Chapter Text
“How old are you, really?”
The question was mumbled against Rin’s outstretched arm, then followed up by one of Kakashi’s brief, narrow glances, just quickly enough that he’d likely be able to catch it if she slipped up.
Which, of course, Rin already had. Still, she tried to salvage the situation, turning over onto her stomach with feigned, sleepy inefficiency. “Mhuh?”
She’d sucked him and Obito off earlier, so she could likely pass off her muddleheadedness as due to that. Or she hoped she would, only to be disappointed when, instead of patting or stroking her, Kakashi simply snorted and rubbed his forehead against her upper arm. “I thought about it,” he said, seriously. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”
“Mmm?”
“Rin.” His hand was in her hair now, and the soft, careful stroke of his fingers against her scalp was much more distracting than it should have been even when she was on guard against it. “I know you’re awake.”
Silence settled between them, heavy but somehow warm. Kakashi was willing to wait, then, rather than pin her down and prod her with incisive questions until she slipped up and gave herself away. That made it harder to keep her silence.
He’d chosen his moment well. Nothing was on the schedule today, other than rest and relaxation and as much sex as the three of them could fit in while keeping track of Gaara’s supposedly covert, solo exploration of the town. Obito was on shift for that right now, after grumbling and grousing that it wasn’t fair for him to be the first one kicked out of bed for it, as if he wasn’t the one that’d volunteered for duty himself.
Had Obito been here, Rin would have had more leeway, just from the ability to play the two of them off against each other. But it was just her and Kakashi now, Kakashi who’d gotten terrifyingly patient over the years about hunting down whatever he wanted.
She told herself that it was probably best that she give up right away. Kakashi asking a question once and not getting a satisfying answer always, always meant he’d ask again. Bad enough that he’d figured out enough to support his asking such a question; having him ask while Obito was around would just mean even more to deal with.
She did not let herself think about how answering right now might possibly just be a desperate snatch for relief, rather than a prudent capitulation. “How did you know?”
Kakashi tensed, then relaxed. “Gaara.”
Rin, having been half-expecting just that answer, couldn’t help but smile bitterly. Gods, the amount of trouble they’d all been dragged into by her decision to extend a helping hand to the boy… “Well.”
“It was other things, too,” Kakashi murmured. “But mostly? I couldn’t help but remember how we were like, at his age. How you were.”
“Ah. Not telling.”
“…what?”
“Yup. Not telling.” Then, after a glance at Kakashi’s new, ferocious frown, Rin added: “You already have the answer that matters. You don’t need a number to know I’m older than I should be.”
“But—”
“Not. Telling.”
Kakashi drew in a sharp, affronted sigh, then let it out explosively. “Unfair,” he muttered, but his other arm came winding around her waist, and he pulled her back close towards his chest. “You don’t want to talk about it?”
Rin shook her head reflexively—so much of her old memories had ceased to have a serious bearing on what she did or decided these days that it didn’t seem she had anything she wanted to talk about. Then she thought of where she was and what she was no longer obligated to do, and couldn’t help but smile and say: “Actually, there is one thing.”
“Hm?”
“I didn’t think it’d turn out this well,” she murmured, her fingers tracing an idle, formless pattern on Kakashi’s left shoulder. “I feel like I got lucky, meeting Obito and you.”
Kakashi’s frown came back with a vengeance. “That doesn’t… I mean,” and he paused, but clearly was too impatient, too curious to keep the rest of his question in: “what does that have to do with it?”
“Uh… the obvious?”
“I mean, hadn’t you already met us? The last time?”
Now, Rin felt as muddleheaded as she’d been pretending to be. “What do you mean, ‘the last time’?”
“You know,” Kakashi said, so smoothly she knew he had to be embarrassed, saying it. “Reincarnation. That.”
“Rein… no.”
“So I thought—huh?”
“Nope.”
“…you weren’t?” Kakashi’s frown deepened. “But…”
“Mm-hm.”
“But that means,” Kakashi said, slowly, “that means you didn’t know anything…?” He said it as if he wanted her to refute him, to explain that she’d always looked ahead, or saw ahead, somehow. Rin couldn’t help but smirk a little; it felt so characteristic of him that that would be what he worried about once he knew, that the thought of her forcing them all to strike out on their own as undersized nukenin back then had not in fact been spurred on by mysterious knowledge of how things would turn out for them. “Rin?”
