An Imperfect Understanding
Team Canon: Wolf (Tucuxi)
Prompt: Family (Family is not about blood. It's about who is willing to hold your hand when you need it the most. )
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Kakashi/Iruka
Summary: After the Fourth Shinobi War, Kakashi asks a question Iruka really doesn't want to answer.
Contains [warnings]: (highlight for triggers/spoilers) None
Word Count: 7,600ish
Like so many other things with Kakashi, the conversation came as a complete surprise to Iruka.
The two of them were sitting comfortably in Kakashi's apartment when it came up. Kakashi had just returned from a mission, and earlier in the evening they had been drinking sake and talking. At some point that had dropped away to a comfortable silence and Iruka leaning against Kakashi's shoulder with Kakashi's arm warm around his waist. He was about to suggest they go to bed when Kakashi spoke.
"Why are you still a chuunin?" Kakashi asked. Iruka could feel Kakashi's chest vibrate as he spoke: he sounded tired. Iruka blinked and sat up, wondering if he'd mis-heard something. He tried to remember their conversation from earlier that evening, but couldn't find anything to explain why Kakashi was bringing this up now. Iruka blinked at Kakashi and said nothing, aware his mouth was hanging slightly open. They never talked about rank.
"You could be higher ranked," Kakashi said. He opened one eye to look back at Iruka as if this were a totally reasonable topic of conversation.
"I -- you -- what?" Iruka felt disoriented, thoroughly thrown off by the unexpected nature of the question. Kakashi gave him a look that implied that Iruka was missing something, which was one of Iruka's least favourite looks, especially coming from Kakashi. Iruka felt himself frowning, and tried to straighten out his expression with no success.
"The deadline for this year's jounin and tokubetsu jounin appointments is coming up soon." Kakashi looked tired, but serious. Iruka felt his heart rate speed up. He doesn't know what he's talking about, he reminded himself, he doesn't know I already failed. It didn't really help.
"Kakashi, I don't really think that's --" Iruka paused and took a deep breath. "I don't really want to talk about it." Please, Iruka thought, please, just drop it.
Kakashi looked at him oddly.
"Iruka," he said, "I'm not saying you should go for jounin straight away, but you'd make tokujou easily." His tone implied that he was stating the obvious. The arrogance of it: of Kakashi presuming to tell Iruka not only what he should do, but also what he was capable of, took Iruka's breath away.
Iruka flat-out stared at him, and stood up, brushing Kakashi's arm away roughly.
"No," he said, and his tone was cold. "No, I wouldn't." He gathered the cups and sake and strode into the kitchen. He set the cups gently in the sink and gripped the edge of it, trying to quell the storm of emotions Kakashi had just stirred up. When he came back from the kitchen, Kakashi was sitting just where he had been, watching Iruka with a thoughtful expression.
"You would," Kakashi said, and the certainty in his voice made Iruka want to deck him for his arrogance and kiss him senseless for the blind faith in Iruka that it displayed. When Iruka didn't say anything, Kakashi got up and walked over to him. He kissed Iruka lightly and wrapped his arms around Iruka's neck.
"Just think about it," he said. "Okay?" Iruka forced himself to nod as he pulled away, and Kakashi made no attempt to hold him.
When they crawled into bed, Kakashi shifted closer, ghosting warm fingers across Iruka's hip. Iruka turned away, pulled the blankets up to his chin, and ignored him.
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And for a few days, that was it. Iruka went from expecting to hear more about it at any moment, to sometimes remembering to be nervous about it, to hoping that maybe, just maybe, Kakashi would let it drop.
But really, Iruka thought, I should have known better than to think he'd leave well enough alone.
He looked down at the forms that had appeared on the kitchen table overnight, all bureaucracy and unintentional hurt.
"Kakashi," Iruka called, "you wouldn't happen to know why your kitchen table seems to have sprouted a new pile of paperwork, would you?" Kakashi leaned out from the bathroom, toweling his hair dry.
"Oh, those," he said, as if he'd had to remember which scrolls he'd brought home and put in Iruka's path. "I brought them home for you."
Iruka glared at him; Kakashi just smiled, and went back into the bathroom. Iruka considered setting the forms on fire, but finally just shoved them to the side and put several other pieces of paperwork on top of them, thumping the stacks into place firmly enough that one almost collapsed all over the floor.
When Kakashi came into the kitchen he glanced at the table, but didn't say anything about the missing forms.
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Iruka hadn't really thought that would be the end of it, but he hadn't expected Kakashi to be quite so blunt when he brought it up again, less than a week later.
"You really could be tokujou," Kakashi said, not looking up as Iruka entered his own apartment. "At the very least." Iruka stopped. Then he kicked the door shut behind him with a bit of a bang.
"Well, hello to you, too," he snapped. It had been a long enough day already, without this coming up again. But Kakashi was sitting cross-legged on the floor, going through a stack of papers that Iruka recognized from earlier that morning.
