Chapter Text
Safety, as a concept, isn’t foreign to Iruka.
Home, however, is.
It’s the kind of late summer evening where you’re shocked there’s still light in the sky, heavy and pink and shading towards blue-black though it may be.
In the long grass, there are fireflies.
Naruto is inside, worn-out and sprawling in a pile of ninken who seem to have adopted him as a sort of loud, untalented puppy. Iruka hopes that the ‘untalented’ part will go away soon- Naruto really is improving, really is trying. Has the space and the time to fail, now, the ability to get back on his feet and try again.
The deck in the back is wide and low, planks bleached white by ceaseless sun, sanded smooth by generations of shinobi feet.
Strange to think that, at one point not too long ago, the Hatake clan lived and laughed and died here. The last vestiges of the lightning, their hopes coalesced into a young man inside drying dishes with calloused palms.
Because Kakashi is a young man. Iruka forgets that, sometimes. Forgets that he’s a young man too.
He turned twenty, sometime in the past few months. Forgot all about it. Slid out of his teens with a distracted, ‘Oh, thank you,’ when Nakamura had wished him a happy birthday. Thinks he’s been old for a long time, now.
Iruka lets his legs loll in front of him, sits back on his hands. Stares at the sky and pretends he can see stars.
“He’s being held for questioning.”
Iruka doesn’t look up from the mission scrolls he’s industriously correcting. “Mm?” He says, like he doesn’t know who Anko’s talking about.
She perches herself on the edge of the mission desk, legs swinging, ignoring the disapproving look that one of the other desk workers gives her, speaking low and fast and hard for even a shinobi to hear. Iruka fights back a sigh.
“Right now it’s for ‘questioning’, so he hasn’t been formally charged, but there’s no chance that he’s not going to prison for like, ever. Conspiracy, attempted treason, attempted murder, actual murder--”
“Breaking and entering,” Iruka adds dryly, not looking up.
“And a whole host of other more lawyer-y language, he’s done for.” Anko finishes. “So that’s one less thing to worry about.”
“Is it?” Iruka says, finally looking up.
Anko frowns at him. “Iruka,” she says, hesitates.
“Anko,” Iruka mimics back, unwilling to do this now. Not at the mission desk, not here, not- he just needs another minute. It works, causes Anko to frown at him, annoyed, and raise her voice to regular speaking volume.
“I leave for nine months and look what a mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” Anko complains, but there’s a touch of wistfulness there that makes Iruka’s heart hurt, a little.
“I missed you,” he says, instead of anything else, suddenly sorry he blew her off.
The twinge in his heart dissipates rapidly when she smacks him upside the head. “As you should,” she snaps. “You owe me dango. And a drink. Several drinks.”
“A bottle?” Iruka offers weakly.
“Several bottles! Hatake, Iruka?” She glares.
Iruka’s face goes horribly, abruptly red, and the other desk workers are suddenly very interested in their own paperwork, a sure fire sign that they’re listening intently.
“The kid I get, you soft-bellied fuck, but-“
“Okay!” Iruka says loudly. “Thank you, jounin-san, I have your report filed, you can go, thank you for your hard work!”
Anko hops off the desk, points a sharp, red-tipped finger at him. “This isn’t over, Umino.”
“Yeah,” Iruka mutters, bending back over his papers in a horrible attempt to hide his blush. “I’m sure it isn’t.”
There’s a faint shush, a scrape, and Iruka knows the sound is for his benefit, as is the quiet padding of footsteps to where Iruka sits on the edge. It’s pure politeness not to sneak up on a shinobi, though Iruka knows Kakashi definitely could.
There isn’t, however, a clatter when Kakashi sets down a tray with a neat set of sake, a bottle dripping with condensation.
Iruka picks up the bottle, smears wetness on his fingertips, the palms of his hands. “This is a decent bottle,” he says, to avoid making eye contact.
“Mm?” Kakashi says, languidly, like he didn’t buy the damn thing.
