Scar Tissue

Chapter Ten

Kakashi paused at the edge of the outdoor patio, hearing Anko's laugh. For the last few weeks, it seemed that wherever Anko was, Obito was. He thought about the book he'd planned on reading over lunch, then thought about the stumbling block he'd hit in his new jutsu.

He was pretty sure that, given the right triggers, he could open dimensional portals with the Sharingan. 'Pretty sure' was, however, giving him a monster of a headache. He'd been working himself up to talking with Obito about it, and simply hadn't gotten that far yet. Obito might not even know. He'd been young when he'd been taken, and the Sharingan had only activated for him during that last fight.

But he'd also lived with Sharingan users, which was more than Kakashi could lay claim to. The Copy Ninja edged around a table, catching sight of a small group sitting in the sun. Obito leaned against the railing, the only shinobi there comfortable enough to have his back to the street. Kakashi suspected it had to do with being less aware of how much danger he put himself it, but wouldn't have said so. Civilians did it daily; ninja were just paranoid.

Obito looked good, Kakashi couldn't help but notice. A cane hung over the rail next to him, swaying slightly in the breeze. It was black, Kakashi saw with a wry smile, with red veins running through it. The twisted leg was still obviously weaker than the other leg, but it was no longer warped out of shape. Chakra patterns were raw and sluggish, but flowing in a way closer to normal and no longer an angry red. The scars were still there, would always be there, snarling across his face. He wore long pants and sleeves, covering his arms and legs. His right hand was still twisted, but the fingers--those ones he still had--were usable. Silver streaked his black hair, shiny and healthy in the sunlight. He'd pulled it back into a ponytail at the base of his neck, tied it off with his old hitai-ate--or rather, *a* hitai-ate, as his was gone. He'd gained weight and muscle, too, bones no longer lifting from his flesh like those on a half desiccated corpse.

He was still short, slender, with the delicate Uchiha bone structure and the fair skin. None of that would change.

As Kakashi watched, Anko laughed at something another ninja said and stood, stooping to brush a kiss over Obito's obligingly upturned face. Obito smiled, watching her leave, and caught sight of Kakashi. The smile dimmed slightly, but didn't vanish. Kakashi took it as an invitation, and made his way carefully through the crowded patio.

He paused at the little wooden table, glancing over at the other ninja and inclining his head slightly when he recognized Izumo.

"Kakashi-san," Izumo said, heaving a sigh and gathering up his plate. "Obito-kun, I have to run."

Obito scowled mightily at the suffix, and Izumo just grinned. "I'll be by later," the younger ninja said, and headed off.

Kakashi stood for a long moment, hesitating.

"It really hurts my neck to look up at you like that," Obito said finally, the scowl remaining. "Would you sit down if you're going to?"

Kakashi sat. "I hear the bar is doing well," he said at last, unsure what else to say.

Obito snorted and leaned back. "Haven't seen you in since the opening."

Kakashi lifted one shoulder in an absent shrug. "I figured you'd rather not see me." How Obito felt about him was fairly clear, he thought.

Obito shifted in his seat, discomfort written plainly on his too-pretty face. Kakashi stopped himself, blinking. Too-pretty? He looked down at his plate. The Uchiha were pretty, sure, and scars didn't bother most ninja, but . . . Maybe he'd been reading too much Icha Icha lately.

"Did you want something?" Obito asked finally, ignoring, Kakashi noticed, whether or not he wanted the Copy Ninja around.

Suddenly, Kakashi wasn't sure how to broach the subject. Somehow coming right out and asking about the Sharingan seemed . . . harsh.

"*What*, Kakashi?" Obito snapped.

"Nothing," Kakashi said, taking his plate and standing. "Have a good afternoon." He smiled brightly and left, leaving Obito looking even more annoyed. He'd just have to find a different way to figure it out.

**

"You really need to lighten up on him." Anko lowered herself to the window seat in Obito's bedroom, a sheet wrapped under her arms.

A month before Obito would have snarled at the concept. Now he just frowned slightly. "I don't know that I want to be friends with him," he said at last, glancing around to locate his cane. He didn't actually want it--just wanted to know where it was.

Anko looked at him, a smile in her black eyes. "'Bito, he's all you have left of your past. Seems to me silly to throw it away over a single mistake."

Obito's eyebrows rose. "A mistake that left me imprisoned for almost seventeen years? Yeah, silly."

Anko stood, padding silently across the room, the sheet hushing across the floor. She stooped, bending to kiss his forehead, then took his chin in a callused hand and tipped his head up. "He didn't know," she said quietly. Her fingers slid free as she picked up her clothes, dropping the sheet and shrugging into them. "I have a mission," she said, digging her hitai-ate out of the plant. "Do me a favor, and talk to him while I'm gone? Just one conversation. That's all I ask."

