[Log][KakaRin][Finished][Part 1]
Characters: Kakashi, Rin
Rating: PG-13 for foul language and volatile situations
Summary: Kakashi suspects he has an eye infection, and the only doctor he hasn't harrassed about it in the last ten years is Rin.
For days, he couldn’t manage to dodge the ache.
With a groan, Kakashi dug the heel of his palm into he left eye, trying once again to relieve some of the throbbing pain that had been steadily building in pressure under his left eyelid. For the fourth day in a row, the aching had woken him from a restless sleep, and again, seemed even worse than it had the day before.
Wearily, left side of his face tense and faintly contorted from pain, he strained his right eye to look at his alarm clock. Eight-thirty in the morning. His right eye glared, feeling cheated that it was faced to acknowledge a time that Kakashi had decidedly banished from his life the second he’d turned heel on the military. His left eye had gone too far.
Knowing it was hopeless to give sleep another shot, Kakashi stared at the ceiling for a long, sober moment, idly marveling at the fact that the pain in his eye almost made him feel like he wasn’t hung-over at all in comparison. Finally, with a long sigh, he pushed up from the rumpled cotton sheets of his bed to his feet and headed to his apartment’s tiny bathroom.
The stranger in his mirror looked older than he should have. Or maybe it was that he was finally looking his age after years of reaping the benefits of a baby-face. He was developing thin lines around the edges of his eyes but none in his cheeks, proof that they were from squinting and scowling rather than smiling. It was a depressing thought, to be faced with the physical evidence of a mirthless life. He blinked and winced as his scarred eyelid scrapped across his still damaged left eye and he leaned closer to the mirror. Beyond the dark circles bruising the underside of both his eyes, his left eye was definitely a little swollen. The long surgical scar was particularly puffy and sensitive as he prodded it gingerly. He pulled the ageing skin back to better inspect the eyeball itself. His vision was blurrier than normal in it, and as he looked closely it seemed like he had several broken blood vessels and bright red was leaking every which way across the white of the organ. While his left iris was perpetually bloodshot and bled faintly, and had for at least a decade now, this was certainly outside of his norm.
He released the skin and straightened, squinting at his reflection one last time before turning towards his shower stall. A trip to the doctor seemed to be in order, and there was only one doctor in the city that he could trust with his left eye. How convenient that he’d rediscovered where she was working these days, he mused as he spun the knob for hot water.
Rin was, once again, pretending to be a receptionist. Or rather, she was pretending to pretend to be a receptionist. The woman who had worked at the desk in the lobby had had some sort of substance abuse problem - at least as far as Rin could tell, and she was a doctor, after all - and she had, apparently, simply decided to stop coming to work. Rin figured that at least that was one less paycheck she had to scrounge up every week. Plus, the woman had been completely obnoxious. Rin kind of hoped she was desperately unhappy, wherever she was. Kind of, because it wasn't in Rin's nature to actively wish harm on other people, emotional or otherwise.
She was hunched over in a rolling chair, her chin held up in one hand, something that looked suspiciously like a pout on her lips. She was, to the outside observer boredly checking patient stats and appointments and organizing the filing system. In reality, however, she was boredly checking for any new messages in her inbox (none, how shocking) and boredly playing Solitaire in between refreshing the page. She was very carefully avoiding the overwhelming metaphors that playing Solitaire alone while desperately searching for human contact provided.
The heat in the clinic was still bearable this early in the morning, but her long hair was already sticking to the back of her neck and her temples. It didn't help her mood to know that the temperature would only become more oppressive as the day went on. She sighed loudly, blowing her bangs off her face and trying to make at least a little noise to fill the stifling emptiness of the clinic. And she was very, very carefully avoiding the fact that the clinic was pretty much her life, and all the unfortunate metaphors and symbolism that went along with that particular observation.
Tapping her foot against the floor, she tried to find a place for a red jack.
Half an hour later, grey hair still half damp from his shower and sticking to the back of his neck, Kakashi wandered down the dirty sidewalk he’d reacquainted himself with recently on behalf of an old neighbor. His feet were dragging, steps heavy as he approached the non-descript doors and plain window facing of the small medical clinic she worked at these days. The air was thick and heavy with humidity, sticking his jeans and white cotton t-shirt to his skin in the same manner of his hair. Each step was uncomfortable to the point where he was tempted to simply turn around and go back to his apartment to lay on his couch under his broken ceiling fan. But the pain in his eye was persistent and increasing, and part of his brain knew that he was simply fishing for excuses to continue avoiding her. Kakashi was suspicious of this part of his brain being attached to said painful eye. He was also suspicious of it being the part of him that wanted to see Rin again, and consequently being the piece that commanded his hand every time he’d needed to call in a medical expert over his years in Arceos.
The rest of his brain hated that part. Intensely.
He kept his head low as he walked past the windows, knowing that if he looked up and saw her, he just might bolt which would make it even harder to come back for her help next time. His hand hesitated over the door handle, the majority of his brain arguing strongly that she was definitely not the only doctor in the district that could treat him. But that treacherous part, the part infecting his eye so that he was forced to come here in the first place (the rest of his brain was certain of the truth behind this accusation) remained steadfast in it’s conviction that Rin, who had been there during the circumstances of the injury and who had been the first to treat it, was the only one who would manage to figure out what was wrong with it after so many years. Besides, it’s not like he hadn’t tried to see other professionals. Every single last one of them had blown him off, telling him that the pain was all his imagination and the infections were self-inflicted through mental trauma. Rin would never try to feed him that kind of bullshit.
He sighed and pulled the door, finally looking up with his right eye (the left too sore and swollen for him to be able to open and focus).
Rin looked up at the soft ringing that signaled someone at the door. Her eyes were momentarily blinded by the long exposure to the fuzzy blue glow of the computer screen, and the figure at the door was momentarily just a black silhouette with glowing gold edges. Deja vu hit Rin like a fist to the stomach. She didn't even need the second it took for her eyes to adjust to know who it was.
She straightened slowly in her seat, and unhurriedly - clinically, professionally - looked him up and down. Kakashi, she was unashamedly pleased to note, looked like shit. And while she would need to get closer (in theory) to prove that thesis, it gave her a nasty little thrum of pleasure to know that he was, at least physically, miserable. The part of her that had spent her whole life nurturing and caring and cleaning and bandaging was roiling uncomfortably in the back of her mind. The part of her that was stinging and aching and hurting (it seemed to be concentrated around her cheekbones...) was beginning a slow boil of what tasted deliciously like righteous anger.
Rin pushed her chair back slightly, then crossed her arms over her chest. While the gesture was meant to broadcast displeasure, distrust, and general dislike, the part of her that was still a teenager was desperately trying to protect herself, and to provide some small, roundabout means of comfort she had long-since learned she would never receive from anyone else - the tall man in front of her most definitely included.
Rin cocked her head to the side slightly. She wasn't about to make this easy for him.
Even though he’d braced himself for it, everything under his skin locked with nauseous tension as he finally managed to focus on her. Kakashi stood in the doorway, half in and half out, for a long, awkward moment as his brain argued the validity of his presence in the clinic with itself. Rin clearly did not want to see him, and while it definitely stung it was entirely justifiable.
That treacherous part of his brain felt crushed all over again at her open hostility, having obviously been hoping for at least a glimpse at whatever it was that he used to see in her eyes when she looked at him. That part of his brain was seriously outnumbered all of a sudden though, as the rest of him focused completely on the purple scars on her cheeks and the faint red glow of anger rising to the surface of her skin underneath them.
He shouldn’t have come. He should have just carved his fucking eye out and put a band-aid on it. Somehow he suspected that it would have been the least painful route in the long run. And maybe he’d have gotten lucky and died of blood loss, and never have had to endure this interminable moment under her unyielding, unsympathetic scrutiny.
But he was committed to the action now.
The first step was the hardest, leg so taught and tight that moving it was actually painful. The impact of the step shot up from his heel, through his knee, through his hip and jarred up his torso. The second step was a little looser, but more resigned, like a prisoner on the way to the gallows, which he supposed was accurate as he certainly felt like he was about to be executed. And really, who had more right to swing the axe than Rin?
His shoulders sagged hard under the weight of the air as he moved into the lobby and dug his hands deep into his pockets; glass door swinging silently shut behind him as he made it past the threshold and continued his way to the counter. When he reached it after what felt like an eternity, it was all he could do to keep his eyes level with the counter, rather than dropping completely to the floor like they wanted to. He supposed he should say something, anything really, but his throat was dry and constricted. Finally, his left hand pulled out of its hiding place and pushed his pale hair out of his left eye. He looked up, fixing the spot on the wall slightly to the right of the crown of her head and forced his scarred eyelid open, even as every muscle on the left side of his face screamed in protest.
Rin waited out the long moments as he walked up to the counter, unblinking, unmoving, and (she was trying very hard to assure herself) unfeeling. She waited again for what was probably a solid thirty seconds before she realized that Kakashi wasn't going to say anything. The goddamn fucking coward was going to leave it to her to initiate whatever was about to begin. Of course, she hadn't exactly said "goodbye," so maybe "hello" was supposed to be some sort of penance?
Oh, fuck that.
The anger that had been bubbling just beneath her skin was beginning to reach its boiling point. He was going to deny her the small victory of watching him stumble through an awkward greeting, begging for whatever the hell he wanted. She wanted to see him embarrassed for once in his life, and she wanted to be the cause of it - she deserved to be the cause of it. Apparently he just didn't have the good grace to realize that it was his turn to grovel and plead and give her just an ounce of satisfaction. Rin's mouth tightened as her jaw clenched to the point of endangering the integrity of her teeth, before she forced out a...greeting.
"Can I help you?"
Her voice was different from how he remembered it, harsher and grittier. But hearing it again in person had his muscles locking all over again to keep his knees from giving out.
