There was running water. There were sinks and showers and flush toilets and fluorescent lighting in the bathrooms, which wasn't the impression he'd had of "camping" at all. And outside the bathrooms there were deep sinks with more lights and a roof over them: a dish-washing station, or at least that was what everyone seemed to be using it for.

So he dropped his armful of cookware, plates, plasticware, and cups into the sink next to one of the ninja kids and turned on the water. The girl beside him studied his pile and remarked frankly, "Wow, that's not very many dishes."

Dawn. Meisha's daughter. She had either been here too long or used too much soap, because she was up to her elbows in suds and it was hard to tell which of the dishes were clean and which were still in line to be scrubbed. What had Meisha made for dinner, Cam wondered? Could she possibly have baked her own bread at the campsite?

"That's fair," Cam told her, squirting some earth-friendly soap onto the sponge. "Because I was just thinking that you had enough dishes there to feed the entire program."

"I'm washing my mom's dishes too," Dawn said, like he might not have guessed that. "So I have twice as many dishes."

"Well, I'm washing my boyfriend's dishes," Cam replied. He was guessing the stuff Hunter had cooked with would do better to soak while he sponged off and rinsed the rest of it. "He cooked. I clean. So I have twice as many dishes too."

"You have a boyfriend?" Dawn was giving him a wide-eyed look that made him wonder if he was going to hear about this from Meisha later. But then she asked, "Who is it? It is Sensei Chitzu?"

He relaxed a little, silently grateful to her single parent for teaching Dawn that it wasn't always about moms and dads. "It's Sensei Hunter. You met him when you were helping Shane set up his tent."

"Oh." There was a clatter and soap bubbles flew as Dawn tipped one of the pans over toward the back of the sink so she could reach the plasticware. "The Thunder Ninja. He has a funny uniform."

No one had worn their training uniform since they'd been here. Which meant that she must have seen him before the camping trip, but probably hadn't been introduced, since she hadn't corrected him about when they'd met. He hadn't seen her on campus during any of his classes, but that was the disadvantage of switching with Nena so often. It was just a little harder to keep up with the students.

"He probably thinks the same thing about you," Cam said at last, wondering if it would have saved water to just fill the sink to begin with. Obviously Dawn had the right idea, saving the rinsing until everything was clean.

Of course, this made Meisha's daughter protest. "My uniform isn't funny!"

Actually, seeing children in ninja training uniforms had always struck him as a little funny, maybe because they had used the generic white-and-grey practice uniforms for kids when he was younger. He had worn white and grey cotton to class until he was ten years old. Now kids could get the heavy duty training uniforms as young as six.

"Your uniform isn't funny," a familiar voice agreed. "But you are."

Dawn craned her neck around to stare at him without lifting her hands out of the sink. At least, not much. Cam kept a wary eye on her soaking, soapy hands as they brushed against the edge of the sink and threatened his considerably dryer washing station. "I'm not funny," she informed Chitzu. "Did you know Sensei Cameron has a boyfriend?"

Cam rolled his eyes as Chitzu's gaze flicked to him. "Yeah," the Japanese teacher drawled, smiling at Dawn. "I heard something like that."

"It's Sensei Hunter," she confided. "He made Sensei Cameron dinner."

"Is that right," Chitzu said agreeably, shouldering her aside at her own sink. "Hey, stop hogging all the space. How long does it take you to do dishes, anyway? Give me some of that soap!"

"No!" she exclaimed, giggling as she pushed him right back. "That's my soap! You can't have any!"

"Even if I use it on your dishes?" He got the soap away from her easily, coating the remaining dishes liberally, which Cam felt was serious overkill. There were already plenty of soap suds in that sink. "Come on, use the sponge or lose it," Chitzu teased her.

Then, of course, he flicked some soap suds into Cam's sink and added, "Couple of slowpokes, here. The campfire's going to be out by the time you two finish doing the dishes."

Dawn squeaked as he turned the water in her sink on full blast and angled a plate so that it poured over her hands. "Ew, stop it!" she shrieked, putting her wet hands on his shoulder and pushing hard.

Chitzu barely moved, grinning down at her when she braced her feet and tried to shove him into Cam. "Get a towel and start drying," he suggested. "Or you won't get any marshmallows at the campfire."

"Ooh, s'mores!" She instantly stuck her hands back in the sink and started vying with him over the remaining dishes. "Do we get chocolate, too? That's my sponge, Sensei!"

"Yeah, and I'm faster with it than you are, so stop complaining," he advised. "I'll rinse, you dry. There's chocolate, if you move fast enough."

Dawn grabbed the towel she'd brought with her and barely waited for him to pass her something to dry. Chitzu gave her a mostly-rinsed plate that was at least very clean, and she turned into a speed-drying machine. He laughed at her efforts, but he didn't bother to correct her if she left a few things a little wetter than they probably should have been. Between the two of them they got her dishes clean enough, dry enough, and stacked to carry safely.

That was why he was better with the kids than Cam would ever be. Because it didn't have to be perfect, and he was nice enough that he could bully them without hurting anyone's feelings. Possibly also because they liked his hair.

Cam handed over his soap as Chitzu put his own dishes in the sink, and the other Fire Ninja grinned at him. "Thanks. I thought I was doing well to remember something to dry them with."

"Have to wash them first." Cam smiled at the careless shrug he got in response, and he knew that if there hadn't been any soap handy by Chitzu would have just rinsed and dried his dishes and called it even. He could smile, now, because those weren't his dishes Chitzu was washing.

"So how are you liking the camping experience?" Chitzu asked, offhand. "Missing the computer yet?"

He was probably the only one who could get away with a comment like that, but they knew each other too well to hear genuine curiosity as an insult. "What I'm really missing is chairs," he admitted. "I never realized how much we sit down until there wasn't any furniture around."

"City dweller," Chitzu said affectionately. "You'd think being a ninja would make you more used to sitting on the ground."

"We have cushions at the academy," Cam grumbled, aware of how it sounded even as he said it. "I'm completely incapable of roughing it, aren't I?"

"Nah." Chitzu was idly dragging a washcloth over his dishes with no trace of the focus that had gotten Dawn done and on her way. "I saw you helping Hunter set up his tent. Very impressive."

Cam snorted. "I wasn't helping so much as I was following him around and holding whatever he told me to hold."

