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Kakashi doesn’t not like cats. He just isn’t particularly fond of them, either. And he doesn’t know why that’s that big of a deal, because he isn’t particularly fond of hamsters and not once in his life has anyone ever come up to him and asked: Are you a dog or a hamster person? And then gasped, preferably with a dramatic clutch of the hypothetical pearls (because cat lovers are such prudes, aren’t they) when he gave the wrong answer.
The wrong answer being not cats, thank you very much.
Truthfully, Kakashi can’t see the appeal. Cats are wriggly and peculiar, sweeping against your legs and leaving hair all over your freshly laundered jounin uniform and if you don’t feed them, or pat them just the right way, they’ll whack their long swinging tails at you and then leave you standing, strutting away with said tail straight up in the air, just to make you stare at their tiny cat asses, and that’s a thought Kakashi can’t believe he’s even having, gah.
And what with those vicious little claws, that slice at you every time you wrong them (like saving them from the top of a lamp post, for example, and that mask had been brand fucking new, too!). Those claws are killing machines, and this is no exaggeration. You just reach for them to pat them (rile them up a little by poking their stupidly fluffy little bellies, but who needs to know that) and then they chop into your thumb and slice right through that first layer of protective skin until it flaps right open, and right at the nail bed, too, where everything is extra tender and then your thumb hurts like a bitch and you (conveniently) can’t do your dishes for three whole days.
(Why, then, do cats even have such fluffy little bellies if you aren’t supposed to pat them?)
Aside from that (as if that isn’t bad enough) cats are so arrogant and aloof and fickle, some of them riled up by the smallest things and others just so listless, fat tomcats basking on rooftops for days on end just because they can and then stealing someone’s hard earned fish from where they had gutted and cleaned it and laid it out on the kitchen counter for the time it took to go to the goddamn toilet.
„In the short time I have known you“, Madara interjects, incredulous, „I have seen you stabbed twice, thrown off a bridge into the Nanako in winter. You have suffered severe burns from a katon jutsu and have been hospitalized for chakra exhaustion. And now you are whining about a scratch from a cat?“
Kakashi throws him a miffed glance over the top of his cup. He swirls the tea inside the cup, takes a sip, and puts the cup down carefully.
„Yes. I almost lost my thumb, Dara-chan. And what is a shinobi without his thumb?!“ Kakashi jerks up his thumb demonstratively, wrapped in a slightly askew plop of band-aid, pink and littered with the heads of tiny black cats in-between a cluster of baby-blue stars.
„One.Cut.“
„It ripped right through me!“, Kakashi breathes, scandalized. „I saw the claw come out the other side. They told me at the hospital I barely made it out alive.“
Madara gives him a flat look.
„I was the one who put that plaster on you. Stop being overly dramatic.“
Kakashi narrows his eyes at him in order to give him the nastiest, most vicious look he can muster. It isn’t undercut by the kitty-band-aid at all, not when he hides his hand under the kotatsu. Or that’s just what he likes to tell himself.
Madara just huffs, arrogant bastard that he is, and rests his head in the palm of his hand, sipping lazily from the strange herbal concoction he calls „tea“. Kakashi watched him brew it. It consists mostly of twigs.
„It’s just strange“, he says, while Kakashi fans his hand to diffuse the stinky smell of that mud-brew, and then says nothing, until Kakashi finally gives in, too curious for his own good.
„What?“
Madara smirks at him.
„Nothing. Just that, all things considered, you are very much behaving like a cat. But“, he interjects before Kakashi can blurt out an indignant response, then smirks as Kakashi holds his breath, „only very much so. Almost all of the time.“
Kakashi’s eyes widen. „Never, in my entire life, have I been so gravely insulted. I take affront, Dara-chan, and I want you to know that nothing short of a formal apology with flowers and an invitation to an expensive restaurant will ever close that gap your inconsiderate words have just ripped open between us.“
„Oh, they weren’t inconsiderate at all. In fact, I considered them very carefully before I spoke.“
„Fine“, Kakashi huffs, „ill-advised, then. Ill-judged. Heedless.“
Madara nods, as if he can live with that, and makes a motion as if to go for a re-fill, but Kakashi shoots out his arm and covers Madara’s cup with his hand. The band-aid is very shrill against the dark mahogany of the table. Totally ignorable.
Madara lifts an eyebrow at him.
„Now that we apparently are so open with each other“, Kakashi says, smiling sweetly at him, „I think it is time for me to make a confession to you.“
Across the table, Madara blinks, a bit slowly, which looks a bit stupid. Kakashi thinks he would be cute if he’d just chill a little, now and again. Then again, Madara and chill might just be to incompatible concepts. Maybe Kakashi should try catnip. He makes a note for later consideration.
„Uchiha Madara“, Kakashi says, dropping the smile and the attitude and looking now very earnestly at him. Madara doesn’t exactly go rigid, but his shoulders draw up ever so slightly, and his spine seems to straighten a bit, too. He certainly doesn’t lean halfway on the table anymore. „You are, so very very much, like the most indignant, spoiled Pomeranian I once knew. It was many moons ago, in fact, do you remember Shizune-san from the third floor, she always carried one around …“
Madara’s eyes do that blinking thing again that makes him look stupid-and-almost-cute. Then, very slowly, heat creeps up his face, very red and therefore very visible, like his anger always is. Even his hair starts to bristle, if Kakashi isn’t mistaken.
„A.Pomeranian.“
He nods, helpfully.
„Me. Uchiha. Madara.“
Kakashi nods again, more enthusiastically now.
„For that, you will die.“
„What, do you want to force me to drink that concoction of yours? Or smother me with your hair?“ He stops to consider. „Actually, that might not be the worst way to go, depending on how exactly you do the smothering, and in which position -“
„Shut it, you insolent little brat!“
„Dara-chan“, Kakashi says, shocked. He even clutches his non-existent pearls, feeling very conservative right now. Very prudent, too. „Please. Control your temper.“
„You!“ Madara looks like he means other words to follow, but then just splutters, apparently unable to come up with anything remotely fitting for whatever Kakashi is to him.
„I don’t see the problem, Dara-chan. I like Pomeranian’s. They’re really cute. All fluffy. And loud. And yes, they do have something of a temper. And a bit of a demanding personality, too… You know what, they actually really are a lot like you!“ Kakashi laughs. „Also, that leg-humping thing? Totally you.“
When Madara’s seat pad hits him square in the face, Kakashi thinks it could have been worse. Madara could have thrown that muddy tincture at him, for example. Or himself, to smother Kakashi with his hair. Maybe, Kakashi thinks, idly turning his tea cup in his hands, he should keep discussing pets with Madara just a little longer. See if he’d make him snap. One could always hope, after all.