| Lay Your Armor Down [Ryouma, Katsuko] |
[Nov. 21st, 2009|10:53 am] |
Takes place April 6, the morning after All My Regrets Are Nothing New, a week after Katsuko and Ryuichi's mission in Knife's Edge and No Rest for the Wicked.
Ryouma stopped by the mission office just before breakfast, right after his morning workout and the mission desk shift change. The gangly young chuunin who manned the desk for the morning shift was new--he'd just come in a few weeks ago, after an injured knee took him off active duty for the next month or two--and unlikely to ask questions. In fact he seemed much more interested in the sudoku puzzle in his newspaper than in the reasons Ryouma had spent a week on Personal Leave and now wanted the first mission that would take him out of Konoha. "Things're always slow at the beginning of the week," he said, poking through the open-assignment missions stacked on his desk. "There's a B-rank surveillance out in Mangrove Country, but--"
"I need somethin' with less time to think," Ryouma said. "Team'd be good." Dammit, where were Arata and Hiroyuki when he needed them? "There's not anything up by the Lightning Country border, is there? Near the post that replaced the Dainichi Nyorai Temple Base?"
"Operations there are extremely limited right now," the chuunin said firmly. "But... Hold on a sec." He swiveled his chair around to paw through another basket of sealed scrolls. "You said your name was Tousaki, right? Then you're just in time. Another two days and they'd probably have pulled you off Personal Leave for this one, or assigned someone else. Reiko-san must've been keeping this one back for you. You're good with straightforward assassinations, aren't you?"
( 'My specialty,' Ryouma said. 'Who's coming along for the ride?' ) |
|
|
| The Devil's Got My Secret (Tsume/Ryouma) |
[Nov. 12th, 2009|11:22 am] |
Backdated. Takes place March 31, the day after All We Know Is Distance, the day before Tsume leaves on her mission with Asuma inFire and Water, and five days before Kakashi wakes up in Welcome to My Morning.
"Ryouma," Kuromaru said, pausing in the apartment doorway, "is still not in his room."
Tsume slid the whetstone along her kunai, glancing over at her familiar. He looked highly disapproving. Her lips twitched. "Well, Kuromaru, if you're going to let him be the alpha, he can go wherever he wants."
"I know." Kuromaru walked inside, stiff-legged and unhappy. "He's probably with Kakashi still."
Tsume felt that golden eye narrow at her, and tried not to react.
"You know they're mounting each other."
Tsume snorted a laugh. "Pup, Kakashi's in a coma." If Ryouma's clone hadn't found them the night before to let them know where Ryouma was and why -- with instructions that they could visit if they brought food -- rumor would have still told her about Kakashi. ANBU were almost as good at fighting as they were at gossip.
"Well." Kuromaru flopped down. "We should go check on him."
She almost said they didn't need to hover -- which was true -- but... it was nice to see a friendly face, even if you were just sitting with a hospitalized friend, rather than hospitalized yourself. It wasn't like Ryouma had other family to visit -- or Kakashi either, though she wasn't sure if Kakashi would even appreciate guests. And Ryouma probably was bored.
Tsume stood, opening the chest she'd planted at the foot of her bed. Her armor was still heaped in a corner, but now her clothes and various bits and pieces were at least dumped into the chest, instead of strewn across the floor. She dug around until she found a deck of cards, then slipped them into the pocket of her cargos. ( They could stop by and get okonomiyaki, too, which would probably make Ryouma happier than any friendly face. ) |
|
|
| All My Regrets Are Nothing New. [Kakashi & Ryouma] |
[Oct. 30th, 2009|10:39 pm] |
Takes place seven hours after Welcome to My Morning, and begins two hours before The Little Things Give You Away
This time, when Kakashi woke up, it was with the little mental click of reality slotting back into place. He knew where he was, and why he was there. He knew that Ginta was across the hall, Tsuyako was in the ground, and Ryouma--
Was fast asleep in a chair.