"We're not talking about this," Iruka warned. "Those have nothing to do with me." Kakashi went on sorting through the various forms: applications and recommendations, evaluations and assessments, for the Hokage's eyes only. Iruka had handed them to Tsunade himself this morning, after organizing them all by person, by type and by likelihood of promotion at first glance. He'd been fiercely glad to be shut of them then -- seeing them in his apartment now was jarring and unpleasant.
"They have everything to do with you." Kakashi's tone was even, but Iruka thought a bit of impatience was starting to bleed through. Iruka supposed his reluctance to discuss it must seem odd to Kakashi, but he had no desire to explain his reaction to this to anyone -- not even to Kakashi. Not now. Probably not ever.
"They really don't." Iruka toed off his sandals and took off his vest, and stalked over to sit across the room from Kakashi, reaching down for his bag before realizing that, no, he didn't have anything to grade. It was the little reminders like that -- habits that were now pointless -- that were the worst. Judging by the way Kakashi was not looking at him, he'd noticed the slip as well. Iruka just watched him sort papers for a few minutes, letting the hurt of I'm-not-a-teacher-anymore dissipate gradually.
"I'm serious, Iruka." Kakashi even looked serious this time, instead of lazy, which Iruka knew was a very bad sign as far as escaping from this conversation went. "Konoha's ranks are disproportionately young right now. A few more older jounin and tokubetsu jounin would make a big difference."
"So go through those applications and recommendations, and promote people," Iruka suggested. "And then stop bothering me about it."
"But you could make rank!" Kakashi slammed a stack of papers onto the floor: his confusion was clear, as was his frustration. "You don't have to be chained to a goddamn desk. And don't tell me you like it," Kakashi warned. "I know you hate having nothing to do but Tsunade's paperwork."
Kakashi wasn't entirely wrong: Iruka didn't enjoy his new job as much as he'd enjoyed teaching. He didn't regret slipping Naruto that note, and wouldn't have done any differently. But he wished that the council hadn't felt the need to be quite so strict, to set him as an example. But none of that explained Kakashi's newfound obsession with Iruka's rank.
"It's more interesting than the mission desk," Iruka said levelly. "And it needs to be done. You'd know that just as well as I do if you ever read half of what I hand you." Kakashi's features froze.
"Nothing's going to change, Iruka," Kakashi snapped. "They're not going to decide to send you back to the Academy just because you refuse to be considered for tokujou." And that hurt. Kakashi knew how much Iruka missed teaching. He knew how much it pained Iruka to have been removed from the Academy as punishment for failing to keep Naruto safely hidden during the war.
Iruka stared at him, appalled.
"You could do more than this! Why can't you just admit it?" Kakashi said.
And, oh, did that sting.
"I can't admit it?" Iruka shut his eyes: it didn't help cool his temper at all. "What. Do you think I'm in some kind of denial, here? That I can't judge what I'm capable of as well as you can?"
Kakashi made a negative noise, and Iruka ignored him, his temper finally getting the better of him.
"I keep saying I wouldn't make tokujou because I didn't, Kakashi, all right?" He opened his eyes, and saw Kakashi watching him with intent concentration, as if Iruka were some kind of puzzle he could solve if he just looked hard enough. It only made Iruka angrier.
"Did you really think I'd never tried!? Fuck you, Kakashi. We don't all get everything we want just for wanting it."
Iruka stopped, took a deep breath, counted back from ten, and willed tears from his eyes. He was not going to make a fool of himself, not in front of Kakashi. Not even in front of Kakashi.
"I've tried, Kakashi." His voice didn't break. "I didn't make rank, and nothing's changed since then. All right? Drop it."
Kakashi opened his mouth, and Iruka glared at him.
"Drop it."
Iruka stood, and went into the kitchen to get something to drink. When he came out, Kakashi was nowhere to be seen: nor were his papers. Iruka took a deep breath and tried to get his temper back under control. When that didn't work, he picked up a pouchful of kunai and headed for the training grounds to work off his frustration.
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Neither of them mentioned the argument. But Iruka hadn't really expected Kakashi to let well enough alone, so when Kakashi slipped the forms in front of him a few days later, Iruka just sighed.
"What?"
"Just look at them." Kakashi insisted, his voice gentle, soft. "Please." He leaned over behind Iruka, close enough that Iruka could feel the heat of his body against his back, reassuring and familiar. "You said you wouldn't -- didn't -- make rank. Why?"
He pointed at the list of requirements, and Iruka watched as Kakashi ran his finger down the page. For tokujou, specialization to an elite level, minimum requirements beyond the specialization. For jounin, use of at least two A-rank elemental jutsu, the minimum requirements in seals and physical abilities and jutsu known. The optional spaces for entering information about kekkei genkai, original jutsu and clan- or family-based jutsu.
And looking at them, Iruka realized why Kakashi was so confused.
