Aiko fought her way through a miserable hangover and rather perplexing memory blackout to make her new apartment something closer to habitable. The first thing that she did was dig out the thick curtains she had purchased and cover every hint of sunlight she could manage. It had been creeping in to stab at her eyes, and she didn't fucking appreciate it.
Of course, she was still half-asleep, so it wasn't until they were all up that she realized she had put the kitchen curtains in her bedroom and vice versa.
'I can deal with that later,' she decided sullenly.
Her early dismissal from her shift at the detention center had given her an extra day to get her apartment in shape, but it was hard to appreciate that. Thinking that a shower might wake her up, she stripped off her clothes from the night before, wrinkling her nose as she realized they smelled like smoke and sake. Ugh.
It wasn't until she was actually in the shower that she realized, "I left my bag at the bar." Aiko groaned, letting her head clunk against the teal colored tiles that made the shower wall. Feeling a bit dumb, she eventually crawled out of the hot water and wrapped herself up in one of the enormous green towels Ino had picked out for her. It reached all the way to her knees. Red hair still plastered to her skull, she sneezed pathetically in the chill of her apartment and considered her options.
"I could wear my dirty clothes, be naked forever, wash my dirty clothes, or sneak back into the house and grab the first thing I find," she mused. She didn't even have a washing machine in her new apartment—there was a mutual laundry room. Clearly, she couldn't count on that option, even if she'd wanted to hang around naked for two hours.
As it was, it was an obvious choice, although it might not have been if she had forgotten to put a Hiraishin tag in her old bedroom. Naked as the day she was born, Aiko tugged on what she thought had to be the right seal (and experienced a brief moment of terror that she could have misjudged and gone to one of the boys).
"Oh, thank god," she mumbled when her eyes managed to register the familiar sight of her old room. The sound of talking in the hallway made her ears perk up, and she momentarily considered the explanation she would have to give for showing up in her old house naked, wet, and a day before she was supposed to be back from her assignment. Talk about awkward. Besides, it was far too bright to linger here. Carefully, she slipped across her wooden floor as quickly as possible and pulled open her top drawer—and grimaced, cringing.
'That was unexpectedly loud.'
She froze, eyes wide. Maybe no one heard?
"Did you hear something?"
Hope was for suckers. Aiko stuck a damp hand in the drawer and clenched her fist around literally the first thing she felt an instant before she tugged on the seal singing to her from her new apartment's living room.
"That could have been awkward," she said to no one, dropping her towel carelessly and unfolding her loot. Then she groaned. "Son of a bitch."
Well, what Kakashi didn't know wouldn't hurt him. She'd gone too far to go back now. Without bothering to fully dry off, she unfolded the soft material of Kakashi's navy shirt and pulled it over her head unceremoniously. The pants were just as poorly fitting as she remembered—dragging on the floor by half a foot even when she pulled it up on her hips higher than what felt natural.
"Stupid jerk with stupid long legs," she sighed, doing her best to roll the legs up and pushing the sleeves up her arms.
'I don't have to accomplish that much today,' she promised herself fervently. The original plan had been to get everything done in one day, so she was already ahead of schedule. Somehow she managed to push herself through putting away the box of dishes that had been brought over before she had to slump down on the floor and hold her head in her hands.
Bang. Bang.
Aiko forced open one eye and glared sullenly in the vague direction of the door, but the person on the other side didn't seem to care. "Oh, fine," she sighed, crawling across the floor on her hands and knees and bracing herself against the wall to pull the door open.
A sheepish-looking Yukimasa was fidgeting on her stoop.
"Uh, hi," she said stupidly. "Do you want to come in?"
He shook his head. "That won't be necessary. I brought this over." With an oof, she caught the oversized bag her captain tossed at her. "Sorry about that, I only realized that it might seem creepy that I could both track you and replicate your chakra signature when I'd already retrieved it from the lockers."
Aiko stared blankly up at him, dropping the bag on the floor inside her door. "It should have occurred to you sooner," she said flatly.
Yukimasa flushed, a hand twitching as if he was suppressing the urge to fidget. "Ah, yes." He cleared his throat. "I was wondering…" Green eyes darted either way down the hall, and he self-consciously looked down, apparently not noticing the hand that wandered up towards his right shoulder blade. Her eyes widened in comprehension.
