Disclaimers: I don't own Naruto, Iruka or Shizune. And not Gaara either, which is really a depressing thought.
Of course, it is totally ludicrous to wish a Merry Christmas in the middle of March, but that was supposed to be a christmas fic (why yes, I am late) for Cardcaptor_eternity in reward for her excellent beta work on all of my stories, so... Merry Super Belated Christmas, Eternity-chou! You requested a Shizune/Iruka christmas story, I hope this will please you!
A big THANKS to Audrey, who undertook the beta-ing for that story. Her very thorough work made me realise that a punch glass can be full of milk, and that a gang of chicken could have the kind of innuendo you normally don't associate with chicken. Just for that, I owe you big! :D
A Brunettes' Revenge:
The end of the year was traditionally a time to reflect on your life: what you'd done during the past months, what you would be doing in the upcoming ones, asking yourself the usual questions : who am I, what am I doing with my life, what's my place in the Universe, where has my Youth gone, and so on and so on.
It was a wretched, wretched thing that this period during which everybody tried to find sense in their existence, or more prosaically tried to find some magic formula to make it happier, more meaningful or just more successful, also occurred at the same time as Christmas and New Year's Eve.
Because really, these were the two most booze-inducing Holidays of the year, a couple of weeks that everyone spent more or less half inebriated. Hardly the best moment to make a judgement on your life, and yet tradition and the calendar came together to make it happen.
The 'Happy Drunk' had it the best. They would wake up sometime around January the 3rd, with the kind of pain in the abdomen signalling an abused liver trying to gnaw its way out, and a splitting headache that would limit all life-altering decisions to an "I'M NEVER GETTING DRUNK AGAIN" that come next year, they would have forgotten all about.
The 'Depressed Drunk', unfortunately already prone by nature to dramatize, could be found on Christmas Eve or St Sylvester's night, sobbing dramatically on some friend's shoulder or the first shoulder available, really. That was embarrassing enough. But on top of that they might either drunkenly slur things like "you' my best mate, y'know? T's you n'me n' the un-hic-verse…' and try to jump the poor soul lending a compassionate ear, or they might simply end up sobbing harder, and telling a person they barely knew why their life is a failure, and how, deep inside, they had always wanted to be a ballerina.
Shizune was not a happy drunk. She was not much of a drunk actually, but when she did indulge a bit, she was definitely of the sobbing sort. And now it was Christmas Eve, at Tsunade-sama's special Christmas party. All the warning signs were there: it was one of the most depressing times of the year and she was enduring it, not in a warm environment amongst loving relatives (like every person who had grown up without one, Shizune had an idealized vision of family life), but at her Boss's place, surrounded by all the nutcases she was forced to work with all year, and who were just as much social misfits as she was. And there was plenty of booze.
Clearly, she was bound to finish the evening draped miserably over someone.
She took a swig of her glass of punch which, as tradition would have it, had been spiked beyond measure by pranksters –and somewhat immature- Jounin, till fruit juice was only present in homeopathic quantities, and Reflected.
She was 32, and single. She was alive and still in possession of all her limbs, which was quite an achievement in a Shinobi world. She was the best medic in Hi no Kuni, only second to Tsunade-sama, and virtually ruled Konoha's hospital with an iron fist. She was the Hokage's assistant, and a powerful kunoichi that caused all the jounin and lower ranks, to bow before her. All in all, she was a much respected figure in Konohagakure.
It sucked balls.
She was 32, and she was single. All her achievements became meaningless in the face of those words. Her position did not help her feel any better about it. Quite the contrary, in fact. Because of this, she was always holding people at arm's length.
She drained her glass and grimaced, but it was not due to the alcohol.
Nooooo… she was wrong, actually. People held her at arm's length. The respect they showed her… who she was kidding, they did not respect her, they were just afraid of her and her boss, especially those no-balls Konohan shinobi. What a bunch of chickens. She was tired of being the most gutsy of…
"Shizune-san?"
"Uuuwhhaaa?" she snarled at the male voice.
