[Fic] translations

[suchacharmer]

translations: There are some things that Gai, for all his verbosity, has the good grace not to talk about. Helping Kakashi bleed is one of them.
Category: One-shot
Status- Complete, 13000 words
Rating: NC-17
Characters: Gai, Kakashi, mentions of various others
Notes: This story, originally entitled Translation is up on my journal already in unfinished form. I reworked it and now, instead of being an incomplete mutil-chaptered fic, it is now a complete, longer one-shot. The subject matter of this fic deals with masochism, so it that's a sensitive area for you, proceed with caution. Many thanks to sub_textual for encouraging me to finish and then beta-ing for me.



******
Not mine. Don’t fuss.


There are some things that Gai and Kakashi just don’t say to each other. It’s not that they can’t. It’s that they don’t know how. Some things got mixed up somewhere along the line, back when I love you actually meant I love you and they didn’t speak in misfires and silence.

Kakashi is the worst offender. He speaks in riddles, ambiguities, and the things he doesn’t say. He just depends on Gai to know that he really wants one thing when he asks for something completely different. He says leaves me alone when he really means help me. Gai pretends that there’s no difference and goes about being a savior. He likes, wants, to be needed. It’s one of the things that makes Gai, Gai.

Saving Kakashi, Kurenai, and Asuma from Itachi was an instinctive reflex, born into the toddler who saved ants from death and honed by twenty years of the shinobi life. More than that even, because when Gai was two his father gave him a blunt wooden kunai and tried to give him a lesson on throwing techniques. Naturally he found the weapon fascinating, especially when he discovered that sucking on it was a good way to pass the time. He was equally pleased, when he was four and could better grasp the concept of weaponry, that throwing it at trees was also a grand way to pass the time in the feel of the throw, calculating angles and trajectories before he knew what angles and trajectories were.

Coming home with Kakashi is also [this time, last time, every time] if not even more of, an instinctive action. Gai peered up and down the hall. The bachelor quarters for Konoha shinobi were a scanty affair, white walls marred by dirt and various unidentifiable stains. The air conditioning units heard through open doors thrummed erratically, most of them malfunctioning to some degree. Across town, Gai’s own air conditioner was working perfectly, his father’s house cool to the touch.

The hall felt three times warmer in comparison.

Beneath his feet cheap carpeting full of blood stains took on the weight of yet another shinobi as Gai craned his neck to make sure the hall was clear of people. Squatting down, Gai lifted up the corner of the dilapidated doormat with the welcome nearly worn away to look for a key to the apartment. He didn’t expect there to be a key really, but never let it be said that he hadn’t tried all possible tactics before resorting to illegality.

As he assumed, there was no key under the mat. The only things under the door mat were a small spider which evacuated the premise upon his intrusion and another quite sizeable brown stain. What possible injury Kakashi, or whoever had lived here before him, it didn’t matter, had sustained to bring home such a large amount of blood was something Gai didn’t want to dwell on too long.

He knocked hastily, cringing as the sound filled the hallway. No one poked their head through their apartment doors to see what was going on. Gai breathed a sigh of relief before reaching into his vest pocket and fishing out the hairpin he borrowed from Kurenai. He felt uncomfortable doing this; Kakashi took to seclusion when things were bad and privacy on good days. Gai respected that and he knew he was stepping on toes, knew Kakashi would probably send him away. He just. . .hadn’t seen him since he was released from the hospital and Kakashi just hadn’t been all the way there then.

Picking the lock took a while to pull off. Gai’s forte wasn’t picking locks or hiding in shadows with a kunai. Subterfuge didn’t sit well with him. Subterfuge and ambush were for people like Genma, quick-handed and quiet and already under consideration for ANBU a year after making jounin. He heard all the talk. Genma was exceptionally good at killing people so that they died in secret. Gai would never make a good assassin.

The apartment, if you could call the one room affair granted to wards of the village an apartment, was quiet except for the puttering hum of the air conditioner. Buried beneath the choking cough of the air was the sound of Kakashi’s faint breathing. The shades were drawn tightly shut, making the room dim and magnifying the dearth of decoration. Back in Gai’s house, the paintings, pictures, and knick knacks his mother put up were still in place. Kakashi’s apartment felt like a tomb. Gai compressed to urge to yell something into the house, fill it with real, living noises instead of the mechanical drone of the air conditioner.

Kakashi’s breathing was rhythmic and slow as Gai stepped closer. He wasn’t under the blankets or wearing comfortable clothing, just the navy jounin uniform without the bulky vest. His feet were bare. His mask wasn’t on his face. Gai couldn’t remember the last time he saw Kakashi’s un-obscured face. Five years, at least. Back when they were kids. There was no scar on his face then, no angry red line running from eyebrow to jaw. His face had been bandaged in the hospital, left eye swathed in gauze. He looked small, so much smaller than thirteen like that, sleeping in a dark room mid-afternoon with his face so open.

The bright red of the scar drew garish attention to itself and the pale tone of his skin. Gai followed its path from just above Kakashi’s slim eyebrow to just below midway down his cheek. The culprit appeared to be a sword, and a sharp one at that. Gai wondered how deeply his face had been slashed before the medic-nins has gotten a hold of him. In the hospital, the entire left side of his face was swathed in bandages and gauze. His breathing had been shallow, aided by machine. Shock, mostly, the medic-nins told him the first time he visited. Shock, hysteria, and massive blood loss.

He must have been exhausted not to wake up as Gai took the blanket at the foot of the bed and draped it over his legs. He was normally so alert, to sound, movement, chakra patterns, that Gai was completely thrown by the stillness with which the action was received. He’d expected Kakashi to say something, to throw a customary curt insult at him, a scornful laugh. Or at the very least open his eyes. To his disappointment, there was nothing. Just a whisper of breath and the overwhelming feeling that he still wasn’t there. Or maybe just that something was missing.

Biting back the urge to run his finger over the new scar, to get a reaction from him if nothing else, Gai looked frantically around the miniscule space for something to keep him occupied. He shouldn’t be there, but it felt just as wrong to leave as it did to stay. Movement, he needed to have movement. He had to move in Kakashi’s place.

Kakashi’s holster was draped neatly over the single chair wedged securely between the desk he used as a table and the wall. Perpetually paranoid Kakashi followed in the footsteps of every perpetually paranoid shinobi before him by keeping his back against the wall, safe from imaginary enemies. There was just enough room for Gai to slip into the chair carefully and even more cautiously rifle through the shuriken holster without letting too many of the razor-precise metal edges clank together. As he suspected, they were dried with enemy blood. After the injury Kakashi has sustained, Gai wasn’t surprised that he’d let his meticulous nature waver. He’d heard the nurses talking of sliced retinas, ocular arteries, optic nerves. The possibility of going blind.

The metal cleaning solution was stored in one of the desk drawers. Kakashi’s desk appeared to function as more of a storage area than an actual desk. There was a considerable lack of paper and pens and an abundance of kunai, extra masks, and books on tactical strategy. There was one framed photograph nearly buried under all of it-Kakashi with Rin, Obito, and Minato-sensei.

Gently, Gai unearthed the photo and placed it face down. Memoriam for the fallen.

Deftly, he poured a liberal amount of solution onto a well-used rag and began polishing the shuriken methodically. His fingers knew exactly what to do without looking down, without nicking his skin. He felt more than saw the blood soaking into the cloth. He didn’t stop until he could see his reflection in the surfaces.

Gai startled when Kakashi let out a brief, shuddering breath. It rattled through his lungs. He stayed frozen as one of his grayish blue eyes cracked open, a little kid caught sneaking around in places where adults told him not to go. They were the same age, Gai actually older by several months, but Kakashi had always been like an authority figure. His mother would have said that he listened too hard.

