Chapter Text
Jiraiya gives him the book, after Rin but before Minato.
“Read it,” he says, ruffling Kakashi’s hair like he’s a little kid. He should know better. There are no little kids left, in the wake of the war. “You need to lighten up.”
Kakashi frowns at the label on the back: R-rated, 18+. By rights, he shouldn’t open this slim, obnoxiously orange volume for another five years. Breaking the rules makes you scum, right?
But he’s worse than scum twice over, and Jiraiya gave an order. So long as he follows the orders of good men, better men, men like his teacher and his teacher’s teacher, Kakashi isn’t entirely worthless.
Konoha is treacly with shadows on the night of a new moon. Kakashi nods to Jiraiya and stalks into the darkness, past the bench where the old sage sits – which happens to offer a perfect panoramic view of the houses that face the park, and the lit interiors of their bedrooms.
“And go eat dinner at Kushina’s sometime!” Jiraiya calls after him, prompting the swish of several closing curtains. “She worries!”
She shouldn’t. Kakashi pretends not to hear.
The Hokage’s guard get a single hour of downtime per shift, before or after their allotted sleep periods, which rotate around the clock to dissuade assassination attempts and (Kakashi can only assume) cause maximum disruption to his circadian rhythm. His body’s heavy and sluggish, still adjusting to its new unpredictable timetable, but he staves off exhaustion with stubborn pinches to his forearm and spends his hour in the ANBU barracks recc room, reading Icha Icha Paradise cover to cover.
The prose isn’t complex – not by Kakashi’s standards, who devoured chuunin-level treatises on chakra control techniques when he was still at the Academy. Not much in the way of plot, either. A kunoichi and a shinobi run into each other in a small town on the outskirts of Fire Country. At first, their relationship seems tempestuous – the boy is a total dunce, the girl something of a snob. But their feelings develop (as promised on the blurb) over the course of a sultry, steam-soused summer.
Then they have sex. A lot of sex.
Everything ends rather abruptly after that. Kakashi stares at the last line on the last page (And they both lived happily ever after… until next time!) before he shuts the book and stares at the far wall of the recc room instead.
He isn’t sure what he’s supposed to get out of this.
It can’t be educational; Minato’s already had The Talk with him. Kakashi knows what bit goes where, how to avoid disease, and how to ensure he sires no children that could one day be use as hostages to lure him in and kill him. What more is there?
A familiar white mask slides into his peripheral vision. “What you got there, Pup?”
Hound doesn’t answer to Pup, but Rats aren’t easily deterred. When Kakashi doesn’t reply, the older ANBU shuffles along the wood bench until he catches a glimpse of the title. His harsh laugh draws attention, other ANBU looking up from where they’ve been oiling their weapons and finalising the brush strokes on their exploding scrolls.
“Oh, damn! Not such a pup anymore, huh?”
Kakashi is not blushing. He is not. Though even if he was, it wouldn’t matter, so long as he has his mask on. Rule 31: a shinobi must never show weakness.
“Yet you are and always will be vermin,” he drawls.
Rat laughs again and cuffs him on the head, and dies on the next mission out to Mizu no Kuni, so that’s that.
Kakashi didn’t notice when Jiraiya left, but he lopes back into Konoha a month later, grin as broad and troublesome as the rest of him. He heads straight to the Hokage’s office, where he foregoes greeting Minato-sensei in favour of pestering his smallest bodyguard.
“Well, brat?” he booms, clapping Hound on the arm. His wide, warm palm covers the new tattoo. It’s still a little tender. “What did you think? First in the series, so not my best work – I was finding my stride as an author! But it lays the groundwork for what’s to come, neh? The publishers are already clamouring for a sequel! Soon you’ll find Icha Icha books in every shop on the continent!”
Hound does not care about the expansion of Jiraiya’s erotica empire. Hound cares only about protecting the Hokage. Hound does not reply.
Jiraiya’s grin fades, but only slightly. “You’ll have to tell me what you thought when you’re off-duty, Kakashi,” he says, and ruffles his hair again.
He’s lucky he doesn’t lose the hand. If Kakashi isn’t a child, Hound definitely isn’t. Jiraiya knows what this porcelain mask means, with the red stripes curling around its cheeks and black slits for eyes. He flouts the regulations anyway – ANBU have no name, ANBU have no will but that of their Hokage, ANBU are a kunai held in the fist of the village that kills without question or hesitation – presumably for no purpose but to mess with him.
