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Most jounin are sharp enough to understand that when it comes to the mission desk, if you’re in Iruka Umino’s line, there will be absolutely no tolerance for nonsense no matter how many S-rank missions you’ve completed, or how many excuses you give, or how irritatingly attractive you are.
Kakashi is not most jounin.
Iruka had already known that well before Kakashi had taken over as Naruto’s teacher and nudged his way into being a regular in his life. Well before even the disastrous mission that had been his first formal meeting of the jounin, really. There are certain shinobi that either have a prominent enough family name, impressive enough skills, or a scandalous enough history that one can’t exist in the village without being aware of their reputation— and Kakashi ticks all of the above.
But as of late, the jounin seems to be in the mood to be even more difficult than usual. An impressive feat, considering that his handwriting has been bad enough to nearly bring Iruka to tears on several occasions out of sheer offense at having to read it— and Iruka regularly deals with the handwriting of children. Children who are still learning how to write.
“Kakashi-san,” he says as calmly as possible, determined not to raise his voice less than ten minutes into a three-hour shift. “Half of these sections are still blank.”
“Are they?” the jounin scratches the back of his neck, his one visible eye crinkling with mock sheepishness. “Ahh, it must have slipped my mind. Do you have a pen?”
Iruka is currently holding a pen in his hand. One he has to make a concerted effort not to wave around with a heated, I don’t know, do I?
He holds out the incomplete report and pen with a flat look instead. “Bring it back when you’re done.”
Kakashi hums a note of acknowledgement as he accepts the offering. He then proceeds to uncap the pen, place his report back on the desk, and begin completing the overlooked sections.
There are five shinobi behind him in line.
“Kakashi-san,” Iruka says slowly, drawing his visible eye back upward. The chuunin’s smile tightens. “There are others waiting behind you. Please move to one of the open seats so they can turn in their reports.”
The jounin glances over his shoulder, his mock sheepishness returning. “Ah. I didn’t notice. Sorry, sensei.”
With a short wave, he slinks off towards the seating area.
Iruka doesn’t rub his temples, and he doesn’t grumble under his breath, but he does allow himself one well-deserved sigh before motioning the next shinobi forward.
The late-afternoon shift is always the busiest one— and the one Iruka signs up for the most often. Although night shifts are slow enough to allow him to spend most of his time grading, he’d be more comfortable just completing his marking in his apartment. Swamped shifts are far better because they require enough focus to leave his brain blissfully blank, so long as no nuisances pop up.
Today’s afternoon shift is no exception, allowing him to be oblivious in that blissful blankness for several minutes until he finally glances towards the corner of his vision and notices that a particular jounin is staring at him.
The room feels significantly hotter than it did before he became aware of this fact. Kakashi waves nonchalantly, as though staring at someone working the mission desk is a perfectly normal thing for a jounin to do, and Iruka feels the heat swarming his face only deepen.
He resolutely returns his attention to his work.
Each time he stamps a report and sends the next shinobi off with another thanks, he risks a quick glance back at the seating area. Three consecutive checks reveal that single eye continuing to watch him, and the fourth finally catches him returning his attention to his illegible report.
On the fifth glance, his seat is vacant.
Iruka lets out a soft breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in. Now that he has a chance at peace, he’ll surely—
“Hello again, sensei.”
Iruka doesn’t yelp, because he’s a shinobi, and shinobi do not yelp. He simply makes a noise of… surprise. Somewhat loudly.
A noise that draws seemingly every pair of eyes in the room to him, on top of the single eye that’s crinkled.
“Someone’s skittish today.”
“I am not skittish,” Iruka grumbles as he takes the amended report somewhat aggressively. The paper is slightly crumpled, and over half of the scrawl on its surface is debatably writing at all, but it is finished. If it was a slower day, and if he wasn’t still concentrating on keeping his composure, he probably would have harassed him into redoing the entire thing.
With a restrained grimace, he stamps the report and places it onto the accepted stack. “Thank you for your hard work.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something, sensei?”
Iruka blinks once, twice, before a slight frown tugs at his lips. He glances towards the report, then back at the seemingly amused jounin.
“Forgetting what?”
Kakashi’s hand disappears into his pocket, then extends towards him with the borrowed pen.
