[fic post] note the trees, because the dirt is temporary
Title: Staring at the Sun.
Characters: Kakashi, Hayate, Genma
Warnings: NC-17, sexuality, masturbation

Summary: Kakashi has issues.

Comments: Vague spoilers for Kakashi Gaiden. If you're not current with the manga, you might end up confused. And spoiled.
______________________________




_____________________________________________________________

He'd be lying if he said he wasn't a fucked up person.

If he said he knew who the hell he was half the time, then he was being generous. The truth was,
the real big truth of it was, that Kakashi was a liar. "I'm not at all who you think I am."

He never got why people laughed when he said that. Was he being terribly cute? He never quite trusted people who said they liked him, either. Something about it all just struck him as disingenious.

It was fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate, that very few people had lived to remember a Kakashi
who wasn't the way they said he was: over-all infuriating, always late, always full of excuses, always
snickering gleefully at the prospect of certain death. Always making faces behind his mask, he'd add;
because if that wasn't irony, he wasn't sure what was.

"Keep doing that," his father was fond of telling him. "one day it'll freeze that way." Or, less serious. "You disgrace
the beautiful Hatake lineage with those looks."

Kakashi had never put much stock in the beauty of his lineage--and even at that young age, he was
thinking words like lineage, and progeny, and esteem. "Men don't need to be beautiful," he'd argued. "What's
outside isn't important. That's just what others see."

He'd looked thoughtful a moment, then said "If there wasn't an outside, Kakashi, what would keep the insides hidden?"

A week to the day on which he'd said those words, Kakashi's father committed seppuku in their
kitchen. Disemboweled himself, spilling his insides outside. He'd done it late at night, so the blood had quite enough time to clot and grow sticky. Kakashi thought it looked like plum-paste, and at first he wasn't sure that wasn't what it was. That he hadn't just dropped a jar of something, and forgotten to clean it up. But then, there he was, still lying there, all sort of crumpled up.

The neighbors him scream that morning--long and loud--and came and took him from the house.

They'd cleaned the old man up, and laid him out. Scrubbed the floor as best they could, lit
incense, and led Kakashi back to say his goodbyes.

The clear crisp light picked out every detail in the room, frank, unforgiving. It was supposed
to be a beautiful day.

Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut, and refused to look. "I don't want to see. That's not my father..."

Maybe they saw the way he simmered, the way he shook, because they were quick to fetch a
square of black muslin, and fold it just so over the body's face. "Please. Say goodbye to him...so
his soul may find some peace."

Kakashi, on that day, clenched his tiny fists, and condemned his loving father to hell, as such a
hell even existed.

Someone had the frame of mind to grab him up, turn him away with shielding hands and
protective arms. "He's just a child. He doesn't realize what he's saying. The shock will wear off,
eventually. Give him time."

_____________________________________________________________________

Kakashi entered Konoha academy in his fifth year.

He had vague memories of an inheritance, and provisions made,
everything taken care of over his head, behind his back. It wasn't important where he stayed; wherever it was, they made sure he was comfortable and had everything he needed. Maybe he was spoiled. He didn't care. When he made the announcement, nobody argued. His uncle simply nodded and made the arrangements, told him what a mature lad he was.

That very same year, on the very first day of his attendance, he began wearing the mask. The adults must've thought he'd gone crazy, but they humored him. They all figured it was a passing phase, and that once the kid fulfilled whatever conditions he'd set for himself, he'd give it up.

It took at least three days for the anxious whispering to start. "I wonder what he looks like under
there." "I wonder what he's hiding." "The Hatake progeny? He must be handsome..."

It was then that Kakashi discovered, looks _were_ important. To girls.

To the other boys, one in particular, things were another story. "Yeah? Well _I_ could care less.
You must think you're something special, hah?" Round-faced little rooster of a brat, black hair
and very little concept of personal space. He had the audacity to laugh. Right in Kakashi's face.

Said, in no uncertain terms. "I'm more special than you, I'll tell you what!"

