Ryouma choked on something that might have been a laugh. It didn't sound much like one. "I dunno. Probably." Fifteen years and a bloody war might have killed them, even if alcohol hadn't. He'd never gone back to find out. "I survived. That's the point, right?"

That's enough, isn't it?

Kakashi hadn't pushed him away before, on the hospital roof. He'd hauled Ryouma up on his scraped-bloody shoulders instead, carrying the crippled man who'd come to rescue him, and rambled about how dogs made better family than people did. That was probably true, if Tsume's family was anything to go by...

And Kakashi wasn't going away. Ryouma seized onto that with both hands. He could meet that single grey eye, blazing like lightning; he could refuse to tremble beneath the hand curled possessively over his knee. He'd been weak before, but not anymore. He'd drunk that shot, tasted a mouth still tingling with the after-burn of sake, endured Matsuda's hands, and then rotted the man's gut and throat away. And if Kakashi had sacrificed himself to rescue Ryouma, tossing back the drugged drink with a joke and a smile, hadn't Ryouma made up for it afterward?

"It's a trigger," he said. "The taste, the smell--just bein' around drunk men. But I didn't break, did I? I did the mission." And if he'd only managed it because Kakashi was there--well, Kakashi was here now, wasn't he?

His dry throat shredded his voice, but Kakashi was close enough to hear anyway. "Thanks for helping me keep it together."