Work Text:
“Welcome to Sakumo’s Sandwiches! How can I help you?”
It’s an early morning in December. The streets of the shopping district are still blanketed in wintery darkness; some snow swirls around gently in the light of the streetlights. It’s quiet. After all, few people are willing to brave this weather, especially at this early hour.
In the midst of this cold and this darkness, one shop has already opened its doors. It is a quaint little bakery, shrouded in warmth and the smell of freshly baked bread. The soft lighting that pours out through the display window dyes the falling snow a faint golden color, and the silver characters on the glass declare the bakery’s name: Sakumo’s Sandwiches. The name was once thought up by the shop owner’s son, many years ago, when the boy couldn’t yet reach the counter and his hands were still too small to knead bread.
That boy is still around today, though he’s now grown taller than his father and his hands have made more bread than he cares to count. Inside that quaint little bakery, behind the counter, stands a young man with a mask and an eyepatch, smiling at his customers over the edge of his book.
Two customers smile back at him, although they’re bundled up in coats and scarves and hats and it’s hard to see their faces. The snow that they’ve trailed into the bakery is already melting on the floor.
One of the customers laughs at his greeting and takes off her scarf, revealing brown hair and a familiar face. “Good morning, Kakashi,” she says.
“You didn’t recognize us, did you?” the other customer says, pulling his scarf down to reveal a teasing grin. “For once you’re not the only one whose face is entirely hidden.”
“It’s not entirely hidden, Obito,” Kakashi replies with a huff, fixing his mask in place. “Besides, it’s a simple matter of hygiene. I work with food. Would you prefer I breathed all over your sandwich, the next time you buy one?”
Obito sticks his tongue out at him. Kakashi returns the gesture, although he presumes it’s pretty hard to see.
Rin shakes her head at them and elbows Obito in the side. “We didn’t come here to bicker, Obito,” she says. “We came here to help Kakashi out.”
“Oh?” It comes out as a question, so Kakashi quickly corrects himself: “Oh. Yeah. That was a thing.” Right – he’d almost forgotten. With the holidays right around the corner, the next couple of days are bound to be busy as all Hell. Kakashi vaguely recalls his father mentioning that he’d asked some people to help run the bakery this year, after the flood of customers they’d had last December. Kakashi just hadn’t realized that Obito and Rin are the reinforcements that Sakumo had called in. Oops.
He closes his book and straightens up. “Well, we could use some help in the kitchen,” he says. “And I suggest that Obito stays here to look after the shop.”
“All by myself?” Obito protests. “I have to do the boring stuff while you guys get to bake bread?”
“It’ll get busier soon enough, and then you won’t be by yourself anymore,” Kakashi replies cheerfully. Judging by Obito’s face, he doesn’t share that excited sentiment. “Besides, the last time I let you near an oven, you almost burned down the whole bakery. Not to mention you ruined two perfectly good loaves of milk bread, and my favorite oven mitts. And that wasn’t even the first time it happened.”
Obito colors red. “I said I was sorry,” he murmurs.
Kakashi pats him on the shoulder. “It’s all right,” he says, sincerely, “but I’m still not letting you set foot in the kitchen.” It’s as though Obito has a natural talent for setting stuff on fire. Which would be very helpful if they ever found themselves stranded on a deserted island, but it’s considerably less helpful in a bakery. Kakashi trusts that he’s not doing it on purpose, but it still makes him a very poor candidate for kitchen duty. At Obito’s glare, he adds: “Plus, you’re good with people. Or something. You’re a people person. Getting to talk to customers is the perfect task for you.”
“Yeah, right. Keep your smooth talk to yourself,” Obito retorts, but a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.
Kakashi grins back and tosses him a spare apron. It’s decorated with the same logo as the display window, and contrary to Kakashi’s own apron, this one is not covered in flour. “We’ll be in the back if you need us,” Kakashi calls. Not much more instructions are needed; both Obito and Rin have occasionally helped out in the bakery since they were twelve. “Try to refrain from somehow starting a fire, yeah?”
Obito sticks his tongue out at Kakashi once more.