Iruka pours. Doesn’t think about that.
The sake is faintly yellow, cloudy- nigori- and tastes sweet on Iruka’s tongue, something of fresh apples and clean grass.
Iruka opens his mouth, closes it again. What he was going to say was, “thank you for having us,” polite reflex, but it’s more than that, and he knows it, won’t do Kakashi the disservice of saying it. Sighs instead, stares up at the last vestiges of gold lit clouds as they begin to go grey.
“You know,” Kakashi says, stops. He’s fiddling with the edge of his mask, looped round his throat, like he’s thinking about pulling it back up.
Iruka wants to reach over and yank it down, so he can see the long expanse of Kakashi’s long neck, further expose the twist of his wide, thin mouth.
Iruka doesn’t know what to say. Neither, apparently, does Kakashi.
It’s hard, when it’s not life or death. When there is no fearsome enemy, pressing at the gates. All there is now is the slog, are the secret tribunals, is the quiet redistribution of power as ROOT is slowly, painfully dissolved.
It echoes through Konoha society, small ripples that are nonetheless felt, even if most don’t know how or why.
“I don’t feel like it’s over,” Iruka bursts out, into the thick air. A cricket chirps, and there’s a whir in the air that sings of mosquitos, flocking at dusk. “I can’t- I can’t calm down, when I’m not-“
When I’m not here, is what he meant to say. What he wanted to say, didn’t dare to say, would rip his tongue out before saying, was saying on his knees with open palms.
The Hatake wards thrum under his hands, when he stretches out his chakra to feel them, safety and surety and something more than that, an instinctive checking of the self.
Kakashi looks at him with one grey eye, the scar on his mouth twisted strangely with an emotion that Iruka can’t name.
Kakashi stands before the Hokage, and wishes for his mask.
Iruka is still at the hospital, finally asleep, beaten and bloody and unbowed. Naruto asleep at his feet, curled up like a lapdog, the rest of the pack scattered round the room.
There is still dirt, in Kakashi’s hair.
“Is it enough?” Kakashi bites out the words, to the point, because he can’t imagine what will happen if it isn’t enough.
The Third looks old. He always looks old but now he looks ancient, and tired, and satisfied a little around the corners, barely, like he can’t quite manage to get it all the way there. “It’s enough,” he says, heavily. “We have as much direct confession of treason as we could’ve hoped for.”
He folds his hands in front of his face. “The thing to worry about it,” he says, heavily, and Kakashi swallows, “is if he is the head of the snake, or merely the heart.”
“You think there’s someone else.”
“Something is wrong with the timing, with the support he had. Something rotten down to the core.” The Hokage lights his pipe, and familiar drifts of smoke begin to leak out a moment later. “I worry.”
Kakashi stays silent. He doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t have the same eyes that the Hokage does, to keep both open in all the dappled light of the trees, brilliant slices of sunlight and deep shadows both. Doesn’t have two eyes at all, really. He’s been in the dark too long, has only just started letting his sight adjust.
Kakashi wonders how the Third does it. To think you are done with this balancing act, this game of chiaroscuro, to not only lead the village of trained killers with magic in their blood, but appease the daimyo and his far reaching power, his samurai and his laws. So many plates, each of them trying their damndest to leap off your flat fingertips. To think you are done, to set your successor in place, and then--
Kakashi wonders if Sarutobi loved Minato like he did. If he thought of him as another son. How it hurt him to have to come back to his place. If it hurt him to leave his bright-haired son on the streets, alone.
The thing is- it doesn’t matter, if it hurt Sarutobi. It didn’t matter if it hurt the Hokage, because he did it anyway.
Kakashi’s aware he doesn’t exactly have a straight and narrow moral code- his is more of a flexible, amorphous thing with sharp edges he butts up against occasionally- and wonders if he feels this more because Naruto is who he is- Minato’s son. Wonders if he would feel like this, yearning and coldly furious and tired, if Naruto were just Naruto, and no one else.
He doesn’t know.
