#hound.

[copycaat]

We were real hungry and half dead / When you broke out half a loaf of sourdough bread / And in the tropical air the scent rose like a spirit / Moments of grace like this being wholly unmerited

It's a lazy kind of Thursday.

The day is unremarkable, except that Kakashi thinks some distant part of him may enjoy it, if he lets himself- @lvyeshou wakes him early, must have found out he was in town for a few days somehow. Maybe he had a sense for it, like the hairs stood up on the back of his neck and his head and heart went haywire whenever Kakashi was on stand down for a week, trying to hide away from the world in his sad, empty barracks apartment.

Or maybe Genma snitches on him.

He supposes it doesn't matter, because no matter how Gai found out and continues to find out that Kakashi was or is in town for a few days, the result is the same: Gai enthusiastically knocks on his door at precisely 6:15 this lazy kind of Thursday morning, loudly and insistently enough that Kakashi knows if he doesn't answer, he'll be getting complaints from all of his neighbors again. Kakashi isn't quite dressed, but he's already put some time in with calisthenics in his bedroom waiting for... maybe waiting for the sun to rise and the village to wake, or maybe waiting for Gai to show his face like a pathetic little sunflower, bending to follow Kakashi's orbit whenever Kakashi might let him.

Whatever, he thinks when he opens that door and Gai's expression brightens. He has time to kill. He isn't pleased or displeased to see Gai, he's just... tired. Maybe a little bored. Kakashi wordlessly shuffles away from the door and leaves it open, and Gai follows him inside.

"Good Morning My Rival!" Gai's booming voice is too-loud in an apartment that has no personal effects outside of a shuriken-patterned blanket on the mattress, scattered dog beds full of slumbering and formerly slumbering ninken that are giving the pair cranky looks, and a shelf full of books. Somehow Gai feels like the only living thing to set foot in here in weeks. "I apologize if I woke you-"

"You didn't," Kakashi cuts in quietly, and rolls his eye when he's promptly ignored.

"I only wished to find you early, before you were caught by any other entanglements and appointments, because I wish to issue you a Challenge, and to ask you to Spar!" Gai gives him a wide smile, a cocked hip, and a most youthful and cool thumbs up. If Kakashi had turned any lights on, he might accuse Gai of sparkling.

"Uh huh," he replies flatly. "The challenge is separate from the spar?"

"Indeed!" Gai reaches out to grip Kakashi by the shoulders, and only then seems to realize that Kakashi is in a rare state of undress- loose sleep pants, bare feet, maskless, shirtless. His gaze flickers over his face, the closed gifted eye and the long scar, the little mark at the corner of his toothy mouth, his sharp jawline, down his throat and his chest and the wiry muscle of his torso, before it determinedly locks back on Kakashi's lone, dark eye, blinking placidly at the teen before him like he didn't just catch Gai ogling him before 7 in the morning, which would have marked a far more decent hour for it. "I issue you this Challenge: Let us see which of us might catch more trout bare handed in the river!"

"Hm," Kakashi pretends to think for a moment, negotiates: "How about the first person to three declares victory, so we don't destabilize the local trout population?"

Gai's warm hands squeeze his shoulders. It feels like his fingers sink into something black and cold and dead inside of him and start to tear it out, so Kakashi twists gracefully out of his grip even as he cries out: "An excellent and thoughtful idea, Kakashi! Your consideration and diligence is a credit to-"

"Awesome," he cuts Gai off, unwilling to hear any further character assassination, unwilling to soak up any more warmth before 10am, which would have marked a far more decent hour for it. "I'll get dressed, we can spar and then we can find a spot on the river for the challenge. I don't have anything else to do today."

Kakashi turns away from him, but not too soon to see Gai brighten as he takes the admission as a promise to spend the entire day with him. Damn it. No afternoon nap for him, then. He drops his sleep pants there, and then dresses quickly, snickering to himself when he turns around again only to find Gai pink-cheeked and studiously staring up at the ceiling after his attempt to distract himself from the view by greeting the slumbering, cranky dogs.

Kakashi doesn't say, what's the problem, or nothing you haven't seen before, because he doesn't want to stay in the apartment any longer, not even to twist Gai up in knots and watch the cords of him fray from the tension.

"C'mon," he says, masked and sleeved and armored up against the world as he steps out of the apartment. "Let's go to the training grounds."

And they do spend the entire day together- all morning, sparring at the training grounds as they day starts to heat. As the sun reaches its zenith in the sky, Kakashi declares an end to their spar by shoving Gai face first into the river.

He comes up spluttering, coughing, offended until Kakashi jumps in right next to him. The water is crisp and cold in a way that might steal the breath from their lungs if it were any cooler outside, and after only a little bit of roughhousing in the water, and shedding their vests, they settle into their task of catching three fish by hand.

Kakashi wins. Three trout to Gai's two. Dinner for a few nights. Gai takes his defeat with the usual amount of grace, and they mentally note the scoreboard: 87-79, Kakashi's favor. He can see the other teen gearing up to issue him another inane challenge to try and up his numbers, or a punishment for his failure, so he tucks his hands into his wet pockets and proposes: "I'll clean and cook these for us for dinner, c'mon."

It has the desired effect immediately: Gai's fist shooting into the air excitedly as he declares his intent to clean and descale and debone the fish for Kakashi with absolute efficiency, like gusto alone will provide speed and accuracy.

The apartment is largely empty upon entry, aside from Pakkun who gives him a grumpy, knowing look before Gai spots the dog and descends upon him with enthusiastic greeting. He notes also that Pakkun slips out of the cracked window without a word once they start to strip out of their wet clothes and hang them to dry. Gai's hands are once again warm on his shoulders, on the tender skin of his belly, on his collarbones while they make some effort to dress, and more effort to undress.

