The moment Kakashi sees me, he tenses. Observant as ever, he has seen that I've done away with my hitai-ate. Considering he has never seen me without it since the day I earned it, I must almost look alien enough for him to question my identity for a second. Seated against one of the three stumps of training ground number twenty, I give him a relaxed wave. I've just finished a really interesting session with Lee, the first of many I hope.

"Hello, Naruto."

"Kakashi," I smile. "How are you?"

Evidently, he notices the lack of the usual "sensei". I pat the ground beside me and unseal two bento out of a scroll, plus two pairs of chopsticks.

"Good," he answers. "You?" I distinguish a touch of worry in his voice - and a lot in his personal chant.

"I'm doing alright. I hope you don't mind spicy chicken on fried rice?"

Kakashi gives me his one-of-a-kind eye-smile and shakes his head. "You're betraying ramen?"

"I'm trying new things. Like cooking, for example."

Kakashi freezes as he takes a hold of the bento I'm offering and I chuckle.

"Come on now, Kakashi. I didn't poison anything in here, I promise."

He eases up next to me and opens his lunch. I hear him take a whiff of the food and hum in appreciation. "Since when do you cook?"

I haven't quite decided how subtle I want to be yet. I don't dislike Kakashi so much as I'm utterly let down. His never telling me anything feels like another betrayal. Did he owe me something? Do you owe anything to the orphaned son of your master? I'd say yes, at least the truth if they have been deprived of it but maybe I am expecting too much of people. Shinobi don't make for pleasant or nice individuals. Or moral.

"This is my second ever homemade meal. I used to survive on dehydrated ramen, you know?" I guess I've never been one for much subtlety. I do want Kakashi to ask, however. I want to push him out of his comfort zone.

Kakashi swallows heavily. I'm unsure whether he is wary of the food or ashamed. Both emotions ping against my empathic web. I snap my chopsticks and fish a little ball of rice, along with a slice of red chicken. I bring the food to my mouth and pop it in. I chow slowly. A little too much salt but not bad.

"I got a little too heavy-handed with the salt but honestly, it's alright."

I flex my chakra slightly when he tries my lunch. I smirk when I see his mask slide down and immediately back up as he starts chewing on his mouthful. I understand why he wears it; he would be assaulted by vapid suitors of both sex if he didn't.

"So?"

"It's an honourable second attempt."

"Thank you."

I focus on my bento and remain silent, patiently eating my fill. I let Kakashi's insecurities grow in the space left by silence. Worry, fear, shame; I can feel them rise slowly, cracking the dam of his control and soon escaping it. He coughs first; I repress a satisfied smile.

"So, what have you been up to?"

Drats! He won't fold easily. Though I should have known, Kakashi isn't one of Konoha's best for nothing. If he wants to play it vague, I can do it too.

"This and that. Changing my life."

"Ha. How so?"

Yeah, no, I'm not spilling it. It is important that Kakashi asks. I mentally smirk. I remember my first meeting ever with the man sitting beside me. I was so eager, back then. I spewed mostly bullshit to stretch what little I could say because someone was actually listening to me (or pretending to, at least). This new short-for-word routine is throwing Kakashi off, I know it.

"For the better, I believe," I drop eventually.

Kakashi glances at my conspicuously absent hitai-ate. "The better?"

"Yes."

Silence settles between us. We continue to eat, until both bento lay on our lap, empty and thoroughly cleaned. I sigh. Picking up Kakashi's lunchbox, I seal it away with mine. I rise to my feet; Kakashi imitates.

I sigh again before I rivet my eye on Kakashi's. "See, that's why I'm done. You've been playing your little 'I don't really care' act for so long, you can't get out of it, even for half an hour, the time of a friendly lunch."

"Wha-"

"No, please, Kakashi, be silent. I came without my hitai-ate. You obviously saw it. It obviously unsettled you. You didn't ask about it. You expected I'd just talk, like usual. After all, I'm the one you never could get to shut up, aren't I?"

He looks struck. Nervous too, coiled. I sigh. I now realize the venom that dripped from my lips. I breathe, in and out, to settle my rising anger. "I apologize. I didn't want to get cross with you."

"Naruto…" Kakashi sounds afraid. His voice dies to a whisper. "What happened?"

I roll my neck and shrug, bleeding out the last of my tension. I'm careful to keep my tone dead when I answer. "Oh, now you ask. I told you Kakashi, I'm changing. See, recently, I've rediscovered a part of myself I'd been ignoring for a long time."

I give the man an annoyed look. "When I asked you to share lunch with me here, I willingly came different. I wished you would have asked. That would have shown me that you care, that you're ready to go outside of your comfort for me. But no. You waited for me to spill everything because you apparently can't quite be bothered to ask. It's such an inhuman effort to inquire about someone. Well fine, I'll spill."