Kakashi might be angry about that. So long as Jiraiya isn’t threatening the Hokage, Hound has zero shits to give.
He stands stiff as the doorpost outside Minato’s office as Jiraiya barges in. Staring straight ahead. And, later that night, once Minato's finished his paperwork and Hound is relieved, he slips his white mask into his locker at the ANBU barracks and ensures his black one is snug across the bridge of his nose before sliding into the shadows of Konoha, smooth as a blade into its sheathe.
He runs over the rooftops, his steps light as raindrops, sandals tapping the curved, sun-baked red tiles. Velvet midnight moves around him, a crescent moon squints through a veil of cloud. Kakashi sniffs the wind, seeking Jiraiya’s particular concoction of sweat, sake and toad. He adjusts his heading, nods to the ANBU patrol heading south from Hokage Tower, and wends around pointy gables and chimneys, jumping from balcony to balcony until he spies the welcoming golden glow of a streetside sushi joint.
Jiraiya sits on a barstool, posture loose, shoulders slumped. Kakashi suspects he’s been waiting for him. He jumps down to street level and pads closer, not really trying to sneak, but interested to know how close he’ll get.
The answer being: not very. Jiraiya grunts a greeting while Kakashi’s still five metres out and pats the vacant high stool beside him. Kakashi gives up on stealth. He clambers aboard, his sandalled feet not quite resting on the rung. Jiraiya’s are flat on the ground. Though his weathered cheeks are flushed from the contents of the little clay bottle beside his half-cleared plate, his eyes are sharp as caltrops.
“Well?” says Jiraiya, more to that bottle than Kakashi. “It’s not actually published, yet. I gave you a free preview copy in the hopes of getting your feedback, you know. That’s how this works.”
“Yes, sir.” Kakashi delivers his report, straight-backed like he’s in the mission office, paring the book down to its fundamentals: the plot, the main characters, their physical descriptions, their strengths and weaknesses. He retells the story from start to finish before imparting his opinions. “The writing was accessible and clear. The descriptions were vivid.” Very, very vivid, in some cases. Ugh. “I encountered only five minor grammatical errors – mistaken wa and ga, and ni and de particles, plus you used aru instead of iru when talking about Akari-chan’s pet bird. And…”
He hesitates. This is Minato-sensei’s sensei, after all. One of Konoha’s greatest legends, in the flesh. But while he may be an unparalleled warrior, Jiraiya’s literary skills leave much to be desired.
What the hell, Kakashi thinks. If Jiraiya wanted his ego stoked, he chose the wrong reviewer.
“I don’t understand why Akari-chan fell in love with Hirayuki-kun,” he complains, crossing his arms. “He’s so loud. It’s annoying. Akari-chan should’ve rejected him – she would’ve been better off alone.”
Jiraiya hums. He pours himself another clear, sharp-smelling shot.
Kakashi waits for a reply patiently, then impatiently. He shifts on his stool, rubbing his nose through the mask in an effort to dispel the stink of alcohol. He gets the sense he’s failed some sort of test. He’s not used to it. It’s unpleasant.
Oh – wait. The truth of this situation strikes him with the precision of a kunai to the heart. He’s approached this all wrong; Jiraiya was never looking to be flattered. He must’ve hidden a code in the book, to assess Kakashi’s abilities! He wants to ensure Minato is in good hands.
Kakashi’s fists clench, under the lip of the sushi bar's polished yew counter. “I’ll read it again,” he promises, hopping off his stool. “I’ll understand it this time, I swear!”
Jiraiya chuckles, picking niri from between his teeth. “You do that. It’ll grow on you, kiddo. Give it time.” He gestures to his dinner. “Want some?”
Kakashi glances at the sushi rolls. Their fillings spill out of the white rice like the marrow in the core of a bone. His intestines lurch, a slippery, writhing knot of eels. “No. I have food pills in my locker.”
“What sort of boy prefers food pills to Chirashi?”
Kakashi gestures down at himself.
That earns a laugh. “So, he does have a sense of humour!”
