Daffodil

by Anjelle

Summary:

Kakashi has a pretty standard approach to undercover missions: be discreet, don’t draw attention, and maintain a level of distance.
He’s already failed the first, second, and third rule when he finds himself amongst the victims of the human trafficking ring he’s been tasked with unearthing.

OR:

After a brief encounter with a masked man in a dark tunnel, Kakashi returns home to be given a new mission: infiltrate the Akatsuki.

Chapter 1

Notes:

I've written Tobi, I've written Sukea. But I realized several months back that I don't think I've ever written them interacting together under their shared alter egos, and thought to correct that. This started out as a very standard 'Sukea infiltrates the Akatsuki' plot that kind of got away from me and gets a little deeper than I intended later on. So um. Sorry? I also made a cover! Which reflects the latter half of the fic more than the former, but I digress.

Heads up that this fic is not canon compliant, and at this point in time, Konoha does not know the Akatsuki's objective. It's more fun that way.

---

Kakashi has a pretty standard approach to undercover missions: be discreet, don’t draw attention, and maintain a level of distance.

He’s already failed the first, second, and third rule when he finds himself amongst the victims of the human trafficking ring he’s been tasked with unearthing. Looking around at the bodies flush with his, their limbs bound and legs drawn up to their chests, he burns with anger. The problem is that his anger is only skin-deep, and he can’t seem to feel beyond its initial heat.

It started as a standard A-rank: locate the traffickers, map their trade route, identify those in charge, and return to Konoha. A team would be sent out to do the dismantling on behalf of the Fire Daimyō once they had all the details, and Tsunade’s primary command was: don’t get caught.

The problem was that their trade route was nonsense. Several times over the first week of his mission, Kakashi lost track of the carts ferrying victims between nations as the ring’s chakra-adept personnel incorporated jutsu into their travel. Earth specialists would burrow them deep underground, weaving and closing tunnels to hide their tracks. The ‘merchandise’ passing through Rivers would duck below the water in what had to be the most dangerous carriage rides Kakashi had ever seen. Kakashi’s Sharingan could track them, sure. But following them while remaining unknown got trickier.

Four days ago, he decided to take a hands-on approach.

It didn’t take long for ‘Sukea’, Kakashi’s latest persona, to catch the interest of his targets. He already knew how they chose their victims and what they looked for, so setting the perfect trap for himself was the easy part.

Kakashi figured that being on one of the carriages would make it easier to map out the route they took. While he might not be able to do so himself, his summons could. Several of his hounds were on standby at different landmarks the carriages passed by last week, while Pakkun and Shiba hung back to follow his scent, and would report their findings to the Hokage, should anything go south. Kakashi didn’t expect things to go south; even bound, all he had to do to release his Sharingan was remove the contact over his eye with its opaque pupil, and he could easily take the men holding him there. He was no Might Gai, but his taijutsu was good, and he had experience fighting with limited mobility. It was a standard part of ANBU training, after all. But having a contingency plan never hurt.

Things got a little less clear-cut when Kakashi was removed from the dark room where he’d been kept and hauled onto one of the carts. There was a genjutsu specialist amongst the traffickers. That was fine, of course; Kakashi had the Sharingan.

But he had a barrier to remove if he wanted to use it.

Kakashi stares vacantly at the carriage roof as it rolls along a bumpy dirt road, fighting to keep hold of the burning rage he felt earlier. It keeps slipping away, his head cottoned up by whatever genjutsu is pacifying him, and though he’s perfectly capable of nullifying it, he can’t be bothered. The contact lens stays where it is, blinding Obito’s eye, and any idea of trying to break the illusion falls away.

There’s a little window in the side of the carriage, just a small square, and beyond it are fluffy, white clouds. Seeing them brings him peace. Ahh, what a nice day. He would love to pull out Icha Icha and read. It's perfect weather for it. Around him, the other victims are calm, too, no longer fidgeting and sharing whispers.

Kakashi really should break the genjutsu. He really, really should.

Maybe after a nap.

When his eyes open next, that same calm settles over him again, and he looks around. He’s being dragged out of the carriage by his arms, the grip firm, but his legs feel strangely loose, and he struggles to get his footing. The other victims are no different, all gangly and unsteady. They lead each one off the carts and line them up along a cavernous wall, handing out rations. By the look of it, they’re at a stop-over in one of those doton-carved tunnels, so they must be headed into Earth Country. If he looks to the right, there’s a yawning darkness, stretching endlessly behind the carts. And if he looks left, there’s a bend further ahead that he can’t see past.

He should… do something. Ah, but there’s food to eat first…

From the darkness to his right, a stranger emerges, his shadowed figure cloaked and masked. He walks nonchalantly down the path of dirty, silent bodies, never once glancing their way, as though they’re nothing more than phantoms. Kakashi watches him, curious beneath his haze of contentment, and wonders of the red clouds that stand out against the black of his outfit.

He knows those clouds from somewhere.

Further ahead, the traffickers yell at the man. Their bodies hit the cavern walls, held tight by long tendrils of something Kakashi can’t discern through the dark, and the man turns the corner.

Screaming, loud and raw and painful, breaks across the air. Most of Kakashi’s fellow victims look up, toward the sound, but no one is panicked, and no one gets up. Some are still eating the rations they’ve been offered, chewing lazily as they stare at the unseeable bend in the cave.

The sounds that follow are muffled and quiet. Soon, Kakashi smells blood. For all the adrenaline it brings, death can be a quiet affair, and more often than not, actions that take lives are silent ones. There’s a thought in his head, foggy and vague, that urges him to channel his chakra and break the genjutsu. But he’s been told to stay put and eat his meal, and going off to investigate his captors’ imminent crisis negates that order. Revealing the Sharingan wouldn’t, as he could watch from where he sits… But instead, he chews the hard, stale ration bar he’s been given, and swallows. He’ll wait until he’s done eating, a voice telling him to obey.

It’s minutes later that movement sparks his interest again, and Kakashi looks at that bend in the path as the stranger returns. He’s just as nonchalant as before, walking calmly back the way he came, a still body trailing behind. The man reeks of blood, his dark cloak soaked in it, splatters on the swirling orange mask he wears. When Kakashi looks past him, he can see dark spots on the cavern wall that indicate there may be more of it around the bend.

None of the victims acknowledge the man beyond a glance, even though he drags one of their captors behind him, now a corpse. Even Kakashi, his ANBU training allowing him to fight the genjutsu, is only just now feeling the urge to disobey the commands he’s been given. It’s amazing how much sway a little complacency can have on the mind, and what a tug of emotion can do to even a seasoned shinobi.

If he does take that next step, what would he do? Kakashi doesn’t know who this is, what his goals are, or what he would do if he noticed one of the prisoners had more agency than the rest. Undercover missions are precisely the sort where rash decisions lead to failure, and that failure, most certainly, would be death.

I can remove the contact lens now, he realizes, testing it as he moves a hand slightly up, but stops. Instead, he continues eating. It would not be wise to draw the attention of the unknown.

But despite this, the stranger stops less than two feet in front of Sukea, and stares. Kakashi trains his eyes on the vague middle-distance of the cave, mimicking his earlier genjutsu fog (which he continues to feel, even now). He hopes this man is only taking note of them now that all the traffickers are dead, and will soon pass on. The situation isn’t ideal; with how quick and violent the unknown’s actions were in the short few minutes he was around the bend, Kakashi doubts he could reveal his Sharingan faster than this man could kill him.

The body the man’s dragging is released, its head hitting the rock with a hard thud. He crouches before Kakashi, and finally, Kakashi allows himself to face the man. Two of the victims beside him do the same. Staring back is a single eye Kakashi cannot see, the hole in the mask perfectly black, as though nothing lay beneath it but darkness. But he doesn’t need to see the eye to know he’s being watched. The man takes note of the cuffs on his ankles and wrists, and the remnants of the meager meal he’d been given, and raises a gloved arm.

“Hand,” commands a dark, raspy voice, and Kakashi feels his mind buzzing with the genjutsu’s influence.

Kakashi quickly and easily complies, placing his hand on the stranger’s palm. His brain fog returns full-force now that he’s received an order. A strange relief coils in his chest at having listened, and he can only stare forward as the unknown fiddles with something below his eyeline. Blood smears across his arm, rubbed off by the man’s grip on him.

The cuffs clatter and fall in a heap at his feet. Gloved hands rub over his wrists, and it’s only now that Kakashi notices their dull ache. Shortly after, the ones around his ankles fall away, too.

“This world is too rotten for such a pretty face,” the man says quietly.

Kakashi blinks slowly, trying to shake off the haze. Even if he does, he can’t act right now, and were he to try, he would only put the victims in danger if he antagonized this man. But he wants to focus, to unearth any small details about this encounter that might matter later. It’s so much harder now that he has someone’s attention, though. The genjutsu is at its strongest.

The orange mask levels with his face again, something unseen watching him through the single hole on the right side. Kakashi takes note of the short crop of hair poking out from above the mask, and the thick band of elastic around the sides of the man’s head. No part of his skin is visible, and his only identifiers are the strange mask and the nagging patterns on his cloak. His hands come together, pressed close to Kakashi’s chest.

“Kai.”

All at once, the pull in his head stops. The fog is still there, lingering, dispersing with time, but Kakashi’s body is his own. He blinks, adjusting his eyes as though waking from a dream, all those dulled emotions rising up from the grave.

The unknown dispelled the genjutsu.

