Ryouma couldn't have managed anything near that good with only one hand to mold chakra and a set of borrowed fingers to finish the seal. The clone that bloomed out of lightning-scented smoke was brown-haired and chocolate-eyed, dressed in the perfectly bland street clothes Kakashi had henge'd up for himself when they'd checked into the hotel. It was also wearing the kind of amused, superior smirk that usually made Ryouma want to kick things, like Kakashi's ass.

"Well," it drawled, hooking its thumbs into its pockets, "aren't you two adorable. I don't suppose you need me to point out how bad of an idea this is, do you? Because I could--"

"Join in?" Ryouma suggested.

The clone's eyes narrowed. "I notice that you never let common sense interrupt your flow of conversation. That must be hard for you."

Kakashi seized a pillow and buried his head, muttering something that might've been Save me from testosterone fights with a chakra matrix. The clone glared at him, too. "I'm not sure you're one to talk about sex hormones..."

"He can talk all he wants," Ryouma said. "He was great." He grinned cheerfully at the clone. "Wallet's in my backpack. Knock yourself out."

The clone bared its teeth. "You wish."

Ryouma ignored it to roll onto his side and push the pillow off Kakashi's face. "C'mon," he said, prodding gently at a tattoo-blazed shoulder. "Roll over. I still owe you half a backrub."

"Oh gods," the clone said, and slammed the door behind it.

Kakashi dragged a hand over his face. "Does it count as self-hatred if I actually have a second neck to break?" he asked, rhetorically. He fanned out the fingers still covering his eyes to glance at Ryouma's hand still insistently pressing against the crimson whorl on his biceps. Ryouma actually looked serious about that backrub, mouth set firm behind its smile. Kakashi felt himself blink--again--and caught Ryouma's wrist before the push became a shove.

"As much as I admire your stamina," he drawled--or started to, before he remembered the clone's mercury contempt and kicked the laziness right out of his voice, "the only way you're getting another round out of me right now is if you come up with a better bribe than food and not moving for the next twenty minutes." He considered. "Maybe if you killed that clone."

"You can chuck your pillow at it when it gets back," Ryouma promised. "And both of you have dirty minds. Mind. I don't want another round."

Which had to be the first time he'd ever uttered that particular combination of words, but it was still true. He'd had great sex before, and if his luck held good he'd have plenty more. But sex by itself didn't really hold a candle to...whatever this was. Strength, in the loose bracelet of calloused fingers around his wrist. Shelter, in the muscle-hard warmth of a body curled against his. Safety, in a tired and teasing voice stripped of sarcastic bite.

Peace.

He sat up, working his shoulders against the itching, endorphin-dulled ache in his back, and reached out to finger-comb Kakashi's flyaway hair out of his face. "I'd like," he said quietly, "to give you something without expecting anything back. Like to see you fall asleep smiling. Which isn't gonna happen, maybe, given we got food coming whenever your clone feels like it and it'd probably take a month to get you to relax, but I'd like to try."

This time, Kakashi didn't blink. One grey eye widened, the other remained quiescent behind its closed lid, and a wave of dull red crested across his cheekbones, hidden by black cloth. If he'd been a little younger, he would have ducked his head, vanished behind his hair, and put serious thought into creating a jutsu designed to let him dissolve straight through the floor--or destroy the room and half the hotel. Acute embarrassment was a problem beast in teenage ninja with quick trigger fingers.

But he wasn't a teenager, wasn't running, and his trigger fingers were still locked around Ryouma's wrist, fighting not to tighten.

Definitely not running.

Thinking would have been nice. But all he could come up with was a hot, highly-confused tangle of mental threads snarled around the idea that Ryouma was actually serious. And another twist, reminding him how good that backrub had felt, right before it had devolved into better things. Ryouma's expression, relaxed and smiling and just a little sad, dark eyes gilded with a flicker of self-aware irony, wasn't helping him feel anything other than... young.

Highly unsure. Entirely reassured.

Really embarrassed.

"Two months," he said finally, and released Ryouma's heavy-boned wrist. Turned away from the eyes that outmatched his two to one and saw more than he'd ever been comfortable with, and rolled over to give Ryouma his bare back. "And if I haven't called you a masochist before now, consider yourself newly labled."

Ryouma laughed, baratone etching into bass, and answered with two broad hands sweeping rough-and-gentle down the length of Kakashi's spine. It was exactly like last time; startling at first, until it faded into just plain good. Fingers used to weapons and women found the exact line between hard and soft that made something low and belly-deep warm and relax in a way that--for once--had nothing to do with sex. He caught himself sighing, then groaning quietly. Heard Ryouma chuckle deep in his throat, and realized he'd forgotten almost entirely about feeling embarrassed. Artist's fingers chased away the renewed flush of red that spilled down the back of his neck.

When the clone returned, it found the door locked, its creator entirely uninterested in anything but the narrow scope of future centred around muscle and bone and whatever Ryouma planned to touch next, and a baratone-bass command to come back in half an hour with proper food. None of that flavourless crap. And a fresh mug of coffee.

"Don't get carried away," Kakashi murmured, stretching out with the dull rythmn of joints cracking contentedly back into place. He turned to catch a half-lidded look at Ryouma, saw strong shoulders, two healing red handprints, and a bitten circle that said nothing but mine against tanned skin and a slow-beating jugular pulse, and didn't quite smile.

Then Ryouma's hands brushed ribs, deliberately found a ticklish spot, and startled a strangled laugh out of him instead.