It was too early to be thinking straight. Kotetsu tugged at his hair, trying to make his brain wake up a little more as he followed the Intel agent to the briefing room. Early morning briefings sucked, especially when sardonic agents knocked on your door and gave you looks till you pulled on something decent and followed them without even stopping for something hot to drink.

The Intel agent pushed open the door, "Sorry to keep you waiting, ANBU-san," and Kotetsu was just two steps behind him, and nearly let the door close on his face.

Because. That was...

Ginta looked up, and the florescent light made his hair shine gold-silver.

It was Ginta.

The Intel agent coughed, and Kotetsu realised he was staring. With a very good attempt at subduing his blush, he grabbed for the nearest seat. "Uh."

Well, Kotetsu-kun seemed as full of scintillating wit as ever. Their briefer was one Ginta had worked with before. Tendo Kenta. He was a decent guy, if a bit authoritarian. Someone had once tried to set them up on a date based on the similarities of their first names. Kenta, being not only straight-laced, but straight, had not appreciated the joke. Fortunately, Ginta had laughed enough for both of them. After a few drinks they had become, if not friends, at least decent acquaintances.

"Hi. Want donuts?" Ginta asked, shoving the sack towards the middle of the table. "And you're late, Kenta. You have a date with a hot chick last night or something?"

"Not that you'd know a hot chick from teriyaki, but yes, as a matter of fact," Kenta said, and slapped a packet of papers down on the table in front of Ginta. "It's your mission partner that held this up, though. And the mission office. They didn't give him his notice last night, so I had to go drag him out of bed for this."

"Sucks," Ginta said succinctly, and bit into a jelly donut. Red jam squirted out the hole and nearly spoiled his mission dossier, but a quick finger flick caught it. He licked his finger and grinned. "Strawberry."

It was, Kotetsu decided, not a good time to be sleep befuddled. A flush of hot-cold embarrassment washed through him, and he forced himself to concentrate on his mission doisser. Mission partner. He was partnering Ginta on this mission.

He sneaked a glance at Ginta at the word 'strawberry', and swallowed, and he was very grateful Ginta wasn't looking at him.

Mission. Yes. Important mission. B-rank assassination, looked like he was there to play back-up and gain the experience. Simple.

Would it be too obvious if he reached over for a donut? Probably. He read through the dossier again, and looked up at Kenta. "So I'm back-up for this, right?" He tried not to look towards Ginta at the rustle of the paper bag.

"Yes. Backup." Kenta reached into the sack and extracted a powdered sugar donut hole, which he ate surprisingly neatly, not getting a single bit of the white dust on his black uniform turtleneck.

"Don't worry," Ginta smiled at Kotetsu, and shook the donuts at him. "It's an easy-peasy one. We just gotta get our coordinates down, observe our target long enough to figure out when the best time to strike is, take him out, and we're home free."

He really hoped this kid wasn't going to turn out to have mission nerves. He seemed kind of uneasy; anxious about something. "You've had assassination missions before, haven't you?"

Kotetsu managed a weak smile, and was about to refuse the donuts - you couldn't be impressive or even just professional eating donuts! (Kenta was an exception. And Ginta. And everyone in the world except Kotetsu) - when his traitorous stomach woke up and growled.

"Thanks." He extracted one from the bag as quickly as possible, and tried not to drip cinnamon powder on his doisser. "And. Yeah, I've been on assassination missions." Though one probably counted more as... a massacre.

Was Ginta being kind? He looked up at Ginta, and decided that the small smile on his face probably was that. Kind and sort of concerned. About a rookie for a partner. He didn't know what to feel about that, and bit into his donut instead. It rained cinnamon on his doisser. Fuck. At least he didn't have to give it back.

"Great, we'll have no trouble then," Ginta said. He spread his folder open and studied the maps. There was a large compound. The target's house was near the back, and an orchard looked to be spread behind that. Good. Easy access, easy getaway.

Kenta started talking about the details Intel had gathered for them already, on habits of the target, family members, known associates, expected hazards.

It was an hour before the meeting wrapped up, and by then, Ginta's eyes were as glazed as the donuts he'd been eating.

"Alright, alright. we have a plan. You good with this, Kotetsu-kun? I want to get my gear packed up, but we could leave in another hour if you can get ready that fast. Two hours if you want to be slower."

Kotetsu was about to fall back asleep, keeping awake only because Ginta was there. Some part of him wanted to make a good impression on the older ANBU - which was probably a gone case, as it were. He'd come in late, after all! - and the fact that Ginta called him 'Kotetsu-kun' gave him an oddly warm fuzzy feeling.