“I think I have an eye infection,” he replied, voice completely devoid of, well, anything. It was his professional voice, the one he’d cultivated his entire life to reflect absolutely nothing about what was happening beneath the stony surface of his face. One that worked especially well when underneath was such a fucking mess he had no idea where to even start with his categorization.
Again, his mind tried to get his throat to throw more words at her, but he couldn’t manage to figure out which ones to use, or in what order. He’d never been any good at talking to people, and he’d never understood why Rin thought she should be the exception to that rule. The hand pushing his hair out of his eye dug it’s heel into the socket as a sharp jolt of pain so intense it was itchy raced along the inside of his scar and danced like angry, sharp spiders on the inside of his eyelid.
Rin wasn't sure what exactly she had expected him to say when she saw him again. Actually, she had spent the better part of her adult life convinced that she never actually would see him again. But maybe she had imagined. Maybe she had run increasingly complex and detailed scenarios through her head, complete with dialogue and stage cues. And maybe, if she had dreamt up those scenes, they had all had the running theme of Kakashi saying he was sorry. Possibly on his knees and weeping. The "sorry" had been the important part. The rest was mostly filler. So Rin was, understandably, distinctly not satisfied with "I think I have an eye infection."
She really couldn't control the skeptical arch of one eyebrow as she leaned back a little further in her chair. To get a better view of his face, of course, not to try and put as much distance as possible between them. Because that would be ridiculous. And pointless, since it was a matter of inches that was in question.
But Rin's eyes narrowed involuntarily as his hand went to his eye and the left side of his face gave a sort of spasm. The sight of his bloodied iris was bringing back flashes of memory through her mind, memories of things she had worked very, very hard to forget. It was typical of Kakashi. To wait until she felt almost balanced on her own feet, until she felt almost like she wasn't a walking car crash, until she had almost gotten her past buried, to show up and ruin everything. To kick the legs out from underneath her.
But what stung the most was the part of her that wanted to reach out and touch his face. To try and soothe away the pain that would drive him here. Rin wasn't sure if that was the part that was a trained caregiver, or the part of her that had always wanted something to take care of that had so desperately wanted to be needed by someone. Or if it was the tattered remains of that part of her that had thought Kakashi rose and set the sun in the sky, the part of her that had trusted him entirely when he'd smiled at her like that over drinks.
"Well, if it is infected, I'm sure scratching at it is really going help," she drawled, defenses snapping back into place. Rin glared at her half-finished game of Solitaire, and dropped the Jack of Hearts into place below the Queen of Spades, before closing the window and pushing herself out of her chair. Now standing at her full height she was still only eye level with his chest, but the act itself gave her a certain sense of satisfaction.
"So what, exactly, would you like me to do about it?"
Wasn’t that obvious?
Kakashi’s hand froze and his jaw clenched at her sarcastic observation. He screwed the eye shut and forced his hand away from it, digging it back into the front pocket of his worn jeans. The muscles in his shoulders and back cramped even more as Rin stood up and he had to fight the very real impulse to at least step back, even though logically she wasn’t in the slightest bit physically intimidating to him.
His dark right eye dropped back to the counter surface and he stared intently as her razor blade question hung in the air, taking fresh swipes at him with every second of silence he let drag by. She really wasn’t going to cut him even the slightest bit of slack, was she?
He coughed a little awkwardly, his shoulders snarling viciously at him as his lungs jarred them and his brain scrambled for something, anything to say. And then to figure out how much of it he could legitimately say. Was he supposed to tell her that she was the only doctor in the city that could help him? Was he supposed to tell her that he’d figured this out by seeing everyone else first and not being satisfied with their diagnosis? Was he even supposed to talk to her on such a mundane level? Was he supposed to pretend like the eye was just an excuse to see her? Would that make her less angry? Would anything?
“Well…you’re the doctor…” he mumbled to the counter, trailing off in hopes of avoiding digging himself even deeper into whatever pit she had cast him into, while trying his hardest to avoid saying anything that could be considered a lie should she continue to probe him with her scalpel-like tongue.
Was that sarcasm? Was the egotistical bastard actually trying to...what? mock her? tease her? Rin felt her anger spike again, hot in her veins, clouding her thoughts - not that she was really trying all that hard to hold on to coherency. She exhaled loudly through her nose in what on a less professional person might have been considered a snort. Like she was a bull and Kakashi was painted eight shades of red. It seemed appropriate - there was something almost feral in the wave of emotion slowly building behind her narrowed brown eyes.
Speaking of eyes, it suddenly occurred to Rin that Kakashi had yet to meet hers. Well, they'd been advised back in one of the endless lectures that made up their youths that you weren't supposed to look wild animals or the mentally unstable in the eyes - they viewed it as a challenge. For some reason this only served to fuel her frustration and her hands clenched into fists where they were crossed over her chest. It occurred to her distantly that she probably would have been just as irritated if he had made eye contact, and that there was almost nothing that Kakashi could do or not do at this point that wouldn't leave her seething.
The thought jarred Rin from the red-tinged haze that had been overtaking her vision. She was the doctor here, she was a professional, and she was an adult now, goddamnit. She was above this. And she would be damned if she let him see the effect his mere presence was having on her (she resolutely ignored the fact that the time for concealing her emotions had long since passed, and that she'd never been very good doing so anyway). Rin forced her body to relax, first her clenched fingers, then her aching jaw, and finally her stiff shoulders, her tensed spine. She let the cool, professional demeanor of Doctor slip into place, settling over her like a blanket. Just one more layer between them.
Rin breathed in. She eyed Kakashi - no, she eyed her patient with detached interest. His eye must have really been hurting him if it was enough to drive him anywhere near her. She had a job to do. That was all. No more, no less. This was the life she had chosen (the life she had chosen), and he wasn't about to change that.
"You're right," she said after a long moment, "I am the doctor. The exam rooms are this way." And she turned on her heel towards the door. She felt a strange sort of disconnect with the rest of her body, her legs surprising her as they moved with fluidity across the room. Her boots (the same ones she'd worn around him every day for however many years, but different ones at the same time) made soft, dull noises against the floor. Her arms fell loosely to her sides, fingertips brushing the fabric of her white coat. It wasn't until she was halfway down the hallway that she realized she had forgotten to breathe out.
Kakashi wasn’t sure what was worse, her pure loathing for his very existence or her cold, disconnection from him. At least when she was angry-
He shook his head, clearing it of the thought before it had time to fully form the ‘she was his’ that he knew was going to follow. She wasn’t his and she wouldn’t be again, not after how completely he’d fucked it up the first time around, so it was pointless to even entertain the notion. Her anger was directed at him, but it belonged to her.
He fell into step, two paces behind her, gaze straying up faintly from the floor tiles to stare at the boots that matched his. His steps echoed hers eerily, making the same rubber soled thud, hers light, his heavy. One after the other.
His brain tried to pull all kinds of symbolism from it, turning something so mundane into complex metaphor for his existence in relation to hers (hers soft and gentle, his heavy and abrupt but his always behind hers) and he rolled his eyes at it. This ridiculousness had to be that infected part of his brain, the part that he continued to suspect was
in league with the pain in his eye as it seemed to be getting worse the longer he was exposed to Rin’s psychological and physical presence impeding on his mental space.
Maybe those other doctors had been right; the pain was all in his head. Or at least caused by his head.
As Rin stepped into the examination room ahead of him, the urge to simply disappear was almost overwhelming and the opportunity was so…Black spots suddenly swam in front of his eyes and his mind blanked while his next step stumbled and he crashed into the doorframe.
The wood caught him right above his left eye socket, sending a screeching wave of pain through his eye swamping his senses as he tried to recover and catch hold of the frame to keep from falling flat on his face.
Smooth Kakashi, real smooth.
Rin was too focused on breathing and mentally planning the examination to see Kakashi trip, but the sharp intake of breath alerted her to something wrong, and she spun around just in time to see Kakashi's face smash into the doorframe, accompanied by a sickening crack. Her body moved before she was even done registering what had just happened. In an instant she had crossed the room and grabbed hold of his arm and lower back, and she was struck for the first time since his entrance just how much bigger than her he was.
"Oh, for the love of -" she muttered, hauling Kakashi through the door. "Come on, you've got to sit down." She tried desperately to stay focused on the chair by the exam table and not how warm Kakashi's body felt against hers.
Kakashi tried to stumble back from the impact, his consciousness still debatable as his eyes couldn’t really tell which black spots were from pain, which spots were from the impact and which were from whatever had afflicted him before he hit the door. Distantly he was aware of small hands on his frame and support, his arm around shoulders that were too low to the ground to be particularly efficient in holding him upright. He leaned against her for a second as he regained his balance and self-awareness, only to tense again when self-awareness brought his senses back to him.
She smelled like soap. It was faint but it felt like he was drowning in it, in how simple and clean it was.
He forced his limbs to comply with his will, standing on his own again and pulling away from her as much as he could manage to. Kakashi’s entire mind became focused on making it to the examination table, decidedly ignoring how well Rin still fit in the crook of his arm and against his side despite the changes a decade had wrought on their respective bodies.
Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, Kakashi pondered how terrible of an idea going to the clinic had turned out to be.
Rin felt momentarily crushed by the better part of Kakashi's weight suddenly pushing down on her. The two of them moved in an almost comical, stumbling zigzag towards the other end of the room, Kakashi practically doubled over, and Rin on the verge of crumpling to the floor. The top of her head brushed against his chin momentarily, and it distantly occurred to her that they both must be the exact same heights they used to be, and that that was probably the only physical aspect of her that had remained unchanged. Well, there were two other aspects on either side of her face that had proven pretty damn permanent, too.
