Chapter Text
They found each other on the old rooftop after the funeral. Neither needed to say a word. Iruka just made a place for Naruto between loosely crossed legs and held him. The older ninja's chest was a sanctuary to lean against.
But that wasn't enough anymore. Iruka needed a sanctuary, too. He found it in the juncture between Naruto's ear and shoulder.
They sat there, hair blowing in the wind. Naruto had already shed his tears. It was the quiet that he sought, not the privacy of his old spot.
That was just as well, because Kakashi found them. Just as wordlessly, he sat beside them. Yamato was soon to follow. And where Yamato went, Sai also appeared.
Miracle of miracles, Sai seemed to recognize the mood, and maintained the solemn silence. Either that, or he wisely followed Yamato's lead. He'd been doing that a lot lately.
Naruto didn't mind the extra company. It wasn't exactly a date. Although, it was the closest thing to a date that he and Iruka had shared for a while, and for that, he was sorry.
Between training, the graverobbing investigation, Sora, and the attack on Konoha, he hadn't found the time to be a very present boyfriend. Worse, he'd been spending a lot of time with Kakashi, and that had its complications. But Iruka didn't seem to hold any of it against him. He really was the best.
When the sun set, Naruto got to his feet and announced that it was time to resume his training. All the more, because Asuma had been strong and smart, and Akatsuki were still out there.
Yamato concurred, and he and Sai were up and moving without prompting. But Kakashi stayed. And so did Iruka.
They probably hadn't really talked in years. Maybe they needed to.
Unabashedly, Naruto kissed his boyfriend's lips and then waved his two favorite senseis goodbye. Iruka deserved the ammunition.
*
"It won't be long before Shikamaru's team decides to move against Hidan and Kakuzu," Kakashi predicted, staring at the grossly inaccurate representation of Minato's face engraved in the far cliff. "I'm not letting them go alone. But if anything happens to me―"
"Feigning a lack of confidence? That's a new one," Iruka scoffed.
Kakashi could have pointed out that the pair of strange and deadly Akatsuki members had taken out Asuma, and with Shikamaru's brain on the job to boot. He didn't bother with the obvious. At least, not regarding Asuma.
"Naruto will really need you," he said instead. "More than ever."
"So don't get killed," Iruka said in as near to a snarl as Kakashi had ever heard. "If you hurt Naruto like that, I will never, ever forgive you."
Eyeing him side-long, Kakashi tilted his head. "I didn't think forgiveness was on the table."
"Try asking for it," Iruka sighed, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
But Kakashi shook his head, gaze back on Minato-as-stuffy-old-geezer. "I can't ask for what I don't deserve. I get it now, what you were trying to tell me back then. The difference between care and physicality. I could have found other ways to comfort Naruto and keep Sasuke from going off the deep end. I just didn't know any better."
"Was it the Fourth who taught you how to love like that?"
Turning his head toward Iruka, Kakashi realized he'd never given the man enough credit. Iruka was quiet, simple, and controlled. But he was also incredibly observant. It was part of what made him such an effective teacher. The children were safe with him in ways that mattered far beyond combat skill.
"He taught me to survive like that," Kakashi whispered, finally putting words to what he had been struggling to understand. "I might not be here if he hadn't." To his great relief, Iruka gave a nod of acknowledgement. "But Naruto and Sasuke were never that broken. And...I know, it doesn't absolve either Minato or I that I was, but...I'm learning. And I'm sorry. For the way I treated you, keeping you at arms length while holding on with my thighs."
"They're nice thighs," Iruka muttered, looking anywhere but at Kakashi. "I wasn't exactly clawing at the floorboards to get away."
Regardless of the encouraging intention behind those words, Kakashi winced at the image. He hoped Iruka's averted gaze would miss it, but that observant nature just didn't quit.
"Why the change of heart?" Iruka challenged. "What made you come to terms with all this?"
Debating how much was his own to confess and how much a betrayal of Itachi was a confusing exercise. It left him mute for too long, prodding Iruka's temper.
