Kakashi blinked. Didn’t we talk this morning?

Except they hadn’t really. Kakashi had offered to mind-twist Ryouma out of repeating nightmares, Ryouma had gotten embarrassed, and Kakashi had solved the problem by sleeping on him. Not much of a conversation.

Before that… The last time they’d talked about anything meaningful had been on the rooftop at Embers, after Kakashi had dragged Ryouma away from Ginta, and everything had been hideously awkward and painful until they’d made it okay, somehow. The rest of the evening was a bit of a blur, but he had a few stand out memories: flaming lemons, discussions of octopus sex, hope at Ryouma’s door.

They’d agreed to be friends. Talking was the easy part of that; Ryouma always had weird and fascinating things to say.

Kakashi found on a spot on the sloping verge where the reeds gave way to lush, dry — and, most importantly, leechless — grass, and sat down. He balanced the lantern on a flat rock. “What’d you want to talk about?”

Ryouma settled down next to him, folding an arm around his knee. “It wasn’t really anything big. Not like I have a secret plan for escaping the tanuki or anything. I don’t actually think we need one. It’s weird, but it’s like— I think things are gonna work out. We’ll go home tomorrow, we’ll find a safe place for Harubi, I’ll maybe be a little more careful at crossroad shrines from now on. I dunno if that’s some kinda magic panic-suppressor, like how they took our chakra, or if I’m just panicked-out after what happened with the wolf gods, but…” He shrugged one bare shoulder, and picked at the dusty bandage around his wrist. “I don’t have anybody’s killing intent creeping up my spine, and it just felt like a night I could come out here with you and… look at the moon on the water.”

That — the inexplicable optimism — might actually be the alcohol. Or stress-exhaustion. The wolves had been carved-out terror. By comparison, the tanuki were frustrating, but they weren’t white teeth in Ryouma’s wrist.

The moonlight… Kakashi didn’t have an explanation for. He didn’t try too hard to find one. He studied the sweep of light glittering on the water’s surface, ice-blue and beautiful, and tipped his head up to observe the celestial body. “Do you think it’s the same moon?”

“Could be. Ours was a crescent, though, and this one’s full. So either we lost a couple weeks in the wolf gods’ world, or this is a different one.” He glanced up for a moment, then flopped over onto his back and folded his arms behind his head. “Do you recognize any of the stars?”

Kakashi’s mouth twitched. Ryouma was as well-versed in constellations as Kakashi, like all ninja. They were a crucial navigational tool. He already knew the answer, unless he thought Kakashi had a hidden trove of previously undisclosed star knowledge tucked into his back pocket. Which, Kakashi supposed, was a little flattering.

“No,” he said. “But that one looks like a watermelon stand.” He pointed to a cluster of stars that, if you squinted hard, might make a sort of rectangular shape with one lumpy side.

Ryouma opened his mouth, closed it, then said kindly, “I know your depth perception isn’t good, but that is clearly a shave-ice stand.”

“You are wrong and you don’t know you’re wrong, which makes it even sadder,” Kakashi said. “Pick your own constellations; don’t steal mine.”

“You steal things all the time,” Ryouma complained. He freed his bandaged arm and pointed. “There’s a sake cup. It’s probably a giant sake cup the tanuki threw at the wolf gods when they were having an argument, and it got stuck.”