The kitchen counter dug sharply into Kakashi’s lower back.

“Uh,” he said eloquently, before sense reasserted itself. It wasn’t the first time Ryouma had made an overture; their first conversation at Trials had gone to an are you hitting on me? place, before the vice-commander had interrupted. And there’d been the hair-petting thing on the mission, though Kakashi had taken that more as an accidental gesture from a man wanting to know definitively where his teammates were, rather than anything more serious. But Ryouma was flirty in the same way Katsuko was strange; it was carved into their basic personalities, and sometimes it splashed on Kakashi.

Except Katsuko was also flirty, in a glinting-eyed, sharp kind of way, like a weapon unaware of its edges.

She's got the hots for you. She thinks you're pretty.

Soap bubbles had better boundaries than Team Six, and Kakashi was not awake enough to see a steady path back to solid ground. He tried, anyway.

“That’d be an unforgivable corruption of the points system,” he said. “Which figures, since you’ve known about it for five minutes. And you’re losing all the good work of your dinner-and-flowers plan.”

Which looked a lot less innocuous now.

Ryouma’s empty coffee mug dangled between long, calloused fingers, a short drop from shattering, and he raised one dark eyebrow. “What, I thought it’d be an upgrade.”

“Sex for life-saving?” Kakashi said, heartbeat tripping. “I guess that’s one way to pay. You were thinking we’d go at it right on the counter here, or head back to the showers? Since the bed is taken.”

Ryouma stared for a moment, dilated pupils blending into the coffee-black rims of his irises; it was almost impossible to tell where the border was. His eyes were just dark, unreadable. Then his mouth firmed decisively. He set his mug down, straightened up, and stepped directly into Kakashi’s personal space, crowding Kakashi against the counter. One broad hand curled around Kakashi’s hip.

“Guess that depends on you,” Ryouma said, low. “D’you top or bottom?”

Kakashi couldn’t actually remember the last time his entire body had gone eep. Probably the first time he’d set foot on an actual battlefield, when it had still been new and terrifying, but the sensation came roaring back now, like a terrible tidal wave. He was fairly certain his hair stood on end. He definitely turned scarlet behind the mask.

“I didn’t—” he said, leaning backwards. “I mean, I don’t—”

Ryouma’s head ducked; his mouth brushed warm against Kakashi’s ear. “I’m flexible.”

Kakashi broke. It was easier to bend space, chakra, and a few laws of physics to put himself on the other side of the room, where he could breathe, than find words underneath the looming press of Ryouma’s body. He wound up against the bookcase, and had to catch a sliding videocassette before it hit the floor. On the bed, Naruto grunted and rolled over, oblivious. Plastic creaked in Kakashi’s grip.

“I don’t sleep with teammates,” he said.

Ryouma’s hands were splayed over the counter, braced around the shape of an absent body. He pulled them easily back, and leaned against the narrow gap of wall next to the fridge, one leg pulled up, foot resting against the wall. A smile licked around the corners of his mouth. “Good policy,” he said, sounding deeply satisfied, like he’d won everything he’d wanted. “Guess I’ll have to go back to Plan A, assuming you ever come within ten feet of me again. I could just pay your restaurant tab.”

He’d been screwing around.

Of course he had.

Kakashi bit down on his first response, and the second, and took a slow breath through his nose. Carefully, he returned the videocassette to its abandoned slot, and pulled the tangled snarl of he-didn’t-even-know-what back underneath his skin, until he could be rational again.

Wit or winning, he’d said. It wasn’t supposed to be kind, it was supposed to sharpen you, and the target you used it against.

Well, now he felt honed.

“That gets you to minus fifteen,” he said. “Well done.”