“Oh—,” Iruka quickly accepts the offering, scratching at the scar on the bridge of his nose to try to hide the goddamned flush he can feel coming back. Something that happens uncomfortably frequently in this particular man’s presence. “Thank you, Kakashi-san.”
“Anything for you,” the jounin replies in a singsong tone. Iruka has only a second to gape at him before he vanishes.
He continues to buffer until the next shinobi in line steps up, and he’s met with a look from Asuma that’s equal parts suspicion and perplexion.
“Did something happen between you two?”
“Wh— no! Of course not!”
----
The next time he sees Kakashi, it’s in the middle of getting a hug from Naruto that nearly winds him from the running start it’s launched with.
Iruka wheezes as he pats Naruto’s back with a grimace, struggling to regain his balance on the sidewalk.
“Sensei, sensei, I pulled a record amount of weeds today— sooo many more than Sasuke! Almost double his, maybe even triple…”
Naruto continues his excited recap of the day’s mission with a volume that could only be generously described as slightly below yelling. On one side of the approaching jounin, Sasuke rolls his eyes, while on the other, Sakura sports an exhausted glare. Kakashi, as always, appears perfectly unbothered, his attention remaining on the small book in his hand until he finally glances up to wave at Iruka.
The chuunin stiffens, then raises an awkward hand with a slightly wheezed Kakashi-sensei in response, praying to any God out there willing to listen to his miserable soul that his face remains perfectly not red.
“Are we dismissed?” Sasuke glances up at his teacher, who nods. “I’m going to the training fields, then.”
“I’ll join you!” Sakura declares, hurrying to catch up to his side. Naruto squawks, then promptly releases his bear hug to run after the pair, assuring over his shoulder that he’ll give Iruka all of the details another time before shouting at his teammates to wait for him.
With a sigh, Iruka frowns at his uniform and swats away the dried dirt that had been transferred to him, muttering under his breath about reminding Naruto to hose himself down before tackling innocent bystanders. Once he rids himself of as much of it as he can, he glances back up, barely suppressing a jolt at the realization that the jounin is still here, simply watching him again.
“Where were you headed?”
Iruka stares for a long beat of stunned silence, then blurts an intelligent, “Me?”
Kakashi huffs a soft laugh. “Who else would I be speaking to, sensei?”
The day is getting hotter again. Iruka scratches at his scar with an internal curse.
“...I was going to stop by the market on my way home.”
“What a coincidence!” the jounin’s eye crinkles with the exclamation. “I’m also heading to the market.”
For what? Iruka almost asks before he manages to restrain himself. I know you don’t ever cook…
“Ah,” he says instead, hesitantly continuing on his path as the other man falls into step beside him. “...So, how was everything today?”
As Kakashi recounts the D-rank mission, the tension slowly bleeds from Iruka, leaving behind only the stubborn heat that continues to cling to him. I never really noticed how nice his voice is, he thinks, somewhat absently, before he catches himself and only just resists shaking his head to drive away the thought.
Kakashi trails him to every stall he visits, simply continuing their amicable conversation while proceeding to buy absolutely nothing, nor even pretend to be browsing the produce. By the third stall, Iruka is doing a poor job of hiding a confused frown, the mental calculus of whatever the hell the jounin is plotting here utterly lost on him.
“Iruka-sensei,” the next vendor greets him— Isao, he recognizes, a man only a year or two older than him at most. His father used to man the same stall, but Isao has been here more often as of late. He glances down at the chuunin’s uniform with a growing smile. “Long day at the academy?”
“Something like that,” Iruka laughs awkwardly, not particularly eager to admit he allowed a dirt-covered genin to tackle him. “Sorry, I know I’m a bit of a mess.”
“You’re never a mess,” Isao waves him off, his smile turning crooked. “Not even a hair out of place, as usual.”
“Well! We must be going,” Kakashi declares, grabbing Iruka’s wrist to pull him away from the stall. “See you!”
“Kakashi!” Iruka squawks, barely able to keep up with the insane man dragging him away. “What are you doing?! I need cabbage!”
“His cabbage is low quality,” the jounin grumbles. “You shouldn’t buy from him. There’s better elsewhere.”
