Since the war, things had been different.
There were a great many unsubtle changes at the start. Being appointed to the Hokage position, whether he wanted to be or not, was definitely at the top of this list. It wasn't the thing that best stuck in his mind, even if it was the thing that took over his time and tethered him in place when he wanted nothing more than to sit back and breathe for a while. Another change was in the way people regarded each other, at first. It made a treaty easy, but it also made what follows a treaty harder.
Without a war, shinobi were obsolete after all, and he was nothing if not a child of war. He was hardly the only one.
The changes were not all so obvious as that though. There were the smaller ones too, and somehow, these were the most shaking. Some of the younger generation, for instance, saw through the lie of nothing else having gone wrong. Then again, one doesn't lose an arm when nothing goes wrong, now do they? They didn't tell what happened while everyone else slept, and he was going to keep it that way, no matter the suspicions from some.
For once, he had the power to protect his students from the world, and he would take it, no matter how badly the one he was protecting most might have hurt him in his actions.
It was nothing to how the boy had hurt himself.
In light of that, punishing him would serve no purpose but to make the other two more miserable, and what was the point in that? Thus, the secret that happened while the others slept remained so, and all was blamed on Kaguya. And when he chose to leave for a while? He'd let him go, to make his peace, and just hoped that he'd come back. For the sake of the other two, at the very least, who had never loosened their grip on him in their hearts.
From there, other things had changed, and he'd finally come to know the boy who had stood in for Sasuke. They were nothing alike, but he made Yamato happy, and that was nothing to scoff at. If it made him feel a bit alone to see one of his few friends happy, well, there was no harm in that as long as he kept it to himself. It wasn't as though he didn't have more than ample amounts of work to keep him busy and distracted after all.
Gai helped. Unfortunately, Gai had also been in a great deal of pain, and sometimes being around him became far too many tears for him to handle. He'd tried though, and his awkward attempts at cheering up his self-declared Rival seemed to be enough for the man, even if they only distracted him in fleeting moments. Thankfully, for the first months, the man's injuries meant that that was all the time he served awake, letting him escape to sort himself out after and brace for the next visit.
The relief when a visit went without tears or a too-serious expression on Gai's face was intense enough that he had to lean on the wall upon leaving the room. The man would get better. He would be healthy again, and his heart would heal. Anything else would have been one more weight on him that he just didn't think the world should bear, not with as much sorrow as lingered in a pall over those who had lost loved ones.
Such was the end of any war, but that didn't make it any better to see. He was glad when that heavy height of it started to go away.
It had reminded him too much of things long lost and recently dashed to pieces again.
At the end of the day though... the changes kept coming, and while tiring, it was good to see the village change, in certain ways. If he was watching from the viewpoint of not the Hokage, it would be better, but it wasn't as though there was anyone else left to carry the burden, and Tsunade managed to escape it on grounds of being too old and battle weary to take it back up after being ripped in half, and good riddance to a young person's game. He didn't buy it, and he knew she knew he didn't buy it, but he really wasn't in a position to make her take it back, now was he?
Hokage or not, it would take a far stupider man than he to try to force the Lady Tsunade to do anything she didn't please.
That Naruto had done just that in the past only meant that he was a lucky idiot, not that he wanted to take after his student. Somehow, he was sure he wasn't cute enough to evade her wrath if he tried. Sometimes, it was tempting anyway.
Thus time came to that morning, nearly four years after the war, when everything had finally started to find a rhythm, and he no longer needed to watch everything so carefully.
Sasuke had been back in the village, mostly, for years, Naruto had looked to be going after Hinata, and Sakura had finally marshaled up the drive to give Sasuke another go, with much more success than last time.
In essence, he was under the impression that his loved ones had all started to settle into happy places, with him and Gai being the two watching over the assembled collection together.
Many things would happen that morning that would make him wonder how he'd been so horribly glaringly wrong about what he'd observed, and how he could possibly have missed that things were really, really not gong the way that he thought they were.
The first thing to fall out of sync with expectation was, jarringly enough, Gai.
When Kakashi had gotten up that morning, he'd done things the way he normally did, ambling out of his door and off toward his office in no great hurry.
Gai, apparently still on his laps, which was a little weird considering how late it was for that warm up, had crossed his path. He'd been curious enough to veer off course himself, which had, of course, gotten the other man's attention, and he'd slowed so that they could talk without struggling to hear each other.
