

Kakashi covered his face with his free hand and didn't have the will to care. Two words burned in his throat, caught against his teeth, and found themselves spoken before he lost the ability completely.

"Don't go."

Ryouma didn't have much chakra left. It didn't matter. He dredged it up with his fingernails, wove tattered rags of energy around weak joints and through exhausted muscles. Kakashi stood six feet away, measured in eternities. Ryouma managed it in four steps.

One arm slipped around stiff shoulders. He wasn't quite sure what to do with the other; a tentative pat or two on the back seemed less awkward than anything else. There was no wall to lean against, here. He tried not to need it.

"Kuromaru's still in the hospital because of me," he said, raw-voiced. "Tsume can't sleep alone, so I drug myself senseless so she can sleep in my bed without either of us freaking out. Ginta hunted me down yesterday to-- If he wants anyone, it's not me. They're not you."

Better, in some ways. Infinitely less, in others. None of them were explainable, and all of them were important. He smoothed his hand over Kakashi's back again, feeling the shudders of suppressed sobs, and found the words that came nearest.

"They're not safe. You are."

Wrong.

Kakashi found his laughter, grating like crushed glass inside of his ribcage; it made it as far as his throat and died in the breath he couldn't quite catch. The hand over his mouth pressed harder, crushing cloth to his lips as he tried to keep silent.

Ryouma hadn't left. He'd stepped close and reached out and--

The arm around Kakashi's shoulders felt like a weight and a lifeline all at once. Like a weakness he shouldn't want and couldn't afford, but couldn't step away from. The memory of the riverbank tugged at him, wrapped up in the scent of sweat and grass curling away from Ryouma's brown hoodie. But this was different. This wasn't sex, or a story told to stop him from throwing up. This was--

This was just a hug, and it shouldn't make him feel destroyed from the inside out. Especially when Ryouma smelled like raw guilt and dry ash, talking about the people they'd hurt while his chakra flickered and drained away.

He was safe.

And Ryouma had already seen the worst of him--seen everything of him. Rooftop and riverbank, what he hid behind black cloth and flaking control. He knew the memorial; he'd seen the cherry trees. He lived in the monument's shadow.

And his arm was still around Kakashi's shoulders.

Kakashi shuddered, choked, and grabbed worn brown cloth with both hands. Buried his face against solid muscle and hard collarbone, and let himself believe the lie, just for a moment.

Breath seared the hollow of Ryouma's throat. He swallowed convulsively, patted at Kakashi's back, and focused everything he had on not letting his knee buckle. Or letting his head tip back...

He needed a friend. And maybe Kakashi needed the same, no matter what he said. Ryouma had whined to Tsume only two nights ago about being able to count his friends on one hand, but one friend was infinitely worse than a bare handful. Arata and Hiroyuki were back on the border, three days' run and a veil of secrecy away, but at least he'd left them without another name carved on the Stone.

How long had Kakashi been alone?

His helpless hand stilled, flattened over the sharp line of Kakashi's spine. "Closing yourself off doesn't make you stronger," he said softly. "I never been very good at it, but I figured out that much. And I gotta say, if you're gonna sit in a dark room, it's better not to do it alone. Helps to have someone around to make you coffee."

When he'd been very small, somewhere in the aftermath of inheriting a tanto, a dog pack, and a living room floor with a fresh blood stain, Kakashi had heard the folk wisdom that crying helped. That there was some mythical property in leaking saline until the the world became a better place. He'd listened, measured it against rule twenty-five of the one-hundred codes of shinobi conduct, and sworn he'd never be weak enough to do it.

But now he was, and it wasn't helping. His face was wet, his mask was soaked, his eyes felt sanded raw--and none of it mattered, because twelve years of grief couldn't find an outlet in thirty seconds of tears. There was just more hurt, rising up to crush his lungs flat, and all he'd done was rip the lid off...

But Ryouma's hand on his back, long fingers pressed firm between hitching shoulderblades; his scent, woven into cloth and warm, scarred skin, cutting through even the biting kiss of hot salt; his voice, dipping low and gentle, vibrating through the depths of his chest and winding around yet more advice; the way he didn't rear back, appalled, from a ninja who couldn't remember any of the rules right now, let alone the twenty-fifth...