What he does know is that the Hokage left Naruto, who is Minato’s son, despite it all, alone. And Kakashi has discovered that he doesn’t know if he can forgive him, for that.
Some things you can’t forgive. Some things you just have to accept, because that’s the way that they are, and you move forward. That’s the will of fire, after all. You always move forward, even when you’re injured, even when you’re in enemy territory, even when you’re on your last breath without a drop of chakra left in your body, because if you’re not moving forward-
Well, who’s going to rescue you? How else are you going to get yourself out?
“It’s just a hunch,” the Hokage admits after a long pause, “but shinobi should never let their instincts fall to the wayside. No matter how old they are,” and his eyes are bright, through the smoke.
“Sir,” Kakashi says, and takes it as the dismissal it is, whipping away without a leaf left behind.
He reappears in the hospital, on the roof instead of in the room because Iruka hates it when he body flickers directly into the room, is apt to throw whatever’s in reach at him. One time it was a spatula, wouldn’t have been so bad but a spot of hot grease came off and nearly got him in the eye.
The sun is setting, on the roof, and Kakashi hesitates for a moment before sitting down on the edge, letting his heels bounce against the sides and staring out over Konoha. It warms the city, the sunset, lets thick light filter through the leaves to cast warm summer shadows and gilts the edges when they rustle in the wind.
After another moment- and a careful glance around, a couple pulses of chakra to make extra sure no one was in the vicinity- Kakashi pulls down his mask.
The air always feels cool on the lower half of his face, and the wind is just a little stronger, a little more present this high up. Twists his hair into even more untameable heights, skates along the corner of his mouth, his cheekbone.
Kakashi breathes in, and lets out a very long breath.
It’s over. For now, it’s over.
Later, Kakashi will be summoned back to the Hokage’s office and stand at what passes for attention as the Hokage lays out summations and thoughts and full on guesses, and about half of them will turn out to be right. He’ll head out into the forests of Konoha, a ghost again minus a white mask, and add a few more lines to his Bingo Book entries.
Sharingan no Kakashi has been absent for far too long, wrapped up in the root system of ANBU. The Hokage knows this, will use him for a showy mission or two, make sure that the entirety of the ninja world knows that Konoha still has a master of the sharingan, isn’t afraid to use it--
He stops, frowns.
Kakashi shouldn’t be the only sharingan user. Not when--
He stops, groans out loud, flops onto his back, uncaring of the way the rocks scattered along the roof sting and dig into his back. Iruka is gonna fucking kill him if he says he might need to sort of adopt the last Uchiha.
“I’m sorry,” Kakashi says, and Iruka does blink at that, has to blink two, three more times as his eyes protest the lack of blinking with blurry tears.
“What?”
“I—“ Kakashi stops, swallows. It’s strange to watch the skin of his throat make the motion. Still strange to see any part of him exposed. Not strange at all, when he thinks about it.
Iruka gets why Kakashi hides behind so many masks. His every expression is painted on that fine-boned face, every twitch of his self-loathing and regret.
“Why are you sorry?” Iruka says, bewildered.
Kakashi shrugs, a little miserable. It’s in the twist of that thin, too-pretty mouth. “It’s not your fault,” Iruka says, still staring, and Kakashi’s face goes even more miserable and woebegone, almost comically so, except Iruka knows he means it, knows he really does think it’s his fault, is letting Iruka see it on his face.
“Kakashi,” Iruka says, and then he says it, just like that, amazed at his own easy admission, confession, again, his open palms, his outstretched hands--
“Kakashi, the only place I feel okay anymore is here.”
Thinks, Kakashi, the only place I feel safe anymore is with you, and then says,
“Kakashi, the only place I feel safe anymore is with you.”
Kakashi doesn’t flinch. His grey eye widens, and his expression flattens out, a mask of impassivity borne from shock.
Some things you have to say out loud. Just to be sure. Just to be safe.
It took Iruka a while to recover.
