"Not unless Kaori-san joins us," Ryouma said, glancing up from his stack of CD jewel-cases with a flashing smile for the round-cheeked nurse pushing Ginta's wheelchair. "Or you could hop on for Day Two of our tour of the classic shinobi rock scene. We're just finishing up with Shutdown Assassin. I'm thinkin' about slipping in Feral Porpoises for a change of pace before we move on to Strands of Life's early stuff. Any other ideas?"

"Just keep the volume down, Ryouma-kun," the nurse advised. "If I can hear it in the nurses' station, it's too loud." She tweaked Kakashi's half-empty IV bags, cast a critical eye over the cheerful disarray of the room Ryouma had occupied for most of the past week, and seemed to find it not yet tipping over into the danger zone. One capable hand ruffled Ginta's hair. "Play nice, boys."

"We always play nice," Ryouma assured her. "You wouldn't believe how nice we can play. If you stop by when your shift's over, I could show you..."

"He's five," Kaori said archly, "and you never left puberty. Poor Hatake-san. He's probably lucky to be sleeping through all this."

Black eyes and blue eyes flickered as one to the still, slow-breathing form in the bed. "No," Ryouma said quietly. And then, with determined cheer: "Anyway, I'm learnin' him good music in his sleep. He'll wake up wanting to borrow my Shuriken Force shirts." He opened a CD case at random and pulled the disk out.

Shutdown Assassin's album On the Raggedy Edge wasn't quite finished. Ryouma slipped the next CD in anyway.

"You get meds in an hour, Ginta-kun," Kaori said. "I'll be back."

Ginta nodded and waited for her to go, then reached down for the hand grips on his wheels and rolled himself closer to Kakashi, right up next to the bed. "Hey, Genius," he said quietly. "You seriously sleep too much."

Kakashi didn't stir beyond the slow even rise and fall of his chest. A rise and fall Ginta had memorized in the two days he'd been allowed to watch it.

Of course Ryouma had it more than memorized.

"You could at least play him something cheerful," he complained to Ryouma, "instead of all this angsty unloved teenager with an axe to grind shit. How about some Rabbit Muffs, or Age of Consent?"

Ryouma just snorted and pressed play. Heavy bass and a tortured-sounding guitar. Predictable.

"He has no taste," Ginta confided to Kakashi. "He didn't have any taste when I knew him in Lightning, either. Don't worry, when I get out of here, I'll go to my place and get you some decent music."

When he got out of here. Not yet, they'd told him. Not until he went twenty-four hours with no fever, for one thing. Almost there. And not until he could get around on a pair of crutches. Almost, almost there. Any day now.

He grabbed Kakashi's bedrail and pulled himself closer. His IV bags rattled and clanked against the pole, his caged leg quivered against its pillows. "Ysssh," he hissed. "Still hurts. You're not hurting, right, Genius?"

No answer.

He looked at the cards in his lap, at Ryouma adjusting the balance on the sound as if somehow he could make his tiny speakers sound like a concert hall. At Kakashi, with his face covered by a surgical mask. "You seriously need to stop sleeping so much."

The heart monitor tripped.

There had been red. Then black. And somewhere on the line between the two, Kakashi became aware of himself. Consciousness drew slowly around the edges of a mind pushed far beyond the boundary of sleep, bringing it back. His breath stuttered and sped up. Scar-bitten fingers twitched.

And there was red again. Anxious lines drew themselves between slender eyebrows as picture perfect memory bloomed into full colour, replacing blankness with the last thing he'd seen. The best and worst survival mechanism for a shinobi raised in open warfare. He re-lived two days worth of running-fighting-falling in the time it took to draw a deeper breath. Saw everything, because he forgot nothing.

A lean fallen body, seen entirely in monochrome and draining chakra-blue. Frantic medics.

No pulse.

Beneath one scarred eyelid, salt gathered and burned and slipped down the side of his face. Then Kakashi woke up.

Cold oxygen caught him first, obliterating every scent in a chilly hiss that smelled like latex and plastic tubing. He twitched his head to one side, trying to get away from it, then dragged a hand up and raked the cannula off, tearing something else away that felt nothing like a mask. A cough worked its way out of waking lungs, then a second. He trapped a third, trying to be silent.

There was pain.

He didn't much care.

Noise finally registered as something other than background confusion, then shut abruptly off. He could feel warmth on his face, like fingers of afternoon sunshine. Light shining on closed eyelids. Dull, distant stings that suggested needles and catheters and--

Home.

For one out of three.

A quiet, beaten sound slipped past cracked lips. Then Kakashi braced his left arm, started to lever himself up, and finally opened his eye. Something warm touched the back of his hand; he jerked a dizzy, snarling look left.

And saw blond hair.

Grabbing, falling, and holding on happened in the space of one skipped heartbeat. Heat and living chakra flared under his grip; eyes like chips of frozen sky widened. Hands grabbed him back. Kakashi made another noise, rusty and splintered, entirely wordless. It was an illusion and he knew it--a genjutsu, a hallucination, a dream--but he wouldn't have let go for less than broken fingers.

He probably would have cried, if he'd remembered how.

At the first sign of returning consciousness from Kakashi, Ryouma had cut off the music and Ginta had leaned in to touch his hand. Kakashi had fought it, thrashing his head from side to side, taking desperate, painful-sounding breaths.

When Kakashi tore the mask and oxygen from his face, Ryouma had cleared half the distance between himself and the bed. Ginta's grip on Kakashi's hand had tightened.

There was a moment of animal fury on Kakashi's face, as his grey eye opened, then widened, and then the emotion was something else entirely. He was lunging towards Ginta like a drowning man, and no force in this world would have kept Ginta in his chair. He lurched up, trusting his bandaged left leg with his weight, doing his best to disentangle the splinted right from the wheelchair's support. They met halfway, shoulder to shoulder, before Ginta was crushed against Kakashi's chest.

The wheelchair teetered and crashed against the bed. Ginta's haloed leg scraped and jolted against mattress and floor. Sparking black showers tumbled in his vision, but he held on. Held on, wrapping his own arms around Kakashi's shaking back, panting against Kakashi's bare collarbone.

"Ka-Kakashi. Breathe. Breathe, genius."

Ryouma was there. Ginta forced his head up, looking for him, but caught only a flicker of movement near the door. Gone to get a medic, maybe.

"Kakashi. Just-- Just breathe. Okay?"

Breathe.

Ryouma tried, too, as he shut the door behind him and pressed his back against the half-glass wall. It didn't work very well. His left knee, always a little weaker than the right, buckled, and he slid down the wall to huddle on the cold linoleum floor.

Kakashi'd made it.

