Ryouma blinked. "Sure," he said. He finished rolling the blood-stained jeans into the smallest bundle he could manage, shoved them into the bottom of his pack, and straightened carefully. "You feeling the need for a babysitter again? 'Cause I think we've pretty well proved we're responsible adults."

Kakashi didn't crack a smile. He looked...tired, which was to be expected. Strained, which wasn't. He'd recovered his mask, along with the rest of his ninja blacks; he should have looked sleek and smooth and mysterious again, a silhouette back-lit by the sunset glowing through the curtains. But the sleeveless ANBU turtleneck couldn't conceal the war between tension and exhaustion in the strong line of his shoulders, and his damp silver hair didn't quite shadow his eyes enough to hide the dark smudges underneath.

His knuckles were white on the flowered duvet.

Ryouma sat down on the other side of the bed. "On the other hand, I got groped by a drunk man last night, and I still remember it. I could have a panic attack any minute now. You should summon Shiba."

A flicker of anxiety curled in Kakashi's stomach before he caught the slightly ironic eyebrow twitch directed back at him, the warm, settled scent that was anything but panicked. He rolled his eyes and forced his fingers to unclench, then got up to go dig through his kit, hunting for the scroll tucked into his ANBU armour. "You didn't get groped that much," he said, as he set aside his own, unopened medi-kit. "At least you didn't have to kiss anyone--I think."

There was a blurry memory of trying to keep his balance on Ryouma's lap, fingers laced tight in his hair, something about drinks. A hand that definitely wasn't his stroking up Ryouma's thigh. But after that it all melted into nothing.

He'd tried not to think about it. It was like having a loose tooth in his brain, without the option of being able to rip it out.

The heavy scroll base slapped into his palm. He swallowed a relieved sigh, hooked his thumb under his mask to nick it with a sharp canine, and snapped the scroll open. Blood smeared dark red over the painted characters. He flicked the heavy paper out with a wrist-jerk he could do in his sleep, twisted his fingers through the seals, and pulled on his chakra.

Three seconds later, Shiba catapulted onto the bed and greeted Ryouma with a mid-air chest tackle. Hoshika cocked an ear and tucked her nose carefully under Kakashi's chin, sniffing the gauze taped beneath his mask. He wound his fingers into her fur. "Hi, beautiful."

Shiba yapped.

"And you, too."

"Hey, little lady, I'm glad to see you." Ryouma cuddled Shiba against his chest and rumpled the elegantly fringed ears. "You can be my comfort and solace. Kakashi refuses to admit I was deeply traumatized and he doesn't remember it."

Shiba nipped his fingers.

"How come no one believes me?" Ryouma complained. "I was the only sane and sober one there! Well, the only one to survive." He wondered, with a flicker of guilt, if the bartender-bodyguard counted as a witness. The man had seen Ryouma and Kakashi's faces--had gone off with Ryouma's shirt--but he hadn't seen the deed itself. And it wasn't like anyone would recognize Kakashi without his mask and Sharingan eye and silver hair, or like anyone would recognize Ryouma at all.

Except Shiki, who had.

Ryouma shivered, and concentrated fiercely on petting Shiba. "Speaking of sober. Can we never do that again?"

Beneath Ryouma's long, blunt-tipped fingers, Shiba quickly melted into a contented puddle of fur, tongue poking out between her tiny, needle-sharp teeth. Under Kakashi's own hands, Hoshika sighed quietly and stretched like a duchess.

But, now that he had a shield to think behind, Kakashi was a little more interested in Ryouma.

He settled down on the floor, putting his back to the closet door and crossing his legs, and smiled very slightly when Hoshika abandoned dignity for comfort and sprawled across his lap. Tweaking one long ear, he cast a glance over his mission partner from behind the reassuring bulwark of contented dog. There was tension there that hadn't been present a moment ago, firming the line of Ryouma's lips, chasing a shudder through long limbs. Even across the room, Kakashi caught the change in scent.

"What're the chances they'll ever make us run a seduction again?" he asked, drawing a mental circle around the word sober. "It's not like we're built for it."

