Who said ‘yo’?

Kakashi pulled his hand free of the stall, gleaming chestnuts sliding through his fingers, and turned to find Genma grinning at him. The older ninja looked good, considering. There was colour in his face, a glint in his eyes, a shine to the long hair bound up in a messy pony-tail. He was five shades of casual, dressed in shredded jeans and a dark red shirt with a dragon applique stitched down the flank. Between clenched teeth, a single senbon added an edge to that smile.

“I take all my mission bonuses in edible form,” Kakashi drawled, brain on automatic. “Hadn’t you heard?”

Genma’s grin widened, broad and genuine. Faint lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes. "Either they're not paying you enough, or you're gonna be eating a lot of chestnuts, then," he said, leaning over to examine the nuts. His whole manner was friendly; his scent warm and relieved.

Kakashi took a sharp step back.

“Yes, well -- my life is hard,” he said distractedly, suppressing the urge to kick himself in the head. “And I have to go. Nice to see you’re still breathing, Shiranui. Keep it up.”

Right. Kakashi was the most socially awkward person on the planet: how could Genma have forgotten?

“Nice to see you’re still breathing, too,” Genma said slowly. He wasn’t exactly blocking Kakashi’s exit, but between the other shoppers, the narrowness of the aisles between mounds of autumn harvest bounty and a few imported specialties, and Genma, the only way out for Kakashi would be to force his way past. Genma took a slight step back, to create a little more room. “You okay? Looks like your hair’s starting to grow out.”

“I'm super," Kakashi said, with all the false conviction of a medic telling a child an injection wasn’t going to hurt. He reached up like he was going to touch his hair, but skimmed his cupped palm inches above his head and wrapped his fingers around the back of his neck instead. "You? Actually, don't answer that. You look great. Not traumatized at all. I'm late for the — dentist." He flicked Genma an awkward, trying-to-be-casual salute, and made to slip out past him.

The easiest thing in the world would have been to let Kakashi go. Genma’s smile had already evaporated. Kakashi was alive, evidently as neurotic as ever, and not being a total bastard like he could be. And he clearly didn’t want to talk to Genma, but...

But Genma couldn’t quite let it go. There was no one else in Konoha to talk to about what he and Kakashi had been through, save for the psych woman, and any further discussions with her on the topic were fraught with danger. Genma let Kakashi past him, then swung into step next to him. “I’ll walk with you. I can’t believe they’re already giving you mission assignments. I have one for Monday, but I’ve been off since the last time I saw you. Were they really okay to you, after I left? What happened?”

Kakashi only hesitated for a second.

“Pretty much what you’d expect,” he said, glancing aside at a stall piled high with autumn apples. The vendor gave him a hopeful smile; Kakashi shook his head. When he looked back at Genma, the older ninja’s expression was -- cautious, mostly.

“I’m alive, anyway,” Kakashi added hurriedly. “And you are, too. Hooray for us. Why are you following me?”

Genma’s eyebrows drew down. “I’m not following you,” he said, despite all evidence to the contrary. “And given what I’d expect from... them...” He didn’t quite shudder, but a subtle tension ran through lean muscles. “If they treated you how I expect, I’m surprised you’re walking around at all.”

“I have more inner strength than you,” Kakashi said, going for bland and hitting colourless. “And also a sense of personal boundaries. Don’t you have, I don’t know, friends to go bother?”

“Nice.” Genma’s voice was so flat it sounded stamped on. “I guess you really are still yourself, at any rate. And yes, obviously, but I’m getting tired of pretending the last three weeks didn’t happen.”

Because the mission was classified to hell and back, and Genma couldn’t share the details with his glittery pals. Which left him with Kakashi as his only option, and -- oh gods, he was going to want to talk about it. And commiserate. And build some sort of shared-experience-friendship-thing out of [] days of mutual horror.

“Oh, no,” Kakashi said. “No way. I’m not your emotional needs counsellor.” He’d worked too hard and spent too much getting Genma home the first time, and he wasn’t going to risk it all again just because Genma had decided to get fuzzy in the aftermath. “Go find a bar and get drunk like a regular person, until you learn how to repress properly.”

There was a carpet vendor to the left. And a book-seller to the right. Kakashi called up a cloud of jutsu-conjured smoke, sent a visible clone dodging past the book stall, and ducked out past a pile of sheepskins before Genma could grab him.