The genuine irritation visible in his eye is a jarring shift from the usual disinterested air that he carries otherwise. It’s enough to startle Iruka out of arguing, leaving him only able to stumble after him in dumb shock.
Kakashi’s bizarre behavior doesn’t stop there, either. He walks closer to the chuunin than he had before, frequently brushing arms with him— almost certainly for no reason other than continuing to torture him into blushing. Even after departing from the market, Kakashi continues to follow him around like a goddamned guard dog, and after insisting on carrying the majority of his groceries up the stairs for him, he offers nothing more than a placid wave outside of Iruka’s door before vanishing.
Iruka steps inside, reactivates his wards, and slumps against the front door with an exhausted, earnest, “What the fuck?”
----
Kunai lessons and oncoming storms aren’t a wise combination.
It doesn’t take a great deal of mental power to guess as much, but Iruka hadn’t had the bad luck of encountering the two together until today.
The dull ache he’d woken with in his back had alerted him immediately to the impending change in weather, and it had only gotten worse during the two hours he spent dodging stray kunais from children with terrible aim. Luckily, he managed to leave the lesson relatively unscathed, but that success had come at the cost of sharpening the ache in his back from dull to stabbing.
In the solace of his classroom left empty by the lunch break, Iruka spends over a minute just getting the tie out of his ponytail— one that had already been poorly done up in the morning and almost entirely came apart while dodging kunais. With his back protesting any attempt to raise his arms, he has to duck his head at an awkward angle to reach the sagging tie, and removing his forehead protector is even more of a grimaced struggle.
By the time he manages to deposit both on his desk, he’s forced to breathe through a wave of pain that pulses from his scar to his shoulders. It’s a discomforting reminder of the recovery he’d been pushing through only months ago, and the night he still can’t remember without his throat tightening. A full minute passes before he manages to collect himself enough to begin retying his ponytail, but the moment he reaches up to gather his hair, a renewed stab of pain in his back forces him to lower his arms again with a hiss.
The second and third attempts aren’t any more successful. It’s enough to threaten frustrated tears; with how exhausted the day’s already left him, he’s about as far as he can get from being in the mood to have both his students and coworkers repeatedly commenting on how strange it is to see him with his hair down and probing why he hadn’t redone his ponytail in the first place.
Just as he begins his fourth stubborn attempt, movement at the corner of his vision pulls his gaze to the open window, alerting him with a jolt to the fact that a jounin has taken up residence there.
He’s about as far as he can get from being in the mood to deal with whatever the hell he’s playing at today, either— and maybe just a little too short when he asks, “Do you need something, Kakashi-san?”
Instead of answering like any other reasonable adult would have, Kakashi silently slinks over to the desk, one hand stuffed in his pocket and the other outstretched. The chuunin stares at his waiting palm long enough for the silence to grow awkward before he glances at the tie in his own hand, then back, raising it with a questioning look. He receives only a nod in response.
If the ache in his back wasn’t so acute, he’d be wondering if he was in the middle of a very, very weird dream. Kakashi’s behavior has always been a bit erratic, sure— but this is a curveball Iruka has no idea what to make of. He barely registers handing the tie over before the jounin is already stepping behind him, and as though it’s another banal action he’s done countless times, he begins gathering up Iruka’s hair without so much as a word of explanation.
It takes less than five seconds for Iruka’s face to turn beet red.
He stays utterly still in his seat, as though one wrong move could scare the jounin away. The fingertips against his scalp are gentle and steady, sending goosebumps rippling beneath his uniform and making it a struggle not to shiver. He can’t remember the last time anyone touched him like this— not since Mizuki, probably. Even then, affection was withheld from him much more often than it was given.
Before the stray thought can pull him too far into his head, a deep voice finally broaches behind him: “Your back?”
Iruka’s brows shoot upwards. “My…? Oh— yes. The weather irritates it sometimes.” He pauses, scratching awkwardly at the scar over the bridge of his nose. “It’s not that bad. I, ah— appreciate your help, but you really don’t have to do this.”
Kakashi makes a thoughtful noise. “That so? I was under the impression that my current mission is to style the hair of poor, tired senseis—”
Iruka groans loudly, his face somehow growing hotter than it already had been. He ignores the quiet laugh behind him that absolutely does not fluster him even more.
