Work Text:
Tink, tink.
Tenzo hears the bell at the top of the door make its quiet, beleaguered noise.
He feels a blast of warm air, or rather, a frenzied escape of refrigerated air into the heated landscape.
Next is the sound of heavy footsteps, most likely magnetic boots, against old linoleum.
Here’s where the customer is supposed to press the bell for service. Tenzo waits.
The bell is not pressed. Tenzo does not turn. He simply watches the seconds tick down on his vat of boiling water.
There’s a tapping on the counter.
Bing, Bing, Bing. It’s just turned three, that much, I can guarantee! Bing, Bing, Bing.
The clock in the corner chimes, announcing the hour.
Tenzo wipes the counter. It’s clean, he knows that. He has disinfected it four times today, once every hour, and he has yet to serve a customer. Still, he does as he is supposed to and wipes the rag over the topping counter, the workstation (technically, these are the same counter, but they are procedurally unique, so he wipes them separately), the prep counter, and finally, the service counter.
The man who entered is standing there, watching him carefully. Tenzo does not let him make eye contact as he wipes the counter and the cash register. He is only supposed to serve customers when they use the bell.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The timer on the vat of water has finished, just on schedule.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Tenzo turns it off and lifts the baskets to drain. Thirty just-cooked hotdogs spit steam into the chilled air as Tenzo turns back to the counter and stands idly. This is what he will do until the hotdogs have cooled enough to put them in the rotating grill. After that, he will wait until the next hour has come to an end, and he will do everything again. He will do this entire routine five more times. Then, he will go home.
“Yo,” Says the man.
“Please ring the bell for service,” This is part of the script. Part of the procedure.
The man raises an eyebrow, but Tenzo doesn’t notice. He’s still watching out the front window as dry winds blow tiny dust storms in little orange waves.
Ding!
Tenzo looks at the man who has rung the bell and smiles, “Welcome to Shimura’s Hotdog Stand. What can I do for you today?”
He appraises him fully for the first time. The man is startlingly tall, with a sloppy mop of silver hair that’s currently dusted with a thin layer of fine orange sand. He wears a dust-mask that he still hasn’t removed even minutes after entering the climate-controlled building. Tenzo also notices that he’s left a number of dusty footprints all the way from the door. He’d have to sweep later.
“It’s not much of a stand, is it?” The man asks.
Tenzo pauses. This isn’t in the script, “I’m sorry?”
“There’s tables, and chairs, and refrigerated air, and a soda machine. I’ve never seen a stand with all of that.”
Tenzo blinks.
“What can I do for you today?”
“I suppose that perhaps Mr. Shimura was going for an alliterative approach to the title, but it doesn’t work very well. Maybe…” the man pauses to think, “‘shack’ would be better. Don’t you think?”
“Do you want a hotdog?”
“Don’t you think this is more of a shack than a stand?”
Tenzo sighs. He allows himself to shift on his feet.
“I think ‘store’ would be more accurate than shack,” He says simply after a long pause, wherein the man is clearly waiting for him to respond.
“Ah… Store. But that doesn’t have the right sort of ring for hotdogs, does it? I’ve never said ‘I’m gonna go to the hotdog store’ before.”
beep. beep. beep.
The timer to transfer the cooked hotdogs is going off. Tenzo can’t address them until he finishes serving this customer.
Aggravation seeps into his voice as he responds, “Stores are places people go to buy things. People come here to buy hotdogs. It’s a hotdog store.”
beep. beep. beep.
“Are you gonna get that?”
beep. beep. beep.
“Are you going to buy a hotdog?”
beep. beep. beep.
The man’s eyebrows raise as though he were surprised at the question. “I don’t know! I hadn’t thought about it yet.”
beep. beep. beep.
Tenzo feels the mild breeze of annoyance the customer seemed to carry in with him on the wind begin to turn into more of a gust of irritation. What exactly had he been doing when he was waiting for service other than looking at the menu and picking a hotdog?
He’s already gone off script, so he might as well go deal with the hotdogs while the man contemplates.
beep. be— he shuts off the timer. Donning gloves and selecting the appropriate tongs, he moves them to the warmer. He takes the old dogs, all thirty of them, and puts them in the pan that will become tomorrow’s chili.
“Which one is your favorite?” The man asks.
“I recommend the Martian Special.”
“Is that really the one you like best? I didn’t pin you down as a mayo and blue olives kind of guy.”
