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Against the odds, life glides on as it always does.
Rin had appeared on Obito’s doorstep right before noon with an invitation to lunch, followed by him flying across the foyer of his empty house to throw on his jacket and sandals as she laughs at the doorway, bright like a summer’s day. She mentions something about Asuma and Kurenai being on their way as well but that’s fine, he thinks. He likes them.
In recent months there has been a part of Obito that has become painfully aware of his circumstances in regards to his best friend. He has always been clingy, desperately so, and he's had the horrifically embarrassing realisation that he tends to be a sore loser whenever Rin’s attention was directed elsewhere. Like, at Kakashi. Kakashi who doesn’t even seem to consider the fact that Rin would stay by his side day and night if he asked her to and deal with all of the gruelling realities he deals with and, and—
Internally he sighs. He knows it’s not on Kakashi to return Rin’s feelings, just like it’s not on Rin to return Obito’s. That’s okay, he thinks. Plus, Kakashi and him are cooler than ever now. Ever since Minato had swooped in to snatch him out of Uchiha Madara’s clutches (Obito still can’t believe it), he’s noticed that Kakashi has seemed much softer where he was once all sharp corners and strict edges. He’s still standoffish and sometimes a prick, but Obito’s jokes can now coax half-amused exhales where it had always been the judging arc of an eyebrow, send invitations to spar where it had once been Obito begging to carve his worth out of Kakashi’s failure. It makes him feel a kind of comfort around Kakashi he thought he would’ve died with never feeling.
Now out the door, he looks ahead as they leave the bustling Uchiha compound. Lunch, he confirms with himself, tilting his head down as they walk to see Rin passionately babbling about newfound advancements in medical ninjutsu. The long curve of her eyelashes are clear as day at this angle, barely shadowing the glimmering pools of honey that her brown eyes have melted into in the sunlight. She looks at him and his heart might just melt too. He’s happy.
Lunch is wonderful, and of course its barbecue because he thinks its the only thing Asuma ever eats. After, Obito insists they get dango and the four of them are strolling down the lively streets of an afternoon in Konoha. Obito is eagerly recounting the events of their genin days and Kurenai’s grin is so wide he thinks it might split her face in two. “You’re joking,” she says.
“Nobody in the clan told me you can choke on your spit when you breathe in for Fireball Jutsu! How was I supposed to be prepared for that!?”
Asuma barks with laugher, Kurenai stifling her amusement behind her hand. Remembering all too clearly with her smile crossing between mortified and slightly humoured, Rin comments, “I think I might’ve saved your life.”
Obito nods thoughtfully, “you probably did.”
Then Asuma is lowering a brow inquisitively, donning that stupid shit-eating smirk he’s seen him wear at least a million times at the Academy. “Did Kakashi see this too?”
Immediately, red shoots into the apples of Obito’s cheeks at the mention. He sees the very second when Rin’s eyes glimmer with the intent to recall the time he swore her to secrecy on the matter and had lied out of his ass about being blown up by some lone and mysterious explosive tag and not the jutsu he had just proclaimed complete and utter mastery on the day before.
She never chooses to embarrass Obito for kicks though. Instead, she looks to the sky cheekily, the curved stretch of her lips communicating a remarkably convincing innocence. “Nope, didn’t even know it happened.”
“And never will,” Obito says lowly, squinting at Kurenai and Asuma as if a look alone could pressure them into their covent of sworn secrecy. They chuckle.
“He’s out on a mission now, right?” Kurenai asks.
Almost instantly, Rin responds, a little too eager, “Mhm, they should be back anytime now.”
It’s not like Obito didn’t know the exact same thing but for whatever reason it still sets him askew. Suddenly, Rin stops in her tracks, turning to the side of the street.
“Oh, actually...“ she says, but she’s already trailing off as she strolls away to her point of interest.
Obito’s eyes follow her to a small store lined with trinkets. She’s already over at shelves, carefully eyeing a bracelet of black beads. They look to be made out of some kind of porous looking rock; not Rin’s style at all, he notes.
As Obito and the rest track behind her, a middle-aged woman pipes up from a table at the back of the store. “That’s a lava stone bracelet! One of a kind, dear.”
Obito swallows, quickly realising it’s a gift as he tries desperately, desperately, to push away the inkling of hope insisting that it’s for him. She’ll pick up two more bracelets and it’ll be for Team 7, he thinks to himself. Seconds pass with her deliberating eyes fixed on the thing and it’s clear she’s straying from his prediction.
