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The mission room filled with giggles at the sight of the small white dog running through the door with a letter placed carefully in it’s mouth. The little maltese was already considered the mascot of the room for the time he spent there in the last months.
It was always the same thing. As soon as the movement decreased, the dog went in straight to a specific chunin to deliver the letter in his mouth. He waited for the man to read it and to win some snacks or pet before leaving in a hurry without waiting for answers.
The content of the letters were almost like a s rank mission’s report. The chunin that received them cared for it with his life and no one knew where he kept the papers after. Iruka Umino was really very careful, but that situation was too atypical to be related to work.
By the man’s reactions, it wasn’t reported but something more like an secret admirer.
There was a chain of bets really big about who was trying to win Iruka’s heart and the involved init went from the Hokage till some of the pre-genins of the class Iruka was teaching.
The most obvious would be a member of the Inuzuka clan, after all only a dog very well trained could do what this little one did. But everyone in the Inuzuka clan were too agitated to write such long letters and too impatient to be writing for months without waiting for an answer.
Iruka knew all the theories well, but he didn’t give importance to the weirdness of his fellow shinobi. He was the only one that knew the content of the letters and had his own theories of who were behind them.
‘Iruka-sensei,
Obito was really mean today. He made rain only to make me stop talking about all the things I like the most in you. Terrible friend, don’t you think?
But since he didn’t allow me to do so, I’ll have to tell you then…”
Iruka could feel the cheeks burning with all the praises that were made to him in the letter and an involuntary smile arrived in his face without his control. He already tried to keep and read it when he got home, but the small dog that always observed didn’t allow it.
Despite being bothered to read all that in front of everyone, Iruka couldn’t deny that he felt good knowing that someone was paying so much attention to him. It was good for his ego to be praised and Iruka also had to admit that whoever it was that was sending the letters was slowly gaining his heart.
It wasn’t just for the boom in his confidence, but the words showed a little of the other and who was shown in the paper made Iruka’s heart beat stronger. It looked like someone fun and sarcastic, with whom nothing would be boring. Only the way it talked about friends, many times through nicknames, made Iruka think that it was someone that had bad social skills, but that valued the few people around. Also looked like someone lonely that craved for intimate contact with someone, maybe didn’t search it for fear or shyness?
Anyway, it was someone that Iruka would really much like to meet.
“You know”” Iruka commented with the dog when he realised that no one was paying attention to him anymore “I think that it’s time to end this game. Why don’t you tell to who's writing to meet me and say these things face to face?”
Iruka laughed with himself while the dog seemed to widen his eyes and run from the room. It seemed silly, but he saw some intelligence in that animal’s eyes that remembered him of ninken and well, it was worth the try to - finally - meet his secret admirer.
____________________________________________________________________
When a week went by with no new letter, everyone whispered that Iruka’s secret admirer was either dead or gave up on the obsession for the sensei.
Iruka for his part didn’t know how to react to these possibilities and couldn’t take from his mind that the comment scared the dog and was guilty for the sudden disappearance of his favourite person.
He wanted to have a way to communicate with the other, of asking if everything was alright… But any attempt to locate the people he talked about wasn’t helping. No one with whom Iruka talked knew about an Obito or a Rin and asking about a tou-san or a sensei without a name would be useless.
Not seeing a solution, Iruka followed his routine, trying to not demonstrate how that change was affecting him. He would go to the academy, to the mission room, would correct papers, yell with some people on the way, go to Ichiraku and back to his empty house. If he was yelling more than usual, no one seemed to notice.
He had given up almost a month after when he heard knocks on his classroom door. They were in the middle of free time and it was highly improbable that it was a student. The other teachers didn’t push to interact with him, knowing that he liked to do some work in those moments to finish in time all he had to do and were rare for the appearances of his student’s family searching for him.
“You can come in” Iruka authorized, already putting away his papers to turn his attention to whoever it was.
“Mah, sensei, you never stop working?” he heard Kakashi’s voice a little before seeing the man closing the door behind him.
“Kakashi-san?” Iruka frowned “What are you doing here?”
Kakashi seemed distracted observing the board where the previous lesson was still written in colourful chalk and toying with some of Iruka’s things that were spread around.
“I was helping an old man feed his pig, you see, and the pig told me to look for you. They are very smart creatures, so I decided to not go against him.” Kakashi explained, shrugging.
Iruka’s eyebrow went up not understanding what the other said.
“Excuse me, what?”
“Not important” Kakashi answered with a weird smile, now with the extra hairband Iruka always kept in his table.
“How can I help you, Kakashi-san?” Iruka asked, taking a deep breath to not stress without reason.
