Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Iruka had only been subbing at the academy for two days when he realized there was something wrong with the little blond Uzumaki boy. Not “demon-child” wrong or even “rowdy troublemaker” wrong, though Iruka had heard enough rumors that would suggest both to be true. And he might have bought into those rumors if he hadn’t seen the boy for himself: barely 5 years old with ill-fitting clothes and dirt perpetually under his fingernails, hair uncombed and unevenly sheared, no bento box to be seen at lunch time.

But the thing that really stuck out was that nobody walked with him to drop him off at school and nobody came to pick him up. Once could have been brushed off as a fluke, but two days in a row? Orphan or not, it seemed…off. In any case, Iruka had learned to trust his gut a long time ago.

So when no one came for the boy on the second day and Naruto started walking himself home with the ambivalence of someone used to doing things on his own, Iruka followed him. Into the edges of the Red-Light District. To a shitty, half-falling-apart apartment. Where the boy lived. Alone.

Which was how Iruka ended up where he was now, standing in front of the Council and the Hokage and the Clan Heads, fury boiling under his skin as the elders prattled on and on in endless bureaucratic circles.

“I’m sure everything is fine as it is. No harm has befallen the boy and the ANBU guard has done their job, have they not?”

“A five-year-old cannot live by himself,” Iruka protested for what felt like the hundredth time.

“And the issue of the matter has not changed since it was born,” Koharu said. “The jinchuuriki cannot belong to any clan; the imbalance of power is too great.”

“Naruto,” Iruka stressed, “is a child. One who desperately needs care and attention.”

The Sandaime sighed. “Perhaps if Jiraiya—”

Danzo scoffed. “If Jiraiya had any interest in raising the boy, he’d already be here. Clearly the jinchuuriki’s situation is less than acceptable. I have always held that it should fall to my care—”

“No.”

Iruka jerked at the almost-snarled word, the frigid edge in the room that indicated poorly restrained killing intent. The man who’d spoken had been leaning inconspicuously against the wall behind the Sandaime but was now an unavoidable presence in the room. Hatake Kakashi had taken one step towards Danzo, the threat clear in his posture even without a visible weapon in his hand. The infamous Copy-Nin wouldn’t need one.

The Hokage took another deep breath, fingers twitching in the way Iruka knew meant he was desperately wishing for his pipe. “A recess is necessary, I think. An hour and then we’ll reconvene.”

Iruka gritted his teeth but exited the chamber all the same. He could understand the Hokage’s point—truly they were getting nowhere with Naruto’s living situation—but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He thumped his head against the wall. Maybe some ramen…

“Umino-sensei.”

Iruka flailed away from the voice that had been far too close for comfort, only to recognize Hatake when he regained his footing.

“Hatake-san.” Iruka watched the other man warily. They didn’t know each other well—Iruka only knew Hatake by reputation and a handful of unpleasant encounters at the mission desk involving the worst handwriting he’d ever seen in his life—and he couldn’t imagine what reason Hatake would have to approach him now.

“Your concern over the jinchuuriki does your loyalty to the village credit—”

Later, Iruka would marvel that the hit landed at all, would question whether he’d truly caught a jounin ranked ninja off guard or whether Hatake had let Iruka punch him square in the jaw. Iruka would marvel over the fact that he was still, somehow, miraculously alive.

In the moment, however, Iruka could only register the slight aching in his hand, the way the Copy-Nin rolled his jaw, his one visible eye narrowed and assessing.

“Naruto is a person with a name,” Iruka snapped, already way past the limit of his patience for the day. Funny, how he could spend all day with small children, but a single council meeting wore him down to the bone. “Use it.”

“Hmm.”

For a long second, Iruka thought that he was about to die. And then Hatake’s eye curled in a friendly crinkle, an approximation of a smile.

“You’ll do,” Hatake said.

Iruka stood there for a moment, brain not processing the words. “I—what? For what?”

“I have a proposition for you. An alliance.”

“An alliance,” Iruka repeated dumbly.

“Hm.” Then Hatake turned and slouched towards the exit to the tower, stopping only when he realized Iruka wasn’t beside him. He turned his head over his shoulder, enough to peer at Iruka with one gray eye. “Maa, aren’t you coming?”

Iruka stared as his silver-haired companion somehow managed to eat without once removing his mask.

“What do you want, Hatake-san?”

“You won’t get custody of Naruto.”

Iruka’s hand clenched around the disposable chopsticks. “I—”

Hatake continued in that same annoyingly bland voice, “The Hokage would support you, but the elders will never agree. You don’t have the money to support a child, and you’re not strong enough to protect this one in particular.”

Iruka wanted to argue. He’d been underestimated most of his life—partially because it had taken him so long to make chuunin, partially because he was happy with his work at the academy and the mission desk while others sought out glory in the field—and he was sick of it. How many times did he have to prove that he wasn’t useless?

But he stamped down the flare of anger because in this case, at least, Hatake was right. Naruto would have dangerous enemies and Iruka had no chance of keeping them at bay on his own.

“You had a point, I assume,” he said, and suddenly Hatake’s attention was entirely focused on him.

“Anyone petitioning for Naruto’s custody needs to be above reproach.”

Iruka snorted. “Good luck with that.”

Hatake tilted his head. “Or any two people combined would need to supplement each other’s faults well.”

I have a proposition for you, Hatake had said, and Iruka could only stare as the pieces fell into place. Iruka lacked adequate funds and raw power, but he stayed in the village most of the time, was notably good with children, and had the Hokage’s support. Kakashi couldn’t put his own name forward as Naruto’s guardian—and why he would even consider it was a mystery Iruka didn’t understand in the slightest—because he was active in the field and was rumored to be emotionally unstable, but he was the last Hatake and the Copy-Nin, and that meant he had what Iruka didn’t.

“You can’t be serious,” Iruka said, but even as the words left his mouth, he knew that Kakashi was. Equally, he knew what his answer would be.

He had known Naruto for less than 72 hours, but one look at the boy’s sad, empty apartment, the pitiful contents of his fridge, the disdain and sometimes outright hatred the villagers treated him with, and Iruka had known he couldn’t leave the boy alone. No matter what Naruto had sealed inside him.

And Iruka remembered all too clearly the vehemence with which Kakashi had shut down Danzo’s attempt to take Naruto for himself. There was something else going on there, something that pinged every one of Iruka’s instincts as bad news. What would happen to Naruto if Iruka trusted the elders with boy’s care?

Look what’s already happened. Hokage-sama was supposed to take care of him and instead Naruto’s been neglected.

“What do we need to do?” Iruka asked a moment later and enjoyed the brief flash of surprise that flickered across the limited visible portion of the Copy-Nin’s face.

Then Kakashi leaned into Iruka’s space and said in a low voice, “Oh, sensei, I hoped you’d say that.”

One headache-inducing council meeting, a twinkle-eyed Sandaime, a rushed marriage ceremony featuring a suitably threatening Anko and an overjoyed Gai later, and Iruka was a married man with an adopted child.

Naruto stared up at his new guardians—and that was a brain-melting thought—with large, watery, blue eyes and asked, “Are you sure you want me?”

He looked for all the world like he expected the answer to be a firm no, like he thought Iruka would reveal that this was some sort of cruel prank and Naruto would have to go back to his shitty apartment. Like the promise of a family couldn’t possibly be real.

An unconventional family, Iruka thought with a side-glance at Kakashi. But the other man seemed serious enough in his commitment to raising Naruto well, and it wasn’t like either of them had the usual expectations of their marriage. They would learn to tolerate each other.

Iruka crouched down to be at Naruto’s eye level. “Very much so.”

Naruto chewed on his bottom lip. “I don’t think we’re all gon’ fit in my house.”

Given that Naruto’s shit-hole apartment could barely qualify as a livable structure, that was a fair assessment.

“We’ll have a new house,” Iruka assured him. Apparently Gai had volunteered to search for one while Iruka and Kakashi finished up the paperwork, and though Kakashi had been very specific that their new home should be near the academy and have three bedrooms and a yard, Iruka couldn’t help but have some doubts as to what kind of house they’d end up with. Gai was very…enthusiastic.

There was something like hope in the little boy’s eyes, but it was wary, hesitant. “I heard’ed that sometimes fam’ies walk to school together. And have bedtime stories. And…and hugs.”

Iruka’s heart ached for the boy. Only five, and yet he clearly already knew that his life was different, that he didn’t have what other kids took for granted. Worse, the fact that Naruto’s ANBU guard had to know about it, which meant the Hokage had to know about it, and nothing had been done.

Iruka buried his anger for now and instead wrapped up Naruto in a hug that the boy returned just as tightly.

“We’ll do those things too,” he promised.

Chapter Text

Two months ago, if someone had told Iruka that he would be living in a surprisingly nice three-bedroom house in domestic companionship with Hatake Kakashi in order to raise the nine-tails jinchuuriki, he would have assumed they’d been the victim of a poisoned-senbon accident—probably Genma’s fault—and that obviously drug-induced hallucinations were a side effect.

If they’d gone on to bet that Kakashi would be cooking breakfast for them on a regular basis and packing Naruto’s bento boxes every morning the Copy-Nin was in the village and not off on a mission…well, that was a bet Iruka would have lost. Badly. Kakashi even shaped the rice-balls into little dog faces, and they were so consistently made that Iruka was almost positive that Kakashi was using the sharingan. For cooking.

Just another of the hundred ways Kakashi proved he was nothing like Iruka thought he’d be. It wasn’t that Iruka thought he knew Kakashi all that well before, but…there were certain preconceived notions, certain things Iruka had been utterly sure about which had been proven false.

Like the sloppy mission reports, and how Iruka thought that meant Kakashi had no attention for detail or patience or tidiness. Except that Kakashi would triple-check his pack before leaving for mission. He would listen attentively to Naruto’s endless ramblings about school and the squirrels they’d seen when Iruka walked him home and why ramen was the best food in the world. Once, Iruka caught him vacuuming up dog hair when he thought no one else was home.

And then there was the fact that Hatake Kakashi was supposed to be aloof, untouchable: “Hip and Cool” in Gai’s opinion, “terrifyingly lethal” in anyone else’s. The latter was definitely true and Kakashi had enough mission successes to prove it—along with a heavily redacted ANBU record that Iruka was absolutely not supposed to know about, but which Sandaime-sama had “left” out on his desk during one of their tea meetings. Civilians whispered about him like he was some sort of mythological being. Lower-ranked nin idolized and feared him in equal measure, and even the other jounin tended to defer to Kakashi’s experience.

It was hard to reconcile that with the man who owned pajamas with little dogs and bones on them, who pretended to be asleep while Naruto colored in his eyebrows to match Gai’s, who once—after a two-week mission and chakra-exhausted out of his mind—pressed a very soft kiss to Iruka’s temple before promptly collapsing on the floor.

Hatake Kakashi was human, Iruka was realizing. A dangerous realization, because while Iruka had loathed Bad-Handwriting-Kakashi and Reads-Porn-in-Public-Kakashi and Three-Hours-Late-to-Everything-Kakashi, Iruka was starting to realize that he didn’t loath Kakashi at all.

The recipe was supposed to be easy. Beginner friendly. A nice, simple yaki onigiri because while Iruka had promised that they wouldn’t just eat takeout the whole time Kakashi was on his week-long mission, he was also acutely aware of his skill-level in the kitchen. Essentially, Iruka could cook anything Naruto wanted, mainly because Naruto always wanted instant ramen.

But yaki onigiri, he had been assured, was so simple it didn’t even really need a recipe.

And yet somehow, the pan was on fire. Along with half the stove, the dishtowels, and the edges of the curtains hanging over the sink. Not a small fire either. Great Fireball Technique kind of fire.

“FUCK.”

Quickly, he slammed a lid on the pan where the onigiri had been cooking—grease fires and water were a big NO—before dousing the rest of the flames with a basic suiton jutsu. And then he took in the damage.

On the plus side, everything that had been on fire was no longer on fire.

On the downside, half the kitchen was burnt to a crisp. The curtains and dish towels were crumbling away into a mess of soggy ash on the floor. The wall was intact but scorched—that would need repainting at the very least, if they were lucky enough there was no structural damage—and there was a solid chance the stovetop was entirely ruined. Considering how even the metal had warped under the heat of the flames, Iruka quickly calculated whether or not it would even be worth it to attempt a repair.

“Fu—” Iruka caught sight of Naruto’s wide-eyed gaze peering around the corner and changed course “—dge muffins.”

“Dinner’s bad?” Naruto asked quietly.

That was something that had surprised Iruka at first. Naruto could be loud—loud laughter after pranks, loud hollers of “IRUKA-NII” after school, loud arguments with other children—but at home, he just…wasn’t. In the beginning, Iruka thought that maybe Naruto was just shy with the two strange adults who’d taken him in, nervous about moving into a new house with new people. Unsure of his welcome, maybe—and that made Iruka’s heart ache, because for the first two, three weeks, Naruto kept tensing at odd moments, watching both Iruka and Kakashi with wary eyes like he was waiting to be sent away.

But then Iruka had started to notice a pattern after that first month, after Naruto had settled enough to unpack the rest of his old things in his room. How Naruto was quiet in the mornings when he first woke, how he was normal volume through breakfast. How it was only once they’d left the house that Naruto’s voice escalated, brightly pointing out different plants and cloud shapes and talking loudly about everything he was going to do in school today. And then he’d loudly say goodbye to Iruka at the gates of the academy.

The walk home was the same, but once they were in the house, it was just like the morning all over again. Oh, the tiny five-year-old was still excitable: barely able to sit still in his seat, bouncing all over the room, talking five miles a minute with a billion questions.

But—

Well, Iruka may not have been the child-prodigy that Kakashi was, but it didn’t take him more than a day of observation to put the pieces together.

