Archive of Our Own

Kakashi was no architect, and people seemed to think that that wasn't a problem.

It was a problem. What Kakashi was was a jounin; a shinobi. In his opinion – not that anybody wanted to hear it – what Konohagakure needed with the war now over was a person who knew how to rebuild, not someone who only knew how to tear things down.

'The Council disagrees, your pedigree is perfect, and you're one of the only people who knows how to get the brat to listen,' was Tsunade's response to Kakashi offering up these objections. 'Don't try to wriggle out of it.'

'Not to mention how you're still in your prime,' Kakashi tried again. 'All the talk of you being too old to be Hokage is just–'

'Nice try,' Tsunade cut him off, but the flattery had earned Kakashi at least a small smile. She leaned back in her chair – the chair, that seat in the Tower which Kakashi desperately did not want to fill – and kicked her sandalled feet up onto the desk. He felt, not for the first time, a peculiar mix of envy and outrage at how the Fifth could treat aspects of the Hokage's office so cavalierly; it felt like yet more proof he wasn't suited for the role.

'Look, brat,' Tsunade said flatly. 'It's not just that I'm getting older. I've seen too damned much, Kakashi. I'm tired.'

I'm tired too, Kakashi wanted to say, but the ghost of Minato-sensei wouldn't let him.

Tsunade seemed to sense it. She quirked her lips. 'I'm aware of how incredibly hypocritical it is for me to say so and then kick it down to you, but that's how it goes. There isn't a candidate list, Kakashi. You are the list.'

Kakashi lifted his left hand in an oblique indication at his left eye. 'I can't use...'

Tsunade shook her head. 'Doesn't matter. You know how things work, you've been around the block to know what things don't work, and you don't have to be the most powerful person in the room if you know how to keep those who are in line. Have I mentioned that you're one of the only people Naruto might actually listen to? If you want to think about it as warming the seat for him, go right ahead. I don't care what mental games you have to play as long as you do the job.'

There was something about the way she said it that made Kakashi realise how serious Tsunade was: not about his suitability, but how much she wanted to step down. There was a tightness at the corners of her eyes that belied someone who had held up a very heavy weight for a very long time. There was also a glimmer of hope at seeing the end of her watch come near.

'Isn't it a bad idea to assume that Naruto will become the Seventh?' Kakashi sighed, a roundabout way of admitting defeat.

'You've followed him this far,' Tsunade quipped, crossing her arms and closing her eyes. 'Do you think it's a bad idea?'

Kakashi looked up at the stern portraits of the Hokages lining the walls of the office: all those unsmiling faces who had tried sensible, un-Naruto like ways of doing things, and who had all in their own ways failed.

'No, it's not a bad idea,' Kakashi admitted quietly. If he thought that Konoha needed a creator and not a killer, then there wasn't a better candidate than Uzumaki Naruto.

'That's settled then,' Tsunade declared, making clear by her tone that the discussion was over. She opened one eye to glare at him. 'So suck it up and get used to the idea. If it makes you feel any better, the initial little while after a war tends to be either completely quiet or total chaos, and both are a lot easier to deal with than the sort of slow plotting and batshit behaviour that comes around when people get used to a long peace.'

Kakashi didn't know what that said about him that it did, actually, make him feel better.

'Rokudaime Hokage Hatake Kakashi,' Tsunade mused, over-enunciating the words as she said them. They made Kakashi grimace, but she was smiling. 'Has a good ring to it. Now get out of here; I want to sneak a nap before Shizune comes and forces me to sign more paperwork.'

Six Months Later

'Kakashi-sama,' Shizune said, coming into the office.

It was the office, because Kakashi didn't really want to ever think of it as his office. 'How many times do I have to say you don't have to call me that?' he muttered under his breath, then looked up from an incomprehensibly technical report about the village's potable water supply. It had clearly been written by someone who thought that the Hokage had far more water resource management expertise than Kakashi did, and he pushed it aside with some relief. 'What is it?'

'The latest set of decrees from the daimyo have come in,' Shizune told him, holding out the official sealed scroll in its red enclosure for him to take.

The government's machinations in the Land of Fire had been picking up speed now that the dust had settled somewhat. Shinobi had fought the war, but now their bureaucrat superiors were coming in to finish it: it felt like every other week there were new decrees setting post-war policies in place being announced. If history were any indication, a good number of these "post-war" policies would end up staying on the books forever, but it wasn't as though the hidden villages had any say in what their political lieges wanted to see done. Tools weren't supposed to talk; Kakashi wondered if that was why shinobi who went rogue usually ended up shouting instead.

Ultimately, though, a Hokage wasn't elected for political opinionatedness, and so Kakashi undid the seal without any particular sense of either anticipation or dread. He received the decrees before they were posted so that he could conduct an initial review of them with the Council; the whole process was finally beginning to feel like something rote and normal.

'Hm,' Kakashi hummed after a long moment spent reading it over.

'What does it say?' Shizune asked.

'It's a repopulation decree,' Kakashi said, hearing his voice go bland – this was mission talk, these days. 'It sets out a policy for preserving kekkei genkai bloodline limits in the village.'

Shizune frowned. 'Meaning what?'

'The war depleted our ranks enough that the daimyo is concerned about Konoha's ability to field a sufficient number of shinobi with high-level abilities to serve as an effective deterrent to other nations,' Kakashi summarised, getting to the gist of things with the long experience of someone very used to reading between the lines of official documents. 'It sets out generous subsidies for those who choose to have children under the guise of helping shinobi families recover more quickly, but underneath all of that...' Kakashi tapped the edge of the scroll. 'There will be quotas.'

'Minimum quotas for the number of children born,' Shizune guessed. She would be quick on the uptake: she'd worked for the Fifth for long enough.

Kakashi nodded in affirmation. 'Mmhmm.' He set the scroll down on the desk, eyes hooded.

'They can't just force people to have children,' Shizune pointed out.

Kakashi waved a hand in the air. 'Oh, they've thought about that. The incentives are generous ones, and if push comes to shove they'll be made even more appealing if they have to be. They don't necessarily care about happy families; it's about the numbers, and so if shinobi want to simply contribute to the cause, there are monetary rewards for both donors and surrogates, and a communal creche system is to be set up for children whose parents do not want to act as guardians. I suppose they're also hedging on the fact that significant bloodline limits tend to be held by established families who will have some capacity and desire to raise children anyway.'

Shizune nodded slowly, then came over to pick up the scroll and re-seal it. 'What do you think, Kakashi-sama?'

Kakashi blinked and looked up. 'Drop the -sama,' he said, voice modulating back to normal now that he was done processing the decree. 'Get the scroll to the Council, please, and tell them I'll meet with them...' He flicked his eyes to the clock on the wall, still not used to not being outdoors enough of the day to be able to tell the time by feel. '... after dinner.'

He hadn't answered her question, and Shizune didn't push him; she simply nodded, and vanished off to her administrative tasks.

After the Council meeting, Kakashi ghosted himself into one of Konaha's newly re-established drinking establishments.

