Title: Twisted Morality
Category: Anime/Manga ยป Naruto
Language: English, Rating: Fiction Rated: T
Genre: General/Romance
Pairing: Kakashi Hatake X Sasuke Uchiha
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto, not me.

N: Rewriting this bitch.

It was well known that Psychology Professor Kakashi Hatake was, while extremely talented, considerably unorthodox. Every year, he presented his students with the same test on the first day. "Explain the following: If." His students would generally answer as expected, with obviously desperate attempts at defining their entire beings in essay format, turning in verbose papers that he rarely read through. A vast majority boiled down to, "I am a very interesting person and I deserve to be in your class, because I am intelligent. Please love me and give me an A so I can pass, get a degree, and land a cushy job."

(At the end of each year, he liked to deliver a rousing pep talk about the hostility they would face from other doctors and the difficulties they would likely have in getting good jobs. It was fun to watch whose face fell, and whose determination grew, after hearing his stories.)

The point of the test was to root out the students with good minds, though he would prefer exceptional minds, but to ask for only the latter would be both stupid and unfair - not just to his students, but to his wallet. Better to teach thirty average students, than to teach one or no geniuses.

For that reason, everyone who wrote more than their name on the paper passed, and he consented to teach them all. When a bright mind came through, he would quietly resolve to pay special attention to that student, but the situation was all too rare.

Partly because of this truth, but mostly because he liked to know about people so he could unnerve them more easily, Kakashi tried to track down his new students every year. He never found all of them, but he usually discovered those least likely to drop his class, so he was content with a bit of failure. He ensured his ability to do this by only teaching during the evening, which not only gave him time during the day to find them in other lessons, but which also gave him time to sleep in, thus preventing him from being late on a daily basis, as he had been for the first three years of his employment at Konoha University. Upon receiving a list of students who had signed up for his Psychology class, he would traverse the campus, casually walking in on lessons to look for them.

This year, Kakashi noticed a young man who had almost certainly enrolled in his class by mistake. He expected this student not just to fail, but to fail with drowning colors. When his friend, Professor Iruka Umino, a self-proclaimed grammar and spelling Nazi, heard his prediction, he smacked him above the head for two reasons: Firstly, because he was "sick and tired of Kakashi insulting his students," and secondly, because "that was a complete butchering of the phrase 'flying colors,' and by God, he should be ashamed of himself."

(Iruka somehow convinced him that the only way to properly apologize would be for his lunch, reminding Kakashi why he hated English: No matter how old you got, its teachers were out to get you, and no matter how hard you tried, they found something wrong with your performance. He was particularly familiar with the second part, having been friends with Iruka for coming on seven years, and having dated a high school English teacher for two weeks and facing her unfounded criticism of his sexual performance for at least half that time.)

The student in question was a dark, brooding boy known as Sasuke Uchiha, frequently found with his head down and his shoulders hunched. Kakashi was of the opinion that Sasuke, while certainly an expert at looking generally depressed, was probably one of those artistic types who merely thought he was being brilliant when he waxed poetic. The facts that his bangs almost completely covered his eyes and that his wardrobe consisted heavily of navy blue and black only reinforced this opinion. Of course, he also happened to have found him in a Creative Writing class; that may have affected his opinion... slightly.

After distributing the test, which some regarded with an irritating sort of smugness (he expected them to put down the most bullshit), he sat down in his famous chintz armchair, an old housewarming gift from Spanish Professor Kurenai Yuhi. Kakashi reclined in his seat, confident that he had at least twenty-five minutes before the first essay came in; they looked like a particularly verbose bunch.

At the end of class, as his students filed out, each expressing varying degrees of nervousness (ranging from the brightness of "I totally passed" to the green tinge of "I think I'm going to puke"), Sasuke dropped a sheet of paper on the top of the pile. The shortness of his answer intrigued Kakashi, less because he thought it would be insightful, and more because he couldn't comprehend why Sasuke had kept his paper for an hour and a half if he evidently only needed a few minutes. Another student covered it with her paper, though, so he couldn't read it from his seat; and anyway, Sasuke was still sticking around, and he couldn't show his interest right in front of him. That would go against his code.

Instead, he quirked his left eyebrow, calling attention to both his curiosity and his scarred eye. Sasuke's reaction was no more than a shrug. "You never set a guideline for the length of the essay," he said as he sauntered out, closing the door smoothly behind him.

