A/N: Written for a prompt on slashfestLJ. When I saw this prompt, I really wanted to give it a try; I love Iruka, and I really think he's more awesome than most people give him credit for. I found some of the ninja-disciplines on a website; imagine that! There are 18 in all, according to that website, even though only a few are used here. The different sections are a bit disconnected and a few parts are probably AU to some readers. No spoilers for recent episodes/mangas, I think!
Seishin-teki kyōyō (spiritual refinement)
Iruka's impatience when it comes to Naruto is legendary; just ask any denizen of Hidden Leaf who happens to be awake when Naruto is up to no good. In any case, if they aren't conscious, Iruka's frustrated bellows serve as a great alarm clock. Very accurate.
Naruto brings out the worst in him, surprisingly, and not because he dislikes the brat. It's quite the opposite; Iruka actually loves him. Iruka would do just about anything for the whiskered wonder, because he can see what the boy is capable of.
Great things… many great things, if only he would stop being such a little shit.
This is the point where a part of Iruka's mind sighs in the middle of his meditation session with the students and points out: You were just like that at his age. Only, you know, more smooth at the edges. And not as insane. Well… kind of insane. Remember that time you got a nest of hornets and told some other student that they were golden flies? Wasn't that--
"Naruto!" Iruka screams out loud, and the children flinch where they sit cross-legged on their little mats; he screams because Naruto is kneeling behind Sasuke with a pair of scissors, but it is far too late, even for Iruka's reflexes.
(Up to this day, Sasuke wears his hair in the choppy fashion that Naruto snipped his hair into, mainly because of stupid Uchiha pride. Why so arrogant, Uchiha clan? Iruka thinks to himself all the time. Why?!)
This is meditation, damn it; Naruto and his crazy bunch of friends (that Chouji really should know better), they need to refine their thrice-damned spirits.
Damn, damn, damn.
At least all this refining of spirit comes in very handy when that asshole jounin Hatake decides to sign up Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura for the Chuunin exams. Instead of ripping that silver mop of hair from that stupid head, Iruka has a yelling match with the Copy-nin (right in front of the Third, much to his dismay when he mentally replays it later) and then manages to walk out with as much dignity as he can from that disastrous meeting.
"Is everything alright, Iruka-sensei?" Hatake murmurs to him as they all troop out under the watchful eye of the Hokage.
Iruka looks at his hair and that amused eye and thinks, nothing is alright, you self-assured crazy-person. Iruka inhales as if he is in meditation, inclines his head politely and says, "I believe it will all work out just fine, Sensei. I've done my best for my former students, and though I am worried, I know that they are smart and dedicated children."
Even though he stresses the last word, the majority of his speech is calm and even; he wants to smirk when the single visible silver brow twitches up in surprise. All this poise is unexpected, apparently.
Hatake touches his left hand, a quick press of fingers that shocks Iruka so much that his now-composed façade nearly slides right off his face again; adults tend not to touch him, and Hatake's fingers are warm and rough.
"You have done very well," the jounin says, his words as warm as the sensation of his fingers against Iruka's wrist. "Continue to be proud of them."
Iruka slides away from his grasp and walks away, successfully dismissing the urge to look back.
Taijutsu (unarmed combat, using one's body as the only weapon)
Taijutsu is not Iruka's strong point at all, especially with Rock Lee in one of his classes, Rock Lee who wants to be so much like the great (and sparkly) Gai-sensei that he gives Iruka massive headaches when he practices the Good Guy grins.
"Iruka sensei!" Rock Lee screeches in sparring-class underneath the big kusu tree, "Gai-sensei says that you can push your body even more, if you just want it hard enough!"
"Yes," Iruka says through his teeth as he blocks a quick, flaily attack from Ino, "but sometimes when you want something so badly, you'll kill yourself and hurt your friends to get it. And that's not necessarily a good thing."