Stiffly, Kakashi raised himself up on one elbow and glanced around the room. The clock said he'd been asleep for at least seven hours, but nothing much had changed. There were more food wrappers in a crumpled heap around the rubbish bin (Ryouma must have eaten), a stack of Intel forms on the rickety bedside table, and a pile of neatly folded black clothes at the foot of the bed: Kakashi's clothes, with a mask on top.
So Ryouma had paid attention to his free pass into Kakashi's room.
Kakashi raked a hand through oily grey hair, pulling it out of his eyes, and decided he was okay with that. Well, mostly okay with that. Ryouma wouldn't be curious enough to mess with his scrolls, at least; not if he couldn't read them.
Welded metal bed-struts creaked quietly as he shoved himself back against the pillows and looked at the man. Ryouma had curled himself up into the ugly vinyl chair, long legs folded beneath him, arms crossed loosely over his chest, head resting against a stolen hospital pillow. Definitely there, not easy to miss, but taking up as little space as possible. Which was not surprising, given that he'd probably had to negotiate for his right to be there all week.
The red Atomic Sunrise hoodie was draped across his stomach and wedged beneath one arm, a makeshift blanket. He breathed soft and slow, eyes not even flickering beneath their lids; too tired to dream, probably, if the fresh hollows in his face were any indicator.
( Good. That would make things easier. ) |
|
|
| Welcome to My Morning [Ginta, Ryouma, Kakashi] |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|02:08 pm] |
[Takes place late morning on April 5th, almost a week after All We Know is Distance.]
A week in the hospital was enough to drive even the calmest man to extreme measures. Or at least that was Ginta's thinking. When they finally allowed him up from his bed, five days in, he immediately started making boredom contingency plans. Many of them, in fact most of them, involved finagling himself into a wheelchair and over to Kakashi's room with a deck of cards and a couple of cans of apple juice, to help Ryouma keep watch.
Shiratori had debriefed him and sworn that the docs said Kakashi was mending. The nurses and even his own doctor had said the same thing. Ryouma had gotten the same story, evidently. Chakra exhaustion and a soldier pill overdose were serious conditions, but they were known quantities. Kakashi would be in an uncomplicated coma for several days, and then he'd wake up. It had happened before, it would probably happen again. And it was happening now.
Patience, they said. Ironic that patient and patience were such similar words. Even his grandmother could get nothing more from the doctors. And, she'd told Ginta, she believed them. Of course Ginta believed them, too, at an intellectual level. Kakashi's vitals were stable, and his chakra readings were improving daily. Believing didn't make the wait any easier.
( On the seventh day home, the fifth of April, at a little after ten in the morning, Ginta talked his nurse into helping him get set up in the wheelchair again. ) |
|
|
| All We Know Is Distance [Ryouma and Ginta] |
[Jun. 15th, 2009|10:37 pm] |
The message was waiting when Ryouma came home, pleasantly tired and only slightly splattered with drying black slime and blood that wasn't his. He shoved back his ram-faced mask and leaned hipshot against the mission desk, grinning cheerfully down at Reiko. "Guess who didn't even get scratched this time, eh? You can put 'COMPLETE VICTORY' in that little box up at the top. It was glorious. They didn't even--"
"Ryouma-kun," Reiko said very quietly, "you need to go to the hospital."
He blinked down at her. "Shuuhei isn't colicky anymore, is he? I know it's awful hard stayin' up all night with a crying baby, but I didn't think you could go deaf. None of this blood's mine, all right?"
( Reiko pulled a sticky-note off his file folder and held it out. ) |
|
|
| The Storm Before the Calm. [Closed to Kakashi and Ryouma] |
[Apr. 20th, 2009|07:19 pm] |
[Takes place the afternoon following Watch Me Burn]
When Kakashi woke up, it was to the dull soundtrack of agonized blood beating in his ears. He groaned very, very quietly, and curled up, pressing the heels of his hands to his overheated forehead. That prompted another deep-in-the-throat noise when he touched what felt like the morning after-impression of someone's fist, and ratcheted his headache up from bloody awful to apocalyptic.
