Chapter Text
Over the three years Iruka has spent working at the mission desk, he’s seen just about everything.
Being exposed to reports on missions ranging from genin chores to highly classified jobs only the most elite shinobi can carry out, Iruka is naturally going to read… interesting material. One minute, he could be reviewing something unintentionally but profoundly hilarious, and the next report in his hand could give him nightmares for days. Even then, the reports make up only half of the desk’s chaos— there are the shinobi who turn them in, too. Shinobi who, in spite of mostly being adults, somehow manage to be even more exhausting at times than his classroom full of hyperactive children.
There is very little, at this point in his career, that can surprise Iruka Umino— and so when he walks in for what should be a quiet evening shift, and he sees the shinobi who writes the worst goddamned reports in the entire village leaning against the desk, he only lets out a discreet sigh under his breath.
Until he realizes that that shinobi is on the other side of the desk.
“Kakashi-san,” Iruka greets him as calmly and politely as he can muster. In spite of his best efforts, his eye twitches of its own accord. He comes to stand behind his usual chair, which Kakashi is much too close to. Too close being loosely defined as within several miles on a normal day, let alone several inches, as he is now. “This side of the desk is for staff only.”
“That so?” Kakashi drawls, barely looking up from his book. “I didn’t notice.”
Iruka isn’t sure whether Kakashi has had a recent head wound on a mission, or is simply fucking with him. On the off chance that it’s the former, he clasps his hands behind his back to resist the urge to forcibly haul him back over to the right side of the desk, even though he could get away with it if he wanted to, considering no other shinobi are waiting yet to turn in their report.
“Yes. So please return to the other side.”
“You said it yourself, though, sensei. I’m already on the right one.”
Iruka blinks. Maybe the head wound theory wasn’t actually that far off.
“Excuse me?”
“If this side is for staff,” Kakashi explains slowly, “then I’m on the right side, seeing as I’m staff.”
Iruka’s lips part in a dumb silence, then tilt down into a frown as he peers closer at the slouching jounin. “Are you well?”
“Peachy,” Kakashi says, with all of the enthusiasm of a corpse.
Iruka waits, but no elaboration is offered. Clearing his throat, he continues, “I think you might be confused—”
Faster than he can blink, a letter is being held out to him, adorned with the Hokage’s official wax seal. Iruka accepts it reluctantly, reaching out and gripping it from the very edges as though if he moves too fast, it might bite him. Or Kakashi might bite him.
In his consequent fumbling, the seal comes open with a slight tear of the paper beneath it. Iruka huffs a frustrated breath at himself, but reads on— and promptly has his blood pressure launched back into the stratosphere at the first few words he catches.
“This is going too far,” he admonishes him— no, not just him, but Izumo and Kotetsu too, wherever they must be nearby, probably snickering amongst themselves. “A friend losing a bet doesn’t make it okay for you to forge the signature of a hokage.” He places his hands on his hips and whips around to look out over the room. “Where the hell are you two hiding—”
“Sensei?” Kakashi asks, looking at him as though he’s the one presently evaluating that sensei for a head wound. A sensei who is perfectly goddamned fine, by the way, albeit incredibly exhausted by the bullshit his friends love to pull.
“This is a punishment game, right?” Iruka demands, turning back on his heel to direct the full intensity of his agitation at Kakashi. “This is childish, it’s absurd to come into someone’s place of work to prank them over a stupid bet—”
“Sensei,” Kakashi repeats, more firmly this time. “Have you tried reading what I gave you?”
“I— of course I—,” he starts to defend himself, then snaps his mouth shut again as his face begins to heat. Though he knows this is only going to feed into the prank, he sighs, and he holds the paper back up.
In light of Usui Chie beginning her maternity leave earlier than anticipated, Hatake Kakashi is assigned as temporary staff to the mission desk, effective immediately. He is expected to report for three hours per day, six days per week. He is cleared to handle reports of all rankings. The most senior staff member present during a given shift is in charge of his training and monitoring. Any requests for changes in staffing must be submitted in writing to…
Iruka glances around himself hopelessly, as though any other senior staff members might pop up and spare him from his fate. The universe offers no mercy.
“This is serious,” he says, the words hovering somewhere between a question and a lamentation.
“You can see for yourself if you stop by the hospital. Heard she had twins.”
Iruka winces in sympathy for Chie before his brain catches up to the fact that the shinobi in front of him is going to be much more of a handful than twins.
