Rin always smelled like soap and early spring, the edge of frost under new growth. Her chakra was a cool waterfall around his ragged edges. She was a fixed point; always had been.

Except she was changing, too.

Kakashi let out a breath and put his hand over hers, curling his scarred fingers beneath her calloused palm. “Kind of classified to talk about here,” he said. “Can I steal you for a while?”

She smiled and glanced down at the open report on her desk. “I’m one sentence away from finishing this. Then I’m all yours.”

He let her hand go.

It must have been an important sentence, because she spent a minute in thought over it, absently chewing the corner of her blue-stained lip. Then the pen flicked and a row of neat kanji marched down the page, ending with a restrained flourish. Rin signed the report and tucked it back into the file, stacking the whole thing in her out-tray.

“Patient survived?” Kakashi asked.

“No,” she said. “But it was a good surgery.”

Well, that put his issues in perspective. “Do you need to talk?”

Rin came around the desk and bumped her shoulder companionably against his arm; the top of her head barely came up to his throat. “Later,” she said. “We can trade classified secrets over food.”

“The Cellar?”

“Of course.” She glanced at the door and the hallway beyond, where a secretary was eyeing them both curiously, and turned to the window instead. Chakra barely sparked as she disengaged a seal and slid the window back. She stepped out onto the ledge. Her hair whipped in the wind. “Run with me?”

Kakashi’s mouth quirked. “You spend too much time inside.”

“A little fresh air wouldn’t hurt,” she admitted, smiling. She held her hand out. “Come on.”

Kakashi took it and let her pull him outside.

Rin’s office was three stories above the ground, overlooking one of Konoha’s main streets. A few civilians glanced up as they vaulted from the ledge to the building opposite and ran along the wall, horizontal to the ground. Kakashi let Rin take the lead; she needed to stretch her legs more.

She took them up over the rooftops, graceful on tiles and catwalks and washing-lines strung between buildings, towards the outer edge of the village center. When they reached a squat stone building with boarded windows, Rin dropped back down to the street, and Kakashi followed a second behind.

There was so sign on the building. The door was scarred, desperately in need of painting, and blackened at one corner, as if fire had been a past feature. Rin knocked.

A slender, balding, unremarkable man opened it, and bowed slightly. “Nohara-san,” he said, standing aside to let them enter. “Hatake-san. Welcome.”

Rin nodded. “Toshiyuki-san.”

Kakashi twitched one hand in a little wave.

The entranceway was raw brick and unfurnished, barring the small wooden stool Toshiyuki had been sitting on. An abandoned paperback sat next to it. A door led through a large empty hall Kakashi was pretty sure the owners used for training, or storage, or movie nights. They didn’t go that way. A second set of doors opened onto a freight elevator. Rin hit the button; Toshiyuki returned to his stool, settling back with his book.

The elevator had two sliding grates that needed to be opened and then closed before it would move, and it rattled like a death trap. Kakashi leaned against the wall as it jolted them slowly down. The air warmed, filling with the smell of miso and cooking meat. A dull murmur of noise drifted up.

Rin inhaled with a slow, easing sigh. “This makes up for all the times I had to yell at Oguchi-sensei this week," she said. “I don't even want to strangle her anymore.”

“I thought you liked Oguchi-sensei,” Kakashi said.

“I do,” Rin said. “If I didn’t, I actually would have strangled her.”

Kakashi laughed softly.