"An essential part of tent setup," Chitzu told him. "Holding down the corners. Those poles don't bend if you don't brace them against something, you know."

"You didn't need any help," Cam countered. Chitzu's tent was easily visible from theirs, and he'd had plenty of time to look around while he'd been trying to stay out of Hunter's way.

"That's because I'm extraordinarily coordinated," Chitzu replied. "And also because my tent is about half the size of yours."

"Where's Nena sleeping?" He figured it couldn't hurt to change the subject, especially if it got the focus off of his total lack of experience when it came to all things camp-related.

"She put up a hammock near Miko." Chitzu seemed to think this was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. "Up the river a little way."

Cam stopped what he was doing and stared at him. "She's sleeping in a hammock?"

"She has bug netting," Chitzu assured him. Like that somehow made it more acceptable.

"What if it rains?" Cam demanded.

"She has a rain fly, too." Chitzu gave him an amused look, and Cam just shook his head. "You should try it out. Really. It's a lot more comfortable than the ground."

"Almost anything would be," Cam muttered.

Chitzu pointed a fork at him. "An air mattress doesn't count as the ground. It's just like a waterbed. You'll be fine."

Because he really liked waterbeds. He frowned at Chitzu a little, wondering aloud, "How did you know Hunter has an air mattress?"

"I heard the pump," Chitzu countered, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "So, just one? How big is it? You did remember to bring a sleeping bag, right?"

"If you're worried about my personal space," Cam said, rolling his eyes, "don't. For some reason completely unknown to me, Hunter has decided that I'm an old-fashioned woman disguised as a young gay man."

Chitzu paused, and Cam could feel his gaze without even looking up. "I was actually worried about me getting a good night's sleep," he said finally, amusement obvious in his tone. "But it sounds like that's not really a concern."

"He wanted to sleep on a cot," Cam informed him. "It's a queen-sized air mattress. He said he didn't want to make me uncomfortable."

"Huh." He could hear the grin in Chitzu's voice. "Doesn't know you very well, does he."

"He acts like it's the fifties or something," Cam muttered. Which wasn't fair, because Hunter had said often enough that he'd never dated someone of the same sex before. It was probably more likely that Hunter was afraid of being uncomfortable. But Cam didn't appreciate being someone else's excuse.

"Well," Chitzu said cheerfully, "if you get bored, you know where the action is."

Cam blinked, not sure he'd heard that right. Then he thought he'd misinterpreted it. But when he glanced over at Chitzu and got a wink in return, he narrowed his eyes a little. "Did you just come on to me?" Because that hadn't been part of their relationship since Japan, and now was really not a good time to rehash the old issues.

Chitzu only shrugged. "Is that what it sounded like?" His casual tone hadn't changed, and his expression had gone back to a neutral sort of non-interest in rinsing. The offer was unmistakable: pretend I didn't, if you want.

"Yeah," Cam said at last. "That's what it sounded like."

Chitzu was stacking his still-wet dishes on top of the towel he'd brought with him, stuffing the washcloth in the mug and wrapping the whole pile up like it would dry through incidental physical contact. He picked it up, and all Cam got was a friendly nod before he turned away. "Thanks for the soap," Chitzu called over his shoulder.

Cam didn't bother to answer. Why now? Other than the obvious? Or was the obvious enough? He was seeing someone else, and Chitzu was feeling nostalgic. Basic pop psychology. They had agreed it was over before they'd ever left the Fire Academy. There wasn't any point in reconsidering now.

He took all of his dishes--well, all of Hunter's dishes, since Cam had provided a mug and little else--back to the campsite and left them on the picnic table next to the tabletop grill. The fact that Hunter could pull off a decent meal in a regular kitchen would have surprised him enough, but Cam was still getting over the shock of being served shrimp scampi off of a portable stove. Good shrimp scampi, no less.

It wasn't all bad, he decided, being treated like an old-fashioned woman.

He couldn't help noticing that their two Fire ninjas were conspicuously absent when it came time to actually light a fire. There was no shortage of spectators, but they were mostly of the unhelpful variety. Luckily, he could start a pretty mean campfire with little to no elemental assistance, and it might not impress Cam any but he was proud that he didn't have to cheat. Much.

Cam finally showed around the time the kids were getting serious about s'mores, and Hunter stopped trying to steal extra chocolate from Sensei Miko when he looked vaguely interested in toasting marshmallows. Because the only thing more fun than eating s'mores was making s'mores, and he would bet even Cam couldn't do it without getting his fingers messy. Sugar-coated fingers had to be licked off, especially when the nearest sink wasn't exactly convenient.

Hunter was looking forward to watching.

Most of the camp was there by the time the other Fire Ninja wandered over, and Hunter might not have even noticed his arrival if he hadn't stopped to talk to Shane. Cam was trying to slide a marshmallow off of his toasting stick with a couple of graham crackers, which was really a lot more interesting than watching Shane introduce Chitzu and Porter, and Hunter still had the chocolate squares. He pressed a couple down on top of Cam's marshmallow hard enough that it overflowed the edges of the cracker, and Cam squawked indignantly.

The marshmallow insult devolved into an understated but very determined war over who could get the most fluff on whom without letting anyone see that they were fighting. That last part was mostly a lost cause. They did their best, though, because roughhousing around a fire wasn't the best idea ever, and the last thing they needed was to give the kids any ideas.

Only when Cam conceded to lick the marshmallow remnants off of his fingers--an unofficial cessation of hostilities, and also an excellent peace offering as far as Hunter was concerned--did Hunter realize they'd been left to fend for themselves. Sure, the exchange of marshmallow swipes had been as unobtrusive as they could make it. But Cam's fellow teachers knew unobtrusive when they saw it.

Nena was sitting right next to them, helping Dawn open her water bottle so she could pour some of it over her hands. She caught his eye and smirked at him as soon as he turned, so he was pretty sure she'd known exactly what was going on. She'd stayed out of it on purpose.

Chitzu, on the other hand, was way over on the other side of the fire. Still hanging out with Shane and Porter. Hunter frowned, wondering if the samurai teachers were deliberately mingling. The three of them seemed pretty tight when they were on academy grounds. But hey, maybe that was the point of the camping trip. To get everyone to socialize with each other more.

Hunter decided that whatever the point was, it didn't apply to him until Cam said it did, so he went back to making fun of Cam's obsession with a perfectly evenly burned marshmallow.