Most ninja were relatively good at waking up, putting the pain aside, and working out why they didn't know where the hell they were. But Kakashi was fairly certain most ninja hadn't had their skulls recently unscrewed and filled with hot tar. He bit down a third unhappy sound and focused on breathing for a while.
( When it felt like he could move without his head spontaneously exploding... ) |
|
|
| Watch Me Burn [closed to Kakashi and Ryouma] |
[Apr. 19th, 2009|05:10 pm] |
[[Takes place immediately following Stand Your Ground.]]
Thirty-six hours later, Kakashi was still the pretty one. Chestnut-haired and chocolate-eyed, lean in leather so tight it might have been painted on, he was drawing admiring gazes even before he paid the bouncer at the door of Club 69 and gave up his jacket at the coat check. The mesh shirt glided over pale muscles masked by the liquid curves of a tribal tattoo that covered his entire left shoulder blade and half his upper arm.
He still looked dangerous, but it was the kind of danger that drew men hungry for a thrill.
Ryouma gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the hungry gazes, the naked lust. The naked people were harder to ignore--some guy was dancing on a stage on the lower level in little more than a feathered G-string, and a few of the dancers on the floor around him seemed to be following his example. Most of them really didn't have the physique to pull it off. Perceptions got skewed in Konoha, Ryouma was beginning to realize. Sure, you saw other civilians on missions and in the streets, but for the most part the people you interacted with--the only ones you got close to--were young and lithe and supremely fit. There were a few of that type here, but for the most part...
His gaze was caught, in a sort of fascinated horror, by a man dancing on the fringes of the crowd, near the bar. Surely no one was actually that fat and still mobile? And--oh, no--he was pulling off his shirt--
"Kakashi," Ryouma murmured. "Lend me a kunai. I need to gouge my eyes out." |
|
|
| Stand Your Ground [closed to Kakashi and Ryouma] |
[Apr. 19th, 2009|04:29 pm] |
[[Set on March 22nd, around two weeks after The Safest Place You've Found and Straighten Up, Face the Day]]
Kakashi was late to the briefing.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the Intel agent shuffling his files behind the desk wasn't forty, greying, married, and male. Ryouma rearranged all his conversational gambits, tried the safe ones and then the more edgy options, and still got nothing more than grunted monosyllables and, once, a flicker of a scowl. He wouldn't have even known it was Kakashi they were waiting for if the Intel agent hadn't unwisely asked him, just after he entered the tiny briefing room, whether he'd seen Hatake in the hall.
In retrospect, Ryouma probably shouldn't have pounced with questions. (He's back from his mission? When'd he get back? How come they're sending him out again? Who're we killing? Sure you're not setting me up for another ambush this time?) The briefer shut up tighter than any bank vault, and Ryouma eventually shoved the chairs aside and started doing one-handed push-ups just to keep himself awake.
He was on twenty-three when the door opened, and he counted twenty-four and twenty-five out of sheer stubbornness before he looked up. "Welcome back, genius. Got tired of running?" He rolled into a crouch, chest heaving as he caught his breath. The view was better, from here; he could actually see a narrow slice of Kakashi's pale face and a single grey eye between the mask and hitai'ate.
"Or'd you just miss my scintillating conversation an' supernatural good looks? I gotta warn you, I'm going masked this time." |
|
|
| Picking Up the Pieces [Closed to Kuromaru and Ryouma] |
[Apr. 6th, 2009|09:51 pm] |
[[Takes place March 20th, one day after Don't Wanna Fight This War and two days after Make it Right.]]
Kuromaru picked up the plush puppy, now missing its other eye, and trotted out the door.
"Where're you going?" Tsume called after him, her voice drifting down the hall.
"To see Ryouma!" He didn't know if she understood--his mouth was full of stuffed dog--but he didn't wait to find out, either. At some point she'd remember that even if he was injured, she wasn't his alpha--had never been his alpha--and he didn't have to answer to her.
