Chapter Two
Iruka passed his can of coffee from one hand to another. Glanced askance at the boy sitting tensely on the bench beside him.
Kakashi was staring steadfastly at the scuffed dirt path between his sandaled toes. He tracked the lazy passage of a beetle. The manic flutter of a sparrow startled into motion, darting across the low yellow, pink, and purple sky above them. Fiddled with the tab of the can cupped between his own hands.
Basically everywhere that did not directly involve looking at Iruka.
"Just say it."
The Copy-Ninja's voice surprised him. The lowness of it. Or maybe it was the way he managed to sound so simultaneously articulate and removed. Like he was speaking solely for Iruka's benefit, giving him the room to pass some sort of concrete judgement as if... Iruka frowned. Bit the inside of his cheek and gave himself a moment to weigh the situation.
Truthfully, he was at a little bit of a loss.
He wasn't certain but, if his memory served, this might be the first conversation he'd ever attempted with the isolated warrior-prodigy child of the Last Great Ninja War. Sure, he knew who Kakashi was. Most everyone in the shinobi sector of Konoha had heard at least one tale of deadly conquest that involved the Copy-Ninja. Disgraced son of the White Fang. Nowadays, the stories were more infrequent. More secretive. Impossible.
Rumor had it he'd been drawn into ANBU. That he'd shed one mask for another. Become the perfect ghost. Traceless.
There was little known, and even less-Iruka was willing to bet-was understood about Hatake Kakashi. He was wading into unmarked territory here, venturing off the plodded path already traveled. At any moment he could trigger a mine-field, a retaliatory ambush. There was something palpably dangerous about Kakashi. The sort of unpredictability that burned like a flame, flickering through the dark eyes of a wild animal. One wrong move and he was prey.
So, why was it that Kakashi was talking like he already knew what Iruka was going to say? As if he already knew what the dark-haired chunin thought of him. And he was merely giving Iruka the opportunity to define and label-to openly judge-the mystery that was the Copy-Ninja.
He wondered if that was something the silver-haired boy got a lot. Other people telling him who he is.
"Say what?"
Iruka asked, taking a shallow sip of his drink and being careful not to look too hard at Kakashi. Partly because he had the strangest feeling that, if he looked too hard at the soft-spoken jonin, he might scare him away. And be left, wide-eyed, alone on the bench sipping his coffee like a fool.
But mostly he knows it has something to do with the fact that he can't unsee what just happened. That his stomach is attempting to tie itself in loopy knots the longer he sits here; Kakashi's slender, unmasked face and bare skin flashing superimposed across his vision like a strobe light.
He feels more than sees the jonin's tentative gaze flicker over him. Schools his face into a carefully blank, thoughtless look. Kakashi coughs quietly and turns away.
"That I'm disgusting." Kakashi's voice is so hushed it's almost as if he hadn't said anything at all. He looks down and picks at a loose thread on his knee.
Iruka watches the sun melting into the cradle of dusk over the staggered crown of Konoha's skyline. Says nothing.
"I'm a freak." There's a faint quaver in the words, and suddenly they all seem to be spilling out, helpless to be stopped. Kakashi ducks his head. Clenches his fists between his knees, shoulders raising in a gesture that's poignant in it's weakness. Vulnerability.
"I'm an idiot. A good-for-nothing piece of shit who doesn't know what he'd gotten himself into. A sl-"
Iruka makes a loud, intrusive sigh. Cuts Kakashi off. Shakes his head a little in vague dismay. Looks up at the sky with pursed lips for a brief moment with an expression that seemed to be asking God himself if the teenager beside him was actually serious. And then levels his warm, toffee-colored eyes on Kakashi.
"Don't say that." he kneads a burgeoning headache between his brows and frowns, "Look, I-" he interrupts himself, glancing at the Copy-Ninja again, "You didn't know what you were getting into?"
Kakashi looks at him for the first time. His hitae-ate has been carefully rearranged, just like the rest of his clothes-Iruka fights not to blush-and the Sharingan dutifully put away. There's a softness to the slope of his only visible eyelid that makes the curve of his thick, dark lashes look like the filmy wing of a butterfly casting long shadows on his masked cheek. And Iruka is surprised to see that up close Kakashi's eye isn't black but a layered mosaic of every shade of grey.
"I..." Kakashi stammers, "I didn't-I mean, I don't, it..."
The chunin stares. Feels himself becoming polarized, anchored in some profound, indescribable way to the silver-haired boy facing him through the thin fabric of a mask.
"Doesn't matter."
Iruka blinks a little, frowning at Kakashi, and tilts his head. He looks down at the half-drunk coffee can nestled between his palms.
"What do you mean," he says the words evenly, forcefully so, "'it doesn't matter'?"
And now he finds that he can't look at Kakashi. He can't dispell that tremulous echo of hurt he heard when he'd first pushed through the rickety, side-alley door of the bar. That kind of helplessness-that childish, abject fear of abandonment and loneliness-the sound of it coloring Kakashi's voice; it wasn't something he thought he could ever stop hearing.
The jounin shrugs dismissively beside him. Chases murky circles of half-spilled coffee around the lid of his can with his fingertip.
"I don't know..." he says, and then after a moment of deliberative silence, "You wouldn't..."
It takes a second for Iruka to realize that the Copy-Ninja physically can't finish his sentence. He looks up and is alarmed and a little horrified to read the uneasy fear and the rising crest of a thick blush in the minuscule corner of Kakashi's face that isn't covered by his mask or headband.
"What?" Iruka blinks and then realization hits him fully. He rocks back on the bench a little as if unconsciously offended at the unspoken words, "No! No, I..." he coughs and, blushing heavily himself now, looks awkwardly away, "I would never say anything."
"Oh."
Kakashi nods once, and then again, making to rise from the bench.
"Okay, well. Um." he looks back and forth between Iruka's side and the ground between his feet stiffly, and the sight of it is astonishingly adorable, "I. I guess I'll go... then..."
The Copy-Ninja freezes, jolting to a stop in the middle of turning away. He turns his head back slowly, several overgrown strands of white-silver hair drifting over his solitary wide, grey eye. And stares at the tanned hand curled loosely around the circle of his pale wrist.
Iruka looks up at him firmly, brown eyes warm and so familiar it makes the jounin pause. Swallow audibly.
"You don't need to go anywhere."
...