Author's Note: As usual, this is a side fic to "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" and if you haven't read at least part of that you'll be very confused. And... Actually, technically, this can be canon. Wow, I do not say that often. Yes, I guess this is canon.
"Why is it, that every time we get together, it's to drink ourselves into oblivion over Eru Lee?" Jiraiya asked, a second shot of sake in his hand, Tsunade already blazing her way past all of them combined, "I mean, can't we ever do things like normal people? Go to dinner, go to see the latest play, go to the bath houses…"
"Sounds positively pedantic," Orochimaru clearly wasn't enough glasses in if he could say something like that without slurring. Of course, it usually took Oro a while to show the effects, and even then drunk Oro tended to be a brooder. He got quiet and introspective, nothing like brash Tsunade, or even the jeering loudmouth Jiraiya.
"Also, why is it always at my place?" Jiraiya asked, because really, his apartment was pretty large for a single person but it wasn't that large. Considering that Tsunade had moved back into the Senju compound and that Sakumo had his own compound it was reasonable to assume they'd do it there where there was both more space and more liquor.
"Do you really want to get harassed by my grand uncle?" Tsunade asked, which was more rhetorical than anything else, because Jiraiya did not want to be harassed by Senju Tobirama.
Jiraiya wasn't really sure what the nidaime thought about him, which in itself was rather telling as Jiraiya was usually pretty good at getting a read on people. He thought the nidaime respected him, respected his opinions, his spy network, his abilities in fuinjutsu, taijutsu, and even senjutsu to a point. That said, he'd also made it clear that he found Jiraiya… lacking.
Apparently, if you made it a habit of admiring the ladies, then Senju Tobirama wasn't your man.
Jiraiya couldn't help but wonder if Tobirama was just a hopeless virgin, it was possible, he hadn't ever had a wife as far as Jiraiya remembered and he hadn't made any advanced overtures towards his fellow men either. It was entirely possible that Senju Tobirama hadn't gotten any action from anybody.
(In his mind, Jiraiya felt that this meant he was winning their unofficial competition.)
"Also, trust me when I say drinking with grandpa Hashirama is beyond surreal," Tsunade added, before saying, "He'd probably be sipping on one of those… Oh, what the hell does Lee call them, pina coladas, you know that fruity barely alcoholic smoothie made with pineapples and the little paper umbrellas."
Also, what none of them were saying, was that the English shinobi had taken up residence there and Jiraiya just felt it was way too creepy to drink under that man's watchful eye. Even for shinobi levels, the paranoia that man induced with mere glances was almost awe inspiring.
"Well, Sakumo, what's your excuse?" Jiraiya asked.
Sakumo gave a shrug, sipping at his own glass with far too much ease for the Lee-ified situation, like he was completely unconcerned by it, "I have a son who's far too young to be exposed to this sort of indecency."
Which, well, could be fair. Two verging on three was maybe a little bit too young to be exposed to Jiraiya's drunk venting.
"You aren't going to ask for my excuse, moron?" Orochimaru asked, apparently feeling slighted that Jiraiya wasn't going to ask him.
"Hey, if I wanted to spend my time drinking with Emotional Support Lee, then your place is phenomenal. Also, Oro, you live in your terrifying lab. That is the last place I want to be on any given day."
Oro went beyond slighted to offended, "There is nothing wrong with my laboratory…"
"You hack up clones of my student, Oro! I'm not okay with that." Jiraiya didn't think he'd ever be okay with it, to be honest. Oh, he wouldn't do anything to actively stop it, especially since it was technically legal and had the blessing of the hokage (and it prevented Oro from going down far more slippery slopes). That said, that didn't mean he was in any way alright with the situation.
"It's perfectly legal."
Jiraiya gave Oro a disbelieving look and said, "Yeah, Oro, not really my problem with all of that."
Jiraiya sighed, looked like it really was stuck at his place for the foreseeable future, unless someone else got roped into the sannin plus one drinking gang. That seemed a bit unlikely at this point, since Jiraiya was fairly certain, that of the jonin population, only his team and Sakumo were in the know when it came to most of Lee's abilities.
Well, there were the revived hokages, the sandaime himself, Uzumaki Mito, and the English shinobi if you wanted to be really inclusive but they hadn't asked to join already and, well, drinking with them could be weird.
Besides, by default the Senju brothers and Uzumaki Mito probably did have daily pow-wows over the latest happenings in the village. Came with the whole being married and being brothers thing.
