Chapter Text
Yamato rested the blade of his chainsaw over his shoulder and squinted to read the signs all these ratty teenagers were waving. “What’s the orange sign say?” he asked the guy next to him. “The one the screaming blonde kid with facial tattoos is holding? His handwriting is atrocious.”
“Something about mother earth or some gay shit like that, I bet,” the guy snorted.
Yamato tried not to wince. “Mmm.” Making friends within this particular logging community was not going well for him. He wished he could request a transfer back to his old crew, who had been a nice bunch and extremely open-minded, but they were on the other side of the country now. He was here to stay.
“Tree-hugging bitches, think they know logging law,” the guy next to him was saying. “They don’t know shit. We gotta replant all these fuckin’ trees, right? Cut em down, plant em, cut em down. The world would be overrun if we weren’t here!”
“Mmhmm.” Yamato took a casual step away, leaning his chainsaw against the side of one of the logging trucks. The blonde kid with lines tattooed on his face was keeping up a constant stream of impassioned demands for everyone to just hug it out. It was very attention-grabbing.
“Goddamn pansies!” the guy yelled, waving a fist at the mob. They had begun singing something that sounded like a ragged rendition of Kumbaya. Yamato took the man’s distraction as an opportunity to escape, walking briskly over to the smoke-break spot behind the port-a-potties that was an open secret.
The Honeybuckets had been pretty thoroughly sabotaged so all the other loggers were giving them a wide berth. Yamato coughed at the rank air but kept breathing. It took him a moment but soon the smell faded to the background. He listened to the harsh yelling of the lumberjacks and the off-key songs of the eco-geeks. Neither of them were particularly lovely, but at least they were less grating than the sounds chainsaws normally made. Yamato rubbed the bridge of his nose to try and dispel a growing headache. This job was much more depressing than he’d anticipated. Moving across the country had been more depressing, too. He wasn’t handling the change as well as he’d hoped he would.
“Sup?” said someone right beside him.
Yamato flinched. “Holy shit!”
“Oh, sorry,” said the man leaning against one of the port-a-potties. He didn’t sound very sorry at all. In fact, he looked as though he didn’t care about anything, including current fashions. He was wearing a battered pair of shades, the left lens opaque black and the right lens pale purple. A thin scar stretched from his hairline down behind the opaque lens. His battered denim highwaters and jean jacket looked like they’d survived the 70s with plenty of patching but minimal staining. The lower half of his face was covered up by a bandana so it was hard to tell what his expression was, but his lazy posture spoke volumes.
“Are you one of the eco-terrorists?” Yamato asked. He certainly wasn’t on the logging team—Yamato would have noticed someone this… eccentric.
The man cocked his head to the side. “What?”
Yamato jerked a thumb at the crowd behind him. “Whatever they’re calling themselves.”
“I’d say protestors. Eco-terrorists makes them sound too legitimate,” the man said.
“So you’re not with the protestors?”
“Oh, I am,” he said. “Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
The man waved his hand lazily through the air, as if he was swatting away Yamato’s questions. “I’m kind of babysitting.”
Yamato blinked at him. “At a protest?”
The man peered over Yamato’s shoulder. “Yeah. I’ve got a few kids who’re my responsibility in there and then the rest are their friends. Here, you can see ‘em from here.” He took Yamato’s shoulder and spun him around, then aimed a finger.
Yamato wondered nervously if the man had any concept of a personal bubble. He was a few inches taller than Yamato and his grey hair made him look decades older, but the hand he was pointing with was smooth and didn’t shake with age. He could have been in his late twenties like Yamato or really well-preserved in his forties.
“The loud blond one’s mine,” the man said. “Don’t ask why he got the facial tats, my theory is he’s making all his mistakes early. And the girl with the pink mohawk, she’s the brains of the operation. Those two boys who look like they fell out of a gay strip club are mine, too. They didn’t,” he added quickly. “The one in the half-shirt’s an artist, he’s allowed to go through style phases and all that. But Sasuke’s probably exploring some stuff.”
“You have a lot of kids,” was all Yamato could say in response to that. It was weird to talk to someone who was standing right behind him, and who had left his arm casually draped around Yamato’s shoulder. As if they knew each other that well.
The man clapped Yamato on the arm with his free hand. “Told you, I’m babysitting. What’re you doing here?”
“Oh, I’m supposed to be…” Yamato took a step forward and turned to face the man. “Well, I guess you’re protesting against me.”
“Lumberjack, huh?”
Yamato’s felt heat rise in his face. The man’s tone had been gleefully speculative. The one eye Yamato could see was giving him the up-down. Yamato suddenly wished he was wearing ten more layers of clothing and carrying his chainsaw.
“I’m part of the logging team, yes,” he said.
The man cocked his head to the side. “You got a name, Mister Lumberjack?”
The way he said ‘lumberjack’ was obscene. It implied all kinds of filthy thoughts. No way Yamato was giving this guy his real name. “Tenzo,” Yamato said.
