A.N.: sloppy translation for those who're interested.

Coldness finds its way through cracks and seams; it twists around and slips under canvas and fabric, into Kakashi's pores and under his skin. Outside, on the other side of the thin khaki cloth, everything quiet. It's a cemetery kind of silence and stillness. Not even a breeze. The war is holding its breath.

Kakashi is standing in the middle of his hastily erected tent, back bent so his head won't touch the canvas ceiling. Any small careless movement could make the whole thing collapse. After a second he sits down on the uneven ground, the lumpy soil feeling cool beneath him. He exhales slowly, deliberately.

One after another, he recalls the orders he gave before entering the tent. Where has he positioned his sentries? How many does he have? Who is watching the south side of their small camp? Will they be safe tonight?

No, of course not.

Kakashi sighs and reaches for the map he had delivered to his tent. It's in the corner next to the weak oil lamp whose light is painting his shadow on the wall. In his tiny tent, it's less than an arm's length away. He still extends his arm further than he has to, just to hear the cracking of his joints. For a moment he imagines his vertebrae as tectonic plates that move slowly, crunching. It makes him feel ancient, so he shakes his head to dispel the image. Then he opens the map and stares at the colored arrows and markings on it with his single tired eye.

There are footsteps approaching the tent. This powerful, energetic rhythm; it's unmistakable. Sometimes Kakashi has to brace himself when he hears this all too familiar sound. Today he is too tired, too tense, and somehow it's almost a comfort. He is not alone.

Gai throws his tent flap open with enough force to elicit a loud slap and enters without asking for permission first. He doesn't have to. Kakashi could be Hokage - he could become daimyo, he could rule the whole world - and yet Gai would still march into his bedroom whenever he'd feel like it. Surprisingly, the thought doesn't bother Kakashi all that much.

"You should sleep," Gai says somewhat reproachfully. He looks down at Kakashi, who is sitting cross-legged on the ground.

"Hn," Kakashi mutters, barely acknowledging his visitor. He doesn't think he could sleep, even if he wanted to. And he still doesn't know whether he wants to. Anything could be lurking in the darkness under his eyelids. "What's going on outside? "

"Nothing, the camp's one hundred percent secure!" says Gai, bending over Kakashi while grinning broadly and waving his thumbs-up in front of Kakashi's nose. It looks positively disturbing, viewed from Kakashi's angle. Gai's huge, looming eyebrows don't help.

"Good," Kakashi says, even though nothing is actually good, and returns to his map. The colors blur before his eyes. The thick black lines marking the nations' borders disappear; land masses bleed into one another. Kakashi blinks. He can feel Gai standing behind him; he can feel Gai's body heat and smell his sour breath. After days on the battlefield, even Gai's oral hygiene is apparently no longer what it once was.

"If you want, you can lie down, Gai." Kakashi gestures over to the dark corner where his sleeping bag is lying, neatly rolled up, but before he has finished the sentence, Gai has already let himself fall to his knees behind him.

"What kind of a rival would I be if I went to sleep now, Kakashi?!" Far too loudly and way too close. Something wet hits the back of Kakashi's left ear. Saliva probably. Wonderful...

"Gai," he begins, in a tone meant to calm Gai down, meant to make him shut up, but Gai's hands are already on his shoulders.

"You need to get some rest, Rival! We might only have a few hours..."

I know that. Kakashi thinks of dawn and the red sky glowing behind a zigzag line of black trees, casting long, long shadows. He's cold.

Gai starts massaging his shoulders. Instinctively his fingers find the right places, above Kakashi's collarbone, his thumbs digging into Kakashi's neck. Cleverly, he works around the stiff collar of Kakashi's vest and through the thick, padded fabric. No one can hold a candle to him when it comes to this.

Nevertheless, Kakashi gently pushes him away. "Wait."

He gets up, goes to his sleeping bag and opens the two straps that keep it tied together. While unrolling it on the floor, he can practically feel Gai's eyes on him the whole time. Gai, however, says nothing, not even when Kakashi strips off his vest.