Unhelpfully, his mind fills with the image of her turning up to him and asking if he likes it in the same flustering way he’d see her with Kakashi to which he thinks he would nod so vigorously his brain would scramble and he would crawl back from the Pure Lands just to accept it from her. Romantic or otherwise. This isn’t for him though, he knows that. But Asuma definitely owes from when he wrote that list of date ideas for him and Kurenai so what if he told Rin to invite Obito? Was this a scheme? Is this a double date?
He whips his head over to Asuma and Kurenai only to see a mane of thick inky hair dart its way over to Rin’s side. A porcelain hand rests on the shoulder of Rin’s flak jacket as Kurenai cheerfully opens her mouth to speak.
“Genma would totally love that. You should get it for him.”
His breath hitches in his throat. He thinks his heart might’ve just turned to lead and nosedived straight into his stomach to kill him. Rin frantically shushes her as her face goes red. Kurenai is laughing again. They’re chattering away but Obito doesn’t think he can hear it.
Every instance he’d seen her with Genma floods his brain. Suddenly he’s noticing the minuscule touches, every surreptitious grin and everything that he didn’t catch. He recalls that Genma’s out on that same mission with Kakashi and he wonders how in the world he missed it—just when her attention shifted elsewhere. Not just because he loves her, but because he’s her best friend.
He feels like throwing up at the thought of Rin welcoming him at the front of those big green gates, that cumulative item of all her care and thoughtfulness in her hands. It takes every fibre of his being not to pass out right now. His eyes begin to feel a little wet and he snaps around to a different shelf to clear out his eyes. Kurenai knew. Did Asuma too?
The man in question slinks up to him, peering at the shelf, “You’re buying something?”
“…Yeah, yeah. Uh.” A ceramic maneki dog stares back at him, a twist on the token cat of good fortune. It’s the first thing he sees and he snatches it up without a second thought. One glance at Asuma’s pitied expression tells him that he knows what’s happening and he tries to ignore it as he goes over to the lady at the back. The sound of Rin’s sandals on the tile floor trail him and he wretchedly cries at himself from deep inside to get it together.
Rin is at his side now, both of them digging out yen from their wallets to pay. Rin looks over to his hands, blush still lingering on her expression from earlier. Her brow quirks up, a certain resemblance crossing her mind. “Is that for Kakashi?”
He screws his eyes closed for a second as if attempting to gather every last ounce of strength in him. “Yeah!” he says, a little more hoarse than he expected. It catches Rin’s attention because everything always does.
Obito hates himself for letting her notice and to compensate he shoves the words out his own throat against his feelings: “You know, Genma’s one lucky guy.”
Theres a pause, and then she smiles at him. There’s a weight to it and a look in her eyes that tells him she has always known and he breaks eye contact a little too fast because he might’ve just burst into tears then and there. He feels like such a loser.
He sticks around just to take the nerves off of Rin and lets Asuma pay for a stick of dango that he knows he can’t stomach. There was a time he would’ve donated a kidney just to live on the same side of the village as Rin but right now he thinks it might be a miracle. In all his years growing up in Konoha, he’s never taken off faster to the home he had always felt so torn about.
The door slams shut behind him and all it takes is one deep inhale before he is falling apart on the floor of the foyer, vision blurring. Impulsively, he whips his jacket angrily off his shoulders and watches it slide across the floor in a crumpled heap. In no time at all, his face scrunches up not too differently from his jacket on the floor and its like a hit to the chest when it dawns on him that he’s handling everything like a child. He’s such a child. Laying his gift bag to the side, he crawls over to reach for his jacket, frantically throwing it into his chest for him to cry into as he leans against the door of his home. Can’t handle his feelings, can’t live up to the Uchiha legacy, he’s… he’s—
In one flawless motion, he feels the door behind him give way and Obito is all but flailing as he falls flat on his back, staring up at a pair of unreadable dark eyes. With a gasp marking his mortified realisation, Obito launches himself up while wildly wiping away his tears with his forearms.
“You’re crying,” Kakashi observes matter-of-factly.
“Thanks smartass I didn’t know,” he retorts, voice wavering. He refuses to look at Kakashi, crossing his arms at the wall. He can’t tell if it’s a show of authority or an attempt to guard his own insecurity. “Just get out!”
Kakashi says once more in reply, “You’re crying,” and this time Obito can’t tell if it’s mockery or sentimentality that bleeds into it from how he emphasises the word.
