Chapter Text
He shouldn’t have used the Sharingan against the bandit leader. He shouldn’t have needed to. This mission was supposed to be an easy in and out for Kakashi and Guy. Designated a B Rank only for the sheer numbers of the roving gang, no one had mentioned that the leader of the crew was an S Rank Stone Shinobi who’d gone missing a few years back. It was bad intelligence and it will get one of them killed, but it won’t be Kakashi.
Defeating the bandit leader had been a real fight, not an assassination. It should still have the desired effect. The group will disband. A group this large can’t hold together without a cause or a charismatic leader and, skin like rock or not, their leader hadn’t survived a Chidori thrust through the throat. Kakashi counts one hundred and eighteen criminals. That’s fourteen more than their initial assessment. If they’d made it out as planned after assassinating the leader, that would have been all to the good. A large group has factions. A large group has infighting. The larger the group, the faster it will fall apart. Unfortunately, this group still has one thing binding it together. They’d had a good thing going and they all want revenge on the man who took it from them. Collapsed against a damp cave wall, Kakashi can’t even make himself look like a difficult target.
His right leg hurts like hell. The stone bastard broke it in two places and it can’t hold any weight at all. His right wrist isn’t much better. It was probably broken, too. It’s swelling like a bitch and he can hardly bend it, let alone form a seal. Not that that matters. He doesn’t have the chakra for a single substitution jutsu, let alone anything helpful. Even a shuriken jutsu will knock him out completely. Kakashi is perfectly safe.
After all, Guy wasn’t even injured in the first fight and he’s standing between Kakashi and their hundred murderous opponents like a solid green wall. Guy would protect Kakashi with his life. It doesn’t matter that most of the bandits have shown during their many criminal acts that they have at least genin level skill. Guy is strong enough to take them all. It doesn’t matter that Kakashi is terrified of the tattooed woman holding a cutlass in each hand. She has something up her sleeve and it’s definitely above chunin level. Kakashi is as safe as a baby in a cradle. Guy is going to protect Kakashi with his life.
“We were contracted to break up the bandit band and return the golden teapot to the local temple,” he says. It’s the last chance he has. “Think of the mission. I can hold these weaklings here until you get back.” He knows Guy’s answer before the words leave his mouth.
“Your Youthful Eagerness for battle does credit to your Sense of Duty, Rival, but you cannot fool me with your hip attitude. You have acquitted yourself well already. There is no shame in allowing me a turn. Indeed, it is Only Fair after you claimed the strongest opponent for yourself earlier leaving me with only two weak guards.”
“Guy.”
Guy stops laughing. “Don’t ask me to do what you would not, Kakashi. Besides, I have faced numbers like this before. Have Faith.”
It’s true. During the war Guy had taken out hundreds upon hundreds of the White Zetsu Clones, but that had been always been fighting back to back with Kakashi or Lee, and Zetsu didn’t have the skill of some of these lieutenants. Kakashi isn’t a hopeful man. His mind doesn’t work that way. But he does have faith in Guy. The man has defeated S Class criminals, and he’s proven time and again that he can do anything he sets his mind to. However Guy defines winning, he will win this fight.
“If you die for me, I’ll kill myself.”
“No you won’t.”
Of course he won’t. Too many people have already killed themselves for Kakashi’s sake for him to throw his life away.
The first six bandits attack. They move as a well-trained unit, all armed with solid wooden quarterstaffs. Kakashi judges them to be about the same as skilled genin. Guy doesn’t bother to hold back or try to make the others underestimate him. He strikes each attacker once and sends all of them flying.
“See, Kakashi! This is nothing!”
It’s bravado. Guy doesn’t believe it any more than Kakashi does. The ones who rush in first are always the weakest. Those kids were the ones who had something to prove. Kakashi wishes he could believe. He wishes he could redefine winning for Guy—make it something he needed to live to see.
“If we both survive this, I’ll let you fuck me.”
Guy looks shocked, mildly scandalized, and not at all uninterested, but he doesn’t have time to answer. A much larger, even more coordinated group of twenty or so is rushing him. The redheaded twins with the shuriken are the ones to watch out for. The others attack Guy with swords and kunai, but those two hang back while he defends himself. At the worst possible moment, they throw dozens of the sharp little stars at Kakashi. He dodges. He isn’t quick enough to dodge the second round. Guy has to intercept them. It costs him.
“At least you want something more than to shut me up this time,” he laughs, pulling the wakizashi from his side and dealing handily with the woman who managed to stab him.