Obito scowled down at his hands, at his missing ring finger. When he felt Anko looking at him he shrugged, nodding. "Yeah, fine," he mumbled at last.

Anko sighed. "Stay well," she said at last, and slipped quietly out the door.

**

Kakashi opened his apartment door with some surprise to find Obito there, cane in one hand, bottle of sake in the other.

"You have to live on the fifth damn floor?" Obito snapped, black eye flashing. "Gods. Here." He shoved the bottle at Kakashi, who took it automatically and stepped back. Obito walked in, stride almost normal with the help of the cane.

"What's this for?" Kakashi asked, bewildered.

Obito glanced at the bottle. "For drinking," he said. The 'you moron' was unspoken but distinct.

"I meant, what are you doing here?" Kakashi clarified dryly, closing the door as Obito slipped off sandals.

"I promised Anko I'd have a conversation with you. She gets back tomorrow, and I'd like to get laid some time this week, so I figured I'd better get over here."

Kakashi blinked at Obito for a moment. Then he started to laugh. "Alcohol might ease the blow, hm?" he said, wandering toward his tiny kitchen.

"Something like that," Obito agreed.

Kakashi got two sake cups from a cupboard, then grabbed a canister of edamame as well and poured some into a little bowl. When he walked back into the living room Obito had made himself comfortable on the couch, black and red cane twirling between the fingers of his good hand. "So . . ." Obito began slowly. "Anko says you've changed. That after I went missing, you got that stick out of your ass."

Kakashi managed to keep the annoyance out of his voice. "That's one way to put it, I suppose," he said blandly. He set down the bowl and the two cups, opening the sake bottle and pouring some in. He, for one, needed a drink.

**

"And so Rin says to him, 'Well, old man, maybe I can borrow yours,'" Kakashi finished, already laughing.

Obito's glassy eye widened dramatically. "She didn't!"

Kakashi just nodded, mismatched gaze hidden behind a smile so big it squeezed the rest of his features smaller.

"Oh, man! I wish she were still alive," Obito sighed wistfully, looking down into his empty sake glass. He tipped forward, sloshed more in, and leaned back again.

"Me, too," Kakashi murmured softly, his smile faded but still present. He sipped, staring at his drink.

"Did you two ever . . .?" Obito let the sentence hang, waiting.

Kakashi blinked with exaggerated care. "No. No, after you died--" he flinched, glanced at Obito--who was really too drunk to mind the slip--and said, "after you went missing, things changed between us. She didn't like me like that anymore."

"Bummer."

Kakashi chuckled. "Yeah. Bummer."

"She was hot." Obito sighed, remembering long legs and a just-budding chest. "I used to spend hours trying to get the Sharingan to work so I could see through her bedroom wall . . ." The room was silent, and the weight of it finally pulled Obito's head around to Kakashi's semi-steady gaze. "What?"

"You can do that?"

Obito snorted. It rocked his whole alcohol-loosened frame. "Sure! Just focus on the energy, and then think about fleshing it out . . ." His vision turned red and gray and spiraled outward, and he struggled for a moment to return it to normal before deciding he didn't care.

"Okay . . ." Kakashi said slowly, squinting.

"You see the energy?" Obito asked, scrunching up his whole face to try and peer through the wall.

"Yes . . ."

"Then you look for the more subtle tendrils that flow out through the body . . ."

"I see them . . ."

Obito blinked. "You do?"

"Sure. There," Kakashi said, and pointed.

Obito squinted. "Damn! I never got that far." Kakashi started to laugh and Obito jumped, head jerking around. "It's not funny!"

Kakashi pointed a slim finger, still cracking up. "Dead. Last."

Obito punched him right in his convulsing ribs. When Kakashi just curled around them and kept laughing, he punched the well-muscled shoulder.

"How can you be one of the genius Uchiha?" Kakashi said, almost snorting in his glee.

"Oh, that's it," Obito muttered, and grabbed up his cane to beat Kakashi around the head and shoulders. Other than covering his skull with his arms, Kakashi didn't bother blocking--he was still too busy snortling. Obito got three good whacks in before a hand shot up, strong fingers wrapped around the cool stone and yanking it out of his grip.

Kakashi stood, sauntering across the room with the cane in tow, pausing to pose while leaning against it. "How do I look?"

"Like a moron," Obito laughed. He slouched back against the couch, leaving his bad leg stretched out before him, tucking the other under his opposite knee. His eye drooped, lazy and drunk, pleased to realize that Kakashi was staying carefully in his limited field of vision.