Ignoring the rest of the group didn't get him into trouble until Nena tapped him on the shoulder. He stopped stick fighting with Cam long enough to glance at her, and she handed him a clothespin. "This is an aardvark," she told him.

Hunter stared at her. That sounded vaguely familiar, something he thought he'd been hearing go around the circle for several minutes now, and he thought the appropriate response was, "A what?"

At which point she turned to Dawn and repeated, "A what?"

Dawn turned to the person on her other side and asked, "A what?" and the question went back around the circle.

Hunter used the moment to lean in close to Cam and whisper, "What the hell is going on?"

Cam's shoulder brushed against his and Hunter would swear he could feel his breath when he whispered back, "Not sure. I think Cale's trying to get us to play a game. I wasn't really listening."

On Cam's other side, Porter passed Tem a travel mug and told her, "This is a pumpernickel."

"A what?" she asked.

"A pumpernickel," he said, and half the people at the fire laughed or groaned or otherwise jeered. "What?" he demanded. "Is that wrong?"

Hunter glanced at Cam at the same moment Cam looked at him, and they were so close that it was actually harder not to kiss him that it would have been to just do it. Especially when Cam smiled a little and murmured, "I'd kiss you right now if I didn't think I'd get lectured for it later."

"Set a good example," Hunter agreed softly, wondering if he could get Cam to go camping without the rest of the samurai program someday. There was something undeniably romantic about the darkness and the fire.

"Raincheck?" Cam whispered.

"You're on," Hunter breathed, and a hand squeezed his arm as Cam sat up straighter and watched Cale try to explain the rules of the game yet again. He pulled his arm back just far enough that his hand brushed Cam's. Their fingers twined together, joined hands draped loosely over Hunter's knee, and for the hundredth time today he thought that really, this gay thing wasn't so bad.

"Whenever someone gives you the aardvark or the pumpernickel, you have to ask what it is," Cale was saying. "And then they have to ask the person who gave it to them, and they have to ask the person who gave it to them, until it gets back to me, and then I tell you, and the answer goes all the way back around."

"And then we pass it on," Shane said. He seemed to be talking as much to his brother as anyone, but Cale confirmed it before he handed the clothespin to his mother.

"This is an aardvark," he told her, very seriously.

"A what?" she repeated obediently.

"An aardvark," Cale said.

"Oh, an aardvark," his mother agreed, smiling as she handed it to her husband. "This is an aardvark," she informed him.

While his dad was repeating the thing all over again, Cale turned to his other side and gave the travel mug to Sensei Miko. "This is a pumpernickel," he informed her.

Without batting an eye, she asked, "A what?"

At the same time, Cale's mom came back with his dad's question about the aardvark. "A what?"

"A pumpernickel," Cale told Sensei Miko, before turning to his mom. "That's an aardvark," he told her.

Sensei Miko said, "Oh, a pumpernickel." Handing the mug off to Chitzu, she added, "This is a pumpernickel."

Cale's mom just turned to her husband and said, "An aardvark," so Hunter assumed the exchange was abbreviated on the second, tenth, hundredth time. He thought the complicated part was supposed to come when the "pumpernickel" and the "aardvark" crossed paths on the far side of the circle--right where he and Cam were, of course--but so far the objects hadn't managed to get that far around the circle without someone forgetting what they were supposed to do.

Watching Cale explain it, he'd figured on a really long, boring game. But it turned out that the people nearest Cale were getting the hang of it, and as they sped up, everyone else felt compelled to talk faster too. Which meant that they messed up more and had to keep starting over, but it was admittedly entertaining to watch well-trained and focused ninjas forget a simple a four-sentence exchange.

Both objects never did make it all the way around the circle, but they both passed him and Cam a couple of times, ensuring that they turned to each other repeatedly and said, "A what?" and "A pumpernickel," or "An aardvark," over and over again.

When the kids started to get bored with the game--the adults, of course, seemed determined to try until they got it right--Sensei Miko got everyone to help pick up the s'mores ingredients while she got out a guitar. Which Hunter totally hadn't expected, and he knew Cam saw his surprise. "She's good, too," Cam whispered, while everyone was wandering around or resettling themselves by the fire.

"Yeah?" Hunter murmured back. "You play?"

"Yeah," Cam replied, and he hadn't expected that either.

"Will you play for me?" Hunter prodded, when Cam didn't elaborate.

It made Cam smile. "Sure. Come by after class sometime."

Miko had a pretty voice, and she knew a lot of camp songs that Hunter had forgotten. Or had never known. His family tended to sing the rowdy, silly songs when they were camping, while Miko apparently liked the cute, uplifting ones.

Or maybe, he realized belatedly, she was just sensitive to the fact that they had a large group of people less than an hour away from the campsite's designated quiet hours. She probably didn't want to wind anyone up more than they already wore. After stuffing themselves full of marshmallows and chocolate, not to mention the coffee that Hunter had seen going around at one point, they didn't need any more excuses.

"Hey," Cam whispered, about halfway through the third song, when even the people who didn't know the songs had been able to pick up the parts that repeated. "Do you not sing?"

"As a general rule?" Hunter whispered back. He caught Chitzu's eye by accident, saw the other Fire Ninja watching them across the flames, and he gave a tiny nod in acknowledgment. "No."

"Well, as a general rule," Cam murmured, "I don't camp. Get over it."

Hunter smiled a little to himself and didn't argue. He honestly didn't remember the words to "Barges," but he could do the choruses. When he sang, Cam didn't, which he planned to tease him about later--until the song ended and Cam poked him in the side before he could say a word.

"You said you didn't sing," he declared, sounding almost accusatory.

Hunter raised his eyebrows at him. "Yeah? And?"

"You were harmonizing," Cam informed him.

Hunter broke into a grin, aware that the conversation wasn't just between them when, on his other side, Nena laughed. "I said I don't sing," he pointed out. "Didn't say I can't."

He did it for "Magic," too, and this time he could hear Cam's voice beside him, which was the coolest reason he'd had to sing in a long time. He was maybe just the the slightest bit disappointed when it was over. Miko kept playing for a few minutes, while everyone just sort of sat around and listened, but finally she put her guitar down altogether and people started to pick up their things and drift away.

"Psst," Nena whispered, nudging him.

"Nice," Hunter said, taking a couple of graham crackers from the open package she offered him. "Thanks," he added, offering one to Cam.