Once at the bar, twice in Matsuda's private room. Three moments of crawling almost-panic and only one shot. Drugs hadn't been the only reason Kakashi had drank.

"Ryouma, what's your issue with alcohol?"

Shiba whined when Ryouma's hand went still. She bumped the hard curve of her skull into his palm, and he moved again, mechanically. Her fur was silky against his calluses, soft as it had been the night Tsume first came to his room and asked the same question in different words.

Who didn't stop? When you said no?

Tsume had had a right to know. Shiba had already heard. Kakashi had, a little, on the rooftop. And Kakashi had responded with some garbled nonsense about mayonnaise being thicker than water, and that his father had killed himself about the same time Ryouma's grandfather had his last drink. To hell with the both of them. If there was a hell, they were both probably there already.

"My granddad was a drunk," he said. The fine hairs grew in a little whorl at the back of Shiba's head; he parted them with a delicate finger, trying to see skin. "So were his pals. Mostly I stayed out of the way. I told you, once, I ran. That was afterwards. The old man just got mean when he was drinking, but his friends--"

Tsume had a right to know; he owed her more than he could give. But reasons ran deeper than that, because he knew what Tsume thought of him--or, more significantly, didn't think of him--and his confession hadn't changed that. She'd said she was sorry. She'd stayed, and kept the dark away. She'd known he was weak, and hadn't cared.

Kakashi thought he was strong, and that was the only reason he'd let Ryouma stay.

His throat tightened. Shiba whined again and tried to wriggle free. He let her go. Kakashi thought he was strong. They'd saved each others' lives, leaned on each others' shoulders, watched each others' backs. Ryouma had stopped Sadao.

How had Kakashi felt about himself, afterwards?

"Matsuda was better," he said. "I got to kill him. The other guy--I didn't even know his name. He was grey hair and a yellow grin, and he was so drunk I could taste it afterwards. He didn't--he wasn't Sadao. But Sadao didn't go for kids. And there were half a dozen of them there, and none of them stopped him. They were still drinking. Some of them watched. They liked it."

Matsuda had liked watching.

Kakashi barely noticed when Shiba tumbled into his lap. He caught her with an automatic hand, steadying the fragile little body, and stared at the man across the room. At the calloused artist's hands, held carefully still. The shoulders drawn so stiff they could have been carved from stone, the shadowed dark eyes looking at nothing at all.

It was interesting how fast you could go from anxious to furious. But family did that. Especially the family that left you behind.

Reason I ended up on the streets, Ryouma had said, the first time Kakashi had accidentally tripped over the subject, is 'cause my mom died when I was three years old, and my granddad drank himself to death when I was eight.

Eight.

Family that hurt you was a thousand times worse. Kakashi had never drowned in that particular crucible, but Ryouma--

They liked it.

He could remember Sadao's touch exactly; it had only been a month ago. The bite and the broken bones, the sharp edge of fear when he'd realized he was losing. But Ryouma had been there to tear the man away. To exact revenge in chakra and blistering rot before he'd called the medics, carried Kakashi home, and stayed the night, watching the dark while Kakashi slept and tried not to dream.

Who the hell had been there for him?

Behind black cloth, lips peeled back from dangerous teeth. Hoshika's head came up, long ears pressing flat. A soft whine curled in Shiba's throat. Kakashi slid to his feet, shedding the warm weight of dogs, and crossed the room with silent steps. Ryouma was seated on the side of the bed closest to him. Dark eyes came up when Kakashi drew near; they tracked him warily as he stopped and sank down into a crouch, right in front of Ryouma. One hand settled on a khaki-covered knee, fingers splayed carefully over the broken-healed bone.

"Tell me they're dead." He tried not to growl. It didn't quite work.

Ryouma choked on something that might have been a laugh. It didn't sound much like one. "I dunno. Probably." Fifteen years and a bloody war might have killed them, even if alcohol hadn't. He'd never gone back to find out. "I survived. That's the point, right?"

That's enough, isn't it?