"I look *sophisticated*," Kakashi corrected, swinging around to pose again.

Obito chuckled, gaze sweeping to the floor and then back up, traveling the length of Kakashi's body. Long, slim, thigh muscles just brushing against the soft black of his pants, hinting at strength. A slender waist broadening up into a narrow chest, sleek muscle under pale skin lending a hint of softness to an otherwise spare frame. Soft, like steel under velvet was soft. Soft in a dangerous, deadly way.

Obito swallowed, looked the rest of the way up the tall, loosely canted body, to the pale face with the faint triangular tan line around a single dark eye. "I suppose," Obito said, trying not to visually trace the sharp jaw line and pointed chin, "that you could pass for sophisticated. If everyone was *blind.*"

Kakashi barked a laugh, stillness spilling out of him as he broke the pose and sauntered closer, twirling the cane once before laying it within Obito's reach. For a moment, Obito thought he could practically *feel* Kakashi, not just the easily controlled power of him, but his very body heat. Then the moment was gone, and when he swung his gaze around to find Kakashi, the man was headed toward the kitchen. He clipped himself on the wall, staggering off, ruining the graceful effect.

Obito laughed. "You're drunk."

Kakashi lifted a single hand in acknowledgement. "Did you use your great powers of bartending to figure that out?" he called, returning with another bottle of sake.

Obito watched the alcohol greedily, leaning down to rub at his thigh with the heel of his hand. He didn't drink much, really. He had no alcohol tolerance. When he drank his chakra control frayed and he regretted it the next day when even limping around on his cane was almost too much. The pain was already starting, creeping through the drunken haze, but right now--inebriated past the point of sense--he didn't care.

Kakashi poured two more cups of sake, handed Obito one, and flopped bonelessly onto the couch without spilling his.

Obito sat back and sipped sake. All in all, this trip wasn't turning out as bad as he'd expected.

**

Kakashi was pleasantly buzzed, enough to let himself seem drunker if only to amuse Obito. Obito, who was, in fact, hammered. His single eye was glassy, his smile sloppy and relaxed. More like the child-Obito Kakashi had known.

It pulled at his soul, tugged at memories of easier times, if not happier ones. It reminded him of the man he'd imagined all these years--the man he'd spoken to in hallucinations and dreams, who may or may not have been the real thing. The Sharingan was tricky, and Obito had spoken once of Kakashi waking up and Obito being back in his cell . . .

But none of that was anything he wanted to think about. He was just glad to have Obito back, smiling and slightly bitchy, ready to pummel him whether or not he actually could. It felt like something that had been missing had finally returned.

They sat in alcohol-steeped silence, the sound of skin rubbing against cloth smooth and rhythmic. "Does your leg hurt?" Kakashi asked finally, when it became clear Obito wasn't going to stop the mini-massage any time soon.

"It *always* hurts," Obito mumbled. "But it's better than it was."

Kakashi hesitated, then slipped off the couch, landing with a thud on one knee. "Stop moving," he muttered, then waited for Obito to go still and felt the weight of a one-eyed gaze on his head. He took a deep breath, summoning and shaping chakra, pouring it soothingly slow into Obito's pathways just like he'd done before, when Obito had been sleeping on his couch.

Obito relaxed quietly, his breath coming out in a deep sigh after several minutes. He smelled like spice and something medicinal, not altogether an unpleasant mix. Muscles shifted under Kakahsi's hand, legs no longer skin and bones but padded by a reassuring layer of developing sinew. It wasn't the same dense bulk as most ninja had, but it was something. It was a start.

"Better?" Kakashi asked, already knowing the answer.

"Much," Obito nearly groaned, his head resting on the back of the couch, exposing the pale column of his throat. His shirt hung loose, collarbones peeking out, visible but not hollowed. His skin was soft, almost transparent, blue veins pulsing with life. Black hair tickled his shoulders, streaked with silver from the scars, his face itself relaxed, his eye closed. Delicate bone structure was only emphasized by the eyepatch, strands of hair nearly hiding the straps. He'd cut shorter bits in the front, at some point, Kakashi noticed. It slid into his face, silky, softening the scars and blending the missing eye.

His eye opened, pupil dilated. "What?" he asked, smiling self-consciously.

He didn't know he was pretty. Kakashi smiled, shook his head wryly. "Nothing." He needed to move away, before the scent of Obito curled any warmer into his lungs. Instead he shifted his hands down Obito's leg, rubbing knots out of a wiry calf muscle.

"Hey," Obito said suddenly, looking down and grinning. "Remember the time Rin wanted to see an operation, and the Fourth snuck us into the one for Ibiki?"

