Naruto - Stray 2 (KakaSasu)
In four more days, it will be a year since the first part of this was written. That has got to be a record for me.
Kakashi, Sasuke, keeping a pet brings with it certain responsibilities.
Warnings: AU, still minor, R but probably still not worksafe.
For copycock's "alternative universe hell" challenge.
Two years passed.
The kid came and went, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for weeks. He always arrived after nightfall and left by sunrise, so Kakashi didn't see much of him in the summer. He paid two thousand yen a week for room and board when he was there; Kakashi accepted the money, and didn't ask where it came from. He did check that the bills were nonconsecutive.
Kakashi went through four apartments, all of them still in the city. It got too much rain and had too many opportunities for trouble, but so far it had proved a big enough place for a man who didn't make waves or leave evidence.
The first time he'd moved since Sasuke had landed in his life, the kid had shown up while he was still packing. He'd stared for a couple seconds, and then looked like he was about to walk back out the door. Kakashi mentioned that if he didn't know a good way to transport plants, he would toss them out. They'd just die without the kid watering them, anyway.
Sasuke had remained silent for a little longer, and then snorted quietly and asked where the trash bags were.
The second time, Sasuke had still been gone. It didn't take Kakashi long to move; he was settled in within a week, no forwarding address left. The kid found his place after a month. (If Kakashi were honest, he had eaten a couple times more often than usual in the restaurants in the old apartment's area.) The third time, the kid noticed him reading the real estate section and hung around long enough to help pack.
Time had stopped meaning much outside of work to Kakashi a long time ago. He gauged its passing by different apartments, varying amounts in his bank accounts, and changes in Sasuke.
The kid exercised almost every day that he was around, and probably when he was away as well. He had a good build muscle-wise, but there was still something brittle about him, like he didn't take the time to eat enough.
~~
There were times when he didn't see Sasuke for weeks on end. Kakashi had work, and didn't let him hang around the apartment when he was gone. All his papers listed him as a traveling salesman, so it was necessary that the neighbors think he traveled once in a while. If it bothered the kid, he was enough of a professional himself not to mention or show it.
Kakashi didn't think it bothered him. Sasuke's walls were too cracked to withstand companionship for long; he almost always left again the mornings after they'd had sex.
Sasuke liked privacy not because he was a loner but because he was hiding something. Kakashi had a good idea what it was, but he was too used to solitude to try and force the kid to open up. And he didn't have room in his life to be a father figure.
~~
Sasuke arrived when he was in the middle of dressing. Kakashi let him in and returned to the bedroom.
When he came out ten minutes later, the kid was sitting cross-legged in front of the couch, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked up, noted the suit, and pushed himself onto his feet. "Do I have time to make a sandwich?"
"I'll be back before morning," Kakashi replied, still pulling on his shirt collar. Too much starch in that wash. . . . "Just keep the lights off." He kept his guns and other weapons where there was no chance of the kid finding them.
Sasuke stared at him as he readjusted his wallet in the jacket pocket. Then he nodded.
Kakashi left.
~
He reminded himself that the kid would be in the apartment before setting the key in the lock. Reflexes.
He heard the last trace of a scrabbling noise as he was opening the door. Kakashi flipped on the light before shrugging out of his jacket; the kid stood up from where he'd been either crouched or sitting by the bookcase. He was holding a flashlight.
Sasuke sniffed the air a moment after that and started to frown. "Are you drunk?"
He couldn't fault the kid for asking--he smelled of more alcohol than he had in him. "No," Kakashi replied, folding the sides of the jacket so that it lay flat. He draped it over the back of the couch. "He's a good man, but I can't trust him that much."
Sasuke glanced down, and then looked over at the kitchen. Kakashi headed to the bathroom to wash his face.
~
When he came out, he heard the rice cooking.
"Did you not eat yet?" he asked, undoing two more buttons.
"No," the kid replied. "It . . . would've been a pain in the ass, trying to do everything by flashlight. And people would probably think you were being robbed."
Kakashi wondered if his paranoia was rubbing off on the kid, or if Sasuke's own was branching out.
He was vaguely surprised when Sasuke got out two bowls and two eggs. He started to tell the kid that he'd already eaten, but then decided this might be a good idea. He'd guaranteed that he wouldn't have a hangover, but even with precautions, alcohol made him groggy in the mornings. The more to offset it, the better.
~
The bathroom had no windows, so Sasuke had already showered. When Kakashi got out, he found the kid still up. He was sitting on the edge of the couch. He started to scoot forward, but then stopped himself.
"Did you take vitamin B?" the kid asked.
"Yeah," he replied.
Sasuke nodded once, then looked away. He flopped down on the couch a moment later. Kakashi went into the bedroom.
~
He only just heard Sasuke come into his room later that night. Even with adrenaline, he wasn't sure he would have been completely coordinated if the kid had been someone else. He would have woken up regardless at Sasuke settling under the covers, but that was too close to be acceptable.
Kakashi decided to wait two hours between beers instead of one from then on, and to never drink again until he was living alone.
~
It was late morning when he woke up due to Sasuke climbing out of the bed. The sun had been up for hours, which meant the kid wouldn't be leaving until evening or tomorrow morning. Kakashi started a pot of coffee while Sasuke was in the bathroom, and then went to brush his teeth.
Sasuke microwaved the remainder of the rice for his breakfast. Kakashi stuck to coffee.
He was still nursing the second cup when the kid finished and dropped his bowl in the sink. Kakashi watched as he filled a glass with water, and set his coffee on the table.
When Sasuke started to pass him on his way to the ledge the plants sat on, Kakashi got a hold of the glass and took it from his hand. He set it on the table as Sasuke gave him a confused look.
"What--?" he started to ask, and Kakashi caught his elbow and tugged him closer.
Sasuke's shins hit the side of the chair, and Kakashi tugged on his elbow again. Sasuke hesitated a moment before leaning down to kiss him.
Kakashi let go of his elbow and slid his hand underneath Sasuke's shirt. He shivered at that, and shifted his legs a moment later, knees brushing Kakashi's thigh.
Kakashi stood up when Sasuke made a move to straddle his legs, bringing his hand with him. He brought the other one up as well, to pull the shirt over Sasuke's head. It messed up the kid's hair when it came off.
Kakashi dropped the shirt on the seat of his chair and took a step closer, until he was standing just against Sasuke and it was easy to reach around and brush his knuckles up his spine.
Sasuke swallowed and took a step back; Kakashi followed.
The kid caught on then, because he swallowed again and said, "The--bedroom."
"Yeah," Kakashi replied, running his knuckles back down Sasuke's spine, a little firmer this time. Sasuke shifted again, and hooked two fingers in the waist of Kakashi's pants.
~
The kid had as many hang-ups about sex as most people, Kakashi figured. Even after two years, he still didn't like being touched, not often. It was hard to tell where the line between teenage embarrassment and genuine discomfort lay. Sasuke always wanted it to be fast--to get to the point as soon as possible and not bother with extraneous stuff. He squirmed and got irritable when Kakashi wanted to take time, a fact that Kakashi, every once in a while, didn't give a damn about.
It meant he had fingernail imprints from where the kid had gripped his upper arms while Kakashi nipped and kissed his way from Sasuke's throat to his cock, but the kid hadn't drawn blood, and they would fade.
~
That afternoon, he noticed that the shelf containing his porn was out of order--one of the books had been shoved between two others of another series. Kakashi looked at it for a moment, and then laughed quietly.