Of course Ryouma'd never doubted it. Even in the long black watches of the night, when Ginta slept through nightmares across the hall and Kakashi's chest lifted so gently Ryouma had to keep checking his pulse to be certain it was there, he mostly hadn't doubted. He'd timed heartbeats by the soft tap of nurses' shoes pacing up and down the hall, and he'd held onto Kakashi's wrist long after he should have let go. Kakashi wouldn't know, after all. When Ryouma spent all the daylight hours being relentlessly cheerful, it wasn't all that selfish to try to leach a little warmth from his cold skin in the night.

But Kakashi was awake now. And someone was there for him, even if Ryouma had far rather it be him. Maybe it didn't matter so much as long as there was a warm body to hold onto, a strong and steady chakra to soothe away the fear. And Kakashi and Ginta had come through hell together, spurred on by comrades' promises and something none of them would name. Ginta deserved this.

"Ten minutes," he told the nurse pounding up the hall from the nursing station. "He's fine, he's awake, he just needs a minute to get used to the world. Ginta's his partner. You can come back when they're okay again."

The nurse, at least, knew ANBU; she glanced through the glass wall, gnawing at her lip. "His vital signs were good," she admitted grudgingly. "Except the heartbeat going through the roof. All right... I'll tell Hanatarou-sensei to take his time. Call me if anything happens, okay?"

"Gotcha," Ryouma promised, with the best smile he could manage. "Thanks."

The nurse nodded distractedly, still watching whatever was happening through the glass, and finally turned to head back to her station. She probably wouldn't give them ten minutes; Ginta'd be lucky if he had five. Even that should be enough, if he used it right.

Ryouma tipped his head back against the wall, and listened hungrily all the same.

Breathe.

If he breathed any more, he'd hyperventilate and pass straight back out. Instead, Kakashi wrapped his aching arms around slender, hard-muscled shoulders, tightening his grip to a point far shy of grinding bones--he wasn't strong enough yet--and pressed his face against the side of Ginta's neck. His mouth and nose were bare; there was nothing to stop scent burning right into his brain.

No expensive wood, no sweet fruit. The reek of a long hospital stay overlaid everything, replacing the familiar with medicine and sharp sterility. There was pain like a rusted weapon, old enough the edges had blunted. Beneath that, salt and sadness and worry. And under that, Ginta's own scent, twisting and indefinable, backed by chakra and a heartbeat Kakashi could feel.

You couldn't fake that.

But he'd seen Ginta fall. Had felt him drop half a staggering step before Kakashi had dropped, too wrecked to stand anymore. Because two-hundred miles of running-jumping-falling had been too much for a man with a fever hot enough to boil a river, and Kakashi shouldn't have tried it, and Ginta had died.

There was a sound. This time, even broken and rasping and muffled by skin, Kakashi recognized it. It was his own voice.

"I'm sorry--I'm so sorry."

It wasn't nearly good enough.

"Kakashi?" Ginta kept as still as he could, balancing precariously on one hip. His thigh burned under him, his right leg throbbed in its exoskeleton. He didn't care. What he cared about was Kakashi, clinging to him with a desperate grip. Kakashi's voice like a broken sword blade, jagged and raw, babbling apologies.

"Genius? Stop. Stop it. Don't." His own voice came strained and harsh. He was shaking, Kakashi was shaking. Scab-knuckled hands scraped over bare, bruised skin. He could feel Kakashi's ribs, the knobs of his spine, the raw, trembling power of every breath.

"Don't be sorry, Kakashi. Fuck. I'm the one who should be sorry."

He should be getting a medic. Ryouma should be the one here. But...

But no. After everything that had happened, he couldn't bring himself to let go for even a moment. His hands tightened against Kakashi's shoulder blades. "It's okay, we made it. We made it, okay? You--" Ginta's voice caught. "You made it."

Kakashi couldn't have laughed to save the world, but the bleeding, limping sound that clawed out of his throat was almost enough to pass for a copy-cat imitation. He always made it. He crawled and drowned and bled and burned, but the darkness never stayed permanent. There was always a dawn to wake up to.

Just for him.

Ginta had died, spark gone as cleanly as if Kakashi had snapped his neck. No pulse. But there was scent under his nose, a jugular beat hammering in the shadow between jawline and collarbone, moving chakra and body heat warmer than Kakashi's own--

Fever.

No. Just heat, drifting gently on the line that meant living. Soaking through the thin hospital gown Ginta was wearing and into Kakashi's sleep-chilled skin, washing something that wasn't nearly calm down his naked back. More pain itched across his sinuses, carved out in rust and rotten fruit--Ginta was hurting.

Kakashi pulled back, realized he wasn't even close to steady, and tightened his grip before he fell. Overused, bruise-lined muscles shrieked at him, unprepared for movement after a week of nothing; the chakra monitor rattled out a warning. He ignored both to drag one hand around, pushing Ginta's hair off his face. Touching his cheek, his throat, his chest; the arm Kakashi remembered bandaging, still wrapped around his own shoulders. Briefly, his fingers reached down and felt metal, but Ginta gasped and Kakashi wrenched his hand away.

"How can you be alive?" Somewhere along the way, his forehead had ended up pressed against Ginta's. Breath warmed his face; his hand was clenched back around Ginta's shoulder. Salt still slipped from Obito's eye to score down his cheekbone. "I watched you--I saw you die."

"I--" What could he say to that? It was true. Probably true. Definitely true. Shiratori had told him, his grandmother had told him, his doctor had told him--when the medics at the gate had gotten to him and Kakashi, Ginta hadn't been breathing. His heart had stopped beating.

"It-- They-- They revived me. They said. They said it was-- They said they wouldn't have been able to if you'd been a few minutes later. They said--"

It didn't matter that they said. It mattered what Kakashi believed. It mattered that Kakashi was here, awake, to believe it. To shake with a sick parody of laughter, to cry involuntary tears from a closed, scarred eye.

"Look at me, genius. Look for just a second." Ginta pulled his face back enough to focus on Kakashi's. The grief he saw there nearly undid him.

"I didn't. I didn't, I'm still here. You didn't, either. We're both still here."

It was Ginta's turn to shake with something that barely resembled a laugh, that tried desperately not to be a sob. "You just way overslept, genius."

For weeks, it felt like. And no time at all. Kakashi's fingers dug into Ginta's shoulder, whitening skin beneath thin cloth as he tried to stay steady. His eye--his own eye--focused on that angular face as he took in every detail, freezing them into memory. Cheekbones that were still sharp, but not hollow. Blue eyes that glittered far too bright, but weren't glazed. Bruises he remembered being purple-black had faded to sickly yellows and greens; the split in Ginta's lower lip was barely a darker line. The only sign of burns were patches of faintly reddened skin, as if he'd spent too much time in the sun.

