| [Aug. 15th, 2008|12:22 am] |
Kakashi took a quiet breath, letting it trickle out through his nose, and relaxed a fraction. The air tasted sweeter now, just a little. Tsume's scent had warmed, Ryouma's had calmed. And more importantly, Ryouma was touching back. Touching Tsume. Refusing to flinch from his own hands.
"Quick learner," Kakashi echoed quietly, feeling the words slip out of his mouth without any real thought behind them. A tired smile twisted under his mask, backed by a completely inappropriate laugh. He bit the sound off before it got far.
Ryouma was a quick learner. Kakashi had a riverbank memory, filled with sunlight, that attested to that.
But now was probably not the time to say that.
He tightened his grip on Ryouma's fingers a little, feeling shivers ease beneath his hand, and watched Tsume relax beneath a careful touch, ice-blue eyes sliding closed. Her breathing settled down, slow and steady.
"Don' you dare sleep," Kakashi muttered, and wrapped his free hand over her sheet-covered shoulder, squeezing gently. "Doc'll hang me if you wake up yellin'..."
It was getting increasingly hard to focus, but that he remembered. He slid down a little, feeling warmth seep through armour and cloth as the narrow bed's two other occupants pressed against his flank, and let his head fall sideways. He could rest against his own arm, still curled up around Ryouma's shoulders, and keep an eye on the door...
"Don' let her sle'p," he mumbled, grabbing at the soldier pill's chakra and throwing it against the towering walls of looming unconsciousness. "Or me. Need to--to--" A yawn almost drowned the last word. "Guard." |
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