Kakashi looks, really looks at the man crouched before him, searching for meaning, a reason for why he was singled out amongst the rest. He doesn’t find it. Instead, the man stands back up, and moves on. He grabs onto the collar of the corpse he’s been dragging, recovers a scroll from one of the carts, and continues down the path from whence he came.

Once alone—as alone as one can be, surrounded by the brainwashed victims of an illegal slave trade—Kakashi removes the contact blinding Obito’s eye, slips it into his pocket, as his storage scroll was confiscated, and takes quick strides left of where he previously sat. The further he gets, the stronger the stink of blood is, and as he rounds the corner, he finds the corpses of all those slave traders he’s been making notes about over the past week. This isn’t all of them, by far. The network has deep roots, and part of what makes this mission more of a long haul is fishing for the names and backgrounds of everyone involved. All the ones travelling with the carts are now dead. One is missing—the one heading this particular excursion, who the stranger took with him—and the rest are in varying states of duress. There are punctures in their bodies, each and every one, large and gaping and painful.

Kakashi can’t find sympathy for them, no matter how hard he looks. Instead, he memorizes the scene with his Sharingan so he can better report on it later, and searches their persons for anything that might be of use to the team the daimyō sends out next. In the breast pocket of one of the traffickers, he finds their itinerary. Well, that helps. Information like this isn’t usually so easy to come by while laying low. But if that unknown decided to usurp his mission and change all his plans, he may as well benefit from it.

There isn’t much else for him to recover, but this is plenty. It would have been nice to have more information about the genjutsu used on the victims, but the specialist is currently being dragged through the tunnels by a strange man, and Kakashi can at least recount his own experience in his report.

Kakashi goes back around the corner, stares out at the three dozen bodies resting placidly against the walls, and summons his ninken. He can’t leave these people out here, no matter what mission he’s on, and he’ll need help if he’s going to get them all to safety. Sending Pakkun for backup is his best option, even if he knows what sort of lecture he’ll get for the turn the mission took.

Ah, well.

It’s nice to be worried about now and then.

 

---

 

After debriefing Lady Tsunade of his findings, Kakashi goes back to his apartment. He releases the wards surrounding his unit, unlocks the front door, and toes off his village-issued black sandals in the genkan. His first course of action is removing his disguise and getting all the nasty, horrible smells off his body, so he drags himself into the bathroom and stands in front of the mirror.

The man staring back at him is a brunet, with hazel eyes and purple lines across his cheeks. Kakashi tugs off his wig, revealing the silver strands caught in the hairnet beneath it, and puts everything on the counter. He takes out the one contact still in place, retrieves the other from his pocket, and sets them aside. As piece by piece, Kakashi returns to himself, he wonders what it was that drew the unknown to him. By design, Sukea is a face in the crowd. He’s not meant to be eye-catching, or glamorous, and the most unique thing about him is his cover as a journalist, which helps mitigate suspicion if he seems a little too nosy.

“This world is too rotten for such a pretty face.”

This may be the first time someone has flirted with him while he was undercover. If that can be considered flirting.

When the pieces that make Sukea up are tucked away, and he returns to being Kakashi Hatake, he steps into the shower and stands beneath the spray as the bathroom steams up.

The mission didn’t go exactly as planned, but it didn’t go sideways, either; Kakashi was able to get the information he needed, and had the added bonus of releasing that batch of victims from the tunnels with the help of reinforcements. All-in-all, he’s satisfied, even if he’s been chastising himself for falling so deeply for the enemy’s genjutsu. On most missions, that could get his comrades killed.

After towelling off and changing into his uniform blacks, setting his long-missed mask over the bridge of his nose, Kakashi falls across his bed and stares up at the white ceiling above.

“Akatsuki,” he considers, recalling red clouds across a wash of black.

Kakashi hasn’t thought of Akatsuki lately, and isn’t surprised that his genjutsu-addled mind couldn’t place their iconic cloak. Naruto is off with Jiraiya now, Sakura is training under Lady Tsunade, and Kakashi…

Kakashi is alone again, taking every mission offered to him.

He shouldn’t be surprised. With how poor of a teacher he is, how much he’s failed them, he shouldn’t expect anything but to lose them. And these apprenticeships are good for them, of course. Training under the sannin will expedite their growth, and he can only imagine what terrors they’ll be by the end of it. But he can’t help the tiniest, smallest, most miniscule feeling of—

Loneliness.

He misses his team.

He misses both of his teams.

Kakashi sighs.

In any case, now that he’s realized the stranger is part of Akatsuki, he can assume there was a hefty bounty placed on the head of the genjutsu specialist working for the trafficking ring, which drew the attention of the mercenary group. As much as Akatsuki seems to have a broader goal at the heart of their organization, they do still primarily operate as bounty hunters, so coming across one while on the job isn’t so strange. Kakashi doesn’t know this one, though. When he brought up his encounter to Tsunade and Shikaku, they had no information, either, and suspect he may have recently joined. There seems to be a lot of in-fighting amongst the members that has resulted in skirmishes and, well. Death. It wouldn’t be a surprise if they grabbed someone new after one was killed.

What are their hiring practices like, he wonders.

With the mission over, none of that matters anymore, and he puts it out of mind. Kakashi closes his eyes, tucks his arms behind his head, and settles in for that nap he’s been wanting.

 

---

 

Kakashi stands before the Hokage with the dawning resignation that his next mission will put him out of the village for a while.

“Akatsuki?” he repeats, just to be sure.

“That’s right,” Tsunade says, her arms folded over her desk as she slides over the mission scroll. “As it stands, we’ve run up against them several times in the past, and I can see them becoming a problem down the road. We don’t know what their end-game is, or much about their members as a whole. That worries me. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill bounty hunters we’re dealing with; each one is a high-ranking missing-nin in their homeland.”

Kakashi opens the scroll and reads through it leisurely, considering this. He remembers his encounter with Itachi, and the days-weeks-months that passed within the confines of his former teammate’s Tsukuyomi in the blink of an eye. Itachi is only one member, and if they have someone of his calibre on their side, and the rest are comparable in skill, then the threat they pose is real.

But Akatsuki has only briefly been on their radar over the years. If he recalls correctly, it used to be a peace corp based in Ame, back in his youth. He’s not sure when that warped into whatever it is now. Either way, the organization hasn’t come to blows with Konoha often in the past, to his knowledge. He wonders what’s sparked this sudden concern.

“Your assignment is to infiltrate Akatsuki by any means necessary, and bring back whatever information you can find, no matter how insignificant.”

“For how long?” Kakashi wonders, his back slouched and hand in his pocket. He lowers the scroll to his side. “Do I have a cut-off date?”

Tsunade sighs. “At the moment, no. With the last round of the jōnin exams wrapping up, we’ll have more able-bodied shinobi to assign high-ranking missions going forward, so we can stop relying on you to take all our S-ranks. If something urgent comes up, or I feel it’s no longer safe for you to continue with the mission, I’ll send word. We’ll work something out.”

Kakashi lifts the scroll one last time to look at it with mute disappointment. For the past several months, he’s been doing back-to-back solo missions, accepting whatever he’s handed. Keeping busy, one might say. And that’s all well and good, because Kakashi does best when he’s on the field and not tucked away alone in his little apartment, where all his failures can come back to haunt him.

But it’s been wearing on him lately. He’s always some level of chakra exhausted, and has survived primarily off of field rations for the better part of a month. To put it bluntly: he’s tired. A mission with no end date sounds like a nightmare.

Ah, well.

“Understood.”

He’s used to nightmares.

Notes:

This will be the start of a beautiful friendship. I can see it now.

I have another new fic up called To the Moon, and will be posting for (most) of the KKOB Week event days. Everything I post this week will be added to my OBKK Week series, so have a look there if you want to read more!

Thanks for reading, I'd love to hear your thoughts, and I hope you had fun!

Til next time!

Chapter 2

Notes:

Mission: START!

Enjoy!

Kakashi has a week to rest and prepare for his departure. The mission is high clearance, and no one is allowed to know about it, so as far as anyone is concerned, he’s off to guard a wealthy merchant’s daughter for an extended time as she travels the Elemental Nations. Somehow, babysitting a spoiled brat seems like a worse fate than weaseling his way in amongst a band of mercenaries. Kakashi should consider himself lucky.

In this time, his main concern is fleshing out his Sukea persona, as that’s the one he chose to use. It’s a bit of a risk, seeing as the masked Akatsuki member has met him in that disguise once before, but he wonders if he might be able to play that to his advantage.

Sukea is, by design, amiable. Kakashi made him to be personable and easily forgotten so that people are willing to talk to him, but not so eager as to wonder about him for an extended period of time. Beyond that, he’s a rather weak base to work with; Kakashi only used him a handful of times to gather information. (And there was that one time with the traffickers and the genjutsu. Can’t forget about that.) Because the missions ‘Sukea’ has been on were all short-term, there hasn’t been a reason to delve into his backstory, likes, or dislikes. But if he’ll be around the Akatsuki for weeks, or even months, it might be necessary to lay solid ground-work for his persona.

Kakashi spends one of his seven days practicing Sukea’s makeup routine, brainstorming a believable life story. More than anything, he wonders what might be a motivator for a kind soul like Sukea to seek out the Akatsuki, and how he can explain his easy capture if the masked member questions him.

And oh, yes. He really does need to learn their hiring practices now, doesn't he?

 

---

 

Kakashi’s target falls face-first into the mud, chakra rope binding his arms to his sides. He spits out a string of foul curses, mocking his captor, but Kakashi only smiles. Sukea does, anyway. He’s got his footing now, after a week in his new role, and is careful to play the part even while alone.

