A/N: I am just beginning to practice actually spending money. Of my own. For things that I just want, no other reason. I upgraded my account on a game that I really enjoy and think I will be playing more of in the future, and then yesterday, I thought about buying a chocolatey treat for myself. A treat? Something temporary? Just for enjoyment's sake? That's essentially unthinkable. Or it was. But maybe... I don't know. I still live by my parents' example, which is very anti-waste. That's why I'm being so careful to make sure I really really want this treat before I buy it. When I buy it, that will be a great advance on the path to independence. I could buy my own Nutella one day! Or orange juice!

I won't tell you what to expect, because I don't know what to expect, but the heretofore invisible and unmentioned details of routine adult life might get a little fleshed out in chapters to come. I might actually describe food, or the process of acquiring it. Wow!

But not yet. This turned out to be a thinking chapter, with the concrete details conspicuously glossed over. Ah well. It still is good, because it is what happened and therefore it must be good.

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General

Hidan lay on his bed, thinking through the concrete details of how to accomplish tasks given unpredictable sudden surges and withdrawals of the necessary resources. He had googled the question, and found some of the advice helpful. But he had the feeling that nobody else, or very few people, faced this same problem. There wasn't exactly a support group for people whose brains flop back and forth meeting every Thursday on the next block over. There had to be a technique. He knew this kind of problem was not unique. At the very least, there had to be historical examples from centuries of human societies that didn't have stable supply lines. But how could he find them? In order to use search engines, he would have to know the exact name of the thing he was looking before, because an algorithm just couldn't understand the same way a person could. I don't work the way machines do. I don't have solid ideas and plans and details and shit. I can't communicate with them. How the fuck am I supposed to get what I need then?

He had come to this conclusion three times already. Trying to figure out what he should do was stressful and made him feel increasingly helpless, which was why he'd spent the entire day on it. He'd only really spent two hours thinking and researching, but the amount of breaks he'd taken for the sake of his sanity inflated that into a much longer span of time. He hated feeling helpless. He wanted to get up and do something. But action alone wasn't the way to get done what he wanted to get done.

He sat up to take another break.

He picked his scythe up, lay it on the bed, and wound the rope around it. He put on his cloak. He checked himself out in the mirror. All of these were things he had already done multiple times before, because throwing his scythe at things was Hidan's idea of a break. He snarled at himself in the mirror. You know what? Fuck it. If I wasn't supposed to use the place for a training ground, he wouldn't have the power to make everything indestructible. Where the fuck else can I practice except for the hospital? Every other place would be damaged!

Hidan ran down the street at a fast pace, no hesitation. The demon boy had the ability to read minds and could be anywhere he wanted, so if he objected to this plan, he would have already popped up to complain about it. And if he happened not to be around to notice and object, well, that wasn't Hidan's problem.

Out of courtesy and a desire not to frighten the hospital's happy residents, he restricted himself to the outer edges of the grounds, throwing his scythe across the wide lawn and into the occasional tree. He steered well clear of the bushes, which he vaguely remembered being trimmed by some ghostly gardener. Alright, let's see… Up? He flicked his wrist, and the scythe twisted sideways. Shit!

He wasn't really frustrated. He did not become frustrated. Every completely unexpected direction was a reason to laugh, every burial in the yard a pleasant interlude where he could relax and walk around. And, eventually, he did come to realize something about the scythe's movements. Out of the blue, it dawned on him as he pulled his weapon to the side. It's moving in an arc. It always moves in an arc. It doesn't fly straight except just after I throw it. It moves in arcs and it strikes as it moves.

That proved to be the breakthrough he needed to unlock a whole new level of scythe mastery. Haha! Instead of trying to move it in specific directions, he tried to make it strike out in certain directions. That was much more intuitive and came much more easily to him. It involved moving the scythe the opposite way he had been trying to before, controlling the head instead of the tail. Have I been doing the completely wrong thing this whole time? No wonder it wasn't working. He made the scythe strike to the right, and he bit at the air. He made it strike to the left, and his right hand clawed through the scene before him. He stopped to roar. His roar was loud, it was deep, and he was proud.

A crow perched on a nearby branch, watching him. He knew it wasn't a real bird because it wasn't afraid. It watched him too closely, too steadily. He smirked in its direction after roaring. It cawed back. He waved at it. "Why don't you just come down if you want to, kid?"

The bird blinked, stretched its wings, refolded them. Either the boy did not want to put in more of an appearance, or he couldn't. Hidan shrugged. "Whatever. I've gotta get back anyway. Nice seeing ya."

