A Happy Birthday?
Kakshi looks for Jiraya once. Only once. Minato is dead; Rin and Obito are long since dead and ash; Kushina dead. The only relics of the Yondaime’s legacy are his own cracked visage in the mirror and a child with a monster sealed inside him.
Minato used to tell Kakashi that Jiraya was like his Grand-sensei; that he could always go to Jiraya for anything (“If you can find him, that is!” he used to joke). Kakashi never did.
Kakashi goes to Jiraya now because there is no one left to ask, and he wants to know if this is how it always feels; if this is what it will always feel like. To lose someone and feel it in your marrow that you’d never be happy again.
(Many, many years later, Kakashi will still remember the exact look of distaste on Jiraya’s face—even though he did not have the sharingan activated at the time.)
“People won’t like you if you’re moody all the time, kid,” Jiraya says, a million years ago and every day afterwards, a clear dismissal. He doesn’t even bother to look up from whatever magazine he’s flipping through. “You’re not the only one grieving, after all. Give people some slack.”
Kakashi’s shoulders slump. He’s travelled three unsleeping days to reach Jiraya, who had not been in Konoha at the time of the Kyuubi attack, and who is lauded as the hardest to find of the Legendary Sannin.
But Kakashi finds him. He isn’t known as the best tracker in ANBU for nothing, after all.
“Oh,” Kakashi says. “Then I’m sorry to bother you, Jiraya-sama.”
News has been spreading of Minato’s death like wildfire; soon the other hidden villages will start swarming Konoha to take advantage of their weakness. No doubt Jiraya has already heard the news.
“That’s better, but would it kill you to smile?” he says. And then he laughs. The smile on his face is more sad than happy. “Come over here. We can share a bottle of sake, in honor of Minato.”
The first time Kakashi gets drunk, it’s with Jiraya passed out on the floor beside him, and every mistake he’d ever made a fresh, bleeding wound in his chest. The sake is cheap, long gone cold by the time the bottle is empty. The room is spinning, the moonlight a splash of light as his eyes try to focus, and the grief knotting up his insides has muted to a cottony, far-away feeling.
He doesn’t know if that’s better or worse. With Jiraya snoring on the floor beside him, Kakashi decides it must at least be safe to close his eyes.
When he wakes the next afternoon with a headache almost as bad as when Rin had forced the Sharingan into his skull, Jiraya is long gone. He’s left Kakashi the bill for both the alcohol and the room. Kakashi pays it without issue and walks the two weeks it takes to get back to Konoha at a normal pace, too hung over to run.
He's never asked for advice from a human soul since.
Kakashi waffles for a week before he makes a decision. In the interim, Tsunade sends him on a single B-rank mission, a simple retrieval he could do in his sleep. When he gets back, still riding the high of an easy, successful mission, he decides to reach out to one of the names on the paper Iruka had given him: a medical-nin Yamanaka named Kurouba, nineteen years his senior. He worked with her briefly during the height of the third Shinobi war, on a handful of reconnaissance missions, memorable only because they were the few times his jonin missions were completed with no complications. Despite that, he still sends her a scroll that looks more like a mission report than anything else.
How else is he supposed to go over the details of the scrambled mess in his lungs? He learned how to write by writing reports.
(B-rank, he decides, given his own taciturn nature. He thinks about writing it out on the scroll, but the idea of her even in jest taking it to the mission desk stills his hand.)
Then he waffles some more. Kakashi has never been the type to ask for help; even before his life was made up of solo ANBU missions. He's since theorized that seeking help is a practiced skill, and it's something no one bothered to teach to him either. Kakashi throws away and rewrites his letter to Yamanaka at least three times.
Later, he stands outside T&I for nearly an hour, pushing down the urge to run, to deflect.
And once he’s there, sitting on the edge of his seat while the Yamanaka watches him, he thinks he’d upgrade that to an A-rank at least. Kakashi breathes, tries to remember that he's here of his own volition, mostly. Thinks about all the awful, ugly truths he lives with, and which might be the easiest to say aloud. About breaking through the ground with an earth jutsu and never coming out of the ground again.
"I think have PTSD," he finally decides.
It's the first time he's ever said it aloud, although both Pakkun, Tenzo, and even Gai have told him numerous times. Notably, he does reluctantly admit to himself in the dead of night that they're not wrong. Perhaps it’s the easiest of his truths to confess. Kurouba hums in response, nodding along with a smile.