Naruto was loud everywhere but home because everywhere but home, people at best ignored Naruto’s existence and at worst snarled and sneered and spat. At school, most of the kids gave him a wide berth, refused to play with him or talk to him or sit near him. Most of the teachers ignored his raised hand in class, ignored when he asked a question or asked for help.

It made Iruka furious—almost as bad as when he’d found out about Naruto’s prior living conditions—but there was nothing he could do. Nothing he was allowed to do.

(“You can’t be Naruto’s teacher, Iruka,” the Sandaime said tiredly. “That would be biased.”

“Everyone else is biased against him,” Iruka had argued. It didn’t make a difference.)

All he could do was make sure things were different—better—at home.

Iruka stared at the cremated remains of the rice-balls: little more than black ash crusted to the pan.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Dinner’s bad.”

That was an understatement.

Naruto chewed on his lip for a moment. “Can we get ramen, then, Iruka-nii?”

Iruka sighed. There really wasn’t any other choice, short of barging in on Genma—who would just laugh at him and then tell absolutely everyone that Iruka had blown up his own kitchen making yaki onigiri—and that wasn’t going to happen.

“Yeah. Let’s get ramen.”

Kakashi stared at the crisped kitchen, his one visible eye managing to convey a mix of worry, confusion, and disbelief. Iruka was not going to tell him that it had looked much, much worse three days ago—he and Naruto had gone out for ramen, and then paint, new curtains, and dishtowels, and they’d put in enough work that Iruka had given Naruto a small “D-rank” allowance for the effort.

“Was there an attack?” Kakashi finally asked.

Naruto and Iruka met each other’s eyes briefly.

“You could say that…” Naruto said slowly.

At Kakashi’s widening eye, though, Iruka figured he’d better explain.

“More like, I was cooking—”

“Trying to cook,” Naruto muttered.

“—and the stove attacked us.”

“With fire!” Naruto held out his arms as wide as he could. “You shoulda seen it Kashi-nii! It was huge.”

The Copy-Nin’s shoulders relaxed marginally. “Ah. I see.” One dark gray eye sparked with humor—that was a relief; Iruka had worried Kakashi would be angry. “Were there any casualties? The curtains perhaps?”

Iruka could feel the heat spreading across his face and automatically closed his eyes, as if that would somehow stop everyone else from seeing his embarrassment. “And the dish towels. And probably the stove.”

“And the wall,” Naruto said, tugging on Kakashi’s sleeve. “But me and Iruka-nii painted it up real good.”

Kakashi patted Naruto’s head like he would a puppy and eye-smiled. “It looks nice.”

Naruto beamed.

It was still in the early, pre-dawn hours of morning when Iruka felt the faintest disturbance of unfamiliar chakra that signaled the arrival of an ANBU at Kakashi’s bedroom window, and even half-asleep, Iruka frowned. It wasn’t like he thought Kakashi should be home all the time—that was at least half the point of them marrying and co-parenting Naruto, because Kakashi couldn’t be home often enough to do it on his own—but for Shodai’s sake, it hadn’t even been two whole days since his last mission.

Iruka wracked his brain. Kakashi’s last mission had been shorter than usual, but the one before that had been two weeks, and there’d been practically no break in between them either. Never mind the fact that he’d come home injured, though not bad enough to warrant a stay in the hospital. They were going to run him into the ground at this rate.

What if he takes so many missions because he doesn’t want to be here, the stray thought fluttered through Iruka’s mind, not for the first time. It wasn’t fair to Kakashi for more than a few reasons, he knew, but no matter how many times he tried to brush it aside, it lingered.

(“I have a proposition for you. An alliance,” Kakashi had said. It wasn’t more than that. It was never going to be more than that. Iruka should know better.)

Kakashi didn’t owe him anything beyond what he’d already given. He’d offered Naruto a home, a comfortable life, two mentors/guardians who would love him and teach him and take care of him. He’d given them both stability, a certain level of protection. And they got on well even if they weren’t a conventional family. Living with Kakashi was easy.

(And if, sometimes, Iruka was sad that he was never going to fall in love with someone who wanted him too, if he wished that single moment of chakra-exhaustion that had led to Kakashi brushing his lips over Iruka’s temple had lasted a little longer, if he wondered what it would be like if their arrangement was more than just companionable co-parenting—well, he kept it to himself.)

Absently, he was aware of Kakashi’s chakra moving about as he prepared for his mission. It didn’t take long—Kakashi always had an emergency bag ready to go if he needed to leave immediately, so adding a few extra…precautions never took him more than a few minutes—and soon he was disappearing out of the house.

Except.

Except less than fifteen minutes later, Kakashi’s chakra flickered back into the house—not through his bedroom window, but through the front door. Downstairs.

It was unusual, and that meant it was worth getting out of bed for even at ass-o’clock in the morning.

“Kakashi, what—”

Iruka froze. Kakashi froze. They stared at each other.

Kakashi—dressed in ANBU gear, including his Inu mask that Iruka was not supposed to know about but absolutely already knew about—stood at the kitchen counter with a large box in his hands, looking very much like he had gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar despite the fact that no part of his face was visible.

And then Iruka saw the picture and writing on the box and frowned, head tilting to the side. “A crock-pot?”

A long silent moment, and then Kakashi’s hand scratched at the back of his head in a familiar gesture. “Ah, it’s…less flammable than the stove?”

Iruka’s face felt as hot as the fire he’d caused. “Oh.”

Another long silence.

“I—I’ll be gone a while,” Kakashi said, voice low and serious, the kind of genuine gravity that Kakashi rarely bothered with.

A while. That could mean anything. Longer than any mission he’d been on since they got married, certainly. A month? Longer? There was a twist in Iruka’s stomach as The Thought made itself known again, though this time he shoved it down with a vengeance.

“Be safe,” he said instead. “Come home.”

Kakashi visibly stilled, and for a split second Iruka worried that that had been the wrong thing to say. Worried that it had revealed too much.

“Try to keep it in one piece for me, hm?” The teasing edge to Kakashi’s voice was back, light and lilting, and Iruka’s face warmed further still. He hid his face in his hands even as he laughed a little.

And then there were fingers around his wrists, a soft touch of leather as his own hands were tugged gently away from his face.

“Maa, sensei, you’re so cute when you blush.”

Iruka spluttered, the heat in his cheeks only intensifying, and went to snap something back—he didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if Kakashi was joking or if he meant it, didn’t know—but Kakashi was already gone.

(Iruka was not going to think about how ridiculously, stupidly good Kakashi looked in his uniform. The flash of pale shoulder, well-muscled arm, the stark red tattoo, the way the fabric clung like a second skin to his torso, highlighting just how lean—

But was it better or worse to think instead about how Kakashi had gone out and bought a crock-pot? Bought it specifically because Iruka couldn’t cook anything and Kakashi knew that. Bought it because Kakashi wasn’t going to be there to cook for them. Bought it as a way to take care of them even when he wasn’t there—

No, you’re overthinking it, Iruka told himself, but that didn’t chase away the warm feeling in his chest.)

Inu almost missed the next branch as he ran through the treetops, earning a concerned look from his squad. He was trying to focus on the mission—he was—but for the first time in a long, long time, other things kept drifting across his mind when he least expected it.

Like how Iruka had looked this morning, his hair loose and flowing and soft around his face, eyes tired but warm. His sleeping yukata had been rumpled and gaping a bit at the chest and all Kakashi had seen was a flash of pretty brown skin. He’d had his ANBU mask on so it had only taken a second to open his eye and imprint the memory with his sharingan.

Which had seemed like such a good idea at the time—the best idea, really, because who knew if Iruka was ever, ever going to let Kakashi see him like that again, Kami he hoped so but he wasn’t sure he deserved it—but now it was just distracting.

“Taichou?”

Right. The mission. Focus on the mission, finish the mission, go home.

(“Be safe,” Iruka said, lovely and tempting without even trying. Kakashi had never wanted to leave for a mission less. “Come home.”)

Because finally there was a home to go back to.

Chapter Text

Iruka hadn’t been on active duty in a while, but the instincts never really went away. Even the most laid-back shinobi would wake to the sound of their bedroom door creaking open. He had a kunai in his hand before he was fully awake, the grip steady, and the only reason he didn’t throw it immediately was that the figure in his doorway was small, gold-orange, and crying.

Oh, Naruto.

He hadn’t handled Kakashi’s long mission well. The first two weeks had been fine. Three weeks, even. But then a month hit, and Naruto’s fidgety-ness had become more and more prominent. He paid even less attention at school. He had more frequent nightmares, picked at his food, though luckily not because it was burnt—Iruka had mastered the crock-pot.

Iruka tried to keep Naruto busy, and so they delved into extra training sessions that Gai was happy to help with and lessons on seals that Naruto was probably too young for though he took to them like a duck to water. They had learned new recipes together, pranked Anko together—and subsequently ran from Anko together—and met up with Sandaime-sama for tea.

It had mostly worked to keep Iruka Naruto occupied.

Mostly.

(“What if he doesn’t come back?” Naruto asked at the six-week point.

“He will. Kakashi’s very strong.”

“What if…what if he doesn’t…want to?”

“He does,” Iruka promised, even though there was that nagging part of him that wasn’t sure.)

When Kakashi had come home just shy of two months after he left, it had been a relief. Not just that he was in one piece and relatively unharmed—he’d only been exhausted and covered in scrapes and scratches, and a wound stitched shut that was maybe a week old—but that he had come home. That he had wrapped an arm around Naruto when the boy all but barreled into him. That he had leaned into Iruka’s touch when Iruka placed a hand on his shoulder with a soft, “Welcome home.”

With Kakashi’s return, Naruto had mostly returned to normal.

Mostly.

The nightmares, it seemed, had lingered.

“Naruto, what’s wrong?”

There was a sniffle from the doorway and nothing else. From the faint cast of moonlight from the window, Iruka could make out the way Naruto’s shoulders trembled, arms wrapped tight around the stuffed toy dog that the boy liked to sleep with, face buried in the plushie, with just a single, wet eye peeking over at Iruka.

It must have been one of the really bad ones, Iruka thought, if Naruto wasn’t rushing into a hug the way he usually did after his nightmares. It had taken time to get Naruto to ask for things at all; he had been so hesitant in the beginning, and even now, five months in, Naruto was oh-so-careful when asking for snacks or a specific food or even attention. Iruka tried his best to put the offer out there first, so Naruto wouldn’t have to second-guess himself.

“Would you like to talk about it? A hug?” he asked, and Naruto—with a sound that was halfway between a sob and a wail—lurched forward.

He’d barely had time to catch Naruto and wrap the boy up in his arms when Kakashi blurred into the recently vacated doorway, still dressed in his pajamas, kunai in hand and sharingan uncovered. The Copy-Nin’s eyes flickered around the room, quickly checking for threats, the tense line of his shoulders easing slightly when he realized there was no one but Iruka and Naruto.

“What—”

“Nightmare,” Iruka answered as he smoothed the flat of his palm down Naruto’s spine, the small child still shuddering with quiet tears.

Kakashi’s expression contorted, the tension seeping back in, and Iruka leveled him with a no-nonsense glare. Kakashi had made no secret of the fact that he was…uncomfortable with feelings. Especially crying. Especially children.

(The first time Naruto had fallen off the tree Kakashi was trying to teach him to walk up—and really, Kakashi, tree walking? For a five-year old?—Naruto had gotten scraped up pretty bad. Partially because a huge chunk of the tree had blasted off from the sheer pressure of Naruto’s chakra, and little bits of wood had splintered into Naruto’s legs. Being five, Naruto had immediately teared up.

Not because he was injured, as Iruka later found out—“S’okay, Iruka-nii,” Naruto had said, not wincing even once as Iruka pulled the wood out. “I’m used to being hurt”—but because Naruto thought he’d failed and that Kakashi would be mad at him and maybe send him away.

Not that Kakashi had helped dissuade that idea, seeing as he’d immediately bailed once Iruka was there to assess Naruto’s condition and provide the necessary comfort.

“Maa, sensei, you seem to have this under control, so I’ll just—”

And then he was gone.)

Well, Iruka was going to drag Kakashi into some semblance of emotional competence, kicking and screaming if he had to. He glared harder. Get your ass over here.

Kakashi’s gray eye turned pleading. I don’t want to do this.

Iruka raised a brow. Tough shit.

Kakashi’s gaze flickered briefly to Naruto, then to the side, almost like he was thinking about running—

Iruka let just a tiny flicker of killing intent leak out, pleased when Kakashi jerked back towards him in surprise. I’m not fucking around.

With great reluctance, Kakashi inched his way into the room.

Naruto’s sniffling had quieted, the shaking stopping except for the occasional tremble, and Iruka asked again, “Do you want to talk about it, Naruto?”

“Had a ba’ dream,” the boy mumbled into Iruka’s shoulder, words muffled. Then he leaned back, looked up, blue eyes wide and watery and wary again but there was a thread of steel too. His tiny fists gripped Iruka’s sleep yukata like he was terrified to let go. “Are…are you and Kashi-nii gon’ get rid of me?”

Kakashi made a sound like he’d had the air punched out of him, but Iruka barely registered it. What he wanted to do was swaddle Naruto in blankets and cuddle him until he never worried about that again, then go out and maybe kill a few people—Iruka had names, he’d been paying attention to who was mean to Naruto, who had treated the boy badly or set him up to fail, and yes, one of those names was the Sandaime’s for all that the man was outwardly kind, and Iruka had no illusions he could take out a Hokage, but Kakashi would help, probably, and—

Instead, Iruka took a deep, steadying breath and met Naruto’s gaze evenly.

“Never,” he said, carefully thumbing away the tear tracks. “Never. You’re ours now.”

“Promise?” Naruto’s voice was so small, and Iruka’s heart ached. He thought they’d been doing better with this, but Naruto clearly needed more reassurance. More stability. More dedicated family time. Iruka’s mind whirled—how could he make that happen, what steps would need to be taken, would he be imprisoned if he yelled at some very high-level officials?