Because Akatsuki doesn't exactly hand out fliers promoting their organization and their base is unknown, Kakashi decided to act the part of a bounty hunter. When he picks a target, he goes for the ones with high returns, not quite at the top of the most wanted list. Sukea isn't a strong-looking character, and is a bit of an airhead, so it wouldn't look right if he kept turning in the most infamous criminals for his rewards. He makes sure to get injured, too, at least surface-level, in a show of carelessness.

If they ask after his previous capture, he has a few ideas on where to take it. It all depends on how they react, and if they even ask at all.

Sukea crouches down as the bandit writhes and spits at him, his hands folded neatly over his knees. The smile fades, and pity replaces it. “I really am sorry, but I did ask you to comply.”

That sends the man reeling.

“Oh dear,” Sukea sighs, narrowly avoiding a headbutt to the chin as he pats the man’s shoulder. “Up, now. The sooner we get you sealed, the sooner we can get those ropes off your arms. That would be nice, wouldn't it?”

He fishes through one of the pouches hanging off his belt for an empty, human-grade sealing scroll, and watches the bandit pale. No one likes being sealed; it’s stuffy, cramped, and if the scroll burns or tears, the contents can't be released. Essentially, it’s death, and outside shinobi villages, they’re strictly banned. But there's nothing that can't be bought off the black market, and a bounty hunter getting hold of one isn't too far-fetched an idea.

Kakashi has made some changes to his Sukea character. Most crucial of all: he's a photographer now, not a journalist. Akatsuki wouldn't want someone around who’s prone to poking his nose where it doesn't belong. He’s no longer a civilian because that wouldn't account for his combat skills—Kakashi can fake a lot, but when it comes down to it, he’ll always fight like a shinobi—but isn't a graduated chūnin, either. The status of a genin who left home still gives him the title of missing-nin, but with the added bonus of being underestimated.

Sukea lays the scroll out beside his catch and presses chakra through it with one hand, waving a little goodbye with the other. The shouting, angry man sinks into it, disappearing, and Sukea is left to the quiet peace of birdsong on a clear, sunny day. He looks up at the clouds, shielding his eyes with his hand, and smiles.

He thinks someone is watching, but can't be sure. There's a presence nearby, but they're too far to scent.

While gathering the scroll, Sukea rifles through the bag he wears on his hip and pulls out his camera, setting the strap around his neck. Then, he shrugs off his backpack and removes the long telephoto lens stored snuggly in one of the padded slots. There’s no rush. He takes his time to clean the glass and adjust settings, taking a few test shots to see how they fare. It’s only once Sukea is satisfied with the lighting that he holds the camera up to his right eye and adjusts the zoom ring, the image in the viewfinder stretching far into the trees.

As he searches the surroundings, snapping a photo now and then, pretending to adjust his angle, Sukea is mindful not to point it directly at any onlookers. When he spots a crow in the trees, perched on a tall branch, he pretends to see past it, focusing instead on a squirrel climbing up the trunk of the tree behind it.

“There you are,” he remarks softly. “Stay just like that.”

The camera clicks, and he lowers it, satisfied with the shot as the squirrel scurries up into the leaves. Kakashi is all too familiar with Itachi’s crows, and he sees the way the bird fixates on him from afar. By a stroke of luck, he caught the Akatuski’s eye. Now, he needs to keep it on him.

There are a few pains to being scouted by your former ANBU squad member, the first of which being: they know your fighting style. Fortunately, Kakashi’s already had a run-in with his old squad mate, so he’s taken countermeasures to limit the risk of discovery.

Sukea doesn’t fight like an ANBU soldier. He doesn’t fight like most Konoha-nin, either, relying heavily on tools and gimmicks to get him through. Because he only has a genin-level education, there are few high-level ninjutsu at his disposal, and he isn’t aware of the formations common to jōnin and chūnin squads.

In a word: he’s underwhelming.

The best way into the Akatsuki is to piss them off. Kakashi hopes that by stealing some of their bounties, he’ll draw them to him, and then he can make his plea to join.

Sukea spends half an hour wandering along the main road through Rivers toward Fire Country, taking photos of birds, snakes, and the dragonflies zipping over the water. After putting away his camera, he washes up in the stream, and is surprised at how comfortable he’s gotten while playing this role. There’s something nice about wandering around alone, picking what jobs he takes, and having the freedom to go at his own pace. Well, at Sukea’s pace, because his travel habits are significantly less rigid than those of a vetted ANBU soldier. Kakashi may have been (dis)honourably discharged, but his years of service have left their mark, and he isn’t sure he’ll ever fully shake them.

A strong gust of wind blows along the water, cooling his skin, and he allows himself to enjoy it. Sukea runs cold, having grown up in the balmy parts of Kusa, and wears a scarf even on a warm summer day. It helps change Kakashi’s silhouette, and to mask the man beneath it.

His pleasant lounging is cut short when he scents his old teammate nearby. Sukea turns, his eyes settling on Itachi’s robe, familiar red clouds decorating it. Then he looks up, at the coal-black eyes of an Uchiha, strikingly similar to an old friend’s.

“Oh,” Sukea startles, wiping his hands on the sides of the coat. “Well, hello there. I didn’t know I had company.”

Itachi isn’t in the mood for pleasantries. Behind him is yet another member—Kisame, Kakashi recalls. They’ve been seen together before, and as they already assumed, the Akatsuki must work in teams. That means Sukea will have a partner, someone glued to his hip. It will be difficult to send information back to Konoha, but spending that much time with one of the members might give him insight he would otherwise miss.

“Our leader has taken note of you,” Itachi says without preamble.

“We see you’re earning a small fortune these days,” Kisame continues, ever amused as he crosses his arms. “Would you mind saving some bounties for the rest of us? You’re not the only one with mouths to feed.”

They’re prodding him. Sukea hasn’t taken the highest bounties, but he’s collected a large sum of the upper-middle range requests on the wanted boards he’s passed, so word must have spread.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he says, forcing something akin to genuine remorse onto his face. “I’m new to this, and didn’t know there was a proper etiquette to follow.”

Kisame laughs, loud and full, like he hasn’t found good entertainment in years.

Sukea’s eyes fall once more on the patterned robes they wear. “Would you happen to be members of Akatsuki?”

The pair look at each other, frowning.

Ignoring the words the mercenaries are sharing with their eyes, Sukea steps forward, face bright and stance purposely open, as though letting down his guard. “That’s wonderful. I’ve been hoping to speak with you.”

 

---

 

Sukea is presented to a stone-faced man with piercings and a woman with dark hair. He smiles pleasantly, his hands folded in front of him, as he politely awaits their judgment.

The man is Pein, and as it so happens, he’s the leader of the organization. Konoha doesn’t have information on this one yet, nor have they heard of Konan, who stands by his side. From what Kakashi gathers, these two organize the members and are behind everything they’ve done thus far, so if he sticks close to them, he should learn more about what their goals are.

Akatsuki’s aim was peace, once upon a time. Perhaps that still rings true.

With a wave of his hand, Pein dismisses him. “You’re not required.”

Sukea’s smile falls. Hm. That’s not good. He thought they would want to bolster their numbers as much as possible, seeing as they’re making a lot of enemies amongst the hidden villages.

“We have the ten members that we sought; I was merely curious who it was that kept taking our bounties. I harbour no ill will.”

Only ten? That seems like gross under-staffing if they plan to continually press the buttons of the shinobi elite. S-rank missing-nin or not, there’s only so far they can go with so few moving parts.

Kisame steps forward, wearing that easy grin. It took two days of travel for them to meet Pein in this nondescript cavern, and in that time, Sukea believes he’s charmed his companion. While Itachi spent most of their walks passive and quiet, observing Sukea for inconsistencies, Kisame was happy to share idle chat, asking a bunch of questions whenever Sukea wandered off the beaten path with his camera. He was indulgent, too, suggesting to Itachi that they wait for him, and that letting him snap a few photos would do them no harm.

“Now, hang on, Leader,” Kisame starts. “We have enough members now, sure. But what about Tobi?”

Konan narrows her eyes.

“He’s been with us for a while now, but never had a partner. Maybe we don’t need them for sealing, but it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra hand earning bounties, right?”

Sealing?

Pein’s eyes fall on Sukea, these spiralling purple orbs that make his skin crawl. It’s a Kekkei Genkai, and though Kakashi can’t be sure, he wonders if it might be the Rinnegan. He’s never seen it in person; no one has in decades or more. Not before now, at least. “What is it that brought you to us?” he asks. “What drives you to join our ranks?”

Their attention all falls on Sukea, and he smiles, big and wide and honest.

“There’s a debt I’d like to repay.”

 

---

 

In two weeks now, Kakashi has not been able to peel away Sukea’s mask. It’s getting to him a bit, the way he needs to second guess his every word and be mindful of his facial expressions. Kakashi may have worn a mask all his life, but hiding in plain sight is new, and using his bare face as a disguise, while clever, is a bit much.

Kakashi’s not fond of being perceived. But lately, everyone he meets is watching him like a hawk.

The Akatsuki warm up to the idea of taking Sukea on as a trial member. He third-wheels on one of Itachi and Kisame’s missions, acting as support while they execute the current top bounty in Rivers, and on the trip back, Itachi starts to loosen up. They sit below the stars at night while Sukea pulls out his tripod and secures his camera to the mount, aiming it at the lake they’re camped at. The target is tucked away safely in his sealing scroll.

“Can you take photographs when it’s dark like this?” Itachi wonders.