Cam shook his head once. "I'm fine," he said, leaning around Hunter to get a good look at Nena. "Are you really sleeping in a hammock?"

"Mmm-hmm." She swallowed, then added, "Why, are you scared I'll damage your reputation by being cooler than you are?"

"Yes," Cam agreed wryly. "That's my main concern."

"Well, I'll tell you what." Nena grinned up at them from her ground-level camp chair. "You can come try out my hammock, and if you're not an instant convert, at least you'll have firsthand experience that you can base your denouncement of it on."

"Sounds like a terrible idea," Cam told her.

"Yeah," Hunter agreed, affecting a frown. "Did you just invite my boyfriend into your bed?"

"What was that?" Chitzu drawled. He'd finally made it around the fire to join them, and he was eyeing Nena with enough amusement that he must have heard more than he let on. "You trying to get in on the action, here?"

"If you don't keep your voice down, Miko and Meisha will give you 'action,'" Nena threatened. "To say nothing of young Mr. Protected's parents."

Hunter glanced around, but Cale and his family were safely gone from the campfire already. Meisha was indeed giving them the evil eye as she and her daughter gathered up their things, but Dawn didn't seem to be paying any attention to them so it were probably okay. He wasn't sure where Miko had disappeared to so quickly.

"My bad," Hunter said, just loudly enough that maybe Meisha would hear it. "Sorry about that."

"Let's take this somewhere else," Cam suggested.

"I have toys," Nena offered. Her tone was so innocent that Hunter couldn't tell whether she was joking or not, but Chitzu seemed to take her at her word.

"Lead on," he declared, hoisting his camp chair over one shoulder.

Cam gave Hunter a questioning look, and he just shrugged. If Cam wanted to hang out with his friends, he was up for whatever was going on. And it looked like Shane and Porter were going to sit around by the fire a little longer, so even if Miko didn't come back, they would be there to make sure it died down to a safe level.

Hunter pulled his headlamp back on before they turned away from the fire, checked to see that, yes, Cam had forgotten his flashlight, and pulled a little maglite out of his pocket. "Here," he said quietly, tapping it against Cam's wrist before he could trip over something.

He couldn't see Cam's face very well in the shadows, but he could hear the smile in his voice when he said, "Thanks."

They followed Chitzu and Nena up the path by the river, barely discernible by flashlight but vaguely delineated by the sound of the water in one direction and the lantern-lit tents and moving flashlights on the other. Chitzu was teasing Nena about her "toys" as they went, and Cam called ahead to them that Meisha probably thought they were all delinquents now. A little reassuring, Hunter thought, that at least he wasn't the only one who had wondered about that invitation.

"Tattoos," Nena called back. "I have temporary tattoos, that's all!"

"You're too good for these guys, Nena," Hunter said aloud, and he heard her laugh.

"I keep telling them that," she answered. "They never listen!"

"Tattoos of what?" Chitzu wanted to know, ignoring the exchange. "Secret ninja symbols? Pornographic body art? The minotaur?"

"Superheroes," Nena told him. "You can be Captain America."

"You kill me with your irony," Chitzu replied.

Nena's hammock didn't actually occupy a tent site, which maybe made sense since most of the sites were cleared and she needed a couple of close trees. But Hunter did wonder about the legality of the place she had chosen. A hammock didn't leave a big footprint--until you brought all your friends and their camp chairs to sit around it with you.

She did have lanterns, though, and as she turned them on Hunter realized that she wasn't off in the woods at all. She was just at the outer edge of a little site, one without a picnic table or fire pit, and her pack and a cooler sat on a tarp off to one side. So he put his chair down in the cleared area with the rest of them, and Nena snapped her fingers at Cam and Chitzu until one of them started a fire for her.

A small, very ninja-y fire. Hunter stared at it in surprise while it burned, with no containment or any kind of fuel, several inches off the ground. "That," he said, to no one in particular, "is vaguely disturbing."

"And," Chitzu said, in the exactly same tone of voice, "exceedingly cool."

Hunter had to grin. "Yeah. That too."

"You sleep in this?" Cam asked. He was staring at her hammock, a blue silk thing strung between two trees with what looked like lashing straps. There was a bug net pushed to one side, a lantern hung from the other end, and a pile of stuff in the middle that was probably her sleeping bag and pillow.

"I'm going to assume that's a rhetorical question," Nena remarked, rummaging through her pack for something. "Try it out. Just don't knock all my stuff out when you sit down."

Cam didn't sound convinced. "Will this even hold me?"

"It'll hold two of you," Nena informed him without looking up. "Easily."

"What's the weight limit?" Hunter wanted to know.

Nena finally stopped messing around with her pack and sat back on her heels, tilting something toward the nearest light so she could see it better. "Four hundred pounds," she said absently.

"Cool." He stepped around Cam, grabbed the front and the back of the hammock, and sat down as close to the middle as he could manage. It buoyed him up without the slightest complaint, just as strong as she had claimed. When he tugged on the back and twisted a little, he could rest his head against the opposite side.

"This is great," he decided, leaning back appreciatively. Just like a recliner. "I want one."

"Fifty bucks," Nena told him. "Not including the slap straps and the bug net."

"Worth it," Hunter declared. Patting the sleeping bag beside him, he gave Cam a pointed look that was probably lost in the shadows. "Gonna join me?"

Only when there was a very obvious pause did it occur to him that Cam had to be giving him some sort of interesting look in return, but sadly, he couldn't make it out. Cam did come sit with him, though, stiff the way he'd been on the bike at first: like his concept of personal space didn't include hammocks or motorcycles. But when Hunter lifted one arm out of the way to make room, Cam relaxed against his side, letting the arm go around his shoulders without complaint.

"Now who's inviting him into their bed?" Nena teased, smiling over at them. Her face, too, was in shadow, but the expression was everywhere in her voice.

"Technically," Hunter pointed out, "I invited him into your bed."

"And we're back to the group sex," Chitzu remarked. He was lounging in his camp chair, really lounging, in the way that took work. Shoulder over one arm of the chair and a leg over the other, head tilted back, and damned if he didn't make it look comfortable.

"No group sex." Cam spoke up from where he was ensconced in a truly warm and nice way against Hunter's side. "Personal preference. That being that I prefer the person I'm having sex with to also be having sex with me."

"How limiting," Chitzu drawled, but Hunter didn't pay much attention to his response.

