Well, that took a bit longer than usual! Please let me know your thoughts - I love hearing from you all! Next chapter should be a bit sooner...

It took them half an hour to get back to Hampstead in the rush hour traffic. All the way round the Heath Kakuzu was silent and Hidan was on his phone; calling Deidara, calling Tobi, calling any of their friends who might have seen them, and leaving more and more garbled and frantic answerphone messages. Finally, as they turned into Parliament Hill, Kakuzu took the phone away from him.

"No-one listens to their voicemail anymore, Hidan," he said wearily. His head ached and he felt an awful flatness that even the brief touch of Hidan's hand couldn't alleviate.

"I know," Hidan said, surrendering it without resistance, and then lapsed into silence too, staring moodily out of the window.

It was still raining heavily enough that the short walk along the street and up the path was enough to soak them all over again. So miserable that even the paparazzi had abandoned their vigil. Kakuzu's fingers, wet with rain, slipped on the alarm code keypad and entered a number wrong. Cursing under his breath, he entered the override code and did that wrong too. And that was the point at which it suddenly seemed to make more sense to punch the thing off the wall than to take a deep breath and do it properly. The alarm, of course, kept on going and going, and without even being aware of quite how it had happened, Kakuzu lost it completely. He punched the wall where it had been with a satisfying crunch of plaster. The feeling of letting rip was intoxicating, somehow such a massive relief. If there was pain in his hand, he didn't feel it, just that urge to break something, to damage, to attack. Again and again, systematically, as if he really could break right through it.

Hidan, following him in, made a grab for his arm. "Fucking hell, man!" he shouted, over the keening wail of the alarm. "Stop that, stop it right fucking now!" But Kakuzu didn't even seem to hear, and he was moving with so much force that from behind it was impossible to restrain him. Shit, he was really going to hurt himself - if he hadn't already - it seemed like he was going harder with ever punch, and with less and less control.

Forcing himself between Kakuzu and the wall he threw his own hand over Kakuzu's bloodied knuckles. He'd imagined that by hurling his own bodyweight against him he'd able to push him back and out of range as well, but that idea proved to be pure fantasy. He might as well have hurled himself against the wall. He winced in anticipation of the impact crushing his hand into the mess of crumbling plaster. Kakuzu would never be able to stop in time, but, what the hell. They could both nurse their broken hands together...

But he did stop. Hidan heard his shoulder joint crack as he stopped dead; he felt the back of his hand just graze the wall before the force he was exerting himself nearly knocked them both over backwards.

"What the hell are you doing Hidan?" Kakuzu yelled unreasonably, after a second of wide-eyed shock. "Get out of the way - you're going to get hurt!" His hand started to shake. He looked at the wall, horrified. The original Georgian plaster had not survived his onslaught; the brickwork was exposed and the thought of how nearly Hidan's hand had come to being sandwiched between that and his fist made him feel sick.

They stumbled back against the opposite wall and Hidan stretched up to give him a hard, level stare. "Unless you want a backie down to A&E I suggest you cut that shit out right now!" he said sternly. "Do you think I'm going to let you fuck yourself up like that? Fucking hell!"

Kakuzu stared at him, breathing hard. "You shouldn't be near me when I'm like this," he said, his voice shaking. "I could've really hurt you-"

"Yeah, well, you didn't. You hurt yourself, like a big fucking idiot." He reached up to run his hand along the hard set of Kakuzu's jawline, trying to smooth away the tension and Kakuzu felt the awful burning shame that indulging his temper always brought on. It was almost unbearable how much Hidan didn't blame him. He didn't deserve to be forgiven like this.

"Stop it, Hidan," he said miserably, but he found he couldn't put any force behind the words and the hand which had jerked up to brush Hidan's away ended up holding it instead. Suddenly he was physically trembling as well. "You shouldn't put yourself at risk for me. You know what I'm capable of."

"Kakuzu!" Hidan shook his head. "You crazy fuck... I'm always going to have a go, aren't I? What the fuck do you take me for?" He extricated his hand from Kakuzu's. "Now, let's have a look at what the fuck you've done to yourself."

"I'm fine," Kakuzu muttered, though his hand was throbbing.

"Yeah, right." Hidan rolled his eyes, carefully straightening Kakuzu's fingers and wincing slightly as he surveyed the damage. "Fucking pull the other one. Look, you're bleeding, you'll be fucking lucky if you haven't broken your hand!"

Kakuzu fought the urge to snatch it from him and examine it himself. "Can we please get that alarm off now!" he groaned, looking away. He'd wrenched his shoulder as well, pulling that punch so suddenly. He massaged the muscle surreptitiously as Hidan turned to pick up the keypad - dangling from its wire but luckily still just about connected. He started to tell him the code, but Hidan was already entering it - always more capable than you think, he had to remind himself - he bit his lip and shut up.

The relief as the noise stopped was incredible. Hidan closed the front door and they looked at each other, Kakuzu wary, Hidan cautiously curious; ears ringing. The silence seemed to press in around Kakuzu like cotton wool.

"I'm probably alright," he said miserably, flexing his hand experimentally. The sudden flash of rage over, he felt exhausted and drained. "Years of mixed martial arts..." he explained. "I'm pretty well conditioned." He looked regretfully at his shredded knuckles. "I admit, that was ... really dumb, though. I'm sorry."