“If I set the exposure right.” Sukea fiddles with the settings, double-checks the viewfinder, and takes the picture. He backs up slowly, mindful of the tripod, and sits in the grass next to his temporary teammate. “We have to let it sit now. If we move it, the shot will come out blurry.”

Itachi nods along, showing a sliver of genuine interest.

When they met, Kakashi wasn’t sure what to make of his former comrade. After the night of the Uchiha massacre, he wondered if Itachi had just… snapped. He was a loving kid who cared deeply for his family. Quiet and soft-spoken, but expertly skilled. There was no child who showed as much promise, or as much competence, and the pressures of his clan were just as heavy a weight on his shoulders. But at the end of the day, Itachi was only a boy. The village crushed him beneath its expectations just as it had Kakashi, and where did that get them?

Seeing him like this brings back a lot of memories. It’s hard to imagine that someone so warm could do such heinous things. But, well.

A shinobi with clean hands is no shinobi at all.

Behind them, Kisame has already turned in for the night. He’s easygoing to a fault, and if he has any reservations about Sukea, he’s very good at hiding them. Kisame was one of Kiri’s seven swordsmen, now having defected to join the Akatsuki. He’s a hard character to read, and a bit strange, but seems like a good companion to have.

It feels like these two might genuinely like each other. With all the rumours of in-fighting, Kakashi expected the members to always be at each other’s throats.

“Did I pass the test?” Sukea asks, leaning back to prop his weight on his hands and watch the sky.

“I believe so, yes.”

“Oh, wonderful. I hope Pein will accept me now.”

Itachi leans forward, folding his arms over his knees as he tilts his head to observe his newest colleague. “You don’t strike me as a good fit for Akatsuki, honestly. I can’t imagine why someone like you would seek us out.”

Perhaps Sukea is a bit too easygoing. Ah, well. Kakashi’s so far into the character that it would be hard to make changes now. That’s fine; he has a cover story. “I owe a great debt to one of the members,” he confesses. “He rescued me once, and I’ve admired him ever since. When I learned that he was part of Akatsuki, I wondered if I might be able to help him reach his goals.”

Itachi rests his chin on his arms, turning his attention on the clear lake and the camera set before it. There’s no wind, so with luck, the photo should turn out clear enough… Not that the result matters, of course. “Who was it? I can’t imagine any of them going out of their way to help a civilian.”

“I don’t know his name. The one with the orange mask?”

Itachi tenses, and from the corner of his eye, Kakashi can see the minute shift in his posture as the calm of the moment is cast aside. Whoever the masked man is, Itachi isn’t fond.

“I see.”

 

---

 

Two-and-a-half weeks into the mission, Sukea finds himself at Mountains’ Graveyard. He smiles sweetly at the ten or so members appraising him across the room while Pein announces his recruitment. Several of them give him the stink-eye, and no one looks particularly happy that he’s here, not that he can see well in the dimly lit cave. If only he could access his Sharingan.

From what he gathers, this location within Mountains’ Graveyard is important to Akatsuki. It acts as their base of operations, with various rooms carved into the tunnels, including a dormitory. There are lower levels he hasn’t seen, and the husk of a big, towering tree at its core. If given the chance, Kakashi wants to do a full walk-through of the facilities. There’s no better way to get a feel for someone than to see their dwellings. Though, he doubts the members spend much time here; usually, they’re off doing bounty work.

“This guy? Really?” a blond asks, his frown prominent and arms crossed over his chest.

Sukea bows politely in response. “I hope we get along.”

All at once, he feels the heavy air in the room. No one wants him here. That’s fine; he’s not here to make friends.

“I can’t believe you would waste my time with this,” says another, all but his vibrant green eyes hidden away behind cloth. Across his forehead rests the defaced symbol of Taki. Without skipping a breath, he walks straight past Sukea and through the mouth of the cave, leaving before Pein has completed his speech.

A pale-haired man follows after, making a face of disgust as he meets Sukea’s eyes. “What is this? They letting anyone join now?”

What a pleasant bunch.

The gathering is quick to disperse. Pein has little else to say, other than announcing that they’ll soon set in motion the next phase of the plan, and urges them all to be ready to act. This must have something to do with the tailed beasts, as those have been mentioned once before. What they could possibly want with them, Kakashi doesn’t know.

As the members trickle out, Sukea finds himself alone. He caught the names of a few members after comparing them with descriptions he’s heard from Kisame and Itachi, but hasn’t been properly introduced.

Where is his partner?

“Tobi,” Pein calls. 

Sukea follows his stare. At the back of the cave stands someone else, a black silhouette through the dark. Their head lifts. “Yes, Leader?”

“You’re being assigned to Sukea’s team. I trust you’ll get along.”

Sukea squints through the dark, and faintly, he spots the warm hue of an orange mask. What luck for him to be partnered with the member he’s most curious about. He still recalls the image of that shinobi walking through a man-made tunnel, dragging along the corpse of his target.

A loud, dramatic gasp punctures the moment. “Really?!”

Kakashi stills. This is not the voice he heard that night.

The figure at the back of the cave pushes off the wall and makes quick strides toward them. Kakashi takes a step back, losing grip on his character as this stranger, Tobi, steps out into the light.

A swirling orange mask, a crop of dark hair, and a black robe with red clouds.

Tobi closes any distance that remains between them, and he takes Kakashi’s hands into his own, leather gloves the only barrier between their skin. “Tobi’s never had a team before. Hello, Sukea! I’m Tobi!”

Kakashi blinks rapidly, trying to regain his footing and hold tight to his character. How would Sukea react? This man, he’s not—he can’t be the same one who—

Sukea smiles, relaxing into his partner’s hold on him. “Hello, Tobi. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Tobi stills. The moment hangs in the air, the world quiet. No one moves. Then, Tobi shrieks, twisting back to face Pein. “Sukea is perfect, Leader! Thank you! Tobi’s so happy!”

As Kakashi regards this strangely excitable creature hanging off him, trying not to wince at the shouting in his ear, he’s at a loss for words.

It’s quite possible that this mission will be a worse headache than he thought.

Notes:

I'm glad y'all liked the first chapter, and I hope you're excited for the third. Set-up is out of the way now, so the next update will be all Tobi and Sukea, cross my heart.

Thanks for all the comments and kudos, I'd love to hear from you, and I hope you're having fun!

Til next time!

Chapter 3

Notes:

I've been feeling down today, so to distract myself, I decided to edit this chapter and get it up for ya. Now, we have two updates this week. Yay depression?

Enjoy!

“Tobi doesn’t get along with the other members very well,” Tobi laments with a sigh, his whole body wilting in extension of his words. Then, like a sunflower at dawn, he perks right back up. “That’s why Tobi’s so happy that you’re here now, Sukea! This is the best day ever!”

Kakashi would disagree.

They’ve just completed their slow crawl down the mountain and are working their way through the trees at its base. Tobi’s yammering hasn’t stopped for more than three minutes since they met, which includes the fitting Sukea had for the Akatsuki cloak he now wears. Seeing himself in it is… strange, and off-putting. But not as off-putting as his partner.

It’s almost like having another Gai around. But louder, and worse. Like if Gai was fused with Naruto… No, Naruto is calm in comparison to Tobi. But they might be equally loud. If he has to live through months of this, he might go against orders and abandon the mission.

Outwardly, he’s a calm fortress of easy smiles and attentive looks. It took almost an hour for Kakashi to grapple with how Sukea would respond to such a character, and when it came down to it, he realized… Sukea wouldn’t treat Tobi any differently than the others. On the contrary: because Tobi is friendly (in the loosest sense of the word), they might get along.

They trudge through the thick undergrowth, all the while Tobi is oohing and awing at the very normal wilderness around them, tilting his head and twisting his body, watching birds fly between trees as though he’s never set foot outside Mountain’s Graveyard.

Then, in a moment of distraction, he’s gone.

Sukea stops, blinking as he looks left and right in search of his partner, only for a bright orange mask to pop up, somehow, from below. He resists the urge to stumble back, Tobi right in his face, and his smile widens. “Yes, Tobi?”

“Sukea, look!” In his hand, he presents a grey rock with the slightest imprint in it, barely a dent in its smooth surface. “A fossil!”

Forget the week. Kakashi might not make it through the day.

Sukea dips his head to stare at the very normal, very unexciting rock, and tries to channel genuine enthusiasm. “It’s lovely. I wonder how old it might be.”

Tobi snatches it away, giddy as he holds it to his chest. He’s like an over-eager puppy… or a child with no social skills. Soon, he marches on once more, telling Sukea about how mean the other members are to him, and that Hidan, who Kakashi vaguely recalls, is the meanest of them all. Deidara, on the other hand, is fun to tease. That’s… the blond one, isn’t he?

As they walk, Kakashi can’t help but think this couldn’t possibly be the mercenary from the tunnel. The pitch of his voice is different, his mannerisms are wrong, and not even his gait matches the stranger from Kakashi’s memories. It could be that this is an act… or that what he saw back in the tunnel was. Regardless of how Tobi behaves, he must be skilled to have drawn Pein’s attention. Akatsuki is primarily made up of high-ranking missing-nin from across the Elemental Nations, and if they’re one and the same, then the efficiency Kakashi witnessed before makes sense. But for the life of him, he can’t see it.

The build is right, though. The height. Tobi is wearing the same high-collared shirt beneath his clothes as he was back then, his hands are gloved and his whole body is covered. Not a single patch of skin is visible across the landscape of his body beyond the exposed areas of his sandals. Even the eyehole in his mask is an inescapable black.