Ryouma was the alpha!
Kuromaru stretched out his legs, covering ground rapidly. Down the corridor, past the elevators, around another corner and back up, following the hall to the other side of the U-shape. He dropped his plush puppy on the floor and rose onto his hind legs, pawing at a door handle.
It didn't turn. He dropped down, bit the knob carefully, squeezed until the metal dented under his teeth, and turned.
It still didn't turn.
Kuromaru sat back on his haunches and glowered. "Ryouuuuuuma!" he howled at long last. |
|
|
| Don't Wanna Fight This War [Ryouma and Ginta] |
[Mar. 14th, 2009|03:32 pm] |
[[Takes place on March 19, thirteen days after The Safest Place You've Found and fourteen days after If the Door's Still Open--both of which you should probably reread for context.]]
Ryouma waited a week and a half before he let himself even think it. At first it was simply so he wouldn’t hobble down the hall and rip Ginta’s head off; then it was because nobody took a man seriously when he was on crutches, and if he wanted the man who never took anything seriously to do so for once in his life, it was going to be the moment when Ryouma punched Ginta in the face and then demanded what the hell he’d thought he was doing. Kissing Kakashi was one thing; if Kakashi had let him do it, obviously there would've been nothing for Ryouma to do but congratulate Ginta and offer to compare notes. But from the way Kakashi told the story, that hadn't been a kiss so much as an assault. And Ginta had lied.
Even so, Ryouma decided on the second day that he didn't really want to punch Ginta in the face anymore. An explanation--and, okay, a chance to do some yelling--would be enough. He figured he’d wait till he lost the crutches anyway, just so he’d have the option.
( In the meantime he tried not to think. ) |
|
|
| Make it Right [Closed to Tsume, Ryouma, Kuromaru] |
[Feb. 20th, 2009|10:18 pm] |
[[Takes place March 18th, two days after Pleased To Meet You, Won't You Lock Me In A Cell? and three days after The Weight of the World]]
Tsume glanced out the window once more, though Ryouma had long since disappeared from view. Then she ducked back into the bathroom, angling her head to see the bandaging on one temple. She was down to a large, skin-colored band-aid that looked nothing like skin. New flesh, vividly pink as the edges of scabs peeled away, drew lines back into her hair and flicked across her forehead, melding slowly into the rose-petal pink of new skin. The worst of the rot was still heavily scabbed under the band-aid, but even that was only the size of her thumb, now. It was healing slowly.
Kuromaru's was healing slower still, since his damage was worse. Still, his skin was mending. ( His mental state... wasn't. ) |
|
|
| The Weight of the World [Ryouma, Hayate, Katsuko] |
[Jan. 6th, 2009|07:47 pm] |
[[Takes place 8 days after Blood Will Make It Right and 5 days after Sunburst]]
The crutches fell victim to a katon jutsu in the hospital courtyard on the fifteenth of March, exactly ten minutes after Ryouma's examining doctor told him he could resume training with only a supportive brace for his knee. He marched back to HQ without limping at all, changed from jeans and a hoodie into shorts and a tee, grabbed a water bottle and a towel, and slid down the banister for two full flights of stairs. The teenage agent he met on the first floor landing looked shocked, and then mildly envious.
"I'm supposed to stay off my feet," Ryouma told him.
"Uh," the boy said. "Right. You go ahead and do that, senpai."
Not rookie, Ryouma noticed. Not even though the kid had probably worn the Hunter's mask a year longer than he had. Was the deference due to age, height, injury? Or just to the mistaken assumption that the only ones insane enough to slide down the banisters in ANBU HQ were the veterans who'd already cracked?
( He took the last flight down to the basement the normal way, just in case. ) |
|
|
| Blood Will Make It Right [closed to Ryouma and Tsume] |
[Nov. 30th, 2008|05:25 pm] |
[[Set the day after The Safest Place You've Found, Gestalt, and Ryouma's journal entry of March 6.]]
