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We are all mortal until the first kiss.
"It was metal," Hiwa says.
She tries to rub the dirt out of her yukata with a warm cloth and soapy water, but the thing's ruined. There are two circles of green and brown, grass and mud stains, where her knees are, and her sleeves are caked in mud.
She should have been more careful. The thing grew on her, by the end of the night.
"And you think that that was the entrance?" he asks.
"Or somewhere close to it," she says, scrubbing at the stains. She's putting her core into it.
Genma scratches his chin. "Building's old, isn't it?"
"Looks like it."
"Older buildings, especially ones from the Warring Clans or earlier, tend to have basements with hidden escape routes," he says. He smirks. "Unfortunate for them that generally, those escape routes are also an easy way in if the wrong person finds them."
"Huh. Makes sense."
Sighing, she sets the cloth down and stares at the poor yukata.
Better to focus on the yukata than the question of what exactly is going on between her and Genma. How is she supposed to handle this whole crush-feeling-thing situation, now that it's not only a 'her' problem?
For a second, her eyes shoot up from her yukata to him. He's staring off into space. She purses her lips and tosses the yukata in the direction of the laundry bin, shoving the whole situation out of her mind.
Not now. More important things to deal with.
"Kakashi's still planning on going ahead with scouting in a couple of days?" she asks.
"As far as I know. We'll probably go two days from now, around this time."
"Well. At least now, I have some kind of lead to give him."
"It'll make things a bit easier," Genma says. "I honestly have no idea what Kakashi had in mind otherwise."
"I'm guessing there has to be a different entrance though, right?" she asks. "Because the idea would be to funnel people out of the building through a hidden entrance, then escape through the second one. A way to get out of the building without using the front door."
"Potentially. But they might have completely blocked it off if they didn't think they were ever going to use it."
"They would need to use it though," she says. "If the idea is that they're sneaking ninja out of the building without leaving any trail. Even at like, four in the morning, there's at least a handful of people sitting around in that lobby."
Genma clicks his teeth against his senbon.
She can't imagine any ninja would pass up on the chance to have such an easy way out. While a few people hanging around in a lobby might not seem like a big deal, you never know if those few people might be spies. She and Genma are a case in point—you never know who's in your midst. And infiltrators work by that principle.
If Genma's right and there is a second entrance hidden somewhere in the hotel, Hiwa's confident that the Kusa nin are using it.
"I'm going to go and get Kakashi," Genma says.
.
.
"They're using the entrance in the hotel," Kakashi says. "But that's not the one we're going to want to use."
Genma knits her eyebrows together. "Why not?"
Hiwa taps her finger against her knee, lips pursed as she thinks it through. And… "We know they have the sealing capacity, given that they've privacy sealed the entire basement," she says, thinking aloud more than anything. "And if they've gotten somebody capable of doing privacy seals, they've also probably gotten security seals, too."
"Aren't those more complicated?" Genma asks.
Before Hiwa can answer, Kakashi pipes up, "Less, actually. Fewer factors to account for because it's a simple input-output style seal. Input one action, output another action. Privacy seals have to factor multiple forms of input that won't necessarily have the same output."
Hiwa nods. She doubts she could have given quite as eloquent an answer, but she has a grasp of the concept. Partially from bugging Jiraiya into giving her tips and tricks every so often and partially from having done her own research when she felt the odd urge arise. "So if they've taken the time to stick privacy seals all along the perimeter of this thing, they'll stick a few on this door to keep any unsuspecting idiot from stumbling in. And to incapacitate any suspecting idiot."
"But they probably won't bother adding any security seals to the hidden entrance," Kakashi says.
Genma nods slowly, picking up their line of thought. "No reason to seal something that's impossible to find."
"So that's the plan for tomorrow night," Hiwa says. "Try and locate the exit."
And the night after that, go in to scout as per Kakashi's deadline. They're still without word from Konoha and she sees no reason why Kakashi would change his mind now. Might as well try and get the way paved for them now so that the operation is easy later.
"When I said that this was the plan," Hiwa mumbles, "I meant for you."
Voice equally low, Kakashi says, "Mah, where's the fun in that?"
Hiwa rubs at her eyes, dragging her heels as they walk down the garden path. She scowls into the darkness. "Me? In my bed? Asleep at three in the morning? That sure sounds like fun to me." She whines softly. There's nobody to hear the undignified noise and judge her for it, other than Kakashi. "You don't even need my help? Your senses are as strong as mine, if not stronger."
