| [May. 25th, 2015|02:56 am] |
"If I drop you, Naruto will cry," Minato pointed out. "You'll forgive me if I choose to take my chances with homicide instead." He levered Kakashi back upright, but didn't drop the hand.
He didn't need physical contact to carry a passenger on the journey between dimensions with Hiraishin, not with only three people all standing within the sphere of his chakra reach. Still, Kakashi was a little too white around the eye for Minato's peace of mind. Ride-alongs were never easy, but the closer Minato stood, the smoother the trip. And he had no intention of dropping Kakashi on his living room floor with an extra dose of spacetime nausea to damper his day.
"Count to three, Naruto-kun," he said, and opened up the universe.
They landed on the rug in front of the sofa while Naruto was still deciding between "ni" and "san." Kakashi thumped down on a cushion as if his knees had given out. Rin stepped down off the coffee-table with a wry glance at Minato and laid a slim hand against Kakashi's forehead.
"Still feel fine?" she asked. The cool water of her chakra brushed against Minato's, filtering into Kakashi's inflamed pathways. Kakashi's own chakra stirred sluggishly in response. He swallowed, bare throat bobbing, and sighed.
"I'm out of the hospital." Eye closed, he leaned a little into Rin's hand. "You can upgrade me to radiant, so long as I can be radiant and sitting down."
"Stay put, and we'll use you for a reading lamp this evening." Minato collected Naruto into his lap and settled down on the other end of the couch. He could feel the smooth polish of Ogata-san's chakra in the kitchen, hear the faint, resuming schwick of her knife against a cutting board; she'd recognized his own chakra in turn, and gone back to her work. A floor below, Lynx was supervising the secretarial army as they sorted out paperwork in Minato's office; on the roof above, two ANBU whose chakra signatures Minato didn't immediately recognize wove a silent patrol.
Somewhere out in the streets Panther, his assigned shadow for the day, was probably only just now realizing he'd left the hospital. Hopefully she'd beat last week's record for tracking him down again.
Rin's chakra flared in a complicated little pattern, sealing her work into Kakashi's flesh. She stood with her head tilted thoughtfully, studying him. Then she nodded to herself and sank down onto the far edge of the couch, tucking her heels up gracefully beneath her and smothering a yawn with her hand. "One thing about pulling sixteen-hour shifts," she murmured, "is that as soon as you let yourself rest, it all catches up with you."
Kakashi slouched down into the couch beside her as if all his muscles had turned to water. He dug his shoulder blades into the cushion and sighed blissfully. "This couch is my most favorite couch. Never get rid of it, sensei."
"I invited you both over for dinner, not naptime," Minato said, amused. "We had naptime already, didn't we, Naruto-kun?"
"I did." Naruto clambered out of Minato's lap to rescue First Mate from Kakashi's loose grasp and plant the stuffed seagull firmly on top of Kakashi's head.
"I'm conserving energy for food," Kakashi said, looping an arm around Naruto's waist and tugging him down sideways into a very gentle headlock. "I haven't seen you since Thursday, shrimp, and you're torturing me with waterfowl."
Naruto squealed. "No torturing! Tickling!" He twisted around and went for Kakashi's vulnerable ribs, hiking up the hem of the overlarge jounin blues and scrabbling his sharp little fingers over milk-pale skin.
Kakashi yelped and actually flailed sideways into Rin, jolting her out of her half-doze, before he recovered himself. He grabbed for Naruto's wrists and got them on the second try. Reactions dulled from recovery, or mere overacting for the boy's benefit? Minato was inclined to believe the second, though Kakashi's initial surprise did seem genuine. Maybe he hadn't been the recipient of one of Naruto's surprise tickle attacks before. They were relatively new, and Naruto hadn't yet learned not to use his nails.
But with Kakashi's hands occupied, and Rin on his blind side, he'd left himself open. |
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