'I'm not going to be here every time you second-guess yourself,' Tsunade said to the empty air next to her at the bar.

'I'm not second-guessing myself,' Kakashi said, sitting himself down in the space a moment later. He drew a silencing jutsu in the air; while the barman was Interrogations and therefore authorised to hear most things classified, there were still a few other patrons hanging about.

Tsunade poured some sake into the cup that was set down in front of Kakashi. 'I take it you don't like the new decree.' News travelled fast, once it left the Tower.

'Whether or not this ends up planting the seeds of a biological arms race,' Kakashi posited, picking up the cup, 'I think it's inadvisable to put children in a position where they're raised purely as weapons.' Tsunade raised an eyebrow at him; Kakashi shrugged a shoulder. 'Call it speaking from experience. I've seen the results.'

'We all have,' Tsunade agreed, throwing back her drink. 'But there's logic behind it. It's a carrot, for now, not a stick. Plenty of people are going to want to settle down and fuck like rabbits now that things have settled down. Happens every time a major conflict resolves itself – the Bureau of Population can draw you charts. As for the ones who are going to go into it just for the monetary gain...' She shrugged. 'There are worse ways to bring up kids than in a foster system that is prepared to handle them, don't you think?'

It made Kakashi think of Naruto, alone and abandoned with no one but ANBU guards he hadn't even been aware of as his guardians before Iruka had come along; of Itachi and then Sasuke; of a dozen other examples of orphaned shinobi he knew and had known. 'Maa,' he shrugged, and drank as well.

'Look at it another way,' Tsunade advised. 'Stop thinking like Naruto and start thinking like what you were trained to be. People will always do crazy things for power. Which would you choose to deal with: voluntary contributions, or test tubes in secret bunkers?'

Kakashi picked up the flask of sake to pour for them. 'Tenzo turned out all right,' he said, voice a mask of cheerfulness.

Tsunade snorted. Kakashi raised his cup to her, because she was right, and drank.

The decree was posted on all the public noticeboards, and the Bureau of Population soon sent Kakashi a report even longer than the one about water resource management. Kakashi still wasn't sure if the Bureau was in favour of the decree or not by the time he was done reading their very many projections on how things might go, but he did take note of their immaculately drawn up lineage charts, all of which marked TOP SECRET.

Some bloodlines, Kakashi knew, were happily going to take care of themselves without any outside intervention. Paired with the Bureau's report was an ancillary one from ANBU which amounted to the choicest gossip about the villagers' personal goings-on: Naruto and Hinata, for example, were headed slowly but surely towards something serious – that was a jinchuuriki and the Hyuugas in one fell swoop.

Other lines were problematic to the point of being potentially unsolvable; an aggressively sealed note detailing Sasuke's movements abroad left Kakashi with no more hope for the Uchihas' prospects than he'd had for them a year ago. The one small mercy was that he didn't have any doubt in Sasuke's ability to defend himself against anyone who might come questing for a genetic sample from him: god help them, honestly.

Then there were all the other clans; details on details about people and futures and families that might be brought to life soon. It was strange to look at them as possibilities instead of just liabilities. Kakashi hoped that he would never have to give some sort of rousing speech in favour of the decree, because the sheer absurdity of him being the one to give it would be just too much.

Kakashi sealed the reports away, and decided to go for a walk.

His father's grave marker was not as immaculately kept as it could have been. Kakashi knelt down, a cleaning cloth in hand, and ignored how his ANBU detail's distant chakra signatures became even more distant as they gave him space. He set to work in silence.

When he finished arranging the fresh flowers he'd brought in place, Kakashi leaned back and considered the name carved into the headstone.

Hatake Sakumo.

'Honestly,' Kakashi said to his father, 'it's a miracle I'm not right here next to you.'

The cemetery Sakumo was in was the embodiment of modern Konohagakure sensibilities. Was there a mark of a mature shinobi village more obvious than how it planned for its burials? The grounds were large but dense; the markers uniform in size and closely spaced. In times past, clans buried their people on their own land, but the village had seen enough redistricting for reasons both natural and political that few were able to do so any longer. These days, it was more likely to find groups of markers reserved amongst the otherwise sequentially-filled rows. It was why there were two spaces next to his father's grave: one for Kakashi himself, and then an optimistic third in case the Hatake line lived that long. Kakashi was old enough now to understand what a kindness it had been that someone had thought of him while making Sakumo's arrangements, considering the disgraceful circumstances of his father's death.

'I was never going to fill that third spot,' Kakashi went on. 'Left to my own devices, I won't.' History didn't need to repeat itself, and his current job title didn't lend Kakashi any confidence about his potential lifespan, even if it was easily much better than being in ANBU.

Kakashi lifted his right hand and looked at it. He concentrated, and lightning sparked at his fingertips. He had good control. Great control, by almost anyone's standards. But, without the Sharingan, not enough control. He stopped the flow of chakra and put his hand down.

'Will they ask me to contribute just because of this?' Kakashi asked his father speculatively, plucking at the Hokage symbol on his armband and sighing. 'Everything I've ever been known for was borrowed. And this generation isn't supposed to need all this latent firepower. Or does every preceding generation just want to think that way?'

The White Fang had nothing to say in reply. Kakashi stood, dusting off his knees. 'We dogs of war aren't that special anyway. Hopefully they leave me – us – out of it.'

He turned, and left.

Wearing the words rokudaime emblazoned on his back did come with some advantages: one was that Kakashi's usual sense of paranoia could be toned down while in the village to something that might be termed mere borderline paranoia instead. Going anywhere alone was now impossible unless he was actively trying, and these days Kakashi had enough things to worry about that he rarely saw reason to shake off his diligently unobtrusive ANBU guard detail. It therefore took Kakashi until he was nearly at the door of his father's house before he picked up on the fact that there was someone already inside.

He paused at the threshold for just long enough that one of his guard materialised next to him. 'Hokage-sama,' they said, and at least with ANBU Kakashi didn't feel the need to try to be familiar: they had the good grace to address the position instead of him directly by name. The eagle-masked ANBU was practically sweating with embarrassment: their horror at having let someone break in was palpable. 'We–'

Kakashi waved a hand at Eagle. 'Don't worry about it. I recognise the signature; it's fine.' He opened the door. 'Tenzo, what are you doing here?'

Tenzo was standing just beyond the entryway. 'Your forward guard could use practice at detecting muffled chakra,' he said, smiling pleasantly at Eagle; too pleasantly.

'You're one of the only people on earth who can make himself feel like a tree,' Kakashi replied merrily. There was something nostalgic about tag-team hazing of ANBU. 'In fact, you are probably the only person.'

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say, because Tenzo's expression turned neutral. The levity in the air evaporated. Kakashi shifted, nodding at Eagle. 'You're dismissed. Leave us alone to talk.'

'Sir,' Eagle said, and was gone a moment later.

In the kitchen beyond, Kakashi could see a kettle of water that had been set to boil on top of the little charcoal stove. 'How did you know I was coming?' he asked, stepping up inside. He never stayed in the old Hatake house, and it was a miracle the place had survived, all told. It was only visiting his father that had made Kakashi feel like dropping by.