The bird flew over and landed on his head. It dug its claws into his hair, scratching his scalp and making him wince, and held on tight. Hidan's eyes watered. Ow ow ow my head is sensitive! But from knowing the demon boy's sense of entertainment, he understood that the portion of him in the false crow just wanted to see what it was like to ride on someone's head. He could understand that. He let the bird sit there until it got bored and flew away.

When he got back to the base, he sat next to the front door and held his head in his hands. The scratches still stung in a very attention-getting way. He was filled with an urge to scratch, but knew for sure that would make everything infinity times worse. What to do? Ow ow ow. He tightened his hands into fists and tried his hardest not to scratch. But he wanted to so much… Just rub the knuckles against the scalp a little… Agh! That hurt! Shit! Aaaaaaggghh! The urge doubled in intensity.

The pain of itching brought him to the verge of tears. He started to sob, fantasizing about burying his scythe in his own guts just to have a distraction. Knives in his throat. Needles filling his back and arrows his front. Railroad spikes to the kneecaps. Anything other than this horrible pain from no source.

When a car turned into the parking lot, Hidan picked up his scythe and ran directly at it before it even slowed down. The driver braked suddenly, making the whole vehicle rock back and forth. Hidan slid over the hood to the passenger side, where he stood shaking and waited. It seemed to take forever. But finally, slowly, Yahiko opened the passenger's side door and got out.

Hidan grabbed his hand before he could speak. "Myediches!" He pulled Yahiko's hand onto the top of his head and whimpered most piteously.

Yahiko released chakra from his hand in confusion. "Huh?"

Hidan leaned over, threatening to topple in relief. "Oooh." He started to purr. "Mm."

Nagato got out of the driver's side. "Hidan? Are you okay?"

Finally, Yahiko realized what was going on. "His head hurts."

"Itches," Hidan clarified. "Mm."

"Maybe I should take him to my room and keep him from itching there," Yahiko said.

Nagato looked stung. "Well…"

"It would be a really good idea." Yahiko flushed and tried not to cringe. He had just spent the entire car ride in some of the greatest discomfort he had ever known. At first he hadn't been able to summon the courage to say anything. Then Nagato had asked if he was okay, and Yahiko had finally managed to say he was sorry. But he still could not say out loud what he was sorry for. That would be admitting too much. Nagato had made everything worse by saying it was okay, that he'd known ever since last night that something was wrong, and he hoped Yahiko figured it out without too much trouble.

Why did he have to be so considerate? Why can't I just trust him? Why? What's wrong with me?

Oh, crap. Hidan knew he was being called back to work again. He hadn't even properly ended his break yet! But he could feel the insatiable need that was not his. Eh, fine. He took his head away from Yahiko's hand and raced as fast as he could run toward Yahiko's room before the itching could return.

Once safely enclosed behind a locked door, Yahiko went into the bathroom to get some water. Hidan nearly melted again when the chakra-infused glob of water was held to his head. He smiled dazily like he was dreaming.

Yahiko gave it some time for the pain relief to sink in. Then he asked, "What happened?"

"The demon kid was in the form of a bird," Hidan explained. "He got curious and sat on my head. His claws scratched me up."

Yahiko blinked. "Oh, um… Okay." He had tried to make his chakra heal before. He tried it again, thinking healing thoughts and trying to make his chakra extra delicate. The faint glow of his chakra in the water changed from blue-white to green. He hadn't even noticed it was blue-white before. He pushed it through the water, probing at Hidan's head. It stimulates. Goes into flesh and stimulates growth and things. That's what she said.

"That feels good," Hidan murmured. Yahiko smiled. I'm doing it! I'm actually healing a person!

When he took his glob of water away, tossed it into the sink and sat down again to see if the healing was complete, Yahiko felt that a great weight had been lifted from him. Nothing about his concerns had changed, but he now had the strength to ignore them, and that made all the difference.

"It's not coming back," Hidan reported.

"Can I…?"

"Sure."

Yahiko got up and looked down on Hidan's head from above, pushing aside his hair to look for scratches. He saw faint lines, but nothing freshly scratched. He sat down with a grin. I healed him!

Hidan rubbed his head. "Yeah, it's good! You're the best, Sunshine." He sat up straighter. "So, what'd you want me here for?"

Before they talked about that, Yahiko remembered something else he wanted to ask. "Why do you call me and Nagato Sun and Moon?"

