[Log][KakaRin][Finished][Part 2]
Notes: Hahahaha we broke the word limit. AWESOME.
Rin's world was blissfully dark with small red patches as her hands pressed against her tired eyes. A part of her was secretly hoping that childhood logic of 'If I can't see it, it isn't there' would somehow manage to save her from the overwhelmingly confusing maelstrom of emotion and memory that was surging through her veins. She was just managing to calm herself enough that she thought maybe she could risk looking at Kakashi without the danger of decking him in the face when she felt - or rather thought she felt - a feather light touch on her cheek. She was almost sure she imagined the sensation - a sensory hallucination, projecting what she wanted to feel onto her skin. She was just beginning a mental overhaul about the fact that what she apparently wanted was Kakashi's skin on hers and how completely untrue that was when the she felt what was too firm and too rough and too real to be her admittedly vivid imagine. She kept her hands where they were. Because this was - this didn't make sense and she so desperately needed her world to be ruled by logic and reasoning.
And then he whispered to her skin, she felt the words more than she heard them. He was sorry...he was sorry for what? For the scars? For showing up unannounced and demonstrating the fact that he was deeply socially stunted? For - what? Damnit, she needed specifics, she needed to analyze and compartmentalize this until she could invent some sort of reasoning she could live with. Wasn't this what she'd wanted? His apology? Wasn't this what she'd spent nigh on ten years waiting for? Rin realized that she didn't know what she wanted anymore, and she was terrified to find the idea creeping up in the back of her mind that there was a possibility that Kakashi did know.
And then his lips were on hers and his mouth was soft and hot and wet and managed to do what she had long believed to be impossible - he made her mind go quiet. Everywhere she looked inside her head, she found the empty spaces kept throwing her back into the present physical sensation of kissing Kakashi -
No, nononono, Kakashi was kissing her, he was, he was...and then she was more aware of every inch of her body than she had been since...ever and - and - and....
Her mouth was moving and pressing without her expressed consent. It wasn't her fault, it was just the familiarity of the physical sensation and act, it was just muscle memory, it was just her teenage self projecting a lifetime of experience and want and aching and she was kissing Kakashi back and the world was ending.
She shoved at the pressure point at the tip of his sternum, pushing him away from her, their mouths disconnecting with a soft sound of suction, and she was pushing herself away from his hands and his lips and his muscle and his skin and his everything.
"What - I - you -" She wanted to scream at him, something witty and scathing and angry, but all that was coming out of the ruin of her mind was stammered gibberish. She was supposed to be furious not flustered and stupid and stuttering. And she was fairly sure she was blushing. Actually, flushed was probably a more accurate description - her mind needed something else to focus on. Now. "What do you think you're doing?!" she shrieked (shrieked, for the love of God). "You can't - you can't just - people don't do this - they don't - you aren't - " Her back hit the opposite wall with a dull thunk. She was looking for something heavy to throw. Her lungs seemed to be disabled and her chest was heaving with the sheer effort of forcing air in and out. The worst part, however, was that her body kept mentioning that it would much rather go back to what it had been doing, please. Rin hated her body with every last ounce of her awareness.
Kakashi felt cheated. He’d barely skimmed the remnants of coffee off her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue and she was suddenly running away from him before he managed to take the drink he was now so parched for. He was acutely aware of her fingers as they pushed into the wall of his chest, willing the contact to make that subtle shift from rejection to invitation with every brain cell he could command to action. While they failed to telepathically convince her, they did provide him with a crucial piece of information that had him one step behind her as she scuttled back. She hadn’t been pushing him away, she’d been pushing herself away.
That speck of difference that anyone lacking his extensive training in body language would have missed or brushed off, was all the confirmation that his advances were still welcome that he needed. Though her agitated state, flushed cheeks, harsh breathing and bright eyes all served to confirm that fact.
“I’m not thinking,” he replied as he cut through her personal space effortlessly, stopping close enough that his chest brushed against hers with every breath from either of them and spearing one hand through her hair to cradle the back of her skull and pull her back towards him. “That’s probably the problem.” His mouth slanted against hers before she had the chance to scream at him again, taking advantage of how her full lips had been parted for breath to sweep his tongue along hers and continue to pursue the elusive bitterness of the cup of coffee she had to have had consumed at her desk earlier, wildly intrigued to figure out how it would blend with her natural sweetness.