"Worst day of my life," Kakashi groaned, reliving the four hours spent just standing there.

"And Sensei told us that the jutsu wouldn't hold if we moved," Obito laughed.

"He was such a liar," Kakashi muttered, smiling.

"But we didn't know that."

"*I* did," Kakashi corrected.

"Then why didn't you say something?" Obito challenged.

"I didn't want to ruin it for Rin."

"Liar," the Uchiha laughed.

Kakashi glanced up into a smiling face, feeling himself respond with a grin of his own. Warmth curled in his belly, filling an ache he hadn't been aware of. "Well," he said finally. "I was pretty sure."

Obito chortled, rocking back on the couch and sitting up again. "See, 'Kashi, no one knows you like *I* do," he gloated.

Kakashi lifted a single eyebrow at the nickname, but didn't bother objecting to it. Actually, he wasn't sure he hated it. It was just . . . no one ever had.

"I mean, other people saw you grow up--but I bet you didn't let 'em in," Obito said, watching his hand drift through the air past his eye. "Me, though, you can't fool me." He looked at Kakashi, tapped his own temple, and said, "I knew you back then, *and* I have a Sharingan."

Kakashi smiled softly. "You are more right than you realize," he said quietly.

Obito nodded, pleased with himself. "Damn right." He sighed happily. "Remember that time you tossed all my notes into the river? You were such an ass, even if people say you aren't one now."

Kakashi chuckled. Obito sure had a way with compliments. "I didn't do that," he said absently.

"Yes, you did! I remember!" Obito's head snapped up and he glared with his single eye.

"Nope. That was Rin." He kept massaging, muscles going to putty in his hands. He slid his hands down farther to Obito's foot, feeling skin warm and smooth beneath his fingers.

"It was not! You told me I should have memorized my notes, so to test me you threw them out there!"

Kakashi smiled. He remembered that. "Rin knocked them off the bridge, and she was embarrassed. Then you showed up and assumed it was me, so I just went along with it." He could feel Obito staring at him.

"Okay," the Uchiha said finally. "Maybe you're not a *total* dick."

"Oh, I was a total dick to you," Kakashi agreed cheerfully. "But I grew out of it."

Obito snorted, put his foot in Kakashi's chest, and shoved. "You wish."

Kakashi let himself fall back, then climbed up onto the couch beside Obito, grinning. "Have I done anything dick-like tonight?"

Obito looked suspicious. "The night's young."

"No, it's not," Kakashi laughed.

"Huh. Give me my cane," Obito demanded imperiously. "I need to go take a leak."

**

Mostly, he'd needed to get away from Kakashi and get his skin to stop tingling. It was the alcohol, he was sure. And maybe the chakra. Or the foot massage.

He finished pissing and washed his hands, leaning against the counter for balance before picking up his cane and opening the door, hobbling out. The floor wouldn't stop moving. If he'd had two functional legs, that wouldn't have been a problem . . . but he didn't. He leaned against the wall for a moment, waiting for the wobbling to stop. When it continued, he gave up. "Kashi!" Pride was easier to swallow with a bottle of sake, apparently.

Kakashi appeared in the doorway, long and sleek and a little sleepy looking. "Trouble finding the bathroom?"

Obito scowled darkly. "Trouble walking," he muttered unhappily, muscles tensing with embarrassment.

"That happens when you drink too much," Kakashi pointed out cheerfully, and came down the hall to wrap an arm around Obito's ribs, tugging him upright. "Maybe it's time for bed."

"I'm not sleeping with you!" Obito declared. "You have pointy elbows!"

"And you steal the sheets. Too bad," Kakashi shot back, steering them toward the bedroom.

Obito fell silent, stumbling along, trying to pretend like Kakashi was just helping, rather than carrying him. "You're too damn tall," he muttered, telling himself he was only so aware of Kakashi because of the man's height. It had nothing to do with the way he smelled, like dog and sage and, right now, alcohol. It certainly had nothing to do with the fall of silver hair in his eyes, or the sleek muscles Obito was pressed up against. No, no, no.

"I'll lop off a few inches in the morning," Kakashi promised, and let Obito drop to the bed. "Do you want some water? Stave off a hangover?"

Obito shook his head, not wanting anything from Kakashi. He didn't want to like the man. Tolerating was one thing. But something kept drawing his gaze over, and he didn't like it. It was easier to hate Kakashi, even if they were the only links to each others' past, now.

"All right," Kakashi said, rubbing a hand over his face. "Then make yourself at home. Again."

"Fucker," Obito muttered, but there was no heat behind it. He'd had too much to drink, and sleep claimed him swiftly.

****