Ryouma had never considered himself much of a morning person. True, there was that whole exciting vista of a brand-new day spread out before him, but facing it generally involved getting out of bed. When Tsume slipped out, sometime after dawn, he rolled over, mumbling something incoherent, and snuggled into the pillow she left behind.
Then he smelled coffee, and woke up properly.
Tsume was puttering between bathroom and kitchen, hair still mussed from sleep, toothbrush wagging in the corner of her mouth. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and propped himself up on one elbow to watch. She disappeared into the bathroom for a moment to rinse and spit; when she wandered out again, she was raking her fingers through her hair, sorting the messy locks into some approximation of order. Silent in thick woolen socks, she padded back to the tiny kitchen-nook to check the coffeepot and fetch down a mug. Even in the overlarge tee-shirt she'd slept in, standing on tiptoe and reaching over her head, she was one long lean line of muscle and elegance.
Ryouma grinned at the world in general. "Putting the mugs on the top shelf was my best idea ever," he said, and sat the rest of the way up. "Did you make enough for me?" |
|
|
| The Safest Place You've Found [closed to Kakashi & Ryouma] |
[Nov. 16th, 2008|07:50 pm] |
[[Takes place immediately after What Hell Is Like and Dog of War Meets Puppy of Emo, the day after If the Door's Still Open]]
When the warm little bundle of fur and fragile bones curled up on his feet vanished with a crack of chakra and a puff of smoke, even the lingering effect of a sleeping pill couldn't stop Ryouma from jerking awake. He stared blindly into the pre-dawn twilight of his deserted room. Kitchenette, TV, posters painted in shades of grey...
Tsume, sleeping on his arm.
He hesitated a moment, then slipped carefully free. It was harder clambering out of bed without waking her, especially since he had been against the wall, and his left knee still wouldn't bend without pain. She stirred once, mumbling something incomprehensible, and wrapped herself around the pillow she'd stolen from him at some point in the night.
( Ryouma bit his lip and jerked his eyes away. ) |
|
|
| If the Door's Still Open [closed to Ginta and Ryouma] |
[Oct. 24th, 2008|07:41 pm] |
[Takes place the day after Just Promise to Keep Your Heart Broken and Heaven Forbid You End Up Alone]
The same medics who had discharged Ginta only an hour before were the ones to respond to Kakashi's clone. They found Ginta chakra-depleted and limp in the hall outside Kakashi's room, and couldn't understand how they'd managed to miss such a severe chakra deficit. It meant Ginta had no choice in the matter--he was admitted to the locked ANBU ward for tests and observation. He was there for a day and half before they finally let him go home.
Thirty-six hours was a lot of time to think about something. A lot of time especially if you didn't have any convenient distractions, as Ginta didn't. At first he'd sat shockingly still while medics examined him in the hall outside Kakashi's hospital room. Remained shockingly silent for hours, unable to sleep, in his own hospital bed on the locked ANBU floor after that. His silence, in fact, had so concerned the medics that they'd called in psych. It was uncharacteristic, they said. A sign that something was perhaps seriously wrong with Sakamoto-san.
Ginta was a good actor, though. And he recovered quickly. By morning he was winking at the male nurses, trying to set up dates for the females, acting like he hadn't a care in the world. It was enough to convince the brown-eyed woman from psych and the stern-faced Intel agent with the scarred lip that he was fine. Just suffering from overexertion on his mission. That he'd failed to report his ankle injury and the bruising evidence of a choke hold in a fight because he'd been tired and wanted to go home. Not because he'd been hiding anything.
( No one even suspected that choking had happened well after the ninja he'd fought on his mission was dead. ) |
|
|
| Just Promise To Keep Your Heart Broken [closed to Tsume and Ryouma] |
[Sep. 27th, 2008|07:45 pm] |
[Happens the evening of Like You Wanted To Go And Give Yourself Away]
The clock was ticking. In Ginta's apartment. She'd never noticed the ticking clock, before. Never heard it over Kuromaru's panting or sleepy breathing or simple heartbeat. Anxiety crawled up over her shoulders.