That helped.

Kakashi even managed a weak, strangled laugh at the poor joke, and didn't wince when the noise tripped over a sob and muffled itself in Ryouma's chest. Behind his legs, chakra bound in fur and flesh pressed closer, keeping him on his feet. Down to one side, on the edge of awareness, small paws braced against his shin.

"I'm not alone," he managed, between shuddery breaths. "I h-have Hoshika. And Pakkun. And a healthy understanding of how much caffeine the human body can take." And a heartbeat, flickering just beneath the edge of his jaw, that was far more comforting than it had any right to be.

He was in so much trouble.

"Hey," Ryouma said. "I've never overdosed. Not that anyone's noticed, anyway. Soldier pills don't count." He managed to stop himself just before he launched into full-scale babbling, and rubbed Kakashi's back again instead. His hoodie, already itchy with sweat, was starting to get damp again. Tissues might be a better idea than coffee.

But when he shifted his weight, testing if movement was an option, his left knee buckled. His grip tightened reflexively; his pathways burned as he scraped up the chakra for another shoddy reinforcement. Kakashi hiccuped.

"Oh, come on," Ryouma said. "Crying's one thing. I haven't hiccuped since I was five." He tried a stumbling step; Kakashi moved with him. Hoshika's solid bulk against Kakashi's legs kept them from tipping too far over. Three steps, four, and they were halfway to the bed. Ryouma had to pause to catch his breath. At least he wasn't hiccuping.

"Dude," he said at last. "You're what, twenty? Twenty-one? And you make your bed?"

There it was; time to stop.

"Twenty," Kakashi rasped, and forced himself to let go. His fingers hesitated in well-worn cloth, then released and withdrew; he pulled back, reaching up to drag a hand over his face, and stumbled when Hoshika leaned against his knees. Ryouma tightened his grip just as a snap of canine chakra caught Kakashi from behind, trapping him between a heaving ribcage and a concerned german shepherd. "And j-just because I possess a Y chromosome," he muttered roughly, trying not to rest his forehead against Ryouma's collarbone, "doesn't mean I can't tidy. We're not all prehistorically terrified of clean sheets."

His apartment was normally organized; two and a half nights spent awake had just given him time to perfect that. He'd caught up on reading, too, even if he wasn't quite sure what he'd read.

He took a deep breath and coughed when it stuttered, tripping over another hiccup. His cheeks, already raw beneath black cloth, flamed. There was an accusing damp patch on Ryouma's hoodie, right around eye level, and his mask felt a whole lot worse. He couldn't even breathe through his nose. And any second now, Ryouma was going to say something else...

"You cried," Kakashi began, a shade desperately, then bit the words off so quickly they snapped. Ryouma had been tortured and terrified, freshly awake in hospital, half eaten by his own guilt. It wasn't the same.

And he wasn't Kakashi. There were no excuses.

"That's not--I didn't mean--" he tried to gather his thoughts together, catching his balance again when they lurched another step, afraid Ryouma was going to snarl or...

Leave.

The thought caught him between the eyes, effectively throttling speech. When he shook it off enough to pay attention, they were one step closer to the bed, his free hand was tangled back in soft brown cloth, and Pakkun was talking.

"--not slept in about three damn days and you look like about the same, brat the second. Sit the hell down before you break something else. Or I'll fetch that angry medic with the pretty wife. I'm sure he'd love to knock you both out."

"You could try fetching the maintenance guys instead," Ryouma said as airily as he could manage. "New door'd be good. Keep the petty thieves and the fanboys out."

"It didn't keep you out," Pakkun said sourly.

"I haven't committed petty theft in years," Ryouma said, hitching one more step. His knee sparked pain back at him, a dull ache that threatened far worse. Two steps. He could do that. He could do that because Kakashi was still crying, eye brimming over, voice choking up. Because one friend seven years dead shouldn't be able to breach the walls like that. Because Shiba had vanished in the twilight before dawn, and Kakashi had refused to open the door, and Ryouma refused to be left behind.

