Chapter Text
Iruka was going to seal his teacher inside a scroll.
Okay, not really. He wasn’t at that level of sealing yet. Besides, Iruka was already in hot water with her and after seeing how the first semester at school went, his parents had taken to waking him up with a warning to not cause any trouble like some awful, nagging alarm clock, but he was tempted.
So very, very tempted.
Iruka didn’t know what he had done other than exist, but from the moment he had enrolled at the Academy, he had been absolutely certain that his teacher was out to get him. Like, the-sky-was-blue kind of certain.
Was he aware of how ridiculous it sounded, that a grown woman who had undergone months of training in education to even become his teacher in the first place had such strong issues with seven year old him? Yes, and he didn't care because it was true!
The very first day, she had scolded him for being too loud when he answered to her calling his name during attendance and then it just kept snowballing from there. Every single day there was something new that he did wrong. Sitting too crooked, taking up too much space in the aisle, brushing his bangs out of his eyes, sharpening his pencil over his paper—it didn't matter! There was always something!
Yesterday, it had been for chipping a chunk off the wooden target with his shuriken. She had scolded him in front of the entire class saying that she would have to graciously pay for a new one out of her own pocket. A wooden target! What did she need to pay for? They lived in the Hidden Leaf Village! All she had to do was find another stupid log and paint a target on it!
But today? Today’s episode was that this time, instead of failing at shuriken, he was serving detention in class for 'disrupting the class with his disrespectful comments’.
And okay, Iruka knew that sometimes he said the wrong thing at the wrong time, but this was one of the times he didn't!
Iruka had just corrected her as she was helping one of the younger students with the hand signs for the transformation jutsu, but then she totally blew up at him as if she wasn’t the one ignoring the fact that the girl was doing the signs in the wrong order! How could she forget the order of such a low-ranking jutsu as a Chunin instructor?
Iruka hadn’t even been the only one to point it out, either! Several other students had told her that it was Dog before Boar and not the opposite, but Iruka was the only one she had sent to detention, demanding a written apology for his ‘insubordination’, whatever that meant.
So, that was how he ended up staying behind in his stuffy classroom while everybody else went out for taijutsu practice.
He scowled at the blank piece of paper in front of him. It was so perfect, not a wrinkle in sight on its smooth surface. Iruka wanted to shred it to bits so that his teacher would have to fetch him another if she wanted that apology.
Then after she brought him another, he’d destroy that one, too. He’d keep doing it until she gave up or brought an entire stack and if she brought him a stack, he’d make a bunch of seals and stick them to her back. He needed to practice them, anyway.
Iruka sighed. Leave it to him to get stuck with a teacher that had no right to be one in the first place.
Listen, he knew that with the war going on the supply of teachers was sorely lacking, but surely they could have found someone that didn’t hate children and was actually qualified to teach! Maybe then he would’ve gotten a different teacher. You know, like one that didn’t hate his guts for no apparent reason. Seriously, Iruka was going to end up like his dad at this rate with all of this huffing and puffing, greying hair and everything!
All of his internal complaining must have somehow alerted the woman of his nightmares because not even a moment later his teacher busted through the door and stormed up to him, rage contorting her already less than pleasant features with harsh lines.
Mina-sensei snatched the paper from under his nose, shaking it furiously in his face, and Iruka held his breath with a flinch.
“What is this, Umino?” she demanded, “Why is it still blank after twenty minutes? If this isn’t done by the end of class, I will be having words with your parents! Get. It. Done!”
Never one to not allow something to go unscathed in her interactions with Iruka, she slammed the table a good couple of times, probably wishing that it were him, before leaving as quickly as she came with another violent mistreatment of the door for good measure.
The moment she was gone Iruka gasped for air, clutching his throat as he coughed. Gods, his teacher’s perfume smelled particularly awful today. Did she wear it just to spite him? He swore he was this close to passing out!
Iruka was in the middle of flapping away the remnant cloud of foul death gas left behind in her tracks when a leaf fluttered onto his desk, small and green and very much not supposed to be inside.
Slowly, he turned around and dared to allow a grin spread across his face.
There it was. The window, left wide open and just begging for someone to jump out of it and onto the swaying branches of the tree outside.
He bit back a laugh. Oh, Mina-sensei. She just didn’t learn, did she?
