Work Text:
There were many things that had been said about Hatake Kakashi, a man who wielded thousand jutsus, and who had just as many enemies; a man who had mastered the art of warfare since the age of four. He was someone with many names affiliated with his persona. A genius, some claimed. A prodigy, some praised. A merciless killer, some whispered. He didn't see why he should correct them, merely huffing silently to himself every time he caught onto the rumors that circled around him or saw the way he was looked at, knowing exactly what the others were thinking about him. To him, it didn't matter, since he lived for Konoha and most of the people whose opinions had mattered were already dead. For him, there had been hardly anything else to his shinobi life than the goal of completing a mission and bringing both himself and the occasionally accompanying team safely back home, apart from Maito Gai's friendship and Icha Icha. At least, not before his life had taken a sharp turn of one-hundred-and-eighty in the form of Uzumaki Naruto and all that came with that blond ball of energy – including the boy's former sensei.
“You're thinking about something again,” said the warm baritone of a man who had appeared behind his shoulder, and Kakashi had to quell his rising instincts that vouched for picking up the closest weapon he had at hand, when the voice matched the search result in his mind.
A quiet huff of a chuckle left his masked mouth, and the Rokudaime gave a passing look at his dark-haired partner over his shoulder before turning back to look over the view he could see from his office windows. “ What gave you that impression?”
“Apart from seeing the smoke rising from your ears, I guess it was when I had managed to come closer to you than twelve feet and yet you still didn't seem to notice my presence,” Iruka said, his tone warm and teasing as he stepped next to his companion, a sliver of mirth dancing in the dark brown eyes. “I don't know if I should be worried that you may have been like this on the field back in the days when your mission scrolls had more S seals on them than any others. I'm beginning to understand Pakkun's view on you.”
Kakashi let out a nonsensical hum at that. He needed to have a word with his ninken. “It was a rare thing to have a mission where I could both stop and think, actually. In most cases it was stop and dodge or think and run,” the jounin mused, his voice low and contemplative, as if in that short span of a minute he had relived some of those memories from those kinds of situations. In some sense he was a bit relieved that he didn't need to voice out what other kinds of actions he had been required to do, since the man who stood next to him was as familiar with field work than any other shinobi was. Speaking of which. “Shouldn't you be at the Academy?”
A rustle of papers broke the silence between them when Iruka waved a manila folder as a way of answering the question. “I found this on my desk this morning. Thought that you may want to see it, Rokudaime-sama.”
Apart from the oddity of hearing his title spoken in so formal manner, the look he saw taking over the dark brown eyes was professional to the T, which was enough for Kakashi to know that there was a good reason for Iruka to reschedule his daily work routine and visit the Tower.
In silence, the folder changed hands, and the Hokage flipped it open to see what was it that demanded such formality between them. The gray eyes read the papers carefully, the jounin paying no attention to the tokujo who stood next to him as he knew he was given the privacy he needed to go through the text. After a while, the narrow, gray eyes were lifted from what they had been reading and the quiet ex-ANBU captain gave an unreadable, long look at the man standing beside him. Then, the silver-haired head gave a curt nod, more to himself than anyone else, and the Hokage turned a page, perusing the written lines like the serious man many thought he was. Although he didn't deny being serious, especially when it came to such papers that he held in his hands.
“I'll see that a suitable team is assigned.” The reply, as calmly as he had spoken, echoed with undertones that didn't leave much to be guessed about his opinion, and Kakashi turned away from the window to step to his desk.
“Thank you, Hokage-sama,” Iruka replied, his voice smooth and steady, and yet his shoulders were tense like a chakra string had been bound too tight around them. Then the tan tokujo turned on his heels to face the back of his lover, the dark, slanted eyes cataloging everything that they observed in the other's body language. “You don't like it.”
“Are you addressing me as your Hokage or as your partner, Umino-san?” Kakashi said, keeping his voice without any tone that could tattle about the thoughts that twirled around his mind on what he had read and his own personal reaction to it all.
“I know what my Hokage thinks, whereas I know better than to make assumptions on what my lover has to say about it,” Iruka said, the words thoughtfully picked and weighed, while the tan shinobi stepped towards the silent man, the jounin who had become too precious to him to even find suitable words to describe it. “ What are you thinking, Kakashi?” He asked, his tone as cautious as the steps he took to walk around the wooden desk to look at the other. The tokujo wasn't sure if he liked the expression he could see on the masked face of his lover, the eerily unreadable gray eyes and the slightly frowning silvery eyebrows making his gut churn with dread.
“As your Hokage, I know how important this is when it comes to the future of shinobi nations,” Kakashi started, measuring the words as he went, “and as your lover, I understand the Hokage's reasoning. Yet you were correct. I don't like it.” With that, he looked up to see the dark eyes of his companion, noticing the flicker of unease in them as well as the surprise on his phrasing. “I know you have to participate, and I know better than to act selfish when our future generations are put on line, but I do not like the fact that had you not come to me with this matter I may not have known about it except on the morning of your departure.” He sounded harsher than he had intended, but his simmering irritation was reasonable, considering that it may have very well been the case due to someone at the administration having decided to withhold information from him, intentionally or otherwise.
“I won't be away for long,” Iruka said, his voice soothing, but his eyes telling of a different sort of concern that the tokubetsu displayed at the visibly tense line of the silver-haired jounin's shoulders.