Kakashi hadn't pushed him away before, on the hospital roof. He'd hauled Ryouma up on his scraped-bloody shoulders instead, carrying the crippled man who'd come to rescue him, and rambled about how dogs made better family than people did. That was probably true, if Tsume's family was anything to go by...

And Kakashi wasn't going away. Ryouma seized onto that with both hands. He could meet that single grey eye, blazing like lightning; he could refuse to tremble beneath the hand curled possessively over his knee. He'd been weak before, but not anymore. He'd drunk that shot, tasted a mouth still tingling with the after-burn of sake, endured Matsuda's hands, and then rotted the man's gut and throat away. And if Kakashi had sacrificed himself to rescue Ryouma, tossing back the drugged drink with a joke and a smile, hadn't Ryouma made up for it afterward?

"It's a trigger," he said. "The taste, the smell--just bein' around drunk men. But I didn't break, did I? I did the mission." And if he'd only managed it because Kakashi was there--well, Kakashi was here now, wasn't he?

His dry throat shredded his voice, but Kakashi was close enough to hear anyway. "Thanks for helping me keep it together."

Unlike the first time Ryouma had ever thanked him, Kakashi didn't have to lunge quick and catch the man before he fell. Unlike the second time, he didn't flush and change the subject. He didn't even throw it back in Ryouma's face. Just insult me like you know you want to. Instead his fingers hesitated over Ryouma's kneecap, tough cloth catching against callouses, before he squeezed the joint and pulled his hand back.

"Should be thanking you," he said, consonants dragged roughly over the lingering edge of a growl. "You came up with that band thing and killed the target. Got me out." Kept his cool in the middle of a personal nightmare, not to mention the first mission he'd had since the mess with Tsume and Kuromaru. Kakashi touched the edge of bandage beneath his mask, where a blade would've ended his night the terminal way if Ryouma hadn't intervened.

He didn't remember that particular rescue, but at least he was alive to not remember it.

And no longer anxious.

Maybe it was the warm scent of dog in the room, or the lick of fury still coursing through his insides (whatever Ryouma thought, Kakashi was going to find those men, even if it was only to shatter their gravestones), but mostly it was Ryouma, walking the line between strength and honesty. Talking about old hurts with stillness in his hands, steadiness in his voice, and steel in his eyes.

Proving one more time why he was worth standing by.

Kakashi rose to his feet and sat down on the bed, drawing his legs up to tuck one beneath the other before he called the dogs with a low whistle. Hoshika trotted over, ears pricked and tail high. Sober brown eyes swept over Ryouma before she settled down by his feet and, very carefully, licked one hand. Shiba leapt back up into his lap. Kakashi reached over to stroke one fringed ear, hesitated again, then left his hand on Ryouma's thigh.

"Guess I'll have to give up drinking," he said. Dark humour touched one corner of his mouth. "The Matsudas of the world will be very sad."

"They don't deserve you, anyway." Ryouma laid a gentle hand over Shiba's back, and her fur-feathered tail beat lightly against his stomach. He could feel her tiny chest fluttering against his legs, the gust of Hoshika's warm breath over his bare feet, the comforting weight of Kakashi's hand on his thigh. Kakashi had been right about his dogs making better family. But sometimes people did all right, too.

"We made a pretty damn good team," he said, watching the play of tendon and bone in his hand as his fingers flexed into Shiba's fur. "I mean, three other pairs failed that mission, right? And we did it. Just like we've done everything else. So we're not just good ninja, we're really hot good ninja."

He had no idea what he was saying. It didn't really seem to matter.

"Of course, the porn video we didn't do would've proved that, too. Might've been easier. Problem with a video is you never know where it's gonna end up, and if somebody like--like Matsuda got it, I might have to spend the rest of my life taking showers. Which wouldn't be so bad. Can you please make me shut up?"

Talking himself off the edge really wasn't going to work if he kept talking himself back to it. And then falling off the other side.

Kakashi lifted his hand and covered Ryouma's mouth, feeling the clean edge of freshly shaved skin beneath his palm. A catch of breath against his fingers.