He had managed to nearly flay his dislocated wrist in his frantic quest for blood, the skin bunched and pulled like wrinkled sheets round the hurting bones. The bruise by his mouth takes weeks to fade fully, stays yellow and spotted for a long time.
The fuma shuriken, half shattered by the Hatake wards snapping into place like spiderwebs made of razors, had done more damage than Iruka would’ve liked to admit.
He had tried to stand after the impromptu huddle and nearly collapsed right after as pain split through his spine.
Kakashi got a grip right above his elbow- on the non-dislocated side, he noticed- and kept him upright even as his knees buckled from the sheer confusion of that much pain.
“Hospital,” he said, tightly, mouth a thin line.
Naruto sniffed, more to suck back snot it sounded like, and shoved himself up against Iruka’s legs like he was trying to shore up a collapsing wall with tears and mucus alone.
Iruka went to drop his hand atop his head, sucked in more air as his dislocated wrist protested the movement.
“Hospital now,” Kakashi said, started to half-carry Iruka through the gates.
The gates, where Mizuki still hung, mouth open, suspended in the Hatake ward’s genjutsu. Iruka swallowed, got his feet under him, and walked through.
“What about-” Iruka said, swallowing back acid pain. “-the report. And Naruto, you can’t take both of us, and Mizuki, and--”
“The dogs will deal with it,” Kakashi said. “I can come back after. I’ll grab Naruto then.” Naruto nodded rapidly, his red face and yellow hair blurring to orange fire in Iruka’s blurry vision. When did his vision get blurry?
“I can still walk, Kakashi,” Iruka said. “I’m gonna be fine.”
He was silent for a brief moment. “Let’s just get you checked out,” Kakashi said, and said, “Naruto, stay in the compound till the dogs tell you I’m back,” and said, “Pakkun, please--”
And then Iruka was the subject of the gentlest body flicker he had ever experienced, and blacked out at the gates of the hospital.
He found out later he hadn’t pulled out the entirety of the fuma shuriken. That part of it had shattered with the rest of it, right next to his spine. That the Hatake wards had taken the brunt of it, but that he was about half an inch and five steps from severing a vertebrae.
From never walking again, really. From never being a shinobi again.
That was a career ending injury. That was a life ending injury.
He didn’t, though. Had hands laid upon him, glowing green with chakra and life and they had plucked the shards of shattered shuriken out from the meat of his spine. Had to lay on his stomach for a solid four days while they stitched muscle back together, gossamer webs rebuilding, bitching about how his back itched.
He had a scar now, bigger than it might have been normally, from the tiny needle slivers of shrapnel they pulled out of him with tweezers. A shooting star of pale flesh laid along the length of his spine.
So it was that, and it was the awful regrowth of skin on his arm and hand- that was what really itched, and so Iruka thought about his back even harder, to avoid the spider-like feeling of newness on the knob of his wrist. And it was the genjutsu, of waking up sometimes gasping for breath, sleeping on his stomach not helping as everything compressed down on him, making him think he was once again drowning on dry land, lungs filled up with water that wasn’t there.
And it was the betrayal, too.
Mizuki had been his friend. Had been his friend for a long time, the only one he had, at times, and it wasn’t just the friendship he mourned but the strange loss of innocence, of sheer unthinking trust. Not just in Mizuki, but in Konoha, and how she operated.
That was what Iruka dwelled on, with his arms piled up under his chin- dislocated wrist wrapped in bandages, still splinted for safety- while Naruto slept in a pile of sunlight and Kakashi was out doing whatever the hell he did whenever he wasn’t in the room with Iruka.
That was what he dwelt on, the idea that Konoha wasn’t infallible, wasn’t the shining true flame of- maybe not righteousness, perhaps, but-
It was the loss of idealism, really. Like getting old and seeing a parent drunk for the first time. Like hearing a beloved mentor idly and thoughtlessly say something that turned your stomach. Like looking at the world through too sharp eyes, that the roses are brambles and thickets, turning your hand over to see too dark blood where the shards of tinted glass had torn your fingers open.