Suddenly, Kakashi seemed to right himself, and he stood somewhat drunkenly and pulled away, his arm sliding off her shoulder like water. Rin kept her arm securely anchored around his waist, though, and half guided, half shoved Kakashi towards the exam table. She straightened herself, and shoved her bangs out of her face distractedly, breathing heavily and feeling the heat in the room press down on her almost as hard and Kakashi's all too real body.
"Now," she said somewhat breathlessly. "Let's see that eye."
It wasn’t fair that her breath be so harsh and labored in his ear. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t care what he’d done, on purpose or by accident, or what he hadn’t done but should have done, none of it, even cumulatively, was worth this cruel trick to his senses.
Kakashi gratefully pulled away from Rin completely to settle on the table. His instinct to run was steadily being overrun by his instinct to drag himself even closer as he reacquainted himself accidentally with all the things about her body that he knew so well but had purged so thoroughly from his memory. He rubbed his nose lightly through the fabric of his mask in effort to knock free her smell as it started to itch the inside of his nostrils.
He was allowed one deep breath of clean air before she called him close again to inspect the entire reason he was here. “Just cut it out and rid me of its hassle,” he muttered exhaustively as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. As the table was slightly higher than her waist level, and his upper body was longer than hers, Kakashi needed to slouch and hunch to bring his eye to a comfortable level for Rin’s inspection. He felt the knots in the long muscles lining his spine tighten and pull, telling him that he was in for a world of pain once he was stretched out on his couch again that evening.
Rin raised an eyebrow at his mumbled comment, an act she was finding herself doing with worrisome regularity. Mentally shaking herself, she walked over to the cabinet pressed against the wall and retrieved a small silver device from a drawer- it was a glorified flashlight, really, but it had the added bonus of looking a bit like an instrument of torture. While her mind was, for the most part, focused on doing her job as a doctor, her pride wasn't so quick to recover, and the thought of mentally terrorizing Kakashi just a bit was too appealing to overlook.
Rin took a deep breath before turning around (she was still out of breath from dragging him across the floor, that was all), then turned on her heel and closed the distance between them before she could think about it too much. Kakashi was hunched over, looking tired and unhappy. Good.
In one quick movement, Rin tipped his face back and used her thumb and index finger to hold his damaged eye open. "Now just hold still," she murmured, leaning in. Then she held the light up to his eye and flicked it on.
Kakashi was spared Rin’s attempted psychological warfare as he had buried his face in his hands as soon as she’d turned away. The room was tilting faintly in his peripheral vision, his already sore eye was now throbbing from the growing bruise on his brow, and the smell of soap was lingering, clenching his gut every time it got strong and then more so when it seemed to fade, and he was starting to feel a little nauseous. He gingerly shifted his bare palm along his forehead, searching for traces of a fever, which was the one symptom of infection that he hadn’t yet been subjected to. He supposed the skin felt a little warm, but it was probably due to the blood rushing to the swelling of the bump on his head rather than a real fever.
He sighed as Rin came back, taking one last breath of air before she invaded it again and knocked his hands away from his face so she could inspect him. He remained passive under her hands, doing his best to comply perfectly even though his eye screamed shrilly as she pried it open.
As the penlight hit his retina, it was all he could do to keep from recoiling as vicious pain burned down into his brain. His jaw ground together as every muscle in his body locked so tight he was almost shaking from the strain. But he remained still, even when his damnable left eye started to water in what was probably the most embarrassing display Kakashi had ever participated in, however unwilling.
It didn't escape Rin's notice when Kakashi's entire body seemed to steel itself, but she was only dimly aware of it, as almost all her attention was focused on the strange, bloody iris beneath the beam of light. The strange thing was, from what she could see there didn't appear to be any real damage to the eye, besides the discolored iris and perhaps a few mild scratches to the cornea Kakashi had no-doubt inflicted on himself with his constant rubbing. She pursed her lips just a bit at the thought.
She narrowed her dark eyes, and leaned even closer, her bangs falling forward to brush against Kakashi's face. His pupils were responding normally to stimuli. The delicate muscle of the iris itself wasn't damaged. The minute blood vessels around the eye were inflamed, yes, and now that she noticed it, the tears spilling from Kakashi's bad eye were getting her thumb wet. But she couldn't find anything that would indicate an infection. Infections usually spread from the site of an injury, but there simply wasn't anything that fit that description on Kakashi's eye.
She clicked off the penlight, but didn't lean back. Releasing her finger's hold on the delicate skin, she let Kakashi's eyelid slide closed. Rin didn't really realize that she was forgetting to breathe again as she traced the pad of her index finger along the long scar bisecting Kakashi's eyelid. The scar made her feel strangely...embarrassed. And frustrated. If she'd done the stitching today, it would be half as wide, barely visible from a distance. Sloppy, she thought in disgust, unforgivably sloppy. She ran her fingertip over the red, slightly swollen area over the arch of bone that had connected with the doorframe where a bruise was already beginning to form. Even if the eye made no sense, that had to be hurting.
Suddenly realizing how very, very (dangerously, stupidly) close she was to his face, she recoiled. "What -" she began, her voice cracking slightly from lack of use, "What exactly are your symptoms?"
Kakashi focused entirely on the pain, forcing himself to revel in its throb to the point where he started mentally amplifying it. He latched on to it, using it as a blanket to drown out the feather-light brush of her hair against his cheekbone and the knowledge that if he leaned forward just an inch and tilted his head slightly he could bury himself in the crook of her neck. He used it to drown out the urge to do just that and the conviction that surely her skin would manage to make him feel better.
The pen clicked off, and had the muscles banding his chest not been screwed quite so tightly he would have sighed in relief. But with the pain receding, came increased awareness of her breath hitching and hovering as it skittered over the outer surface of his mask, the increased awareness of her slim finger as it glided over his smooth scar tissue, and the increased awareness that she was lingering so very close to him, despite her initial scathing objections to his presence. His breathing was shallow, clenched by his ribcage and suffocated by that cloud of soap that seemed to cling to Rin.
She pulled back suddenly and he was grateful. Any longer and he might very well have forgotten why her hand lingered as it had on his scar, and why it was so crucial that he re-implement the chasm of space between them. Her voice cracked, and that more than anything she could possibly have said shoved Kakashi firmly back into their scripted roles. That emotion hadn’t been for him. But her words did a very good job of reinforcing it.
He recognized the confusion, the hesitation. She was two minutes away from telling him that there was nothing wrong with him, just like everyone else. He straightened suddenly, left eyelid dropping smoothly into place as he turned away from her and stared at the door. He stretched his jaw under his mask, cracking it lightly as he tried to figure out just how willing he was to sit through the same conversation for the ten thousandth time over the course of a decade.
His eye hurt, a lot. That was his symptom. Additionally: blurry vision, black spots, popped blood vessels, itchy, temporary blindness, swelling, strain related exhaustion, but mostly constant, throbbing pain. He was supposed to have an infection. Rin would listen, frown and then point out that there was no visible evidence of festering wound and that there was no heating in the area indicating the body trying to kill malicious bacteria. He would shrug. She would frown more, maybe glare. Any other doctor would ask the source of his original injury, but she already knew so they’d be able to skip that part of the conversation and move right on to the conclusion. She would suggest that perhaps his pain was a result of his unresolved guilt regarding the history of his wound. And if she said that, he wouldn’t be able to blow her off like he had all the other doctors.
This whole time, he’d always been able to say that these doctors couldn’t see the problem because they didn’t really understand the injury. If Rin saw it, she’d be able to figure out what it was; surely she would spot some sliver of shrapnel that had been caught in his skin when she had stitched him up. Or something. It had to be something.
He wouldn’t be able to bear hearing her tell him it was nothing. He just couldn’t do it.
Decision made, he slid his feet to the ground, taking a second to steady himself on the examination table as the room tilted precariously. “Thanks for taking a look.”
He hated how his voice echoed so hollow in his chest cavity and how cold it was as it climbed through his throat, but at the moment, he found solidity in his ability to be professional and disconnected. He just needed to cling to that, and eventually everything would straighten out again.
Rin saw something glass over in Kakashi's eyes. For some strange, stupid reason, it hurt. And for one strange, stupid moment, she was sixteen again, trying to get just a bit of his attention and failing as usual. He was doing it again, he was brushing her off, he was leaving, just like he was always leaving, always left her. He'd left her all alone--
But Rin wasn't sixteen anymore, and she felt the anger she'd managed to smother with professionalism was burning through its restraints and her bone and muscle and skin. She felt blood rushing up under her face and in her ears, drowning out the rational part of her brain that said gone was the way she liked Kakashi best.
"Kakashi!" It was the first time she'd addressed him by name, the first time she'd said his name since...since she'd left. It felt strange on her tongue, like another language she was fluent in but had had no cause to use in years. "Don't you dare," she breathed, her voice thick and rasping to her ears.
Somewhere her nails were digging deep into her skin. And in somewhere in another lifetime, they were digging into his.
The fury cutting out the syllables of his name hesitated his step, and once he hesitated he was trapped. It was either stop and make the motion purposeful and therefore maintain control of it, or try to keep going and let her know just how hotly she could burn him.
He stopped, motion smooth and deliberate, spine straight and shoulders squared as he faced the door that suddenly felt miles away. He looked back over his shoulder, eyebrow arching mildly in the physical equivalent of the ‘don’t you dare what?’ that terror was sticking to the back of his throat.
Terror of her wrath, so intense and boiling so close the surface of her seemingly tiny frame. Terror of what exactly it was that she was trying to stop him from doing. And terror of what his body just might be tempted to do the second she openly denied him the right to do it.