Rock Lee blinks those round eyes at him, his mouth open. Iruka kicks away one of Naruto's clumsy clones, throws dirt at both Sakura's attack and Lee's gaping mouth and then snaps, "Pay attention. Your body is your only weapon in taijutsu, and this is especially applicable for you, Lee… but you can extend your awareness to your surroundings. Okay? Then, when you can push your body to its limit, you understand where it is able to go. Get it?"
Lee nods as he spits out a mouthful of soil (that's what they get for not being attentive), but Iruka can see he doesn't really grasp the concept. Iruka figures that when Gai-sensei gets to train him, he'll probably go, "Oh, that's what Iruka-sensei was saying."
Hopefully.
When Naruto goes off with that Sannin, Iruka asks Gai to help him practice more in taijutsu so he can be up to scratch while teaching the children. Gai-sensei is delighted (your youthful dedication, Iruka-sensei! So admirable!), and when they spar together, Iruka really appreciates Gai's strength, speed and patience.
What he doesn't appreciate is Hatake's tendency to wander into the training room, book in hand. Iruka knows he's not reading a word of porn; he's far up in the seats, probably staring at Iruka with disparaging amusement.
"You move well, Iruka-sensei," Hatake calls out only once, after Iruka manages to pin Gai for maybe half a second. "You're sure of your body. Very lithe, in fact."
"What?" Iruka sputters, and finds himself flat on the floor, the wind struck out of his stomach by Gai's quick fists. Iruka glares up at Hatake, and blinks when he sees that the jounin is looking at him the way starving people contemplate a buffet. Iruka's distraction deepens and he curses himself when Gai-sensei seizes him by one ankle and hurls him through the air. He curls his body in tightly, his mind focusing on where he might be in relation to the oncoming wall and manages to rebound off it to land lightly on the floor. Gai is upon him, so very fast, but Iruka simply falls to the side bonelessly, kicking out at Gai's ankles.
Gai can be predictable, sometimes.
"Well done!" Gai praises from the ground and leaps to his feet in a green flash, grinning. "I think I will begin to challenge you, Iruka-sensei!"
"Um, no thanks. The practice is good enough for me."
"I think you should take up a challenge. You really have a great potential in taijutsu, for a chuunin," Hatake drawls overhead and Iruka wants him to die in a fire. A good katon would serve really well right now.
"And I think you should shut up," Iruka mutters.
"What was that?"
"Nothing, Hatake-san."
Hatake is in Iruka's face so abruptly that Iruka strikes out without even thinking. When Hatake stops coughing from Iruka's fore-knuckle fist to his throat, he croaks, "You should really call me Kakashi."
Intonjutsu (escaping and concealment)
Iruka grits his teeth when one of Kakashi's clones slouches past his hiding place, whistling tunelessly into the warm, still night. This little game of Kakashi's has been going on for far too long, Iruka thinks as he slides along the wall in a well-practiced chameleon-jutsu. He has to mimic the different textures and colours on the wall into matching bands of chakra on his body. It's a jutsu that manipulates the shape of chakra. Surprisingly, a lot of people tend not to use it, preferring more direct methods of disguise, such as actually becoming a random object; however, that level of chakra output would be picked up easily by a jounin of Kakashi's level. The chameleon-jutsu might not be that impressive to some, but it doesn't use a lot of chakra. It does, however, require a great deal of focus.
Iruka, who has developed the enviable ability to spot children trying to kill each other out of the corner of his eye while he attempts to teach them the basics of fighting with a chain and sickle, has a great deal of focus. He needs it, because Hatake Kakashi keeps trying to throw his whole world out of balance and Iruka just doesn't get it. When Kakashi looks at him, eyes dark and weighing from across a room, Iruka goes hot all over and then gets enraged for feeling so out of control. Kakashi seeks him out when he's at lunch, sitting close and smelling surprisingly nice and Iruka feels his fingers itch to stroke at the back of Kakashi's neck, see if the hair there is as spiky as it looks.
Iruka hides when he feels this way; mainly because he's pretty good at it and he wants to make Kakashi as upset as he feels. It isn't really working (Kakashi appears as unruffled as always), but it's the principle of the matter.