"You think I don't see what's in Naruto's heart? I know how he feels about you, Kakashi. You might say your private life is none of my business anymore―if it ever was―but if you break Naruto because you can't open up to―"
"It was basically rape," Kakashi said dully. That was the only way he could bypass the chaotic conflict of feelings where Itachi was concerned. Turn it all off. Take feelings out of the equation. "Itachi had an adolescent crush on me and when he trapped me in his genjutsu, that desire leaked in. I spent 72 hours straight getting skewered, and in between, he blurred every boundary between pain and pleasure. Even the phantom memory of being with Minato made me nauseous. That's what happened three years ago. That's what changed."
The expression Iruka wore was comically on point. The scrunched-up face, the tears, the accusation in his eyes that condemned Kakashi's years of silence. Textbook Iruka.
Except, he didn't fling the expected scold. He launched himself at Kakashi, holding him in an embrace that seemed stronger than recollection accounted for.
"That's awful," Iruka wailed. "For love to be twisted like that, to backlash... You needed a hug and I gave you blame instead. I'm so sorry."
Sorry? Iruka? For what? "I...couldn't handle touch," Kakashi said instead of expressing his shock. "I was just glad you and Naruto had each other."
Recoiling, Iruka looked guilty to the point of ridiculousness. So Kakashi leaned over and drew him back into a gentle embrace.
It was nice. Iruka knew just how to hold a person. Kakashi wished he'd appreciated that more.
"I'm relearning the boundaries between touch, tenderness, and torment," Kakashi whispered. "Itachi's helping me unravel the knots."
Iruka stiffened. "Itachi? Itachi's helping you?"
Cursing, Kakashi pulled away, thinking fast. But he had already been lulled by the nostalgic contact, and in his haste to put Iruka's mind at ease, he had let slip the wrong secret.
"Hear me out," he breathed. If anyone could give someone the benefit of the doubt, it was Iruka. He would listen. He would help Kakashi understand. "What if―hypothetically―Itachi isn't who we think he is? Who he wants us to think he is. What if that story about testing his strength was just a cover up?"
"To hide what?" Iruka cried, looking like he had a lot more to yell about. "What are you getting at? That Itachi's secretly not such a bad guy? Decent people don't perpetuate genocide! They don't murder their parents!"
"Who does?" Kakashi thrust back. "Because I worked alongside him and I didn't see a cold-blooded murderer. I saw someone who hated to witness human suffering and did whatever was necessary to end it. So tell me, who kills their family and countless others just to test themselves? Not the boy I knew."
"But why, Kakashi? What could he possibly have been covering up that would justify so much death?"
Kakashi hurried on. "Something terrible. Something about the Uchiha clan. Maybe even something the Third couldn't countenance."
"Have you lost your damn mind?" Iruka wheezed, eyes flared like saucers. "Where would you even get an idea like that?"
"He told me, Iruka―not about the massacre, but about what the clan elders did to him. He was just a kid, and nobody saw it. Nobody even suspected. I didn't... And sometimes, he gives away more than he intends when he's helping me work through the knots. Maybe because the part of him he gave to me is the part that loved me. I don't know. But I think he did it as much for the village as for himself."
"Kakashi, you aren't making any sense." There was a pleading tone to Iruka's appeal as he took Kakashi's face in his hands. "What has Itachi done to you? How can I help you?"
Taking a deep breath, Kakashi began again from the beginning. His only hope that he wasn't reading hints that weren't there or, indeed, out of his damn mind, was contingent on Iruka's concession that there might be something to his theory. That there might be something of Itachi to save.
If Itachi could be redeemed, anyone could.
*
Iruka didn’t go home right away. He walked. Down to the street level, past shuttered shops and lanterns guttering in the wind, across empty training fields... His body moved on instinct, but his mind lagged behind, stumbling over Kakashi’s words like stones in a riverbed.
It was basically rape.