The smug arch of his eyebrow was trying to shove her back into her traditional role of blushing, stammering sycophant, and only made the urge to lash out - verbally and physically - that much stronger. Did he honestly think that he still had that much control over her? Or that she still couldn't read his body language the way other people read books? Or in this case, flashing neon signs? Kakashi never seemed to catch on to the fact that he spoke with his whole body, and she'd long-since learned every nuance of the way he moved. The way he'd angled his body away from her, supposedly so set and strong and unmovable, all it did was emphasize the fact the Kakashi was deliberately trying to push her away, but the way his muscles were tensed all along his spine - that said something else entirely. Kakashi had always relied on his mask more than even he seemed aware of. Although, really, that was just another barrier between them that had become a moot point. It wasn't like she didn't know what was under there.
"You don't get to do this anymore, Kakashi," she said lowly, her breath shaking and shallow from barely contained emotions. "You don't get to just show up here and then just run away like you always do - I'm not here for your convenience," she hissed. Her bangs were falling in her eyes again and her clothes were sticking to her skin from the humidity. Everything seemed to be consciously trying to goad her into some sort of action. The idea began to form in the back of her mind that she was actually in danger of physically attacking Kakashi. It was stupid and childish, but the overwhelming frustration of his presence made her want to kick and scream and cry until she was in an exhausted pile on the floor. It was ironic then, she supposed, that she'd never so much as thrown a tantrum as a child. Well, she was a long way from the happy, loving girl she'd been. Maybe she needed to make that fact just a little more clear.
The list of abuse Kakashi would take, and willingly at that, from Rin was long and intricate. She was probably the only person still living for whom he would, without hesitation, wrench his entire existence into abstract pretzel formations in effort to accommodate her. But even with such extensive grounds for her to romp freely upon, she still managed to stomp carelessly across the very few very tender pieces he kept to himself. And if he could ever be goaded into admitting he cared at all, he would be forced to characterize that it wasn’t the fact that she did it that really bothered him at all. It was the fact that she went out of her way to do it on purpose.
“I came here for your professional expertise,” the words were perfectly solid, spoken with care and precision, his tone cut out of the same glacier as everything he’d managed to say to Rin so far that morning. It was designed to cut and divide the mess of their personal history from the structure of medical consultation. It was designed to keep the six foot thick wall between his present and his past completely and utterly intact, and to force her to accept that wall’s presence. “As you’re about to tell me that there’s nothing wrong with me, and therefore nothing you can do to help, there’s little point to me lingering.”
And there it went. The floodgates were as good as decimated.
"Oh, right," Rin shouted, "You came here, out of all the various medical facilities you could've gone to in at least two districts, because you wanted my professional expertise. Take some fucking responsibility for once in your life, Kakashi." Rin felt like an open wound. All the words were crimson-tinged and spilling out of her, and while a small part of her wanted desperately to just fucking shut up, the majority of her was winning by far, and it wanted blood. Hers or his, it didn't matter. But it demanded sacrifice.
"Or maybe that's the problem, huh Kakashi?" she snarled, venom dripping from her lips like poisoned honey. "Maybe that's the diagnosis you've been getting for a while now. About possible emotional and pyschological ties you might have to that particular injury?" She was rounding on him, when had her feet started moving? Didn't matter now, her hand was on his arm, grabbing and forcing him around to face her. "Tell me, Kakashi, dear, do you have anything in your long and decorated past for which you have reason to be ashamed?"
Rin was barely eye level with his chest, but she was far too intoxicated by fury to even care about the fact that he was big and she was small and those were the facts that had always dictated their relationship.
"Who do you think you're fooling?" she said in a whispered hiss. Then - because she couldn't stop herself, because she was too far gone now to ever go back, had been for years and year and years - she reached out and yanked the black fabric down his face, not caring if her nails caught skin. "There's glass between us!" she shouted in his face, fingers still fisted in the fabric of his mask. Somewhere, she was screaming that this was a Very Bad Idea.
Despite his tension, Kakashi’s body moved with surprising fluidity as she pried at him. Rin was allowed to grab him, to hit him, he was completely malleable to her physicality whenever she chose to impose it on him. Wave after wave of righteous fury assaulted him through her voice, her words lashing him mercilessly as he stood still and took it all in. He deserved it, and she was right.
But then she went too far again, with his entire body exposed to her she went for his eye.
He didn’t feel the shift of the air on his skin as she ripped his mask away, and he didn’t feel how her fist twisting the fabric was squeezing his windpipe. His brain seemed completely and utterly disconnected from his body, like he was standing against the wall by the doorway watching this automaton version of himself as the mechanical hand pulled out of the front pocket of his jeans and slid around Rin’s wrist.
His now exposed face had all the expression of a rock, left eye closed completely and right half lidded like he was almost asleep as he looked down at her. He recognized her as Rin, registered her as the girl he knew, but under his cold dissection he started to become fully aware of just how much the woman before him was glossed over with the forgiving paint of memory and wishful thinking. His hand viced slowly, thumb digging into the pressure point on the inside of her wrist as he stared down at her face, waiting to see how it would change. The grip around his throat eased as her fingers were forced to release him and he pulled her hand away, very deliberately settling it back down against her side and releasing her.
His hand slid back into the front pocket of his jeans as his head cocked to the side slightly. What did she want from him? He rolled his jaw finally, cracking it as his mind roiled in a strange, opaque white haze.
She would have bruises on that wrist, she was fairly sure of it. She'd always been annoyingly fragile, even back in the military. Just bumping (or being forcibly shoved) into corners and walls and sometimes other people left her various shades of black and blue and other colors not generally associated with bruises under her clothes. It was a fact she'd kept to herself. She didn't particularly care at the moment, however. She could barely feel her wrist, actually, let alone any pain Kakashi's vice-like grip might have caused it. It hung down against her hip like a dead thing, loose and dangling. She thought that it probably wasn't strictly considered healthy to have such gruesome imagery so readily at hand. Maybe she could blame the influence of current company.
Kakashi looked older, she noted with some surprise. It seemed like a rather obvious result of the passage of ten years, but it struck her as strange, never the less. It was probably the source of numerous insecurities that Kakashi had been prettier than her as a young man. Kakashi had been prettier than the better part of the population, of course, but a girl's pride could only take so much. But that prettiness had translated into something entirely different now. It wasn't that Kakashi wasn't handsome - he was (he really, really was) but there was something almost feral in the gaunt, hungry look around his eyes. He'd finally grown into his nose, she noted, and the line of his jaw was still the same. His hair was longer, but so was hers, having been one of her first defiances against the strict military rules that had kept it cropped short for the better part of her life.
Did she look as old as he did? She honestly had no idea - she avoided mirrors, as a rule. Vanity was a luxury she'd weaned herself off of after mirrors stopped showing her the face she expected to see. She rubbed at her cheek with the back of her other hand absently, eyes never leaving his face. Of course she had changed - puberty had finally seemed to catch up with her all at once after leaving the endless exercise regimes and years of being easily mistaken for a boy from the back. She'd spent a long time at odds with that, feeling like a walking invitation on every street she went down. But she'd adapted and she'd grown accustomed and she'd kept moving, because that was all she'd ever been able to do, in any situation.
She felt old, anyway. Some days more than others. She wasn't sure she was supposed to feel like that at twenty-nine. How old did that make him, then? Thirty...two?
His mouth was same. His mouth looked the same, anyway. Why wasn't he saying anything? She felt the frustration he seemed on a singular mission to dredge out of her coming to the surface again, pulling her muscles into tight knots along her shoulders. He'd always been aloof, but this was different. This was...She didn't know what this was and it was making her fucking angry. He just couldn't seem to stop himself from doing exactly the wrong thing, could he? It was like some sort of social psychosis.
Finally, she raked her hands through her hair and snarled, "What is wrong with you? I don't - I just - I can't - " She gave up, making another growling nose, and ground the heels of her hands against her eyelids, in an unconscious imitation of his own habit. She was about to fucking lose it. She just wished she had a fucking clue what it was she losing.
Kakashi's good eye followed the motion of her hand against her cheek with unexpected sharpness. Catching it and honing down on it like a bird of prey to some unsuspecting mouse. Did they hurt? Her scars, those purple welts his incompetence had left on her skin. Did they still hurt the way his did?
A frown brewed stormily across his brow as he stared with what could probably be interpreted as unnerving intensity. The muscles and bone under her skin were shifting, he supposed she was saying something to him but he couldn’t hear her through the thick buzzing in his ears and then her hair was tugged back, baring her cheekbone, her jaw line, her ear, and that sweet curve of her neck that had been so enticing to his senses barely ten minutes ago.
His entire brain seemed to be experiencing technical difficulties, leaving him in the wasteland of off-air snow and no way to understand exactly what his hand was doing as he watched it glide across that exposed cheek. The warmth of her skin registered, testament to still broiling anger surely, but instead of scalding him like it was meant to, he was drawn to it like a moth. His thumb stroked over the tattoo, once so light he barely skimmed the surface and then again, more solid. Did it hurt?
He was vaguely aware of something bubbling up from his gut, burning through his stomach and up the back of his throat before he could finally catalogue its source. He wanted them to hurt. He wanted desperately for them to hurt. His other hand was suddenly on her other cheek, her jaw cradled so gently even as his muscles clenched solid to fight back against the sickening urge to make them hurt.
The second the thought reared its head, cold shock banished it back to the pit of his belly and he leaned forward suddenly, brushing his lips soothingly against the first scar. “I’m sorry.”
The words scratched past his vocal chords, fighting through an already dry throat that had become a desert now that he found himself drowning in the smell of soap all over again and her warmth. “I’m sorry,” again as he kissed the other scar, like he was kissing a child’s scrapes better, like he was kissing the foot of a deity.
He wasn’t entirely sure for what he was apologizing, there were just too many things. Things he had done, that he should have done, things he hadn’t done, things he’d thought about doing…and then there was that one thing that he was about to do that would probably make everything even worse. While the thought occurred to him, it didn’t matter. He was committed to the action, completely and utterly ensnared in her, and too desperate to know that there was still some piece of her he could steal.
His lips sealed against hers without preamble or hesitation, some part of him knowing that if he let her react first he’d never get away with it.
