Title: Baby Steps.
Rating: R for sex, violence and general darkness.
Genre: Tragedy
Summery: The first time Kakashi had sex he was fifteen years old.
Notes: This was written by request from a friend. Drel, this is all your fault laughs. This particular incarnation of Kakashi is taken from the version of him I play in the RP Fallen Leaves, which can be found on greatestjournal (fallen-underscore-leaf) and now insanejournal (fallen-underscore-leaves) due to general jackassery on greatestjournal's part. The writing in this comm is excellent, and I feel deeply priviledged to be a part of it.
The first time Kakashi had sex he was fifteen years old. ANBU hound and Konoha's war dog. He was newly inducted, the greenest of rookies, dog mask over cloth and the spiral tattoo carved into his arm so fresh it was still scabbed, red and flaking. One dead team mate on each flank and one freshly dead sensei to guard his back. One red mirror branded into his face while the other lay fractured under a rock.
The first time Kakashi had sex there was blood on his hands. It was not his.
It wasn't his first mission. Not that mission. His first ANBU mission went much better then his first jounin mission; no one died except the target.
It wasn't his second mission. No one died at all. Kakashi held the stolen scroll tight in his hand all the way home.
It wasn't his third mission. He lost a dog then. The first of sixteen. It wasn't his mistake and he couldn't have saved her, but that didn't stop him from breaking three bones in his partner's hand. It was a petty revenge for the life of a canine, a pack member, a piece of his heart. It didn't make him feel better.
It might have been the fourth mission, or the fifth. They began to blend after that. A parade of faces and names and dog tags. Endless stolen jutsu and the beginning of the cycle that became his life; sleep, mission, sleep. Food that tasted like nothing and rest that brought black and no nightmares because he was too tired to dream.
The first time Kakashi had sex, he wore three masks. Only one cracked.
It was probably the fourth mission. He didn't remember the target. After a while it became easy to forget them, even with the perfect memory of the sharingan. He did remember his partner. Not the name, but everything else that mattered. Wide hands and blunt fingernails. The pearly ridged line of his spine and the shadow cast by his ribs. Sharp pelvis bones and heavy muscle. The thin, slender tracery of two previously broken collar bones and the scattershot of scars that linked and slipped through skin. Red hair.
The first time Kakashi had sex, it wasn't his idea. He could have ended it at any time. He chose not to.
It hurt, just a little, when his partner bit him. Kakashi broke the man's nose and blunt teeth yanked back from his skin with a laugh and a curse. Then it felt good in a way he couldn't understand. It was only skin, only nerves. Chemical messages with complicated names he didn't really care about. Hands holding him a little too tight. Adrenaline that made his heart thud and pulse sting like a snakebite in his throat.
The first time Kakashi had sex, he wore three masks. ANBU, cloth, and his own face. Rule twenty-five carved into skin.
Only one cracked.
They kept most of their clothes on. The forest was dark and shadowed with winter, and blood dried cold and cracked over white armour and frozen limbs. Kakashi's breath plumed gently in the air, he remembered that even if he didn't remember the man's name. He remembered the splatter of stringy tissue that might have been lung or might have been brain adhered like baked pink clay to his partner's throat.
They didn't kiss, it seemed pointless. Kakashi didn't know how to anyway. Two animal masks stayed fixed in place, he couldn't remember the design of his partner's. It might have been a cat. Might have been a lion. Might have been red. Blue. Green. It was all painted in shadows anyway.
The first time Kakashi had sex, he didn't think about Obito. He didn't think about Rin. He refused to think about Minato-sensei and his lectures that involved bananas and latex. He didn't think about anything really. Not the ninja already dead, their blood drying under his fingernails, not the long trek home they still had to run. He didn't think about anything but scent and touch. Warmth so hot it was shocking against his skin.
The first time Kakashi had sex he was safe. He was careful. There was no kissing. He licked no blood that wasn't his, and refused to let his mission partner penetrate him. When the man insisted Kakashi pressed a warning chidori to his chest, searing the white armour black. He allowed one bite mark and that was only because the man was faster then Kakashi expected. But a swift blow and the following broken nose laid out the ground rules. The mask didn't crack against Kakashi's fist, even if the bone did. ANBU made strong masks.
They kept most of their clothes on and Kakashi refused to think how small his blood-streaked hands looked compared to the other man's. How thin they were as he slipped them underneath chilled armour and found sweat-slick skin. It felt wrong to let someone grab him, but he held himself still as too-big hands traced the line of his waist band and slipped beneath the cloth.
It felt good in a way he hadn't expected. In a way he wasn't sure he liked.
The first time Kakashi had sex, he broke one mask. It wasn't made of porcelain or painted like a snarling dog. It wasn't stitched from blue-black cloth, stretched old and fine with time. It was his own face, his own skin. He gasped and cried out with a sharp high sound his partner didn't muffle in time and told the Mist-nin exactly where they were.
The first time Kakashi had sex, he ruined the afterglow by watching a man die. It wasn't the Mist-nin.
Kakashi didn't remember his partner's name. He did remember the wine-bloom of blood that stained his armour, and the way his fingers twitched and clenched. The way he fell sideways with a rattling gasp as metal speared through his chest. The way skin ripped with the sound of wet cloth tearing. The way his sternum crunched as it broke.
The way the enemy leapt from the trees and died so easily, so quickly, with a chidori and a leap-dance-strike. Three kunai, two shuriken, and one white hot blow with a sound like broken birds.
Kakashi remembered the cold hard edge of cracked dog tags clenched in his fist as he ran for home. The funeral pyre behind him, hot and red in the gathering dusk. It was hard to make wet wood burn. He used a jutsu stolen from a ninja whose face he couldn't care enough to remember.
The first time Kakashi had sex, he added seven more men to his own personal body count. Six were mist nin. One was not.