“Mmm, I’d rather call you Mister Lumberjack,” the man said.
“And you are?” Yamato said coldly.
“Kakashi. Very nice to meet you. Do all lumberjacks wear those delightful suspenders, or is that just for my benefit?”
“I—they’re practical for what we do!” Yamato said.
“They’re quite fetching.”
Yamato was blushing violently now. “You—I don’t—It’s the uniform!”
Kakashi shrugged and craned his neck to keep an eye on the protest. “Do all lumberjacks wear helmets too or is that just you? Cuz I’m seeing some bare heads in that crowd facing off against my students.”
Yamato’s hand flew up to the orange safety helmet he’d forgotten he was wearing. “Oh. I probably have hat-hair.”
“I can check for you,” Kakashi said.
“That’s. It’s fine.” Yamato cleared his throat. “Your students? You teach?”
Kakashi shrugged. “We’ve got kind of a commune school.”
Yamato blinked rapidly. “You’ve got a what?”
“I’m a filthy hippie,” Kakashi said. He spread his arms so Yamato could get the full effect. “I supervise a pack of angry, horny teenagers for a few hours every day in exchange for a place to live. I’m using my liberal arts education to its full effect a decade out of undergrad.”
Holy shit, this guy was barely past thirty. “So… Is this a class trip?”
“I really only follow the class around,” Kakashi said with a shrug. “New-wave learning, open classrooms, students as the teachers and all that.”
Yamato peered into Kakashi’s single visible eye. “You just don’t want to have to do real work.”
Kakashi’s eye crinkled happily. “You know me so well already, Tenzo!”
“I—” Yamato coughed. “Well. Um. So, what’s going to happen?”
“Well, I’ll probably ask for your phone number in a second and then you can tell it to me and I’ll ask you to write it on my arm but you’ll notice how strong yet supple my—”
“With the protest!” Yamato yelped.
“Oh, that,” Kakashi said, sounding infinitely disappointed. “Class ends at three, so I’ll pack them up and you lumberjacks can keep doing what you do.”
Yamato checked his watch. “It’s three oh eight.”
“Really?” Kakashi said. “Well, I’d better get your number quick, then.”
“Uh,” Yamato said.
“We only have one phone on our commune,” Kakashi said. “I’d give you the number but there’s literally no good time to call.” He produced a Sharpie from one of the pockets on his jacket and held it out. There was dirt caked under his nails.
Yamato took it. He uncapped the pen and then made himself ask, “Are you hiding your identity or something? With the mask.”
“That’s the kind of thing you get to find out on the second or third date.” Kakashi rolled up his left sleeve and held out an arm that was lean and wiry, definitely strong and supple.
Goddammit, Yamato thought to himself. He grabbed Kakashi’s elbow and wrote his number neatly, then added Yamato under it. He slapped the Sharpie into Kakashi’s hand and released his arm.
“Is that your preferred name?” Kakashi said, reading what Yamato had written.
“I gave you a fake name earlier,” Yamato said, because there was no way he was getting out of this situation with any dignity at all.
Kakashi didn’t look offended; he looked delighted. “Really? I’m glad I inspire such trust all of a sudden! I bet it’s the teacher thing. A teacher and a lumberjack, I think I saw that porno… All right, Tenzo. You’ll hear from me later.” He flipped a lazy salute. Yamato nodded awkwardly in acknowledgement.
In less time than it took for Yamato to draw a breath, Kakashi was suddenly racing across the field. He looked like a sprinter straight out of the Olympics, practically flying across the packed earth and patchy grass. Yamato’s mouth fell open. The whole hippie uniform, from the fraying edges of his jeans to his flapping patched jacket, suddenly looked like just that: a uniform. A disguise to blend in with a crowd.
Yamato watched him stop right next to the protestors, clap his hands once, and then… It was amazing. The wad of young adults was falling into formation, still yelling at the loggers but definitely drifting into something organized. Yamato saw Kakashi ruffle the blonde kid’s hair affectionately as he walked down the line. The girl with the pink mohawk led everyone towards a big blue van with a dripping green spiral painted on the side and packed everyone in. She got in the shotgun side, Kakashi took the wheel, and apparently the protest was over. Yamato’s fellow loggers were left dazed in the wake of such an efficient shutdown.
Kakashi beeped the horn and waved as he drove past Yamato. The kids in the back stared at him with interest. They were a motley, punkish crew in black leather, tattered fishnet material, and vibrant hair colors. There was even a truly enormous mutt of a dog who had his fur spiked up along the ridge of its spine and keeping with the theme of badass subculture, though Yamato could have sworn he saw a bowl-cut in there somewhere. Then, as one, all these young rebels joined Kakashi in waving at him. The blonde kid with the facial tattoos even yelled, “Hey, hi! Hi!”
All Yamato could do was give a shy wave back.