Rin puts on an apron as well, and she follows Kakashi into the back of the shop. As she ties the apron behind her back, she sends Kakashi an apologetic look. “I’ll only be able to help in the morning,” she says, “sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he replies, and adds with a sympathetic look: “Is med school trying to drown you in homework again?”
“Yeah,” Rin affirms with a laugh. “It never stops being busy.”
Kakashi hums in understanding. “How about Obito?” he asks. “Is he busy? If he’s missing work because we asked him to help, I swear I’ll kick him out.” Obito works in a retirement home, and he’s gotten himself in trouble before for his chronic tardiness. It’s been a problem since grade school; as soon as someone in need catches Obito’s attention, he just has to help, no matter how long it takes or how late he’s going to be. It’s odd, and very typical, that he still hasn’t kicked that habit despite the fact that helping people is his job. And if Obito has decided to forsake his job to help Kakashi, then Kakashi doesn’t want his help at all.
Rin holds up her hands, a reassuring gesture. “No, Obito’s got some days off,” she replies. “I wouldn’t have let him come here if he’d been busy.”
“Good.” Kakashi opens the door to the kitchen and beckons Rin inside. “After you.”
The kitchen is comfortably warm, even warmer than the rest of the shop, and the warm air carries the scent of bread. Kakashi pauses briefly in the doorway, allowing himself to enjoy it for a moment.
In the middle of the kitchen, Hatake Sakumo is busy kneading bread. He pauses when Rin and Kakashi walk in, holding up a flour-covered hand as a greeting. “Good morning,” he says, and smiles. He’s wearing a mask just like Kakashi is, so someone unfamiliar wouldn’t recognize his smile, but Kakashi notices how the corners of his father’s eyes crinkle and smiles back.
“Good morning, sir,” Rin replies, bowing slightly. Her words are polite, but her tone is comfortable. “Is there anything I can help with?”
He nods and gestures at a batch of buns that’s cooling on a rack. “Your timing’s excellent, actually. The bread for the yakisoba buns has just cooled down enough to be filled. If you could fill them, that’d be great.” He holds up the lump of dough with a sheepish smile; “I’d do it myself, but I’ve kind of got my hands full.”
Rin rolls up her sleeves. “I’ve got it.”
“Thank you.”
A kitchen timer beeps then, signaling that the bread in the oven is done. Kakashi quickly puts on oven mitts and pulls a batch of melon bread from the oven, steaming with heat. The oven mitts aren’t exactly hygienic enough to touch the food, so Kakashi puts the breads on a cooling rack with nothing but plastic gloves protecting his hands. Sakumo laughs as Kakashi hisses through his teeth, and he reminds his son of the existence of tongs.
A different batch of bread is cooling on a second rack, and upon inspection it turns out to be cold enough to sell. Waving his still lightly-toasted hands around to help cool them down, and making Rin laugh at him in the process, Kakashi crosses the kitchen to grab a bunch of plastic bags. Soon, the loaves are neatly bagged and ready to be moved to the shop.
Kakashi holds up one of the loaves in his arms. “I’m going to take this to the shop.”
“Please check if Obito hasn’t gone crazy from loneliness yet,” Rin deadpans.
Kakashi snickers. “Will do.”
“You should ask Obito to help out in the kitchen for a bit,” Sakumo says, looking up from where he’s filling cream buns. “He’s liked baking since he was little, and there’s plenty of work to do.”
“He started a fire the last time he was here, dad!” Kakashi protests, but his words aren’t backed by any desire to argue. He pouts dramatically. “And he’s clumsy. He should stay in the shop if we want to keep him safe from himself.”
“You say this like you’re any less accident-prone,” Rin shoots back with a grin, drawing her thumb vertically across her left eye to mimic the scar that Kakashi has there. “Isn’t there a saying about throwing rocks and living in glass houses, Kakashi? Or pots calling kettles black? I feel like that applies here.”
