| [Sep. 14th, 2013|01:35 am] |
Kakashi’s grip changed, moving up the sliding scale from painful to mildly agonizing when he found a pressure point on the back of Raidou’s neck and applied his thumb to it, because he was an evil, surly little shit. Raidou gave serious thought to drowning him in mud.
Yes, Yondaime-sama, I had your student for a week, and then I floated his body down a creek because he annoyed me.
He moved one hand enough to give Kakashi’s unruly hair a yank. “Suggest a solution, Hatake.”
“You’re the captain,” Kakashi said, sounding muffled and annoyed. Raidou hoped his face hurt. “Lead by example.”
“Fine,” Raidou said, and released his hold.
This close, he could feel every flicker of concealed surprise in Kakashi’s tense, untrusting muscles, backed by the ice-burn of cold blue chakra. Kakashi didn’t immediately let go, checking, presumably, for the hidden catch. Raidou held one hand up, fingers spread; the other arm was mostly pinned beneath their bodies.
And still, Kakashi waited.
“Kid, if you don’t let me go, this is going to turn into the world’s most awkward hug, and I don’t actually have a backup plan for that,” Raidou said.
Kakashi let go so fast he might have burned himself with air friction. Raidou pushed himself up and cracked his own neck, working the nerve-pinch pain out. Figured Kakashi was a no-hugging-zone; Raidou wondered if Hatake Sakumo had been that touch phobic, too, or were Kakashi’s issues all his own?
“Aww,” said the first clone. “No kiss?”
“I will murder you with a branch for my own amusement,” Raidou said levelly. “Just try me.”
“As long as you don’t give me a hug,” said the clone.
Unexpectedly, Kakashi hadn’t bolted back to camp, or to a distant vanishing dot on the horizon. He was ten feet away, rumpled and muddy and slightly breathless, eyeing the clone like it was a foreign concept.
Raidou shoved himself to his feet, feeling his aches. Bruises definitely, but nothing broken and nothing important torn. Kakashi seemed to be in similar shape, though Raidou was fairly certain you could whack him with an iron bar and he’d just look sarcastic about it.
Well, no, maybe he’d faint.
“One win, one draw,” Raidou said. “Raincheck on round three? I’m going to stretch the kinks out. You should join me.”
“You surrendered round two,” Kakashi said, drifting ever so slightly closer. “One each.”
“I negotiated a mutually beneficial cessation of hostilities because someone never learned good sportsmanship. So, actually, moral victory for me, which makes it two-nothing.” Raidou spread his arms in a broad crucifix, getting his blood flow going again. “We can go five out of seven.”
Kakashi stretched his arms out. “Next time, ninjutsu.”
“Hell no,” Raidou said. “Not until you beat me square, then we can play in your candyland.”
Kakashi snorted. “Fine.” |
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