“Promise,” Iruka swore, pulling Naruto in for another hug the moment he relaxed. Over the boy’s shoulder, he gave Kakashi a pointed look.

Slowly, hesitation still lining every inch of his body, Kakashi reached forward to lay a hand on Naruto’s back, causing the boy to turn and aim those lethal, watery blue eyes at Kakashi.

“We’re pack,” Kakashi said with forced casualness, eye-smiling as though dragging the words out wasn’t as hard as any A-rank mission. But Iruka knew. Kakashi stumbled over words unless they were a shield—a joke or a jab that he could hide behind—and when it came to physical affection, there was always a pause, like Kakashi wasn’t sure it would be welcome. He preferred to show his care in more roundabout, but no less meaningful ways: cooking for them when he was home, bringing his summons around to puppy pile Naruto after a rough day, leaving a thermos of Iruka’s favorite tea at the mission desk that morning Iruka had walked Naruto to school in a downpour. “Pack sticks together.”

Naruto nodded slowly, still sniffling, and then buried his face in Iruka’s shoulder again, though significantly calmer than before. “Can I stay here?”

“Of course, Naruto,” Iruka agreed easily. It wouldn’t be the first time Naruto laid claim to Iruka’s bed in the wake of a nightmare.

“Kashi-nii too?”

That? That would be a first.

(And if Iruka thought about it sometimes—what it would be like to end and begin the day with Kakashi pressed close, the other side of the bed warm with leftover body heat in the mornings, the comfort of reaching out at 2 am and knowing he wasn’t alone—well, it wasn’t illegal to have those kind of thoughts about his husband. Even if their relationship wasn’t like that.)

Iruka raised a brow at the other man over Naruto’s shoulder. Up to you.

There was a flicker of hesitation, and Iruka prepared himself for some bullshit answer about Kakashi needing to check the perimeter or clear the house just in case. He tried to ignore his own disappointment. Thinking Kakashi would want to stay with them was a fool’s hope—

“Good idea, Naruto,” Kakashi said, ruffling the blonde’s hair before flopping gracelessly on the bed, the resulting bounce jostling both Iruka and Naruto. “We might have to fight off more nightmares, and you know, shinobi work best in teams.”

With little fussing, they managed to arrange Naruto between them, curled up in the center, the hands that had been fisted in Iruka’s yukata going slack as the boy sank into sleep. Iruka smiled down at him before laying down himself and trying not to feel self-conscious in his own bed with the weight of Kakashi’s gaze on him.

“Thank you,” Iruka whispered into the dark room.

For a long, long moment there was no answer, and though Iruka was almost positive Kakashi wasn’t asleep yet, he wasn’t going to push the other man to respond. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to focus on his breaths. In and out. In and out. He was just drifting off, in that hazy space between sleep and waking where it’s hard to separate the boundaries of dreams from reality, when Kakashi finally spoke.

“Don’t thank me for being selfish.”

Iruka had barely a second to wonder if it was real or merely something he’d dreamt before sleep pulled him under.

Wakefulness came slowly to Iruka as it always did when he wasn’t on mission—he was not a morning person—and with it, a vague sense of confusion. Naruto was sprawled out immediately in front of him, taking up a good half of the bed with his splayed limbs, the faint sniffle of little snores confirming that he was still deep asleep. Which was a relief, but didn’t explain why Iruka’s back was so warm, and why was Naruto’s hand hanging off the side of the bed when he was supposed to be in the middle between Iruka and—

Kakashi.

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no.

It took every ounce of his shinobi training not to tense up under the realization that the line of searing heat pressed from nape to knee was Kakashi. Kakashi’s very firm, warm, fit body. The breath fanning across the back of his neck was Kakashi’s breath. The arm slung over Iruka’s waist was Kakashi’s arm.

Kakashi had not particularly struck Iruka as a cuddler and yet here they were.

It was disastrous.

It was perfect.

It was everything Iruka was not allowed to have because he and Kakashi were a co-parenting alliance and nothing more, and so it had to stop. He just had to figure out how to escape without waking Kakashi. A feat that was made all the more difficult by the aforementioned arm across his waist.

Iruka was halfway through a very gentle twist-roll maneuver that had a 60% chance of working if only because it could easily be mistaken for just turning over in his sleep when someone at the window flared their chakra in the increasingly familiar way that Iruka recognized as ANBU. Kakashi woke instantly, his grey eye blinking in confusion, and Iruka grimaced. He’d managed to get the lower half of his body away from Kakashi and had attached his feet to the wall with chakra so as to get the right angle to slip out from under Kakashi’s arm, which all in all made for a very strange image, he was sure.

The ANBU’s face was hidden behind the mask, but Iruka would have bet anything whoever it was was judging them.

Kakashi blinked again, then rolled over to eye the ANBU directly. “What?”

“Hokage’s office. Top priority.”

Kakashi nodded sharply, the ANBU disappearing not even a full second later, and then Iruka was aware of a near-silent sigh and the quickest brush of lips across his cheek as Kakashi half-rolled, half-stumbled out of bed, ducking down to press his face into Naruto’s hair before slipping off to his room, presumably to throw on his own ANBU gear.

Iruka absently pressed his fingers against the tingling spot on his cheek and held them there. Kakashi had kissed him. Again. On the cheek, yes, and in a way that would seem almost thoughtless except for the fact that there was no way it was an accident. Kakashi didn’t even have the excuse of being chakra-exhausted out of his mind this time.

The thought that it was just for show occurred to him and was discarded with equal haste. The ANBU operative had already been gone by then, and Naruto was still asleep. The most obvious answer was that it was a genuine show of affection, that maybe the feelings that Iruka had desperately been suppressing weren’t as entirely one-sided as he’d thought—but that was a dangerous path to travel down and he wasn’t…he couldn’t afford to let that kind of hope to grow only for it to be crushed later.

Still, it was nice to pretend.

Iruka was pissed off.

He had tried to be patient. He had tried to be understanding. He had tried to be realistic most of all. But this was getting ridiculous.

“—Kakashi is an important asset to the village,” the Sandaime was saying, and while he looked sympathetic, he was clearly not apologizing or planning to change his actions. “He can’t be in Konoha all the time. That’s why your joint adoption of Naruto was a necessary measure.”

Kakashi was on yet another highly-classified mission, projected to take somewhere from three to six weeks, after being home for just a scant handful of days. And Iruka knew that Kakashi was important and needed and probably the strongest shinobi Konoha had outside of the Hokage himself, which put him in high demand. But Iruka had been paying attention, collecting data, making charts.

“Do you know how many days this month Kakashi was in Konoha?” Iruka asked.

“No, not off the top of my head—”

“Nine.”

“Ah—”

“For the whole month. A third of that was spent in the hospital recovering from chakra exhaustion. And—” Iruka laid his charts down on the desk in front of the Hokage “—that was above average for the past six months. Would you like to guess what the average is, Hokage-sama?”

The Hokage pursed his lips.

“It’s four. Four days a month is his average time spent not on mission.” In the back of his head, Iruka acknowledged that it was almost impressive how he’d managed to fall in love with a man who was only home about 13% of the time.

The Hokage’s eyes widened just a touch before glancing down at the papers Iruka had compiled, and Iruka allowed himself a moment to breathe. If Sandaime-sama was bothering to look at the data, there was a chance this could work out.

“Now, I know I don’t have the clearance to track ANBU coming and going from the village, so the comparative data comes from other jounin-level shinobi near Kakashi’s caliber.”

And if some of those shinobi happened to also be ANBU, that was just coincidence.

“Anko spends an average of eleven days a month in-village. Genma and Raidou average thirteen. Gai averages fourteen.” Iruka let the words hang in the air for a moment. “When I agreed to co-parent Naruto with Kakashi, it was with the understanding that Kakashi was strong enough to protect Naruto should anything happen. But I don’t see how he can do that if he’s halfway across the elemental nations all the time.”

The Hokage flipped through the charts Iruka had made, then pinched the bridge of his nose with a deep sigh. “You have made quite a convincing argument, Iruka. I will look into the matter.”

That was probably as good as it was going to get, Iruka thought as he bowed and took the Hokage’s dismissal for what it was. Whether anything would come of it was yet to be seen.

Chapter Text

The park was as busy as expected for a Saturday, the good weather an irresistible draw. They hadn’t gone often, not in the six and a half months since Iruka and Kakashi had adopted Naruto. School and work kept everyone plenty occupied, and Naruto hadn’t ever pushed to go—though whether that was because he was uninterested or because he didn’t like to ask for anything, Iruka wasn’t sure. When they had gone before, it was while Kakashi was away on mission, and it had always been in the late afternoon or early morning when hardly anyone was around.

But Kakashi was home for the third day in a row, his general mission-weariness had been slept off, and Iruka—ever in search of ways to increase Naruto’s family time—had suggested a picnic. That Kakashi agreed immediately, without a bribe, had been both surprising and suspicious. So much so that Iruka didn’t notice Naruto’s increasingly nervous energy until they were already at the park.

Naruto had one hand clasped in Iruka’s own in a death grip, the other fisted at the hem of Kakashi’s shirt, his head high and even and locked straight ahead though his eyes followed every flicker of movement. Even when the picnic blanket was laid out and the bento boxes unpacked, Naruto’s didn’t relax, his smile too bright, shoulders tensed, and he only picked at his food instead of scarfing it down the way he usually did.

Iruka wanted to ask what was wrong, but he’d learned by now that while Naruto could be persuaded into talking about what was bothering him inside the house, Naruto outside the house was a different matter entirely. I’ll talk to him about it when we get home. That would have to be good enough.

Lunch itself was relatively quiet, though Naruto still chattered on about schoolwork and pranking Anko and the things he wanted Kakashi to teach him now that Kakashi was home more often and might actually have the time.

“Iruka-nii says you know a bajillion jutsus,” Naruto said eagerly, all but vibrating where he was sitting. “You gotta teach me, Kashi-nii.”

“A bajillion, huh? Well if Iruka-sensei says so, it must be true,” Kakashi mused, eye darting over to meet Iruka’s with undisguised humor. Then his eye crinkled in a smile. “It’ll be a lot of work, Naruto. Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Of course, dattebayo! I’m gonna be the strongest ninja ever!” And then, a little quieter, a little less sure, “Plus, we got plenty of time, right?”

He hummed. “Even if you learned them as fast as I did, it would take you years.”

“Years?” Naruto’s eyes were wide.

“Years and years,” Kakashi confirmed, reaching out to ruffle Naruto’s hair. “If we get started now, you might be done by the time you’re thirty.”

“Thirty?” the little boy squawked in offense. “You’re not even twenty, Kashi-nii! No way am I gonna learn that slow!”

It was nice, nicer still that Kakashi hadn’t pulled out his usual reading material to even pretend to not pay attention, and Iruka felt an unreasonable surge of fondness.

When lunch was done, Naruto—who had managed to calm a little over the course of the conversation—tensed back up, and Iruka said, “You can go play if you want,” because there was a chance that Naruto was itching to run around. The boy was boundlessly energetic even on his calmer days, and if he didn’t exert some of that energy frequently, it tended to build up until he was bursting at the seams.

Naruto’s expression pinched for just a second, so fast Iruka wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t paying extra close attention, before he nodded sharply and ran off towards the swings with a whoop. Iruka couldn’t help but track the boy with his eyes, something he was peripherally aware that Kakashi was doing too.

Something is definitely off with Naruto today, he thought, frowning lightly. Maybe we should just go home…

But there was always a chance Iruka was reading too much into things—he’d been accused of being a touch overprotective before. Maybe this was nothing more than Naruto’s usual “out in public” nerves, heightened by the fact that there were more people in the park than they were used to. Maybe it was because they were used to doing things with just the two of them, and bringing Kakashi along had thrown Naruto off? Though that seemed unlikely, given how much Naruto practically glowed under Kakashi’s attention—

“You’re very good with him,” Kakashi said quietly, interrupting Iruka’s train of thought. When Iruka looked over, Kakashi was still staring ahead, eyes trained on Naruto as the boy kicked higher and higher on the swing-set, the faintest hint of pink along the top edge of his face mask. “It’s—this is…better. For him. You are, I mean.”

Iruka’s brow raised in amusement. Months ago, before this whole thing began, he would have never expected the Hatake Kakashi to be so awkward. Not that he’d ever come across as charming—Iruka had firmly been of the opinion that Kakashi was an unmitigated asshole—but he had seemed effortlessly in control, coolly indifferent in the way that suggested complete confidence. Even when he was turning in his shit mission reports and reading those trash books in public, he always gave off the impression that the world turned at his leisure.

Peeling back some of those layers, the exaggerated flirtation and sharp, dry humor hadn’t been much of a surprise. The stilted, almost-embarrassed way he muddled through genuine emotion, though, that had been a surprise. A pleasant one.

“Thank you,” Iruka said. “So are you.”

“Maa, sensei, I don’t think—”

“No, you are,” he insisted, cutting off whatever thinly-veiled self-loathing bullshit Kakashi was about to spew. “I know you don’t think so, but Naruto needs you. It’s not just that he admires you, or thinks you’re cool, or wants to steal all of your ninja secrets—”

Kakashi barked out a small laugh at that.

“Do you know how many people Naruto considers safe? How many people he knows he can trust? It’s not many. Teuchi and his daughter, because they’ve always fed him when no one else would, but they’re civilians so he won’t go to them if he’s hurt or in danger. Gai and Anko he knows won’t hurt him now, but he won’t ever ask anything of them because he doesn’t want to be a burden. Which leaves me, and you.”

“No one else?” Kakashi asked, his tone deliberately light, and Iruka heard the real question underneath.