The phrase kept replaying, blunt and clinical, as if Kakashi had stripped the emotion from it so Iruka wouldn’t drown. But Iruka drowned anyway. He felt it in his throat, in the tightness behind his eyes, in the way his breath kept catching like he’d been punched. He stopped beneath a sturdy tree, leaning for balance as he pressed a hand to his sternum, as if he could steady the ache.
What Kakashi had revealed to him in explicit detail intended to convince was too convoluted for a black and white verdict. It was rape, and it had damaged Kakashi with all the violence and horror to be expected. That much, Iruka understood without question. But it was also evidence of a heartbreaking history that changed how Iruka―how everyone―should interpret Itachi's tragic actions.
It was too much. Too tangled. Too cruel.
Passing back through the village proper, Iruka sank back against the cold wall of a closed tea shop and let his head fall forward. The village was quiet—funeral quiet, grief quiet—and for the first time in years, Iruka felt like the fledgling academy teacher again, the one who held too many children’s secrets and not enough answers.
Still, Kakashi’s voice echoed in his memory. I’m relearning the boundaries between touch, tenderness, and torment.
His fingers curled into fists of helplessness―anger and sorrow with no outlet. He had blamed Kakashi, resented him. He had thought Kakashi was withholding out of arrogance, or emotional cowardice, or even just simple indifference.
But Kakashi had been hurt―hurt in a way Iruka hadn’t even imagined. Even before Itachi... Before Iruka had first been swept up in a crush fueled by confidence and passion he'd never realized were open wounds.
In speaking of Itachi, Kakashi had let slip things about the Fourth―a deeply sexual and emotional history that finally shed light on Kakashi's views about sex and mentorship.
He had been so hurt all along―hurt in a way that made Iruka’s stomach twist with guilt. He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the ground, knees drawn up, arms draped loosely over them. His breath fogged in the cool night air.
“Idiot,” he whispered, not sure whether he meant Kakashi or himself.
He knew what Naruto did not. He was old enough to remember Namikaze, Minato, and to see the resemblance in that golden hair and the bright blue eyes. On the surface, Naruto was the spitting image of his father. But he would be mortified if he ever learned how Minato had strung Kakashi along, caught between man and wife like a pet that needed too much attention...
Naruto—bright, earnest, reckless Naruto―loved Kakashi with a sincerity that made Iruka’s chest ache. He didn’t know the half of it. He didn’t know what Kakashi had survived. He didn’t know how fragile Kakashi’s healing was.
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Iruka wondered what would become of them all. Naruto, Kakashi...himself... How much more could any of them handle?
He didn’t know. But he knew one thing with absolute clarity: Naruto would choose Kakashi again and again, even if it broke him. And Kakashi—Kakashi was finally trying. Finally opening up. Finally trusting someone enough to speak the truth. Iruka couldn’t abandon him now.
He stood slowly, rubbing warmth into his thighs. His legs felt steadier than his heart.
At least, until he let his thoughts drift back to Itachi―the villain of everyone's story. A prodigy, a murderer, and a defector. None of that had changed. The facts remained unaltered.
But the boy Kakashi had described—hurt, used, twisted into something unrecognizable by the people who should have protected him... If Iruka had worried for Naruto, if he lamented that Kakashi had been hurt by his experiences, then what Itachi had been through in his young life was knowledge too heavy to bear. How could he blame that child? That boy of just thirteen years, who had been abused beyond forgiveness and too numbed by use to reach for the one person he'd felt connected to...
Iruka didn’t know if Kakashi was right about Itachi's motives in the end. He didn’t know if redemption was possible, no matter the cause. He didn’t know if Itachi deserved anyone's grace, let alone Kakashi's. But he knew Kakashi needed to believe it so. And Iruka—Iruka could hold that belief for him, at least for the present.
He would not accept the possibility that Kakashi may not survive facing the Akatsuki duo who had taken Asuma from them. When Kakashi returned, he would be ready to talk things through more fully―to make sure Kakashi knew he didn't have to answer every impossible question alone.
