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"You know, for as much as we meet at this coffee shop, we could have our own show," Deidara says, "All Friends and shit, yeah."
"We don't always go to the same place," Kabuto says, his voice coming from somewhere behind his hands.
His penchant for precision would always make itself known, it seemed. Even while hungover.
Sasori glances up at Kabuto, his expression unsurprised and unimpressed, and returns to reading his newspaper from Paris. Deidara looks between them and then shrugs, pulling his phone and headphones out of his pocket to play a game.
For about ten minutes, Sasori and Deidara occupy themselves in silence while Kabuto sat motionless, his elbows on the table, hands still covering his face.
Sasori abruptly folds the newspaper into a square and places it on the table, smoothing out the wrinkles. "Regardons," he says, looking at Kabuto. "Kabuto, maintenant." Kabuto spreads the fingers of his left hand and looks between them at Sasori, his gaze wary and begrudging.
Sasori sighs and reaches over to pull Kabuto's hands off his face. "Relâchons," he says as he points at a word on the paper, but his tone is not harsh. "Mais bien sûr," Kabuto answers mockingly, ignoring the newspaper and still glaring slightly at Sasori. "What is it. Je suis malade, if you couldn't tell."
"C'est seulement ennui," Sasori huffs, waving his hand in the air. "Or, ennui est why you are in your current predicament."
"He doesn't look bored, yeah," Deidara interjects. Sasori glares at him. "Ennui does not simply mean boredom, you simple American."
"Last time I checked," Kakashi says as he joins the table, setting a large coffee and a larger glass of water in front of Kabuto and sitting to his right, "you were also a 'simple American,' Sasori." Sasori scowls at him and pulls his newspaper away from the condensation steadily dripping off of the water glass.
Kakashi puts his left arm around Kabuto and presses a kiss to his temple. Kabuto winces. "Thank you for the coffee," he mutters. "And the water."
"Mais bien sûr," Kakashi says, repeating Kabuto's earlier words. From his exaggerated tone, Sasori realizes he must have been eavesdropping. "Anything for you, mon cher," Kakashi says to Kabuto, and then turns to grin at Sasori.
"Ugh, don't call me that," Kabuto says, but he is smiling. "Besides, last night was your idea, so you're to blame for this headache."
"If you drank more wisely, you wouldn't have that headache," Kakashi says unmercifully. "But I also picked up your sunglasses from your apartment," he fishes them out of a pocket and puts them on the table, and continues to talk over Kabuto's relieved gasp, "so I think that if we're going off some sort of scale, it should be tipping in my favor."
"Why were you drinking last night anyway, Kabuto?" Deidara asks, suddenly curious. Kabuto pretends not to hear him and prolongs his sip of coffee. Kakashi and Sasori's eyes meet, their gazes significant.
"Yeah?" Deidara prompts Kabuto again, but Kabuto stays silent.
"C'est ennui," Sasori says again, to change the subject. "We've been over this."
Kakashi turns to Deidara and, hand in the air, recites, "'You know him, mon semblable, mon frère.'" Sasori’s frown deepens at Kakashi’s heavily affected accent, but he doesn’t comment.
Deidara glares at the two of them. "I don't get it. And I don't like it when you two suddenly become a French Force, yeah."
"Vous avez lu Baudelaire?" Sasori suddenly asks, begrudgingly impressed.
"'Hypocrite lecteur,’" Kakashi says to him in way of answering. Sasori’s frown transitions to a scowl, but he drops the question. "Kabuto," he says instead, "third paragraph, fourth line. Répéter—"
"Ré-pé-ter," Kabuto says.
"No, not that word," Sasori says, and points. "Celui-là."
"I don't know what that means.” Kabuto’s tone betrays his forced patience. Kakashi watches the two of them silently and rubs Kabuto’s neck and the top of his back with a hand. Kabuto leans into his touch unconsciously.
"Celui-là means 'that one.' You could practice that."
"Seh-loo-ee." Kabuto sounds out the word slowly. "Sounds like 'celery.'"
"That is because of the way you are sounding out the 'ee,'" Sasori explains. His tone is patient, but his expression is frustrated. "You should, ah… smooth the sounds together more. Blend. Make it lighter." He frowns. "And faster. Rappelez, vowels at the end are short."
"Rop-a-what?" Kabuto says, and then tries, "Say-lui."
Sasori shakes his head, "Non, a softer 'e,' this letter has no accent." Kabuto opens his mouth to try again, but Sasori cuts him off. "But the 'a' in là does. Repeat. Celui-là." They fall into a repetitive back-and-forth, Sasori speaking the word again and again with seemingly infinite patience, and Kabuto's (slowly improving) attempts to pronounce it correctly.
"Celery, la," Deidara says to Kakashi, who looks up from his phone. "Sounds like a song, yeah," Deidara adds. "You could totally set that to something—"
"Hm," Kakashi looks back down. "The Beatles. That one off the White Album. With Desmond. Market place."
Deidara frowns. "Why is everything classic rock with you, man?" Kakashi shrugs a shoulder in response.
Itachi joins them at that moment, with what looks to be a complicated and supposedly low-in-calorie espresso beverage in hand. "How are you?" He asks Deidara and Kakashi, tone flat but pleasant, and opens his laptop.
"We're fucking great, yeah," Deidara says, sarcasm dripping off his words. "Kabuto has a hangover and Sasori is teaching him how to pronounce 'celery.'" Kakashi laughs quietly, eyes on his phone, his other hand still diligently massaging Kabuto's neck.
"Ah," Itachi smiles.