“Naruto is not stupid,” Iruka answered. “He’s smart enough to know that most of the village doesn’t like him even if he doesn’t know why. He’s smart enough to know how he ended up in his former housing situation and who approved it, and I’ve never lied to him about the fact that some people might have preferred we didn’t adopt him.”

Kakashi hummed, tipping his head in concession.

“Besides,” Iruka continued. “Naruto adores you.”

“Ah…” The blush was back and brighter than before.

“You’re his cool parent,” Iruka mock-complained. “I’m always telling him to brush his teeth and eat his vegetables and do his homework. And you teach him to walk up trees and blow things up. Plus, you have dogs.”

“From my understanding, you two also blow things up when I’m gone,” Kakashi said innocently, though the sense of mischief was more than apparent if you knew where to look. Iruka threw a muffin at him in retaliation, which Kakashi caught and took a bite of. He gave Iruka an unconvincing wounded look, going so far as to put his hand over his chest like a scandalized civilian granny. “That my own husband would attack me—”

“Oh, shut up.”

Iruka was valiantly fighting down a blush of his own, and it wasn’t only out of embarrassment for destroying their kitchen. It was just that the way Kakashi said my own husband, even teasing, felt unbearably intimate. And Iruka, curse his stupid brain and his traitorous heart, wanted to hear it again.

“So mean to me, sensei,” Kakashi pouted. Then his gaze turned suggestive. “Though if that’s what you’re into, I’m more than happy to play along—”

Before Iruka could do more than splutter—and really, what the hell was he supposed to say to that—his attention was snagged by a movement in the corner of his eye where he had been half keeping an eye on Naruto. His head whipped towards the swings, Kakashi not even a second behind him, their conversation abandoned in favor of the scene before them.

It shouldn’t have been surprising. Iruka wasn’t blind, after all. He’d seen how the other parents corralled their kids away from Naruto, the sneers and glares aimed at the boy. And maybe it would be one thing if it was just the civilians—stupid, still, and inexcusable, but at least they’d have the excuse of not knowing better, at least they’d have the excuse of being civilians, easily frightened and ignorant—but it was the shinobi families too.

But things had been getting better since they’d adopted Naruto. Iruka would glare down anyone who even looked at Naruto funny, and Kakashi was terrifying enough to everyone but other elite jounin (and sometimes even them) that the implied threat of him was enough to get people to back off. Naruto hadn’t been glared at on their walks to and from school for months now, even if people tended not to look at him at all, and none of the shops had given them any trouble since that first week when Iruka had not-so-covertly gotten a grocery store shut down on health and safety violations after they’d refused to sell unspoiled produce to Naruto.

It seemed that Iruka had gotten too comfortable. Just because people weren’t being actively aggressive all the time didn’t mean that the animosity had died down.

There was a huddle of mothers clutching their children protectively in a corner of the park, civilians going by their clothes, and they all watched Naruto with wary, angry eyes, muttering amongst themselves—the usual rubbish, if Iruka had to guess, about demon-children and bad luck and that the boy shouldn’t even be alive. That alone would have been irritating but not dangerous. No, the real problem was the shinobi who was marching towards Naruto, shouting at him to get out of the park.

Kakashi tensed, gray eye flicking over to Iruka for just a split second as if asking, are you coming? And then they were both moving across the field.

Up close, it was more obvious that Naruto was panicking, his eyes flickering between the shinobi (a threat) and possible escape routes. His grip on the chains holding up the swing was white-knuckled, his breathing a touch shallow, and he flinched minutely every time the shinobi raised his voice further. Not that the yelling was the worst part.

“You’re not welcome here, demon freak. You gonna leave or am I gonna have to make you, huh?”

“Hey!” Iruka shouted. He was close enough now he could see the moment Naruto’s eyes locked onto him, the sheer relief there, and that calmed him just enough to not immediately punch the shinobi. Iruka didn’t know him by name, but the man was vaguely familiar—a chuunin, he was pretty sure, just not one that ran in Iruka’s circle.

A fight in the middle of the park is not going to help anything, Iruka told himself. Would it be satisfying? Yes. But he also knew that there were people who would use any opportunity to prove Iruka and Kakashi weren’t fit guardians for Naruto. Besides, civilians needed to have faith in shinobi, and it wouldn’t look good to have in-fighting in such a public place. You can always make things difficult for this asshole later, when it’s less obvious.

“You,” the man snarled, turning to look at Iruka over his shoulder. “You’ve got some nerve bringing it here, making the rest of us have to deal with the monster. Take it and get out.”

The shinobi reached out as if to grab Naruto by the back of his collar to haul him up out of the swing. His hand never made contact.

There was a clean snapping sound, followed by a cut-off shout, and the shinobi stumbled backwards. Naruto, having been plucked out of the swing-seat, now sat tucked against Kakashi’s hip, and Kakashi tilted his head as he coolly appraised the other man now cradling his arm to his chest.

“You broke my wrist, you fucking psycho—”

“Don’t. Touch. My. Kid.”

Whatever the other shinobi might have said to that hardly mattered, since he was all but choking on Kakashi’s killing intent. Without another word, Kakashi looped his free arm through Iruka’s and lightly guided them out of the park.

“What about our picnic stuff?” Naruto tensed up, only relaxing when Kakashi’s grip on him tightened.

“I’ll send a clone for it.”

The boy nodded, then tucked his head into the side of Kakashi’s neck, apparently content to block out the rest of the world right now.

“Is that going to cause trouble for you?” Iruka asked, nodding back in the general direction of the park.

“Maa. I didn’t break any laws, sensei. I merely incapacitated a shinobi who would have harmed a civilian child without my interference.”

Iruka blinked.

“’m not a civilian,” Naruto protested, his nose scrunched up, and Kakashi eye-smiled, ducking to gently nudge Naruto’s head with his own.

“You are until you graduate the academy.”

“Some people aren’t going to be happy,” Iruka pointed out, getting the conversation back on track. “You could be sanctioned for that.” His eyes flickered towards Naruto meaningfully: Because he’s not just any civilian child.

“What are they going to do? Fire me? Assign me to D-ranks? Send me on border patrol?” Kakashi rolled his eye. “They can’t afford to. They need me for other things.”

Iruka wasn’t convinced. “But—”

“Husband mine,” Kakashi said. Those words alone were enough to stop Iruka in his tracks, but Kakashi also slid his hand down Iruka’s arm, clasped his hand and then brough it up to his masked lips to press a kiss to Iruka’s knuckles. “You worry too much.”

If he’d been able to find his voice, Iruka might have protested that he worried just enough, actually. But as it was, he said nothing at all.

The Sandaime sighed. “Kakashi…”

The silver-haired jounin didn’t bother to look up from his book. “He’s alive, isn’t he?”

Well. Given what had happened to the drunkards who had tried to attack Naruto on the first anniversary of the Kyuubi attack, perhaps that was a fair point.

Iruka shuffled the extra paper-slip into the mission assignment with ease. It had taken less than five minutes to find the man’s file, easily identified by his ID photo even if he looked slightly different when his face wasn’t contorted with hate and disgust. Only a few minutes more to find the perfect mission: a six-week reconnaissance job in Swamp country in the middle of the rainy season, with the goal to identify and track a large bandit group that was camping out in the middle of nowhere. There would be no luxury of an inn or warm meals. No chance of dry socks once they left Fire country either.

Iruka smiled. It was perfect.

As they neared the gates at the entrance of the compound, Naruto fidgeted, tugging at the hem of his clothes. “What if they don’t like me?”

Kakashi eye-smiled, and maybe it was intuition or maybe Iruka really was learning to read Kakashi better, because he was 90% sure that particular eye-smile meant something along the lines of, They will not live to see another day. Which was not quite the message Iruka wanted Naruto to get out of this experience.

“Then we go home,” he said, before Kakashi could speak, “have ramen for dinner, and collapse in a puppy-pile. And then we’ll work on finding better friends.”

Iruka wouldn’t promise him that, no, of course they’ll like you, Naruto. Because even if that’s what he wanted to say, he couldn’t guarantee that it would be true.

Naruto chewed on his lip quietly in thought. “Can we have ramen for dinner even if they do like me?”

Iruka laughed. “Sure.”

(“A…playdate?” Kakashi had asked, more than a little skeptical.

“What, don’t tell me you never had a playdate when you were little.”

“No.”

“Not even once?”

“Gai used to try to break into my house sometimes.”

“Uh…he still does that. Last Tuesday, in fact.”

Kakashi frowned. “Sometimes Minato-sensei would take me to spar with older kids.”

“That doesn’t count. That’s training. Didn’t you ever, I don’t know, arrange to spend time with someone just for fun? When I was Naruto’s age, my parents used to set up playdates with the neighbors’ kids. We’d play tag and kickball and bandits vs ninjas. You know, kid stuff.”

“Ah. No, I didn’t like other children, and…” He paused. “And my father asked once, I think, if I had any interest, but all I wanted to do was train. So that’s what we did.”

“Oh.” Iruka didn’t know what else to say; Kakashi never spoke about his father.

For a long moment, Kakashi was quiet. And then—

“Does Orochimaru count?”

Iruka choked. “The Sannin?”)

“Yes, yes, we’ll have ramen for dinner, now let’s go.” Kakashi put a hand on each of their shoulders, ushering them along. “We don’t want to be late.”

Iruka and Naruto turned to look at him in sync, identical unimpressed expressions on their faces. Kakashi just smiled and kept pushing until they stood in front of a large house. The door opened, revealing a man carrying a small, drowsy-looking child, both with the exact same pineapple-esque hairdo.

“Kakashi. You’re…early. Clearly Iruka is a good influence.”

Kakashi eye-smiled. “Shikaku, thank you for having us.”

The jounin commander grunted. “And this must be Naruto.” Naruto smiled shyly up at the man, and Shikaku nodded. “My son, Shikamaru.”

The boy in question patted at his father’s arms, a signal to be set down, and when his feet were on the ground, he leaned closer to Naruto, squinting. Naruto stared back warily.

“Do you like naps?” Shikamaru eventually asked.

Naruto looked up at Iruka, who nodded in encouragement, before answering, “Yeah. ’Specially the ones where Kashi-nii lets me make a dog fort.”

Shikamaru tilted his head. “What’s a dog fort?”

“It’s like a pillow fort, but instead you put a bunch ‘a dogs together and snuggle in and it’s nice and warm.”

“Huh.” Shikamaru seemed to think for a moment, then sighed, shoulders slouching in a way that was more befitting a forty-year-old man than a five-year-old. “Come on. I’ll show you my cloud hill. We can try to make up shapes for them if you want.”

Without waiting for an answer, the dark-haired boy grabbed onto Naruto’s arm and pulled him towards the backyard. Naruto could only stumble along after him, eyes wide and bright and a little wet at the corners.

“The lethal eyes,” Kakashi muttered to Iruka, who smiled in turn.

Shikaku sighed exactly in the same way his son had, then opened the door wider to let them in. “If they get on well, this could be a disaster for Konoha. We should start drinking now.”

Kakashi patted him consolingly on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”

Later, when the sun was low in the sky and Naruto was somehow exhausted despite mostly lying down the whole time, yet still finding the energy to talk about how smart Shikamaru was, and how they’d probably come up with the best pranks, and yeah, he seemed a little lazy, but that was probably because he hadn’t found the right thing to be all whoosh about yet, Iruka’s heart felt ridiculously full.

Just because Naruto was so happy, of course. It had nothing to do with the way Kakashi had scooped Naruto up onto his shoulders for the walk home, or the way Kakashi had reached out to hold Iruka’s hand with a faint blush on his cheeks. It had nothing to do with how Kakashi had called Iruka his better half earlier during drinks with Shikaku, how Shikaku had pulled Iruka aside before they left and said, “I don’t know what you did—and please don’t tell me—but I haven’t seen him this stable in…maybe forever. You’re good for him. For both of them.”

At Teuchi’s, with Naruto half-slumped over his bowl of ramen but still scarfing it down at his usual horrifying pace, Iruka was grateful everyone else was too busy to notice the way he nearly choked on his ramen when Kakashi’s leg pressed against his and stayed there all throughout dinner. And when Kakashi’s eye met his for what seemed like the dozenth time, warm and incredibly fond, Iruka finally, finally allowed himself to acknowledge that maybe his wishful thinking wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility after all.

*omake 1*

“Mikoto.”

Mikoto looked over at her husband where he was frowning down at a pile of paperwork. Not that that was unusual; Fugaku seemed to be frowning more and more lately. Most of it was clan business. The elders were getting restless, the younger generations were overly prideful, and the rumors in the village were getting worse. They were trying to fix things, but clan-head or not, there was only so much one man could do. Especially when it seemed like the cosmic forces were out to undermine them.

“Yes?”

“The Nara heir has befriended the Uzumaki boy.”

Mikoto closed her eyes briefly and sent a small prayer that wherever Kushina was, she would forgive her. If Mikoto had been allowed to look after him, Naruto would have been like a son to her. Instead, the Sandaime had told her in no uncertain terms that Naruto could not be taken in by any clan. Fugaku had forbidden her from reaching out, had forbidden their children from reaching out—for the sake of the clan and public opinion, and she understood, she did, but that boy was supposed to grow up alongside her own sons. Kami, she could even remember when she and Kushina had joked that maybe their children would be best friends, joked that they would marry someday. And yet Mikoto had been allowed to do nothing.

Whatever trouble Hatake had caused among the Uchiha with that ordeal with Obito and his eye, Mikoto would forgive it all in an instant just for what he’d done for Kushina’s son.

“You know what this means, of course,” Fugaku continued.

“Hm?”

“A connection with the Nara comes with the Yamanaka and Akimichi. It is practically a given. After that, Hatake will likely reach out to the Inuzuka. And once Tsume is involved, you know it’s only a matter of time.”

Mikoto frowned. “A matter of time?”

“Until the Hyuuga make their move.”