Hidan looked up at him. "Oh, that's your thing - fuck, I wanna see you at it!" he said, so sweetly and obviously impressed that Kakuzu felt another pang of guilt at just how close he'd been to the receiving end of it. "I bet you're like a fucking machine." He gently manoeuvred him away from the door and towards the stairs. "I'm still worried you've damaged the tendons, though. Come on, sit down for a minute, I'm going to get you some ice."

Kakuzu slumped down on the third step and let his head drop into the palm of his good hand. "Maybe put the kettle on, too," he called meekly after Hidan as he headed down the hall.

The second Hidan opened the kitchen door he heard the clatter of dog toenails on polished wood and moment later all four of them were pressed around him. Kaze laid a heavy head on his knee. Tsuchi let out a little whine and licked his hand, trying to nuzzle it away from his face. "Good girl," he said absently. "Down, now." He pushed her face away a little, but put his arm over her, patting her side lightly.

Mizu flopped down on his feet and Kaminari leant heavily against his other side. How do they know I feel like shit? he thought tiredly, but gratefully. They always do know. His jaw clenched and he began to notice that his face seemed to be wet under his hand. No, he thought. Not after all that. No. He took a deep breath; tried to steady himself - but it didn't do any good. Tsuchi was licking his cheek now and he didn't even bother to stop her. He could hear the kettle boiling from along the hall, another patter of paws, some short sharp barks.

"Mizu!" he called, in a pathetic croak that no self-respecting schnauzer would pay any attention to. He knew it was her from the tone of her bark. Why is she barking at Hidan? He couldn't let that go on. Hidan was so much more comfortable with them now, but she could still make him nervous. He started to lever himself up. "Hidan? Are you alright?" he called. He brushed impatiently at the tears blurring his vision - I don't have time for this - and looked up to find Hidan right in front of him.

"Kakuzu?!" His tone was aghast. "Kakuzu, hey, look at me, babe! Oh fuck." Ice clattered onto the stairs and Hidan's hands were urgently wiping the tears from his face. "Kakuzu..."

"Hidan." Kakuzu's voice came out as a kind of gulp, and now he was excruciatingly embarrassed as well. He tried to turn his face away, frowning as if it could force his tears back into his eyes. "I'm sorry, love," he choked. "You don't need to see this..."

"Don't be fucking ridiculous!" Hidan insinuated himself into Kakuzu's lap, pushing his hair out of his face, his mouth against his cheek. "What is it with all this self-sufficient 'don't help me' crap? Even your fucking dog knows you need me!" His arms went around his head. "It's bullshit - you've been forcing this down all day long, keeping it together, sorting out everyone else's shit for them - but, fuck it, you don't have to do that with me!"

Kakuzu took another slow deep breath. He couldn't think of anything to say but another useless 'sorry', so he said nothing. He felt guilty, like he was indulging in grief he wasn't entitled to. Of course, he'd liked Sasori. They'd been friends for a long time - they'd had a lot in common - and yet it wouldn't really have been true to say they were exactly close. Surely this intensity of grief wasn't meant for him? He hadn't earned it. And yet, here it was. As he let the breath out again, it brought a hard, choking sob with it. He tried desperately not to let himself do another. It was ugly, and embarrassing and weak, and the feeling of being out of control was unbearable. But in between five warm bodies, he'd already let his guard down too far, relaxed too much - all he could do was bury his face in Hidan's arms and let them come.

And it was scary, but also liberating, in a way, and in the end it felt like it was the sheer relief of being able to let it out that finally gave him the strength to stop.

"Hidan?" he forced out, looking up at him through a blurring glaze of tears and wondering if it was normal to feel this ache in your throat; it had been so long, he couldn't remember.

"Yeah?" Hidan was wiping the last of the tears away, smoothing at Kakuzu's frown lines with insistent finger tips.

"Somehow I didn't think I'd have to go to another funeral like that. Another young gay man. Another grieving lover, another stiff-necked, stony-eyed family not acknowledging him, who he really was. I thought I was done with all that." He shut his eyes. He felt Hidan shift back a little, he was gathering up the ice and starting to wrap his hand. "I feel like a fucking relic, Hidan," he said, keeping his eyes shut. "There's no-one I know now who would remember but today was like-" He swallowed. "Damn it, it was like being back in the 80s. You know-" He hesitated, then plunged on. "I ... haven't got a single friend left from that time now. Not a single one. They're all gone."

"Fuck, I'm sorry," Hidan said.

Kakuzu sighed and shook his head. "No. I'm sorry. To bring all this up. I suppose it was Itachi being taken ill on top of everything ... But there's no point raking it over now - you just wouldn't understand ... you're just too young, you wouldn't remember and it's best that way."

"Try me. Maybe I won't get it, but." He looked at Kakuzu, "I don't know. I can try to imagine."

"Sweetheart." Kakuzu put his arm around him. "You sweet young thing... Don't you see I don't want you to get it? I don't want you under a burden like that. Remembering the awful things, those years, young men wasting away, everyone afraid. Homophobia like nothing you can even imagine now."

"Okay. But remember I grew up in a small fucking town. And I was at school in the 90s... I wasn't completely oblivious."

"Mm." Kakuzu acknowledged. "I can imagine that was a fairly brutal environment to think about coming out in, but-"

"I know. It's not the same." Hidan settled himself against Kakuzu's chest, one arm around his neck, still holding the ice pack in place. "I do remember some things, though. I remember Freddie Mercury dying. My mum cried and played his records all day when she saw the news ... She forgot to take me to school and my aunt came round at lunchtime and gave her shit for it..."