A hand reaches past him to lift his forehead protector from the desk. It isn’t until the headband is already being tied off that Iruka realizes the ponytail is finished— and the result feels surprisingly decent, the tension much better than the poor job he’d left his apartment with.
“Is that alright?”
“Yes—,” he answers far too quickly, then coughs, amending, “Yes, that’s, uh, good. Thank you.”
The single eye visible to him appears far more amused than it has any right to be.
Kakashi returns to the window, then pauses to look back at him. “You know, sensei, you look cute with your hair down.”
With a placid wave, he vanishes before Iruka can even finish spluttering.
He— I— what—?!
“Iruka-sensei, Iruka-sensei!” several kids vie for his attention as they pool back into the classroom. One pipes up above the rest, “Hey, why is your face so red?”
Shit.
“Go back to your seats,” he briskly waves the bunch off. When his students continue talking over one another and shouting more questions at him, he adds a stern, “We need to finish our lesson on the eight gates before the end of today, and there will be a quiz after.”
A chorus of groans follows, after which his students begrudgingly return to their seats. In the brief moment of calm that follows, Iruka exhales a long-suffering sigh under his breath.
Oncoming storms, kunai lessons, and strange jounin don’t appear to be a particularly stress-free combination, either.
----
Iruka vows that his face will not turn red, even a little bit, the next time he sees Kakashi.
He hadn’t anticipated that next encounter involving alcohol.
What starts as a simple drink with Anko turns into several rounds after being waved over to a larger table by Asuma and urged to stay for a while. There’s barely enough room for the two to squeeze in— and, of course, one of the open spots is directly next to Kakashi.
After settling beside him, Iruka holds his breath for whatever strange comment is going to be thrown his way this time, but the jounin only acknowledges him with a nod. It’s something he would have mistaken for coldness, had Kakashi’s eye not crinkled slightly with the movement.
Iruka ignores the resulting flutter in his stomach. And, for good measure, decides to avoid looking at him as much as possible. If at all. Ever again.
But as one drink turns into two, then three, the pleasant warmth of alcohol buzzing over his face and through his body turns him more lax than he’s been in days. At some point in those few rounds, his thigh starts brushing Kakashi’s, and he continually grazes arms with him when laughing— occasionally even mindlessly leaning into him. It’s something that would have mortified Sober Iruka, but the self-consciousness that should have surfaced immediately is nowhere to be found.
At the start of the fourth round, Iruka is distantly aware that he’s swaying slightly in his seat. Anko and Asuma could probably both drink just about any shinobi under the table, whereas Iruka has never been blessed with their… robustness. While the two barely appear tipsy, Iruka is drowsy enough that he could easily pass out here. Nestled amidst the warm chatter of the table and pleasantly numbed to his usual worries, that doesn’t really sound half bad.
“Sensei,” a soft murmur comes beside him, drawing his attention back to Kakashi— who also, somehow, barely appears to have had anything to drink at all. His eye is slightly crinkled again. “I think it’s time to return home.”
“Mmh?” Iruka responds, intelligently. It takes several loafing seconds for the implication to click. “M’not that drunk…,” he defends, ignoring the quiet laugh that’s just barely audible over the conversation at the table. He glances at the clock on the wall, wincing slightly. “Ugh… I guess it is getting late.”
“Come on,” Kakashi stands, offering his hand. “I’ll walk you home.”
Iruka blinks once, twice, then a third time, but the image doesn’t dissipate. It’s possible that he’s simply gone insane, though with the room beginning to spin around him, he hardly has the mental power to even finish the train of thought. Sober Iruka would almost certainly have refused the help, but Drunk Iruka is increasingly becoming aware of how unsteady he is, and he’s not particularly keen on doing a baby-deer-learning-how-to-walk impression in front of all of his friends.
Even with a hand to help him up, the change in position has the room briefly spinning faster, and a second hand has to shoot out to steady him before he can fall back into his seat.
Iruka is vaguely aware of Kakashi issuing goodbyes to everyone for the both of them. He’s also aware of the fact that Asuma is eyeing them suspiciously, whereas Anko is doing a poor job of restraining a laugh.
Maybe he really has had too much to drink.