Tenzo pauses and turns to look at the man. “I don’t like anything on the menu. I don’t eat hotdogs.”
For some bizarre reason that Tenzo can’t quite parse, the man begins to laugh.
“You don’t eat hotdogs?” He repeats Tenzo’s words between chuckles. “Why do you work here, then?”
“Where else would I work?”
“Where else?!” The man exclaims. “You’ve got the whole of Mars available to you! Hell, you don’t even need to work anywhere! It’s easy enough to live off the land around here.”
“Do you want a hotdog?”
The man hums in consideration and leans forward to look through the glass panel that shields the toppings from the public.
“Do you have ice cream?”
“No. We only serve hotdogs.”
“You’d probably make a killing if you sold ice cream. Especially around these parts. At least,” He hesitates, “until winter rolls around.”
“I don’t make decisions around here. I just sell hotdogs.”
The man quirks an eyebrow at him, and Tenzo feels surprised at just how infuriating that simple act can be.
A slow smile begins to cross the man’s lips, “Say, what’s your name?”
“Sir, if you’re not going to buy a hotdog, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
When Kakashi pushes open the door to his new favorite establishment, he’s greeted first by the wave of refreshingly cool air and second by the low drone of rock and roll music playing from a faded speaker on the wall.
“Oh good, it’s you,” he says to the employee, who has yet to acknowledge him. “I suppose I have to ring the bell again, huh.”
The employee doesn’t react, and Kakashi decides to take this opportunity to study him. If he’s not going to acknowledge Kakashi, surely it’s not that rude to stare, right?
His uniform, garish and brightly striped with red and blue and yellow to match the store, fits him well. It’s just a little tight around the chest, Kakashi notes with minor intrigue. His hair appears to be tied up under a hairnet and tucked into the cap of the uniform, so Kakashi can’t see it too well, but based on the bulk at the back of his head, it seems like there’s a lot of it.
And then, there’s his eyes. They had been what drew Kakashi in in the first place. Big, and dark, and so full of something Kakashi can’t name, but at the same time completely devoid of expression. How the man managed to pull off both at the same time was a pure marvel.
He didn’t flinch as Kakashi leaned over the counter to examine him closer, at this point, mostly just searching for a reaction.
When he was sure he wouldn’t be getting one, Kakashi cleared his throat and stood up straight before gently tapping on the bell for service.
Ding!
“Welcome to Shimura’s Hotdog Stand. What can I do for you today?”
“Yo,” Kakashi says with a small wave.
The employee looks impassive, but Kakashi’s reflexes are fast enough to notice his eye twitch a little. Good, he thinks.
“Some weather we’re having recently, huh?”
The employee nods with clear boredom. Kakashi and the employee both know that there is no weather to be spoken of. There hasn’t been a dust storm in six months, and this part of Mars doesn’t get rain.
“Whereabouts are you from?” Kakashi asks.
“I live within a reasonable commuting distance to this hotdog stand,” the employee responds, in the most frustrating non-answer Kakashi has ever heard. That’s saying something since Kakashi has given a lot of non-answers in his life.
“But you haven’t lived here all your life…” Kakashi probed, “Unless you’re younger than you look.”
The employee rolls his eyes, “Would you like to buy a hotdog?”
Kakashi smiled and turned, crossing the small dining room in a few short strides to examine some of the photographs on the wall.
Most of them were of the same man, Shimura, Kakashi suspects, shaking hands with someone or other. There were a couple black and white photographs of the stand when it had been newly constructed, made entirely out of reclaimed rocket materials like most buildings had been in the early days. Judging by the interior, it had undergone heavy renovation once they had gotten around to synthesizing building material on the planet.
Kakashi wasn’t sure exactly when that was, though. Martian history wasn’t his strong suit.
“When was this place built?” Kakashi asked without turning to look at the employee.
A long pause and one hefty sigh later, he spoke, “Shimura’s Hotdog Stand opened its doors for the first time twenty years ago.”
“And how long have you worked here?” Kakashi turns this time, watching the employee’s reaction carefully. “Or did they build you at the same time as the building?”
“Are you here to buy a hotdog?”
“Hmm,” Kakashi considers, “Nope! I came here to talk to you!”
This must have finally broken something in him because the employee’s expression twists into a frown.
“Why?”
“I’ve got nowhere else to be, and you don’t have anyone else to talk to.”