At least a week's worth of healing.

Barely breathing, Kakashi brought his other hand up again, and tried to make it true with touch. Unsteady fingers skimmed the arch of a cheek, the edge of the clean-shaven jaw. His thumb traced the line of one wheat-gold eyebrow, then eased gently down to feel the feathery brush of lashes as Ginta blinked. He splayed his fingers out against that faintly bruised, finely carved mouth; breath flowed over his skin, shuddery in the aftermath of laughter that wasn't laughter.

Revived. And if he'd been a few minutes later--

It couldn't be true. He didn't get that lucky. Not with teammates that far gone, not ever.

The chakra monitor beeped again. Kakashi swallowed hard, set his teeth against his lower lip, and opened his left eye. Raw, inflamed pathways screamed, already burned from the inside out, but he just needed a moment--a second--

Tears blurred the image; Kakashi didn't care. It was there. Monochrome and bright cornflower blue, a branching network of healthy pathways written out into a pattern he'd memorized months ago, on their very first mission. Warm, moving, living chakra. And you couldn't fool Obito's eye.

He slumped forwards, forehead coming down to rest on the hard wing of Ginta's shoulder, and tried to catch his breath. Too much relief, too much energy he didn't have. Both eyes slid closed and the world became nothing but scent and touch, not-so-distant pain he really didn't care about.

One hundred and two.

"Hey, jackass."

"It's pronounced jackass," Ginta whispered. And laughed. And let his own eyes blur and dampen. He held Kakashi's shoulders and ran a hand up the back of his neck, sagging with a similar exhausted relief. Every moment longer his leg hung off the side of the bed let the throbbing grow stronger. Every moment he sat up, balancing his own and Kakashi's weight together, pushed him closer to the limit of his thin endurance.

He didn't care.

If Ryouma came back with Kaori and Emiko and a whole phalanx of medics to pull him away, if thay came back with Shiratori or even Arakaki or the Hokage himself, Ginta wouldn't have cared. He could feel himself slipping, feel Kakashi slipping, and all he had to do was hang on tight, and let Kakashi hang on tight, for just long enough. Just long enough to get it. To get that thing they'd fought about six weeks ago--was it really so recent? To get it that sometimes, even in the face of hopeless odds, a friend who said he'd be there really would be there.

Two friends.

Ginta didn't lift his head, didn't move his hands from around Kakashi's shoulders. He wasn't sure he could and stay upright. That didn't matter, either.

"Listen, genius. I'm not the only one who's been waiting for you to wake up."

It probably said something when Kakashi's weary thoughts skidded down a very short list that started with Intel, bypassed Arakaki, and finished on the Hokage before he even considered anyone else. Unless there was a doctor about to give him some very bad news...

A grinding headache settled in his temples when he tried to pull back again, aiming to catch a glimpse of Ginta's expression. He'd made it halfway when he caught his first look at bright colour that shouldn't have been there; a familiar red hoodie tossed over the back of an ugly vinyl chair. And next to it, stacked in two messy piles against the wall, a double dozen CD cases. None of them he recognized, but with sudden, painful hope he would have wagered a month's pay they were all rock-themed. Scattered about the trashcan, snack wrappers drifted like leaf litter. Lots of sugar, no nutritional content.

Stiffly, he pushed himself higher, twisting to look right. An overflowing rucksack spilled more clothes, most of them emblazoned with band names. DVDs lay in a heap next to it, boasting titles that would have thrilled any twelve-year-old genin boy. On a small empty table pushed against the wall, someone very bored had created an elaborate construction of empty coffee cups, piling them up into something that was vaguely castle-shaped. There was an unplugged TV shoved into the corner, and a stereo sitting on a plastic chair.

A week's worth of healing on Ginta's face. A week's worth of living detritus scattered around the room.

Carefully, Kakashi scented the air and caught the drift of a thunderbreak, the edge of something desperate. A bright, aching twist of false cheer.

Ginta had lived. Ryouma had waited.

He didn't get this lucky.

Calloused fingers tightened on Ginta again, suddenly afraid he'd vanish and Kakashi would really wake up. Exhaustion dragged at him; he dropped his head back onto Ginta's shoulder and fixed his gaze on that red hoodie. Only half the band name was visible, but he already knew it. Atomic Sunrise. He'd worn that hoodie less than a week ago--

Less than two weeks.

"Call a nurse?" Kakashi asked, just a little too pleading for his own pride. He cleared his throat, still unwilling to let go of Ginta just yet. "Bring him back."

That was his signal.

Ryouma slammed the door back and tumbled into the room as the echoes of Kakashi's words were still drifting on the air. He pulled up short just before he tripped over Ginta's fallen wheelchair, uncertain who to reach for first. Ginta's broken leg skewed awkwardly against the bed, carving the pained lines deeper into his too-thin face, but he wasn't letting go. Kakashi--

Kakashi was awake. Bruised, bare-faced, so thin his ribs crested like waves under almost-translucent skin, clinging to Ginta as if the dream would dissolve when he let go. But awake, alive, twisting up to meet Ryouma with one startled-wide grey eye and the light of hope dawning in a face that had never seen much of it...

Ryouma reached over Ginta's shoulder, cupped Kakashi's chin in his hand, and kissed him.

If there were words, Kakashi didn't have them. But he didn't need them. Steady strength braced under his jaw, wrapped up in a familiar calloused hand that could kill with a touch. Lips crushed against his own, somewhere on the line between hard and painful. He tipped his head up, still held steady by Ginta's arms around his shoulders, and found his eyes already closed. A long inhale drew through his nose, bringing the scent of a desperate hurricane.

The hand not leaving bruises in Ginta's upper arm lifted to catch the back of Ryouma's head, stiff fingers sliding through wild black hair. The solid curve of bone still fit against his palm. Chakra flavoured like a storm curled through pathways beneath his touch, brighter than his and Ginta's combined. Warm, safe, alive. Waiting for him.

He shuddered, and two pairs of hands chased it away. Broke free to breathe, just for a moment, and found the world filled with smoky black and bright, glittery blue. Two scents, twined together like a wolf pack gone to ground, and both of them within reach.

It felt like a crystal bubble, impossibly fragile and not completely real. But he could see it, smell it, feel it--and he wanted, so desperately, to believe it.

Just once.

He held onto Ginta's shoulder, tangled his fingers in Ryouma's hair, and let himself shake. Let Obito do the crying for him, when he remembered how.

Ginta held achingly still, caught between Ryouma and Kakashi, and desperately wanting to get away. But Kakashi wasn't letting go, and Ryouma didn't seem to care he was there. When Kakashi's shakes started up again, all he could do was hold on, duck his head down, and try to keep himself as steady as Kakashi needed him to be.