"I learn something new about you every day," he told Cam instead. Including the fact that sex was apparently an acceptable topic of conversation, and that Cam was willing to take some amount of teasing on the subject.

"I'm a very sharing person," Cam replied, deadpan.

"All evidence to the contrary," Chitzu added.

"Here you go, Captain America," Nena announced, handing Chitzu something by lantern light. "Knock yourself out."

"Really?" he asked skeptically. "I hoped you were kidding about that."

"Of course Cam will want Spiderman," Nena continued, paying no attention. She gave Cam a tiny square of paper which he accepted with an audible eye roll.

"Thank you for sounding so sure of that in front of Hunter," he told her.

"We're all friends here," she replied, smirking at him with her voice. "Hunter? Which superhero do you want?"

"Got any women?" he countered, figuring that would be enough of a distraction.

Cam replied before she could, sounding amused. "Excuse me?"

"Just proving I'm man enough to wear a girl's tattoo," Hunter told him.

"I think this is Elektra," Nena said, studying the piece of paper as closely as she could. "Apparently she's replaced Wonder Woman as the token female superhero."

"I can get behind that." Hunter held out his free hand, and Nena turned the tattoo over to him. "So who do you get?"

She considered. "It looks like either Daredevil or the Incredible Hulk."

"Really?" Despite his complaints, Chitzu had already slapped his tattoo on his arm and was dribbling water over it. "What about Superman? Why isn't there a Superman tattoo?"

"Or Batman?" Hunter added. "Since when is Daredevil more popular than Batman?"

"Since they started counting intelligence over money?" Cam suggested.

"Ah, I should have known," Hunter said with a smirk. "Hello, Peter Parker. Intrepid photographer and technical genius."

He knew he was right when Cam just smiled. "You're too kind."

"How long do we have to wait for these?" Chitzu wanted to know.

"I don't know; it says on the back." Nena frowned at her square of paper, then looked around for her flashlight.

Hunter held his out toward the lantern, but he couldn't reach far enough to light the instructions and still read them and he didn't really feel like moving. Chitzu must have been at pretty much the same level of motivation, because he remarked, "Yes, I'm really known for reading the directions."

"Sixty seconds," Nena told him, flipping her flashlight off again. "You can probably peel it off any time."

"I don't have any water," Cam said to no one in particular.

"Ask Hunter to lick it," Chitzu advised.

"Are you being deliberately obnoxious tonight?" Nena sounded mildly amused and genuinely curious at the same time. "Or is it just a coincidence that Cam's boyfriend is going to be scarred for life and will probably never talk to us again?"

"Hey, no worries," Hunter assured her. "I've got a younger brother. This is dinner table conversation."

"We're not always this bad." Nena handed over her own water bottle, giving it to Hunter but clearly meaning it for Cam, who had already laid the Spiderman tattoo on the back of his right hand and was holding it up with wordless patience. "Sometimes we have moderately intelligent discussions about things that aren't dirty."

Hunter grinned, pulling his arm free as he sat up a little and reached for Cam's hand. "I'm happy with moderately intelligent discussions of things that are dirty," he promised. "Okay if I pour water on this?" he added, glancing up at Cam without lifting his head.

"Unless you really do plan to lick it," Cam said, raising an eyebrow at him in the dim light. "Yes."

"Smartass," Hunter muttered, cupping his fingers at Cam's wrist to keep the water from running down his arm.

"Flirt," Cam replied.

When the paper on the back of the tattoo was soaked, he covered it with his fingers to hold it in place. "Calling you names is flirting with you now?" he said, giving Cam an amused look. "You weren't kidding about the attitude thing, were you."

"Repeat what I said about your attitude in front of my friends and I may not speak to you for the rest of the night," Cam informed him, his mouth quirking up at the corners. "And I wasn't talking about the name-calling. I was talking about your expression."

"You're imagining things." Which was really one of the more ridiculous things he could have said when they were sitting in a hammock, legs pressed up against each other, hands tangled together in the dark. There probably wasn't anything he could do to Cam right now that wouldn't be flirting.

"You're being unnecessarily coy," Cam countered.

Hunter grinned at him. "Only compared to your friends."

"Sumimasen," Chitzu interjected, very politely. "Do you think we can't hear you?"

"Do you think everyone in the world speaks Japanese?" Cam replied without looking up.

"Does he think everyone in the world should?" Nena added. "Yes. Obviously."

"Do you?" Hunter asked, glancing over at her. She had dropped into her own camp chair and was watching all of them in the flickering light of the ninja fire. She wasn't making any effort to apply her own tattoo.

"Know Japanese?" she guessed. She shook her head. "Only what Chitzu speaks at me and deigns to translate."

"The former of which," Cam put in, "is everything, and the latter of which is almost nothing."

"I'm contributing to greater cultural awareness," Chitzu told them. He was also shining a flashlight on his arm, inspecting his new tattoo in the uneven light. "Do itashimashite."

Cam snorted. "And you're welcome for every time I hold up the line at a sushi bar asking for vegan food."

Nena laughed at that. "You hold up the line at McDonalds asking for vegan food."

Hunter lifted his fingers from Cam's hand, brushed away the leftover drips, and peeled back the little piece of paper covering his tattoo. "Since when are you vegan?" he wanted to know. Cam had been eating meat since their first date, and if he avoided any other animal products Hunter was pretty sure he would have noticed.

"It's situational," Cam replied, shaking his hand out after Hunter let it go. Maybe to dry it the rest of the way. Tipping it toward the lantern hanging from Nena's hammock, he smiled a little. "Nice. Thanks."

"Situational?" Hunter repeated, not about to be diverted. "What does that mean?"

"It means he's not and never will be a vegan," Nena declared. "He just does it to be annoying."

"It's consciousness raising," Cam insisted. "Vegans are a minority that don't deserve to be discriminated against just because they have high standards. I only ask if there's vegan food because I don't feel they should have to change an entire culture by themselves."

"And," Chitzu added calmly, "because it's annoying."

"You would know," Cam said without missing a beat.

Chitzu gave him a flat stare. "You talk like a girl."

Hunter looked back at Cam in time to see him blink. "Wow," he said, with a level of insincerity Hunter had never heard from him. "Thank you for completely proving my point."

"Like. A. Girl," Chitzu repeated deliberately.

