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It is half-past seven on a Tuesday and Kakashi is wreathed in the eucalyptus-scented steam of a post-mission bath when his peaceful transition to human being is interrupted by the sound of someone small creeping into the bathroom.
“Weren’t you supposed to pee before going to bed?” he asks the air, and the air answers, “Iruka didn’t tell me I had to.”
Kakashi turns his head as slowly as he can, feeling the pull in his muscles that says he’s overdone it. Naruto is perched on the toilet, giving one of his all-purpose “make me” glares. Kakashi supposes that this one is meant to say “make me go back to bed,” but he isn’t particularly inclined to leave the hot water. Iruka will be hot on Naruto’s heels: the kid hasn’t quite picked up sneaking yet, despite having lived with a recently-retired ANBU operative and a mostly-reformed prankster for almost a year now.
“Wash your hands,” Kakashi says absently, and turns back to a less-painful position.
After a moment, there are sounds of scrambling. The toilet flushes, the stool squeaks along the tiles, the sink runs. It’s a little odd that Iruka hasn’t come storming in yet to capture their recalcitrant kid and confine him to quarters, but maybe he’s stuck on a particularly stubborn essay. Maybe he’s implying that Kakashi has spent long enough in the bath.
Well, tough shit. Kakashi isn’t planning to leave until he’s as wrinkled as the Sandaime. And, maybe, if he stays long enough, Iruka will come and join him. The thought is a nice one: between both of their busy schedules, he feels like he hasn’t really spent more than five conscious minutes with Iruka in far too long.
There is the sound of the stool plunking down because the tub, and Naruto gives as world-weary a sigh as a four-year-old is capable of. Kakashi feels unwound enough to ask, “Something troubling you?”
“Iruka fell asleep in my bed,” Naruto complains. “But I wasn’t tired.”
“Oh?” Kakashi asks. This wouldn’t be the first time that Iruka has gone in for a bedtime story and come stumbling out an hour or two later, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Kakashi doesn’t know how he manages it; Naruto is not a peaceful sleeper by any stretch of the imagination. On Kakashi’s nights to put Naruto to bed, it takes all of his considerable skill to avoid being kicked off the mattress; if he leaves before Naruto falls asleep he gets hit with the sad eyes, which are Naruto’s kekkai genkai.
“The poor guy was really tuckered out,” Naruto says, a perfect imitation of Iruka, and Kakashi doesn’t bother hiding his smile. He’d probably mind Naruto having a favourite parent more if Iruka wasn’t his favourite, too.
“But you weren’t?” he asks, more to keep the conversation going than anything else. Sometimes Naruto needs to talk himself down from whatever energy high he’s achieved.
“No,” Naruto says. “Not tuckered out at all.” Kakashi can hear his little heels drumming against the bathmat.
“Hey,” he begins, but cuts himself off when Naruto’s hands start gently splashing in the water. Kakashi opens his eyes to see his adorable kid standing on the stool to lean way too far over the bathwater for Kakashi’s comfort. If Naruto falls in, the splashing and the yelping will wake Iruka for sure, and then they’ll both get it.
“Do you need a bath, too?” he asks, because sharing his bath is a small price to pay for retaining household tranquility.
Naruto shakes his head and keeps splashing. Not so talkative tonight, then. He’s probably tired after all.
“Do you want to get one of your frogs?”
“Maybe,” Naruto says. His eyes are on the water, or so Kakashi thinks, until Naruto says, in the tone of voice he uses for all the world’s great mysteries (why are there foods other than ramen, how can frogs jump SO FAR, who decided that people need haircuts), “Your thingy is bigger than mine.”
This, Kakashi has learned, is what life with a four-year-old is like: one moment, you’re worried that he’ll drown himself in the bath, and the next you’re confronted with comparative anatomy.
“You know, Naruto,” he says, “my whole body is bigger than yours, too.” Iruka would remind Naruto that body parts have proper names, but Iruka isn’t here and Kakashi would rather argue comparative anatomy than proper terminology.
“Yeah,” Naruto says, like it’s obvious, “but your body is also bigger than Iruka’s body, and your thingy isn’t bigger than his. I saw at the onsen.”
Kakashi makes a mental note to give Minato-sensei a piece of his mind the next time he visits the Memorial Stone, and says, “Everybody’s body is different?”
“I guess,” Naruto allows, and resumes splishing around. “Iruka also doesn’t have as many scars as you do?”
Kakashi isn’t sure if all kids are as curious as Naruto is, or if it’s a side-effect of living with someone who answers questions for a living, but by now he knows that the more questions he sidesteps, the more Naruto will ask.
“Iruka doesn’t spend as much time fighting as I do.”
“I guess,” Naruto says again. His head is starting to droop against the tub's tall side and, with an inward sigh, Kakashi accepts that he will have to get out of the bath before he is well and truly wrinkled, or relaxed.
“I’m going to dry off,” he tells Naruto, “and then we’ll go snuggle with Iruka for a bit. I bet he’s cold without anyone there to warm him up.”
