Kakashi hadn’t actually meant that as a criticism.

Well, he hadn’t meant it as a criticism of Ryouma. It was a judgement on the kind of friends that would take someone out, hollow-eyed after a bad mission, and abandon them to whatever pretty stranger grabbed first. But since that was apparently the point, Kakashi was left to question Ryouma’s post-mission coping strategies and his choice in friends.

And to wonder why dating had entered the conversation.

“I meant,” Kakashi said finally, “that people should do better by you.”

The grimy sodium-light turned Ryouma’s look of blank confusion orange-gold. “How drunk are you?”

“I’m not,” Kakashi said. He was warm from his first drink, and the second Kurenai had added, but clear-headed. “I’m making a point.”

Ryouma’s gaze dropped. He stood in the doorway, cut from shade and shadow, staring at the red drink in his hand. “Maybe I’m drunk, then.” He swallowed half the glass with a careless gesture, as if to prove it, and looked up with challenge in his eyes. “So what’s your point? I don’t always make mistakes.”

Kakashi wasn’t doing this right, again.

He set his glass carefully down on the wall and got to his feet, walking back until he stood in front of Ryouma, just outside of arm’s length. Ryouma tracked him warily, defensive, like he expected Kakashi to bite. If he’d been a dog, his fur would have been ridged all the way down his spine.

But not, Kakashi thought, with anger. Ryouma wasn’t angry. He’d lost his closest teammate, watched his teacher fall apart, couldn’t turn to his captain because everything between them was fraught with sex. He’d dragged them all out for fun, and he’d even managed to find some of it, but he’d also spent half the evening looking stabbed.

“You’re my teammate,” Kakashi said. “And I don’t think you’re okay. If you want to go back in there and chase Sakamoto, or someone else, and that will make you happy, then you should do it. But—” He made an awkward gesture and tried, hard, to be an actual human being. “If it won’t, I want to… help?”

Ryouma stared at him.

There was a moment where Kakashi thought he’d managed to say the right thing. Ryouma swallowed hard and said, “Fuck, Kakashi. You—”

Then he broke off.

Music thumped distantly beneath their feet. Ryouma drew a breath and threw back the rest of his drink, let his arm drop with the empty glass. The sharp, elegant lines of his face hardened, guarded. He said, “It’s not Sakamoto. But he wanted me and he was willing and we’d have fun together, and it wouldn’t be more than that. Not like it would if— Can you stop looking at me like that?”

Kakashi flinched back a step, caught himself. Ryouma’s dragon tattoo was a jeweled streak of color beneath the translucent mesh shirt, coiled under Ryouma’s collarbone. Kakashi looked at the arch of its neck, and said, “Okay.”