And it took Iruka a while to recover, from that.
“It’s not something I should be allowed to have,” Kakashi says, and it’s not broken, just a little desperate, more like he’s trying to convince himself than Iruka. Like he’s confused it could go any other way than slog and pain and blood money.
Kakashi, who thinks of himself as a human weapon, too much hurt to be handled with bare hands. And Iruka, who just told him that he’s— not.
“Seven seals,” Iruka sighs. “It doesn’t matter if you’re allowed to have it, it’s just- something that you have anyway.”
The last dredges of sunlight are almost gone, a bare bronze gild on the very border of the lawn, on the edge of Kakashi’s bare shoulders, the deep blue sky tinting everything somehow warm.
Kakashi lets out a very quiet breath. Not quite a sigh. Wets his lips with the tip of his tongue, and then takes a very long drink of sake— drains the cup.
When he sets it down, Iruka can barely hear the clink over the whine of mosquitoes, of his heart in his ears.
“I hated this place for a long time,” Kakashi says quietly. “It was always empty, except for— my father,” swallows, continues, “and it’s where I found him when he died. And then I left, after that, because it was just some place lonely and hateful.”
He stares out over the long grass. Lightning bugs blink. “I only ever came back when I needed a hole to hide in,” he says. “Where I could be sure I was the only one who would ever step through those gates.”
His next exhale is long and slow. “I didn’t feel like I deserved that either,” he says. “Still don’t. But I’m very glad I have it, now, because— keeping it through the years was worth it, to give you someplace safe. To give Naruto someplace safe,” he says, not quite belatedly, but enough that Iruka knows—
Iruka’s heart is a glowing ember in his chest, choking his throat, and he feels the same way he did when Cat came through his window to check on him, to have someone really, genuinely-- to care and be cared for.
“Careful,” Iruka says, pretends his voice isn’t rough and a little wobbly. “That’s how you pick up strays.”
Kakashi snorts. “I like dogs,” he says, gives Iruka a shy little grin. His canines are a little long, a little pointed. It’s cute. Iruka hasn’t noticed it before.
His hand, very gently, nudges Iruka’s.
A long moment, and the sun, finally, sets.
Tenzo has a slightly crazed look in his flat dark eyes, one that you could probably only see if you really knew him, or were looking for it.
Both of which Kakashi is, or does, whatever the correct verbiage is there, and he instinctively pulses out chakra to make sure he’s not about to walk into some sort of trap or chakra wire, stares at Tenzo suspiciously.
That just makes Tenzo grin horrible and too wide, and Kakashi starts looking for escape routes.
“Senpai,” he says, almost brightly-- maybe it’s not Tenzo, maybe it’s some sort of badly genjutsu’d clone?-- “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I’m always happy to talk to my most beloved kouhai,” Kakashi says. Starts walking faster.
Tenzo keeps pace with him easily. “You put my name up for captainship. Senpai.” he grits between that horrible smile.
Ah. That. “Congratulations,” Kakashi says. “I assume they gave it to you.” He doesn’t quite break into a run, but he’s certainly thinking about it.
“Why?” Tenzo says, finally breaking that sort of fatalistic cheerfulness.
“I think you’d be good at it,” Kakashi says, finally slows his steps. They’ve made it to the rooftops in Kakashi’s not quite serious desire to get away, and Konoha stretches out before them.
“I shouldn’t--” Tenzo says, and now there’s something miserable to his features that Kakashi turns to look at fully.
“I’m serious,” Kakashi says. “I do think you’d be good at it.”
“I was ROOT, senpai.” Tenzo says.
“So was I,” Kakashi says.
“But you left--”
“I got dragged out of the ANBU, and ROOT by default, kicking and screaming because I couldn’t stop having dreams about brutally murdering a six year old who drew me pictures in crayon,” Kakashi says flatly. “That’s the only reason I wasn’t still ROOT when it all-- happened.”