"You meet all of them," Kakashi said gently, and he hooked a foot around a chair to pull it over, sat down facing Iruka. "So why not?"
"You're not going to drop this," Iruka said, "are you." Kakashi shook his head and Iruka sighed. Kakashi could be as stubborn as a puppy with a bone when something caught his attention, and Iruka knew better by now than to try to resist that persistent curiosity.
"All right," he said, and picked up a pencil. He checked off the relevant boxes, filled in the sections he could. And it looked fine: he could probably go tokujou a couple of different ways: he was almost certainly smart enough for T&I, for example, and anyone who thought a schoolteacher was soft had clearly never dealt with a class full of pre-genin. But when Iruka came to the last section, for kekkei genkei and family-specific jutsu, he simply wrote a circle, and slashed a line through it.
"That's why." Iruka said, not looking up. Kakashi made a puzzled noise, and Iruka glanced at him. He smiled tiredly.
"Kakashi," he said, "when was the last time you saw me use a jutsu that I don't--" he stopped, "that I didn't teach at the Academy?"
Kakashi blinked at him, but said nothing.
"Never," Iruka said, answering the question for him. "The answer is never." Kakashi looked at him, clearly puzzled.
"That's an unofficial requirement for promotion, isn't it? Family or unique jutsu. It's even more important for jounin than tokujou, to have something to pull out to surprise an opponent." He took a deep breath. "I don't have that."
"But," Kakashi started, "the Umino family has--"
"Had," Iruka corrected. "My family had its own jutsu. But my parents died before they'd taught me. And, yes, I was eleven. I still hadn't learned very much." He didn't look at Kakashi, didn't need the reminder that at eleven, Kakashi had been nearly six years a chuunin, had probably been working on a second element or developing his own jutsu, having already mastered all the ones he'd been taught.
Kakashi took one of his hands, but didn't say anything.
"I thought," Iruka continued, "well, teaching looks a lot easier than it is, you know. At first I thought I'd have plenty of free time to do research around the edges, put things back together. But it turns out I'm a good teacher: I didn't want to leave, after the first year or two. And everything else sort of took a back seat after that."
Iruka sighed. "It just -- at first it seemed more important to stay at the Academy and help pass along the Will of Fire than to put one more body in the field. At least, until Orochimaru's attack and Pein and the fourth war. And then things were too busy to worry about developing jutsu: we were all just trying to keep our heads above water."
Kakashi nodded.
"That makes sense." They sat for a moment, the silence stretching heavy between the two of them. Finally Kakashi spoke.
"What about now?" he asked.
"What?"
"Well," Kakashi said, "you said you didn't have time before. Do you have it now?"
Iruka nodded, slowly. Kakashi wasn't wrong: Iruka had a lot more time on his hands these days. But it felt a little like Kakashi was forcing his hand, now, pushing Iruka to do what Kakashi wanted. Something in him balked at the idea.
"I'll think about it," Iruka admitted.
"Great," said Kakashi, and kissed him.
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After that conversation, things went more smoothly. The jounin paperwork never found its way back into either of their apartments: Iruka was almost pathetically grateful for that. One evening they discussed the signature Umino jutsu, a chakra-net that Kakashi had seen Iruka's father use a handful of times. After that, Kakashi asked the occasional idle question: did Iruka remember the seals used to initiate the net jutsu, or how long his father had been able to hold a net intact? Still, the questions were few and far enough between that Iruka was able to dismiss them as just Kakashi's insatiable curiosity, nothing more.
And after a few weeks, Iruka unbent far enough to dig a box out from the back of his closet and open it. He looked down at the Umino jutsu scrolls, nearly all smoke-damaged but intact. They were one of the few remaining relics of his childhood, of his parents and his heritage, and Iruka sorted through them carefully, almost ritually, looking for one in particular. It was stained and difficult to read, and the handwriting wasn't perfect to begin with: the archaic characters had been reproduced faithfully, but not well, by an unpracticed hand. He replaced the box in his closet, but left that one scroll out: his father's net jutsu. It was the one he'd been trying to learn just a few weeks before the Kyuubi attack had changed everything.
It was tedious, frustrating work to interpret the tiny script through the soot and staining, even knowing what the jutsu was designed to do. Iruka remembered seeing his father cast nets of chakra, entangling his sparring partner in a thin, glimmering web of light. He'd even ensnared Iruka a time or two, so Iruka knew that the nets buzzed slightly against the skin and very gradually drew chakra: not enough to notice at first, but enough to be nearly self-sustaining, and to grow stronger the harder the target struggled. The nets were much stronger than they looked: strands of pure chakra knotted together like fishing nets, sturdy and flexible. They'd been the light to the Nara's dark, at one point: the jutsu that shut down an opponent's movement rather than controlling it.