Iruka glanced at the clock. There was still more than half an hour until class ended. He gripped the pencil in his hand. Well, he certainly wasn’t going to wait for his teacher to come back and pry the unwilling apology out of his mouth. He scribbled a hasty note on the paper telling her to say hello to his parents for him and after a moment of thought, added a cheeky self-portrait by his name before heading for the window.
Wind whipped at his face as he dove for the tree, thrill curling in his gut as he snagged one of the lower branches. Carefully, he lowered himself and pushed off the trunk when he got close enough to jump.
Iruka scanned around and let out a relieved breath. No teachers. Good.
Climbing over the fence, he landed softly on his toes and quickly made his way to… Well, actually, he didn’t know. Iruka hadn’t thought that far.
He scratched his head. Maybe he’d head over to the river? Quiet, calm, and severely lacking in Mina-sensei's… yes, that would do.
Just then, a vicious growl came from his stomach. Iruka flushed. Looked like it was market first then the river.
Sticking close to the shadows, Iruka made his way to the market with nobody none the wiser that he was skipping class and he was able to slip into a small, nondescript convenience store without issue. Greeting the owner, he went to grab a steaming lunch when he noticed the sign above the shelf. There was a sale going on.
Iruka left the store swinging two hot lunchboxes from his hand.
Winding down the streets, he gazed up at the sky and wondered if his teacher had noticed she had left the window open yet.
Iruka snorted. Yeah, right. She probably thought that she had finally scared him into obedience as if he hadn’t stopped being scared after the first dozen times.
He reached the end of the street and carefully slipped past the fence, throwing one last glance behind him before jumping for the trees looming overhead and towards the river.
Iruka was still a bit stiff when it came to travelling through the trees, but as long as he stuck to the lower branches and went really slowly, he could probably make it there without breaking a bone. It was fun, anyways! The wind was nice and the rise and fall in his gut made him giggle a little bit.
He pushed off another branch.
It was easy to get lost in.
Perhaps too easy to get lost in because he didn’t notice the silent rustle above his head until a masked face dropped down right in front of him and then suddenly he was plummeting off the branch with a bloodcurdling scream as his feet slipped out from under him, bark exploding off from the outburst of chakra.
The rush of wind was deafening as it cut at him and fear gripped at his throat like ice as he flailed wildly because oh gods, he was going to die—
Air slammed into him as a hand fisted the front of his t-shirt and he gasped as he lurched to a stop, neck aching from the whiplash as he dangled precariously, his heart pounding so hard he feared it would rip right through his chest.
But then Iruka’s crazed eyes finally saw him and he froze.
Holding onto him was Kakashi, hanging upside down with his feet planted firmly on the underside of the branch Iruka had just slipped off.
“Kakashi-sensei?” he breathed, blinking in disbelief.
Then his identity clicked and this time he screamed out of anger, face flushed as blood rushed to his head.
“You jerk!” Iruka shouted, thrashing around and desperately wishing he wasn’t hanging in the air so he could wring his hands around that guy’s throat because what the hell! “What is wrong with you? Stop sneaking up on me! I don’t care who you are, I’m going to kick your butt!”
Kakashi clearly did not care. “You should be in school.”
Iruka didn't either. “I don’t care! I’m not writing that stupid apology just because my teacher was being stupid! Oh, for— can you just let me up before I pass out!?”
Okay, so that wasn’t true. Iruka could actually hang upside down for much longer than this, but he really didn’t want to especially considering the fact he had nearly hacked his heart out of his mouth in alarm. Kakashi didn’t need to know that, though.
But Kakashi must’ve had some kind of special lie detector built into him because he was entirely unfazed. “And if I don’t?” he asked and Iruka just knew that he was taunting him!
Iruka gritted his teeth. “Then I’ll die and haunt you until you die!”
Honestly, he didn’t know what he was expecting since the threat to his life didn’t do anything, but the threat to Kakashi’s did nothing to sway him, either, and he merely cocked an eyebrow at Iruka expectantly.
Oh, come on. Seriously? What was he, Iruka’s dad? He sighed and tried to put all of his annoyance into it, but it only came out as more of a wheeze.
Dang it.
“…Please?”
Jerk was beginning to sound like too kind of a word to describe Kakashi because he let Iruka dangle like a sack of rice for another solid ten seconds before yanking him up. What the hell? What kind of power trip was he on?
Iruka had hardly gotten his footing back before Kakashi was already crossing his arms.
“Why are you here?”
