Chapter Text
Guy was leaning down and peering into the back of his fridge, contemplating the shelf-life of hardboiled eggs and whether or not he could still eat the ones in the back, and then whether or not he should eat them. He considered the benefit and what it might do to his gastrointestinal tract - and whether THAT could be considered a good thing by anyone's standard. (Did he intestines benefit from training like the rest of the body? Guy had no idea.) In the end, he decided to throw them out. Perhaps another day would be the day that he challenged himself to that particular feat of training. As it were, he was unconfident in his memory of when he had originally made the eggs, and it had at least been since before his latest mission out of the village, so they were at least a week old but they could have easily been far older. Guy was perhaps a little over-eager to challenge himself (and this now included his stomach) in any way, shape, or form, but even he had his limits and this was it; not after a week away from home and fresh off of a mission.
So Guy turned away from his fridge, threw the eggs in the trash can, lamented the waste with a solitary, glistening tear, and turned to his cabinets.
"A nice bowl of curried potatoes will suffice," he said aloud, though there was no one else around. He pulled out his various trappings of a curry and scowled into the back of his surprisingly bare cabinet. 'At some point,' he decided, 'I will have to go on a grocery run. This will simply not do; I cannot possibly be expected to maintain a youthful vigor with only potatoes to sustain me!'
It was not too terribly long after, as he was chopping garnish for the top of his bowl on his counter, that he felt a familiar presence fade into existence nearby. Guy had not anticipated him showing up at this moment, let alone this night, but he would have been surprised if the other had waited until morning upon his return. In all likelihood, had he not shown up on Guy's doorstep windowsill, Guy would have made his own way over to the other's, probably with some food to share just in case he had returned since Guy had last checked several hours earlier. In general Guy and Kakashi made a habit of tracking the other down when they got back from extended missions.
While Guy's and Kakashi's missions were not quite supposed to have ended on the same day, Guy supposed it was luck that they had. Guy had been gone for less than a week but it had been several weeks that Kakashi had been out on a particularly lengthy Transport & Protect mission that kept getting extended. Guy had surmised Kakashi's mission had ended up maturing the way they tended to when Kakashi was involved; 'simple merchants' with 'simple wares' only wanting to be protected on their 'modest' journey usually gave way to organized criminals, assassination attempts, and clandestine affairs in spades when Kakashi was involved. (And for all Guy and the other jonin teased Kakashi about it, Guy was 100% sure that the frequency with which Kakashi's missions upgraded themselves had at least SOMETHING to do with Kakashi himself… He was some sort of magnet for trouble.)
Guy had been between missions almost five weeks ago, fresh off of his own when Kakashi had taken this one on. A week-long mission protecting a small merchant caravan from one town to the next big city. Alas, one week then turned into two, two to three, to four and so on. Each week approaching a "final day" of the mission that would mean Kakashi's team could go home, and each week a harbinger of another extension and a longer absence from Konoha for the team. About four weeks into Kakashi's perpetual mission, Guy was up in rotation again for another of his own. Fortunately his did only last the chartered week and it was over in no time. No muss, no fuss; just your average, run-of-the-mill diplomatic bodyguarding at a few events over the course of a week. The type of mission Kakashi had actually signed up for. The most danger Guy came across on this particular mission was some overly-aggressive wait-staff who had made the most grave error of giving his target decaffeinated coffee rather than full-caff. It drove him crazy to waste his talents at light-work bodyguarding, though he respected the appearance and diplomacy involved in having a Konoha Jonin in the entourage. Guy hated it, but he did his duty faithfully.
So Guy had made it back home in one piece, full of youthful spirit and ready to begin his training again (he had, after all, spent a week doing hardly any kinesthetics and did not want to suffer the repercussions of the limited number of repetitions he had been able to go through). On his way through Konoha after his debrief he had taken a detour to take a peek at the windows of Kakashi's apartment in the fading dusk to see if anyone were home. If they had been lit, he would have altered his course immediately and dropped in. Unfortunately, they had been as dark as they had been for weeks, so Guy moved on.
Now it was clear that Kakashi had done the same on the other end and decided to swing by. Guy wondered if he had been back long - or rather, if he had been back longer than a quick debrief. As was procedure (extenuating circumstances notwithstanding) Kakashi would have kept the Hokage up to date on all of the developments of his mission as they happened. As such, usually the debriefs were, well, brief. Only when missions went terribly awry did debriefs take longer than a few formal minutes with the Hokage or an aide. Guy himself had only been seen by an aide this afternoon to report that all went well. The unfortunate side-effect, however, of a mission that has been lengthily extended tended to be that the mission report required more explanation than most.
