| [Dec. 27th, 2013|06:44 am] |
They didn’t feel like his team yet. He hadn’t even been thinking about them in the neighborhood of ‘his’. They were more like the ruptured insides of a pocket watch, every piece ticking slightly out of sync, grinding each other’s gears. Except—
Kakashi’s mind stepped back, unfolding around the few moments that had been itching at him for a week. The first night of the mission, when the team had settled into sleep, and Raidou had turned away from the campfire with thoughtful eyes: Want to spar? Like he’d known Kakashi needed to do something before sleep was an option. He’d promised another taijutsu fight, and Kakashi wanted to take him up on that.
And Genma, who’d pulled him aside to say, I know it’s hard at first, and treated minor injuries as if they were just as important as broken bones. He’d answered honestly when Kakashi had asked, Did something happen in Konoha? And self-induced a fever to deal with demon poison, because he was a crazy man.
Katsuko, who flirted and fought and demanded Kakashi take his shirt off, and pulled slaughtered children from underneath blood-soaked tatami with her bare hands. He owed her another spar, too, since he’d won the second—a third would break the tie. And she’d promised to teach him her family’s Hyoho Niten.
Then there was Ryouma.
Kakashi slouched lower in the water, until it crept up warm over his mouth, soaking the facecloth so that it clung wetly to the bridge of his nose.
Ryouma who also flirted and fought, and promised a taste of his signature jutsu for a glimpse at Kakashi’s face. Who’d massacred the demon Kakashi couldn’t finish, and played with Naruto, and corrupted Kakashi’s points system, and curled a hand around Kakashi’s hip while he said I’m flexible.
If they were a team, they were also a walking carnival. But they were Konoha’s, and that alone made them his.
The thought clicked into place like a missing piece, and Kakashi realized abruptly that he was looking forward to tomorrow morning, when team training would resume. For starters, he needed to kick one long-legged, rot-handed ass up and down the field a few times, until normalcy reasserted itself.
He sat up and looked at Minato, who was watching him with patient blue eyes.
“My team can handle it,” Kakashi told him.
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