Rin hated the stupid wall. She hated all walls - everywhere - every wall to ever be created anywhere in the world. Because he was following her because apparently she was going to have to physically beat the message into his head that No, no, no, this was not allowed, and because she suddenly had nowhere to run from him as chest brushed against hers because of his blatant disrespect for person boundary space. And she was inhaling to scream a series of obscenities in his stupid, unfairly attractive face when his mouth was attacking her again and his tongue seemed to be on some sort of mission to make her a slack-jawed idiot.
She was dimly aware that letting her jaw go as slack as it was was probably not sending her intended message of loathing and outrage, but her brain was doing that thing again where it was completely useless to do anything besides relay the message of 'feels good.' She was just so confused, and she couldn't focus on anything besides his lips and his teeth and his tongue and how his body was suddenly flush against hers (whose fault was that? His...right?). She blamed mental trauma and shock for the way she was trying to make her body melt into his. Maybe she was just cold? ...In the humid, stifling exam room that had both their clothing all damp and sticky? Maybe? Either way, her hips were pressing into his and her back was pressing into the (stupid) wall and everything was pressing into everything else and all her senses were just sort of melting into a thick haze that tasted like cigarettes and smelled like musk and pillows and felt like hard muscle and sounded like ragged breathing and something wet and sucking.
His hair felt nice and surprisingly soft between her fingers. Was she digging her nails into his scalp too hard? Her thumb brushed against his face accidentally, and even through her Kakashi-induced haze, her Doctor persona managed to be concerned that she'd hit the area above his bad eye. She should really...take care of that...she should...oh.
Kakashi was drowning, and blissfully so. For the first time, the memories he had of a person he cared about were resonating in an evolving way with the present. He could feel the difference the years had made in how she rolled her tongue and her body simultaneously against him, hinting to experience she hadn’t had the last time they’d been this close. Her curves pressed against him in a new way and he ran his free hand down her back to press her closer still and further distort the ghost imprint she’d left previously. The eager hand skimmed over the now fully developed hip and settled over her rear, relishing how it filled his palm more firmly now as he lifted her faintly so she would have the extra support of his muscle if she stood on the tips of her toes and compensated for some of their height difference.
He felt light-headed with relief, finally able to experience the growth of someone and felt the almost giddy elation of it all but oozing out of his pores as he reveled in Rin’s unfolding openness to him. He’d missed her. He hadn’t realized it (or perhaps it was simply that he hadn’t acknowledged how much he’d come to yearn for her over years of denying himself) and the acknowledgement of it hit him like a sledgehammer to the gut. And at that exact moment, with her warmth and solidity caught up in every one of his nerve endings from his scalp to his toes, with her fresh and clean scent of soap fogging his lungs, with her unique blend of bitter and achingly sweet under his tongue, he couldn’t remember why he’d wasted a decade without her.
His brain’s reaction was delayed as Rin’s hand scraped across the side of his forehead, too caught up in her to notice anything more than the faint sting a bug bite might leave. But the sudden wave of hesitation and tension that rippled through her cut a question mark in the blissfully dense fog that had flooded his brain, and once the dissipation began, its expansion was swift and merciless.
His eye was throbbing. Starting from the inside and leeching its way out in lung seizing pain. Piece by piece, the scattered puzzle of 'why' fell back into place and printed the face of one Obito Uchiha firmly behind that injured eye, reminding him of exactly everything, and of exactly why he needed to let Rin go, walk out the door and never look back.
His lips broke from hers with a pained gasp, the motion jarring his skull and spitting tar-like black spots behind his vision. As if suddenly being severed from Rin’s plush lips (even more swollen now from how he’d tried to devour them) wasn’t enough of a shock to his system. His breathing was harsh, irregular and shallow as he struggled to swallow and pull himself back together. He leaned his forehead against hers and hunted for his wayward willpower.
After what seemed like an eternity, he managed to disentangle his hand from her hair and forced it against the wall so he had something other than her breasts and hips to lean on, but his other hand remained glued to her glutes. In fact, it was all he could do to stop from squeezing.