"It's quite common for Shinobi who have been in service for five years or more. Although it's more rare in your generation; the Third Shinobi War was difficult on the generation before yours."
Kakashi's eye crescents into a smile. A lie sits on the tip of his tongue. He swallows it back.
He can do this. The truth is not so terrible.
"Yamanaka Kurouba," he says, as gently as he can manage. "You don't remember the missions we spent together, in the war? Ah, my fragile heart might never recover."
In the ensuing silence, Kakashi watches as his name on the file and the face from her memory click.
"Hatake Kakashi," she says again. "It has been a long time."
"I told you I'd grow into a fine young Shinobi."
She smiles at him, fond, even though they both know Kakashi would have never said anything close to that in his youth.
"All right. What do you want to start with, then?"
She sits up straighter in her seat, looking for all the world like she's about to explain a set of mission parameters. Maybe she's like this for each new patient, or maybe the no-nonsense attitude is just for Kakashi. Either way, it loosens the tight knot of tension in his chest. If she'd looked at him with sympathy (or pity) he'd probably bolt.
(No doubt she knows that. Smart woman. No wonder Iruka recommended her.)
So, Kakashi gives her the good grace to honestly mull over her question. What does he want to start with? Which ancient horror can he dredge up from the lockbox of his insides for her? There is so much blood on his hands, so much of it his own fault, seeped into every pore that he can never wash it all out. On particularly bad days, his perfect recall remembers the way blood had slipped between his fingers, murky-dark and slippery: Rin's blood, Sakumo's blood, enemy blood, friend blood—
His own blood—
"Let's start off small," Kakashi breathes, annoyed that his voice shakes already.
Kurouba nods, encouraging. At least he knows this won't pass to anyone else. After all, as they say, once a door has closed in T&I, no one can hear you scream. Kakashi looks up from his hands, ignoring the way the walls are trying their hardest to squeeze in around them, to check the still-closed door. He can see the lock clicked into place.
Kakashi swallows.
(He lies. He doesn't start off small. Instead, he tells her about Rin. All the classified details. The unclassified ones. The look on Rin’s face as she died, relief and disappointment and sadness and love, all mixed into each other. Blood running down the sides of her mouth and tears down the sides of her cheeks. Hundreds of nights since then, clawing himself back to reality after dreaming of her and Obito, dozens of almost-botched missions from failing to forget anything at all. The way she sometimes says, in his dreams, with a mouthful of blood it should have been you crushed under that boulder, Kakashi. )
Kakashi feels wrung out afterwards, when the story is met by sympathy and not pity. Pushing down the urge to run, the urge to deflect, Kakashi meets Kurouba’s eyes with a steady, dispassionate gaze.
“And that’s it, I guess,” he finishes lamely, spreading both hands and collapsing backwards into the not-quite comfortable couch.
“Thank you for telling me,” is all she says.
She lets him unwind for a long moment, as if staring up at the ceiling will do anything to help fix him. Maybe it will. Kakashi doesn’t know anything about this, does he?
When he finally leaves, he wonders if that's the first time he's ever said any of those things aloud.
(He wonders the whole walk home if it's helpful at all to relive old traumas like that and doesn't notice the way a handful of Shinobi watch him meander down the road, the way his shoulders are pulled back and his head held uncharacteristically high.)
Later that night, he sits in his favorite chair and stares out into the village, and for once, for once, something untangles itself from the angry knot of misery in his chest. He falls to sleep within five minutes and doesn’t stir once before waking.
That night, for the first time in what feels like his entire life, he doesn't dream.
When Hatake leaves from his first session with her, Kurouba stays where she is for a long moment. She’s a medi-nin by nature, hardened by both the second and third shinobi wars, but even still she gets the creeps from being in T&I for so long. Only Hatake Kakashi’s insistence had brought her here in the first place, and it seemed prudent at the time to make Hatake as comfortable as possible. It isn’t often that a jounin of his caliber calls her up directly for this kind of thing.
She’s surprised, but so, so glad he did.
Footsteps linger outside, too loud to be Kakashi’s. Ibiki, most likely, haunting every inch of the building like he’s wont to do. Kurouba takes a breath, remembering the slump of the Hatake boy’s shoulders, the closed-off body language, the almost imperceptible tremble of his fingers.
And remembers, with almost startling clarity, the last time she’d seen Hatake Sakumo alive. He’d had the same weight drooping the planes of his shoulders, the same tremble in his arms.