Jiraiya had no idea where the English shinobi fit into that, he wondered if they did either. It wasn't hard to see, even from the beginning, that he was a complicated man. A dangerous one, yes, undeniably so, but also… complicated.
He was the sort of man who could wait for decades for a plan to come to fruition, who seemed more than content to stay in Konoha for the time being, to not even think of his home country and whatever plans he had there (and he'd admitted that much, at least, that there were plans and that in some meaning of the word he would be missed).
However, for all that Jiraiya would have liked to label him as a power hungry missing nin that wasn't quite right either.
He was like, well, not exactly like Orochimaru, but more of a mix between Orochimaru and the nidaime. Highly intelligent, too intelligent it seemed, and without any of the close and forced early support that had been offered to Orochimaru through their sensei and Jiraiya and Tsunade, without brothers like the nidaime had, and without the brutality of being a soldier in a true war.
In other words, he'd never learned the reasons for limits or the value of human life, because he had no human connection. The greatest connection he had from his home country, the only one he seemed to have, was in the young and almost entirely oblivious Eru Lee.
Still, all ninja were untrusting, those who weren't died young and brutally. And for all that no one in the Senju compound trusted that man he and the nidaime had struck up a very odd and tentative friendship, one that based upon outwitting the other and proving they were the smartest, but still a vague friendship.
And Senju Hashirama tried to be friends with everyone.
So long as the English shinobi didn't attempt to destroy the village he would probably be considered good 'friend' material by the shodaime, or at least, in desperate need of a friend.
Point being, Jiraiya could see the four of them gathering around to drink about their Lee inspired woes, but as it was they were part of a completely different generation, one he didn't think would mesh well with his own drinking buddies.
Although, if Jiraiya wanted to be technical, then technically Sakumo was a bit older than he and the gang and being in ANBU for the second war had given him a vastly different experience than he and the gang had with field work.
But Jiraiya wasn't being technical, he was ranting about his genin student problems. His problems which just seemed to be exponentially growing. Every time he turned around a problem had turned into two more with her.
"So, Jiraiya, what's the problem today?" Sakumo prompted, as if on cue.
Jiraiya let out a long suffering sigh before he threw the drink back and felt the harsh burn of sake in his throat, "Well, I'm not sure if it's so much a problem now, as it's something I should be really worried about maybe a year down the road."
He also felt like a giant ass and hypocrite for even calling it a problem, given his own reputation, and what he would have done in their place.
"So, it's not a problem," Tsunade said rather bluntly, considering she hadn't even heard what it was yet.
"No, believe me, it could be a huge problem," Because while Jiraiya trusted Minato's judgement, sometimes, in comparison to Lee's, he remembered being that age, or well, a year or two older than that age, and what a moron he'd been.
"This just gets more and more exciting," Orochimaru commented, like a condescending ass.
"Hey, I'm serious this could end up being… really serious," Jiraiya finished rather lamely, a bit too drunk to pull out words like catastrophic into casual conversation.
"Things with Lee usually tend towards that direction. She has a word for that, doesn't she? Entropy, I think?"
"No, well, sort of." Jiraiya said, he'd definitely heard her use that term before, but not usually in the context of herself.
"She said it's the tendency all things have to move from order to disorder." Sakumo explained, which, well, was a pretty damn good word for Lee.
"There's a word for that?" Jiraiya asked, eyebrows raised, then said, "Then yeah, sure, it's like that but… you know… ten times more awkward than usual."
"Alright, let's hear it, what has my future apprentice done this time?"
Jiraiya paused, as he always did, whenever Sakumo brought that up. Because really, Jiraiya liked Lee, (maybe even loved her like he would if he ever had a kid or a little sister), but Jiraiya also had firsthand experience of the walking disaster she was. He had no idea, at all, why Sakumo was so dead set on Lee being his apprentice. His only apprentice, actually, Sakumo had never taken an official one before, only a few ones here and there through ANBU before they moved up the ranks.
And he'd been talking that way even before Jiraiya had met Lee.
"My bet is clones," Tsunade said, which really was a good guess, but unfortunately it was Tsunade betting it which instantly made it untrue.
"Good try, but not clones," Jiraiya said with a grin, because really, that at least made it more pleasant to deal with. Sort of, in a way he'd almost rather deal with Lee's constant clone issue.
"Jashinists," Orochimaru cut in, randomly, because that wasn't that good of a guess.
"Why the hell would it be Jashinists?" Jiraiya asked, not even sure he wanted to know.
