He still remembers the first time she shed his usual 'sensei' title.
Evening. Early autumn.
They cross paths one day out in the village, he on his way to a shop and she just coming back from a mission, and naturally as they tend to do, they stop and say hi.
Their conversations have been getting a bit longer than the usual 'hi, hello, goodbye' bit that is practiced by most fellow ninja, and he's not sure when exactly the shift happened but he doesn't mind it in the slightest. He stops on the side of the street and waits for his favorite ex-student.
Her demeanor is light and cheerful as she adjusts the straps on her backpack. "Hey!"
"Hey yourself," he replies jovially, giving her an off-handed salute.
"How've you been?" She asks, tilting her head in curiosity.
She's only been gone two weeks, a short mission compared to most shinobi her level, but he plays along anyway because he knows she's genuinely missed him just as he's missed her.
"Oh, not too terrible. The worst thing that's happened to me while you've been gone is the cliffhanger in this latest volume of Icha Icha I've been reading," he drawls, lifting the orange book he knows she hates; it's always worth it to see the way her nose crinkles at the sight of it.
"Of course it is..." she rolls her eyes and makes a dramatic sigh. "So where you headed? Wanna get a bite to eat?"
His single visible brow lifts. "Eat? You want food at this hour?"
"Do I?" She exclaims rhetorically. She stretches her arms, spreading them out in a circle. "I'm practically STARVING!"
He regards her for a moment, lowering his Icha Icha novel and bookmarking it with his thumb. "Alright, then. I suppose we can grab a bite."
"Great! Come on, Kakashi!"
She happily walks ahead of him and waves him over to follow, but he's stopped dead in his tracks from her sentence. He blinks three times quickly, unsure if he's losing his hearing in his old age.
"I'm sorry?"
She stops and looks back at him. "Hm?"
He's even more baffled now, because he's sure she would have understood what he meant. "'Kakashi'...?"
A flit of confusion, then- "...Oh! I'm sorry! I guess I just got so comfortable around you that I forgot to use your suffix!"
She blushes and scratches the back of her head in embarrassment, rambling a bit about how it's been a long two weeks and she must be losing it. Kakashi doesn't really hear any of it though, because he finds that he actually likes the way his name sounds coming from her lips without the usual 'sensei' added to it. He cuts her rant short and voices his thoughts.
"No no, I...I like it."
She stops, stares blankly at him. "...You do?"
"Yeah." he decides. "And if you ever call me sensei again, I'll stick Pakkun on you and call it a day."
She laughs - they both do - and waits for him to catch up to her before they start walking again.
At this point, he didn't much care where they ate.