Naruto yawns and nods and watches Kakashi through slowly-blinking eyes as he towels off and pulls on his sweats.
When they get into Naruto’s bedroom, Iruka is still fast asleep and the clock reads 8:15. Kakashi isn’t worried, he isn’t, it’s just that he’s still coming down from his mission, but he curls his body around both of them as if his presence could protect them from their exhaustion. Eventually, he falls asleep, too, waking only when Naruto starfishes and knocks him off the bed.
Iruka sleeps through it.
Kakashi is officially worried.
Really, Kakashi points out to himself about a week after the Thingy Incident, he should have seen this coming. How many times in the past few months has he come home from a shift in the on-call room to see Iruka passed out over a pile of tests or a halfway-finished lesson plan? How many times has Iruka announced “leftovers for breakfast!” before dashing out to an early-morning shift at the mission desk even before Naruto, god’s perfect alarm clock, has scrambled into their bed?
Sleeping through your partner falling out of bed is just the next part of a pattern. Kakashi is great at pattern recognition.
And now that he’s seen it, he can’t unsee it. There is exhaustion in every line of Iruka’s face when Kakashi swings by the Academy to bring him the lunch he left in the fridge.
“Oh, thank you,” Iruka says, tilting his head up for a kiss. “I knew I was forgetting something.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Kakashi assures him, but underneath the words are more words they both aren’t saying, because Kakashi isn’t always here, is he? He was assigned only short, day-trip missions for the first six months after they got permission to set up a tiny orange-and-frog bed in what used to be Iruka’s office, but he’s back out for longer, now, sometimes weeks at a time. He doesn’t think that Iruka will forget Naruto, ever, but he does worry that Iruka will forget other important things. Like eating.
“Let me clean up your classroom today,” he offers, spur of the moment. “I don’t have a shift until this evening, so I can come by at the end of the school day and you can get a nap in before Naruto gets home from daycare.”
Iruka smiles wanly at him. “You’re so sweet,” he says, and that’s a “no” if Kakashi’s ever heard one.
Sure enough, Iruka follows it up with, “But I agreed to stick around and help Tamaki-san’s twins with some chakra theory homework while she’s out on a mission, since her husband is a civilian and won’t have a clue.”
“Okay,” Kakashi says, because there’s nothing else he can say. “I’ll see you for dinner, then.”
Iruka hums noncommittally, which means he will not, in fact, be home for dinner. “Thanks again for the lunch, Kakashi.”
Kakashi leans down to press a kiss to the crease between Iruka’s brows and slots this whole interaction into the pattern.
Naruto and Kakashi exchange significant looks as Iruka storms through the apartment looking for a hair tie that is demonstrably on his wrist.
“Iruka,” Naruto says, because he’s too little to know that you’re not supposed to be reasonable when someone is in a bad mood, and Iruka snaps, “What?”
And, sure, he’s raised his voice at Naruto plenty, but he’s never been angry the way he is right now, tightly-wound and spoiling for a fight. It's not at Naruto, but Naruto will get the brunt of it if they're not careful. Kakashi scoops him up from the floor where he’s been happily colouring, a preventative measure because he’s pretty sure Iruka will hate himself if Naruto starts crying, and says, “Umino, left wrist” in his most neutral voice.
“Would it have killed you to tell me that five minutes ago?” Iruka demands, but doesn’t stick around to wait for the answer. Kakashi hopes whatever shinobi turn in their mission reports today are feeling particularly thick-skinned.
“Is Iruka feeling bad?” Naruto whispers into Kakashi’s neck.
“Yeah,” Kakashi whispers back. “I think Iruka’s feeling really, really bad.”
Iruka doesn’t like celebrating his birthday. He’s told Kakashi that he used to like it, before the Kyuubi, but that now birthdays are just reminders that his parents are never coming home, and Kakashi gets it. There are few of their peers who don’t feel the same.
It hasn’t stopped him from being particularly solicitous around Iruka’s birthday, though, and this year in particular it feels important; twenty-one is the age Iruka’s parents were when they got married.
So Kakashi’s pointedly casual when he says, to the rice porridge he’s rescued from burning while Iruka scrambles to finish the grading he’d fallen asleep over last night, “We could go for ramen tonight, so nobody has to wash dishes. It’s been a pretty long week.”
Naruto cheers for ramen, and when Kakashi turns to look at the kotatsu he sees Iruka and Naruto rubbing noses and grinning at each other. It’s been a while since he’s seen Iruka smile, he realises, although the dark circles under his eyes are beginning to seem like a permanent fixture. “What do you say, Naruto?” Iruka asks softly, because he’s wearing himself out for unclear reasons but he’s still the man that Kakashi fell in love and semi-adopted a child with.
“I say ramen!” Naruto says in the same soft voice.