“I’ve been rude,” he forces himself to bow. His face still manages to redden in embarrassment, even as dread begins to set in. “I apologize, Kakashi-san.”
When he straightens back up, a single eye is on him, disinterested— or simply bored. The only response he receives is a shrug.
“…Well,” Iruka exhales, slipping his messenger bag off his shoulder to hang it over the back of his chair. “Please, sit. There aren’t usually many reports turned in on Friday nights. Unless things pick up, you can just observe tonight.”
And hopefully not fuck anything up in the process, he thinks, but does not say. The mere memory of Kakashi’s past mission reports— which are more appropriately labeled as abstract pieces of art than intelligible written communications— makes him shudder.
If the Sandaime is a humorous man, his humor is certainly cruel.
Kakashi pulls out the chair beside him, not bothering to lift it at all as he does so. The resulting shrill screech of the chair’s legs scraping against the tile floor makes Iruka jump, but before he can admonish him for it, their first client of the evening enters the room.
The shinobi who pauses in the doorway can’t be any older than fifteen, perhaps sixteen. She glances between the two men at the table before her eyes get stuck on Kakashi, and she freezes like a deer in headlights.
Iruka hazards a glance to his side and, just as he expects, finds the same flat, bored stare being leveled at her. He clears his throat, and he motions the kunoichi over to him. “Good evening, shinobi-san. I can take your report.”
She hesitates for a beat longer, then approaches the desk. After handing her report over to Iruka, she is suddenly very interested in looking anywhere other than the ray of sunshine seated to Iruka’s right.
Out of pity, and perhaps a touch of secondhand embarrassment, Iruka only gives her report a quick skim before approving it. Her writing is neat, every section is filled, and there’s more than enough detail to accept it. He promptly stamps the report, then places it into the empty bin beside him. “Thank you for your hard work, shinobi-san.”
“Yes— ah— you, too— I mean—,” she shakes her head. “Er, have a good night.”
Iruka somehow manages to hold a smile together, even as the reality sinks in of just how very long this night is going to be.
The next few unlucky shinobi to step through the door are granted no kinder fate. Their initial reactions to Kakashi vary from mild surprise to visible unease, but by the time each of them make it back out the door, everyone is walking a little faster than when they first came in.
“Kakashi-san,” Iruka says under his breath, drawing the same disinterested look as ever back to him. “I think you’re, ah… intimidating people.”
He blinks. “Am I?”
“…Yes. A little.”
“You told me to observe,” Kakashi points out. “I’m observing.”
“That… is true,” Iruka allows, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. He glances at the small stack of reports in the bin beside him, then picks them back up to hand over to Kakashi. “Why don’t you read these and let me know if I missed anything?”
Iruka does not ever miss anything, which Kakashi is well aware of, considering how many times he’s been scolded in this very room by Iruka over mistakes both glaring and minor. Still, Kakashi humors him, which is a small victory in and of itself— and a welcome chance at some breathing room.
Until he gets through two more reports from shinobi behaving much more awkwardly than usual, and finally realizes that Kakashi’s reading material is not a stack of mission reports, but rather a book with a large content warning on its surface that Iruka had been too flustered to notice before. An adult content warning.
“What is that?” Iruka squawks, drawing out his boldest reaction from Kakashi yet— the raise of one eyebrow.
Or… maybe both eyebrows. The crooked hitai-ate makes it impossible to tell.
“A book,” Kakashi responds, eloquently.
“That’s not just a book, that’s—,” Iruka begins to snap, then glances towards the open doorway to the room that is, if only for the moment, blessedly empty of any further witnesses. “Kakashi-san, I asked you to read mission reports, not porn.”
“I finished those,” he gestures a lazy thumb at the reports. “They were fine.”
Iruka’s eye twitches again.
“Kakashi-san,” he repeats slowly. “You can’t read porn while you’re working here.”
Kakashi stares back at him, impassive. He shuts the book without looking away, and he pockets it.
“Thank you,” Iruka mutters, lifting the stack of mission reports from the table and straightening them before placing them back into the bin.
On a slow night, Iruka would normally be grateful for the extra time he could use to grade homework or draft lesson plans, but each minute that passes with nobody else in the room but Kakashi proves to be one small eternity in hell. He’s back on his feet the very second the clock hits eight, and though he knows he’s meant to be training his new coworker on how to close the desk, he gathers up the night’s reports and rushes to the Archive without anything more than a hasty good night called over his shoulder.