Not really. Obito once said that if Kakashi ever wanted to tell a joke he’d need to spend a week in hospital first, having the foot-long pole extracted from his ass. But Kakashi countered with ‘at least I’ll have plenty of time to ask the surgeon if they know how to implant talent into an Uchiha’, and though Rin had scolded them both for being so mean, she'd been giggling – so maybe the jury's still out, on that one.
Jiraiya sneaks in one last hair ruffle (Sage, the bastard’s fast) before Kakashi can duck away. “Hey, don’t scowl. That’s a good thing. It means there’s hope for you, yet.”
Kakashi reads Icha Icha Paradise again. And again, and again.
He reads the first word of every line, then every letter. Then he runs through his basic code-cracking training, searching for patterns, numerical alphabet links, repeated phrases and motifs.
Nothing.
Finally, short on ideas, he sounds out the katakana of every word backwards. It’s utter nonsense. A part of him – the ambitious part, the haughty part (the part Obito hated, the part that doesn’t deserve to live) – is grievously offended that the pervy sage has outsmarted him. Then again, Jiraiya is one of the legendary Sannin, taught by Old Man Sarotobi himself. He’s roamed the shinobi world for far longer than Kakashi’s been alive – longer than his father was alive, too. He must know codes the Leaf have never heard of.
When Gai shows up midway through Akari-chan’s page-long orgasm, Kakashi is almost glad for the distraction.
“Rival!” he calls, waving like he’s trying to swat clouds out the sky. It’s not like he needs to announce his arrival – Kakashi heard him coming a half-mile off. Gai bounds everywhere with the same exuberance, noise, and staunch refusal to acknowledge how much he annoys people as the average marching band. “How can you be reading? It’s the most glorious and beautiful afternoon! The perfect day for a training match!”
Perhaps Kakashi should show him Icha Icha too, turn code-cracking into a competition. His lack of headway gnaws at him, and he’s always worked better against opposition.
Gods, no. Gai would be horrendously embarrassed. Or, worse yet, he’d wax lyrical on the primal love of the central characters, how noble and inspiring it is that they share in each other so passionately, night after night. He might even cry, like Akari-chan after the second sex scene. Pathetic.
Under the safety of his mask, Kakashi pulls a face. Best not to risk it.
He contemplates Gai’s suggestion instead. A practice bout might clear his head. And, for once in his life, Gai is correct - it is the perfect day. Wind lifts the muddled scents of Konoha, rather than leaving them to stale in Kakashi’s sensitive nose. Leaves eddy in spirals like the symbol on his hitaii-ate, clouds scudding across a gasfire-blue sky.
Kakashi sits, stretches. He places the book face-down on the branch of the tree he was lying on, overlooking Konoha’s central park. It won’t be visible from the ground, but if someone steals it, he doesn’t mind. He’ll have an excuse then, for failing Jiraiya’s test.
That’s lazy, he knows. But Obito was lazy, too.
Kakashi jumps to the ground, landing languid, hands in pockets. “Sure,” he says.
Gai’s face lights up like a triggered paper-bomb. “Really? I mean – yes! Excellent! I will prove myself to you, rival – I will show you how much I have grown!”
He talks a mile a minute about everything from the new curry place opposite Yakiniku Q, to his team’s latest C-rank mission, to how he wants to start training a new taijutsu technique, dancing circles around Kakashi all the way to the training ground – the genin one, Kakashi decides. Gai hasn’t earned his flak jacket yet, and it’s not like Kakashi intends to go all-out against him.
He doesn’t want to kill the guy. Most days.
“And Ebisu was so convinced we were going to be attacked by thieves that he pounced as soon as there was movement from the bushes – but it was the daughter of the merchant, who had snuck away from the campsite to relieve herself! Poor Ebisu – he had the best intentions, I am sure! But the girl was convinced he had been trying to peep, and so she insisted that the only way we could fulfil our contract was if we blindfolded him for the rest of the trip!”
His enthusiasm reminds Kakashi of summoning a new ninken. They get so excited to see the physical world, they have to sniff every trail and piss on every tree trunk for at least a week before they can concentrate on missions.
It might be adorable, if Gai were a dog. Or a girl, Kakashi supposes. But he’s just Gai, so it’s more irksome than anything.