'I didn't,' Tenzo said. 'I followed your ANBU when you headed to the memorial stones, and then guessed you'd come afterwards. Hokage-sama.'

Kakashi rolled his eyes, but it was good to hear Tenzo joke a little; that said, he was the kind of person who could joke while the world was ending, so it didn't say much. They had, between them, a pretty high bar for what got deemed upsetting.

'Is there something I can do for you?' Kakashi asked, seating himself at a low table which Tenzo had brought out of storage. The rest of the house still had a musty smell to it, but the table and the tea service laid atop it gleamed. 'What have you been up to anyway?' It'd been a while since they'd been able to catch up properly. Being Hokage kept getting in the way of things like having friends, it turned out.

The kettle whistled. Tenzo took it off the stove and brought it over. 'I was hoping to get your advice, senpai.'

'What about?' Kakashi asked. Senpai, coming from Tenzo, was a familiar, comforting form of deference: he'd earned that from Tenzo a long time ago, and it felt good; personal. He'd spent too much time recently wrangling politics and feeling impotent while doing so.

Tenzo reached for a thick envelope that he'd put next to the table and offered it to Kakashi. 'I received a notice from the Bureau of Population. It strongly advised me to consider contributing to the efforts supporting the population decree.' His tone was mission-neutral, and he was watching Kakashi very carefully as he spoke.

Kakashi opened the envelope and withdrew two separate documents. They looked like the sort of profiles ANBU wrote up on targets: they were in the exact same format. The only thing missing was bingo-book rankings, which had been instead replaced by Konoha rank markers. Both profiles were of women with extant, if not remarkable, bloodline limits.

'Ah,' Kakashi said, spreading them out on the table. 'Because of the mokuton.'

Tenzo nodded. 'Yes.'

Kakashi raised his eyebrows at the papers, and ignored the twisting he felt in his stomach with the ease of long practice. 'A bit sinister for marriage profiles, aren't they?'

Tenzo blinked as if just realising the similarities. 'Well,' he chuckled, self-deprecating. 'I thought it would be best to be thorough, and old habits are hard to break.'

'Did you want me to... approve of your options?' Kakashi asked, eyes still on the profiles. He made himself look up. 'Honestly, Tenzo, as long as they aren't spies or secretly hidden-nin or insane, that's all I can ask of you.'

Something in Tenzo's expression twisted. 'I was hoping you would help me choose. Or at least express an opinion on the matter.'

'Me?' Kakashi asked, pointing at himself. 'I'm hopeless with women.'

'These are profiles,' Tenzo insisted. 'You're good at reading profiles.'

'They're profiles of women,' Kakashi pointed out. 'They're profiles of women who you will presumably be–' He paused, unable to quite finish the sentence.

'One might say that you're imminently qualified to make judgements about my...' Tenzo coughed. 'Preferences.' He looked at Kakashi and wouldn't look away.

Kakashi said nothing: what was he supposed to say? No, Tenzo, don't do your duty to the village? That would be rich, coming from the Hokage; richer still, coming from Hatake Kakashi, with his own vested interest in the matter. He eventually shrugged uncomfortably. 'It's not like you've had much time to sleep around in the last few years. Not like I'm paying attention or anything.' He wasn't. It was just easy to keep up with who Tenzo was sleeping with – and vice-versa – because usually the only liaisons either of them had outside of each other were with people whose idea of good fashion sense involved wearing masks at least 50% of the time. 'It's your choice – do you prefer brunettes?' He pointed at one of the profiles. 'Blondes?' Then the other.

'I don't think hair colour particularly matters, senpai,' Tenzo said, sounding frosty. 'At least not when it comes to someone I'm going to be bonded to for the foreseeable future.'

Kakashi slumped forward on the table, shrugging helplessly and hoping that going slouchy would break Tenzo of his stiffness. It felt unfair, being asked in a personal conversation to talk about something primarily professional. Kakashi wasn't sure what Tenzo wanted him to actually say. 'There's always the surrogate pool instead,' he ventured. 'Tsunade-sama gave a rousing lecture about how all you really have to do is go to the hospital and make a contribution.' He waggled his eyebrows. 'It can all be done very scientifically. I can loan you an Icha Icha, help you get in the–'

The other man's expression darkened, and Kakashi abruptly realised what he'd just said. Ah, damn.

'Tenzo–' Kakashi started to apologise, cursing himself and his lead tongue.

'No, thank you,' Tenzo cut him off icily. He picked up the teapot and began to serve, the motions precisely formal. 'I've had enough of science experiments.'

'It's not actually a science experiment,' Kakashi objected, retreating into flat official semantics. 'The foster creche pool being established for children produced from surrogacy has good designated teachers and overseers. It will be staffed by some of the best in Konoha. Think about it rationally, Tenzo: you're getting married for the sake of preserving bloodline limits, but what if the Hashirama cells don't take? You don't even know if you can pass them on.'

'The Bureau has made it clear to me that they think it would be extremely irresponsible for me not to at least try,' Tenzo replied, but some of the coolness had left his voice. 'Like I said, the letter was very strongly worded.'

Kakashi grimaced. 'I'm sure it was. And what will you do if the child doesn't inherit anything?'

Tenzo finished pouring the tea, and set the pot down on the table. It made not even a whisper of sound: old habits, again, even though they were in one of the safest places in the village. 'Then the child grows up like any other child.'

'Because you and I are such experts in what growing up normally looks like,' Kakashi said dryly, taking his cup to warm his fingers.

Tenzo nodded at the profiles. 'Other people have that sort of expertise; ergo the benefits of getting married over using the communal creche. I took a look at the creche's duty roster, senpai,' he added. 'I recognised a lot of the names.'

Kakashi sighed and looked up at the ceiling. 'You would have,' he agreed, because quite a few of the selected shinobi were ex-Root. 'But you might be selling them short. Iruka-sensei's on the list too, you know. It's balanced, like everything has to be in the village.'

'Ah, yes,' said Tenzo, partially mollified. 'But depending on how many children end up in the creche, there might not be enough attention to go around.'

Kakashi shrugged. 'Plenty of us have grown up just fine without two or even one doting parent, you know.'

'Neither you nor anyone else should have had to,' Tenzo said. 'And it isn't quite the same thing: the mokuton is rare, as are the bloodline limits represented here.' He nodded at the prospective candidates. 'The child would know. Communal parenting is an experiment, senpai: Konoha might end up with generation of bloodline limit users resentful that their existence is justified by their jutsu.'

'If we're talking about raising shinobi, a certain amount of suffering builds character,' Kakashi said flatly. 'Some bloodline limits even require it.'

'I'm not disagreeing with that,' Tenzo said: there was the practical man that Kakashi knew emerging from this new, oddly unfamiliar version of Tenzo who seemed so eager to protect children from what felt to Kakashi quite inevitable. 'I'm merely saying that I, personally, don't want to contribute in that way. What would Naruto say to me if I did?'

