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This is an exercise in many things, Kakashi thinks—in patience, in instinct, denying every trained muscle in his body the act of sweeping the chunin’s legs out from under him and incapacitating him on the spot.
Instead, his hands curl once at his hips, and his exposed eye flickers down to the sharp stare peering up at him through a dense set of lashes. Glinting in the light of the half-moon, Iruka’s eyes convey all that his knitted brows and wrinkled nose had already spoken in turn: determination, twinged with an undeniable, innate curiosity at the jounin now standing beside his bed.
Despite himself, Kakashi can hardly deny the stir of interest that settles in the pit of his stomach; Iruka is, for all of his surface-level normalcy, positively alluring at such a close proximity.
The steady fingers on either side of his face slip gingerly beneath the cross-stitched lip of his mask. With a bobbing throat, Iruka tugs his grip downward, and despite the pomp and circumstance that had danced across his features only moments ago, his reaction to the lower half of Kakashi’s face is almost disappointingly unremarkable. It isn’t that Kakashi wants for him to fall backwards at the sight of his face—far from it, in fact—but if Iruka had caught wind of Naruto’s ridiculous ideas around Kakashi’s unseen face, he can only imagine what the other man may have heard through the grapevine.
And yet, after a steadying breath flutters out past his lips, Iruka’s expression settles on a small smile, and one of his brows quirks upward in questioning. It’s an expression that Kakashi has borne witness to any number of times these past years, but for all of its familiarity, it sets a new spark to the desire still lapping away at his nerves.
A warm pair of lips presses forward suddenly to mask his own, and a quiet part of his subconscious marvels at how quickly his body and mind cave to Iruka’s advancements.
The cloth mask dangling loosely around his neck is long forgotten.