Author's Note: A few notes here. One that this is a side fic to "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" and if you haven't read a good chunk of that you'll be a bit confused. Second is that this is NOT CANON, for obvious reasons.
If Lee was to pinpoint a moment when her life got flipped turned upside down, well, aside from the glaring obvious moments littered throughout her life, then she'd say it was the morning that she came to terms with her status of the fresh prince of bachelorettes. Or, rather, that inauspicious late Spring morning that her fifteen-year-old apprentice banged on her door looking both haunted and incredibly hungover.
"Obito," he'd been standing there, twice as pale as usual, cup of tea in hand, an overly large and dark pair of sunglasses perched on his nose, and his hair sticking out in even more directions than usual.
Without a word he pushed passed her, into Lee's rather spartan apartment, which had become more or less a place to stash her books and DVDs rather than a home, and made his way to sit on her couch and stare blankly at the wall.
After a year and a half of being Obito's master, Lee thought she'd gotten to know him and his quirks fairly well. Perhaps even more than Minato had, Minato was familiar with Uchiha Obito as he was before the Kannabi Bridge, the boy who came back from that mission months later was an entirely different beast.
Obito, for all his biting self-depricating humor and sharp tongue, was also fond of his pretenses. Not to the point of delusion, sometimes Obito was almost too honest with himself about what he was and what he wanted, but generally there was this thin layer of normalcy about him, as if he was still the young man he could have been had he never fallen into Madara's clutches.
Generally, Obito would rather smile and crack witty jokes than reveal the wealth of his darker emotions, his fear, his rage, and his hatred, festering inside of him.
So, it was a rare day that Lee would actually see him emotionally shaken, and usually, it meant nothing good.
Quietly, Lee sat next to him, producing a cup of tea for herself out of thin air (an always useful and always underappreciated jutsu), and waited for him to speak first. He didn't however, even as he rubbed his scarred hand through thick dark hair then over his face in weariness, wincing at even the dim lighting of her apartment.
He still smelled like a ghastly amount of sake.
Lee thought of the date, still May, not June yet, so not the anniversary of the Kannabi Bridge or even the death of his grandmother while he'd been left to Madara's tender mercies. Approaching it though, slowly but steadily, just as they had slowly but steadily approached it the year before.
Finally, when it appeared he wasn't going to say anything, Lee started in, "Rin?"
Nohara Rin, for as long as Lee had truly known Obito and even before then, had been a tender spot for him. Almost, well, not quite the same thing as herself and Minato, but approaching it, perhaps tangential to it.
He barked out a laugh then winced and rubbed his temples at his own noise, carefully, with only the slightest movement he shook his head and muttered, "No, not hardly."
"Inconveniently timed flashbacks?"
Again, his lips quirked, that bitter amused smile that he liked to wear, "Please, shishou, I got over those years ago."
He hadn't, on missions he was now an alarmingly light sleeper and tended to get clingy in dark, enclosed, spaces. The nightmares seemed to have more or less faded on his end, but getting over it was something of an exaggeration. Lee would have said, instead, that Obito simply lived with it.
He sighed then, took off his sunglasses, squinting in the lighting and then, oddly enough, flushing, "I… got drunk last night and fucked by Kakashi."
Lee spit out her tea.
Obito just laughed, shaking his head, "At least, I think I was the fuckee rather than the fucker, the details got a little… fuzzy in the middle, but I certainly feel sore enough if you know what I mean."
"Holy shit," Lee exclaimed, not really sure what to say to this, all she could do was stare at Obito who looked somewhat as baffled as he should but, well, perhaps not nearly as much as he should.
Obito spared her a dry and unamused glance, "Shishou, no offense, but you're not the one who woke up hungover this morning naked in Hatake Kakashi's bed."
Lee felt as if her mouth was too dry, without another word she gulped tea, swiftly before Obito could drop any other alarming bombshells on her. After her cup was drained and slammed on her coffee table she tried to consider it.