The second the door to the Archive shuts behind him, and he’s finally, perfectly alone, he turns around, and he smacks his forehead against the door.
----
“You thought he was helping us prank you?”
Iruka pointedly does not answer that question, scowling into his beer as Izumo, Kotetsu, and Anko all burst into laughter. The shinobi at the tables near them cast a curious glance at the group, which makes Iruka shrink into his seat.
“There’s no other earthly reason he should be assigned a job like that,” he defends, weakly. “He can’t even write reports properly, let alone review them.”
“I doubt his reports are that bad,” Anko dismisses. “He graduated at half the age most of our students are now. Isn’t he supposed to be some kind of genius?”
“That doesn’t mean he’s literate,” Iruka points out.
Except for reading porn, he supposes, though he can’t imagine the Icha Icha series is a particularly challenging read.
“I heard he got into some trouble recently,” Izumo raises his brows, leaning in with a hushed voice. “I don’t think his assignment there is supposed to be fun.”
“A jounin like that will go crazy at a desk job,” Kotetsu agrees. “I doubt you’ll have to deal with him for more than a couple days before he quits.”
“If they let him quit,” Anko snickers.
“Trouble?” Iruka echoes, ignoring his friend’s amusement. “What kind of trouble?”
“I’m not sure,” Izumo frowns. “But it must be pretty bad if they’re keeping him off the mission roster. There’s already a shinobi shortage as it is, and he’s one of the best.”
“They do call him Friend-Killer,” Anko muses. “Maybe you should avoid getting on his bad side, Iruka.”
Iruka shrinks further into his seat, suddenly regretting the beer sloshing around in his uneasy stomach. He swallows, and he mutters, “Pretty sure that’s a lost cause.”
“Wanna bet?” Kotetsu grins.
Iruka shoves him, and his friends cackle.
----
The next night, when Iruka braves the walk from his apartment back to the mission desk, his limbs are as heavy as lead.
Each step is unwilling, only made slower by the exhaustion that’s built up in him over the course of the day. The laughter and chatter spilling through the curtained doorways of the bars and restaurants he passes by feel like the distant echoes of some other, better world than the terrible one he’s found himself in. He should be in a pleasant mood after a productive day at home, but the start to the weekend has been far from it.
For the entirety of the day, focusing on grading has been next to impossible with his head lost in rumination over how difficult his second job is about to become for him— and whether he might have to go as far as finding other work, if Kakashi is going to make every shift as intolerable as his first. The resurgence of the thought alone is enough to send another pang of anxiety through Iruka; his rent has been tighter since reentering single life after years of sharing an apartment with Mizuki, and he can’t afford to simply drop a second job, no matter how torturous that job becomes.
But through some small act of divine mercy, or simple good luck, Iruka is greeted by an empty mission desk on his arrival.
He lets out a breath of relief, rolling his shoulders to rid himself of the tension that all of his useless rumination had left him with. It’s nothing that will do him any good to worry about now, he tells himself— and resolves to savor his quiet shift tonight.
A quiet that lasts all of fifteen minutes before the window behind him creaks open.
He jumps to his feet automatically, already brandishing a kunai at the intruder before his brain processes exactly who has decided to enter the room through a window like it’s a second goddamned door.
He’s still gaping dumbly when a single-eyed stare, along with one visible raised brow, finally meets him.
“Do you greet all of your coworkers like that,” Kakashi glances down at the kunai, “or just me?”
Iruka’s mouth snaps shut as his face heats up, then opens, closes, and opens again. He manages only a single baffled note before finally stringing together a somewhat more coherent, “What the hell are you doing?”
Kakashi blinks. “Showing up to work?”
“Through the window?”
“It’s faster,” he shrugs, shutting the window behind himself. “And I was running a little late.”
Iruka looks at the clock on the wall, then back at Kakashi, who seats himself at the desk as though coming to work through the window is a perfectly normal thing to do. He debates marching straight to the Sandaime’s office to demand a reevaluation of Kakashi’s assignment to the desk, but forces himself to sit back down with a short sigh through his nose.
“Fifteen minutes is not a little late,” he settles for at length. “Please arrive on time to your next shift. And… use the door. Not the window.”