Kakashi’s mouth formed a soundless word, his vocal chords not cooperating with him. Gai imagined it was his name. Hesitantly, he slipped out from behind the desk and walked to the edge of the bed. His eyes were closed again, but his chest no longer rose and fell to the rhythmic pattern of sleep.

“My mask,” the disoriented shinobi managed to murmur in a voice mangled by a drag through gravel.

“Don’t worry about it,” Gai assured him. “It’s just me.”

This time, Kakashi opened both eyes to look at him. Gai was startled by the sight that greeted him. His left eye wasn’t just damaged, it was gone, replaced by the foreign crimson color of the Sharingan. The effect was unnerving, knowing that he’d been right along about something being missing. He threw it at him like an accusation. But it wasn’t Gai’s fault. It wasn’t. It was Kakashi looking for scapegoats again.

As quickly as he opened them, he closed them again, groaning in pain as he did. “Fuck,” he said under his breath. He covered the eye that wasn’t his with his palm and opened the other one. “The doctor said it wasn’t supposed to hurt like this after a few days.”

Gai said nothing in response. Kakashi probably didn’t want him to say anything anyway. Kakashi never wanted anyone to say anything to him unless it was the absolutely right, unquestionably perfect thing to say. Gai always felt like he was being graded on his responses whenever he talked to him and he could never earn that “A” Kakashi looked for.

Just as he expected, Kakashi said nothing further on the matter. Closing his real eye, he rolled over unto his side, back facing Gai. He didn’t say thank you for coming, he didn’t berate him for breaking into his private domain. He didn’t say get out, didn’t say sit down or make himself some tea. Gai could leave or stay. It was the first thing he really said since waking up. Silence breaking silence. It hurts Gai’s chest sometimes, listening to the words between the words. Kakashi takes the metaphorical literally and the literal metaphorically. Gai can’t keep up with him. That is why he was so late in coming to the scene of Kakashi’s confrontation with Itachi and Kisame. Kakashi lies like he’s in love.

He’d call him stupid for doing it, but Kakashi isn’t very good at understanding how much he hurts Gai when he goes off without saying anything. The Tsukuyomi is a dangerous attack, a killer from all sides. After hearing about Sasuke’s encounter with his brother, Gai can only shudder when he imagines what kind of images brought about Kakashi’s vacant eyes. He understands just as much as anyone else that the feeling of dying is infinitely worse than dying. The pain is gone when you die.

He’d wanted to be alone with Kakashi after bringing him home from the hospital. He didn’t expect Kurenai and Asuma to show up with sympathy and concerns about the things to come. Then Sasuke arrived on the scene and Gai knew he couldn’t stay long after that. Kakashi would have stopped him from following his brother, so Gai had to rescue him if he could. For Kakashi. He does everything for Kakashi, stays by his side as his rival because the word companion scares the silver haired man as much as losing Sasuke would. He really, really doesn’t want to tell Kakashi about Sasuke chasing after Itachi, even if he did come back. He knows that Kakashi will see the same thing he sees in Sasuke, mirror after mirror after mirror. In the mirror he looks like his mother, but he couldn’t see her on the day of the funeral. He watched as his grandmother draped black shawls and linens over the mirrors in the house. Gai hated the black of those shawls. He hated the sobriety of the color and he hated all of the sad eyes that seem to follow him wherever he goes. Most of all, he hated Kakashi for wearing black every single day and not caring how much it upset him. Gai can’t recognize himself next to him.

He’s always been quiet, the exact opposite of loud, opinionated Gai. Kakashi is the absolute antithesis of Gai. Gai is out-spoken where Kakashi is contained, rash where he’s analytical, bold where Kakashi hung in shadow. Gai was bright where Kakashi was dark. Lately, he was even more contained than usual, retreating inside himself instead of reaching out to Gai. Barely dead for two weeks and Kakashi did nothing to help in those somber, black funeral clothes.

There was no hug at the funeral. No pat on the shoulder or comforting words. Just a few words that honestly, truly made Gai hate him.

“Now do you know how it feels to be a ninja?”

Gai couldn’t answer that. The words, although quiet and composed, seemed to Gai full of unwarranted vindictiveness. They threatened to pull his whole world down around his feet. Kakashi would have been satisfied with that.

He could see it more and more with each passing day. It felt like they’re drifting apart. But then again, he wasn’t sure if they were ever close enough together to drift anywhere to begin with. He tentatively reaches out his hand to wrap his fingers around Kakashi’s wrist. He finds his pulses and rests his first two fingers lightly over the barely noticeable beating of the vein. The flow of blood is steadily strong, but sluggish. Gai would give anything to be able to infiltrate Kakashi’s mind to find out what Itachi has done to him. He had to have known it would happen. As good as Kakashi is, his genius is nothing compared to Uchiha Itachi, borrowed Sharingan or not.

Gai desperately wishes he would be more careful with his life. He doesn’t think Kakashi wants to die, per say, but he doesn’t think he’ll mind dying either. He can’t decide which is worse. He also can’t decide if he liked Kakashi better before or after they started sleeping together. For all his confidence and flamboyance, Gai is an indecisive shadow around Kakashi. He doesn’t know what to think and he just barely knows what to do.

Truth be told, Gai didn’t know what he was getting into at the time. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have done it. Of course, there’s nothing good to be said about hindsight. There was no way he could have known, or even guessed, and even if he had, he was pretty sure that he still would have done the same thing. He never did do things the easy way.

The motion had come so naturally, too. He was five years old at the time, and all he wanted was a new friend. The silver-haired boy didn’t seem much different from the other kids he knew, not at first. In hindsight (damn that hindsight) maybe he should have known. Silver hair on a five year old? Kakashi was already older than he was supposed to be.

Teachers loved Kakashi. Gai, like other students, bordered somewhere on the milky border between jealousy and awe. He wanted to know how many hours Kakashi had to practice to hit the bulls-eye on the targets every single time. He wanted to know how long Kakashi studied in order to ace every test. He wanted to know why he sat in the back corner of the class, stayed inside during recess, and answered in nods and shakes. He didn’t understand how someone like Kakashi could not have any friends when he desperately wanted at least one person to call a friend.

So Gai, as he was prone to doing when feeling absolutely Certain about the Right Course of Action, took it upon himself to offer his friendship to the quiet Kakashi. In Gai’s firm opinion, loneliness was a thing no one should have to deal with. He didn’t like being alone, so why should Kakashi?

Back then, back before Kakashi wore a mask and back before Gai’s eyebrows had grown in completely, Gai held out his hand and offered to be Kakashi’s friend. The already genin Kakashi looked down at the proffered hand with the more curiosity than he thought was necessary. Gai sat next to Kakashi up until graduation day, but wasn’t sure if Kakashi actually knew his name.

He didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no. “You’re weird,” was his only reply. In hindsight, Kakashi is quite aware that Gai’s stubborn streak began in that very moment of time.

He’s also quite aware that he’s no longer alone in his apartment. His eyes are open, because he can feel the dry itch of them, but he can’t see a damn thing. And he can’t bring himself to blink. He can barely bring himself to breathe, let alone move a muscle. Everything hurts: his muscles scream, his skin burns, his tendons twinge, his organs heave, and his bones crack. All of it hurts so badly. He’d scream if he didn’t think it’d kill him.

It doesn’t help that he feels imaginary holes in his body, phantom blood pouring from his chest.

God, you’d think it wouldn’t feel so good to be bleeding like that-bleeding out until there’s nothing left but the empty space inside of you. It’s quiet there, the kind of silent that nearly drives Gai insane. It’s the primary reason why he doesn’t meditate in spite of the health benefits. He has more stress in his life then he knows what to do with. And right now, he has far more silence than he knows how to handle.