Iruka paused to glare at him before opening his bag to make sure his lunchboxes were intact. “I already told you, my teacher was being stupid!”
Kakashi looked at him like he was being particularly daft. Iruka almost thought that he’d say something rude like ‘are you sure it wasn’t you being stupid?’ but he didn’t.
“How?” was all that he asked instead.
It was uncharacteristically lacking in insults and Iruka squinted in suspicion before shrugging. Whatever. Maybe Kakashi was feeling sorry. “She gave me in-class detention for correcting her and I jumped out the window. That’s it.”
Or maybe not. “There’s more.”
Kakashi said it like a fact rather than a question, like he was there to witness the whole thing, and Iruka bristled in annoyance.
“Jeez! Can’t you even wait until I get to the river first?" Iruka demanded, "There’s only so long I can stick to a tree before my legs go numb!”
Kakashi just stared at him and Iruka was about to snap at him again before he nodded once like a second bob of his head wasn’t worth his precious time.
Pulling a face, Iruka moved past, clutching his food to his chest. He dropped down beside the river soon after and took a seat on the warm grass, setting his bag down next to him. A moment later, Kakashi landed to his left, casting a dark shadow over him.
Okay, he had to be doing this on purpose now.
“Well?” Kakashi said.
“Well, move out of the way for one,” Iruka said with a scowl. “You’re blocking the sun.”
If Kakashi had a sliver of emotive abilities other than moving the upper half of his face and crossing his arms like some huffy toddler, Iruka bet he would’ve looked totally affronted. Unfortunately for the livelihood of Iruka’s well-being, he didn’t. Kakashi narrowed his eyes, but he finally moved out of the way.
Without Kakashi's fat ego in the way, the sun was finally able to hit Iruka's skin and he let out a long sigh of content as he basked in the warm rays. This is nice, he thought, I could stay here forever.
Contentment never seemed to last long for him nowadays, though, because all too soon his eyes were blinking open again as a shoe nudged his leg.
Iruka's smile quickly fell away to another scowl. He wondered why that was.
Holding back a sigh, Iruka turned to glare at Kakashi, annoying and looming over him. “Can you sit down? What’s wrong with you?”
Kakashi must have been in a worse mood than he thought because his hand twitched at his side like he wanted to smash it into Iruka’s face and Iruka had the distinct feeling that he should move away and apologize, but before he could Kakashi settled beside him, hands resting stiffly on his crossed legs.
Iruka didn’t think that he could have looked any more like he didn’t want to be there and he felt himself twitch, too. He wanted to demand why Kakashi didn’t just leave if he clearly wanted to so badly, but he bit his tongue and took a breath. Now wasn’t the time, not when someone other than his parents was finally remotely willing to listen to him about his teacher.
High seas. When did he get so low that even Kakashi of all people would listen to him?
Dragging his hands down his face, Iruka shoved that thought to the back of his head and began. “My teacher was helping one of the girls with the transformation jutsu, but she kept ignoring that she was doing the hand signs in the wrong order even though everyone was trying to tell her that it was Dog before Boar and not the other way around. She said that since she was the teacher, she would know how to do a Henge better than any of us even though she didn’t say anything when my classmate did the wrong signs!”
He shot a glance at Kakashi, waiting for some sort of rebuke like there usually was, but to his surprise it never came. Kakashi was simply watching, gaze resting evenly on him, and Iruka dared to feel a spark light up inside of him before rushing to continue, hands waving around incredulously as the words spilled out with new invigoration.
“Right, so then I went to correct her because it’d be wrong to let the girl struggle with stupid Sensei any longer, yeah, but guess what? She gave me detention for distracting the class with my ‘disrespectful comments’! And it was totally unfair ‘cause none of the other kids got in trouble other than me even though I said the exact same thing as them! And then she wanted a written apology before the next class ended! Which I couldn’t go to! Can you believe that?”
No response. Kakashi just continued to stare at him blankly.
Iruka puffed out his cheeks indignantly. Did the other even listen to any of that? Was that why he wasn't saying anything? What a jerk! He shouldn't have bothered if Kakashi wasn't going to pay attention in the first place!
Flopping onto his back, Iruka flung his arms out with a pout.
“Never mind, of course you wouldn’t,” he grumbled, “You have Minato-sama as your teacher. I bet he doesn’t yell at you guys for correcting him.”
Finally, a response. Kakashi sniffed. “He doesn’t make such foolish mistakes in the first place. No competent shinobi would ever make the wrong hand signs for a Henge.”
