"About as much as you normally do," Kakashi said, when his breath steadied out enough for words. Ginta snorted, a self-mocking kind of sound, but his gaze stayed to the side. Then he seemed to shake himself, and looked back at Kakashi. There wasn't any demand in his expression, no insistence, there was just...

Hell, at this point, Kakashi didn't even know.

"Half-brothers is a hell of a jump from friends," he heard himself murmur, and didn't know what to do with that thought, either. Didn't know if there was anything to do, beyond mourn that the father-figure they'd both wanted had died turning his real son into a demon.

With Ginta's arm still held fast, Kakashi let his thoughts cut loose and run.

Ginta had never had a dad, Kakashi had never had a mom, and both of them had been yanked around by the kinds of families that left normal people bleeding. But it didn't even matter, really, because they'd both still survived and grown up and made it to ANBU, and now they had a real cause to bleed for. And keep breathing for.

They had a village to defend. Even if it had kicked them both in the balls more than once. That didn't matter; it was still home.

And if Kakashi was tired enough to make his soul ache--if Ginta was so shattered that he couldn't walk, could barely sit upright--that didn't matter either. Because they'd done the job. Done it sideways and backwards and wrong--

Nothing would bring Tsuyako back.

--but done it in any case. And Kakashi thought that maybe, this one time, it was okay to stop kidding himself and admit that he just wanted to lie down, right here, with a man he had no intention of sleeping with any time soon, and just... do nothing. Exist. Breathe. Think a pain-free thought.

And, well, maybe give Ginta's grandmother a stroke. But that was just a bonus.

"I was going to go home," he said, and the words came out smeared with exhaustion. So quiet that Ginta cocked his head to hear them. "But now I think I... want to stay. S'that okay?"