Whatever was happening in Kakashi's shattered heart, Ginta was part of it, whether he had any real place there, or not.

He held on until his own body could take no more. Until his shaking mirrored Kakashi's and his thoughts were all pinned on the torture in his legs. He felt himself start to slide, felt his vision starting to go grey, and then there was a broad hand under his right arm, lifting him up, keeping him from falling. Ryouma's hand.

Ginta took a shallow breath and tried to pull back, to get a look at a pale, unmasked face streaked with tears tracing long-healed scars.

"Kakashi? S'all right, okay? I should-- I should go. Go back to bed or something. He's here, right? You should probably lie down before you hurt yourself."

Breathe.

The air smelled like raw pain, most of it Ginta's. Kakashi tried to break his own grip, and had to force himself to relax bruising fingers, to pull his hand away and slide his arm free of Ginta's shoulders. He pulled back, heat bleeding away, and felt his balance lurch. Ryouma's hand released his chin and caught his shoulder; Kakashi dropped his own hand to the mattress and braced himself. Tried to brace himself. There was no strength in his arms; muscles trembled and wouldn't hold.

Ryouma eased him back down, but Kakashi pulled his hand free from spiky black hair and caught Ryouma's wrist, fingers braceleting around heavy bone. Reached past him and grabbed Ginta again, capturing his hand. Halfway through sliding off the bed, Ginta froze.

Kakashi tried to find words.

"Don't go far," he rasped finally, raking one last look over Ginta's face. Memorizing every living detail. His gaze slid sideways and up, focusing on Ryouma. "Don't go anywhere."

"He won't," Ryouma promised. "I'm not. I been here all week, you think I'm gonna bugger off just 'cause you woke up to be annoying again? That's my job. And Ginta's, when he rattles over across the hall to cheat me out of all my pay." He smoothed his thumb over the sharp edge of Kakashi's collarbone, sheathed only in milk-white skin and fading bruises. "You wouldn't believe how boring it gets just watching you sleep."

He'd joked to the nurses about feeling like a stalker, creeping into his victim's room to indulge his sick fantasies. But the only fantasies he'd been able to come up with involved Kakashi whole and well and aggressive, and the nurses had laughed pityingly, as if they knew it. In the end building coffee-cup castles had been a more satisfying use of his time.

The visitors had helped. Tsume and Kuromaru on the second day; Sandaime-sama himself had stopped by on the third. When Ginta woke up for good they'd watched samurai epics and zombie flicks together, and sent Ryouma's clones out for snacks, and summoned up more clones or nurses to make a foursome at cards. No matter how badly Ryouma was losing, though, or how hard he laughed, it was impossible to forget the soft-breathing reason he was sitting at a hospital table across from a man in a wheelchair. He'd have visited Ginta on his own merits. But for Kakashi...

"Hey," he said softly, leaning down as far as he could without relaxing his strong grip under Ginta's right arm. "I never stayed for anybody else, either."

But he'd stayed for Kakashi. And the last two times Ryouma had crash-landed in hospital, Kakashi had stayed for him.

It should have been a terrifying thought. Should have taken him straight to a place with dead teammates and dead teachers and staying the hell away to keep the list from growing--

One hundred and two. He was lying to himself; it had jumped to one hundred and three the second he'd broken Tsuyako's neck.

But his left hand was still wrapped around Ryouma's wrist, his right hand was still clenched on Ginta's hand, and when he tightened his grip, all he could feel was warm flesh, solid bone, and living-breathing pulses.

One hundred and three. And two still alive.

One who'd stayed for him.

Kakashi licked lips that tasted like a bruised sky, and carefully released Ginta's hand. Trusted him to Ryouma, and let his own shoulders finally meet the bed again. Old burns itched at his skin, like a tight sunburn drawn across his shoulderblades; he couldn't feel a bandage anymore. Couldn't feel much of clothes, either. Ryouma's grip was warm enough to scorch against his bare collarbone.

It was harder to let him go.

"Look after Ginta," he managed, because it needed doing and Kakashi couldn't stand. He forced himself to free Ryouma's wrist. "And come back."

There was a flicker of well, duh in sharp dark eyes, but Kakashi didn't care. For once, just this once, he needed to hear the words in his own voice.

Ginta didn't expect the jolt he felt when Kakashi let go. Didn't expect the stumble his heart took in his chest, or the way Ryouma's grip tightened as if Ginta had slipped. He should have expected the nurses, though. Time hung suspended for an instant, while Kakashi stared past Ginta into Ryouma's eyes, and Ryouma stared back. While Ginta groped for any kind of balance--physical, emotional, mental--and found none.

Then Kaori was in the room, and another nurse, and a young medic wearing wire-rimmed glasses, and suddenly the noise was back--chirping monitors and hissing oxygen. The hospital was back, strangers were back, and Kakashi had both hands over his face. Ginta grabbed for the discarded surgeon's mask and pushed it towards him.

"You're back with us? How are you feeling, Kakashi-san?" someone asked. Another someone had hands on Ginta's shoulders. "What are you doing up here? You really don't look so great, Ginta-kun, are you-- Whoops, can we get another pair of hands in here? Just step back a moment, Ryouma-kun..."

Cacophony. Movement. The grey fog narrowing his vision again, as more people crowded into Kakashi's room. Kakashi was a vulnerable, bruised figure with his face covered by a crumpled surgical mask. Ryouma was a solid presence next to Kakashi, watching them all. Waiting while a pair of nurses lifted Ginta. Waiting while the other nurse and the medic examined their newly awakened patient. Waiting to have him back to himself.

"I--" Ginta croaked. He was back in the wheelchair, slouching against hands and pillows. Back in his body, back in a world where physical pain could trump the ache in his heart.

"You need to be back in bed. No, no, keep your eyes open. No passing out on us, Ginta-kun. Kakashi-san's all right. I'm sure Ryouma-kun will bring you an update in a little while."

Cold hands on his face. Kaori's concerned, gentle eyes in her moon-round face. Ginta lifted his head to look past her.

"Don't you go anywhere till I get back either, Genius. Ryouma, don't let him." The wheelchair was rolling back, the movement dizzying.

"Don't shut your eyes, Ginta-kun."

When he opened them again, he was back in his own bed.

Ryouma followed the cavalcade of nurses and wheelchair-bound patient as far into the center of the hall and then stopped, adrift between two imperatives. Look after Ginta. Come back. And Ginta, with nurses lifting him carefully into bed, didn't seem to need him anymore; through the thick wire-patterned glass Ryouma saw bruise-shadowed eyes closed, the tousled head lolling back. If he was that exhausted he probably wouldn't even know the difference. And he had agreed that Ryouma's job was to look after Kakashi...