Iruka knew the jutsu was fiendishly difficult to use in the field: the sequence of hand-signs was long and involved enough that the user almost always had to have a partner buying time for the casting. That had been his mother's job in their Guard unit, buying time for his father to prepare. The complexity of the handsigns had made learning it frustrating at eleven; it was no less frustrating now, when there was no one to point out Iruka's mistakes and tell him how to fix them. It was some consolation to know that objectively, this jutsu was not an easy one, but not much.
Having a second set of eyes to help him spot mistakes would doubtless be useful: Kakashi's help interpreting certain characters would speed things up on the written end as well. But Iruka found himself tucking the scroll into a desk drawer before he left the apartment, leaving it protected and out of sight. Asking for Kakashi's help would feel too much like admitting that he had been right. Iruka knew it was irrational, but kept right on doing it. Maybe once he'd gotten the first jutsu down he'd ask Kakashi -- once he could say that he'd made some part of his family heritage his own by himself. His father would have approved, Iruka thought -- he'd been fiercely protective. His mother, on the other hand, would probably have scolded him for not taking help when it was offered.
So Iruka pulled out the scroll when Kakashi was away on missions or locked in with Tsunade and Shizune for meetings Iruka wasn't senior enough to attend. And even though he half-resolved to tell Kakashi what he was doing any number of times, he could never quite bring himself to do so.
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Life went on. The recommendations for jounin were submitted, and some of them approved: Iruka and Shizune had a long debate about a couple of the candidates about whom they had very different opinions. Neither of them had missed a beat when Kakashi showed up beside Tsunade to announce promotions. But both he and Shizune had blinked for a moment when they saw Kakashi's name underneath Tsunade's on the official scrolls.
"How did that happen?" Iruka asked, after the newly promoted jounin and tokujou had departed, and Shizune was organizing the remaining paperwork.
Kakashi shrugged. "Tsunade's idea," he said. "The council seemed pleased."
"Hm," Iruka replied. "Well, the new appointees definitely liked it. I think one of the girls nearly passed out when you handed her her scroll." He elbowed Kakashi playfully, and was relieved when Kakashi elbowed him back, mock-glaring. Kakashi had been subdued enough during the ceremony that Iruka had started to worry for him. Even this kind of ceremonial responsibility could ruin his mood for days at a time.
"She did not," Kakashi insisted, a little flush rising to color his cheeks above the mask.
"Mmm," Iruka said, "she pretty much did. Right over onto the floor, if her friend hadn't pinched her."
Kakashi tried to glare and failed completely.
"Come on," Iruka called, "last one to training ground thirty-seven has to cook."
Kakashi beat him to the training ground, but the run seemed to lighten his mood, so Iruka counted it a success.
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And woven through all the normal actions of his everyday life, Iruka struggled with his father's net jutsu. He transcribed the entire original scroll, and replaced it in its box, wrapped with almost ritual reverence. He worked instead from a copy that he'd corrected and re-corrected more times than he could count, until it was a perfect replica.
But no matter what he tried, the net wouldn't hold together. Iruka tried different opening hand-seals, tried altering the kind of chakra he was using, tried changing how and where he was focusing his chakra. He considered asking Shizune (or even Sakura) how to focus chakra into a scalpel, to see if that kind of focus was at all relevant, but decided it wasn't worth it. His father had emphasized the flow of chakra, when he was teaching Iruka, explaining it as feeling the strands weaving together around your fingers as you formed the signs, liquid and solid at once. Iruka racked his memory for anything else he'd been told, or seen, or overheard, and still ended up frustrated and disappointed more often than not.
Once or twice, Iruka cast an eye at the other scrolls in the box, jutsu for trapping and warding spaces invisibly, for enduring extreme cold or heat, for manipulating air or light or sound to spy on an enemy from a distance, all based on the same principles of fine-scale chakra manipulation. There was one scroll wrapped in white, which Iruka hadn't dared to touch until he'd passed the chuunin exam: the Umino sacrifice jutsu.
His jounin-sensei had looked at that one after Iruka passed, even encoded and partially incomplete as it was, and refused to help Iruka learn it. Hope you never need it, she'd said. Hope that you never, never need it. It had saved comrades and completed missions, and had delivered Iruka's grandfather into Tsunade-hime's hands so badly hurt that even she hadn't been able to save him. Iruka left that scroll in the box, no matter how many of the others he took out to compare encryption or handwriting.
Iruka might have felt bad for the amount of time he was devoting to the jutsu, but Kakashi was staying late at the Hokage Tower or Monument more often than not, these days. He came home tired, sometimes covered in dust from the Archives, and made feeble excuses for why he was late: he'd been hunting a fish, or gotten lost on his way to the past, or had to help a friend with a super-secret project, shhh. Iruka had half a mind to ask Tsunade to pull back a bit, except that Kakashi seemed perfectly happy about it.
So except for the scroll tucked under a book, or on Iruka's bedside table, or hidden in a desk drawer, things fell back into their usual, comfortable routine. Then Iruka's birthday rolled around.