Kakashi remembers, of course. Their first time. He remembers being aggravated about being stuck on a mission with Guy instead of his teacher, or even Obito. It was always harder to keep his cool around Guy than it was around others. Guy was always so casual about taking Kakashi’s arm or slapping his back in emphasis. Almost as if he didn’t realize that Kakashi might fail to dodge and really hit him back. He remembers the irritation building as Guy yammered on about their imagined rivalry and the many challenges he couldn’t wait to have. Even achieving their mission objective hadn’t calmed the boy down, and there were too many traps in those woods to press on in the dark. When night had fallen, they made camp. Guy didn’t stop talking. After a dozen polite—and not so polite—suggestions, after over an hour of staring blankly into the fire imagining ways to kill Guy and make it look like an accident, Kakashi had finally spoken.
“If I jerk you off, will you shut the hell up and go to sleep?”
It worked immediately. Guy’s mouth didn’t even close; he just stopped talking, leaving his jaw hanging there, like a dangling participle. Kakashi had known from the first that there was something different about the way things were with Guy. For one brief moment it occurred to him that it might not be what he assumed. Guy might have been honestly appalled. After all, it took a certain type of person to assume attraction was what drew two men together.
Then, Guy’s mouth had closed. His eyes were as wide as the sky above, but he’d nodded, just once, slowly. So Kakashi moved closer. He kept his eyes on Guy. He unfastened the other boy’s belt and slid that ridiculous jumpsuit open. Guy’s breathing had been quick and uneven, but Kakashi made sure to display nothing but boredom in his own demeanor. He’d been so careful not to look too long at the golden skin of Guy’s chest. When he pressed his left palm against the base of Guy’s hips and wrapped his right hand around Guy’s little acorn there wasn’t anything to indicate that he hadn’t done this a hundred times before. Maybe this was Kakashi’s preferred way to silence an annoying teammate. With Obito around, how could Guy have doubted that Kakashi used it frequently?
Though of course it had been Kakashi’s first time. He didn’t know how to get the angle right from the opposite direction and Guy seemed to respond more to a firmer touch than the one he used when alone, but taking the time to explore his body would be too obvious. Guy made soft, breathy little noises, and if the point had been to make him shut up, Kakashi regretted it. He wanted to press his ear against Guy’s mouth and feel those choked little grunts reverberating through his skull. Even more than that he had longed to pull down his mask so that he could bury his nose in the crook of Guy’s neck and really smell his arousal. The thought of actually doing that—of really being that close to Guy—squeezed his chest with a sickening panic that warred against the arousal burning low in his stomach. Still, he was a genius, and he had achieved the goal of the exercise within a satisfactorily short time frame.
“Kakashi,” Guy murmured, gazing at him with disturbingly flushed cheeks.
“You promised to go to sleep,” Kakashi grunted irritably, pretending to wipe his hands clean with a handkerchief.
“I will,” the other boy had sworn. “A deal is a deal, but wouldn’t it be more fair if—“ Guy’s cheeks had flushed like sunrise; they were redder than the last embers of the campfire. “I could touch you, too. I mean, I may not be as experienced as you are, but I’m sure I’d be able to—“
Kakashi had snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going to do a patrol. You go to sleep. A deal is a deal.”
That had been the final word spoken at the time, but Kakashi hadn’t gone to do a patrol. He’d perched in the trees to watch Guy sleep—to finally lower his mask and taste the residue on his hand—to wrap that same hand carefully around himself in the dark where no one could see his weakness.
All of the bandits can see Guy’s weakness now. It’s as evident as Kakashi’s injuries. The shuriken twins target Kakashi again. So do the rest of their group. Guy has a choice, but he doesn’t see it that way. He opens the first six Gates.
Even back then, when both of his eyes had been his own and he’d only had those first two lessons about the cruelty of the shinobi world, Kakashi had known better than to get attached. At the time, he’d thought any emotional connection, even friendship, endangered his objectivity. Later, after Obito, he’d decided that comrades were okay, so long as he fought for them. A shinobi needed something to fight for, but letting any one person become more important to him than the rest of his comrades was still an unthinkable weakness. Kakashi had had good reasons—beyond the dizziness, shortness of breath, and chest pain—for his utter rejection of Guy when he started showing up with flowers, chocolates, custom training weights, and tossing around the word date like he’d once said challenge. Kakashi told himself he wasn’t tempted, that he wasn’t a coward being ruled by the panicked feeling of letting someone get that close. Leaving off the last part, he’d told Guy that the same thing. Guy responded with terrible public poetry about their Eternally Destined Rivalry and Courtship.