If Kakashi were a real enemy, Gai shouldn’t waste so much energy chattering. He’d be killed in seconds.
“Taijutsu only,” he says, as they pass through the gates to the training ground, nodding to the presiding chuunin. He and Gai have done this enough that the overseers know Kakashi – and, more importantly, know that he knows the rules. No lightning. No killing strikes. No blades.
He doesn’t need them. Gai nods, eager as ever, and dives forward with a cheerful bellow. All of three strikes clash between them before Gai eats dirt, tripped over Kakashi’s smooth ankle-block.
He pushes himself up, scowling. “An excellent blow, my rival! Your strength has increased once again – it seems I must work harder than ever! Another match?”
Kakashi doesn’t have the heart to tell him he could’ve won even if he’d borrowed Ebisu’s blindfold. “Nah. I’m done.”
“But we just got here!”
“I’m a jonin. I’m busier than you.”
“You were reading in a tree!”
“Important documents for an upcoming mission,” lies Kakashi, straight-faced.
Gai frowns. “Your important mission documents were called ‘Make Out Paradise’?”
So, he noticed the title. He’s more observant than Kakashi gives him credit for. Not that it’s a high bar.
“No,” he says, like it’s obvious. “But jonin can’t just lounge about reading top-secret mission reports, can they? I have to keep them hidden somehow.”
“Ah.” Gai nods, gravely. “I see. Truly, your genius is to be commended, rival. But if the mission reports are top-secret, why did you leave them in the tree?”
Kakashi suspects most villagers might be surprised that Gai uses words like commended in regular conversation. Kakashi suspects most villagers might be surprised at a lot of things about Gai.
“Eh,” he says, reaching out, two fingers extended, to clasp around Gai’s own. Reconciliation seal: the sign of a friendly match at its completion. Gai mistakes the gesture, grasping Kakashi’s palm to pull himself to his feet. “I cast a jutsu of disguise over it.”
Gai’s eyes widen. “I never saw you make the seal! I never saw your hands move!”
Speaking of hands, he’s still holding Kakashi’s. Kakashi raises his eyebrows until Gai realises, flushes, pulls away. Kakashi tucks his fist into his pocket, curled tight around Gai’s residual warmth. He's always hot to the touch, like he's got a furnace roaring in his belly. Central heating. Kakashi, whose fingers and toes start bluing the moment the midday summer sun teeters off its peak, is very almost jealous - until he remembers Gai's deplorable attempts at ninjutsu, back at the Academy, and decides he'd take poor blood circulation over poor chakra circulation, any day.
“I’m just that good,” he says - and Gai’s eyes go all big and starry, an entire constellation in each pupil, like if Kakashi claimed that he could protect Gai from the united armies of Wind, Earth, Lightning and Water, Gai would believe every word.
Six days later, Kakashi caves. Jiraiya only intends to stay a week, and Kakashi’s no closer to deconstructing Icha Icha than on his first read. He’s forced to acknowledge either that he’s far less intelligent than he’s always bragged (a terrifying prospect), or that Jiraiya is a true genius (which, somehow, is worse).
Thankfully, Kakashi happens to know another genius. One who, better than anyone, would know what’s going on in the old toad sage’s head.
And so, that night, rather than leaving as soon as his shift’s up, the Hound accepts the Hokage’s customary offer to join him and his wife for dinner and removes the first of his masks. Unfortunately, he overestimated the strength of the student-teacher bond. Minato stares at him, aghast. Or rather, at the orange book, sitting innocuous on the Chabudai, next to the rice pot.
“Jiraiya gave you this?” he squawks. His voice has gone all funny, like he recently caught a punch with his throat. Not possible. Kakashi would’ve sensed and deflected any such attack.
“Yes, sensei.”
Minato points a tremulous finger. “And – and he told you to read it?”
“Yes,” Kakashi explains, patiently. “He’s trying to teach me something, but I can’t figure out what. I thought you might be able to help me?”
Kushina turns the book over. She scans the blurb and starts giggling – until she spots Minato’s slack, shell-shocked expression, at which point the giggle deepens into an all-out guffaw. “You broke him,” she chortles. “And a month before I’m supposed to pop! How rude of you, Kaka-chan. How’s my kid supposed to grow up without a father?”