Rating: PG-13 for foul language and volatile situations
Summary: Kakashi suspects he has an eye infection, and the only doctor he hasn't harrassed about it in the last ten years is Rin.
For days, he couldn’t manage to dodge the ache.
With a groan, Kakashi dug the heel of his palm into he left eye, trying once again to relieve some of the throbbing pain that had been steadily building in pressure under his left eyelid. For the fourth day in a row, the aching had woken him from a restless sleep, and again, seemed even worse than it had the day before.
Wearily, left side of his face tense and faintly contorted from pain, he strained his right eye to look at his alarm clock. Eight-thirty in the morning. His right eye glared, feeling cheated that it was faced to acknowledge a time that Kakashi had decidedly banished from his life the second he’d turned heel on the military. His left eye had gone too far.
Knowing it was hopeless to give sleep another shot, Kakashi stared at the ceiling for a long, sober moment, idly marveling at the fact that the pain in his eye almost made him feel like he wasn’t hung-over at all in comparison. Finally, with a long sigh, he pushed up from the rumpled cotton sheets of his bed to his feet and headed to his apartment’s tiny bathroom.
The stranger in his mirror looked older than he should have. Or maybe it was that he was finally looking his age after years of reaping the benefits of a baby-face. He was developing thin lines around the edges of his eyes but none in his cheeks, proof that they were from squinting and scowling rather than smiling. It was a depressing thought, to be faced with the physical evidence of a mirthless life. He blinked and winced as his scarred eyelid scrapped across his still damaged left eye and he leaned closer to the mirror. Beyond the dark circles bruising the underside of both his eyes, his left eye was definitely a little swollen. The long surgical scar was particularly puffy and sensitive as he prodded it gingerly. He pulled the ageing skin back to better inspect the eyeball itself. His vision was blurrier than normal in it, and as he looked closely it seemed like he had several broken blood vessels and bright red was leaking every which way across the white of the organ. While his left iris was perpetually bloodshot and bled faintly, and had for at least a decade now, this was certainly outside of his norm.
He released the skin and straightened, squinting at his reflection one last time before turning towards his shower stall. A trip to the doctor seemed to be in order, and there was only one doctor in the city that he could trust with his left eye. How convenient that he’d rediscovered where she was working these days, he mused as he spun the knob for hot water.
Rin was, once again, pretending to be a receptionist. Or rather, she was pretending to pretend to be a receptionist. The woman who had worked at the desk in the lobby had had some sort of substance abuse problem - at least as far as Rin could tell, and she was a doctor, after all - and she had, apparently, simply decided to stop coming to work. Rin figured that at least that was one less paycheck she had to scrounge up every week. Plus, the woman had been completely obnoxious. Rin kind of hoped she was desperately unhappy, wherever she was. Kind of, because it wasn't in Rin's nature to actively wish harm on other people, emotional or otherwise.
She was hunched over in a rolling chair, her chin held up in one hand, something that looked suspiciously like a pout on her lips. She was, to the outside observer boredly checking patient stats and appointments and organizing the filing system. In reality, however, she was boredly checking for any new messages in her inbox (none, how shocking) and boredly playing Solitaire in between refreshing the page. She was very carefully avoiding the overwhelming metaphors that playing Solitaire alone while desperately searching for human contact provided.
The heat in the clinic was still bearable this early in the morning, but her long hair was already sticking to the back of her neck and her temples. It didn't help her mood to know that the temperature would only become more oppressive as the day went on. She sighed loudly, blowing her bangs off her face and trying to make at least a little noise to fill the stifling emptiness of the clinic. And she was very, very carefully avoiding the fact that the clinic was pretty much her life, and all the unfortunate metaphors and symbolism that went along with that particular observation.
Tapping her foot against the floor, she tried to find a place for a red jack.
Half an hour later, grey hair still half damp from his shower and sticking to the back of his neck, Kakashi wandered down the dirty sidewalk he’d reacquainted himself with recently on behalf of an old neighbor. His feet were dragging, steps heavy as he approached the non-descript doors and plain window facing of the small medical clinic she worked at these days. The air was thick and heavy with humidity, sticking his jeans and white cotton t-shirt to his skin in the same manner of his hair. Each step was uncomfortable to the point where he was tempted to simply turn around and go back to his apartment to lay on his couch under his broken ceiling fan. But the pain in his eye was persistent and increasing, and part of his brain knew that he was simply fishing for excuses to continue avoiding her. Kakashi was suspicious of this part of his brain being attached to said painful eye. He was also suspicious of it being the part of him that wanted to see Rin again, and consequently being the piece that commanded his hand every time he’d needed to call in a medical expert over his years in Arceos.
The rest of his brain hated that part. Intensely.
He kept his head low as he walked past the windows, knowing that if he looked up and saw her, he just might bolt which would make it even harder to come back for her help next time. His hand hesitated over the door handle, the majority of his brain arguing strongly that she was definitely not the only doctor in the district that could treat him. But that treacherous part, the part infecting his eye so that he was forced to come here in the first place (the rest of his brain was certain of the truth behind this accusation) remained steadfast in it’s conviction that Rin, who had been there during the circumstances of the injury and who had been the first to treat it, was the only one who would manage to figure out what was wrong with it after so many years. Besides, it’s not like he hadn’t tried to see other professionals. Every single last one of them had blown him off, telling him that the pain was all his imagination and the infections were self-inflicted through mental trauma. Rin would never try to feed him that kind of bullshit.
He sighed and pulled the door, finally looking up with his right eye (the left too sore and swollen for him to be able to open and focus).
Rin looked up at the soft ringing that signaled someone at the door. Her eyes were momentarily blinded by the long exposure to the fuzzy blue glow of the computer screen, and the figure at the door was momentarily just a black silhouette with glowing gold edges. Deja vu hit Rin like a fist to the stomach. She didn't even need the second it took for her eyes to adjust to know who it was.
She straightened slowly in her seat, and unhurriedly - clinically, professionally - looked him up and down. Kakashi, she was unashamedly pleased to note, looked like shit. And while she would need to get closer (in theory) to prove that thesis, it gave her a nasty little thrum of pleasure to know that he was, at least physically, miserable. The part of her that had spent her whole life nurturing and caring and cleaning and bandaging was roiling uncomfortably in the back of her mind. The part of her that was stinging and aching and hurting (it seemed to be concentrated around her cheekbones...) was beginning a slow boil of what tasted deliciously like righteous anger.
Rin pushed her chair back slightly, then crossed her arms over her chest. While the gesture was meant to broadcast displeasure, distrust, and general dislike, the part of her that was still a teenager was desperately trying to protect herself, and to provide some small, roundabout means of comfort she had long-since learned she would never receive from anyone else - the tall man in front of her most definitely included.
Rin cocked her head to the side slightly. She wasn't about to make this easy for him.
Even though he’d braced himself for it, everything under his skin locked with nauseous tension as he finally managed to focus on her. Kakashi stood in the doorway, half in and half out, for a long, awkward moment as his brain argued the validity of his presence in the clinic with itself. Rin clearly did not want to see him, and while it definitely stung it was entirely justifiable.
That treacherous part of his brain felt crushed all over again at her open hostility, having obviously been hoping for at least a glimpse at whatever it was that he used to see in her eyes when she looked at him. That part of his brain was seriously outnumbered all of a sudden though, as the rest of him focused completely on the purple scars on her cheeks and the faint red glow of anger rising to the surface of her skin underneath them.
He shouldn’t have come. He should have just carved his fucking eye out and put a band-aid on it. Somehow he suspected that it would have been the least painful route in the long run. And maybe he’d have gotten lucky and died of blood loss, and never have had to endure this interminable moment under her unyielding, unsympathetic scrutiny.
But he was committed to the action now.
The first step was the hardest, leg so taught and tight that moving it was actually painful. The impact of the step shot up from his heel, through his knee, through his hip and jarred up his torso. The second step was a little looser, but more resigned, like a prisoner on the way to the gallows, which he supposed was accurate as he certainly felt like he was about to be executed. And really, who had more right to swing the axe than Rin?
His shoulders sagged hard under the weight of the air as he moved into the lobby and dug his hands deep into his pockets; glass door swinging silently shut behind him as he made it past the threshold and continued his way to the counter. When he reached it after what felt like an eternity, it was all he could do to keep his eyes level with the counter, rather than dropping completely to the floor like they wanted to. He supposed he should say something, anything really, but his throat was dry and constricted. Finally, his left hand pulled out of its hiding place and pushed his pale hair out of his left eye. He looked up, fixing the spot on the wall slightly to the right of the crown of her head and forced his scarred eyelid open, even as every muscle on the left side of his face screamed in protest.
Rin waited out the long moments as he walked up to the counter, unblinking, unmoving, and (she was trying very hard to assure herself) unfeeling. She waited again for what was probably a solid thirty seconds before she realized that Kakashi wasn't going to say anything. The goddamn fucking coward was going to leave it to her to initiate whatever was about to begin. Of course, she hadn't exactly said "goodbye," so maybe "hello" was supposed to be some sort of penance?
Oh, fuck that.
The anger that had been bubbling just beneath her skin was beginning to reach its boiling point. He was going to deny her the small victory of watching him stumble through an awkward greeting, begging for whatever the hell he wanted. She wanted to see him embarrassed for once in his life, and she wanted to be the cause of it - she deserved to be the cause of it. Apparently he just didn't have the good grace to realize that it was his turn to grovel and plead and give her just an ounce of satisfaction. Rin's mouth tightened as her jaw clenched to the point of endangering the integrity of her teeth, before she forced out a...greeting.
"Can I help you?"
Her voice was different from how he remembered it, harsher and grittier. But hearing it again in person had his muscles locking all over again to keep his knees from giving out.