Kurouba hadn’t been great friends with Sakumo; she doesn’t think he had very many friends, especially after his wife’s death. But they’d been on the same chunin team, once upon a time, and when the entire village had turned its back on him, Sakumo had come to Kurouba for a friendly face and a warm meal more than once.
Once upon a time, the Hatake clan had been as powerful and influential as the Yamanakas, until the Second Shinobi war decimated their numbers. The Hatake were proud, loyal, and self-sacrificing; with no kekkei genkai to speak of but well regarded and feared in equal measure nevertheless. Their innate understanding of jutsu was unmatched, even by clans with more specialized skills. It was said that the Hatake Clan was a Clan of geniuses, back then. That Konoha had failed them so thoroughly, until their numbers dwindled down to Sakumo and Kakashi, should have been the village’s greatest shame.
That Kurouba did not know, could not even guess that Sakumo would take his own life, was her own personal shame. She’d tried to watch over his son after Sakumo’s death, until the Third Shinobi war had swallowed Kakashi up into its darkest secrets. And now, here he was, asking for help when Sakumo could not, when few others would.
Kurouba could not fail him.
Kurouba will not fail him.
But, Gods, does she need a drink.
So it goes. Kakashi is sent on several back-to-back missions so easy that he starts to get suspicious. Surely the Hokage is up to something?
Kakashi can’t quite shake the feeling that the rug is about to slip out from under him. A week goes by. He has tea with Tenzo. He sees Kurouba again. He meets with Itachi while his little brother is sleeping. He meets Shisui, Itachi’s cousin whose easy-going smile reminds him of Obito for one heart-stopping, earth-shattering moment.
The world doesn’t end.
“I think I’m going crazy,” Kakashi says when Gai opens his window, not-quite midnight of the forteenth day of September. “Tsunade hasn’t sent me on a serious mission in weeks.”
“Is that so strange?” Gai asks, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He squints out into the darkness, slightly to the left of where Kakashi is hiding in the tree by his window. “It’s rude to creep around in the dark like this, Rival.”
Kakashi appears at the windowsill in the next minute; Gai gives him a very unimpressed stare—it’s after midnight, after all. Gai has told him on multiple occasions that he can’t be held responsible for cordiality of Kakashi interrupts his sleep.
“Since she’s taken the Hokage mantle, I’ve not had more than nine days in the village.”
Gai blinks at him, then shifts his weight onto his back foot. It’s all the invitation Kakaski needs to slip into his living room and start to pace. Gai blinks again watching him with his mouth agape.
“Besides injuries,” Kakashi amends into the silence.
Gai is wearing a pair of long-johns that he’s either dyed or found in that signature green of his, with a blanket slipping off his shoulders as he keeps watching Kakashi in bewilderment. A breeze rolls in through the window, cold enough to say that autumn has well and truly arrived. Gai shivers and slams the window shut.
Gai’s apartment is small. The small cottage Maight Dai built with his own two hands did not survive the Kyuubi attack, but many of his knick-knacks did. Gai himself has always been sparse with his furnishings; if not for Gai’s things, Kakashi expects his apartment might be as bare as Kakashi’s own. Instead, the walls are filled to the brim with photographs, paintings, shelves with little figurines and books and scrolls of yellowing parchment. All of it is crammed into the living room, and Kakashi inspects each item closely, memorizing their shape as if he hasn’t done this a thousand times before.
“You don’t think she’s maybe seen the error of her ways?” Gai hedges.
Kakashi remembers, all at once, the fight they’d had not too long ago. You are an extraordinary Shinobi, he’d said. Unmatched by any of our enemies. And the village abuses that fact.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Gai snaps, stomping away to the kitchen and making a great rattling commotion. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. Do you really think me so underhanded?”
The stove turns on. Even through his mask, he can smell the pungent rooibos tea leaves Gai prefers when he opens the container. No, Kakashi doesn’t think Gai so underhanded, he decides.
“I have been sworn to secrecy,” Gai says after a long minute of Kakashi pacing in his living room and staying silent. “But I might say: someone may have let slip to Shizune that your birthday is approaching. You know how Shizune has the Hokage’s ear these days.”
From the kitchen, the kettle whistles, and water is poured into two cups.
“My birthday,” Kakashi repeats hollowly.
From the wall seperating the kitchen and the living room, something chirps. A birdhouse-shaped clock opens the little yellow doors at its base and a tiny robin shoots out, chirping twelve times.
“Sit down already,” Gai says, finally coming back into the room. Kakashi blinks, staring at the two cups of tea in Gai’s hands. “I know you disapprove of gifts. Have tea with me, instead.”