The moon shifts in and out of gauzy clouds and Iruka tries to keep his chakra matched to the play of silvery light and shadow; he chances a glance up and sighs in defeat, for another Kakashi-clone is on the roof of the building opposite to his position, looking down at him steadily. The clone winks at him before it pops out of existence. The real Kakashi saunters around a nearby corner and advances upon him.
"Why are you hiding?" Kakashi asks innocently, as if he hadn't been chasing Iruka all over Konoha like an impish puppy.
"Why are you following me?" Iruka returns, cancelling the jutsu and stepping away from the wall. He narrows his eyes at Kakashi, and is surprised to see a flicker of uncertainty in Kakashi's eye before the jounin shrugs as if he couldn't care less.
"I like following you, Iruka-sensei. My ever-wandering interest is peaked, I suppose… among other things." He looks as if he's smiling wolfishly behind his mask.
Iruka stares at him; this man hides everything in plain sight, and he's here telling Iruka that his interest is peaked. On impulse, Iruka steps close to him; he senses the moment when Kakashi's body goes taut, readying automatically for a physical confrontation. Kakashi's visible eye widens slightly when Iruka steps so close that their bodies are touching, one of his thighs shifting between spread legs. There is the smallest of hitches in Kakashi's breathing. Good; just because Iruka's a measly chuunin doesn't mean Kakashi is allowed to play around.
Iruka tilts his head and parts his lips slightly, exhaling so that his breath probably whispers against Kakashi's jaw.
"Peaked?" He rests his hands against Kakashi's chest, slow and easy so that Kakashi won't break his wrists out of reflex. Iruka runs his hands up to rest them on those strong shoulders, and then further back to link them around Kakashi's neck. "Oh, Kakashi-sensei," he breathes, their lips so close that they almost brush. "Do you think that you could… peak my interest too?"
"Well, I--" Kakashi starts, and freezes when Iruka's mouth touches his, tentatively. Iruka's hands move quickly through the symbols for kawarimi no jutsu and in a moment, Kakashi is making out with the garbage bin that had been sitting on the corner, while Iruka beats a hasty retreat along the roofline.
Instead of angry yells, Iruka hears a warm chuckle and a tiny smile creases onto his own face as he heads home.
Hensōjutsu (disguise & impersonation)
"You know," Kakashi says casually, as if he and Iruka are happily lounging along under the moonlight instead taking part in a serious mission, "You remind me of… an acquaintance."
That pause in his sentence seems to highlight the divide which exists within the Copy-nin, that walking paradox: gentle yet harsh; open yet closed; surrounded by friends, yet lonely. Iruka smoothes a hand down the front of his dark-blue silk clothing and doesn't look directly at his intense gaze.
He and Kakashi are secret guests of the Raikage in Kumogakure, trying to flush out a suspected assassin from Konoha; in all honesty, the Raikage doesn't really need their protection. This is mostly a mission to preserve diplomatic relations whilst trying to capture one of their own. The Hokage had explained to Iruka that a small servant-child in the courts of the Raikage had witnessed this missing-nin.
"You're good with children," Tsunade had said airily in her office a few days ago, pushing bottles aside. "And you need more missions to keep your edge, now that school is out for holidays."
"Did Kakashi-sensei request me for this mission?" Iruka had asked respectfully, hands folded behind his back.
"Request you?!" Tsunade had scoffed and then sighed heavily. "Alright, yes, he did. I don't know what goes on in his stupid head, but he did. Now go on; get your little sensei butt out of my office."
The little boy, Satoshi, had indeed taken to Iruka even when he had refused to speak to his own people, and now he is seated nearby at this dinner-party, chattering happily about his pet birds while Iruka only listens with one ear, and tries to hear what Kakashi is saying underneath the underneath.
"An acquaintance? Not a friend?" Iruka murmurs, smiling down at the tiny Satoshi, whose wide, open smile reminds him of Naruto's.