When he shifts ever so slightly to look at him, the answer is laid out undeniably in the sight of his barely softened eye. Kakashi’s poker face rarely breaks for anything other than sheer annoyance but seeing something as potent as sadness lay somberly on his features nearly shocks him out of his own sorrows. In a desperate attempt to draw himself away from his teammate’s desolate expression, Obito looks to the wall again, sniffling. “It’s nothing. Seriously, just leave.”
There’s a long pause of silence before he hears the door click closed behind him and he spins around to see Kakashi standing in front of it. “I’m staying.”
“No, no you’re not!” Obito all but whines, immediately wincing at the harsh cracking of his voice.
Kakashi insists, “I should. Look at yourself,” and then stands there, arms crossed all high and mighty, brows furrowed ever so slightly.
Obito’s eyes are tinged with pink, his cheeks down to his chin soaking with tears, and at Kakashi’s comment he’s almost certain the flush on his face has darkened to rash red. There’s a part of Obito that’s screaming that it’s all condescension—after all, in the years of knowing him it always was. But, he finds a strange uncertainty in Kakashi’s stance, an apprehension that awkwardly prevents the masked boy from moving forward. This is new territory for him and Obito can tell, for however good smothering sentimentality under your heel is for making you a shinobi, it’s shying up to it that makes you a better friend. He’s trying, Obito realises, however obtuse he is about it. Part of him is twitching with agitation at the idea of putting up with his emotional ineptness, but the other can’t believe that he’s finallyspending his time to do so on him after all these years.
(He knows why—he’s seen Kakashi’s eyes linger over the ridges and scars marring him enough to know.)
Almost as if Kakashi had suddenly become acutely aware of Obito’s uncertain eyes on him, he drifts his focus to the jacket left on the floor in Obito’s floundering and moves to pick it up. Obito watches him hang it up on the jacket hook by his door, finding a strange fascination in seeing him deliberately mind something of his with care.
“…Why are you even here?” Obito manages to ask.
Kakashi casually takes in the rest of the room, lightly kicking Obito’s haphazardly strewn sandals straight. “My house is on the way. I got you your souvenir.”
Before Obito can even process it there’s a glass jar being tossed his way and it nearly crashes into his shoulder before he catches it. Inside are what appears to be small, weedy looking bulbs and Obito realises its the flowering tea he asked him to get from the Land of Tea. Something about it nearly makes him weep. Instead of expressing this, he mumbles, “I could’ve just had broken glass everywhere.”
Kakashi shrugs, eyes floating to the side. “You’d catch it.”
The total assuredness in Obito’s ability to catch a jar stuns him completely silent. It shouldn’t feel like a big thing but it does.
Briefly, the other boy looks to a doorway framing kitchen countertops and a perfect silver kettle. Turning back, he says, “We should prepare it.”
“Now?” Obito asks.
He rolls his one eye like its the most obvious thing in the world. “Yes now,” and without waiting for a reply he moves past him and into the kitchen. With a strangled complaint caught in his throat, Obito saunters after him.
Already Kakashi is popping open the lid and filling the kettle with water at the sink. Jar still caught in his hands, Obito stares a little dumbfounded at the sight of someone else hosting him in his own home. For however rambunctious he is and was, he still fought to keep his manners in check where it mattered.
“I can do that you know, it’s just tea,” he protests, peaking over his side.
Without even looking at him, Kakashi replies, “I know,” continuing to let the water run into the kettle with a rising hiss. “Leave the tea leaves on the countertop. Just sit.”
Slightly pursing his lips, he gently places the jar next to the sink with a quiet clink and a sniffle. Kakashi drifts over to the stovetops to heat up the water while Obito seats himself, using his friend’s diverted attention to wipe away the glossy remnants of his tears.
It’s in this momentary silence, broken only by the clacking of the stove knobs, that his eyes are drawn to the table and his mind begins to churn once again. A picture of Rin’s small smile at the store, knowing and sympathetic replays in his mind and it kills him all over again. Looking up towards Kakashi’s back, he realises Genma is home now if Kakashi is too. In his head he envisions him slipping on the small loop of beads and Rin beaming enough to rival the sun. It’s only when he snaps back to where he is that he realises Kakashi’s eyes are on him, analytical as always. He feels like prey shrinking in his gaze. Then Kakashi speaks, still as straightforward as anything could be from his mouth, but hushed in a way you’d never notice without being chilled by his cold exterior.
“You can tell me what’s going on you know.”
Obito blinks dumbfoundedly, then rapidly, staring back down to his hands. “It’s stupid,” he says, meaning to say you’d think it’s stupid. Because this isn’t about Obito bracing himself for death and waking up with half of a body that was never his, although the trauma lingers in mirrors and lightless spaces like a vengeful wraith. No one’s blood is blooming out into the dirt, no one cradled by death. Compared to everything, this is minute.