Genma and every other ninja in the marketplace at that moment tensed up. Hands went to pockets for weapons, or crooked into seals for jutsu, shoulders stiffened, heads swivelled, wary eyes darted. As Kakashi’s smoke cleared, an older Uchiha jounin caught Genma’s gaze, raising one sculpted eyebrow over a Sharingan eye that was fading from red back to black.

“Want to tell me what that was about?” the man asked, coming close.

Great. A cop.

“No idea,” Genma answered with an almost casual shrug. “He’s kind of an ass.”

The Uchiha snorted. “That was Hatake, right?”

Genma nodded, grinding his teeth against his senbon. Damn, an Uchiha. They had an even bigger problem with Kakashi then Genma did.

“He’s your friend?”

Genma stared at the cop for an eye-blink. “No. Not really. We’ve just had a few missions together,” he said as blandly as he could.

The Uchiha pursed his lips as if he smelled something disagreeable. Genma shifted his weight, studying the other man. He was shorter than Genma, with salt-and-pepper hair and creases around his eyes and mouth that spoke of long years of sun and wind burn, and a dark shadow along the jaw that suggested a heavier beard than was usual amongst the Uchiha.

“Lover’s tiff?” The cop asked next, and this time the sneer was unmistakable.

“No,” Genma said firmly, meeting the sneer with a glare of his own. They had a little audience now, of vendors and market-goers. Some of those shinobi still had hands hovering over stashed weapons. ”Mission partners.” Genma crossed his right arm over his left and slapped his shoulder in a sharp ANBU salute.

“Then you can tell him to keep his jutsu on the training field and out of the marketplace. Next time I’m citing you both for disturbance of commerce.”

Fucking Uchiha. They had way too much power, Genma thought fiercely. Outwardly he just nodded. “If I see him again, I’ll tell him. Is that all, sir?”

“Your name?” the cop asked.

“Shiranui Genma, 010203, special jounin,” Genma recited. Fucking hell, he was going to ream Kakashi a new one next time he saw the bastard, if he ended up getting cited and fined for Kakashi’s stupid trick.

“You can go, Shiranui.”

How magnanimous, Genma thought. He saluted again, and headed back to the grocer’s stall.

He never got a chance to pass along the cop’s message, although he ran into Kakashi here and there over the next couple of weeks. In the showers, Kakashi was dressing when Genma came in — he didn’t even say hello, just booked out like he was late for a briefing. In the cafeteria, Kakashi grabbed food and disappeared with it, never making eye contact. In the laundry room, when Genma came in, Kakashi left so fast he dropped a damp shirt. At the mission desk, when Genma walked up, Kakashi snatched an assignment from the wall and vanished with it in another cloud of translocation vapor.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when Genma came home from a mission with a gash on his thigh that needed stitching and found Kakashi waiting to see the medics as well, that they finally got a chance to speak. “Hi,” Genma said, casual and quiet. Kakashi shot him a glare, stood up, abandoned his place in line, and stalked out into the hall.

Well, fuck that. Genma followed him.

“What the hell is your problem, Kakashi? You’re avoiding me like I’ve got some kind of contagious disease; it’s getting fucking annoying.”

Kakashi came to a halt halfway down the empty hallway, stared at the blank wall, then raised his one visible eye to the ceiling. Seriously?

“Because I don’t want to see you, Shiranui,” he said, without turning. “How is that hard to understand?”

"Yeah. Easy. Why?” Genma’s voice rose on the last word, lilting with frustration. “I know we're not best buddies or anything, but fuck, Kakashi. It's not like we're bitter exes who can't stand the sight of each other." He drew a sharp, hard breath, then spoke more quietly. "It's not like Iwa never happened."

Kakashi turned on his heel, ignoring the flaring pain from the long shallow wound down his back, where his armour had buckled under a blow. “No, see, that’s where you’re wrong,” he said, letting the words drawl coldly. “Officially we were never there. So officially it never happened. And you need to stop stalking me before I get annoyed.”

"I live here, I'm not fucking stalking you,” Genma snapped, looking mission-dishevelled, blood-flecked, and pissed. There was a stained bandage unravelling around his right thigh. “You're neurotic. Is it that hard to just act like a normal person around me?"

“I’m not normal,” Kakashi snapped back, throwing his hands halfway up and stopping when it hurt.

Genma made a snorting sound of agreement. Kakashi’s eye narrowed; he strode forward, halfway to prowling, and boxed Genma into the wall. Genma stiffened.

