"So take drugs." Kakashi sat up, hand falling away to catch against fawn-pattern bed covers. He'd judged wrong; that smokey edge of lowering thunder-scent didn't mean what he thought it did. Or Ryouma just didn't know what he wanted.

But he'd still managed to catch Kakashi out on a limb, offering--

Who offered an abuse victim sex?

Cotton-weave threads snapped under his fingertips. Whatever had happened to him, Ryouma wasn't a victim. The sky had a better chance of catching on fire. Ryouma was--irritating. Frustrating. Maddening. He was--

Moving Shiba carefully aside and rolling onto his flank. Bracing one arm beneath his head, the other by his side, and pressing the hard plane of his sternum solidly against Kakashi's knee. Brief lines of pain chased swiftly over his face, telling the story of an injury that still ached--that knife wound over his shoulders. Kakashi found his hand lifting without thought; he caught it and dropped it back to the bed. Curled between Ryouma's stomach and Kakashi's leg, Shiba opened her jaws in a disgruntled yawn before she settled back down. At the foot of the bed, Hoshika was nothing but a warm chakra presence, quietly keeping guard.

Kakashi stared down at crooked smile lilting one corner of Ryouma's mouth higher than the other, the dark strands of messy hair just long enough to get into darker eyes, and gave up trying to touch ground with reality. Since when did Ryouma turn down sex?

And since when did Kakashi get rejected?

He touched the hard edge of Ryouma's shoulder, traced the defined path of muscle down to his biceps, where clean cotton and phantom tribal ink still hid the real curve of a ruined ANBU tattoo. Breathed the lingering edge of uncertainty and laughter in the air.

"Some days I think I hate you," he said, looking into the middle distance of nothing. "Especially when you make no sense."