Kakashi was taken aback--mostly by his breath--but partly, he'd admit, by the kid's attitude.
Three days in, and already apparent as the class screw-up. Uchiha in name only.

"So, prove it," Kakashi said.

"Oh, I will. One day, I'm totally gonna kick your ass."

He was, Kakashi remembered, a brilliant nuisance; but he never did totally kick Kakashi's ass, or
his anything. "Quit being so immature," he'd say. "Think of the mission."

Kakashi wonders, if he hadn't died, what would've become of the six-years-old threat. He
wonders if his ass would even've been worth kicking, at that point.

______________________________________________________________

He'd be lying if he said he learnt anything from Obito's death. Right away, at least. He'd be lying
if he said that was when he took it in his head to change, for good. To be better. That was the unbearable lightness of being Kakashi. He just didn't learn. He went, and he did, and he looked back with enough prescience to regret; but that was it.

Sometimes he'd get to thinking those days were behind him. When he was feeling too philosophical for his own good, he'd divide his life in two parts: before and after. As he grew older, his before got bigger, and his after shrunk; a sort of karmic doppler effect. He'd once tried to explain this to Asuma. "Because the closer they get to you, the tighter the soundwaves stack."

This'd gotten Asuma's stock response, "Man, too many late nights. Not good for a person's sanity."

At age twenty-years, fresh-faced and smiling behind a yard of black fabric, Kakashi was old enough to drink, and young enough to think he knew better.

If he'd had a point to prove with the mask, he'd long since forgotten. It'd gone from phase to compulsion, and become something people carefully never mentioned, or spoke about, or noticed.

And he could play right along. Pretend that he wasn't, for all intents and purposes, missing three
quarters of his face; smile at jokes, purse his lips thoughtfully, frown hard, mock those who
deserved it.

"What changed?" Hayate asked him one day, down at the local tea-spot where they'd sometimes
meet. "I don't recall you ever being like this."

"Ah, funny thing," Kakashi sighed, discretely rolling his mask down to the dip of his chin, and
sipping his tea. "One day I got lost on the road of life."

Hayate gave him a terrible dead stare, (the kind that usually ended in heads rolling) and said:
"Consider carrying a map, then." He drank with an ominous air, terrible and serious and polite. "If you're late one more time, I'm afraid I'll have to take measures."

Kakashi snorted into his sencha, perfectly splattering it across his nose and face, then wiping it
away with his sleeve. He couldn't explain why he laughed. It wasn't the incongruity of Hayate. It was the fact that he reminded him of someone. "Take measures?"

"What he means," said Genma, looming calmly over Kakashi's shoulder. "Is that he'll kick your
ass."

Hayate gave a curt nod. "Definitely."

Kakashi sobered quickly and said, "Better men have tried and failed."

"That sounds like a challenge," Hayate said, bit of a half-smile creeping past the edge of his cup. "You know I'm incapable of refusing a challenge."

All right. Kakashi would be lying, again, if he said he weren't still just a bit of a jerk. Old habits
died hard, and even when they did, the smell could hang around for some time. "I'm not usually
in the habit of fighting my own team-mates, but since you've so graciously extended the
invitation..." here he stood, one flick setting his mask in place. Appearances, he thought, it'd just be strange otherwise.

Genma shuffled to the side, hands dropping from his pockets to hang ready. "Oi, oi, he didn't
mean here."

Hayate hadn't moved; not so much as even a muscle, not so much as a tic. His teacup poised at
his lip, he said softly "He's right. Allow me to finish my tea first."

They fought that afternoon, in the dusty heat of the practice yard.

Hayate was first to go down, and he lay in the orange dirt, pale and panting on all fours, face
streaked with rust-colored sweat. It would have been victory by default, since Kakashi's final
palm-strike had never connected; but when Genma stepped in to declare it, Hayate let out a yell.

"Kiii-AAAIIIYYY!" Like that, he twisted up from the ground, eyes white with rage, and whipped
his lanky self around like a Saracen blade.