His face remains perfectly blank, his hands resting on his thighs in loose fists. The lamplight frames him in his own shadow.

"Okay," Kakashi says when he is done. He kneels down on his sleeping bag, opposite Gai, and wonders how much more he'll have to say to get what he wants.

He doesn't have to say anything. Gai simply comes over to him and resumes massaging his back, the way he's done time and time again, and when, at some point, Kakashi takes his wrist and guides Gai's hand under his shirt, they pick up where they left off years ago, just like that.

It's been years.

The last time Gai touched him like this was before Kakashi got his Genin team. It was before Gai got his Genin team.

It had been a game. They'd been young and they'd fumbled around, pawed at each other, because it had been easy. Easier than to get involved with someone else, easier than having to build any kind of meaningful relationship based on more than "who can last longer?". They'd never kissed, they'd never used anything but their hands, and they'd always done it in the dark.

It's been years, but it feels almost exactly like it did back then. Except that Gai's hands are even more calloused. Kakashi is lying on his side, eyes closed, trying to focus on how it feels.

Which isn't exactly easy. His thoughts distract him. Outside, in the other tents ... Kakashi is sure that similar things are transpiring there. Sexual advances fuelled by fear. This could be our last chance-kind of things.

He smiles behind his mask. Gai would probably break Kakashi's nose if he said something like that aloud. Gai is sure that they will win the war, that they're invincible.

For Kakashi it's not that simple.

He bites his lip. He needs to get his act together. He's missed this. The sensation of heat rising in his body, slowly but relentlessly, the knowledge that he cannot let himself make a sound.

Somewhere behind his navel there's a thin thread, a vibrating string, stretched to breaking.

The truth is that he wants more. That he's had enough of the games.

He pushes Gai's hand away the very moment he, more than anything, just wants to cling to Gai, and gasps.

He rolls onto his back, feels the loose soil beneath him give - his body will leave an imprint, a hollow like a shallow grave. Gai looks at him questioningly. Kakashi wants to kiss him, he wants to pull Gai down on top of him and sleep with him. He wants to have sweaty, passionate, desperate sex with Gai.

He doesn't. He doesn't move at all.

Gai's eyebrows furrow, the way they always do whenever he's really thinking about something, trying to puzzle something out, whenever he can't figure out the solution but is too proud to ask.

After a few seconds he moves closer to Kakashi.

And then down.

Gai's mouth is merciless. His hands move restlessly over Kakashi's thighs, they hold on, they let go, they stroke and caress and dispel whichever thoughts try to form in Kakashi's mind.

They have never done this before. This has never happened.

And Kakashi never thought that Gai would ever –

But now he feels the scratching of tiny stubble on the inside of his thigh and he hears Gai breathe, wetly, a little frantically and somewhat helplessly. He hasn't quite figured out how to do what he is doing without suffocating and, somehow, Kakashi is both slightly shocked and completely gone at the same time.

His fingers are clawing at the fabric of his sleeping bag. He doesn't know what he'd do if he allowed himself to touch Gai right now.

"You should rest," Gai says as he sits up.

Kakashi's body is warm and heavy on his sleeping bag. He knows he'll be able to sleep now, that he won't dream and that the camp is safe, at least until dawn.

"Stay," he says. He reaches out to Gai, touches his friend's wrist fleetingly. He knows he said it as if he was speaking to one of his dogs. And that's not right. And yet, he cannot say more. When the war is over maybe –

Kakashi swallows his hope.

A stray thought crosses his mind. No one in camp has any toothpaste. Food and water rations are scarce.

It's a splinter of a thought lodged under his skin.

How long will Gai taste Kakashi on his tongue?

Please, he amends. It's not something he'll actually say. Not yet anyway.

Gai hesitates for a moment, puzzled, then, suddenly, he smiles, not the gleaming sliver of white teeth but another new one, an almost invisible one that is alive only in the brightness of his eyes.

And while outside dead silence still reigns over shadows that move ever so slightly in the pale moonlight, it has become a bit warmer in the tent, in the ever shrinking space between them.

end