Dinner is a simple affair. Rice, some pickled vegetables, a little bit of miso soup and some of the trout roasted, while the rest of the fillets are packed away and frozen. Kakashi 'discovers' a bottle of hot sauce in his fridge, largely untouched, and turns away from Gai's warm delight when he hands it off to him before they start to eat. They do the dishes together, and Kakashi purposely gets in Gai's way whenever he reaches for something, bumps hips with him, presses against his side like he might be able to swallow some of his radiating heat and keep it for himself inside of his cold, dead body.

Gai laughs every time. Maybe that, too, is the goal.

They kiss. Of course they do. It seems to happen more often than ever these days, that one of them gets a little too close to the other's face, maybe a silent request and maybe an accident.

Gai asks: "Can I kiss you?"

and

Kakashi blinks and volleys back with his teeth bare: "Is the sky very blue in the summer?"

The answer is: yeah, usually. It should always be so, shouldn't it? The rare black-cloud, green-atmosphere thunderstorm doesn't negate the fact that the sky should be blue, and Gai should be allowed to kiss him.

They kiss for a long time on that lazy Thursday, Gai pulling Kakashi into his lap on Kakashi's decrepit, dog hair covered couch. Their hands wander, Kakashi's nimble fingers combing through Gai's silken hair, brushing his jaw, digging into his shoulders and trailing down his pecs. Gai's hands-

The tattoo is—- well, Gai doesn’t have a tattoo of his own, so…. He’d always thought it would feel at least a little raised. But it’s smooth, the crimson swirl sitting on pale skin like it’s always been there, always been a sort of him. Gai thinks about kissing it, but maybe that would be weird, as if he were showing devotion to the special forces. He settles for tracing it, running his thumb over it, before sliding his hand up to rest over Kakashi’s collarbone and reaching up to kiss him again.

Kakashi licks his lips when Gai draws away to catch his breath, his gaze locked on Gai's, at the wide-eyed fascination with the swirling ANBU tattoo. Sensation is no different there, between the pale of his own flesh and the angry dry-blood shade of the tattoo and its permanent claim on his body.

Declared ownership far more permanent than a headband.

He stills underneath Gai's touch and tries not to think too much, because when he starts to think it always ruins everything nice that he lets himself have.

He doesn't think about being owned.

He doesn't think about Gai's disgust and fear for the work he does attached to that ownership.

He doesn't think about how he might feel to see such a claim laid upon Gai,

And the little dark marks such deeds, such ownership, might leave upon his friend's body, spirit, and soul.

Instead he, too, wonders: the marred skin, unlike a scar, feels no different to touch and be touched, but it is permanent all the same.

Gai must decide something, because he turns his attention away from the tattoo and back to Kakashi himself, reaching back out to draw him close again and kiss him, lazy and warm like they're coaxing something out of each other with the kind of patience reserved for wild animals and children that are stupid with fright.

It's a lazy kind of Thursday, and Kakashi doesn't think those are so bad at all.

We were newly alive and I felt your hand on my arm / I was awake to the sensation and immune from all harm / You pressed your soft cheek up against my gut / Pure gold, nothing but gold

[copycaat]

You've been away, for quite some time. / and now the rules are different, / now everything's mine. / backtrack. hey say, what's the problem? / here's the problem:

The little girl's name is Miyuki.

Kakashi stares at the characters on the scroll blankly for a half second too long before he remembers that was also his mother's name. Hatake Miyuki, one of the half-feral swordswomen from the land of Iron. Of course, she is the daughter of some noble from the land of Honey, so this one's name would be Lady Miyuki. Kakashi's mother was many things, but nobody ever would have called her a Lady.

The details are pretty typical. Some rich lordling in the land of Honey married a woman from the land of Fire. She comes home to visit her ailing parents with their precious daughter, and he gets into a trade dispute with a different rich lordling from the land of Claws, who threatens his life. He is of course terrified for the safety of his precious wife and daughter, and hires them a protective detail from the great village hidden in the leaves. Risk assessment placed this at a high B-rank, Kakashi's on light duty after getting stabbed four times in the liver on his last assignment and ending up in the hospital for a month.

So, the girl's name is little Lady Miyuki. The wife's name is Lady Eriha, which is a name Kakashi blessedly has no prior association with. His comrade for this assignment is @lvyeshou -- apparently they think he needs someone to make sure he doesn't frighten the civilians. Kakashi thinks, privately, they couldn't have picked a better partner to cover his rough edges for the duration of what will no doubt be a long and arduous journey.

He eyes the other young man subtly, rolling the scroll and then tossing it to him. "I hope you arranged for someone to water your plants, Gai," he murmurs. "This will keep us out of the village for about a month and a half."

Traveling with civilians is usually a slow, painfully boring process, and they'll have to stick to the narrow strip of unaffiliated countries between Wind and Earth countries. To get to the land of Honey will take a little over a month, and to return on their own should take less than a week at a good clip. It should be more than enough time for Kakashi to get himself back into shape to go back to regular ANBU rotation once they're back.

At nineteen, they've both had more than their fair share of assignments outside of the village, so once Gai has read over the scroll he tips his head toward the gate, where the girl and her mother are waiting with their entourage of a couple of non-shinobi body guards and a few maids.

"Are you ready to go?"

[copycaat]

The last of the repercussions died off real slow / The sky was still and the cold sun sank down beneath the snow / I hung by my hand from the tree outside / And I looked the whole wide world

One week ago he'd made the mistake of telling one of the night nurses in the hospital he'd been having trouble sleeping- long nights with too many soldier pills will do that to people, Otter had informed him tiredly when he'd first been put on his team. It was normal. It was a dysfunction of the human body and an inconvenience, one that was easily taken care of, and it was normal. He'd said: just ask a nurse to slip you a little something that'll help you get to sleep, if you think you need it.