And then the full force of both of their smiles is levelled at Kakashi, and he can’t help but smile, too. “I’ll pick Naruto up at five, and we’ll meet you at Ichiraku’s?” he asks, and Iruka says, “It’s a date,” just like he did on the morning two and a half years ago when Kakashi, badly wounded and out of his mind with poison, said he’d stay in the hospital forever if only the pretty eyes would come visit him.
Maybe, Kakashi thinks as Iruka kisses Naruto’s head and Kakashi’s cheek and heads out the door, maybe everything is going to be okay.
It’s six, and Teuchi has got to be the most patient man alive because he has not yet kicked Kakashi and Naruto out despite Naruto spinning on his stool yelling “I’M A NARUTO!!” for at least the past ten minutes.
In fairness to the kid, it’s been an hour since they were supposed to meet Iruka, and there’s only so many times you can practice your very basic reading skills on a ramen menu before you get bored. Hell, Kakashi’s bored and he has his full attention on ensuring Naruto doesn’t break anything at Iruka’s favourite restaurant and get them kicked out for life.
“Why don’t we order, Naruto?” he suggests, and the yelling stops abruptly.
“No!” Naruto says, utterly scandalised at the suggestion. “Um, Kakashi, I don’t know if you know this, but Iruka isn’t here yet.”
“And we can’t eat without Iruka?”
Naruto is visibly horrified, which would be adorable if Kakashi wasn’t also a little horrified himself.
“I think Iruka would want us to eat,” Kakashi hazards. “Just imagine how sad he’ll be if he finds that we’ve been hungry waiting for him!”
“I can wait forever,” Naruto insists, crossing his tiny arms exactly the way Iruka does when he’s set his mind on something unreasonable. Kakashi wishes he had his camera.
“Well, a good shinobi never compromises his abilities by letting himself starve if food is available,” Kakashi points out, “so I’m going to eat.” He orders for himself and for Naruto, two full-sized bowls because when it comes to ramen Naruto has the stomach of a much larger boy, and when Teuchi hands them over the counter, Naruto only holds out for about a minute and a half before yelling “THANK YOU FOR THE FOOD!” and digging in.
Kakashi eats more slowly, dragging it out, but by the time six-thirty rolls around, he knows Iruka’s not coming.
On the way home, Iruka’s favourite in a to-go container clutched in Naruto’s chubby fists, Kakashi tells his squirming backpack son that they need to come up with a plan.
First things first: Kakashi knows that, just statistically, cute girls get more favours. Even at an age where differently-gendered kids are not really distinguishable from each other, if a given kid ticks enough “girl” boxes in someone’s brain, they’ll be more likely to agree to whatever the kid wants. It’s with this logic in mind that he sets about teaching his four-year-old how to do a gender transformation.
It’s harder than he thought it would be: Naruto has lots of chakra, but zero control over it, and even less patience for Kakashi’s attempts to teach. He’d ask Iruka for pointers, but a) Iruka is pulling a double shift at the mission desk and b) the whole point of this perhaps unnecessarily complicated scheme is to get Iruka out of all his extra mission-desk work, and it’s not going to be successful if Iruka catches on.
“I need you to think about your chakra like a ball of yarn,” he says, and Naruto goes “What’s a yarn?”
It takes three days, but Naruto finally pulls off a little girl transformation, pigtails and all. They have a lot of fun making faces in the mirror, and Kakashi even manages to feel pretty neutral about seeing himself with a narrower jawline.
Unfortunately, the shift-scheduling chuunin at the mission desk has apparently seen many, many photos of Iruka’s son, and is not impressed by Kakashi’s attempt to have Iruka’s daughter plead for her father to get some time off and/or a reduced schedule.
“Frankly, Kakashi-san,” the scheduler says, “this has ‘prank war’ written all over it, and I don’t want to be in the way of whatever revenge Iruka-sensei cooks up. You know he scared me half to death one time with phosphorescent paint?”
Kakashi hasn’t heard this particular story, but it doesn’t surprise him.
“You can drop the jutsu, Naruto,” he says, and when Naruto does, the scheduler gives him a caramel.
“You’re a cute kid,” she tells him. “Iruka’s really proud of you.”
Naruto beams and Kakashi sighs inwardly. No one should give sugar to any child, ever, much less Naruto. Bedtime tonight is going to be fun.
Oh, and also! Their plan so far is a dismal failure.
Household chores are probably an easier route to taking things off Iruka's plate, Kakashi thinks, so he sets about teaching Naruto how to fold laundry. They match socks and turn kitchen towels into neat rectangular stacks for a while, until it becomes too tempting to turn the bedsheets into a parachute and Kakashi has to summon a few ninken to help them billow the sheet up around them.
Naruto’s giggles make even Pakkun melt.
Even though the dog-slobber means that they have to wash the sheets again, it’s a great use of an afternoon, and Kakashi is excited by the prospect that Naruto’s newly-learned capacity to fold t-shirts (albeit a little wonkily) will have positive effects on Iruka’s schedule.