Kakashi is dressed in dark, shimmering grey and it complements the formal, decorative mask over the lower half of his face and the rakish tilt of his hair over the festive eye-patch. He doesn't look like the scruffy, slapdash Copy-nin who has handwriting that can reduce Iruka to tears. He looks like the kind of guy that Iruka can trust his heart to.
That's a very bad way of thinking, but sometimes Iruka just can't help his romantic side.
Kakashi tilts his head, considering and a smile causes his cheeks to rise a little over his mask. "Yes. A friend. I don't have much of those, you know."
"It's your abrasive personality," Iruka sniffs and starts as Satoshi clambers into his lap. "What is it?"
"The man you wanted to know about?" Satoshi whispers in his ear. "He's over there. Is he going to hurt me for telling?"
"No." Iruka hugs him, because he really does love kids and this one is as lovable as they come. "Kakashi-san and I, we will never let that happen."
"That was so cute," Kakashi tells him as they chase after the missing-nin, lunging across cloud-covered hills. "Now I know that when you have our children, they'll be completely happy."
It takes a lot to render Iruka speechless, but Kakashi is really good at that. He's grinning at Iruka's shocked expression, even as he takes down the missing-nin with shocking ease. When he smiles in that open yet hidden way, he looks nothing like a person that knows at least ten different techniques to turn Iruka inside out… one of those techniques simply involves staring at Iruka a certain way, apparently.
This is not a man he should even consider being in love with. This is probably not even the real Kakashi; it's just another mask, and whatever reason he has for using it against Iruka's heart, Iruka has no idea.
Chōhō (espionage)
Iruka nods at Gai's decidedly unfunny joke, but out of the corner of his eye he can see Kakashi standing with Kurenai near the refreshment table, set at one end of a training-room in the Academy; one pale hand rubs at the back of his neck in that self-conscious manner. Right now, Iruka is so far gone over that jounin, and he kind of hates himself for it… because after what felt like a lifetime of exasperation directed at Hatake Kakashi, this particular emotion seemed to hit him overnight. It's just a crush, brought on by Kakashi's waggling eyebrows and suggestive mutters in Iruka's ear, all aimed to annoy and make Iruka feel helter-skelter inside.
In an attempt to assuage his need to constantly appreciate Kakashi's lean form, he spies on the jounin incessantly. He finds out that Kakashi doesn't take the time to chew, and that his favourite Icha Icha involves a young farmhand that goes through the legs of many lovers before he finds his so-called true love. He discovers that Kakashi likes the colour red and he likes tea and he likes looking at Iruka as hard as Iruka looks at him.
As he is doing right now.
Iruka doesn't flinch or look away; the subtle trick of spying on someone is giving the impression that there is no spying going on at all; he nods indulgently at Gai until Kakashi materialises at his elbow, and his smile is tight enough to crack his face when Kakashi tells Gai, "I'm just going to borrow him for awhile," and drags him away to a small storage-room down the hall.
"I'm sorry this isn't more romantic," Kakashi says as he locks the door and pulls down his mask. It's dark enough in the storage-room, but there is light coming through a crack between the wooden door and its frame, and Iruka blinks at the pale line of his jaw. "But you keep looking at me like that and making me feel like a horny teenager."
"When you were a teenager, I don't think you were horny," Iruka points out breathlessly after Kakashi kisses him to the point of weak-kneed-ness. Kakashi pulls back a little and looks at him. "I saw a file of yours," Iruka admits.
"You snuck around and dug up information on me? Information that was probably buried under a mile of wards?" Kakashi is incredulous at Iruka's embarrassed nods. Then he smiles, sly and sunny, and kisses Iruka again, pressing against him until they both are gasping and clutching at each other. "Now that is love, Iruka-sensei," he teases, and groans when Iruka's fist sinks into his stomach.
Iruka makes up for it in scorching kisses that pulls needy moans out of his jounin and thinks, Why so in love, self? Why?!
fin