"Ah, but then, who will keep me entertained?" Kakashi says. "This all sounds very boring to do alone. Don't want to leave an old man to his own devices, eh? Might do something you'll regret and I'll laugh about."
"You're embarrassing, but you're not old. You're only a year older than me."
Kakashi waves a hand. "Semantics."
"Is it?" she asks. She tugs on her braids, her eyes sweeping around the area. "Is it really?"
From nowhere, Kakashi pulls out a book and hits Hiwa on top of the head with it. "Bad dog."
She stops dead in her tracks. Calm as a summer sea, she regards him. "I'm going back to sleep."
"No, you're not," Kakashi says cheerfully.
"You going to stop me? How?"
He smiles at her. "Leave now and I'll send Genma a copy of Icha Icha Undercover, with the most true-to-life passages highlighted."
Her eyes fall shut and she breathes out from her nose, long and deep.
Leave it to Kakashi to find a loophole in less than a day.
"Fine."
"Great," he says, looping his arm through hers. His hold on her is as unbending as a steel girder. "Come along, then."
They make their way towards the spot Hiwa remembers Blondie at—she and Genma didn't stay around very long. She gives a bit more chakra to her eyes to help her see through the darkness and retrace their steps, one step at a time.
Neither of them is in full ninja attire. Hiwa had to dig through her bag a bit to find something that would let her blend in with the dark, and in the end, she went with a black t-shirt and dark blue cotton pants and a dark blue bandana she borrowed from Genma. Though, she's completely unarmed. Kakashi comes closer—he's definitely armed, and has on his mask and jonin blues, sans his flak jacket or hitai-ate.
So together, they ghost their way through the gardens.
Once she gets close enough, she starts to hear the voice again, though they sound different tonight.
There's no question it's different people. The question is why there are voices there at all—is it a coincidence that both times she's been here, she's heard people? Or are they stationed near the door as guards?
She has her head cocked and her hearing enhanced with chakra to see if she can make any words out of the garbled noise when Kakashi says, "So, you finally realized Genma has a thing for you, huh?"
Hiwa sighs. She cuts the chakra flow to her ears. "I should have known this is what you meant by entertainment."
"Implying something?"
"You dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night to get drama."
"Me?" he asks, deadpan. "I would never." He smiles. "But if you want, I could drag you back to bed for—"
Hiwa's face goes bright red. She hopes the darkness will cover it up, but from the look on Kakashi's face, she knows it doesn't. "Don't finish that sentence. Please."
"Uh-huh."
"Well? Am I right?"
"You're nosy and perverted, is what you are," she says. "Congratulations."
"Always so mean."
With a light step, Hiwa follows the trail of chatter.
The question becomes one of where they are located in relation to the door, at that point. Are they right in front of it? Down the hall from it? A few feet away from it?
She's not familiar with this kind of work, and she has no idea how she can go about uncovering a hidden door. She tugs on her braid again, chewing her lip. Theoretically, the door is going to be denser than the rest of the metal underneath them. If she gives it a good tap, the way the sound reverberates will be different. But she doesn't think she can just sound her way towards it. One or two sounds can be pushed off as flukes—but a series of them might arouse suspicion.
"Come on," Kakashi says. From the way his mask shifts, she thinks he's pouting. "Tell your old flame your relationship woes."
"Can't tell you about what doesn't exist," Hiwa whispers, knelt. She runs her hand over the grass the way she saw Blondie doing it, hoping she might feel a seam or a mechanism or something. "And 'old flame'? I don't think that's what you count as."
"You mean to tell me being married doesn't count as a relationship?"
"So that has gone around."
"I'm insulted that you think I wouldn't have found out on my own."
"That's fine."
She puts her ear to the ground. The voices are right under her.
Now, which way does she go?
"I'm also insulted that you don't consider me an old flame," he says.
She's about ninety-nine percent sure that's pure sarcasm as Kakashi doesn't have friends, by his own choice. Hiwa rolls her eyes. "Sorry. How dare I?"
"You spend a month acting like somebody's boyfriend, make out with them in a cheap hotel room, endure a heavy heart-to-heart with them," he says, ticking them off on his fingers, "and this is how they repay you?"
"The sibling mission was better," Hiwa says. "It let me inflict your particular brand of annoying on somebody other than me, for once."
