Yay! I've been on a KakaIru kick : ) Does anyone know any really long, really good stories about these two? The only thing I've found so far is Blind, and I'm not a huge fan of angsty!Kakashi...(I still read it though).

Edited for the most part, too! And I know that the ending is kind of...uh, loose-thread-like, but I couldn't come up with anything better and some chibi in my head flashed a sign that said 'end it here!'

So blame the chibis.

Also, I don't know any teachers that (are dumb enough to) grade in pencil, but I didn't think pen worked either so...(locks up accuracy with realism).

Hope you like it! Please review!

-Oceans

Another Word for Scarecrow

Weird.

That was Hatake Kakashi, summed up in a single word. But who said you had to stop there? There were plenty- strange, strong, enigmatic, unmotivated, easygoing...

Iruka could come up with a ton off the top of his head; enough, he was willing to bet, to fill a rather large book. The kind that hurt when it fell on your foot. And not all of them were complimentary.

...difficult, egotistic, intolerable...

Iruka stiffened. No...god, he didn't need this now! He had tests to grade!

Do your job, Umino! He growled lowly and bent over his work with renewed focus.

Wrong, wrong, wr- right.

He smiled. "Good job, Ume-chan."

"Talking to yourself, Umino-kun?"

Iruka lurched and looked over his shoulder, but no one was there. The teasing rumble had come from his head. He shook it off and grabbed Yokiro-kun's test.

The next time it happened, he broke the tip of his pencil on the desk top.

"Damn it!" He snapped. Iruka took his head between his hands as it he was going to juice his brain out through his ears.

But of course he wasn't. Not his whole brain- just the odd Hatake-clouded memory...

He dropped his skull with a crack and sighed, defeated.

"...why did you have to do something so...confusing..." He whimpered, clenching his fist painfully tight.

Confusing. That was yet another word to add to his bo- list. It was probably a better one than 'weird'.

Unpredictable. There was another. Maybe it wasn't so easy to describe the surviving Hatake with one term.

Kakashi was weird. He saw rules as only guidelines at best. Punctuality was something wadded up and forgotten in his back pocket. There wasn't room for reasonable in a sentence that included the word lie in his case. He single-handedly made reading porn in public acceptable in Konoha. But despite these faults, or perhaps because of them, he was a genius. A true prodigy- and a mentally stable one. Always a bonus in the Hidden Leaf. He was an ideal comrade-in-arms and, though the term was applied loosely, dependable.

He was unpredictable. He just, well- was. Iruka didn't have a prepared, well rehearsed and thoroughly thought out rant sitting in his head for this one. Honestly, 'unpredictable' had only recently joined the parade. If someone had asked him two days ago if he thought the silver haired Jounin discernable, his answer would have been a hard, quick yes. But now...after what happened yesterday...

Maybe Kakashi wasn't quite as shallow as he seemed to be. Maybe he was ocean-deep. Maybe he was so shallow he reflected the sky. Iruka couldn't tell anymore, wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Confusing...jeez, same as 'unpredictable'. He hadn't thought up his speech yet. He hadn't realized there was a need for one.

Iruka clunked his head on the desk. Damn Kakashi, if he had just left him alone yesterday, he wouldn't be thinking so much now! If he hadn't...!

Iruka's cheeks caught fire. This was insane. He was a grown man! Not a blushing schoolgirl! It wasn't like he'd never been kissed before!

Some evil voice in his head decided to speak out.

But not by a man.

Not through cloth.

And not like that.

He groaned. It had been difficult enough to go to sleep last night, when the incident...(the cloth was rough- it scratched the soft skin just beneath his lip)...had been fresh on his mind...(wait a second, his back was against the terra cotta roof- when had that happened?!)...but for it to follow him, and hang around so strongly that thinking about it still gave him butterflies...

Iruka's chin bounced off an ungraded test, startling him out of his revere. He looked mournfully down at the stack of unfinished work and sighed. Too much Kakashi on the brain. Not enough room for tests.

The children would have to wait to get their grades back.