Ah. She should have known. If it wasn’t the clan elders—and it was, at least 80% of the time—and it wasn’t the Hokage, then it was Hyuuga Hiashi.

“I see.”

“We have to be more proactive.” Fugaku hummed. “There’s nothing else for it. Sasuke is close enough in age at least.”

Mikoto paused, breath catching lightly in her throat. Fugaku rarely changed his mind once a matter was settled, but if his competition with the Hyuuga would force him to reconsider a friendship alliance between their children and Naruto…well, Mikoto might have to send Hiashi a fruit basket. It would probably have the added benefit of utterly confusing the man.

“Would you like for me to arrange an informal meeting between them?” she asked.

Fugaku nodded. “Yes. Preferably in the next week or two if we can manage it. It will look worse for us if we wait until after all the other main clans have been contacted.”

That was certainly true, and Mikoto was not unaware of the careful political balance she would be maintaining in cultivating this new connection. But Sasuke was a lonely child for all that he was surrounded constantly by cousins, and if Uzumaki Naruto was anything like Kushina, he would be good for Mikoto’s son. Possibly the best thing to ever happen to him, even.

Itachi, too, might benefit, if she could lure him in under the guise of watching over Sasuke during his playdate.

Mikoto hummed to herself. Perhaps she should pick up a gift basket for that chuunin sensei too. After all, he was the one who’d started this whole thing.

*omake 2*

Shikamaru spent most of his days napping or cloud watching.

Correction:

Shikamaru had spent most of his days napping or cloud watching up until he was introduced to Uzumaki Naruto. He’d never thought he’d be happy about an interruption to his previous schedule—and perhaps Naruto was a bit rowdier in general than Shikamaru would have preferred—but the thing was, Naruto had the best ideas.

“Hey, Shika. Do you ever try to ride the Nara deer?” Naruto asked.

Shikamaru, who had been trying to figure out if that one cloud to his left looked more like an angry bear or Ino in the middle of a hissy fit, said, “Huh.”

(This was, as Naruto would later come to find out, a fairly reliable indicator that Shikamaru was interested.)

Shikamaru stood, brushing the grass off his pants, and reached down to pull Naruto up to his feet. “The herd is pretty friendly. We can at least pet them.”

(If, just past three in the afternoon, two dark brown blurs sped through the middle of the compound, signaled by the pounding of hooves and a loud whoop—well, Shikaku had decided, frankly, that was none of his business.)

Chapter Text

Naruto was a heavy sleeper, but it wasn’t like him to miss a meal, especially Kakashi’s special Saturday brunch—which was, admittedly, just homemade ramen, but it was the highlight of Naruto’s week. And so when Naruto didn’t immediately come racing down the stairs when Kakashi called for breakfast, Iruka was a little concerned.

When, five minutes later, Naruto still hadn’t appeared, both Iruka and Kakashi frowned, and Kakashi called again. After another few minutes, they’d both given up on pretending they weren’t worried and went to check on Naruto themselves.

Which was how they found him, wrapped up in his blankets, eyes open but droopy, looking absolutely miserable and hot to the touch.

“Don’ feel good, ‘Ruka-nii,” Naruto mumbled weakly.

“Don’t worry, Naruto. I’ll get you a cold cloth, and how about some ramen?”

Naruto paused before shaking his head just slightly. “Not hungry.”

Fuck, Iruka thought, eyes flashing over to meet Kakashi’s. Naruto was almost always hungry, a side effect of his ridiculously large chakra reserves and the amount of energy he expended on a daily basis. For him to turn down food—and ramen, at that—was not a good sign.

“Maybe just some broth then,” Iruka said, ignoring how his own voice shook and hoping Naruto wouldn’t notice. He brushed some of the blond boy’s hair back from his face as he stood and closed the bedroom door gently behind him, ushering Kakashi out into the hallway as he went.

“He’s not supposed to get sick,” Kakashi said immediately, his voice purposefully blank, though that did little to hide the threads of unease that Iruka had grown used to looking for. “The kyuubi is supposed to keep him from getting sick. Kushina never even had a cold.”

Iruka’s mouth settled into a grim line. “If the seal is sectioning off the chakra too effectively, maybe it’s keeping the kyuubi from healing him.”

Or the seal is failing and the kyuubi’s chakra is hurting him, Iruka didn’t say, but he knew they were both considering it. Iruka didn’t want to doubt the Yondaime’s seal-work, and nothing in the past few months had indicated that the seal wasn’t working at an optimal level. And yet, there was no denying that something was obviously wrong.

If Naruto had been any other child, Iruka might have said this was obviously just a little bug and that Naruto could weather it out at home with enough fluids and rest. But Naruto wasn’t just any other child.

“We should take him to the hospital. He needs a doctor.” A doctor would be able to tell them whether or not it was chakra-related at least.

Kakashi grimaced—he disliked hospitals enough he didn’t want to even be near one—but didn’t argue.

“I’ll take him over,” Iruka offered, taking pity on him. “You should go check in with Mikoto-san. Sasuke and Itachi were over yesterday for lunch, and we should warn her Naruto’s sick just in case it turns out to be contagious.”

The flash of relief on Kakashi’s face warred with concern, but ultimately he nodded, and Iruka turned back to Naruto’s room.

Hopefully this will all be solved quickly.

The hospital was worse than useless.

First, the woman at the check-in counter—a civilian nurse—had ignored Iruka for a solid fifteen minutes until he’d finally had enough and pulled rank. Then she’d told him they were too busy to squeeze anyone in, and no, it wasn’t an emergency unless someone was bleeding out. When Iruka had idly commented that wow, if the hospital was so inefficiently staffed, clearly it was in need of an entire overhaul and personnel review, and he’d be sure to alert the Hokage right away, the woman had finally—reluctantly—called around to see if anyone was available.

Three different civilian doctors had refused, along with two chuunin medics and a tokubetsu jounin. Just when Iruka was starting to contemplate semi-treasonous thoughts—like whether or not he could get away with burning down the hospital, or if he did become a missing nin as a result of burning down the hospital, would Kakashi come with him, and what were the chances of Naruto being able to get medical attention on the run, considering no one would know he was a jinchuuriki—a doctor that Iruka was about 95% certain dealt almost solely with ANBU agreed to see them for five minutes.

The man was brusque but professional, although the only thing he could tell them after a quick examination was that Naruto’s chakra looked fine. Meaning the seal was functioning as it should and there was no leakage of the kyuubi’s chakra.

“Based on the symptoms,” the doctor said blandly, “I’d almost think he had chakra exhaustion except for the fact that his chakra is perfectly healthy.”

And then he’d left without another word, and Iruka had decided he was done wasting time here. Naruto had not improved in the slightest from this morning, although now that he was out of bed, his whole body drooped and the fever was giving him shivers.

“Come on Naruto.” He lifted the boy gently and carried him out, ignoring the glares from the front desk woman.

“Can we go home now?” Naruto tucked his head into Iruka’s neck. “’m tired.”

“Of course. Are you hungry yet? I know Kakashi made ramen this morning, but if you wanted, we could get a carryout from Teuchi’s.”

“No thanks, ‘Ruka-nii. I jus’ wanna go to sleep.”

“Okay.” He tried not to let Naruto see his panic—if Naruto was refusing Teuchi’s ramen, things were serious. “We’ll go home.”

Kakashi was panicking.

(Kakashi panicked more than you’d expect, actually, even if it wasn’t obvious to most people, even if it wasn’t over the sort of things most people got panicked over—like social interactions, paperwork, and other mundane things. Iruka usually found it endearing.)

“We could take him to the Inuzuka—”

(Usually.)

“You want to take Naruto to the vet,” Iruka clarified, not sure if Kakashi was being serious. He probably was—Kakashi was a bit of an idiot when it came to people. “A human child. To the vet.”

Kakashi paused. By now, he’d obviously realized the thread of danger in Iruka’s tone that always warned him he’d said or done the wrong thing. It was also clear by the vague panic and hesitation in Kakashi’s sole visible eye that he had no idea what was wrong with what he’d suggested.

But the truth was, neither of them had been happy with the hospital’s lackluster prognosis. Sure, it was a relief to know that it most likely had nothing to do with Naruto’s seal or the kyuubi. But at the same time, it meant that they had no idea what was making Naruto so sick. Both of Mikoto’s boys had been completely fine at least, though she’d sent over a thermos of soup that she said her own grandmother had sworn by for colds.

Maybe…maybe the Inuzuka weren’t a horrible idea, Iruka considered. At least he could trust they would treat Naruto kindly, unlike at the hospital. Tsume had watched Naruto just two weeks ago while Kakashi was on mission and Iruka had a shift at the mission desk, and Naruto had come home with a grin, talking nonstop about how cool the Inuzuka dogs were—though not as cool as Kashi-nii’s nin-dogs—and how he’d gotten to wrestle with Kiba, and how Kiba’s mom was so cool and scary, but cool.

“Alright. But ask first if it’s okay.”

Kakashi nodded, and five minutes later, Pakkun was off running with a message.

“Well, the fever seems to be going down,” the Inuzuka vet, a woman named Harue, said as she smiled down at Naruto. “We can give him an anti-inflammatory to bring it down a little more, but I think you’ve probably seen the worst of it pass already. The tiredness, he’ll probably sleep off in a day or two, but if it lasts longer than a week, bring him back in. For his appetite, start off slow: lots of broth, then move up to rice and noodles, and then introduce heavier foods like meat. If he’s still not eating by Monday, bring him back and we’ll give him nutrients through an IV just to be safe.”

“So you think he’s over the worst of it?” Iruka confirmed.

Harue smiled reassuringly. “Most likely. It’s hard to say for sure since we still don’t know what exactly caused the issue in the first place, but Naruto-kun has a very strong immune system. The reduction in fever makes me think whatever he caught is already on it’s way out.”

“Thank you,” Iruka said, shoulders sagging with relief.

“Of course. But like I said, don’t be surprised if he’s still not quite 100% himself for the next few days. There’s no need to worry as long as he keeps getting better.”

With a small bag of anti-inflammatory pills in hand, Iruka scooped up Naruto and held him close, walking towards the front of the building where Kakashi was talking with Tsume.

“You can bring him by anytime,” she was saying, her sharp, angular face serious and fierce. “If the hospital won’t treat him, we will.”

“Maa, I’ll be speaking to the Hokage about it—”

“Regardless, brat.” She slapped a hand to his shoulder, hard enough that Kakashi staggered a bit under the hit. “Naruto’s a good kid, and Kiba likes ‘im. When he’s better, we’ll do dinner.”

“Ah.” Kakashi nodded. “If you insist.”

“I do.” Then, she turned to Iruka. “And you. Umino.”

“Uh…”

“I heard you kicked up a shitstorm at the hospital yourself.”

Iruka felt the heat rush to his face. It wasn’t that he regretted it—he’d do anything for Naruto, especially protecting him from the village’s prejudices—but he was, perhaps, a little embarrassed that news had gotten around so quickly. I shouldn’t be surprised, he thought. Nobody gossips like shinobi.

“Good work, kid.” And then she clapped his shoulder too, though not hard enough to jostle Naruto where he had already fallen asleep, face smooshed against Iruka’s other shoulder. “A protective instinct is good in pack-mates. Nice choice, Kakashi.” She waggled her brows at the Copy-nin and laughed when his cheeks pinked too.

Naruto saved them from further embarrassment by grumbling in his sleep and snuggling closer to Iruka. “Well, we should get this one home.”

“Go on, go on,” Tsume waved them off. Then she pinned Kakashi with a look. “Think about what I said.”

When they were out on the streets, walking back home, Iruka turned to look at his partner. “What did Tsume talk to you about?”

“Ah.” Kakashi’s blush roared back to life. “Just clan stuff.”

That was a lie. Kakashi liked to pretend he was terribly mysterious, but after all these months, Iruka knew him well. He also knew when to push and when not to, and whatever it was Tsume had actually spoken to him about had clearly left Kakashi feeling a bit off kilter, and maybe a touch embarrassed.

(That was Tsume’s specialty, really.)

If it was important, it would come up again later, and Kakashi would tell him when he was ready.

Or at least, Iruka hoped he would.

“I was thinking we could do a family movie night,” Iruka said casually, changing the subject. “Leftover ramen from this morning that none of us got to enjoy, and Naruto can pick his favorites.”

“Sounds good, ‘Ruka-nii,” Naruto said, voice muffled by the fabric of Iruka’s jacket.

Kakashi took Iruka’s hand and laced their fingers together, eye curving into a smile.

They’d managed to get Naruto to drink two bowls of broth before he passed out again, this time curled up on the end of the couch, bundled up in the softest blanket in the house. They were halfway through the second movie—something about a princess that needed to be rescued, Iruka thought, though he wasn’t sure because it was awfully difficult to pay attention to the movie when Kakashi was leaning against him, warm and relaxed and crowding Iruka’s personal space.

Not that it was unwelcome. They had all changed into pajamas nearly as soon as they were home, and Kakashi had abandoned his face mask the way he did when it was just the three of them. Which meant that he was wearing those ridiculous sleep pants with the dogs and bones printed on them, face bare except for the soft eyepatch that covered his sharingan, hair mussed and skin warm, and he was draping himself over Iruka, practically half in his lap.

Technically, they’d been at least this close before, back during that night when Naruto’s nightmares had been bad enough the three of them had crammed into Iruka’s bed. Back when Iruka woke up all but curled up against Kakashi, the other man’s arm holding him close. And so Iruka was aware that Kakashi was occasionally a cuddler.

But that had been when they were both asleep. And now, with both of them awake, there was no excuse of unawareness. No passing it off as an accident.