I spit the last word. I didn't want this meeting to turn into an outing of grievance. I don't like complaining, I feel whiny when I do; I'm learning that it's okay to do so sometimes.

"I'm angered, Kakashi. You are one of two connections I could have had with my parents but you didn't act on it. I'm not holding that against you. I can imagine all the orders Sarutobi gave you to keep you away from me. Probably another deep-seated need to torture me but whatever. I can imagine grief was weighing you down, you weren't in the right mental headspace."

"You were supposed to be my sensei though. The thing is, you never really acted on that either. You humiliated me, left me on my own and dropped me with a bigoted asshole for the chunin exams. You didn't expect I'd stand a chance against Neji. What was it again?"

I snap my fingers, gaze lost in faux-remembrance. "Work on your basics, is that it? The same basic you never bothered teaching me. Funny, you didn't have any problem sending me after Gaara. The one you specifically armed against him failed but you, without a clue of my skill set, sent me after him. Though I suppose Jiraiya kept you tabbed. Send the good little attack dog against the mad one, huh?"

Kakashi looks sick.

"The first open compliment - not one of your infantilizing pat - you've ever given me was when I completed the one impossible jutsu neither Jiraiya nor you - the genius - could finish. I think the second was when I saved Konoha and got an enemy, someone who was hellbent on strapping me to a table to tear Kurama off my essence, to revive all his victims."

I sneer and my voice grinds, beyond my control. "But you know what was really nice, Kakashi?"

Seeing as I'm obviously waiting for him to reply, he shakes his head mutely, eyes wide. his mounting shame strain against my empathic fibre. It sounds like chalk ripping against a blackboard.

"These are one time outliners. I especially loved the routine. The everyday condescension, the constant dismissal, the clear disdain for my potential. I understood nothing about your teaching methods so obviously, it meant I was a lost cause and in turn, you didn't have to bother with my requests. You didn't have to bother with me. Why would you ever teach the less capable orphan a cool jutsu when he'd naturally not get it, am I right? He'd only ever be good for the basics. You have no idea how I fucking hate that word." I frown and take a deep breath in an effort to appease the white-hot fury boiling in my chest.

"No matter that he wanted to impress you and his teammates and hoped to help keep his team safe," I mumble.

His voice comes out raspy, shaking. "I-I never meant-"

"Yeah, Kakashi?" I bark a short laugh. It's mirthless. "You never meant? Of course, you never did! Well, you know what? It only makes it worse. Couldn't be arsed to deal with me. What is it, Kakashi? Do I open old wounds? Do I look too much like Namikaze? You didn't have the courage to really take me in and you didn't have the courage to let me go. Your negligence could have gotten me killed several times, given our mission history. What was it? You were counting on Kurama to patch all my booboos? Is that it?"

"No!"

"See, that's the danger of waiting for supposed comrades to look underneath the underneath. They just might frame and interpret your intentions in a way you never meant them. And when you finally come clean, it's too little too late because now the atmosphere is weighty with suspicion. Now the other party won't ever not wonder what you truly have in mind even when you're honest!"

Kakashi takes a step back and I realize I'm flaring my chakra. My power overwhelms the jounin. My emotions spill and slam against his and swallow them like a Mother Wave. My hand is balled into a fist. I unclench it.

"Breath," says Kurama soothingly. "Exert control. Do not hurt him in your anger. You'd regret it."

I follow my friend's advice.

"Naruto." Kakashi sounds so very sorry. Like porcelain shattering. I feel it, I feel him in all his putrescent sorrow and shame and guilt. His sentiments lash out, almost as dangerously sharp as Tomiko's. But I'm armoured against such things; I'm a sun bearing down on a mere planet.

"I don't hold grudges, Kakashi. I don't know what to do with them. You're forgiven. All the negative things I feel towards you, I now let them go. Which doesn't leave me with that much positivity to remember you by. You will seek me out if you wish to remediate that. You couldn't be my brother, you didn't want me as your student, you'll decide if being friends interests you. You will get out of your comfort zone. Or you won't."

I exhale. "Just remember, I won't beg."

Energy erupts around me and washes over my very being before it carries me away, faster than Kakashi could ever hope to follow much less match.

AN: After reviews telling me I should have shown the confrontation between Naruto and Kakashi, I decided to publish it, after a quick rework. Rightly, the reviewers pointed out that chapter 4 is a lot of "telling" instead of "showing". It was kind of intended. I wrote the confrontation between Naruto and Kakashi and removed it from the final version for a summary of their encounter because I feared Naruto would come off as "whiny". The scene merely needed to be modified a bit.

I'll eventually merge chapters 4 and 4.5 together.