“I think I have an eye infection,” he replied, voice completely devoid of, well, anything. It was his professional voice, the one he’d cultivated his entire life to reflect absolutely nothing about what was happening beneath the stony surface of his face. One that worked especially well when underneath was such a fucking mess he had no idea where to even start with his categorization.
Again, his mind tried to get his throat to throw more words at her, but he couldn’t manage to figure out which ones to use, or in what order. He’d never been any good at talking to people, and he’d never understood why Rin thought she should be the exception to that rule. The hand pushing his hair out of his eye dug it’s heel into the socket as a sharp jolt of pain so intense it was itchy raced along the inside of his scar and danced like angry, sharp spiders on the inside of his eyelid.
Rin wasn't sure what exactly she had expected him to say when she saw him again. Actually, she had spent the better part of her adult life convinced that she never actually would see him again. But maybe she had imagined. Maybe she had run increasingly complex and detailed scenarios through her head, complete with dialogue and stage cues. And maybe, if she had dreamt up those scenes, they had all had the running theme of Kakashi saying he was sorry. Possibly on his knees and weeping. The "sorry" had been the important part. The rest was mostly filler. So Rin was, understandably, distinctly not satisfied with "I think I have an eye infection."
She really couldn't control the skeptical arch of one eyebrow as she leaned back a little further in her chair. To get a better view of his face, of course, not to try and put as much distance as possible between them. Because that would be ridiculous. And pointless, since it was a matter of inches that was in question.
But Rin's eyes narrowed involuntarily as his hand went to his eye and the left side of his face gave a sort of spasm. The sight of his bloodied iris was bringing back flashes of memory through her mind, memories of things she had worked very, very hard to forget. It was typical of Kakashi. To wait until she felt almost balanced on her own feet, until she felt almost like she wasn't a walking car crash, until she had almost gotten her past buried, to show up and ruin everything. To kick the legs out from underneath her.
But what stung the most was the part of her that wanted to reach out and touch his face. To try and soothe away the pain that would drive him here. Rin wasn't sure if that was the part that was a trained caregiver, or the part of her that had always wanted something to take care of that had so desperately wanted to be needed by someone. Or if it was the tattered remains of that part of her that had thought Kakashi rose and set the sun in the sky, the part of her that had trusted him entirely when he'd smiled at her like that over drinks.
"Well, if it is infected, I'm sure scratching at it is really going help," she drawled, defenses snapping back into place. Rin glared at her half-finished game of Solitaire, and dropped the Jack of Hearts into place below the Queen of Spades, before closing the window and pushing herself out of her chair. Now standing at her full height she was still only eye level with his chest, but the act itself gave her a certain sense of satisfaction.
"So what, exactly, would you like me to do about it?"
Wasn’t that obvious?
Kakashi’s hand froze and his jaw clenched at her sarcastic observation. He screwed the eye shut and forced his hand away from it, digging it back into the front pocket of his worn jeans. The muscles in his shoulders and back cramped even more as Rin stood up and he had to fight the very real impulse to at least step back, even though logically she wasn’t in the slightest bit physically intimidating to him.
His dark right eye dropped back to the counter surface and he stared intently as her razor blade question hung in the air, taking fresh swipes at him with every second of silence he let drag by. She really wasn’t going to cut him even the slightest bit of slack, was she?
He coughed a little awkwardly, his shoulders snarling viciously at him as his lungs jarred them and his brain scrambled for something, anything to say. And then to figure out how much of it he could legitimately say. Was he supposed to tell her that she was the only doctor in the city that could help him? Was he supposed to tell her that he’d figured this out by seeing everyone else first and not being satisfied with their diagnosis? Was he even supposed to talk to her on such a mundane level? Was he supposed to pretend like the eye was just an excuse to see her? Would that make her less angry? Would anything?
“Well…you’re the doctor…” he mumbled to the counter, trailing off in hopes of avoiding digging himself even deeper into whatever pit she had cast him into, while trying his hardest to avoid saying anything that could be considered a lie should she continue to probe him with her scalpel-like tongue.
Was that sarcasm? Was the egotistical bastard actually trying to...what? mock her? tease her? Rin felt her anger spike again, hot in her veins, clouding her thoughts - not that she was really trying all that hard to hold on to coherency. She exhaled loudly through her nose in what on a less professional person might have been considered a snort. Like she was a bull and Kakashi was painted eight shades of red. It seemed appropriate - there was something almost feral in the wave of emotion slowly building behind her narrowed brown eyes.
Speaking of eyes, it suddenly occurred to Rin that Kakashi had yet to meet hers. Well, they'd been advised back in one of the endless lectures that made up their youths that you weren't supposed to look wild animals or the mentally unstable in the eyes - they viewed it as a challenge. For some reason this only served to fuel her frustration and her hands clenched into fists where they were crossed over her chest. It occurred to her distantly that she probably would have been just as irritated if he had made eye contact, and that there was almost nothing that Kakashi could do or not do at this point that wouldn't leave her seething.
The thought jarred Rin from the red-tinged haze that had been overtaking her vision. She was the doctor here, she was a professional, and she was an adult now, goddamnit. She was above this. And she would be damned if she let him see the effect his mere presence was having on her (she resolutely ignored the fact that the time for concealing her emotions had long since passed, and that she'd never been very good doing so anyway). Rin forced her body to relax, first her clenched fingers, then her aching jaw, and finally her stiff shoulders, her tensed spine. She let the cool, professional demeanor of Doctor slip into place, settling over her like a blanket. Just one more layer between them.
Rin breathed in. She eyed Kakashi - no, she eyed her patient with detached interest. His eye must have really been hurting him if it was enough to drive him anywhere near her. She had a job to do. That was all. No more, no less. This was the life she had chosen (the life she had chosen), and he wasn't about to change that.
"You're right," she said after a long moment, "I am the doctor. The exam rooms are this way." And she turned on her heel towards the door. She felt a strange sort of disconnect with the rest of her body, her legs surprising her as they moved with fluidity across the room. Her boots (the same ones she'd worn around him every day for however many years, but different ones at the same time) made soft, dull noises against the floor. Her arms fell loosely to her sides, fingertips brushing the fabric of her white coat. It wasn't until she was halfway down the hallway that she realized she had forgotten to breathe out.
Kakashi wasn’t sure what was worse, her pure loathing for his very existence or her cold, disconnection from him. At least when she was angry-
He shook his head, clearing it of the thought before it had time to fully form the ‘she was his’ that he knew was going to follow. She wasn’t his and she wouldn’t be again, not after how completely he’d fucked it up the first time around, so it was pointless to even entertain the notion. Her anger was directed at him, but it belonged to her.
He fell into step, two paces behind her, gaze straying up faintly from the floor tiles to stare at the boots that matched his. His steps echoed hers eerily, making the same rubber soled thud, hers light, his heavy. One after the other.
His brain tried to pull all kinds of symbolism from it, turning something so mundane into complex metaphor for his existence in relation to hers (hers soft and gentle, his heavy and abrupt but his always behind hers) and he rolled his eyes at it. This ridiculousness had to be that infected part of his brain, the part that he continued to suspect was
in league with the pain in his eye as it seemed to be getting worse the longer he was exposed to Rin’s psychological and physical presence impeding on his mental space.
Maybe those other doctors had been right; the pain was all in his head. Or at least caused by his head.
As Rin stepped into the examination room ahead of him, the urge to simply disappear was almost overwhelming and the opportunity was so…Black spots suddenly swam in front of his eyes and his mind blanked while his next step stumbled and he crashed into the doorframe.
The wood caught him right above his left eye socket, sending a screeching wave of pain through his eye swamping his senses as he tried to recover and catch hold of the frame to keep from falling flat on his face.
Smooth Kakashi, real smooth.
Rin was too focused on breathing and mentally planning the examination to see Kakashi trip, but the sharp intake of breath alerted her to something wrong, and she spun around just in time to see Kakashi's face smash into the doorframe, accompanied by a sickening crack. Her body moved before she was even done registering what had just happened. In an instant she had crossed the room and grabbed hold of his arm and lower back, and she was struck for the first time since his entrance just how much bigger than her he was.
"Oh, for the love of -" she muttered, hauling Kakashi through the door. "Come on, you've got to sit down." She tried desperately to stay focused on the chair by the exam table and not how warm Kakashi's body felt against hers.
Kakashi tried to stumble back from the impact, his consciousness still debatable as his eyes couldn’t really tell which black spots were from pain, which spots were from the impact and which were from whatever had afflicted him before he hit the door. Distantly he was aware of small hands on his frame and support, his arm around shoulders that were too low to the ground to be particularly efficient in holding him upright. He leaned against her for a second as he regained his balance and self-awareness, only to tense again when self-awareness brought his senses back to him.
She smelled like soap. It was faint but it felt like he was drowning in it, in how simple and clean it was.
He forced his limbs to comply with his will, standing on his own again and pulling away from her as much as he could manage to. Kakashi’s entire mind became focused on making it to the examination table, decidedly ignoring how well Rin still fit in the crook of his arm and against his side despite the changes a decade had wrought on their respective bodies.
Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, Kakashi pondered how terrible of an idea going to the clinic had turned out to be.
Rin felt momentarily crushed by the better part of Kakashi's weight suddenly pushing down on her. The two of them moved in an almost comical, stumbling zigzag towards the other end of the room, Kakashi practically doubled over, and Rin on the verge of crumpling to the floor. The top of her head brushed against his chin momentarily, and it distantly occurred to her that they both must be the exact same heights they used to be, and that that was probably the only physical aspect of her that had remained unchanged. Well, there were two other aspects on either side of her face that had proven pretty damn permanent, too.
Suddenly, Kakashi seemed to right himself, and he stood somewhat drunkenly and pulled away, his arm sliding off her shoulder like water. Rin kept her arm securely anchored around his waist, though, and half guided, half shoved Kakashi towards the exam table. She straightened herself, and shoved her bangs out of her face distractedly, breathing heavily and feeling the heat in the room press down on her almost as hard and Kakashi's all too real body.