And that's a dirty lie.
Not because she didn't appreciate being able to treat Kakashi like the annoying brat he is and have it be a part of her cover, but because spending a month kissing Hatake Kakashi is no hardship, and despite the baggage, neither was that night they made out.
Granted, he was as annoying—if not more so—then, and he oscillated between startling coldness and intolerable snark rather than staying primarily in the latter. And there was the whole issue of the mission being in Wind Country, with the two of them undercover as a couple travelling around, selling silk for Hiwa's 'father'. That was a special kind of kick in the teeth, given that they completed the mission the day before the anniversary of her actual father's death.
Hiwa pauses as the thought rolls through her mind.
In retrospect, the fact that she insisted on stopping at a random hole-in-the-wall bar in Wind Country when the tenth of October rolled around isn't surprising at all.
She remembers how that night last year with Kakashi was the first time in two years she felt like somebody else got it—that there was somebody else out there who knew that all-consuming guilt. How sometimes, guilt is like an avalanche, where you can run and run and run but at some point, the snow is going to catch up with you and bury you and somebody either has to dig you out, or you have to wait for spring to come along and melt the snow.
She spends the year running. From Shinji, Hiro, what happened with Hitomi and all the baggage that comes along with her mom. By the time the tenth of October comes, Hiwa's out of steam and she goes under.
And last year was the first time somebody was there to dig her out, even though she doubts he was even trying to.
"Right in the heart."
"Are you going to help?" she asks, hoping her voice doesn't betray the place her thoughts had lingered. "Or am I doing this myself?"
He smiles.
Hiwa rolls her eyes. "Oh. Great."
"Tell me the deal with you and Genma."
Giving Kakashi any kind of material sounds like a nightmare. Once he gets going, he won't stop.
But she's ready to get some sleep. She doubts she's going to sleep well tomorrow, with Genma and Kakashi out and about scouting. Getting a good night's sleep tonight is what she'll need to be ready for tomorrow night and the stress that's going to bring.
She pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. "I realized that this… I don't know. Crush. Might be mutual yesterday."
"Oh? Details, please."
"You got enough. I'm trying not to think about this, as it is. This mission's too important to be distracted by something stupid like this."
For some reason, that makes Kakashi grow smug.
"What?" Hiwa asks.
"Nothing for you to concern yourself with."
"Kakashi…"
"Now, then. The exit." He points a bit to her left. "It's right there."
"... what?"
"There's a charge of chakra around that square of dirt. Residual, from continued jutsu use on the one section. I'm guessing it can be lifted off with a jutsu and then there's a hatch underneath."
Hiwa rocks back on her haunches. She squints at him. "You asshole," she mumbles.
Because she has enhanced senses, but she's never been a chakra sensor. Can't sense chakra to save her life. He knows that, too. He knows more about her strengths, weaknesses, and abilities than almost anybody else alive, from the missions they've taken together. Not that that's a feat, with how few people she takes missions with and her non-existent social life. But it means enough that from the second she got them here, he knew that she wasn't going to be able to find the exit.
Kakashi shrugs.
She's too tired for this.
Without another word, Hiwa gets up and makes her way back toward the hotel, and Kakashi trails along behind her.
Seeing Genma in full ninja attire after seeing him in nothing but kimonos for the last two and a half weeks is jarring.
He has his hair pulled back into a bun with a bandana over top, a black shirt and black trousers, and plated fingerless gloves. He's armed to the teeth, too, with kunai and senbon strapped to his upper arm and thigh on the right side of his body, along with a curved dagger hanging off his waist and the pockets on his trousers that he filled with other supplies.
It's only a scouting expedition, but they have to be prepared for a fight to break out.
Which Hiwa won't be around for.
She crosses her arms over her chest and leans against the wall beside the door, watching as Genma double checks his loadout. It's almost three in the morning and she's dressed for the hour, with her hair in braided pigtails, her sleep shirt on, and a pair of fluffy grey slippers to keep her feet warm.
She's exhausted.
Genma had told her to just go to sleep because there wasn't any point in both of them losing sleep tonight, but she couldn't do it. Even her body can't shut off when it's filled with nerves like this.
The plan is simple; there's little chance of anything going wrong. She and Kakashi were able to figure out the mechanism that keeps the door hidden underneath the grass—or at least, locate it and guess at how to open it. Part of their scouting job will be testing those guesses and if none of them prove fruitful, taking a few more shots on the fly. Worst case scenario—outside of combat—is that they go home empty-handed.
