| [Nov. 19th, 2011|06:31 am] |
Fortunately his stomach seemed to have settled, even if his balance hadn’t. Arakaki and Inoichi each grabbed a shoulder. The spinning room jerked to a halt, then reversed and picked up speed going the other way. Ryouma shuddered and stood still.
“--heading out anyway,” Inoichi was saying. “I can drop him off. Where’s he staying?”
“I doubt you’ll need to,” Arakaki said, bone-dry. “He’ll likely have someone waiting outside for him. Fool boy...” His hand closed almost gently on Ryouma’s shoulder, then fell away. “Thank you.”
He was gone.
“All righty then,” Inoichi said cheerfully. “Ten steps to the door and then we’ve got a hallway and an office and--”
He stopped, halfway through the doorway, looking down the hall. “Hey, look. Arakaki was right. You brought a fan club!”
Ryouma blinked away the dizziness again.
A little ways down the hall a red-haired woman in chuunin blues had fallen asleep on Kakashi’s shoulder. They were both sitting huddled against the wall, Kakashi with his knees drawn up almost to his chest, the woman curled against him with a couple of forgotten magazines slipping from her hands. They must have been waiting for hours. Kakashi was so tense he was almost vibrating, and his eye was like winter’s heart.
Slowly, without looking away from Ryouma, he reached over to shake the woman awake.
She mumbled something, shook her head, looked up. Leaped to her feet so fast that Ryouma’s scrambled brain refused to convert motion into meaning. She was sobbing on his chest before he even recognized her face.
“Reiko,” he said, and his own throat closed on the name. It was another moment before he could dredge up more words. “Hope Shuuhei got over his colic.”
“You bastard,” she choked, pounding a fist against his vest. “We went to your funeral.”
“Sorry I missed it,” Ryouma said. “Didn’t know I had one. Did you give a speech?”
She hit him again--harder this time--and then just held tight.
Behind him, Inoichi said helpfully, “If you need to buy apology flowers, I can give you a discount rate.”
“Thanks,” Ryouma said, raw-throated. “I think I may need a lot.” |
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