"Now," she said somewhat breathlessly. "Let's see that eye."
It wasn’t fair that her breath be so harsh and labored in his ear. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t care what he’d done, on purpose or by accident, or what he hadn’t done but should have done, none of it, even cumulatively, was worth this cruel trick to his senses.
Kakashi gratefully pulled away from Rin completely to settle on the table. His instinct to run was steadily being overrun by his instinct to drag himself even closer as he reacquainted himself accidentally with all the things about her body that he knew so well but had purged so thoroughly from his memory. He rubbed his nose lightly through the fabric of his mask in effort to knock free her smell as it started to itch the inside of his nostrils.
He was allowed one deep breath of clean air before she called him close again to inspect the entire reason he was here. “Just cut it out and rid me of its hassle,” he muttered exhaustively as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. As the table was slightly higher than her waist level, and his upper body was longer than hers, Kakashi needed to slouch and hunch to bring his eye to a comfortable level for Rin’s inspection. He felt the knots in the long muscles lining his spine tighten and pull, telling him that he was in for a world of pain once he was stretched out on his couch again that evening.
Rin raised an eyebrow at his mumbled comment, an act she was finding herself doing with worrisome regularity. Mentally shaking herself, she walked over to the cabinet pressed against the wall and retrieved a small silver device from a drawer- it was a glorified flashlight, really, but it had the added bonus of looking a bit like an instrument of torture. While her mind was, for the most part, focused on doing her job as a doctor, her pride wasn't so quick to recover, and the thought of mentally terrorizing Kakashi just a bit was too appealing to overlook.
Rin took a deep breath before turning around (she was still out of breath from dragging him across the floor, that was all), then turned on her heel and closed the distance between them before she could think about it too much. Kakashi was hunched over, looking tired and unhappy. Good.
In one quick movement, Rin tipped his face back and used her thumb and index finger to hold his damaged eye open. "Now just hold still," she murmured, leaning in. Then she held the light up to his eye and flicked it on.
Kakashi was spared Rin’s attempted psychological warfare as he had buried his face in his hands as soon as she’d turned away. The room was tilting faintly in his peripheral vision, his already sore eye was now throbbing from the growing bruise on his brow, and the smell of soap was lingering, clenching his gut every time it got strong and then more so when it seemed to fade, and he was starting to feel a little nauseous. He gingerly shifted his bare palm along his forehead, searching for traces of a fever, which was the one symptom of infection that he hadn’t yet been subjected to. He supposed the skin felt a little warm, but it was probably due to the blood rushing to the swelling of the bump on his head rather than a real fever.
He sighed as Rin came back, taking one last breath of air before she invaded it again and knocked his hands away from his face so she could inspect him. He remained passive under her hands, doing his best to comply perfectly even though his eye screamed shrilly as she pried it open.
As the penlight hit his retina, it was all he could do to keep from recoiling as vicious pain burned down into his brain. His jaw ground together as every muscle in his body locked so tight he was almost shaking from the strain. But he remained still, even when his damnable left eye started to water in what was probably the most embarrassing display Kakashi had ever participated in, however unwilling.
It didn't escape Rin's notice when Kakashi's entire body seemed to steel itself, but she was only dimly aware of it, as almost all her attention was focused on the strange, bloody iris beneath the beam of light. The strange thing was, from what she could see there didn't appear to be any real damage to the eye, besides the discolored iris and perhaps a few mild scratches to the cornea Kakashi had no-doubt inflicted on himself with his constant rubbing. She pursed her lips just a bit at the thought.
She narrowed her dark eyes, and leaned even closer, her bangs falling forward to brush against Kakashi's face. His pupils were responding normally to stimuli. The delicate muscle of the iris itself wasn't damaged. The minute blood vessels around the eye were inflamed, yes, and now that she noticed it, the tears spilling from Kakashi's bad eye were getting her thumb wet. But she couldn't find anything that would indicate an infection. Infections usually spread from the site of an injury, but there simply wasn't anything that fit that description on Kakashi's eye.
She clicked off the penlight, but didn't lean back. Releasing her finger's hold on the delicate skin, she let Kakashi's eyelid slide closed. Rin didn't really realize that she was forgetting to breathe again as she traced the pad of her index finger along the long scar bisecting Kakashi's eyelid. The scar made her feel strangely...embarrassed. And frustrated. If she'd done the stitching today, it would be half as wide, barely visible from a distance. Sloppy, she thought in disgust, unforgivably sloppy. She ran her fingertip over the red, slightly swollen area over the arch of bone that had connected with the doorframe where a bruise was already beginning to form. Even if the eye made no sense, that had to be hurting.
Suddenly realizing how very, very (dangerously, stupidly) close she was to his face, she recoiled. "What -" she began, her voice cracking slightly from lack of use, "What exactly are your symptoms?"
Kakashi focused entirely on the pain, forcing himself to revel in its throb to the point where he started mentally amplifying it. He latched on to it, using it as a blanket to drown out the feather-light brush of her hair against his cheekbone and the knowledge that if he leaned forward just an inch and tilted his head slightly he could bury himself in the crook of her neck. He used it to drown out the urge to do just that and the conviction that surely her skin would manage to make him feel better.
The pen clicked off, and had the muscles banding his chest not been screwed quite so tightly he would have sighed in relief. But with the pain receding, came increased awareness of her breath hitching and hovering as it skittered over the outer surface of his mask, the increased awareness of her slim finger as it glided over his smooth scar tissue, and the increased awareness that she was lingering so very close to him, despite her initial scathing objections to his presence. His breathing was shallow, clenched by his ribcage and suffocated by that cloud of soap that seemed to cling to Rin.
She pulled back suddenly and he was grateful. Any longer and he might very well have forgotten why her hand lingered as it had on his scar, and why it was so crucial that he re-implement the chasm of space between them. Her voice cracked, and that more than anything she could possibly have said shoved Kakashi firmly back into their scripted roles. That emotion hadn’t been for him. But her words did a very good job of reinforcing it.
He recognized the confusion, the hesitation. She was two minutes away from telling him that there was nothing wrong with him, just like everyone else. He straightened suddenly, left eyelid dropping smoothly into place as he turned away from her and stared at the door. He stretched his jaw under his mask, cracking it lightly as he tried to figure out just how willing he was to sit through the same conversation for the ten thousandth time over the course of a decade.
His eye hurt, a lot. That was his symptom. Additionally: blurry vision, black spots, popped blood vessels, itchy, temporary blindness, swelling, strain related exhaustion, but mostly constant, throbbing pain. He was supposed to have an infection. Rin would listen, frown and then point out that there was no visible evidence of festering wound and that there was no heating in the area indicating the body trying to kill malicious bacteria. He would shrug. She would frown more, maybe glare. Any other doctor would ask the source of his original injury, but she already knew so they’d be able to skip that part of the conversation and move right on to the conclusion. She would suggest that perhaps his pain was a result of his unresolved guilt regarding the history of his wound. And if she said that, he wouldn’t be able to blow her off like he had all the other doctors.
This whole time, he’d always been able to say that these doctors couldn’t see the problem because they didn’t really understand the injury. If Rin saw it, she’d be able to figure out what it was; surely she would spot some sliver of shrapnel that had been caught in his skin when she had stitched him up. Or something. It had to be something.
He wouldn’t be able to bear hearing her tell him it was nothing. He just couldn’t do it.
Decision made, he slid his feet to the ground, taking a second to steady himself on the examination table as the room tilted precariously. “Thanks for taking a look.”
He hated how his voice echoed so hollow in his chest cavity and how cold it was as it climbed through his throat, but at the moment, he found solidity in his ability to be professional and disconnected. He just needed to cling to that, and eventually everything would straighten out again.
Rin saw something glass over in Kakashi's eyes. For some strange, stupid reason, it hurt. And for one strange, stupid moment, she was sixteen again, trying to get just a bit of his attention and failing as usual. He was doing it again, he was brushing her off, he was leaving, just like he was always leaving, always left her. He'd left her all alone--
But Rin wasn't sixteen anymore, and she felt the anger she'd managed to smother with professionalism was burning through its restraints and her bone and muscle and skin. She felt blood rushing up under her face and in her ears, drowning out the rational part of her brain that said gone was the way she liked Kakashi best.
"Kakashi!" It was the first time she'd addressed him by name, the first time she'd said his name since...since she'd left. It felt strange on her tongue, like another language she was fluent in but had had no cause to use in years. "Don't you dare," she breathed, her voice thick and rasping to her ears.
Somewhere her nails were digging deep into her skin. And in somewhere in another lifetime, they were digging into his.
The fury cutting out the syllables of his name hesitated his step, and once he hesitated he was trapped. It was either stop and make the motion purposeful and therefore maintain control of it, or try to keep going and let her know just how hotly she could burn him.
He stopped, motion smooth and deliberate, spine straight and shoulders squared as he faced the door that suddenly felt miles away. He looked back over his shoulder, eyebrow arching mildly in the physical equivalent of the ‘don’t you dare what?’ that terror was sticking to the back of his throat.
Terror of her wrath, so intense and boiling so close the surface of her seemingly tiny frame. Terror of what exactly it was that she was trying to stop him from doing. And terror of what his body just might be tempted to do the second she openly denied him the right to do it.
The smug arch of his eyebrow was trying to shove her back into her traditional role of blushing, stammering sycophant, and only made the urge to lash out - verbally and physically - that much stronger. Did he honestly think that he still had that much control over her? Or that she still couldn't read his body language the way other people read books? Or in this case, flashing neon signs? Kakashi never seemed to catch on to the fact that he spoke with his whole body, and she'd long-since learned every nuance of the way he moved. The way he'd angled his body away from her, supposedly so set and strong and unmovable, all it did was emphasize the fact the Kakashi was deliberately trying to push her away, but the way his muscles were tensed all along his spine - that said something else entirely. Kakashi had always relied on his mask more than even he seemed aware of. Although, really, that was just another barrier between them that had become a moot point. It wasn't like she didn't know what was under there.