Kakashi had needed it. It'd been weeks of being unable to sleep more than a few hours a night; his body and mind so tired that his vision had started crawling and his ears would catch sounds that weren't there. He was jumping at shadows, which is not something one wants to be doing at all as a shinobi, let alone a fresh-faced teenager trying to prove oneself on a new ANBU squad. So he'd gone to the hospital after the conclusion of his assignment with the team to get stitches along his collarbone instead of doing them himself, and when the nurse had finished patching him up he'd cleared his throat, shrugged his coat back over his shoulders, and asked with his eyes downcast if she could do something for him.

The nurse had watched him for a long moment before answering in the affirmative, the same way one watches a wild animal behaving strangely, just to make sure it isn't rabid. He would have been offended, but he knows he has a reputation at the hospital for being a bit of a hard case- when he'd shown up, conscious and of his own volition, they'd darted around in a frenzy to admit him and accommodate him before they'd realized, no, he wasn't dying, and no, he wasn't bleeding all that badly either. She'd probably feared he was hiding another injury from her, or some kind of illness or poisoning.

Instead he'd asked if she could give him something to help him sleep- flat-calm and frank and cold, gaze locked on the curtain that separates the bed he's seated on from the rest of the emergency ward, something that offers them less privacy than the fact that most other people on the floor are unconscious, drugged to the gills, or on their way out as the nurses turn over the beds to prepare for the next patient. From the corner of his eye he'd seen her expression twist first with surprise, then anger, then pity, but when he turned to look at her dead-on her expression had shifted right back to neutral.

"I'm not in the business of handing out meds like candy," she'd informed him flatly, so close to his own tone in asking that he'd nearly lost all courage then and there. "And I can't prescribe you anything, anyway. You'll have to talk to a doctor if you-" She'd paused when Kakashi's fists had clenched, and only resumed when he deliberately flattened his palms against the tops of his thighs, head bowed and gaze locked on the floor. Her voice softened, then, like she didn't want to spook him. Probably for the best. "Have you talked to Psych?"

Kakashi had shaken his head.

"Why not?"

"Because, um..." He'd paused, reached up to scratch his cheek, shaken his head again as if to clear it. "Because they might try to section eight me. And I want to keep working, it's just... been a rough couple of weeks."

Her lips had pursed, and her gaze had turned very searching. That flash of anger had returned as well, but he didn't feel like it was aimed at him. She'd stared at him for what felt like forever, until she'd stood up from her little rolling stool with a long sigh. "I'll give you a sample pack of some sleeping pills," she'd conceded. "Enough for a couple of days. If they help, you should go to Psych and talk through getting a prescription for them, or maybe you won't need to after a couple of nights' sleep."

He'd blinked at her, his lone eye dark and dull in the harsh buzzing light above them. "Okay," Kakashi had agreed, not really understanding why she was asking this of him but willing to say anything to get some kind of respite from the sleepless nights, no matter how short-lived it was.

She'd stood up, brushed her hands off on her smock, and marched off. She'd returned with a blister pack of little purple and yellow capsules. An eight pack. "One a day," she'd said. "Thirty minutes before you're planning on sleeping. Make sure you can get a full eight to ten hours of sleep, drink plenty of water with them, and don't take any assignments until you know you aren't suffering from any side effects like dizziness, excessive sleepiness, or confusion." He'd taken the pack- she pressed it into his hands, her brows furrowed, her expression serious. "And stop taking soldier pills. Those are supposed to be for emergencies only, they are not replacements for a full night's sleep."

Kakashi had nodded, though he had no intention of stopping the soldier pills, because he's fifteen trying to keep up with adults in ANBU, and those adults in ANBU are also taking soldier pills to manage their hectic schedules and dangerous missions. They're supposed to be safe, aren't they?

One week ago he'd made it all the way back to his apartment before the little blister pack had made him think of his father, his eyes cracked open and dull and sightless, stinking of death and decay, limp on the floor. The thought of his father had pushed him to tucking the pills away in a bathroom drawer and leaving them there.

One more week of sleepless nights. He had cut back on the soldier pills, and that had made his hands tremble and his skin itch but he still hadn't been able to sleep. The blister pack had appeared in his hand that night as he got ready to lay on his back and stare at the ceiling and try to sleep. He'd stared at it. He'd popped out four, figured he needed all the help he could get, swallowed them with a handful of water from the bathroom sink. Brushed his teeth. Started tidying up his apartment, until the tiredness had hit him like a brick wall, sudden and harsh and abrasive, and he'd stumbled into his bed.

The sheets had felt hot. His body felt hot. It didn't matter. He hadn't been awake long enough to register the heat. He hadn't registered the shift in the breeze.

The dream, when it starts, is unremarkable. He's walking a ways behind his team- Obito, Rin, Minato, all expression obscured by the sun in front of them. Something weighs his steps down, slows him to a crawl. He wants to keep up, but he can't. He has to try. They need him to-

"maa, kakashi, what are you so scared of?" obito's face is young. round and boyish, split open on a grin. "great wars? kanabi bridge? ghosts? what are you talking about?" @falsedream laughs. keeps laughing, then laughs some more. there are tears in his eyes. "you're always so serious. listen to that! ghosts. can you believe it?" the laughter continues, mounting, until it's brittle and manic, and the next time kakashi blinks, obito's face is split open with blood. his eye is missing. half of his face is caved in. barely recognizable. "what kind of ghost would want to haunt you?"

I'm not scared.

He cannot tell that to the ghost.