Kakashi felt himself freeze momentarily. 'He'd kick both of our asses for even talking like this,' he admitted. Kakashi wasn't embarrassed to say so: he had been brought up to think like this, think practically about what needed to be done, no matter how unpleasant. That said, he could and did feel ashamed; not for the first time, he regretted letting Tsunade talk him into things.

'He'd, as you put, kick my ass for even thinking about marrying someone I don't know,' Tenzo agreed, shuffling the papers around.

'I should just abdicate and give the position to him right now,' Kakashi sighed. 'But then I wouldn't want him in charge of overseeing the implementation of this decree either.'

'Neither would I,' Tenzo said firmly. 'Which is why I would prefer to have the marriage arranged and avoid dumping a child in the creche pool.'

Kakashi forced down the lump in his throat. 'Are you sure?'

Tenzo slid the profiles back into the envelope. 'Do you have any objections?'

Kakashi didn't doubt for a moment that Tenzo wanted to do what was best for the village: they were both cut from the same type of cloth, more comfortable with sacrificing for Konoha than taking for themselves. He was equally sure that if Tenzo married himself off, it would be the end of the on-again, off-again affair that they'd maintained since their days together in ANBU. Kakashi had never assumed they would go anywhere: he'd always assumed, really, that one of them would die before they'd ever have to discuss it. This wasn't a conversation he had ever been prepared to have.

'It won't be for love,' Tenzo said ponderously, when Kakashi'd been silent for too long. 'But then again I'm not sure I really understand what love is to begin with. And in doing so the child will at least have the benefit of having declared parents, and I can certainly afford my future partner a comfortable lifestyle between my tokubetsu jounin stipend, the long-term provisions granted by the decree, and any potential death monies.'

All very practical again; all very Tenzo, to lay out the options and weigh the pros and cons as though this were a mission briefing. The two of them were a good team on missions, used to breaking down hard problems and solving them quietly and with minimal fuss. Tenzo was coming to him for help now, wasn't he? For some solidarity, some advice – if Kakashi had been forced to marry someone, he'd probably have asked Tenzo the same thing. It would be churlish and selfish to tell him not to do something good for the village and this potential future mokuton user – this child.

Hatake Kakashi, Hokage, had no real reason to object. And so he didn't.

'Maa,' he said, taking the envelope when Tenzo offered it up to him. 'I'll give the profiles a look and let you know what I think. Doesn't seem like there's any other option, does there?'

He wasn't sure what to make of Tenzo's small, sad smile in reply.

Yet another problem with being Hokage, Kakashi decided a few days later, was that the work required him to manage shinobi politics without actually allowing him to be a shinobi. He'd spent thirty years of his life dealing with difficult issues by simply going to work and letting his training take over, but now that work involved less mind-focusing adrenalin and more sitting around thinking about things he didn't necessarily want to think about.

The folder Tenzo had given him lay on the side of the desk. There was a whole ecosystem of neglected paperwork around it, but it was the folder that Kakashi kept glancing at.

It shouldn't bother him. Tenzo getting married was just one more thing Tenzo was doing for Konoha, and this one didn't even involve him being in mortal peril. Kakashi ought to be glad for him: Tenzo would likely benefit from having something to anchor him besides the mission. The new Psychology subsection Kakashi had established within Interrogation and charged with the duty of monitoring jounin stability would be overjoyed. For some reason, they liked to pick on ex-ANBU members, and apparently ex-Root were even worse. Tenzo was so stable and so duty-minded that they found him somehow hugely suspicious, and kept recommending that he be given time off to "avoid burnout".

(Psychology's own recommendations for him Kakashi promptly set alight without ever reading; he already had Guy's voluminous suggestions on how to live a better life to ignore.)

It would mean putting someone less competent on Orochimaru's detail, but it would never have been sustainable to have Tenzo be the only one capable of that. There would be time to shift Tenzo's responsibilities around, and he was incredibly valuable stationed in Konoha because of the rebuilding efforts. Good things all around.

Kakashi found his eyes straying from the report he was meant to be reading to the folder again. It sat there, somehow accusing, and Kakashi gave up pretending he was going to get anything done and pulled it over.

He didn't know either of the two women. Both of them were quite young; nearly a decade younger than he was. Statistically, it made sense: so many bloodline limit users were promoted to jounin before they were ready for the war, and many had died in it. The population decree wasn't founded on nothing, after all. Kakashi wagered that most potential candidates in Tenzo's age range wouldn't have put themselves up for a matchmaking service: they were likely already attached, or unwilling to be and in the surrogacy pool instead.

Looking at the fresh faces in the profiles made Kakashi feel ancient. He supposed he'd always thought Tenzo would end up like him, a sworn bachelor watching Konoha grow from the sidelines. No small part of him had expected that they'd do so together, survivors who had seen too much to stomach being open enough to do something like get married and have a child, no matter how impersonal the arrangement might be. That they'd keep each other company: safe company, good company, the kind of company that only long acquaintance and shared history could make. The occasional tumble with an ANBU was good for letting off steam, but Tenzo was someone he could sit in silence with. That was different.

Kakashi tapped his pen against the profile of one Kotonaru Miho, last of a line of water jutsu users. He found himself looking for reasons to fault her, to fault them both. It had echoes of how he used to feel about genin teams before Team 7, and his own selfishness sickened him. His reservations weren't necessarily Tenzo's: good things might come about from the marriage, at the end of the day.

Someone knocked on his door and Kakashi hastily shoved the envelope into a drawer. 'Come in,' he called.

'Kakashi-sensei,' greeted Shikamaru, coming in. 'We're going over the planning committee stuff today, right?'

Kakashi'd completely forgotten about the appointment. 'Ah, Shikamaru, yes, right. Planning committee stuff, yes, ha...'

Normally, Kakashi enjoyed having Shikamaru around being exposed to the sort of strategic work the Nara were so good at; it was part of him stacking the deck for Naruto in the future. Today, however, Shikamaru was proving his hereditary incisiveness rather annoyingly as he cocked an eyebrow in askance. 'Is something eating at you, Kakashi-sensei?'

Time to deflect. Kakashi smiled at him and opened a different drawer to pull out an Icha volume. 'The publishing company is ghost-writing sequels...'

Shikamaru didn't even blink. 'Fine, don't tell me why you've been so broody and distracted lately,' he grumbled. 'But please at least pay attention to this – the eastern section of the village perimeter could use some buffering...'

That evening, as Kakashi ate his dinner at his desk, he felt Tenzo's chakra signature flicker into place outside the windows of the office. He put down his chopsticks and went to open them, dispelling the seals to indicate to whoever was hanging around on duty that it was all right.

'What is it?' Kakashi asked as Tenzo came inside. He managed somehow not to add, the last time you came in through the window, we had a good time in the maximum security records section; let's do that again and not talk about kids or marriages or anything. That had been months ago, in any case.

'I wanted to see if you'd had a moment to look through the profiles,' Tenzo said, but then he hoisted up a bento box tied up neatly in a recycled standard-issue jounin kerchief. 'And I guessed you've been busy.'

