To have one of these conversations when he wasn't dead on his feet. Was there a law somewhere that stipulated he had to be exhausted when he dealt with other peoples' emotions?

"Nothing," he said, after a second to twist the honest answer out of his brain. Disbelief flashed over Ginta's face, quickly chased by anger. Kakashi could almost read his thoughts: Are you mocking me? "I'm serious," he said quietly, turning to look back at the room. "What's left for me to want?"

The air tasted like scorched metal. Like blood and antiseptic and the bland edge of cooling rice.

"Intel sent me out because I'm the only one who stood a chance of making it to you on time." He hesitated, mental fingers wrapping carefully around the next thought before he shaped it into words. "Ryouma..."

--treating me like I raped you.

He'd told Ryouma about the kiss in the hallway, smelled the anger that had rolled off him like a black thunderhead--I'll melt his damn face off--and Kakashi had grabbed and snarled and forbidden Ryouma to do anything, because a kiss meant less than nothing in a world where bones broke like an afterthought. Because he hadn't let Ryouma kill Sadao, and why would he let Ginta get hurt for so much less?

But Ryouma had done something.

"Both of you need to get over this habit of interfering in my sex life," he said shortly. "It's my choice who I screw, and if I ever find myself on the losing end of a fight--or something worse--it'll be my choice to do something about it." For a flickering second, he thought of the bitemark scar on his shoulder, felt it tingle, but the fleeting sensation was gone before he could do more than notice it. "You don't have a claim on me, Ginta. And you sure as hell don't have a reason to be concerned about me--I warned you. More than once."

He raked a hand through his hair, trying to organize his thoughts.

What do you want?

"I wanted to be left alone. And I did everything but paint a neon sign on my door about it. Now I don't want anything, because every time I try to untangle my life I just end up with more people in it."

It wasn't quite a lie. He just didn't give voice to deeper, painful wants. Like the half-crushed desire to feel Ryouma's hands on his shoulders, hauling him back onto his feet, standing strong at his back. Or the wish to see Ginta's face split with laughter again, while his eyes gleamed and his hands gestured and he spun out some insane idea wrapped up in a grain of logic and too many words.

He'd never wanted partners. Never wanted friends.