Drink for Thought
There is creamer in his coffee, floating in chunks that look like old Parmesan cheese, and it's there because Iruka buys the cheap stuff.
He examines the boring brown mixture and out of the corner of his good eye, he sees Iruka wringing his hands anxiously, waiting to hear that the coffee is okay. Kakashi nods politely, mumbling a "Thank you, Iruka-sensei," and making sure to address the man properly.
The mug is pink with white swirls and it has a crack around the handle, but he holds it by the handle anyway, thinking about how the not-so-boring mixture is actually the same shade as Iruka's hair, and musing that Iruka's eyes are like regular black coffee, plain and intense.
He takes a sip through his mask, but it isn't really a sip because the coffee is bleeding through, bleeding like Naruto had when the boy had gotten sloppy on their last mission together, a few years previous. Kakashi had watched then as Sakura patched him up, trying to hide the smile on her face. He had known her for far too long not to have noticed it, and for some reason, it had bothered him.
It bothered him that he cared enough to pay attention, bothered him that he was jealous of a certain blonde student fourteen years his junior.
He risks another taste, and tries to imagine the exact smile Sakura had given Naruto, and he frowns when he realizes that it was one of those smiles she always reserved for Sasuke.
He stirs the coffee with a spoon lying on the table by where Iruka had stood, and he nearly throws it when he takes a look at the rubber gripper on the utensil—blue, a color that reminds him of Sasuke.
Blue is the color of sadness, of greatly annoying music, and the color of a student whose teacher failed him. Kakashi had never really thought of himself as a failure…not really. Not until Sasuke left, and bad happenings seemed to come together, accumulating into a pile that was entirely his own fault.
A pile like the cheap creamer…and like dirty laundry and Sakura's clothes when she gets dressed during missions when we share rooms and it all kind of pools together, and—he gulps down a river of the steaming brown liquid, and it burns his throat on it's way—and I shouldn't be thinking like this.
Obito's death was his fault, and Rin's disappearance was too, and it's his fault that the Third Hokage died, because he could have tried harder to protect the old man…and the decorative swirls on the mug are white, like the gown that Sarutobi used to wear.
And…the mug is pink. Why hadn't he noticed it was pink?
Pink is a color associated with cotton candy and bubble gum and little girls—but Sakura is definitely not a little girl anymore—and the color of a student who he rarely sees, and the color of love—but no, red is the color of love.
There are so many colors in the room he almost calls Iruka into the room for a painkiller; and they're all annoying colors like the bright, mismatched orange blinds that remind him of his final student, a student who doesn't respect him and who had gone to a different mentor seeking help.
Now that he thinks about it, all of his students had left for a time to be taught by someone else.
He empties the pink and white mug and lightly sets the spoon with the blue gripper down, and closes his eyes so he doesn't have to see the orange blinds, and as the last bit of coffee settles in his stomach and he opens his eyes once more, he is reminded of why he had opted for coffee instead of orange juice, and why he is staying with Iruka in the first place.
He leaves his finished drink on top of the table, not bothering to venture into the kitchen and set his mug into the sink, and he makes a beeline for Iruka's bedroom, a room with neutral colors and brown bed sheets and bamboo blinds that trigger no significant memories when he sees them.
He sits on the edge of Iruka's bed, giving him a quiet, "Thank you for the drink, Iruka," and he leaves off the honorific because he doesn't want to hear the word 'teacher'.
Iruka leans forward and Kakashi thinks about how perfect Iruka's tan is, and thinks about how Iruka's skin and eyes and scar and hair are all brown, and how the man's lips are even a brownish color.
When they kiss, he leans into it and closes his eyes so all he can see is black (or is it brown?), and reminds himself that this is what he wants after all, because he was wrong and red is not the color of love, and it's certainly not pink either, because it's brown.
Brown.
Author's Notes: I favor KakaSaku over KakaIru, but I had this idea and it wouldn't leave me alone, and I still got to throw a bit of KakaSaku in for kicks. Just a simple drabble...there are many more where this one came from, too.
I tried to write with a bit of a different style, but I'm not sure if it was very noticable.