Kakashi enjoyed that wonderful thing called 'routine' for a couple of months after The Incident. He tortu- trained his team, he trained himself just as severely, he waited for the next insane mission Tsunade might come up with, he enjoyed his Icha Icha series whenever he could. Life was sweet.

And missing something.

Kakashi glanced away from the activity below to discreetly observe Gai. Both their teams had ended up in the Forest of Death that morning, which, apart from containing the Mosquitoes of Doom and the Leeches of the Apocalypse, wasn't really all that bad. At least you weren't interrupted by Shizune with a bunch of misfile reports.

The teams were practicing against each other; it was good exercise all around, and got the kids used to facing a variety of opponents. Right at this moment, Neji was kicking Naruto's ass- in the nicest of ways, though, because Neji had relaxed a lot in the past four years and was no longer quite so obnoxious and gloomy. Lee and Sasuke were tearing up the woods a bit further away, and Tenten and Sakura had paused in their bout to swap tips on large weapons handling.

Kakashi and Gai's team-mates were not their students anymore; the kids had all graduated and risen in rank, up to junior-level Jounin for Neji. The two older men were no longer teaching a bunch of cadets; they were handing down treasured jutsus and experience to soldiers under their command.

Despite all this and the years that had passed, Gai still treated his team like a bunch of kids to be chivvied and loudly encouraged whenever they scored a blow, followed by a pithy comment about youth and vigour. His team endured it with long-suffering patience (except for Lee, who still lapped it up after all this time).

But not today. That was what was missing, Kakashi realized. Gai corrected in an abstracted voice when he saw a fault, and only grunted or gave a small nod as praise. When Lee kicked Sasuke through a tree, Gai said 'Very good', then stared at a large cloud above the practice field in a thoughtful way.

Kakashi went to make sure his team-mate was alright. Once he assured himself that Sasuke wasn't in need of medical attention, and also not mad enough to mean that medical attention would soon be needed for Lee, Kakashi climbed back up the slight incline to the side of the clearing to watch. But he was having a hard time concentrating now. He'd learned to filter Gai out after all this time, but the absence of exclamations was as distracting and ominous as the sudden cessation of all noise in a forest when you're on patrol. Kakashi wasn't the only one to notice; Neji, Tenten and Lee were also looking at their commanding officer with worried, sidelong glances. From their stance, Kakashi thought this attitude had been going on for a few days now.

There had been nothing wrong with Gai two weeks ago, when he and Kakashi had had one of their regular matches. The score was now seventy to sixty-nine. Kakashi had won the Taijutsu match a couple of months back; he'd been too pumped up on adrenaline after his narrow escape from a threesome with Anko and Gai to lose. Since then, Gai had drawn ahead once more with the last challenge, a footrace/obstacle course through Konoha which had, unfortunately, led past the bookstore. Gai had finished the race in the remarkable time of twenty minutes, thirteen seconds and two tenths. Kakashi had taken several hours.

Concerned for some reason he was hard put to define, Kakashi put his hands in his pockets and walked over to his self-styled eternal rival.

"Yo."

Gai looked at him slowly.

"The kids are probably okay on their own. Want to practice?"

Gai stared at him, his mind apparently coming back from a long trip. Then suddenly he was striking a familiar pose. "Kakashi, I challenge you!"

Kakashi hadn't realized he could ever feel so relieved to hear those words.

"Hey, hey, I was only suggesting a few throws," he drawled, scratching the back of his neck, "but if you insist...after we're done watching the brats."

"It's your turn to choose the event." Gai was looking at him with an intensity that wasn't quite usual.

"Well-"

A whirring sound, and something smashed into the tree halfway between Kakashi and Gai. Kakashi stared blankly at the large battle axe imbedded in the trunk about three feet from him.

"Weapons?" he asked rather weakly before turning around. "Girls? Mind being careful? Those can be rather dangerous."

"Sorry, sir! I didn't mean to throw it that far."

"Wow, Sakura, how did you do that?" Tenten asked, awed. "I can only get it ten yards, if that."