Which, actually, made no sense. Probably it was because Ginta didn't call him 'kid', or 'rookie'. He was one of the few veterans who actually used his name.

"'s not that far," Kotetsu said, trying not to flush any more than he already had, and brush the donut crumbs off his papers. "I'll be packed in an hour."

"I'll meet you at the mission desk," Ginta said, and gathered up his papers. An hour to pack his gear, eat a bite of something more nutritious than donuts, and flirt with that new guy on the mission desk, if he was there. It worked out beautifully. He gave Kenta a cheery wave and headed out before they could take any more time on preparation.

Easy missions were great. Didn't pay as well, but it was ANBU, even a B-rank was compensated pretty highly, when you factored in hazard pay. Not of course that Ginta really had to worry about money. But it was still nice to feel like your work was appreciated.

"Sure," Kotetsu said, and left quickly, glad that Ginta didn't seem to notice at all - or if he had, that he'd been kind enough not to say anything.

***

Traveling with Ginta hadn't turned out to be a particularly hard chore. In Ginta's presence, Kotetsu found it somewhat awkward to maintain his usual style of swinging rapidly through the branches - he couldn't shake off The awareness he had of Ginta's proximity. On the other hand, Ginta was chatty, perfectly willing to do most of the talking, expecting little more from Kotetsu other than the occasional interjection. The masks were also very helpful, because every time Ginta said something to him, Kotetsu'd feel a flash of heat; the mask helped chill his cheeks, and obviously hid it from Ginta.

Still, it was nice listening to Ginta - a little bewildering perhaps, because he talked about a lot of things, veering from subject to subject as quickly as they leapt through trees. It let him think that maybe Ginta wasn't noticing him beyond 'fellow ANBU', which was both a relief and a disappointment.

Ginta landed on a slender oak branch, pushed off, checked that Kotetsu was keeping up, and launched another topic at his companion. "So anyway, I hear you like fish?" he asked. "I've never had a betta, but I breed koi. Well they aren't my koi, they're my grandmother's koi, except they really are mine. Just last week I had a new batch of fry, and there were three really nice red and whites with near perfect markings. If they grow nicely and don't get all lopsided, those will be prizewinners. Of course that's a few years off yet." It was easy to keep up a patter as they loped through the trees. Easy to talk to Kotetsu, because he almost never interrupted. Perhaps talking at him was a better way to describe it.

It beat the alternative, which was grim silence. They'd tried that for the first kilometer or so, but when it became abundantly clear that Kotetsu wasn't going to initiate anything like conversation, or participate in discussion, Ginta had switched to babbling at him. He vaguely thought of quizzing him later, to see if he remembered anything Ginta said at all.

"You keep fish?" Kotetsu felt a flare of something - maybe it was recognition, maybe it was hope, but it died. Ginta sounded like someone who really loved fish as a hobby, bred them for show even, while Kotetsu had only just found out that something was eating his betta's fins. He hoped Ryuichi'd change the water like he'd promised. Or else Green Demon might die.

"I only had him for a bit," Kotetsu ventured, wondering if Ginta'd take the opportunity to talk about himself, or try to pry things out from Kotetsu, or leap like quick-silver onto another subject. What, maybe it'd be birds? Wood? He liked hearing Ginta talk, and he gathered that Ginta was terribly clever, but it was disconcerting all in all.

"Who, your fish?" This was an improvement. Kotetsu actually seemed like he might be willing to talk for a change. Ginta wondered what made the kid so tense. Was it mission jitters? Was it him? But he was pretty non-threatening, as long as you weren't his target! Wasn't he?

"So tell me about your fish. I mean other than that you have him. It's a boy fish? Or are you just guessing? It can be hard to tell, since they don't exactly have dangly parts to make it obvious. But bettas are sexually dimorphic, right? Not like koi. Koi you have to watch and see who lays the eggs and who fertilizes them." Not strictly true, there were ways you could tell, if you knew what to look for. Ginta seriously doubted Kotetsu had figured out how to sex a fish, though.

"Green Demon," Kotetsu nodded, caught a branch with his hand and swung to another. How much further did they have to go? He thought it might actually be nice, really, to just keep moving like this, forever. Just the trees moving past, a spreading wave of silenced forest animals rippling out ahead of them, and sunlight dappled blueish-grey on Ginta's hair, lending just a touch of glow.