A thin grey box with a blue ribbon. A scroll. Pakkun licking tears off of Kakashi’s six-year-old face. Moonlight spilling white along tatami mats; a dark stain spreading to his feet.
“I didn’t realize,” Kakashi says faintly.
He sits on one of Gai’s cushions, watches Gai set a cup in front of him on the low table. It has a chip on the rim, and the tea inside is rich umber. The other cup makes a faint clack as it is placed on the table as well.
Mechanically, Kakashi picks it up. He stares down at the reddish-brown liquid. Sakumo’s death, Dai’s death, Obito and Rin and Minato’s death. Kakashi, walking away from a boisterous voice, always offering him a seat.
“Happy birthday, Rival,” Gai says.
Kakashi takes a sip of his tea. His eye flickers up to Gai, who is smiling so wide almost all of his teeth are on display. Under his mask, Kakashi’s lips twitch.
“Thank you, Rival.”
Kakashi has not often celebrated his birthday. Not since Sakumo’s death. Who would he have celebrated with, and where would he have found the time? He doesn’t think he’s been in Konoha for his birthday since…
Since…
Well, a decade, at least. But he is now, and Gai bullies him into having breakfast, and then bullies him into taking a walk around town. They just so happen to meet Kurenai at a nearby yakitori restaurant, who bullies them into lunch, which happens to house Asuma as well. Kakashi is suspicious once again, especially when Gai slings an arm over his shoulder and all but steers the whole group of them towards Hokage Mountain.
“What are we doing, Gai?” Kakashi finally asks.
“Obvioulsy we’re going to your birthday activity,” Kurenai says.
She and Asuma are walking side-by-side, just their pinkies linked together as they stare resolutely in opposite directions.
“Gai’s choice of name,” Asuma adds.
“So you did set this up.”
“I would never lie to you, Rival!” Gai shouts, pushing away from him to point a dramatic finger. “I reserve this area every year, on the chance that you’ll join us for some birthday climbing!”
“Kakashi,” Asuma says, “You’ve been hanging out with Iruka lately, right? I can go fetch him for you.”
“Have I?” Kakashi asks lightly, squinting his eye in a pleasant (fake) grin.
“Gai can’t keep his mouth shut,” Kurenai adds. “So don’t bother denying it.”
Kakashi does not blush. He keeps smiling and slips his hands into his pockets. Thinks about disappearing in a whisp of smoke. Thinks about staying. Thinks about sitting with someone on a rooftop, the warmth of their hand on him. I want to be your friend, Kakashi.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Asuma rolls his eyes.
“Sure. I’ll go get him, then. Anyone else you want to invite? It’s your birthday, after all.”
Tilting his head, he actually thinks about it. Kakashi hasn’t celebrated his birthday since before Sakumo’s death. He doesn’t know what one does when it’s not just him and his dogs on a windswept mission.
Kakashi summons the whole pack in one fell swoop. While Asuma and Kurenai both shout in surprise, Kakashi crouches down to Pakkun.
“Go get Tenzo,” he tells him. “Nothing urgent. A…birthday party, I suppose?”
Pakkun stares at him like he’s never seen him before. Seven other tails start wagging furiously, though.
“Sure thing, Boss,” Pakkun says. “There better be birthday steak in it for us.”
“Birthday steak!” Biskue shouts.
“Birthday steak!” Akino shouts.
“Birthday steak!” Shiba shouts.
“Who said anything about steak?” Kurenai shouts.
In the commotion, Pakkun disappears. No one in town knows Tenzo’s civilian persona, so he should be fine out in the world for an afternoon. Itachi is too, well, Uchiha. If word gets back to Danzo that his precious Crow has been spotted in Konoha…
(Maybe next time, he definitely doesn’t think, because Kakashi shouldn’t get used to feeling so light, to feeling like maybe he can feel good on this day, to feeling like—)
He senses Iruka’s chakra before he sees him or Asuma return, which is interesting and a little embarrassing, considering Asuma’s chakra is much stronger that it should have completely masked a chakra signature as weak as Iruka’s.
Iruka is in a black shirt, his hair up in his signature ponytail. He’s flushed red, and Asuma is roaring with laughter as he pushes Iruka towards them.
“You never said your birthday was coming up, Kakashi!” Iruka shouts when he’s within shouting distance. “I would have gotten you something!”