Kakashi has to stoop slightly to accommodate the chuunin’s shorter height and get Iruka’s arm around his shoulders. With one gloved hand keeping a hold on his forearm and the other wrapped around his back, the pair embark on their slow journey through the night.
Iruka doesn’t bother to resist leaning into him, the jounin pleasantly warm compared to the chilly night air. Neither man speaks, but it doesn’t feel awkward— not to Iruka, at least. It may just be the alcohol, but the silence feels comfortable. Considering how intimidating Kakashi had been before really getting to know him, experiencing this steady, almost gentle presence from him feels more like a dream than reality.
The chuunin steals a glance up at his face. Though there isn’t much visible around the mask, there’s enough skin to see that there isn’t even a tiny bit of red coloring his cheekbone.
“Did you even drink?” he slurs, drawing a questioning eye to him. After a beat, he gets a quiet huff of a laugh in response.
“Do you think I was pretending to drink?”
“I think you do a lot of weird things,” Iruka mumbles, resolutely ignoring the fluttering that stirs in his stomach again at the sensation of Kakashi shaking with silent laughter against him.
“You’ve got me there, sensei.”
Most of the windows they pass are darkened, leaving only the occasional streetlamp and the light of the waxing moon to guide the way. Just over a block out, Iruka can spot his apartment building approaching.
“Why’d y’wanna walk me home, anyway?”
“It’s no trouble,” Kakashi dismisses. “I live right nearby. We’re practically neighbors, really.”
“Huh,” Iruka frowns. He didn’t think the jounin lived nearby at all, but he doesn’t exactly keep close tabs on the man.
The stairs are even more of a slow-going challenge than the roads, but if Kakashi’s feeling any impatience, he doesn’t show it. After Iruka fumbles through deactivating his wards, the jounin walks him inside, going as far as to deposit him safely in his own bed. He leaves the room without so much as a goodbye, which Iruka supposes should be expected by this point, but a minute later, he returns to set a cup of water on the bedside table. While the teacher squints at the cup in confusion, Kakashi simply observes him for a minute, a slight hint of fondness coloring his visible eye.
“Have a good rest, sensei.”
Iruka returns the sentiment. Or, at least, he slurs something that vaguely sounds like you too, which is good enough.
It isn’t until he wakes the next morning, squinting again at the cup of water with a throbbing headache and a tight grimace, that he remembers Asuma mentioning months ago that Kakashi lives in his building, which is in almost the exact opposite direction from the bar as Iruka’s, and is very much not practically neighbors.
Considering it’s far, far down the list of bizarre shit the jounin has done recently, Iruka doesn’t even bother to question why he’d lie about that. Knowing Kakashi, the answer is almost certainly just because or I thought it was amusing for some fucking reason.
----
Iruka is still exhausted by the time he makes it home from work the next day.
Considering he barely managed to get himself together and drag his ass just two blocks to teach pre-genin from the comfort of a classroom, he can’t even begin to imagine how his friends were able to take on whatever missions they’d been assigned today. It probably helps, he supposes, that none of them are as much of a lightweight as he is.
Not that he’d ever admit to that.
It isn’t often that Iruka takes naps, given that he’s much more likely to push through his fatigue and take care of whatever marking, cleaning, or other chores remain on his to-do list. He’s been a compulsive worker since he was a small child— he can blame his mother for passing that trait on to him— and relaxation in general is something that’s never come easily. He doesn’t so much as sleep in on the weekends, let alone willingly conk out for an hour of nothingness in the afternoon when there’s always something to get done.
Iruka knows he’s fucked when even he’s considering a nap.
The idea pops into his head while toeing off his shoes at the door, and to his own horror, is a legitimately tempting one. Stripping off and hanging up his vest next continues to deplete the microscopic pool of energy he’s got left, making that nap turn from possible to probable, unless he wants to fall asleep on his kotatsu and wake with ink smudged on his cheek for the hundredth time.
It’s in the middle of this slow, begrudging resignation that he realizes there’s an extra pair of shoes beside the door, and an extra vest on the hangers. Something that wouldn’t have been surprising at all, had those articles of clothing been Naruto-sized.
Which they aren’t.
