Just a little shameless humanisation of our favourite Hatake. Enjoy!
Kakashi was like a child with a blanket most nights, Iruka thought to himself as he watched the man sleeping in his lap. Only he, Iruka, was the blanket. No matter how they fell asleep, Kakashi's hand would always find its way to Iruka's pyjama top, tangling itself in the material.
Every so often, usually on the anniversaries of certain deaths, Iruka would wake up with his arm clutched protectively to Kakashi's chest. It was only when Kakashi had exhausted himself to unconsciousness that he did not fist his hand around Iruka's clothes, and even then, the Jōnin's hand was always touching somewhere, as if to subconsciously remind himself that Iruka was still there.
The Chūnin carded his fingers though Kakashi's hair as he thought to himself, smiling as Kakashi sighed and lent into the touch. Even though Kakashi was two years his senior, sometimes the man seemed infinitely younger than him. Other times he seemed decades older.
Iruka knew Kakashi's reason for his unusual sleeping habit, and it was with that knowledge that that Iruka let the man have his comfort, his confirmation that Iruka was not going to disappear.
It was the one thing that Kakashi was afraid of, hell he was terrified by the thought of those he loved disappearing from his life.
Kakashi had lost his mother, father, and both of his teammates before he'd even turned thirteen. Then once the war had ended and everyone had been lulled into a sense of peace and security, he lost his Sensei to the Kyūbi's attack.
He'd cared for Itachi, another child genius like him, who knew what it was to have to live up to expectations, only for the Uchiha heir to snap and massacre his entire clan save his younger brother, whom he had tortured with his Mangekyō Sharingan.
Kakashi was terrified of losing his loved ones; it was part of the reason why he tended to distance himself from other people, because he didn't want to experience pain like that again. He had every right to be afraid; the world hadn't been kind to Kakashi at all and it made Iruka even more determined to show him that not everyone he cared about would die before their time.
He couldn't say that it wouldn't or even couldn't happen, eventually. They were Shinobi; it was their job to risk their lives every day. But if he could just reassure him, tell him, somehow, without words, (because he'd never accept them) that he was not to blame, that it wasn't his fault, that he'd done all he ever could, and that nobody blamed him, then, even if he died tomorrow, he could die the happiest man in existence.
Because Kakashi was a brave man. The bravest he'd ever known, because even with all that life had thrown at him; the pain, the lost innocence, the guilt, the sorrow, he had not broken. Where other, weaker, men would have given up and taken their own lives years ago, Kakashi pressed on, believing, perhaps if only subconsciously, that things would get better—that all was not lost.
That—that took courage. Courage that many—if not most—men did not have, and Iruka admired him for that. Kakashi had his faults, and he knew it, he acknowledged them, and those he could not cure, he lived with the best he could.
That was what made him unique. Kakashi was of the sort that was one in a million every three blue moons and Iruka felt it sad that Kakashi never saw his true worth.
He would see it, one day, Iruka decided, he would just have to show him how.