Tenzo stares at him.
Kakashi winces, glad his mask is covering the worst of it. Maybe too much information. “Tenzo,” he says, gentling his tone, “I recommended you because you were ROOT. They need someone in there who knows what- who knows how it worked. The structure, and who was a part of it, and who really believed in it, and who was just angry and doing a job. And because I think you’lll be good at it.”
Tenzo stares at him a moment longer, and-- he looks his age, for once. Looks nineteen and lost and a little scared. And Kakashi still thinks he’s gonna do a good job.
Probably a better one than Kakashi ever did, that’s for damn sure.
“Thank you, senpai,” Tenzo says after a moment. He turns to go, stops just before his last hand sign, and says, innocent, “Say hello to the missus, would you?”
Kakashi swears, long and creatively, at the leaf that falls at his feet.
Stays on the rooftop another long moment, just wondering for a moment how he got here. What luck he used up, to get this, for a moment.
Kakashi would like to think he’s not a fool, or at least he’s a realist. He’s waiting for the axe to fall, Damocles’ sword to break. Probably always will be.
There’s something in him, however, call it the will of fire or inherent stupidity or just a stupid unbreakable piece of hope, that makes him hold onto the sword with both hands. Right onto the blade. It might hurt a little now, will hurt even worse later, if the thread holding it breaks, but for right now--
Right now, he thinks it’s worth it. Just to have this.
Something to come home too, sacred domesticity. Something to look forward to. Something to pass along, to prove that all the bloody knowledge in his head can be put to something good for someone else, even if it’s just once, even if it’s for his ungrateful, mean, too-wise by far kouhai. The little shit.
He will pass along his hello, however. Iruka likes Tenzo.
It’s a full moon.
Suddenly, Iruka snorts.
“What?” Kakashi says, and for a moment Iruka feels bad, because he looks genuinely worried.
“You know,” Iruka says, touches the tip of his tongue to his teeth, because he is, at heart, still a bit of a prankster, “I’m beginning to think your reputation is undeserved.”
“…What?”
“Your predilection for Icha Icha,” Iruka says, irrepressible smile playing around the corners of his mouth now.
“What?”
“You walk around reading porn all day!” Iruka say, turns fully toward him now, grinning a little too wide but too damn happy to do anything about it, “I just assumed—“
“Are you asking me to ravish you?” Kakashi says with one eyebrow raised, and Iruka bursts out laughing.
“Ravish?” He says, in between giggles.
“Well, forgive me,” Kakashi says, but his lip twitches, “there wasn’t a lot of time to— I’ve been in the ANBU since I was twelve—“
“Honestly,” Iruka smiles, “I have to do everything myself.”
When he leans forward and kisses Kakashi, he’s still grinning, unable to do anything but. It’s probably not a very good first kiss because of that, a lot of teeth, but after a brief moment Kakashi gets the idea.
It turns out Kakashi is a good kisser, or maybe it’s just because it’s Kakashi, as cheesy as that is. Makes Iruka shiver when one of those teeth brushes against his lower lip, pulls Iruka closer with an insistent hand on his hip, and Iruka pulls back after a moment.
“You—“ he says, and Kakashi is going to be absolutely fucking insufferable with how breathless his voice sounds, already looks it with the way his eye goes even more heavy-lidded than normal. “Been in the ANBU since you were twelve, you’re so full of shit—“
“I more meant that as the ignorance of traditional socio-romantic cues,” Kakashi says beatifically. “Also, you make me nervous.”
That, of all things, is what makes Iruka blush, and Kakashi grins, wider this time, less shy, and this time he’s the one who leans in, gets a hand in Iruka’s hair, more confident.
He tastes like the sake they were drinking earlier, still clean and summer like, communion, like every cup they told secrets and admitted truths over, this, a bright thread.
Iruka wraps his hand around Kakashi’s shoulder, right over the ANBU tattoo, holding on a little too hard, digs in his fingers like he wants to leave a bruise, wants to cover up previous marks of ownership with his own.
