As Ryouma talked, Kakashi’s smile faded.

“I know,” he said. “I met Katsuko on the training fields, after your mission. She was wearing your shirt.”

Ryouma winced, gaze dropping. He forced it back, meeting Kakashi’s eye again. “I lent it to her on our way home. Her shirt got ruined in a wind jutsu, an’ I was just wearing bandages.”

Katsuko hadn’t been in great shape, Kakashi remembered. Exhausted, wounded, defensive, and just as angry as Kakashi by the end of the conversation.

Do you want him? he’d asked her. It hadn’t been an offer.

What for? He won’t want me.

But she’d abandoned Ryouma at the hospital -- hadn’t even stayed to check on his injuries -- so Kakashi thought she’d forfeited her right to sound bereft. He had gone to check, but Ryouma had already been home and flattened from his soldier pill crash, and Kakashi had stood silent at his door for twelve long minutes, smelling the weary, bloodied despair, before he’d left Ryouma to sleep.

He’d regretted that later.

But Ryouma had made it home after all, and Kakashi was sick of saying things he regretted; he didn’t plan to start again now.

“You can’t cheat on a relationship you never agreed to be in,” he said carefully, pushing himself up on one elbow. He found a jagged smile. “We said no strings. And I spent most of my time pushing you away, anyway.”

Ryouma drew in a deep breath, let it out again. “That’s what I told myself. Worked in the moment, didn’t help the guilt later.” His scent twisted into something black and unhappy, burning at the edges like charred paper.

I just wanted to not think.

Kakashi reflected on the bottle of shouchuu in his fridge: a not-quite-so-adequate substitute for every man he’d slept with in the last six years, since he’d figured out that hard, masked, anonymous sex could wipe his mind clean in the way that nothing else would. Apparently it worked for other people, too.

But everything with Ryouma had been better. Enough to break Kakashi in half when Ryouma had died.

When Kakashi thought he’d died.

He drew his own deep breath, sat up far enough to lean against the edge of bed, and curled his fingers over the sharp-bladed edge of Ryouma’s shoulder. Anchored himself. Told the truth. “I was so angry at you. I don’t think I’ve been that mad at anyone since I was a kid.” Since his father had gutted himself on the living room floor, perhaps. “But you can’t get that tied up in someone if you don’t care about them, and when you didn’t come home...”

Ryouma winced again.

“I didn’t care about Katsuko. I didn’t care if you hated me for everything I’d said to you at the Stone. I just wanted you back safe.” He leaned his head against the bed, half-closing his eye. “They didn’t tell me you’d vanished until three weeks after. They didn’t tell me at all, actually. It was all classified; Ginta figured it out. They’d sent three search teams after you and found nothing, and I was too stupid-angry to notice. I just thought you were on a long one, or had double-ended your missions. But Ginta caught it and brought it to me, and we went out together after you. AWOL.”

Ryouma startled, something unreadable flashing behind his eyes. Had he thought no one would look for him?

“There was no trail -- it was too late, and Ginta kept slowing things up. His leg was still injured, and he wouldn’t give me your mission details. Too afraid I’d bolt off without him.” Granted, Kakashi would have, but the memory still made him clench his teeth. “We couldn’t find a sign of you, but we ended up near your old Lightning stomping grounds, and Ginta knew the safe house your team had been based in. So we went there.”