“I…” Kakashi started before his expression shattered for a moment and he seemed extremely anxious “I don’t know. You called me here, but I think I can’t do what you asked, sensei.”
“I called…? Maybe that’s a mistake, Kakashi-san. I didn’t ask for any jounin or you in particular.”
“It’s not that you asked for help” Kakashi mumbled more to himself than to Iruka, seeming to fight with himself without realising he was saying out loud “I knew that it was a terrible idea, shouldn’t have let sensei and Obito convince me otherwise.”
Iruka was about to call for help, thinking the jounin finally went nuts when the name said by the other caught his attention. He widened his eyes and analysed Kakashi for some seconds.
“It was you.” Iruka whispered.
Seeming to notice his slip of tongue, Kakashi cursed himself out loud before looking apprehensively to Iruka, not knowing how the other would react.
Iruka could tell he was surprised, but deep down he knew that it wasn’t true. He passed for what he called ‘spelled by Kakashi’s period’ in which his feelings for the other were in ridiculous levels, even more considering that the jounin didn’t even know his name. That was before Kakashi became Naruto’s sensei and the stories the boy telled about the jounin turned that insane passion down, changing it to something more real in which he could admit that the other was infuriating but still attractive.
Iruka only couldn’t imagine that Kakashi paid attention to him enough to know all that details of his personality and appearance, much less… oh gods!
The chunin felt the cheeks red remembering some letters where his secret admirer described in many details what he wanted them to do. And no, he didn’t remember exactly the ones describing romantic and fun dates that Iruka couldn’t wait to go to, but the other types of activities that were more… uh… private.
“Sensei?” Kakashi asked apprehensive “Are you okay? You won’t pass out or explode, ne?”
“I won’t explode” Iruka answered, becoming more red “Is it you or not that were sending that letters?” Kakashi swallowed hard but agreed with his head “Why didn’t you give me the opportunity to answer, Kakashi-san?”
“Well…” Kakashi seemed so out of his comfort zone as Iruka.
“Kiss him already, sensei!” A little voice sounded from the window followed by many giggles.
Iruka and Kakashi could see that almost all of Iruka’s class was there observing them, taking advantage of the distraction of the two shinobi to spy on them. Iruka knew that the little girl that had shouted to them the idea was one of the kids in the old bet about Iruka’s secret admirer.
“It’s not a bad idea” Iruka whispered to only Kakashi to hear “But I can’t give them this satisfaction, so don’t leave here.”
Hiding the smirk, Iruka made a mad face and started to scold his students, giving orders till everyone was busy with something silly he invented as ‘training’. It wasn’t like him to do something like that, but he felt that if he let Kakashi go, he wouldn’t see the man again so soon and the little brats had to train those abilities at some point anyway.
“Where were we?” Iruka asked, turning back to Kakashi with a bigger smile than he planned to give.
“I think you agreed with a kiss, sensei.” Kakashi seemed to almost choke with the words in the hurry to say them.
“You’re right” Iruka smiled even more, getting closer to Kakashi, but stopped before touching the man. “Before that, I didn’t know that such cute dogs could be ninkens.” He couldn’t avoid asking about the dog, after all he got attached to the cute creature. “I didn’t notice him in your pack either.”
“Oh, well” Kakashi laughed embarrassed “That wasn’t a ninken actually.
“How not? Did you train so well a comum dog?” Iruka was impressed.
“Not exactly… It isn’t just the Inuzukas that can use jutsus specialized in dogs. The Hatakes are even better with dogs, despite we’re not that known since the clan now is just me.” seeing the curious look on Iruka’s eyes, Kakshi decided to take off the band-aid at once. “I can turn into a dog, not exactly as a jutsu, it is more like a kekkei genkai as some other clan’s special techniques.
“So all this time it was you delivering the letters?” Iruka had his eyes so open they could pop out “Brilliant! Wait. If you were there then you already knew how I feel about them. And left me here waiting so long?” Iruka pretended to be angry.
“Do I deserve a punishment, sensei?” Kakashi asked in a sexy tone before noticing what he said and hiding his mouth with his hand in horror.
Iruka laughed openly, getting closer to the other.
“You do, Kakashi-san, maybe later, after dinner and in a place more comfortable as my house. Without the kids spying on the windows?”
Kakashi didn’t seem to believe his own luck. But agreed before leaving a masked kiss at Iruka’s cheek and waving goodbye to the students that actually were still spying them through the window.
Iruka was a little sad for losing the easy company of that small dog that visited him, but hey! He got something in exchange that was so much more worth it.