Well, first tried to think of Uchiha Obito and Hatake Kakashi objectively, rather than as cute little apprentice and adopted little brother respectively. She'd… Always vaguely wondered if Kakashi hadn't had something for Obito. Granted, similar to her own relationship with Minato, it could simply have been eerily close platonic friendship. Certainly, Obito himself had never been entirely sure, especially when Kakashi had picked up the habit of obsessively reading Jiraiya's erotic novels.
Except clearly not, because here at the first opportunity Kakashi the love machine was banging her apprentice and leaving him to retreat in shame and alarm to the refuge of Lee's apartment.
And Lee actually had no idea how to get around to asking, well, anything important. Because there was a cesspool of unsaid drama hanging in Obito's blunt, and simple, confession.
Finally, lamely, she asked, "Well… Aside from hungover, how are you?"
"Considering the circumstances, I think I'm doing marvelously," Obito wryly responded, and even though his lips were quirked upwards at the corner his mismatched eyes were practically burning holes into her drywall.
"Obito, the circumstances are you having drunk sex with Kakashi," Lee dutifully reminded him, which judging by his look, was unnecessary and unappreciated.
She paused, swallowed, and finally, softly asked the question he'd no doubt come to her for, "And Rin?"
He shook his head, still smiling that bitter, lost smile, "I don't know."
He sighed, leaned back on her couch and stared at the ceiling, his eyes moving past this small apartment and into his own past as well as the future, "I… So much of my life has been centered on Rin but I… I was drunk, perhaps not in a great state of mind, but I didn't mind it. In fact, I may have just liked it entirely too much. And Rin… When has Rin ever really seen me?"
Lee couldn't answer that, Nohara Rin was the one student of Minato's that she had little to no familiarity with. Lee mostly knew of her, through Kakashi and through Obito himself, but to Obito she had always seemed like this burning idol and idea rather than a human being. For all of Lee's own terrifying respect and perhaps worship of Namikaze Minato, he had been more real to her than Nohara Rin had seemed to be to Uchiha Obito.
"I remembered that it was Kakashi who went to you to get me out of the cave," Obito said quietly, "It was always Kakashi from the very beginning and he's… God he's so much like you it's painful sometimes, but he sees so much in me that even I can't see, far beyond the scars. Even back then when I was shouting about being hokage, he saw something that I could never…"
He sighed, leaned forward again and stared Lee in the eye, a plaintive and lost expression on his scarred and mismatched face, "Shishou, what do I do?"
And it was then, opening her mouth, realizing she was about to tell Obito to go for it if only because she knew from personal experience that Nohara Rin simply never would, that Lee realized the nature of her own life.
Here she was, twenty-five years old, not old by any means and immortal on top of that, and certainly her friendship with Minato hadn't waned but all the same she was in this small apartment, when Obito, who in many ways was a reflection of herself, had managed to find someone in the least expected place ten years younger than she herself was…
She forced herself to smile softly, to put a hand on Obito's shoulders and pretend that Lee was anything but Lee, "Go get him, but try to stay sober this time."
Obito laughed, louder than before, wincing even as he did so but he laughed all the same, and for the moment, Lee laughed with him.
It wasn't until he left her apartment, where she stared blankly at the black screen of her television, that her smile slipped.
Later that day saw Lee loitering downtown against some innocuous civilian building, small but very noticeable amounts of killing intent rolling off her as she considered her current state of affairs. Grimacing, she noted to the empty bubble of space surrounding her, "I'm not lonely."
She crossed her arms, reaffirmed her statement with a confidence that she wasn't quite feeling, "Sure, Minato and Kushina are married now with one kid born and another on the way. Sure, my apprentice and little brother in all but blood have managed to find each other in perhaps an almost sickeningly sweet if bizarre romance based on alcohol and poor decisions. Sure, I'm more or less stuck inside the village, Obito will be a jonin soon, and I'll have basically nothing to do. But even so I'm not…"
Lee sighed, glanced around, and noted that as usual the civilians were all giving her wide berth again. Not necessarily as much space as they gave Kushina on any given day, what with the giant fox in her stomach waiting to break free at any moment, but certainly more than they ever gave Minato despite his equally S-ranked status.
"Lee, what in god's name are you doing?"
And there, standing across from her, looking bemused and exasperated all at once, was none other than the nidaime hokage, Senju Tobirama.