What would he gain from acting this way, though? Or is this the real Tobi, and the man in the tunnel was a front he put on when faced with a threat?

It’s hard to tell.

Tobi tugs the strap of Sukea’s cross-body bag. “What’s this for?”

Sukea startles, pressing his own hand to the bag. He resists the urge to shy away from how close and clingy this stranger is. “It’s for my camera. I keep it on me for quick access.”

“Oooh, you like taking pictures?”

Because Sukea is nothing if not indulgent, he pulls the camera out of the bag, attaches his prime lens, and holds it up to Tobi. “It’s my hobby.”

Tobi doesn’t snatch it out of his hands like Kakashi expects him to, and instead leans left then right to see it from all angles. Then, he gets bored, and marches on like he never inquired in the first place.

How exhausting.

By the time they find a body of water, the sun sits low in the sky. It's getting late, and because of his time with Itachi and Kisame, Kakashi hasn't had a chance to restock his field rations, so it might be best to fish for dinner.

“Tobi,” he calls, because now that Sukea needs him, Tobi is as far as can be. “Why don't we make camp for the night?”

Tobi tilts his head, a little figure of black and orange far down the road. He cups his hands over his mask, and shouts back, “The sun is still up!”

Sukea scratches his head. It seems his new partner has energy to spare. He tries shouting his explanation.

“What?”

Which doesn't work. Instead, he points to the river and makes gestures that, he hopes, are reminiscent of fishing.

“Ooh, okay!”

Twenty minutes later, Sukea is standing on a rock with a kunai in hand, taking aim at blurry bodies he can make out below the water's surface, and Tobi is right there next to him, on his knees and leaning forward heavily to watch the fish. He's quiet now that he's distracted, and because of that, Sukea pretends to need more time than he actually does to concentrate.

Sweet, perfect silence.

Sukea glances at his partner curiously. Tobi balances himself with his hands, hanging over the water as he kicks his legs back and forth without a care in the world. Nothing about him screams S-rank threat, but he's found his way into this organization, just like the rest of them.

When he spears a kunai through two fish, Tobi sits up and claps. “Amazing! Sukea’s so cool.”

A shinobi shouldn't be praising anyone for such a rudimentary skill. But it feels a bit… hm. Well. Kakashi doesn't hate the positivity, even if it feels forced. Because of the nature of shinobi missions, high-ranking teams can often be tense, even uncomfortable. No one knows if this is the mission they’ll die on, or what lies ahead. ANBU is the worst for it, but the shinobi elite who do black-ops work have long accepted that their lives are forfeit.

Kakashi sits before the campfire, watching as the fish cook, the scent pleasant to his sensitive nose. It’s a rudimentary meal, but it’s protein, and should tide them over until morning. Judging by the map, the next village is a six-hour walk away. If they ran, they could half that, but Akatsuki isn’t about speed, and even while third-wheeling on Itachi’s team, they moved leisurely toward their target. Maybe they won’t eat breakfast, but by lunch, they’ll have at least found a tavern, and can share a warm meal before restocking in town.

When he looks up from the map, he realizes Tobi is gone again. Kakashi looks left, then right—down, too, after last time—but he’s alone. The camp is quiet save the crackle of the fire and the bubble of the stream.

Is this… okay, or should he be concerned? Either way, it’s becoming a habit, and he should probably expect it going forward.

Kakashi tests the fish, and they look to be done, so he removes them from the fire and starts to eat. Tobi’s absence makes the night peaceful, but he does need his partner around if he’s going to gather information.

Not that Tobi is a well of knowledge.

Twelve minutes later, there’s rustling in the underbrush. Tobi steps through, leaves and twigs in his hair, his mask smudged with dirt. He’s holding up the ends of his Akatsuki robe, and it looks like he’s carrying something in the groove of the fabric.

“Sukea!” he calls cheerily as he stumbles into their camp, nearly tripping when a gnarled root catches his foot. Tobi hurriedly plops down next to his partner, and in his lap rests several dozen mulberries. “I brought food to share!”

Kakashi, as Sukea, stares down at the humble offering. He sees the sorry state of his partner, who by all rights must be a highly-skilled shinobi, and smiles. “You didn’t have to,” he says softly. “But thank you. Why don’t you have dinner, and I’ll wash these for us?”

“Okay!”

Sukea cleans the berries by firelight, noting that there are several varieties amongst the pile, one of which is poisonous. Sighing, he discreetly tosses those back into the brush, and keeps the ones that are safe to eat.

Kakashi learned exasperation when Team Minato formed, long before his teammates made chūnin. Obito was loud, overeager, and a bit of an idiot. Though his intentions were good, his efforts to help were often a detriment to the team. He was the first person Kakashi truly fought with, the first teammate to flare his temper enough to get him yelling. Though Obito improved with time, they never really moved past that dent in their relationship, even up until the end.

Tobi reminds him of Obito. Just a little. They’re entirely different, but the mental fortitude required to tolerate them is about the same.

Kakashi smiles. It must be because of the character he plays. Sukea is quick to smile; that’s how Kakashi designed him.

By the time he brings over the remaining berries, Tobi has eaten his share of dinner and is all too eager for a midnight snack. Kakashi wonders if he might see what his teammate looks like now, and watches out of the corner of his eye. But Tobi turns away each time he lifts his mask.

Kakashi would be disappointed, if he had any right to be. The only time someone sees his face is when he’s playing a role.

Tobi still has the energy he did during the day, so they stay up a bit longer and stare at the stars. He’s finally quieting down, at least. Maybe his yammering was a side-effect of excitement, and now that Sukea’s novelty has worn down, he’s mellowed out.

Tobi hasn’t mentioned their first meeting yet, and as they stargaze, Kakashi drums his fingers, mulling over whether he should say something. Because he’s woven that encounter into Sukea’s character, he knows that he should. But he also finds it strange that Tobi hasn’t said anything, and wonders if there’s a reason.

Either way, Sukea is honest and upfront, so Kakashi should lean into that to be consistent.

“Thank you for helping me back then,” he says, leaning back on his palms to stare at the world above. “I don’t know where I would be right now if you hadn’t.”

Tobi pulls his mask down and turns to face Sukea.

“I was travelling alone when they caught me. They had a formidable genjutsu specialist working for them, and it seems I wasn’t strong enough to break free on my own. You saved my life, Tobi. I’m eternally grateful.”

His teammate watches him quietly for a long stretch, and then tilts his head. “You were in trouble? When? Who hurt you? Tobi will beat them up!”

Sukea’s smile falls. “Do you not remember?” he asks. “When we first met. In the tunnel. You came for a bounty, I think… You broke the genjutsu I was placed under.”

“Nope.”

“Ah… I see.”

So, he outed himself for nothing. Great.

Tobi flops down onto his back and puts his hands behind his head. “You must be thinking of someone else. Tobi would remember a pretty face like yours.”

“Mm… perhaps.” Pushing would be a bad move; it's best to stay agreeable and not kick up a fuss. It's strange, though, that Tobi would lie about something like this. It could be that he really doesn't remember, but…

“This world is too rotten for such a pretty face.”

It was Tobi he met that night.

 

---

 

Travelling with Tobi is exhausting, and as they head for the next village, Kakashi gains a new appreciation for his brief stint with Itachi and Kisame. Truly, he didn't know how good he had it. Nevertheless, he plays his part well, slowing them down whenever a patch of scenery catches his eye, or anytime he spots wildlife in the undergrowth. Tobi doesn't complain. Sometimes, he’ll sit nearby and ask questions. Others, he’ll wander off to entertain himself until Sukea is ready to move on.

They reach a tavern by midday and sit on the patio for their first meal. Kakashi has gone several days without food on missions before, so he's doing fine. But he finds it strange that Tobi hasn't complained. Tobi whines about other stuff, like how sore his feet are and that Sukea isn't paying enough attention to him. (It's like babysitting a six-year-old.) But Tobi never brings up hunger.

The waitress brings out their order and smiles at them, eyeing Tobi nervously before she heads inside. He stands out like a sore thumb, even amongst the mercenaries and missing-nin known to frequent roadside establishments like this. It doesn't help that he's loud and animated; he draws the eyes of everyone else out here, most of whom are sporting slashed hitai-ate somewhere on their person.

Come to think of it, Tobi doesn't wear any relics from his home village. Even beneath the Akatsuki robe, he doesn't have a hitai-ate he’s hiding, or any identifying symbols. Most of the other members do. They're proud to have defected, and are confident enough in their skills to flaunt their old loyalties.

Kakashi watches across the table as Tobi turns around to eat. Even now, all he can gather about his teammate is his dark hair and broad build. He looks like he might be well-built beneath the clothes he wears, but it's hard to tell with all that fabric in the way. What does he have to hide?

This is how his students feel when they try to peek under his mask, isn't it?

“Tobi,” he calls, watching his teammate’s head perk up, “I think we should get to know each other. Would you like to play a game?”

Tobi acts like he's about to turn around, but stops when he remembers that his mask is up. “Ooh, Tobi likes games.” For the first time, his voice isn't muffled by his mask. “How do we play?”

Sukea hums, cushioning his chin on the backs of his hands. “To start, how about I ask a question, and then you ask a question? Whoever doesn’t answer gets a strike. The first to three strikes loses. Does that sound fun?”

While hemming and hawing, Tobi lowers his mask back over his face and spins around, setting his empty bowl on the table. “Suppose so. Tobi will unearth all your dirty little secrets,” he says with a giggle. It's…a bit unpleasant to the ear, honestly.

