Author's Note: Okay, okay. I wrote the freaking happy ending. What can I say, I'm a sap. But hell, they deserve one. I actually wrote this the day after the first part, but was hesitant to post it on FFN because without the second part, the first part is friendship only, but with the second part, the fic becomes shippy. ... oh well.

The next morning...

The sun was just visible over the horizon when they finally got off the roof. Both of them were long past shivering, and Kidoumaru's pack of cigarettes had run out hours ago, but despite that and his still unhealed injuries, Kidoumaru was grinning cheerily as he and Tayuya walked down the stairs to the relative warmth of the top floor of the Otokage's tower. "Man, I'm so cold I can't feel my hands. Wonder if I have frostbite?"

Tayuya glared at him. She had heard somewhere that it took on average six cigarettes to become addicted, and she had passed that number around three in the morning. She wasn't sure she liked the idea of a cigarette addiction, and took it out on her unsuspecting supplier. "Not like you can't afford to lose a couple fingers, freak."

Kidoumaru just continued to grin. "Yep, sure am cold. Pretty dumb of us to stay out there so long. Maybe we should go check with Kabuto and see if we got pneumonia or something."

"Not a fucking chance."

Kidoumaru raised an eyebrow. His cheery demeanor shifted into something else. "You want to warm me up instead, then?"

Tayuya... blinked. She had heard that tone out of a number of guys over the years, all of whom received a kick in the groin for their efforts. It just wasn't a tone she expected out of Kidoumaru.

As far as pick-up lines went, it was pretty terrible. Corny beyond all belief. It was definitely groin-kicking worthy. Or at least, it would have been if it had been anyone else.

As it was... "Fine. Whatever. Need the body heat, anyway." She grabbed Kidoumaru by the wrist (the spider-nin looked stupefied enough that she was fairly sure he needed the direction) and started dragging him towards her room.

At her door, he finally snapped out of it. "Uh... you... Tayuya, you sure?"

Tayuya looked him in the eye. In all truth, if she had been asked ten years ago, or even five, on pain of death which of her comrades she was most likely to fall in love with, after calling the questioner a dick-sucking mother fucker, she would have answered Jiroubou, who was probably the only one of the Five who had ever treated her like a girl. As much as she had hated it most of the time, sometimes it had been okay. On a rare occasion, it had even been flattering. But Jiroubou was dead, and Kidoumaru wasn't. And that made all the difference. She didn't have time to waste on the dead more than anybody else. Much better to waste it on who was living, and breathing, and currently standing right in front of her, managing to look both uncomfortable and slightly hopeful at the same time.

"Yeah, I'm sure. But body heat's the only reason. I'm fucking freezing and my heater's broken. You touch me anywhere below the waist and I'm ripping off your balls, got that?"

Kidoumaru grinned. It wasn't much different from one of his normal smirks. Maybe a slightly softer edge. "Yeah, I got it. I'm not nearly as stupid as I look, believe it or not."

"I know. Actually being that stupid is probably impossible."

Before Kidoumaru could protest this, Tayuya dragged him into her room, and slammed the door behind them. The empty cigarette pack, dropped accidentally in Kidoumaru's surprise and slightly smashed from Tayuya stepping on it, lay forgotten in the hallway. It wasn't soon to be noticed.

END