Kakashi relaxes against the edge of the counter, humming as he looks to the orange seeping into the sky out the window. “You could call Genma that.”
Obito nearly chokes on his spit before slamming his head into the cusp of his hands with a long, frustrated groan. The other boy remains still.
“She went to welcome you guys back didn’t she.”
“She did.”
Now he's carding tensed fingers through this hair, letting them interlock at the nape of his neck. “I’m so stupid,” Obito grimaces. “She probably told you to check up on me.”
At that, Kakashi doesn’t say anything. Obito continues anyways.
“Did you know? About them.”
Carefully considering his expression, Kakashi nods slowly, “I figured something was going on.” After a pause he adds, “I thought you knew.”
Obito’s face contorts into a deep frown. “She didn’t tell me. I thought… I really thought she liked you.”
Kakashi’s focus goes to the floor, always darting around to where Obito isn’t. He can see the minuscule shift of his mask indicate the partial opening of his mouth before he closes it again. Obito continues.
“One of these days I really thought you’d like her back—and I would’ve been cool about it! I was preparing for it, you know, you’re my best friends. But now I just, I feel like…”
“An idiot?” Kakashi supplies.
Obito’s squints slightly before he sighs in defeat. “She wanted to hide it from me.”
“Because it would hurt you.”
“But I’m her best friend! Kurenai knew before me, Kakashi! Kurenai! She was all like get it for Genma, Rin! That’s how I found out!”
“So you’re saying you finding out wasn’t on her terms at all.”
The kettle is whistling away like a scream. Obito’s attention sliding down to his hands as Kakashi’s dark figure slowly moves to turn off the stove in his peripheral.
The answer to the question was obvious—of course he knew what it meant, Kakashi did too—but it doesn’t stop his response from dying over again on his wordless lips.
Nonchalantly interrupting the silent paralysis that had taken a hold of Obito, Kakashi calls from over his shoulder, “Where do you keep your cups?”
“Oh,” Obito says dumbly. “…They’re the cupboard to your left.”
Kakashi nods his head faintly before he’s reaching for the clear teacups instead of his slightly nicer glazed green yunomi set. It’s strange to say, but there’s something to do with the oddly rigid motion of Kakashi’s arm that challenges the usual laxness Obito always sees him donning nowadays, jarringly unsimiliar to that lazily blinking eye and slightly slacked shoulders that have become apart of him. When this overtook his overtly hawk-like vigilance Obito couldn’t say, but Kakashi is being particular about himself again if he's suddenly all rigid. In a weird, roundabout way, maybe Kakashi is caring about this conversation. About Obito. Maybe he’s nervous too.
It’s only then, with a heavy and knowing sigh, that the phrase, “It wasn’t on her terms,” weakly departs from Obito’s mouth.
A thoughtful hum comes audible from Kakashi as he is carefully pouring a few flowering bulbs into the two cups set out for them. “Rin isn’t stupid,” he says, narrowly interrupted by Obito immediately firing himself up to defend a notion neither of them suggested. Kakashi signals him down with one downward flap of his hand and half an eye roll. “She’d know there was no escaping you finding out. I’m sure she meant to break it to you.”
Obito is pensive, face shifting with uncertainty. “You think?”
“I know,” Kakashi tells him, setting down the two cups in front of them. “By the way, look.”
Following the momentary pointing of Kakashi’s finger to the small brambly bunches at the bottom, Obito watches as one ribbon of steaming water spills to fill his cup. When it's full, Obito excitedly cusps it's scalding circumference in his fire affinised hands and lifts it to eye level, observing the small things steadily unfurling. It blooms like a great big yawn and the long stretching of arms in the morning, orange petals breaking through like the rising sun. This strangely sincere novelty has him totally enraptured, bestowing Obito with a warm smile. Suddenly imbued with a little more joy, he looks over his cup to the generous tea bestower who is now pouring for himself.
“You know,” Obito starts, “you’re actually a really nice guy, Kakashi.”
There’s something that overtakes Kakashi, almost shock, almost confusion, all made harder to read under the deep coal shade of his eyes. It takes no longer than a second for it to disappear underneath his flawless shinobi facade once more.
“Just wait until I kick your ass next time we train.”
And like the strike of a match, Obito is raving so fervently that the fierce downing of tea is decidedly followed by a rather competitive spar on training ground five. It ends with both boys near scorched and near fried, hitai-ates damp with sweat, and Obito beaming with pride. It’s a draw.