Hiwa chews on her lip, half tempted to pull out a cigarette, at this rate.
She has a microphone. She'll be able to listen in the entire time. If anything goes wrong, she'll know, and she'll be able to take action.
Didn't keep this whole thing from being nerve-wracking.
"Think I'm good," Genma says, clipping up the last of his pockets. He presses a hand to his ear. "Kakashi?"
Through her earpiece, in her hand but not in her ear quite yet, she can hear Kakashi's clipped reply of, "Ready."
"Cool. Meet you out there."
"Off you go, then," Hiwa says. She punctuates it with a smile, her voice carefree despite the weight on her chest. "Have fun. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. Remember to use protection."
He scoffs. "Yeah, mom."
Softly, she says, "And be safe."
His smile is gentle and crooked and it makes her heart melt into her feet. "'Course."
.
.
The plan is simple but risky.
Genma and Kakashi get in through the hatch. Kakashi hits the guards with genjutsu—something about tricking their eyes into not seeing Genma and Kakashi—and the two sneak past. Rinse and repeat when necessary while they get the layout of the basement and assess the level of threat the Kusa nin present. Get out again.
And if things go wrong? They move ahead before they get their okay and clean out the basement. Hopefully coming out no worse for wear. Kakashi will get a slap on the wrist because Hiruzen has always had a soft spot for him, just like Jiraiya does, and they move on with their lives.
Hiwa takes a breath, sat cross-legged on top of the bed.
Don't get ahead of myself.
.
.
The sound of metal hinges creaking. Kakashi's voice crackles over the earpiece when he says, "Eyes to the Right, Ten Degrees Off Jutsu."
Hiwa rolls her eyes at the name. Who gives a jutsu a name that long?
Seconds tick by.
"Initial genjutsu application is successful. Move forward."
"Roger."
.
.
"Bigger than I thought it'd be."
"Mah, not the first time I've heard that."
Hiwa cackles, unable to help herself, and she hears Genma groan.
.
.
"Right door, now," Kakashi whispers, the edge on his voice sharp enough to slice through steel.
Hiwa stiffens.
She hears a door open, shut, and then the sound of the two of them scrambling around the room.
"One coming down either side," Kakashi says. "We'll have to—scatter."
More shuffling around.
Her breath catches in her throat and Hiwa listens, stiff, as there's a faint creak and the sound of footsteps.
"Man, really wish they'd quit keeping us up this late. This was supposed to be the bitch baby posting, you know? Cushy. 'It'll be fun' they said, 'you'll get to sit around in the hot springs all day' they said. You know where I sit all day? On a fucking stool."
"Right? Fucking stupid." A pause. "What did you say you were getting out of here?"
"Left my report on the table. Another stupid thing."
"They're still making you do reports?"
"Yeah? Aren't you doing them?"
"Nope."
"What?"
"I dunno, man—oh, hey. There it is."
"Grab it for me?"
"Sure."
Footsteps again, growing close to either Kakashi or Genma, she can't tell. Papers rustling.
"Thank the Kami. Junko was going to have my hide if I lost this."
"Oh, dude. She scares me so bad."
"Same."
"But I think I'd also like her to crush my head with her thighs."
"Same."
"Like, she scares me but—"
The voices die away and the door falls shut again.
Somebody lets out a breath. "Holy fuck," Genma mutters. "Okay."
"Let's keep moving," Kakashi says, clipped.
.
.
Genma enters the room again at five in the morning, his shoulders drooping and his head dipped. He's slow to enter, and his eyebrows go up when he sees Hiwa sitting up on the bed, the earbud and wires laid out over her knee.
Her hair's out of its braids—she's been unweaving and reweaving them for the last hour, and she's in an unweaving stage, right now.
"Hey," he says. "Thought you'd be asleep."
Hiwa chews the inside of her cheek.
A brief war goes on inside her head, but fuck it she thinks to herself.
He's standing in the doorway, the door closed behind him. His shoes are on and he's fully armed. And when she doesn't say anything, he frowns.
"What's—"
Hiwa gets up, crosses the room to him, and wraps her arms around his torso. Her forehead rests against his chest, on the little section of it right below where his collarbone branches out.
"Whoa, hey," he says. "Hey. It's fine."