"It's all in the hips. You-"

"Weapons," Gai agreed, and went to encourage Lee with something like his old spark.

---

Kakashi had been congratulating himself on finding a way to get Gai alone in a familiar context, and in a position to worm out what was bothering his friend and rival.

With the nunchaku weaving its way around his nose, hair and other, even more precious parts, he was starting to wonder if it had been such a good idea after all. What had possessed him to suggest armed combat with a visibly distracted Gai?

One of the nunchaku's rods came whistling at Kakashi from the right, the side of his weaker, normal eye. He tried to catch the rod on his kunai to break the swing, but Gai jerked the other rod, the chain swung, and Kakashi had to dodge backwards to avoid the weapon scoring against his head. Dammit, Gai was playing this just a bit too seriously. Kakashi should have gone home and fetched a practice sword-

Gai jerked the rod back over his shoulder. The nunchaku curved around his body like a snake, switched hands and shot out at Kakashi from a completely different angle, from the left side and underhand, nearly catching Kakashi in the stomach.

Kakashi had only wanted to take this opportunity to have a chat with Gai, but it was time to take this seriously. He twisted on himself and parried properly, his kunai striking a metallic chime from his opponent's weapon. He ducked beneath the follow-through swing, foiled Gai's attempt to trip him, swung his kunai towards Gai's flak jacket to gain a bit of space and leapt back.

"Gai, let's-"

Gai was already on him again, nunchaku like a deadly flail.

Kakashi flung his kunai into the ground, shot forward into Gai's space, caught Gai's wrist in his hands and twisted hard, jerking his head away from the final downswing of the nunchaku. Gai resisted for an instant, but Kakashi's burst of speed and well-applied chakra defeated the Green Beast's greater strength and brought him to his knees.

The blur of movement in the clearing finally ceased; Kakashi was pinning Gai down by the arm, Gai was down on one knee. Then Gai's head jerked as if he was waking up. He spluttered a bit, hauling against Kakashi's hold, and then his eyes settled on his rival's discarded kunai.

"What-...did you just forfeit? Or did I lose?" he asked, confused.

"Neither." Kakashi let go and took a cautious step back. "I'm just calling a time-out. This is getting dangerous. You're not concentrating."

"I'm concentrating!" Gai shot to his feet. "I was pressing you, wasn't I?"

"Yeah, you were. You do remember you're not really trying to kill me, right? Or was I supposed to respond with lethal intent too?"

Kakashi was watching Gai carefully. He saw the clench of the jaw, the dilation of the pupils, as if he'd struck his adversary a blow. It wasn't just Gai's concentration that was off. Behind the familiar strength and loud words, there was a hint of something like uncertainty. Kakashi noted, in passing, that whatever the problem was, it hadn't affected Gai's fighting capacities one iota. He was too good a Shinobi for that. But it was dangerous to play-fight when distracted. Too many chances of injury, and Konoha couldn't afford having either of them hospitalized because a little friendly challenge got out of hand. When they fought with weapons, they normally tried to disarm their opponent, not clobber him into insensibility.

Gai had rallied quickly. One fist held high, he proclaimed: "I was in control! My control is excellent!"

"Is that so. As the one who nearly caught your 'chak in the head a few times, it seems to me you're a bit off your game."

"What do you mean? I'm on my game! I've never been so on my game. I've got game!"

"...And you're talking nonsense. Come on, what's up? The job?"

Probably the job. Which would explain Gai's reluctance to talk about it; he would not be allowed to discuss the details. But that was okay. Kakashi had talked down quite a few Jounin from a mental edge before without needing any details. Some things were universal. He'd been on that edge often enough, and some friend had talked him down too. If anything, it was a wonder that Gai hadn't needed this before. He was damn tough, but not invulnerable, either physically or mentally.

Kakashi plucked the kunai from the ground and put it away with a deliberate gesture. Then he went to lean against a tree with his arms crossed over his chest in the classic 'I can wait longer than you've got patience' pose.

Gai swung the nunchaku around restlessly, then tossed it at his pack and started pacing up and down in tight circles, with his head down and his arms behind his back.