That is, until he’s busily filling out some quarterly reports the following day – requisition forms for replacement shinobi tools, mostly – and is interrupted from his senbon calculations by the sound of Iruka’s indignant “Is this my good tablecloth?”
It turns out that Naruto, emboldened by his new skills, has emptied every closet and dresser drawer in the apartment and industriously dumped every stitch of cloth onto the living room floor. He has remembered how to match socks, at least, Kakashi sees when he slinks guiltily from the bedroom, and the kitchen towels are tidy, if a little creative. Every single uniform shirt has been twisted around in a different way, however, and, of course, Naruto’s arms weren’t big enough for bath towels, let alone sheets and tablecloths.
There is a trail of underwear leading to where Naruto lies, on his stomach, on the balcony, staring at some bugs.
“Did you get distracted?” Kakashi asks, crouching down.
“From what?” Naruto pokes at a bug with his finger. He’s wearing a pillowcase like a cape. The bugs do look fascinating, Kakashi has to admit, but Naruto knows he isn’t supposed to go out on the balcony alone, and, plus, they have some damage control – and a lot of laundry – to do.
Naruto learns how to cook an egg the next day, and it only has a bit of shell in it. Kakashi is pretty sure this plan will work: the meals he can make with a four-year-old sous-chef are simple, but Iruka hasn’t really been tasting his food lately, so Kakashi thinks they can get away with stealing all the cooking duties.
And the washing up. Naruto looks very cute in a too-long apron and rubber gloves that come up to his armpits, standing on a kitchen chair at the sink. He puts on a Serious Housework Face for Kakashi to snap a photo, and they get to work scrubbing the dinner dishes while Iruka mutters over some project he’s brought home from the Tower.
It even works, for a few days. Kakashi likes cooking, and doesn’t even really mind dishes, and Naruto is being a really good sport about it all. Iruka seems marginally less stressed – he even lets Naruto scramble into his lap so they can “work” together, which means Iruka writing comments on a lesson plan for a new Academy teacher who’s asked for his advice and Naruto drawing elaborate scribbles that he assures Kakashi are, in fact, anatomically-correct frogs.
And it’s nice, to bring Iruka a cup of tea and get a genuine smile in return. It’s nice, to hear the low murmur of Iruka’s voice as he tells Naruto a bedtime story. It’s nice to wake up when Iruka rolls out of bed in the early hours of the morning and get a “go back to sleep” kiss.
It’s all nice, and Kakashi is congratulating himself on the first successful phase of the Get Iruka Rested plan when Naruto, perhaps predictably, ruins it.
It’s the fourth day of the two of them doing all the cooking and washing up, when normally Iruka and Kakashi alternate and Naruto mostly just gets underfoot. Naruto says, “Kakashi, when is Iruka going to start cooking again? You make too many vegetables,” and Kakashi grudgingly admits to himself that expecting a four-year-old to remember that this was all part of the plan was maybe asking too much.
Iruka insists on cooking and washing up the rest of the week, and Kakashi feels like objecting would risk the plan too much, so he doesn’t.
“Remember,” Kakashi says to Naruto, “if anyone asks, we’re here to drop off Iruka’s bento.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Naruto tells him, sounding entirely too much like a bratty preteen for Kakashi’s nerves to appreciate.
“Not ‘yeah, yeah,’ Naruto,” he says. “This is our mission, and we have to stick to the plan, okay?”
“Okay,” Naruto grumbles. He’s been less and less impressed by each of Kakashi’s plans as the weeks have worn on, and Kakashi knows that even though the two of them have been spending a lot of time together, Naruto misses Iruka, and has a hard time understanding why they need to sneak around like this and learn how to fold towels for Iruka to be able to spend time with them.
Truth be told, Kakashi has a hard time understanding it himself, which is possibly because he’s not interested in following the train of thought that begins “maybe Iruka doesn’t want to spend time with us.” It wouldn’t be a first, for either Naruto or Kakashi, but Kakashi doesn’t want to consider the possibility that Iruka, of all people, would give up on either of them.
So instead he’s here, with his scrubbed and stubborn kid, waiting outside the vice-principal’s office to formally submit a request for Iruka’s extra teaching duties to be handed off to someone else. Naruto is his own self this time, and Kakashi hopes that the cuteness will be enough to sway, if not the vice-principal, then Iruka’s colleagues into taking some of the load off of Iruka’s plate.
“Ah, Kakashi-san,” the vice-principal says when the clock hits 12:05, “come on in and tell me what you’re here about. Surely not early evaluation for this sweet pea, hm?”
Naruto, to his eternal credit, does not object to being called a sweet pea, perhaps because he does not recognise it as a vegetable, or perhaps because he understands, in some childish way, that the stakes here are pretty high. He holds Kakashi’s hand as they walk into the vice-principal’s office and tells her, solemnly, that they’re just here to bring Iruka his bento, if anyone asks.
Kakashi is grateful that the mask hides his grimace.