"We all learnt CPR to a soundtrack of 'Another One Bites the Dust' back in '81," Kakuzu mused. "And Queen was always Kim's music of choice in theatre..."

Hidan shivered suddenly and Kakuzu realised with a start how wet they both still were.

"Get these off!" he said, unbuttoning Hidan's shirt one-handed and peeling it off him. "You're soaked - how could I let you sit around like this?! For goodness sake! Go and grab the towel from the cloakroom..."

"Stop fussing about me!" Hidan said, getting up and doing as he was told anyway. "I should be the one looking after you! And anyway, you were keeping me warm..."

"Why were you shivering then?" Kakuzu spotted Hidan's rucksack at the foot of the stairs and extracted his dressing gown. "I like looking after you, anyway," he added stubbornly. "It's making me feel better. So you'll just have to put up with it." He took the towel from Hidan and pulled him in between his legs, roughly towelling his hair as dry as he could before tugging the dressing gown closely around him. He pulled him forward by the lapels and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

"That's better," he said quietly. "Now you can make the tea." He got wearily to his feet. "I'll run us a bath. Will you join me..?"

"Damn right I'll fucking join you! Do you want me to feed the dogs?"

"It's a bit early yet-" Kakuzu glanced at his watch. "Oh, go on then. Then we'll have some peace ... Go with Hidan," he said encouragingly to Tsuchi. "Go on! Good girl." He noticed that Kaze was already at Hidan's side as if he owned him, nudging him towards the kitchen with his head. "Kaze!" he said commandingly, pausing at the turn of the stairs. "Gently!"

Hidan giggled, clearly charmed as Kaze pushed his head against his hand. "Aw, don't worry, this guy's just a big softie, isn't he?"

"It's really not a good idea to let him get away with being boisterous," Kakuzu warned, coming back down a few steps. "He'll be all over you..."

"It's okay, I'm not some fucking pushover- fuck! Ow!" Hidan clutched his side as Kaminari joined Kaze and their combined force pushed him off balance and against the door frame. But only lightly. Kakuzu stared a moment, then ran back down.

"What happened?" he asked, horrified. "Down," he commanded the dogs, in a tone they couldn't ignore. He pointed to the kitchen, his eyes still on Hidan, and they obediently ran through.

"I don't - I don't fucking know!" Hidan probed around his ribcage and up towards his armpit and winced. "That shouldn't've hurt."

"Tobi - the car - he did hit you, didn't he?" Kakuzu pulled open Hidan's dressing gown and probed as well.

"I ... didn't think so." Hidan squinted down to try and see. "Maybe I landed on a gravestone..."

Kakuzu growled. "Next time I see Tobi I am seriously going to wring his neck! You're really bruised!" he added, running an exploratory hand over the whole area. That's going to come up quite spectacularly by tomorrow."

"Ah fuck, Yugito's not gonna be pleased..." Hidan flinched away as Kakuzu's fingers found a particularly sensitive spot.

"Sorry; sorry, love, just keep still, can you?" Kakuzu urged. "I want to make sure your ribs aren't broken."

"Wouldn't it hurt to breathe or some shit like that?"

"Does it hurt to breathe?"

"No."

"Then you're probably fine." Satisfied with his examination, Kakuzu still hesitated. "Since I'm down here I might as well-" he began, gesturing into the kitchen, but Hidan cut him off.

"Get the fuck up to the bathroom, man!" he said sternly. "I've got this!"

As he sat on the side of the claw-footed Victorian bath and turned on the hot tap, Kakuzu found himself faced with a rather surprising array of products which certainly hadn't been there a few weeks ago. And a glance into the shower confirmed that there were rather a lot more in there too. He rather thought they must have been accumulating one by one after every time Hidan had popped back to his flat. Quite a lot of them seemed to have some affiliation with silver hair. Kakuzu picked up a handsome tube patterned with chevrons and an orange lipsticked kiss and examined it. Even after reading all the directions he had very little idea what it could possibly be for, though. He smiled. Keeping Hidan adorable would have to be enough of an explanation.

This blue thing that said 'Rituals' was clearly bath foam, though. Kakuzu smelt it suspiciously, then smiled again because that was the scent of Hidan all warm and relaxed and pliable, when he'd come to find him in his study and distract him until he came to bed with him. Or stretch out half on top of him on the sofa and steal the book he was reading... Hidan, padding around the house in bare feet and his dressing gown, smelling of this and chalk, charcoal and pencil lead. He tipped some into the water and could almost hear how Hidan said his name when he wanted his attention - Kakuzuuu? - Like no-one else said it...

Now his dulcet tones floated up the stairs. "Have you got a tray, Kakuzu?"

Kakuzu went onto the landing. "Yes. Somewhere," he called back. "I don't think I've used it for ten years..."

"Ah, fuck it, I'm going to use this roasting tin."

Kakuzu chuckled and went back to start running the cold in.

Within a few minutes he was relaxing in the warm water; the heat easing his shoulder, ice-wrapped hand resting on the side of the bath and Hidan perching on the other side, gulping down tea.

"You are fucking stacked, Kakuzu..." he said, eyes roving admiringly over Kakuzu's upper body. "Do you just do it for your own satisfaction?"

"Well, yes..." Kakuzu said. "Mostly. I suppose I like the idea of being ... powerful. Being in control. You could call it an obsession - I guess it extends to every area of my life, really."

"Ha, you think you could take me?" Hidan drained the last of his tea and put his mug in the sink.

"I know I could take you, love, if only you hadn't completely disarmed me before we even began."