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Iruka ducked under Kakashi's arm, avoiding the kunai's tip by a hair's breadth, and threw a roundhouse kick at Kakashi's side. The clone puffed away on impact, and Iruka spun quickly to regain his balance, scanning the training field for any other presences. Kakashi was nowhere in sight.
Iruka feathered his chakra outward, trying to locate Kakashi, and jumped into a tree bare instants before Kakashi burst from the earth.
Iruka stayed where he was for a moment, hidden behind a solid cover of leaves. Then he sent a rain of senbon toward Kakashi's location and dropped to the ground behind the tree trunk. Kakashi often tended to stay up in the trees when he could, and Iruka was pretty sure that assumption would buy him an instant or two.
It did. Kakashi approached, scanning the tree-line for movement. Iruka charged him, knocking Kakashi off balance and being thrown roughly away, somersaulting in mid-air to land facing Kakashi, hands raised defensively. Kakashi was still very slightly off balance when Iruka ducked towards him, and this time he managed to land a blow before Kakashi tossed him aside. It was a little disheartening how easily Kakashi could turn his attacks against him, but Iruka was starting to get used to that, and he'd definitely gotten better at landing on his feet.
Kakashi advanced on Iruka, sweeping a low kick toward Iruka's ankles to knock his feet out from under him. As Iruka jumped up to avoid the kick -- in the moment he was airborne and unable to move freely -- Kakashi hurled a half dozen shuriken at him. Iruka deflected them with kunai, but it worked as a distraction: Kakashi was able to back away, out of arm's reach. He started forming hand seals, which was never a good sign. Iruka lunged forward, but Kakashi was able to lean out of his path, leaving Iruka almost stumbling as he overshot where Kakashi had been standing. Iruka turned quickly, and saw Kakashi finishing the hand-signs of an unknown jutsu.
Then sunlight glinted as something spun from Kakashi's hand. Iruka ducked away from the chakra wire's expected path, confused. But the wire was growing as it sped toward Iruka, and knotting itself into a glowing tracery of fine webbing. Iruka stared. He took the net full-on and was knocked over by the force of its impact. The air in his lungs whooshed out as he hit the ground hard and Iruka struggled to take a breath. He hadn't fallen this badly in years, but not being able to breathe was the least of his worries: this was his father's net jutsu. This was the jutsu he'd been working on, and now Kakashi was casting it at him? Iruka gasped like a beached fish, trying to figure things out and failing.
Kakashi came into view, grinning widely under the mask, and Iruka felt a flash of white-hot fury rush through him.
"You bastard!" Iruka snarled, sitting and struggling against the net. It stretched with his movements almost as he remembered from his childhood, somehow never letting him move enough to accomplish anything except tiring himself out. It was warmer than he remembered, though, almost hot to the touch. "You complete and utter bastard."
Kakashi paused, and the smile slid off his face.
"It's not quite right," he offered, stepping closer to Iruka a little carefully. "But I thought you'd --"
"I'd what?" Iruka spat, "thank you for stealing an Umino jutsu?" Kakashi flinched; Iruka just kept going. "Did you think I'd be happy you could master it when I was struggling with it?" Iruka gasped for breath, and told himself it was just the fall. That was why he felt an iron band around his chest. That was all. "What the fuck, Kakashi."
The net around him dropped away, dissolving in little pinpricks of flame that singed his clothes. That was not supposed to happen. Had Kakashi been altering it, too? Iruka's head spun. Kakashi stepped closer, hands at his sides. He looked confused and he was biting his lips under the mask, opening his mouth to say something. Iruka was desperate not to hear whatever Kakashi was going to say next, whatever reasoning he had for why it had been all right to steal one of the few things Iruka had of his parents, why he hadn't said anything to Iruka about it. He gritted his teeth.
When Kakashi stepped closer again, Iruka surged to his feet and decked him.
Then he turned and ran for his apartment.
Kakashi didn't follow.
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When he got home, panting from the sprint, Iruka immediately unravelled his wards and re-keyed them to his chakra -- and only his. He stormed into the bedroom and pulled Kakashi's book from the bedside table, Kakashi's clothes from the closet, where they'd begun to creep in piece by piece. When he'd finished grabbing anything of Kakashi's he could see, his arms weren't even full. He shoved the clothes and a spare belt-pouch into a box, stuffed the book in on top. Everything Kakashi had left at his apartment in one place: it made a pathetically small heap.
Is that really it? Iruka wondered. What the hell happens now? He tried not to think about how many of his things were probably in Kakashi's apartment. They'd started out splitting time more or less evenly, but by now they'd settled on spending time at Kakashi's place more often than not. It was larger, for one thing, and in a better apartment block, closer to just about everything and in better condition, too. Iruka's apartment was just fine, but the wiring was a bit squirrely at its best; Kakashi's building had reliable lighting indoors and out, and a super who actually fixed things when they broke. And it didn't remind either of them of Iruka's work as a teacher.