"Your team seems fine," Kakashi finally said, with a sidelong glance at his colleague. "Was it a solo op? S-rank? Mission blow up in your face-"

"It was the challenge," Gai growled, looking away. "The one you refused."

Kakashi hadn't been expecting that one at all. It was like going out for a peaceful evening stroll and ending up in a minefield. He was pretty sure no sign of surprise or discomfort was visible in his pose, but in truth, he wasn't so much leaning against the tree now as bracing himself against it.

"Oh. That challenge. What about it?"

Gai muttered something. Kakashi had time to note just how unusual if was for Gai to mutter instead of speaking clearly and with the occasional exclamation mark; then the words 'sex', 'challenge', 'experience' and 'somebody else' ganged up together and punched Kakashi in the head.

"You...challenged someone to- to see who was the best in bed?" Kakashi groaned, taking a guess.

Behind the shock and the wince, he felt a flash of something like hurt. A small thread of thought started that went along the lines of 'But I'm the one this idiot always challenges, I'm his eternal rival', and ended up in a very strange place indeed.

But Gai had stopped pacing and was shaking his head in one of his exaggerated gestures, causing a ripple effect in his bowl cut that would have fascinated a mathematician.

"No, I was only seeking knowledge. I wanted to understand why you had refused."

"I told you-"

"I know." Gai crossed his arms and looked mulish. "And what you said made sense. But when I talked to Anko, what she said made sense too. So I visibly lacked enough understanding of the matter to be able to judge this correctly. I am a well-travelled man of the world, with a wide range of interests, and I refuse to accept a gap in my knowledge that-"

"You were curious," Kakashi translated.

"Curiosity and experimentation are the spice of youth! It is what allows us to-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I went through this when I was thirteen."

He'd been precocious. Gai, on the other hand, was the very definition of a late bloomer. He'd probably never even thought about sex until Anko had opened her big mouth. That curiosity might have contributed to that insane challenge two months back, which was off the wall even by Gai's standards. And then when Kakashi had turned him down....He must have wanted to experiment. Fortunately, Gai had only ever attended the Anko School of Getting Laid, however briefly. From the start, he'd been lead to think of sex as a challenge between equals but nothing more. It looked like the idea of love being part of the equation hadn't really crossed his mind. Shinobi didn't have much to do with romance anyway; it was not only a closed book, it was frequently used for target practice. Kakashi realized just how strangely reassured he was at that; the idea that Gai might have gotten his sturdy big heart broken was more deeply upsetting than it had any rights to be.

"So...what's the problem?" he asked slowly.

Gai didn't answer right away, just started his pacing again. Kakashi waited, watching a few magpies bicker in the branches nearby. He had the time. It was only one o'clock; they'd given their teams the afternoon off after all that practice; Kurenai and Asuma and another Jounin were on call if Tsunade needed minions; the forest of Death was peaceful, the sun piercing the leaves...as far as Kakashi was concerned, he could wait here for hours.

"Do you enjoy it?" Gai finally asked.

"What, sex?" Kakashi scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully. Wonderful. Looked like he was going to have The Talk with Gai. Gai had lost his parents before puberty too, another war orphan, so it was highly possible he'd never gotten it. They should really start sex ed at the academy...even for those graduates who left before their age hit double digits. "Yeah, if you do it right, it's kinda fun."

"Do it right?" Gai stopped his pacing to stare at him intently. "How do you learn to do it right?"

"That's the crux, alright. Mostly-" Kakash was about to say 'experience', but he suddenly had a flash of prescience. A vision of Gai swearing, in his Good Guy pose, to train hard and to sleep with a dozen people before the day was out, or do a thousand laps around the village.

"Mostly you can find the information in books. I can lend you some," Kakashi finished, completely chickening out.

"Books? A man learns by doing!"

"Okay, then I hope you found a very, very nice and understanding woman who shared that opinion." From Gai's behaviour, that had probably not been the case.