“He would have gotten you something,” Kurenai repeats under her breath, nudging Kakashi with her elbow. “You didn’t tell me you were interested in a Chunin, Kakashi.”
“Iruka is my friend,” Kakashi says, slipping over the word and making Kurenai smirk at him, probably getting the wrong idea completely. “So he says.”
“I’m honored to have been invited, Senpai,” Tenzo says from directly behind him.
Kurenai jumps almost out of her skin, whirling on him and pointing a kunai at his throat in the blink of an eye.
“Don’t kill him, Kurenai,” Kakashi tells the two of them without taking his eyes off of Iruka. “Tenzo is my friend, too.”
Kurenai says something, but Kakashi doesn’t quite hear her. He takes a few steps towards Asuma and Iruka, waving in greeting while Asuma rushes at the dogs to a great peal of barking.
“Hi.” Iruka sounds out of breath, and Kakashi tries not to get distracted by the way he flushes when he smiles. “Happy birthday. Asuma says there’s gonna be rock climbing?”
“Is there?” Kakashi asks mildly. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Gai has a handicap,” Kurenai calls out to them, clearly eavesdropping. She pulls a scroll out of somewhere that she pulls several bottles of sake out of. “Oi, Asuma, how many laps of the village have you done today?”
“None.”
Kurenai grins, the evil one that makes shinobi quiver in fear.
“Gai, how many laps of the village have you done today?”
“Only twice!” he exclaims.
Both Kurenai and Asuma gape at him.
“But you always have your eighteen-lap run of the village before the sun rises,” Kurenai pouts, staring at the bottles of sake lined up on the floor.
Gai blinks. His eyes flicker to Kakashi for a moment before he grins again.
“The road of life leads to many places,” he says in a perfect imitation of Kakashi. “Perhaps today, mine led me somewhere different.”
Kurenai sniffs, but she does open a bottle of sake and pour herself a cup.
“Let’s all have a drink together anyway,” she says. “I don’t think we’ve ever come out here on Kakashi’s birthday with Kakashi actually present.”
Kurenai passes out six cups of chilled, sweet-smelling sake. Kakashi has a bizzare moment where his throat closes up and tears prick at the corner of Obito’s eye, watching the disparate group of people laughing together, raising their cups in the air.
“To another year!” Gai shouts, never one to contain his excitement. “Enjoy!”
The group drinks their sake.
“I’ve got the stopwatch,” Asuma says, turning to Kakashi expectantly. “You going first, Birthday Boy?”
Gai points at the base of the mountain, where all of his dogs have made a semi-circle, waiting patiently.
“No chakra, straight to the top,” Gai explains. “Slowest time buys dinner.”
A chill breeze ripples through area, like a balm against the nape of Kakashi’s neck. He’s forgotten how much he likes this time of year, when summer hasn’t truly disppaeared, when autumn hasn’t figured out how to sink its teeth in.
He thinks he’s forgotten a lot of things he used to like.
“Sure,” Kakashi says, slipping off his vest and slouching over to the wall. “What’s Gai’s best time?”
“Seven minutes, forty-two seconds!”
Kakashi hums, eyes scanning the face of the mountain, considering his path.
“Ready, Kakashi?” Asuma calls.
Kakash stretches his shoulders until they pop, shaking out any tension in his hands.
“Ready.”
(He makes it up in seven minutes, six seconds. Gai climbs it ten times in a row to try to beat his time.)
Tenzo and Kurenai elect not to climb, but Iruka sheds his longsleeve and climbs up in ten minutes flat. A highly respectable time for a Chunin.
His flush reaches from his neck down to the small of his back, which Kakashi is not noticing. He is not wondering how a chunin manages to keep in such good shape either, because that would be a disservice to all chunin in general.
“You might be drooling, Rival,” Gai says beside him, quiet enough for it not to travel. He waggles his eyebrows in the most unsubtle way. Kakashi considers drowning himself in the river. “Good job, Iruka-sensei! A remarkable time!”
Iruka jumps the last meter to the ground, almost glowing in the late afternoon sunlight from the sheen of sweat along his torso and arms. He’s panting when he lands, and his legs wobble dangerously.
“I should have known it was silly to try to keep up with you two,” he pants. His face is flushed bright red from exertion, but he’s smiling brightly too. “Not bad for a Chunin, I think.”
“Asuma has never done better than twenty minutes,” Kurenai calls. “Don’t sell yourself short, Iruka-sensei!”
Asuma roars while Kurenai laughs at him, and in the commotion, Gai turns away from them, very un-subtly pushing Kakashi a step closer to Iruka.