He gave Sasuke a negative point for being flustered enough by his return to not have replaced it unnoticeably, and then wondered if the kid was going through them randomly or in order. If it was the latter, he'd either gotten through two in one night, or he was reading them when Kakashi didn't notice.
~~
They didn't have sex often, and it was always Sasuke who initiated it; most nights the kid chose to sleep on the couch. Kakashi, for what it was worth--and he knew it was worth jack--never approached him without overtures.
He could trace exactly the complicated and awkward path along which he'd gone from deciding never to do more than give the kid a handjob to buying condoms on a regular basis. He didn't justify it. He knew anything he had to justify was a bad idea, and since he'd been aware of that well in advance, it seemed unnecessary.
He never could quite think of Sasuke in anything like an "occasional lover" position. It was partly because he found himself thinking at least once a month that he should have left the kid in the alley, and partly because he never had asked Sasuke his age.
~~
During the second year, around the middle of winter, Sasuke came into the apartment with a different kind of silence. Kakashi wasn't an infallible expert at interpreting people, but he knew more than enough to read through the kid.
Sasuke sat on the floor near the television, chewing at his beef bowl with a studied absence. Kakashi kept to his usual place on the couch, and waited.
When it came, it was abrupt. That was something he occasionally liked about the kid--getting straight to the point was rude, but efficient.
"Are you the one cleaning the grave?" Sasuke asked, when he'd finished about half his bowl.
Kakashi paused at the actual question.
"No," he answered, picking up another bite of rice.
"Do you know who is?"
"I can guess."
"Who?"
"None of your business, kid," he replied.
Sasuke stared at him with narrow eyes. Kakashi continued eating.
"Why only that grave?" he asked finally. "How did you know that cousin?"
"None of your business," Kakashi repeated.
The kid should have expected his reply. Kakashi supposed that wouldn't have stopped him from being frustrated.
Sasuke was pragmatic enough to finish his food before leaving--a change from who he had been; the old kid would have stormed out after being rejected. But he still left. Kakashi didn't stop him.
Sasuke was gone for three months. He didn't come back until the weather had turned; and when he did, he had bags under his eyes again. Kakashi let him in and didn't mention the new clothes.
~
When Sasuke returned, he stayed on the couch for over a week. Kakashi wouldn't have thought much of it if the kid hadn't also worn jeans and long sleeves for the duration. He was tempted to turn up the heater, to see if Sasuke would continue to wear sweatpants and sleeves to bed; but it was more likely that he'd leave again, so he didn't.
He was starting to wonder how much longer Sasuke was going to wash his shirts in the sink, when he came out of the bathroom to find the kid watching television on the couch and wearing a t-shirt.
Sasuke turned off the TV when he walked past, and followed him into the bedroom. He pulled off his shirt and sat down on the bed while Kakashi checked his email for any new messages and then shut the laptop down.
Sasuke wasn't looking at him when he turned around. He was staring at the dresser.
Kakashi had noticed earlier that the kid was wearing one of those leather wristbands currently popular with teenagers. He noticed it again when Sasuke didn't take it off.
Sasuke seized up badly when Kakashi leaned down and kissed his shoulder, and then forcibly relaxed. Kakashi took note and only used his hands that night.
~
He got the kid's wristband off later, while Sasuke slept. Kakashi stared at the small, new tattoo above his wrist for a few minutes.
Then he put it back on.
The kid shifted slightly. Kakashi settled back onto his side and closed his eyes.
~~
It was a big city, but it wasn't infinite. And Kakashi, like most people, had places he preferred to shop at, even if he didn't allow himself to visit them often.
"Hey!" a girl called to him as he passed by a flower stand set up in front of a grocery. "Want to buy some flowers?"
"Nope," Kakashi replied, without stopping.
"Sure you do!" she retorted. "Just come look at what we have!"
"No thank you."
"Oh, I'm sure there's someone a man like you would want to buy flowers for," she continued. "Your girlfriend would be delighted at the surprise!"
The girl's voice was starting to sound slightly desperate, though she was hiding it well. Kakashi paused and looked over his shoulder at her.
She gestured rapidly for him to come closer, keeping her hand hidden from general view with the flower buckets. Kakashi eyed her for another moment, and then moved out of the sidewalk traffic. "I suppose she might."
"Well!" the girl said brightly. "We have a lot to choose from, you'd be surprised. All our flowers come straight from the Yamanaka greenhouse. Fresh!"
"Mm," he replied, shifting a couple bouquets of carnations around in their bucket with the backs of his fingers rather than the tips.
"Do you know Sasuke?" the girl asked, much quieter.
"Who?" Kakashi replied.
She blinked at him. He nudged the carnations back to where they'd been and straightened up.
"Oh!" she breathed. "No, he's never talked about you. Not--he said he had an instructor," she explained. Kakashi looked over, still giving her a slightly bemused, 'I'm not sure why you're telling me all this' expression. "I saw him talking to you once a few months ago, in that grocery." She tilted her head briefly at the store near the edge of the block. Kakashi's face didn't change. "I figured, it had to be you. He doesn't talk to people, it couldn't have been anyone el--. . . but he doesn't talk about you. Sir."
Kakashi gave her a small, amused smile. "Okay. . . ."
The girl gave him one last searching look. She seemed too certain of who he was--had she been trailing him or the kid?
"Someone sold him a gun," she said, very quietly, and only excellent self-control kept Kakashi from starting.
"I don't know who." She gave him another pleading look. "Please, he's not listening to me or Naruto. But he mentions you like he respects you. If you told him how stupid this is, maybe--"
The grocery door opened, and the girl changed topics without taking a breath. "--or those either. See, daffodils mean 'unrequited love,' so that's probably not a good omen for a first date." She smiled at him, and then gestured to another bucket. "I'd go with tulips! These red ones mean things like 'a declaration of love,' 'believe me,' all the good things to start a relationship with."
Kakashi inspected the tulips for another moment, as the customer who'd exited juggled his bag and made his way into the sidewalk traffic.
If she was trustworthy, then the girl was pretty clever. If she wasn't, then she was sloppy, but still decent for a beginner.
Should have left the kid in the alley, he thought once again, and said, "I'll take a bouquet of tulips, then."
"Thank you," the girl murmured, pulling one free. She shook the water off of the ends and wrapped it in a plastic bag. "They'll ring you up inside."
Kakashi took them silently. When he came out of the store, the girl was arranging flowers in one of the buckets farthest from the door. Her shoulders tightened when he came out, but she didn't look at him.
~
When he got back to the apartment, he started to hide the tulips away. Then he changed his mind.
If the kid saw them, he might guess who Kakashi's informant had been, and Kakashi was well off enough that he could afford the decency of keeping secrets. But if the kid didn't recognize them, then it could be a sign that the girl was laying a trap.
If you're going to eat poison, eat it down to the plate, Kakashi decided, and went to pour the last of the milk into a glass.
He left the glass in the fridge and put the tulips in the freshly-washed container. He set them on the window ledge, between two of the plants.
~
The kid arrived after sunset, like usual. Kakashi was almost finished making dinner. He read at the table; Sasuke ate like he'd either been working all day or had skipped lunch.
After dinner, he marked his place in the book with a thumb. He waited until Sasuke had set the plate down in the sink before saying, "Hey, kid."
"Yeah?"
"Who sold you the gun?"
Sasuke tensed up.
He turned to look at him after a couple seconds of silence. "Who told you that?"
"Did you think I wouldn't notice?"
The kid gave him a sharp, scrutinizing look. He almost believed him, but. . . .