"No one has run into the Jashinists lately," Oro said, as if this explained enough, which it kind of did, except not really at all. Because just because it hadn't happened, and it was due to happen, did not mean that Jiraiya wanted it to happen to his team.
"Right, well, it's not Jashinists. It's… Well, I guess it's about Minato and Lee," he didn't guess, he knew it, he just felt awkward coming out and saying it. Which really wasn't like him.
He rubbed a hand over his face and then through his hair, breathing out, and then just coming out and saying it, "So, I hadn't realized this. But Minato and Lee have been sort of living together since they were five."
Seeing his friends' blank looks he expanded, "No, I mean really living together. Like, they shared a room in the orphanage because Lee applied a genjutsu to the matron to think it was okay. And they've been sharing an apartment ever since they moved out, and still might be sharing a bedroom." Jiraiya hadn't even gotten that far, hadn't really needed to, because if it was fourteen-year-old Jiraiya in that situation he knew where he would have been sleeping.
For a moment they all still looked blank, and then slowly but surely, it seemed to dawn on everyone what exactly this meant.
"Holy shit, you think they're sleeping together," Tsunade said, spluttering out her latest drink of sake with a look of disbelief.
"Well, not yet, I don't think," Jiraiya didn't think Minato was that casual, Lee, maybe, Lee had this weird sense of importance to things like this so he could see her taking it both extremely seriously and not in the same instance, but Minato, no. Minato would give the whole game away… At least, Jiraiya kind of hoped so.
"Not yet?" Sakumo asked.
"Well, in two years, maybe a year, then yeah, I'm genuinely worried," Jiraiya wasn't exactly sure when his crush on Tsunade had grown from cute to something undeniably sexual, probably around the time she'd started growing the most perfect breasts in all of Konoha, but whether that was fourteen or fifteen was hard to say.
Definitely boobs had been on the mind when he'd been thirteen.
"Jiraiya, they're twelve!" Tsunade seemed horrified, as horrified as he kind of was, which was good.
"I know, that's why I'm kind of weirded out!" Jiraiya winced, then added, "And I think Lee may have skipped sex ed entirely,"
Orochimaru, set down his glass, and slowly began to clap, in the manner that belied all of its sarcasm, "Congratulations, Jiraiya, you have reached a new level of hypocrisy,"
"Shut up bastard," Jiraiya said, "I'm serious, I need some serious help to get through this, or at least a damn good venting session."
"You do realize this means that you'll have to have the talk with her," Sakumo pointed out, rather helpfully.
Which, no, technically he could put it off onto Sakumo, since he seemed so eager to take Lee on as an apprentice anyways. Except Sakumo would probably find some way to show his displeasure, and this would be… unpleasant to say the least.
"You've got to get them to move out," Tsunade said.
"Yeah, good luck with that, Princess. This is Minato and Lee we're talking about, unless it's mission related, I can't get them to do anything they don't already want to do." Jiraiya said, taking another drink, and then slurring, "Besides, Lee might have no clue what's going on, but I don't think Minato's as innocent as he looks either. Those big, blue, naïve eyes of his, oh no, no, no, he knows. I know it, I can practically smell it."
Well, not really, Minato wasn't the pervert that Jiraiya was at around his age in spite of living with a girl and having so many opportunities. Truth told, Minato seemed like he'd turn out to be something of a romantic. Course, it was hard to say this early, but still.
For all that he watched Lee, for all that he reacted to her, he also held her in the highest respect and wouldn't take any action he felt dishonored her.
That said, it didn't help the perfect storm that teenage hormones would brew in the coming years, or months, knowing Jiraiya's luck it would be months.
"Well, Jiraiya, I wish I knew how to help you but…" Sakumo trailed off, giving him a rather apologetic smile, a completely useless gesture that Jiraiya did not appreciate.
"I say it's karma," Orochimaru said, "This is divine justice for your own dubious pastimes,"
Well, Emotional Support Lee seemed to be Oro's karma for his, so Jiraiya felt he had no room to throw stones in that very glass house of his.
"Thanks, Oro, that means a lot."
And Tsunade, raising her latest glass in his honor, gave him a wry smile, "Good luck, idiot, you'll need it,"
And Jiraiya kind of hated all of them.
Author's Note: And then Jiraiya did absolutely nothing to address this issue, because he felt way too hypocritical and awkward about all of it. Written for the 1300th review of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" by impureevilregal who asked for more of the sannin plus one, otherwise known as Jiraiya's Lee-ified drinking buddies.
Thanks to readers, reviews are greatly appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Harry Potter