" 'Cause you two started looking after me and Konan, and you're like a team. Someone's always there in the sky."

Yahiko smiled. "You think I look after you?"

"You're there in the sky," Hidan repeated.

I'm not as bad as I was just thinking. What was I just thinking? Did I forget everything good about me again? I need to stop forgetting that! "I have a problem." Yahiko paused, then let everything else pour out of him in a rush. He talked about what had happened last night. He talked about the conversation with Nagato just now. He talked about his struggle to think at work in the morning. He talked about his conclusions. "Why can't I trust in what I know? I know he wouldn't laugh at me. I know nobody would. But I can't trust anybody. I'm trying to, but I can't! Is there something wrong with me?"

Hidan had sat silently the whole time. Now he put a hand on Yahiko's shoulder. "Sunshine?"

Yahiko got a grip on himself. "Yes?"

"There's nothing wrong with you."

Hidan and the rest of the world became very blurry. Yahiko tried to blink it away, but that made the problem worse. "There's nothing wrong with me?"

"There's nothing wrong with you."

Yahiko was now actively crying. A part of him must believe what Hidan was saying. Yet he disbelieved it too, because what Hidan was saying contradicted everything he'd seen and felt for himself. How could it be true? But if he had really believed it wasn't true, he wouldn't have cried. He didn't know what he believed.

Eventually he got a grip again. "Wha - what do you mean?"

"You're expecting too much from yourself," Hidan said. His own face was covered in tears, but he somehow continued to play the role of the stern mentor. How does he do that? "How the fucking fuck are you supposed to trust something that's not real?"

Yahiko stopped sobbing in surprise. "What?"

Hidan wiped his face clean. "You heard me," he said, sounding sterner than ever. "It's not real. You think other people won't bother you, you think they won't say shit, but you haven't seen it for yourself. It hasn't happened. I can do whatever the fuck I want because I'm in that position. You haven't really seen some ordinary guy, someone like you, who can't do anything he wants, be treated nicely and not made fun of. You haven't seen it. It's not real. So how the fuck are you supposed to trust it?"

"But…" Yahiko looked down. "But I know it's real. I know that's okay, the there are guys who wear makeup and even dresses and don't get made fun of."

"But have you seen it?"

"...No."

"What have you seen?" Hidan ordered.

Yahiko turned red. "My dad used to look at me like I was doing something wrong by brushing a doll's hair," he mumble-whispered.

Hidan was very fluent in mumble. "Okay," he said, relaxing back into kindly friend mode. "You saw that. It happened. You know it's real. You haven't seen people being cool. You don't know that's real. There's nothing wrong with you, Sunshine. Who the fuck would trust an idea over shit they saw?"

Is he saying…? "You think I was afraid of Nagato because of other people."

"Uh, yeah."

Yahiko drew his knees up and looked down at them. "He's not other people."

"No offense, but you fucking panicked. I don't think we're dealing with something that obeys logic here."

"I was just really anxious and I froze," Yahiko protested.

"No. You fucking panicked."

Yahiko wanted to continue protesting, but did not. He couldn't seem to say a single word. If he said another word, who knew where it would lead? Hidan had already gotten him to bring his long-dead parents into this. They were not safe in the past anymore. What might further conversation do to their memories?

Yahiko struggled to say something, anything. Why can't I say anything to that? He was forced to give up. With a sigh, he slumped forward and let the current line of discussion die.

Hidan let it die too. He yawned. "Ah, shit. You wanna know what I've been doing?"

"What?"

"I've spent the whole freakin' day figuring out how to help Konan with her issues. Then you showed up needing help with your issues. I'm fucking done for the day. You wanna do something completely stupid instead?"

Yahiko sniffed. "Um...no."

Hidan cocked his head.

"I think I would rather do something smart instead."

Hidan leaned forward eagerly. "Watcha thinking?"

Yahiko got into a new, more open seated position. He took a deep breath. And, quickly, before he had the chance to lose his nerve, he made hand signs. With a burst of chakra, his body reshaped itself.

Hidan's jaw nearly fell off. "Waahhh shit your hair it's pretty!" He reached out and let a bit of it drape over his finger. "Fuck, you are amazing with long hair."

Yahiko gulped. "Really?"

"Yeah." Hidan sighed and got that dreamy appreciative look that Nagato had so often. Do I really look that good? Yahiko flicked his hair back shyly.

"How...else do I look?"

"Whaddaya mean?"