Whipped all the way around a shocked Kakashi, and by god, kicked him right in the ass.

___________________________________________________________________

"Well," Genma reflected later, over the hospital cot. "That is what I said he'd do."

Kakashi had just winced, and laid there with his backside bare beneath a large icepack. "Would you call that irony?"

Genma flicked his toothpick a few times, like a cat playing with some string, eyes lazily
following the movement. "No. Irony would've been him kicking you in the teeth. Something
counterintuitive like that."

"Subtle," said Kakashi. "I believe you just called me a butt-head."

"I believe you deserved it."

Kakashi frowned darkly, for the benefit of no-one. "Just whose side are you on?"

The door creaked guiltily open, then, and a dour faced nurse led an even more dour faced Hayate
into the room.

He glanced around quickly, his eyes just skiiiiddding over Kakashi's naked rear.

Kakashi waved at him, cheer and dead-pan. "Hey, eyes up here, please."

The nurse murmured something then left. Hayate raised a hand to his mouth, and nervously
cleared his throat. "How is your...um..."

"Oh, my ass?" Kakashi said, casual as you please. "Sore, but not as much as my pride."

Hayate furrowed his brow delicately, and scrutinized the floor; shadows pooled beneath his eyes when he did this. He looked, at once, both dangerous and far far too breakable. "I apologize. That was...ah...rather unsportsman-like of me."

"Funny as hell, though." Genma muttered around his toothpick.

"Genma-senpai!" Hayate growled. "Shouldn't you be setting a better example?"

Genma shrugged. "S'pose so."

Hayate's voice dropped an even lower octave. "No wonder I've started down the path to delinquency. I should quit you. I really should."

"Relax, Hayate-kun. You lost your temper. It happens."

And then Hayate said it. The thing that one should never ever say to Genma, or around him, or
to any of his friends, or anyone who might conceivably get it back to him. "No. I'm not like you."

There was a small audible crack in the room, a sound not unlike what a more romantic sort
would describe as Genma's heart breaking. But actually, it was his toothpick, bitten in two.

Hayate's eyes went wide, and his voice went small. "I'm...sorry. I shouldn't have said
that."

Genma drew a shaky breath; and wasn't it convenient how everyone in the room seemed to forget
about Kakashi, laying there with his trousers down around his hips.

"It's okay," said Genma. "It's fine." He let out his breath, and plastered over the hurt with a
vague smile.

Hayate reached for the doorknob, said: "I'm sorry, I'll go now," and with great formality, let
himself out.

_______________________________________________________________

Word of Kakashi's 'injury' spread fast. He was out of the hospital before supper, and already he
had well-wishers. So many of them. Such a wealth of consideration, he was frankly
overwhelmed.

"Hey, how's yer ass? Heard you took a real pounding today!"

Kakashi smiled a very forced smile that no-one could see, and waved to each concerned party in
passing. "It's fine, thank you! How's yours?" He forsaw a night of very heavy drinking ahead.

The old Kakashi would've gotten angry. The before him would've sulked. He'd have gone after
Hayate and said spiteful horrible things, things he'd end up regretting later; he knew. The before
him hadn't been very good at keeping friends.

"The thing you need to understand about Hayate," said Genma. "Is that he can't stand to lose. It
infuriates him."

Kakashi sank back against a nearby wall, under the shade of green awning, and tried to ignore the
clammy cling of his sweat soaked mask. "Nobody likes to lose."

"Yeah, well. Some of us take it better than others."

"Hmm. Like you, for example?" Kakashi touched his chin, and eyed Genma speculatively a while. "You strike me as a fairly confident person. Let's fight."

Genma tilted his head this way and that, like he was honestly thinking about it; blinking long
unaffected lashes, hands clasped behind his back, open stanced. "No thanks."

"You're not even a little curious as to who'd win?"

"Can't say I am."

"You're not the least bit threatened by me?"

Genma blinked again, still standing there with his feet apart, hips slightly cocked. "Should I be?"