Everything was purposeful. The way Kakashi’s arm slid around Iruka’s waist, pulling him a little closer. The way Kakashi’s head—which had been resting innocently on Iruka’s shoulder—tilted up until Iruka could feel Kakashi’s breath fanning across his skin, could feel Kakashi’s nose ghosting along his neck, against the edge of his jaw. The way Kakashi’s body-heat seeped through Iruka’s yukata—which all of a sudden seemed too thin. The way Kakashi’s other hand played with the loose ends of Iruka’s hair, winding it around his fingers.

“Can I—” Kakashi’s voice was low and soft. His eye dropped to Iruka’s mouth, hand leaving Iruka’s hair to curl against his cheek instead. His palm was warm, fingers calloused, and Iruka leaned into the touch without thought. “Iruka, can I, please—”

“Yes.”

The word came out almost in a gasp, but it didn’t matter because Kakashi’s mouth covered his own, tentative and sweet. Iruka felt as though he was in a dream, his thoughts hazy and unfocused, unable to process anything outside of Kakashi’s lips—surprisingly soft, probably from being protected by his mask all the time. Kakashi kissed carefully, or tried to, but with every gentle peck he grew bolder, more insistent, and Iruka couldn’t help but kiss back, one of his hands tangling in Kakashi’s hair, the other dropping to his hip, thumb tracing errantly along the edge of Kakashi’s waistband.

Kakashi sighed happily but made no move to deepen the kiss, and Iruka realized with a sudden clarity that that would be up to him. Because Kakashi was always a little hesitant with physical affection, always unsure if it was welcome. Kakashi who only recently started taking Iruka’s hand. Kakashi who had asked to kiss Iruka—half asked, really, all embarrassed and unsure—because Kakashi apparently hadn’t known that Iruka had been thinking about it for months now, would have said yes ages ago if he’d had even an inkling of a thought that Kakashi wanted that at all.

Kami they were both stupid, Iruka thought fondly, and then, finally making use of his limited make-out knowledge—gained through a somewhat harrowing practice session with Anko when they were only fifteen, terrible in part because neither of them were attracted to the opposite sex—he nipped at Kakashi’s bottom lip, swiped his tongue along the sting. Using his grip in Kakashi’s hair to tip his head just slightly, Iruka licked into his mouth, hot and intent.

“Oh, fuck,” Kakashi groaned, swinging his leg over so that he was fully in Iruka’s lap, finally pressing forward to return the kiss just as eagerly. It was perfect. A little sloppy—both of them would just have to practice more, clearly—but everything Iruka had dreamed of and more. He could have sat there for hours, focusing on nothing but the feel of Kakashi’s mouth against his, the softness of his hair between Iruka’s fingers, the tempting heat of Kakashi’s skin, little more than a sliver exposed between his sleep pants and shirt.

And then someone cleared their throat.

Iruka startled, and Kakashi let out a sound that was almost a whine, pulling back from the kiss only to bury his face in Iruka’s shoulder. Without the distraction of Kakashi kissing him senseless, Iruka became distinctly aware of the awkward-looking ANBU standing in their living room. Who had caught them making-out. Who was still staring at them.

“Hatake-san, the Hokage requires your presence.”

Kakashi sighed heavily, still not picking himself up from where he was all but collapsed atop Iruka. “Alright.”

The ANBU didn’t move. “It’s urgent.”

Kakashi sighed once more, quietly, and then the veneer of professionalism slid over him. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

The ANBU nodded, and then flickered away, finally leaving them alone.

“I don’t want to go,” Kakashi muttered, words mouthed along Iruka’s skin. He pulled away and Iruka immediately missed the warmth. “Will you be alright with Naruto?”

“Of course. If there’s a problem, I’ll go back to the Inuzuka.”

“Good.” Kakashi kissed him again, just a press of their lips, soft and sweet. “I—”

“Go,” Iruka said and kissed him back just as gently. “The faster you leave, the faster you can come home.”

Kakashi smiled at that, and then, with one more kiss, said, “Okay.”

Iruka followed his chakra as Kakashi moved through the house with his usual efficiency, switching into his ANBU uniform and leaving through the upstairs window. It isn’t fair, a part of him wanted to complain. He’d just now finally gotten proof of Kakashi’s feelings, finally gotten to live out a reality that overshadowed any fantasy of kissing Kakashi that he’d ever had.

But.

But now he knew that Kakashi wanted him too. And that made it a little easier, letting him go, because now Iruka knew for sure that Kakashi wanted to come back.

Chapter Text

Naruto knew what most people thought of him: that he wasn’t particularly smart, that he was a troublemaker, that he wasn’t good for much, that he had no business being a shinobi, no business being alive at all, according to some.

Things had been better since Iruka-nii and Kashi-nii came and adopted him, took him home to nice pretty house that was a hundred times better than the orphanage, a thousand times better than the apartment that Jiji had given him. Since they had given him a family, with Iruka-nii holding Naruto’s hand as they walked or Kashi-nii carrying Naruto on his shoulders. Family dinners, and family training time, and family picnics, and sometimes family sleepovers, and…well, the point was they’d given him something he’d thought he was never going to have.

Kashi-nii was super scary, except for when he wasn’t, and Iruka-nii was super nice, except for when he wasn’t, and so between the two of them, a lot of the people who’d been mean to Naruto backed off. And then they’d told Naruto the real truth: that he was smart, actually, and that pranking a little wasn’t bad as long as you knew the right time to do it—and knew how to not get caught—and that he was going to be a great shinobi, and that they were so, so glad he was alive and that he was theirs.

The point?

Despite being exhausted and sick to the point where he’d turned down more ramen and couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open all the way through his favorite movie, Naruto still woke up the instant he felt the strange, angry not-quite-chakra feeling circle the house. He counted three of them, entirely unfamiliar, and they prodded at the defenses around the house. For a moment, Naruto thought Iruka-nii’s special seals were going to blow them into a thousand pieces, except there wasn’t an explosion, and the three blots of not-quite-chakra moved closer, closer, closer.

Doesn’t Iruka-nii feel them? Naruto wondered as they continued to slink into the house unhindered. A part of him wanted to get up and run to Iruka-nii’s room—that would be the safest place for him, especially with Kashi-nii gone on mission—but he didn’t have the energy to even walk on his own, let alone run, and at this point he was more likely to get caught by one of the intruders if he started moving around.

One of the stairs creaked, and Naruto tensed at the sound.

(“A shinobi’s house should always have creaky floorboards,” Kakashi-nii had said when Naruto asked why he was breaking their new house. “And only the people who live in it should know where they all are.”

Naruto had thought Kashi-nii was just being weird again, partly because Naruto hadn’t known him all that well back then and partly because Kashi-nii was really weird. Now, though, he understood.

Kashi-nii was so smart and cool!)

Iruka-nii must have heard it too, because Naruto could finally feel his chakra signature startle to awareness. It still left him lagging just a hair behind the intruders, though, who had also startled at the sound of the stairs, the suddenness of that small noise launching them into motion.

Naruto heard a door from the hallway fly open, followed by a quick succession of dull thunks—kunai, most likely, as it thudded into the drywall. Which meant Iruka-nii was taking on the three enemies. Alone. Because Kashi-nii was on mission and Naruto was too sick to move.

Useless, he thought, eyes tearing up in frustration as he failed to do more than twitch his leg. How could he call himself a ninja if he couldn’t even get up out of bed to fight with his nii-san? How was he supposed to deserve his family if he couldn’t do anything to help?

“Get the boy,” an unfamiliar, strangely accented voice said. “We can handle this one.”

His own bedroom door opened, and Naruto did the only thing that made sense.

It was too late to hide. He didn’t have the energy to fight or run, but Kashi-nii always said that good ninja didn’t need to be the strongest if they could fight the smartest. If he could bide his time, pick the best moment to attack…

Naruto feigned sleep. It wasn’t as hard as it might have been, given how his exhausted body refused to move anyway. The intruder moved in and picked him up carelessly, flung him over his shoulder, and then returned to the hallway.

“Naruto—” Iruka started, but he was in the middle of an uneven fight, and the other two nin were doing their best to divide his attention. The single moment of distraction that seeing Naruto had provided allowed for a senbon to pierce Iruka-nii’s neck, and he collapsed.

(“It’s hard to kill someone with a senbon,” Anko-san had told him, spinning one of the delicate-looking needles effortlessly between her fingers. “Unless it’s poisoned. But unless you’re a poison-expert yourself, it’s risky to carry around shit that could kill you too, so most people use them as a ranged weapon to paralyze opponents.”

“That’s why I get to practice with ‘em?” Naruto had asked. “Because it’s not as dangerous?”

Anko-san’s grin was sharp. “Who said anything about ‘not dangerous?’”)

Not dead. Not dead. Not dead, Naruto chanted to himself in his head, squeezing his eyes shut tighter and grateful that none of the intruders were looking at him right now. Iruka-nii would be fine; he had to be, because Naruto couldn’t do anything right now to fix it if he wasn’t.

“Kid’s drugged, just like they said,” the man carrying Naruto said.

“Good,” another voice answered, higher pitched like a woman and more smug. “Then let’s kill the chuunin—”

“No.” The third voice—the one that had ordered the other to go collect Naruto, and the clear leader—finally spoke. “We don’t have time. ANBU’s bound to check in soon, and he wants the boy more than we need some Konoha chuunin dead.”

“Fine,” the woman spat, unhappy but unwilling to argue.

And then they were moving fast.

(But not as fast as Kakashi-nii could go.)

Wait for the right moment. Patience, Naruto told himself and let them carry him out of Konoha.

Iruka was having a bad night.

First, Naruto was sick all day and Iruka had yelled at the hospital staff, tried not to worry, failed at not worrying and worried a lot, and even now that Naruto’s fever had dropped off, they still didn’t know why he’d been sick.

Then, just when he and Kakashi were having their first kiss, ANBU had called Kakashi away. And fine, that was the life of a shinobi, but Iruka thought he was allowed to say that it sucked.

And now, someone had broken into their house at ass o’clock in the morning, kidnapped Naruto, knocked out Iruka, and fled, and the only reason Iruka wasn’t still incapacitated was because the in-village ANBU rotation had noticed Naruto’s chakra was missing from the house.

“How fast can you get someone to Kakashi?” Iruka asked the nearest masked figure.

“Hatake-san is on mission—”

“I fucking know that. But he only left—” Iruka paused, calculating “—about four hours ago. Which means that if he finds out you didn’t tell him his kid was abducted when he was still within contact range, whoever is responsible is going to be dead.”

There was a pause.

“I can do it,” a much-too-young-for-ANBU-in-Iruka’s-opinion voice said, coming from one of the masks to his right. “Two hours tops.”

Young and very fast. ANBU. Uchiha Shisui, Iruka put together in a matter of seconds. 14 years old. Ridiculously talented. A child.

Another ANBU nodded their agreement, and the mask that had to have been Shisui flickered away in a blink.

“Umin—um, Hatake Iruka-san, you should go see the Hokage—”

“If you tell me to go anywhere other than wherever Naruto is, I will put a seal on you that will make your insides your outsides.”

Another pause.

“Ah. As you were, Iruka-san.”

Damn fucking straight.

Now, he just had to track them.

Kakashi was having a bad night.

Naruto being sick all day had sent his brain spiraling into a frantic uproar of I can’t lose anyone else. I can’t lose anyone else, and not Naruto. Not sensei’s son. That Naruto was starting to recover had been a balm, but it wasn’t enough to quiet the panic entirely.

And especially not when Kakashi was called away on some bullshit mission, forced to leave his pack—Naruto, still miserably ill, and Iruka…no, Kakashi had made a deal with himself that he wouldn’t think about Iruka on missions, because then Kakashi just got “moon-eyed and mopey” according to Genma and Tenzo—although Tenzo at least was too polite (shy) to say it out loud.

And it got worse when Uchiha Shisui body-flickered directly in front of him, forcing Kakashi to stop the brutal pace he’d forced his team into.

(“The faster you leave, the faster you can come home,” Iruka had said, and Kakashi wanted to be home very fast.)

Not that Kakashi didn’t like Shisui—nice kid, too cheery for an Uchiha, too much like Obi—no. No, Kakashi liked Shisui just fine. But the kid was in his own ANBU gear, and last Kakashi had checked, was set for a rotation of in-village guard duty. Shisui was the fastest, though, and that could only mean one of two things:

Either something was wrong with their mission and they were being sent updated intel or backup.

Or.

Or something was wrong back in Konoha.

“Inu. Mission priority has changed.”

“Report.”

“There was an attack on your home at 0200. Hatake Iruka was incapacitated in the initial fight, but uninjured. Uzumaki Naruto was the target, abducted by three enemy shinobi, unidentified, but Iruka-san’s observations suggest Iwa.”

Kakashi felt the coldness wash over him, the veil of apathetic efficiency that had been the hallmark of his earliest days in ANBU, back when putting on the mask meant becoming little more than a vessel of death. Minato-sensei and Kushina had pulled him back from that ledge the first time. If anything happened to the new family he had only just started to build for himself, there wouldn’t be anything left to keep him from succumbing to that emptiness completely.

“Naruto’s current location,” Kakashi ordered.

“Unknown.”

Then there was no point in sticking around. He was already behind, but he could catch up. Quickly, he summoned his nin-dogs and had them sniff Shisui—he’d been at the scene, and there was always a chance something useful would come up.

A slim chance, maybe, but that was all Kakashi needed.

“Not much, boss,” Pakkun said gruffly. “Clearest scent we got is Iruka.”

“Search for that, then. He’ll be headed for Naruto too.”

If you’d asked Naruto to guess at what being kidnapped was like, he’d have said, “A lot less chatty.”

Admittedly, they were probably only talking so much because for some reason they thought Naruto had been drugged, but it worked out well for Naruto because they weren’t bothering to be subtle.

They’re not very good kidnappers, Naruto imagined Kashi-nii would say if this were one of his lessons. Tell me why, Naruto.