With a sharp breath, Iruka draws a kunai from his pocket and presses himself up against the wall, straining to listen for any other presence in the apartment. There’s a soft bubbling sound coming from his kitchen around the corner, but not much else to go on.
Iruka swallows, wills himself steady, and advances slowly towards the kitchen’s doorway. Once he rounds the corner with his weapon drawn, he’s met with the sight of a jounin leaning against the counter, an unbothered eye directed down at the kunai, then back up.
“Maa, sensei, is this how you treat all of your guests?”
“K— Kakashi-san?!” Iruka splutters. He glances around rapidly, wondering if Naruto had let his teacher in, but there’s no sign of the kid— and if he were present, he would have made that well known by this point. It’s not easy to exist within a mile radius of him and be unaware of it, let alone unknowingly occupy the same apartment. “What— why— how the hell did you get in here?”
“You shouldn’t deactivate your wards in front of other shinobi,” Kakashi chides him, his tone slightly teasing. “It isn’t safe, sensei.”
Wait, when the fuck did he—
Ugh. It was Kakashi he’d been practically hanging off of while stumbling home drunk last night. He can’t fully remember letting him in, but he does recall that unexpected glass of water that had made its way to his bedside.
Iruka’s face is quickly growing hot.
“Normal shinobi don’t break and enter into their friends’ homes,” he grumbles, pocketing his kunai to cross his arms.
“‘Friends’, hm?”
The word sends all thought in the chuunin’s head to a screeching halt.
He hadn’t even really meant to say it. If he had been asked just an hour ago to describe his relationship with Kakashi, he isn’t sure he would have used the word at all. Iruka’s never been one to make friends easily, always keeping a certain distance from everyone in his life, and from what he’s seen of Kakashi, he appears to share that trait.
But now that he really stops to consider it, he has to ask himself— are they friends?
The gentle touch of fingertips he can still remember against his scalp doesn’t make the acquaintances label seem very appropriate. Neither does the glass of water that had sat on his bedside table, or stalking someone through the market, or all of the strange comments the jounin’s been throwing his way lately.
It’s probably all just some sort of game to Kakashi, but whatever his intentions are, it’s pushed the pair well past simple acquaintances.
The eye trained on him is crinkled with a teasing glint. Iruka rolls his eyes, huffs, and glances at the bags that have been deposited on his kitchen table.
“What’s all of this? And why are you here?”
The jounin hums, glancing back at the kettle just as it begins to whistle. He moves it to an unlit burner. “I noticed your kitchen was almost empty while I was looking for a glass. You’re not likely to deal with shopping while hungover, so you don’t have much to eat.” His eye flicks back towards the frozen man. “Am I wrong?”
It takes several seconds for Iruka to realize he’s staring dumbly at him again. He affirms with a slow, stunned, “You’re not wrong.” It’s true that he doesn’t have anything on hand to make a proper dinner for himself— and though he would have nagged at Naruto for doing the same, he had planned on settling for whatever snacks he could scrounge up.
“I wasn’t sure what groceries you would have wanted, so I got takeout instead.” Kakashi turns to fetch the kettle, pouring the steaming liquid into two mugs. “You left a canister of tea out, too, so I decided to make some.”
All of this is said with the exact same dispassionate tone the jounin defaults to, as though he were simply commenting on the weather or making idle chat, rather than telling someone he broke into their apartment to… give them food?
“I don’t understand,” Iruka admits. Surely, there must be something Kakashi is playing at— or perhaps he’s buttering him up in preparation for some insane favor he plans to ask him soon. “Why go to all this trouble?”
Kakashi’s eye crinkles slightly. “Are we not friends, sensei?”
Well. Whatever Iruka was expecting, it wasn’t that.
He scratches awkwardly at the bridge of his nose, turning towards the window to hide the stupid heat he can feel swarming his face. “I… suppose we are.” With a cough, he adds, “Thank you, Kakashi-san.”
Iruka dreads an awkward dinner, or simply feeling suffocated when he had intended to wallow in his exhaustion alone, but being in the jounin’s presence is strangely comforting. It isn’t quite like any interaction he’s had with anyone else in his life— he doesn’t feel pressured to speak, nor to entertain his unexpected guest. Their meal is companionable, completed partly in silence and partly in conversation that weaves aimlessly from topic to topic, occasionally managing to coax a laugh from Iruka despite how shit he had felt when he first stepped through his door. The pair continue speaking at the kitchen table long after eating, and eventually move to a more comfortable spot at the kotatsu with fresh cups of tea.
