| [Jan. 31st, 2012|06:36 am] |
“She can read, you can stay upright,” Kakashi said unrelentingly. “You’re the perfect team.”
Katsuko made a sound of quiet despair and curled up into a tight, blanket-trapped ball on the bed. After a second, her hand reappeared and dragged a pillow underneath the covers.
Ryouma sat up, pink-cheeked and wildly ruffled, and looked down at the crumpled papers on the carpet. At some point in their scrum, Katsuko had caught the neck of his shirt and stretched it, baring the shadows of one collarbone.
“I could smooth out some of the wrinkles...” he said at last.
It was like dealing with puppies, except puppies didn’t smell like thunderstruck lust when Kakashi walked around without his shirt on. Which was something he was grateful for--in actual puppies, anyway. In present context, he was keeping hold of the dark appreciation in Ryouma’s eyes and trapping it inside his ribcage, like a warm secret.
He wasn’t quite sure what to do about Katsuko, except feed her and kill for her, and try to stop her chakra eating her alive.
“That’s a start,” he told Ryouma, both answer and echo to his own thoughts, and strode over to untangle Katsuko and check the seal he’d applied to her stomach.
She didn’t react well to being foisted from the covers, batting weakly at his shoulders and clutching her head. “Go lift Ryouma’s shirt up.”
The paper seal was still holding, glued firmly to her skin despite last night’s shower, keeping her chakra leashed down tight. It hadn’t been twelve hours yet.
“Voyeur,” Kakashi told her, and wrapped one hand around her upper arm, pulling her out of her hungover nest and dragging her to the edge of the bed, next to Ryouma. “Get up. Work and food’ll make you feel better.” His mouth quirked. “Mostly work.”
“You want everything just stacked?” Ryouma asked, looking at the mess with a dubious eye. “‘Cause it looked kind of like a tornado hit, before. Now it looks like an angry tornado.”
“Yeah,” Katsuko said, bleary-eyed and rumpled. “Who did that?”
Side by side, they looked like a matched set of trouble. With bedhair. It was probably a piece of foolishness to trust them with tidying anything, let alone fragile documents and valuable books, but it would keep them busy and distracted, and Kakashi kind of wanted access to his floor again.
He folded his arms and looked at Katsuko. “Technically, you did, seeing as this is all for you. And you should note that I am allowing you to touch my things. Stacking’s fine. Just help Ryouma before I change my mind and make oatmeal instead of bacon.”
Katsuko looked down at the floor. Her scent curled somewhere between pain and uncertainty, with a green edge of nausea playing tagalong, but she made an expression that was almost smile-shaped. “Does this mean I can make a scroll fort?”
Ryouma glanced at her, then at Kakashi, and cracked up laughing. Then he slid off the bed and began stacking things into quick, neat piles. Katsuko sighed and slid down after him, subtly attempting to bring a pillow with her.
Kakashi regarded her. “Maybe oatmeal would be better.”
“Bacon,” Katsuko croaked plaintively, like a woman on her deathbed.
“I am being good,” Ryouma said virtuously. He picked up a crumpled page, studied it, turned it upside down, studied it again, gave no recognizable sign of comprehension, and tucked the page inside an open book. “So what did you two talk about last night, aside from how hilarious things were going to be this morning?”
“Sushi,” Kakashi said, relenting long enough to crouch down, spin a quick jutsu, and wrap his hands around Katsuko’s visibly aching skull. She stiffened at his touch, muscles tensing beneath that borrowed, too-big shirt, then let her breath out on a low hiss when he locked a band of chilled air into place around her head, like an invisible hitai-ate. Little ice crystals that froze and melted and froze again, cooling her skin.
“And you,” he added, leaning across to flick Ryouma gently between the eyes, before getting to his feet. “Be careful with that book. It’s been in my family for years.”
Anything else was Katsuko’s choice to tell. Kakashi made his escape to the kitchen and left them to it. |
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