Iruka shook his head to clear it, and then shoved the box into a closet so he wouldn't have to look at it anymore, pushing it to the opposite corner from his scrolls, as if contact with Kakashi's things would leech something away from them.
His hand really hurt.
Iruka sat heavily on the floor of his bedroom and rested his head in his hands.
What the hell, he thought. What the hell is going on?
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The next day was painfully awkward at best. Kakashi got to the Tower later than usual even for him, which meant that Tsunade and Shizune had already gone for lunch. They'd left Iruka to mind the desk in case anyone or anything important came in.
Arguably, Kakashi qualified as something important. Iruka looked up when Kakashi slouched in, then went back to the property tax documents he was preparing for the Hokage's signature.
Kakashi wandered over to the side of the room and leaned against the wall, just watching. When it became clear that Iruka was not going to stop, or look up again, Kakashi made a low noise in the back of his throat, and pushed away from the wall.
"Iruka," he started to say, "I--" It was hard to see, but Iruka was familiar enough with Kakashi's profile by now that it was obvious that his jaw was slightly swollen where Iruka had hit him.
Iruka surged to his feet, thrust the pen into Kakashi's hand and left to find Tsunade. Then he took the rest of the afternoon off, and ran kata until he could hardly move anymore.
Iruka thought he felt Kakashi's chakra hovering in the treeline at one point, but he just turned to face the opposite direction and kept going, ignoring Kakashi as hard as he possibly could. Even thinking about what had happened yesterday threw him into turmoil: anger and disappointment and hurt and something almost like betrayal all vying for first place.
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It didn't really get better from there. Kakashi approached Iruka again, a handful of times; each time Iruka ignored how hopeful Kakashi looked whenever Iruka glanced up at him. It was hard, but each time he saw Kakashi, Iruka was hit by an almost physical jolt of recall: the shock of seeing his father's jutsu raw and new. The sense of betrayal made it easier to ignore Kakashi, to frown at him and say the minimum required to get his job done. And if Iruka felt terrible when he went home at the end of the day, if he missed Kakashi's sly sense of humor and familiar presence, well, that was too bad. Iruka threw himself back into the scrolls, finding new determination in the desire not to think about what was happening in the rest of his life.
After a day or two, Kakashi responded in turn. Iruka had thought himself prepared for Kakashi's response, had thought that being ignored, rebuffed, yelled at, would be painful but manageable. Instead, Kakashi treated Iruka like a total stranger, like any of the nameless, faceless chuunin who staffed the mission desk; like Iruka didn't matter at all. It was immeasurably worse.
And Iruka found his anger ebbing away for lack of confrontation. It left him watching Kakashi from the corner of his eye, wishing Kakashi would walk up to the desk just one more time with that hopeful look on his face again.
Sometimes Kakashi did turn to the desk and notice Iruka, but his gaze was cold and impersonal. Iruka flinched away from it more often than not, and avoided looking at Kakashi again for as long as he could bear.
You idiot, Iruka told himself, did you really think Hatake Kakashi would come crawling back, after the way you've treated him?
He deserved it! the angry part of him insisted, defiant and defensive as it clung to the memory of Kakashi's stolen jutsu. He shouldn't have taken it. But doubt crept in, steady and unnerving.
The mood in Tsunade's office went from convivial to cold and condemning, and everyone's tempers shortened.
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After a couple of days, Shizune pulled Iruka aside into her tiny office and shut the door.
"Whatever is going on," Shizune said, "this has got to stop." Iruka tried to stare her down: she stared right back. Finally Iruka sighed, and scrubbed his hands through his hair in frustration. Shizune made an inquiring noise and Iruka felt his lips tighten into a scowl.
"He used one of my father's jutsu on me while we were sparring," Iruka managed, feeling anger bubble up again.
"All right," Shizune said, "but surely you expected that when you taught him --"
"No," Iruka spat, glaring at her. "I didn't teach it to him. I couldn't have. I don't know it." Shizune tipped her head to one side and nodded slowly.
"Oh," she said. "I see." And it looked like she might.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Iruka closed his eyes again. It would be so much easier to stay angry if he didn't have to keep reminding himself not to miss Kakashi so much.
"Look," Shizune finally said, "you're pissed. I get it. It makes sense. But Kakashi's not quite right in the head, you know?" Iruka laughed.
"Not quite?" he asked, his tone bitter, and Shizune winced.
"Right," she said, "The point is, he was trying to do something nice for you, in his own way. You need to at least acknowledge that."
Iruka stared at her.
"Wait," he said. "You want me to apologize to him?"
"I want you to admit that he meant well." Shizune countered. "And that your response was completely out of line for what he thought he was doing."
"What he thought he was doing?" Iruka spat. "He had no right to go anywhere near those jutsu. None. And he did anyway!" His voice broke and he snapped his mouth shut.