At any rate, Guy was pleased that his rival was back in town and equally pleased that he had stopped by just as he was finishing his curry.
Guy traipsed over to his living room window and opened it to allow for someone to pass through. He felt Kakashi's chakra lingering just outside and stepped back to let him pass.
"Rival!" he said to the air, not seeing Kakashi immediately. "Come in! I have made curry - and enough for ample servings for the two of us!"
Kakashi did not immediately appear at these words, and Guy frowned. Sometimes, as much of a dog-person as he was, Kakashi was as finicky as a housecat. Guy supposed that perhaps opening the window and gesturing for him to come in was not the best way to actually persuade him that 'in' was what he wanted. Despite the fact that he had come to Guy's apartment on his own. And had hovered outside his window. And had announced himself by undampening his chakra signature in a clear 'I want to be let in' manner. Kakashi didn't move a muscle, as if he were on the verge of flitting away without having said a single word.
Undaunted and thinking that 'Two can play at that game,' Guy took a step back towards the window, said "Ah, well, in that case…," and went to close it. As he started pulling the pane down, a gloved hand jerked into view and stopped him, clutching the frame from below. Guy grinned, 'just like a cat,' he thought to himself. He relinquished his hold.
Guy wandered back into the kitchen, confident that Kakashi would find his own way through the window, now that Guy had made the choice for him.
"I hope you like potato curry, Rival," he threw over his shoulder, walking up to his cabinet and pulling out a pair of bowls and utensils. He didn't hear Kakashi come into the kitchen, but he kept talking as if he had. "I'll be honest, it's not the best base for one of my curries, but it does contain AMPLE amounts of carbohydrates for the jam-packed energy that youthful ninjas like we need!" Guy grandly and performatively doled out spoonfuls of his concoction into the two bowls and whipped around to place them dramatically on the table in the center of the room.
He grinned radiantly and posed to accentuate the curry, before glancing up at Kakashi and taking him in in an instant.
Kakashi was a mess. His normal, standard issue jonin uniform was nowhere to be seen. Instead he was wearing just his black undershirt, sleeves rolled up, and unclasped vest on top. His plain pants were the same as they always were, as was the mask he wore over the lower half of his face. He was covered head to toe in a light layer of dust and debris that only came about after scuffling in close quarters during battle. This was accentuated in some areas by light scrapes and scratches; he'd clearly caught himself in a fall or slide and lost some skin along the way.
Guy noted the parts of his arms that were bright red from these less-serious scrapes and the few tell-tale signs of deeper injuries: dried, maroon blood along his arms and a trail that once dripped along his temple. He saw the red cakes under his fingernails and deduced there would probably be blood along the cuffs of his rolled-up sleeves, likely rolled primarily to hide the stiffness and dullness that accompanied dried blood; a slight color change that tended to unnerve after awhile of wearing it around like a badge of honor -- or shame. This was also a hint that Kakashi had used his chidori at least once in the recent past which Guy knew tended to leave Kakashi drained in more ways than one.
Guy took a moment to absorb the state is rival was in and a brief side-thought to lament that the hot curry on his table would now have to wait and would get cold; Kakashi needed someone to tend his wounds. Primarily he needed someone to coo and tsk appropriately, which was why he came to Guy. Guy doubted he would ever admit it out loud (especially considering that Tsunade was Hokage and was somehow always listening), but Kakashi suffered from an infuriating condition of Hospital Hatred. Not quite nosocomephobia - not with the sheer quantity of times Kakashi had been laid up in Konoha Hospital beds after particularly arduous fights - such a tendency simply made a real phobia unsustainable in the long run - but certainly a compulsion to go elsewhere for help when it was manageable. Plus, Kakashi was well-equipped to handle his own wounds. Guy personally though he lacked other outlets in his life where he might garner unfettered affection of the likes of simple 'what a shame you've been wounded, I wish you didn't have this inconvenience' cooing over scrapes, and the empty 'you cheeky thing, getting a bruise like this; you take too many risks' tsking over the rest. Fortunately, Guy was always happy to oblige.
Guy eyed his steaming curry and the table setting for two once more and wished it longevity since he certainly wouldn't be eating any time soon; Guy had work to do.