The words are teasing, light as the ginger sauce she served over tonight’s butterflied unagi fillets. Kakashi pinches his visible eye shut in a way that most people assume means he’s smiling.
“It’s not so hard,” he says, trying to match her tone. “So long as you have a good sensei.”
Something passes between Kushina and Minato – a whip-fast connection of gazes. Kakashi catches it, but he doesn’t know what it means. Kushina settles more comfortably, one hand smoothing the vast swell of her belly, hair falling over her shoulders in a fiery waterfall.
“Ah, but Minato’s the best sensei in the village, ne? So our kid’s gonna have the best dad and the best sensei.” Kakashi has heard that pregnant women glow, but Kushina seems mostly to gripe about her sore ankles in between running Kakashi and Minato ragged, fetching the subject of her latest cravings. In moments like these though, her smile is radiant in a way Kakashi can’t quite describe. “You should come by more often, Kaka-chan, after the baby’s here. Not just when you want Minato to help you with deciphering Jiraiya’s, um, literature. You’re always welcome at our table, ya know.”
So radiant, in fact, that Kakashi can’t bear to look at her. The Namikaze-Uzumaki are going to be the perfect family. He can picture them so easily: Minato and Kushina cradling a teeny infant, hair red or yellow or somewhere between. All beaming at the camera, so bright and joyous and good.
Kakashi sucks at being any of those things. It’s sweet of Kushina to lie, but Kakashi’s never been one for maintaining pleasant illusions over the harsh kunai-cut of reality. The truth of it is, once the baby’s here, Kushina won’t want her husband’s old student intruding on their home.
That’s okay. This is what sensei deserves: happiness, after everything.
Kakashi smiles again, still using only his eye. “Sure. I guess you’ll need someone to watch the brat every now and then, while you catch up on sleep.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Kushina huffs, cheeks pinking. “And don’t call my kid a brat, you brat!”
Uh-oh. There’s the infamous Uzumaki temper – no doubt amplified by hormones. Kakashi surreptitiously gauges how fast he can reach the nearest exit.
“Okay,” says Minato, standing and pressing a kiss to his wife’s crown while she flares her nostrils like a bull snorting steam before a charge. “I should go say goodbye to Jiraiya. Kakashi, will you help Kushina clear the dishes?”
Kakashi gives him a pleading stare. Don’t leave me alone with her, for the Sage’s sake – do you want me to die? Sensei’s known him long enough to read it – and to shoot him a riposte using only the angle of his eyebrows and the tweak of his smile: You got yourself into this. Get yourself out of it.
Coward. He’s just running away before Kushina gets mad enough to upend the table.
It takes a foot rub and a lot of grovelling to placate the pregasaurus rex (which, for your information, Kakashi only calls Kushina in the privacy of his own mind. Despite a few of his ANBU colleagues’ mutters to the contrary, he doesn’t actually have a death wish.) Still, that’s for the best. Kakashi has gotten a lot better at chakra masking over the years, but he doubts he could spy on his sensei for longer than ten minutes without being caught. Thanks to the grouchy, Kushina-shaped delay, he arrives on the roof of the Hokage building just as Minato and Jiraiya are getting to the good part.
“You can’t give my student this!”
Kakashi can’t see into the office – Jiraiya sensed him when he was at least five metres away, so such proximity poses too much risk. He’s got a good enough imagination that it shouldn't matter. He crouches on the roof, envisions Minato brandishing Icha Icha Paradise in Jiraiya’s face, and wishes he’d bought a bag of popcorn from the new cinema in the centre of the village. The girl at the counter always gives him extra salt, when he asks politely.
“Ah, calm down, would you?” Jiraiya’s wheedling grates. It’s unbecoming of a man so powerful. “I just wanted to loosen the kid up a bit. Relax him, y’know?”
“He’s thirteen!”
“Right. He’s thirteen. He should be finding his place in the world. Fighting boys. Noticing girls. Jerking off until he snaps a damn tendon in his wrist. I don’t know; something, anything.”
“That’s a little reductive, don’t you think? Young boys develop in a myriad of ways, at their own speed. Just because you were like that at his age, sensei –“
“Okay, okay, I was an early bloomer in my appreciation for the beauties of life." Jiraiya’s voice shifts, becoming gruff as the croaking toads at the village pond. "Point is, there’s a coldness in that kid. It reminds me of another boy I once knew.”