"Ah, don't be so sure!" Hidan leant over to plant a rather challenging kiss on his mouth. "By the time you'd caught up with me you'd be so fucking knackered I could have my wicked way with you no fucking problem..."

Kakuzu caught hold of the collar of his dressing gown and kept him there. "Oh I think you always have your wicked way with me!" he deflected smoothly. Over the last two weeks they'd been running together on the Heath - their holiday session seemed to have cemented it as a routine - and it was true that Hidan set a pace that Kakuzu ... wasn't quite used to yet. He'd hoped it hadn't been that obvious though. He'd kept up! Hadn't he?

"Come here," he said quietly, any distance between them suddenly seeming unbearable. Abandoning the ice-pack, slipping the dressing gown off him onto the floor, he pulled him into the water. The level rose to nearly overflowing and Hidan stretched himself out over Kakuzu's chest, his legs sliding in between Kakuzu's as he relaxed against him.

Kakuzu smiled, getting his arms around him, feeling his dick start to stiffen just at the proximity of him. Feeling Hidan's doing the same. "Ah, love," he murmured against his hair as Hidan laid his head down against his chest. "What a day, hm?" He felt a hum of agreement from Hidan.

"It seems so unfair, you know," he mused, twisting a strand of Hidan's hair around his fingers. "After years of being life being flat and grey I find you... I feel like I could be happy forever - ridiculous as that sounds - and all of a sudden everything blows up in our faces ..."

"Maybe we found each other just in time to get through this shit," Hidan suggested. "Ever think of it that way? What would you have done today without me? You'd have swallowed down all that misery til it choked you." He paused, trailing lazy fingertips over Kakuzu's chest. "You know, the day we met..."

"Mm?"

"I was feeling so ... fucking disconnected from everything. I walked into Dei's Private View and there wasn't a single fucker there I could even bear to look at for more than ten seconds without wanting to punch them in their stupid smug bastard faces and it was so ... so fucking lonely. The only thing I could think of was get so wasted I didn't care anymore. But then you appeared. And you made everything okay without even trying."

Kakuzu got his hands firmly around Hidan's waist to stop him sliding away from him. "You know what, love? I was trying, actually. I wasn't in the habit of trying with anybody. But you ..." It was impossible to express what had been so different - everything had been. He couldn't put it into words. "Now might be the time for me to confess that I had Deidara's flyer sitting on my desk since the end of April," he said, slightly shamefaced, but still somehow wanting Hidan to know. "And I might just have fallen in love with your face before I even met you ..."

"Seriously?" That irrepressible delighted smile.

"Seriously. And there was this look in your eyes..." Again, he couldn't quite find the words. "I thought perhaps, just for one evening, I could make sure things were okay for you."

"You did a bit better than that, didn't you?" Hidan smiled. "Ah, Kakuzu, you're so fucking romantic when you get in the mood ..."

Kakuzu chuckled. "I'm not sure I've ever been accused of being romantic before," he said.

"Well, you should've been. You're a fucking teddy bear underneath it all!" Hidan suddenly snorted with laughter. "I watched you watching the film, you know," he said. "And I thought 'who is that sexy bastard? He's probably straight though'..." Another laugh. "Then you walked over and I stopped thinking that pretty fucking sharpish..."

"Oh, so I've got a gay walk, have I? As well as being a teddy bear! Am I going to have any dignity left when you've finished with me?"

"Well, you made a pretty gay bee-line for me," Hidan said, slightly smug.

"Ahh..."

"You've actually got more of a gay stance than a gay walk - if there hadn't been people standing all around you I'd've known before you even moved."

Kakuzu smiled slowly. "I've got a gay destination, that's for sure," he said, slipping a hand down in between them.

"Mm," Hidan agreed, rubbing against him, "can I come too?"

"I don't suppose I can get there without you, sweetheart..."

"Kakuzu?"

"Hm?"

"Did you jerk off to the flyer?"

"Only once or twice..."

Hidan laughed again, kissing him and sliding against him.

"Maybe three times..."

"Remember that time you fucked me on the bath mat?" Hidan murmured.

"Oh yes!" He remembered it very well. Another rainy day... Just thinking about it made him even harder, and he felt an answering stir from Hidan.

Neither of them felt like getting overly energetic, though. Certainly, this wasn't going to be quite like the bath mat time. Kakuzu was quite prepared to lie back and let Hidan do what he wanted, which seemed to be slowly grind up against him under the water, getting more and more evidently aroused. He was kissing and nuzzling against his chest and up along his jawline, hungry, urgent kisses, and it was so incredibly hot, and it still felt so new and almost unbelievable, to be so wanted, for every inch of him to be enjoyed and appreciated and desired. It took his breath away.

He felt Hidan take his cock in his hand and gasped helplessly; Hidan gave a low moan in response, mouth open against his neck, thrusting against him harder now, and was he really going to bring himself off hands-free? It seemed he was. It clearly wasn't going to take him long, either. "Ah, fuck, Kakuzu..." he breathed, his rhythm changing slightly, and the next moment he was so obviously shooting that it tipped Kakuzu over the edge too.

A little later, dry and warm and feeling a lot better, they were lying in much the same position as they had been in the bath on the much-more-comfortable-than-it-looked green leather settee in Kakuzu's living room. In their dressing-gowns, Kakuzu's hand neatly bandaged; better, but not entirely at ease - a text had come through from Deidara while they were in the bath. 'Gone with Tobi' it said baldly.