"I know it's fine," she answers. Her voice is as steady and monotone as a flat-lined heart monitor. "You and Kakashi are big boys who can handle yourselves perfectly well. You're both skilled, and you know what you're doing, and you would have gotten yourselves out, one way or another."
But damn did that still scare me.
.
.
Genma can feel her heart beating against his chest.
It rattles against the top of his ribcage, the beat of it rapid and unsteady.
He wonders how that must have felt. On the other side of the line, unable to go in and help if needed, but still able to hear if things go wrong. He thinks that might have torn him apart, that kind of helplessness.
.
.
One of his arms winds around her waist and the other cups the back of her head. His chin settles on the crown of her head. "Sorry," he mumbles. His breath breezes over her scalp. "Sorry."
"You've got nothing to be sorry for. You don't. You—literally, you guys did nothing wrong."
"Know that. Doesn't mean I can't feel bad that we gave you a bit of a heart attack, there."
Hiwa's grip tightens a bit, and in response, Genma's fingers begin to run through her hair. The feel of it sends shivers down Hiwa's spine.
And being held like this feels so good, and once again, there's nobody here to see it but them, no reason for this intimacy but each other's comfort and Hiwa feels so safe and warm and comfortable with him curled around her like a barrier from the rest of the world.
And she just wants to stand here and enjoy it.
She wants to pull him back into the bed with her, where they can let this night end. She wants to keep to what she said to Kakashi, about not broaching the topic until they're back home.
But she can't keep treating this like it's nothing.
"I think we need to talk about this," she says to him. "This whole. Whatever's going on with us, thing."
He stiffens. His hand, bunched in her hair, goes limp.
Hiwa slides one of her hands up and down his back, and she can feel the tension in his shoulders ease. "I wasn't going to say anything until the mission was over, because there's so much at stake. And I didn't want to try and deal with this, and then end up distracted."
"Yeah," he mumbles. "Me too."
"So it's not all in my head? That there's… something here?"
"Thought you were imagining it?"
"I thought it was all me until a couple days ago, in the garden."
He huffs a laugh. "Gave myself away, huh?"
"A bit. And I mean, this, too."
"I don't think I can explain what's going on on my end, right now," he admits. "I've been trying not to think about it, too. I didn't want to try and gauge what you were doing until I could be sure that the mission wasn't clouding them."
"Oh. Smart."
"I thought so."
And she has to laugh at that, too.
She feels stupid for having left the conversation for this long, even if she can understand her logic over it. Most of the legwork for the mission is behind them, at this point. They're close to being done, and less for them to mess up over all of this messiness. But with how easy it went?
Well. Then again, hindsight is always 20/20.
They stand there for a few more minutes before Hiwa forces herself to pull back.
"I don't think we have to do anything about this. Actually, we probably shouldn't, yet," she says. "I just… wanted to acknowledge it."
Genma nods. He cups her cheek, and the rough calluses on his palms are at odds with the feather-soft touch. "Better not to leave anything unsaid."
"Yeah."
His expression grows cocky. "Then I guess I won't say anything else."
And he leans forward and brushes his lips against hers. It's barely even a kiss, but there's something so sweet about it that Hiwa has to laugh.
When Genma snags her around the small of her back and kisses her again, firmer and than before, she's not laughing anymore. His hands are dangerously close to her butt and there's tongue this time, and Hiwa's content to let him take her along for the ride.
She makes a sound—some kind of weird moan-sigh hybrid—and she freezes. Her face burns.
Genma stops, too, and now he's the one laughing.
"I don't know what that was," Hiwa mumbles.
Genma hums. "Was cute, though."
"You think?"
"I'm pretty sure it was, yeah."
"Then why don't you try and make me do it again?"
"Gladly."
.
.
For the first time since getting to the resort, Genma goes to sleep with Hiwa held in his arms like she's a stuffed animal he doesn't want to lose in the middle of the night. For her part, she's gotten herself wrapped around him koala-style, one arm around his torso, the other fisted in his shirt, and her leg hooked through his.
There's a warmth in his chest, nestled deep in there, and he wonders if now that the flames have engulfed him, he's going to start burning from the inside out, too.
He doesn't know how he feels about that. The fact that Hiwa seems to be in about the same boat makes this easier, lightens the burden. There's somebody else to help bale out this sinking ship.
Neither of them knows what this is. But they both know it's there, at least.
And for now, that has to count for something, right?
A/N: ;)
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