| [Sep. 18th, 2013|10:28 pm] |
And there were the judgemental eyebrows.
The lieutenant, Kakashi was learning, had more than a little nanny goat in him. Kakashi shrugged loosely. “Your hair has a leaf in it.”
Genma gave him a long, silent look.
“I thought we were finding things,” Kakashi said.
Genma held out his empty coffee cup. “Go find me a refill.”
Idly, Kakashi wondered what would happen if he said no. But there was an ocean’s difference between deflecting an observation and refusing a direct order, and he’d never done the latter without a life-or-death reason. He took the cup. “Lieutenant.”
“Hatake,” Genma said levelly.
Ryouma was still crouched over the spread map—which presumably had the advantage of being pictographic if you ignored the place names—but his eyes were on Kakashi, dark and measuring. “There's cold pheasant wrapped in leaves by the coffee-pot, if you're hungry.”
Tempting thought.
Kakashi wasn’t generally a breakfast man, but they had miles left to run and protein never hurt. He nodded once and went in search of coffee.
“Making friends?” Raidou said quietly, when Kakashi passed him.
“It’s what I do,” Kakashi said, eyeing Raidou’s calloused knuckles. No bruises, not even a faint reddening. The fingerless ANBU gloves covered his forearms, but Raidou moved like nothing ached, easy and fluid. “You promised you’d take responsibility with the lieutenant. Minus ten captain points.”
“Complaining before 5am,” Raidou tossed back. “Minus thirty underling points.”
“Don’t co-opt my system,” Kakashi said, examining the simmering coffee in the collapsible pot suspended over the fire. It looked dark and bitter, and smelled like roasted earth. He’d never quite understood the appeal.
Raidou completed the final kata of asa no kurayami no byoutaisou, which was a pattern-dance Kakashi had always privately thought of as Greet The Lack Of Dawn With Calisthenics, and flipped onto his hands. He lowered himself into a series of straight-body pushups. “You’ll want sugar in that.”
Kakashi wrinkled his nose, but dropped in single dose from one of the paper sugar packets someone—probably Genma—had left in a helpful pile on a rock.
“Half a point for adequate waitering,” Raidou said, between slow breaths.
“Minus everything ever for intellectual theft,” Kakashi said, taking a leaf-wrapped parcel of pheasant. He returned the coffee to Genma, who accepted it with a wordless nod and didn’t break from his quiet conference with Ryouma. Still ‘detectiving’.
Katsuko’s oppressive chakra pulled Kakashi’s attention left. She’d returned from her clone errand, and obviously stopped by the stream on her way back. Her hair was damp and wild, and her bare shoulders glistened with water droplets she hadn’t bothered to dry off. She leaned against the broad trunk of a tree, tipped her head back, and, judging by the way her chakra instantly quieted and begun to respool itself, slipped into a trance.
Seemed like everyone had a morning routine. |
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