It doesn’t help that Kakashi’s evidently become comfortable enough with him to outright remove his mask for the meal, and Iruka’s stuck staring at how surprisingly good-looking he is under it. He had already been able to mostly picture his face from the outline of his jaw, nose, and what was visible outside of the coverings, but even still, it’s enough to make the task of keeping the blush out of his face all the more irritatingly difficult. As the night ticks on, the chuunin slowly grows used to the sight— though he still can’t help staring for a second too long now and then.
Any sense of time slips away entirely until Kakashi finally rises to assert he has to return home to prepare for an early mission, and Iruka realizes it’s gotten so late that the sun’s already set.
“Ah— I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you from getting ready!” the chuunin hurriedly apologizes, scrambling to get to his feet and see him to the door. “You should have said something—”
“I would have said something if I wanted to go,” Kakashi dismisses, smiling slightly before pulling his mask back up. “But I didn’t.”
And Iruka has no answer for that, really, save for the dumb stare that only seems to make the jounin’s amusement grow.
At the open door, Kakashi turns back to offer a short wave. “You may want to be more careful with your wards in the future, sensei.”
And with that, he’s gone again.
----
Iruka probably should have learned by now that nothing good ever comes out of drinking with his friends.
He purposefully limits himself to small sips this time, determined to have a simple night with no nonsense, no stumbling home, and no terrible hangover to make teaching children feel like he’s waterboarding himself.
And then, of course, Anko has a bright idea.
The moment she suggests a game of truth or dare, Iruka already knows it’s a lost cause to protest. By the time he even opens his mouth to argue, Genma and Kurenai have already heartily agreed to play— and wherever Kurenai goes, Asuma always seems to follow, whether he thinks he’s being obvious about that or not.
He isn’t sure whether Kakashi’s penchant for bullshit or his desire for privacy will win out, but the jounin doesn’t protest the game, either, and so it begins, much to Iruka’s dismay.
The first target is Anko, who accepts a dare to flirt with the bartender while ordering their next round of drinks. Iruka can already feel the blood draining from his face in mortification of whatever the hell he’s going to be dared to do if that’s the kind of game they’re playing. If only some small relief, rather than rotating to him next, the target moves to Anko’s opposite side.
Hopefully, by the time it swings around to Iruka, he’ll already have a decent excuse to leave. Or maybe he’ll be dead by then through some divine mercy killing.
As the game progresses around the table, the targets continue accepting dares, which only seem to grow more embarrassing with every turn. By the time Genma actually follows through on a dare to go to an abandoned table, pick up the half-empty glass of beer that had been left behind, and down the rest of it, Iruka can’t stomach watching anymore, instead keeping his gaze glued to the table and praying for that divine mercy killing to hurry the fuck up.
If Kakashi has any distaste for the game, he certainly isn’t showing it. Once his turn arrives, he merely states with his ever-disinterested tone, “Dare.”
“I know, I know!” Anko declares, her way too excited smile doing little to curb Iruka’s desire to perish as soon as possible. “Kiss the person you think is the cutest in the bar.”
“He doesn’t have to go far!” Genma smirks, making Iruka tense up. The shinobi can’t entirely contain his laughter before he completes, “Obviously, it’s me.”
The table erupts into laughter and accusations— no, I’m the prettiest one here— the game seemingly all but forgotten until masked lips gently graze Iruka’s cheek, and everyone goes silent.
Iruka practically gives himself whiplash with how fast he turns to stare at Kakashi, who appears almost amused again. The chuunin’s face rapidly darkens in color, and his mouth hangs open for several seconds before he rises from his seat, snaps a gritted, “That’s not funny,” and storms out of the bar.
It’s only once he’s outside that he realizes he left behind his messenger bag. Something he can’t afford to just ditch and wait for a friend to bring by tomorrow, considering he has quizzes to grade tonight, but there’s no way he’s going back in immediately.