“That’s because she isn’t! She’s an even worse teacher, too! Do you know how mean she is to me?”
“Then you should have requested a transfer.”
“I tried!” Iruka protested. “But they kept telling me that it was too early to know anything to transfer because I just started even though I pretty much already know everything she’s going to teach us this year!”
For the first time since Kakashi had caught him, he looked at him with something other than that bored glaze over his eyes. They shifted over, narrowed. “Everything?”
Iruka nodded furiously. “Everything! Since I’m okay with shuriken now, I have nothing else because we don’t start kunai until next year and I already know most of the book stuff because my parents basically crammed everything into my head the minute I was born!” He let out a pathetic whine and smushed his face into the grass. “There’s nothing I can do in there except get yelled at because she hates me for no reason,” he moaned.
Kakashi desperately looked like he wanted to mention the childish display, but he just turned away with a contemplative look on his face.
“I see,” he said before falling silent.
He was too silent. Iruka didn't think it was possible, but it was. His brooding was coming out of his skin instead of his mouth now, and it was coming out in big, heavy waves. So heavy that maybe it’d knock Kakashi’s head right off. Not that Iruka wanted that, but, well—you know.
Iruka mumbled incoherently into the grass and Kakashi made a noise above him.
“Stop eating the dirt and speak up,” he said, “Not even an ant could’ve heard what you said.”
With a huff, Iruka flopped back onto his back and glared, wiping the dirt from his face. “I said, stop thinking so hard! I could hear the bones grinding in that thick head of yours!”
“At least I can think,” Kakashi glared back.
Iruka stuck his tongue out childishly before hastily retracting it just in case Kakashi decided to yank on it. “Jerk.”
And that was the end of it for a very, very long time. So long that maybe he’d see a new wrinkle on his face the next time he looked in a mirror.
Iruka fidgeted uncomfortably. He didn’t like it when it was quiet. Doubly so when he was being quiet with Kakashi.
Arguing with Kakashi was normal. At least when they argued, he could pretend that they were kind of friends because friends argued all the time, right? But now that they weren’t, it only reminded Iruka of how Kakashi was very much not his friend. They were just people who happened to run into each other over and over again no matter how much Iruka wanted it to be otherwise.
Iruka had liked Kakashi from the beginning despite how utterly infuriating he was because Kakashi had helped him, allowed him to stick around and talk his ear off instead of mocking him for things he couldn't control. Was he mean? Sure, but he wasn't mean in the same way that some of his classmates or shinobi on the streets were. In some strange, twisted way, Iruka actually liked this kind of mean.
Kakashi, though... Iruka wasn't actually stupid, he knew that just because he liked Kakashi didn't automatically mean that he liked Iruka back. He had learned that a long time ago. Iruka understood that the other was leagues ahead of him, his hitai-ate proof of the fact, that the shinobi—because that’s what he really was, not just some random older kid with the attitude of a brick wall—wasn't bound to a rule that said he had to like Iruka. There was always a chance that Kakashi was only there to humor him and didn't actually like him at all.
And with how Kakashi acted, Iruka was starting to realize that the possibility was far more likely than the one he hoped for. After all, there was a reason why Iruka never saw him again after the festival until now almost six weeks later, wasn't there?
“Hey, Kakashi-sensei?” Iruka said hesitantly. “Why were you here in the first place?”
Kakashi closed his eyes and took a deep breath, chest rising slowly. Iruka had a feeling he was annoyed and he couldn’t help the twinge of hollow guilt in his stomach. When the Kakashi opened his eyes again, they looked just the same.
“I followed you,” he said.
It was nice and simple and infuriatingly short, but whatever nervousness he held promptly vanished and Iruka blinked in surprise. Really? Had he really come after him on his own accord?
Then a thought struck him. Wait.
Iruka rolled onto his side with a frown. “How come I couldn’t feel you this time?”
Unlike the sporadic clicking he had only done as a distraction for himself at the summer festival, this time he had been actively watching out for people from the moment he had jumped out of the window. Even if he wasn’t anywhere near as good as his parents when it came to mapping out his surroundings, he still should have felt Kakashi at some point! He had chakra, didn’t he? There was no reason that he couldn’t have—
“Chakra suppression,” Kakashi said and there was something cold, something calculating in his gaze that made Iruka instinctively shrink in on himself before he caught himself. “Your technique relies on sensing the chakra running through people in order to find them, doesn’t it? Take that away and it’s rendered useless.”