"Iruka," Shizune said, and her impatience was clear now, "it was your birthday. Why do you think he showed you then?" Iruka shook his head, as if he could deny what she was saying. "Do you have any idea how many hours of research he did?" Shizune continued. "He's spent less time at the memorial stone in the last month than I've seen in years, because he was in the archives. That has to have been for this."
Iruka stared at her. Kakashi had seemed busier lately, and a little distracted, but he'd assumed it was just a crest in the work Tsunade was demanding of him, another part of the gradual shift of responsibility onto Kakashi's shoulders as Tsunade prepared to pass the title of Hokage along.
"...he worked his way through one of Konoha's least intuitive jutsu, Iruka," Shizune was saying. "And he did it for you."
Iruka bit his lower lip and grabbed onto the little ember of hurt that had been fueling his anger for the last week.
"It's none of his business," he insisted. "Even if he meant well, what possible justification could he have to interfere like that? It's my life, dammit."
Shizune gave him a long, level look; Iruka looked away first.
"There are a million other jutsu out there," Iruka said, still looking away.
"All right," Shizune said, "I'm not supposed to know this, much less be spreading it around. But the Council has been after Kakashi to appoint a jounin aide, and he's been refusing. Think about that for a minute." Iruka frowned, puzzled.
"Iruka. He's been insisting that you try for a higher rank," Shizune said. "And he's been refusing to select an aide from the existing pool of jounin." Iruka blinked.
"Wait," he said, mind reeling, "wait, what?"
"Exactly," Shizune said. She leaned across the table and took Iruka's hands in her own.
"Look," she said gently. "He fucked up. But think about what he meant by it, all right?" And she got up and walked out, leaving Iruka alone and astonished.
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Iruka opened the door and stepped aside without a word. Kakashi came in and closed the door silently, like always. Iruka watched him slip off his sandals, and, after the briefest moment, his vest as well. Iruka was still wearing his.
Kakashi came into the apartment and sat facing Iruka.
"Can I get you -- do you want something to drink?" Iruka asked, feeling more nervous than he had in ages: what if he fucked this up? Worse? Kakashi was the best thing that had happened to him in years, and it looked like he'd already almost killed it. He held his breath.
"No," Kakashi said. And then, "thanks."
"Okay." Iruka sat back down. "Then. Can you just listen first?" Iruka asked. "I think that would help."
Kakashi looked at him for a moment, his gaze measuring. "All right."
"Thanks." Iruka took a breath.
"First of all," Iruka said, "you know that most shinobi don't make jounin." Kakashi looked puzzled, but he nodded. "And," Iruka continued, "for most of those people, making chuunin is an achievement. It's a big deal. It's not something that happens when you're six." Kakashi gave him a sour look. Iruka held his hands up placatingly. "I know!" he said. "But I think it's easy for you -- not just you, but most tokujou or jounin -- it's easy to forget that. The chuunin exam can't possibly seem difficult anymore. Not when it's something you moderate to keep kids safe, because you're that much better than they are." He paused, then made a dismissive gesture.
"I mean," Iruka continued. This was going to be the hard part. Well, a hard part. "There are some people who try frantically their whole lives to make jounin, and aren't happy until they do. Or just aren't happy," Iruka said, remembering Mizuki's frantic struggle for attention. "But most shinobi aren't that unbalanced." Kakashi quirked an eyebrow, and Iruka smiled. "All right. Most shinobi aren't that unbalanced in that way. But there's still some remnant of the nagging voice, for most of us -- what if I were jounin? What if I were better, what if I were more? Everyone knows jounin are -- are better than the rest of us."
"Iruka," Kakashi interrupted, "what does this --" Iruka gave him a look, and he subsided.
"It matters," Iruka said, "because when you started pushing the forms at me, it --" He paused. "It--" Iruka forced himself to continue. "It seemed like you -- it was like I wasn't good enough. Like you'd decided I had to be jounin to be, I don't know, worthwhile."
Kakashi shook his head. Iruka held up a hand when Kakashi opened his mouth.
"Wait," he said, "I know that's not what you meant. But you kept pushing about it, and I didn't know why."
Kakashi shook his head, and Iruka smiled a little sadly.
"Yeah," he said. "But --" he stopped for a moment to try to wrangle his thoughts into order. "It was like -- look, you can't teach anymore, and now Kakashi's reminding you how -- how not-strong you are, on top of it all." Iruka looked at his hands, momentarily out of words.
"I --" Kakashi paused, but Iruka nodded at him to continue. "I didn't mean it that way. I just -- you could take Shizune, I think. If you caught her empty-handed, your ninjutsu and taijutsu are just as good as hers. So, it," he paused. "It seemed wrong for you not to know that." He paused. "And it would be helpful, you know? There's enough to keep Shizune more than busy, and you're good at what you're doing, you just get stuck with the really boring stuff because the council's all tied up in knots about senority and security."