He borrows a radio from a Raidou, one of Kakashi’s longtime neighbors. Hayate used to live in the hall before he died, two doors from the stairwell. Genma’s moved into his old room temporarily, decorated the place in black and grey. Gai sees him leave as Raidou hands him the radio with a candid inquiring smile, waving half-heartedly to no one.

Raidou slumps boneless against the wall, sighing all the while keeping up pretenses. “He’s really fucked right now,” the dark skinned jounin says as he nodded in the direction of Genma’s disappearance. “Not sleeping still.”

Gai nods. Kakashi’s not sleeping either. He’s also not awake. “I’m sure it’ll pass,” he assures Raidou as best he can as he thinks about Kakashi’s nearly comatose state three doors down. He flirts with the idea of adding another platitude about moving on and time healing wounds, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Shinobi tend to have short life-spans. They die more frequently than not and words don’t make anything better. Neither does time, because someone else is sure to die later on.

He leans his head against the door frame, looking for all the world like a lost child. “Right. It all passes.” He nods at the radio in Gai’s hands. “You can bring that back whenever you want. I don’t listen to it much.”

Gai grins his thanks and promises to give Raidou something in return. He never takes something without giving something in return. Promises are binding and Gai likes to anchor himself firmly in the future. Being with Kakashi makes that hard and twice as vital.

He plugs in the radio and leaves it on the first station that comes in clear. He doesn’t really care what music he listens to just as long as there’s some noise in the room. Kakashi probably wouldn’t stir no matter how loud he turned up the volume, but he keeps it low anyway. Just in case he happens to be conscious enough to hear him. Of course what his parents didn’t know is that Kakashi always heard their after-dinner talks. He kept the hallway light off in an attempt to stay hidden. They would have stopped talking if they found out.

“He should be out playing with kids his own age.” His mother’s voice was just as startling as the plates clinking together in the sink as she washes. Evening had fallen. Kakashi’s ears buzzed with the abrasive croaking of tree frogs and cicadas. “It’s not good for him to just train all the time.”

Sakumo bit into a rice ball and chewed thoughtfully. The villagers all said that Kakashi looked just like Sakumo, a miniature version of Konoha’s White Fang. Sakumo smiled with pride whenever he heard it and ruffled Kakashi’s hair if he was standing close enough. “I thought you were proud of our son, Tsuuke. He’s the youngest ever to make gennin. He’s already infamous. He’ll be a legend just like his old man.”

Kakashi’s heart swelled whenever he heard his father say things like that. It made up for the fact that none of the other kids liked him. What need did he have for a bunch of academy undergraduates when he had the respect of a man like Sakumo?

“I am proud of him. But. . . ” Kakashi squelched the feeling of unease building in his stomach. He wasn’t supposed to be listening. He was supposed to be sleeping. He just couldn’t sleep when he knew they were talking about him and Kakashi was their favorite topic of conversation. “But I’m scared for him, Sakumo. He. . .he’s so young. I don’t want him to. . .” she cut herself off by furiously attacking a pan, too frustrated and pained to say what she really wanted to say. “He’s too young.”

Kakashi could fill in the blanks on his own. Most students didn’t graduate from the academy until they were eleven. He was too young to be a genin, too young to see blood, too young to kill. Too young to die.

“You’re a ninja, Tsuuke. You know how things have to be.” They talked the way all shinobi parents talked, remembering their brushes with death and wishing that their sons and daughters could be scholars and doctors and carpenters instead of soldiers in training. “Besides, he’s a smart kid.” Kakashi saw his father’s proud smile through the crack in the door. “He’s smart and he’s talented. He’ll survive.”

Kakashi compressed the urge to jump back. His father seemed to be looking right at him through the crack of the door. Telling him something he’d need to know later on. Kakashi had the distinct impression that this is a moment of time that actually means something as he slinked away to pass the hours with no noise other than the drone of the radio. Every once in a while Gai recognizes a song. He mouths the words for lack of anything better to do.

He doesn’t know how much more of this he can stand. With Kakashi half-alive and half-dead, Gai feels like he’s at a wake. It doesn’t help that the curtains on the windows are drawn tightly shut, blocking out the sun. It’s the middle of summer, not the dead of the December. The apartment shouldn’t be so cold. He wants Kakashi to wake up. Better yet, he wants to pick him up and take him back to his house where it’s sunny and warm and full of color. There he can put him into the bed they share sometimes, when Kakashi feels like making love instead of just fucking and keep him there until he gets better. Or they can sit out on the porch as Kakashi nursed his swollen ankle.

“Geez, that’s ugly,” Gai commented as he handed Kakashi a block of ice wrapped in a towel. Kakashi had pulled his pants up just enough to expose the heated skin to the cooler air of the evening. “It looks like someone took a sledgehammer to it.”

“You’re sweet,” Kakashi said with his practiced blithe brevity. “You always know just what to say.”

He sat down beside Kakashi, crossing his legs at the ankles. Kakashi shifted slightly to put a little more distance between them. Gai didn’t fail to notice, but also didn’t say anything. Kakashi chose to spend some time on Gai’s porch instead of going home, and that was enough for him even if Kakashi wouldn’t mention why. “Well, if it helps, it’s a attractive shade of purple. It’s kind of like eggplant.”

Kakashi nodded far too sagely for an eight year old. “So my ankle is a vegetable.”

In moments like that Gai understood where Kakashi’s nickname among the chuunin and jounin came from. The Hatake brat. That barbed tongue and his unnerving talent had older shinobi scrambling for a device to ward of the threat of the little boy who was too small to fit into a regulation vest. But Gai didn’t hate him for it. He was used to it. To him, it sounded like a joke.

“How did that happen, anyway? Did you fall or something?”

Kakashi sent a withering glare his way, visually berating him for having the gall to suggest that he did something as trivial as trip and fall down to incur an injury. Gai smiled as innocuously as he knew how convincingly. Kakashi seemed to like him better when he pretended not to pick up on things. “I had a run-in with a cliff,” he said simply. “On the run from an assailant.”

There was a brief pause between them as Gai processed the information. “So you did fall?” Gai said finally.

“Off of a cliff.” He scowled before closing his eyes to Gai and the not so gentle throb of his ankle. He was lucky he didn’t break something after falling forty feet. “It’s not the same as tripping.”

Gai made genin one year after Kakashi made chuunin. He had yet to fall off a cliff and looking at the engorged ankle covered by ice, he was absolutely certain that he would have to one day. He just hoped he’d walk away from it with something as minor as a twisted ankle like Kakashi had. Did he perform some amazing chakra manipulating feat of acrobatics to come away with such a small injury? Or was Kakashi just gifted with as much luck as he was skill? He didn’t understand the other reason Kakashi had earned himself the Hatake brat. He was good at his job. It shouldn’t matter how young he was as long as performed as well, better even, than some shinobi twice his age. Gai’s sense of justice prevented him from seeing the other side of the story. “I’m proud of you, you know,”

Kakashi looked up at him, clearly startled. It was early April and the breeze was strong, so strong that Gai couldn’t hear Kakashi breathe. His hair lifted up just enough so that Gai could see the thin arches of his eyebrows. “You’re proud of me? Why?”

Gai grinned at him so earnestly that Kakashi almost laughed at the absurdity. “Isn’t that obvious? You’re an amazing shinobi. I want to match your skill one day, Kakashi-san. Maybe even surpass you. Wouldn’t that be something?”

That certainly would be something. Kakashi was far too much of a realist to consider the declaration anything more than a fantasy, but it would definitely be something. He’d probably even like it if that were to happen, just to shut everyone up about his goddamned potential for a minute.

“Don’t call me Kakashi-san,” he instructed briskly. “I’m not any older than you are.”

“Right then. Is Kakashi-kun okay?”

Kakashi stared at him levelly. His mother called him that, usually when she’s fussing over him or glaring and cursing at his father. He’d never tell his mother, because she’s his mother and they don’t like hearing things like that, but he can’t stand being called Kakashi-kun. Besides, he never has been big on honorifics, even if most people think it’s rude. “Just Kakashi.”

