| [Apr. 8th, 2017|10:39 pm] |
Kakashi wasn't dancing. He stood dark and uncompromising in a sea of moving bodies, hands in his pockets, strobes catching pink and green in his hair as he stared after Ginta.
Ryouma warred, for a moment, with the desire to kick his head in.
"You got something to say?"
"You said to stop you if you made a mistake." Kakashi's eye narrowed, tracking Ginta through the crowd. "That is a mistake."
"I didn't mean Ginta!" Ryouma had to yell over the throbbing music; he might have been yelling anyway. "He's hot, he likes me, he's not pretending t'be anything he isn't, what's wrong?"
He'd gotten Kakashi's attention, at least. Blue light cut over the mask on a sharp inhale. "He's a man who collects blackmail for fun. He has council connections; he'd end your career in a second if it suited him. You don't want him under your skin."
"You don't know what I want," Ryouma snapped. "What, you think I'll screw up so bad he'd throw me to Kuroda?" Ginta was the one who'd said ANBU officers policed their own—
But promises were easy, and all shinobi were liars.
Kakashi's brows pinched. "No. I think you have better options."
Ryouma stared at him. Kakashi frowned back, blue and silver and the worst option on the floor. Ryouma could have laughed, if he hadn't wanted so badly to hit something.
"It's a good thing you don't run my sex life, Hatake. You'd fuck it up worse'n I do." He drained the rest of the beer he'd bought for Usagi. "C'mon. Let's check on the officers."
For the briefest moment, the lights caught something in Kakashi's eye that might have been surprise, or even pain. He reached out, caught Ryouma's shoulder with his fingertips before Ryouma could turn away, and said, "I'm sorry."
Ryouma stood still.
Kakashi said, "I— did that wrong. You can do what you want." His hand fell away. His voice was almost inaudible under the music. "I just… thought we would hang out tonight. You made me get a shirt."
And jeans. And Kakashi'd tried them both, even though it meant involving more people, changing in Hakone's bathroom, wearing another man's scent against his skin. He was standing here in a packed club with dancepop thumping in their bones and strangers grinding perilously close, and he'd come because Ryouma asked him.
Ryouma's chest clenched. His voice came hoarse, maybe from the yelling, or the smoke. "You should've kicked me in the head."
Kakashi blinked once. Then his eye curved. "I keep hearing we should use words."
Maybe. There were some Kakashi definitely didn't want to hear. Ryouma searched for others. "I've never done this before. Gone with someone who — wasn't lookin' out for himself. Sorry I left you."
The smile faded from Kakashi's eye. He looked up at Ryouma for a moment, while the lights played in his hair and the crowd surged around them. Then he turned towards the bar. "Next round's back on you," he said. "Also, I'm starting to think you're actually worse at people than I am."
He cut his way through dancers like soldiers on a battlefield. Ryouma nearly knocked someone over, trying to keep up. "Nobody's worse at people than you are."
Kakashi glanced back over his shoulder, a glint of amusement in the strobing lights, then ducked under someone's flailing arm and fought his way through to ask the harried bartender, "What's the most expensive drink you have?"
"What?" the man shouted back.
Kakashi held up two fingers and jerked his chin back at Ryouma. "He's buying two of them." |
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