And it must be a ghost, because Obito had cried quite a bit when he'd known him but he hadn't known about the bridge until after. He'd known the war. He'd been afraid of ghosts. Isn't that a beautiful irony? The boy who'd cried at the thought of a haunting now stands before him crying with laughter at the absurdity of being one.

Kakashi doesn't look away from the sight even as his vision in the dream starts to cloud and shift and tint red, like he's watching it through the gifted sharingan eye, like he's weeping blood.

The ghost pitches his voice up to mimic Kakashi's voice, cries out "Obito, Obito-" and then reaches out to grab Kakashi by the collar and crushing him close to Obito's chest. His blood, cold like mud, drips onto Kakashi's bare face. His voice slips into a low growl. "I'm not the ghost that wants to haunt you, Bakashi."

"Obito," he reaches out for the boy's ruined face, like Kakashi's filthy hands might be able to shape the crushed bone back into something right, something alive. The flesh under his hands is sticky and cold, like it belongs to any other corpse. But it isn't any other corpse, it's-

"Obito."

But you're here.

Kakashi doesn't say it because he suddenly can't move. The hands pressed to Obito's mess of a face slip down to hang limp and filthy at his sides. His tongue is heavy in his mouth. The boy shakes him by the shoulders and snarls when Kakashi's head rolls around on his shoulders like a doll's. He shoves him to the ground.

He feels the bones in his striking hand break. Obito straddles him, his ruined face looming over Kakashi as he grips him by his wrist and lifts the hand up to the space between him. Cuts from rib bones, familiar streaks of charred blood. Obito's free hand grips his jaw. His body, his hands are hot on Kakashi's skin.

He's dead. Ghosts shouldn't be hot, because they're cold, like the bloody mess of Obito's crushed skull. Should he remind him?

"Look," he snarls. "Look at this. Why should I haunt you? Huh? This is all that you are, this hand and the awful, killer's body attached to it. So why should I haunt you?"

"Ss- Srr-" Kakashi's mouth and tongue don't quite want to work.

"You're sorry, huh?" Obito tosses his arm carelessly back to the ground. Ground that isn't ground. Because he's dreaming.

The knowledge doesn't bring him any comfort. Normally once he recognizes the dream he's able to wake himself, but he's stuck on the ground trapped beneath the weight of Obito's body, crushing him, boiling him from the inside.

"You look real sorry, Kakashi," he hisses. "But not sorry enough."

The background fades back in, like it had politely receded only to return when it realized Kakashi would not be waking up. He shifts like he's thinking about struggling, and the ground shifts with the sound of loose stones. They're in a cave. The world is still red. Kakashi works his jaw until Obito slaps him open handed on the cheek. His ear rings. His jaw finally unlocks.

"You..." he rasps.

"Me? Me what?"

"I promised... you."

To see the future together. Is that what traps Obito here, haunting him? He's often comforted himself with the thought that he isn't truly alone because he carries Obito with him wherever he goes, and sometimes he thinks he can feel the heavy weight of familiar judgment hanging over him. Disappointment. Rage. It's better than nothing, almost like he still has a conscience.

"You... you promised me..." Obito's laugh is ragged and obnoxious, the same way it sounded when he was alive. "The future with you? What good is that future? Look at the state of you."

Obito's hands circle his throat and start to squeeze until Kakashi thrashes, and he lets up the pressure with a sneer visible on the eyeless, untorn side of his face. The bloody mass on the other side grows and grows until Kakashi feels like he might fall into it. In the center spins a familiar sharingan eye.

"You think pretty highly of yourself, don't you," Obito snarls, pressing his thumb to the tender skin beneath their eye until it starts to hurt. "I should take this back, see how good you are without m-"

He's interrupted by Kakashi's fist hammering into the bloody mass of his face. He screams and rolls off of him, clutching at the ruined flesh and squirming. His fingers squelch in the cold blood, and Kakashi scrambles to his feet and stumbles.

"Fuck you," he snarls, unsure where the vitriol comes from when Obito hasn't spoken an untrue word since this nightmare started. "You're mine. You're my ghost. I d-don't give a fuck if you're stuck here because of my promise. You can't leave me now. You can't have it back-"

Obito tackles him around the waist with a howl, and Kakashi's body slams into the dirt hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He thrashes, lashing out with his fists and sinking his teeth into Obito's hand when it darts too close to his neck. He wraps his legs around the other boy's hips and slings them over until Kakashi is sitting on top of him, slapping and scratching and snarling in a way he'd never done when Obito was alive.

"I was a good shinobi before you," Kakashi bites out, fingers digging into the wound on the side of Obito's skull as he thrashes below him, "And I'd be a good one without you. But you can't have it back. You're mine."

He doesn't wake up for a very, very long time.

The voices came quietly, I shut them down / A tricky young southerly wind came at me with its high whistling sound / I turned around to face it with real arrogance burning inside / And I drank in the whole wide world

[copycaat]

@lvyeshou asked:

'i know it's bad. but i can't be alone now, i can't'

Kakashi twitches upright and then awake in an instant.

His left hand is wrapped around a kunai before he even registers that he's sitting up, but Pakkun's small, coarse paw casually settling on top stops him before he can lift it from the bed and throw it at the intruder- in the darkness, only Obito's eye can see the outline of the slim teenager standing in the center of the room with his arms wrapped around his midsection like something inside of him is hurt.

He blinks rapidly, and then closes Obito's eye. The faint red glow from it fades swiftly, leaving Gai no longer illuminated by anything but the waning crescent moon outside. Kakashi forces his grip on the kunai to relax, and only then does Pakkun move his paw with a sleepy grumble. None of the dogs have moved, really, all of them remain in various states of sprawled on his bed and the couch and the floor in his little studio apartment. None of them bothered to get up when Gai let himself in. Kakashi himself hadn't woken until he'd hit the single creaking floorboard in the center of his room.