After both the vice-principal and Iruka’s colleagues have engaged in serious conversation with Naruto on the subject of Frogs: Why Do They Jump Away From Me?, and have told Kakashi that Iruka has asked for all his extra work so they wouldn’t feel right taking it from him, and has he maybe tried talking to Iruka himself?, Kakashi knows it’s time to bring in the big guns.
They spend the next few days staking out the Hokage Residence so that they can map the Sandaime’s schedule, and if Kakashi has to bribe a former colleague or two, it’s worth it when Naruto whisper-shouts to him that they’re being so quiet, even the ANBU don’t know they’re lurking.
“We’re being very quiet,” Kakashi agrees, and apparently his voice is too loud, because Naruto’s stage whisper, which both Fox and Falcon are giggling at in the periphery of Kakashi’s awareness, informs him that he needs to “keep it down, please, Kakashi; some of us are trying to work.”
It’s Iruka’s phrasing, and Kakashi’s heart hurts.
Focus, Hatake, he tells himself. They’re about three minutes away from Hiruzen’s scheduled lunchtime walk, and he and Naruto are going to casually cross paths with the Sandaime, and Naruto is going to say “Someone really should stop Iruka from working too hard; I miss him so much” and Kakashi is going to give the Sandaime a Meaningful Look, and then Iruka will have to stop working and get some sleep.
Unfortunately, it seems that while Naruto was busy charming the pants off the ANBU with his abysmal sneaking skills, he was actually lulling them into a false sense of security. It’s the only explanation for why Naruto manages to swipe the hat from the Sandaime’s hand and dash off with it in the general direction of Ichiraku’s, screaming, “I’M GONNA BE HOKAGE!” at the top of his lungs.
“Your kid just stole the hat,” Fox says, sounding faintly impressed.
“Are you gonna get it back?” Falcon asks, “Or should we?”
Hiruzen is laughing loudly enough that several of the administrative staff are poking their heads out of the Tower. Naruto’s legs are short enough that he can still be seen, hat trailing behind him like streamers on a kite. There’s no way that Iruka isn’t going to hear about this.
“You’re a good father,” the Hokage tells him, chortling, “but you need to talk to Iruka.”
The thing is, Kakashi doesn’t want to talk to Iruka about the fact that it seems like he’s purposefully avoiding spending any time at all with Kakashi and Naruto. What else can it mean, when he’s taking extra shifts and extra responsibilities, barely sleeping?
There’s a part of Kakashi that wishes he’d just come out and say it, say, hey, it’s been a good two and a half years, but I’m actually done with you. We shouldn’t have brought a kid into this. There’s a part of Kakashi that’s terrified that Iruka will look over at him one night and say, hey, you know I’m not going to stay with you, right? You know this was just a temporary thing?
It’s 6:45, which means almost time to start the long process of Bedtime, when Kakashi hears the door open, feels the wards hum and stretch around Iruka’s chakra. Still, despite everything, it makes him feel warm to know Iruka’s home, and safe.
“Welcome home!” Naruto calls, and Iruka says, “I’m home, sweet boy,” in the most resigned tone of voice Kakashi’s ever heard him use.
He doesn’t turn around from the fridge where he’s rearranging the leftovers until he hears Iruka’s quiet footsteps pad up behind him.
“Kakashi,” Iruka says, and Kakashi feels every muscle in his body seize up. “We need to talk. The three of us.”
“Okay,” he says, instead of the “No” he can feel clawing up inside his throat.
Iruka sits the two of them down on one side of the kotatsu and himself on the other, and, very, very quietly, he says, “Do either of you want to explain to me why you stole the Hokage’s hat today?”
If Iruka is Naruto’s favourite parent, Kakashi knows that he’s Naruto’s partner-in-crime parent. If one of them is in the doghouse, they’ll go there together. Under the table, he opens his palm and feels Naruto’s hand creep into it.
“No?” Iruka continues. “Well, maybe you’d care to tell me about the reason why you tried to bribe my colleagues to grade my classes’ work for me.”
Naruto gives Kakashi’s hand a little squeeze, and Kakashi squeezes right back.
“Or why you taught our child a transformation jutsu so you could pull a prank on my mission desk supervisor?”
“Iruka,” Kakashi begins, because “our child” has given him a little bit of hope, but Iruka cuts him off.
“Don’t ‘Iruka’ me, Kakashi. I want to know why the two of you have been trying to make my life more difficult. It can’t be because neither of you knows what Iruka is working hard to take care of us means?”
Naruto shuffles closer to Kakashi, which ordinarily means sadness, but what’s radiating from his little body right now is outrage, and before Kakashi can say anything, the dam inside him bursts.
There are a lot of tears for someone so small; Kakashi doesn’t think he’s seen Naruto cry like this in the almost-a-year they’ve been living together, temper tantrums and lost frogs notwithstanding.
“But Daddy,” Naruto hiccups, “Dad and I are just trying to take care of you! You missed your own birthday! We had a mission!”
Kakashi’s eyes jump to Iruka’s, because this is the first time Naruto has called either of them something other than their names, because even if Iruka does want to leave him, they will always have shared this moment when the child they’ve loved and fought for acknowledges them as his family.