"What'd happen if attacked you, right now?" Kakashi shifted his weight, and Genma didn't so much as twitch.

"Bad idea, telegraphing your moves like that."

"Ah, you're right." He eyed the man again, up and down. He was getting bored of this. "Shall we fuck, then?"

"Okay."

One of these days Kakashi, someone once told him, that mouth of yours is gonna get you in trouble.

Genma did not waste a move; grabbed Kakashi by his vest collar, spun him into the narrow
alleyway, and kissed him up against the wall, mouth over mask. Slam-kissed him, body to body, shoving a thigh between his legs, pinning and pressing. And just when he would've gotten a reaction, whether Kakashi had any say in the matter or not, he stopped.

"Called your bluff?" Genma whispered.

Kakashi arched his shoulder up off the wall, shoving back a bit. "You licked my mask. You licked _cloth_."

One last kiss, on the cheek this time, and Genma skipped back a few steps; quite satisfied of
himself, and the fact that Kakashi wouldn't retaliate. Another second's consideration, leaning
back a bit with his hand in his pocket, then Genma turned and walked back out onto the street.
"I'll see you tomorrow," he said. "Don't forget to bring that report.

Kakashi took a deep damp breath, adjusted his fly, and tore down his mask. Stupidly, he called
out, "Yeah, okay," and slid slowly down the wall; scraping his back as he went.
____________________________________________________________________

Kakashi was no stranger to sex. Which was not to say he and sex were the bossomest
of companions...but he'd had it. He'd managed not to make a _complete_ prat of himself. Most of
his partners seemed to enjoy what he did. He knew a little more than your standard vanilla missionary routine. He did not begrudge oral.

He could say, with confidence, that he and sex were on familiar terms.

Familiar, the way he was with his right hand, and on alternating days, his left. Both hands were
reserved for special occasions, and a pillow was when he couldn't be arsed for either.

And when even that proved too much of a bother, there was his good old pal alcohol. Sake.
Nihonshu. And a bath hot enough to kill whatever dying scraps of libido remained.

Maybe he had been bluffing. Maybe he hadn't. Same difference as far as his body was
concerned. It wasn't Genma, and it wasn't personal, he told himself. It wasn't his gender, or his
sex. It wasn't the fact of his cock, or his walk, but just the fact that he looked and smelled nice,
and felt nice, and kissed Kakashi like he could've meant it.

He could tell, already, that alcohol wasn't going to cut it that night.

He got off twice in pretty short succession, crouched on his bare bedroom floor, with the
bedframe at his back, whimpering and biting into his wrist. First time, it was two fingers and a
thumb, short quick strokes base to head, and he was picturing Genma on his belly, ass in the air
just like _he'd_ been at the hospital. Kakashi rutted him like a wild dog, and Genma thrust back,
shaking and gasping and clawing the sheets, hair plastered sweatily to his face. He came hard
that time, too quick. Not the way he'd have done things, if given his druthers.

So there was the second time, second long excruciating time, fucking into his lubed fist and
rocking back against the bedframe 'til he thought the wall might give. That time, it was Hayate's
frowning lips, wrapped indecorously round the head of his cock. Hayate drooled, and his face
got red and sweaty, and picturing him afterwards, he'd be hard as hell, thick and heavy, and ever
so slightly curved.

Kakashi supposed he'd have to let Hayate fuck him, if it came to that. He'd have to flip the glum serious Hayate onto his back, stand his cock on end, and rock down on it, he'd fuck and be
fucked, and Hayate's face would screw up in a most undignified manner, teeth bared, shocked
eyes. Kakashi wondered if he'd growl, or maybe just wheeze, and how hard would he thrust with
that compact blade of a body? Would he rather be on top? Would he use just his hips? Or his
whole body?

Second time. He came arched way back, grinding his heel up against his arse-hole, straining his
thighs, drooling, panting like a dying thing.

And he wondered why he was still alone.

