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What the hell am I supposed to do now? Kabuto thought. It wasn’t like their arrangement was something he didn’t enjoy, but he didn’t like not being able to plan it. The sudden spontaneity of something Kabuto thought he had controlled through careful planning unnerved him—and it wasn’t as if he could turn tail and be successful. Kakashi already knew he was there. There was no way he wouldn’t know.
In a moment, Kakashi would turn and their eyes would meet. He’d drawl something insipidly stupid just to make Kabuto scowl, his eyes sparking with mirth. Kabuto watched the scenario play out in his mind. They needed new names, if this was going to happen more often. If he couldn’t prevent these random crossings from happening. But no—there was no way Kakashi was unrecognizable as he was now, forehead protector pulled down over the sharingan and Konoha flak jacket on display. Fuck. Fuck fuck fucking fuck.
At this point, Kabuto was almost on board with running, and he realized, knowing Kakashi knew he was there—had to know—that the thing keeping him from running was his pride and insistence on having the upper hand in the situation.
Someone bumped into his shoulder, someone drunk by the smell of their voice as they told him to watch where he was walking, as if Kabuto wasn’t standing still. Kabuto was pushed out of his racing thoughts at the contact, and stepped aside and ducked his head reflexively, already pulling on the affect of a meek and apologetic youngster.
Kakashi looked over his shoulder then, and Kabuto forced his head up to meet his eyes. eye. whatever. The jounin stared at him for a long moment before fishing some cash out of his pocket and placing it on the high table he’d been sitting at. Eating at. Kabuto knew Kakashi ate quickly if he had to eat in public. What was he sitting there so long for, biding his time? Kakashi slid off the high stool and walked toward Kabuto, hands in his pockets and back curved just slightly, the lanky slouch hiding the skill beneath. The killer beneath, Kabuto suddenly thought, with a small beat of fear to his heart.
Kakashi stopped next to him instead of in front of him, and Kabuto counted it as some small, calculated mercy. “If I didn’t know you better,” Kakashi said quietly, “from the way you were boring holes into my back for ten minutes, I’d have thought you liked me.”
Kabuto turned his head to see Kakashi’s long mouth slanted in a wry smirk. Kabuto realized, distantly, that he wanted to laugh.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, old man,” Kabuto said before he could think better of it. Kakashi’s eyes glinted in the evening dark.
He reached out and tugged on the wide collar of Kabuto’s uniform. “Now,” he said, and paused, “I doubt you’d let me into bed with you if you considered me an old man.”
Let me into bed with you. Kabuto never understood it, this undercurrent of kindness that surfaced when he least expected it. He should start expecting it, then. Let Kakashi into bed with him- the phrase was preposterous. As if they hadn’t somehow tangled together in a strange collision like stars, a fight cut short by the sparking arousal of being too close and too worked up, hot breaths turning into a bruising kiss as one of them pressed their mouth into the other’s first.
Kabuto’s thoughts continued on overdrive, ignoring things he knew about how he felt about whatever this was, biting on his cheek to keep himself from immediately saying something back. He was- he wasn’t ready tonight, for this. For Kakashi.
His chest suddenly felt breathless with low fear and the overwhelming crush of how much he wanted what he wasn’t ready for.
He didn’t know how much time had passed in silence before Kakashi began to continue walking, leaving Kabuto there. Kabuto turned to watch him go, hating himself for feeling indignant that Kakashi hadn’t taken the reins of the situation. That he hadn’t said anything beyond brief, low conversation, and now was walking away.
Kabuto hated him for it. And he was, if the way his toes curled just slightly in his sandals, thrilled by it.
Physiological responses... those were always the toughest to control. Years spent keeping himself still felt, sometimes, unraveled and useless when it came to Kakashi. His enemy fuck, the teacher of the child Kabuto helped steal, the genius weapon of the Leaf.
And then, in a miracle, Kakashi stopped walking. He toed the dirt in front of him, scratched the back of his head. Kabuto suddenly noticed the now-forced straightness to Kakashi’s shoulders, and wondered if he wasn’t alone in fruitless, circular thought.
Kakashi threw his head back over his shoulder, his one eye zeroed in on Kabuto’s two. “So,” he called, voice low enough to escape passerby attention, “are you coming?”