"Are you trying to ask me what happened last night?"
Hopefully, he looked up at her. "Are you saying that you remember what happened?"
"I don't know, that depends on what you think happened," she deflected.
They narrowed their eyes at each other, neither willing to spit out what had to be said. Stubbornly, Aiko refused to look away.
Yukimasa was the one to give in with a sigh. "Look, do you remember why the hell I have a tattoo of the Hokage in lingerie on my back? Not that I'm complaining." He trailed off. "Well, I'm complaining a little," he added darkly. "I think she might actually kill me if she found out. But now I can't stop wondering if she really does own those panties."
"You too?" she breathed, eyes wide. "With like, the green jacket falling off her shoulders and nothing else?" She gave a stupid grin.
'In retrospect, the pigtails are hotter than I'd realized. Will have to take a good look the next time I see her.'
He slumped. "So… that's a no. You don't remember either."
"Sorry," she shrugged, genuinely disappointed. "At least we're brave drunks?" He looked majorly bummed. Her brow furrowed. "Hey wait, how long have you been up? Shouldn't you be cringing somewhere in the dark?" He certainly looked tired enough.
Yukimasa gave her an odd look. "I took painkillers."
'Oh. Why did that never occur to me?'
She cringed away from the way that he seemed to snicker at her. It wasn't that funny. She'd never had a hangover before. She didn't even have painkillers around. This was a different kind of pain—normally, soreness, cuts, and even minor broken bones could be powered through. But this affected her balance and cognitive functions.
"You should go drink some water and take a nap," he advised dully. "I'll see you later, then."
"Yeahhhh," she drew out slowly, feeling a bit nauseous at the idea of consuming anything at all. Still, she politely closed the door behind him and sullenly trudged to the kitchen. He was probably right, after all. With the water turned all the way to the cold setting, she leaned under the faucet to lick up at least a glass's worth of water. It didn't seem to help her headache at all, but she considered it enough of an accomplishment to justify crawling back under the covers.
She woke up what must have been another eight hours later, feeling roughly a hundred times better. Somehow, she stumbled through the pitch-black to the light switch. The clock above her stove told her that it was ten at night—not exactly the conventional time to get up and start getting ready for anything, but Aiko couldn't be bothered to care.
"The store will still be open," she muttered to herself, shoving her feet into her boots and tucking the loose edges of Kakashi's pants inside. "Probably, anyways."
As it turned out, it closed for the night at 11:30, so she rushed through her list of what she would need for dinner the next night, as well as other household items she had forgotten about. Bless their hearts, Sasuke and Naruto had agreed to haul over the two couches she had held at the furniture store sometime in the afternoon, and she'd hoped to be mostly done with everything else that needed to be done.
Once she had all her groceries put away, she finally tackled the piles of junk in the front room, unrolling the gold-colored rug that would cover most of the floor. Painstakingly, she dragged the furniture Naruto had helped her carry over into place, putting the little table in the kitchen and the three side tables on top of the rugs, leaving space for the squooshy blue couches she'd ordered. They were empty now, but she dutifully put the vases Ino insisted were a vital part of home decoration on all available surfaces.
The night passed much the same way—she dug out enough quarters to toss all her packed clothes in two of the washers downstairs, made bread dough from scratch, and made several silent trips back and forth between her old room and her bedroom clutching whatever she could hold to put around the house. As it turned out, it didn't seem very different at all to Hiraishin while she wrapped her arms around her dresser than it had when she used it alone.
'I am the laziest piece of shit there ever has been and ever will be,' she thought with some amusement as she used her most powerful technique in order to get her dresser in just the right position. Oh well. When it was clean, she shucked Kakashi's clothes and pulled on black slacks and a long-sleeved shirt from her packed laundry, tossing the loose clothes she'd used as pajamas onto her bed for now.
Bang.
Aiko jumped a little, already halfway to the front room where she'd heard the door slam open. 'Did I really forget to lock it after Yukimasa came by? I slept with the apartment unsecured?'
Not that locks were really much of a deterrent for shinobi, but still. That unnerving thought aside, she relaxed a little when she saw it was only her old housemates, led by Naruto. "Er, good morning," she tried, giving a reflexive glance at the covered windows and making a guess.
