| [Apr. 22nd, 2018|08:44 pm] |
Ryouma grinned up at the first stars beginning to prick the velvety sky. “In southern Fire Country. When it’s still rainy-cold in Konoha, before it gets sweltering hot down south. When you’ve finished the mission and you’re heading home, but there’s no rush, and the sky’s blue with big puffy clouds and the trees tossing all white against it, and you can put up your hand and brush the blossoms down, but some of them stick in your collar and you can still smell them at the end of the day… I think,” he decided, “I’m a little bit drunk.”
They’d reached the edge of the pond: less a water-carved bank here than a squelchy verge, jointed reeds and fringed rushes rising up tall and slender in the dusk. Kakashi brushed them aside with an open hand, stepping down bare-foot into the shallows. Ripples spread out from his wet toes, glinting in the golden light. Kakashi held the lantern out so that the soft glow touched Ryouma and looked back, thoughtfully.
“No,” he said. “You’re eloquent.”
From the dull heat in his neck and cheeks, Ryouma was fairly sure he was flushing. Maybe the light wasn’t that good. “I could be both,” he said. “That was some pretty impressive sake. Wonder if they’ll let us take any back.”
“If Yuuhi bargains for it, almost certainly,” Kakashi said. His foot stirred idly in the shallow water. His eye curved again, like the dawning of a slow grin. “You’re blushing.”
“That’s just proof I’m drunk,” Ryouma said, and came down a step closer. Mud squished between his toes, weirdly pleasant. Cool water lapped at his feet. “Are we swimming?”
Kakashi looked back at the dark water. The placid mirror of the moon gleamed beyond the circle of lantern light. Across the pond the bonfire was only a distant glow, ringed by small dancing figures. “We could. You want to?”
Cold water might help, but stripping down in front of — beside — Kakashi certainly wouldn’t. And sitting around afterward in wet underpinnings was significantly less appealing. The tanuki still had the rest of their gear, inaccessible in chakra-sealed scrolls. Ryouma feinted: “There might be leeches.”
Kakashi evidently hadn’t thought of that. He took a sharp step back, recovered, and sloshed more moderately through the reeds toward the shore. “What did you have in mind?”
Now that he’d thought of it, too, Ryouma wasn’t too proud to check their feet. The lantern revealed only a clean wet glistening, no dark blobs or blood. He straightened in relief. “I, uh… Nothing really. It was just getting hot and noisy by the fire, and I didn’t wanna get stepped on. And I wanted—”
He stopped.
Kakashi looked steadily back at him, the lantern drooping from his hand, still haloing the edge of his profile.
“I wanted,” Ryouma said, “just to talk with you. It’s been a while.” |
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