“Ah,” Gai affirmed as he pushed renegade strands of black hair out of his face. He needed a haircut. “I guess that makes me just Gai, then?”

Kakashi didn’t know what that made Gai, but he was willing to settle. “Yeah. You’re just Gai.”

Gai grinned coyly and knocked him in the shoulder playfully. Kakashi glared, an action which went wholly unnoticed by Gai. “And when I beat you one day, you’ll have to call me Gai-san.”

The ice was finally starting to take effect on his ankle, the pain numbing drastically. “Dream on, Gai,” he said back, knowing full well that he would do just that. Gai was full of dreams. Kakashi’s dreams involved a lot of blood. He was envious of Gai’s dreams, just a little. His dreams lately (if he can really call them dreams since Kakashi isn’t sure whether he’s awake or not) are full of more or less the same. It strikes him as funny that so little has changed in spite of how much has changed. Gai is probably the one in the room with him. He’d be disappointed if it’s for some reason not, but he’s pretty sure it must be him. Gai isn’t one to break years of tradition on a whim and no one else would sleep on his bedroom floor waiting for him to get better.

He wills something to move, even just his finger, so that he knows he’s still alive. He’s just too tired and everything aches too much to do anything. The radio is the only thing anchoring him to a state of semi-awareness. Because the radio means Gai is there. He has to be.

Gai pauses as Kakashi draws a somewhat less shallow breath. He’s stupid enough (because he’s always stupid when it comes to Kakashi) to let himself think that maybe something won’t be a struggle for once. That maybe he’ll just wake up on his own and Gai won’t have to take him to the hospital to see Tsunade. He shivers at the phantom smell of hospitals creeping under him skin and refuses to dislodge. The whole house smelled like it before Gai ever learned of the supposed secret.

He knew his mother was dying before his father told him. She’d been dying for years. He could tell by the steady stream of doctors in and out of the house. And that smell: Clinical, cold, anti-bacterial death that couldn’t be banished by opening windows.

He refused to be negative about it however. She’d been stubbornly clinging to life for the past two years, so there was no reason to give up now as far as Gai was concerned. Whenever anyone asked in that hushed voice filled to the brim with pity Gai can’t stand because he knew she was going to make it, he smiled and gave them all thumbs-ups. A thumb to the sky and everything will be okay. He had to believe that.

The only part about it all that really hurt was knowing that no one else believed it. They sent flowers that belonged on grave stones and Gai was tempted to pitch them out the window before she ever saw them. Instead he dutifully put them in a vase with water and set them on the table next to her bed so that in a few days the smell of rose and medication would mix together in a sickly-sweet and bitter scent that smacked him in the face.

Whenever she woke up, he gave her a thumbs-up and a smile for good luck. In those moments Gai was even more certain that she’d make it in the end. He still has to believe that he can fix what is broken, looking down at Kakashi’s rigidly prone form. He gives him the thumbs up even though he can’t see, mostly because he doesn’t know what else to do. Kakashi would appreciate the gesture if he could see it. He shows his appreciation with eye rolls and dismissive hand waves, but just the fact that he’s never reached out and broken his thumb lets him know that he has permission.

“I wish you’d wake up,” Gai says as he perches on the bed. “I know you hate hospitals just as much as I do.” Having Lee in the hospital for so long nearly killed his resolve. Watching the people you love struggle for life has never been Gai’s favorite pastime. He goes because he’d hate himself if he didn’t, but he’s always glad when it’s over. “I’ll have to take you if you don’t come out of this on your own.”

Kakashi doesn’t answer, but that’s nothing new. All Gai can hope is that Kakashi’s stubbornness will be a blessing instead of a curse for once. He leans over, planting one hand on either side of Kakashi’s narrow waist. He’s deceivingly small under the bulk on the jounin vest and roomy pants, too the point where Gai sometimes thinks he could snap a bone on his arm with ease. Of course, that’s Kakashi’s fault, not wanting to be treated like he could break when all evidence is to the contrary. He’s probably broken one hundred times over only to put himself back together again in ways only Kakashi can think of.

For the hundredth time, Gai toys with the idea of pulling his mask down. Kakashi doesn’t look like he can breathe with the cloth up around his nose. He never has. But then again, Kakashi never took overly deep breaths. He never did a lot of things that most people did. Gai knows exactly when his birthday is but they don’t celebrate it. Their anniversary either, though Gai can pinpoint the exact hour on the exact day it happened. They don’t even acknowledge it. They pretended nothing had happened, not that Kakashi could even look Gai in the eyes when he walked into the hospital room. Gai was the second person at the hospital. Kakashi’s mother was the first. He got there just as he woke up to discover that the mask, which had become a permanent feature on his face over the past month, was missing. Gai’s just relieved that he didn’t need help breathing.

“Where’s my mom?” Kakashi asked quietly, his hand curling around his lips and chin protectively.

Gai covered his discomfort with a broad smile, determined not to tell him that his mother is pretty much having a nervous breakdown in the waiting room. “She’s in the cafeteria getting food.” He frowned. “You can move your hand, Kakashi. I know what your face looks like.”

Kakashi didn’t comply, which put Gai on edge for some reason. It wasn’t like Kakashi even really listened to him, but they both seemed to be teetering on the edge of something Gai couldn’t comprehend. He was sure that Kakashi had frayed a little bit more, and the bottom seemed really far away. He did and didn’t want to know if the injury was an accident just like Kakashi did and didn’t want to know why it was Gai was lying to him. The problem was, they both already knew the answers. And Gai was mad at Kakashi for doing that to him, making him worry so damn much. Kakashi just stared up at the ceiling and wondered why the meaning of life didn’t bother to flash before his eyes.

Look what you did, dad, Kakashi whispered to himself as those dirty strands of guilt that he can’t bear to assign bounce around his skull. Look what you fucking went and did.

Gai leans close, deigning it appropriate to brush a kiss over his sweaty forehead. Then, because it’s not like Kakashi can stop him at this point, he curls up in the bed like he used to do when he was little, body settling into all of Kakashi’s slight curves. He puts a hand over his chest to feel the almost imperceptible rise and fall. Nothing at all like their after sex ritual when breath runs ragged and Gai can hear Kakashi’s half-delirious moans long after they’ve finished. As his finger moves down to the exposed sliver of stomach between his shirt and his pants, he wonders why he couldn’t have picked a lover who wants the same things he wants, a house, a dog, warm dinners.

His skin is slightly cold, just like the apartment. Cold to the touch but deceiving, because there’s fire burning underneath, and it doesn’t leave his body for what feel like years. He isn’t sure what hurts worse: when the slow burn of pain is moving through his nerves at the speed of torturous enemy poison or the moments when it contracts into tiny pinpoints that stab.

The stabbing, he decides as he looks up at the chipping paint along the ceiling’s edge, reminds him of sex. The burn is the afterglow.

Gai watches carefully for signs of real recovery, both from the desk and in bed wide awake when he should be getting some sleep of his own. Tsunade, thank the gods for Jiraiya and Naruto finding her in a timely manner, treated him as soon as she could. Kakashi keeps getting lucky as far as he’s concerned, staying alive when most other would have died. That’s the only reason Gai knows he doesn’t want to die like he says he does.

He’s not in the bedroom when Kakashi does wake up, but Kakashi still knows he’s not in the right apartment. The smell is different. There’s curry in the air, and something else sweet that might be hot chocolate. He preaches constantly about the addictive properties of coffee, but he found his own addiction in liquid cocoa that’s just as bad as Kakashi’s addiction to pain. Gai’s is just less detrimental More telling, though. Gai tends to drink it heavily when he’s worried and the chocolate nearly overpowers the curry.