Sasuke glanced at the tulips, standing bright red in the electric light among the other plants.
". . . It was Sakura, wasn't it," he said quietly, looking back at Kakashi.
"I didn't ask her name," he replied.
Sasuke's hand was clenched tight around the edge of the counter. He was silent. Kakashi remained seated and waited.
The kid finally let go of the counter after another moment. Kakashi could see the indentions on his palm as he let his hand drop to his side. "I remember what you told me," Sasuke said flatly. "I won't come back afterward."
"So you think you'll live through it?"
"I trained," he answered harshly. Kakashi raised an eyebrow.
Sasuke jerked away from counter abruptly, striding past Kakashi faster than necessary. He waited until the kid was behind him, and then said, "Sasuke."
"What."
"That wristband is pretty obvious to anyone who knows you."
The kid was still for a moment. Then he continued walking. Kakashi heard him hefting up his backpack from the other room, and opened the book again.
The kid never took long to pack; his clothes stayed in the backpack, and his bathroom stuff was all in a plastic baggie on the counter. He was gone before Kakashi had managed to reread a paragraph enough times to understand it.
Kakashi supposed he could have handled that better. Maybe if the kid didn't want to be a lost cause. . . .
~~
Five months passed. Kakashi moved again.
There was always a risk that the kid would betray him. Kakashi did get mail, and while he usually handled it when the kid wasn't around, safety required he assume that at some point Sasuke had learned his family name. He had preparations for fleeing the country, but that didn't change the amount of trouble it would cause him. There was the small fact that the kid was still presumed dead, so he couldn't walk into the station himself; but an anonymous tip to the police or Interpol would still force Kakashi to disappear.
The only point seriously in his favor was that the kid was still presumed dead. It wouldn't be hard to hunt Sasuke down if he needed to; a call to the police from him would destroy whatever cover the kid had kept up for the last two and a half years.
Kakashi would prefer things didn't come to that. Sasuke never talked about what had happened to his family, but between the bruises he'd had and the facts he knew, Kakashi could make some educated guesses. The kid's brother had left him alive for a reason--maybe the man hadn't noticed that Sasuke had failed to asphyxiate, but Kakashi assumed anyone capable of taking out a family who made its living selling themselves as bodyguards to yakuza wouldn't be that sloppy.
But on the extremely low chance that it was so, bringing the kid's survival to light would be equal to murder. And Kakashi avoided killing that he wasn't being paid for.
For five months, he saw nothing of the kid. No police stormed his apartments. His clientele had always been small due to the difficulty in accessing him and the high fee, but there was no noticeable drop in it.
So when his cell phone rang late one night, and listed a payphone, Kakashi only wondered when the kid had gotten his hands on it long enough to learn the number before answering.
~
"Hello."
"K--" Sasuke cut himself off. "It's me."
"I see."
"Do you know a doctor?"
Kakashi paused. "You can't go to a hospital?"
"Would I be calling if--do you know one or not?!"
"If you can yell it's probably not fatal," he pointed out.
"It's not for me," Sasuke answered, voice dropping. Kakashi frowned and strained to hear the background noise. "He can walk, and I put on a tourniquet, but we need a doctor. It's too close to the artery."
At that, Kakashi head someone faintly say: "It's not that bad . . . I still got feeling and everything!"
"Shut up," Sasuke replied, slightly muted like he'd turned away from the phone.
"Where are you?" Kakashi asked.
The address the kid gave him wasn't in that bad an area of town, but it was a place people died in infrequently. Kakashi had always assumed that said more about the city than the areas that composed it.
It was also a short subway ride from Rin's latest office.
She would kill him. But the only other doctor Kakashi trusted was over twenty minutes from the kid, and Kakashi himself wasn't that much closer.
"How long did you wait before calling me?" he asked.
"I . . . eight, I think," Sasuke answered.
"How bad is it?"
"Knife wound to the leg," the kid replied, voice growing slightly less strained as he moved to clinical details. "Bleeding profusely--" more from whoever was with him, but Kakashi couldn't make it out and the kid didn't reply "--despite the tourniquet. He was stabbed with a triangular blade, and then it was ripped out from the side."
That was more than Kakashi could take care of on his own. He didn't have the materials for sutures.
She would kill him.
"How close to the artery?"
". . . maybe half an inch from the tibial, look, if you don't fucking know someone I--"
Sasuke cut himself off again. The strain was back.
"Can you get him on the subway without attracting attention?" Kakashi asked calmly.
"If I have to," Sasuke replied.
"Then go here." Kakashi gave him the address, then paused and asked, "Do you know that area?"
"I--know the street, I can find it."
"Second floor," Kakashi told him. "Take the stairs between the restaurant and the cigar shop."
"Okay. Anything else?"
"You should probably hurry," he commented. Sasuke hung up.
Kakashi sighed and did the same. And then he flipped the cell back open and began punching in the number.
He'd never kept Rin's information somewhere concrete, just memorized. Even when he'd still been working with Obito.
~
"Hello," Kakashi said when she picked up.
"Hello?" Rin answered, sounding mildly surprised and confused.
"It's Kakashi."
Silence.
He waited for fifteen seconds, and then said, "I need a favor."
". . . Go to a hospital," she replied, voice cracking slightly on the last syllable.
"It's not for me," Kakashi replied, and then took a risk. "It's for an Uchiha."
"What?" The confusion returned. ". . . They died years ago, what are you. . . ?"
"The two brothers that were missing are still alive," he said. "Or at least the younger one is. He called and said he had a wound in the leg, triangular blade, close to the tibial artery. You were the closest doctor I knew."
"How. . . ?" she replied after another second. Kakashi heard a chair creak in the background. "I moved."
He didn't answer.
After another pause, Kakashi said, "I already gave him the directions to your clinic."
". . . Goddammit," Rin replied. "God damn you. I'll be there."
He started to thank her, but she'd already slammed the phone down.
~
Sasuke showed up at the clinic half-hauling a blond teenager whose right jeans' leg was soaked with blood. Kakashi had barely gotten there before him. He'd waited in the front while Rin set up the first operating room in the back. They hadn't talked.
Rin had blinked at the blond and stared hard at the kid, but otherwise, she said nothing. She was trustworthy; Kakashi had gambled that that hadn't changed, and so far he seemed to have been right.
The kid didn't leave the room when Rin undid the makeshift tourniquet and starting cutting the blond's jeans to get to his wound. She gave him another brief look, but said nothing. Kakashi remained out in the hall.
~
After half an hour, Rin had finished the sutures. Another quarter of an hour, and she'd treated and wrapped up the two inches above the kid's wrist where it looked like his skin had been sliced away with a razor. Kakashi could see her partly through the doorway as she washed her hands.
"You should remain still for another thirty minutes," she told the blond. "The anesthesia will've worn off by then. Don't put too much pressure on your leg for the next two weeks; the sutures will dissolve on their own, so you don't need to come back." She turned off the water and reached for the paper towel. "I don't want to give you painkillers, but you can probably find them through some other source."
"Thank you," the kid told her.
"Damn," the blond said, propping himself slightly up on his elbows. "That looks kind of cool."
"You're an idiot," was Sasuke's response.
Rin gave both of them another look, the blond a confused one and the kid one that was mostly well-concealed. Kakashi leaned slightly away from the door frame when she stepped out of the room. She walked past him.
Kakashi lingered by the door for another moment. But the kid and the blond were exchanging insults in between sounding concerned about each other, and there was something . . . off, about his being there. The blond was a part of the kid's world that Kakashi wasn't involved in, the same way Rin was--had been--a part of his world that didn't concern the kid.