“Correct,” she murmured, tucking her head back in against his chest, heedless of how that would muffle her words. “Rin-Rin didn’t know anything. Rin-Rin’s just, y’know, been doing whatever’s seemed like it might work.”
“Rin.”
“Sorry.”
“Rin, that’s not—look at me.”
“Rin-Rin’s too sleepy.”
“Rin.” When she didn’t look up, Kakashi let out a forceful sigh. “Rin, I meant—when I asked if you didn’t know anything? I just meant… I wasn’t blaming you, okay?”
“Hm.”
“Rin, I mean it.” He said that emphatically, his tone so certain it sent a surge of relief through her, one she hid by burrowing tighter against him, much the way she would if she were really too sleepy to be having this horrible conversation. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like, losing everything.”
Guiltily, Rin cleared her throat. “Wasn’t that bad,” she murmured. “Don’t need to pity Rin-Rin.” Though it was kind of nice that he did, even when what she’d left behind in her first life had largely been a world drained dry of familiar colour, a world she’d been too angry, too heartsick to hang on to anymore.
Dying there had been a relief. It’d hurt, of course, quite terribly, but in the end there had been nothing to worry about, just darkness and a quiet that asked little of her, and, some uncountable time later, an insubstantial, faraway voice that wanted to know if she’d like another chance.
Not back there, she’d thought, firmly, meaning ‘no’, only to wish she could roll her eyes when the person (thing? being?) she couldn’t see or feel pushed her into what felt like a cold, cold stream. The stream had washed away her name before she quite knew what was happening. Annoyed, she’d fought not to let it wear away anything else, losing, but still fighting, and then she’d woken up to giants and muddled senses and sleeping all the time. Only somewhat intact.
“Who were you?” Kakashi asked, his tone tentative. “Do you remember?”
“A hero,” Rin murmured. “Glory and honour and sacrifice and all that nonsense.” Then, when Kakashi pulled an inch or so back, disbelief in every line of his body, she laughed and couldn’t help but add: “The killing kind, of course.”
“Really.”
“How do you think I knew I didn’t want to do it again, this time? Hm?”
“Rin…”
“Oh, come on, you can’t look at Rin-Rin so disdainfully without expecting something to happen. Let’s just do a bit?”
“You—I know you’re trying to distract me.”
“Is it working?”
“The—it’s—this should be a serious conversation!”
“But… but Rin-Rin wants something else that’s serious too…”
Snarling under his breath, Kakashi wrestled with her, managing to lever her resisting body off of him and pin her to the bed in one smooth, vicious motion. Naturally, once he’d done that, all the conversation’s seriousness had fallen to the wayside, cast off in favour of his punishing grip on her wrists, and his hard thigh being forced between hers. “You never listen,” he muttered. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you avoiding the original question.”
That said, he seemed more focused on fondling her than forcing her to answer anything. Probably he meant to try and do that a little later, holding out on giving her what she needed unless she gave up the answer he wanted.
How much older will he believe? Rin thought, even as Kakashi pinched her left nipple hard enough that she couldn’t keep back a moan. If he’s going to be like this every time he asks…
“You’ll tell me in the end,” he was saying, his calm tone a delicious contrast to the way he was already thrusting into her. Fuck, she didn’t think he’d be able to get this hard so quickly. “You need it too much.”
“I—I don’t—”
The bedroom door opened with a loud creak, so suddenly that all Rin could do was freeze. Gaara and Obito weren’t the only ones that could bypass the seal traps on it so easily, but they were the only ones that would actually try; shocked, Rin scrambled for the edge of the nearest sheet, and had pulled it over Kakashi and herself halfway by the time she could bear to open her eyes and take a look at who had just come in.
Thankfully, it was only Obito. Which most likely meant that San had taken over keeping an eye on (a.k.a. doting mercilessly on) Gaara the way he often did when they were on a break, leaving Obito free to wander back over here.
“…tell me you really expect me to believe that,” Obito was saying, his disdainful sneer a perfect match for the way he was leaning back against the now closed bedroom door. “I should have known.”
“I’m serious,” Kakashi said, his blush sapping those emphatic words of their strength. Not to mention the fact that though he’d gone still atop Rin, he didn’t seem to have any intention of pulling out. “She really did start this. I just thought I’d take advantage and still try to—”
“Just shut up,” Obito said, cutting him off. “If anything, I’m the real moron here,” he muttered, already shrugging out of the loose tunic that was all he’d been wearing up top. “I can’t believe I really thought you’d keep it to just talk if I left the two of you alone.”