Iruka cringed a bit, and she immediately felt sorry. He was, after all, one of the rare people who could understand her. Just like her, he had a considerate nature that had made him choose a career in which he would help others. Just like her, he had an organized streak that made him a precious help in administrative matters.
Just like her, his life was ruled by an energetic blond charge whose short temper and bad habits would be the death of him, one day.
Two years ago, Naruto had been designated by Tsunade as her eventual successor. He was now shadowing her every steps, learning the job of Hokage right from the one currently in charge, just like his father had learned from Sandaime. Shizune could only agree with that decision, she had been at the front lines to witness the horrible organizational mess following Tsunade's nomination. However, it also meant having to deal with Naruto on a daily basis.
Naruto was not so horrible alone, but along with Tsunade, it was a bit too much for her to manage; when Naruto harassed her with stupid questions the Sannin used the opportunity to escape her duties and drink sake.
Or rather, she was pretty sure that is was what would have happened if Iruka hadn't been there to bear the blunt of the blonde's attention. It was he that the Kyuubi container had chosen as his personal assistant, and Shizune had grown to like him a bit and respect him even more; obviously someone who could bear with the too energetic, too loud successor of Tsunade had to be a saint.
And apparently, his saintly patience had been especially tried today. Well, she supposed that in a party full of people who all had an approach to humour similar to that of a bowling ball hurtling toward a strike, you had to be very patient if you happened to be wearing a Santa Costume in a Christmas Party, like he was. Of course, Naruto himself was wearing the full reindeer attire, but jokes were glancing off the happy ball of sunshine like water off a duck.
Shizune grinned. "So… Santa Claus, here to see if I was being a good girl?" she immediately blushed at the -involuntary- innuendo behind her words, but Iruka just sighed and answered:
"That joke is not so funny after the 43rd time, Shizune-san."
Her smile widened a bit. "You're making that number up."
"Unfortunately, no." he dropped to the chair next to hers. She would have been flattered at the attention if she hadn't suspected that he chose that place mostly because of its ideal location next to the punch bowl. "But I have to admit that Kakashi-san alone made that joke 15 times. He is quite drunk."
'… or quite horny.' Shizune snickered, but only shook her head when the brown-haired man raised a polite eyebrow at her.
They spent a few minutes in something that couldn't quite pass for a companionable silence, but was certainly not an awkward one.
Iruka had taken off the false beard, red hat and extra pillow, and was sipping his third glass of punch with a faraway expression. Shizune had reclined on her seat and closed her eyes, trying to enjoy a few moments of peace before her boss managed to monopolize her time.
Unfortunately her ears soon made out the sound of cheers and whistles, coming from one corner of the reception hall. She opened her eyes warily, and immediately wished she hadn't.
"Don't." she said to Iruka, who had started to refill his glass.
"Huh?" He looked at her, surprised. She briefly noted that he was really handsome when his ponytail was messed up with a few misbehaving locks framing his face.
'Too bad the guy in himself is pretty tame.' She thought.
"Why?" he asked with a slight pout. Yeah, definitely cute.
"Because our respective burdens, I mean bosses…" she pointed to something behind his back. "…are apparently having a 'who has the biggest tits' competition of sorts."
Iruka froze. "Do I want to see?" he whined.
"I'm afraid you'll have to." Shizune answered, not without sympathy. "Naruto is using sexy jutsu and he keeps puffing his chest. I think he's either going to explode or suffocate himself. That is, if he's not first mauled by the crowd of drunken shinobi watching him."
She doubted the latter had any chance of happening. The Kazekage, invited to the party along with his diplomats, was hovering protectively beside the table on which the present and future of Konoha were having their little show. He was sporting a pair of plastic reindeer horns and a ferocious expression and bizarrely, on him these were not mutually exclusive.
Iruka was already heading toward the makeshift stage when his protégé suddenly toppled backward with a screech, helped by an alcohol-addled sense of equilibrium and a very nasty chest-shove from Tsunade.