A single eye lingers on him, still no easier to read than ever. Cold, an anxious mind fills in. If Kakashi didn’t already dislike him for the headache Iruka had caused during his final field mission before becoming a sensei, he certainly has enough reason to dislike him now.
Maybe you should avoid getting on his bad side, Iruka.
He looks away, and pretends not to notice Kakashi continuing to watch him fidget.
The shift begins as slowly as he anticipates, but a string of shinobi trailing in at the same time makes it impossible for Iruka to ignore his coworker for long. Reluctantly, he motions for a couple shinobi to form a line in front of Kakashi, and he instructs him, “Just make sure every section is filled out, and the writing is legible. If anything is missing, hand their report back and let them know what they need to add. If a lot of corrections are needed, give them a blank report.”
Kakashi nods. Though it feels like he’s handing off a ticking time bomb to the unlucky shinobi who’ve wound up in Kakashi’s line, Iruka forces himself to return his attention forward, and to smile at the next shinobi in his own line.
The report he’s handed is… not the neatest, to say the least. While it isn’t quite as abominable as Kakashi’s usual reports, it’s still just as challenging to read as the handwriting of his pre-genin students. Iruka leans closer to inspect the scrawl with a frown, his attention wholly fixed on deciphering the report until the single word is spoken beside him:
“Next.”
Iruka straightens back upright, blinking as he watches a confused shinobi turn to leave, and a second reluctantly come forward. Kakashi slides the stamped report to the side, rather than placing it in the empty bin at his station, and holds his hand out for the next report.
Which he proceeds to stamp after roughly five seconds of inspection.
Iruka slowly turns back to the shinobi in front of him, extends the report with an empty sheet, and instructs, “Please rewrite this more neatly, shinobi-san. You can use the seating area if you’d like, or come back later if you need more time.”
The man frowns slightly. “But I already—”
“Thank you!” Iruka chirps, holding his smile until the man slumps his shoulders and leaves with a sigh.
And then Iruka turns to Kakashi, and he calmly asks, “What exactly are you playing at here?”
Kakashi’s brow inches back towards his hairline. Though his stare is no easier to hold than ever, Iruka forces himself to swallow down the nerves squirming in his stomach, and to keep his head high.
“Sensei?”
“I don’t know what led to you getting assigned here,” Iruka elaborates, “but I don’t buy for a second that you’re as careless as you want people to believe. I’m not going to allow you to sit here and do a poor job to try to get out of this assignment. Either have the respect to leave and ask to be placed somewhere else, or do your job. I don’t care which you choose, but you have to choose one.”
Just barely, the eye fixed on him narrows. Something flickers through what scant parts of Kakashi’s expression aren’t covered by his hitai-ate or mask— but whether that’s curiosity, disdain, or simple annoyance, Iruka isn’t certain.
What he is suddenly certain of is that they’re sitting much too close for this discussion. Or any discussion, for that matter.
His heart thuds against the base of his throat, floundering beneath Kakashi’s stare. Heat creeps over the bridge of his nose and pools beneath his scar, painfully exposed in comparison to the masked face across from him.
The jumbled nerves in his stomach are only tangled further by the adrenaline that spills into his bloodstream, making the urge to squirm almost unbearable. Just as the clamor threatens to boil over, Kakashi turns forward again, and he offers nothing more than a short, silent nod.
A kunoichi clears her throat, smiling apologetically at the startled look Iruka gives her. “Excuse me for, uh, interrupting… but can I hand in my report?”
Iruka blinks once, twice, before he manages to choke out an intelligent, “I— yes. Of course.”
He doesn’t notice how hard his heart is still beating until he reaches for the stamp at the end of his review, and the shaking of his own hand makes him briefly freeze.
“Everything alright?” the kunoichi asks, her smile turning somewhat uneasy.
Not even a little bit.
“Of course,” Iruka forces his own smile in response. He stamps the report, and he places it in the bin with hardly a second glance, and he pretends he doesn’t notice Kakashi staring at him again.
When the clock hits eight, it’s Kakashi who’s the first one to leave, vanishing from the room before Iruka can so much as offer a simple good night. His first thought is to wonder whether he’ll see Kakashi again, or whether he’s dissuaded him from ever returning for another shift; his second thought, against all reason, is a vague flicker of disappointment.
He promptly banishes that thought from his mind, returns home to his empty apartment, and tells himself that if he never sees Kakashi Hatake again, he’ll be glad of it.