Karin gave her a grumpy look. "It might have been, if someone's chakra signature wasn't driving me nuts all damn night by popping in and out of the house. Did you leave your window open or something? It's not like you couldn't come and get your stuff during the day."
"Oh. Right," she said a bit sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I didn't think I'd be keeping you up."
Her brother pushed his way into the apartment, rolling his eyes at the bickering redheads. "Be grumpy later, you two. Didn't you have something to ask Aiko about?" The three girls glanced at his back for a minute as he made a bee-line for the kitchen and started digging around for something.
"Tea is to the left of the sink," Aiko called over her shoulder.
Naruto gave a sleepy grunt in return. "I was hoping for coffee, actually."
She scrunched up her forehead. "Uh, I think the grounds are on top of the fridge." Then she cringed at the sound of something crashing to the floor.
"Found it!" he called back cheerfully.
Hinata shuffled uncomfortably, drawing Aiko's attention back to the other girls. Suddenly, she thought she knew why this exact group was on her doorstep when she'd only been expecting Naruto to come by early to help. They'd been invited, but Karin and Hinata hadn't seemed inclined to come to team dinner when they were already invited to Naruto's silly 'family' dinner two days later.
'Methinks I know what this is about.'
Keeping her thoughts off her face, Aiko gave an apologetic smile. "Sorry there's nowhere to sit." She collapsed cross-legged on the rug and patted the floor beside her. "I'm a poor hostess, I know."
"It's fine," Hinata demurred quietly, coming to sit on the rug as well. Karin settled, making them into a rough triangle.
"We came to ask you a favor," Karin said abruptly. "Just hear me out, okay? I thought that we should finally make Hinata an official member of the family and offered to adopt her in. I didn't think it was going to be a big deal, but it turns out they we're running into a paperwork problem because that would mean we'd have too many ninja in one family and we're supposed to declare as a clan, which sounds easy but even though I'm the oldest I'm told that I don't have the authority to make that decision and that you'd have to agree to take a council seat or something and-"
"That's fine," Aiko finally interrupted, wanting to cut Karin off before she ran out of air. "What do you need me to do?"
Karin and Hinata exchanged mildly incredulous looks, as though they hadn't expected this conversation to be particularly easy. "Ano, you'd have to fill these out." With a sigh, Aiko took the papers from Hinata's hand and started scanning them over.
The only problem she had with this was that sharing her last name could come back to bite Hinata in the ass when it inevitably got out that Aiko was a Hiraishin user. 'The least I can do is get a tag on Hinata so I can keep an eye on her,' Aiko decided. But… she'd already promised Tsunade that she wouldn't tell anyone else in the meantime.
She shrugged off any guilt at the solution that occurred. If she gave Karin and Hinata a safe version of the seal, they wouldn't be likely to suffer adverse effects from association with her. When Hiraishin became public knowledge, she could apologize. Until then… well. Aiko just had to be able to touch them for an instant, somewhere they wouldn't generally be looking while channeling chakra, in order to leave a hidden seal.
"Got a pen or something?" Aiko asked absently, not really that absorbed in what she'd been reading. The paperwork wasn't so bad. Without looking to see who'd offered it, she uncapped the pen, stuck the lid between her teeth, and set about signing and dating on various lines, as well as writing Uzumaki as the prospective clan in the clearest handwriting she could manage at the top. "What about the adoption form?" When it was proffered, she went about copying the information that had been filled in on the rejected form and authorized it with her signature. "There you go. You can drop that off, right?"
Karin nodded dumbly. "Well, that was easier than anticipated."
Aiko shrugged. 'I would have eventually said yes even if Tsunade hadn't told me to. Hinata would have to have red hair to be more qualified to be an Uzumaki. Kami only knows she's stubborn enough to fit in.' She didn't say that, of course. "Why would I say no? Hinata's basically family already. If some stupid paperwork makes it official, I'd have to be really lazy to put it off."
"R-right," Hinata blinked, looking down. It was a gesture she hadn't seen in a while, so Aiko frowned.
'I probably shouldn't call her out on it. This is a much bigger deal for her than it is for me.' She felt almost a little bad for being so nonchalant about something that affected the other girl on a profound level. 'I'm kind of an asshole,' Aiko sighed. 'I was only thinking about this in terms of what it would do for me with that stupid council thing.'