Fortunately the Kazekage was immediately behind him to cushion his fall. He scooped the blonde, whose henge vanished in a poof, up in his arms and all but snarled at the assembled ninjas: "Show's over."
They reached them just as the Suna Leader –after several attempts- made Naruto reacquaint himself with the idea of feet and verticality. It would have been easier if the blond's priority hadn't been hugging the redhead and looking at him with stars filled eyes.
"Gaara-chan, my hero! You saved me!" Shizune tried to stifle her giggles at the very resigned face the Kazekage made, but lost the battle as soon as the Leaf shinobi began nuzzling his friend's neck.
"Gaara-sama, I'm sorry about that." Iruka said, obviously mortified. He tried to pry his molesting charge away from the redhead, but Gaara himself shook his head.
"It's alright. I'll put him to bed."
Iruka bowed deeply. "Thank you very much for taking care of the little miscreant, Kazekage-sama. He hardly deserves a friend like you." Said Kazekage just waved the apologies away and set to steer Naruto toward the exit, in a more or less straight line.
Shizune watched them depart with a smile, and then turned her attention to her own boss. Tsunade was jumping up and down in 'victory', much to the interest of the Jounin who hadn't been frightened away by the Suna Leader. But when the Hokage started to challenge the people remaining to wrestling matches, the crowd rapidly cleared.
Her assistant snorted, deciding that her boss was indeed fine. She returned to her previous spot next to the alcoholic area, but was surprised –if slightly pleased- to hear Iruka quickly trot to catch up with her.
"So you're leaving Tsunade-sama alone?" he asked, but she guessed that he was just making conversation and not questioning her judgement.
"Yes. She's actually less dangerous right now; she only snaps when sober because then she's always hung-over... she'll be horrible come tomorrow." The medic-nin winced, thinking of the next day.
"But yeah, usually she's quite the happy drunk." She selected a drink from the 'refreshment' table and held it up. "Unlike me; I'm quite the gloomy drunk. Or Naruto, who's quite the destructive drunk. You were actually in a tighter spot than me up there."
Iruka shook his head, smiling a little. "I'm very lucky that Naruto has a friend as dedicated as the Kazekage. He always manages to bring him to his room when things heat up. It's a wonder that Naruto hasn't succeeded in tiring him out yet."
Shizune had to snicker at this. "Yeah, 'friend', right." The laugh died in her throat, however, when the brown haired man looked at her, obviously surprised at her reaction.
'Oh shit,' she thought, just as Iruka's face went from perplexed to a mixture of dawning realization and horror, 'it was not a clever innuendo, it was an oblivious one.'
She winced as the brown-haired turned all kinds of interesting colors, with "freaked-out green" and "throbbing-vein purple" dominating his little rainbow of emotions.
He finally snatched Shizune's drink and gulped it in one go.
"That little shit-!" He exclaimed, and the medic-nin shrinked slightly in the face of that unadulterated wrath.
"So he... And then he... GAH!" He tightened his fists, and the glass was ground to mere sparkly dust without even cutting the tan skin of his hand. "And he did NOT tell ME!"
Shizune watched, mesmerized, as the kind and amiable man turned into a batshit-crazy psychotic bear in less than five seconds. He then turned the full force off his angry glared to the woman next to him, and she started slightly.
"How long?" he snarled.
She held up both her hand defensively. "I don't know!" she protested. This was actually quite a lie, since Tsunade-sama had always insisted, on the basis of being quite a talented medic-nin and a nosey kind of person, on giving the Kazekage a full medical check-up on each of his diplomatic visits.
Of course, Tsunade was no male-gynaecologist of any kind, but when the Kazekage came to your office with a huge love bite on his neck, a nervous stutter and horribly technical questions for a 'friend' who has 'er, a guy he really likes, who sort of hosts a demon in his body', you didn't have to be a specialist to understand what was going on. For once, Shizune had let her boss indulge in as much sake as she wished afterwards.