Hidan had been staring at it for a few minutes now. "Should I reply?" he asked Kakuzu finally. After everything he'd sent, all his calls, messages ... just that? What could you say to that?

"Just say okay," Kakuzu said without hesitation.

Hidan nodded, but didn't do it. He started typing, deleted, let the phone slip from his hand. Kakuzu picked it up. 'OK' he wrote, pressed send, and put the phone out of Hidan's reach.

"Forget about it for now, hm?" he said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could. Deidara had effectively cut them off - they didn't have the license to keep on trying to get through to him now. He smoothed his fingers idly though Hidan's hair, feeling him relax a little against him. It wasn't what either of them had wanted, but it was closure of a kind.

"So tell me more about your mum and the day Freddie Mercury died," he said quietly, after a moment. "I don't think she can have been quite as I imagined her - I didn't expect a Queen obsession somehow..."

Hidan gave a rueful smile. "Ah, yeah, she loved glam; Roxy Music, Bowie, - if it involved glitter and men in makeup she was basically sold..." He rolled onto his back to look up into Kakuzu's face. "Those were normally the good days, though - she'd play me her records and dance around the living room, singing along and bouncing off the furniture cause it was fucking tiny. Woodchip on the wall etc. If it was a bad day she didn't even necessarily even make it to the living room."

"Were there a lot of bad days?"

"There were later." Suddenly he was blinking rapidly, tipping his head back. "Fuck..."

"Okay," Kakuzu said, rubbing his shoulder and panicking a little internally. Perhaps this hadn't been such a wise choice of subject-change after all... "Okay... I shouldn't have asked you to talk about this. We don't have to-"

"No. It's okay." Hidan took hold of his hand, tightly. "I want to tell you. I just- I don't want you to think she was a bad mum; she wasn't, she-"

"I'm not going to-" Kakuzu began.

"You don't know what you're going to think," Hidan pointed out sadly. "A lot of the time I was really happy, seriously. I had a good childhood, in - in a lot of ways... But she was really fucking messed up too."

Kakuzu nodded. "Okay," he said calmly.

"When I was a little kid I didn't really notice though, or I thought it was just normal, that one day she'd be fine, and the next she'd hardly be able to get out of bed." Hidan was picking anxiously at his thumbnail; Kakuzu resisted the urge to stop him. "My aunts used to come round and clean the place up for her, because she couldn't cope with that, even on a good day. They'd say, 'mummy's tired, Hidan,' and they'd try and stop me from going in to see her. Because she was fucked off her face on something, probably, things she took to help her cope with it, but they didn't really. But I didn't care; I didn't get it. I'd crawl in beside her and try and get her to play, and she would try... Because she really fucking loved me, you know, she really did, and she could be fun; she did take care of me, even if she had to drag herself downstairs on her hands and knees."

His voice was rising and tense, and Kakuzu did take his hands now. "Alright," he murmured in his ear. "I believe you, love, don't worry..."

"I mean, I guess my aunts were trying to help, but I resented the fuck out of them because they upset her." Hidan's voice was a little calmer now. He rubbed his cheek against Kakuzu's sleeve and sighed. "I just wanted them to leave us alone."

He looked up at Kakuzu, frowning slightly as he remembered. "So that day was weird from the start, because she didn't normally play Queen and cry," he said. "Sometimes she'd play, like, Joan Armatrading and cry ... fucking, soulful shit like that ... but normally if she was putting music on at all there was a chance it would be an alright day." For a moment he looked so lost and confused, like he was still that little boy wondering how he could make his mum okay again. Then the habitual toughness was back, and suddenly Kakuzu understood so much more clearly where that came from. He hoped the unavoidable dismay wasn't showing too plainly in his face.

"Anyway," Hidan continued, "she didn't tell me to go to school so of course I didn't fucking go; I spent the morning trying to cheer her up, trying to make her laugh... but my aunt was a dinner lady there so by lunchtime the game was up. She came round to get me and made my mum cry again. I told her to fuck off and she lost it and slapped me in the face, so then my mum went for her like a fucking tigress, seriously; it caused a family feud for a few weeks - she'd go wild if anyone even as much as smacked me."

Well, we'd have had that in common then, Kakuzu thought. Perhaps now wasn't the time for questions about exactly what had been wrong. Depression obviously. Some kind of addiction or dependency issues as well maybe? He'd grown up in the most boring and stable suburban environment imaginable and felt anguished for Hidan. Thinking all the things Hidan was clearly hoping he wouldn't be thinking.

"You said you have sisters?" he said. Maybe that would be easier for Hidan to talk about. "What about them?"

"Half sisters, yeah, on my dad's side," Hidan said, and Kakuzu could hear a different kind of tension in his voice at that. "And I just want to say now I've never met the prick and I don't want to. They're quite a lot older than me. My dad was apparently a bit of a serial disappearer - there'd been a few affairs in between their mum and mine, so there wasn't really any bad feeling - they'd come and stay sometimes when they argued with their own mum, we were like a massive fucking dysfunctional clan."

Kakuzu relaxed a little. He stroked Hidan's arm. "I can just imagine you in the middle of something like that."

"They used to try out make-up on me and take me out for ice-cream and crap like that, though they normally ended up regretting it 'cause I was a bad little kid and I'd run away from them in shopping malls and down the pier and shit... Once they were fucking convinced I'd drowned for about twenty minutes, they even called out the coastguard..."

Kakuzu laughed. "Down the pier..." he murmured. "It all sounds so ... flamboyantly maritime - what is this, anyway, late 80s?" he asked. Hidan nodded. "While I was a junior doctor, then. I can't imagine it all happening at the same time, somehow."

