Work Text:
If you asked him outright, Kakashi couldn’t quite tell you when they fell into this routine, and this realization struck him uncomfortably as he stared at Naruto’s tall frame in the kitchen, listening to the quick snipping of the scissors cutting green onions over the bowls of rice and sautéed miso eggplant with tofu.
“There! Finished,” the blonde sighed with satisfaction as he turned around, two steaming bowls in hand and approached the small dining table. When he set the bowls down, he looked up at Kakashi with a curious gaze, tilting his head.
“What? You’re just staring at me.” He pulled off his dark green canvas apron and returned it to its appropriate hanger in the kitchen to expose his simple black sweater and dark orange pants. His hair was the longest it had been in a long time, messy golden bangs framing his now-grown face. “What’s on your mind, Hokage-I-Plan-to-Usurp-in-Two-Years?”
“What are we doing?”
Naruto sat down and scratches the back of his head, perplexed. “Uh…eating dinner? I’m gonna get started if you don’t mind, I’m starving. Itadakimasu!” He picked up his chopsticks and began to eat, quickly shoveling eggplant and rice into his mouth.
Kakashi really couldn’t remember when this all started, couldn’t tell you how many meals he had come home to by now, entering his apartment after long hours as the Rokudaime to find the Jinchuuriki muttering over the absurd market prices for abalone or shoving a spoonful of miso broth in his face, demanding to know if it was too salty. He definitely couldn’t tell you when Naruto became a proficient cook, and it was unclear how much cooking the young man did for himself since he was usually on jounin missions assigned by Kakashi himself. But the Hokage came to expect it, sometime in the days following Naruto’s return from his missions and his detailed debriefing, to find the blond in his home attempting some new recipe.
Kakashi wasn’t even sure if he questioned the whole thing the first time he found the man trespassing in his home, so startled by the nonchalance and the ease with which the blond occupied his living space. But somehow it became a routine. The Copy-nin would sit down at the table, give his thanks to the cook, and eat quietly while Naruto blabbered on about whatever interested him that day, usually some oddity or strange theory he found while reading. Even that was baffling; no one was really sure when Naruto took to reading and everyone was perplexed that the young man could often be found walking by with his nose in some book or other, blithely ignoring the lovestruck fawning of young men and women in the village. But in the evenings with Kakashi, Naruto loved sharing obscure details of Suna history or speculating on the idea of life among the stars, wondering on how to harness space energy or if a revival of traditional techniques of slash-and-burn agriculture were worth trying for certain crops Fire Country had difficulty cultivating. Kakashi had never thought of Naruto as stupid, despite his comments when he first met Team Seven, but he had to admit it was extremely pleasant to see Naruto embrace a different side of his inherent love of learning, more patient with his own thoughts and growth as a twenty year-old man now. To usurp the Rokudaime at age twenty-two was a slightly overambitious goal, but when did Uzumaki Naruto ever limit his own imagination? And if Kakashi was honest, it was only slightly. In power, intelligence, compassion, and sheer will, the man was more than ready for the job and had been for years.
But Naruto had a long time to be Hokage, and Kakashi wasn’t quite ready to let go of his image of the little boy in his memories quite yet.
Then, suddenly, it hit him.
“Naruto.”
Bright blue eyes peered up at him, pausing his chewing, his face round and full of food. “Hnn? Hwa?”
“Are you coming over all the time to prove to me you’re ready to be Hokage?”
Blue eyes closed into smiling crescents. He swallowed before cocking his head and saying, “In a sense. Can you start eating now? It’s getting cold and I worked hard on this one.”
Kakashi sighed and obliged, picking up his chopsticks and bowl, scooping a bit into his mouth. It’s good. Naruto had made this particular dish to varying success, but recent attempts have been consistently delicious. The Copy-nin liked eggplant anyway.
“Why are you asking now, sensei? I’ve been coming over for months now.”
“Mou, months? It’s really been that long?”
“Yeah, it’s not like I’m coming over often but I guess you wouldn’t notice with how busy you are.”
Kakashi couldn’t help but blush a little, which turned even darker when he realized he wasn’t wearing his mask. Each visit seemed memorable. In fact these dinners were one of the few things he looked forward to and recalled with fondness. “Oh. I see.” He said, his tone placid. “I was just curious.”
“You remember why I want to take your job someday, right?”
“To protect your precious people, if I recall correctly.”
“Dattebayo. And you’re my precious people. So I’m here to protect you.”
Kakashi lifted the bowl up to his face and shoveled more food into his mouth, confident his blush couldn’t be suppressed anymore. How did Naruto always say such things with a straight face, his bright gaze so direct, like autumn sunlight?
Naruto continued. “I’m glad I’m not Hokage yet, honestly,” he confessed. “At first I was really impatient and wanted to prove to everyone they should just hand it over to me as soon as you had settled the major conflicts. I knew I was ready for anything that could come my way after the war.
“But then…then I started to watch you.” His voice grew soft and he put down his bowl, finally empty. “I knew Baa-chan always had it rough as the Godaime, handling piles of paperwork and making the hard calls. And when I watch you as Rokudaime, you make it seem all so easy.”
Kakashi shrugged. He wasn’t sure what would come next.
“But that’s how I know it’s not fair to you. Being Hokage shouldn’t be easy. You make hard decisions every day, things you can’t ever tell anyone else. But I know you’ve been doing that your whole life. You’re better at this than anyone I know. And I know you don’t do it from a place of coldness like you used to, before we met you as Team Seven, but—” Naruto looked up again, his gaze steady as he locked in on Kakashi’s dark expression. “You shouldn’t be alone anymore. Not all the time. And I know what it’s like to feel lonely in a crowd of people, so it didn’t seem right to just invite you out with the others and make you still play Hokage in public. So. I figured I’d come over now and then. And share space. That’s what it means for me to protect you.”
The blond shook his head, as if to snap out of something, and grinned sheepishly as pink bloomed across his cheeks. “Sorry for the speech. I just wanted to give you a proper answer.”
“…Thank you, Naruto.”
The jinchuuriki continued grinning. “Dattebayo!”
Kakashi crinkled his eyes and tensed his muscles, prepared for what he was going to inflict on himself. “I’m glad you could tell I’ve always wanted a pretty housewife to come home to!”
Someone down below shouted as a rice bowl flew out the window, and everyone in Konoha could hear a loud shout of “Who said I was a housewife? Or pretty??”