And Gai had stopped, when Kakashi had sat up suddenly. Gai is clutching his midsection, like something hurts.

Kakashi's sleep-adrenaline brain catches on that last detail, instead of ruminating further on what any of the rest of that means.

"Areyoualright?" falls out of him so fast it's almost one word, and he fights to untangle his legs from blankets that are weighed down by Bull on one side, who groans at him in protest, and Guruko on the other, who huffs and jumps off the bed to curl up next to Akino beneath it. Legs free, he slips from his sheets on silent feet, stumbling over to Gai and stopping just before he grabs his elbows. He smells like tears, and snot, but no blood. No sickness, just... heartache.

Gai sniffs, shivers, even though his apartment isn't cold. Kakashi finally touches his palms to Gai's elbows, and the other boy lets out a soft whine, folding himself close to Kakashi and tucking his face against his bare throat before he can decide whether he wants to push him away or not. Gai's arms slip around his waist, and when Kakashi grunts at him, Gai whispers wetly against his collarbone: "I know it's bad. But I can't be alone now, I can't."

A stretch of silence curls around them, broken only by a sniffle from Gai, who continues to leak against Kakashi's bare skin. Kakashi's hands, very carefully, settle one at the small of his back and one between his shoulder blades, feeling the knobs of his spine, the shuddering gasp of each of his breaths. Something yawning and empty opens up inside of him, something awful, something hungry, something that wonders if all he had to do was break into someone's apartment in the dead of night and cry on their shoulder for a little sympathy, if maybe that might have changed-

But the situations are different. Gai isn't like Kakashi, he never has been. And Dai wasn't like Sakumo, except for... well, there is at least one glaring similarity, isn't there? It's the tangled limbs standing here in the middle of Kakashi's apartment.

"Um..." Kakashi rests his cheek on the top of Gai's hair- he stinks a little, and he's greasy. He'll make him shower in the morning. He wonders if maybe he hasn't showered since they'd buried his father and Kakashi had brought him back here. He doesn't know. How many days has it been? He's been sleeping a lot. What time is it?

Squinting at the clock on his wall: three sixteen in the morning.

Gai starts to draw away, already trying to wipe the tears and snot both from his face and Kakashi's bare collarbone, an apology stuttering from his lips.

Kakashi's hand shoots up to the collar of his shirt, and without a word he drags him to the low bed and pushes him down on it. His legs are sprawled over Bull, who still doesn't bother to move. Pakkun's eyes blink judgmentally at him from the pillow on the left side of the bed, and Kakashi pushes and shoves at a squirming, protesting, sniffling, pathetic Gai until he has enough room to slip in between him and Bull. The blanket situation is unfortunate, and will likely not resolve itself until he makes his bed in the morning.

"You don't h-have to-" Gai starts.

"Shut up," Kakashi sighs, shoving at Gai's shoulder until he's turned away from him, and then Kakashi curls up behind him and settles his arm over his waist and his face presses against the nape of Gai's neck. He can feel each shuddering breath, the almost feverish heat of his skin against Kakashi's cheek. He should have gotten him a glass of water and made him drink it, but he's afraid that if he spent any more time looking at Gai tonight, he might say something, or he might ask something, and Kakashi just... doesn't want to deal with that.

He'll get him a glass of water in the morning. And breakfast.

They both lay there in his bed in silence for a few minutes, Gai continuing to try and force himself to cry quietly, and Kakashi slowly growing more and more tense.

"It's not bad," he finally says, his voice cracking out of him like a whip.

Gai jerks, like maybe he thought Kakashi had fallen back asleep and was just naturally as stiff as a board. "What- What's not bad?"

Kakashi makes an impatient noise against the back of his neck, and his voice is brittle when he answers: "Not wanting to be alone, Gai. Humans are social creatures. Not wanting to be alone is normal."

The other boy's voice is small, thoughtful, when he replies, "Oh."

Pakkun groans. Kakashi reaches up and flaps a hand around until he finds the dog's head, and he gives him a few fluttering pats until he growls, "go the fuck to sleep, stop bothering me."

Exactly.

"See? It's fine. Go to sleep," he parrots, letting his arm fall back around Gai's waist. It doesn't take long for sleep to find him again- the way his nose is pressed against Gai's spine makes him snore, just a little bit.

Breakfast in the morning. Probably some eggs with a little too much salt, and whatever bullshit tea he has on hand.

Someone was changing. Someone was changing from the inside out / And I turned around to face you.

[copycaat]

@gatesopen asked:

"come home and shout at me. come home and fight with me. come home and break my heart, if you must. just come home."

Kakashi finishes adjusting the ties on his armor, spine and shoulders stiff, trying to gain control of the small amount of exposed expression before he turns around. Still, his lone eye is flinty when he turns to look at Gai, and he allows the silence after the plea to stretch on, and on, past the point of uncomfortable and into painful territory. Is he supposed to be tempted by the idea of fighting with him? He hates fighting with Gai. He hates this conversation.

They both know it's a selfish ask, anyway. Are they allowed to be selfish?

"What's 'home', Gai? You?" He asks, voice tight with... with irritation, with pain. Kakashi hates that he can't quite muster the derision he'd like with the question- with a little more scorn it would have been reprimand for the presumption, but without it the question sounds genuine. Is his home here in Gai's room? Is it dragging himself off Gai's couch to work out and spar early in the mornings, and then getting a filling breakfast shoved at him until he relents? Is it the casual touches on his shoulders, his elbows, the small of his back, his flank, is it the fingers carding through his hair? Kakashi is a little afraid that the answer might be yes.