Cam just rolled his eyes. "I'm sure Nena appreciates your opinion."

"Hey," Hunter objected, holding up his tattoo. "Elektra here doesn't appreciate your opinion either."

Cam took the complaint as he'd intended it: more of a protest about being excluded than actual comprehension of the conversation. "My mom taught me Japanese," he explained. "I didn't speak it with anyone else until I attended the Fire Academy. Chitzu always says I have a woman's accent."

Hunter raised his eyebrows. "A woman's accent?"

Cam just shrugged, but Chitzu drawled, "He didn't exactly blend in."

"And your English was so much better," Cam said dryly.

"English has approximately one million, eight hundred eighty-three thousand idioms," Chitzu informed him. "And it's irregular. And also, no one in my family speaks it fluently."

"Japanese has more levels of formality than English has idioms," Cam countered. "And it has three different written forms. And hearing my mom speak it occasionally is not the same as taking classes every day for six years!"

Hunter glanced over at Nena, but she didn't look surprised by their vehemence. "They have this argument every other week," she offered, when she realized he was looking. "It's like a ritual or something. I try not to get involved."

"Habit," Chitzu corrected. "I don't think it's reached the level of ritual yet."

Yet, Hunter thought?

"I'd just like to point out," Cam said, "that, as usual, I wasn't the one who started this conversation. If you would stop bringing it up, we could stop discussing it."

Chitzu didn't look very sorry, and Hunter was starting to feel left out, so he nudged Cam and suggested, "Can't resist a challenge?"

Cam's attention instantly refocused on him. "No," he said with a smile. And that was all it took to make him feel like part of the conversation again.

It wasn't the whole story, though, and later he would be glad that Cam hadn't brought it up around the campfire. Because it was so obvious that he should have seen it for himself, but he wasn't used to thinking that way and he wouldn't have known what to say in front of Cam's friends. He still didn't know what to say, even in the darkness and relative privacy of their tent, when Cam casually mentioned that he and Chitzu had been together for almost two years.

A long moment passed before he could even acknowledge it. "Oh," he said awkwardly. And that was all he could come up with.

"It's not important," Cam said quickly. "I just thought, if you were curious. That's why we know so much about each other."

"Oh," Hunter said again, then shook his head once. "I mean, yeah. I get that."

"Surprised?" Cam sounded kind of uncomfortable and maybe a little amused at the same time, and that was pretty much how Hunter was feeling too, so. It worked out.

"I should say no," Hunter told him, after a brief pause. It really should have occurred to him before. "Cause, the two of you, right? It makes sense."

"Does it?" Cam's tone was curious now.

"Well..." Hunter shrugged, because maybe that was a stupid thing to say. What kind of sense did he and Cam make, anyway? And yet here they were, a few feet apart, him sitting on the floor of the tent while Cam was already getting comfortable in his sleeping bag.

"As much as anything, I guess," he said at last. "I just didn't really think about it."

"What about you?" Cam wanted to know. "Good relationships, bad ones? What are you used to?"

Hunter blinked. Cam was comfortable, nice to be around, funny, weirdly open about his life, but he wasn't... easy. He'd say pretty much anything, but he'd ask almost anything too. And when he asked, he expected an answer. He wouldn't let Hunter fade into the background--even if he wanted to.

"Uh, nothing serious, I guess," he admitted. "Just, you know. Prom dates, summer parties, that kind of thing. Me and girls... we never really... worked, that way."

Cam was studying him in the shadows of the flashlight Hunter had propped up against his pack. "Why didn't you try dating guys?"

Hunter shrugged a little. "Didn't know anyone who was worth it," he mumbled. "And contrary to what some might tell you," he added with a half-smile, "I don't go looking for trouble."

"Is it trouble?" Cam asked. Hunter couldn't tell if he sounded more curious or concerned. "Dating me--is that a problem with your friends? Or your family?"

"Nah." But it was an automatic response, not a realistic one. "Maybe," he said a second later. "I don't know."

Cam didn't answer, and he tried to come up with something better.

"It's never really come up with my friends," he said uncomfortably. "And you know what my family's like. They're so worried about you being a samurai that they didn't even notice you're a guy until a few days ago."

"How did that go?" Cam asked, his voice quiet.

"Could have been better," Hunter muttered. "How 'bout you? Your parents are cool with--" He gestured, making huge shadows against the tent walls. "You know, this?"

For some reason, that made Cam smile. "I don't know," he admitted. "My mom is, I guess. She likes you. My dad and I... we don't really talk about things like this."

"He knows you're gay," Hunter said, just barely keeping it from being a question.

"I guess." Cam shrugged, his smile fading. "I never told him. I figure Mom did, or maybe he used his amazing powers of observation to figure it out. Or it's possible he thought Chitzu and I were just really good friends. Hard to say."

"You seem pretty worried," Hunter remarked, amused by his offhandedness.

"It keeps me up nights," Cam agreed, deadpan. "If he can't be bothered to tell me that he's an alien from another planet, I don't see what business it is of his who I sleep with." There was a moment of silence, and then he added, "Literally speaking, in this case."

Hunter had to smile in the jagged light, and he wondered how much Cam could see of his expression. "So I don't have to worry about losing my virginity if I climb onto that mattress with you?"

"Is that what you're waiting for?" Cam countered. "Me to promise that I'll keep my hands to myself?"

He actually sounded serious, and Hunter had to laugh. Reaching for his flashlight, he pushed himself to his feet and covered the two steps necessary to put him on his side of the air mattress. "I don't care what kind of history you have," he said, kneeling on the mattress and yanking the top of his sleeping bag toward him. "I'm not worried about your hands through two layers of sleeping bags."

"Don't challenge me," Cam teased, just as he flicked his flashlight off and dropped it beside the mattress. In the darkness Cam suddenly seemed much closer, and he was glad Cam couldn't see his face.

"I take it back," Hunter promised, and it was somehow easier to kid around when he was effectively invisible. "I'm sure you're a total sex god, wrapped in a sleeping bag or not. Happy?"

Cam's chuckle drifted to him in between the rustles of his sleeping bag against the mattress, and Hunter was actually kind of relieved that he hadn't tried to turn around. Hunter had tossed their stuff inside the tent, inflated the air mattress, and shoved things out of the way, but Cam had been the one to spread out their sleeping bags: head to head and toe to toe. That wasn't the way Hunter was used to sharing a tent, and he really didn't want to find out hours from now that he couldn't sleep with Cam breathing next to his ear.