As if he should be surprised. Of course Gai is worried about him. Gai worries about everything under the sun, but his favorite topic is Kakashi. He doesn’t feel bad about making him worry, though. Gai would fall apart without someone to fret over. He’d have to worry about himself otherwise.

“Gai,” he croaks out through an extremely dry throat. He sounds like a cancer survivor. He doubts Gai could have heard him; it sounds like the radio and the TV are on at the same time, playing jazz and the soundtrack to a restless world. The evening news reporters are on muffle between the half propped open door and the scratch of saxophones. They’re whispering the war in Rain. And they’re loud. Whispers weren’t supposed to be so loud, Kakashi lamented as his hand tightened on the kunai. He knew he shouldn’t have been holding the kunai like that, because he could feel the silver edge of the weapon biting into his skin. He didn’t care though. Three days. . .those whispers shouldn’t have been so goddamned loud.

“I heard he hung himself,” Raidou said quietly.

Wrong, Kakashi thought. He put a katana through his stomach and pulled out his own intestines. I saw him do it.

“Serves him right,” scoffed Genma. Kakashi barely knew him but he definitely hated him now. His blood crawled with a completely foreign emotion, so unlike the ones he felt watching his father’s ritualistic suicide. So shocked he vomited until he thought his insides would fall out through his mouth. “After what he did to Konoha he deserved to die.”

The kunai dugs deeper into Kakashi’s palm.

“The Mizukage is holding us responsible for the fate of the hostages,” Asuma chimed in fearfully. “He’s demanding blood money.”

A collective shiver ran through the group. War lingered just on the edge of their minds. Kakashi vaguely remembered hearing the rumors that war was just on the horizon. He wasn’t sure if it made a difference to him, but he did know that it shouldn’t have happened. How could he have messed up so badly? How could he ruin so many things at once?

“See,” Genma reaffirmed. “He caused us enough trouble.”

No one saw Kakashi coming until it was far too late. He was, after all, the son of Sakumo.

Genma gasped in belated alarm as a kunai already warm with blood pressed against his jugular. He somehow ended up on his knees with his arms twisted behind his back in a small but deadly clutch. Pain ricocheted down his spinal cord as Kakashi put a swift knee to an extremely sensitive area. Asuma moved in to help, but the press of the blade a little further against Genma’s throat halted that transaction. The others could barely move. Kakashi jeered on the inside. It’s no wonder they just graduated from the academy.

“Don’t talk about him like that,” Kakashi growled in a voice far too menacing for an eight-year old. “I’ll kill you.” Even if his dad did mess up, even if were right. He felt Genma swallow against the blade and got the barest sense of grim satisfaction from it. He’d never wanted to hurt someone so badly in his entire life. He wanted to see how Genma would feel if his vocal cords were ripped out and had the epiphany of finally understanding what people mean when they say they lose their temper. It was odd, exhausting, and slightly liberating. “Understand?”

Genma whimpered meekly, which Kakashi took as a sign of acquiescence. He let go, but not without leaving a shallow cut on the side of his neck, just as a reminder. As Genma crumpled to the floor, Kakashi noted that he’d made himself something to be feared and that’s he’d quite possibly lost all hopes for making amends for being not quite normal.

He is, after all, the son of Sakumo.

What would his father think of him now? He doesn’t actually give a fuck, but he does think about the turn his life has taken. About how his father would have taken to Kakashi waking up in Gai’s bed mostly undressed. How and why they aren’t the same.

Gingerly, not wanting to overdue it quite yet, Kakashi swings his legs over the edge of the bed and wriggles his toes against the cream colored carpet. He waits a minute, letting limbs adjust to his weight slowly. He doesn’t really need to, or want to really to feel okay, but Gai is just on the other side of the wall and suspiciously in-tune with Kakashi when he’s in a bad place. He calls again, softly, hoping that he won’t hear. Because he’s in a bad place. He’s been in a bad place for years.

“Kashi?” Gai calls out and Kakashi hears his footsteps coming down the short hallway, heavy because he’s home and not on a mission where he has to worry about hiding. He doesn’t follow up with an “are you awake?” or a “did you say something?” He heard.

His form fills the doorway, tall, dark-skinned and dark-eyed and dressed in the pale green yukata with a brown tie he wears at home, feet bare. Some people, the girls especially, seem to think that Gai wears the jumpsuit and leg warmers all the time, like an actual second skin. Kakashi thinks that if one of them ever saw him, standing in the door all hopeful eyes and toffee skin exposed as the neckline widens with every movement he makes, then they wouldn’t giggle like he’s something funny to look at. If Gai makes him laugh, it’s because Gai knows what he finds funny.

Kakashi has to hand it to him. No one handles him better than Gai. He might even go so far as to say he understands, but that’s taking them to a place he’s not ready to go. Kakashi and Gai are good at pretending, after all.

“Gai,” he croaks out in response, rolling his shoulders so that his stiff joints crack a little. Gai pads across the room and crouches directly in front of him. Kakashi thinks that’s a little unnecessary considering he was nothing more than a kid in their eyes. He’s known that. He was already sickening of the weird looks he got from people in the missions office. They were curious, but always cautious, oh so very cautious, confused and awed. They didn’t know what to make of his presence. But since he was there and they had to do something with him, they immediately went for the D-rank pile of missions, most likely wondering if there weren’t any E-rank missions they could give him until he grew tall enough to make it past an adult’s waist. He looked like a genin imposter standing next to teammates twice his age.

And his teammates, they didn’t like him at all. They didn’t understand how he could be better than they were so soon. They didn’t understand how he was able to go longer and faster and harder without complaining. They didn’t understand how strange it felt to look up at everyone and everything all the time.

Kakashi’s neck hurt from looking up so much. He’s always been a little boy looking up at daddy- Obito’s words, not his. One of the last things he ever heard him say besides, “Don’t mess it up, Kakashi-kun. Don’t. . . .mess with the healing process,” he hears Gai saying, probing at Kakashi’s chakra with his own. His is strong and steady, Kakashi’s frail and lethargic. “You’re still on the mend, you know.”

He wriggles his toes again, realizing that they’re more than a little bit on the numb side. Most of his limbs are numbed, the result of the fatigued crawl of chakra through his network. The more he wriggles them, the more feeling returns to his feet in the sharp pinpricks of the dead coming back to life.

They are eye level, he and Gai, a menagerie of brown and grey and black and red all come together. Kakashi has always been of the firm opinion that Gai has beautiful eyes. It’s not because they’re exceptionally colored or unique or even capable of capturing attention from across a room. They’re simple and steady and when they’re alone, not filled with any kind of god-awful pity or the deeper than mere admiration glances she tosses at him. He tried his best to dodge those. The giggles were part of it, too, and the blush that spreads across Rin’s face whenever, on rare occasion, he says her name. The way the Fourth looked at him made him uncomfortable too and the way he called him Kakashi-kun puts knots in his stomach.

After two years with his team he still doesn’t understand what the Third had in mind when he put Kakashi with a bunch of genin. The principle, that he understood. They were all afraid he’d lose it, just like his parents. They were all afraid that something had gone wrong and that they were somehow responsible for fixing him.

That’s what Kakashi didn’t understand. When the mechanics are broken down, their intentions don’t align with the probability. They were trying to fix something that no longer existed, like trying to put air back together after you’ve exhaled. Oxygen and carbon dioxide. He made it a point to take in more than he let out, so that eventually people forgot about the old Kakashi. He didn’t like that Kakashi, the one who was the spitting image of his father. He’s never going to be like that. He didn’t want that face, that name, that association. He vowed not to make the same mistakes.