Kakashi touches his hand to his chest in mock-hurt. Unfortunately, Rin makes a fair point; the scar on Kakashi’s face is hardly the only scar he has, from burns on his forearms and cuts on his fingers due to less-than-ideal knife handling, to that time when he was super sick with the flu and fainted and dropped right down a flight of stairs, to the accident that cost him his eye when he was twelve. He cannot deny that he is a bit of a trouble magnet.
And it’s not like Kakashi himself is the most coordinated person – having only half of his vision and no depth perception makes it kind of difficult not to crash into stuff. He’s gotten better at avoiding collisions with people and furniture, but he’s definitely hit his elbow against the doorway and thrown a whole batch of bread on the floor more times than he can count. He is a pot calling the kettle – Obito – black, but the main reason why he likes teasing Obito so much is because he’s pretty much Kakashi’s only match in terms of clumsiness.
With a deep sigh, Kakashi admits defeat. “Okay, touché,” he replies. “Fine, I’ll ask him to come to the kitchen. I’ll take over running the shop from him.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Sakumo says, dusting the flour off his hands. He pulls down his face mask and sends Kakashi a smile. “It’d be rude of me to invite your friends here and then make you stand in the shop all by yourself.”
Kakashi thinks wistfully of the book that he’d hoped to finish this morning, and then of the considerably less appealing idea of babysitting Obito. He considers bringing it up – but he knows that his dad is a supreme people pleaser, and arguing against his idea will probably just make him sad. Plus, who is Kakashi to say he doesn’t want to spend time with his friends?
He shrugs. “All right. Thanks, dad.”
“You’re welcome, son.” Sakumo lightly squeezes his shoulder as he walks by and takes the bags of bread from Kakashi. “I’ll send Obito your way.”
Kakashi lets Obito take over preparing the cream buns, since there’s not much that can go wrong there. The tasks and the pace of the kitchen comes naturally to all three of them; they’ve been friends since kindergarten, so Obito and Rin have known this bakery for almost as long as Kakashi has.
Their teamwork is like a well-oiled machine fueled by mutual teasing and a generous amount of flour. When Rin notes that it’s past twelve and it’s time for her to leave, Kakashi is surprised at how much time has passed. A mountain of fresh bread is cooling on a rack next to Kakashi, and judging by the frequent sounds of the doorbell that Kakashi can hear into the kitchen, all of that bread will be sold by the end of the day.
He wipes his dough-covered hands on a kitchen towel – anpan dough is so sticky – and smiles at Rin. “You worked hard,” he tells her. “Thanks for your help.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really,” she replies, smiling slightly. “It’s really no problem.”
“How modest,” Kakashi hums, watching Rin’s smile grow wider. He takes a couple of wrapped fruit sandwiches off the counter, making sure to select the ones with strawberry filling; those are Rin’s favorite, after all. “Here,” he says, holding the sandwiches out to her. “Lunch’s on me today.”
“Don’t I get anything?” Obito grumbles.
“You don’t like strawberries,” Kakashi replies matter-of-factly.
Rin laughs as Obito shoots Kakashi the world’s nastiest glare, and she takes the sandwiches. “Thanks.”
They walk to the door with her, seeing her out. It’s snowing harder outside, big snowflakes fluttering down from a gray sky. Rin wraps herself warmly in her coat and scarf, and Kakashi lends her an umbrella; she’ll be back tomorrow anyway, and it’s not like Kakashi’s going anywhere when he’s working hard all day.
Sakumo thanks her and waves at her as she leaves the bakery, and she waves back. When the door has fallen shut behind her, Kakashi turns to Obito and smacks him amicably on the shoulder, leaving a large hand-shaped patch of flour on his black hoodie. “Right,” he says theatrically. “Let’s not dawdle, my friend. Lunch rush is almost upon us, and if we don’t hurry, we’ll surely be trampled under stampedes of customers.”
“I fully agree, my comrade,” Obito replies, slapping Kakashi on the back and undoubtedly leaving a flour stain there as well. “Let us continue to work hard!”
Like that, they return to the kitchen, smacking each other with their flour-covered hands the whole way there. Behind them, Sakumo watches them leave with a shake of his head and a smile on his face.
Really, it’s always been like this, and if the Hatake have their way, it’ll be like this forever.
-END-