Tsume was standing watch. What was worse, he was standing watch on two legs, with a foot planted on either side of Kiba's exhausted body. He would much rather be licking the white wolf's wounds than just standing there, but Kiba had done that himself already, with a little assistance from the runt, and insisted that he was fine now. Tsume had growled, and the other three had volunteered to find something to fill their stomachs while he stood watch over their sleeping leader.
Where were they with that food? They were in a city, it should not be taking this long for them to find something to eat!
Tsume felt fur and muscle shift beneath him, brushing against his legs. Dammit! Why had Kiba gone and gotten himself all beat up like this? Sure, it meant that none of the rest of them had a scratch on them, but Kiba was ... well, he was important.
It would be like pulling teeth to get the slightly older wolf to tell why though. He wasn't even completely ready to face the reason himself. That is to say, he knew the answer, he just didn't like its implications.
Kiba was important because Tsume cared about him. Yeah, he did give a damn about the others in their ramshackle pack as well, but that was a matter of looking out for the next wolf so that they could continue to do the same for him. This was different. This was the prioritisation of one wolf over all the others, including himself, and what for? Because Tsume thought Kiba was too beautiful to have to feel pain for anybody else's sake.
Not that Kiba seemed to mind pain all that much as he lay there, guarded between Tsume's legs, resting as his wounds healed slowly beneath the gentle glow of the rising moon. Wounds that, by rights, should have been on Tsume's hide right now. That two-bit thug from the bar had been aiming at him through his drunken haze, yelling something about being too pretty and snatching his girl's attention from him. Not his fault, but violently drunken humans were a breed Tsume knew how to handle. If Kiba hadn't stepped in, Tsume might have gotten a scratch or three from the knife the guy was holding, but he'd have incapacitated him easily enough.
Kiba just had to step in and defend him though. He was a good fighter, sure, but that wasn't the point. The point was that, apart from Tsume himself, Kiba had never fought a human with a knife before, and Tsume hadn't used his knife much in that fight when they'd met. On top of that, Kiba wasn't used to fighting in his human shape, and the streets were too populated for him to drop the disguise. Tsume was reduced to waiting for an opening and smashing the drunk's knees, then balls, before hauling Kiba over his shoulder and carrying him to a deserted smelling corner of the city.
Along the way, he'd called Kiba as many different types of idiot as he could think of.
"Hey Tsume," Kiba said, his voice quiet. It seemed he'd woken up from his little healing nap.
"Hey your damned self," he answered, not budging from where he stood over the acknowledged alpha of their rag-tag pack.
"Don't be like that," Kiba insisted, his voice still quiet as he tried to stand up on his paws.
Tsume grit his teeth at the feel of Kiba's back and sides brushing against his calves and inner thighs.
"Why the hell shouldn't I be? You're the only one with any real idea of where we're going, and you go and get yourself knifed by a boozer who was aiming for me!"
"I guess I just don't like the idea of you getting hurt when I can do something about it," Kiba murmured, tilting his head backwards so that his nose nearly touched Tsume's bare stomach, and he was looking up Tsume's torso and into his eyes.
"I could have, would have, and did handle that guy better than you did. I know how fights like that one work, and how to end them quickly and comparatively safely. I've got the damned experience," Tsume growled, making himself stay angry rather than listening to what his body was telling him about how close Kiba was to him.
Kiba sighed. "I know," he admitted, lowering his head so that he no longer looked up at Tsume's face. "I do know that. It's really just the idea of anybody touching you at all, it sets off something in me that I can't always control."
"Then why are you rubbing your own face against my leg if you don't like anybody touching me?" Tsume asked, trying to sound grudging and silently telling his heart to not beat so fast and give him away.
"Anybody other than me," Kiba said, looking up at Tsume again. "Though I suppose you dislike the idea of me being possessive of you."
Tsume sighed this time, and shifted so that he sat next to Kiba on his haunches, rather than standing over him in that human form.
"The runt gets very snuggly when we bed down," Tsume said, cocking his head and fixing one eye on the other, undeniably male, wolf. "So you're going to have to find a way to tell him why he can't sleep with me any more. Kid acts like I'm his mother or something."
Kiba smiled a wolf smile, his ears straight up and his posture more alert and eager.
"Yeah, me too," Tsume admitted, somewhat grudgingly, leaning forward to lick at Kiba's neck. "So no more stunts like today."