The whole last two hours had been off. Kakashi pushed away from the door and followed Rin.
She'd gone into the office, and was pulling out the supplies she would need to replace in the other room. She hadn't shut the door, so he followed suit.
"Where did you--how did you find him?" she asked after a moment, dropping a roll of bandages beside the fresh surgical kit.
"A comedy of errors," he replied.
Rin's shoulders tensed up. Her hand shook a moment before she wrenched the surgical kit open and pulled out a scalpel.
She jerked around, pointing the scalpel at him and holding it with both hands. Kakashi looked at her. He stayed in place.
"Don't," she said. "Don't get that kid involved. Not like him."
"I'm not," he replied.
"I mean it." She tilted the scalpel up slightly, aligning it further with his throat.
"I don't want another partner," Kakashi replied. "The kid's just a kid."
Rin stared at him.
After several seconds, her hands started to falter. The scalpel dropped an inch.
"Why are you smiling?" she asked quietly.
"Well," he answered, feeling some strange kind of amusement. The corners of his mouth were still curled up. "I'd thought to myself you were going to kill me if I called."
She blinked.
Rin dropped the scalpel on the kit's lid a moment later. She sat down on the edge of the desk heavily, exhaling.
"I don't understand you," she murmured, shoving the lid away slightly. "I swear, I never understood you. . . ."
"Sorry," he replied.
"Kakashi. . . ."
There was a knock on the wall outside. He and Rin looked over.
The kid was standing in the hallway, mostly to the side of the door. When no one replied, he took a step into the room. "What do I owe you?"
"Oh," Rin said. She pushed her hair back over her shoulder. "For the supplies and the time . . . five thousand yen."
"Five thousand," the kid repeated.
Rin sighed again, this time irritated. "If that's too much, I'll take two thousand. And be grateful."
Sasuke pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket, and fished out two bills.
He set the two five thousand notes on the office table, not quite looking at Kakashi when he passed him. The man wondered if having worlds clash was as weird for the kid as it was for him.
Rin frowned at the money. "That's--"
"Thank you," Sasuke said. "Keep it."
"This is my job," Rin replied, picking up the second bill and holding it out. Sasuke took a step back.
"Not for that," he said. "For. . . ." He paused, and then shook his head. "Never mind. Keep it."
Rin looked at him after the kid left. Kakashi had his suspicions, but just shrugged.
~
Sasuke and the blond--Naruto, the same as the girl had mentioned, unless his real name was "Idiot" or some variation thereof--left just before the half-hour was up, despite Rin's assertion that the anesthesia couldn't have worn off that quickly. Kakashi lingered behind, to keep from looking like he was with them to anyone on the street. He helped Rin rearrange the room.
"I always knew there'd be blood involved when I saw you again," she said once they were done. She stripped off her gloves and threw them in the trash. "I just assumed it would be yours."
"Ah," he replied, turning his gloves inside out and rubbing the fingertips with a paper towel to remove prints.
"Silly me," she murmured, cutting off the light once he was in the hall. "I should have remembered you're unpredictable at the worst times."
"You should go now," she added. "I want to leave as soon as possible."
"Goodbye," he replied.
~
It was lucky Kakashi had opted to wash his clothes before showering. If he hadn't heard the kid knock on the door, he didn't know where Sasuke would have gone. Maybe he would have kept knocking at intervals until it was sunrise.
Sasuke was radiating weariness when Kakashi let him in, but he stayed in the entryway and kept his backpack over one shoulder. Kakashi didn't bother asking how he knew about the new apartment.
"I took Naruto back to his home," he explained, watching the man. "If I went where I usually sleep, this would have gotten infected. Nobody could have followed me, the way I came here."
Kakashi eyed the bandages around his wrist. "A tattoo removal place would have been easier, kid."
Sasuke paused. ". . . When did you see?"
"When did you get my number?" he replied.
The kid eyed him, but eventually said, "While you were in the shower."
"While you were sleeping."
Sasuke snorted. After another moment's hesitation, he dropped his backpack to the floor. Kakashi returned to the bathroom.
When he came out, the kid was passed out on the couch. He'd replaced the bandages.
~
Neither of them mentioned the gun. The old plants had died while Sasuke was gone; he watered the new ones and said Kakashi should just buy cacti from now on.
After his wrist was almost completely healed over, Sasuke disappeared again. He left a thousand yen bill on the table, with the note that it was for the medical supplies he'd used.
~~
Kakashi began to suspect his life was fucked. The kid left, over and over, but he never stayed gone. Just when he would get back to his old schedule, remembering to take care of the plants and wash the dishes before going to bed and that he could clean the guns on the table again, Sasuke barged back in his life.
This time, it was another call from a payphone. His cell rang once and then cut off before Kakashi had time to flip it open.
He eyed the number for a moment, exhaled through his teeth, and then hit redial. The phone rang. No one answered. Kakashi started to pace.
After seventeen rings, the phone clicked. ". . . Kakashi?" the kid mumbled.
He hesitated--it was impossible to perfectly judge people's voices over phones--and then said, "Yeah?"
Silence. He could hear Sasuke's breathing coming thin and hissing, like he was doing it through his teeth. He frowned. "Kid?"
"I found him," Sasuke whispered.
The kid was terrified. And he was hiding it badly. But then, if he'd actually called, he was probably past the point of trying to.
"I can't--" Sasuke said abruptly, still whispering. "He already got hurt. I can't do that to them."
Kakashi felt something between flattered and insulted.
He leaned against the back of the couch. "Where are you?"
The address the kid gave him was in a decidedly bad part of the city, and by 'bad' Kakashi meant 'classy and full of people with connections.' He rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then rubbed the scar under his eye.
"Go away," he advised. "You know where he is, so go back when you have a plan."
"This is the first time I've found him in years," the kid hissed.
"So it's worth attacking him blindly?" Kakashi asked. "Even if you die?"
More silence. Sasuke started to say something, and then stopped.
". . . I want to stop being scared," he finally replied. "If he's--dead, then--"
"It doesn't work like that, Sasuke," the man said. "You still dream."
"If he's dead he can't touch them," Sasuke replied, and this time there was a thread of conviction under the fear. The kid had a rallying point. Great.
Kakashi decided that if he ever found out who'd sold the kid the gun, that would be the one job he did for free.
He dragged the side of his thumb across the scar one last time, and exhaled again. This broke at least twenty of his rules. He didn't kill in his own city. He didn't walk into a job without information he'd gathered himself. He didn't get involved in other people's suicidal actions. He didn't do work last-minute. He didn't do work he could be emotionally involved in.
If someone used Rin against him, he would fall for it. That's why he wanted her at arm's length and unconnected to his life. If someone used the kid against him, he'd probably fall for it. That's why it was better if the kid got himself killed on his quest first. At least Obito had had the decency to die before he could be used against Kakashi.
But then, he hadn't made the first move to pull Obito or Rin into his life.
The moment had been a long time coming, and the decision was different from what he'd expected it to be a year or even a few months ago. But it was time to stop wishing he'd left the kid in the alley and to take responsibility for his recklessness.
Kakashi pushed himself away from the couch and straightened up. "Wait for me."
Yet more silence. He hoped the kid wasn't the type that did excellent in training and froze up in an actual situation.
Then, almost inaudibly, Sasuke said, "Thank you."
Kakashi hung up. He set the phone to vibrate, tucked it into his pocket, and went to get his weapons.