Feeling uncomfortable, she leaned over to give Hinata a one-handed hug across the shoulders… surreptitiously planting a Hiraishin tag on the back of her neck as she did so.
'One down, one to go…' How hard could it be to touch Karin before they left?
"Right." Karin fidgeted, looking between the other two. "Do… Do you need any help with your apartment?"
"That could be nice," Aiko agreed gratefully. "I was thinking I wouldn't worry about much beyond what had to happen to make the front rooms habitable."
Karin nodded knowledgably, hauling herself up to her feet and poking around the apartment. "What are you doing with the spare room?"
"No idea," she snorted honestly, following to peer at the room that was probably intended as a second bedroom. "Maybe it'll be Mitsuo's?" That reminded her… "By the way, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm instigating a 'no snake' policy in the apartment. They drive the dogs nuts."
"Fair enough," Hinata chimed in, leaning against Karin's side. Aiko casually brushed against her cousin's side, tapping her hip and giving it just a kiss of chakra. There, done.
The taller redhead nodded distractedly. "Yeah, it's your house. So. Were you thinking about going on a run for household stuff you'll need? I'll contribute, a lot of the stuff at the house was yours originally."
"That'd be nice," Aiko agreed, running her hand through her loose, slightly tangled hair. "I have towels and shower stuff, but I'll need dish and hand soap, as well as more laundry supplies. House shoes, too, for…" She trailed off, making a face. "A lot of people," she concluded sullenly, looking at the redhead who would definitely not be party to shared house shoes.
"Flowers for those vases," Hinata chimed in, looking around the room. "And at least one rug for the entryway."
"One for under the window," Karin added. "Kami only knows that she's not going to stop doing that."
"And I think I've been relegated to carrying heavy things," Naruto added tolerantly, face nearly hidden behind an enormous mug giving off steam.
"What else are you qualified for," Karin shot back with a smirk. "It's not like even Aiko would want you to pick out decorations."
"I like orange," Aiko chimed in mildly. "And Naruto's taste is just fine."
Karin's hand hit her face. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." The twins gave her a rare, mirrored smile.
While the girls went on a grocery run, Naruto wandered off to harass Sasuke into helping move bookcases across town. He was definitely not pleased about it, but somehow he'd been bullied into manual labor, as Aiko noted when she came back hauling the decorative pillows that were apparently essential.
"We're leaving your movies at the other house, right?" Sasuke cut in before anyone could say anything else.
"Yeah, not much point in moving them when I don't have a tv in here," Aiko noted, dropping the pillows on the floor with a whumph. "Can we go get the couches now?"
After all the work that went into it, dinner went surprisingly smoothly. By team seven standards, anyway. Mostly that meant there wasn't a single Akatsuki in sight or a hint of political intrigue. Unfortunately, there were inter-team problems. Naruto and Sasuke just never left, instead settling down to wrestle and argue in the front room. Naruto seemed a bit flustered and uncomfortable when Yamato showed up, but hell didn't really break loose until Sai showed up at the exact time he had been told to.
"Nyah, who the hell is this guy?" Naruto pointed rudely, smirking slightly. "He looks like slightly less girly than Sasuke. Did you get that cut-off shirt from Ino-san's closet?" He got an elbow to the gut for that one from Sasuke, but he really didn't understand his mistake.
'It's not a good idea to show even a hint of hostility or weakness around Sai,' Aiko noted. Yamato seemed to have had a similar thought. He had perked up and was watching as intently as she was. They weren't disappointed. Sai tilted his head slightly, plastered on a face smile, and addressed his next words to the room at large.
"I see, you must be Naruto. I didn't realize Dickless's girlfriend was this ugly." He swiveled to look at Aiko, managing to miss the way Sasuke turned faintly green and Naruto flushed red. "Is Ugly Girlfriend a good nickname?"
"That's a great one," she agreed gamely, ignoring Naruto's betrayed expression. "Tea?"
Aiko ended up having to play peacekeeper all night, with a half-hearted assist from Yamato who seemed to be out of his depth. The two of them probably spent too much time glancing at the door and wondering where Kakashi was, but no one else seemed to notice. Sasuke and Naruto had managed to mostly unite against the new threat. Sai, on the other hand, was clearly getting irritated with the constant inexplicable hostility. His barbs got sharper and sharper in an attempt to regain the dynamic he'd expected to have with Sasuke, but Naruto took them as a personal offense and squirmed in on what had worked relatively well with just the two of them.
