"I hear congratulations are in order, Rival!"
Carefully, Kakashi averted his eye from the blinding smile, angling his gaze past Gai, past the ever offensive spandex and thumbs-up. He sighed.
The door had hit the wall with a bang and was ricocheting right back at Gai, trembling in its frame, its hinges whining. Gai caught it before it could slam into his face. Gai's smile, Kakashi couldn't help notice, had been in place too long already. He had stamina, sure, always, though especially when it came to smiling, but this one was starting to look frayed around the edges, twitchy.
"You heard right. I'm getting married," he said. The pages of the book in his hands felt smooth and brittle under his fingers. He tried to read another sentence, but there was the sunlight seeping in through the window and Gai's long shadow reaching towards him. Not to mention a woman in Kumogakure, a proud kunoichi from a powerful clan, a woman who probably deserved better. She'd given him a photo after the omiai, and he carried it dutifully in his vest pocket, over his heart.
She'd wanted one of him, but he'd had none to give her.
"Kakashi, you…!" Speechless with emotion, Gai had glittering tears in his eyes. He shed them, sparkling like diamonds, as he leapt towards Kakashi.
The embrace was awkward – Gai lifted him off the couch as if Kakashi was some kind of stuffed animal –and breathlessly tight.
He closed his eye against the warmth of Gai's shoulder, wishing to sink into it, into the moment, and said in a low voice, "It will be good for the village." Because that was the long and short of it, the truth and all that mattered.
"It will be good for you and for your future children who will grow up in a world without war," Gai replied. His voice was choked up, caught in a grey zone between laughing and crying, and it rumbled through Kakashi's body like a landslide. It couldn't bury Kakashi's doubts regarding both statements – nothing could have – but he tried to hold onto it and Gai; he tried to forget about the creases their hug would leave in the picture in his pocket.
A.N.: frankly, at one point I kind of wanted to write this fic, but then I was like fuck it, you know. Who even cares?