Gai stared at him for a few seconds, and then blushed, which was something Kakashi hadn't seen him do since they were both fourteen and he'd lent Gai the newly published Icha Icha Lessons, the first in the series. It wasn't a blush of embarrassment so much as confusion, though. Gai ducked his head and stared at the ground as if he was thinking of challenging it to a match.

Suspicions confirmed. Oh boy, now what? Kakashi took a deep breath. At least he was Gai's friend, and wouldn't use this occasion to tease him. He could just imagine what that bastard Genma would do with this information. Kakashi had slept with the man a few times, when they'd both needed to unwind. Genma had never had any complaints. And once, just once, after a really hard mission, Kakashi had been unable to, well, keep the interest up, it could happen to any guy- Dammit he'd been exhausted, and Genma was still laughing about it to this day-

Kakashi's internal grousing made him miss what Gai had said, though the man was talking so softly he'd probably not have heard anyway.

"What was that?"

Gai's head seemed to retreat into his vest's collar like one of his turtle's. He mumbled something again.

"Speak up, man. Look, this sort of thing happens, and as long as you don't tell Genma about it, you're-"

Gai muttered something. Kakashi's mouth stayed open behind the mask. He couldn't possibly have heard that correctly.

"You what?"

The resulting bellow was probably heard all the way to Konoha.

"I said, I wanted to have sex with a man, because that's what you would do!"

The echoes washed away among the trees, leaving deathly silence in their wake. Kakashi wondered if it was his imagination or if every critter within a square mile was now staring at the two of them with beady, curious eyes. He was distantly thankful they were out in the Forest of Death and not, say, in a bar, where this kind of conversation normally took place.

"What?" he croaked.

"I said, I wanted to-"

"I heard!" Kakashi dragged his fingers savagely through his hair, and struggled to regain his detachment and laidback attitude, because in times like this, you cling to what you know. Okay. He could deal with this logically and calmly.

"But gay, are you even Gai?"

"Huh?"

Kakashi took a deep breath, leaned back against the tree, crossed his arms, and gave himself three seconds to recover.

"Are you into guys? You never showed any indications before." Then again, neither had Gai even glanced twice at a skirt while in Kakashi's presence.

Gai was giving him a blank stare.

"I don't know what you mean," he finally said. "I just...it seemed the right thing to do. That's what you do. Right?"

"That's got nothing to do with it. Didn't you want to try this with a woman? At all?"

The blank stare grew thoughtful. "No, not really. I suppose I had the opportunity, when I went back to Anko for further information, and she suggested that she could further my education- you okay?"

"Yes," Kakashi coughed, trying to relax his suddenly tense muscles. Calm down. Gai was here and unharmed, and not rolled up in his bed in a foetal position, so he had definitively not lost his virginity to Anko. "Carry on."

"I went to Anko for advice on all this last month, since she seems very knowledgeable. She suggested that she could...erm...enlighten me, but I..."

Gai looked lost in thought. "I guess I always use you as my standard, when I don't know what to do," he finally said. "I knew you preferred men, so that is what I decided to practice. And also...I thought maybe when I had more experience, you might change your mind. About that challenge. The one you refused, I mean."

Here's a side of guilt to go with your order of shock.

Normally Kakashi stayed well the hell out of people's private lives, apart from checking how much roughage Naruto ate, and making sure Sasuke didn't spend too much time moping over all his remorse and various personal tragedies. But somehow, this had become Kakashi's business. He didn't need more guilt, he already had more than enough for this lifetime and a couple of reincarnations, so this was something he was going to sort out.

Besides...Gai was his friend. And Kakashi was thinking of the way Gai had been staring at those blasted clouds earlier. A quiet, contemplative Gai was just Wrong.

"So what happened?" he asked, slipping his hands in his pockets. "Did Anko give you any helpful advice?" Kakashi managed to keep most of his irritation and sarcasm out of the last two words.

"Oh yes, she gave me instructions on how to court someone, as well as some basic anatomical information and some, erm, emulsifying product for, erm. She seemed very enthusiastic and amused at the entire idea."

Kakashi realized, with some resignation, that he was going to have to kill Anko. Just a little bit.

"Her suggestions were quite good. Last week, after quite a lot of confusing conversations and misunderstandings, I was able to engage with someone."