"You're never letting that porn video thing go, are you?" he said, standing over the chasm between amusement and yet more anger at the bitter twist in Ryouma's scent. The one that went side by side with Matsuda. "At this rate you'll have us graduating from ninja, skipping past seductionists, and landing up as full time hookers." He reflected briefly on really hot said in Ryouma's deep, gravelling bass. "Really well paid hookers, admittedly. But I think Konoha might kill us."

Ryouma wasn't the only one who could talk too much.

Beneath Kakashi's hand, slightly dry lips parted with an inhale. A muscle flexed against his fingertips, laid over the edge of a knife-line jaw. Burnished light glimmered against skin that was still a little too pale as the last of the lowering sun dipped beneath the horizon.

Considering Ryouma had just admitted to being molested, Kakashi should probably stop touching him.

He didn't.

"If you're not allowed to talk," he said quietly, watching Shiba curl up against the hard plane of Ryouma's stomach, "this is going to be a really long night."

"I can talk," Ryouma said against the crease of a scarred palm. "Just not babble. And it's better if you talk, too." Ryouma had spilled enough tonight. "If we're doing sharing and caring time, you gotta take your turn."

On the other hand...

He caught another deep breath, tasting the edge of salt and skin against his lips. "Or we could skip the sharing. I can think of a dozen things that're more fun. Most of 'em don't even involve sex." He grinned. Kakashi's fingers twitched against his jaw. "You never did get that comedy flick. Or, hey, this time we really could go for pay-per-view--"

Kakashi shoved him. Ryouma caught himself, laughing, on his elbows; Shiba yipped with annoyance and rearranged herself over his navel. His back protested the sudden movement with a warning ache, but the painkillers dulled it enough to ignore. He grinned dazzlingly up at Kakashi. "Guess if you really want me on my back, we can go for that instead."

Genius he might have been, but even Kakashi had a hard time following Ryouma's line of thought from I was molested to Hey, wanna have sex?

But the laughter smelled real, rumbling deep in Ryouma's chest with a catch of sweetness and summer forest. It didn't hide the bladed edge of stress cut through old pain, but it mellowed it. Cleared the air a little.

Behind the grin, dancing dark eyes begged him just to go with it. Forget the rest.

"You're not even on speaking terms with subtle, are you?" Kakashi muttered, shifting up until he could sit level with Ryouma's head. Hair fell across his face, wilder without his hitai-ate to keep it back, silvering the edges of his vision.

He was grey hair and a yellow grin.

Shiki's hair had been silver.

Rage boiled up again, clenched in the muscles of his jaw. But Shiki was dead, Ryouma's attacker was probably dust, and Kakashi was damned if he'd be the third man on the list to inflict more hurt.

Even if he already had.

He lifted his hand, found no trace of hesitation, and slipped his fingers through the soft, shower-spiked mess of Ryouma's hair. Felt the hard outline of delicate bone against his palm as he paused briefly, cupping Ryouma's skull, before moving his hand down to sweep his thumb carefully over the arch of one sable-black eyebrow. Old scars marked across his forehead, so pale they barely gleamed in the light, made Kakashi pause again. A remnant from their second mission together, when a mace had shattered Ryouma's mask against his face.

He hadn't died then, either.

Kakashi leaned down until he was close enough to feel the catch of Ryouma's breath. "I won't be your therapy," he said, finding a rasp in his voice that went with the nervous liquid flicker in his stomach, "but if you're looking for a piece of oblivion, I don't mind helping you find it."

"I don't need therapy," Ryouma said. This close he could see the tic of a muscle under the mask at the corner of Kakashi's mouth, the way steel-grey and rain-grey and silver-grey mingled like the water-pattern of an heirloom sword in his eye. The curve of a callused palm cradled his cheek, long fingers tangling in his hair. Kakashi's skin was cooler now than when they'd woken. A hot drink in a snowstorm...

That's what Kakashi was offering, wasn't it?

Was it what Ryouma was looking for?