Don't go anywhere.

He took up his post again at the foot of the bed, out of the nurse's way and still within Kakashi's field of vision. The nurses bustled about changing IV bags, checking the catheter, scribbling on charts. The medic stayed by Kakashi's head, asking questions in a soft, soothing voice. Did he need painkillers? Did he remember what he'd been doing when he passed out? How many fingers am I holding up, Kakashi-san...

Ryouma jittered. "He's fine," he barked at last, as the young medic was quizzing Kakashi on his times-tables. "You should go tell everybody he's awake. Prolly half a dozen other people wanna come be obnoxious. Dude, c'mon, he doesn't need the advanced math. Just give me ten minutes."

"You had ten minutes from when his heartbeat spiked," the medic pointed out.

"I've been waiting a week," Ryouma said. "Use your math." He hesitated. "Please."

The medic sighed. "I'll send a message to Intel to send someone around in half an hour. Don't get him too excited. For heaven's sake don't let him out of bed. And--"

"I'll be good," Ryouma promised recklessly.

Dark eyes scrutinized him for a moment from behind wire-rimmed glasses. Then, unexpectedly, the medic smiled. "You don't have to be too good," he said. "Just remember, everyone in the corridor's watching."

Even knowing it was a joke, Ryouma couldn't quite help a quick glance at the glass-panelled wall. The nurses laughed aloud.

Kakashi didn't laugh, mostly because he was still trying to reconstruct the world into a shape that felt halfway normal. Ryouma saying please didn't help; neither did the nurses' cheerful, chattering babble. Ryouma asked for permission about as often as he set his own head on fire. And no one should look happy when Ginta's skin paled grey.

Behind the surgeon's mask, one sharp canine worried at a cracked lower lip.

"Alright, Kakashi-san, the call button's right by your head if you need anything. I'll check in with you again before Intel arrive." Fluorescent light gleamed on the medic's wire-rimmed spectacles. "Doubtless you'll be scheduled for scans this afternoon, just to make sure everything's in working order."

One of the nurses giggled again, and muffled it quickly behind her hand. Kakashi dragged himself together enough to sling a narrow one-eyed glare at her; Obito's salt-stung gift was hidden safely behind a ragged fall of messy hair. She reddened.

He looked at the medic. "Leave them outside when you come back. And tell Intel to expect a written report; it'll be quicker."

Easier, if he didn't have to focus on not letting his voice shake. He already knew what questions they'd ask, what details they'd need. He just needed to write it down once. They could duplicate it as many times as they wanted, and then all he'd have to do was learn what forgetting felt like...

The medic said something acknowledging. The nurses bustled a little more, slightly more flustered now, and then flitted out the door. The medic checked a monitor quickly, then followed on their heels.

And Kakashi was left with no one but Ryouma.

The surgeon's mask fluttered slightly as he breathed, spiralling the faint scent of Ginta's skin up his nose. He inhaled deeper, smelling bruised-fruit pain and blond hair, and focused on eyes the colour of a lowering thunderhead. Ginta. Ryouma. Alive. Waiting. He could still feel Ryouma's kiss beneath the mark of his own teeth.

But the man was just slightly out of reach--and no matter what Kakashi wanted, it was long past time he remembered the rule about grabbing.

"You can pull the curtain," he rasped finally, "if you're worried about voyeurs."

"If I can't spell it," Ryouma said, stepping a pace closer, "I don't worry about it." He grinned crookedly. "I don't worry about a lot of things."

He pulled the curtain half-closed anyway, and came closer. There was a black rubber streak on the pale linoleum where Ginta's wheelchair had screeched and crashed; Ryouma scuffed a bare foot over it uncertainly and glanced up at Kakashi again. Somehow it had been easier, before, to put words to meaning. Kakashi's grogginess and Ginta's weakness had lent him a strength and focus that seemed to have deserted him now. Fifteen minutes ago, I'm here had been good enough. What was he supposed to say now?

I'm glad you're back, maybe, for starters.

He cleared his throat and sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed. "I thought you'd agreed with the universe it was supposed to be me taking off first. Next time let me know before you change your plans, okay? Or just-- On second thought--"

Clearing his throat hadn't worked very well; his voice caught on something and wavered. He found Kakashi's hand, thin, frail, still steel-strong, and gripped it tight. His voice plunged into its gravel depths. "Don't you ever do that to me again."

For the second time in less than ten waking minutes, Kakashi's words died in his throat. Ryouma's hard grip chased the blood from cold skin, whitening Kakashi's fingers; he returned the hold, heavy callouses laid over battle-scarred knuckles, and thought there might be an odd kind of symmetry in a clasp between two hands that could kill with a touch.

Then he hauled himself up, braced his shoulder against Ryouma's chest, and flung his free arm around Ryouma's neck. IV lines tangled between them, snagging on rumpled blankets and clothes, but Kakashi didn't care. Ryouma's voice was breaking, Kakashi couldn't even find his, and he'd be damned if he was going to pay attention to the no grabbing rule when Ryouma was half a heartbeat away from crushing every bone between fingertips and wrist. When it felt like there was a hole where his chest was supposed to be, filled up with shattered glass and fledgling hope.

He pressed his masked mouth hard against the hinge of the knife-blade jaw, and wondered if Ryouma would mind pulling up his shirt so Kakashi could climb inside there with him.

A fleck of sense returned with scent and heat as he inhaled against skin.

"Didn't plan on doing it the first time." He closed his eyes and drew a deeper breath, ignoring the now familiar streak of hot salt coursing down from Obito's eye. "Might be tempted, though, if you plan to stick around every time I wake up."

"Not if you keep on waking up like this, I won't," Ryouma said. "Getting hospitalized's a bad habit, and the nurses aren't pretty enough to be worth it." He settled his arm a little more comfortably around the hard curve of waist, fingers resting over a far-too-bony hipbone, and breathed through a haze of silver hair. It badly needed a washing.

He considered Kakashi waking up to him--outside the hospital, outside the mission, on a narrow bed with the morning sunlight streaming in. He'd slept over a few times at former girlfriends' homes; there'd been coffee in bed, leisurely breakfasts, a laughing game of getting dressed and out the door. Warm and peaceful and easy, until she mentioned that maybe he should think about moving in...

But Kakashi wasn't asking for that; he sure as hell wasn't offering it. This was nothing more than the next time Ryouma had asked for in the shower, a promise without a future. Tomorrow would take care of itself. They had enough to worry about just getting through today.

