| Don't Wanna Fight This War [Ryouma and Ginta] | [Mar. 14th, 2009|03:32 pm] |
[[Takes place on March 19, thirteen days after The Safest Place You've Found and fourteen days after If the Door's Still Open--both of which you should probably reread for context.]]
Ryouma waited a week and a half before he let himself even think it. At first it was simply so he wouldn’t hobble down the hall and rip Ginta’s head off; then it was because nobody took a man seriously when he was on crutches, and if he wanted the man who never took anything seriously to do so for once in his life, it was going to be the moment when Ryouma punched Ginta in the face and then demanded what the hell he’d thought he was doing. Kissing Kakashi was one thing; if Kakashi had let him do it, obviously there would've been nothing for Ryouma to do but congratulate Ginta and offer to compare notes. But from the way Kakashi told the story, that hadn't been a kiss so much as an assault. And Ginta had lied.
Even so, Ryouma decided on the second day that he didn't really want to punch Ginta in the face anymore. An explanation--and, okay, a chance to do some yelling--would be enough. He figured he’d wait till he lost the crutches anyway, just so he’d have the option.
In the meantime he tried not to think. That was pretty easy; Kakashi had left on another mission and Ginta seemed to be avoiding him anyway, and after three days of TV and punching his pillows he started spending every daylight hour outside HQ. He worked on chakra-walking with crutches—which was a lot harder than it looked—and he stole a whole roll of explosive tags from the armory and spent two rather charred days trying to use his new chakra-eating jutsu to deactivate them without blowing himself up. He took a sleeping pill every night, and slept without dreams.
On the fifth day, Kuromaru left the hospital, and Tsume moved out. Ryouma flushed the rest of the sleeping pills down the toilet and went down to bug his buddies at the morgue.
The sixth, seventh, and eighth days were mostly the same. Ryouma got a new issue of armor—after he contracted in blood not to lose this set—and stayed up two nights in a row watching samurai, zombie, and pirate flicks. He spent three hours drawing stick-figure storyboards for a samurai-zombie-pirate flick that would’ve made his career as a movie star instead of a ninja, until he realized he was drawing the pirate captain with only one eye and the samurai lord was way too short and that left just him to be the zombie, which would mean he’d never get the girl (the main character, who was starting to look a lot like Tsume, only with bigger boobs). Barring unforeseen plot twists, the pirate captain and the samurai lord wouldn’t want her anyway. He threw the storyboards away and went out for coffee.
On the ninth day he burned his crutches in the hospital courtyard, nearly killed himself lifting weights, gave away all his cash to two starved-looking waifs in the weight room, and spent the rest of the day hunting the slums for his kids. He had to run up a tab at the all-you-can-eat barbeque, but they got fed, too.
On the tenth day, he ran out of excuses.
But when he stopped by Ginta’s room, Ginta wasn’t there.
That was a pretty good excuse. Ryouma used it for another two days, until he shouldered open the door of the little coffee shop and saw a slight blond man leaning against the counter and chatting up the barista. The jingling bell over the door was enough warning for a ninja; Ryouma saw the reflection of blue eyes flick up to the mirrored wall behind the counter, saw his own reflection tense in the doorway. He stepped over the threshold, deliberately casual, and let the door swing shut behind him.
"Hey," he said.
That was about as far as he'd planned. Maybe he should have thought about this more. |
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