Rin didn’t see that. Rin saw adventure, excitement, mystery, and all that other romantic crap that girls talk about. The Fourth did, though. He looked right through the mask and saw all of the things he wasn’t supposed to see. Then he smiled as if telling him to let out a bigger breath of air. Because the truth is, it’s a little hard to breathe through cloth. It rustles as Gai drops from a crouch into a kneel. Kakashi is taller now. He doesn’t like that, so he lets his knees give out and slides down on front of Gai on the floor, the rest of his limbs coming alive again with the sudden movement.

Gai doesn’t have time to say no before Kakashi presses his lips (mask down, Gai notes with sudden, electric clarity) to his. It would be light, chaste if Kakashi were capable of such innocuousness. This is anything but chaste. “Kakashi,” he chastises as he pulls back, wishing they don’t have to go there but living with the otherwise as Kakashi follows the movement, still pretending innocence. From there, all he can do is be gentle for as long as possible and hope Kakashi will follow along. Pale, shaking hands slip inside his yukata as Gai unties the belt for him. It falls to the ground behind him, the edges still touching his toes.

Kakashi doesn’t care about getting his own tank top off. That’s inconsequential. He cares more about the pants he’s having trouble finding the waist line of through half-numb, half seizing muscles. Somewhere along the line Gai takes pity on him and helps ease them down his waist. He trails kisses that he can’t actually feel down his neck and Kakashi runs hands down the toffee colored skin that silly little girls seem to laugh at, confident that there have been times when he could feel the scar Gai has just under his shoulder blade. Right now he only knows it’s there because Gai hisses as he passes over it, just like he always does.

Quickly, too quickly, Gai is inside of him and Kakashi is the one hissing. He knew it would hurt. That was the point. He wasn’t anticipating that it would hurt quite that much, but every once in a while life handed him a pleasant surprise.

He was down on his hands and knees, leaves crunching beneath sweaty palms. There was a searing pain in his ass, so bad effectively made him go numb. Blood trickled down his thighs; he felt the hot, stickiness of it drying as quickly as it fell. He felt, heard his skin tearing from the wide, thick, horribly uncomfortable intrusion.

Kakashi had no idea what his name was. His mind ran through all the letters of the alphabet but comes up with nothing familiar. He’s twenty, twenty-five, thirty, Kakashi couldn’t remember that either. He’s old enough to be called a child molester, but that’s not fair. Kakashi asked for the dick thrusting roughly in and out of him so hard that he had to run away from it. He thought of his mother instead of the nameless ANBU, realized that he barely remembered her face, thought of Obito’s empty eye socket and partially crushed skull and realized that that man had no reason to care about whether or not Kakashi got anything out of it besides a sore back or a disease. Because something went wrong, like it always did, the mechanics out of whack. The only semen on the forest floor belonged to the man behind him.

It’s the best he felt in a long time.

When he comes, back bent awkwardly against the bed with Gai’s chest hovering inches from his, its in unison with the paroxysms of his muscles. As everything seizes up at once and Gai peppers little kisses on his shoulder in an apology he didn’t ask for but makes Gai feel like a saint, Kakashi realizes that he’s crying from his eye, the tears silent, but steady.

If Gai notices the hot liquid on his neck, he pretends not to. Another courtesy granted for the sake of them. Gai’s infinitely used to granting favors, giving Kakashi things that he doesn’t agree with because it’s Kakashi and he needs them, even if Gai doesn’t. Kakashi’s really fucking selfish sometimes, still, except now it’s Gai he takes from; the rest of himself he gives away, doles out in parcels with no return address. The body breaks, the mind bends. He finds solutions to problems where no other men or women can seem to find them, tucked away in dark recesses with remote access. They need his mind as much as they need his body. He’s a genius, ladies and gentlemen. Kakashi’s heard that word a lot in reference to him. He’s the youngest ever to come out of the academy. His father, the Hokage, strangers he didn’t even know were proud of him. Konoha is proud of Kakashi, and he doesn’t much care. He became a shinobi for his father, his heritage, and the Hatake legacy of heroes among men. Certainly not for himself and a bunch of strangers.

A genius. The youngest ever to come out of the academy. Kakashi wonders if that means he’s also the youngest person to kill a man.

The idea makes him ache a little.

“What’s it like?” Gai asked enthusiastically after stopping Kakashi in the street. At six, chuunin Kakashi had just returned from his first B-ranked mission.

As usual, Kakashi gave him a long once over, assessing everything about him all at once. Just one of the qualities that allowed him to graduate so early. Gai was drastically behind in accomplishment compared to Kakashi, but he’s made a vow not to be left far behind for long. His own grades were good. Not as good as the son of Hatake Sakumo, of course, but good all the same. They’d probably be considered great if not for Kakashi.

Gai swore that his heart grew wings when Kakashi actually graced him with an answer. “What is what like?”

“Your first real ninja mission. Your first ever real B-ranked ninja mission.” Imagine, being six years old and already on a chuunin level mission. Gai isn’t even out of the academy yet. He’s jealous of this boy adults whisper about as a genius, a prodigy. Unmistakably the son of Sakumo.

Kakashi shifted in his stance, the fabric of his clothing rustling and loose kunai clanking as he did. Because of his small stature, no chuunin vests fit his frame. “I killed someone today,” he replied. Lightly, like it hardly mattered. The kunai in his hands was covered in dried blood. “Some man three times older than me is dead.”

Gai didn’t like the way Kakashi fingered the edge of the kunai. Slowly and meticulously and altogether unnerving. “You did it for the good of Konoha,” Gai reassured him with the first of what would later amount to the hundreds of thumbs-ups Kakashi would see from him. The good of Konoha is the only reason they ever became shinobi. No matter what, said the sensei at the academy, you do anything for your village. His mom was sick for that very reason. Some types of poison, the doctors said, wreck irreparable damages on the lungs and brain. His mom is a hero for breathing it in, sacrificing herself for the village. If he has to die, that’s the way he wants to go, in honor.

Kakashi nodded, but Gai could see that things had shut down. He saw it in what he couldn’t see in his eyes. With a quick flick of his wrist, the kunai is buried in the ground barely a hairsbreadth from Gai’s sandaled foot. “You can keep it. It’s not mine.”

Gai didn’t know whether to be scared or not. Kakashi just walked away, leaving Gai to deal with the aftermath. He pulls out as slowly as possible without sacrificing the burn that Kakashi seems to like so much. He has to lift Kakashi up a little bit to do so, arms wrapped around his ribcage in an unfamiliar embrace of tenderness. Kakashi is twitching badly-from what Gai doesn’t know. He feels shaky himself, but too wound up to let it happen. There are things he has to do now. Put clothes on. Change the sheets Kakashi’s been laying on for days straight. Warm a basin of water to wipe him down. Get Kakashi back into bed. Find a corner and scream into his fist.

Gai didn’t come. He never does, when it’s like this. And he’s not going to tonight. Kakashi isn’t unconscious anymore, but he isn’t particularly aware of what’s going. He’s stretched out on the floor next to the bed, Gai’s robe pillowed under his neck so that he doesn’t bang it too hard against the floor as his limbs lock up. He’s coming alive in millions of pin and needle points. Thousands upon thousands more than the pins and needles that punctured his skin when he got his ANBU tattoo three days after his sixteenth birthday. Two years of solo S-ranked missions more then prepared him for the rigors of the elite of Konoha. Those on the outside, those who didn’t know any better, called it that. Those on the inside called it what it was.

His first kill wasn’t a problem. The second and third were easy, followed by twenty one and twenty two. Then came the point where Kakashi lost count of the victims. Shortly before that came the point where he forgot why they were victims in the first place. Lastly came the point where he forgot how to breathe on his own, had to start reminding himself. Breathe. Breathe through it.

These needles are different. The ones that swirled black and red ink on arm were isolated to one area, concentrated punctures from the outside in. These are in reverse, coming from the inside and trying to burst their way out of him. Kakashi doesn’t want that- he’d quickly learned that shutting things out is far easier than actually having to deal with the dirty little intricacies of it all. Responsibility, blame, guilt, he didn’t want to allocate any of it then, now, ever. He’s gotten into the habit of shoving all of that messy shit down beneath his conscious and keeping it there under lock and key.