'Yes, sorry,' Kakashi apologised, moving tectonic piles of paper to make space.

Tenzo set down the box and opened it: its contents smelled excellent. 'Tempura; Gai was telling me how much you like it, and it seemed a better offering than your favourite field rations.'

'Gai and I ate out a lot together in the old days,' Kakashi mused, nudging the sub-par meal he'd scrounged up from the late-night place around the corner into the bin. He could've asked someone on the staff to get him something better, but it still didn't feel right to impose. 'When I retire, we have plans to tour every hot spring we can find...'

'It seems a little early to think of retirement, senpai,' Tenzo chided, leaning against the wall as Kakashi murmured thanks for the meal and began to eat.

'It's retirement that's too far away,' Kakashi said after a few bites. 'This is good. Where did you get it from?'

'I made it,' Tenzo shrugged. 'Naruto was complaining about hospital food, and I had some free time so I made plenty extra. The reconstruction committee is letting me take breaks in between being their lumberyard; I think they're afraid that if they overwork me there'll be hell to pay.'

'There will be,' Kakashi agreed after a mouthful of sweet potato. 'I'm the only one allowed to abuse you that way.'

Tenzo smiled. 'I'll let them know you're staking a claim.'

It was suddenly too much for Kakashi to sit there eating food Tenzo had brought for him and to look at Tenzo smiling. It made him ache. He put down his chopsticks and pulled up his mask. 'About the profiles,' he said, clearing his throat.

Tenzo straightened a little. 'Yes?' he asked, sounding hopeful.

'I'll look at them tomorrow,' Kakashi promised. 'I'll make time.'

'There's absolutely no rush,' Tenzo said, his face shutting down as he snapped to sudden perfect politeness. 'I don't want to burden you unduly when you're so busy.'

'You're my kouhai,' Kakashi said, trying to tease and wondering what the actual hell was going on. Why was talking to Tenzo now so hard, when it had once been so easy? 'I want to.'

'I appreciate it,' Tenzo said. 'Senpai.'

Kakashi nodded, ignoring how that had felt like a barb, and went back to the food. He ate quickly by habit, and Tenzo had made just enough; not too little, but also not too much. Kakashi carefully packed the chopsticks back into place, re-tied the bundle, and held it up like a terrible olive branch. 'Thank you.'

Tenzo took it, brushing their fingers together as he did. Kakashi felt sure it had been on purpose, because Tenzo was always so careful about touch, but if he let himself think about that he might actually drive himself insane. 'Good night,' Tenzo said to him softly, stepping back.

'Good night,' Kakashi replied, and then Tenzo was gone.

Maybe Psych was right, Kakashi reflected a moment later as he gazed out of his now-open window at the twinkling lights of the village below: ex-ANBU and Root were useless at some things after all.

He needed to think. Or, rather, not to think. Kakashi climbed onto the sill, edged himself out, and shut the window of the Hokage tower behind him before setting off towards ANBU.

The person on-duty at the department's shadowy equivalent of a mission desk was surprised enough at Kakashi showing up unannounced that they almost betrayed emotion in their voice when they greeted him.

'Hokage-sama. Is there something...?' Otter trailed off expectantly.

ANBU only had an equivalent of a mission desk because all its missions were distributed directly from the Hokage to its captains. "Front of house", therefore, was mostly a token security role used to scare the crap out of newcomers, accept couriers, and to give ANBU on the injury rota time to take the weight off of their feet and fill in neglected paperwork. Kakashi noted Otter's stiff right arm.

'Don't worry,' he told Otter. 'No audits.' He put one hand on the counter between them. 'A mask, please.'

Otter was silent for a long, stunned moment. 'Hokage-sama?' they repeated dumbly.

'A mask,' Kakashi repeated, dropping the polite request.

Otter didn't need to be told a third time. They slipped back into the shadows of the quartermaster supply behind them; when they returned, it was to wordlessly slide the requested mask across the counter.

ANBU did not retire mask designs, they simply rotated them as rosters changed – there weren't enough animals in the world to keep up with the number of losses the department sustained. Still, Kakashi knew that his old design had been unofficially taken out of the rotation; he hadn't seen it around since stepping into office. Some old ANBU pride at work, he supposed. That very design now looked back up at him with dark, blank eyes.

Kakashi set it over his face, feeling the familiar contours and the soothing hollowness that settled into his bones as he became the role and the role became him.

'Will you be needing a team?' Otter asked, composure back in place and all formalities now dropped in the face of communal ANBU anonymity. It came as a relief. But then Otter shifted slightly, opening their body language and tilting their head. 'Or something else...?'

Kakashi knew, even though he was not meant to hold that knowledge in the forefront of his mind, that Otter was Ishii Jiro. The injured arm, the way he stood, the fact that he knew Kakashi and the mood Kakashi was in well enough to offer, obliquely, to have sex. They'd done so before, during the worst of the war and once before it. Ishii was an ANBU's ANBU: the soul of discretion and not wont to ask questions.

Kakashi hadn't come here intending to blow off steam in that fashion. He could. It would even be healthier than what he had planned. It would very likely be better for him, considering current circumstances. It might even be the right thing to do for Tenzo.

Kakashi shook his head slightly, and Otter was all brisk professionalism once more. Kakashi reached into his jacket to withdraw a ANBU mission scroll for a missing-nin that had strayed too close to Konoha and handed it over for verification. Missions were issued directly by the Hokage, after all. Otter accepted it without a word.

For the sake of propriety, Kakashi removed his flak jacket at the counter instead of going into the general locker room with it. The jacket did have rokudaime on the back, and it wouldn't do to have things made for the light get dirtied in the darkness. He handed it over for safekeeping, then slipped away.

Thirty minutes later and the wind was in his hair. Kakashi felt the branches under his feet as he moved soundlessly through the trees, felt the brand of moonlight on his skin, felt nothing else but the world around him and the mission at hand.

Sandaime had never said that Kakashi was suited to ANBU, just that he was needed there; Minato-sensei had had a similar mindset. They'd never seemed to know what to do with him, Kakashi reflected, but at the end of the day he had been good at this job. Too good, probably, and he knew it would have eaten him whole before the end if he'd been left there. But they'd needed him to do the work for that little while, just like how Konoha needed him to be the Hokage for this little while, and being the mission was something Kakashi could understand.

Everything else drained away. All emotion, all feeling, all need to think. He had a goal, and he was going to achieve it: Sharingan or not, and personal attachments be damned.

The world blurred past. His hands would be bloody before the night was over. Perhaps it was sick that this was the easiest way Kakashi knew how to clear his head, but a shinobi village only grew into the light because it was rooted, to some degree, in this kind of darkness. When Konoha raised its children as weapons, it did so with the knowledge that weapons, from time to time, wanted to be used.

After the kill and after he brought the body back to Konoha to be put into the morgue for a post-mortem, Kakashi – still masked – turned away from ANBU and headed into the village proper.