I want there to be a next time, he'd whispered, under the heartbeat pounding of water. And Kakashi had gone still and quiet, and asked if this was just about sex, or if there was something else. They hadn't really found an answer; he'd thought they didn't need one. They couldn't plan for a future they might not have.

But this was now. And the stroke of Kakashi's thumb was light over Ryouma's brow, the faint floral scent of the hotel shampoo undercut by the clean cold scent of his body. The offer lingered on his parted lips, an elegant bow-line beneath the mask. If Ryouma just tipped his head up, he could touch...

He sank down instead, relaxing the tense muscles of his shoulders, easing his sore back into the wrinkled blankets. Kakashi's finely carved face hardened to marble. Ryouma tried to smile at him.

"I don't want oblivion, either. Peace'd be nice, I guess."

"So take drugs." Kakashi sat up, hand falling away to catch against fawn-pattern bed covers. He'd judged wrong; that smokey edge of lowering thunder-scent didn't mean what he thought it did. Or Ryouma just didn't know what he wanted.

But he'd still managed to catch Kakashi out on a limb, offering--

Who offered an abuse victim sex?

Cotton-weave threads snapped under his fingertips. Whatever had happened to him, Ryouma wasn't a victim. The sky had a better chance of catching on fire. Ryouma was--irritating. Frustrating. Maddening. He was--

Moving Shiba carefully aside and rolling onto his flank. Bracing one arm beneath his head, the other by his side, and pressing the hard plane of his sternum solidly against Kakashi's knee. Brief lines of pain chased swiftly over his face, telling the story of an injury that still ached--that knife wound over his shoulders. Kakashi found his hand lifting without thought; he caught it and dropped it back to the bed. Curled between Ryouma's stomach and Kakashi's leg, Shiba opened her jaws in a disgruntled yawn before she settled back down. At the foot of the bed, Hoshika was nothing but a warm chakra presence, quietly keeping guard.

Kakashi stared down at crooked smile lilting one corner of Ryouma's mouth higher than the other, the dark strands of messy hair just long enough to get into darker eyes, and gave up trying to touch ground with reality. Since when did Ryouma turn down sex?

And since when did Kakashi get rejected?

He touched the hard edge of Ryouma's shoulder, traced the defined path of muscle down to his biceps, where clean cotton and phantom tribal ink still hid the real curve of a ruined ANBU tattoo. Breathed the lingering edge of uncertainty and laughter in the air.

"Some days I think I hate you," he said, looking into the middle distance of nothing. "Especially when you make no sense."

"Some days I hate me." Ryouma wedged his arm a little more securely under his head and tried not to shiver under Kakashi's fingertips. "Kind of a lot lately, actually. I didn't mean to--"

He stopped, started over again. "If you're going to be a liar, you should be a good one. I'm not. I bust up laughing, or I just get too ridiculous for anyone to believe, or--I get scared of what the truth really is. So I run. Say I've been dating a girl for a month, and we're in bed, and she tells me she thinks she may be falling in love. So the next day I apply to get sent back to long-term duty on the border. Because she's sweet and funny and damn she's good in bed, and I'm already half in love--and if she is, too, there's nothing but a broken heart waiting for her. D'you get me? When it's just sex it's fine and dandy, but it's never just sex, not for me or for her."

Just sex? Kakashi had asked, as he sprawled in Ryouma's lap with the water dripping from his hair and pearling on his skin. Or are we doing something else here?

Ryouma tipped his head off his arm and pressed his face against the blanket. Muffled in quilted cloth, he murmured, "An' she's not like you."

Kakashi's hand stilled.

Knew a girl once, Ryouma had said, standing on the wind-burned roof of Konoha's hospital. Loved a girl, once. We'd been together maybe a month.

I brought her tags back, for her mother.

And Kakashi had called him in idiot, asked who fell in love after a month. He hadn't listened.

He was listening now.

He was trying very hard not to stand up and leave, now. They'd had sex three times, for three different reasons, but none of them had been love. People didn't fall in love after two and half months. Kakashi didn't fall in love ever. And Ryouma--

That's your problem, rookie. You bound up to everyone like a--like a stupid eager puppy. All big eyes and wagging tail, asking for people to love you and handing your heart out to anyone that'll take it. Running on to the next when they throw it back broken.