It had been too much. Obito and Rin both teased Kakashi unfairly about his nonexistent boyfriend who didn’t matter to him at all. Worse, Kakashi’s teacher had taken him aside for a heartfelt conversation about the nature of love, socially normative behavior, and the surprising irrelevance of gender and sexuality when it came to a person’s character. During the talk, Kakashi had listened attentively, as befit a model student, but his insides had been churning in revulsion. Minato had known everything. Not just that Kakashi was extremely unlikely to ever repopulate his clan, but that he wasn’t nearly as irritated by Guy as he was terrified. Minato-sensei hadn’t suggested that it was a weakness, but he had seen it. Kakashi needed to crush it.
“You want me to touch you again, right?” Kakashi said, interrupting Guy’s florid presentation of yet another colossal, lurid bouquet. “That’s what this is really about.”
Kakashi hadn’t found a kid who could spout nonsense about young flowers blossoming together blushing redder than the roses he held endearing at all. “Yes,” Guy had said, refusing to admit to his embarrassment. “More than anything in the world.”
“Fine. Then we’ll make another deal. I’ll jerk you off again, but this has to stop. No more presents, no more asking me to go on dates, no more damn poetry. We’ll be Rivals, and that’s it.”
Kakashi had been somewhat impressed when Guy said no. Usually the green clown wasn’t any good at looking beyond the short-term gain, but Guy had a lot to say about Kakashi finally acknowledging their Rivalry, True Love, and Waiting. For the sake of his sanity, Kakashi ignored all of that.
“This has to stop,” he repeated. “I’m not interested.”
Guy deflated. “One date, then. Go on one date with me. If you don’t have fun—if it isn’t the best date you ever had—then I’ll agree to your terms: Rivals only.”
“Nowhere public. And you never tell anyone.”
Kakashi agreed easily, with no intention of keeping his side of the bargain. It wasn’t a fair deal since it would be the only date he’d ever had, Guy couldn’t expect honest agreement under the circumstances. Then again, Kakashi could frame it as the path of least resistance but a part of him—a small part that he intended to conquer and thereafter ignore—wanted to go on a date. Just once. Because toward the end of their talk, Minato-sensei had suggested that trying some of the more common life experiences would help him better understand human behavior and make him a better shinobi. Not because agreeing made Guy smile with his whole body.
No date with Guy could be a typical one and Kakashi’s own rules had precluded most of the common activities, but he’d still been a little surprised to be taken into the Forest of Death for a picnic. In his— theoretical, observation based—experience, most people tried to avoid mortal peril for their romantic liaisons.
The food was good. Well, the dango was burnt and the rice balls were a little bland, but Kakashi’s whole bento had been arranged in the shape of a cartoon dog. Guy wasn’t much of a cook, but he sure knew how to make an effort. Kakashi hadn’t reacted, of course. He’d pretended to be bored and inattentive during their entire meal, but Guy had been animated enough for both of them, offering up different juices and conversation topics like a fisherman changing the bait on his line. Kakashi took the juice once or twice, but he never took the bait. Like any patient fisherman, Guy hadn’t even been annoyed.
Then the swarm of giant ants arrived. Kakashi and Guy leapt up together instantaneously. Without a word, Kakashi went low as Guy went high, taking a leg each from the first six ants with precisely thrown kunai while Guy smashed them from above. The ants were only slightly larger than the boys, and they were ungainly once they received even a little damage, but they were incredibly strong and fast. More importantly, there were hundreds of the things. Lucky they were stupid, then. Kakashi took a couple dozen out with one fireball after Guy herded them together.
Guy was Guy; a shouting, spinning, laughing, kicking, daring, flipping, wisecracking fighter if ever there was one. He was everywhere, but never in Kakashi’s way. After fighting each other so many times that they fought perfectly together. Giant ants were barely a workout, no matter what their numbers were. Kakashi even smirked once or twice at the ridiculous jokes. If Guy’s sense of humor leaned toward silly puns rather than dry wit, at least he was lighthearted, unlike Obito who took everything too seriously. That playfulness always made fighting alongside him more fun than a serious fight should be. Still, Kakashi had to tease him when it was over.
“And this would be why most people don’t choose the Forest of Death for a first date,” he’d chuckled, tossing the last of the twitching insect carcasses onto the pile.
“What do you mean?”
Kakashi lit the heap of dead ants with a fire jutsu. The resulting bonfire was taller than the surrounding trees. Putrid smoke rose slowly from the bodies, filling the clearing. Kakashi pulled Guy into the forest to keep an eye on the flames from a distance. Cleaning up was only polite—the natural scavengers wouldn’t take care of a mess this big before the bodies went to rot—but he didn’t want to start a forest fire. “You should have known something like this would happen.”