“Naruto,” Iruka says, and his voice breaks. He slides from the kotatsu and onto the floor and opens his arms. When Naruto launches himself into them, he drags Kakashi with him.
The three of them end up in some kind of convoluted pile, but it’s good, it’s so good, to finally hear Naruto give them names that he chose for them, that they’ve whispered and wondered about in the quiet of their own bedroom for ages now. It’s so good to catch Iruka’s scrabbling hand in his and let himself be pulled firmly into the tangle.
It’s so good to hear Iruka say, voice muffled by Naruto’s hair, “I’ve missed you so much,” and to know he means both of them.
Sitting on the floor like stacking dolls is where Kakashi wants to finish his life. Between his outstretched legs, Iruka is leaning back against his chest, head tilting every so often to press a kiss against his jawbone. Naruto is curled up on Iruka’s lap like the little fox that he is, and Kakashi gets to have his arms around both of them. It’s way past Naruto’s bedtime, and Kakashi feels a little guilty that his exhausted partner is still awake instead of sleeping, but neither of those things is enough to make him break his hold.
“Do you want to talk about why you’ve been working so hard?” Kakashi murmurs, almost against his own will, and Iruka says, “Yes – only, not tonight, Kakashi? I’m just so tired.”
“He’s really tuckered out, poor guy,” Kakashi tells Naruto, and they share a conspiratorial smile.
“I also want to hear about whatever schemes my boys have been cooking up,” Iruka says, and, tired or not, there’s still that hint of asperity in his voice that warns them they should have a really good explanation. Kakashi isn’t worried about that – for the first time in weeks, he’s not worried about anything.
When Iruka goes to roll out of bed at five the next morning, Kakashi catches him around the waist. “Send a clone,” he says, “to tell them you’re taking a sick day,” and Iruka collapses back against him.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and Kakashi says, “Or I’ll send one for you, Iruka. You need to sleep, and the three of us need to get to the bottom of whatever this is.”
It’s Kakashi’s clone, in the end, who gives Iruka’s apologies to the vice-principal’s secretary and the shift-scheduling chuunin and asks them to pass the word on to whomever Iruka has agreed to help today. “Glad you’ve finally stopped messing around,” Boar remarks as the clone is leaving the Hokage Tower, and, when the clone’s memories return to him, Kakashi can’t help but agree.
He leaves Iruka in bed, breathing deeply and evenly, and heads into the kitchen where, predictably, Naruto has taken it upon himself to make breakfast. Thankfully he hasn’t gotten past trying to rinse the rice, but there’s a spreading pool of water on the floor and the look of intense concentration on Naruto’s face promises that he will slip in it.
“What’s on the menu, chef?” Kakashi asks in a whisper, and Naruto giggles at him.
“I’m not a chef,” he insists, but Kakashi just gives him an eyebrow-waggle and says, “But you’re getting breakfast ready, Chef Naruto. How can I help?”
Naruto gives him the task of cutting up all the mushrooms for Iruka’s favourite soup add-in, and they work together – well, Kakashi works, Naruto mostly makes messes and gets egg shells in the rolled omelette – and Kakashi lets Naruto chatter at him about the dream he had in which he was a great big shinobi who could use fireballs.
It’s things like this that Kakashi didn’t realise he was signing up for when he and Iruka first started petitioning the Hokage to let them take Naruto home. They still haven’t been allowed to officially adopt him, although Kakashi sometimes wonders if that isn’t at least partially because the name “Uzumaki” has long meant reassurance when applied to a jinchuuriki.
But throughout all the months leading up to emptying out Naruto’s horrible little apartment (a toddler living alone! There are so many people Kakashi wants to absolutely rip to pieces whenever he thinks about it), when they’d talked endlessly about school fees and skinned knees and bathtime and bedtime and the Eat A Vegetable campaign, Kakashi had never imagined standing next to Naruto-on-a-chair and grilling fish together. He’d imagined shuriken practice, but not soap bubbles getting on Naruto’s nose when they’re washing dishes together, or the two of them napping in a sunny spot on the couch, or reading the same story seven hundred times.
“I love you, kid,” he tells Naruto, and Naruto beams up at him.
When breakfast is ready and Naruto’s apron has been unfolded from around him and put directly into the laundry, they go to wake Iruka up with a tray.
He blinks at them, a little blearily, but when Naruto says “Breakfast in bed, Daddy!” Iruka’s tired face breaks into the kind of smile that Kakashi has been missing, wide and joyful and bright enough to light the room.
“Oh my, Naruto,” Iruka says, “Is this all for me, or will the chefs join me?”
“We’re not chefs,” Naruto complains, with an accusatory glare at Kakashi as if his dads have some kind of telepathic connection and Kakashi’s been abusing it to tell Iruka falsehoods.