It was easier, now: easier like this. The sense of calm that always followed an ANBU takedown made the world feel muted even as it set him in a state of serene hyper-focus. Kakashi alighted on the roof opposite Kotonaru Miho's assigned jounin quarters, and waited.

He watched her shadow in the window as she lit a low light a while later, and watched another shadow join with hers as another person entered the room.

Hosokabe Ayame was next. Kakashi found her sleeping not in her own quarters, but in those of one of Tenzo's old squadmates.

When Kakashi was done with his observations, false dawn was just about breaking.

Shizune nearly broke protocol yelling at him for dozing off in half a dozen meetings the next afternoon, but Kakashi barely heard her. The haze of distraction and vague irritability that had dogged at him over the past week had lifted; in the light of what he'd found out the night before, Kakashi was just barely able to acknowledge that those feelings might have been rooted in jealousy.

It left him thoughtful as he pondered what to do next.

He decided, after his last engagement of the day, to go visit Naruto in hospital. Even this long after his altercation with Sasuke, Naruto's rehabilitation was stuck somewhere in between the valley of complete exhaustion and the plateau of real recovery, and Tsunade wanted him trapped somewhere where he could be kept an eye on.

Naruto was seated cross-legged on the bed in his ward when Kakashi arrived, dressed in one of those hospital shirts that was oversized enough at every opening to allow even the most absurdly injured jounin to get in and out of it easily. One of its sleeves flapped emptily, but besides some persistent sallowness to his normally excessively robust complexion, Naruto looked on the mend. Some of the perpetual tension that Kakashi carried around eased away to see it: it had been a good idea to visit.

'Oh my god I'm so bored thank god you've come,' was the first thing out of Naruto's mouth.

'This is what happens when you get yourself into that level of trouble,' Kakashi chided, leaning against the far wall and smiling beneath his mask. 'Expending enough chakra to exhaust a Tailed Beast and then getting your arm lopped off will do that.'

'Ne, Kakashi-sen... Hokage-sa...' Naruto stopped and made a face, suddenly tongue-tied.

'Leave it,' Kakashi shook his head. 'I called your father Minato-sensei unless I was reporting in as ANBU, after all.'

That made Naruto grin, if somewhat tiredly. 'How's it been going?' he asked. 'The whole rokudaime thing?'

In the mad rush of the handover and the reconstruction of the village and the drawing up of new treaties between all Five Kages and Naruto's long-lasting fatigue, they had't actually had much time to talk. That his student was turning the tables and asking after him filled Kakashi with a sort of bittersweet pride: Naruto didn't use to be able to see past his own nose, but the price of him growing up had been nearly too high.

'It isn't how I thought I'd end up,' Kakashi confessed easily, going to sit by the bedside. 'I had a hard enough time keeping the three of you in check, much less a whole village.'

'The village sounds easier,' suggested Naruto.

'Maa,' Kakashi shrugged, deadpan. 'It keeps me busy, and so far I've got away with not having to wear the annoying jacket everywhere. How about you?' He nodded at Naruto's arm. 'I hear they're making good progress on the replacement.'

'That's what Tsunade-baba says,' Naruto shrugged. 'But they also need me to be a bit more recovered before they even think of doing the implant. Something about how my body's kinda beat up.'

That was putting it mildly. 'Total chakra exhaustion takes a lot of time to work through,' Kakashi advised. 'Take it easy. In all honesty, having a whole hospital room to yourself here is a better deal than what you'd get going on the housing lottery at the moment.'

Naruto squinted out of the window, which gave them a good view looking eastwards at the massive amount of rebuilding going on. 'I heard from Sakura-chan that it's pretty bad.'

'Enough civilians lost homes that most jounin who don't have a place to go are stuck in barracks,' Kakashi said. 'Once the civilians are taken care of, then the allotments will go by rank, and you would be at the very near the bottom of the pile.' He smiled winningly. 'Chuunin.'

Naruto gaped at him. 'But–' he protested loudly. 'But I basically saved the world!'

'Don't exaggerate,' Kakashi said, rolling his eyes. 'You and Sasuke had a quarrel, and generated massive collateral damage. As usual. At the end of the day, you still haven't passed your qualifying exams.' He laughed over Naruto's splutters of indignation, then changed the subject. 'How is Hinata?'

'Oh!' Naruto said, reaching his arm up to scratch the back of his head and smiling so brilliantly that the blush on his face suited him more than it made him look embarrassed. 'Good, good. She's amazing. I feel bad for worrying her, you know? But now that I'm not like, falling over every time I try to walk for more than five minutes she's forgiven me for nearly killing myself.'

'That's good,' Kakashi said, soaking up Naruto's simple joy and committing it to memory. 'I'm glad you're happy.'

Naruto squinted at him. 'Are you being weird?'

'No,' Kakashi shook his head and held up both hands. 'I really am happy for you. You're setting a good example, especially considering current affairs.'

Naruto beamed. 'Thanks. Really, screw that population decree, Kakashi-sensei – I can't believe they want to encourage people to get hitched with people they don't like, or have kids they don't really want. I mean, we'll make sure no one gets left behind no matter what happens, but still, what a piece of garbage.'

Hearing the words come out of Naruto's mouth solidified a resolve in Kakashi that, until now, he hadn't realised needed buffering. It had been a terrible idea to listen to his own instincts; he wasn't a builder, more of a breaker. It was the prime reason Kakashi preferred to paint himself out of the picture of anything personal: being on the sidelines was infinitely safer than being potentially responsible for someone besides himself.

Naruto, on the other hand, knew better how a future should look than Kakashi ever would, no matter how oblivious he could still be. The courage to care despite everything, and to care personally: that was Naruto's first instinct, and it was that instinct that had steered Konoha back in the right direction.

He must have looked openly lost in thought, because Naruto's beam had become sly. 'What about you, Kakashi-sensei, huh? Any grand plans?'

'No plans,' Kakashi said, ponderous all over again. 'No plans yet.'

With some free time left to spare before his next meeting after visiting Naruto, Kakashi took an impromptu detour towards the hub of the housing reconstruction projects. Things were coming up nicely: Shikamaru had done a good job wrangling zoning committees and doing forward planning, and in between the markers laid out for residential blocks were spaces for future parks and shops and distributed shinobi facilities that would make Konoha more resilient against attack.

Tenzo was on duty. Kakashi sauntered up to him, but his otherwise silent approach was rendered useless by everyone around Tenzo doing the cursory bowing-and-scraping. Tenzo just looked over his shoulder and nodded at him. 'Senpai,' he said, his arms quite literally full as he stayed pulled timber out of the on-site earth and water supplies.

'Yo,' Kakashi replied. 'How many is this now?'

Tenzo thought about it for a little while. 'This is the twenty-eighth building since the start of work.'

'Maybe when you hit a hundred, there'll be enough spots for you to have a chance to live in one of them, too,' Kakashi said brightly.

'My lottery number is one of the lowest in the jounin allotment,' Tenzo said, with gritted teeth. 'Just my luck.'

Kakashi clapped him on the back sympathetically. 'You could always cheat.'

