Notes:

the canon timeline around this generation gets really wonky if you look at it too closely, so I'm not specifying any ages. It's before Kannabi Bridge, that's the important thing. After fifteen years, I can't believe I'm publishing Naruto fanfic again.

"Please accompany me for tempura this afternoon, Kakashi!"

Kakashi looked up. Might Gai, as earnest and over-bright as always, stood in front of his bench in the park with his hands folded behind his back as if he was restraining himself from touching every object in an art museum. It was one of those cloudy, silver afternoons in the village, a dour backdrop against that shining face. Wind ruffled his neatly ordered hair, blowing cold as early spring hinted at the threat of rain.

Kakashi lowered the essay he had been reviewing, which was full of Kurenai's well-meaning but very mixed-up homonyms. He supposed it was time for class to be getting out, although he'd graduated himself ages before and was no longer subject to the academy bells.

"I'm not hungry," Kakashi said.

"Nonsense!" Gai retorted. "Shinobi must eat whenever fortune allows! Your body is a splendid machine which requires sustenance to thrive, so let me take you out for tempura!"

Kakashi considered him for a moment. His face was pink with exertion, so he'd probably run all the way here from the academy as soon as he was excused. It took more and more these days to get Might Gai puffing, so he must have really booked it across town. Kakashi wondered how he'd known where to look. Maybe he'd just looked everywhere. What a lot of effort for something so unnecessary.

"…Is your dad buying?"

Gai flapped his hand. "No no, Ichiko-san said it would be her treat."

Despite himself, Kakashi stood up and folded away the essay he was helping Kurenai with. He would of course make sure to give it back to her before tomorrow morning so she could make corrections, but it wasn't exactly difficult work, and he could reasonably spare an hour at the front end of his day in exchange for an hour at the back end of his day. He wouldn't have to cook, anyway, which would speed things up.

"I don't believe I know an Ichiko," Kakashi said, as Gai jumped around and did a few victory punches. Kakashi kept walking, and Gai rushed to fall into step. "Is she from the year above you?"

Gai laughed. "Absolutely not! She's a civilian."

Kakashi side-eyed him. All evidence of the last three years suggested that civilians found the Might Family more off-putting than the shinobi did. There were always winces and groans whenever they burst into public theatrics, although unlike the chunin who whispered and laughed, average villagers mostly rushed to avoid the spectacle. And Gai hardly could go five minutes without challenging himself to some kind of absurd training goal. What was he doing meeting up with civilian kids, let alone girls?

He paused. The idea of Gai chasing after girls was an oddly unsettling one. Kakashi stuck on the mental image of Gai falling down to one knee in the street, proposing his Eternal Youthful Devotion to some farmer's daughter he'd barely met. Roses would manifest in the air. There would be sparkles.

He shook his head a little and the dream popped. Gai was a bit older than him, but even so, surely, he was still too young for that sort of thing. Anyway, if anything like that had happened, Kakashi would have been the first to hear about it.

Gai had already moved on from that topic, by the time Kakashi tuned back in. By the point where he pushed open the door to the restaurant, he'd finished trying to get Kakashi to feel how heavy his leg weights were and started waxing eloquent about his morning run. He was still chattering when Kakashi stopped just past the doorway, squinting at the staff behind the counter.

A sizzling plate passed in the space between, hot and wafting the scent of garlic, and behind it a waitress leaned over the counter to speak to a woman whose brown hair was pulled back under a bandana, her apron flecked with dark spots of oil. She wasn't a beautiful woman, but her smile was infinitely familiar—her eyes, and even something about the shape of her cheekbones.

Like he'd sensed the shock racing through Kakashi, Gai paused mid-step and turned around, brows furrowed in question.

Kakashi looked from him to the cook, again, just to be sure.

"Rival?" Gai said, tilting his head. "Is the smell too much for you?"

"I'm fine," Kakashi said. He took a step closer, and then in a quiet tone, said, "That woman looks a lot like you."

Gai straightened, surprised, and glanced over his shoulder.

"That's Ichiko-san," Gai told him, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which, in retrospect, it ought to have been. There was a sliver of a moment in which Gai just looked, his face turned away, beyond Kakashi's sight. A sliver of absence: no shout, no gesture.

Then he turned back, smiling brightly, and announced with pride, "She's the one who incubated me!"

Kakashi just about fell over.