______________________________________________________________

"You're a mess," Hayate told him, exchanging old blood-soaked cloth for fresh.

Kakashi grinned redly at him, before remembering he still wore his mask, and in that case all
Hayate saw were his eyes--one grey, one red-- rolling slowly back in their sockets. "Not looking
so hot yourself, sunshine."

"Please, would you stop talking, and concentrate on not dying?"

"Can't stand to lose," Kakashi said, hating the way his breath gurgled in and out of his throat.
Especially when he laughed. What was going on down there anyway? So much blood. A lot of
it was his, he could tell.

Hayate's eyes got big, white as they were the day he'd put his zori to Kakashi's rear. "This isn't
funny."

"Maybe...not from where you're sitting," Kakashi grunted. "But from down here, trust me, it's
fucking hilarious. One big cosmic...joke."

Hayate grabbed the com-link from his ear and shook it, slammed it against the ground a few
times for good measure. "Not working," he panted. "It's not working!"

For some reason, Kakashi found this hilarious too. Even when he was screaming and cursing
and hacking off enemy limbs, Hayate never dropped the polite speech. Everything he said came
out as "If you'd please go fuck yourself," and "I humbly invite you to drop dead." Someone had
gone to a lot of trouble in raising him right.

"Please work. If you'd please just WORK, god-damn it!" Hayate shook it
again, then shouted into the mouthpiece. "Unit B! Can you hear me! UNIT B! We have men
down! Please come in. Somebody."

There was a long dreadful stretch of silence, Hayate trembled convulsively, com-set rattling in
his hand. "All right. All right..." he sniffed, wheezing and hoarse, and hunched over. And his speech
got very plain all the sudden, eerily calm and simple. "We'll get out of this. We will. I will get you
out of this."

Kakashi couldn't be sure, but he thought he might've wet his trousers, hard to say; could've been
blood. "I think I've pissed myself," he said. "This is so embarrassing."

"It's okay," said Hayate. His lower lip trembled. "It doesn't matter."

"Hey," Kakashi felt his hand move, felt dozens of small cuts ground full of sand, dirt, flecks of
treebark. He never felt himself lift it up though, just saw it floating across his line of sight and
scrabbling at Hayate's blood slicked arm. "Hey. Don't...go to pieces on me. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

Hayate carried him about twenty yards, on his back, into the midst of a fresh fire-fight. With
literal fire.

Kakashi remembered lots of jostling and shouting, and very serious people saying things like:
"What the hell happened? Your com went dead."

It all seemed so very unreal. Like something he was watching on television. Everything was
flat, just one never-ending, two dimensional plane. Sky, trees, dirt and orange licking flame, all
compressed into a narrow band and knocked ever so slightly askew. The only thing that wasn't
flat, the only thing with any weight or substance, was Hayate.

"Don't move," he said. I hope you wouldn't move, please. "I'll stay with you. Just don't move."

Kakashi lay there and lay there for a long time, staring at the acid white disk of a sun, eyes wide
open, and thinking: "This is it."

This is it. This is really it.

It's happening. It's going to happen now. Any minute now. The spreading warmth had already
turned to numbness, and his ears had started ringing, and things were compressing much faster
now. Too fast. He wasn't sure he liked this picture anymore.

"I'm–gonna–I'm gonna die," he slurred.

"No. No, you're not. No, you're not--"

_________________________________________________________________

All he'd ever heard people talk about was the sense of overwhelming _peace_ and well-being,
and oneness with the universe. Made Kakashi wonder if he'd done something wrong.

All he'd felt was blank, stark, big terror. Terror and cold and numbness, and whiteness.

"I was supposed to feel at peace," he rasped, hoarse from all the tubes they'd shoved down his
throat.

The chair next to his bed creaked, and Kakashi carefully rolled his right eye in that direction.
"What a cheat," he sniffed, plucking a bit of pilling from his blanket.

Genma smirked at him, and said "That's death for you," an appropriately vague pause and then,
"except that you didn't die. Exactly."