Hoshika slipped out of the way just in time. Kakashi's calves bumped against the bedframe; he wavered, released his fistful of sweatshirt, and dropped down on the bed like a puppet abruptly sliced off its strings. He caught himself just short of pitching over again, and stared fixedly down at the green shuriken-patterned coverlet. Straggling silver hair shrouded half his face; the mask took care of the rest.

If that was a hiccup shaking his shoulders, at least it wasn't a sob.

Ryouma lowered himself carefully down, and only fell the last six inches or so when his knee decided abruptly that he'd abused it enough. Kakashi's mattress was firm, the coverlet tucked in so tightly that a coin would've bounced. Ryouma poked restlessly at a cloth shuriken, fiddled with the zipper of his hoodie, and said finally, "Ginta found me yesterday. Pissed as hell. He said he talked to you, the night before we got out of the hospital. S'that what set you off, that day? 'Cause he damn near set me off, too. And I think we're all wound up tight enough to shatter at a touch."

His fingers brushed against skin bared by the sliding zipper. A stretch of skin, a strip of scar. He jerked his hand away, and rubbed it on his thigh. "Hell, you should've seen me night before last. I cried."

Kakashi lifted his head, turning just enough to see Ryouma's profile in the half-cut of his peripheral vision. The world blurred like a watercolour; he dragged the palm of his hand over his eye and tried to ignore the seep of tears that wouldn't quite stop. Ryouma cried; he'd cried twice. And that shouldn't mean anything more than it had a minute ago, but hearing the words from his own mouth...

After Ginta's name.

For a guy with a busted ankle, he sure got around a lot. Kakashi tried to unravel a relevant emotion from the barbed wire tangle in his chest, and did nothing but cut himself. One thing just led to the next--Obito to Minato to Rin, Ginta to Ryouma. And a hundred other names behind theirs, clotted together like a scab he'd just torn apart.

He paused, reconsidered that image, and pulled a face behind his mask. Wet cloth adhered to his lips, plastered against his nose, and made it hard to breathe; he reached up and dragged his mask off, taking his hitai-ate with it. Open air hit flushed skin like a slap. He scrubbed the dry side of his mask over his face, letting his hitai-ate hang around one wrist, and tried to inhale without a catch.

On his blind side, Ryouma was still facing forward, one broad hand rubbing nervously over his thigh. He'd been terrified to touch, Kakashi remembered suddenly, back at the hospital. Horrified at the damage his hands had done. He'd gotten over it, somehow, between waking up screaming and limping out on crutches.

"I'll get that door taken care of, then," Pakkun rumbled, breaking the stretching silence. He butted Kakashi's shin, traded a look with Hoshika, threw in a sharper glare at Ryouma, and trotted out. Hoshika leapt up onto the bed and settled herself on Kakashi's other side, leaning against his hip.

"He woke me up," Kakashi said finally, dropping his hands; one of them dug into long black fur and clenched. "The night before you and Tsume were released. He was fresh back from a mission. I guess he wanted to say hi--at least until he saw us all in the same bed. He got..." angry wasn't quite the word. "We had a fight. He kissed me; I strangled him. He threw a genjutsu at me; I--yelled, mostly. It was so easy to make him mad..."

He shut his eyes, felt hot lines streak down both cheeks, and reminded himself he didn't care. About any of it. His mask was down, his door torn off its hinges, living teammates scattered and snarling, dead ones still gone, and all he really wanted to do was sleep until the stupid tears stopped.

Except Ryouma was half an arm's length from his left elbow, looking into middle-distance with his hand clenched over his knee, still making no move to leave. It took everything Kakashi had not to lean against him.

"What'd he say to you?" he asked, instead, and almost managed to keep the words steady.

Ryouma's knuckles whitened. The brace pinched his knee; he took a deep breath and tried to unclench his fingers. "He didn't say that." He'd have been flat on the floor, crutches or no crutches, if he had. Sadao had died less than a month ago. And if Ginta hadn't heard the rumors, didn't know the truth, he should have known. He'd kissed Kakashi--assaulted him in anger, in a way just two steps and a broken nose away from what Sadao had done--and then he'd come to Ryouma to whine about being told to go to hell?