"And?" Kakashi asked, when the tale suddenly stopped.

Gai started pacing again. He was doing it in a way where he wouldn't have to look Kakashi in the eye.

Kakashi waited, and then decided that this situation required sensitivity and consideration on his part. So he took out his Icha Icha Paradise, opened it with a loud riffle of pages, and barely glanced over the top of the book at Gai who had frozen to stare at him on hearing the sound.

"Don't be a chump, Maito," Kakashi murmured, his eyes starting at the top of the page. "Being a good fighter doesn't relate to your abilities in the sack, especially the first few times. If you want to trade embarrassing stories, I've got a whole catalogue of my own. Spit it out already, so we can go home sometime today."

He concentrated on his book; he'd missed his bookmark and opened it on a section he'd already read, but that was okay, he enjoyed this bit - ooh, handcuffs - and it gave Gai the opportunity to think and scrutinize Kakashi without all that embarrassing eye contact stuff going on.

"You weren't good at this either?" Gai asked slowly. He was looking at Kakashi intensely, as if the fact that his rival hadn't been a genius in this particular subject was really important to him.

"Fuck no," Kakashi answered lazily, not even glancing up from his page - knee-cuffs and chains, oh yeah, he'd forgotten about those. "I had to pick it up as I went along, and I didn't jump in at the deep end like you apparently did, if by 'emulsifying product', you meant 'lube'."

Dammit, that was just Gai all over, Kakashi sighed inwardly, though on the outside all he did was flip the page. Gai had been like that even when he was a kid: he didn't practice and open his Lotus Gates one by one, oh noooo; he went and blew open six at once and spent most of the age of twelve in the hospital as a result. And now he had apparently decided that anal sex was the best way to pop the cherry. Way to go. Why couldn't Gai have started off with a hand job, like every other horny teen who lost it after the first three strokes?

The silence stretched. Kakashi finally had to glance up.

Gai was looking at him. Just...looking. It was a stare that was hard to qualify from someone who normally broadcast his feelings with a bullhorn.

Kakashi's gaze dropped from that look. He knew what Gai wanted, even if Gai didn't know it himself. He shook his head in mild exasperation.

"You're a great Shinobi, Gai. Almost as good as me." That earned him a sudden combative snort. "The rest...do you really think that could influence what I think of you? If you thought it'd actually matter to me, then maybe I've hit you in the head too many times during our matches."

Gai was silent for a spell, then he nodded abruptly. "You are a good friend, as well as a great rival, Kakashi."

"Huh-uh."

"And a great man as well."

"So a few guys have told me."

"I hope you won't think the worst of me, but...I'm afraid my first attempt wasn't very good. My performance was...inadequate." He started to pace again, energy and self-directed annoyance shivering off that bloody green spandex. It hurt Kakashi even to watch, so he looked at his book again.

"Did the guy you were with say something?"

"No. He didn't have to," Gai answered a bit shortly, reminding Kakashi once again that Gai was could be pretty weird and bone-headed at times, but he wasn't dumb by a very long stretch.

"And you didn't really enjoy it, I take it?"

"...I guess it was...okay...." Gai was frowning again, that inward, thoughtful frown. "But it was confusing, I couldn't seem to figure out what to do and when, and it hurt a bit."

"You mean you-" Surprise caused Kakashi's book to wobble. Whoa, Gai had bottomed? That was unexpected. Thought it shouldn't have been. Gai always went to the very end of his weird ideas and went for the greatest challenge first. Still, Kakashi could more easily imagine Gai on top; no wonder- wait a sec.

"Hurt? How bad?"

"Less than a one," Gai answered absently, which told Kakashi quite a lot. That was how you answered after a fight. How bad? You gave an indication of your injuries on a scale from one to ten. A ten was the loss of a limb or two.

Kakashi could feel something near his covered eye start to twitch. Yeah, sure, first times were never the best. And a 'less than a one' was the sort of minor ouch you picked up without even noticing until all your major wounds were stitched and bandaged and you happened to glance down and think 'huh, when did that happen'. But the fact that it had even registered on the scale was wrong.

