11 Ways

Nine: Punch

The first time his own body
betrayed him (on Sakura’s behalf) Kakashi was aghast.

Ever since she’d come back
from that particular mission he’d been extra cautious around her. It wasn’t her
that he was being careful about, but he’d noticed that while all the questions
about his strange behavior during her absence had stopped, the always-inquisitive
eyes of his ‘friends’ probed even deeper now at the interaction between the
two.

It was only for that reason
that he was forgoing his favorite way of dealing with such circumstances and
avoiding her. So now he was around her only as much as necessary, nothing more.
Not enough to incite speculation, not little enough to arouse suspicion.

Now he was sitting at a
cramped table in the bar, pointedly ignoring Genma’s graphic depictions of his
many conquests and current interests. Not the most scintillating or thought
provoking of topics, but it provided a nice droning background. All he truly
wanted was some peace; when left alone his thoughts had a distracting tendency
to pester him, so the monotonous noise around him allowed him to sink into a
numbing mindlessness.

Until the senbon-chomping
idiot had the audacity to mention her.

It wasn’t much of anything
really, probably the most innocent comment the other had made all night, but it
didn’t matter. Before he had the chance to even notice what he was doing, let
alone respond, his fist had buried itself in his unlucky friend’s jaw and sent
the man flying across the room.

The accompanying din then proceeding
silence was deafening, but when the other patrons saw no fight forthcoming (and
the two who were involved), they quickly turned back to what they had been
doing.

“Shit, Kakashi,” Genma
muttered, slumping back against the wood behind him. He stretched his mouth
until he heard a resounding crack then swiftly pressed his lips and changed to
tenderly stroking the abused jaw. “You just had to tell me.”

“Tell you what?” he replied
drolly, turning back to stare at his drink in denial. He sat there looking for
all the world like a man with nothing more pressing on his mind than when to
buy his next roll of toilet paper instead of a man who’d just punched a fellow
jounin into the wall.

Idly, Kakashi wondered if he
could start a new club; ‘Denial-Lovers Anonymous’ had a nice ring to it. Maybe
they could all move in together, form a commune, and he’d finally be in a safe
environment where no one would bother to question his actions and motives because
he could in turn grill them about theirs.

Going to all the trouble of
making something like that happen would surely have to be easier than
dealing with this…right?