| [Apr. 8th, 2017|08:57 pm] |
Paperwork was a commander’s lot in life, but Raidou was starting to think ANBU had a special vendetta against trees. His desk had been organized once. He remembered making neat piles. There’d been an in-tray somewhere. Now there was a deep strata of shifting layers that might have interested a geologist, but it had eaten his sketch of Kiri’s sewer system.
He sighed. “Shiranui—”
“Third drawer down,” Genma said, without looking up from his own desk. He had a senbon clenched between his teeth, another skewered through a messy topknot, and the thousand-yard stare of a man who’d been wrestling with medical supplies accounting for the last hour. Crumpled balls of paper surrounded his overflowing trash can.
Raidou yanked the drawer out and unearthed a battered folder he didn’t remember hiding from himself. The sewer sketch was the third page in, behind two much less successful attempts. He muttered a prayer of gratitude, stapled the sketch to his report, sealed the report into a folder, and skimmed the entire package over to Kakashi, who was pretending to be asleep on the couch.
One pale hand snaked up and caught the report out of the air.
“Deliver that to Intel, would you?” Raidou said, already reaching for his next task.
The little orange book was tented over Kakashi’s face. He yawned reproachfully, sloughed off the sofa, and wandered out the door with the folder under one arm and Icha Icha in the other hand, apparently intending to read as he went.
"Faster would be better," Raidou called after him.
In the hallway, Kakashi made a startled sound.
Genma’s head lifted. Raidou swivelled in his chair, expecting to find Kuroda's smug face, and instead turned right into Usagi's headlock. The next few seconds were a stretched heart attack, a brief and vicious tussle that broke a corner off the desk and landed him facedown on the carpet, and a goddamned redhead laughing in his ear.
“Getting slow,” she said, pressing her knee into his back.
"What," Raidou strangled out, “the hell?”
“Jailbreak,” she said cheerfully. “We’re taking your rookies dancing. You’re invited, by which I mean required. There will be alcohol and fun. Wear a nice shirt.”
“What?” said Raidou.
“What?” said Kakashi, from the door.
“I cannot deal with requisitioning you a new desk,” Genma said, voice muffled by the hand over his face.
In the hallway, someone who sounded very much like Ginta was having a breathless attack of laughter. “Or no shirt,” he managed, sticking his head around the doorframe. “You could also go with no shirt, if you don’t have a nice clean one.”
Raidou got a knee underneath himself and shoved up, taking Usagi with him. She laughed and adjusted her grip, nearly pulling his ear off. He jammed an elbow backwards into her ribs. She released him and danced backwards, eyes glinting.
Genma warned, dangerously, “If you get even one paper out of order on my desk or Taichou’s, there will be blood, Thirteen.”
Usagi held her hands up. Raidou rubbed his throat.
Kakashi said, again, “What?”
Behind Kakashi’s shoulder, Ryouma’s dark head loomed up. He said, very quickly, as if he expected someone to cut him off: “Intel finally let me out and we’re going clubbing to celebrate. Kakashi promised me, weeks ago. Kurenai and Satomi are meeting us there.” |
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