"Someday," Cam was saying, "I will remind you of this conversation."

There was a long pause, and finally Hunter couldn't resist. "And?" he prompted.

The mattress rocked underneath him, but Cam's voice didn't sound any closer or farther away than it had before when he replied, "I'm not making a prediction. I'm just stating a fact."

"Uh-huh." He sounded very mild, and Hunter was learning to recognize that particular brand of innocence as Cam's "subtle" sarcasm. So, maybe he was totally wrong, but he was gonna go out on a limb and translate that as, Someday I will make out with you in a sleeping bag, get you embarrassingly turned on, and laugh at you for ever thinking it couldn't be sexy.

All things considered, it wasn't a terribly frightening threat.

He grabbed his pillow and slid down into his own sleeping bag, shoving the pillow up against his shoulders as he stared up at where the ceiling of the tent would be. "Cam?" he asked after a moment.

And because Cam was less than a foot away, even if his head was at the other end of the mattress, he replied immediately. "Yeah?"

Hunter smiled into the darkness. Weird, but nice. He thought maybe he could handle dating a guy who asked personal questions and thought in terms of relationships and didn't like getting melted marshmallow on his fingers. "How do you say 'good night' in Japanese?"

He could hear the smile in Cam's voice when he murmured, "Oyasuminasai."

Hunter blinked. "What?"

Cam repeated it, slower and a little more clearly, and Hunter considered that.

"Okay," he agreed at last. "'Night, then."

He heard Cam's soft huff of amusement. "Good night, Hunter."

This was what he didn't like about camping. It was coming back to him now. It wasn't the daytime that was the hardest part, it was the night. When there was nothing to take his mind off of where he was and what he was doing, no way for him to ignore the many little discomforts that, all together, made relaxing enough to sleep utterly impossible.

Cam hated not being able to sleep. There were so many things he could be doing at any given time that taking the time to sleep in the first place was a huge concession. When he finally gave in, laid down, and sleep eluded him, that was just insulting.

Out here it was even worse, because what else was there to do? It was dark outside. Limited electricity. Nowhere to go. Nothing to read, to design, to study. Not even anyone to talk to. Just the dark and the cold and the unfamiliar sleeping bag on an air mattress that was nowhere near as comfortable as his own bed would have been.

He hated camping. Pushing himself up on his elbows--because why not, he was already that uncomfortable--he squinted into the darkness toward where he thought the door should be. Hunter had brought extra blankets, and he'd already gotten one to drape over his sleeping bag. He didn't really want to move enough to get another one, since it meant leaving what minimal warmth he'd managed to gather, but he was too cold to stay where he was and at least it gave him something to do.

The first time, he had managed to avoid waking Hunter. This time he wasn't so lucky. He heard Hunter mumble something as he tried to get out of his sleeping bag, probably rocking the mattress in a really annoying way. He would know, since he'd been awake pretty much all night and he was starting to hate air mattresses almost as much as camping. Every movement seemed to be amplified by its strange and reactionary unevenness.

"Just getting another blanket," he whispered, in case Hunter really had woken up.

Hunter mumbled something else. Something totally indecipherable as far as Cam was concerned. This was followed by the sound of his name, and a question that was vaguely recognizable as, "You okay?"

"Cold," Cam muttered. "Just cold."

"Get a blanket," Hunter's voice murmured, slurring a little over the consonants. "By the door, top of my pack."

"I did." He was currently trying to push the fleece off of his sleeping bag so he could get out of it, but for some reason he was having trouble coordinating in the dark. And he couldn't remember where he'd left his flashlight. "I'll get another one."

He couldn't quite bring himself to say, go back to sleep, because misery did love company. Just being able to complain to someone else might make him feel marginally better. It would probably also make him look even more incapable of surviving in the wilderness than he already felt, but there were always tradeoffs to be made.

The mattress shifted with Hunter's movements, then bobbed more violently and the change in his voice indicated that he'd sat up. "Blanket goes inside the sleeping bag," he mumbled, and Cam could feel his hands, clumsy in the dark, patting the other end of Cam's sleeping bag. "Should've said. Sorry."

"What are you talking about?" Cam demanded, except it was probably closer to a whine, and he folded his arms across his chest in a futile effort to ward off the chill. His body wasn't that warm to begin with, so wrapping himself up wasn't helping much. He was too tired to shiver, and he was pretty much over this whole experience.

"Sleeping bag's down." He could hear Hunter's yawn in the middle of the sentence. "Doesn't work if you compress it. Bring the blanket in with you and it'll keep you warmer."

"Well, that sounds really appealing," Cam muttered into the darkness. "Bring the freezing cold blanket inside the sleeping bag with me."

"Really?" He could hear Hunter grunt as he moved around, maybe resettling himself on the mattress. "That cold?" And now his voice was closer--not resettling after all, but crawling up beside Cam with a flashlight that he aimed into the mattress before he turned it on.

"That cold," Cam confirmed through clenched teeth. Hunter, of course, had had no trouble sleeping. He barely sounded awake now. And Cam could feel the warmth coming off of him like a dark and comforting presence.

This was definitely not fair, he decided.

"Feet?" Hunter asked. He was yawning again. "Hands?" he added. "Face? How much of you is cold?"

"All of the above," Cam muttered. Even his nose was cold, and that wasn't a comfortable feeling. He felt like he should be able to see his breath. It couldn't possibly be that cold out.

"Huh." A brief silence followed his reply, and then Hunter asked abruptly, "How much do you trust me?"

"A lot?" Cam squinted into the shadows, wondering why this game and why now. It was distracting, yes. But it was also pointless. "I trusted you with my life that night I waited for you in the garage. And several times since, if I recall."

"Yeah," Hunter said, sounding more awake by the minute. "Not that kind of trust." He was right next to Cam now, and he wasn't just gathering up the blanket. He was fumbling with the top of Cam's sleeping bag.

Cam didn't answer, because the only thing he could come up with was that Hunter was offering to share body heat. Hunter couldn't really think he'd say no, could he? He wasn't convinced that two people could fit into one sleeping bag, but he was definitely willing to try.

Then Hunter was unzipping the sleeping bag, and Cam protested automatically. That wasn't going to make him warmer. He didn't want any more cold air in contact with him than absolutely necessary. Body heat was not a fair trade if he didn't get to keep the sleeping bag around him too.