“Of course I did! My teacher told me those ants were getting ready to swarm days ago. He said they were a natural menace and usually caused a lot of destruction in the forest unless village shinobi took care of them. I begged him to allow me the honor of handling it. I’m just happy that the timing worked out so nicely for our date!”
Kakashi stared at him.
“What? Didn’t you have fun?”
“No,” Kakashi lied, because lying about that had always been the plan.
Guy’s grin twisted into tears, though he was obviously trying to restrain them. “Oh.”
One date was fine, but there could never be a second. Kakashi couldn’t afford the weakness. Fun was for children. Eventually Guy would realize that and thank Kakashi for this. “A deal is a deal.”
Guy nodded slowly. “Of course,” he said as one sparkling tear escaped from the corner of his eye to race down the side of his cheek, leaving a clean path through the dirt and soot. “I’ll keep my word.”
So Kakashi pushed him back against the tree trunk and started shoving that absurd green jumpsuit out of the way.
“What—what are you doing?”
“Touching you again, obviously.”
Guy wasn’t with the program—undressing him was like trying to move a sleeping cat—but his body was. Once Kakashi had him naked, he was able to get a hand around him quickly enough. He even removed one of his own dirty gloves, though he drew the line at lowering his mask to lick his palm.
“But I—you didn’t like the date.”
“No backing out, Guy. This is the deal. I jerk you off again and you never ask me on another one.”
“Yes, but—“ Guy gave up. That was a relief. Kakashi knew their agreement had been changed, but technically he was the one who owed a forfeit under the new deal. He could at least give Guy something, even if another date was impossible.
Getting the right angle was even more difficult while standing on a tree branch, but the troublesome footing was a blessing in disguise. Kakashi had an excuse to press close. He was able to hold on to Guy more tightly than he could have if they were sitting on the ground. Kakashi remembers tripping Guy—just overbalancing him a little with one foot—so he could slide to the side and hold him steady by wrapping his left arm around Guy’s waist. Kakashi remembers what Guy said then.
“I promise, Kakashi,” Guy had mumbled, not looking at Kakashi’s face. “I’ll never ask you for another date or bring you presents or say any of these things you hate to hear ever again. I promise. But I’ll always love you. I love you so much. If you ever change your mind, well, I’m yours if you want me. Whenever you want me.”
Those big black eyes had been staring down at Kakashi’s naked right hand, watching it move in time with Guy’s breathing. Kakashi remembers liking the sight, but he remembers liking Guy’s fascination even more. With his teeth, he’d tugged his mask down just enough to free his nose. For the first and only time, he’d buried himself completely in Guy’s sweaty, musky, sticky, earthy, manly scent. Kakashi remembers breathing deep. He remembers the choked way Guy groaned when he came. He remembers leaving Guy half naked in a tree with a roaring, unattended bonfire. He remembers running like a whole company of enemy shinobi was in pursuit because he wanted so badly to pull his mask off completely and taste a kiss.
Guy’s speed after opening the Gate of Joy is always a revelation. He takes out over thirty of his attackers in the initial push. He uses the Morning Peacock on the shuriken twins, even though it’s overkill. So much overkill, in fact, that the flames from his punches actually injure some of the surrounding bandits. The enclosed nature of the giant cave system makes a quick escape impossible. Most of the weaker bandits try anyway, slipping as they attempt to climb the steep tunnels leading out of the cave. Guy lets them go. He has bigger things to worry about, like the balding giant charging Kakashi with an axe. Guy is fast enough to intercept the attack. He hits the giant with a Morning Peacock. The giant burns. Kakashi hasn’t met too many who can survive that flurry of fists. But the giant succeeds in the true objective of his suicide run. Rocks fall. Kakashi can’t dodge. The weight on his injuries almost makes him pass out from the pain. He’s trapped and hurt and he can see the green glow of Guy coming for him like a beacon.
For years Guy has been there when Kakashi needed him, but Kakashi has never kissed him. That seems like a shame. He remembers thinking about it, one year to the day after the Fourth Hokage’s death, when Guy came to harass him out of a deep depression. Kakashi had refused Guy’s challenges, rebuffed his offer to talk, rejected the soup he’d brought, and rolled lethargically away when Guy lost his temper and tried to physically manhandle him up from the floor.
All Kakashi had been able to think at the time was that Guy was the last person alive that he really cared about. Guy was the only person who had ever said, “I love you” to Kakashi and not taken his own life—either in suicide like his father or in sacrifice like his teacher. In that moment, Kakashi had been utterly certain that Guy one day would. Guy used the Gates and one day he would pass through the Eighth, which only allowed conduct in one direction. At least he wouldn’t use Kakashi as the means the way Rin had.