It was his mother who screamed in fright and obsessed over the blood drying in clumps in his hair and on his skin after he came home from one particularly draining mission. This is to say everything about the violence too, but Kakashi felt exhaustion first. He’d forgotten about it already, intent on taking a long, long nap before anything else. He could have sleep for days just like that. It wasn’t until his mother started acting like it was a big deal that the sweet, coppery tang madke his stomach turn over.

He tried in vain to swat her away. Fine, he was fine, or at least he would be if she stopped reminding him that the blood all over his body wasn’t his. He’d have felt better if it were. At least then he’d be able to account for it. She wanted to clean the blood off of him herself, but he wouldn’t let her. That wasn’t hers to bear. She had enough. She had too much, worrying about him all the time.

Not that it’s necessary. Kakashi always comes out of these things, Gai reasons. Over and over again. He’s prepared to say goodbye if he needs to. Wants to, sometimes. Thinks it’ll be better for both of them, if they could just say goodbye. Even if it’s just for a little while; long enough to miss, long enough to take some deep, steady breaths. Long enough, even, to say “do Do you remember when?”

Instead he goes to the kitchen for a bowl of warm water and a cloth. He heats it on the stove while Kakashi works the pins and needles out of his arms and legs, bruising himself as he bangs elbows against the wood. He thinks its pin and needles he’s fighting, anyway. It could be those pesky demons again. They’re real, Gai knows. Gai’s seen them. He’s been them. They all have them. There are no horns on real demons, though, not like the ones he’s learned about from folklore. Gai’s always liked folklore for that reason-the idea that there is a physical form to the things that run amuck on them. Things he can chase down and end, right then, right there. It’s a nice idea. He cherishes the sentiment.

He makes tea, too, while he’s at it. Borrows some of the water for the bath to soak jasmine leaves.

Kakashi’s twitches aren’t as violent when he returns, and Gai is flooded with relief; slight suits him better. The tea goes on the ledge behind the window while the bowl comes with Gai to the floor beside Kakashi. He’s of no help getting the rest of his clothes off, but he doesn’t complain when the water touches his skin. He’s pliant under Gai’s touch, and silent through the whole thing. The bath, the short haul into the freshly made bed. The tea Gai forces down his throat when Kakashi refuses. Gai knows what’s good for him, and when Kakashi lets his guard down, he gives him those things too.

“Sleep if you can,” Gai says to break the silence. It’s not comfortable, never will be. Kakashi may like to suffer the quiet, but Gai won’t do it. He won’t be alone in his head. That’s asking for trouble. “You probably need it.”

Kakashi looks at him with one grey eye, the other one closed to conserve chakra. Gai should get up from the bed and find him a strip of cloth to put over it, but he’s hoping Kakashi will just go back to sleep. They’ll try food the next time he wakes. An apple, Gai’s thinking. He can run down to the vendors and pick one up, and maybe some fish too. Kakashi likes those.

Kakashi only listens, nods. His face makes absent little ticks, as if startled every time air blows on the skin of his face. He looks young this way; he is young, but right now he looks young, naked and exposed and more expressive than Gai is used to. He can see the tiny furrows in his brow as he undoubtedly pieces together the events that led him here, to this point where the resemblance between them was so striking that it startled him into rage when he looked in the mirror. The mask wasn’t a metaphor to Kakashi. He wasn’t hiding his pain from the world or anything so trite and cliché. He hid his face because he’d finally come to realize that it wasn’t actually his face.

He was fully willing to admit that his life has gone to hell. His mother was in a mental hospital, his father committed suicide and he’s an eight year old in a mask desperately pretending that he wasn’t the son of Konoha’s White Fang and hoping that everyone would just play along with his fucked up game of hide and seek.

For the first time, Kakashi wondered if that’s the real legacy of the Hatake family. He doesn’t wander anymore, though. Now it’s just one of many idle thoughts he’s had over the years, a remembrance that comes up again from time to time. Kakashi doesn’t claim to have it worse than anyone else. He won’t pretend that he’s the only one to have lost someone close to him. The Kyuubi’s attack left orphans and widows and disfigurations too many to count in his wake. The town was in shambles, piles of bricks in the middle of the street with children trapped beneath them. The town wore black.

There’s Raido, whose face burned beyond recognition.

There’s Iruka, looking lost now with both of his parents are gone.

There’s Genma, who Kakashi couldn’t bring himself to hate anymore. Genma’s jaw shattered after a pile of rubble fell on him while he was saving a child. That child died, and with Raido in the hospital, no one came to visit except the nurses with their long needles and hurried smiles.

Asuma started smoking, the smell of tobacco mixing with charring flesh and wood. Rin died to the world, her eyes vacant, forgetting how to blink. Gai’s dad burned alive. And as Kakashi wandered through the remainders of the home he never really liked in the first place, things come into sharp, too bright focus. There were a lot of rumors about how the Fourth defeated the Kyuubi. The most far-fetched of all was the one that the fox demon is sealed inside of an infant child. Kakashi believed that one because his life was full of crazy. He also believed, suddenly and completely, that he'd had the mechanics of it wrong until he finally saw the cause and effect.

The Kyuubi was to blame for the Fourth dying on him, and fire was to blame for the smell of burnt blood, sweat was to blame for the irritation of his goddamned eyes. Everything in life-sweat, tears, screams, blood, has a source, a trigger-something to blame. Someone to point to and shoulder off all the sordid things that have men going insane at night. The guilt that bleeds internally.

Kakashi has a lot of that-for his mother, Obito, every person he’s ever killed. He doesn’t know what to do with it now that he finally understands that he drove himself crazy. And that’s okay, because he knows he’s not alone. They're all crazy by profession. Even Gai, who has mercifully left him alone with his thoughts for the time being, is kind of off-center. He doesn’t tell this story because it makes him seem unhinged like the rest of them, but after his father burned to death, Gai went through the city collecting ashes in a jar. He couldn’t tell charred wood from charred flesh, but he didn’t seem to care.

“You don’t even know where he died,” Kakashi said as he trailed along behind him, toeing absently at the ground every time they halted for a moment. “You could be putting anyone in that jar.”

Gai ignored him vehemently, bending down to collect another handful. The jar was about half full at that point and he showed no sign of stopping until the thing was full to the brim. Kakashi’s foot came in contact with something small and solid as they turned the corner of what used to be the boulevard- a hand, somewhat charred but still definitely a hand. Oh look, at least something survived the fire.

“Can you imagine, explaining that one day?” Kakashi goes on as he nudges the hand further into the debris. “No, kids, that’s not grandfather, that’s just the baker and his dozen.”

Gai whirled around, suddenly, angry through the tears and oh fuck, he was crying. There were silent, but tears nonetheless. Kakashi hated it when people cried. Didn’t really do any good, did it? There’s no such thing as regeneration.

“Fuck. You.” Gai enunciates his words with the potency of punches. He’s been known to ramble from time to time, but he knows when to make them count too. Kakashi of all people, should know better-knows how this feels. And maybe the Kakashi he used to know would have had at least a passing sentimentality to spare, but Gai won't feign blindness. Gai saw Kakashi change. It happened right before his eyes and he couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

It’s not that Kakashi wasn’t quiet before the suicide and everything (mom in the psych ward, teammate in the ground, an eye lost and found) that came after. He was always quiet, always the one watching and observing everything going on around him and committing it to memory. He would talk when Gai engaged him in conversation, not always in detail but a participant nonetheless. He used to talk to Gai, used to joke in his subtle way and laugh under his breath. That Kakashi was gone.