Tenzo finished extruding a set of dimensional lumber; the builders had it whisked away before he was even done dusting off his hands. 'Cheating would actively undermine attempts to make the process fair. People are on a hair-trigger as it is, with the waiting list so long.'

'It wouldn't be cheating, precisely,' Kakashi said lightly. 'Just you taking advantage of circumstances, since technically married couples go to the top of the list.'

Tenzo's face went blank again; interesting. 'Have you looked at the profiles, then?'

Kakashi lifted a shoulder. 'A little. We can talk about it later.'

Tenzo nodded. 'All right,' he said, acknowledging that it wasn't something to discuss in public.

Kakashi nodded at the next set of lumber that Tenzo'd produced. 'These don't look as... tree-like as what you normally put up,' he commented.

'It isn't as easy to build with more naturally shaped wood,' Tenzo explained. 'I prefer to use the mokuton to make something truly living, but growing a tree or a winding branch would mean two or three times more work for the carpenters: they'd have to size and plane them straight. It would still be better than actually felling trees, but if I can generate mostly dimensional lumber, that's more efficient.'

'And I suppose this first flush of housing isn't meant to last all that long,' Kakashi mused. 'The plans for taller buildings made of brick and that newer concrete stuff keep passing my desk. It'll make for better fireproofing and will be generally more robust.'

'That's the future,' Tenzo agreed, voice pitched in such a way that Kakashi knew he was being intentionally neutral. 'And so this timber has less character.'

'But?' Kakashi prompted.

'But we wouldn't be a village of leaves without the trees,' Tenzo said, speaking his own mind. 'That's what I think, anyway.'

Kakashi hummed. 'The Hatake house is all wood,' he said after a moment. 'It's a miracle it didn't get damaged worse than it did.'

'A lot of it is still in good enough repair that...' Tenzo trailed off.

Kakashi inhaled once, and exhaled silently. 'Would you come take a look at it?' he asked.

That made Tenzo turn from his timber-making to look at him. 'To see what repairs it needs?'

'Yes,' Kakashi said. 'I haven't taken an allotment myself, and I usually sleep at the Tower anyway, but it would be nice to see if it could be patched up. We could talk there, too.'

Tenzo opened his mouth as if to say something, then seemed to think better of it. 'Of course,' he said. 'I'm at your disposal.'

It took some doing, but Kakashi eventually wrestled a two-day break for himself and then abused his position to secure the same period of time off for Tenzo as well. When Shizune had expressed her disbelief in him wanting to take personal time, Kakashi'd (finally) opened his recommendations from Psychology and pointed out the completely predictable report indicating that occasional breaks to prevent burnout were strongly suggested for someone with his background.

It was a prototypical early summer morning when Kakashi arrived at the Hatake house: there was the slightest bite of chill in the air that was overridden by the growing bloom of light across the blue skies overhead.

'It's rickety,' Kakashi said when he felt Tenzo arrive, nodding at the old house. 'But it's where I spent a lot of my time, growing up.'

Tenzo tucked his hands into his pockets and looked. 'I've never lived in a house. What was it like?'

Kakashi cast his mind back. 'I don't know,' he admitted after a while. 'I have some memories of growing up – but they're less about the house, more about my father. After he died...' He shrugged. 'It was a roof over my head.'

Tenzo took the time to look around. Kakashi knew that Tenzo was well familiar with the area: he'd followed Kakashi here on several occasions in the past, whether as Root or as ANBU or just as a friend, but he was unlikely to have stopped to take in the scenery.

'It's a large plot,' Tenzo note. 'Out of the way of the growing bustle, and located in a beautiful area. It's... pleasant.' He gestured around; this part of Konoha was much more sparsely populated, and there was plenty of old growth around that had survived. The river wasn't far away. It was not particularly convenient if you liked living close to the village centre, but jounin tended not to spend a lot of their time at home anyway. A gentle breeze was making the trees sway, and the rustling of the leaves was strangely calming. Kakashi had once thought it was a lonely sound, but he could see why Tenzo would like the place: there was nature here.

'Let's go in,' Kakashi told Tenzo as he went up to unlock the doors and slide them open; they rattled along the unoiled rail. He gestured Tenzo inside. 'What do you think of the damage?'

While the house had been spared from the worst of the fighting, it had suffered serious neglect: one of the walls was in bad shape; the tatami mats were even worse. The papering in the screen doors were torn in places; some of the windows sat in warped frames.

Kakashi followed from behind as Tenzo ran his fingers along the battered walls of the entryway. The wood beneath his hands creaked, warped, and then resettled into shape as he went along, a far subtler mending than Tenzo's usual approach to fixing the structural damage that Naruto and company inevitably left in their wake and a world away from the timber he was tasked to produce for the reconstruction.

'I didn't know you could do that,' Kakashi said as the walls started to go plumb. The house felt like it was sighing; from the inside it was as though it was slowly unfurling from a long slumber, stretching.

'I don't usually have reason to try,' Tenzo told him.

Kakashi paused, watching Tenzo watch him. 'I'll go get the rooms aired out and dusted,' he said eventually, noting Tenzo's surprise at him not mentioning the profiles instead. 'And there's fresh paper for the doors outside – I brought supplies over last night.'

Tenzo, one palm laid flat against the repaired wall, nodded, and quirked a small smile.

It was dawn when they started work and dusk by the time they stopped. Fireflies were coming out as the world turned to purple and then a deep, blanketing black. Kakashi lit a pair of newly-acquired lanterns and hung them at the door. He stepped back to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tenzo, reviewing their work.

The house was aglow. The doors and window frames gleamed dully as if polished. The roof was free of thatch, but Tenzo had worked the base panels beautifully, and they looked almost like large, overlapping tiles in the dim light. The walls were fully repaired and the door, left ajar, provided a glimpse of level floors composed of new wood. The whole thing felt rooted in place; knowing Tenzo, it probably was. A ragged old wisteria that had been struggling to climb up the back wall had come to life as they'd worked, and now it trailed tendrils along the eaves. It was barely past sundown, but the darkness was just deeper here, away from the bright lights of the village core.

'Let's go inside and talk,' Kakashi said eventually, when the silence between them had dragged on for too long.

He felt more than heard Tenzo sigh next to him. 'Yes, we should do that.'

They had to light lanterns inside as well, since the electricity lines out here had been disrupted and service had not yet been restored to the house. The flickering of the flames made shadows dance along the walls and dip out through the windows.

Kakashi went into the kitchen and retrieved two boxes of food and a small flask of sake that he'd staged there earlier in the morning along with their already-eaten lunches, and brought them to the table. 'I paid both Kotonaru and Hosokabe a visit.'

Tenzo accepted his box and opened it. 'Oh? I didn't hear them mention anything about a visit from the Hokage.'

'It wasn't the Hokage who visited,' Kakashi said, setting out two small cups. Tenzo took the bottle of sake away from him before he could pour, and Kakashi let him. 'I did what I do best, and just watched from the shadows.'

'And?' Tenzo asked, pouring diligently.