But either Iruka didn't smell the lie or did not wish to pursue the issue further. He suddenly seemed to deflate, anger all but vanishing in the blink of an eye. He sat tiredly next to Shizune, and after a moment, said:
"I suppose it's quite irrelevant for me to be worried now about sexual education, whether or not he is Ready or the Depth of his Feelings and the Importance of Commitment?"
"Er…"
Iruka raised a hand. "Never mind."
The medic-nin awkwardly patted his forearm. "If it makes you feel any better, I think they're happy together."
The young man sighed. "I think so. Naruto seems always so cheerful when he's visiting..." A shadow fell on his handsome face.
"But he should have told me himself. No offence meant to you, but it is kinda humiliating to hear about it from a third party."
"Every teen needs a bit of a secret garden. Or so I've heard." Shizune shrugged. "Or maybe he was afraid about the way you might react about him having a boy, er, boyfriend."
"If it's the latter, then I'm going to be *really* angry. He should know me better than that." He made to reach for another glass of punch, but then stopped, his eyes widening. He dropped his face in his hands.
"Oh nooo. Nononono ... No! I can't believe it!" he moaned.
"What?" Shizune asked, quite alarmed. She thought that everything had been said about the 'Naruto and Gaara' situation, so what could possibly set him off now?
"I've just realised..." The shinobi then sent her a funny look and hid in his hands once more. "Never mind."
Shizune frowned and pulled at his fingers until she could one of his eyes. "You're freaking me out. Tell me what the matter is."
Iruka winced and pried his sore hand away from her grasp. "No," he said sulkily "It's embarrassing, and you're going to laugh."
The medic-nin looked at the blush that was invading his face. Curiosity was eating her.
"Come on." She said, her face as honest as she could manage while being slightly intoxicated. "I won't laugh, I promise."
The shinobi was now as red as a tomato, and his eyes were looking everywhere but toward her.
"It's... I've just realised... that my student got laid *before* me. How unfair that is?" he wailed, and dropped his head in his hands once more.
"Thanks for not laughing at me." He added some time later.
'I'm too busy being mortified on both our behalves.' Shizune thought, but did not say.
She contemplated the depths of her punch glass, a thing she usually did when she had far more alcohol in her body. But Iruka had given her something to think about. She had always known that some men were excited by virgins but she had never suspected that it could be the same for women... until now.
She put her glass next to her and leaned toward the embarrassed chuunin, and whispered seductively to him.
"Very unfair indeed. But it's not too late to take some sorf of... action?"
Iruka raised his head and looked at her, obviously surprised. Shizune willed herself not to blush, or babble her nervousness away. Then the shinobi's face lit up and he jumped on his feet, smiling at her.
"You're right of course! I know just what to do."
'Well, duh.' Shizune thought.
"I'm going to get revenge! I'm going to play a prank that little blonde weasel!"
The medic-nin blinked. 'Why, why do I always fail to inspire lust in men's hearts?'
"There is that, " She sighed. "But... wait. Play a prank? You would know how to do that?"
She had serious doubts about it. She could not imagine the respectable teacher and so reliable assistant of the future Hokage playing pranks like a naughty schoolboy.
But once more, he proved himself to be full of surprises. He winked at her.
"Well, I do spend a lot of time around Naruto... but more importantly, I used to be a real prankster back in my young days... I often brought my teachers to tears." He added, in a far too wistful tone for a respectable academy teacher.
Shizune looked at him, eyes slightly widened. That man was indeed not what he seemed at first sight. For one, he was more interesting than he let on. She briefly wondered if the same thing could be said of her.
"So... you have an idea?" She asked.
He grinned at her. "Yep."
He told her. Her admiration grew tenfold. So he had an evil side as well; she must have this man. But before that...
"Mind if I hijack your plot?" she asked.
She had her own boss to deal with.
TBC
It's a two parts fic, and the next part is coming soon! (I needed to post it before sending ~9,000 words of Inner Obstacle to Pamy-chou, so I won't be yelled at too much… right?)
Next! Unpleasant morning for Tsunade and Naruto… and an early one for a bunch of unlikely Christmas elves…