"And I'm sure they'd be so pleased to see me dealing with more sensitive materials," Iruka interrupted, "what with my having been tried for treason just a year ago."
Kakashi made a dismissive motion with one hand. "They'd deal with it," he said. "At this point, they'd probably be pleased. They've been pushing--" he paused. "They've been pushing me to pick someone -- someone jounin-ranked -- to take on Shizune's job."
Iruka nodded. "Shizune might have mentioned that yesterday," he admitted. "If she knew anything about it, which of course she doesn't." He cracked a tiny smile and Kakashi appeared to relax slightly.
"Oh," he said. "So, then --"
"Look," Iruka said. "If you'd said anything about that, I might have understood why you were pushing, okay? As it was, it just hurt." Kakashi nodded.
"Will you think about it?" He sounded hopeful, and Iruka found himself nodding.
"But that's the other thing," Iruka said. "I can't do that without some kind of leg up." Kakashi nodded. "I've been working on the net jutsu, a little," Iruka admitted. "More than a little. So it was," he paused, and Kakashi nodded again, reaching out for one of Iruka's hands. "It hurt to see you use it, when I haven't figured it out all the way yet," Iruka admitted. "I just -- it's mine, it's my family's, and --" he stopped and shrugged, uncomfortable. "Well. I've been having trouble with it, so."
Kakashi made an uncomfortable face, and Iruka squeezed his hand. They were both silent for a moment, but it was a more comfortable silence.
"It doesn't use a fire jutsu as its base," Kakashi asked, eventually, "does it? I thought that part was wrong, but I couldn't figure out anything better, except air." Which Kakashi couldn't use.
"No, it doesn -- wait." Iruka gaped at him. "You really reverse-engineered it?" Iruka said, in disbelief. "I thought you'd gone through -- that you'd read the -- you reverse-engineered it?"
"Wait," Kakashi said, "are you telling me there's something to read?"
"Scrolls," Iruka admitted. "Not much survived the fires, but the jutsu scrolls were protected, so they did alright. They're just really hard to interpret through the smoke damage, and not quite complete, in case they were stolen, so they're sort of a puzzle."
Kakashi shook his head, and laughed.
"That would have been a hell of a lot easier," he said, and then, "no wonder you were so angry. Did you really think I'd go through your family's things?" He sounded more than a little hurt at the implication.
"Yes? No. I mean," Iruka sighed. "What else would I think? No one's stupid enough to try to re-create a jutsu from just -- just a general idea what it did and some vague recollections of handsigns." He shook his head. "No one but you, apparently." He looked Kakashi in the eye. "I can't believe you did that. It must have taken forever." Kakashi shrugged. He looked uncomfortable.
"Are you that dead set on me getting promoted?" Iruka asked.
"No," Kakashi said. "No, that wasn't --" he bit his lower lip through the mask. "I was -- I wanted to do something for you." He shook his head. "That didn't exactly work, did it?" He scrubbed his hands through his hair, visibly uncomfortable. "I thought I could show you how -- how important you are? To me. I mean." He looked away, flushing. Iruka blinked as several things slotted into place.
"Oh," he said faintly. "I. I see." He paused. "I mean, I think I -- Kakashi?" Kakashi had pulled his mask off and somehow lost his forehead protector. His cheeks were faintly pink, and as Iruka watched, he bit his lower lip again.
Iruka leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips.
"Thank you," Iruka whispered. "And I'm sorry I -- I'm sorry."
"Mmm," Kakashi hummed. "You're welcome." He kissed Iruka back, one hand rising to cup Iruka's jawline.
"Can we," Iruka pulled away for a moment. "Will you look at some of the scrolls with me?" Kakashi kissed him again, and Iruka could feel him smiling.
"Yes." Kakashi's voice was low. "Later." He glanced at the bedroom door, and Iruka felt something loosen in his chest, some last, residual anxiety melt away.
"Definitely later," Iruka agreed, and pulled Kakashi to his feet, and towards the bed.
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Epilogue:
"Damn," Tsunade said, when Iruka presented her with this fall's stack of paperwork, his recommendation for tokujou on top. "So he convinced you after all." She made a face. "This means I'm going to have to find someone else to do all this paperwork without complaining. Do you have any idea how difficult that's going to be?"
Iruka surprised himself by laughing. "You could always fail to appoint me," he suggested. "Who knows, maybe I don't fit the bill." Tsunade gave him a measuring look.
"Right," she said. "And I'm going to win the lottery tomorrow. Give me those papers already, kid." And she shooed him out of her office, calling for Shizune.
Tsunade handed Iruka his appointment scroll herself less than a week later.
"I see you didn't win the lottery," Iruka observed. Tsunade laughed, and clapped him on the shoulder, hard.
"Congrats," she said, and pushed the scroll at him, gesturing for the next person to step up before her. Iruka caught Kakashi's eye as he stepped aside, and smiled.
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