"You could try takin' it easy," he said. "Sleepin' in. Breakfast in bed, Sunday afternoon shopping, eating ice cream at my birthday party. It could be exciting. Wake up and wonder What am I gonna do today, not How am I gonna die? I'll stick around till you get bored."

"About three days, then," Kakashi said, on something like a dry hitching laugh. "Four if you manage to be spectacularly entertaining."

The world rocked abruptly, movement and sound colliding with a sharp burst, like a localized hurricane. Shock frissioned down Kakashi's spine, startling both eyes open, before he realized Ryouma was laughing. Not loudly or violently, but enough to make his shoulders shake and his ribcage catch, his arm draw tighter around Kakashi's waist. The air coloured with a scent like bittersweet spring.

Real laughter, but not Ryouma's usual. This was the kind dragged more from sheer relief than genuine hilarity.

His hand slid up Kakashi's back, found tangled grey hair, and tugged it. Kakashi snorted against skin and the borrowed mask, but didn't pull his head away. The sharingan slid closed, stinging painfully. He didn't have the energy to wince.

He didn't have the energy to sit up, really. But Ryouma was doing most of the holding now, and Kakashi just had to lean and breathe. A hundred aches and pains tried to flag his drifting attention down--his entire chakra network felt burned, scorched away to the edge of nothing--but it was nothing new, and he still couldn't bring himself to care.

Still fluttering with unreal humour, Ryouma's jugular pulse jumped against his lips, shielded only by a thin layer of cloth. Kakashi stretched his arm further around Ryouma's neck, brought his hand back to his own mouth, and unhooked the mask. Breathed the scent of blood under skin, of sweat and soap and storm clouds. His bite mark was still there, scarring into a broken circle. Ryouma's hand was still clenched around his own, grip loosening enough to be only mildly painful.

Kakashi sighed, soft as a fingerprint bruise, and pressed his face closer to Ryouma's throat.

"No more rescues," he mumbled, touching something close to sardonic. "The good karma's not worth the ouch. Next time, I'll just burn a few hearts out. And you can melt some faces off." He thought about telling Ryouma how much Kakashi had wanted him there, every step of the way between finding Ginta and flinging himself home, but the words wouldn't come. And he didn't want them to. Ryouma didn't need to know about the factory and the fight, or Hoshika's snap-back to her own world (she would come back) and Tsuyako's broken neck. Ginta's cliffwalk on the edge of the afterlife. He definitely didn't need to know what it felt like to run with your eyes full of blood and your bones catching fire.

Besides, Kakashi already had a confessional.

"I need to go to the Stone." A beat of puzzled silence filled itself with the rhythm of Ryouma's pulse and the awareness of a body that really wasn't ready to be moving yet. "Tomorrow," Kakashi conceded, accepting the flicker of familiar guilt. He owed Obito. "Tomorrow morning."

"Sure," Ryouma said, skimming his hand down again over bandages and the bony ridge of a spine edging far too close to the surface. "I'll argue a wheelchair out of somebody. You can see how you like bein' the cripple for a few days. Or to the Stone and back, at any rate." Really, the argument would probably be over getting Kakashi out of the hospital, but if Ryouma promised to bring him home in time for the next sponge-bath...

And if they knew Kakashi was going to the Stone. Konoha hospital's medics and administrators spent their lives treating wounded and grieving ninja; they knew how much it meant for a shinobi who'd missed the public funeral to be able to trace his fingers over the name of the comrade he couldn't save. And everybody knew what Kakashi was like about Saving People.

After that first half-delirious reference, Ginta hadn't spoken of his dead mission partner again. Ryouma doubted Kakashi would want to discuss her either. He had another number to add to that tally in his head. Ryouma would have given up count after far too many, but Kakashi didn't let go.

Except of the living. And even that, now, was beginning to change.

"Better save your strength," he advised. "'Cause my birthday's day after tomorrow, and I'm throwin' a party even if we have to do it in here. Although the hospital probably won't let the dancing girls in. Hope you don't mind missin' out on that."

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"I'll do my best to survive," Kakashi's mouth drawled, before his brain caught up. He blinked once, slowly, and then fumbled for the thin steel chain slung around Ryouma's neck. Dogtags clinked as they slid free of the band-name emblazoned grey tee-shirt and dangled from his fingers. He twisted his head, narrowing his open eye to bring the stamped letters into focus.

DOB: 04/07

April 7th. The year meant Ryouma would be... Kakashi grappled with slippery mental figures for a moment, math tangling in his weary skull. Twenty-three. Ryouma would be twenty-three.

Kakashi blinked again. "You're three years older than me?"

A row of little facts ganged up to kneecap him before Ryouma could answer. For starters, it had been March when he'd last looked at the world. For seconds, how had Ryouma made it to his middle twenties without someone knocking a hole in his head? And for lasts...

"If you're looking for a present, I haven't exactly been in a shopping mindframe recently." Or a conscious one. Though he'd given Ginta a jutsu for his birthday, half an eternity ago. But wrapping something stolen up in sparkly chakra didn't feel remotely right for Ryouma...

With something like absurd mirth, Kakashi realized he'd gone from thinking about the thin red line between life and death to debating birthday gifts in less time than it took for a healthy man to catch his breath. But at least Obito's eye had stopped crying.

He dropped his head to rest against Ryouma's heavy collarbone, tired down to the bottom of his soul. "Might get you a puppy, if you're lucky. Or a coffee mug." His jaw cracked on a yawn. "Think Intel's going to have to wait for that report..."

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"They're gonna be pissed if they get here and you're asleep," Ryouma said. He grinned at the thought. "Want me to tuck you in?"

Kakashi snorted. His head tipped up; sharp teeth nipped at the base of Ryouma's throat. "Only if you want me to kick your ass."

"C'mon, I could so take you." Ryouma scrubbed his hand through a week's worth of wild bed-head, fluffing greasy grey hair out into fascinating new styles. "For probably the first time since I was sixteen. Didn't you know I'm older than you? I mean, I was pretty close to full-grown already back then, and you were this scrawny little rat--"

Kakashi bit him again.

"I think I deserve two coffee mugs," Ryouma said. "Just for putting up with you. I can leave one at your place for when I come visit."

"Because my mugs are inadequate for your fine sensibilities?" Kakashi said, words stretched out by something like a drawl dragged through a yawn. "Or is this part of your cunning plan to slowly insinuate yourself into every aspect of my life? Because my kitchen is delicately organized, door-wrecker."

Admittedly, it was mostly delicately organized collections of dust, but dry humour was an easier place to stand then wondering whether Ryouma had really decided to start moving his hypothetical stuff into Kakashi's home.

There was a flicker-beat of silence. Kakashi lifted his gaze and found Ryouma looking at him, just looking, mouth set in a crooked line that seemed like it couldn't decide between a serious answer or a ribald comeback.