"That little son of a bitch," he breathed. "He said--he was all pissed off 'cause he said I was sleeping with the guy he was trying to date. I told him we weren't-- Well, that I wouldn't get in the way. He said he stopped by the hospital and ended up choked and chakra'd out, and that if I'd been awake it would've been worse. But I didn't think-- He didn't say--"

He couldn't shape the words. Couldn't think. Red fury knotted his breath and tripped his tongue. Ginta lied. Of course Ginta lied. He cheated at cards and made bad jokes and told stories that wound truth through a fascinating tangle of fiction. He had the kind of mind that left Ryouma racing to catch up, and he was a genjutsu expert; he knew exactly what strings to pull, what threads to manipulate. He'd had Ryouma offering him advice, offering him Kakashi, and he'd never said--

"I'll melt his damn face off," Ryouma snarled.

In the empty space between one breath and the next, Kakashi had his hands fastened back in the ragged cloth of Ryouma's collar. This time there was no comfort in the gesture. Ryouma's head snapped around hard enough to crack tense neck bones, expression broken between horror and fury and something Kakashi couldn't even read in the chalk-pale angles of his face.

Kakashi didn't give him the chance to speak.

"No," he grated, and his voice twisted out like a beaten-dog bark. Dull panic, so old and familiar it felt like a weapon he could use, made him reach for the words that hurt; the only ones that ever worked. "I just dragged you back from one mission with a teammate's blood on your hands--what makes you think I'd be the reason for it? I didn't--" He clenched his jaw, wiped his face blank. "I didn't let you have Sadao. I'm sure as hell not letting you have Ginta for less."

You didn't kill your teammates. You especially didn't sell the victim short when you'd let the rapist go. Even when the rapist still turned up dead, slaughtered at the victim's hands--but that had been orders. Ginta's revenge, held back until it could be sanctioned by someone in a position to make the right choice. Sadao had died to keep other ninja safe, other teammates, and that was something else entirely.

That wasn't murdering someone over a kiss that didn't even matter.

"And what the hell do you mean you wouldn't step in the way?" Kakashi demanded, voice splintering as his thoughts jerked sideways. Hands tightened in cloth hard enough to tear it. "There is no way. I'm not on the market for any of you bastards--I don't date. And--and--how can you step back if you keep promising to stay?"

He was losing the battle to keep his face guarded; his mask had fallen to the side somewhere, crumpled and forgotten. It didn't matter anymore. All that counted was the man in front of him, determined to thwart every single attempt made at keeping him safe--who wanted to stay and go and break down doors in the only place Kakashi could really sleep, even when he couldn't. And the other man, the even more complicated man, who apparently couldn't be trusted not to get himself killed even when Kakashi wasn't in his life.

To his side, Hoshika uncurled slowly and stood up, a soft-edged noise rumbling deep in the back of her throat. Kakashi almost snapped the summons on her, too tired to focus on one more thing.

"Tell me what I'm doing wrong," he said, when he managed to find the words, torn between anger and aching. "There's some secret to keeping you all alive and--away from me. Or keeping you alive and close. I don't care anymore. Just--whatever it is, I'll do it." He'd done everything else; he could do this too. "Please."

"I don't--"

Ryouma cut himself off just before he ran out of words again. Kakashi's hands still clenched in the neck of his sweater; when he swallowed, scarred knuckles brushed his throat. Tears glimmered again in salt-crushed lashes. And that broken catch in Kakashi's voice clawed at his ears and knifed through his chest, tangling fear and fury into heartbreak. He couldn't even protest that he hadn't really meant murder--not with that please still burning on Kakashi's lips.

He couldn't speak. But he could pry his hand away from its death-grip on his knee, and reach up. His fingertips brushed over the sharp line of Kakashi's cheekbone, and then glanced back to smear the spilling tears away. Kakashi squeezed his eye shut.

Ryouma's throat hurt.

"I don't know," he said at last, very quietly. "I don't think you're doing much of anything more wrong than the rest of us are. I didn't-- When I told Ginta I wouldn't get in the way, I meant, if you and he both wanted each other. I thought-- I'm an easy lay if I'm anything, right? I'm not dating you, and I'm not in love with you, and if I need you it's because you stop the world from falling apart."