Iruka stiffened. How—?
A wave of ice crashed over him and he shot up, whipping around to stare at Kakashi in shock. “H-how’d you know that?”
Kakashi gave him a look.
“It’s common knowledge that sensors detect chakra,” he said like he thought Iruka was missing a few screws as if he didn’t have every right to freak out because Kakashi would surely hate him now that he had just figured out that—
Wait. What?
Iruka made a strangled noise. “S-sensors?” he squeaked.
“Do you not even know what you are?” Kakashi said incredulously. “You’re a sensor, aren’t you?”
What the hell.
“Sensor?” Iruka repeated dumbly again before the words finally caught up to him and he let out a nervous laugh that was too loud, too shaky, his heart pounding. “Oh—sensor! Right, right! Sorry, I forgot that there was a word for—that.” Resolutely not looking at Kakashi, he tried his best not to grimace as he slapped on a wide grin that made his jaw ache, a cold sweat breaking out on his back. “Yeah, I know I am. A sensor.”
If his soul had already been well on its way of being evicted from his body, Iruka was frantically trying to reel it back in now because he could feel Kakashi’s gaze burning a hole into the side of his head, narrowing in suspicion.
But before Iruka could toss away his life and break down into snotty tears and beg for forgiveness from his parents and maybe Kakashi, too, the other finally looked away after what felt like a lifetime of suffocating silence.
“Right,” Kakashi said slowly like he didn’t believe a word that Iruka said, but he dropped it right then and there and Iruka had never wanted to praise the skies more than he ever had before.
Not wanting to give Kakashi a chance to change his mind, Iruka quickly changed the subject, furiously flipping through them with clammy hands for something so different it wasn’t even in the same light year—
“Could you teach me how to suppress my chakra, too?”
Stupid! Too close of a subject!
But to Iruka's overwhelming relief, Kakashi just scoffed like a snob instead of interrogating him. “Like I’d waste my time on you when you’re not going to learn it until you’re much older anyway.”
Iruka knew that it was an insult of the highest degree and he most definitely should have been offended, but he jumped at the opening. Anything to stop his hands from shaking behind his back.
“I knew you were old, Kakashi-sensei, but not that old!” Iruka propped his head up with his hand and grinned. “How old are you really?”
“Older than you.”
“That’s not an answer and you know it! Come on, by how much? One? Three? Two?” Iruka let out a gasp. “Wait, ten?”
At that, Kakashi shot him an unimpressed glare before sighing. “You seriously know nothing about me, do you?”
Iruka made a face. What was that supposed to mean? The last part was a joke (maybe)! “What? S’not like you know all that much about me either.”
“Umino Iruka, born on May 26 and currently age seven, only son to Umino Ikkaku and Kohari with no other known relatives, lives in the fifth house six streets over, has attended the Academy since he was six, and has an extensive history of instigating fights of which you have had two of within the past four weeks,” Kakashi recited casually, ticking off each fact with his fingers until there were none left. He raised an eyebrow at Iruka. “I could go on further.”
Okay. What?
Iruka stared at him, gobsmacked. Should he be concerned? How had Kakashi even known about the last part?
(But at least he hadn't said—)
Iruka wanted to ask a lot of things, but after a long moment of realizing that he didn’t want to know the answers to most of them, he settled for: “How long have you known that?”
Kakashi stared back evenly before closing his eyes. Again. Did he have an issue with his eyelids? Or his eyes themselves? Maybe he should get that checked out before it got worse. Wait, Iruka was getting distracted now, he should—
“Since June.”
—have stayed distracted.
“W-what?” Iruka spluttered, voice sliding up embarrassingly high, his face hot with disbelief. “You— Why?”
“It is called information gathering.” Kakashi peeled a lazy eye open. “You would know that if you paid attention in class.”
Okay, now he knew that Kakashi definitely hadn’t been listening to him earlier! If he had then he would have known that there was no class!
“I know what information gathering is!” Iruka whined. “My parents taught me!”
“Then why ask if you knew?”
“Because it’s creepy! If you wanted to know then you could’ve just asked. You didn’t have to do your…” He waved a hand around awkwardly. “…thing.”
Kakashi snorted. “I am a shinobi. Shinobi don’t ask unless we have to.” He said it as if the idea was absolutely preposterous. “We take whatever we need to.”