He brushed off the essay on top of the pile, and picked up Sasuke's. There were three, neatly written sentences at the top of the page: "If is just a word people use to resemble a possible scenario involving what they define as 'human choice,' even though it shouldn't exist. If everyone realized what the implications of if were, no one would use if. If this is the hardest assignment, I'll pass."

"See me after class."

That was what the note had said, clearly written in bright, red marker in his teacher's easily identifiable handwriting. It was all loops, and the cross on the T extended to the first S in class. Sasuke raised an eyebrow, the only expression he would allow himself. After years of conditioning, it was simply natural for him to repress emotion. As his friend Neji Hyuuga always said, "Thank God for fucked up families; they make you more interesting by tenfold."

Sasuke flipped the paper over, and wondered if his professor had been able to read the line he had erased. Judging by what little he'd seen of the man's personality, he assumed he hadn't; Professor Hatake seemed like the kind of person who would avoid reading his students' essays at many costs.

He hoped he was right, and as he surveyed his teacher's expression, it seemed he was. In fact, the silver-haired man's gaze almost never fell on him, and when it did, there was no shift from when he was looking at another student.

Sasuke sighed with relief. Despite the front he put up, he was serious about his academic life. He knew he was intelligent, and he didn't want something he wrote on a mere whim to screw up his present or his future.

Kakashi looked up as Sasuke approached his desk. The rest of the class had emptied the room, leaving only the two. Nearly everyone would be gone by now, either to get shitfaced at a nearby bar, study 'til their eyes stung, or just fall into a bed for the night. "Yes, Sasuke?" He asked pleasantly, feigning ignorance of the arranged conversation.

The young man sighed, and flipped his bangs out of his eyes. Kakashi nearly lost his train of thought when he saw their deep shade, nearly black. "You wanted to see me after class, right?" Sasuke's sharp tone jerked him out of his reverie, and he grinned.

Sasuke bit the inside of his cheek, worried. Kakashi smiled oddly, and chuckled knowingly, and Sasuke found himself wishing the world would open up underneath him; devour him so that he could avoid this humiliating agony he knew would envelop him any moment. Kakashi had seen the sentence, and from the looks of it, he was going to hold that knowledge over Sasuke's head.

"Congratulations," Kakashi said, and Sasuke just barely stopped himself from doing a double-take. He hadn't expected that. "You did very well on the test. Your paper was a very appreciated break from some long essays."

Or, well, it would have been, Kakashi thought, if I had read more than four of them. But Sasuke didn't have to know that.

"If I recall correctly, Sasuke," Kakashi continued, standing, "you included a fourth sentence on your paper. You erased it quite thoroughly." He sidled around his desk and leaned on it with one hand, looking supremely comfortable while Sasuke could only feel burning anxiety. This was more like what he'd expected. "I noticed it, though. I'm good at noticing things that people try to hide."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes just a bit, but didn't allow himself to clench his fists, as he might have in earlier years. Though he was just twenty, he was good at masking his emotions. He wasn't an expert at crushing his feelings like Neji, or at simply making them weigh less like Shikamaru Nara, but he could act one way and feel another with little or no difficulty. Rather than fidgeting or running away, like he wanted to, he stood his ground. Shifted his weight and raised his eyebrows as though he was confused.

"I think it went something along the lines of, if I wasn't your teacher, you would kiss me." Kakashi fell silent, long enough for Sasuke to raise his gaze back to his face. He immediately regretted it. Kakashi's face had a certain trait to it that didn't make you just want to tell him everything, it made you feel like you had to. Fighting his blush under the scrutiny of those mismatched eyes was too much to ask, and he knew his face turned a shade of pink he'd never found attractive.

Kakashi found himself fighting a similar battle. He realized, with sudden clarity, that he wanted Sasuke. He wanted to caress his pale skin, run his hands through the odd spikes in his hair, and kiss his sullen lips until he coaxed them into a smile. It was a powerful revelation, and surprising, but he embraced it.

"I asked you here because I wanted to tell you, that isn't a problem for me." He leaned closer to Sasuke, and watched with interest as the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. "Teacher, student... they're just titles. We're both adults here, aren't we?" Without waiting for an answer, he pressed his lips against the younger man's, and would have laughed at the widening of Sasuke's eyes if they weren't so alluring. Instead, he pulled back reluctantly, and slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Sasuke," he promised, "and don't worry about it." He couldn't stop grinning when he walked to his car.

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