Gai has opened his mouth to reply, but Kakashi doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to argue with him, or watch the flash of hurt in his eyes when Kakashi snaps at him again- so he steps into his space, chest to chest, and then gracefully folds his legs beneath him until he's kneeling, his hands resting on the backs of Gai's thighs, his cheek pressed to his stomach as he stares up at him. The other man's mouth freezes in a shocked little "o", even as his big, hot hands settle one on the meat where his neck runs into his shoulder, and one on his jaw. Gentle pressure. His body armor presses into the fronts of his thighs, like Kakashi might try to crawl inside of him.

He strikes before Gai can untie his tongue.

"We will never be able to promise that to each other, Gai, you know that," Kakashi's voice is low, soft. "Our lives don't belong to us, and they never will. Stop asking this of me."

give me your hand. / give me everything you've got. / and the light from window will fall on us burning hot, / just like a torch.

[copycaat]

@lvyeshou asked:

promise me this is the end.

Another thing to cut himself open on and bleed all over.

Late the night before he left they were twisted and tangled up together in Kakashi's bed, the dogs pressed close around them like the heat from each of their bodies might be enough to ward off the chill of February, might be enough to fill his hollow chest and breathe something like life back into him. Kakashi is going through the motions, these days, worn thin by too many missions and too much fear and held together only by the faint ribbons of anger he can dig his fingers into. Gai's head on his stomach was so heavy, like it was the only thing keeping him from drifting away on the wind.

Kakashi stared at the ceiling. The shadows from the street lights flickered on the paint above. They were insubstantial. He'd grown attached to the facsimile of life they provided, entertainment in the small hours when everything about him felt dead, but that night, with Gai laid out next to him, curled around him like a half-moon, Kakashi had not found himself satisfied with the cold false signs of life they provided. His right hand had been very, very careful when he'd reached out to touch Gai's hair.

Gai hadn't said anything to him then. Just opened his dark eyes, and blinked sleepily, and smiled.

They'd fought earlier in the day about the usual things: Gai, trying to press Kakashi into resigning from the special forces, and Kakashi, stubbornly clinging to something that's been killing him for a decade without telling Gai why.

That's the rub of it, he'd thought at the time. You can't make someone understand that you're keeping a secret to protect them if you tell them about the fucking secret.

He'd accused Gai of being selfish, asked if he was really delusional enough to believe that there might be more scraps of Kakashi for him to love if only he wasn't in ANBU, watched his face crumple and turned away so he didn't have to see it. His mouth had felt lava-hot. Gai had wrapped his arms around Kakashi's waist and breathed a 'sorry' into the nape of his neck, and Kakashi hadn't said anything at all.

-

Promise me this is the end.

Kakashi had done no such thing. He'd pretended to be asleep when Gai had mumbled it into his ribcage the night before he left. They'd already had this discussion a dozen times, and he didn't want to tear at him again tonight. Neither of them were going to change their minds.

-

His vision is starting to get fuzzy around the edges.

Death, he thinks, is a substantial kind of end.

With his right arm limp at his side and his left clinging tightly to a kunai, he hits the ground hard on his knees. His paper-thin skin has been torn open, and he bleeds heavy black gore from his mouth and nose and ears, from the gashes rent into him, in awful dark bruises beneath his skin. He wonders: if he bleeds enough, might it turn the sky black in the way the sea turns it blue?

Or is it the sky that turns the sea blue? Is his blood black and rotten because it's his, or is it black and rotten because there is something outside of himself making it so? He opens his mouth to ask, but nothing at all comes out of his mouth except for a gurgling sigh.

Promise me this is the end.

Maybe he should have, he thinks. It would have been easy enough to keep, now. Death is a kind of end. He could have avoided that fight altogether if he'd taken Gai's rough, warm hand and pressed it to his cheek, to his chest over his heart, to his waist, if he'd leaned over and kissed him and promised: one more job, and then he's out. It wouldn't have been a lie. Instead he'd bitten Gai like a frightened, useless dog, spent the night stiff as a board next to him, and left before the sun had risen.

-

He can't see for the blood in his eyes, smell for the blood in his nose, or hear for the blood in his ears. Hands grip him, and he's too weak to thrash away from them. The familiar talon-tipped ANBU gloves dig into the meat of his arms. He's lifted, slung over a shoulder. Unconsciousness is a mercy, after that.

Unconsciousness is a kind of end, too. Ha.

-

The figure at the end of his hospital bed looks kind of like Gai, but it's after visiting hours. He looks wasted away, with sallow skin hanging from his bones instead of the cords of muscle under tanned skin Kakashi knows Gai is meant to have. The man that is not Gai has a cold hand spanning the width of Kakashi's bare ankle. Kakashi blinks sluggishly at him, and the man smiles.

"Do you not wish to fulfill your promise to me?" The man asks. His mouth is bloody. Gai's voice, directed at him, has never sounded so harsh.

Kakashi can't open his mouth. He thinks they probably have him on muscle relaxers again. He's awake. A machine breathes for him. He's awake. His foot is cold beneath that hand. He's awake, and his body hurts, but he can't move. He thinks: What promise?

Not-Gai laughs, the sound nothing at all familiar to him. It sets Kakashi's hair on end. "I want an end, Kakashi," he steps forward, trailing emaciated fingers up his shin, his knee, his thigh. That spider-slim hand rests on his thigh, looking like that paper-thin skin might slough off of him and leave only bone at any moment.

His lone eye blinks sluggishly, like if he tries hard enough to clear his vision this apparition will resolve itself into the real Gai, not this walking dead version, standing over him with a pensive frown instead of that rictus grin. Kakashi wants his warm hand on him.