Kakashi goes stiff for the briefest instant, then nearly boneless, pushes forward more insistently, and Iruka cups his face with his other hand, the whole exposed plane of it.
“Yeah,” Kakashi says, nonsensically, when they break apart, his eye blown black and wide and shining in the dark of the night, “I’d give you the house, for that, if I hadn’t already.”
Iruka snorts out a laugh, buries his head in the crook of Kakashi’s neck and shoulder for a moment, like he had in the kitchen before going to Danzo, but this time he’s shaking with laughter, not tears, and when he comes back up for air Kakashi’s still smiling, barely, softer.
His hand bumps Iruka’s again. This time Iruka takes it.
A few weeks later Naruto comes home from the Inuzuka's pleased as punch and full of way too much energy, and so Iruka sets him up on the back deck in the sunshine with a pot of ink and some thin paper to practice drawing seals.
Naruto’s always been interested in seals— you couldn’t really live with Iruka and not be interested in them, at least a little— but his determination to actually learn them had exploded after their horrible little adventure in taking down ROOT. That, and Kakashi’s quiet explanation of Naruto’s last name, how the Uzumaki clan were well known for their seals, how they had been powerful and renowned, family knowledge that Iruka had been desperate to give Naruto and couldn’t, was horribly, wildly glad Kakashi could. To give him something back of his lineage. To give him anything.
So Naruto settles at the low table with a minimum of complaining and Kakashi and Iruka sprawl on the steps leading into the grass, soaking up the last of late summer sunshine, and have a lazy argument.
“You should get rid of your apartment,” Kakashi says. “You’re never there anyway—“
“That’s because school isn’t in session,” Iruka says. School had ended while Iruka had been laid up in the hospital for those few weeks, wrapped up with a very lovely, very bright card signed by students of all the classes Iruka helped out with.
Iruka would take over his very own class for the first time that fall. He was pretending he wasn’t worried about it.
“You hate it there anyway,” Kakashi continues, relentless. “You know you’ll feel better here—“
Oh, Iruka doesn’t regret that confession, per se, but Kakashi can be a dog with a bone when he finds out a piece of information that serves him. It’s what makes him a good shinobi, after all.
“It’s convenient for my commute,” Iruka says.
“So you’re only planning to come back on the weekends?” Kakashi says, unimpressed. He probably already knows he’s won this argument, won it as soon as Iruka kissed him in the backyard with his hand wrapped tight over his tattoo. “And stay in that empty apartment all week? Alone?”
Iruka paused. “It’s just so far,” he says weakly after a moment.
“If you’re worried about your virtue,” Kakashi suddenly leered, leaning heavily into Iruka’s shoulder, all comforting weight and warm skin. It was a little disturbing how Kakashi’s smirk became attractive instead of annoying when you could see the curved line of his mouth, the sharp line of his collarbones and heavy muscle in his shoulder in his loose tank top.
“We could take separate rooms,” Kakashi was saying, “of course, then I’d have to figure out how to sneak into yours, but there’s something kind of sexy there, I agree. Would you set wards to try and keep me out? There’s a scene in Icha Icha—“
Iruka blinked at said collarbone for a moment, then goes red. Says in a half-whispered squawk, “What are you reading, it’s rotted your brain, you massive pervert, you know he can hear you—“
“He’s not paying attention,” Kakashi says easily. “You know, really, you’re the one that started this whole thing.”
“This whole thing—“ Iruka started indignantly, then, “what do you mean I started it?”
“You put my chakra into your wards first,” and damn him to hell and back but he makes it sound absolutely filthy—
“I— what—,” Iruka sputters, “That was my apartment, not a—“
“Still stands,” Kakashi says, smug and mouth curling up like a cats.
Iruka throws a pen at him.
After a moment, he says thoughtfully, “You know, wouldn’t it be me sneaking into your rooms? I feel like it makes for a better narrative considering I have more experience, both in seals and in—“ and is incredibly pleased when Kakashi’s pale skin goes pink all the way to his ears.