"My dear Rival! It is not often you join me in my training in such a spirited way! While I do not protest, it does leave me curious what brings this change of heart to the idea of running laps!" The grin that followed didn't have anything hidden in it, so how was he to know where this conversation was to go?
"No change of heart, just curious why you're doing it so close to noon." He didn't give any speculation on what else it could be, because they hadn't had a challenge that Gai could have lost in... over a week now actually, and unless he had fumbled something in his training, something that Gai didn't tend to do, he couldn't think of any other reason for him to have penance laps. Had he been at this since dawn maybe?
"Ah! These are Celebratory Laps! I have convinced the one I was trying to woo to go on a date with me!" He followed his words with a fist pump, but Kakashi had ground to a halt at the news that Gai was interested in anyone. Sure, he didn't begrudge Gai the idea in theory, but why now all of the sudden? And who was it? How had he missed it?
His silence, and sudden departure from Gai's side, was probably why the man circled back, and he finally came to a halt in front of him to put his hands on his shoulders. "My Rival, is all well?"
While his mind was still in shock, it seemed that his autopilot was working just fine, and he nodded his head. "Fine, fine, just surprised. So, you have a date?" He managed to focus with the grounding weight of Gai's hands on his shoulders. He didn't want the man to think he wasn't happy for him after all. He was. He was just... baffled.
"I do! I am greatly excited by this, thus I decided to run! I cannot do as many as I once could just yet, it's true, but it is still enough for a proper celebration! But you must not tell my students, for they would be greatly crushed if this does not go as well as I hope."
While Gai looked very serious in declaring this, all Kakashi could think was that it probably wouldn't be his students who would be sad if the date went poorly. Still, he kept his mouth shut, since there was no reason for him to go spoiling the man's day. He'd prod him for details later if he didn't start singing the praises of whoever this was.
If he hadn't been already at least. He'd have to work that one out later though. No reason to give away that he couldn't immediately point at someone and go 'that's the one Gai likes'. Especially when he really should be able to do that.
"I'm sure it'll go fine." He lifted one of his hands between them and waved it casually as though wafting away the worry. "You just get back to your celebration and let me know how it goes."
The smile he got was as brilliant as Gai's ever were, and he felt his own lips, hidden by the mask, tip up in turn. If this news made Gai smile like that again, he'd take it, even if it did leave him feeling awkward with unasked questions and unpicked observations. With a cheery 'I shall!' Gai was off again, and Kakashi looked after him for a moment in thoughtful silence before turning and resuming his walk to the tower.
He was surprised, confused, and somewhat happy for his friend. That was more than enough of a muddle for one day, and he'd have been perfectly content to leave it at that.
The universe, on the other hand, had apparently decided that he'd settled too firmly into his routine, and wanted to get all the shaking over with all at once instead of letting him adjust to the changes it was going to inflict on him in individual increments. To be fair, the universe probably had a point, and at least he'd have ample time to recover afterward if it didn't fling anything else at him.
Maybe.
Probably not, but the thought was still nice, and if he'd realized that his trio of students all converging on him shortly before he would have reached the tower meant that he'd be getting any downtime effectively sealed away forever, he probably would have run instead of lifting his hand in a little wave at them as their presence in his path made him halt.
"Yo." When no immediate answer was forthcoming, he looked from one student to the next, honestly baffled why Naruto, at least, wasn't speaking up.
It was even more bewildering when it was Sasuke who broke the silence, given that that student, of all of them, tended to avoid being the spokesman like the plague. "We've been talking."
The first words being spoken clearly broke whatever the cause of the tension was, and he turned his head to look at Naruto as the blond picked up the thread. "Yeah, see, we've been talking and we kind of noticed some stuff. So, you know, we need to talk to you too." One hand had drifted behind his head with a sheepish smile, and the other waved at Kakashi like he was worried he'd miss who he was talking about.
He wasn't given a chance to interject before Sakura started talking though. "Right! And it's not something for being out in the middle of the village, or even your office, so, we thought maybe we could drag you back to your place for the talk? If that's alright with you! If you have something really important to get to we can wait a little while, but it really should happen soon, okay?"
It never failed to be amusing when both boys were giving someone the same look, in this case it was disbelief aimed at Sakura, but he couldn't find as much humor in it because when was the last time these three had ever come to talk to him about anything, really? If it was just one of them, it wouldn't be so strange, but as a unit? Unusual, and worrying enough to put any sense of humor right out of his head.