And Naruto would say that they talked too much for people trying to be sneaky. He would point out that they didn’t double check to see if Naruto really was unconscious, and they hadn’t tied him up at all, which was just stupid. Instead of using hand-signs, they were talking aloud, and that was how Naruto knew they were heading northwest at a straight run, hoping to reach the edge of Fire Country in two days time at the latest, because they figured crossing Kusa and going into Iwa would make Konoha nin think twice before risking breaking some treaty.

Naruto would tell Kakashi-nii, “The dumbest part was they thought they could outrun Konoha nin when they can’t even run on trees.”

The other tidbit of information Naruto had managed to piece together—because Kakashi-nii always said to look underneath the underneath—was that someone had given them all the information on where to find Naruto, when he would be most vulnerable, and the defenses of their house. Which meant there was probably someone in Konoha leaking information.

Probably one of those people Iruka-nii had told him about: the people who weren’t happy they’d adopted Naruto.

But Naruto figured he didn’t have to worry about that just yet. Iruka-nii and Kakashi-nii were going to come get him, because they always came to get Naruto whenever he couldn’t handle it on his own. And they were going to be pissed, and Kakashi-nii was probably going to curse a lot and Iruka-nii would scold him for his language, and they’d take care of the bad guys, and then the three of them would go back home and Iruka-nii would let Naruto and Kashi-nii stay in his bed together, and everything would be okay.

Except Kakashi-nii is on a mission and doesn’t know you’re gone, and Iruka-nii got hurt, and they’re the only people in the whole village who would ever come looking for you if you went missing, the worst part of Naruto’s thoughts whispered. No one is coming. No one is going to miss you.

No, no, no, no, no. He tried to block it out. Things were different now. Maybe a year ago that would have been true, but not anymore.

As if summoned by his very thoughts, a blob of spark-bright not-chakra-but-angerhatefury flitted at the edge of his senses. He tried to focus how Iruka-nii had taught him—“You’re a natural sensor, Naruto, but you’ll have to practice if you want to get as good as I am.”—and the faint, familiar wash of Iruka-nii’s chakra flickered at him. It was small, suppressed in order to better hide himself, but Naruto would have known Iruka-nii’s chakra anywhere after all the nights he had spent reaching out with his senses to count each of his precious people as a way to help him fall asleep.

He watched as the small orb of chakra—no bigger than what a squirrel might have given off—bounced ever closer, darting through the trees with an ease that Naruto’s kidnappers could only dream of. Closer. Closer. Almost.

And then, when Iruka-nii’s chakra was right overhead, Naruto focused on flooding his chakra into his teeth—almost easy after months of tree walking and water walking practice had given him better control—turned his head as if he was merely shifting in his sleep, and bit down hard on the enemy shinobi’s neck.

Pakkun is gonna be so proud, Naruto thought as the man who’d been carrying him buckled and fell to the ground screaming. Or gurgling, rather. The man’s grip on him loosened, and Naruto flopped gracelessly to the ground, only barely managing to catch himself enough not to slam face-first into the dirt.

“What—” the woman of the group started to say, only she was cut off as a kunai went through her own neck, two more following quickly, one in her eye and another in her chest. It happened so fast, it was hard to say which hit had killed her, but she fell to the ground without a sound and didn’t get back up again.

Only the leader remained standing, though Naruto was peripherally aware that the man he’d taken down was still twitching a few feet away, hand pressed to his bleeding neck. Not dead yet, he noted, and wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He could still taste the man’s blood in his mouth.

“Rumi was right, after all. I should have killed you the first time.”

“You won’t get another chance,” Iruka-nii said from somewhere in the trees, and Naruto smiled. He’d be safe now.

ANBU had told Iruka to stay put until the Hokage had been alerted, and tried to assure him he’d be part of the squad sent out to retrieve Naruto. But Iruka had worked in bureaucracy long enough to know bullshit when he heard it. The second the ANBU team had vacated his home, he’d been on the move.

He couldn’t afford to wait for the Hokage to hear the mission report, begin planning a retrieval, only to undoubtedly get waylaid by the Council or the Elders or some other bullshit because if it involved Naruto, everyone and their mother thought they had a right to give their input. It could be an hour or more before they actually sent someone after Naruto, and Iruka knew he wouldn’t be included. He was just a chuunin schoolteacher after all, next to worthless in the eyes of the Council, and being Naruto’s guardian would mean he was emotionally compromised.

So, no. Iruka wasn’t going to wait.

It was easy to track the path the kidnappers had taken. They were more obvious than any well-trained ninja should have been, and the more Iruka followed their trail, the more he suspected they’d fallen into the common trap arrogant beginner nin often succumbed to—and something Iruka tried to train out of his students while they were still in the academy: they’d focused on enhancing their combat skills to the detriment of other basic, extremely useful skills like stealth and hiding a trail.

It was a little trickier once he got beyond the village walls, when the density of the forest naturally provided cover. But still…They’d looked and fought like Iwa nin. They’re making beginner mistakes. They’re not overly competent, so chances are they’ll run straight for the Iwa border. Northwest it is.

If he was wrong…no. Iruka closed his eyes as he ran, familiar enough with the trees surrounding Konoha that he didn’t need to look to be sure of his footfall. He stretched his senses out, ignoring the bright spark-points of chakra that came from Konoha behind him and focusing instead on the forest ahead. His sensory range wasn’t overly large—he wouldn’t be seeing to the edge of Fire Country anytime soon, like the Nidaime was rumored to have been capable of—and he couldn’t read emotions out of chakra signatures the way that Naruto could, but when he focused, he could feel the whole world around him, sometimes even for miles when he was properly motivated.

And with Naruto missing, he was definitely properly motivated.

Within minutes he’d found Naruto, a well of chakra that was bright and bold and larger than most grown adult shinobi. Within an hour, he’d been within range to keep pace without having to give himself a headache using his sensing ability. By the second hour, he’d caught up to them completely.

Just in time to see Naruto tear a chunk out of his kidnapper’s throat. The man collapsed, and Iruka used the distraction to take out the woman from before—the one who’d been lucky enough to catch him off guard with a senbon. Anko and Genma were never going to let him live that one down; he could practically hear them laughing at him already.

“Rumi was right, after all. I should have killed you the first time,” the leader of the group said. To an inexperienced eye, he looked calm, ready for battle, but Iruka spent all his time correcting children’s techniques and teaching them how to fight, and he could see the faint tremors in the man’s hands, the flicker of unease in his eyes. It was obvious he hadn’t expected anyone to catch up so quickly, and he certainly hadn’t expected two of his comrades to fall in a matter of seconds, leaving him to face an enemy shinobi alone.

“You won’t get another chance.” Iruka threw three more kunai, unsurprised when none of them hit the man—he hadn’t been aiming directly for the enemy nin anyway, just trying to herd him away from Naruto.

He threw two shuriken in the enemy’s general direction as he dropped to the ground right next to Naruto, quickly erecting a barrier seal around the boy. That would take up a fair chunk of Iruka’s chakra to maintain if this fight went on too long, but it was worth it if it meant Naruto would stay safe. Besides, Iruka thought as he slashed a kunai the rest of the way through the half-mauled neck of Naruto’s kidnapper, ensuring the man was well and truly dead, I don’t plan on dragging this out.

The faint rumbling of the earth below his feet alerted Iruka just a second before the ground split, trying to pull him under. He’d already jumped back up into the trees where an earth jutsu would be less effective, then used another flurry of shuriken to drive the enemy nin back towards the direction they’d come from. Now that Naruto was safe, it was time to enact his plan.

Darting between the trees, Iruka alternated between throwing shuriken to move his target and a flurry of taijutsu that forced the enemy nin on the defensive. It was easy to drive him backwards with kicks and harsh palm-strikes to the chest, easy to lead him to the right with a shuriken tossed near enough to graze his left cheek, easy to make him go where Iruka wanted: right into a trap of ninja wire, so narrow and fine, and yet sharp as any of Iruka’s blades. One last kick, and the man all but fell into the razor-sharp web, a tiny gasp punched out of his lungs before his body was torn to shreds.

Iruka waited until he was sure the man was dead—not long, considering he’d caught a wire to the neck—before running back over to double check the other two bodies, and finally, finally releasing the seal around Naruto and scooping the boy up in his arms.

“Naruto.”

“Knew you’d come get me, ‘Ruka-nii,” he said tiredly, wrapping his arms around Iruka’s neck and clinging tight. “I couldn’ help ya at the house, but I got one of ‘em when I felt you comin’. Bit ‘im just like Pakkun said I should.”

Iruka was trying not to cry. The adrenaline had kept him going from the moment he’d come to and found Naruto gone, the pressure of the mission and the need to get Naruto back all that was keeping him together. But now that Naruto was safe in his arms, unharmed but for the smear of blood around his mouth where he’d bit into the man, Iruka was aware of his own shuddering breath, how tightly he clung to Naruto right back.

“You did so good, Naruto,” Iruka said. “So good.”

He stood, cradling Naruto against his chest—Kami, he was so small, Iruka always forgot just how tiny he was—and grimaced at the bodies. Really, he should seal them up and take them back for T&I to look at.

(Well. Really, what he should have done was leave one of them alive for questioning. But that hadn’t been an option when Naruto was still in danger. Oh well.)

But he didn’t want to set Naruto down for even a second, and Iruka was already drained—from the fight at the house, from the run all the way out here, from taking out two shinobi, one of which had been a simple-but-work-intensive fight, from holding the barrier seal, from the emotional strain of this whole fucking day. He should seal them, but…well, whatever team the Hokage had approved for Naruto’s retrieval would be here soon enough, wouldn’t they? It had been hours, now, and even if the Council had dragged their feet, surely someone would have been sent.

Fuck it. Someone else can take care of it, Iruka decided. I’m not even supposed to be here anyway.

“Let’s go home,” he mumbled into Naruto’s hair.

But instead of relaxing further at those words, Naruto suddenly stiffened.

“Iruka-nii, those bad ninja were talkin’ ‘bout how I was all drugged up just like they were promised and that everything at the house was just like some guy told them it would be, and I was thinkin’ what if someone back at home told them how to get me?” Naruto’s watery blue eyes looked up at him. “Does that mean home’s not safe?”

Fuck.

Oh, but it made a horrible sort of sense, didn’t it? Because Naruto who wasn’t supposed to get sick at all was suddenly ill. And then Kakashi was called away on mission, leaving just the two of them at home. And only a few hours later, they were attacked. It was too convenient.

Because if Naruto hadn’t been ill, he’d have fought back at the house and Iruka knew just how much trouble Naruto could cause in a fight, five years old or not. Because if Kakashi had been home, not even a single hostile ninja would have made it a foot into the house and Iruka would be scrubbing blood out of their tatami mats right now.

They had a traitor in their midst. Someone who either knew about Kakashi leaving or, even worse, someone powerful enough to have sway over the ANBU mission roster. Someone who had been watching their house enough to know about Iruka’s seals. Someone who had been able to get close enough to Naruto to drug him.

But while Iruka knew there were plenty of people who didn’t like Naruto in Konoha, he’d never thought any of them would sell him out to Iwa—

And that was another thing. These ninja had been largely incompetent, but they’d never once treated Naruto like a serious threat, like they would have if they’d known he was a jinchuuriki. Underneath the underneath, Kakashi always liked to say, and Iruka was looking, and the only thing he could think of was…

It had to also be someone who knew who Naruto’s real father was. That was the only reason Iwa would have any interest in Naruto outside of his jinchuuriki status. The Yondaime had been a real pain in Iwa’s ass, and half the reason Naruto’s true heritage wasn’t common knowledge was because Namikaze Minato had pissed off a lot of people and made a lot of enemies. The entire Hidden Stone Village being one of them.

But that wasn’t common knowledge. Iruka figured that maybe all the clan heads knew—definitely the Uchiha, since Mikoto hadn’t been shy about that fact, and Iruka tended to assume the Nara knew everything—along with the Hokage, obviously, and the elders. Which meant this wasn’t just some disgruntled civilian or a low level shinobi with a grudge. It meant whoever the traitor was, they had power.

And Naruto was right. Home wasn’t safe.

But where do you go when the only place in the world you’ve ever trusted is the one place you can’t go?

Kami, I wish Kakashi was here.

“Naruto, we should—”

A rustle of leaves that was at odds with the stillness of the night air caught Iruka’s attention and he froze, reaching out instead with his senses.

Five chakra signatures, so small and insignificant that Iruka wouldn’t have noticed them at all if it weren’t for his ability to recreate his immediate landscape in his mind based on chakra impressions.

His first thought: the ANBU team the Hokage put together has arrived.

But through the leaves Iruka caught a glimpse of a plain white porcelain mask, utterly empty except for the eye-wholes and a caricature of a mouth. He’d never seen an ANBU mask like that before. Never.

Which meant, Iruka thought, his stomach sinking as he shifted Naruto to one side and readied a kunai, that this wasn’t ANBU.

Kakashi was aware only of the branches under his feet and the wind rustling through his hair, his nin-dogs sprinting ahead of him, and the knowledge that every step brought him closer to Iruka and Naruto. Picking up Iruka’s scent had taken less time than he’d thought; Kakashi had only had to run in the general direction of Iwa—because he trusted Shisui’s intel, trusted Iruka’s instincts—and it hadn’t taken more than an hour to catch Iruka’s scent on the wind.

And Kakashi was fast. He’d always been, really, but being in ANBU since he was fourteen had pushed him to keep getting better, and the only one who could outrun him now was Shisui. Without having to accommodate his ANBU team, he bolted through the trees of Fire Country. Faster. Faster. Faster. Get to the pack.

When he finally slowed—only for a moment—it was to the smell of blood in the air, still fresh. Please not them. Please not them.

It wasn’t. Two ninja, unidentified but very clearly not of Konoha, were laid out on the ground in pools of their own cooling blood: a woman with three kunai embedded in her and a man with his throat practically torn out. The kunai were Konoha standard. The man’s throat had been ripped into with a sharp set of teeth if that bite mark was anything to go by.