“You don’t have a job?” The employee asks, voice tinged with disgust.
Kakashi stifles a laugh, “Nope! I’m a free man! “
“Maybe you should get a job.”
“Don’t want one,” Kakashi says simply as he pulls out one of the chairs at the lone table in the store and sits.
The employee just stares at him, with some mixture of disbelief and non-comprehension on his face.
“You still haven’t told me where you’re from,” Kakashi purses his lips, “Don’t say it, let me guess.”
The employee probably wasn’t going to say it anyway.
After a long period of thought, Kakashi finally speaks.
“Konoha. Final answer.”
The employee opens his mouth and then closes it. His big, round, dark eyes mixed with that expression give him the sort of countenance as a goldfish. Kakashi chuckles to himself.
“Did I guess right?”
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The noise of a timer distracts the employee, and he turns away from watching Kakashi to attend to his duties.
In the meantime, Kakashi hums along to the song playing on the radio. It’s an old one, from Earth. He never liked it before, but he finds himself enjoying it now.
He lets the employee do his work in comfortable silence, already brainstorming a list of stupid questions to ask to see if he can get him to break character.
He hadn’t expected to find himself so vexed by the employee, but he was. Usually, he was able to get a rise out of everyone, but not this guy. The day before, the only sign of aggravation he could see was being politely asked to leave if he wasn’t going to buy anything.
“How did you know?” The employee asks when he returns to his spot at the counter, snapping Kakashi out of his musings.
“About Konoha?” Kakashi asks with a raised eyebrow. The employee nods his clarification. Kakashi taps his nose, “The nose knows.”
The employee’s brow furrows, “You can smell it on me?”
Kakashi pauses, caught off guard for a moment, before laughing. “No,” he says, eyes crinkling up with mirth, “What I mean is, it’s easy enough to spot your own kind.”
There’s a heavy sort of understanding that settles over the room then. The two of them are about the same age, Kakashi guesses, and grew up in the same village and ended up on the same side of Mars. Kakashi was sure that meant they probably had other things in common, too.
“You know,” Kakashi breaks the reverie, “You never did tell me your name.”
“Kinoe,” The employee says quickly, without much thought.
Kakashi hesitates before furrowing his brow and cocking his head. “Is that your real name?”
The employee mirrors his confused expression, tilting his head and pursing his lips in consideration.
“I guess it’s not,” he says finally with a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders.
“Have you ever met a Martian?”
“They’re supposed to be extinct now,” the employee says with little interest.
“I have.”
“I’ve heard they’re dangerous.”
Kakashi fiddles with the slightly sticky, thick plastic tablecloth, “Not really. They’re just like us.”
The employee cocks his head, “I thought they had telekinetic abilities.”
“Well,” Kakashi pauses, “Yeah, they do. But they have to work really hard to use them. And well, the one I knew was kind of an idiot, so it wasn’t all that dangerous in the first place.”
The employee (not Kinoe, though Kakashi still hasn’t gotten him to say his real name) pauses to consider this information. Kakashi has discovered that when he hears a new fact, he sort of scrunches his face up like he’s literally rifling through filing cabinets in his head to correct his records. It’s cute, Kakashi would think if he were capable of thinking such a thought about a grown man.
“This song has played fourteen times today,” the employee observes, with a glance towards the radio.
“Do you like it?” Kakashi had noticed several visits ago that the playlist was disturbingly short. But there were a lot of repetitive, annoying sort of noises that played in themed dining establishments like this. Especially ones with militaristic hotdog cooking routines.
“No. I don’t like anything here.”
“Nothing?” Kakashi asks incredulously, “Not even the—“
Bing, Bing, Bing. It’s a quarter to nine. No more time to dine! Bing, Bing, Bing.
— clock?” Kakashi finished, restraining a laugh.
“I have to close.”
“I get it. I’ll get out of here,” Kakashi says, raising a placative hand and heading to the door. He hears the bell above the door tinkle as he exits and is confronted by the brisk night breeze.
Well, as brisk as it gets in equatorial Mars.
Kakashi stubs the magnetic toe of his boot in the dirt, watching the clouds of orange dust that puff up around it.
Within twenty minutes, the employee exits and locks the door before he even realizes Kakashi is waiting for him.
“Green suits you,” Kakashi remarks, trying not to smirk at the horrified, surprised expression that comes across the employee’s face when he announces his presence. “Much more than the uniform.”