“Wait,” Rin couldn’t help but say, unable to keep from making certain connections, “you knew he was going to ask…?”
“The bastard’s only been ranting about you being older being the only explanation for some things for, what, the last three months?” Obito rolled his eyes as he came up to the side of the bed. “I thought he’d never ask. Move over.”
“But,” Rin said, even as Kakashi grudgingly moved off of her, and she joined him in shifting over to make room for Obito, “you… don’t you want to know, too?”
“I wouldn’t mind knowing,” was the murmured answer. “It’s not like it matters if I do, though.”
Obito’s arm was cold, as was the material of the ninja pants he hadn’t bothered to kick off before getting into bed. His bare feet were unnaturally warm as ever. The implied, unconditional acceptance beneath his words had Rin wanting to burrow into the circle of his arms and never come out.
“It’s… it’s not…” It’d been several quiet moments of nestling between them, Obito’s arm around her shoulders, and Kakashi’s hands still idly wandering everywhere, and Rin still didn’t know how to explain her reticence. “It’s just that I don’t really…” She didn’t feel forty-one, but she also didn’t feel as if she were just twenty-three, either. “I don’t know how to explain.”
“Then don’t,” Obito said, shrugging.
“Or, you know,” Kakashi said, casually, “when you finally feel comfortable enough to say it…”
Rin narrowed her eyes at Kakashi, struggling to keep a grin from forming. “You made a bet,” she guessed. “Right?”
Kakashi’s careful non-reaction to that question told her something. Obito’s rusty, vindictive chuckle from behind her confirmed her hunch beyond doubt. “You two,” Rin said, unable to keep back the grin any longer. “Just for that, Rin-Rin’s never going to tell.”
“But…!” Kakashi sat up, shoving the sheet back, his aggrieved frown directed squarely over at Obito. “You, I bet you deliberately—”
“You wanted an hour, and you got one,” Obito said, shrugging again. “Not my fault you didn’t use it well.”
“I said at least an hour, okay? At least. Which obviously implies more than that!”
“You said an hour,” Obito said, the slight emphasis to the words making them sound much more smug than his bland tone would ordinarily allow for, “and you got one.”
“Yes, yes, and now, because of you, neither of us will fucking win!” The way Kakashi snarled that last phrase was enough of a turn-on that Rin could no longer prevent herself from hooking her leg around his waist and trying to tug him down on top of her. “What—stop it!”
“Why?” He was still half-hard, and wasn’t resisting her efforts as much as he could have if he were really serious. Which meant he was in the mood to be coaxed, but as always, too embarrassed to own up to it. “It’ll make you feel better.”
“I don’t—you!” Kakashi’s voice cracked betrayingly when Obito reached out to lend Rin a helping hand in dragging him down. “Why the hell you think you can mock me when you—you can’t ever stay out of it—”
“The difference,” Obito said, sounding immensely pleased with himself, “is that I can admit I always want it.” He had to reach far over Rin to maintain his steely grip on Kakashi’s shoulder as Kakashi crashed down beside her. It felt as if Obito were looming over the both of them; it made everything so much better. “All these years, and you’re still such a liar.”
“I’m not—nhuh—” Kakashi didn’t manage to get out anything more intelligible than that for a while. By the time his mouth was free enough again that he could speak, he was too breathless, too obviously distracted by the sensation of having Obito in him while also being deep inside Rin.
Sometimes, at times like this, Rin could manage a joke, a little dig at Kakashi for how wordless he always was when he was the connection between her and Obito. He never let up about how taking both him and Obito was the only thing that satisfied her enough to shut her up, so Rin took it as her eternal duty to return the favour whenever she could.
Just now, she couldn’t bear to. The weight of the both of them on her, the sweat between their bodies, the ragged sound of their breaths; all of it was a stark reminder of their success, something almost too sweet to bear.
Mine, Rin thought, fiercely. Both mine, and alive, so long as I draw breath. She didn’t say anything. Her bruising grip on Obito’s arm and Kakashi’s shoulder likely said it all for her, along with the tears she couldn’t quite manage to blink away.
Afterwards, as they held her, she found herself saying, in a hoarse whisper: “I was seventeen, when I died.”
Kakashi tightened the arm he had around her waist. Obito pressed closer. “Okay,” Obito murmured. “Okay.” Nothing else was said.