“I need you to push me away.” Resistant in every way possible, his voice was low and scratched to hell, cracking as his vocal chords refused to form his words properly. He doubted that she would have even heard him at all had he not managed to at least lend his harsh whisper to her ear.
Just the loss of his lips felt physically painful. They were braided together like twine, and now he was unwinding them. He was disentangling himself from her, like she was some sort of briar he needed to escape. His neck was craned at an angle that looked uncomfortable but artistically beautiful, leaning his forehead down to press against hers, like he was trying to physically force a thought into her head.
He held his lips still against her ear and then he was saying that. Push him away? He was the one who'd spent years shoving her further and further out of his life, and now, after shoving his way back into hers, he wanted her to make him leave? She squeezed her eyes shut tight, bit down hard on her tender lower lip, and willed herself not to lean into his touch. It wasn't fair, this shouldn't be hers to carry. This wasn't her fault.
But the worst part was that she knew she could make him stay. All she had to do was lean back into him, capture his lips again, hook one calf around his leg, and he'd be hers or she'd be his or they would be each other's. It would be so easy and so fast and so deliciously selfish.
But...Obito. She felt a fresh stab of something more subtle than guilt and sharper than loss. Kakashi must have felt her hand and thought...but that wasn't what she'd meant, it wasn't that, it was - what? Maybe she would have had a chance to figure out what she was thinking if he would just leave her alone for one minute. But not that kind of alone. Not the kind of alone he was asking her to bring on both of them. Her teeth ground together and she could feel her throat closing off. She felt the familiar surge of anger and frustration rush up to meet her, but not the same anger as before. Something more insidious and so much more painful.
She reached her hands up again to pull his face within her reach. Dragging her lips across the shell of his ear, she breathed wetly, "Fuck you, Kakashi." Then she dragged his still open mouth down to hers and kissed him hard enough to bruise, her teeth catching his lower lip and biting until she tasted blood, and then swept her tongue along the metallic tasting edge. And then she shoved the heel of one hand into his stomach, quickly followed by the other hitting the center of his chest, just below his collar bone to knock the breath out of his lungs (a trick Obito had taught her, in a sad little irony). And then she was pulling herself out of his arms and then she was across the room, and then she was running down the hall into her office, and slamming the door so hard behind her that the wall shook. She slid down the door until she hit the ground, and dug her teeth into her knees where they had drawn up to her chest. She couldn't have said whether she was locking him out or locking herself in.
He was shaking, literally shaking, as he resisted the challenge she growled in his ear, as he resisted the shivers her hot breath against his ear triggered, as he resisted the ferocity in her kiss and the almost overpowering need to possess her in every way he could comprehend against the wall.
His lungs seized as she hit him, suddenly so completely relieved as his rib cage was paralyzed and Rin left without the slightest hint of a backwards glance. He leaned his arms and his forehead against the wall as he listened to her steps, to the slam of the door and to the telltale snikt of the lock. Every inch of him was aching as he struggled to reclaim his breath and his pulse. Finally he slumped against the wall, turning his back to it and letting himself slide down to collapse between it and the floor.
Every muscle in his body continued to quiver, his already shaky coordination struggling even more as he lifted his hand to dig the heel of his palm into the roaring rage of his left eye. Mind a complete blank slate as it struggled to grasp what had just transpired, his hand dug at the organ that was both the cause of his current predicament as well as its archaic root cause. It was leaking again and he swiped almost angrily at the moisture. The part of his brain that was attached to his eye was the first to stir, shameful and apologetic as the weight of the morning settled on it. He’d acted stupidly and hurt Rin again, as if he hadn’t already damaged their ties enough already.
Slowly, he pushed back to his feet, forcing his angry hand away from his now stinging eye and shoving it and its twin into the front pockets of his jeans. The room was still suffocatingly warm, but his shoulders hunched against the cold prickling his skin. His boots scuffed the surface of her tiles as he forced his first shuffled steps. With familiarity though came something akin to ease and he found himself leaving, stepping out of the stillness of the clinic to the noise and activity of the street.
He winced at first, offended by the buzzing energy of the outside world as it acted in distinct opposition to how he felt. He didn’t want noise, he just wanted quiet and space. The rest of his brain seemed to suddenly be snapping back to life again and branded liar across his consciousness.