*
"Shikamaru."
Crouching in the dark before dawn, just far enough from where Ino and Choji were gathering water to hear any signs of trouble, Shikamaru didn't react to his name. He was half-consumed by the darkness of the woods, as though becoming one with the shadows he wielded.
"I don't know," he said, only after Kakashi deliberately crunched leaves under foot moving closer. He was answering a question Kakashi hadn't yet thought to ask. "Despite what I told the Hokage, I don't know if I expect to survive this. There are too many variables, and my priority isn't my survival. It's taking them out."
"Wanting revenge is understandable, but―"
"This isn't about revenge," Shikamaru muttered, flicking the lid of Asuma's lighter.
Open. Closed. Open. Closed.
"What, then?" Kakashi prompted when he seemed lost in the clicks.
"It's about seeing things through. I know now what I have to protect."
"And what's that?"
"The children. They're precious beyond rank or riches, and they need our protection."
Kakashi was silent for a moment. Then, he leaned down, reaching out to lightly touch the back of Shikamaru's hand, wrapped around the lighter.
"Asuma was blunt, and maybe a little rough, but I'm certain you were precious to him, too."
"What? Of course I was," Shikamaru scoffed. "But I haven't been a kid for a long time. He never treated me like I was."
"And you wish he had?" Kakashi wondered. Had Asuma's relationship with Shikamaru assumed too much? Had it done the boy harm?
Had Kakashi been harmed? Had Naruto? Sasuke?
He lowered himself to his knees, arm loosely draped about Shikamaru, still touching his hand.
"Why would I want that?" Shikamaru responded. "What's with you, Kakashi-sensei?"
"Look." Kakashi sighed. "Nobody is going to give you the space to grieve as a lover. If there's anything you want to get off your chest, I'm listening."
"In sorry, what?" Shikamaru spoke the question in a low, dry tone, turning to stare him down. "Just what, exactly, do you think is going on, here?"
Kakashi blinked, quickly reorganizing his assessment. He retracted his touch on instinct. "I... I could have sworn..."
"Out with it."
"Asuma was totally smitten with you."
"So you assumed he was robbing the cradle?" Shikamaru asked incredulously.
"You said yourself he never treated you like a kid."
"Mentally. Emotionally. Not... Wow. You really thought he was screwing me? I thought you knew him better than that. He was a jerk sometimes, sure, but he wasn't fucking depraved."
"Forgive me. I didn't mean to imply that he was," Kakashi backpedalled, hurrying to his feet and brushing off imaginary leaves. "It's just... It's a pretty common thing between shinobi as close as you two were."
"Please. That'd be like you banging Naruto. Gross." Shikamaru rose in turn, pocketing the lighter.
"Haha. Yeah..."
"I guess I can kinda understand why you'd think that, though," the strategist said, then, staring of into the gloom between the trees. "I mean, I love him. And he loved me. But just knowing that was all we needed, you know? The connection we had wouldn't have meant as much if we'd gotten physical."
Phantom arms wrapped around Kakashi, Minato's lips at his throat. He shivered. The night air didn't know he was being held.
He wanted to tell Shikamaru that wasn't true―that he didn't know what he was missing. But that felt cruel. Asuma was gone forever. There was no point in lamenting what could never be.
Besides...maybe there was something to it. Kakashi honestly didn't know if it would have changed anything if he or Itachi had acted on their connection before it was too late. Maybe things would have turned out differently. Or, maybe, it would have just hurt that much more when they didn't.
Clearing his throat, Kakashi shook off the private thoughts, rubbing the back of his head. He refocused on Shikamaru.
"Revenge or not, I'm here to make sure you don't throw your life away. Losing Asuma was a blow to all of us. We can't afford to lose you. Asuma would never forgive me."
And that was that. The sun was climbing, the gaps between trees lightening. Choji and Ino found them, and the team set off without another word until it was time to discuss strategy.