“You’re acting like I’m an enemy, Kakashi-sensei,” Iruka pouted, trying to ignore that ba-dump of his heart at those words. “That’s mean.”
Iruka thought it said a lot when Kakashi just shrugged, not even bothering to deny it.
He was in the middle of realizing that the date he had been given meant that Kakashi had researched him right after they first met when Iruka’s stomach growled pitifully and he groaned.
Right, he had planned to eat before Kakashi had so rudely thrown himself into the equation and distracted him from his rapid starvation.
He rolled over to his bag of lunchboxes and pulled both of them out when he paused. Closing his eyes, Iruka exhaled slowly through his teeth before tossing a lunch at Kakashi, a pair of chopsticks right after.
The show-off that he was, Kakashi snatched them out of the air one handedly without even looking. He turned the lunchbox over, eyeing it suspiciously. “What is this?”
“Food, Kakashi-sensei. Food.” Iruka peeled the lid off and snapped his chopsticks. “I know you know what that is.”
“Why?”
Iruka shot him a look as he picked up a piece of meat and crammed it in his mouth.
“Would an enemy give you food?” he asked after swallowing.
Kakashi stared at him flatly.
Iruka grimaced. “…Okay, so maybe they would’ve, but does it look like I had time to poison it? I didn’t even think I’d run into anybody here! I bought these for myself! Now would you just eat it?”
Kakashi stubbornly kept the container closed. His eyes narrowed into dark slits. “Are you trying to find out what I look like?”
You’ve got to be kidding me, Iruka groaned internally. That’s it, he was giving up!
“How self-centred are you?” he snapped, “I don’t care about what you look like under there! I bet you’re ugly anyways!”
Okay, so that was a lie. Iruka was very much curious about what Kakashi looked like and he’d been wondering ever since they met, but he figured that he wore that dumb mask for a reason as impractical as it was (whether it was because he was ugly or something else was to be determined) so he wasn’t going to try and sneak a peek. His parents raised him better than that. Then again they did tell him not to pick fights with people, but he only antagonized Kakashi out of respect, alright?
Speaking of Kakashi, he still hadn’t budged.
Iruka pulled another face. Seriously?
Shovelling another piece of meat into his mouth, Iruka turned his back to Kakashi with a huff.
“Look, happy?” Iruka shouted. He pointed his chopsticks behind him in Kakashi’s general direction accusingly. “And no, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head so eat it before I do!”
He didn’t get a reply, but he did get the wonderful sound of a lid opening and figured it was the best he was going to get out of the other.
They ate in silence with only the sound of trickling water running down river to fill it. Not for a lack of trying on Iruka’s part, of course, but there were only so many times he could open his mouth without fearing that Kakashi’s chopsticks would lodge themselves into his eyes and no matter how many times his dad claimed that he didn’t care about his own well-being, he did. Stuffing the last piece of rice down his throat, he snapped the lid back on and slipped the chopsticks back into their paper wrapper.
“Kakashi-sensei,” he called as he gathered his trash in his arms, “I’m going to turn around. Are you done?”
A sigh sounded behind him. “Unfortunately.”
Iruka chose to believe it was because the food was so good. The other—and most likely—reason would hurt his feelings.
Kakashi was indeed done when Iruka turned around, now laying down on his back with his arms crossed behind his head. Strangely enough, his lunchbox was nowhere near him and it was only when Iruka went to discard his own that he noticed it inside of the plastic bag alongside his chopsticks, neatly put back into its own wrapper.
Iruka didn’t know if he was impressed or afraid that Kakashi had managed to get closer and dispose of his trash into such a loud crinkly bag without alerting Iruka, but something in his gut sank at the sight and it wasn’t his food. If Kakashi could do that, what use did he have for Iruka? He was already so far ahead, there was nothing that Iruka could possibly offer him so that—
A rock nailed him in the back of the head and he hissed as he rubbed at the sore spot, already feeling a bump begin to form. Whipping around, Iruka shot daggers at Kakashi’s lax form to shout, “What is wrong with you?”
“What is wrong with you?” Kakashi shot back. “You’ve been staring at the trash for the past three minutes without a single word of your mindless babbling.”
Iruka faltered. Had it really been that long?
“Really? Sorry, Kakashi-sensei.” Pasting a grin onto his face, Iruka laughed sheepishly as he rubbed the scar across his nose. “I guess I just got lost in my thoughts.”
