“Must have made it easier for your sensors to spot anything incoming,” Genma said. “And made it easier to cheat at bar games. How much money did you take off unsuspecting civilians at darts?”

Asuma gave Genma a genuine smile at last. “None, you ass. I had a reputation to uphold and shit.” He stole a gyouza from Genma’s abandoned container on the coffee table, chewed, and swallowed, before he allowed, "Also I didn't have to pay for room and board out there, unlike the one time I cheated around you…”

“See,” Genma said, “now there’s a real recruiting pitch. ‘Come work for the Daimyou, live rent-free in the glorious capital of Fire Country, and develop a conscience even a monk would envy.’”

Asuma’s smile died, and his gaze dropped to the bottlecap, stilled between two fingers. “No, not really,” he said distantly. “Those Fire Temple monks can out-conscience pretty much anyone.”

You’re an idiot, Shiranui. In one of Asuma’s infrequent letters last year, he’d mentioned one of the Guardian Twelve being a monk, hadn’t he? Had the monk remained loyal, or had he been one of the traitors? Did it matter? He’d certainly been one of Asuma’s friends.

“Yeah,” Genma said. “I guess you’re right.” He picked at the label on his beer bottle while Asuma uncapped another for himself. For a long, awkward moment, Aoba’s apartment was silent. When had it gotten hard to talk to Asuma? But there was so much neither of them could say — sworn to secrecy and not on the same team anymore. Genma’s leg ached, and all the things he’d spent the day trying not to think about came pressing in.

"So uh,” Asuma said, in the world’s most inelegant subject change. “Did they say how long they think you'll need those bandages?”

“Couple weeks,” Genma said, grateful for the safe topic. “I have to do the PT, and if the remaining hematoma starts to ossify, I’ll have to do another surgery, probably.”

Asuma flicked an eyebrow upward, and Genma could guess at the question.

“It was a bad cut, and I made it worse trying to get it to stop bleeding in the field. You know how I’m always saying self-surgery isn’t an option unless your other choice is death?”

Asuma gave a sage nod. “Classic ANBU mission. Knowing you, your teammates are in better shape?” It wasn’t quite a question.

Genma thought back to that rookie year with Asuma, to missions Team 14 had come limping home from. Hyuuga-taichou’s carefully worded mission reports that Toshirou-sensei had seen straight through.

“I’m smarter about it now,” he said. “Hatake’s in bad shape, and I spent a lot of energy getting him stable, but I made sure to treat myself first. IV and blood pills and the whole circus.”

Asuma gave him a look laced with skepticism.

“OK, yes, the rest of my team is in better shape medically, except for Hatake. But we also brought home—” Genma stopped himself. The prisoner was with T&I, but the fewer people who knew about her, the longer Konoha could leverage her.

“I told you about Iebara. That’s going to be public knowledge, since we’re removing him from the Bingo Book. Confirmed kill, no ambiguity. But his jutsu was vicious, and I got hit with it. Tried to heal the wound and missed a branch artery, and I wasn’t clotting great because of soldier pills, so it bled into the muscle for several hours after the fighting was over. I started getting hypovolemic and shocky, so I kind of massacred an emergency cauterizing jutsu—”

Asuma held up a hand with a fond look. “Smarter about it now, he says.”

“I only needed chakra from my captain once— twice. But that was because—”

Asuma still looked amused. He picked up the box of gyouza and waved it at Genma. Genma took the hint, and popped a whole one in his mouth.

So ok, it was harder than it used to be to talk to Asuma, but it wasn’t like everything had changed. For the first time since the ANBU Trials, Genma felt something he hadn’t even known he was holding onto unclench.