If you're going to eat poison, eat it down to the plate.
Kakashi, Sasuke, keeping a pet brings with it certain responsibilities.
Warnings: AU, still minor, R but probably still not worksafe.
For copycock's "alternative universe hell" challenge.
Two years passed.
The kid came and went, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for weeks. He always arrived after nightfall and left by sunrise, so Kakashi didn't see much of him in the summer. He paid two thousand yen a week for room and board when he was there; Kakashi accepted the money, and didn't ask where it came from. He did check that the bills were nonconsecutive.
Kakashi went through four apartments, all of them still in the city. It got too much rain and had too many opportunities for trouble, but so far it had proved a big enough place for a man who didn't make waves or leave evidence.
The first time he'd moved since Sasuke had landed in his life, the kid had shown up while he was still packing. He'd stared for a couple seconds, and then looked like he was about to walk back out the door. Kakashi mentioned that if he didn't know a good way to transport plants, he would toss them out. They'd just die without the kid watering them, anyway.
Sasuke had remained silent for a little longer, and then snorted quietly and asked where the trash bags were.
The second time, Sasuke had still been gone. It didn't take Kakashi long to move; he was settled in within a week, no forwarding address left. The kid found his place after a month. (If Kakashi were honest, he had eaten a couple times more often than usual in the restaurants in the old apartment's area.) The third time, the kid noticed him reading the real estate section and hung around long enough to help pack.
Time had stopped meaning much outside of work to Kakashi a long time ago. He gauged its passing by different apartments, varying amounts in his bank accounts, and changes in Sasuke.
The kid exercised almost every day that he was around, and probably when he was away as well. He had a good build muscle-wise, but there was still something brittle about him, like he didn't take the time to eat enough.
~~
There were times when he didn't see Sasuke for weeks on end. Kakashi had work, and didn't let him hang around the apartment when he was gone. All his papers listed him as a traveling salesman, so it was necessary that the neighbors think he traveled once in a while. If it bothered the kid, he was enough of a professional himself not to mention or show it.
Kakashi didn't think it bothered him. Sasuke's walls were too cracked to withstand companionship for long; he almost always left again the mornings after they'd had sex.
Sasuke liked privacy not because he was a loner but because he was hiding something. Kakashi had a good idea what it was, but he was too used to solitude to try and force the kid to open up. And he didn't have room in his life to be a father figure.
~~
Sasuke arrived when he was in the middle of dressing. Kakashi let him in and returned to the bedroom.
When he came out ten minutes later, the kid was sitting cross-legged in front of the couch, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked up, noted the suit, and pushed himself onto his feet. "Do I have time to make a sandwich?"
"I'll be back before morning," Kakashi replied, still pulling on his shirt collar. Too much starch in that wash. . . . "Just keep the lights off." He kept his guns and other weapons where there was no chance of the kid finding them.
Sasuke stared at him as he readjusted his wallet in the jacket pocket. Then he nodded.
Kakashi left.
~
He reminded himself that the kid would be in the apartment before setting the key in the lock. Reflexes.
He heard the last trace of a scrabbling noise as he was opening the door. Kakashi flipped on the light before shrugging out of his jacket; the kid stood up from where he'd been either crouched or sitting by the bookcase. He was holding a flashlight.
Sasuke sniffed the air a moment after that and started to frown. "Are you drunk?"
He couldn't fault the kid for asking--he smelled of more alcohol than he had in him. "No," Kakashi replied, folding the sides of the jacket so that it lay flat. He draped it over the back of the couch. "He's a good man, but I can't trust him that much."
Sasuke glanced down, and then looked over at the kitchen. Kakashi headed to the bathroom to wash his face.
~
When he came out, he heard the rice cooking.
"Did you not eat yet?" he asked, undoing two more buttons.
"No," the kid replied. "It . . . would've been a pain in the ass, trying to do everything by flashlight. And people would probably think you were being robbed."
Kakashi wondered if his paranoia was rubbing off on the kid, or if Sasuke's own was branching out.
He was vaguely surprised when Sasuke got out two bowls and two eggs. He started to tell the kid that he'd already eaten, but then decided this might be a good idea. He'd guaranteed that he wouldn't have a hangover, but even with precautions, alcohol made him groggy in the mornings. The more to offset it, the better.
~
The bathroom had no windows, so Sasuke had already showered. When Kakashi got out, he found the kid still up. He was sitting on the edge of the couch. He started to scoot forward, but then stopped himself.
"Did you take vitamin B?" the kid asked.
"Yeah," he replied.
Sasuke nodded once, then looked away. He flopped down on the couch a moment later. Kakashi went into the bedroom.
~
He only just heard Sasuke come into his room later that night. Even with adrenaline, he wasn't sure he would have been completely coordinated if the kid had been someone else. He would have woken up regardless at Sasuke settling under the covers, but that was too close to be acceptable.
Kakashi decided to wait two hours between beers instead of one from then on, and to never drink again until he was living alone.
~
It was late morning when he woke up due to Sasuke climbing out of the bed. The sun had been up for hours, which meant the kid wouldn't be leaving until evening or tomorrow morning. Kakashi started a pot of coffee while Sasuke was in the bathroom, and then went to brush his teeth.
Sasuke microwaved the remainder of the rice for his breakfast. Kakashi stuck to coffee.
He was still nursing the second cup when the kid finished and dropped his bowl in the sink. Kakashi watched as he filled a glass with water, and set his coffee on the table.
When Sasuke started to pass him on his way to the ledge the plants sat on, Kakashi got a hold of the glass and took it from his hand. He set it on the table as Sasuke gave him a confused look.
"What--?" he started to ask, and Kakashi caught his elbow and tugged him closer.
Sasuke's shins hit the side of the chair, and Kakashi tugged on his elbow again. Sasuke hesitated a moment before leaning down to kiss him.
Kakashi let go of his elbow and slid his hand underneath Sasuke's shirt. He shivered at that, and shifted his legs a moment later, knees brushing Kakashi's thigh.
Kakashi stood up when Sasuke made a move to straddle his legs, bringing his hand with him. He brought the other one up as well, to pull the shirt over Sasuke's head. It messed up the kid's hair when it came off.
Kakashi dropped the shirt on the seat of his chair and took a step closer, until he was standing just against Sasuke and it was easy to reach around and brush his knuckles up his spine.
Sasuke swallowed and took a step back; Kakashi followed.
The kid caught on then, because he swallowed again and said, "The--bedroom."
"Yeah," Kakashi replied, running his knuckles back down Sasuke's spine, a little firmer this time. Sasuke shifted again, and hooked two fingers in the waist of Kakashi's pants.
~
The kid had as many hang-ups about sex as most people, Kakashi figured. Even after two years, he still didn't like being touched, not often. It was hard to tell where the line between teenage embarrassment and genuine discomfort lay. Sasuke always wanted it to be fast--to get to the point as soon as possible and not bother with extraneous stuff. He squirmed and got irritable when Kakashi wanted to take time, a fact that Kakashi, every once in a while, didn't give a damn about.
It meant he had fingernail imprints from where the kid had gripped his upper arms while Kakashi nipped and kissed his way from Sasuke's throat to his cock, but the kid hadn't drawn blood, and they would fade.
~
That afternoon, he noticed that the shelf containing his porn was out of order--one of the books had been shoved between two others of another series. Kakashi looked at it for a moment, and then laughed quietly.