“I like bouldering,” Iruka says, low, his face growing brighter. “I try to go every weekend, when I have time.”
Kakashi doesn’t have hobbies. He kills people under the order of his Hokage; he sleeps and he eats and he feeds his dogs because they all need to survive. He reads sometimes. Does keeping fit for his job count as a hobby? Kakashi often scales the mountains surrounding Hokage Mountain on his off days, although he’s never considered more than training.
“Me too,” he decides, and delights in the pleased smile it pulls from Iruka. “Maybe we can go together again.”
“I’d like that,” Iruka says, breathless again.
Asuma ends up paying for dinner, when he misjudges his grip on one of his handholds and tumbles down half the mountainside. He catches himself with chakra, less than a meter off the ground, and Iruka shouts himself hoarse before checking on his vitals begrudgingly.
“I didn’t know you knew medical jutsu, Iruka-sensei,” Tenzo says quietly, watching Iruka’s glowing hand with interest.
“I picked up a bit, here and there. Mostly diagnostic.” He glares at Asuma one last time. “You’re fine. Maybe next time don’t let Kurenai distract you, hm?”
Asuma flushes scarlet and starts sputtering denials while Kurenai laughs at him.
“Fine,” he grumbles. “Lets go get takoyaki. My treat I suppose.”
Kakashi has fun. He doesn’t quite believe it. Takoyaki is a chaotic affair that involves the dogs trying to swindle Asuma out of the Sarutobi fortune by buying them their weight in octopus, Gai convincing Tenzo and Kakashi into a one-handed handstand pushup contest, and Kurenai trying (and mostly failing) to drink Iruka under the table.
The number of pleasant birthdays Kakashi can remember fit on one hand with several free fingers. It seems impossible that he’s here, surrounded by people that make him feel safe, that make him smile. Kakashi has also never considered himself a people-person. And yet, he’s spent literally the entire day with Gai; he’s spent hours with Asuma, Kurenai, Tenzo, and Iruka, and he hasn’t felt his energy dwindling to dregs like it normally might.
He doesn’t know what’s happening. But for now, he’s not going to question it.
They spend the afternoon at the takoyaki stand, until Iruka declares that he needs to get home to study, and the group decides to disperse. A quick round of good-byes and happy birthdays and a completely unsubtle wink from Gai, and the group disappears.
“You sure you’ll make it home all right?” Kakashi asks.
There’s no wobble to Iruka’s stance, despite all the alcohol he and Kurenai consumed. Iruka smiles at him, wide and unworried.
“Kurenai has nothing on Anko,” he says with a wave of his hand. “If you’re really so worried, you can walk me home.”
With a flick of his ponytail, Iruka turns and begins a slow walk to the south, in what he assumes is the direction to his apartment. Kakashi takes a deep breath. Sunflower oil still burning hot at the takoyaki stand, and the nearly overpowering smell of cooking bread cloud his senses for a second.
“Wait for me at the apartment,” he tells the dogs, who all disappear in a poof of smoke.
Kakashi follows after Iruka, trying to ignore the way his stomach ties itself into knots. Iruka is warm by his side; he smiles when Kakashi catches up to him, but doesn’t speak as they walk. That suits Kakashi just fine. They’ve done a lot of listening today.
Relatively, it’s a short walk. The sun sinks closer to the horizon, not quite dusk. Iruka stops in front of a small apartment complex, tilting his head backwards.
“This is me.” Kakashi nods, wondering what people say in this type of situation. “Thank you for inviting me, and happy birthday, again.”
And before Kakashi can figure out what to say to that, Iruka leans in and presses a kiss to his cloth-covered cheek, lingering for a heady moment where all Kakashi can smell is the warm orange-spice of his soap and the sake on his breath.
Iruka pulls away and waves, a faint flush crawling up his neck. Kakashi watches his departure and does not move a muscle, trying to memorize the warm press of his mouth, trying to imagine what it would feel like without a layer of cotton in the way.
His whole body feels light. His cheek tingles. His stomach flutters.
For the first time in twelve years, Kakashi has a good birthday.
He practically floats back into his apartment. The sun has mostly sunk behind Hokage Tower, so his sparse room is flooded with amber light.
Sitting on the inside of his window sill is a crow half the size of his torso. Blood is dripping from its beak, half of its feathers ruffled. It stares at him with blood-red eyes. When it opens its mouth, it drops a single spider-lily and disappears in a puff of smoke.