He wanted Rin.
He shoved his hand deeper into his pocket and pulled out a thin cardboard case, flicking open the lid and sliding out one of the white sticks with his abused lips. He wanted a cigarette.
She wasn't sure how long she was supposed to wait. Would his recovery time be shorter than hers? It usually was, or at least he always seemed to leave first. Well, she'd won that contest this time. It was a trick she'd picked up somewhere along the way between the last time she'd felt Kakashi's body that close to hers and what had just transpired in the first exam room: Leave them before they leave you. It was a simple matter of self-preservation. It was a defense mechanism. It was the fight-or-flight response. It was just biology.
It was also biology when her legs gave out the first time she tried to stand up. Her feet were asleep. That was understandable. That made sense. She stretched them out in front of her to improve the circulation of blood, waited a few minutes, then tried again. Success. She was fine. It was all just enzymes and chemicals that were triggering sections of her brain to make her body not work quite right. She'd studied this. This was just anatomy.
The pains of her stomach and back. The increased blood flow to her skin. The biological want. That was just anatomy, too. All this was text-book reading material.
She fumbled with the lock for a solid two minutes before her numb fingers managed to correct it. Lack of proper circulation again. Too much blood to her skin and not enough to her muscles. It happened.
Her boots made loud, deliberate thumps against the floor. Her legs were slowly falling back into rhythm. Her body was returning to homeostasis. This was all normal.
When she rounded the corner to look into the room where she'd been flush against the wall however many minutes ago, she didn't know what she expected to find. But he was gone. She felt relieved and devastated and numb, but she had no idea what the proportions of those emotions were. She didn't know which one of them won out over the others. She walked over to the wall, slowly, like there was a mine field hidden underneath the tile. She stared at the blank wall for a long moment, then reached out a tentative hand to brush against the plaster. But just as her fingertips touched the drywall, a small bell echoed down the hall. A patient. Work. Life. The world kept turning, apparently.
"Just a minute," she called, but the sound was tiny and stuck in her throat. "I'm coming!" she called again, louder this time. She raked her fingers through her hair, straightened her coat, rubbed at her eyes. The she walked out to where the rest of her life was waiting for her.
Rin's world was blissfully dark with small red patches as her hands pressed against her tired eyes. A part of her was secretly hoping that childhood logic of 'If I can't see it, it isn't there' would somehow manage to save her from the overwhelmingly confusing maelstrom of emotion and memory that was surging through her veins. She was just managing to calm herself enough that she thought maybe she could risk looking at Kakashi without the danger of decking him in the face when she felt - or rather thought she felt - a feather light touch on her cheek. She was almost sure she imagined the sensation - a sensory hallucination, projecting what she wanted to feel onto her skin. She was just beginning a mental overhaul about the fact that what she apparently wanted was Kakashi's skin on hers and how completely untrue that was when the she felt what was too firm and too rough and too real to be her admittedly vivid imagine. She kept her hands where they were. Because this was - this didn't make sense and she so desperately needed her world to be ruled by logic and reasoning.
And then he whispered to her skin, she felt the words more than she heard them. He was sorry...he was sorry for what? For the scars? For showing up unannounced and demonstrating the fact that he was deeply socially stunted? For - what? Damnit, she needed specifics, she needed to analyze and compartmentalize this until she could invent some sort of reasoning she could live with. Wasn't this what she'd wanted? His apology? Wasn't this what she'd spent nigh on ten years waiting for? Rin realized that she didn't know what she wanted anymore, and she was terrified to find the idea creeping up in the back of her mind that there was a possibility that Kakashi did know.
And then his lips were on hers and his mouth was soft and hot and wet and managed to do what she had long believed to be impossible - he made her mind go quiet. Everywhere she looked inside her head, she found the empty spaces kept throwing her back into the present physical sensation of kissing Kakashi -
No, nononono, Kakashi was kissing her, he was, he was...and then she was more aware of every inch of her body than she had been since...ever and - and - and....
Her mouth was moving and pressing without her expressed consent. It wasn't her fault, it was just the familiarity of the physical sensation and act, it was just muscle memory, it was just her teenage self projecting a lifetime of experience and want and aching and she was kissing Kakashi back and the world was ending.