Sometimes he hated having an eidetic memory.

Carefully, to the soft echo of Shiba's whine, he pulled his hand back. Shifted his weight until there was a breath of space between his knee and Ryouma's chest. Closed the one eye that never saw things rose-tinted and tried to think.

"For someone who doesn't want to be chased away, you're not making this easy." They'd done this already. Talked about mourners and graves and dead best friends. Pretty girls lying in the earth, carrying pieces of hearts too far gone to break. He'd cried himself raw in Ryouma's arms. Don't go. Ryouma had screamed himself silent under Kakashi's hands. You're safe.

And a year from now, two if they got lucky, one of them would turn around and find the other gone.

Kakashi opened his eye, looked at the door, and saw no escape in the panelled wood. Nowhere to run that wouldn't catch up with him. He'd stand at Ryouma's gravesite, wherever they dug it, and see the man in the ground -- then he'd stitch himself back together, take another mission, and live the life until it killed him. There was nothing else left.

A shuddery breath hissed through his teeth. Carefully, he leaned forward until he could rest his head against Ryouma's shoulder. Wrapped his hand around the man's left biceps and held on hard enough to hurt.

"I don't love you," he whispered. "Change the subject."

"No strings," Ryouma agreed. "It's okay." He should have learned his lesson from Hitomi-sensei, or even from Tsume. Kakashi'd told him he didn't have a chance from the very beginning. He'd told himself. And he'd gone ahead and broken his oath and handed over his heart anyway. "I should--y'know--back to Lightning Country, or something..."

He didn't move. Kakashi's forehead pressed against his shoulder; Kakashi's fingers bruised his arm. Against his stomach Shiba whimpered and scrabbled over Kakashi's knee, escaping from a trap of tension. Ryouma blinked against the scratchy coverlet and listened to the blood beat inside his head.

"I'm not supposed to have sex on missions," he said at last. "That's probably why--"

Kakashi had nearly died because he'd taken Ryouma's share of the drug. Misao had died because she'd been straddling him, pinning him down on his back in the long grass while she laughed and refused to let him kiss her. You couldn't quite compare Misao's mistake to Kakashi's sacrifice, but Ryouma's part hadn't changed.

"Dammit," he said, and squeezed his eyes closed so tightly that stars whirled against the black. "I should've just had myself gelded." The laughter in his voice trembled on the edge of something else. "When we get back to the village, maybe I will."

He lasted through the first hour. After that, though, he was more than willing to talk. You take away a man's testicles...

Kakashi's grip tightened hard enough to bruise the bone. Ryouma flinched slightly, a splintered inhale catching in his throat. He wasn't serious--no man made that threat seriously--but it didn't matter. The room smelled like rancid fruit and bitter lead, rainwater tempered by rusting steel. Old memories, new hurts, the lingering pulse of ragged thunder. All bleeding away from Ryouma's skin while the dogs whined and Kakashi tried to breathe.

He forced his fingers to unclench.

Ryouma's face was half-buried in the covers, eyes shut so tightly it looked painful, mouth set in a broken line. He shouldn't look like that. He was the kid who'd forged his place in the war and stripped flesh with both hands. The man who stood on the edge of hell and laughed when the flames reached for him.

He wasn't supposed to cry, not again.

Kakashi lifted his head. Then he pulled up his free hand, dragged it rough and careful through wild black hair, and leaned down until his masked lips brushed the shell of Ryouma's ear.

"I'm not going anywhere, idiot." He expected the words to break; they came out steady. "And if you stop having sex with me, on missions or off, you'll have much worse to worry about than singing soprano."

"You," Ryouma said, low and ragged, "are a bastard."

He rolled over onto his back again, crushing Kakashi's hand behind his head, glaring up wild-eyed and breathless. Kakashi jerked back, but didn't pull away; he was still close enough to kiss.