"He's ... the guy said that only the males fight. And have big fins." He hadn't actually thought about looking at dangly bits of fish. Why would he? Fish were fish - they just didn't have gender, until he'd gotten Green Demon.

He considered telling Ginta about the fish he'd bought for Ryuichi, and the first one he'd gotten that had died, and decided against it. Kakashi had reacted like it had been a mortal sin to be curious about the fighting abilities of the animal; he didn't want to have it confirmed that Ginta'd recoil in disgust from him too.

"Um. How did you know about my fish...?" Because he was fairly sure he'd not told him... Ah well. Word traveled fast in ANBU, and both Ryouma and Kakashi'd heard of it... not to say anything about the almost-fight between him and Kakashi. Kotetsu shook his head sharply, dispelling the thought, and almost stumbled at the next leap. Again, he was intensely grateful for the cool porcelain against his heated skin.

Gods, Ginta must think he was some sort of clumsy idiot.

"Oh, people talk, you know." Ginta waved an airy hand as he reached for the next branch. "I heard you were planning to fight your fish, actually, but it didn't work out. They kill each other right off the bat?" He didn't get an answer, and a quick glance told him not to expect one. That guilty flinch of Kotetsu's shoulders made it clear this was a sore topic.

"That's one thing about koi," he went on, not entirely sure what Kotetsu was feeling guilty about... Maybe that he'd failed to have the winning fish? "They establish dominance without having to kill each other usually. Non-aggressive in general. I guess your bettas are kind of more like samurai than ninja, with their flashy coats of arms and public battles to the death. Not that koi are ninja fish. They're more like... monks. Peaceful."

"Ninja fish'd do it sneakily," Kotetsu said, trying to picture koi as monks. With little temples and prayer fish and incense. Wow, that sounded like something Ryuichi'd say when he was on Speed.

Ginta didn't seem to care much that one of his fish'd been killed. Or that they killed each other. It was a small relief that he wasn't as quick to take offense as Kakashi was. He gritted his teeth at the thought of Kakashi, and focused on taking the next leap.

"So what do people talk about?" Keep Ginta talking, and he wouldn't have to think so much.

"What don't they talk about?" Ginta laughed and swung to a stop on a high branch. He pulled out his map and compass, and looked for landmarks. Nearly to the ford at High Tiger Creek, which meant they needed to correct thirty degrees to the east if they wanted to make it to the next checkpoint following the trail Intel had mapped out for them. And given this particular mission, there was no reason not to. He pointed out their direction with a short bob of his masked head, pleased when Kotetsu led off immediately.

"They say you like to spar until you get yourself skewered and the medics take you off missions for several days. Bets are even whether you're being clever and lazy, or stupid and have a death wish." He laughed and picked up his pace a little to catch up to Kotetsu. "I'm guessing it's the laziness thing, since so far you aren't acting like someone stupid enough to get run through during a spar by accident."

Kotetsu misjudged, and almost missed the branch he was reaching for. Thank the gods that it hadn't been mossy, or else he'd have landed face first in the leaf litter below. "Hey," he said, his face burning. "That was Ryuichi! And I didn't do it on purpose..." Wait, that was admitting he was stupid and clumsy. He shot a glance at Ginta, and couldn't tell whether the laugh in his voice was at Kotetsu's expense or not.

It was a nice laugh. Just... Ginta was laughing at him. "It was unexpected," he said, hoping that that worked better as an excuse. "And I wasn't run through. He put an axe through my shoulder and... Anyway, how come you know all that? Is the grapevine that good?"

It would, Kotetsu thought, be so much nicer if he could make Ginta laugh at something else, instead of him.

"Ryuichi? I don't actually know him." Ginta didn't miss the stretch Kotetsu had to put into catching his hold. "You have a crush on him or something? That would explain why you nearly fell just now, thinking about him. And why you let him put an axe through your shoulder."

This time the flinch was monumental.

"If you try and tell me you're straight and I just insulted your manhood, I'm going to laugh so hard I piss myself." There was no way this kid was straight. Not with the way his eyes had tracked to Kenta's crotch in that briefing. Not with the way Ginta had felt those brown eyes on the fit of his own pants. No straight man spent that much time checking out the lower halves of other men. Ever.

It was fortunate that he had his mask on. Even then, he was vaguely worried that it'd just combust from the pure heat his face was producing.

"Crush? On Ryuichi?" He tried to shrug that off. "Ryuichi'd stick me for real. Hard. Like, through the floor if he heard that." Crushing on Ryuichi. Gods. The guy he was crushing on hard - and harder every time he laughed - thought he was crushing on Ryuichi. There was no justice in this world.