He hadn't meant to say that. Too late to hold his tongue; he forced himself on. "So if you wanted him, I wouldn't hold you back. Only now I would," he added viciously. "Damn him!"

Kakashi's grip faltered and dropped away, hands falling to land on the bend of Ryouma's knee and the crumpled covers. That was and wasn't an answer; I don't know twisting into something else entirely, while long, unsteady fingers feathered over the salt-sticky cut of his too-bare face.

"If I had any virtue," he managed, "I'd appreciate the attempt to keep it safe. But seeing as I'm not an incapable heroine, and Ginta's definitely already feeling his bruises, you can stop trying to white knight me."

I'm not dating you, said Ryouma. Not in love with you. Two sentences that made something loosen and tighten in his chest all at once, but he was too exhausted to do more than glance at the emotions, and not nearly sane enough to make sense of them.

You stop the world from falling apart.

Kakashi leaned sideways, just enough to pull away from the hand against his face, and let himself slouch forwards, curling over until his forehead could rest just above the brace strapped to Ryouma's knee. The angle of his own arm hid half of his face; his hair shrouded the rest. Even through his blocked nose, he could catch the very edge of Ryouma's scent, torn between anger and something that was far too close to sorrow.

"You're not an easy lay," he muttered, and felt Hoshika settle slowly behind him. "You're about the most complicated--I don't have words for how much of a pain you are. Even before you broke my door." It should have been impossible to sleep with his seals gone, with his room wide open to anyone that felt like getting curious, but he didn't have the energy left to care. "If you were anyone else, I'd throw you the hell out..."

But underneath everything, hearing he was still needed, that he hadn't managed to drive Ryouma away despite a broken knee and crying like a child, was just enough to ease a fraction of the tension knotting his muscles harder than iron.

And that more than anything meant he was long past exhausted and falling off the edge.

"I need to sleep," he mumbled, quiet enough that the words were half lost. "Just for a bit. You can--you can go if you want." His fingers closed on denim for a fraction of a second, before he could make them loosen. "I'll keep it together better when I wake up."

The world or himself, either would be nice.

"Sounds like that'd be worth hanging around to see," Ryouma said. His palm smoothed over the wild bush of unruly hair, temporarily flattening a cowlick. "Anyway, if you're gonna take Shiba away without a goodbye, you owe me company." Tsume would be at the hospital all day, and... Even sleeping company was better than none at all.

Besides, staying meant not tracking Ginta down and kicking his fool head in. All things considered, that was probably the better choice. He'd be thinking rationally again by the time his temper cooled, and while at the moment he couldn't much see how an extra dose of rationality would help things, kicking Ginta's head in probably wouldn't, either.

And Kakashi was just enough of a martyr to not want him to do it.

"Okay," he said. "You sleep. Hoshika and I'll play poker and wait around for the door-fixer guy." The shepherd, halfway through rearranging herself to make room on the bed, paused to give him a disgusted look. He mustered up a grin for her. "Or we could just compare Kakashi stories."

Hoshika snorted, draped herself over half the pillow, and then stretched out again to bite down gently on a fold of Kakashi's shirt and tug. Ryouma helped. Kakashi tried to. Somehow the three of them managed to unfold the long body and roll Kakashi against the wall. He blinked dazedly at Ryouma, as if he wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten there.

"I'll be here when you wake up," Ryouma told him.

Kakashi nodded jerkily, tucked his head against Hoshika's flank, and closed his eyes. His breath lightened, evened. When Ryouma shifted his weight, and the mattress squeaked a protest, Kakashi didn't stir. Shadows bruised the hollows under his cheekbones, and a slight crease caught at his brows, but the tense line of misery in his mouth had eased away. Ryouma caught himself before he touched the place where it had been.

Hoshika was still watching him, golden eyes narrowed. He tipped his head to her in ironic salute and slipped off the edge of the bed. Straightened out on the floor, his leg didn't ache quite so badly. He drew his other knee up to his chest, leaned his head back against the bed, and remembered that he'd forgotten the coffee.

It could wait.