Kakashi’s depression turned to desperation. He flipped to his feet, kicking Guy soundly in the chin as he did so. “Leave me alone,” he snarled, meaning the exact opposite.
“Never,” Guy said, facing off squarely against him. “You are my Eternal Rival and I shall not abandon you in your time of need!”
They fought, quick and brutal because Kakashi wanted to hurt him and Guy was more worried about not breaking all of Kakashi’s possessions than he was about fighting back. Kakashi had him pinned to the floor within a minute. “Leave me alone,” he demanded.
“No.”
“Fine,” Kakashi said, because his body was already pressed against Guy. “Fine. We’ll make a deal.”
Guy’s breath caught as Kakashi started peeling the annoying jumpsuit out of the way.
“You leave me alone.”
“No!” Guy scrambled up off the floor, the top half of his spandex monstrosity open and hanging loose around his waist.
“Yes,” Kakashi snarled, slamming him against the wall and dropping to his knees. Guy didn’t resist much. “You leave me alone for one damn day and I’ll blow you.”
Guy swallowed hard. He searched Kakashi’s face, but Kakashi didn’t return the gaze. Instead, he tugged down his mask and continued undressing his unresisting rival. “If that’s what you need.”
Kakashi hated that. Hated the way Guy made it sound like what he needed was to be on his knees instead of left alone. Hated that it was probably true. Hated that he wanted so badly to be close to someone and physically could not allow anyone close enough to hurt him again. Hated that he could smell Guy perfectly without his mask. Hated that his body finally trusted Guy this close even though Guy would inevitably hurt him in just the same way everyone else had.
Guy had grown up in the years since they were chunin together. Filled out. Kakashi was still slightly longer, but Guy was thicker and so very hard. It was nothing like sucking on an acorn. For a moment, Kakashi was distracted by the wish that he had some practical experience. He was familiar with the mechanics, however, and relaxing his throat to swallow around a large object without choking was easy enough for a genius shinobi. Kakashi was the master of his body, even if he wasn’t the master of his emotions.
He couldn’t keep himself from needing Guy, but he quickly figured out how to keep his Rival close. How to make Guy gasp and squirm and whimper and groan. Sucking, licking, stroking, groping, Kakashi finally took his time exploring Guy. He ignored the hard pull of Guy’s hand in his hair in favor of listening to the deep, eager noises his rival made. Guy was right. Kakashi wanted to be on his knees. He needed to be close to the last person he had a connection with. But he made Guy need him, too. He made Guy curse and beg and growl. He made Guy come. Then he made Guy leave.
Guy lifts the boulder off of Kakashi easily, which hurts almost as much as being crushed by it in the first place. The pain steals Kakashi’s breath and blanks his vision so he can’t warn Guy. He comes back to his senses just in time to see the attack. The tattooed woman slices both of her cutlasses down at Guy’s back. He evades, a little, not enough to avoid two deep cuts. Kakashi doesn’t need the Sharingan to see the Wind type chakra being funneled through the blades. He realizes what he doesn’t like about her. A proficient user of Wind Style could have the speed to keep up with Guy, if she is the A-Rank shinobi she seems to be. Guy should have backup against someone like her, but Kakashi can’t offer any now. He would only be in the way.
There have been women over the years for Guy—a few men, too—but Kakashi has only felt the need to intervene three times. Guy is a physical person. He can express that physicality in any way he cares to without bothering Kakashi. Sometimes, if Kakashi felt lonely, he would even hide himself and watch Guy’s dates. Watching never panicked Kakashi, and sometimes it was comforting to see Guy when he was happy and enthusiastic, especially if Kakashi didn’t have to bear the brunt of that enthusiasm. Dating was fine, but—and Kakashi knew how selfish it was—no one could be allowed to supercede Kakashi’s place in Guy’s life.
“I’m going to ask her to move in with me,” Guy had confessed once, his eyes bright with dreams of marriage and fat children.
“Weren’t we sparring?” Kakashi drawled, to all appearances completely bored with the topic.
Guy apologized and blushed a little the way he sometimes did when Kakashi shot him down. They started sparring. Kakashi started fighting seriously.
He didn’t connect solidly on any hit, but he targeted Guy’s sensitive points one after the other, barely even bothering to defend against Guy’s attacks in order to line up his own strikes. It cost him a split lip, a black eye, and a sprained ankle, but he managed to control the fight. He stroked hard along the muscles of Guy’s lower back. He squeezed Guy’s thigh. He pressed his thumb deep into the line of Guy’s hip. When he was certain that the adrenaline of their match and the precision of his strikes had aroused something more than Guy’s fighting spirit, Kakashi allowed himself to be pinned. Then he arched his hips up against Guy’s.
