| [Oct. 19th, 2015|12:04 am] |
The waiter — a short, cheerful man with a purple mohawk — lit their table grill, basted it with oil, and brought a selection of meat cuts for them to cook themselves. Ryouma got his enoki mushrooms wrapped in thin slices of pork. Katsuko got a menagerie of dead things. And Kakashi got fresh-caught fish hooked from Konoha’s own river.
The sizzle and pop of grilled barbecue filled the air with rich savoriness, and brought a kind of group camaraderie to the table. For most ninja, campfire cooking held good memories.
Ryouma was bright-eyed and flushed, but not sloppy-drunk. He laughed when Katsuko speared two shrimp on her chopsticks and made them act as a pair of dancing shoes. Kakashi leaned against the wall, propped his chin on his hand, and watched them tiredly. He’d missed this, he realized.
“Tousaki,” he said, interrupting Katsuko’s impromptu sacrifice of the dancing shrimp to the grill. “Were you drinking to celebrate?”
Ryouma glanced over, startled, and then looked away. “Not really, no. I just got one to— steady the nerves, y’know, and then it turned into three.” He busied his hands sliding three enoki-maki off the grill and onto Katsuko’s plate, and added diffidently, “The lieutenant’s taking me on for field medic training.”
Which… was a bad thing?
“Really? That’s fantastic!” Katsuko grabbed Ryouma in a tight hug, and like a proud general bestowing a hard-won medal, transferred one of the enoki-maki from her plate to his.
(She kept the other two.)
Ryouma, already warm, turned pink with pleasure and— something that smelled like anxiety, sharp and rank under the cooking meat and spilled beer. “He brought it up a couple weeks ago, but I still wasn’t sure— He got Taichou’s permissions and everything, and told me to sign up for a medical basics class. So I think it’s really going to happen.”
“Do you want it to?” Kakashi asked.
Katsuko sat back just enough to look at Ryouma’s face, but left her good hand resting on his arm.
Ryouma drew a deep breath. “Yes,” he said, like he’d just realized that was true. “I hadn’t really let myself believe it would. I mean, who’d let me—? But Taichou said he’d pay gold for another medic, so I guess they don’t mind. Assuming it works, I mean.” He looked down at his hands, clenched one, relaxed it, looked up again. “Hell, it’s just first aid and ninjutsu, right? I can do that. And next time we run into trouble, I can help.”
Kakashi traded a glance with Katsuko. She frowned.
“Did the lieutenant say you weren’t helping?” Kakashi asked.
Ryouma’s head came up, startled. “No! No, he said… Being a medic helps him deal with being a ninja. Because the same hands that kill your target can save your comrades.” He smiled at Kakashi, crooked and a little hesitant, across the table. “And hey, the whole time I was looking after you on the field and in the bunker, I wasn’t killing that Kiri captain, right?”
Kakashi and Katsuko both relaxed, and Kakashi snorted softly, “So long as you don’t start fussing after us like the lieutenant…”
He could see the logic, though. He remembered Ryouma in Tsuto’s bedroom, silent and methodical as he snapped the wife’s neck, finished the daughter before she drowned in her own blood, rotted Tsuto alive. There was no doubt Ryouma could kill for Konoha without hesitating, but it took something from him.
Here, in giving, was a chance to take something back.
It wouldn’t hurt to have another medic around they could trust, either. Kakashi would never be one. Katsuko couldn’t. Raidou had enough to manage, and Kakashi doubted he had the aptitude anyway.
Kakashi nodded. “You’ll be good at it.”
Katsuko leaned against Ryouma’s side. “Agreed.”
The crooked edges of Ryouma’s smile softened, and some of the anxiety slipped away. “Thanks.” |
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