"Yeah, so what about all that?" Hidan asked. "Tell me about your fucking colourful past. Clearly the shit hit the fan somehow - what happened anyway?"

Kakuzu groaned. "Do I have to? It's ancient history, as I've said before. And it puts me in a foul mood just to think about it..."

"Yeah, you have to." Hidan was firm. "I don't want to find out from the fucking radio, or your patronising-as-shit doctor friends.

"Fair enough." Kakuzu sighed. If they ran into Kim again he was almost bound to bring it up... But where to even begin? "Alright," he said finally. "So the 'shit hit the fan' in '94. I was training to be a cardio-vascular surgeon. That's a heart surgeon, in layman's terms. I'd done medical school, I'd done two years as I junior doctor, I'd done three years of basic surgery, and I was three years into a six-year cardiac specialty."

"Whoa, fuck," Hidan said. "That's a lot of training!"

"Mm-hmm." Kakuzu agreed. "Now, only the med school bit of that is not actually working as a doctor," he continued, "making life and death decisions on a daily basis. So, you can basically read that I was a doctor for eight years. I wasn't a consultant yet. However, I was, like Kim said, the shining star. By my third year I was doing everything the consultants were doing and a lot more that they didn't have to bother with anymore. And increasingly, they'd leave more and more to me. It was exhausting, but exhilarating and challenging and I loved it. I really did. But - as you might expect with egos as big as Kim's and mine flying around - there's a lot of rivalry; most of the cardiologists couldn't stand each other and on the surgical side we weren't much better, and with a massive dose of machismo thrown in to the mix as well..."

"You what?" Hidan cut in. "I mean, sure, he's pretty much made of nothing but ego, but you-"

"I was pretty different back then," Kakuzu said shortly. "So was he. Anyway. One patient, I'd struck up a particular rapport with. He was an artist, actually; a sculptor, famous for his wood carvings, and performance pieces with an on/off collaborator back in the 60s that were pretty groundbreaking at the time. Even in those days I was very interested in the arts and we used to chat. He'd-"

"Hang on a minute, you don't mean Hashirama Senju, do you? You met the fucking Shodai Hokage!"

"You know his work?" Kakuzu was surprised, though he supposed he shouldn't be. Shodai Hokage had been Hashirama's performance alter ego and he and his partner - the first Madara Uchiha - had exploded onto the art scene with a series of 'happenings' that were still regularly referenced when discussing contemporary work such as Deidara's...

"Ah, his legacy lives on at St Martin's, and there was a guy at City and Guilds in the woodcarving department who everyone hailed as the fucking second coming of Hashirama..."

"Yes, I remember that," Kakuzu said. "One of Orochimaru's first big successes, though he's back teaching at St Martin's now, isn't he? And he didn't have the performance angle..."

"No, and I fucking loved the performance stuff, though Hashirama's partner was a fucking tit, wasn't he?"

"Madara Uchiha ... Yes, I believe there was some dispute over the copyright of the works they'd made together and they were totally estranged by the time he died. Hashirama didn't ever completely get over it, I think. That's how I met Tobi, actually, he looked me up a year or so after all this happened. He founded Akatsuki Publishing on the back of inheriting Madara the First's estate - he's some kind of nephew I believe..."

"So what did happen?"

"On a night shift, while he was waiting for an elective, scheduled surgery, he was taken ill. I was on call and there were a couple of options. The consultant who should have been there ... well, he just wasn't there. I bleeped him, sent people searching for him, but nothing doing. It was down to me. But I was young and over-confident - arrogant even - and I wasn't worried. I was pretty certain I could deal with it, so I made the call. If I'd waited he would certainly have died." He paused a moment. He'd never got this far talking about it and still been calm. He waited a moment for the telltale signs of anger rising, but so far he seemed to be alright.

"But I didn't make the right decision and he died on the operating table anyway," he said, his voice as measured and calm as he could make it. "It's impossible to say for sure whether I could've saved him if I'd made different choices, but it turned out he had a pre-existing condition which had gone undetected. Basically, it was a colossal fuck-up and they needed someone to blame. So, that was me."

"Ah fuck ..." Hidan murmured, disbelieving.

"There was a tribunal, and I was suspended from practice for six months but that was nothing compared to the hit my reputation had taken. I wasn't prepared to go back and work under the people who had thrown me under the bus, and there was no way any private clinics would want me with a blot like that on my copybook. I was done, and more than that, somehow all the passion I'd had for my profession was gone as well."

"Fuck..!" Hidan looked so wounded for him he could almost laugh. "How could they do that? How did they get away with it?!"

"Oh, I was a perfect candidate for 90s scapegoating, wasn't I? Not white, not straight, not a fucking public schoolboy - just who everybody wants to lay the blame on!" He shrugged. "But what fucks me off even more than the personal aspect is just the utter waste, to be honest. I was trained on public money. I could still be there, being a massive asset to the NHS for a fraction of my current salary. Being an 'upstanding citizen' - contributing to society..." Bitter sarcasm dripped from his tone. "But no. The NHS required its pound of flesh, and a handful of consultant surgeons didn't like the look of the competition coming up from behind."

"Fucking hell!" Hidan snarled. "I want to fucking kill them!"

Kakuzu did laugh this time. "Don't fret, love," he said. "It's all a long time ago now. I managed to ruin them all financially, anyway - don't tell anyone that though. Some of it was a bit illegal..."

"What, really?"

