They drifted a little, after that. Raidou and Kurenai discussed train prices and expense accounts. Genma’d apparently kept a running tally of all they’d spent so far, because that was part of the lieutenant’s paperwork. Ryouma closed his eyes, too, and listened to the ripple of their voices around him, as soothing as the breath-lifted shift of Kakashi’s shoulder against his, or the lap of the warm water against his skin…

Nails clicked, distantly, on stone. Raidou yelped.

Ryouma pried his eyelids open and saw Raidou with a hand clapped to the back of his neck, while Saishou sat back on the edge of the pool, licking her chops with an air of satisfaction in a job well done. Kakashi said drowsily, “She wants you to know the tanuki have prepared beds for us, somewhere, apparently.”

Raidou dropped his hand. “...Thank you?” he told Saishou. He swept a glance over his heat-flushed team, and abruptly stood. “Right. Yes. Everyone up. No one is allowed to get heatstroke and drown.”

“We’re on a mission,” Ryouma protested. “They’ll still put us on the Heroes’ Stone if we drown.”

“Not if you drown in a bath,” Kurenai observed, levering herself up and offering Genma a hand. They both made it out of the pool while Kakashi and Ryouma were still wrestling with dogs, coaxing Yori and his stiff hip out of the steam. By the time Ryouma toweled down and wrapped himself in his yukata, the others were dressed and...damp, if not dry.

It was a good look on all of them. Ryouma was tired enough to let himself appreciate it: Kurenai’s pink cheeks and black curls, the little halo of short hairs at the nape of Genma’s neck, the damp stretch of patterned yukata over Raidou’s broad chest. Kakashi’s wet hair the color of steel, and the heavy droop of his eye, and the way the mask stretched tight over his jaw as he yawned.

Even masked, the yawn was contagious. Raidou’s jaw cracked. He scrubbed a big hand through his hair, spiking it on end, and stooped to pick up an armload of tumbled gear. “Where’re these beds, then?” he asked Saishou.

Saishou flicked her tail and trotted off down the path, light on her paws despite her heavy belly. The rest of them followed, Pakkun riding on Kakashi’s shoulder.

It wasn’t far: another winding path branching off through wind-shivered bamboo, a single stone lantern at a wicker gate, a low-roofed cottage like a tea-house with five futons laid side-by-side on a tatami floor. Kakashi, investigating further, found a tidy outhouse and a garden well. Genma bullied them all through drinking their fill of the cold metallic water.

Then back to the tatami room, and a moment of bewildered blinking at futons. Ryouma couldn’t help remembering Himself’s amused rumble: To share as you see fit.

There’d be no sharing going on, not with all five of them and the dogs in the same room. Unless that was what Himself had meant...

Exhaustion broke like a wave over any further thoughts, and dragged them back down to sea. “You can have the wall,” Ryouma told Kakashi, and dropped onto the next futon over.

He didn’t dream.