"I didn't? Thanks. I wasn't so sure there for a minute."

"You're getting better at sarcasm."

"I wasn't being sarcastic," Kakashi sighed.

Kakashi spent an unmemorable week in the hospital, and pretty much slept through it. Hayate
visited a few times, as Genma reported, but never when he was awake. "Because he wasn't sure
what to say."

"How is he, though?"

"He checked himself out two days ago. But...I don't think he's well enough to be walking
around," said Genma, flicking a glance at the bed-rail, then the bed-tray. His lashes, in the light,
seemed sharp enough to cut glass. "Raidou says he saw his bandages. Said they looked pretty
bad...so...I don't know."

Kakashi turned his head towards the window, looked out. He kept expecting to see that same
acid white disc of a sun he'd seen before, but found only dense gray haze; warm and static and
smelling like sharp wet earth. The window was open. He wanted it kept that way. "It's my fault.
I used it too much, exhausted my chakra."

"That doesn't matter now. It's not about fault," Genma sighed and sank lower in his chair. "Like
I told you, Hayate can't accept losing." He blinked down at his lap, and his whole body seemed
to go quiet. His face went soft, and the toothpick drooped from his lip, and his hands lay folded
loosely between his knees.

Nothing to do but watch him; so that was what Kakashi did. "What do you think he might do?"

"What would _you_ do, if you were him?"

Kakashi turned his head again, and looked at the bud-vase on his window-sill, at the single pale
blue flower, petals venous and sharply translucent in the warm mercury thunderstorm haze. A
soft rumble of thunder, the humid purr of a sleeping cat, a giant. "I'd take another mission," he
said. "Right away."

Genma caught the edge of his lower lip with a tooth, skewer now shifted to the side, eyes cast
towards the ceiling. "That's what I thought," he said. "I have people keeping an eye on him, just in case he tries anything. He's going to hate me for it...but...what else can I do?"

"Hate you. For not wanting him to die?"

Genma turned his head, spat the toothpick into the wastebasket by the far wall, then took several
deep measured breaths. The line of his jaw hardened and shifted, etching maturity into the plane of his cheek. "He's seventeen, Kakashi. Did you know that?"

Kakashi shifted closer to the bed-rails, stuck his hand through, and let it hang there, out in space.
"Obito was twelve," he said. "Rin was fifteen."

Genma shifted again, leaning carefully forward, over the bed-rail, resting his cheek on the hard
plastic, letting his hands fall to mattress level.

Kakashi touched his wrist, scabbed knuckles against smooth skin. "Every time a person you love
dies, a part of you dies with them," he said. "Something I've been wondering for a while. If
enough loved ones die, if all of them die, and you've got no-one, then all of you dies as well.
And if all of you dies, what happens...do you become a different person?"

"I don't know. Maybe," Genma closed his eyes. "Do you want to be a different person?"

"That's the thing," said Kakashi. "I'm not so sure any more."
_______________________________________________________________________

If he were filming the story of his life, Kakashi supposed this part would be the epilogue. The
point at which all the loose little threads tied neatly together, and the camera panned slowly out
over the village and closed on a nice shot of him sitting on some rooftop at night. There'd be a
bit of music, a brief coda, maybe, then credits.

Little bit short as life-stories or pictures went, he thought, but not a bad place to end it. It left
things open, at least.

What the audience wouldn't see, was him sitting on the ledge for about twenty
dead-eyed, slack-jawed minutes, skipping stones off of the gutter. When he got bored of that, he
kicked gravel and slung himself down the fire-landing, out into the alleyway. Coming round a
tight turn, he wandered out onto a narrow, tree-lined back-avenue and followed it to where it
spilled back into the village proper.

Calm at this time of night. Under the red and orange glow of paper lanterns, shopkeepers stood
out by their front doors, smoking, arguing across to one-another, sweeping the day's dust into the
street.