He gave Sasuke a negative point for being flustered enough by his return to not have replaced it unnoticeably, and then wondered if the kid was going through them randomly or in order. If it was the latter, he'd either gotten through two in one night, or he was reading them when Kakashi didn't notice.
~~
They didn't have sex often, and it was always Sasuke who initiated it; most nights the kid chose to sleep on the couch. Kakashi, for what it was worth--and he knew it was worth jack--never approached him without overtures.
He could trace exactly the complicated and awkward path along which he'd gone from deciding never to do more than give the kid a handjob to buying condoms on a regular basis. He didn't justify it. He knew anything he had to justify was a bad idea, and since he'd been aware of that well in advance, it seemed unnecessary.
He never could quite think of Sasuke in anything like an "occasional lover" position. It was partly because he found himself thinking at least once a month that he should have left the kid in the alley, and partly because he never had asked Sasuke his age.
~~
During the second year, around the middle of winter, Sasuke came into the apartment with a different kind of silence. Kakashi wasn't an infallible expert at interpreting people, but he knew more than enough to read through the kid.
Sasuke sat on the floor near the television, chewing at his beef bowl with a studied absence. Kakashi kept to his usual place on the couch, and waited.
When it came, it was abrupt. That was something he occasionally liked about the kid--getting straight to the point was rude, but efficient.
"Are you the one cleaning the grave?" Sasuke asked, when he'd finished about half his bowl.
Kakashi paused at the actual question.
"No," he answered, picking up another bite of rice.
"Do you know who is?"
"I can guess."
"Who?"
"None of your business, kid," he replied.
Sasuke stared at him with narrow eyes. Kakashi continued eating.
"Why only that grave?" he asked finally. "How did you know that cousin?"
"None of your business," Kakashi repeated.
The kid should have expected his reply. Kakashi supposed that wouldn't have stopped him from being frustrated.
Sasuke was pragmatic enough to finish his food before leaving--a change from who he had been; the old kid would have stormed out after being rejected. But he still left. Kakashi didn't stop him.
Sasuke was gone for three months. He didn't come back until the weather had turned; and when he did, he had bags under his eyes again. Kakashi let him in and didn't mention the new clothes.
~
When Sasuke returned, he stayed on the couch for over a week. Kakashi wouldn't have thought much of it if the kid hadn't also worn jeans and long sleeves for the duration. He was tempted to turn up the heater, to see if Sasuke would continue to wear sweatpants and sleeves to bed; but it was more likely that he'd leave again, so he didn't.
He was starting to wonder how much longer Sasuke was going to wash his shirts in the sink, when he came out of the bathroom to find the kid watching television on the couch and wearing a t-shirt.
Sasuke turned off the TV when he walked past, and followed him into the bedroom. He pulled off his shirt and sat down on the bed while Kakashi checked his email for any new messages and then shut the laptop down.
Sasuke wasn't looking at him when he turned around. He was staring at the dresser.
Kakashi had noticed earlier that the kid was wearing one of those leather wristbands currently popular with teenagers. He noticed it again when Sasuke didn't take it off.
Sasuke seized up badly when Kakashi leaned down and kissed his shoulder, and then forcibly relaxed. Kakashi took note and only used his hands that night.
~
He got the kid's wristband off later, while Sasuke slept. Kakashi stared at the small, new tattoo above his wrist for a few minutes.
Then he put it back on.
The kid shifted slightly. Kakashi settled back onto his side and closed his eyes.
~~
It was a big city, but it wasn't infinite. And Kakashi, like most people, had places he preferred to shop at, even if he didn't allow himself to visit them often.
"Hey!" a girl called to him as he passed by a flower stand set up in front of a grocery. "Want to buy some flowers?"
"Nope," Kakashi replied, without stopping.
"Sure you do!" she retorted. "Just come look at what we have!"
"No thank you."
"Oh, I'm sure there's someone a man like you would want to buy flowers for," she continued. "Your girlfriend would be delighted at the surprise!"
The girl's voice was starting to sound slightly desperate, though she was hiding it well. Kakashi paused and looked over his shoulder at her.
She gestured rapidly for him to come closer, keeping her hand hidden from general view with the flower buckets. Kakashi eyed her for another moment, and then moved out of the sidewalk traffic. "I suppose she might."
"Well!" the girl said brightly. "We have a lot to choose from, you'd be surprised. All our flowers come straight from the Yamanaka greenhouse. Fresh!"
"Mm," he replied, shifting a couple bouquets of carnations around in their bucket with the backs of his fingers rather than the tips.
"Do you know Sasuke?" the girl asked, much quieter.
"Who?" Kakashi replied.
She blinked at him. He nudged the carnations back to where they'd been and straightened up.
"Oh!" she breathed. "No, he's never talked about you. Not--he said he had an instructor," she explained. Kakashi looked over, still giving her a slightly bemused, 'I'm not sure why you're telling me all this' expression. "I saw him talking to you once a few months ago, in that grocery." She tilted her head briefly at the store near the edge of the block. Kakashi's face didn't change. "I figured, it had to be you. He doesn't talk to people, it couldn't have been anyone el--. . . but he doesn't talk about you. Sir."
Kakashi gave her a small, amused smile. "Okay. . . ."
The girl gave him one last searching look. She seemed too certain of who he was--had she been trailing him or the kid?
"Someone sold him a gun," she said, very quietly, and only excellent self-control kept Kakashi from starting.
"I don't know who." She gave him another pleading look. "Please, he's not listening to me or Naruto. But he mentions you like he respects you. If you told him how stupid this is, maybe--"
The grocery door opened, and the girl changed topics without taking a breath. "--or those either. See, daffodils mean 'unrequited love,' so that's probably not a good omen for a first date." She smiled at him, and then gestured to another bucket. "I'd go with tulips! These red ones mean things like 'a declaration of love,' 'believe me,' all the good things to start a relationship with."
Kakashi inspected the tulips for another moment, as the customer who'd exited juggled his bag and made his way into the sidewalk traffic.
If she was trustworthy, then the girl was pretty clever. If she wasn't, then she was sloppy, but still decent for a beginner.
Should have left the kid in the alley, he thought once again, and said, "I'll take a bouquet of tulips, then."
"Thank you," the girl murmured, pulling one free. She shook the water off of the ends and wrapped it in a plastic bag. "They'll ring you up inside."
Kakashi took them silently. When he came out of the store, the girl was arranging flowers in one of the buckets farthest from the door. Her shoulders tightened when he came out, but she didn't look at him.
~
When he got back to the apartment, he started to hide the tulips away. Then he changed his mind.
If the kid saw them, he might guess who Kakashi's informant had been, and Kakashi was well off enough that he could afford the decency of keeping secrets. But if the kid didn't recognize them, then it could be a sign that the girl was laying a trap.
If you're going to eat poison, eat it down to the plate, Kakashi decided, and went to pour the last of the milk into a glass.
He left the glass in the fridge and put the tulips in the freshly-washed container. He set them on the window ledge, between two of the plants.
~
The kid arrived after sunset, like usual. Kakashi was almost finished making dinner. He read at the table; Sasuke ate like he'd either been working all day or had skipped lunch.
After dinner, he marked his place in the book with a thumb. He waited until Sasuke had set the plate down in the sink before saying, "Hey, kid."
"Yeah?"
"Who sold you the gun?"
Sasuke tensed up.
He turned to look at him after a couple seconds of silence. "Who told you that?"
"Did you think I wouldn't notice?"
The kid gave him a sharp, scrutinizing look. He almost believed him, but. . . .
Sasuke glanced at the tulips, standing bright red in the electric light among the other plants.