The employee looks up and down at his clothes, which are standard Martian fare. A patchwork of clothes from a patchwork of nations, stitched together into some semblance of a vest. Even in the dimness of night, Kakashi could make out the familiar shades of Konoha green, patched over with what looked to be mostly Kiri blues and Kumo whites.
“What are you doing?”
“Military clothes, though,” Kakashi notes, “Must have been hard to get your hands on that much material.”
“What do you want?” The employee asks with a resigned sigh.
Kakashi smiles, “I thought we could go for a walk.”
The employee, either by way of acknowledgment or in a display of defiance, begins to walk away. Kakashi happily trots along next to him.
“Have you ever been to the castles?” He prods, searching the employee’s expression carefully in the starlight for any sign of recognition.
“I’ve heard they’re dangerous.”
“Mah, maybe for some. I was fine, though.” Kakashi kicks a dark orange rock and watches as it bounces and skitters away out of view. “That’s where I met my Martian.”
“Your Martian?”
“Well, it’s not like I kept him in a cage, but he was my friend. My Martian.”
“Uh-huh,” the employee says incredulously.
“Like I said, he was an idiot. He didn’t even know how to do telekinesis until the last day I saw him, so I didn’t even really see anything cool.”
“He was hanging around the castles?”
“Yeah,” Kakashi's expression twists slightly lower, though not an outright frown, “His family caught the plagues when he was young, and he never left. He had only just reached an age of maturity when I met him.”
“What happened to him?”
Kakashi chews his lip for a moment, heart suddenly heavy with the memories.
“He got sick,” he says after a long silence. It's not technically the truth, but Kakashi can’t tell the employee that, and he didn’t want to deny him an answer either. He didn’t ask Kakashi that many questions.
They walk together in silence for a long time. There aren’t many buildings in this part of town. Most of the real estate had been taken up by land grants to early colonizers, who then died, and no one knew who’s land was officially who’s, and in the end, it remained empty. Sometimes, someone built over here, like Shimura and his hotdog shack.
Mostly, people set up wind farms in long fields.
“You wear military clothes too,” the employee says after they can no longer see the lights of the town in their periphery.
Kakashi glances down at his own vest, left unzipped to be more innocuous, but the material is identifiable nonetheless.
“Can’t afford new clothes when you don’t have a job,” Kakashi says with an embarrassed chuckle. Of all the things for the employee to notice, this was not his top choice.
“Why don’t you get a job?” The employee asks, an echo of himself on a previous day.
“Don’t want to.”
The pair walk in silence even further out into the wild desert outside of town. Kakashi’s eyes adjust easily to the darkness as they walk, but he can see the employee squinting to make out the shape of rocks on the horizon.
“Any particular reason we’re headed so far out?” Kakashi asks.
“I’m going home.”
“You live out here?!”
“Where else would I live?”
“Somewhere in town, “Kakashi splutters, “with streetlights and people around.”
“I don’t like streetlights or people. I like the desert.”
“Is that true?” Kakashi asks, and the employee stops in his tracks. It takes Kakashi a couple steps to notice and turn to face him. “What’s wrong?”
“Why do you always ask that?” The employee’s face is wrinkled up in confusion again.
“Ask what?”
“If what I’m saying is true. Even when I told you my name, you thought I was lying. Why?”
“Well, that wasn’t your name, was it?”
The employee’s brow furrows even further.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I’m a good judge of character,” Kakashi says with a simple shrug.
The employee huffs then, probably in frustration, Kakashi thinks with a little unrestrained glee that he’s finally managed a reaction and begins to walk again. Almost, but not quite, stomping away into the dark night.
Kakashi jogs to keep up before falling into pace next to him. They walk in comfortable silence for a long time, At least twenty minutes, before they come to a small door carved in the face of a rocky formation jutting out from the flat landscape.
“Goodnight, Mr. Employee,” Kakashi calls behind him with a lackadaisical wave.
After about thirty steps back towards the town, he hears it. He has to strain his ears, but he hears it.
“Tenzo,” the employee calls to him, only barely above a normal speaking voice, “My name is Tenzo.”
Ding!
“Welcome to Shimura’s Hotdog Stand. What can I do for you today?”
“I think I will have a hotdog today.”
Tenzo’s face lights up with the closest approximation to excitement Kakashi has ever seen on his face.
“What toppings would you like?”
“I’m not sure. What do you recommend?”