"Yes ... I mean, this was years afterwards, of course. It took me a little while to get back on my feet and figure out what I wanted to do ... and by then I was firmly established in the world of finance. The consultant who should've been holding that bleep, I got to know the guy who handled his investments, and," he chuckled darkly, "managed to persuade him to, uh, mismanage them rather..." He glanced at Hidan. Would he understand that this had been insider trading? Did he even know what that was...? Maybe better not go into this too deeply. "Let's just say he invested heavily in something that dropped like a stone," he finished. "Another of them was engaging in a little bit of tax fraud, and it was child's play to expose that ... The other two got divorced - one of them with a little nudge in the form of sending his wife some rather incriminating photographs - and I was able to introduce the ex-wives to a lawyer who completely wiped the floor with them."

"Wow, that's fucking savage," Hidan said admiringly.

"I always had got on very much better with my colleagues wives than the bastards themselves..." Kakuzu said. "And it serves them right for having flings every time they went away to medical conferences - they're all at it. Anyway, the whole experience was massively cathartic and after that I was able - to a certain extent - to put the past behind me. To stop dwelling on it, anyway." He held out his forearms, shaking back the silken sleeves of his dressing gown to reveal the pairs of plain tattooed bands on his wrists. "One for each of them," he said. "I don't know why - I've never felt anything like it before or since - but I needed something physical. A physical manifestation of ... recovery, I suppose. Of having dealt with something that had threatened to consume me. I look at these and know that - whatever the situation - I'll find a way to take back control."

Hidan nodded. "I can understand that," he said, trailing a fingertip along one.

"Yes, I dare say you can..." Kakuzu looked at him speculatively for a moment. Hidan hadn't done a ritual - as far as he was aware - since the one on holiday. Kakuzu had been keeping a close eye on his mood all fortnight, and every time he'd seemed stressed or upset he'd made sure to divert his attention to something more wholesome. Mostly sex, he had to admit, which had been surprisingly easy and of course a pleasure. Making sure he got his dinner on time seemed to be important too, and cooking with Hidan perched expectantly beside him had become a bit of a ritual in itself. Sometimes he was even helpful, though there had been a hairy moment when he'd chopped himself instead of an onion, but Kakuzu was pretty sure that had been a genuine accident. He'd still sucked off the blood and offered it up to Jashin with a moment of prayer, but then Kakuzu had distracted him by bandaging him up and kissing him better until one thing had led to another and they were fucking on the work surface again...

"What?" Hidan said, curious, and he realised he was smiling like the cat who'd got the cream.

"Oh nothing," he said. "Just remembering something." And luckily Hidan seemed content to leave it at that.

"Okay, so what happened next?" he asked.

"Well, after 12 years of medical training, I wasn't quite so much of an idiot as to throw it all in without at least trying to ... get back in the saddle. Kim was going out to Bosnia with Medecins Sans Frontieres - mainly as a way to escape from a certain bad break-up I suspect - and he persuaded me to join him."

"Now, Kim took to it like a duck to water - in fact most people seem to come out of experiences like that - harrowing as they can be - with, good lord, deepened compassion and their humanity strengthened…" His words were lightly mocking. "But after a few months mine was barely intact. It just made me realise even more how much I didn't give a crap about helping people anymore; just reinforced all the horrible conclusions I was coming to about human nature. I did six months - the minimum - and ran back to London with my tail between my legs."

He glanced at Hidan - how much talk of Kim is he going to be able to tolerate? But he was just listening quietly, so he carried on.

"Kim stayed out there for three years. He only left Srebrenica when the Bosnian Serb army expelled the UN in '95, and a few months later he was back in the field, in Rwanda this time. He'd still be with them, I think, if he hadn't had some health problems of his own..."

"Anyway, I buried myself in the city and didn't let myself think about anything except finance and making obscene amounts of money. The next time I did more that put a plaster on someone was five years later at the Admiral Duncan. But let's not get into that now. You'd have just been a kid at the time—"

"Seventeen, actually." Hidan cut in. "I was seventeen and fuck, Kakuzu, I was there." He sat up, an expression on his face Kakuzu hadn't seen before. "Shit, were you there when the bomb went off?" he asked, as strange tightness in his voice. "We— fuck, we could've been right beside each other."

Kakuzu just stared at him. "Christ," he said. "Hidan!" Somehow the thought of a terribly young Hidan in that absolute hell was almost unbearable. He could just imagine him, stumbling through the dust and smoke, coughing, choking- The thought that he might have seen him and dismissed him preyed on his mind and for a moment he was on the cusp of replaying his memories of the scene to look for him. He caught himself up just in time. Not a good idea. Particularly not today. He took a deep breath. He needed to stop letting his mind run away with him like this.

"Sorry," he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. "That's ... hard to think about. I was down the street when it happened and I- I-" He shut his eyes tight, a moment. The sudden sour taste in the air. Ears not working properly. Everyone running. Stop thinking about it. Stop it. "You can't imagine how much I want you to have not been there," he said, voice cracking. "At seventeen!"

"Yeah, it was fucked up," Hidan murmured. Still that tightness about him.

They sat in silence for a minute. Kakuzu looked out at the slowly darkening sky. "It was April," he said. An air of melancholy seemed to pervade the room. "So you were only just seventeen."

"Yeah."

"You'd been in London less than a month."

"Yeah. Don't get sentimental about it - I was a tough kid."

"I'm not getting sentimental," Kakuzu claimed unconvincingly. "I just. I hope I didn't just ... walk past you."