This Kakashi brooded. This Kakashi insulted. This Kakashi was moody, terse, brittle. This Kakashi is arrogant. This Kakashi was still convinced that a structure existed somewhere in the chaos, so he followed orders that he didn’t believe in to make amends for the things he does. There was talk of ANBU wanting to work with his Sharingan before this mess made of the village. Now they’ll be certain to make him an offer, and Kakashi won’t turn them down; he never turned a mission down.

Gai was sick and fucking tired of worrying about whether Kakashi would come home this time. This Kakashi had more anger than he knew what to do with. Gai wasn’t entirely sure that he was even the same person, but he was entirely sure that there wasn’t much room left for him among all that animosity.

Kakashi shrugged. “If it’ll make you feel better.” His smile twisted under the mask. Gai saw the outline clear as day. “Whatever you need, Gai.” Not whatever you want, and that should have clued Gai in to how this whole thing was going to work, but it was late and they’d very nearly died not three hours earlier, in that sinkhole of a hideaway. Kakashi, though. That Kakashi was a genius, in case you hadn’t heard. “Whatever you need,” Kakashi murmured against his neck. Never let it be said that Kakashi was completely passive; he started it. Gai, for his part, couldn’t stand the thought of it being someone else who broke Kakashi open. It’s not a decision he regrets, because at least this way he’s there to make sure that the pieces go back together in the end. They go back differently every time, but they are together, even if you can always see the cracks.

It’s exhausting, seeing him in that many rearrangements. Gai feels like he’s running himself ragged trying to keep up with all of them. Sometimes, Gai just doesn’t feel like fighting-with words or with the never-ending list of things they don’t say. Sometimes, he doesn’t feel like having sex that leaves him raw and aching for something more afterward. He doesn’t care so much about happily-ever-after, but once upon a time would be good.

“You’re going to collapse if you keep at it like that,” Kakashi unhelpfully informed him as he watched Gai execute another push-up: this one number three hundred seventy-six. “Take a break or something.”

Gai gave him a half-smile, half grimace, and lowered himself almost all the way to the ground. “I’m almost done. Only twenty-three more to go.”

Inside, Gai was fuming slightly. Kakashi stopped after two-hundred and he’s supposed to be better than Gai. He should have been the one doing four hundred. Gai, occasionally and privately, thought that Kakashi got away with too much for no good reason other than his name, while his own name was pretty much nothing. It was more than a little unfair. He’d already decided, though, that he was going to get there. He’d have to work twice as hard as Kakashi, but he’d get there. Dedication is how you get anything in life. Dedication was something he could pass down.
Three hundred seventy-eight.

Three hundred seventy-nine.

A not so gentle but not quite hard prod on the small of his back brought him to his knees. Gai let out an undignified grunt as the wind was knocked out of him. Dirt, lovely. “What the hell, Kakashi?” he grumbled, feeling his weight shift until the silver-haired boy straddled his lower back. “I’m not done yet.”

Kakashi dropped a bento box in front of Gai’s face, rudely kicking up more dirt. “I needed a chair,” he explained right before digging into his own lunch. It smells delicious. Gai congratulates himself on a job well done with the whitefish. It’s a personal favorite of his, a recipe passed down from his mother that he hasn’t made in years. Cooking takes time that Gai doesn’t always have to spare.

Kakashi wanders out of Gai’s room just as he’s turning off the stove. His pants, and all the rest of his clothes, are too rank to be worn again until they’re washed. He’s wrapped up in the green yukata that he took off of Gai a couple of hours ago, indecency lending to decency. The spare mask that Gai keeps in the apartment for him is fitted safely around the lower half of his face and his throat. He’s borrowed what is probably one of Gai’s old hitai-ate and has it slanted sideways to cover the Sharingan. From the neck up, he looks like himself.

“Did I wake you up?” Gai doesn’t think the addition of oil frying adds much to the white noise of television and radio static, but Gai is polite. It’s not a formality, it’s just a part of him. Possibly passed down from his mother as well. “I’m sorry if I did.”

Kakashi shakes his head slowly, easing himself into the chair at the table. It might be leftover aches from the encounter with Itachi, or it might be from the sex. Gai can’t tell, and doesn’t want to. “I wasn’t sleeping,” he clarifies. Gai has fresh apples sitting in a bowl on the table. He hears Kakashi crunch into one while his back is turned.

Gai raises an eyebrow privately. He’s surprised; not that Kakashi didn’t fall back asleep, but that given that, he’s still here in Gai’s apartment instead of back at his own. He must really be feeling like shit to have stuck around when he had the chance to escape. Probably he shouldn’t be out of bed yet, but the fact that he is almost reassuring.

“You never could do that without looking ridiculous.”

“Screw you,” Gai says lightly. “I made whitefish. And you’re going to eat it because I made it out of the goodness of my heart.”

Kakashi’s answering bite of apple is exactly the dismissal Gai was waiting for. He’s always doing that. Someone who didn’t know him would think that Kakashi takes nothing seriously; always late for meetings; flippant to the point where it’s nearly an art form, where you think nothing has ever held his interest and nothing ever will. It’s so far from the truth that Gai could laugh. Honestly fall to the ground and laugh and laugh until he can’t anymore because it’s just so ridiculous. It’s so ridiculous that he aches with it.

Gai scoffs in return. Contrary to what one might think, Kakashi didn’t teach him how to do that. He always knew. He prefers not to, Kakashi knows, but he has to hold his ground every once in a while. Oh, please, yes you will, it says. Oh, “Come on Kakashi-chan. If I was in trouble, you’d come and save me, right?” Obito’s smile was so genuine, like he already knew the answer and expected nothing less than the best. Kakashi felt like slapping him for it.

“No,” he said. He heard the landing on Obito’s cheek. “I wouldn’t.”

The scene has replayed in his mind thousands of times over the years, and each time it does, the louder and harder he wants to scream. It’s juxtaposed with silver flashes of swords, Rin crying, enemies laughing, panic, Obito’s hands on his back. It’s seeped in blood, rocks, sweat, and white-hot, searing pain. All he can think about as his eye that’s not his eyes throbs is that he really didn’t know any better. Someone always dies, all at once or piece by piece.

Centimeter by centimeter, the yukata slips from Kakashi’s shoulder. Gai is broader than he is, in the shoulders, in the waist, the arms. He takes up more space than Kakashi does, unafraid in ways he can never be. Never was. He shivers as the air touches his bare skin, the way he does when, on occasion, Gai comes inside of him. A little chilly, a little sick, left wanting something more and nothing less at the same time.

Gai sets a plate of whitefish that Kakashi will most likely only pick at in front of him and, after careful consideration, slides the yukata back up over Kakashi’s shoulder. It looks a lot like one Gai had when he was growing up, a shade paler, if that. But it can’t be. Gai burned all of his clothes after the Kyuubi attacked. He burned every single piece of clothing he owned without a second thought. Everything smelled like smoke anyway. If it was all going to smell like smoke, than it should just be smoke. That was right. That made sense in poetry.

It was after that, clad in the regulation pants and a tank-top that he would later burn and add to the jar he keeps under his bed, that Gai went in a store the next county over looking for the most outrageous articles of clothing there. He came out with the green jumpsuit and orange leg warmers he's worn ever since.

Somewhere out there, Gai thought as he paid for clothes that he knew would get him laughed at, there was a world where funerals weren’t held in mass like that and a world where kids had a better chance of keeping their parents. Somewhere there was a town that wasn’t mourning in black clothes and talking about the deceased in hallowed whispers. Gai longed to be in that town. He was certain that were better things in life, more to look forward to than death and tears. He’s going to find them even if it kills him.

No one batted an eye at Gai’s new choice of attire, just like no one told Asuma to stop smoking even though he was only thirteen and just like no one told Kakashi to take off the mask.

It was then that they began rewriting the dictionary.

.End