". . . It was Sakura, wasn't it," he said quietly, looking back at Kakashi.
"I didn't ask her name," he replied.
Sasuke's hand was clenched tight around the edge of the counter. He was silent. Kakashi remained seated and waited.
The kid finally let go of the counter after another moment. Kakashi could see the indentions on his palm as he let his hand drop to his side. "I remember what you told me," Sasuke said flatly. "I won't come back afterward."
"So you think you'll live through it?"
"I trained," he answered harshly. Kakashi raised an eyebrow.
Sasuke jerked away from counter abruptly, striding past Kakashi faster than necessary. He waited until the kid was behind him, and then said, "Sasuke."
"What."
"That wristband is pretty obvious to anyone who knows you."
The kid was still for a moment. Then he continued walking. Kakashi heard him hefting up his backpack from the other room, and opened the book again.
The kid never took long to pack; his clothes stayed in the backpack, and his bathroom stuff was all in a plastic baggie on the counter. He was gone before Kakashi had managed to reread a paragraph enough times to understand it.
Kakashi supposed he could have handled that better. Maybe if the kid didn't want to be a lost cause. . . .
~~
Five months passed. Kakashi moved again.
There was always a risk that the kid would betray him. Kakashi did get mail, and while he usually handled it when the kid wasn't around, safety required he assume that at some point Sasuke had learned his family name. He had preparations for fleeing the country, but that didn't change the amount of trouble it would cause him. There was the small fact that the kid was still presumed dead, so he couldn't walk into the station himself; but an anonymous tip to the police or Interpol would still force Kakashi to disappear.
The only point seriously in his favor was that the kid was still presumed dead. It wouldn't be hard to hunt Sasuke down if he needed to; a call to the police from him would destroy whatever cover the kid had kept up for the last two and a half years.
Kakashi would prefer things didn't come to that. Sasuke never talked about what had happened to his family, but between the bruises he'd had and the facts he knew, Kakashi could make some educated guesses. The kid's brother had left him alive for a reason--maybe the man hadn't noticed that Sasuke had failed to asphyxiate, but Kakashi assumed anyone capable of taking out a family who made its living selling themselves as bodyguards to yakuza wouldn't be that sloppy.
But on the extremely low chance that it was so, bringing the kid's survival to light would be equal to murder. And Kakashi avoided killing that he wasn't being paid for.
For five months, he saw nothing of the kid. No police stormed his apartments. His clientele had always been small due to the difficulty in accessing him and the high fee, but there was no noticeable drop in it.
So when his cell phone rang late one night, and listed a payphone, Kakashi only wondered when the kid had gotten his hands on it long enough to learn the number before answering.
~
"Hello."
"K--" Sasuke cut himself off. "It's me."
"I see."
"Do you know a doctor?"
Kakashi paused. "You can't go to a hospital?"
"Would I be calling if--do you know one or not?!"
"If you can yell it's probably not fatal," he pointed out.
"It's not for me," Sasuke answered, voice dropping. Kakashi frowned and strained to hear the background noise. "He can walk, and I put on a tourniquet, but we need a doctor. It's too close to the artery."
At that, Kakashi head someone faintly say: "It's not that bad . . . I still got feeling and everything!"
"Shut up," Sasuke replied, slightly muted like he'd turned away from the phone.
"Where are you?" Kakashi asked.
The address the kid gave him wasn't in that bad an area of town, but it was a place people died in infrequently. Kakashi had always assumed that said more about the city than the areas that composed it.
It was also a short subway ride from Rin's latest office.
She would kill him. But the only other doctor Kakashi trusted was over twenty minutes from the kid, and Kakashi himself wasn't that much closer.
"How long did you wait before calling me?" he asked.
"I . . . eight, I think," Sasuke answered.
"How bad is it?"
"Knife wound to the leg," the kid replied, voice growing slightly less strained as he moved to clinical details. "Bleeding profusely--" more from whoever was with him, but Kakashi couldn't make it out and the kid didn't reply "--despite the tourniquet. He was stabbed with a triangular blade, and then it was ripped out from the side."
That was more than Kakashi could take care of on his own. He didn't have the materials for sutures.
She would kill him.
"How close to the artery?"
". . . maybe half an inch from the tibial, look, if you don't fucking know someone I--"
Sasuke cut himself off again. The strain was back.
"Can you get him on the subway without attracting attention?" Kakashi asked calmly.
"If I have to," Sasuke replied.
"Then go here." Kakashi gave him the address, then paused and asked, "Do you know that area?"
"I--know the street, I can find it."
"Second floor," Kakashi told him. "Take the stairs between the restaurant and the cigar shop."
"Okay. Anything else?"
"You should probably hurry," he commented. Sasuke hung up.
Kakashi sighed and did the same. And then he flipped the cell back open and began punching in the number.
He'd never kept Rin's information somewhere concrete, just memorized. Even when he'd still been working with Obito.
~
"Hello," Kakashi said when she picked up.
"Hello?" Rin answered, sounding mildly surprised and confused.
"It's Kakashi."
Silence.
He waited for fifteen seconds, and then said, "I need a favor."
". . . Go to a hospital," she replied, voice cracking slightly on the last syllable.
"It's not for me," Kakashi replied, and then took a risk. "It's for an Uchiha."
"What?" The confusion returned. ". . . They died years ago, what are you. . . ?"
"The two brothers that were missing are still alive," he said. "Or at least the younger one is. He called and said he had a wound in the leg, triangular blade, close to the tibial artery. You were the closest doctor I knew."
"How. . . ?" she replied after another second. Kakashi heard a chair creak in the background. "I moved."
He didn't answer.
After another pause, Kakashi said, "I already gave him the directions to your clinic."
". . . Goddammit," Rin replied. "God damn you. I'll be there."
He started to thank her, but she'd already slammed the phone down.
~
Sasuke showed up at the clinic half-hauling a blond teenager whose right jeans' leg was soaked with blood. Kakashi had barely gotten there before him. He'd waited in the front while Rin set up the first operating room in the back. They hadn't talked.
Rin had blinked at the blond and stared hard at the kid, but otherwise, she said nothing. She was trustworthy; Kakashi had gambled that that hadn't changed, and so far he seemed to have been right.
The kid didn't leave the room when Rin undid the makeshift tourniquet and starting cutting the blond's jeans to get to his wound. She gave him another brief look, but said nothing. Kakashi remained out in the hall.
~
After half an hour, Rin had finished the sutures. Another quarter of an hour, and she'd treated and wrapped up the two inches above the kid's wrist where it looked like his skin had been sliced away with a razor. Kakashi could see her partly through the doorway as she washed her hands.
"You should remain still for another thirty minutes," she told the blond. "The anesthesia will've worn off by then. Don't put too much pressure on your leg for the next two weeks; the sutures will dissolve on their own, so you don't need to come back." She turned off the water and reached for the paper towel. "I don't want to give you painkillers, but you can probably find them through some other source."
"Thank you," the kid told her.
"Damn," the blond said, propping himself slightly up on his elbows. "That looks kind of cool."
"You're an idiot," was Sasuke's response.
Rin gave both of them another look, the blond a confused one and the kid one that was mostly well-concealed. Kakashi leaned slightly away from the door frame when she stepped out of the room. She walked past him.
Kakashi lingered by the door for another moment. But the kid and the blond were exchanging insults in between sounding concerned about each other, and there was something . . . off, about his being there. The blond was a part of the kid's world that Kakashi wasn't involved in, the same way Rin was--had been--a part of his world that didn't concern the kid.