"Come off it, you were probably saving someone's leg or something. I was fine. I was lucky."

"Yes. But still." He wasn't even quite sure what he was trying to express, so he stopped trying. It was probably a very good thing he hadn't known Hidan when he was seventeen. He would have been far too young for him, and in 1999, with its laws still utterly archaic until a year later, he wouldn't even have been legal. Though he very much doubted that would've been stopping him. And he himself had been at his absolutely lowest point. God knows what kind of damage they would've done to each other - probably enough to ensure that what they had now would have been absolutely off the cards. It would've been a disaster.

All the same, the thought of his internal triage categorising Hidan as 'will survive without care' and not giving him a second thought - as he might very easily have done - was awful. If there could have been a touch - a fleeting point of contact; if he could've been the person to say, 'you'll be okay'; to tell him where to go and what to do, however briefly- But he knew he'd done nothing like that for anyone. He'd been purely practical; efficient, emotionless, cold. And yes, he might well have saved a limb or two, and well as preventing a few deaths from blood loss, but right now the thought that he could've been there for Hidan and he hadn't been seemed to matter more.

Which is stupid, he told himself. It doesn't matter at all, it was just a strange coincidence, and maybe not all that strange, actually, given that it was Friday night in a popular gay pub back when he was new in the city.

He started to wonder what Hidan had looked like back then - and if he would have been as irresistibly drawn to him then as he was now. Maybe not - he'd have been far too young... wouldn't he? "Was your hair already turning grey back then?" he asked, running his fingers through it, forcing himself back to the present.

"It was well on it's way, yeah." Hidan touched it too. "It got kind of singed off in the blast actually - came back even greyer."

Kakuzu stiffened. He was inside when the bomb went off then. "Does it run in your family?" he asked, to distract himself.

"Yeah, apparently my dad had it." Hidan got up and went to look down into the street; he very clearly didn't want to talk about this, and Kakuzu - who could think of a lot of reasons why that might be so - didn't push it. Hidan's dad was really just about the last thing he wanted to think about too.

He followed him to the window, and brushed lightly along his cheekbone with the backs of his fingers.

"Hey," he said gently. "It's beautiful, wherever it came from."

"I know." Hidan cracked a jokey smile, eyes sliding away.

"And it's so ... silky... Isn't white hair supposed to be coarser?" Kakuzu leant in towards him, stroked through it again, not letting him laugh off the compliment.

"The fuck would you know about it? - you don't even have a single fucking one!" Hidan's smile was more natural now, though; he was warming up to the attention.

"Yes, I'm not very distinguished, I'm afraid..."

Hidan turned to look into Kakuzu's face. "My mum would've reckoned you were distinguished as fuck," he said. "She'd've fucking loved you."

"I hope she'd have been right to," Kakuzu said softly, taking his face between his hands. "I know you get fed up of my paranoia about hurting you, but just thinking about what might have happened if I'd met you back then-"

"Nah, I was fucking adorable, you'd've broken your hand before you'd hurt me!"

"I'd still break my hand before I'd hurt you," Kakuzu said. It was out of his mouth before he'd even realised he was thinking it, and he almost blushed because it was so over the top, well... romantic... Even the tone of his voice was over-romantic. But even as he said it he knew it was true. He was helpless. Disarmed. Declawed.

"I know you would." Hidan took the injured hand and kissed lightly over the knuckles. His eyes turned up to Kakuzu's, a lingering, sensual look that had his heart racing again. Well, if he was going to get ridiculously emotional they seemed to be on the same page at least...

"Is it feeling better now?" Hidan murmured, a husky note in his voice that made Kakuzu's stomach flip.

"It's fine," he said gently, catching Hidan's chin in his hand for a moment, running a finger briefly over his bottom lip. Only a slight twinge...

Hidan turned to push up the sash window; the smell of the flowering climber that was colonising the neighbours' wall wafted in. "It's cleared up," he said. "It looks like a nice evening now."

Kakuzu put his arm around him. "It does. Do you ... want to go out somewhere?" He didn't remotely want to, but he felt like if he was with Hidan it could be alright. It could be tolerated.

"Nah." Hidan turned in to him, slipping his arms around his waist. "Not tonight."

A ridiculous level of relief coursed through him. "What do you want to eat?" he asked.

"Steak," Hidan said without hesitation.

Kakuzu laughed. "Well, that's easy then," he said. He took Hidan's hand and led him towards the door. "Let's do it now, before you get too hungry ... and difficult..."

"Oh, you think I'm going to get naughty, huh?"

"You're always naughty." Kakuzu gave him a playful slap on the behind. "I will allow you the euphemism of 'tired and emotional' if you prefer, though... Just because you're so sweet to me..."

His hand lingered there caressively and Hidan giggled, hanging onto the bannisters and swinging round to face him. "Ohh, you want to fuck again already, don't you? Fucking admit it..."

"No, I want you to eat your dinner..." Kakuzu said calmly.

"Man... you've got a boner, haven't you? I can tell."

"Well... maybe a very slight one..." Kakuzu was entirely straight-faced. "I am touching you, after all..."

He couldn't remember ever having felt this peaceful after thinking about his past, and Hidan, while you couldn't exactly say he was calm, that awful tension had abated. He caught him around the waist to stop him accidentally hurling himself down the stairs, and breathed out a sigh that wasn't quite all contentment, but getting there. Tomorrow would be a full day, the last day before Hidan's catwalk debut. They'd probably barely see each other. He'd have to make the most of him now.