“We’re not friends,” Kakashi said, low and icy. “We’re not exes, we’re barely even comrades. We did our jobs and we stayed alive because we got lucky. That’s it. It wasn’t a bonding event and we’re not going to meet up later to dissect it over coffee.” He inhaled through his nose, catching the warp and weft of Genma’s darkening scent. “I don’t like you, Shiranui. Try to remember that.”

Not even after Genma had saved his life, shoving that poison antidote down his throat. Or after Kakashi had returned the favour, with risky unpracticed medical jutsu and suicidal trips into countries with long, unfriendly memories. Especially not after Genma had helped piece Kakashi back together in the dark, with careful touching and ungrudging giving and, okay, not-brilliant sex.

Kakashi set his jaw.

He couldn’t have friends. They never survived the experience.

“I don’t much like you, either,” Genma snarled. Kakashi smelled of mission-funk: stale, adrenaline-fueled sweat with a whiff of blood. Even through the filter of Kakashi’s mask, Genma could smell ration bars on Kakashi’s breath. His hair was ropey and lank, grown out enough now to show dirt, but still absurdly short. His viciously glittering eye was shadowed in the hollow underneath.

Feeling the heat and threat of Kakashi’s body so close, Genma flashed for moment back to that Iwa cell. Hard muscles, terrible fears. Sex to prove they were still alive. Genma’s nostrils flared.

“If you dislike me so much, then don’t stand so damn close to me.”

Kakashi gave Genma a hard look. "Standing far away wasn't working," he said, with a menacing edge. But he took a step back, bristling and stiff, and half-turned to leave.

Genma took a breath and stared at the man in front of him. He didn’t hate Kakashi. He understood Kakashi, maybe a little. And he was pretty sure Kakashi didn’t hate him. Not after all that they’d been through together. Kakashi was as traumatized as a ninja could be and still be functioning — that was something Genma was well-qualified to judge — and he was shitty at personal interaction, but he was as human as Genma, and as needy.

“Until next time, then,” Genma said quietly. “I’ll be here.”

It was like a tooth breaking, except all at once and inside his mind. One minute he was walking away with plans to head home and make a clone stitch his back up, the next he had Genma crushed up against the wall with a hand across his mouth and another wrapped hard around his left wrist.

Genma’s eyes flew wide, showing whites all around. He struck out — a flurry of quick, hard blows aiming for Kakashi’s face and neck. Kicks aiming for everywhere. Kakashi ducked aside, taking them harmlessly on the shoulder, the side, the thigh, and dropped his hand to Genma’s throat, tightening until Genma’s breath stuttered out.

Kakashi’s own heartbeat roared in his ears, nothing like mission clarity.

“Stay away,” he spat, and it came out a snarl. Deep and throttling, wrapped up in the worst things he could say. “You stay away from me. You almost got us both killed, Shiranui. I want out of your blast-radius. If you come near me again—”

His right hand choked higher on Genma’s wrist, feeling the ply of strung tendons and clicking bones. His left hand clamped back over Genma’s mouth. Genma whined under his hold, a high, thin sound that broke through Kakashi’s fingers. Genma’s scent was pure death, like bleached carbon and acid.

Kakashi grabbed his index finger and wrenched it back on itself, until it dislocated.

There was a moment of crunching silence, filled with nothing but the buzz of fluorescent lighting and the distant noise of a living hospital, then a faint, shuddering breath whispered against Kakashi’s palm. Nothing more. Genma was utterly white, his eyes almost black.

Kakashi snapped his finger back into place with a dull crack.

“I’ll hurt you worse,” he rasped. “Next time. Stay away, you stupid bastard.”

Genma didn’t respond. Kakashi shoved away from the him, feeling the rush of hot, prickly adrenaline thunder like fire in his veins, like a drumbeat of shame-guilt-horror (neverhurtyourteammates), and took off up the hallway. Genma didn’t come after him; Kakashi wasn’t even sure he moved.

He grabbed a random doctor on the way out, shoving him in Genma’s vague direction with a garbled account of an ANBU in distress, and bolted from the hospital. It was only when he got back to his room, breathless but not shaking (not on the outside), that he realized he’d bitten through his lower lip. His mask was blood-soaked, like Genma’s thigh bandage.

Obito’s eye burned behind his hitai-ate.

He called a clone, made it stitch and bandage his back up, and banished it. Changed his clothes, washed his face, re-packed his kit, and went down to the mission desk. Took the first mission out of Konoha.

A week later, when he got back and collapsed, Genma was just coming off the sick list. He hadn’t reported Kakashi.

He was still alive.

And he stayed alive.

It was worth it.