"Are you a chicken?" he remarked, scrambling back to some approximation of poise. "Good grief. What does that mean, incubated?"

Gai gave him the most serious look, and then crossed his arms firmly in front of himself, a hand to his chin. "Well, Kakashi, I am surprised that you don't know! However, I am honored to be the one to tell you. As a matter of fact, when a man and a woman join themselves in youthful passion—"

Kakashi firmly pressed a finger over his friend's mouth. "I know what sex is, Gai."

Gai made a little "!" noise and then nodded fervently. Kakashi let him go.

"That's your mother?" Kakashi asked.

Gai hesitated again. "I am certainly her progeny," he said. "Now, let's not stand in the door when there's a meal to be had! She's a very good cook!"

Gai took his hand. Gai tugged him over to the counter and greeted the waitress with his usual bouncing fervor. The waitress, unlike most people, returned his smile. She twisted and called out into the kitchen, "Ichiko, your boy is here!"

The cook finished hanging up the wok she'd been putting away and meandered back to the counter. Her hands were wet; she wiped them on her apron.

"Hey kiddo," she said, "you brought a friend?"

Gai saluted. "Yes! This is my rival, Hatake Kakashi. Thank you for having us!"

"You ninja kids," she said, shaking her head with a smile. "You gonna take that mask off to eat or what, Kakashi-chan?"

Kakashi stiffened. It wasn't correct to be rude to adults, but he had no idea what to do when adults were rude to him.

"Please do not concern yourself," Gai told her, stepping between them. "Kakashi is very private! I hope you will respect this."

The cook looked a little chagrined. "Sure," she said. "No problem. Hey, you want hot sauce on your stuff, kiddo? I'll toss it for you, don't tell the rest of the customers."

"Thank you, Ichiko-san!" Gai said, and bowed. "I would be very grateful!"

"Don't sweat it," said the cook. "Tell Mito your order and I'll have it out in a jiffy."

Kakashi barely noticed what he pointed to on the menu. His thoughts whirled. It was off-hours for a restaurant, and the only other customers were a squad of chunin obviously fresh in from some long trek outside the village. Only the soft fizzle of oil and susurrus from beyond the window filled the place.

Across the table, Gai swung his legs absently and hummed as Kakashi stared.

"Why doesn't she live with you?" Kakashi asked, abruptly.

Gai blinked. "Who, Ichiko-san?"

Kakashi nodded.

Gai's eyebrows pinched as he thought the question over, more pensive than usual.

"You don't call her mother," Kakashi said, unable to stop himself. "And you never talk about her. You and your dad are so close, it seems strange to me."

"Papa says…" Gai started, with an unusual amount of delicacy, "that some people are better at certain things than others. Just as not every person wants be a shinobi, not every woman wants to be a mother. Not every tree is an oak, and not every flower is a lily! In this world there is a beautiful variety, and everyone is meant to choose their own destiny."

Kakashi picked this sentiment apart for a moment. He had an uncomfortable, sinking feeling.

"But… you're here?"

"Ah…" Gai smiled uncomfortably, tapping his fingertips together. "Papa says that sometimes people don't know what they want until they've tried a few things. Ichiko-san was kind enough to give birth to me, but I am not her way in this life."

A cold fist gripped Kakashi's stomach. "She abandoned you," he said.

Gai threw his hands out, waving Kakashi back as if he'd pulled a knife in the middle of a conversation. "It isn't like that!"

Kakashi sat very still. Absence; he'd taken the absence for granted. There was no blood on the floor of Might Gai's house, but it had been abandoned all the same. And he'd never realized.

"Accidents and passing encounters are part of the rich experience that makes life worth living," Gai informed him, reaching across the table as if entreating Kakashi to understand. "Leaping forward not knowing what the result will be, braving the possibility of failure, holding nothing back! That is the meaning of youth!"

"That's the meaning of recklessness," Kakashi said. His voice was colder than he meant it to be.

"It is not a bad thing to be reckless, as long as one takes responsibility for one's actions!"

Kakashi looked at him. Had Dai said that? It sounded like the kind of thing Might Dai said. It was a brave man who could take such absolute and devastating rejection and forgive it all down to the bottom of his very heart. Might Dai was a very brave man.

Kakashi thought again of blood on the floor.