She shoved at the pressure point at the tip of his sternum, pushing him away from her, their mouths disconnecting with a soft sound of suction, and she was pushing herself away from his hands and his lips and his muscle and his skin and his everything.
"What - I - you -" She wanted to scream at him, something witty and scathing and angry, but all that was coming out of the ruin of her mind was stammered gibberish. She was supposed to be furious not flustered and stupid and stuttering. And she was fairly sure she was blushing. Actually, flushed was probably a more accurate description - her mind needed something else to focus on. Now. "What do you think you're doing?!" she shrieked (shrieked, for the love of God). "You can't - you can't just - people don't do this - they don't - you aren't - " Her back hit the opposite wall with a dull thunk. She was looking for something heavy to throw. Her lungs seemed to be disabled and her chest was heaving with the sheer effort of forcing air in and out. The worst part, however, was that her body kept mentioning that it would much rather go back to what it had been doing, please. Rin hated her body with every last ounce of her awareness.
Kakashi felt cheated. He’d barely skimmed the remnants of coffee off her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue and she was suddenly running away from him before he managed to take the drink he was now so parched for. He was acutely aware of her fingers as they pushed into the wall of his chest, willing the contact to make that subtle shift from rejection to invitation with every brain cell he could command to action. While they failed to telepathically convince her, they did provide him with a crucial piece of information that had him one step behind her as she scuttled back. She hadn’t been pushing him away, she’d been pushing herself away.
That speck of difference that anyone lacking his extensive training in body language would have missed or brushed off, was all the confirmation that his advances were still welcome that he needed. Though her agitated state, flushed cheeks, harsh breathing and bright eyes all served to confirm that fact.
“I’m not thinking,” he replied as he cut through her personal space effortlessly, stopping close enough that his chest brushed against hers with every breath from either of them and spearing one hand through her hair to cradle the back of her skull and pull her back towards him. “That’s probably the problem.” His mouth slanted against hers before she had the chance to scream at him again, taking advantage of how her full lips had been parted for breath to sweep his tongue along hers and continue to pursue the elusive bitterness of the cup of coffee she had to have had consumed at her desk earlier, wildly intrigued to figure out how it would blend with her natural sweetness.
Rin hated the stupid wall. She hated all walls - everywhere - every wall to ever be created anywhere in the world. Because he was following her because apparently she was going to have to physically beat the message into his head that No, no, no, this was not allowed, and because she suddenly had nowhere to run from him as chest brushed against hers because of his blatant disrespect for person boundary space. And she was inhaling to scream a series of obscenities in his stupid, unfairly attractive face when his mouth was attacking her again and his tongue seemed to be on some sort of mission to make her a slack-jawed idiot.
She was dimly aware that letting her jaw go as slack as it was was probably not sending her intended message of loathing and outrage, but her brain was doing that thing again where it was completely useless to do anything besides relay the message of 'feels good.' She was just so confused, and she couldn't focus on anything besides his lips and his teeth and his tongue and how his body was suddenly flush against hers (whose fault was that? His...right?). She blamed mental trauma and shock for the way she was trying to make her body melt into his. Maybe she was just cold? ...In the humid, stifling exam room that had both their clothing all damp and sticky? Maybe? Either way, her hips were pressing into his and her back was pressing into the (stupid) wall and everything was pressing into everything else and all her senses were just sort of melting into a thick haze that tasted like cigarettes and smelled like musk and pillows and felt like hard muscle and sounded like ragged breathing and something wet and sucking.
His hair felt nice and surprisingly soft between her fingers. Was she digging her nails into his scalp too hard? Her thumb brushed against his face accidentally, and even through her Kakashi-induced haze, her Doctor persona managed to be concerned that she'd hit the area above his bad eye. She should really...take care of that...she should...oh.
Kakashi was drowning, and blissfully so. For the first time, the memories he had of a person he cared about were resonating in an evolving way with the present. He could feel the difference the years had made in how she rolled her tongue and her body simultaneously against him, hinting to experience she hadn’t had the last time they’d been this close. Her curves pressed against him in a new way and he ran his free hand down her back to press her closer still and further distort the ghost imprint she’d left previously. The eager hand skimmed over the now fully developed hip and settled over her rear, relishing how it filled his palm more firmly now as he lifted her faintly so she would have the extra support of his muscle if she stood on the tips of her toes and compensated for some of their height difference.