Ryouma had kissed him in Matsuda's bar, with the alcohol stinging on his tongue and Matsuda's hand slipping up his thigh. He'd kissed Misao on a windswept prairie, as she unzipped his chuunin vest and pulled him down. Then Kakashi had reached for a glass with a joke and a smile, and Misao had stared down at the bloody sword-tip between her breasts with a puzzled frown that never quite dawned into fear.

And Ryouma couldn't do anything but be too late.

He reached up, hooked his fingers into the edge of the mask, and ripped it down to bare the stubborn mouth and bandaged throat. "Sex doesn't kill people," he snarled. "Caring doesn't kill people. Being stupid about it does. If you knew the drinks were drugged, why'd you take mine?"

Cloth tore down, air hit skin, and Kakashi almost snapped Ryouma's neck. Seven years of hard-learned lessons clenched his fingers in blankets and tangled black hair before instinct yielded a corpse.

He took a slow burning breath.

"Because I didn't want to see you dead, asshole." Without thin-worn cloth in the way, the urge to lean down and sink his teeth into Ryouma's throat, to make him shut up and stop arguing and smell better, was strong enough to make Kakashi's jaw ache. He clenched his back teeth. "In case you missed it, alcohol doesn't exactly take you to a warm and fuzzy place. I wasn't blind."

Obito's eye seared behind its lid. Kakashi opened it and saw the world through layers of chakra-blue. Tightened his hold in Ryouma's hair, anchoring his head in place, and let him face down every secret kept hidden behind masks and scars.

Ryouma wanted to know why. Like there was even a question involved.

Like he didn't think there was anything of himself worth risking a life over.

"If I was already gone," Kakashi said, soft and dangerous, "why would I take you with me?" He remembered the sticky-sweet taste in his mouth, the solid muscle of Ryouma beneath him. The chaos before everything went black. "You got me out. You killed the damn target. Why are you making it hard?"

Sweat sheened the plane of Ryouma's throat. Kakashi bit his lower lip until teeth tore through.

Black and crimson spun like a pinwheel in the wind, distracting, dizzying. Ryouma wrapped his hand in the loose mask bunched at Kakashi's throat and refused to let himself fall in.

"I wouldn't've died. You didn't. You fought like a geriatric one-handed cripple, but that was the double dose. He didn't want to kill us--just make us easy to play with. And I could've done that and still killed him." Or given it a damn good try. You didn't need to be completely steady on your feet to kill a man with the Nikutai Tokasu, anyway; he'd done it concussed before, done it fainting with fever and bloodloss. You just had to get close enough to touch...

Blood was beginning to bloom on Kakashi's lip, dark as the iris of his spinning eye. Ryouma reached up and wiped the spilling trickle away.

"You don't have to love me," he said. "You don't even have to give a damn. But you can stop treating me like I can't see it when you do."

Frustration welled up, dark and angry and complicated, meshed with the desire to drag Ryouma to the nearest wall and beat his head against it until he could actually see what was right in front of him.

"I didn't know what it was." The words snapped out like a bark, like a bone breaking. "I thought it was poison, maybe. And if it was then it was probably fatal. But I didn't even think that until after I'd taken mine. You might call me a bastard, but I'm not enough of a traitor to toss my partner in front of a damn kunai when I don't have to. And I'm not going to stand by and let you throw yourself down for a rapist, either, even if you think you should!"

He caught his breath, feeling fingers slip in the blood smearing down his chin. Ryouma stared up at him, flat on his back and not giving a single inch.

Thinking Kakashi didn't care.

"I wanted to give you time to kill the target and get out. Maybe get me out, if you could." He lifted his free hand and caught Ryouma's wrist, pulling it down before fingers cut themselves against his teeth. Didn't let go. "And you did. You keep talking about trust, Ryouma. Why won't you trust me?"

"I do!" Ryouma twisted his wrist, but Kakashi's grip was tempered steel; he'd win bruises before release.