What end?

Again, he's incapable of asking aloud, but the apparition doesn't seem to mind at all. He leans closer, his hand flat on Kakashi's stomach now, pressing down on his ribs and forcing the air from his lungs. He jerks underneath the pressure, choking on the pain that stabs through him. "Any end, Kakashi," he coos, his face moving back into Kakashi's sight. Gai's face, dead skin peeling, hollow cheeks. "Yours, mine. This, that. I want an ending from you."

I have nothing at all for you, he thinks. Not even an end.

Stop asking me for anything. I don't have it, I don't ever have enough--

"You have plenty for me to take," the dead thing insists, still smiling coldly. "Look, let me show you."

Its hand on Kakashi's chest sinks beneath his skin and roots around. Kakashi can't scream, even with the immense pain radiating out from the visceral places inside of him that the hand touches. It feels as if blood is welling out of him like a ground spring, spilling in great splashes on the floor. His body does not move. It can't move. The machine struggles to breathe for him. The monitors start to scream when the creature wearing Gai's face finds his heart and squeezes-

-

Under the cold light of the stars, a dog trots along a path, alone. His paws are stained dark from a life at work, his body lean, but his eyes are bright and alert. There is blood on his muzzle from a fresh kill.

Killing is what this beast was meant to do.

His teeth are clasped around the neck of a small bobcat, whose struggles have ceased. She had put up a great fight, but the dog had triumphed, as he was meant to. He's carrying this limp dead thing to his shepherd, who will scold him for frightening the sheep by bringing it back.

Why must he always bring these things back?

-

When Kakashi cracks open his eye again, the world is bright. Too bright. The lights are on, and the shades on the window at the end of the long room are open. He's not the only occupant of the room any longer, and they have him on a different kind of drug. He breathes in, stops, exhales, and then brings in another stuttering breath under his own power. The air is stale, and it smells faintly of death beneath all the healing.

A dark head of hair rests at his elbow, warm, strong fingers curled into his own.

Kakashi struggles to reach for that dark head of hair, but he can't move his arm at all. The one being held is his right, which is in a cast, and he finds it heavy and numb. Probably for the best.

It can't be the end.

Kakashi can't quite make himself articulate it. It comes out as a mumble. Still, the noise is enough to wake Gai, who jolts up and blinks at him sleepily. Wide, clear eyes, warm and brown. Full, healthy skin. There's an imprint on his cheek and forehead from the sheets and the cast. His expression crumples when he sees Kakashi looking back at him, hazy and half-there and confused, but only a few tears and sniffles escape him before he composes himself. He rubs his eyes aggressively.

"Y-you're awake," his voice is normal too. Something inside of Kakashi relaxes at the brittle, frightened resonance in the words. The relief. This Gai is only here to take from him the things he is used to having taken from him. This Gai is here to give him something too.

Kakashi tries to make an affirmative noise and coughs on it, his mouth dry and throat painful. Gai twists, casts around, and darts off for a few minutes that feel like forever. Kakashi closes his eye. He opens it again, and Gai is frowning pensively at him, standing at the foot of his bed with a little white cup. Backlit, he looks very lean. Kakashi twitches, gasps, and Gai slips around the bed and sets the cup to the side, touching Kakashi's forehead and cheek very carefully.

"Are you in pain?" He asks, seriously. Kakashi glances at him and sees again the warm, full cheeks and kind eyes, the concerned furrow between his brows. Alive. His hands are gentle.

"Nnooo," he manages to slur through gritted teeth.

Gai nods, pensive, and without another word he sits at his bed side and spends the next while feeding Kakashi ice chips, until Kakashi turns his face away from the next one offered with a sigh. He feels like he's been awake forever. Like he's been asleep forever. He wants to crawl back into that darkness. His eye falls shut, and he hears Gai sigh softly, and feels his warm hand fold back into Kakashi's.

-

There is one end to be found, though news of it comes later: a wash from the black operations corps with no hope of returning, and six to eight months of convalescence. He thinks he'd rather the creature reached out and taken his life.

What's going to be the death of me? / Static electricity. / What's making me take it all too far? / You are.

[copycaat]

@lvyeshou asked:

“I like laughing with you.”

Another period of recovery- it's spring.

Kakashi finds himself in the space where easy sparring is allowed, and still a relief to move instead of an irritating constraint.

One week ago he'd ducked into Gai's apartment and slept on his floor when he'd realized the man was out of the village on an assignment.

Two days ago Gai had come home, they'd smiled at each other (Gai's bright and broad and warm and Kakashi's little more than a shy curl in the corner of his lone eye, but present all the same), and Kakashi had asked nicely if he would help get him back into shape.

They're in one of the more secluded training grounds now, little more than a clearing in the woods that smells like growing damp things, like the early flowers of mid-April, and like Gai's and Kakashi's sweat mixing as they exchange blows for a second consecutive hour. Kakashi will have to call it quits soon, he thinks: he's exhausted, and the sun is high in the sky, and he thinks he might offer to take Gai out to lunch as a thank you for-

His distraction nearly costs him. At the very last second he manages to twist and catch a heavy blow from Gai's shin to his guard instead of to his gut, but the force of it sends him skidding back through the plants, tearing them up from the soft ground as he tries to gain his feet again. Gai calls out, asks if he needs a break, and instead of replying Kakashi gathers himself and launches at his waist, tackling him to the ground.

The pair wrestles, each trying to stay on top, the perfect form of their previous taijutsu spar devolving into something more like a pair of clumsy pups tangling with each other. They roll, they roll, Gai trying to pin Kakashi by the shoulder, Kakashi wrapping his thighs around his waist and using his body weight to sling him to the side, twisting so he's sitting on top of him. Gai flails, smacking at him, and a bark of startled laughter escapes Kakashi before he can smother it.