“That is not my point,” he snapped, which sounded somehow very ill-suited for the situation, but Kakashi could care less. His pale fingers tapped on the folder he had put on the desk top, as if counting the persons he needed to pay a visit to when them two had finished the talk. “It won't nullify the fact that we will be sending out a man who is very valuable to our village on a very short notice, which makes it imperative to assign a proper team for you. Do you have any requests on who you wish to accompany you?”
If Iruka had been taken aback by the odd turn of events, he didn't let it show on his face. “I would request to have Shiranui-san and Konohamaru as my aides. It will do good for Konohamaru to accompany higher ranks than chuunins from time to time.”
“I didn't ask what good you considered it would do to Konohamaru, I asked if you thought your team could handle things should something go wrong,” Kakashi said, his voice barely holding in the bark of a disciplinary command that rumbled in his masked throat, his dark gray eyes gaining a glint of fine steel that the elite shinobi knew how to handle ever since he had learned to spell kunai.
On that tone of voice, Iruka's spine instinctively straightened and he fixed the silver-haired jounin with a long look, the dark eyes gazing straight into the gray ones that peered back over the dark mask. Silence fell between the two men, the tan tokujo and his superior commander, while the men let the sharp edge slip off from their conversation. Then, the headmaster let the words drop from his mouth, with precisely picked intonation: “I understand your concern, Kakashi, but you should be able to trust my reasoning if you're asking who I may find suitable for such a mission. Kami knows the boy is still a knucklehead from time to time, but Konohamaru is a promising chuunin and therefore someone who I may consider recommending for jounin tests in the near future. Shiranui-san on the other hand has been climbing up the walls ever since the missions had toned down and he had been tasked with many duties inside Konoha's walls. The man is a lazy gossip and a troublemaker when the mood strikes, but he is a very capable shinobi who has many diplomatic missions under his belt for the same reason of being the ears and eyes that see everything and having a deviously ticking mind that doesn't miss an opportunity. With all their flaws and strengths taken into account, Sarutobi-kun and Shiranui-san are more than adequate for this mission, Hokage-sama. ”
A silvery eyebrow rose at what the jounin was hearing. Kakashi may need to have a word with more than just a few people during the following hours. “Is that supposed to make me feel any better, to know that you'll settle with a knucklehead and a troublemaking gossip?” Who was also a well-known closet pervert. On a second thought, maybe a few strong words weren't enough when Genma was concerned.
“No, but it helped to pull that genius head out of your uptight ass, didn't it?” Iruka countered steadily, but this time there was no helping on the tug of a smile that twitched the full lips, which regrettably disappeared as quickly as it had emerged.
The jounin had to admit, it strangely did. The Rokudaime let out a sigh and then rubbed his pale temple, the shoulders of Konoha's finest feeling suddenly more weighed down by the leadership he had been saddled with. “ I know a few others who could accompany your three-man cell, who you wouldn't hurt to have tagging along.”
“You need your ANBU elsewhere, Hatake-sama, not where I'm going.” Like usual, Iruka had caught onto his brewing idea , which sometimes made Kakashi want to give up on even bothering with going underneath the underneath. Then again, there was no fun in that.
“Maa,” the jounin drawled, watching as the sound of his voice struck the nerve on Iruka's temple. “You're surprisingly defiant towards your Hokage on this matter, Umino-san.”
“I'm only treating this matter the way your actions currently warrant me to, Hatake-sama,” the tokubetsu spoke, calm and collected, while the dark eyes were choking on words that were not suitable for such a delicate situation they were currently in. Pompous ass, Kakashi thought he could read in them. Then, the look in the dark eyes shifted towards a more assertive tone while the man continued: “This is not the place to discuss this matter any more intimately, Kakashi, but I understand your worry. I wouldn't want to leave Konoha, not when the genin graduation exams are right around the corner and we need to give an overview on our curriculum, but as it says, all headmasters are to be present in that symposium. It is mandatory, both for my own professional ambitions and for Konoha's benefits. I cannot put aside my duties as the Konoha Shinobi Academy's highest representative.”
The man had an excellent point, which Kakashi was loathe to hand to him. He should have known better. Although, the sudden mission and the gnawing unease that came with it be damned, he wouldn't let these matters make him wake into any more lonely mornings than what such assignments forced him to. “Alright. I'll send summons for Shiranui-san and Sarutobi-san, and the mission briefing will be held tomorrow morning at eight sharp. I trust that our finest headmaster will make sure that Konohagakure's educational achievements are recognized by other shinobi nations and that he'll come back with good ideas for the Academy, Umino-san.”
Iruka couldn't keep the widening grin off his face when he listened to the other's unnecessarily formal dismissal. “I will miss you too, you know.” Then, in a moment of an affectionate rush, he leaned over the desk to plant a quick kiss on the masked lips – only to end up pressing a damp imprint of his mouth on a manila folder.
When the tokubetsu gave his superior a puzzled look over the offending office object, the answering look was all but professionally detached on the masked face, and yet the gray eyes were glinting with barely suppressed laughter. “Kakashi-san may have an opinion about you kissing your Hokage for accepting your mission request, Umino-san,” the jounin murmured, his voice not letting onto anything unsuitable for a man with his status. But while his words were light and warm, his eyes told an other story as they regarded the dark-haired man over the edge of the folder held between them; about the unsettling worry of a sudden assignment but also about the stoic acceptance of the discussed subject. Yet, in the end, the steely gray darkened into murky shadows with a promise of how they shall continue their talk when they met again after all had been done for the day.
“But of course, Hatake-sama,” Iruka conceded, the expression in his dark eyes rivaling with the pleased smile on his face.