"Gonna have to get up," Hunter's voice told him. "Sorry. Here--" And the edges of the fleece blanket were being fumbled into his hands. "Work on warming this up."

"What are you doing?" Cam mumbled, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders as he let himself be nudged to the edge of the air mattress and then off, onto the ground. At least he had something to do again. And someone to talk to.

"Putting the sleeping bags together." The flashlight was momentarily buried when Hunter reoriented his own sleeping bag and yanked the zipper open. Rescuing the flashlight, he stuck it in his mouth and shuffled the sleeping bags around in a way that made a lot of noise and completely obscured his goal.

Cam tried to watch, but with the way the light was jumping around he could barely make out Hunter's hands, let alone see what they were doing. He did hear a couple of false starts with a zipper, and some more sleeping bag rearrangement. Then the zipper caught and slid, and a moment later Hunter had another one going. He shuffled the bags some more, then held the flashlight high enough that Cam could see they were spread out again.

Or at least, that one of them was. Hunter's sleeping bag seemed to be all the way open, lying across the mattress like a comforter cover. Cam lifted the nearest corner, though, and sure enough, there was his underneath--zipped to Hunter's like one big double-sized sleeping bag.

"I didn't know you could do that," he murmured.

"Well, at the risk of sounding like Chitzu," Hunter said, eyeing him in the dim light. "You sleep like a girl. But you're not the only one, so. I know how to compensate."

Cam considered that. There wasn't any part of it that made sense, even on second or third review, so he resigned himself to asking. "What?"

"It's not that cold out," Hunter remarked, somehow managing to sound amused and sympathetic at the first time. "At least, not to me. Your resting body temperature must be low."

Cam's brain translated "resting body temperature" to "basal metabolic rate" and he gave Hunter an impressed look that he probably couldn't see. "You know something about physiology."

"Nah." Hunter sounded like he was smiling, though. "Just the obvious. Girls sleep colder than guys."

"I'm not sure why everyone finds it necessary to compare me to a girl today," Cam grumbled, deliberately not pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders even though his fingers were freezing.

"It's 'cause you're so pretty," Hunter teased, flicking the flashlight off and plunging the tent into darkness again. There was a shuffling sound that might have been him settling back onto the mattress. In their shared double sleeping bag.

"I'm going to pretend that was the sleep talking," Cam muttered. In the dark, he did pull the blanket tighter, wondering how he was supposed to keep it around him and get into the sleeping bag at the same time.

"You waiting for me to promise to keep my hands to myself?" Hunter's voice asked.

Cam smiled only because he knew Hunter couldn't see his expression. He rocked the air mattress, inevitably, climbing awkwardly into the sleeping bags with Hunter. The blanket bunched up around his upper body, and he squirmed in a mostly futile effort to pull it down further. Hunter didn't say anything, didn't protest at all, but the movement brought them into close enough contact that Cam could tell he had rolled over on his side and was facing the other direction.

He hesitated. Hunter's back was warm against his, even through the blanket. Just moving around had dispelled a little of the cold, and he wouldn't care so much about getting the blanket just right if he didn't have to leave a careful amount of space between himself and his bed partner. "Do you mind?" Cam whispered.

Hunter's voice was gruff when he answered, "Wouldn't have done it if I minded."

He wasn't sure Hunter understood what he was asking, but the man wasn't shy. He could tell Cam to back off if he wanted to. So Cam finally let himself relax a little, pressed up against solid warmth under a fleece blanket and a shared sleeping bag, and the last thing he remembered was thinking that if this was how he was going to spend the rest of the night, he wouldn't mind being awake so much.

The next time he opened his eyes, he could see the dark grey nylon pressed up against his cheek. More than that he could see the crimson fleece poking out from under his hand, and the brightly colored panes of domed tent walls arching over him. There was light, and it didn't come from a flashlight. The sun must be coming up.

Had he really slept the rest of the night away?

He tried to shift, looking for his watch, and that was when he realized his right hand was trapped under someone else's arm. Cam went very still, cataloging the sensation flaring to life up and down his body. Legs pressed up against his. Head resting against the back of his neck. An arm over his chest, not careless, not even close, not when those fingers were curled loosely around his hand.

Hunter had worked some magic on their sleeping bags in the middle of the night, making it so Cam could climb in with him when he complained of the cold. Hunter had let him drift off against his back, absorbing heat through sweatshirt and blanket alike, closer than he could possibly have expected in the darkness. And now the same person who had suggested sleeping on a cot on the other side of the tent was wrapped around Cam, holding onto him like he might disappear if they were separated even for a second.

A man can not be held responsible for what his body does when he's asleep, Cam thought, letting his eyes slide shut again as he decided there wasn't any reason to move right now. Chitzu used to tell him that... his excuse for any number of things, actually, and Cam smiled to himself. Hunter probably wouldn't jump him in his sleep.

He didn't think he fell asleep again, but when he felt Hunter shift away from him at last the tent was brighter and his eyes were harder to open than they should have been. He tried to murmur "good morning" and it came out more like an incoherent mumble. Even hearing something in return that sounded vaguely like "coffee" didn't dispel his semi-somnolent state until it was backed up by the unmistakable smell of liquid caffeine.

Rolling over onto his back, Cam squinted up at the ceiling of the tent and decided that he was alone. There definitely wasn't anyone else in the tent. On the other hand, he seemed to be buried in two sleeping bags and a fleece blanket, so he clearly owed his unexpectedly well-rested state to Hunter's intervention.

The tent flap by the foot of the mattress rustled, and Cam shifted his gaze. Hunter's blue eyes met his as he pulled the door open. "Hey," he said with a hopeful smile. "Coffee's ready. Black, right?"

Cam struggled to sit up as Hunter pushed his way into the tent. He reached out automatically as Hunter offered him a mug handle first, and the Spiderman tattoo on his hand distracted him when he glanced down at his watch. It was too much, and he started to smile even as he blinked the sleep out of his eyes. He knew the smile was returned without having to look up.

"You know, it's funny," he mused, drawing his legs up so Hunter could sit down on the edge of the air mattress. He cradled his coffee mug as his camping, cooking, coffee-making boyfriend joined him, and he inhaled the familiar smell with deep appreciation. "I think I'm starting to get what you see in this camping thing."