“Sorry,” he said immediately, in case Guy didn’t understand. “Damn this is embarrassing. It’s just been a while for me, you know.” Kakashi wasn’t really lying. He’d never allowed anyone close enough to touch him sexually. His whole life could be considered quite a while.
Guy loosened his hold. Another time it would have been a great opportunity for Kakashi to take back the match. “I understand.” Guy’s voice was at least two octaves lower than normal.
“Oh, hey!” Kakashi said brightly. “You too? That’s great!” He flipped them over to straddle Guy’s thighs and started opening his own pants. “You wanna just—“
Guy did want to. Kakashi shied away from the attempts to lower his mask and remove more of his clothing than his already open pants, but thankfully Guy didn’t press either issue. Guy did press against Kakashi. He wrapped one big calloused hand around both of them together. Kakashi couldn’t take the pleasure—the closeness—he hadn’t been prepared for it. He’d fallen forward, resting his forehead against Guy’s shoulder and staring down at that strong, scarred hand rubbing them together. Kakashi was a born shinobi. He couldn’t do anything but hold on to Guy—rut into his hand, rub eagerly against him—but he could avoid being obvious. He kept his breathing even. He kept sound from escaping. He used the pain of his injuries to keep focus. He struggled and he struggled and he struggled and he kept himself from coming until Guy made the soft, choked noise that indicated he was close.
It was the most intense feeling Kakashi had ever experienced. He and Guy were completely connected. They spilled together simultaneously. For a brief, impossible moment, their pleasure was in absolute unison.
He allowed himself three breaths against Guy’s neck before he pulled away.
“That was fun,” he said, tugging his pants up, mask still firmly in place. “We’ll have to call the match a draw, but maybe we can do it again sometime anyway. See ya!”
Kakashi hadn’t been expecting the lethargy. He’d used masturbation as a soporific a few times when nothing else would help, but, much like the pleasure, the feeling was far more intense than what he had experienced alone. He teleported directly to his apartment and dropped into bed rather than tailing Guy to his girlfriend’s as planned. It didn’t matter. Guy’s sense of honor was as predictable as the sunrise.
“I had to end things with her,” Guy admitted later. “I cheated. She deserves a much better man than me. She should be with someone who can commit to her completely. Someone who will love only her. I can’t give her that. I’m grateful to you for making me aware of it.”
“Sorry,” Kakashi had said, looking up from his book. “Did you say something?”
He’d used the same trick again about two years later when Guy mentioned the man he’d been sleeping with regularly for a month and a half was almost as much fun to spar with as Kakashi. If anything, being touched that way was even more intense the second time. That was unimportant. All that mattered was that Guy ended things with the threat.
The third time might not even have been a real problem. Guy had only fucked the Sand Kunoichi once, but there had been something in his eyes and voice when he talked about going to visit her in Wind Country. It was a simple bargain. Kakashi would suck Guy a second time if Guy promised to never see her again. After falling into a coughing fit that Kakashi patiently waited out, Guy had agreed.
The objectives were simple, if something based entirely on feelings of panic and inappropriate desire could be termed so formally. Kakashi couldn’t give in to his carnal desires, but he couldn’t let anyone become more important to Guy than he was. After their first date, Kakashi had never given in twice during the same year, but eventually he did let someone usurp his place as first in Guy’s enormous heart.
Kakashi had known the moment he saw Lee that the kid was destined to be Guy’s student. He’d even remarked on their similarities in case Guy didn’t pick up on it. A kid like that needed Guy. No one else was ever going to give him a chance. He’d given a few more pushes until Guy was officially the boy’s jonin sensei, then he’d forgotten about it. Even if he’d been angry later when he discovered that Guy had given the boy his suicidal techniques along with his taijutsu, Kakashi never doubted that encouraging the connection had been the right thing to do. Guy deserved a better man than Kakashi, someone who would give him the love and devotion he wanted. Someone who could be openly affectionate. Someone less likely to panic at a hug. Kakashi couldn’t tolerate Guy having a serious romantic partner, but he didn’t really mind the certain knowledge that Guy would choose Lee over Kakashi if he ever needed to. Now that they’ve reached the end, Kakashi can only wish his friend had chosen to leave and live for Lee.
The woman is so fast that her cutlasses are a blur to Kakashi’s weary eye. Guy has six gates open and is still using his nunchaku. Something is wrong. Guy is receiving more cuts. Kakashi believes the few bandits who haven’t fled yet are under the command of this woman. He thinks they aren’t trying to attack Guy because they know she’s already taken him out. They’re wrong.