Kakashi grabbed dinner at the local noodle joint, then spent thirty minutes arguing with Gai over
something he couldn't be bothered to remember; it only mattered that he won, and that he'd never let Gai live it down. Funny thing, he reflected. He supposed he and Gai were friends. He wasn't quite sure when that had happened, save that it was unmomentous, and at the same time huge. Maybe he was getting better.

It wasn't until he'd finally headed home for the night, until most of the streetlights, and lanterns had gone out, that he saw him. Hayate, sitting crouched at the edge of his apartment's front stoop, reassuringly miserable as ever.

Kakashi stopped at the perimeter of his walkway, and Hayate stood. "Um..." he muttered
uncomfortably, rubbing at his bottom lip.

Whatever it was he was about to say, Kakashi never let him finish; he marched right up there and
grabbed him, and held on for a very long time. He hadn't exactly rehearsed this all, he hadn't ever planned to sweep anyone off their feet. That would never be him. Hayate hugged back, awkwardly, like this
whole human contact business was something new to him; then he stood on his toes, and mashed
his lips against Kakashi's. Or just about where he thought they'd be.

"It's not attached, you know," Kakashi reminded him, peeling his mask down just far enough. In this light, the distance between twenty and seventeen seemed that much wider. A gaping chasm, yawning beneath his feet. Was this okay?

Hayate leaned back a bit, hands on shoulders, to look at him. "I know," he said. "It's just...I felt
you'd seem...more naked without it."

A very long pause. Kakashi blinked at him, and he blinked back. Then Kakashi said. "I see."

They kissed again, and both tripped backwards against the doorframe, each letting out a grunt of
pain and grabbing to push away or pull closer or whatever. And when they finally sorted
themselves out, Hayate was panting, and his lips were wet. He carefully straightened his
hitai-ate, and his hair, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

Kakashi's left knee gave like a cooked noodle, just then, half spilling him to the pavement before
Hayate launched forward and caught him, fetched him to the side, then corrected and sort of
wobbled him upright.

"Are you all right?" Hayate asked, shy and shell-shocked. His shoulders moved with every
breath, bowing in and out, like he'd just run a race; like he was still running it.

Kakashi, no less shell-shocked, blinked at him and said. "Are--are you?"

Hayate smiled. "No," he said, laughing a little. "No, I'm not. I'm really not okay." His face seemed at war with itself, like his insides wanted to come out, like something wanted to break.

Kakashi hovered over him again, and carefully pulled him away from the doorframe, forward
into his good shoulder. "Well, admitting it's a step in the right direction. Can I walk you home?"

Hayate nodded anxiously, and with a small stumble, the two of them linked hands, and limped
off down the dark sidewalk.

__________________________________________________________________

Well, he'd be lying if he said he'd just walked Hayate home, and never did anything more.

That was the unbearable lightness of not knowing any better.


_____________________________________________________________________

...

cross the street from your storefront cemetery
hear me hailing from inside and realize

I am the conscience clear
in pain or ecstacy
we were all weaned my dear
upon the same fatigue

staring at the sun
oh my own voice
cannot save me now
standing in the sea
it's just
one more breath
and then
down I go

your mouth is open wide
the lover is inside
and all the tumults done
collided with the sign
you're staring at the sun
you're standing in the sea
your body's over me

note the trees because
the dirt is temporary
more to mine than fact face
name and monetary

beat the skins and let the
loose lips kiss you clean
quietly pour out like light
like light, like answering the sun

you're staring at the sun
you're standing in the sea
your mouth is open wide
you're trying hard to breathe
the water's at your neck
there's lightning in your teeth
your body's over me

(be what you will
and then thrown down your life
oh it's a damned fine game
and we can play all night)

you're staring at the sun
you're standing in the sea
your mouth is open wide
you're trying hard to breathe
the water's at your neck
there's lightning in your teeth
your body's over me


T.V. on the Radio--staring at the sun



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Re-edit: >:O Yeah, thanks for telling me my links never worked. Free music, how could you pass that up?

T.V. on the Radio--staring at the sun.mp3

Blonde Redhead--for the damaged.mp3