“Sarutobi,” Kakashi said blankly.

That’s what he got for trusting chakra-sense over eyesight. And assuming the restrained energy signature next to Genma was a medic.

“Mornin’, kitten,” Asuma replied genially.

Genma made a choked sound, hurriedly covered by a cough that made him clamp a hand over his stomach. Kakashi looked at him for a flat moment, wondering why it had clearly been necessary for him to share Katsuko’s fondness of pet names with the universe.

Then he looked back at Asuma.

The Sandaime’s only son looked taller than Kakashi remembered, even sitting down. Which tracked, since the last time they’d really seen each other eye-to-eye had been in the aftermath of the Kyuubi, after Kushina’s funeral and before Hiruzen’s. Asuma had been a pale, scruffy slouch in funeral blacks then, chain-smoking cigarettes like he had plans to never breathe again.

The scruff was a beard now, dark and neatly trimmed. The shoulders were broader, filling out with the muscles of adulthood. He’d tanned in his time away from Konoha, skin burnished to a sun-warm brown. There were tough calluses on the backs of his knuckles, legacy of taijutsu, and, if Kakashi had to guess, something with the weight of knuckle-dusters. A fresh pink scar drew like a ruler’s edge up the side of his throat. Any other injuries were hidden beneath a battered pair of jeans and an old, long-sleeved jounin shirt, but he sat like his right arm ached.

He looked a lot like his father.

“Congratulations on not being dead,” Kakashi said at last.

Asuma’s eyes darkened, and something very subtle changed in the shape of his face. A hollowness, like the bones beneath were pressed a little too close to the surface. Grief, exhaustion, or maybe just a twitch at the reminder—he’d come close, then. “Congratulations on ANBU,” he said. “I hear Genma’s breaking you in nicely.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Kakashi said.

Genma had recovered from his coughing fit. He glanced between Asuma and Kakashi, and said with etched irony, “I didn’t realize you two were friends.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Asuma said, with a faint smile.

“We’ve shared some mutual annoyances,” Kakashi said, which was about the only way you could say ‘we occasionally viciously tortured each other at school’, and also that they’d both trailed after the coattails of legendary Hokages, which mostly meant scowling at each other in the echoing hallways of the palace.

And they’d both grown up looking like dead men.