The point wasn't that it had hurt ten times less than amputation or disembowelment. The point was...

Despite what Anko had suggested to Gai, two months ago, Kakashi's experience wasn't 'vast'. It was also exclusively among other Jounin, with the occasional Chuunin exception. Civilians didn't understand the mental, emotional and physical constraints the job imposed. If one of his Jounin fuck-buddies wasn't around, Kakashi stuck to his Icha Icha Paradise and his own imagination. Kakashi liked his imagination: it didn't get emotionally involved with him, it didn't require wining and dining before putting out, and it didn't get offended when Kakashi was in a killing rather than a cuddling mood.

He knew some Jounin who had given up on sex altogether, as being too much effort and a potential weakness an enemy could exploit. But Kakashi had no intention of ever giving up a small source of pleasure and relaxation. It felt good, and it allowed him and his friends to let go and unwind in the presence of someone they could trust; that made it worth all the efforts.

Who knew what Gai had hoped to get out of it? What mattered, though, was that he'd been hurt a tiny bit at a moment when he wasn't really expecting it. The pain itself wouldn't be that important, actually, Gai was used to a lot worse. It was the blow to his self-confidence that counted. He was used to being on top of every situation, or just about. And of course, Gai wasn't going to shrug, brush it off and let it go. He wasn't wired that way.

Kakashi stared at Gai who appeared to be deep in thought again; probably going over the event repeatedly to figure out what he'd done wrong, a habit of his when he lost a fight. Kakashi had the Sharingan, the talent and the instinct for figuring out his mistakes and learning from them, but Gai had only hard work and bloody-minded determination, as usual. And normally, this was enough.

But this wasn't something you could figure out like a Taijutsu move or an enemy strategy. Gai was missing some basics here, stuff that Anko probably hadn't even thought to give him. Despite all his efforts, he was having a hard time figuring out what he'd done wrong. And the guy he'd been with had obviously not thought to enlighten him, either before, during or after.

As he watched his oldest surviving friend chew things over, Kakashi came to a sudden conclusion. It was a very simple conclusion. It went unquestioned, unchallenged. It didn't stop to wonder why Kakashi was getting uncharacteristically worked up over something fairly minor. No, this conclusion was The Way Things Were Going To Be.

And the conclusion was: Somebody was going to suffer for this.

"Hey, Gai?"

Gai looked at him inquiringly.

"Who was it? Who was the lucky guy?" 'Lucky' being a very relative term...

"I can't tell you."

"Huh?"

Gai looked at him as if the reason was obvious. Kakashi asked him to elaborate anyway; the twitching under his headband was back.

"I can't tell you. He asked me not to."

"He asked you not to tell me?"

"You or anybody. He said we should keep this between ourselves, which I thought sounded fair. Anko explained about Discretion." Gai looked like he was trying to spell out a foreign word when he said that. "And he said it was a one-off thing and he didn't want to inform anyone."

Somebody was going to suffer. A lot.

"Why?" Kakashi forced his voice into its usual laid-back drawl, though it was surprisingly difficult to keep out the growl. Apparently Gai hadn't quite picked up on the fact that that was a bit weird, and Kakashi didn't want him thinking about it too much.

Gai gave him another blank look. After too many need-to-know-only orders and instructions, you got into the habit of accepting secrecy without really thinking.

"Never mind."

Kakashi didn't lose his temper. Kakashi never lost his temper. Fury clouded your judgment. A burst of rage could make you kill someone quickly, whereas a level-headed interrogator could make things last for days. Kakashi took the flicker of wrath that had suddenly blossomed deep in his head, and harnessed it instead of letting it out.

He was rewarded with a flash of intuition. Aha. Now to confirm it. And deal with it.

"Gai? Look, we need to have a talk. But I have to do something else first," because the twitching at his temple was getting distracting. "Can you meet me back at my place in about an hour? Let yourself in the window, you know the traps and all."

Gai nodded seriously, still way too quiet for Maito Gai.

Kakashi spun on his heels and went hunting.

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