The room felt very large. Her futon very cold. Something creaked. Her eyes opened and flicked to the door, half expecting the knob to turn. Kuromaru wasn't there to sense people even before she did. To keep a hazy watch throughout the night, share the duties of protection. He was still in the hospital, though they'd insisted she go home and let him rest. Her family had suggested she stay there, but less than an hour dealing with Taro and Tanaka, while Tsume was in a weakened state, was enough to keep anyone from protesting when she decided to return to ANBU HQ.
Tsume punched her pillow and rolled over. No one was going to get her here, for the Wolf's teeth.
The clock kept ticking.
She'd slept alone before.
Before she'd had Kuromaru.
No, she'd shared a room with her sisters, then...
Or stayed with friends...
That one night she decided to run away.
No, she'd slept with the feral pack after nearly getting her throat ripped out.
She was a grown woman and a special jounin and former head of her clan!
The stairwell creaked. ( It smelled like old blood. ) |
|
|
| Like You Wanted to Go and Give Yourself Away [closed to Ryouma and Kakashi] |
[Sep. 26th, 2008|10:54 pm] |
[[Takes place the morning after Breaking Up Is Hard To Do]]
The late morning sunlight gleamed in Tsume's hair, picking out chestnut threads in the dark brown, burnishing the bandage a blazing white. Ryouma narrowed his eyes against the glare as he watched the mob of tattooed men, women, and children--and several dozen barking dogs--funnel away down the street with his former mission partner walking unsteadily among them. Half the Inuzuka clan had come to collect her from the hospital, it seemed.
He would lay even odds she'd have given up half the clan in a heartbeat, if she could stay with the one.
But Tsume's injuries were mostly healed, and Kuromaru's would require hospitalization for weeks yet. Ryouma had tried not to listen very hard to the the doctor delivering his solemn prognosis at the side of the other bed, this morning; he'd concentrated on getting dressed in the ill-fitting jounin blues the nurses (finally!) brought him, on shaving himself for the first time in a week, on figuring out what had happened to drive Kakashi so silent and grim. He'd woken up this morning with Kakashi curled in a chair across the room, and Kuromaru whimpering and clawing at his bandages, and Tsume crooning meaningless reassurance at her familiar as she tried to hold him still.
The tiny hospital room had become far smaller in the last twelve hours. ( Ryouma, for one, was damn glad to be leaving it. ) |
|
|
| In the Sky With Diamonds. [Closed to Kakashi and Tsume] |
[Sep. 7th, 2008|04:49 am] |
Takes place several hours after Give the Other Fella Hell and Lead Me Away
Morphine, Kakashi decided fuzzily when he woke up again, was the drug that just kept on giving. He'd been sponge-bathed, re-dressed, re-catheterized, moved around by nurses--and he absolutely didn't care. In fact, he felt warm; toasty-comfortable in a way that had nothing to do with blankets or body heat; though there was a blanket, covering him from toes to chin, and stretching away in a vast swathe of baby-blue to envelop Ryouma and--
Kakashi inhaled.
--Tsume.
( It took him a few minutes to realize that meant she was actually back in the bed with them, but when he did it didn't change much. ) |
|
|
| Lead Me Away. [Closed to Kakashi and Ryouma] |
[Sep. 1st, 2008|09:04 pm] |
Takes place about ten minutes after the start of Give the Other Fella Hell
Kakashi never moved when he had nightmares; a lifetime spent sleeping on the edge of war had twisted that habit into an essential survival trait. He lay next to Ryouma and Tsume, tied to his own softly beeping machines, and slept like the dead.
Which was fitting for a man who dreamed of nothing but the dead.
It was the sharingan's fault. Its first moment in Kakashi's head had been spent memorizing the image of Obito, half-crushed and fully blind, yelling at them to run while the rocks tumbled down. Its next moment had witnessed the birth of Kakashi's first working chidori, and the men that had broken beneath it.
( And there were always more. ) |
|
|