“I recommend the Martian Special,” Tenzo says with something that Kakashi can honestly call a grin as he is finally allowed to return to the routine of his job.
“I’ll go with that, then.”
Tenzo begins to do his duty happily. After placing a dog on a bun, his brow furrows, and he leans over the counter and twists to peer up at the menu.
“Been a long time since you actually made one?” Kakashi asks with his brow raised, and the corners of his eyes crinkled in a smile.
He shoots Kakashi a glare before returning behind the counter and finishing the preparations for the meal.
Kakashi watches with rapt attention as his deft fingers stack chopped onions and drizzle sauce and create what is, admittedly, altogether a rather unappetizing combination, however aesthetically beautiful it may be. It seems to Kakashi’s senses that the Martian Special is a combination of all of their least popular ingredients.
He carefully slides the tray holding the Martian Special and the included cup for the soda fountain over to the counter next to the cash register.
“That will be four-seventy-five. We accept Martian currency as well as Earth Ryo.”
Kakashi nods, left hand going to his back pocket. He furrows his brow before smacking his right hand against a front pocket. He repeats the gesture with growing dramatic flair until he has patted down every pocket on his person.
“Oh no,” he says in a greatly exaggerated performance, “It seems I didn’t bring any money!”
Tenzo blinks once. Then twice. Then, a third time.
“Please get out of my store,” he finally says, unrestrained annoyance seeping through every word.
“Have you heard about Earth?” Tenzo asks.
Kakashi looks up from his book, surprised a little at the sudden question. In all the weeks he’s made himself a pest in Shimura’s Hotdog Stand, Tenzo has never been the first one to start a conversation. He’s become much more talkative than those first days, but he’s never the first to speak.
“Yeah,” Kakashi had heard. He wasn’t sure what to make of the news. “I heard.”
Tenzo looks at the linoleum between them, chewing his lip, “What are you going to do?”
“What is there to do?”
“I’ve heard most people are going back.”
“I’ve seen enough war on Earth. I don’t need to go back to see another one in person. I’m just fine with hearing about it on the news.” Kakashi says, trying not to let his resentment color his words.
Tenzo looks up at him, then, eyes a little glossy, “They say it’ll probably be the last one.”
“They always say that,” Kakashi says with a dismissive wave. “There'll be more, and they’ll try to get us to go back then, too.”
“You don’t have to keep walking me home.”
“I can see better in the dark than you. I can’t imagine how you ever found it without me.”
Tenzo seemed to accept that. Kakashi’s not sure why, exactly. If their places were reversed, he’d be asking all kinds of questions. They walk in silence for a little while.
“You know an awful lot about me, my name, place of employment, address—“
“Do you get mail out here?”
Tenzo ignores the interruption, “I don’t even know where you live.”
“Don’t live anywhere, really,” Kakashi says with a shrug. “Haven’t since I stopped having a job.”
Tenzo stops and turns to look at Kakashi fully. The gesture is mostly metaphorical since they’ve long since left the streetlights, and there are no moons on the horizon tonight to shed light on them. Kakashi can see him well, though, and he takes this private moment to observe without being seen.
Tenzo’s brow furrows, “You’ve been homeless the whole time I’ve known you?”
Kakashi thinks for a moment, pursing his lips, “Yeah, I guess I have.”
“What do you do in the winter?”
Kakashi shrugs, “I’m not usually in the same place for so long.”
“What do you mean?”
Tenzo starts walking again, though slow at first. Kakashi goes with him.
“Usually, I keep walking. It’s easy enough to outrun winter.”
“You’ve been coming by every day for three months.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To talk to you.”
Tenzo is quiet then for a long, long time.
Eventually, they come to the threshold of his rocky home.
“What will you do in wintertime?” He asks before Kakashi turns to leave.
“I imagine,” Kakashi says with a soft smile, though Tenzo can’t see it, “That I’ll try to come inside.”
Kakashi doesn’t miss the smile on Tenzo’s lips as he turns away from the door.
“Hey, Tenzo,” Kakashi asks between sips of a fizzy drink he didn’t pay for.
“Yeah?” Tenzo responds from behind the cash register.
Something wicked sparkles in Kakashi’s eye, “Why don’t we close early tonight?”
“What?”
“Has Shimura ever come to check on this place?”
Tenzo frowns, “No.”
“Has anyone but me ever come in to buy a hotdog?”