“But you brought me breakfast,” Iruka counters, and Naruto huffs out a very dramatic breath but scrambles up on the bed nevertheless and imposes himself under Iruka’s waiting arm. Kakashi slips in next to them and pours the tea, a sweet jasmine that even Naruto will drink.
Iruka thanks them for the food and the next few moments are filled with sounds of enjoyment that could be exaggerated for Naruto’s benefit or could be because this is the first time Iruka is really tasting his food in weeks. Kakashi sneaks the eggshell-y bits of omelette so that, when Naruto tells Iruka about its preparation, the effect isn’t ruined.
“Your dad is a great cook,” Iruka informs Naruto, “so I’m glad he was the one to teach you these things instead of me.”
“One day,” Naruto declares, “I’m gonna be a better cook than Dad! Believe it!” Kakashi and Iruka reach to stabilise the tray at the same moment – Naruto has shot to his feet on the bed and everything is wobbling dangerously – and Kakashi catches Iruka mouthing “Dad!” at him.
“What’s next in the morning, Naruto?” he asks to cover the fact that he just wants to live in this moment forever.
“Brush teeth!” Naruto exclaims, and hops off the bed to find his toothbrush. Iruka’s hand falls on Kakashi’s wrist, and when he turns to look, Iruka’s got tears in his eyes.
“Kakashi,” he whispers, and it covers everything: I’m sorry and I love you and Our son!
“I know,” Kakashi tells him, leans in for a kiss that tastes like fish and mushrooms. “We have to talk about it, though.”
It’s late morning by the time teeth have been brushed and breakfast dishes have been washed and everyone is dressed in day-off clothing, by the time Iruka has collected whatever papers he feels like he needs for this conversation and Naruto has selected the crayons he wants to use as the official note-taker.
Iruka begins with a question that feels like it should be rhetorical, but clearly isn’t.
“Have you guys been enjoying spending more time together the past few weeks?”
“Duh,” Naruto says, not bothering to look up from his colouring. Kakashi kind of wants to echo him, but Iruka is clearly going somewhere with this, so he needs at least one conversation partner who won’t speak in monosyllables.
“It’s been great,” he admits, and Iruka nods.
“I’ve enjoyed not worrying about you getting killed,” he says, and Kakashi and Naruto both know who he means. Nobody’s tried to kill Naruto in a long time. Someone tried to kill Kakashi just last month.
“Iruka,” he begins, but Iruka just gives him a look that says, I know you’re a shinobi and death haunts your every step; that’s not what this is about. Kakashi closes his mouth and waits for Iruka to explain what it is about.
“You’ve been taking more dangerous missions, lately,” Iruka says. “And I know they pay better, Kakashi – I can see how much that helps with things like the last two growth spurts. But I figured, there have to be better ways to make our books balance than you potentially leaving us for good.”
“Why’s he leaving?” Naruto asks, and Kakashi says, “I’m not, but your dad is worried that I’ll die on a mission.”
“With good reason!” Iruka exclaims. “I work at the desk, Kakashi; I know that active-duty shinobi with kids under Academy age don’t take A-ranks, much less solo A-ranks.”
Kakashi hadn’t known that, and he says so.
Iruka stares at him. “So you haven’t been requesting these missions?”
Kakashi stares back. “I…no? I don’t think I’ve ever requested a mission in my life, Iruka; they just get handed to me, and I read the brief, and I head out. I can request missions?”
“Yeah, but you shouldn’t – you should be doing full-squad B-ranks, because we have a five-year-old. There are regulations about that.”
“Huh,” Kakashi says. “I feel like this is a stupid question, but are you sure?”
“Positive,” Iruka says, and Kakashi briefly rearranges his whole understanding of Konoha, again. It wouldn’t be the first time the rules have been broken to ensure Hatake Kakashi is in whatever field needs him, and it wouldn’t be the first time Hatake Kakashi has been kept in the dark about the ways the Village’s infrastructure works for everyone but him.
“I thought that expired after six months,” he says, quiet, and Iruka says, “Honey, no,” and then they’re both very still, the only noise Naruto’s humming as he works on his picture.
“Well,” Iruka finally sighs, “I should have known no one would tell you that you didn’t have to accept high-ranking missions. The price of being married to a genius, I suppose.”
They aren’t married, of course. Iruka realises what he’s just said a moment after Kakashi does, and blushes that bright red that is one of Kakashi’s favourite colours in the whole world.
“So,” Kakashi says, because they need to resolve the Iruka-is-overworking-himself problem before they get to the part where he insists that this counts as a proposal, “Under the impression that I was taking high-ranking, lucrative missions on purpose, you…?”
“I did some quick and dirty math,” Iruka finishes, shooting Kakashi a glare that reminds him there will be no “quick and dirty, eh, sensei?” jokes while their kid is within earshot, “and I figured out how I could compensate for the loss of income if you stuck to full-squad B-ranks. It seemed like a small price to pay, being a little more tired but getting to have you here, for both of us.”