He felt light-headed with relief, finally able to experience the growth of someone and felt the almost giddy elation of it all but oozing out of his pores as he reveled in Rin’s unfolding openness to him. He’d missed her. He hadn’t realized it (or perhaps it was simply that he hadn’t acknowledged how much he’d come to yearn for her over years of denying himself) and the acknowledgement of it hit him like a sledgehammer to the gut. And at that exact moment, with her warmth and solidity caught up in every one of his nerve endings from his scalp to his toes, with her fresh and clean scent of soap fogging his lungs, with her unique blend of bitter and achingly sweet under his tongue, he couldn’t remember why he’d wasted a decade without her.
His brain’s reaction was delayed as Rin’s hand scraped across the side of his forehead, too caught up in her to notice anything more than the faint sting a bug bite might leave. But the sudden wave of hesitation and tension that rippled through her cut a question mark in the blissfully dense fog that had flooded his brain, and once the dissipation began, its expansion was swift and merciless.
His eye was throbbing. Starting from the inside and leeching its way out in lung seizing pain. Piece by piece, the scattered puzzle of 'why' fell back into place and printed the face of one Obito Uchiha firmly behind that injured eye, reminding him of exactly everything, and of exactly why he needed to let Rin go, walk out the door and never look back.
His lips broke from hers with a pained gasp, the motion jarring his skull and spitting tar-like black spots behind his vision. As if suddenly being severed from Rin’s plush lips (even more swollen now from how he’d tried to devour them) wasn’t enough of a shock to his system. His breathing was harsh, irregular and shallow as he struggled to swallow and pull himself back together. He leaned his forehead against hers and hunted for his wayward willpower.
After what seemed like an eternity, he managed to disentangle his hand from her hair and forced it against the wall so he had something other than her breasts and hips to lean on, but his other hand remained glued to her glutes. In fact, it was all he could do to stop from squeezing.
“I need you to push me away.” Resistant in every way possible, his voice was low and scratched to hell, cracking as his vocal chords refused to form his words properly. He doubted that she would have even heard him at all had he not managed to at least lend his harsh whisper to her ear.
Just the loss of his lips felt physically painful. They were braided together like twine, and now he was unwinding them. He was disentangling himself from her, like she was some sort of briar he needed to escape. His neck was craned at an angle that looked uncomfortable but artistically beautiful, leaning his forehead down to press against hers, like he was trying to physically force a thought into her head.
He held his lips still against her ear and then he was saying that. Push him away? He was the one who'd spent years shoving her further and further out of his life, and now, after shoving his way back into hers, he wanted her to make him leave? She squeezed her eyes shut tight, bit down hard on her tender lower lip, and willed herself not to lean into his touch. It wasn't fair, this shouldn't be hers to carry. This wasn't her fault.
But the worst part was that she knew she could make him stay. All she had to do was lean back into him, capture his lips again, hook one calf around his leg, and he'd be hers or she'd be his or they would be each other's. It would be so easy and so fast and so deliciously selfish.
But...Obito. She felt a fresh stab of something more subtle than guilt and sharper than loss. Kakashi must have felt her hand and thought...but that wasn't what she'd meant, it wasn't that, it was - what? Maybe she would have had a chance to figure out what she was thinking if he would just leave her alone for one minute. But not that kind of alone. Not the kind of alone he was asking her to bring on both of them. Her teeth ground together and she could feel her throat closing off. She felt the familiar surge of anger and frustration rush up to meet her, but not the same anger as before. Something more insidious and so much more painful.
She reached her hands up again to pull his face within her reach. Dragging her lips across the shell of his ear, she breathed wetly, "Fuck you, Kakashi." Then she dragged his still open mouth down to hers and kissed him hard enough to bruise, her teeth catching his lower lip and biting until she tasted blood, and then swept her tongue along the metallic tasting edge. And then she shoved the heel of one hand into his stomach, quickly followed by the other hitting the center of his chest, just below his collar bone to knock the breath out of his lungs (a trick Obito had taught her, in a sad little irony). And then she was pulling herself out of his arms and then she was across the room, and then she was running down the hall into her office, and slamming the door so hard behind her that the wall shook. She slid down the door until she hit the ground, and dug her teeth into her knees where they had drawn up to her chest. She couldn't have said whether she was locking him out or locking herself in.