“You can go first, if you like.” Kakashi is confident in the character he developed. He doubts there's a question Tobi will ask that he doesn't already have an answer for.

“Right!” Tobi slams his hands on the table, leans forward, and asks, “What colour underwear does Sukea have on?”

This, he did not account for. Tobi isn't quiet, and several heads turn their way, whispers soon to follow. Kakashi draws a blank. He thought of so many possibilities, and yet—

He tries to force Sukea’s smile, but it's stiff. “Ah, um, Tobi… I believe that would be considered sexual harassment.”

Tobi gasps, as though only just now considering this. “Oh, no. I didn't think. Sorry.”

Sukea sighs in relief. “That's okay.”

“You pass, then?”

He's not backing down on this. And, though Kakashi hates to admit it, they didn't establish boundaries for the questions they would ask. If he tries to duck out of it, he can imagine Tobi sulking about him being a sore loser and calling off their game. Because his partner is so agreeable, he was hoping this would be a way to gather Intel, however small.

Will he really take a strike for this?

“Pass,” he says in defeat, hanging his head.

“Strike one!” Tobi cheers, resting his chin on his palms. “Your turn now.”

Well, he still has two strikes to go. No harm done. Kakashi wants to use this game to create a profile for Tobi in his head, so he asks, “What village are you from?”

Tobi waves his hand dismissively. “Tobi doesn't have a village.”

“That can't be true,” Sukea says. “You must have been born somewhere, right?”

“Ah-ah!” His teammate holds up a hand in pause. “It's Tobi’s turn. Is Sukea related to the Nohara clan?”

Kakashi stills. He looks down at the reflection in his tea, his eye catching on the purple tape framing his face. It isn't that he never noticed the similarities between his disguise and Rin, but he chose to ignore them. Most can be waived away as coincidences. The clan markings are a bit harder to brush off; though not exactly the same, they run a lot of parallels, down to the shade of purple they use.

The Noharas originated in Suna during the founding era, and Rin’s parents only emigrated to Fire Country after the Second War. Their clan is small with very little power, so other than locals, most people don’t know of them. This could mean that Tobi originated somewhere in Wind Country… But, being in Akatsuki, it’s equally likely he could have met them while travelling.

“On my father’s side,” Sukea says, and leaves it there. If he says any more, it’ll look suspicious.

“Ahh, I see, I see. Sukea is mixed blood. Interesting!”

“It's my turn now. Let’s see… Why did you join the Akatsuki?”

“For world peace, of course!” Tobi exclaims automatically, flailing a bit. “Leader is going to make the world a better place to live in. Then, no more fighting, no more wars! Isn’t that great?”

Akatsuki’s original aim was for peace, yes. While that is true, it’s clearly fallen down a darker path now. One only needs to look at its members to understand its alignment, filled with deserters and criminals as it is. Could Tobi have perhaps joined long ago, back when the organization still held some good? But Tobi is a provisional member, like Sukea. It wouldn’t make sense for him to be benched without a partner all these years. They only just met, so Kakashi doesn’t know much about Tobi, but there has to be a reason he’s kept around. It would be strange to keep a member they wouldn’t utilize.

“Why did you join, kouhai?”

Sukea blinks, lifting his head. “Kouhai?”

Tobi nods enthusiastically. “Tobi’s never had a junior before. This is exciting. Don’t worry! Tobi-senpai will teach you everything there is to know about the job!”

So far, he’s only shown Sukea ‘cool’ rocks and tried to feed him poisonous berries.

“So?” Tobi presses. “Is this another strike?”

Sukea smiles, leaning forward on the table, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever lay behind the eyehole in his teammate’s mask. “I was grateful for what you did for me, and wanted to repay my debt.”

Tobi sighs, shaking his head. “I’m telling you, kouhai. You’ve got the wrong Tobi.”

No, he doesn’t. Because in the seconds before he answered, Tobi hesitated.

Sukea drums his fingers against the table, watching his partner curiously. Now, he’s certain they’re one and the same. Not only that, but Tobi must remember him, too, and is refusing to admit it. Pushing the point will just get him dismissed, and it’s clear anything leaning in that direction won’t be met with an honest answer, so he needs to backtrack. It might be too soon to ask for details about the other members, as he just joined, and no one trusts him, to begin with. Instead, he asks, “Why do you wear a mask?”

Tobi gasps, his hands raised to the edges of it. “Sukea must hate Tobi’s mask to ask that. Sukea is repulsed. ”

His easy smile falls away, and he sits up. “Hey, now, of course I’m not,” he assures softly. “I don’t mean to offend, and I’m sorry if I did. I only wondered, as it’s rather eye-catching, and you haven’t let me see your face. You can pass, if you’re not comfortable sharing.”

Tobi dithers, tilting his head left, then right, forgetting the hurt that previously carried through his voice. Eventually, he hangs his head like a defeated man. “Tobi got really, really hurt when he was little, and doesn’t like his face.”

Kakashi sees the sole eyehole in a new light, observing the curving spiral of the mask. Tobi must have lost his left eye. There’s probably scarring around that, severe enough for this strange, silly man to be self-conscious of it. Kakashi assumed the mask was for anonymity; if Tobi is in a bingo book, no one will recognize him with his face hidden.

This, however, hits close to home.

“My turn! Is Sukea wearing underwear?”

Kakashi regrets suggesting this game.

Notes:

Thanks for the comments and kudos, I would love to hear from you, and I hope you're having fun.

Til next time!

Chapter 4

Notes:

I updated Come In, The Water is Fine last night, so when I was deciding what else to post during my unexpected free time, Daffodil was first on my list. These two fics are very different, but I've been writing them with the same mindset, so when I work on one, I can't help but think of the other.

Enjoy!

When they reach the village, the first task on Kakashi’s agenda is to restock. Picking a bounty to hunt won’t mean much if they don’t have the food to make the journey, and given Tobi’s personality, it’s best not to leave him in charge of little chores like this; he’s liable to forget, get bored, or flat-out ignore it.

Tobi follows along without fuss as they take to the market streets. He makes a beeline for the wares of any stalls that happen to catch his eye, making the vendors nervous. For all that he acts like a silly, harmless man, his appearance says otherwise. The swirling orange mask is like a flashing beacon to all who see it, and the red clouds on his robe declare his loyalty. Akatsuki is becoming well-known. More and more people are recognizing its members, and now that Kakashi’s joined, he’s getting the same looks, especially whenever he wanders off to gently urge his teammate back on track.

Once they’ve stocked up on food, medical supplies, and other miscellaneous things, it’s time to find a target. Because mercenaries are so commonplace, a lot of villages have adopted bounty boards that the local authorities update regularly. There are seedier options available, too, especially in bigger towns, but Kakashi doesn’t see the point; government jobs pay better and are easier to find. This doesn’t include the assassinations of well-known politicians and businessmen, which run big rewards in black market crowds. But generally, sticking to legal capture is best, even for a member of a criminal organization. If their identities truly are an issue, they can simply remove their cloaks or wear a henge.

Kakashi stands before the board with a finger to his chin as he meticulously reads the details of each wanted poster, searching for a target ‘Sukea’ can handle that will garner a decent reward. He needs to prove his usefulness to the organization, but wants to remain understated, if possible. There may come a day when the Akatsuki expects him to do something he can’t allow himself to do, and if it does, he needs to have the element of surprise.

“Oooh, it’s job hunting time!” Tobi sings from right by his ear. Sukea remains perfectly still, even as a chill runs up his spine. This man has no concept of personal space. “Mmm… Why don’t we take them all?”

Sukea stares at the fourteen posters on the board. “All?”

“Yeah! It’ll be fun. Tobi-senpai and his kouhai, ridding the world of all the bad guys!”

“That sounds wonderful,” Sukea says, indulging this man-child of a partner. “But since this is our first job together, why don’t we start small, and take just one? I’m a bit nervous.”

“Tobi will protect you,” Tobi assures, puffing up his chest and standing tall. “But Tobi will play fair and not force Sukea to do anything he doesn’t want to do. Like a gentleman.”

Instead, Tobi tears one from the pin holding it against the corkboard, wiggling it between his fingers. The bounty is the largest on the board, more than Kakashi would expect ‘Sukea’ to handle, and the target is a poison specialist and underground weapons dealer. Because she’s distributed shinobi-grade tools across several of the Elemental Nations, and likely has a whole network working under her, she’s a high-risk, high-priority threat. They’re still not quite in Fire Country territory, but the job has been requested by two daimyō, as well as the heads of several small towns and villages, so the pay is hefty. It rivals Konoha’s S-rank assassination fees.

Above that, they don’t have a name, only a photo. She’s an unknown entity, and without information to go off of, she’ll be hard to track, so this is a sleuthing job.

The image of Tobi attempting this mission almost makes him laugh. Even in the underground tunnels of the trafficking ring, he was anything but understated.

Sukea’s smile widens. “That’s a good idea,” he says, plucking a more reasonable bounty off the board. “But it seems like a bit of a long-haul. Why don’t we try something a little more manageable, and earn some money first? My funds are a bit low after today.”

Sulking, Tobi hangs his head and nods. But Sukea doesn’t miss the way he folds up the poster in his hands and tucks it into the inner pocket of his cloak. “Tobi will acquiesce if Sukea says so. But this job seems much more fun. ”

“Next time, okay?”

“Next time,” Tobi accepts with a nod.