Guy opens the Seventh Gate. He is the Blue Beast. The woman can’t keep up. Guy punches the air. His Daytime Tiger roars. The woman is blasted through the cave wall and a good portion of the side of the mountain goes with her. The last of her subordinates are caught in the falling rocks, but Kakashi is caught up by Guy and carried out into the open. As soon as he sets Kakashi down, Guy collapses. The Gates close and his aura dissipates like smoke in the wind.
“Poison,” Guy grunts.
“I know.” And Kakashi does. A shinobi like her was bound to have something underneath her Wind Style and speed. She’s dead, but Kakashi hates her for it on principle.
“Stay with me,” Guy pleads as Kakashi drags himself up on his one good leg and cuts down a sapling that looks sturdy enough to support his weight.
“I’ll be back,” Kakashi promises. “Don’t die.”
It would be better if the wrist opposite his broken leg was the injured one, and Kakashi knows that he’ll be scolded later by the medics for not splinting anything before he tries to move, but he doesn’t have that kind of time. Kakashi drags his broken body over to where the rubble should be. It’s further than he thought, but the pain isn’t bad enough to make him pass out, so that is largely immaterial. The woman is completely buried, but one of her cutlasses fell far enough away from her body that he can dig it out. It’s slow going. He’s too weak. The rocks are too large. He can’t use his left hand. Finally, he gets the damn thing free and fumbles in his flack jacket until he finds the specially modified litmus paper Sakura gave him. He slits the paper with the cutlass and waits for it to change color.
Green, blue, or purple would all be fine. They’re the three most common poisons and he has antidotes for each specially prepared by Sakura. Red is pretty common too, but the antidote is unstable and can’t travel. He watched her make it once. He can probably find the necessary root in this area. He’s a genius. He’ll figure it out if he has to. The only thing he can’t deal with is black. Black means it’s an uncommon poison. Black means Guy will need a real healer, someone like Sakura or Tsunade who can make a diagnosis and formulate an antidote in time. Kakashi doesn’t know where he’ll find someone like that or how he can move Guy when he can hardly move himself or why the white paper hasn’t changed colors.
The paper is white and Sakura said it would take a minute or two but the paper is still white. It occurs to Kakashi that both blades might not have been poisoned. He might need to dig for the other one. There’s too much rubble. He’ll never shift it in time without an Earth Style and using that kind of chakra will kill him before he can get an antidote back to Guy.
The paper is purple.
Kakashi falls more times than he cares to count on his way back to Guy. It hurts. It slows him down. Luckily, he doesn’t lose consciousness. He can save Guy as long as he doesn’t lose consciousness. Kakashi remembers their last time, when he would have given anything to lose consciousness for even a minute.
After the war—after good triumphed over evil, but Obito was dead again and Sasuke was still Sasuke—everyone went home, but Kakashi didn’t go home alone. Obito’s ghost came along and haunted his every waking moment, far more than he ever had before. Kakashi couldn’t stand to close his eyes long enough to let him go, and lack of sleep turned into the inability to fall asleep. Sakura had not only flat out refused to give him sleeping pills on the sly, but the little traitor actually told Tsunade, throwing around words like trauma, stress, and disorder. Kakashi had been removed from the active duty list until he agreed to get treatment or proved he was healthy. Apparently, a competent medical shinobi could tell when he hadn’t slept in days by the feel of his chakra, even if he transformed his red, swollen eye into something resembling its usual shape.
Desperate, he’d conned Guy into his apartment and ambushed him. It was hardly medical science, but the two times Guy had given him an orgasm, he’d fallen asleep within five minutes. Since he was being denied medicine by a couple of nosy harridans who wanted to discuss his feelings about being responsible for his best friend’s death a second time, he figured it was the next best thing.
Guy had been cooperative. Surprisingly cooperative. He’d been naked before Kakashi even had his pants mostly down. He never tried to touch Kakashi’s mask. He wrapped a strong hand around Kakashi within seconds of realizing what Kakashi wanted. Kakashi felt he owed his rival something for that.
“I just need an orgasm,” he mumbled. “I think it’ll put me to sleep.”
“And I’m the closest warm body?” Guy’s laugh was light, maybe rueful, but not hurt. Kakashi owed him a little honesty, but he didn’t owe him everything.
“Do you mind?”
“Never. I could do this every day.”
Kakashi had been exhausted. Guy had been touching him for the third time in his life. Imagining that luxury—being with Guy every day—had been more than enough. He collapsed against Guy, coming all over his hand.
It was wonderful. He always managed to forget somehow just how much better it felt with Guy. Slumped against his warm, strong friend, he could barely stay awake.