This time, Kakashi didn't blink. Instead he closed his eye and exhaled, long and slow, naked breath curling back from Ryouma's shoulder and warming his face. It was too much to get his head around. They were talking about coffee mugs. How could that be a harder concept then a supposedly-dead teammate who'd somehow found a way to keep breathing?

"Least I didn't suggest a sofa," he muttered, and slumped backwards onto the bed. Ryouma's arm tightened around his back; Kakashi's grip strengthened in turn, just for a second, dragging Ryouma down with him. His breath hitched as stiff muscles protested and cramped; for the first time, he regretted turning down the medic's offer of painkillers. But Ryouma was as warm as a furnace wrapped up in soft cloth and scarred skin, and that helped.

It helped even more to remember him as a gangly, still-growing sixteen year old, instead of a full-fledged adult who seemed too damn knowing whenever he wasn't carousing like a kid. Flawed, just like Kakashi. Full of mistakes.

"Forgot to tell you," he said, looking at Ryouma's jaw instead of his eyes, "I added you into my door seals. You can get in without getting fried--you just need to pick the lock. If you can manage not to wreck the place, I could use some clothes. And a mask." He licked his lips and twisted his still-captured hand until his fingers hooked around Ryouma's. "Send a clone."

"Later," Ryouma promised, bracing himself on up on his elbow. He wriggled his trapped-in-turn fingers. "I'm not so good as you are at borrowing someone else's hand to make a seal. Probably end up with a clone lookin' like some ungodly lovechild of you and me and scare all of the nurses out of their stockings." He paused, thinking this over. "Actually, given our fabled good looks, it'd be more likely to knock 'em out of their panties..."

Kakashi choked on something like a laugh; it sounded like it hurt. "If you start talking about kids," he rasped, "I'm going to kill you with an IV stand. Painfully."

"Dude," Ryouma protested, "I know my biology. That bit of it, at any rate. Besides, Tsume already turned down the chance to have my kids; I'm not gonna press my luck with you."

Breath gusted against his shoulder: a snort, then a sigh. "Too late. By months, I think. Isn't ANBU hard enough for you, anyway?"

"Oh yeah," Ryouma said. "Prob'ly. For you, certainly." One corner of his mouth kited up. "My last mission was an A-rank solo, and I didn't even get scratched. Came home with nobody's blood on me but the bad guys', and they told me you and Ginta were in the hospital. I'm not goin' so far as to say you're a bad luck magnet, but you need some serious lookin' after. Both of you." He ducked his head, forehead brushing against Kakashi's. "Good thing I'm around."

Briefly, Kakashi considered head-butting Ryouma on the nose. But that would take effort, and the warm wash of bad-coffee-and-snack-food smelling breath against his mouth was more comforting than it had any right to be. "I'd like to see you run two-hundred miles in three hours," he groused. "And fight a one-man war on your lonesome, and combine two of Yondaime's jutsu on the fly. And," he added, warming to his rant, "play medic with almost no supplies. And--"

Ryouma kissed him firmly, cutting him short. "Okay, you're awesome, I get it. Shut up."

"Two hundred miles," Kakashi said against skin. "Three hours. That's not awesome, that's amazing. I'll probably get a statue. Or a medal. Or a statue with a medal."

In the pain-free light of hindsight, the frantic flying run to carry Ginta's fevered body home was one of the coolest things he'd done in recent memory, even if it had hurt worse than anything ever. If there was a way to replicate the jutsu combination without tearing all his coils out, hitting a seizure and revisiting a coma...

Something to think about.

"Woke up from a coma without brain-damage, too," he pointed out, just a little smugly, and turned Ryouma's kissing trick back on him before he could be a smartass about it. There was something to be said about not wearing a mask; it made anything to do with lips a whole lot easier. He drew back just enough to add, "Y'know, I never got hurt so much before I met you and Ginta. I think you're the bad luck charms."

"I got hurt before," Ryouma said easily. "Last time I ran a mission with Ginta, I got a sword through my back and a lightning jutsu stylin' my hair. He got just about gutted--sliced halfway through to his spinal cord. But my team got him out of Rai no Kuni and back to Konoha, and we spent the next two months on the run before we could get ourselves back through the border without starting a war. Then I joined ANBU. Point is--"

He paused for a moment, hunting for it. Kakashi's yawn didn't help. "Hey, listen up! Point is, I got all of us out safe--and my medic had a broken leg, too--and I can do it again." He'd done it in the club last month, after all. It was easier to applaud himself for it when Kakashi wasn't crazy and he wasn't terrified.

But Kakashi was blinking up at him as if he wasn't making any sense all. Combining a guy just recently awakened from a coma with a guy who'd spent the last week talking to the nurses, the coma-patient, the walls, the TV, and the coffee cups might not have been the best way to achieve total mutual comprehension. Ryouma simplified. "You can go get your statue and your medal--hell, I'll clap for you--but next time you head off on your own like that to get yourself killed, I'll do my waiting right behind you."

If Kakashi's nose hadn't been right next to Ryouma's throat, where scent pooled like an almost visible shadow, he wouldn't have been able to keep up. Even then, emotions without context were almost impossible to translate. But Ryouma's talent for thinking out loud provided context and subtext and subliminal thought-patterns all at once. Kakashi inhaled.

Testosterone like a red blade-edge: I'm just as good as you are.

Fear, sweet and acid: You nearly died on me, asshole.

Determination, scent-carved in solid oak: I'm sticking with you next time.

And something like wild-wolf fur slinking around in human skin. Possessiveness, held mostly in check: You're mine to protect, too.

All of it understood at gut-level, gripping Kakashi's backbone without ever touching his brain. His lips skinned back briefly; half smile, half bared teeth, but he had no energy to stand up to a challenge. And this didn't really count, anyway. Not in a way that needed teeth.

Not when he'd spent half of Ginta's rescue trying not to think about Ryouma's solid strength missing from his back. One more person, any person, would have made all the difference. But Ryouma...

"Next time," Kakashi mumbled, eyes sliding closed and head purposefully tilting sideways, baring his throat, "you can do your fighting right next to me. It'll save me wishing you were there."

Ryouma didn't often find himself speechless. Usually he had the opposite problem, and had to babble his way through shock into coherency. But this... He couldn't even find a place to begin.

He wanted me there.

It was a start.

He brushed his lips against the slow-drumming pulse, gentle over the pink new scar of a healing sword-slice. "I'll remember that," he said, very quietly. "We're a pretty damn good team. I've never had a better."

Kakashi made a muted noise low in his throat. Ryouma decided to think of it as agreement. "My last real team was officially named for the Dainichi Nyorai Temple Base," he said chattily, "but we called ourselves--"

"Team Badass," Kakashi said sleepily. "Ginta told me."