'Both of them have partners of their own, don't they?' Kakashi watched Tenzo set the bottle down without a quiver. 'And you knew.'

'I did,' Tenzo nodded, denying nothing. He touched his thumb to the lip of his cup, then looked up at Kakashi. 'I felt it would be best if both sides of the marriage had a similar understanding of how things might operate. If my future wife has an arrangement that makes her happy, that would free me to make my own arrangements in turn.'

Kakashi tilted his head to the side. 'Would that be fair to her?'

'When are things ever fair, senpai?' Tenzo retorted. 'In this case, I felt I could both serve the village... and, perhaps, be allowed a selfish thing as well.' He looked back down at the cups. 'If I presumed incorrectly–'

Kakashi reached across the table and touched Tenzo's cheek. 'Would that be fair to either one of their partners?' he revised his question.

Tenzo leaned in to the touch, eyes falling shut for a moment. Kakashi felt him breath in shakily before opening them again. 'Would it be fair to you?'

Kakashi stroked Tenzo's cheekbone with his thumb. 'It doesn't have to be fair to me; I'm as used as you are to how cruel life can be.' Tenzo's gaze sharpened. Kakashi smiled, wan, and let his hand drop so that he could take one of Tenzo's. He rubbed his thumb against the centre of Tenzo's palm. 'But it also,' he ventured, 'doesn't have to be unfair, or cruel.'

'Senpai,' Tenzo started.

Before his courage could leave him, Kakashi pulled down his mask, tugged gently on Tenzo's hand, leaned over the table and kissed him.

There was a shattering gentleness to the kiss that was a thousand ways removed from how they had always kissed before: there was none of the mission-driven roughness from their time in ANBU, nor the exhaustion-laden numbness of the war, nor the distracted worry that had characterised the few times they'd managed to sleep together after Kakashi had become Hokage and Tenzo had stopped simply being there occasionally at night, since they'd both known that someone would always be watching.

'Is that what you wanted me to say, the other night?' Kakashi murmured when he pulled back slightly.

Tenzo tightened his grip on their joined hands. 'You haven't said anything yet,' he murmured in return.

'Don't do it,' Kakashi whispered, fighting to find the words. 'To the potential child, or to either of them, or to either of us.'

This time, it was Tenzo who leaned in to kiss him.

They spilled the sake onto the newly-repaired tatami, ignored the food. There weren't any futons in the space yet – Kakashi hadn't dared to assume – but the both of them were used to assignations conducted in far worse conditions. Besides, Kakashi reflected when they were finished, this time there was hope of improvement in the future. The future itself seemed to spool out in front of him, a ribbon of time which he'd always cut off no more than a year from the present now elongated into the unknowable beyond.

He was leaning up against one of the repaired walls with Tenzo's head in his lap. Kakashi pushed his fingers through Tenzo's hair and let his eyes drift closed.

'You know,' he said, keeping his voice whimsical, 'you could always marry me.'

'Could I now?' Tenzo asked, matching him in tone.

'Yes,' Kakashi continued, lips quivering as he tried not to laugh. I'm the Hokage, that has to count for something.'

'You weren't very quick on the uptake,' Tenzo countered, sounding just as mirthful. 'I tried my best by suggesting Kotonaru-san and Hosokabe-san, and the home-cooked food, but it is hard to get through to the Hokage when you don't know if he wants you the way you want him.'

Kakashi ignored the pang in his chest at the words: if that was a wound that his obliviousness had made go unnoticed, at least now it could be healed. 'The current Hokage is an idiot,' he tells Tenzo. 'But at least now he'll be free from all the people trying to marry themselves or their offspring off to him to help "fulfil the population decree."'

He felt Tenzo stiffen in his arms at the mention of the decree. Kakashi pulled him up so that Tenzo's back was to his chest, and propped his chin on top of Tenzo's head. 'If the decree matters enough to you that you want to fulfil it,' he said, his heart in his mouth, 'then use a surrogate. And whatever happens, the child will have a place in a house–' Kakashi gestured around them '– in a home, and I won't give a damn if they don't manage much more than lousy taijutsu. It'd be better for their lifespan if they weren't good at any jutsu–'

Tenzo turned in his arms and kissed him again. Kakashi let his head hit the wall and let that be his excuse for why the world felt like it was spinning.

'You don't have to decide now,' he told Tenzo when Tenzo finished, wrapping an arm around the man's back. 'You don't have to experiment when you aren't sure. If the Population Bureau wants to try to force you into it...' Kakashi leaned down and nipped at the junction of Tenzo's shoulder, teeth barely marking but there. 'Well, they can try.'

Tenzo huffed a breathless laugh. Kakashi felt him thread the fingers of one of their hands together, and read that for the gratitude it was. 'It's not the Bureau I'm afraid of if I say yes to you,' Tenzo quipped out loud.

'What's more fearful than a bureaucratic division?' Kakashi asked, genuinely puzzled.

'Naruto,' Tenzo said serenely. 'When he finds out.'

Kakashi's eyes shot open from their lazy half-droop.

'I'm saying yes,' Tenzo informed him. 'So you can't take it back.'

Kakashi groaned. 'Well,' he said eventually. 'Serves him right. He's the one that reminded me I shouldn't give up, I suppose.'

'On what?'

Kakashi shrugged, because he didn't know how to say the words on happiness, or even on the future. He settled on kissing Tenzo's temple and simply said, 'On you.'

OMAKE

'Why are you dragging us out into the middle of nowhere for?' Naruto grumbled as Kakashi led them along. 'And why are we carrying all this junk?' He nodded at the large chests that he, Sakura, and Sai were carrying between them. 'Oh hey,' he said as the house came into sight and they trooped up to it. 'I didn't know there were houses out here!'

'This is my house,' Kakashi said sunnily as his team came in through the gates.

The front door was pushed open and Tenzo came out. 'Well, our house, really.'

'NARUTO!' Sakura shouted as Naruto dropped the chest they were carrying together onto her foot.

'YAMATO-TAICHO!' Naruto screamed, eyes wide. 'What do you mean OUR house?'

'They were married two weeks ago,' Sai provided quietly, settling the chest which he was helping Kakashi move down without any injury to anyone. 'Very quietly, but they did use Tsunade-sama and ANBU as their required witnesses, ergo–'

'YOU,' Naruto turned on Sai. 'You witnessed them getting MARRIED and you didn't tell me?'

'We didn't tell anyone, to be fair,' Tenzo laughed, coming over and opening the chest Sakura and Naruto had been carrying.

'Are those futons,' Naruto asked, clawing at his face. 'Did you make us carry futons that you two are going to f–'

Sakura slapped a hand over Naruto's mouth.

'– fornicate in,' Sai completed the sentence. 'Yes, they did.'

Naruto's muffled scream scared a few birds out from their roosts in the trees.

'Well,' Kakashi said, beaming at them all. 'Honestly, Naruto, don't make such a fuss. It was practically Tenzo using me as an excuse to build something to live in that matched up to his architectural dreams. Did you know that, even as a jounin, his housing lottery number as a single male not married to the Hokage would have been...'