'Boys are so dumb sometimes.' Yamato gave her a slightly frantic expression, as if totally lost for words or ideas on how to curtail what had somehow evolved into a three-way eating contest. Of course, Sai was cheating with ink mice carrying away rice and vegetables when the other two looked away, leaving them completely infuriated and baffled as to how he was keeping up while calmly and politely eating.
She just shrugged, indicating that she didn't know what to do either.
Situation will improve in future, she signed lazily in ANBU standard. It wasn't meant for conversation, but it could do in a pinch. Sai's sharp eyes seemed to catch the motion, but he didn't comment. Yamato's response was a rather doubtful, optimal outcome.
"Perhaps we should help washboard clean up," Sai interrupted, putting down his bowl and chopsticks.
Aiko had a sudden vision of Sai and Sasuke finally coming to blows using chopsticks while Naruto tossed plates at them.
Naruto gave him a baffled expression. "Washboa-" Blue eyes widened when Aiko gave a little wave as if to say, that's me. "Right," he said weakly.
"Don't ask," Sasuke murmured, elbowing him.
"Ah, I appreciate the offer, Sai, but I think that five people are too many to work in one kitchen."
Yamato nodded. "Why don't you boys have a team training exercise?" The three teenage boys stiffened, eying each other like alley cats. "Might work off some steam," he muttered not-quietly-enough to Aiko. She snorted.
"Right," Sasuke said decisively, climbing to his feet. "Thank you for dinner, Aiko-san," he stressed, pointedly looking at Sai as if to make a point about what he should use to refer to others. Sai stared back placidly. "I think Yamato's idea is excellent."
"Training ground six!" Yamato hollered after the boys. Then he looked at Aiko and flushed. "Ah, is it okay to leave you with the clean-up? I didn't think that through. The boys should probably be supervised so they don't kill each other, but I didn't mean-"
"Am I late?"
"Yes," they answered in unison without turning to look at Kakashi. He was probably pouting.
"I put a plate away for you," Aiko clarified, remembering just what a mess the boys had made of the front room.
"Maa, it's fine." He ambled into the room, closing the door that Naruto had left swinging behind him. "I'm not hungry. You see, I-"
"You suck," Aiko said bluntly, raising an eyebrow. "How is it team dinner if the one person who connects everyone else doesn't show up? This is your team."
He gave a sheepish smile, ruffling his hair. "Don't be like that. You see, I was doing some house-cleaning."
"Were you," Yamato said flatly, expression implying he thought that was a filthy lie.
Kakashi nodded, looking genuine. "And I realized I couldn't do my laundry. You see, I wash once every seven days, and I have eight sets of clothing. So I really need those back."
Aiko flushed, but Yamato looked like he was questioning Kakashi's idiotic story. She could hear the conversation as she hurriedly crossed the room to snatch his clothes off her bed.
"That doesn't make sense, senpai," Yamato argued. If she knew his body language at all, the tone meant that he'd just crossed his arms. "Wouldn't that mean you had seven outfits?"
She stalked back into the room, the clothes under her arm in an awkward bundle.
Kakashi was giving Yamato a look that implied he was an idiot when she came to stand beside him. "I suppose I don't know what you two do, but I wear clothes when I do my laundry," Kakashi drawled.
Yamato reddened, back stiffening like his spine had just been replaced with an iron rod. "I. Ah. Buh-" He cleared his throat. "What's that look for?" he managed to squeak.
Aiko assessed the situation with a quick glance, holding the clothes out for Kakashi to take. "He's wondering if we really do our laundry naked and that's why it didn't occur to us that he'd need those back in order to do his laundry every seven days." Her superior officer stiffened uncomfortably. "Now he's picturing it." Kakashi's lone eye twitched, and he avoided looking at them while he made a hasty grab for the clothes. "Now he's remembered how young I am, and is about to flee," she concluded easily. She didn't even get to finish talking before he'd disappeared in a shock of crispy leaves, fluttering to her wooden floor.
Slowly, Yamato turned to give her a mildly impressed look. "How'd you do that?"
"I've worked with him for years," she pointed out mildly. Plus, the power of suggestion. Even if he hadn't been thinking that, he certainly had when she'd pointed out the train of thought.