With a pale raised eyebrow, taking in her killing intent and the flyaway curls falling out of her braid, he asked, "Were you just talking to yourself?"
"…No," Lee answered, face blank, unfortunately the nidaime had never been the type to buy that sort of thing.
Instead he just stared at her, entirely too judgemental, and the only one in the civilian part of town willing to step within ten feet of her. Then, looking at him looking at her, taking in his crossed arms, cold and cutting red eyes, white hair grown out a tad longer than usual, she realized something.
"You… never got married," Lee said slowly, earning a single raised eyebrow.
"And?" he asked.
But Lee stepped forward, continuing, as she was putting together the pieces she'd never put together before, "You never got married, even after your brother did and then your brother died, and no one's ever said you had a lover…"
Granted, there were the stray rumors that Senju Tobirama had been a closeted homosexual, had perhaps had an affair on the sly Uchiha Kagami, one of the jonin he'd been reputedly closer to when he was among the living the first time around but… Lee had never really bought those, and no one close to Senju Tobirama had either, the man had simply just not had anyone in his life.
"Lee, is there a reason we're gossiping about my love life in the middle of the street?" the man asked, somewhat irritated and insulted, but not truly, likely because he'd been hearing about his lackluster love life for most of his adult life.
Stepping forward, grinning a little too forcefully, she asked, "Say, Tobirama, do you have time to get a drink?"
"It's just… it's never really hit me like this, you know?" Lee slurred, throwing back yet another shot of sake at a time far too early in the day, while the nidaime watched in what either was amusement or growing alarm.
They were early in the day to be drinking, only the chronic desperate alcoholics and ANBU veterans were loitering in the bar at this time of day, as it was Lee and Tobirama were sticking out like sore thumbs.
It seemed to make Tobirama slightly uncomfortable, especially as he had decided to not drink anything at all and was now the only desperately sober man in the room, but he hadn't walked away either and for that Lee was perhaps entirely too grateful. Although, somewhat curious as well, because she had honestly expected Senju Tobirama to make his escape long ago.
"I mean, Obito's probably too young for this shit, but just… Him getting action, in any capacity, made me realize that… Well, I'm not," she motioned to herself, to the hot mess sure currently was with a drunken laugh, "And I didn't think I minded but… Kill me, I mind."
For a moment, she thought he might comment on the whole Kakashi and Obito situation, he certainly knew Obito well enough by this point to make some remark, but he seemed to change his mind halfway through and asked instead, "And I am here because?"
Lee snorted and motioned to him, "Please, Tobi, you're king of the bachelors why… You're the fresh prince of bachelors!"
"The fresh prince of bachelors?" he asked, slightly dubious as ever of both the very idea and the wording of it, but Lee dismissed him with a drunken wave of her hand.
"The freshest, nidaime," she then sighed, swilling her drink with a soft nostalgic smile as she noted, "And it's not necessarily that I want Minato instead, I'm happy for him, I've always been happy for him. But I…"
She trailed off, glanced over at the rest of the bar then back to Tobirama, blinking at him, then blurting, "Why are you still here?"
"What?" he asked, but Lee was having none of that.
"You're still here, listening to me rant about my lack of love-life, and I'm drunk as hell and it's only noon," Lee said, feeling the room spin slightly as she said that even.
"It's three," Tobirama corrected with an ever so slight smile.
"Shit, time flies," Lee said before shaking her head, pitching forward so she was almost falling on top of Tobirama over the table, "But you're still here, wasting away in Margaritaville, and you're not even drunk!"
"I have no desire to be drunk," he said, and this was probably more than true, even in his darkest moments she doubted Senju Tobirama was the type to get wasted. No, he was a harder sort than that, after Senju Hashirama's death she imagined that he had shut down in a way, put his blood, sweat, tears, and grief into the foundation of the village instead.
"I know, so why are you here?!" Lee asked, motioning around them.
"Did it ever occur to you, Lee, that perhaps I was here because you had decided it was a brilliant idea to get drunk halfway through the day?" he asked, giving her a rather pointed look, "You, of all people, know how dangerous that is."