Could’ve been an Inuzuka who took them out, a part of his brain argued, but Kakashi didn’t think so. Iruka’s scent was all over the place. Naruto’s too. They’d been here, and they’d killed the enemy nin. Where’s the third?

Twenty yards out he found the third body strung up in wire. Iruka’s work for sure. Some of the pressure in Kakashi’s chest eased. Three assailants, Shisui had said. And now here were three bodies, signs that Naruto and Iruka had escaped from this fight, and no indication that they’d been injured in the process.

But then where were they?

“Pakkun.”

“Scent’s still fresh, boss.”

He wasn’t too far behind, then. They must’ve headed back to Konoha. Well, then that’s where Kakashi would go too.

“There were others here,” Pakkun added a half second later, sniffing the ground in a circle just ahead of where Kakashi stood now. “Four? Five others?”

“Who?”

“Not sure. Kinda…dusty? Dusty iron? And damp.” Pakkun looked up at him seriously. “Same direction as the pack.”

Fuck.

An unfamiliar scent meant it wasn’t anyone in ANBU, and that’s who the Hokage would’ve sent after Naruto. Kakashi was getting a bad feeling about this. He signaled for them to move out again, picking back up the same breakneck pace as before. Other would-be kidnappers? Kakashi considered. But no, the trail was leading them back in the general direction of Konoha, and no ninja with any brains would take a hostage back to the place they stole them from, unless of course the captors were also from the village—

Kakashi missed a step, almost fell, used his chakra to bounce back up and regain his footing. There was someone in the village who had tried to get their hands on Naruto before. Someone who wasn’t afraid to be underhanded, wasn’t afraid to stage a foreign kidnapping just to get Naruto in a vulnerable position, wasn’t afraid to send Kakashi off in the opposite fucking direction on a bullshit mission just to get him out of the way.

You could be wrong, he tried to soothe, but that was useless. Kakashi’s life seemed set up to cause maximum damage. Whatever the worst potential scenario was, that was usually the one to happen to him.

And the worst person who could get their hands on Naruto right now?

Danzo.

Whatever small measure of relief Kakashi had felt at seeing the dead bodies of those nin back there—whatever reassurance he’d temporarily had that Iruka and Naruto were okay—evaporated in a wave of sheer fury.

“Getting close,” Pakkun called, and Kakashi pushed himself to go faster, faster, until his legs ached with the strain though he barely felt it.

There. Just ahead, a small clearing. Iruka and Naruto’s scents were strong, and instinct more than his senses alerted him to the others.

Root.

Kakashi didn’t pause to think, didn’t slow his stride even a little. He drew the ANBU-issue tanto from his back, breathed once to center himself, to let the blade feel like a mere extension of his own body, and then he was sliding through the trees in a blur of movement nearly too fast to follow. The first two Root agents went down quickly and silently, neither having expected Kakashi to appear out of the forest like a feral ghost. The third had turned, had started to draw their own weapon, but Kakashi was faster, just a step ahead, and sliced through the masked figure with ease.

It was the fourth and fifth that would be most challenging, if only because now they were aware of his presence and ready to fight. Root was merciless, trained only to be tools, only to follow orders, emotionless and empty. Much as it disgusted him, Kakashi could admit that the training was effective in making competent shinobi. On some days—the days when he constantly felt Rin’s blood on his arm, when Obito’s eye ached in the socket, when he looked at Naruto and only saw sensei—Kakashi thought any Root agent might beat him in a fight.

After all, an unfeeling thing could not be frozen by grief, incapacitated by fear, rendered helpless by self-loathing.

But right now, Kakashi knew they were no match for him. Not when every fiber of his being screamed to protect his pack. Not when every beat of his pulse belonged to Naruto and Iruka. Not when the very thought of them seemed to lighten the weight of the tanto in his hand, cast off the exhaustion of running for hours.

He spun under the first shinobi’s attack, kicked out at the legs of the second, tumbled and rolled back up to his feet, and then flashed through the hand signs for an earth jutsu. He didn’t blink even as the ground surged up and swallowed one of the nin whole before crushing them back into the earth. Instead, Kakashi moved, let his instincts and years of practice guide him through a fierce clash of blades, narrowly dodging a cut to his thigh as he spun again, parried, slashed, pushed forward—until finally he knocked aside his opponent’s weapon and in the next strike landed a killing blow.

The clearing was silent except for the harsh sound of his own breath.

And then there was a slow clap.

“You always were exceptional, Hatake,” Danzo said, stepping out of the shadows. “Twice the shinobi your father was. Such a shame you fell prey to weakness. Sentiment.”

Does this look weak to you, Kakashi almost wanted to say. Five of Danzo’s specially trained Root agents reduced to fungi food all because Kakashi loved his family too much.

“I suppose I have you to thank, Umino, for getting rid of those Iwa fools. And for bringing Hatake here,” Danzo continued to muse. “It’s cleaner this way. No loose ends.”

Stall for time. Think.

“Hatake.”

Danzo frowned, gaze flickering back to Kakashi. “What?”

“He—” Kakashi nodded to Iruka “—is also Hatake. That’s my husband you’re talking about.”

Bull could carry Naruto easily, maybe even outrun whatever other Root agents Danzo has lurking around. But where to send him? Gai? Is Gai even in the village right now? And then there was Iruka to protect, too. A quick glance to the side proved what Kakashi had predicted: Iruka was exhausted.

What Kakashi hadn’t predicted was that at some point after defeating the Iwa shinobi, likely while in Root’s tender care, Iruka had sustained a head injury. Blood stuck to the side of his head, matting his hair and dripping down his cheek. Even at this distance, with the sharingan it was possible to see the droplets collecting at the corner of Iruka’s chin.

Change of plans.

“Sentiment,” Danzo sneered pointedly. “The technicalities of his name hardly matter when the both of you will be dead—”

Whatever else he was going to say spluttered out as the sound of chirping birds filled the air, and not a second later, Kakashi’s hand went straight through Danzo’s chest, electricity crackling.

Then, because Danzo was a tricky bastard at the best of times, Kakashi used his tanto to cut off the elder’s head. Another minute and he’d sealed the two pieces of Danzo’s body separately.

Kakashi could barely feel his own hands. He knew, distantly, that he was shaking. He knew that his breaths were coming in uneven gasps. He knew, in an absent sort of way, that his chakra was lower than it had been in a while, and he was probably going to pass out the second the adrenaline stopped thrumming through his veins.

“Well.”

Kakashi jolted, but it was just Iruka speaking. Iruka, who was safe even if he’d been injured. Iruka who was surveying the scene blankly, and oh Kami he’ll hate me after this, now that he’s seen what a fucking monster I am, seen how fucked up I am, he’s going to leave me and—

“This is going to be one bitch of a report to write.”

“’Ruka-nii, you’re not s’posed to say bitch. That’s one of the bad words, remember?”

Kakashi couldn’t help it. He laughed. And then his vision went black.

Hospitals sucked.

Nothing good ever fucking happened at a hospital. Kakashi supposed some people were happy about childbirths, but the only one of those he’d ever witnessed ended in death, destruction, and a mental breakdown.

Hospitals were sterile and too bright and purposefully uncomfortable so people wouldn’t linger unless they absolutely had to, and the food was terrible, and Kakashi always woke up in the hospital sore and miserable and alone.

Well, apparently not always alone.

“I know you’re awake,” a soft, warm voice said. Gentle fingers carded through Kakashi’s hair. So nice. He almost could go back to sleep… “The sooner you wake up, the sooner we can go home.”

Kakashi pried his eye open. Iruka was sitting at his bedside, no longer bloody and dirty, though his head had a small bandage on it. His hair wasn’t up in the usual ponytail—instead, it had been wrangled into a loose braid that hung over his shoulder. It was a good look. Very pretty.

Iruka smiled. “I think you’re pretty too.”

Oh no. Apparently, he’d said that out loud.

“It’s the truth,” Kakashi slurred since his brain to mouth filter was currently nonexistent. “Not takin’ it back.”

He bolted upright, wincing at the pain and tiredness that shot through his body. Still, that was nothing compared to—

“Where’s Naruto? And Danzo—Root. The Hokage—”

“Naruto is right there,” Iruka interrupted calmly, gesturing to Kakashi’s own hospital bed. Sure enough, a sleeping Naruto was curled up against his side, unbothered by Kakashi’s sudden movement. Kakashi watched for a moment as Naruto’s chest rose and fell with his breathing, and then turned back to Iruka who was waiting patiently. “After you lost consciousness, we met with an ANBU squad—the one that had been assigned to retrieve Naruto, coincidentally—and returned to Konoha. You were taken directly to the hospital while I debriefed with the Hokage. He is…not happy.”

Kakashi winced, and Iruka offered a reassuring smile, passing over a cup of ice chips that Kakashi was all too familiar with.

“But he’s not mad at us. Well, he was a little stern about the whole acting without orders thing. Mostly he’s pissed about Danzo pulling strings behind his back, and Shikaku-san has been ordered to investigate the extent of Danzo’s…extracurricular activities. Also…the truth of Naruto’s parentage was leaked.”

“What?” That was…well, it wasn’t good for a lot of reasons, but now Naruto would finally get to know, at least.

“There wasn’t much point. Danzo let it slip to Iwa in order to orchestrate the kidnapping. In a few weeks, everyone would have known anyway.”

“Nobody gossips like shinobi,” Kakashi agreed. “How long have I been out?”

“Two days.”

He sighed. Now that he was awake, he would undoubtedly be dragged along to his own debrief with the Hokage, not to mention a shit-ton of paperwork—that Iruka always made him fill out properly now that they were married—and he just knew he was going to be uselessly exhausted for days, which was the opposite of helpful since when he’d left for his accursed mission, he’d had the idea that his return home would be filled with a lot more making out.

Among other things (but only if he was particularly lucky).

“Dreading all the work ahead of us?” Iruka guessed. Kakashi nodded and offered his best pout. Iruka only rolled his eyes. “Well, lucky for you, there are no nurses on this hall right now, and Gai is standing just outside the window.”

Kakashi blinked. “Why is that lucky for me?”

Gai was…great, but he definitely wasn’t at the top of Kakashi’s list of people he wanted to see when he was bone tired and chakra exhausted.

“Because,” Iruka grinned. “This is a jailbreak.”

“A jailbreak?” As in getting him out of this damned hospital. Because Iruka knew him, knew how much Kakashi hated them, and Iruka was going to make everything better. Still, he couldn’t help but tease. “That’s against the rules, sensei.”

“You can rest just as well at home as you can here. Put the lid on your ice chips and we can go.”

Kakashi had never complied with an order so fast in his life.

“AH MY ETERNAL RIVAL—”

“Gai-san, Naruto is still sleeping. Would you mind?” Iruka asked, voice polite but firm. Gai smiled apologetically and was much quieter as he picked Kakashi up.

Iruka’s a miracle-worker, Kakashi thought in awe. And as he watched his husband pick up their sleeping son—that’s what Naruto was, wasn’t he, in all the ways that actually mattered—he thought, I’m so in love with him.

*omake*

“Hatake-san is terrifying.”

That phrase in and of itself was not particularly uncommon, especially among new ANBU recruits. Kakashi-san ran a tight ship: he trained his squad hard, he ran them until they couldn’t move another inch and then ran them some more, he demanded near-perfection and flawless efficiency and a level of commitment that most people had a hard time living up to. The benefit to this was that Kakashi-san almost always brought everyone home. That was a rarity for shinobi life, rarer still for ANBU.

But this recruit wasn’t talking about Kakashi-san.

In fact, most of the new recruits were more scared of the other Hatake-san.

“Once I was sent to get Inu-taichou and Hatake-san told me to come back in 15 minutes because they weren’t done with dinner. With a knife.”

“I heard Hatake-san tell an enemy nin he wasn’t worth the paperwork to kill him.”

“Hatake-san was teaching Uzumaki-san about seals, and they blew up the north quadrant of the Forest of Death.”

“I heard that Hatake-san sent someone on a 6-week mission to Swamp just for yelling at his kid.”

“That’s nothing. Hatake-san pushed a man through ninja wire for kidnapping Naruto-kun."

“Once,” one of the ANBU captains said, voice low and ominous because it was always good to scare some sense into the newbies, “Hatake-san told me he’d put a seal on me that would make my insides, my outsides if I tried ordering him around.”

“Holy fuck.”

“Why isn’t he…you know…one of us?” That was one of the new batch, still learning the ropes.

The ANBU captain smirked. “He knows too much to be sent out into the field with any regularity. Everyone in ANBU knows he’s got the Hokage’s ear, and all his closest friends are high-ranking jounin. Do you know what would happen if, say, Kiri got their hands on him?”

Another ANBU captain laughed. “Please. As if they could crack him.”

A whole unit shuddered.

“Hatake-san will ask how you’re doing, and suddenly you’re drinking tea in his living room, spilling state secrets.”

“Hatake-san told the Hokage to practice making his handwriting more legible. And the Hokage did!”

“I heard that there was a conspiracy to wipe out one of the big clans in Konoha, and Hatake-san singlehandedly stopped it.”

A pause.

“What? No way is that one true,” one of the rookies said.

Out of a darkened corner, Uchiha Shisui grinned. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

.

.

.

Sitting at the bar of Teuchi’s ramen stand, Iruka sneezed for what must have been the fifteenth time.

“What the fu—”

Naruto stared at him.

“—fudge.”

“Maa, husband mine, I hope you’re not getting sick.” Kakashi pressed his cheek against Iruka’s forehead under the pretense of checking his temperature. “Just to be safe, I might have to keep you in bed all day.”

Iruka’s face really did heat up after that.

Naruto wrinkled his nose. “Ew, gross Kashi-nii.”