"Hey, wait," Yamato breathed, sounding a bit put-out. "What's so terrible about picturing me naked that made him run off?"
'Absolutely nothing,' Aiko thought. 'I bet it's a nice view.'
But they didn't have the kind of dynamic where she would move to reassure him about something like that. So instead, she pulled her features into an incredulous sneer that implied she'd just smelled something foul and gave him a pointedly slow up-and-down. Then she turned away without a word and left Yamato to the fit of self-consciousness that would undoubtedly spur. He sputtered incomprehensibly for a moment before he too left.
"Well." Aiko heaved a sigh, looking at her messy apartment. "That could have gone better." She blinked down wetness rising in her eyes. Somehow, she'd imagined that this would be more enjoyable and less stressful.
'Maybe beating each other up is what they need to learn to get along,' she hoped. 'and Kakashi will show up next time.'
That really had been disappointing. Granted, he wasn't a very sociable person, but she had thought he would know that he had been wanted there. He was just an ex-teacher to Naruto and Sasuke, and a temporary captain to Sai, but she and Yamato both considered him a friend. Glumly, she stacked dishes and began putting away the few leftovers that had escaped the purge.
Kakashi took a deep breath, unspeakably relieved to be in the comfort of his own apartment and not around subordinates who insisted on talking about being naked. That conversation had not gone exactly as planned. He really had intended to come to that dinner, but he wasn't used to time-sensitive engagements. No one had made him go and behave at things like that in a very long time.
Then he paused in his thoughts, lips turning into a slight frown. He gave another sniff, nose twitching. "What the…" Kakashi trailed off, lifting the clothes in his arms to confirm that they really did smell like Aiko. He shifted uncomfortably.
They didn't smell like clothes that had sat around unwashed for weeks. They smelled like they had been washed with her sickly-sweet detergent… and then she had re-worn them. Recently, too, and quite a lot. As pajamas, perhaps? Uncertainly, he balled the clothes up and tossed them onto the table.
Was that normal?
It was one thing for him to lend a comrade equipment or assistance on a temporary basis during a mission gone wrong. However embarrassing it was, things like that happened all the time.
It seemed like something else entirely for someone to apparently want to wear his things when there was no need. As a child, Aiko had always been physically affectionate, but she had withdrawn significantly in the past months and he had assumed she no longer desired that sort of reassurance from him. She was an adult now, one who didn't need his constant protection. Why else would she seek out reminders of him?
The safest course of action would be to avoid thinking about this. There was probably a good reason.
'I'll try to be less late next time,' Kakashi decided, dropping the first line of thought like it was a poisonous lizard. However odd it was, Aiko and Tenzou did seem to want him around. If eating their food and then fleeing would make them happy, he might as well give it a try.
Unprofessionally slumped against the wall in one of the painfully bland conference rooms in Hokage tower, Kakashi did his best to avoid noting the strangely uncomfortable atmosphere. He really wasn't sure why Tenzou kept giving him wounded looks, but his kohai apparently didn't feel like saying anything. He shrugged it off. It mustn't be important.
"I suppose it's time to call Aiko on over?"
Tenzou gave a sullen shrug, all but pouting.
His expression was openly conveying confusion, but Kakashi didn't dare ask. Some things were better left unsaid, though he didn't know why a mention of Aiko would apparently irritate Tenzou further. He pulled out the cold metal of his tagged kunai and lazily washed it in some of his chakra.
A half-second later, he was blinking down at a tousled head of reddish-hair attached to a rather short person in the same conservative black outfit as yesterday. Aiko yawned, flashing white teeth. "Hey, guys." Her gaze flickered to Tenzou, and amusement danced in her eyes.
As if in slow motion, he noted Tenzou scowl, finally pushed past whatever bit of self-restraint had been keeping him from a temper tantrum.
"You two hurt my feelings, you know," the younger man pouted.
It was sort of adorable, but he had no fucking idea what Tenzou was talking about. "Huh?"
"I would too look great doing laundry naked!" He hissed, hackles rising and eyes wide. Kakashi recoiled. 'I don't know what is going on, but I want no part of it,' he thought a little desperately.
A cough broke into their conversation, and slowwwly the two men turned to see the opened door that Aiko was already gazing at with a blanked expression.