"Please, danger is my middle name," Lee snorted, pouring herself another glass and throwing it back.
"Your middle name is Lily."
"I live on the wild side, in the danger zone," Lee said, grinning across at him, and oddly enough he did smile back as if despite all his grousing he really was content to be here with her and watch her drink.
She tried to straighten, wobbling slightly and supporting herself on the table, then pointing to him said, "Minato must have you doing almost as little as I am."
She knew her missions, particularly her non-English missions, had been cut back since the war. Lee was terrifying as any kage but without the hat, as a result, Minato had to be a bit careful about where he sent her and Obito and why. These days anything of real import was done in England or else small short things within the Land of Fire.
It likely was the same for the shodaime and nidaime hokages as well as Uzumaki Kushina.
He laughed though, an amused rather wry thing, and then said, "Well, I have to admit, sometimes retirement does vex me. All the same, even I'm not at the point where I'd take up babysitting drunkards as a hobby."
Lee just looked at him, waiting to realize exactly where he was and what he was doing, but he just stared straight back as if he was somehow fully aware of where exactly he was and what he was doing and that this somehow didn't count as babysitting drunkards.
"If you must know, I had no desire to get married," Tobirama said, "Marriages were arranged when I was a young man, that my father or Hashirama didn't arrange one for me to bind us to a clan is unusual. I was always too busy to think about it, and if I did think about it, then there was never anyone who hit the criteria."
"What, you have some sort of checklist?" Lee couldn't help but ask as she slumped forward again.
"Don't you?" he asked in turn.
She thought about it, tilting her head, then finally said, "Not really, honestly, I mean… It's not really something I spend time thinking about."
Maybe Minato, but early in Kushina had drawn his attention, and even then it hadn't really been like that. So long as he was in her life, and even then, Minato was… Lee would gladly set aside many things for his sake, and she was fine with that, had contented herself with that reality.
"Well, it wasn't something I spent time thinking about either," Tobirama said with the slightest of shrugs.
"Oh, come on, wasn't there that whole you and Uchiha Kagami thing?" Lee asked, motioning towards him, and he just gave her a look.
"That rumor, about Kagami being my jilted homosexual lover, came about because of Uchiha bitterness and a petty attempt to slander my reputation," he said wryly, never one to spare his thoughts or feelings for the Uchiha clan or their own hatred for him even years after his death and resurrection, "Besides, Kagami was entirely too young even if I had been interested."
That probably was true, if Lee thought about it, she didn't exactly know the age difference between the two of them but it probably hadn't been anything to sneeze at. Which was why Lee herself had never really bought into it, along with the fact that Tobirama had brought up Madara more often than he'd brought up Kagami. And if anyone had thought there had been a love affair or one-sided yearning with Madara… Well… They had only to look in Tobirama's eyes when he spoke his name to know how false of an idea that one was.
Lee then sighed, slapped down a few bills and made to stand, only to pitch forward and be caught by Tobirama, "Lord, you are drunk."
Lee wheezed, the world blurring ever so slightly, even as she tried to right herself and note, "I am… mildly intoxicated."
She tried to step forward but failed completely, tilting to the side and being forced to lean on Tobirama as he moved an arm under hers, walking her towards the door.
"You are not going back to that box you call an apartment tonight," Tobirama insisted in that tone of voice that was not to be questioned.
"What?" Lee asked, "No, where else am I supposed to go?"
"I'd say your old master's compound, but I imagine his son and your apprentice might be busy," Tobirama said, to which Lee flushed but couldn't exactly shake her own supsicions either, Obito could get… Motivated when he wanted to, and it seemed as if Kakashi had been patiently waiting for near six years now.
"Oh, let's not do that, that sounds depressing and terrible," Lee whined out in a slurred tone, slumping further against Tobirama, who oddly enough she was noting smelled like some sort of clean plant, or else one of the more pleasant air fresheners.
"I could take you to the hokage compound," Tobirama continued.
"And get lectured by Minato?" Lee asked, well, Minato didn't usually lecture but he would frown in disapproval, "No thanks."