 

---

 

The target of their first job is a missing-nin from Taki with A-rank skills and decent combat prowess. He travels around a lot, making him a bit annoying to pin down, so their job won’t be over in a day. If this were Kakashi, he would go to the missing-nin’s last known sighting, summon all eight of his ninken, and have them fan the area while he interviews the locals for a lead. It’s not an ANBU mission, there’s no classified information, and no need for anonymity, so taking the direct approach would be fine.

This is not Kakashi. This is Sukea, and Sukea is not the clan-born son of the White Fang.

They’re a week out of the last village, and he crouches with Tobi by a tree, watching a bird through the lens of his camera as it pecks the ground some distance away. He snaps a few pictures, only for Tobi to tug impatiently at the sleeve of his cloak.

“Tobi wants to see! Tobi wants to see!” he whispers, but loudly. Their arms brush against one another, this uncomfortably close contact now familiar between them.

Indulgent as ever, Sukea pulls back from the viewfinder and hands the camera off to his partner. Tobi sets it before his eye, and Kakashi winces at the click it makes when it hits against Tobi’s mask. As much as that camera is a prop for his character, it is expensive, and it does hold sentimental value. If it survives to the end of the mission with no damage, he’ll be shocked.

Tobi turns the zoom ring and makes little noises of wonder when he adjusts the focus. Tobi’s interest in the camera renewed after seeing Sukea take pictures of the architecture of the village, so Sukea taught him a bit about how to work it, and the names of the parts that make it up. Now and then, he’ll decide he’s bored of it and toss it aside again. But there are times, like now, when it’s suddenly the most interesting thing in the world to him.

There are sides to Tobi that Kakashi might have, in other circumstances, considered charming. He does take genuine interest in Sukea and his hobbies, even if they aren’t quite his cup of tea, and his casual touches aren’t as bad as they were that first day. If Sukea asks for space, he’ll give it. There’s something nice about his blind optimism, too, that Kakashi—that Sukea finds himself liking.

If you put aside the fact that he’s part of a crime syndicate, he’s not so bad.

“Aww, it flew away,” Tobi sulks, pulling back to watch the bird disappear into the sky. “Tobi didn’t get a single picture.”

“That’s too bad. Maybe next time you’ll have better luck.”

They settle for lunch, which consists of take-away they got at a roadside inn yesterday evening. As usual, Tobi faces away from Sukea while he eats, keeping his face hidden. Tobi hasn’t eaten with him at every meal. Sometimes, at dinner, he’ll say he’s still full from lunch, or will wander off when the food is ready, like he doesn’t feel hunger. But one thing he won’t ignore is dango. Tobi has an insatiable sweet tooth, and is all too eager to take off his mask if it involves sugar.

“Hey, hey,” Tobi calls, “can Tobi paint Sukea’s nails?” He wiggles his fingers dramatically.

Sukea tilts his head. “I don’t see why not,” he says. He noticed during the gathering at Mountain’s Graveyard that all the members of Akatsuki paint their nails a dark colour, as though it's part of the uniform. It’s not something he questioned before now, but he can just imagine this strange man pestering them all about it. It’s his brand of chaos. “I’ve never painted them before.”

Tobi cheers.

After lunch, Sukea leans against a tree along the side of the road as instructed while Tobi retrieves the nail polish from seemingly nowhere. By this point, nothing Tobi says or does fazes him, so sure, why the hell not? Paint his nails, where is the harm? He’s ready to zone out for however long it takes for the paint to dry and get moving. They got a lead that the target may have left Fire for Earth and are on their way to confirm it.

Tobi takes off his gloves, and Kakashi is momentarily distracted by the mismatched skin of his hands. The left matches the skin of his feet, but the right is an unnaturally pale white, like parchment. A prosthetic? But it looks normal otherwise. There’s no visible indication of segmented joints, like with most prosthetics, and it’s textured like skin. Tobi’s nails are painted, too, despite his ever-present gloves.

Sukea smiles.

“Alright, kouhai! Are you ready for initiation?”

Sukea tilts his head, brow raised. “I thought I was already initiated. Was there a part two?”

“Of course,” Tobi nods. “But don’t worry. Senpai is here to fix things.”

“Thank you, Tobi-senpai.”

His partner gets flustered whenever Sukea calls him that, and it’s a bit, hm… Well, he likes seeing it. It was only two days before Kakashi caught on that Tobi was annoying him on purpose, trying to get a rise out of him, and since then, he’s been teasing in his own way. It reminds him of Tenzō, a bit, and their dynamic.

Suddenly, he misses home.

Tobi takes his hand and pulls it close, peering through his blackened eye hole at the nails. Before applying the nail polish, he turns it over, pressing the fingers of his paper-white hand to Sukea’s fingertips. This hand holds no warmth, cool to the touch like a prosthetic, but too soft for any of the models Kakashi is familiar with.

“Sukea has a lightning affinity,” Tobi marvels. It’s only now that Kakashi understands this was a ploy to gather information about him. Tobi’s just as curious about his partner as his partner is about him, and has been thinking up sneaky ways to make Kakashi spill all his secrets. They’re playing the same game, really. “Lookit these scars. Looks painful.”

“I have water and earth affinities,” Sukea corrects gently. The less ties that lead to Kakashi Hatake, the better. “I can use a bit of the other elements, but I get backlash, so I try not to.”

“I see, I see.” Whether Tobi believes him is another matter entirely. He’ll have to show off his earth and water jutsu during the upcoming encounter, even if Sukea primarily fights with tools.

“What about you?” Sukea prods as the first line of black paint spreads across his nail. “What’s your affinity?”

“Fire,” Tobi answers offhand, focusing entirely on his task. “Tobi’s great if you wanna ruin something.”

It’s meant as a joke, but the inflection isn’t right, and sounds altogether flat compared to their usual dialogue.

Beneath it is the faintest thread of another voice, one a little deeper and endlessly world-worn.

 

---

 

When they catch up to their target, it’s at a brothel along the border of Earth and Fire. Kakashi has been to establishments like this on previous assignments, and is no stranger to the violence they breed. But even from outside, the building reeks of blood. There’s no security watching the entry points, no customers entering, and as he slides open the front door, he finds the bodies of young women lying in the hall. His first course of action is to check for a pulse in the one hunched against the panel by the door, but there’s nothing, and she’s already gone cold. The next is the same, their elaborately embroidered outfits stained by the sluggish weeping of their wounds. He takes a breath and steels himself for what comes next.

Tobi enters behind Sukea with the usual bounce to his step. He looks down at the corpses for only a moment, then cups his hands over his mouth, and stage-whispers, “Tobi thinks we found him.” Nudging one of their arms from his path, he strides inside and pokes his head down the hall. There’s no sympathy for the victims lying here, or even a sombre note of their passing.

For the first time in a while, Kakashi understands who it is he’s travelling with. He remembers Tobi from the tunnels, and the disregard of the dozens of victims he strode past on his way to collect his bounty.

Tobi is not a good man. Human life matters little in the face of his goals, no matter his talk of peace.

Sukea follows after his partner. He’s distracted, his mind on Tobi’s back, reconciling what he just witnessed with the friendly, ridiculous man he’s begrudgingly started to like. The more he thinks on it, the more he realizes that Tobi’s like this in all aspects of life: if he’s interested, he cares, and if he’s not, he doesn’t. He’s shown it with food, with his interest in the camera, nature, and their surroundings. Even Sukea, himself. Sometimes, Tobi is hanging off his every word, asking him all the questions under the sun and teasing him as they travel. Then there are other days, when he’s quiet and dismissive, saying only a scant few words when prompted, always in his usual, high-pitched voice, but not always with the same tone.

It nags him.

Tobi pokes his head around the corner and shrieks. He flails, spins on his heel, and ducks behind Sukea, hands on Sukea’s shoulders as he crouches down like a child hiding from the monster in their closet. “He’s so scary!”

Sukea presses his lips together and fishes his chakra blade from its sheath. The missing-nin is an A-rank threat, which would be a non-issue for Kakashi of the Sharingan. But right now, he has the added challenge of fighting in a way he’s not used to, with tools he only briefly trained with and chakra natures he’s less practiced at.

He doesn’t think this battle would be an issue for Tobi, either. Yet here his partner is, cowering behind him.

Sukea looks back at the orange mask of his teammate and smiles. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll protect you with my life.”

Despite the callous truth of Tobi’s character, Kakashi can’t hate him.

There are more bodies in the hall, both of men and women, some uniformed, others half naked. Sukea nudges open the door at the far end, the one Tobi peeked into, and finds an abnormally large man matching the descriptors on the wanted poster as he tosses aside the body of yet another victim. The floor is a bloody mess, and he can hear the crying of several women in one of the connecting rooms. Judging by the weapons on their persons, the dead here are mercenaries who came for his head. He retaliated, they died, and anyone who kicked up a fuss was caught in the crossfire.

What a meaningless waste of life.

The man notices them, and his face twists in disdain. “There are more of you, eh?” He lifts a bottle to his mouth and tips back his head, miserable to find it empty. He tosses it, and it shatters across the floor. “What a waste of time.”

The nice thing about being Sukea is that he has no reason to bury his emotions. He wears his grief openly, and it’s cathartic, almost, how right it feels. Shinobi don’t get this. But right now, he’s not a shinobi, but a mercenary—a member of Akatsuki. And the Akatsuki don’t care how you feel or what your motives are, so long as you work toward their goals.

Sukea is allowed to be upset. He’s allowed to be angry, even when Kakashi isn’t.

He levels his chakra blade and springs forward, launching himself above the kunai thrown at the doorway. They embed in the hallway wall, and Kakashi realizes his teammate never followed him inside. Tobi’s—somewhere. Gone, apparently, away from this mess. Somehow, this bothers him more than Tobi’s dismissal of the dead. He abandoned his own teammate, right at the moment of truth.