Kakashi's wrist was bruised, too. Blurred fingerprints like stormclouds darkened the pale skin where Matsuda had gripped him hard enough to make bone creak. Kakashi had drunk--twice--and then signaled Ryouma to move, ripped free and lunged into his own fight thinking he was a dead man anyway...

And Ryouma hadn't even watched him go, because he knew Kakashi'd get the job done. Trusted Kakashi to fight his own fights and watch Ryouma's back. That was what partners did, wasn't it?

Trust cuts both ways.

"I do," Ryouma said. "I mean, I just told you, didn't I? About-- I wouldn't have if I didn't trust you." He'd told Tsume because he owed her, because she asked and he couldn't refuse. But if he owed Kakashi a debt he'd paid it off as often as he drew on it, and that kind of debt wasn't the kind you cured with telling secrets, anyway. It was the kind that gave, instead of taking away.

He trusted Kakashi to guard his back, to win his fights, to know what to do. To keep his secrets, and understand them. To doze in a hospital room until Ryouma woke up, and to stay until he fell asleep again. To be stubborn and superior and self-sacrificing, and to never ask for more than Ryouma was willing to give.

He'd never really figured out what Kakashi wanted, and somewhere in there he'd forgotten that it might not be what he assumed it was.

And if it wasn't what Ryouma assumed it was, or thought it should be... Did he trust Kakashi to make the choice that was right for him?

Or to be okay if Ryouma wasn't there to watch his back?

Or to stay beyond today, and into tomorrow?

"You always talk about me dying," he said numbly. "S'annoying as hell. But I guess I'm not any better. I still can't quite believe you'll stick around past tomorrow night."

I'm not going anywhere, idiot.

It'd be nice to believe him.

Not giving an inch crumbled somewhere between two I do's and the future, and Kakashi hated himself a little. Ryouma's wrist hung loose in his hand, no longer fighting to pull away. Kakashi didn't release it. If anything, he tightened his grip, reassuring himself with the pulse that still beat beneath bloodless skin.

Ryouma trusted him and didn't. Kakashi trusted Ryouma and didn't. And neither one of them could back away from the edge and pretend it didn't matter because it did.

Two and a half months standing next to each other; it felt like a lifetime and nothing at all.

And Ryouma couldn't believe he'd stay.

The bastard scared him half to death talking about love, watched Kakashi fight more demons then a soul was supposed to carry trying not to run away, and still thought he wouldn't stay. Like he was the kind of man who'd make a promise and break it half a heartbeat later.

Even when he'd promised never to care.

"You suck at changing the subject," he growled, lips pulling back from teeth, unsure who he should be furious at and angrier because of it. "I'm not like you. I don't run up to every person who smiles pretty and smells good and give them my heart to break. I don't even like people. But I--" He hesitated, but there was nothing left to lose. "You're mine. One of my pack and I don't care what other name you give it." Friend, like Ginta had tried and Ryouma wanted. Kakashi was tired of fighting it.

Eyes like a thunderhead stared up at him, wide and chakra-blue in the double vision of Obito's eye. Kakashi inhaled, ribcage hitching, then leaned down, pinned Ryouma's wrist to the bed, and bit a perfect scar in the side of his neck, shocking him right out of that charred flower scent.

"And I'll leave you behind when that fades."

"Son of a bitch!" Ryouma jerked, bucking against strong hands and wickedly sharp teeth. "Most people'd just ask me to tattoo their name on my ass. What are you, a vampire?"

Kakashi snorted. His breath was hot against Ryouma's throat; a thin trickle of warmth tickled its way down to blot on the coverlet.

No way in hell that wouldn't scar.

Ryouma stilled.

"Werewolf, maybe," he decided, after a long moment. "Crazy, anyway." Possessive, definitely. That smokey rumble still reverberated low in Ryouma's belly: You're mine. He shivered, and licked his lips. "Does this mean I get to mark you back? 'Cause that tattoo is pretty smokin'." His fingers untangled from the bunched folds of Kakashi's mask, drifted sideways to trace the liquid, dangerous curves of the tribal tattoo that still writhed down Kakashi's upper arm. "You could make it permanent."