| [Jul. 25th, 2013|05:12 am] |
Raidou laid down his ace. “Hatake Kakashi.”
That won the biggest reaction he’d gotten so far. Genma’s face went absolutely blank with shock, betrayed only by the widening of his golden-brown eyes, then he broke up laughing. It was a nice laugh, lighter than Raidou’d expected, with a smoker’s rough edge.
“No, really,” Genma said, when he’d calmed down. “Who’d we get?”
Raidou hooked Kakashi’s file out and showed Genma the name. “Hatake.”
Genma looked at the file, looked back at Raidou, looked at the file again, and finally let out a long, soft whistle. “Okay, I did not see that coming,” he said. “Is this a reward or a punishment?”
“I’m choosing to believe it’s a reflection of my personal magnificence,” Raidou said. “Or an overabundance of faith in our skills.”
“I can accept that,” Genma said, with dry good humor. “You got the assignment directly from Yondaime-sama himself?”
“And Sagara-sama.”
“Did they have anything....” For the first time, Genma visibly groped for words. “Any logic behind putting the two of them on one team?”
That was going to be the question of the day.
“Yondaime-sama thinks they displayed decent teamwork in the second Trial,” Raidou said, after a moment’s thought. “Or at least, the beginnings of it—Tousaki put his neck on the line when he thought Hatake was in trouble, and Hatake returned the favor when he knew Tousaki was actually in trouble. I guess Yondaime-sama jumped on that with both feet.”
Kakashi badly needs a friend.
The fraught worry in Yondaime-sama’s eyes was too raw to share.
"Since Kakashi's got such big fanclub, you mean?" Genma said, tapping his senbon thoughtfully on his lower lip. “I guess if I had to place Konoha's biggest loner since Oro— Jiraiya-sama, on a team, I'd put him with someone he seemed to actually like." His eyes flickered briefly at that near-slip, but he only added: “Especially if I was practically his dad.”
Someone was a tiny bit of a mind-reader.
Or Kakashi’s issues were just that well-known.
“Loner, maybe, but I don’t think Hatake’s running secret experiments in a basement somewhere,” Raidou said, because they might as well yank the heart out of any worries Genma had right now. “Too many eyes on him.”
“I sure as fuck hope not,” Genma said, with surprising sharpness. He seemed to realize he’d shown too much, because his eyes half-lidded, and his shoulders settled forcibly down. “But yeah, there’s no way two Hokages' star pupils would go off the rails in the space of five years, right? That shit only happens in bad movies.”
“You want a drink?” Raidou asked.
Genma’s eyes flicked up, assessing. There wasn’t an ulterior motive for him to find, other than ‘you’re tired and sweaty and clearly have some issues to discuss, so let’s have a goddamn beverage’, and he seemed to hit on that same conclusion. He smiled slightly. “Thanks.”
Raidou waved the gratitude away.“Have a seat,” he said, and went for his fridge. He didn’t have much in the way of tea, but he could do beer. Might as well grease the wheels. He grabbed two Blue Mountain Drys and the fruit bowl, because vitamins never hurt, and dropped into his usual chair at the kitchen table. Genma sat down across from him.
Raidou popped the caps with his rings, and slid one beer across. Then, pointedly, the fruit bowl.
“Okay,” he said, taking a drink. “Hit me.” |
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