Like Kakashi did all those years ago.

The missing-nin swings back at him with a wind-infused fist, and he gasps, the air gone from his lungs as he’s flung at the wall, wood bending beneath his body. He grits his teeth and curses his wandering mind. That shouldn’t have hit. Even Sukea should have been able to dodge such a wide swing.

The target snorts. “Really? You came all this way thinking you could take me, and couldn’t even dodge that ?”

Kakashi licks the beads of blood at his lips and gets up, his back twinging with pain. This isn’t the time. They knew their opponent had a wind affinity from the wanted poster they took, which doesn’t bode well for Sukea. If Tobi were here, his fire would be the perfect fit, but—

It doesn’t matter.

Kakashi dives back in. The missing-nin launches at him and Kakashi hits the floor, skidding between his legs and thrusting out with his chakra blade. The man screams as it bites into the meat of his calf, his knee buckling beneath his weight, and topples like a felled tree. Big guys like him don’t stay down long, so Kakashi drops his blade, brings his hands together, and hits them against the ground. Slabs of mud burst through the floorboards, splintering the wood as they wrap around their target.

Before they enclose him, the man twists onto his back, his hands forming a seal. A concussive force bursts out from his centre, prying the mud slabs away and throwing Kakashi back against the table and into broken shards of glass. He winces as sharp edges poke through the skin of his palms. Something cracks in his crossbody bag.

Ah, he thinks numbly, my camera.

While his opponent is righting himself on his bad leg, Kakashi grabs the chakra rope from the latch on his belt loop and whips it forward. It hits the side of the missing-nin’s knee, and once again, he falls as it wraps around, sucking at his chakra stores faster than he can mould them.

Kakashi releases a breath, watching the man fight with the rope, trying to unravel it despite the sudden weakness in his body. The only safe-to-touch part of the rope is its grip; everything else leeches chakra and won’t stop until there’s nothing remaining. If left alone, it will cause chakra exhaustion, the kind that leaves people in a hospital bed for several weeks at a time.

“Sukea!” cries a voice from the hall, echoing and hollow behind a mask. Hearing it reminds Kakashi of where he is and who he’s meant to portray, and he shifts his weight, trying to stand as Sukea would. No sooner does Tobi come flailing through the main entrance of the room, his arms in the air and a vase from the hall in his hands, as though that would make a suitable weapon against a shinobi-grade threat. “Tobi will save you! Tobi is here now, and—”

Tobi stops, his eye settling on the sight before him, the pallor of the target’s skin and the mess of the room. Great. Now, he’ll make a scene about the fight being over. He’ll maybe hit the missing-nin on the head, act like he helped, and ask a million questions about the chakra rope while Kakashi seals this guy in a scroll.

But Tobi doesn’t do that. He lowers his arms, and the vase slips from his fingers, rolling across the floor. He stands there, ignoring the foul words their target spits like venom, and stares for a long, long time at Sukea.

“Tobi?” Sukea asks, just barely retaining his character’s usual cadence. He runs a hand across his forehead and grimaces at the wet feeling of blood smearing over it. His make-up is waterproof, but he’ll still need to reapply it after getting cleaned up, and that’ll be hard to do with his palms cut up the way they are. Ignoring that, he smiles at his teammate, pushing back the feeling of abandonment that weighed him down during the fight. “There you are. I’m glad you’re safe.”

Something in Tobi shifts. He sways in place, still watching Sukea, uncharacteristically silent, and then finally notes the man panting and exhausted in the middle of the room. With a deep breath, he steps calmly across the floor, over bodies and shards of glass, weapons dropped by would-be assassins when they failed their mission. He raises his hand to the growling, furious beast Kakashi subdued, and tilts his head.

“How dare you?” Tobi says quietly, in a voice not his own.

With a one-handed seal, the man goes up in flames. He screams, writhes, scrambles to get free. But he burns, and burns, and burns, all while Kakashi watches with wide eyes from the floor.

Sukea shakes himself, brings his hands together, and gathers water from the air to douse the blaze. The flames go out, their target charred and smoking, but not dead. He stumbles as his chakra reserves take a hit, and is confused to find Tobi pressed against him, supporting him by the arms.

“Stop it,” Tobi says with a sigh, still in that lower pitch. “You’re bleeding.”

It doesn’t matter. A little blood loss won’t kill him. As the seconds pass, the lightheadedness left from his sudden chakra loss fades, and he steps free of Tobi’s hold, retrieving the human-grade enclosing scroll from his belt loop. Kakashi can use all five elements, but his chakra output is better controlled with some than others. Water and fire tend to be his weakest ones, lucky him.

The elements of his teammates. Of Rin, and of Obito.

“Stop,” Tobi insists, rounding him again and snatching the scroll from his hand. They stare at the blood smeared across the back of it. “Sit down. I’ll do it.”

Sukea relents, slumping against the wall to watch as his partner lays out the scroll. Their target isn’t moving anymore, in too much pain now to put up a fight. All it takes is one short burst of chakra to seal the man within it, his body breaking down into the ink across the scroll, and the chakra chain clattering in a heap where he once lay. Tobi rolls it back up, then stares down at Sukea and nods to the front entrance.

“Let’s go.”

Sukea shakes his head.

Tobi growls, something Kakashi never expected to hear, and snaps, “What now ?”

“The back room,” Sukea says, nodding to the door against the farthest wall from where he leans. “We need to make sure the women hiding there are safe.”

He can practically feel the anger and frustration oozing off Tobi as he stomps across the room, once more stepping over the corpses sprawled about, and kicks open the door.

“It’s safe now,” Tobi says blandly. “Scatter.”

The women inside hesitantly pass him, trembling, and freeze when they see the state of the brothel. But even they must sense Tobi’s killing intent, because they swallow their horror and hurry outside.

Tobi puts his hands on his hips, and despite the blackened eye hole, Kakashi can feel his glare. “There. Are you happy now, you bastard?”

Sukea smiles, his eyes arching as he says, quite honestly, “Yes, Tobi. Thank you.”

 

---

 

Kakashi sits on the grass as his teammate picks free the tiny shards of glass from the gashes in his hand. He embellishes the pain a little, as he doesn’t imagine Sukea to have a high tolerance, and swallows his newfound curiosity.

He can’t stop staring. Tobi’s walls are down, and suddenly, all Kakashi can see is the stranger he met all those months ago in a dark, man-made tunnel.

He dropped the act. Now what?

Tobi clicks his tongue when Sukea winces, carefully prying free a large shard. When the blood starts up again, he compresses it with one of the cloths from the medkit and waits for it to slow. Neither of them know medical ninjutsu, apparently, so they’re doing things the old-fashioned way.

Their eyes meet through the darkness of Tobi’s mask, and Tobi looks away first. It’s strange how different he is after dropping the act; usually, he won’t look away, even after Sukea has. He’ll unabashedly stare for however long he wants.

“Aren’t you supposed to be competent?” Tobi asks. Ouch. What a stab to the gut. “I can’t believe you couldn’t handle that meathead.”

Kakashi wants to roll his eyes, but Sukea would never. “I’m sorry,” he says, staring down at his other hand, already bandaged. “When he started using his wind affinity, I thought you would counter it. But when I looked…”

Tobi’s hand stills.

“I shouldn’t have let that distract me.”

Tobi removes the cloth, and the bleeding has stopped. He fishes around the medkit, disinfects the wound, and meticulously bandages it. It’s only when Sukea’s injuries are covered that there’s another shift in the way he moves.

Suddenly, Sukea’s squeezed between two arms, wrapped in a hug he has no choice but to accept, and Tobi wails.

“Tobi is sorry!” his teammate cries, back to his usual, light voice. “Tobi is so sorry! He got scared and went to hide, but then—but then Sukea was left alone, and Tobi’s a no-good, horrible, terrible, stupid—”

“Hey, hey,” Sukea hushes, very awkwardly returning the hug. It feels—strange. Wrong, a bit. Kakashi hasn’t been hugged since he was a boy, not since his father, and being enclosed like this draws panic from somewhere deep within. Shinobi don’t like touch, least of all ANBU, and to be this close with an enemy—

It should feel worse than it does.

“It’s okay,” he insists. “Everything turned out fine, and we have our bounty now, right?”

Tobi sniffs, pulling back a bit to stare once again at Sukea. It’s… odd. Why is he going back to the act now that he’s shown his true self? Why cling to it like this? But if he asks, if he calls it out, will he even get an answer? “But Sukea’s hurt.”

“Just a few cuts,” he assures, holding up his bandaged hands. “They’ll heal. I just—I wish you didn’t leave like you did. That… yes, that upset me quite a bit.”

Tobi hangs his head, nodding. “Friends don’t abandon friends.”

Friends? Is that what they are now, or is this part of the act? Can Kakashi be friends with a criminal, one who would abandon his teammate?

Kakashi thinks of Obito, who reached out to him even after he turned his back on them. Can he be the type of person Obito was? Can he learn to be?

As Sukea, he smiles, placing his hand on Tobi’s shoulder. “Have my back next time, okay?”

And as Kakashi, he sighs, pulled into another hug as this strange, fake man nods furiously against his shoulder.

For a brief moment, he forgets the mission he’s on, and that this teammate isn’t really his.

Notes:

I enjoyed writing this chapter more than a little.

Thanks for the comments and kudos, I'd love to hear from you, and hope you're having fun!

Til next time!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of OBKK Week 2025