Ryouma blinked. "Well, yeah--and the point of that was, you and me, we're better. And--usually--less sexually frustrated, which is a good thing all 'round. But what were you and Ginta doing talking about me?"

"Fighting about you," Kakashi corrected, sifting his way slowly through a tangled mess of sleepless memories. He freed his hands, untangling one from Ryouma's hold and the other from its resting place on Ryouma's shoulder, pulling them close to catch some of the warmth trapped between their bodies. Ryouma had battered, well-worn clothes to keep him comfortable; Kakashi had a sheet that seemed to be making a spirited attempt to get away. And a lot less flesh on his bones than he remembered. "Ginta wanted to know..."

Why Ryouma. What Kakashi wanted. Why everything.

And Kakashi had answered--mostly. Until they'd ended up snarling at each other. But there'd been a truce in there somewhere, and none of it had mattered in the morning when Ginta's killing fever had thrown everything into its real perspective.

It didn't matter now, either. Ryouma was here (talking about sexual frustration), and Ginta was over there, still breathing, and both of them must have repaired whatever was left of their own friendship in the week Kakashi had been unconscious, because no one looked freshly strangled.

"It's not important," he said, words sliding wearily together, and pressed his face against the warm hollow of Ryouma's throat. "He told me a bit about your old team, and how he used to wear a mask and call himself Sei-something. You had to break protocol to save his life."

And Kakashi had thought: Obito would have liked that.

"He couldn't remember if you'd gotten into trouble for it. And he wanted to know why I was in ANBU. And--something." A yawn dragged through his teeth; he rode it out, then groaned softly. Shook himself a little to wake up. "We were trapped in a safe house for a night; we talked about a lot."

A memory reshuffled itself. Dryly, the corner of Kakashi's mouth twitched. "He called us a 'non-love triangle'."

The words tickling his throat didn't sound angry. Ryouma tipped his chin to get a better view of Kakashi's face and saw only faint amusement leavening the exhaustion. A fight on the roof, a quarrel in the hotel--Kakashi hadn't ever much liked that word, and he didn't seem to be taking it seriously now. Ryouma let out his breath in a short huff.

"Ginta's been watching too many soap operas." That was careful enough, wasn't it? Kakashi snorted a little half-laugh of agreement, and Ryouma relaxed.

"I didn't actually get in trouble for saving him--much. My teammates were kinda pissed off, 'causing breaking in to get him brought half Kumogakure down on our backs, but by the time anybody in command heard about it there were worse things to worry about. Like impending war. Which was all Ginta's fault; we just got caught up in it." He grinned and tucked his chin down on the mop of greasy, tousled hair. "So maybe Ginta's your bad-luck charm after all. Except I wouldn't've got into ANBU without him--without that whole mess, probably, 'cause when it was all over I got a commendation for getting my team through--but he's the one who got me thinking about it."

He'd probably had something to do with the speed with which Ryouma's application had been processed, too, but Ginta'd never said and Ryouma had never asked. And while Ryouma still had occasional twinges of nostalgia for the clean mountain air and the teasing camaraderie, the pay, the lodgings, and the social scene were all better in ANBU. The missions were more frequent and a lot more interesting. And the company was a hell of a lot prettier.

Ryouma thoughtfully tongued the hole in the back of his mouth where two broken molars had been extracted. "All in all, I'm glad he did. Though I would've been okay skipping the bit where I got tortured."

"Makes two of us," Kakashi murmured, words slurring contentedly together. He was only half-listening, adrift on a sea of reminiscence. War and commendations and ANBU--it was familiar territory, comforting in its normality. He wound his unbandaged hand beneath Ryouma's shirt to splay cold fingers over warm, solid stomach muscles, just beneath the twisting scar-that-wasn't-a-scar where Ryouma's dragon tattoo had been. Other scars hitched beneath his touch, flexing as Ryouma breathed; more than he could count with one hand.

That was comforting, too.

"S'funny," he mumbled, shifting closer, tucking his head firmly beneath Ryouma's chin. "I know all our reasons now. For joining ANBU. Ginta's political; wants to be in charge someday." Scary thought. "You're here because you're already good, and someone said you could be better. And prob'ly because someone else said y'couldn't..."

A shift and a rumble suggested the beginnings of soft laughter.

"I'm here because--because--" What had he said to Ginta? "Because where else would I be? Makes a triangle: you and him and me. Wannabe boss and baddass and I-don't-know-what." The idea twisted around on itself, becoming senseless. He tried to catch it again. "S'like a generation thing. There was them--Sandaime, and his. Then the Sannin. And my father. And Sensei after. And now it's you an' me and, and all of ours. Our generation, with lots of... triangles." He frowned. "Patterns. Repeating what the others did, but different, and passing it on..."

He wasn't making sense anymore.

"Maybe y'should have kids," he said finally, holding onto a last handful of wakefulness. "Teach 'em... something new..."

"I've got kids," Ryouma said very quietly. Kakashi stirred faintly, but he didn't interrupt. Ryouma puzzled it out aloud.

"They're mine as much as anybody's--nobody else wants 'em. And I don't spend near as much time down in the alleys as I probably should. But maybe it's enough. All I needed was one bored jounin to break my arm and kick me into the Academy. They get one of their own looking out for 'em once in a while, teaching 'em and telling 'em they can be more. I hope it's enough..."

Kakashi stirred again, pressing closer, his fingers flexing against Ryouma's stomach. But his breath was already evening, the monotonous beep of the heart-rate monitor slowing. His head jerked up into Ryouma's chin with one last desperate effort at rousing; Ryouma laughed, and pressed him down again. "All right, bucko. Go to sleep. I'll fight the Intel guys off for you. Sic 'em back on Ginta instead. You'll wake up again, won't you?"

Kakashi was already gone.

"Yeah, you will," Ryouma told him softly. He rubbed a hand over the fly-away hair, carefully extricated Kakashi's hand from underneath his shirt, and slipped off the bed. Kakashi didn't twitch, even when Ryouma pulled the sheet up over thin limbs and medical tubing, or when he added a blanket as well. He went to the door, and found the coast still clear. That four-eyed medic was a man of his word. They'd spent perhaps twenty minutes talking; Kakashi still had another ten minutes before the Intel goons showed up and Ryouma could chase them off again.

And then... A ten-mile run around the perimeter of Konoha, the first time he'd been outside in days. A shower, a shave, actual food. He'd have to pick up clothes for Kakashi, too--see if Kakashi'd managed to key those seals right. And then...

Maybe, for the first time in days, he'd try actually sleeping, too.