“You still haven’t bought one—“
“Have they?”
Tenzo’s frown deepens, “No.”
“So?” Kakashi asks, lithely leaping from the acrylic chair, “Let’s close early tonight. You can come right back in the morning and do everything like normal. No one will ever be the wiser. Or…”
“Or?” Tenzo asks, highly suspicious of the prospect of taking career advice from someone as unemployed as Kakashi.
“Don’t come back at all.”
“What?!”
“The last rocket left from the neighboring town yesterday. Everyone in this town is either gone or dead or dying. You’re not gonna get any more customers.
“Who will accept the deliveries if I’m not here?”
“Who will be there to deliver anything?”
Tenzo’s brow furrowed, considering.
After a while’s hesitation, he speaks, “Yeah…”
“Yeah?”
“Okay.” Tenzo seems to have resolved himself and nods seriously.
“Okay!” Kakashi says, with enough enthusiasm for the both of them.
Fifteen minutes later, the two of them walk next to each other as the sun begins to set. Kakashi has never seen him outside during the day before. It feels like something somehow forbidden.
This time, they’re walking towards the center of town.
“Where do you want to go?”
Tenzo shrugs, “I haven’t been this far into town before, so I don’t know.”
“You just come and go from work? That’s it?”
“You’ve been with me pretty constantly for the past four months. Have you ever seen me go anywhere else?”
Kakashi laughs, a little stunned by Tenzo’s dedication to his work.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I know just the place.”
It turns out that walking through a desolate, abandoned town when you could very well be the last two people on Mars is a bit of a downer.
But Kakashi is used to being a bit down, and he suspects Tenzo is too, so they enjoy themselves perfectly well.
Their first stop was the Earth-Jungle-themed bar, where Kakashi thought they might have a great time critiquing the realism of the fake trees (you do learn a lot growing up in the forest), and getting hammered. Tenzo doesn’t drink, but he does have a lot to say about the trees. Kakashi listens with rapt attention to one of the first things Tenzo has ever really talked to him about.
The next stop was the opera house. Two costumes and several rides up and down in the elevator (Tenzo had never seen one before), they were in someone’s house. Tenzo showed far less remorse than Kakashi expected him to in picking through the poor woman’s belongings and calling the man in the photographs next to her ugly.
When night began to fall, they sat on someone’s porch, eating cherries from their refrigerator and staring up at the sky.
“The stars are a lot clearer in town now because none of the lights are on,” Kakashi notes.
“I’ve never really looked at them that closely.”
Kakashi leans back, reclining to see better, “Really? No homesick longing for Earth?”
“I like it better here.” Tenzo does the same, their shoulders brushing as he finds a comfortable position on his back.
“I think that’s the first time you’ve ever told me something you like.”
“I like elevators, too. And trees.”
“What about that feather boa from earlier?”
Tenzo scrunches up his nose, “No, I didn’t like that.”
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment before Kakashi raised his hand to point at the sky, “That star there, the sort of greenish one? That’s Earth.”
“How can you tell?” Tenzo asks, turning away from the stars to look at Kakashi as he lowers his hand back between them.
“Had to learn all the stars. Constellations, solar systems, moons and whatnot. Standard part of the curriculum,” Kakashi says with something approaching wistfulness in his voice.
After a long silence, Tenzo gathers enough courage to ask. “Do you miss it? Earth?”
Kakashi chews his lip, “Yeah, but I won’t go back, not after—“ Kakashi cuts himself off, watching in stunned silence as the light of the star he had pointed out earlier grows brighter.
“Is that—?”
“Yeah.” Kakashi affirms breathlessly, his fingers finding Tenzo’s, “It is.”
They both hold their breath for what feels like eternity as they watch, eyes shining bright with wonder, as the little green star grows and grows and grows. Kakashi squeezes Tenzo’s hand, and Tenzo squeezes his back. The green glow of Earth soon outmatches the brightness of any other star. And then, as soon as it came, it left. The bright green flame fades, and they are left alone in silence, one fewer star in the night sky.
Neither speaks.
After a while, Kakashi looks over at Tenzo, who has been watching him closely the whole time. No doubt, he’s seen the waves of emotion roll over him as they watched their planet of origin explode as the last war reached its end.
Kakashi met Tenzo’s gaze, “Have you ever seen the light trees in the south?”
“No.”
Kakashi smiles and leans infinitesimally closer, “Let’s go there next.”