With several creative and probably far too loud curses, he paces the street in front of the bar to procrastinate dealing with the bag, his jaw set and fists clenched tight. Embarrassment makes his face swarm with heat, burning uncomfortably against the sharp chill in the air.
He was stupid to think he could be friends with Kakashi. Everything is a game to him, and that idiotic dare only seals what Iruka had suspected all along, though he doesn’t feel any satisfaction that such a long-anticipated vindication would usually give him.
No, not only does he not feel any satisfaction, he feels like crying, which only mortifies and agitates him further. He lowers his head and shrinks into his vest slightly as he continues to pace, praying that the watery sheen of his eyes isn’t visible to passerbys.
Iruka quickly loses count of how many times he paces the length of the street. It’s his fourth or fifth pass when his lowered gaze causes him to smack straight into someone else on the sidewalk, who immediately steadies him by his arms before he can fall.
The worst part is that without even looking— without even listening— he knows it’s Kakashi. The jounin could walk into any room and Iruka would know him by his presence alone; could simply feel the electric way the air parts around him.
“Iruka-sensei—”
“Let go of me,” Iruka snaps, pulling himself out of his grasp. He crosses his arms and turns away in an effort to very much not show the fact that he’s on the verge of crying. “Just go back inside. You were clearly having fun.”
“Iruka, just listen—”
“No, if you want to talk, you listen,” Iruka cuts him off, holding up a finger to silence him. He can feel himself slipping into enraged lecture mode, and though he could probably force himself to come back down from it if he wanted to, this might as well fucking happen at this point. “Teasing someone for months isn’t nice, it’s childish. Even my students are more mature than you. Embarrassing someone for— for what? A cheap laugh? And why me? Is it because I’m an easy target? Or do you just enjoy making fun of someone who’s gullible enough to like you— to think that maybe—”
Continuing lectures, evidently, is a very difficult task when someone is kissing you.
It isn’t another mere peck on the cheek, but lips against his own, unmasked. His note of surprise is muted by the kiss, and a shiver runs down his spine at the feeling of a hand against his cheek, fingertips brushing the stray hairs that have come loose from his ponytail over the course of the day.
Kakashi pulls away just enough to break the kiss, but his hand remains, drifting a thoughtless thumb over the scar on his cheek.
“I wasn’t joking,” he states, his voice low enough to be more rumble than sound. “I never was.”
Iruka is vaguely aware of the fact that his mouth is hanging open. He’s also vaguely aware of the fact that he’s burning up under Kakashi’s touch, just as flushed as he would’ve been if he was four rounds deep again.
And despite all the jumbled thoughts that had been clamoring to erupt from him at once, the only thing he can manage in reply is an echoed, “Never?”
A small smile twitches at the corners of Kakashi’s mouth. “Never.”
“Oh,” Iruka says, intelligently.
And though a mixture of mortification, confusion, and butterflies leaves him paralyzed, Kakashi is merciful enough to lean back in for the second kiss that Iruka had been too afraid to chase.
Rumors have always floated around that Kakashi tends to have fairly frequent one-night stands, and whether or not the gossip still holds true, it’s obvious that he’s an experienced kisser. Or, at least, it seems like that to Iruka. He only has one reference point— one that had attempted to murder him, to be fair— but Mizuki had never kissed him like this.
Definitely hadn’t kissed him well enough to have his head spinning and his knees as weak as they are now.
Or maybe Iruka’s just got it bad for this particular shinobi.
Once they break apart again, Iruka surges forward to hug him, partly to hide his reddened face against Kakashi’s shoulder and partly to convey the apology he feels far too frazzled to properly make.
“To be clear,” Kakashi murmurs, “I don’t blame you for assuming. I do a lot of weird shit, after all.”
A startled laugh escapes Iruka, muffled against the jounin’s vest. Once he somewhat reluctantly peels himself from him, he finally notices that his messenger bag is slung around Kakashi’s shoulder.
He might do a lot of weird shit, but Iruka is quickly coming to realize that he does a lot of shockingly sweet shit, too.
“I don’t really feel like going back for another round of truth or dare,” the chuunin smiles slightly. “And it’s getting late.”
Though Kakashi pulls his mask back into place, his smile is still obvious in his crinkled eye.
“Lead the way, sensei.”