Minato draws a sharp breath. Above, Kakashi emulates. Muscles tightening to the point of cramp, like his body’s desperate to spring away, leave this conversation far behind.
He hoped to hear Jiraiya reveal the real reason he gave Kakashi the book. Not this.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out who Jiraiya is referring to. But he's wrong. Kakashi’s nothing like Orochimaru. He isn’t, he isn’t, he isn’t.
Isn’t he?
Obito sneers from the past, eyes overflowing with molten-hot fury. Those who abandon their friends are even worse than scum. Orochimaru did just that. Abandoned his friends, abandoned the village, abandoned his morals. Maybe he isn’t so different from Kakashi, after all.
A faint thump. Jiraiya must’ve slammed his hands on the desk. “Tell me you’re not worried.”
Silence stretches between Kakashi and the men in the office, a tensile spider-thread, drawn out so far it strains on the cusp of a snap. Then Minato sighs.
“I worry,” he says.
How do two words hold so much power? How do they hurt as much as if the bolder crushed Kakashi instead?
(If only it had done. The one thing no one could ever accuse Obito of being is cold.)
“He doesn’t talk to me,” continues Minato. “Not properly. I made him my ANBU bodyguard so I could keep him close, but… I don’t know.” A creak, as he slumps into his office chair. “Some days, he seems further away than ever.”
Kakashi’s chakra is stifled, sure as an ANBU mark with a pillow pressed over their gasping mouth and nose. He’s never been anything less than impeccable when it comes to self-control, yet a part of him yearns to drop his barriers, let his harsh white lightning-energy crackle an inch past the surface of his skin, so it might scent the air around him with ozone – and alert his sensei.
I’m right here, he wants to scream. I’m ten metres away. I could stop any attack before it reached you. I can sense any danger that might close in. I will always protect you, sensei. You’re all I have left in the world –
Kakashi bites his lips to keep them shut. He tamps down on the buzzing birdsong in his chest, crushing lightning into ice.
“Children are difficult,” says Jiraiya, softly. Their shadows stand closer now, his hand on Minato’s shoulder. “And you’re about to have two of them - I don’t envy you at all.”
Huh? Kakashi didn’t know Kushina was expecting twins.
Minato’s laugh is sunshine. “I can’t wait. All the trouble – it’s so very worth it.” Another shift in the shadows. Minato must have held out the book. “Kakashi will come around,” he says. Then, cracking apart the frosty shell around Kakashi’s heart: “He’s going to be a great big brother. He just needs a little guidance along the way. If you really think your book will help him to feel more, become more in touch with the world around him, stop him from drowning in the past…” Another sunshine-laugh, thawing Kakashi, drip by drip. “Wow, I can’t believe I’m giving you my blessing to give porn to my kid.”
“’Official supplier of erotica to the Hokage’s top student’,” Jiraiya jeers. “I’m putting that on my business cards!”
Minato doesn’t correct him that Kakashi is his only remaining student. Or maybe he does, but Kakashi doesn’t stick around to hear.
He jumps off the roof and runs along the wires linking the Hokage tower to the nearest block of chuunin residences. Head light. Cheeks hot. Pulse fluttering in his ribs like those lightning-birds are trying to escape.
He’s going to be a great big brother.
All the trouble – it’s so very worth it.
Minato wasn’t talking about twins at all. Minato was talking about –
The chill wind slaps him as he soars over the village, bouncing between gables, sparrow-light. You don’t deserve this, it whispers, and it sounds a bit like Obito. But Kakashi moves too fast for the truth of those words to catch up for him, splitting the night, a shuriken tossed at an undefended throat.
“Quit it,” says Hawk, as he jogs into the ANBU compound. Hound likes Hawk. He teases him – most of the older ANBU do – but unlike Rat, he didn’t witness that failed mission, where Kakashi froze before he could thrust his Chidori through the enemy’s chest, eyes full of Rin and mouth full of acid. His mockery is blunt, not bladed. Certainly, it’s never couched in the insinuation that Hound is only here because he’s the Hokage’s student.
Or his kid. His kid, his kid, his kid –
“Stop what?”
