"Would you stop following me?" barked Tenzou at Kakashi, who had been tagging along behind him all afternoon. "It's driving me nuts."
"What, can't a man spend a little quality time with a comrade?" His eye crinkled in his signature Kakashi smile.
"No!" He frowned. "Go away!"
Kakashi rolled his eye as his friend leapt to the roof of the apartment to his right before following, taking a good deal of care not to appear as if he was exerting an effort.
It was a paint-blisteringly hot day in July, so Kakashi couldn't fathom why Tenzou insisted on wearing black. Old habits die hard, I suppose. He was supposed to be watching Tenzou for the Hokage after he had failed a psych test by three points last month. Three points wasn't a lot, but protocol dictated that if a shinobi, chuunin-level or higher, failed any of the routine psychological stability tests, there was to be a period of probation. The probation officer was also required to be at or above the level of the person they were tailing. Kakashi had been in the office at the time, so he had been forcibly recruited. It wasn't very interesting, though, seeing as most veteran shinobi tended not to do much beyond sleeping, eating, or training on their time between missions. Tenzou, codename Yamato, alias Faceplate, was not an exception. Today all he had done was sleep, eat breakfast, and then go for a walk.
As his mind wandered it slowly began to register that they were headed towards the library. Two seconds later he was ducking in through the main entrance after Tenzou, whose gait had changed from annoyed to focused.
VVVVVV
"Tenzou."
"Grah!" Tenzou jumped about six feet in the air and dropped the scrolls he was inspecting, which went flying all over the counter. "Don't do that!"
"You're an ANBU-level jounin, Tenzou-kouhai. I really shouldn't be able to sneak up on you when I'm not trying."
"I was thinking about something else." Tenzou sounded petulant, frowning. He looked like a five-year-old who had been caught eating a cookie before dinner. Kakashi had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing. "And I told you to call me Yamato, sempai. Yamato."
"Yamato, Tenzou, it's all the same to me." He waved a hand dismissively.
Tenzou- Yamato, Kakashi reminded himself- pouted childishly as he unraveled one of the scrolls and began to read it from the left side.
Kakashi leaned over his shoulder, and he hadn't gotten three centimeters into the scroll before his eyebrow shot up so far that it threatened to disappear into his hairline. "How did you get this past security?"
"Secret," Yamato grunted shortly. "Go away, I'm reading."
He took a seat next to the studious man. "You didn't get permission, did you."
"Maybe, maybe not."
He rested his head in his hand. "You know, there's usually a fairly good reason why things are forbidden..."
"I know," Yamato snapped, "but the senary and nonary seals on Kyuubi's chakra look to me like they contain minor errors. It's not much, but I don't know what'll happen, and none of the seal reference books I could find in the non-restricted sections of the library had anything even remotely useful." He paused to write something down on a blank scroll he had fished out of his vest. "And I don't have the direct clearance to get these normally, let alone on probation- dammit!" His brush snapped in two because he was holding it too tightly.
"Why didn't you just ask me, then?"
Yamato looked blank. "What?"
"I could've gotten them for you, easily." Kakashi rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me you didn't think to ask."
Yamato blushed and remained silent.
He sighed. "And anyway, you forgot the third stroke here, which makes it…"
VVVVVV
A/N: Just a random day-in-a-life thing I daydreamed up a couple weeks ago. Just felt like posting something, anything before I signed off tonight.