When their food came, the waitress chatted a bit with Gai in the way that adults sometimes did, remarking on how he'd grown and asking what he was doing in school. Gai obviously came here often enough to be recognized, but not often enough that small talk had moved beyond the basics.

Kakashi watched the kitchen. From time to time, the woman in the bandana passed through his line of sight.

"I don't take it personally," Gai said, somewhere between the third and fourth fried zucchini on his place.

Kakashi fixed him with his full attention.

"I don't want to get in the way of anyone realizing their dreams," Gai said. "It's better for both of us, to be true to ourselves. I exist, and I'm grateful to Ichiko-san for that."

Kakashi felt his mouth tighten. It wasn't fair. Gai should never have had to accept something like that. Gai should have been free of that weight, the weight that grownups put on their children to forgive them. Kakashi hadn't really known his mother, but he at least believed that she had wanted him. Loved him. If she wasn't here now, he knew it was in spite of her wishes, not because of them.

Kakashi's father had been a good man and a fool. He had been soft; he had tried to make honor out of dishonor and failed. And yet, despite all that, Kakashi believed that his father had loved him. Maybe not enough, or maybe too much—he'd never know now, and he'd never have the chance to ask. The severance was final, and yet in that finality, there was a wretched kind of hope.

What was it like to know that someone who should have loved you was right there, a block away, living their own life that you had no part in?

But Gai went on popping battered slices into his mouth, oblivious to the cold wind in Kakashi's heart. It was fact to him. The weight lay on the roadside, far behind, as Gai strode forward with his head held high. His face was clear, and his eyes were bright, and he was a warm light in the cold wind. What could Kakashi say to that?

He ate his duck. It was pretty good. He wished it wasn't.

There was nothing unusual about the two of them sharing a meal in companionable quiet, or conversations in which Kakashi said little and Gai carried on for both of them. If Kakashi made an effort to contribute a bit more than usual, it was nothing worth remarking on.

Ichiko came by the table as they were finishing up, brushing flour off her sleeve. "How's the grub, kids? Am I up to snuff?"

"Your talent is truly inexhaustible, Ichiko-san!" Gai replied in earnest. "But, ah..."

She gave him a wry smile. "More hot sauce next time?"

Gai brightened immediately. "Yes, please!"

"Alright, alright," she said, shaking her head a little in wry amusement. "What about you Kakashi-chan?"

Her skin was the same color as Gai's. She was younger than Might Dai, although not so young that she couldn't have been married. She seemed healthy. Comfortable. Her smile shaded into confusion as Kakashi went on staring at her without speaking.

For all the man's faults, Might Dai was an immovable rock of support, a wellspring of affection, bottomless with love. And yet, this woman who should have been his partner hadn't been able to stick it out. How fickle it must seem to Gai, that two people who should have equally devoted themselves to him had parted ways so completely. At some point, perhaps long before they had met, Gai had understood and accepted that disinterest.

Just like, Kakashi thought, Gai had accepted the disinterest of the world.

For as long as Kakahi had known him, Gai had been pushing himself to achieve the impossible. Five hundred laps if I can't beat Kakashi in a race. One thousand lunges if I can't produce a full clone jutsu. But there had never been, as far as he knew, one thousand pushups if I can't make them love me.

It had never been, one thousand katas if I can't make Kakashi care for me.

"Dinner was good," Kakashi said. "You have a nice restaurant."

Ichiko gave him an uncertain, encouraging smile. "Glad you think so. We've been working pretty hard to pull it together, but it's really paid off."

"Is that what you want?" Kakashi asked her. "Is that your dream?"

She blinked at him, brows pinched, looking so much like her son in that moment. "I guess you could say that," she replied, as if testing the conversation like a pressure pad under a tile. "Sure. Owning my own place was my dream for a while now."

"And you're happy with it?"

She made that expression adults often made when they thought they were indulging children. "Yeah, Kakashi-chan. I'm happy with it."

He watched her for a moment more, and then turned back to the meal he'd been picking at. "That's good," he said. "I hope it's everything you wanted."

While Gai picked up the slack in the uncomfortable silence that followed, bragging happily about his own progress and his rival's as well, Kakashi slowly picked apart the threads of an oyster mushroom with his chopsticks. I'm grateful, Gai had said.

How gracious. The world hardly deserved that kind of grace.

If you were the only worthwhile thing she ever produced, Kakashi thought, then I'm grateful to her too.