Yahiko couldn't explain what he meant. Do I look...okay? Like this is okay? Like I'm not just a pervert or something? "I swear I don't do anything weird in this body," he exclaimed in a surge of panic. "I don't like… I use Transformation Jutsu again if I want a new outfit."

Hidan grinned. "You look like you."

"Like me?"

"Yeah, like you. You, for real. Not fake. It doesn't look like a costume or a doll. It's you."

Not a costume… It felt so good to hear Hidan say that. That must mean something, right? Feeling good must be important. "Do you know where I work?"

"You just told me a lot about your work," Hidan said. "You work in the clothing area of a store, stocking and organizing and cleaning up the changing rooms and shit."

"Yeah, but…" Yahiko blushed. "The clothing areas are big enough to need more than one person to look after them. I'm mainly assigned to the women's clothing. I think, um…" He cleared his throat. "I think my boss assigned me there because she thinks I'm a trans woman."

"That's kinda considerate of her," said Hidan. "And not mentioning or making a big deal of anything. Hey, that's nice."

Yahiko let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. I thought he would ask me if it was true or not. "Yeah, it's good. It's really good. Because I don't, um, I don't know if it's true or not."

Hidan shrugged. "You wanna know what I think, Sunshine?"

"What do you think?" He can feel all my feelings. Can he know? He might know!

"Follow the fun," Hidan said. "Do what feels fucking good."

That wasn't what I expected. "What does that mean?" Yahiko asked. He tried not to sound disappointed.

Hidan lay on his belly, arms folded beneath his head, facing Yahiko. "You remember how I couldn't fight the demon in either form?"

"Yes?"

"Do you remember me even once using the B-word?"

"Um...no."

"That's because I don't want to." Hidan flicked one ear. "I don't even know if it's the right word to use. Maybe the P-word is more accurate. But I don't care, because they're both annoying. I just want to fucking enjoy things without worrying about whether or not I'm fucking allowed to! You know?"

Oh my god. He just described it perfectly. I always worry about whether or not I'm allowed to enjoy something while I'm enjoying it. That's perfect. "I know."

"So I keep those words in the part of my mind where I keep things I know about but don't really think of. Like how you know that's a thing your boss does. 'Oh, yeah, I think that's her reason.' And it's just her reason and you don't have to agree with it or anything. Like knowing, 'Oh, yeah, it fell down because of an earthquake,' and that doesn't mean you start going on about the history of earthquakes in your area and thinking about when the next one's going to hit. It's just a fucking reason. You know?"

"I… I think so."

"Okay." Hidan closed his eyes. It seemed like he had gone to sleep. Yahiko tried to put the matter aside like Hidan said. Well, even if I'm not, I still have this form, and I kind of like being in it. I don't know how I like it. I like to look at my hair in a mirror. That's okay. I'll go look in a mirror right now. He got up to do just that.

Once in front of the mirror, he tried to see himself as Hidan had. It does hang nicely. He took a lock of his hair and let it drape over one finger. He's like a cat. He probably likes texture. It is really soft… Yahiko had never noticed that about his hair in this form. He'd only ever looked at it. He had never considered how it felt or smelled. He ran a hand down his head. It's smooth. On sudden whim, he posed with his hands curled and held next to each other under his chin. Do I look adorable?

Maybe a little.

He walked back to the bed and sat down. Hidan watched him with a small smile. So he hadn't been asleep after all. "I know," Yahiko said.

Hidan laughed. "Hey, do you have any poses?"

.

Meanwhile, Nagato drove right back into town, this time with Konan and Sasori in the car with him. Konan sat in the front passenger seat, which offered her the best view of their surroundings as the car moved. She watched with rapt attention as the trees flashed by, turning her head sharply every few seconds to look out of a different window. Sasori sat in the back, silently contemplating life, the universe, and everything. Or at least that was what he seemed to be contemplating.

Nagato didn't actually know, because he was wrapped up in his own thoughts. He hadn't even taken the time to figure out why he was driving these two into town. He just did because he'd been asked to, and on the way he thought about Yahiko. He said sorry to me, like he had something to apologize for. But he didn't do anything to me, unless… Was he scared of me last night?

Why would he be scared of me? What can I do to reassure him? Nagato took the left turn into town and swallowed. And he doesn't even know. He hasn't seen the part of me that I saw when I helped to move Hidan and I touched his chest. He doesn't know I want things from him. Oh my god. Unless he finally figured it out?