He was shaking, literally shaking, as he resisted the challenge she growled in his ear, as he resisted the shivers her hot breath against his ear triggered, as he resisted the ferocity in her kiss and the almost overpowering need to possess her in every way he could comprehend against the wall.
His lungs seized as she hit him, suddenly so completely relieved as his rib cage was paralyzed and Rin left without the slightest hint of a backwards glance. He leaned his arms and his forehead against the wall as he listened to her steps, to the slam of the door and to the telltale snikt of the lock. Every inch of him was aching as he struggled to reclaim his breath and his pulse. Finally he slumped against the wall, turning his back to it and letting himself slide down to collapse between it and the floor.
Every muscle in his body continued to quiver, his already shaky coordination struggling even more as he lifted his hand to dig the heel of his palm into the roaring rage of his left eye. Mind a complete blank slate as it struggled to grasp what had just transpired, his hand dug at the organ that was both the cause of his current predicament as well as its archaic root cause. It was leaking again and he swiped almost angrily at the moisture. The part of his brain that was attached to his eye was the first to stir, shameful and apologetic as the weight of the morning settled on it. He’d acted stupidly and hurt Rin again, as if he hadn’t already damaged their ties enough already.
Slowly, he pushed back to his feet, forcing his angry hand away from his now stinging eye and shoving it and its twin into the front pockets of his jeans. The room was still suffocatingly warm, but his shoulders hunched against the cold prickling his skin. His boots scuffed the surface of her tiles as he forced his first shuffled steps. With familiarity though came something akin to ease and he found himself leaving, stepping out of the stillness of the clinic to the noise and activity of the street.
He winced at first, offended by the buzzing energy of the outside world as it acted in distinct opposition to how he felt. He didn’t want noise, he just wanted quiet and space. The rest of his brain seemed to suddenly be snapping back to life again and branded liar across his consciousness.
He wanted Rin.
He shoved his hand deeper into his pocket and pulled out a thin cardboard case, flicking open the lid and sliding out one of the white sticks with his abused lips. He wanted a cigarette.
She wasn't sure how long she was supposed to wait. Would his recovery time be shorter than hers? It usually was, or at least he always seemed to leave first. Well, she'd won that contest this time. It was a trick she'd picked up somewhere along the way between the last time she'd felt Kakashi's body that close to hers and what had just transpired in the first exam room: Leave them before they leave you. It was a simple matter of self-preservation. It was a defense mechanism. It was the fight-or-flight response. It was just biology.
It was also biology when her legs gave out the first time she tried to stand up. Her feet were asleep. That was understandable. That made sense. She stretched them out in front of her to improve the circulation of blood, waited a few minutes, then tried again. Success. She was fine. It was all just enzymes and chemicals that were triggering sections of her brain to make her body not work quite right. She'd studied this. This was just anatomy.
The pains of her stomach and back. The increased blood flow to her skin. The biological want. That was just anatomy, too. All this was text-book reading material.
She fumbled with the lock for a solid two minutes before her numb fingers managed to correct it. Lack of proper circulation again. Too much blood to her skin and not enough to her muscles. It happened.
Her boots made loud, deliberate thumps against the floor. Her legs were slowly falling back into rhythm. Her body was returning to homeostasis. This was all normal.
When she rounded the corner to look into the room where she'd been flush against the wall however many minutes ago, she didn't know what she expected to find. But he was gone. She felt relieved and devastated and numb, but she had no idea what the proportions of those emotions were. She didn't know which one of them won out over the others. She walked over to the wall, slowly, like there was a mine field hidden underneath the tile. She stared at the blank wall for a long moment, then reached out a tentative hand to brush against the plaster. But just as her fingertips touched the drywall, a small bell echoed down the hall. A patient. Work. Life. The world kept turning, apparently.
"Just a minute," she called, but the sound was tiny and stuck in her throat. "I'm coming!" she called again, louder this time. She raked her fingers through her hair, straightened her coat, rubbed at her eyes. The she walked out to where the rest of her life was waiting for her.