"He's got a girlfriend, and he's ... He's my friend!"

He didn't even try to deny the bit about being gay. He'd have thought that had hit the grape-vine if nothing else. He slid a glance to Ginta, his mask hiding all facial expression. The laughing monkey design on Ginta's mask was probably a mirror of the man's face. "And there's nothing un-manly about being gay."

"Don't look at me to deny that," Ginta said with a laugh. "I'm a prime example of homosexual manliness, don't you think?" He propelled himself off one branch towards the next with an extra flip, to prove his point, Whatever that point was.

"So this friend of yours is a real homophone? Does he know you're gay and just overlook it for the sake of the chance to drive bladed instruments into your anatomy..." Ginta's laugh turned up a notch. "Okay, and if that isn't some kind of seriously closeted something or other. I mean really. Not that I have any proof, but there's some kind of subtext there, don't you think?"

Kotetsu had to force himself to look away. Ensure he was leaping for the next branch - trained instinct suddenly seemed so unreliable, especially when Ginta turned a tight roll in midair and Kotetsu's throat went dry.

It was, he thought, just so wrong to be talking about Ryuichi when Ginta was doing that.

"Yeah," he managed weakly, pausing when he caught sight of water because he was concentrating so hard at not looking at Ginta do yet more spectacular acrobatics. "Real manly."

River. Ford. Cross now? He jerked his shoulders in a question, as he tried to think of how to reply to Ginta's question about Ryuichi. Without thinking about how the ANBU uniform was tight in all the right places.

"Ryuichi's not... he doesn't care. That I'm gay. I mean. He thinks different. The important part is whether I can take what he can dish out." He cocked his head. "Don't think there's subtext, is there?"

"Oh not with him," Ginta answered airily. "Just in general. Bladed instruments as phallic symbols and all that. Although are there weapons that are vaginal? Maybe a garrote? But that's kind of stretching it."

He looked in the direction Kotetsu pointed and nodded. "We can cross here, yeah, this will be good." They'd get there in plenty of time to set up observation points, and even get some sleep. Whatever Kotetsu's skills were, he was certainly tireless and speedy, both excellent attributes in a mission partner.

"So do you have a favorite weapon?"

He was glad that Ginta'd stopped talking about phallic symbols and weapons - that was not an image he wanted to associate with Ryuichi and his axe. Ouch.

He dropped down to land by the river, hard rocks shifting slightly under his sandals. The river was slightly shallower here, the water slower, so it wouldn't be so hard to cross, even in their full armour.

Then Ginta asked about weapons, and Kotetsu wondered if his face was ever going to get a rest sometime today. Hell, this mission.

"Wires," Kotetsu said carefully, trying not to think about 'vaginal'. Gods. "An' these." He indicated his kunai, wrapped in their lined sheaths and strapped to his back. "Though they aren't easy to use one-handed."

"Yeah, those are almost like really fat kodachi," Ginta agreed. He started to carefully water-walk over the shallow ford--he had chakra to spare for now, so no need to get wet. "So you're one of those garroters, are you? Do you cross-dress, too?" Perhaps, he thought, when he felt a wave of silence hit his back, that had been pushing things too far.

"I like my katana, myself, but I do a lot of genjutsu." Talking about weapons in general, maybe, would restore equanimity to the conversation. He hoped. "Remember those little scaled-down swords we got to play with when we were kids? Man, the first time Junmei-sensei brought those out, it was mayhem in my class. And I was like two years younger than everyone, so of course I got the smallest one. Proved you don't have to have a big sword to do good sword work though."

It's not the size of your blade, but how you use it some irreverent voice sing-songed at the back of Ginta's brain. OK, next topic of conversation?

"Cross-dress?" Kotetsu sputtered, and water wet his ankles. Maaaan, he was stuck in the most surreal of situations. Next up, he should start squeaking. Why break the running streak of 'let's embarrass myself in front of my crush'? "I don't..."

Oh look, that totally looked like the checkpoint.

He wasn't thinking about swords, and sizes thereof.

"So. Uh. You're... you went in two years younger'n everyone else?" How old was Ginta anyway? Kotetsu tried to think of the mathematics involved and gave up. It made Ginta a war-vet in any case, since he was older than Kotetsu if the way he was talking was any judge, and Kotetsu would have noticed a kid like Ginta in his classes.

Blond that shade wasn't that common, after all.