Kakashi’s eyes bore into the side of his head. Uneasy, Iruka tried not to shift in discomfort. An eternity later, Kakashi turned away, but just when Iruka thought he could relax, the other muttered under his breath, “What thoughts?”
Iruka could have cried. Thank everything good in the world that Kakashi was so very, very spiteful.
Letting out a mock gasp of outrage, Iruka said, “Hey! I’ll have you know that I have plenty of thoughts!”
Kakashi scoffed. “I highly doubt that.”
Looking back on it, it probably wasn’t the greatest idea to lunge at Kakashi and prove the exact point that he had been trying to disprove right, but it was so worth hearing Kakashi’s choke of alarm when Iruka threw himself on top of him.
Getting thrown into the river, however? Not so worth it. Not even close.
Iruka spluttered as he broke the surface, coughing wetly as water spewed out of his throat. He shuddered as water dripped from his hair and down his neck, brushing back the limp strands that fell out of his ponytail with numb fingers.
Footsteps thundered towards him and soon Kakashi was right in front of him.
“Shit, you seriously have no brain,” he cursed as he reached down and hauled Iruka out by the back of his soaked-through shirt like a dog.
Shoving away the ghost of his dad’s cry of 'language!’ in his head, Iruka glared weakly as he wrung out his hair and his clothes. “You don’t either! What if I couldn’t swim?”
“Then you’d be a disgrace to your family's name.” Kakashi swiftly unwound the wrap around his leg before shoving the thick bandages against Iruka’s chest and he barely managed to not drop them. “Use that to mop up the worst of it,” he commanded.
The other didn’t wait before he was marching off towards the bag of trash and Iruka could only watch warily as he began to towel off with the bandages. Embarrassingly, it was still warm and Iruka felt his face go hot.
But by the time Kakashi returned, Iruka was only slightly drier. The makeshift towel, on the other hand, was completely soaked and no amount of wringing it out would turn it back into anything remotely useful.
Kakashi seemed to realize that, too. Sighing, he held out the bag for Iruka to dump the bandages in, but the way he stood like a metal pole undermined his show of annoyance. Like he’d never done anything like this before in his life, Kakashi shifted from foot to foot with a constipated look on his face—or whatever part of it was visible, at least.
“Can you manage through the trees by yourself?” Kakashi asked stiffly after a moment of puttering around.
Iruka had to scowl. “I only took a dunk in the river, Kakashi-sensei, I didn’t break my legs. I can get home just fine. I’m seven.”
An unreadable look flashed across Kakashi's eyes before it disappeared back behind a cool gaze. “So you keep reminding me,” Kakashi murmured. He fastened the plastic bag loops to the straps across his back and cocked his head towards the trees. “Let’s go then.”
“Huh?”
“All Academy students must be monitored, accompanied, or within the vicinity of an available shinobi during school hours, instructor or otherwise.” Kakashi said. He tilted his head. “Or has that changed since I left the Academy?”
Iruka’s heart clenched.
Oh. That was… oh.
Something twisted inside him and Iruka shook his head mutely. “No, that’s right,” he mumbled, looking away.
So that’s why you stayed, Kakashi, Iruka thought bitterly as he shouldered past the other, shoes squelching with each step as he took to the trees, Kakashi close behind. That made it hurt more. I should have known that you didn't actually want to. Why would you? I'm just some dumb kid.
He shivered as the wind caught at the water still clinging to his skin but kept going, the sound of the river slowly fading from his ears the colder he got.
It only got worse when Kakashi decided to shadow him like a ghost the entire way back home once they passed the fence, that hollow feeling in his chest growing with each step. Kakashi was always just a hair’s breadth away from being suffocating like he knew exactly what Iruka was thinking about and he had to resist the urge to snap around and tell him that he didn’t need to be escorted to his own home more than once.
Not for the first time, he wished Kakashi would make another mean comment just so that he could start another petty squabble, but Iruka had enough sense not to try any of his usual nonsense now. It wasn't Kakashi's fault that Iruka had been hoping to be actual friends. All he had been trying to do was his job and Iruka taken it the wrong way despite the clear signs that Kakashi didn't actually like him. Iruka knew he had no right to be upset with him, but he was and it was so frustrating.
Iruka pressed his lips together and tried his best to stop his eyes from burning, forced himself to move forward. He just had to make it home and then he could apologize and put an end to this. Just a few more steps.
He wasn't going to cause any more trouble.