“Great,” Kakashi said, hitching up his pants and wandering toward his bed. “Thanks. See yourself out.”
Of course it hadn’t been a miracle cure, but once Kakashi had finally slept a few hours, he was able to see how irrational he was being. Returning to Tsunade, he agreed to see a doctor, snowed the doctor completely, and got the damn pills. Eventually, in his own time, he came to terms with the way his friend had been manipulated by Madara. After that, he had time to think about Guy’s words.
To be together every day—to touch Guy whenever the mood struck him—would be pretty nice. Of course he’d have to tolerate things like flowers, terrible poetry, and public declarations of private feelings, but actually being with Guy would be worth all of that. After the war, after dying for the Village, making peace with his father, being forgiven for Rin’s death by Obito, and leading an army to save the world, Kakashi finally felt that he might have earned a little happiness. Maybe he and Guy could finally be together the way Guy had always wanted. For one brief moment he allowed himself hope that maybe nothing bad would come of that.
Guy isn’t sweating anymore when Kakashi finally limps back to his side. His breath is coming in shallow gasps and his eyes look like glass. Those are not good signs. “Yo,” Kakashi says, hating the way Guy barely even turns his head to look at him. “You dead yet? Because if not I have an antidote.” The words are casual, but he drops gracelessly onto his ass next to Guy’s head, ignoring the jarring pain in his leg, and pulls the correct antidote from the pouch on his jacket as quickly as he can manage.
“Not dying here,” Guy mumbles. It’s obvious how injured he is, but the fact that he can form a sentence is encouraging. “Have something to look forward to.”
“That’s right,” Kakashi says, propping Guy’s head up. He knows how bad the poisoning must be when Guy doesn’t flinch away from the touch. Unimaginable pain comes after passing through the Seventh Gate, so much pain that some who survive the Gate die of what follows, but Guy’s clearly not feeling much now. “The minute you’re up to it. A deal’s a deal, after all, and you aren’t dying here.”
Guy is looking at Kakashi, but he doesn’t seem aware that an antidote has been poured into his mouth. That isn’t a problem. Kakashi knows how to hold his nose and stroke his throat to force him to swallow. The real problem is making it circulate through his body the way the poison has. Kakashi should get him up and walking, but even if Kakashi could stand again himself—not likely—there is no way Guy will be able to move this soon after using the Seventh Gate.
Guy mumbles Kakashi’s name while the genius is still considering the problem. Kakashi focuses. He hopes Guy will say Kakashi is hurting him, but he knows it’s too soon for the antidote to take effect.
“You said I could.” Guy pauses. Blinks slowly. Doesn’t say anything more.
“Fuck me. Have me. Whatever you want as long as you live,” Kakashi clarifies with his brightest grin. He gets that cheery probably isn’t very seductive, but it’s the only thing he can manage that isn’t pointlessly emotional or utterly blank.
“Can I—instead?” Guy is fading. Kakashi took too long figuring out which antidote to use. He would have just given Guy all three except Sakura had explicitly said that combining all of them would probably kill a healthy person. Kakashi has always known that it is possible to have too much of a good thing.
“Well, you have to tell me what you want,” he drawls. Guy is strong. If he can keep him awake and talking the antidote will take effect. “I mean, the answer is probably yes, unless it’s ridiculously kinky. I do have a few lines. Not many, but they do exist.”
“Kiss you. Just once. You don’t have to pretend to like it.”
“Sure,” Kakashi says, keeping his voice even, swallowing the lump of sadness in his throat. “Survive this and you can kiss me for hours.”
Guy blinks again. It takes longer for his eyes to open this time. “I would have liked,” he whispers. Kakashi can count on one hand the number of times he’s heard Guy speak this quietly. Beyond the absent eyes and physical symptoms, that, most of all, tells him that his friend is leaving. “Before—“
Guy’s eyes close. They don’t open again. Kakashi can feel the lack of a pulse in his throat. Kakashi is a genius, not a medic. He knows a thousand jutsu, but even if he had the chakra, he couldn’t use the Magic Palm. He knows that Guy’s heart stopped before the antidote could circulate. As a natural Lightning Style user, he knows exactly one way to start it again.
Kakashi is completely spent. Using a jutsu now will probably kill him. If Kakashi is very lucky, it will save Guy. If he has any luck at all, they’ll die together. Most likely, it will fail, he’ll pass out, and by the time he wakes up it will be too late to try anything else.
Kakashi slips his gloves of. He places his hands on the upper right of Guy’s chest and the lower left of his side. He charges a small Lightning Style. The world goes black.