Konan told him to drive to the technology store near the dog shelter. Nagato did so, following his usual route to work on autopilot. No, no, he couldn't have. He froze so suddenly. He would have had to just realize it, and he couldn't have, because nothing happened that would have tipped him off. Unless he'd already been wondering and he put it together in his mind by coincidence…

The very different lighting conditions kept him alert to the fact that he was not driving in to work as usual, so he had no problem remembering to park in front of the tech store. "Okay, what are we doing here?"

Konan looked at him. She held it for a long while. Nagato shivered. "I was busy thinking about other things."

Now that he was not, he realized why he'd been asked to drive here. Oh, duh. If I'd thought for even a second! He turned bright red. "Nevermind."

"You do have the device you acquired for me."

"I've been keeping it in the glove box."

Konan looked around. "Is handwear typically worn in these vehicles?"

"What? No." Nagato reached over and opened the glove compartment, which was the little useful-for-everything holding space in the dashboard right in front of her. "I've never actually thought about why it's called the glove box before. Maybe people did use to wear gloves, and they would keep them here while driving. Huh."

He got out the phone, brushed dust off of it, and ran through his memory of the last time he'd tried to set up a plan to confirm that they had everything needed. Sasori said, "According to Google people used to wear special driving gloves. They kept them in a box."

Nagato jumped. He'd forgotten Sasori was there. She got Sasori to agree to help get her a plan? I promised I would do that. But I got very sidetracked…

They went inside. There was a different person at the kiosk than Nagato remembered talking to. They seemed very surprised that he'd brought the phone into the store with him. His explanation that he'd gotten it before discovering that there was a problem with getting an actual plan for it was met with suspicion. Nagato caught Konan looking down at her outfit. It was ironic - he was getting that type of reaction for the most perfectly normal thing Konan had ever been involved in, and not the dozens of entirely fantastical things on display about her every where she went? But no, the kiosk person didn't notice her outfit or her blue hair at all. Nagato was amazed at the selectivity of the blinders ordinary people came with.

The kiosk person wasn't paid nearly enough to care, so they gave up with a shrug and shoved paperwork at him. Sasori pulled out his card and filled out the paperwork, and Nagato translated what the kiosk person said about the plan's features. Half of the time, he ended up saying "I'll show you how to look that up later" because Konan would not know how to check her data usage or anything else. He had a strong sense of his own competence after that. Wow. I don't even remember learning most of this stuff. But it is complicated, isn't it?

Things were done to activate the phone, they walked out, and Nagato got Konan involved with the group chat. He showed her how to use the buttons on the side of the phone to adjust how much noise it would make when she got a notification, and showed her how to turn notifications on and off. Sasori began to fidget. He glanced around. He shuffled his feet. Eventually he began to silently drum his fingers on the door handle.

"I can go over all the symbols later if you want," Nagato finished.

"Hidan showed me around his phone once before, but I would like to have my memory refreshed."

Nagato nodded and started for the driver's side door.

Sasori cleared his throat then. "Ahem. There's something I realized earlier."

The others paused and looked at him. Sasori found that his fingers were still drumming on the door handle and made them stop. Maybe it wasn't impatience that caused him to fidget. Or if it was, it was the kind of impatience where you just wanted to get something unpleasant over with as soon as possible to end the dread.

"I thought about why I was agreeing to this," he said, "and I realized something. I didn't agree to stay out of the kindness of my heart, and I didn't agree to pay for this for that reason either. I thought I was being unusually forgiving. But in reality, I had my own selfish reasons. I made that choice for myself."

He closed his eyes. "Which means that I'm not just here because I'm compelled to be. I have a reason to be here. I don't see that reason going away any time soon, so…"

He wasn't going to say it out loud. In addition to desire for power, he apparently had a fair amount of pride. I still don't know whether those are human traits I want to have. But desired or not, he had them, and not knowing how to handle them wasn't going to stop him from acknowledging their existence. So he refused to risk his pride by saying it in front of her.

"Oh," Nagato said. "Alright. I think we can put in an order for that tonight."

Konan graciously did not say anything. Sasori did not volunteer anything. She remained with the car while Sasori and Nagato went into the tailor's shop. He was just about to close, but he took Sasori's measurements and phone number and promised to call when it was done.

On the drive home, Sasori considered his life choices. He ultimately decided to not go to the effort of caring about their greater meaning and just follow the path of happiness wherever it might lead him. If his idea of a good life turned out to be something crazy and weird, so be it.

.

A/N: The two words alluded to by Hidan are bisexual and pansexual, in case that wasn't clear.

And now I have nothing to say. Good day, everyone!