“Smiling like that.” Hawk waves him in, leaning on the desk at the front of the guard’s post. “You’re not just using your eye. You’re like, doing it properly. I can see the line of your mouth through your mask.” He shudders. “It’s creepy as fuck.”
Jiraiya returns the book to Kakashi the next day. “Signed!” he brags, flipping it open and pointing out his messy scrawl on the half-title page. “It’ll be worth more than an S-rank mission, once I’m famous!”
Kakashi mumbles his thanks, slipping the book into his back-pouch. It takes up space that could be filled with shuriken. That niggles at him – but this is important, too. If he has to carry fewer shuriken to make room for Icha Icha, he’ll just have to learn to kill his enemies fast enough that he doesn’t feel their loss.
That night, he steals from the ANBU compound. He squats in front of the gravestone, then sits, cold dew soaking his trousers. He flips open the book, resting its creased spine on the line of his thigh.
His Sharingan cuts through the gloom, memorising every word. Kakashi lets Obito parse the words for him, spinning squiggles of ink into sensical language. He focuses on himself, doing his absolute utmost to feel something. To make Minato-sensei proud.
It’s the ANBU’s job to worry about the Hokage, not the other way around. Kakashi needs to convince Minato that he won’t walk the same path as Orochimaru, that he’ll be the best big brother to Minato and Kushina’s child. That he really is worth it.
Perhaps he needs to convince himself, too.
He doesn’t know if he does a good job. Sure, three weeks later, Minato-sensei stops worrying about him – but three weeks later, Minato-sensei is dead.
Gai and Kakashi stand under the dome with the rest of Konoha’s children. Gai squeezes Kakashi’s shoulder, like he’s holding him back. Like he ever could.
As they watch the demon fox tear free, Kakashi rips from Gai’s grip. He decks the ANBU guards generating the shield. He runs to Minato and Kushina and their baby, and he stands beside them, like family should.
In his mind.
In his mind, Kakashi does a lot of things. He dodges the rock that struck his blind-spot, or barges Obito aside when he tries to hurl him out of the way. He averts his strike at the last second, so it plunges into the space between Rin’s arm and her side, lightning chittering harmlessly over her skin.
In reality, he stands and he stares at the destruction of his village, his world, numb as the rest of them. Watching the smoke and the souls plume up, lost to the sky.
Gai approaches again, after the funeral. Kakashi didn’t attend. Couldn’t. He was supposed to – everyone else was there, from Hiruzen to Jiraiya to the entire Uchiha clan, standing segregated from the rest of the village, surrounded by harsh whispers, hissed blame. Everyone except one orphaned child, a seal on his stomach, painted in blood from his fresh-cut umbilical.
Kakashi can’t think about him right now. Can’t think about any of it. He doesn’t know how Gai knew to look for him here, perched on top of Minato’s giant carved head, overlooking Konoha. Most likely, he ran around the village until he'd exhausted every other possible hiding spot.
“Rival? Are you…?”
Kakashi raises his face from the cradle of his arms and gives Gai a baleful one-eyed glare. “Am I what?”
He dares Gai to finish that question. He fucking dares him.
Gai’s tongue falters around the okay. “Up for a challenge?” he finishes, lamely.
Kakashi stares at him. Then he rises, walks to Gai – noting the hitch in his breath, the tension cording his growing muscles – and past him, without making contact. Continuing on, down the incline, into the night.
Gai is stupid in many ways, but the art of comprehending another’s emotions isn’t one of them. He doesn’t follow. And Kakashi knows, somehow, that if he looked back, he’d find tears streaking Gai’s cheeks.
His own are dry. Kakashi takes the most direct route back to the ANBU compound, where Hound awaits in his locker. He holds him, feeling the cold, hard shape of his face against his palms. Then falls into him as if he took the fastest route to escape Gai – a running jump off Hokage rock, into the open air.
He doesn’t come up for a very long time.
“Rival? Do you want to meet me at the training ground for a youthful – “
Gai finishes the sentence, this time. Doesn’t matter. Hound doesn’t hear.
He tunes him out, walking past the green nuisance who stands in the dango store’s doorway, waving a skewer of hot dumplings. Letting his voice meld into the background hum of Konoha, the static of the world.
Gai doesn’t chase him. Not like he used to.
Hound’s glad. They both have to grow up sometime.