"Thank you Yamato, for providing that thought to brighten up my work day," Tsunade drawled, raising one impeccably neat eyebrow at the ANBU. He meekly cowered, appearing to do his best to hide behind Aiko. It wasn't very effective.
At least the Suna ambassador seemed to be enjoying herself, even if the Kazekage looked a bit nonplussed by it all. "Hey, Gaara," she said in an undertone. "Can I borrow some money?"
Kakashi's ears perked up. Was this going where he thought it wa-
"Enough to commission a D-class mission," she whispered. Obediently, the Kazekage dug into his pocket and carelessly deposited a pouch into her hand.
"What for?" he murmured lowly. Kakashi's lips twitched.
"I'll explain later," the blonde whispered back, giving Tenzou a predatory look. Tsunade, who was definitely within hearing range, looked very amused by the exchange.
"I think we can get back to negotiating subcontracts and mission exchanges later," the Hokage interjected, sounding for all the world as if she was referencing something much more professional than what his ears were telling him. "Gaara-san, you remember Aiko-chan? I'm sorry to surprise you like this, but I didn't want to discuss this in the open. Your seal needs to be replaced."
"Your Hiraishin seal," Aiko clarified, giving Tsunade an inappropriately dirty look. The Suna nin, who had tensed at what seemed like a reference to Shukaku, relaxed. "Can I see the kunai I gave you before?" As the male teen passed it over, she unconsciously tossed her hair over a shoulder. Kakashi wrinkled his nose as the motion sent a fluttery wave of her shampoo's scent into his face. "Thank you. Apparently, this version," (Kakashi suppressed a wince at the careless way she waved the kunai pointy-end-out) "is inefficient and that's why it taxed me to go straight to Suna. I want to give you two copies—one that's like this one," she explained easily. As she talked, her fingers lit up with blue chakra and she gave an odd little pluck at the seal, lifting the implanted chakra web up entirely and balling it up before tossing it over her shoulder.
It was a good thing no one was looking at him, because he wasn't hiding his surprise. When had Aiko learned to do that?
The actual seal looked completely unaffected, but he could tell that the lingering ink was devoid of the spiritual energy that had powered it. Almost lazily, the new Jounin pressed two fingers against the wrapped paper and let a pulse of chakra out that settled into the old seal paper.
"This one is functional, but it's something of a decoy," Aiko explained, handing it back. "So don't worry too much about keeping it secret. Akatsuki already knows Konoha has a Hiraishin user, so if they come for you again they will certainly look to take it from you. With your permission, I'd like to put one directly on you. It'll be invisible except when you channel chakra, so it should be somewhere that won't normally show."
Tenzou shifted uncomfortably. It might have been the conversation, or it might have been the unblinking way that the Suna kunoichi was staring at his abs with a contemplative mien. Understandable. His virtue could be in danger
"I see." The Kazekage didn't even hesitate. "I will allow it."
He felt his eyebrows shoot up. Really? That was it? Allowing someone else to put a seal on you was pretty dangerous. Perhaps he'd misjudged Aiko's decision to give the Kazekage one in the first place, if he really trusted her this much.
"Thank you," Aiko replied briskly, holding her index and middle fingers together as she raised her hand as if she expected to give him the chakra tattoo right there and then. "Take your shirt off."
Suddenly, the room was silent, still, and awkward. The girl rolled her eyes. "I did say it should go somewhere out of sight," she pointed out practically. "That means under your clothes. I suppose if you prefer you could take off your pants…" Aiko trailed off pointedly.
Tsunade looked like she was on the verge of evil cackling. "Why don't we give you two a bit of privacy?" She jerked her head at the door that connected the conference room to the attached kitchen, ignoring the closed door to the hall. "You can undress in the kitchenette, Gaara-san."
He cringed.
'I don't want to know,' Kakashi reminded himself, staring up at the ceiling and doing his very best not to hear rustling and Aiko's whispered conversation from the other room. At least the Kazekage's low rumbles were completely incomprehensible. When they returned a few minutes later, interrupting the stilted conversation that had erupted, Aiko looked satisfied and the Kazekage looked ruffled.
"Well, I suppose I'd better be going. Take care, you guys." Aiko raised a hand in a half-hearted goodbye and then was gone. He might have thought she'd been practicing her shunshin or substitution technique if there had been any debris at all.