The bitterness of mortality
Sometimes Kakashi imagines what it might be like in the end. He figures it will be outside, under a grey, wide open sky. He thinks he might approve if there was rain, sheets of it, preferably. Pounding into the earth hard enough to pierce it. Gai's chakra will be the single spot of color, a flaring blue flame, hot enough to melt bones.
Gai will transcend his body in the end, Kakashi thinks. Or maybe that's just what he hopes.
The truth is that he has nightmares about Gai's body breaking open, organs spilling out, ribs punctuating skin. Kakashi can see them, sharp and thin like antlers, pink with blood and organ juice.
Sometimes Kakashi has to hide behind his porn, so Gai can't see how afraid he is.
black ice
It happens when his lover's strong – not strong enough - legs are wrapped around his waist. They're in bed together, the sheets are twisted on the floor somewhere with their pillows. Tonight they're rough, passionate. Kakashi's eye is squeezed shut, he's wants to focus only on the sensations. The slow burn, as if he's being sucked in and pushed out again.
Harsh hands that slide across his back, grasping for purchase. Kakashi wishes they were more calloused, bigger.
Still, it's easy to get lost in it, to forget. That's what makes him slip up, that's what makes him gasp, "Gai!"
Needless to say, Iruka is not amused.
I still see your ghost
Obito hangs around Kakashi like a dark cloud. He is a shard of glass buried underneath Kakashi's skin, almost invisible, but painful, there. You can see the memories cloud Kakashi's eye, and not just when he's standing in front of the memorial.
No, there are always moments when Obito manifests, suddenly, out of nowhere. Kakashi remembers then, and Gai can tell. He can see that little jolt of lightning strike between Kakashi's shoulder blades; he can see Kakashi tense up, his whole body going stiff with dread.
There's no stepping out of Obito's shadow.
I beat you, Gai wants to say sometimes, to the indifferent stone, it's not fair.
Haunting melody
The one memory that pops into his mind as Kakashi is crouching in the bushes, watching his pursuer's slow, careful approach, is Gai singing in the shower.
The sound of his strong voice bouncing off Kakashi's tiled bathroom walls while Kakashi himself is still lazing around in bed. A typical morning on a typical day off.
It's a terribly mundane memory to recall in what might be the final moments of his life.
He knows he should be thinking about something more profound, his losses, maybe, or his students, or – if it has to be Gai – then at least their first kiss.
Not such a small, ultimately irrelevant, detail of their lives.
But all he can think about is Gai's voice, full of joy, the occasional missed note somehow only adding to the overall beauty of the song.
Kakashi takes a deep, steady breath.
He's got something to fight for.
Fatal accident
"He's dead," Kakashi says unnecessarily, his pale, slender fingers resting on their target's neck.
Gai feels like pouting, to be honest. He'd been looking forward to the fight, and this?
The body they found crumpled at the bottom of the cliff, limbs bent at awkward angles, blood already dried into a splatter?
It's disappointing.
"I think he slipped somewhere up there." Kakashi points at the wall of jagged rock and Gai follows with his eyes obediently. "Guess they don't make S-ranked criminals like they used to, huh?"
"No," he says, thinking, I wanted to fight him.
Thinking, I wanted to kill him.
He tears himself away from the pitiful sight and feels Kakashi's eye bore holes into his back.
"I think I'm done with this ANBU-thing," Kakashi says on their way home, apropos of nothing. "Might be time to try my hand with the kiddies, what do you think, Gai? You up for that challenge?"
The stiff, cold ANBU mask hides Gai's sudden smile, but not his laugh.
"Helping Konoha's precious youth become splendid shinobi? Count me in, Rival!"
dancing with the devil
Uchiha Itachi is strong; Kakashi knew that. What he hadn't known was that Uchiha Itachi is stronger than him. Stronger and younger and better.
It takes Itachi all of three seconds to defeat him, completely and utterly defeat him, to send him sinking down into the depths of the lake, headed for rock bottom.
When he wakes up, this is what he remembers:
The sun swimming above him, slowly drifting out of his reach.
And then, just before he's swallowed, irretrievably lost, a hand reaching for him, pulling him up into the light.
Gai.
Flashes of euphoria
The first time Kakashi actually looks at him, Gai thinks he might just fall over dead from joy. Before, Kakashi's gaze would somehow simply go right through him, as if Gai wasn't even there, as if he was just a phantom or a ghost, already gone or non-existent to begin with.
Not this time, though.
This time, Kakashi is looking right at Gai. Maito Gai, who's just managed to knock sensei over during taijutsu practice, something no other kid in their class has ever managed, not even genius Kakashi.
And it doesn't even matter to him that all the other kids are staring at him as well, that sensei is blinking up at him from where he's lying in the dirt. All that matters are Kakashi's dark eyes resting on Gai, for the first time seeing someone worth his attention.
Terror in the night
There are nights when Kakashi feels the edge under his feet, when he knows one slight tremble will send him toppling over into the abyss. Those nights he comes home drained and empty. He comes home with a gallery of horrors stitched into the inside of his eyelids.
He doesn't go to sleep then –although he is tired, exhausted – he goes to a certain roof from where he'll look at a certain building, searching for an uncertain light in that one window. It's not always on, but he looks for it all the same, hoping and longing.
The vacuum of time
Sometimes it's like time stands still on the training field with Gai. The world freezes around them, visible only in a blur as if veiled, leaving only them. Always in motion, chasing each other through the grass, across the lake's shimmering surface, into the forest.
Kakashi can get lost in those seconds, those minutes, those hours.
He doesn't forget – he never does – but when he dodges Gai's kicks and parries his punches, the weight on his shoulders becomes lighter.
He becomes lighter.