Iruka lays out their balance book and points to some numbers in different columns and Kakashi tries to follow, he really does, but there’s a reason the division of labour they settled on when they moved in together put “household finances” squarely in Iruka’s purview, and eventually Iruka remembers it.
“Sorry,” he says. “The gist of it is that this number,” he circles it with his finger, “is either your A-ranks or my extra work, and this number,” he circles another one, almost as big, “is the deficit our budget has if neither of us is working harder. I’ve tried to make it work without, and I just can’t.”
Kakashi eyes the rows. They have titles, in Iruka’s neat hand: expenses – Kakashi; expenses – Iruka; expenses – Naruto; expenses – household; income – Iruka; income – Kakashi; savings – household; savings – Naruto.
“I don’t see a column,” Kakashi says, slowly, in case it’s there and he’s just missed it in the swirl of numbers, “for the Hatake compound.”
Iruka blanches. “Are we…are we paying to upkeep the compound, too?”
“No, no,” Kakashi assures him. “How are you tracking my income?”
If Iruka is thrown by the change in topic, he’s too good at guiding Kakashi through paperwork to show it. “Standard mission rates and number of missions; there’s a pretty simple formula we use at the desk. Why, do you get special rates?”
“I don’t think so,” Kakashi tells him, “but I do get regular payments from the Village for their use of the compound, I think to store shinobi tools. Why aren’t you tracking based on my pay stubs?”
Iruka is looking at him in horror, but the sound that comes out of his mouth is disbelieving laughter. “Kakashi, you haven’t ever given me a pay stub that wasn’t covered in blood or mud or both! Why would I bother trying to figure out what’s written on it when I can just use the formula?”
Kakashi just looks at him.
“Well,” Iruka says, tartly, “I would’ve tried to figure out what was on them if I knew you were renting your clan compound to the Village. Which I didn’t, by the way.”
“I did wonder why you didn’t ask,” Kakashi admits. “I don’t know, it feels weird to say, hey, Iruka, I own like ten percent of the Village’s territory, for no reason other than everyone else died and left me in charge.”
“Ten percent,” Iruka whispers. Naruto looks up from his colouring to ask, “Is that a lot?”
"Yeah," Kakashi tells him, because it is, in fact, a lot. Hell, it was probably a lot even before the Hatake clan was practically wiped out in the Second Shinobi War, so it doesn’t even make sense that the one family that was left kept the whole compound rather than handing it off to a more numerous clan like the Aburame or the Inuzuka. Kakashi’s always figured that his dad just never bothered to get through the red tape of selling, and there hasn’t really been a good enough reason for Kakashi himself to do otherwise.
“I have been exhausted,” Iruka says now, voice rising, “and you are the closest thing to a feudal lord this Village has,” and, well, that’s not strictly true, because Kakashi is pretty sure that the Uchiha compound and the parts of the forest that sustain it contain more square footage than Hatake land, and the Sarutobis can’t be far behind, and it’s not like he has vassals or anything, but the point stands. If he’d told Iruka about this straight up, he could have saved them both a lot of worry.
“Still want to marry me?” he says, hoping his face sells it as an apology, and Iruka colours.
“I feel like a gold-digger,” he grumbles, but he undoes the seals on the envelope where he apparently keeps Kakashi’s dilapidated pay stubs and extracts one to demand that Kakashi tell him what it says.
Kakashi does, and Iruka laughs, helpless and a little hysterical. “Oh my god, Kakashi,” he says, “we could live on this revenue alone for the rest of our lives. Naruto’s grandchildren could live on this.”
“I don’t have any grandchildren, silly!” Naruto points out.
“I thought you knew,” Kakashi says, miserable. “I didn’t want to bring it up and make things awkward, and I thought you felt the same, so it was just…something that we both knew but didn’t talk about.”
“I knew,” Naruto promises, running a comforting hand along Kakashi’s arm. Kakashi ruffles his hair in thanks. He does not deserve this kid, he does not deserve this life, he does not deserve the man who has extracted a pencil from somewhere and is making annotations in the balance book. He’ll take it, though; he'll take it and he’ll hold onto it with both hands.
“I’m going to have to go back and start all of this over,” Iruka says, and there’s something like relish in his voice. Kakashi does not understand what Iruka finds so satisfying about organising all of their numbers, but he’s glad that he never has to think about them himself, and he’s glad, he’s so glad, to hear the sound of Iruka’s enthusiasm.
“Hey,” he says, and leans across the table for a kiss. When he pulls back, Iruka’s eyes are still closed and his lips are curved in a smile.
“I love you,” Iruka whispers. “Thank you for not giving up on me, even when I’m a colossal bitch.”
Kakashi kisses him again, because he can, because he wants to. “Thank you for working so hard to take care of us,” he whispers back. “I’d be in love with you regardless, but under your care is my favourite place to be.”
Iruka looks like he’s about to say something else, but their conference is interrupted by the imposition of a garishly-coloured paper between their faces.
“I drew a picture of us on our mission!” Naruto announces. “It’s a D-rank. D for Dad.”