“Can dish it out but can’t take it,” Iruka says happily, gets right up in Kakashi’s space-- because he’s really not trying to traumatize Naruto, and it makes Kakashi’s visible eye blow dark and wide-- and says, lowly, “and here I thought I was supposed to be the wife, but I’m thinking you might be more interested--” and Kakashi goes from pink to red. Iruka grins, lets up a little, lets Kakashi wriggle closer so they’re pressed together, thigh to shoulder.
“I suppose there’s no sense in paying for the place if there’s free lodging right here,” Iruka sighs after a moment. “My teacher’s salary isn’t that big.”
Kakashi turns, smiles at him shy and happy, all white teeth and too large canines, and Iruka has to kiss him for that, trauma be damned, even if that’s the exact moment Naruto decides to tune back into the conversation and loudly espouses his disgust.
They do break apart after a moment and let Naruto tell them that all the Inuzakas were very impressed by the fact that he lived with so many nin dogs, and that they listened to him, and—
“Did you tell them that they weren’t your nin dogs?” Iruka asks, amused.
Naruto stops, glares at him, angry little kitten face. “They are so,” he huffs. “I’m gonna sign a contract with all of them as soon as I figure out how to stop lighting the paper on fire.”
“Ah, well as long as you’re practicing chakra control,” Iruka says comfortably.
“Did no one think to ask my pack about this?” Kakashi asks, more to the room at large than Iruka or Naruto specifically. “Or me, perhaps, considering it’s my contract?”
“Biscuit said she would sign with me once I was done being useless,” Naruto says, puts his pointy little nose in the air. “So there.”
Iruka slaps a hand over his mouth to stop the shocked laugh from escaping, but it’s over once he makes eye contact with Kakashi’s wide eye, raised eyebrow.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Iruka says in between gasps of laughter, trying to force his mouth into something serious. “It’s good to have goals.”
This, of all things, is what causes Kakashi to break, and Naruto and Iruka both turn to look at him, shocked and open mouthed, as Kakashi honestly to god giggles, a little hoarse and high-pitched, his mouth stretched wide like it’s almost forgotten how.
“I didn’t even know you could do that,” Naruto exclaims, throws his arms up and lets ink dribble off his brush down his arm.
Kakashi’s got his own hand over his mouth now, half-laughing still but more surprised, his own gaze a little strange and confused, like he too didn’t know if he could do that.
Iruka’s heart is so full it almost hurts, twinges in his chest.
“I knew you could,” he declares, gets up and gives into the urge to throw his arms round Kakashi’s shoulders, pulls his hand away and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth where the scar is. “You used to giggle all the time under your ANBU mask, pretending you were coughing.”
“Iruka,” Kakashi groans— he hates it when Iruka brings up Hound, or ANBU, twitchy and paranoid someone will find out that they’ve both sort of committed high treason— “I wasn’t giggling, and don’t say that out loud—“
“Why not?” Iruka says, teasing and saucy and not bothering to hide his own grin, clear under the bright sun. “Who would hear us?”
“You can laugh at home, Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto says, like Kakashi’s being an idiot, which he might be. “It’s just us.”
“That’s right,” Iruka says. “If not home, where?”
Kakashi turns his hand over, so they’re palm to palm. Iruka can feel the long scar across his hand, like a heart line, carved into his palm. He raises Iruka’s hand to his mouth, presses a dry kiss to Iruka’s split knuckles. “I see,” he says, quiet and with the ghost of laughter lingering around his mouth, his bare face, a gift, a moment of still-shocking trust—
And Naruto’s hair dandelion bright in the sun, the best kind of alchemy, splattered in ink and happy, straight shouldered and open—
And Iruka, here, the Hatake wards running warm under them, more solid than bedrock, the semi-permanent ache in his back and wrist, worth it, for this, stability and domesticity and home, at last, all at once—
“I’ll remember that.”
In the sunlight, everything is gold.