The whole last two hours had been off. Kakashi pushed away from the door and followed Rin.
She'd gone into the office, and was pulling out the supplies she would need to replace in the other room. She hadn't shut the door, so he followed suit.
"Where did you--how did you find him?" she asked after a moment, dropping a roll of bandages beside the fresh surgical kit.
"A comedy of errors," he replied.
Rin's shoulders tensed up. Her hand shook a moment before she wrenched the surgical kit open and pulled out a scalpel.
She jerked around, pointing the scalpel at him and holding it with both hands. Kakashi looked at her. He stayed in place.
"Don't," she said. "Don't get that kid involved. Not like him."
"I'm not," he replied.
"I mean it." She tilted the scalpel up slightly, aligning it further with his throat.
"I don't want another partner," Kakashi replied. "The kid's just a kid."
Rin stared at him.
After several seconds, her hands started to falter. The scalpel dropped an inch.
"Why are you smiling?" she asked quietly.
"Well," he answered, feeling some strange kind of amusement. The corners of his mouth were still curled up. "I'd thought to myself you were going to kill me if I called."
She blinked.
Rin dropped the scalpel on the kit's lid a moment later. She sat down on the edge of the desk heavily, exhaling.
"I don't understand you," she murmured, shoving the lid away slightly. "I swear, I never understood you. . . ."
"Sorry," he replied.
"Kakashi. . . ."
There was a knock on the wall outside. He and Rin looked over.
The kid was standing in the hallway, mostly to the side of the door. When no one replied, he took a step into the room. "What do I owe you?"
"Oh," Rin said. She pushed her hair back over her shoulder. "For the supplies and the time . . . five thousand yen."
"Five thousand," the kid repeated.
Rin sighed again, this time irritated. "If that's too much, I'll take two thousand. And be grateful."
Sasuke pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket, and fished out two bills.
He set the two five thousand notes on the office table, not quite looking at Kakashi when he passed him. The man wondered if having worlds clash was as weird for the kid as it was for him.
Rin frowned at the money. "That's--"
"Thank you," Sasuke said. "Keep it."
"This is my job," Rin replied, picking up the second bill and holding it out. Sasuke took a step back.
"Not for that," he said. "For. . . ." He paused, and then shook his head. "Never mind. Keep it."
Rin looked at him after the kid left. Kakashi had his suspicions, but just shrugged.
~
Sasuke and the blond--Naruto, the same as the girl had mentioned, unless his real name was "Idiot" or some variation thereof--left just before the half-hour was up, despite Rin's assertion that the anesthesia couldn't have worn off that quickly. Kakashi lingered behind, to keep from looking like he was with them to anyone on the street. He helped Rin rearrange the room.
"I always knew there'd be blood involved when I saw you again," she said once they were done. She stripped off her gloves and threw them in the trash. "I just assumed it would be yours."
"Ah," he replied, turning his gloves inside out and rubbing the fingertips with a paper towel to remove prints.
"Silly me," she murmured, cutting off the light once he was in the hall. "I should have remembered you're unpredictable at the worst times."
"You should go now," she added. "I want to leave as soon as possible."
"Goodbye," he replied.
~
It was lucky Kakashi had opted to wash his clothes before showering. If he hadn't heard the kid knock on the door, he didn't know where Sasuke would have gone. Maybe he would have kept knocking at intervals until it was sunrise.
Sasuke was radiating weariness when Kakashi let him in, but he stayed in the entryway and kept his backpack over one shoulder. Kakashi didn't bother asking how he knew about the new apartment.
"I took Naruto back to his home," he explained, watching the man. "If I went where I usually sleep, this would have gotten infected. Nobody could have followed me, the way I came here."
Kakashi eyed the bandages around his wrist. "A tattoo removal place would have been easier, kid."
Sasuke paused. ". . . When did you see?"
"When did you get my number?" he replied.
The kid eyed him, but eventually said, "While you were in the shower."
"While you were sleeping."
Sasuke snorted. After another moment's hesitation, he dropped his backpack to the floor. Kakashi returned to the bathroom.
When he came out, the kid was passed out on the couch. He'd replaced the bandages.
~
Neither of them mentioned the gun. The old plants had died while Sasuke was gone; he watered the new ones and said Kakashi should just buy cacti from now on.
After his wrist was almost completely healed over, Sasuke disappeared again. He left a thousand yen bill on the table, with the note that it was for the medical supplies he'd used.
~~
Kakashi began to suspect his life was fucked. The kid left, over and over, but he never stayed gone. Just when he would get back to his old schedule, remembering to take care of the plants and wash the dishes before going to bed and that he could clean the guns on the table again, Sasuke barged back in his life.
This time, it was another call from a payphone. His cell rang once and then cut off before Kakashi had time to flip it open.
He eyed the number for a moment, exhaled through his teeth, and then hit redial. The phone rang. No one answered. Kakashi started to pace.
After seventeen rings, the phone clicked. ". . . Kakashi?" the kid mumbled.
He hesitated--it was impossible to perfectly judge people's voices over phones--and then said, "Yeah?"
Silence. He could hear Sasuke's breathing coming thin and hissing, like he was doing it through his teeth. He frowned. "Kid?"
"I found him," Sasuke whispered.
The kid was terrified. And he was hiding it badly. But then, if he'd actually called, he was probably past the point of trying to.
"I can't--" Sasuke said abruptly, still whispering. "He already got hurt. I can't do that to them."
Kakashi felt something between flattered and insulted.
He leaned against the back of the couch. "Where are you?"
The address the kid gave him was in a decidedly bad part of the city, and by 'bad' Kakashi meant 'classy and full of people with connections.' He rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then rubbed the scar under his eye.
"Go away," he advised. "You know where he is, so go back when you have a plan."
"This is the first time I've found him in years," the kid hissed.
"So it's worth attacking him blindly?" Kakashi asked. "Even if you die?"
More silence. Sasuke started to say something, and then stopped.
". . . I want to stop being scared," he finally replied. "If he's--dead, then--"
"It doesn't work like that, Sasuke," the man said. "You still dream."
"If he's dead he can't touch them," Sasuke replied, and this time there was a thread of conviction under the fear. The kid had a rallying point. Great.
Kakashi decided that if he ever found out who'd sold the kid the gun, that would be the one job he did for free.
He dragged the side of his thumb across the scar one last time, and exhaled again. This broke at least twenty of his rules. He didn't kill in his own city. He didn't walk into a job without information he'd gathered himself. He didn't get involved in other people's suicidal actions. He didn't do work last-minute. He didn't do work he could be emotionally involved in.
If someone used Rin against him, he would fall for it. That's why he wanted her at arm's length and unconnected to his life. If someone used the kid against him, he'd probably fall for it. That's why it was better if the kid got himself killed on his quest first. At least Obito had had the decency to die before he could be used against Kakashi.
But then, he hadn't made the first move to pull Obito or Rin into his life.
The moment had been a long time coming, and the decision was different from what he'd expected it to be a year or even a few months ago. But it was time to stop wishing he'd left the kid in the alley and to take responsibility for his recklessness.
Kakashi pushed himself away from the couch and straightened up. "Wait for me."
Yet more silence. He hoped the kid wasn't the type that did excellent in training and froze up in an actual situation.
Then, almost inaudibly, Sasuke said, "Thank you."
Kakashi hung up. He set the phone to vibrate, tucked it into his pocket, and went to get his weapons.
If you're going to eat poison, eat it down to the plate.