Better to get it out of the way now instead of drawing it out. "Fine, we can talk now. It's not like the office would miss me yet." He waved it off, then turned to start on his way back home. It was closer than any of their apartments, and the quicker he found out what was bothering these three, the better.
The walk wasn't entirely silent, and the three kept trading looks as they flanked him like he couldn't see what they were doing. At one point Naruto even opened his mouth like he was going to start in on whatever this was about before they managed to get out of the public eye. Clearly Sakura thought that too because one of her pointy elbows found its way into Naruto's stomach without her missing a step. That gesture, they at least didn't pretend he couldn't see, and he earned a bright smile from the woman for his sidelong glance at her.
Despite that though, the walk had a strange air to it, and he would be relieved when it was done, a fact which had him opening his door and ushering them inside before going to plant himself in his chair so they could sit on the couch, waving them to it. "Alright, what's going on?"
Naruto hurried over, Sakura walked normally, and Sasuke hesitated. Interesting. Even more so when the first two sat and the last ended up standing behind them, clearly too unsettled to be properly stationary. Naruto, on the other hand, just looked excited, and Kakashi quickly decided that the mixed signals would not give him a headache. He refused. Instead, he would hear them out and give whatever advice they needed from him so they could be off doing whatever it was they did when they weren't working.
Sakura clearly intended to be the one to talk, and was even opening her mouth to give him some kind of statement that would no doubt not leave him as blindsided as what Naruto cut across her to assault him with. "Kakashi-sensei, you've looked super lonely lately, more than normal, and we decided that we wanted you to be with us!"
Sakura's immediate rebuttal of a punch to the side of the head, and Sasuke's facepalm, by no means made him believe that he could have heard that correctly. They were compelling, but there was several points in that sentence that made no sense at all. One, Naruto was with Hinata, he thought, two, the statement implied all three of them were together, which he hadn't thought was going on either, and lastly, he was not lonely. He was just fine as he was. Mostly. Until the Gai thing this morning. Which was really strange timing, come to think of it, but the three were looking at him, so clearly he was expected to say something.
"If you wanted to train you just needed to say so." Because that was all they meant. They were worried and wanted him to look less sad. That had to be it. Nothing to do with relationships and he'd entirely misunderstood.
Naruto was shaking his head, but this time Sakura got a hand over his mouth before he could get any words out so she could talk. "No, Sensei, we don't mean like that. We're worried, and we've all come to agree that we all are very attached to you in our own ways and want you to be happy, so... we'd like you to be in a relationship, with the three of us, you know, as a group."
He needed a moment to think and latched onto the first question that crossed his mind. "So Hinata-?"
Sasuke was the one who answered him. "Dating Shino for the last year."
Which was not the answer he'd been expecting at all. Bewildered about how removed he'd gotten from the rest of the village with his workload in the last couple years to not have noticed, he had to wonder if the concern wasn't perhaps somewhat warranted. Still, it wasn't as though he could actually accept. They were worried, and that was nice of them, but he was a grown man and could handle his own hurts without burdening someone else with them. He had just opened his mouth to decline when Sakura cut him off, some steel in her eyes that made him lean a bit away from the group of them on reflex.
"Don't just say no Sensei. We've been keeping an eye on you, and you're not doing so well. You look tired, you're not eating right, and even Sasuke thinks you're being too withdrawn." The frown that Sasuke leveled at the back of her head was soundly ignored. By her at least. Naruto shot the Uchiha a grin. Then they all looked back at him as she kept talking. "So don't just say no because you're trying to do right by us. We're not going to be happy while you're like this. And yes it is a we here," She paused, waving at the other two pointedly, "and we all agree that this is the best plan, okay? Just... think about it. Please?"
When she got up, looking pointedly at Naruto, it was obvious that Naruto had expected more, maybe even an immediate yes, and the blond shot him a pleading look that he shook his head at. He was set on saying no, and as Sakura started to pull Naruto off to leave, he thought he'd be fine with that.
Sasuke, however, stayed behind, and was watching him with his arms folded until the other two were clearly in the front room getting on their shoes. "Kakashi. You're our family."
The dark eyes stayed fixed on him, really pressing the weight of the words into him, reminding him of who was saying them, and only then did the younger man turn and follow the other two, waiting for no reply from the stunned Hokage the three left in their wake.
Unlike Naruto, he hadn't expected an immediate answer.
That didn't mean he wasn't just as invested in getting one apparently.