"Perhaps you deserve to be lectured," Tobirama said thinly even as they walked through the streets with far too much confidence in direction given that they were still supposed to be deciding where the hell they were going.
"Perhaps I've had a very rough day filled with terrible epiphanies," Lee countered.
"Then it seems you have no choice but to go back to the Senju compound with me," Tobirama said, but again, given how they'd been walking in that direction the whole time, Lee couldn't help but wonder if that had been his plan from the start.
She decided to ask as much, "Was that your plan all along?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he was smiling, no smirking, that smug look that was entirely too pleased with himself.
"I am drunk and vulnerable, sir," Lee said, poking him in the chest, then glaring she added, "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me, aren't you?"
"If I'm not babysitting drunks, Lee, then I'm hardly the man to go about seducing them. It'd be embarrassing to us both."
"And yet," Lee remarked, eyes narrowed and suspicious and unwavering as she glared up at him, "We are now staggering, slowly but surely, back to your compound. I'm onto you and your game."
Tobirama spared her another set of raised eyebrows, reminding her slowly as they passed through the village, "Wasn't it you who pointed out my distinct lack of game?"
"You think you're clever," Lee said, "And you are, you're probably the smartest person I know, but I'm onto you and your… seductive shenanigans."
"My seductive shenanigans?"
"You smell like high-end air freshener," Lee accused, moving her fingers from her eyes to his in the 'watching your ass' motion, but Senju Tobirama seemed distinctly unimpressed and mildly insulted by this.
"You do realize, that somehow, you are outdoing even the ridiculousness of my brother," Tobirama said, as if Hashirama was by himself a very high bar that one did not step over lightly.
"I'm not outdoing anybody or anything, that's the point I am…" Lee trailed off, trying to think of how best to put it, but all words escaping her in her drunken miserable state.
Tobirama finished for her, "A truly ridiculous woman."
"No, that's not it," Lee said shaking her head, that wasn't nearly insulting enough to be what she'd had in mind, though it was a very Tobirama thing to call her.
He just ignored her, dragging her along through the streets and up the slight hill to where the Senju compound rested, isolated from the rest of the village, "An entirely too ridiculous woman who had once been a ridiculous little girl, and who, lovers or not, I'm sure will continue to casually flip the world on its head at her own leisure."
"You say that like it's a good thing," Lee said rather derisively, knowing that Tobirama hadn't always been her greatest fan. Granted, he'd never disliked her, or she never got the feeling that he did. But certainly, in her genin and even chunin days she'd driven him mercilessly up the wall.
"It's the best thing there is," and looking down at her, his eyes softer than usual, he really seemed to mean it.
Lee, even drunk and miserable, couldn't help but be slightly taken aback by it.
Why had she chosen Tobirama to be her partner in misery, she wondered? Was it really that he too had been a perpetual bachelor? Was it that he'd shown up with convenient timing, in a place where Minato couldn't or wouldn't understand? Or was it something else entirely that she herself had simply never considered…
As Obito, undoubtedly, had never truly considered Kakashi.
They approached the doorstep, and with each step Lee could feel sobriety seeping into her along with a strange determination and a sense that the world, somehow, had righted itself onto its usual tilted axis.
There, on the step as Tobirama opened the door she turned his head towards her, and as he blinked down at her she moved upwards and forward and brushed her lips against his. Then, moving back down and back as he stared at her with wide red eyes, she said, "You know, Tobi, I think I like your seductive shenanigans after all."
And like everything, Lee wasn't sure if this milestone in her life as she stepped into the compound, watching as Senju Tobirama closed the gate behind him, was made of poor decisions, good decisions, or something in between.
It was certainly made of something though.
(Still, this did not stop Lee from meeting up with Obito the next morning, both of them hungover and looking as if they'd had an interesting night in the sheets, drinking coffee at a local civilian coffeeshop, and Lee announcing, "Obito, we're both filthy drunk whores."
Obito, needless to say, didn't even try to refute her.)
Author's Note: Written for the 500th review of "Finishing the Hat" by who asked for a Tobirama/Lee fic in the original "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" universe. So here we are, with many questionable decisions taking place by more than one character.
Thanks for reading, reviews are appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Naruto