"Some days I hate me." Ryouma wedged his arm a little more securely under his head and tried not to shiver under Kakashi's fingertips. "Kind of a lot lately, actually. I didn't mean to--"

He stopped, started over again. "If you're going to be a liar, you should be a good one. I'm not. I bust up laughing, or I just get too ridiculous for anyone to believe, or--I get scared of what the truth really is. So I run. Say I've been dating a girl for a month, and we're in bed, and she tells me she thinks she may be falling in love. So the next day I apply to get sent back to long-term duty on the border. Because she's sweet and funny and damn she's good in bed, and I'm already half in love--and if she is, too, there's nothing but a broken heart waiting for her. D'you get me? When it's just sex it's fine and dandy, but it's never just sex, not for me or for her."

Just sex? Kakashi had asked, as he sprawled in Ryouma's lap with the water dripping from his hair and pearling on his skin. Or are we doing something else here?

Ryouma tipped his head off his arm and pressed his face against the blanket. Muffled in quilted cloth, he murmured, "An' she's not like you."