"You don't get to do this anymore, Kakashi," she said lowly, her breath shaking and shallow from barely contained emotions. "You don't get to just show up here and then just run away like you always do - I'm not here for your convenience," she hissed. Her bangs were falling in her eyes again and her clothes were sticking to her skin from the humidity. Everything seemed to be consciously trying to goad her into some sort of action. The idea began to form in the back of her mind that she was actually in danger of physically attacking Kakashi. It was stupid and childish, but the overwhelming frustration of his presence made her want to kick and scream and cry until she was in an exhausted pile on the floor. It was ironic then, she supposed, that she'd never so much as thrown a tantrum as a child. Well, she was a long way from the happy, loving girl she'd been. Maybe she needed to make that fact just a little more clear.
The list of abuse Kakashi would take, and willingly at that, from Rin was long and intricate. She was probably the only person still living for whom he would, without hesitation, wrench his entire existence into abstract pretzel formations in effort to accommodate her. But even with such extensive grounds for her to romp freely upon, she still managed to stomp carelessly across the very few very tender pieces he kept to himself. And if he could ever be goaded into admitting he cared at all, he would be forced to characterize that it wasn’t the fact that she did it that really bothered him at all. It was the fact that she went out of her way to do it on purpose.
“I came here for your professional expertise,” the words were perfectly solid, spoken with care and precision, his tone cut out of the same glacier as everything he’d managed to say to Rin so far that morning. It was designed to cut and divide the mess of their personal history from the structure of medical consultation. It was designed to keep the six foot thick wall between his present and his past completely and utterly intact, and to force her to accept that wall’s presence. “As you’re about to tell me that there’s nothing wrong with me, and therefore nothing you can do to help, there’s little point to me lingering.”
And there it went. The floodgates were as good as decimated.
"Oh, right," Rin shouted, "You came here, out of all the various medical facilities you could've gone to in at least two districts, because you wanted my professional expertise. Take some fucking responsibility for once in your life, Kakashi." Rin felt like an open wound. All the words were crimson-tinged and spilling out of her, and while a small part of her wanted desperately to just fucking shut up, the majority of her was winning by far, and it wanted blood. Hers or his, it didn't matter. But it demanded sacrifice.
"Or maybe that's the problem, huh Kakashi?" she snarled, venom dripping from her lips like poisoned honey. "Maybe that's the diagnosis you've been getting for a while now. About possible emotional and pyschological ties you might have to that particular injury?" She was rounding on him, when had her feet started moving? Didn't matter now, her hand was on his arm, grabbing and forcing him around to face her. "Tell me, Kakashi, dear, do you have anything in your long and decorated past for which you have reason to be ashamed?"
Rin was barely eye level with his chest, but she was far too intoxicated by fury to even care about the fact that he was big and she was small and those were the facts that had always dictated their relationship.
"Who do you think you're fooling?" she said in a whispered hiss. Then - because she couldn't stop herself, because she was too far gone now to ever go back, had been for years and year and years - she reached out and yanked the black fabric down his face, not caring if her nails caught skin. "There's glass between us!" she shouted in his face, fingers still fisted in the fabric of his mask. Somewhere, she was screaming that this was a Very Bad Idea.
Despite his tension, Kakashi’s body moved with surprising fluidity as she pried at him. Rin was allowed to grab him, to hit him, he was completely malleable to her physicality whenever she chose to impose it on him. Wave after wave of righteous fury assaulted him through her voice, her words lashing him mercilessly as he stood still and took it all in. He deserved it, and she was right.
But then she went too far again, with his entire body exposed to her she went for his eye.
He didn’t feel the shift of the air on his skin as she ripped his mask away, and he didn’t feel how her fist twisting the fabric was squeezing his windpipe. His brain seemed completely and utterly disconnected from his body, like he was standing against the wall by the doorway watching this automaton version of himself as the mechanical hand pulled out of the front pocket of his jeans and slid around Rin’s wrist.
His now exposed face had all the expression of a rock, left eye closed completely and right half lidded like he was almost asleep as he looked down at her. He recognized her as Rin, registered her as the girl he knew, but under his cold dissection he started to become fully aware of just how much the woman before him was glossed over with the forgiving paint of memory and wishful thinking. His hand viced slowly, thumb digging into the pressure point on the inside of her wrist as he stared down at her face, waiting to see how it would change. The grip around his throat eased as her fingers were forced to release him and he pulled her hand away, very deliberately settling it back down against her side and releasing her.
His hand slid back into the front pocket of his jeans as his head cocked to the side slightly. What did she want from him? He rolled his jaw finally, cracking it as his mind roiled in a strange, opaque white haze.
She would have bruises on that wrist, she was fairly sure of it. She'd always been annoyingly fragile, even back in the military. Just bumping (or being forcibly shoved) into corners and walls and sometimes other people left her various shades of black and blue and other colors not generally associated with bruises under her clothes. It was a fact she'd kept to herself. She didn't particularly care at the moment, however. She could barely feel her wrist, actually, let alone any pain Kakashi's vice-like grip might have caused it. It hung down against her hip like a dead thing, loose and dangling. She thought that it probably wasn't strictly considered healthy to have such gruesome imagery so readily at hand. Maybe she could blame the influence of current company.
Kakashi looked older, she noted with some surprise. It seemed like a rather obvious result of the passage of ten years, but it struck her as strange, never the less. It was probably the source of numerous insecurities that Kakashi had been prettier than her as a young man. Kakashi had been prettier than the better part of the population, of course, but a girl's pride could only take so much. But that prettiness had translated into something entirely different now. It wasn't that Kakashi wasn't handsome - he was (he really, really was) but there was something almost feral in the gaunt, hungry look around his eyes. He'd finally grown into his nose, she noted, and the line of his jaw was still the same. His hair was longer, but so was hers, having been one of her first defiances against the strict military rules that had kept it cropped short for the better part of her life.
Did she look as old as he did? She honestly had no idea - she avoided mirrors, as a rule. Vanity was a luxury she'd weaned herself off of after mirrors stopped showing her the face she expected to see. She rubbed at her cheek with the back of her other hand absently, eyes never leaving his face. Of course she had changed - puberty had finally seemed to catch up with her all at once after leaving the endless exercise regimes and years of being easily mistaken for a boy from the back. She'd spent a long time at odds with that, feeling like a walking invitation on every street she went down. But she'd adapted and she'd grown accustomed and she'd kept moving, because that was all she'd ever been able to do, in any situation.
She felt old, anyway. Some days more than others. She wasn't sure she was supposed to feel like that at twenty-nine. How old did that make him, then? Thirty...two?
His mouth was same. His mouth looked the same, anyway. Why wasn't he saying anything? She felt the frustration he seemed on a singular mission to dredge out of her coming to the surface again, pulling her muscles into tight knots along her shoulders. He'd always been aloof, but this was different. This was...She didn't know what this was and it was making her fucking angry. He just couldn't seem to stop himself from doing exactly the wrong thing, could he? It was like some sort of social psychosis.
Finally, she raked her hands through her hair and snarled, "What is wrong with you? I don't - I just - I can't - " She gave up, making another growling nose, and ground the heels of her hands against her eyelids, in an unconscious imitation of his own habit. She was about to fucking lose it. She just wished she had a fucking clue what it was she losing.
Kakashi's good eye followed the motion of her hand against her cheek with unexpected sharpness. Catching it and honing down on it like a bird of prey to some unsuspecting mouse. Did they hurt? Her scars, those purple welts his incompetence had left on her skin. Did they still hurt the way his did?
A frown brewed stormily across his brow as he stared with what could probably be interpreted as unnerving intensity. The muscles and bone under her skin were shifting, he supposed she was saying something to him but he couldn’t hear her through the thick buzzing in his ears and then her hair was tugged back, baring her cheekbone, her jaw line, her ear, and that sweet curve of her neck that had been so enticing to his senses barely ten minutes ago.
His entire brain seemed to be experiencing technical difficulties, leaving him in the wasteland of off-air snow and no way to understand exactly what his hand was doing as he watched it glide across that exposed cheek. The warmth of her skin registered, testament to still broiling anger surely, but instead of scalding him like it was meant to, he was drawn to it like a moth. His thumb stroked over the tattoo, once so light he barely skimmed the surface and then again, more solid. Did it hurt?
He was vaguely aware of something bubbling up from his gut, burning through his stomach and up the back of his throat before he could finally catalogue its source. He wanted them to hurt. He wanted desperately for them to hurt. His other hand was suddenly on her other cheek, her jaw cradled so gently even as his muscles clenched solid to fight back against the sickening urge to make them hurt.
The second the thought reared its head, cold shock banished it back to the pit of his belly and he leaned forward suddenly, brushing his lips soothingly against the first scar. “I’m sorry.”
The words scratched past his vocal chords, fighting through an already dry throat that had become a desert now that he found himself drowning in the smell of soap all over again and her warmth. “I’m sorry,” again as he kissed the other scar, like he was kissing a child’s scrapes better, like he was kissing the foot of a deity.
He wasn’t entirely sure for what he was apologizing, there were just too many things. Things he had done, that he should have done, things he hadn’t done, things he’d thought about doing…and then there was that one thing that he was about to do that would probably make everything even worse. While the thought occurred to him, it didn’t matter. He was committed to the action, completely and utterly ensnared in her, and too desperate to know that there was still some piece of her he could steal.
His lips sealed against hers without preamble or hesitation, some part of him knowing that if he let her react first he’d never get away with it.