The sound is foreign to both of their ears, raspy and awkward with disuse. Gai's eyes light up even as Kakashi's narrow suspiciously, and he continues to flail and carry on dramatically, slapping uselessly at Kakashi's hands when he fists them in the other man's collar. Astride Gai's hips, Kakashi doesn't think he imagines some special twitch of interest from the manhandling, the contact; he definitely isn't imagining the rapid dilation of Gai's pupils, the sudden shallow nature of his breathing and a certain sharpness in his scent, or the way one of Gai's palms settles against his hip, searing hot in the cool spring air. The way his thumb seems to naturally slip beneath his loose shirt and settle against the tender bare skin above his pants. Kakashi...

He twitches at the contact, trying and failing to swallow something that might be more closely aligned with a giggle than an actual laugh.

Gai's interest sharpens further, and Kakashi's stomach twists with nerves, embarrassment... Maybe a shred of anticipation. He doesn't get to finish his warning: "Gai-"

"Are you ticklish, my Esteemed Rival?" Gai asks him, visibly calculating how he might wring another breathless giggle out of the man sitting on top of him now.

"Nnnno," Kakashi lies, badly, because Gai has shifted his grip on his hip to trail his hand lightly over the tender skin beneath his navel. He can't help the laugh that bubbles out of him even as he grips Gai's wrist and turns that hand away from him. Gai takes the opportunity to twist his hips and sling Kakashi over to the side, and then they're grappling again, less focused on getting each other in a hold than they are at jabbing tender points, producing bursts of wild laughter that for once, neither of them bother trying to contain.

Kakashi discovers this about Gai: his stomach is not ticklish, but his armpits are, as well as the back of his knees, which produce a jolt so severe that he nearly takes Kakashi's head off, which makes him laugh all the harder.

Gai discovers this about Kakashi: he's so ticklish that even a little poke to the ribs or stomach can set him off if he has his guard down, already laughing. He's still liable to snap his teeth if he gets too close to his neck, but in this setting it's playful rather than reactive. His laugh sounds like a blade unsheathed: pretty and sharp and dangerous, like it belongs to the man that holds it even if Gai hasn't seen much of it before.

Spring is about the thaw, about the growth of little tender green things.

Gai gets in his guard and manages to pin him on his back and Kakashi lets himself fall limp when Gai settles between his thighs, hovering over him, one hand pressed flat to his breastbone just beneath his heart. Kakashi breathes, and Gai's expression shifts slightly from excitement to something almost reverent.

Kakashi wants to be afraid of that. Some part of him is afraid of that reverence, of the intensity that Gai feels anything about him at all. But for the moment that part of him sees very far away indeed, resting here on his back in the little clearing in the woods, the space between them quiet and still and hot from their exertion. Kakashi breathes again, and Gai's eyes flicker from his own to his mask, and then back to his eye. Kakashi blinks, breathes in, breathes out.

"Ilikelaughingwithyou," Gai bursts out, suddenly nervous under the intensity of Kakashi's even gaze, and something warm curls in his gut at the awkward, rushed honesty.

He laughs, and Gai's gaze flicks to his mouth again, still covered by the mask. Kakashi can't help but tease, asks him: "Sorry, what was that?" like that might help cover the fact that his own heart is in his throat, and his face is flushed not with exertion but with something fresh, awkward, and sweet.

Gai rises to his challenge, because he always does. With something very serious indeed creeping into his expression, contrasting sharply with his pink cheeks, he repeats: "I like laughing with you."

Something in Kakashi's throat closes. His heart continues to beat wildly in his chest. He feels starving, abruptly, like the only thing he ever wants again is this moment on repeat, over and over, like he ought to lift his headband and record the tender, wanting look on Gai's face so he can keep it tucked away forever. He could do it, could ask Gai to say it again and remember with perfect clarity the way his mouth shapes the words, the blood hot in his face. He wonders if the perfection of the memory would produce this very same perfect feeling every time he called on it, touched it gently and held it.

His closing throat, his racing heart, the trembling thing inside of him wanting to reach out and tuck himself inside of Gai's ribcage next to his big heart, right where he knows there's a space for him already hollowed out.

He can't speak, because he doesn't know what to say. Maybe there isn't anything for him to say. There probably should be some perfect line that would put a broad smile back on Gai's face, make another warm laugh fall out of him. Kakashi should probably apologize and tell him to get off. He doesn't want to.

Reaching up with his right hand, Kakashi pinches the edge of his mask over his nose and tugs it down until the fabric settles under his chin. Gai's eyes widen, locking on the small, toothy smile still lingering on his mouth. Both of them lick their lips simultaneously, and that too makes Kakashi laugh.

"Do you want to kiss me?" Kakashi asks him, for once wanting more than his cowardice would normally allow him to take. "I want to kiss you, Gai, I--"

He doesn't get to finish his sentence, because Gai has practically fallen into his mouth, pressing their lips together like he's trying to cut himself open on Kakashi's teeth. It's awkward, messy. It shoots lightning up Kakashi's spine, and he tightens the hold his thighs have on Gai's waist, and twists his fingers in Gai's hair, and opens up his jaw beneath his onslaught so he can nip at him.

One of Gai's hands is very, very soft indeed on his jaw. The other slips from his breastbone to his waist, and grips him there tightly. This time, when Kakashi squirms, it isn't with laughter-- it's with heat twisting like a knife in his belly.

We shed dead weight / It gets pretty hard to concentrate / Practice our prayers until some small hope crystallizes / Follow the shoreline till some better hope arises