Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto
- Together -
"Excuse me," The woman called out and he nailed in place, turning around to search for her face. "Are you the young man that lives in the apartment right there? There's smoke coming from there."
"What- I've, they- oh no." Kakashi patched up a few sentences in one upon seeing the view and then he smiled warmly to the lady. "Thank you. Now, if you'll excuse me…"
He was already running to his apartment, worry wrinkling his brows together. Did they set anything on fire or it was just Sasuke's affinity to a certain element that destroyed his furniture again? Or Naruto had kindled the hotplate for fun. Or Sakura had tried to use the oven to make cookies and has failed again? Either way, he'd have something to repair or… pay for. Great.
He shouldn't have agreed to look after them in the first place. Mebuki and Kizashi had to leave Konoha for a week and he decided it's a good way to create bonds in his team by taking them in his apartment where they'd live together.
Big mistake. Biggest. Two days in and he was exhausted. He was pretty sure Obito's ghost is sitting somewhere, gloating over his miserable attempts at parenting. He could almost hear him choke with laughter.
He dashed into the apartment and found his three pupils yelling at each other in the kitchen. Sasuke and Naruto were on the verge of a fistfight when they noticed his presence and hushed, looking up at him with curiosity.
Kakashi had to gather all his severity and harshness to not give in. They were still so little and appeared to him so helpless and… abandoned at this moment. Especially Naruto and Sasuke, the two most famous orphans of Konoha that had suffered more than they ever deserved. It stung him for a second there and he thought he wouldn't be able to scold them, but then he saw that his oven looked quite damaged.
"What's going on here?" Kakashi put on the demeanor of the offended, controlling dad he'd never be. He had to be honest, he was having a lot of fun when they weren't fighting and quarreling, which was practically between two and five in the morning. Yeah… good times.
There was no answer.
"Who started this?" Kakashi tried again.
The three of them were lined in a row - Sasuke, with a bitter glare that was unfit for his young eyes, Sakura, with her tiny hands folded in the middle and Naruto, with a strong pout that puffed his baby cheeks even more. All of them almost reached the height of his kitchen drawer now, the top shelf.
How was it that he left them for fifteen minutes and they broke something or managed to get into a fight?
"Sakura, who started this?" Kakashi kneeled in front of them without changing his adamant tone.
"Nobody." She snapped or rather… squeaked.
"Was it Naruto?"
"No." Her gaze fell down to her feet. So it was probably Naruto, but she was defending him.
"Then who was it?"
"It was me," Sasuke admitted, a bit more curtly than usual and Kakashi was just going to speak out when Naruto yelled No, it was me! right after.
His confusion was grand by the time Sakura started explaining that it was, in fact, her fault. They weren't very good at manipulating, though, something felt off.
"What are you hiding, guys? Tell me." He eyed them suspiciously.
Sakura looked to her right, then to her left and both her teammates seemed reluctant to share, but they shrugged at last and let her speak.
"We were trying to bake you a cake for your birthday," Sakura mumbled, her forefingers touching shyly.
Kakashi's eyes widened with astonishment. His birthday? How did they even…?
"How did you know it was today?"
"We sneaked into the archive sections of the Hospital a few days ago and checked." Naruto grinned proudly.
Kakashi slowly stood back on his feet, trying to figure out how this situation turned such a frustrating course. He was feeling heavy and sad suddenly, but he didn't quite know why. He let out a brief, hollow laugh and turned away from them with growing inconvenience. His eyes slightly blurred, forcing him to make another step away. What was with him today?
"Kakashi-sensei, are you alright?"
He startled when Sakura's voice came from closer, her small hand pulling at his t-shirt. The three of them had gotten closer in attempts to peek at his face.
"Are you mad at us?"
"Ah, no, not at all." Kakashi forced out another laugh, hands passing through his hair. "It's just I stopped celebrating my birthday long ago."
"Why?" Naruto hurried to ask but quickly received a puff from Sasuke.
"Because it makes him feel bad, dumbhead."
"It's fine, really. I was planning to make us a cake anyway." Kakashi sighed, glancing at the smoke coming from the oven. "I might, if I manage to fix this today."
Baking a cake for him, huh? So it could turn out pretty cool to be a part-time parent. He had three tiny slaves who did a lot of things instead of him and also listened to him unconditionally. He kind of liked it.
"She is so cute and soft, and she's so sweet to me all the time, she's kind to everyone, actually, and her cooking is absolutely perfect, do you know what she made me yesterday?" Naruto's flow of excitement did not quite stop, despite that he asked a question after which Sakura tried hard to ask an interested What? and which didn't matter because he kept going, his words overlapping with hers. "Ramen! Can you imagine that? And it was so delicious, it was heavenly. Like everything about her-"
"Are you ever gonna stop talking about Hinata?" Sasuke sighed, rubbing his temple tiredly.
Naruto squinted, the delightful brilliance of his sky-blue eyes darkening menacingly. Kakashi saw him take a sharp breath of air from his side of the kotatsu they were currently sitting at.
It was a terrible blizzard that whirled outside - a curious rarity for Konoha's mild climate - and he, as never before, decided to invite his team to share a dinner. Nothing special, just a dinner. Sasuke was back in Konoha for a day or two, Sakura had a day off the Hospital and Naruto managed to slip away from his Hokage office and leave everything to Shikamaru this Friday. It would've been a sin to not gather them like this. Especially when he hadn't seen them together for a lot of months now.
Naruto's loosened grey sweatshirt and unruly hair contrasted vividly against Sasuke's and Sakura's quite formal kimonos. His was plain black, while hers was a mild, pale red that complimented her rosy hair. Kakashi had concluded that the two of them must've been out before coming to the dinner. As for Naruto, he was probably tired of the formal attire he had to carry around at all times.
"What's your problem?"
"It's a Team 7 meeting, as far as I know."
"You're a loser who doesn't even know how to treat a girl," Naruto announced passionately. "If I hadn't seen Sarada, I'd still think you've never touched a girl."
"Naruto, don't be a jerk!" Sakura turned crimson with embarrassment, but the anger in her words was tangible. "Shut up already."
"Yeah, have Sakura covering you up again." Naruto scoffed.
"I said shut up!"
Sasuke appeared unbothered, but the angle of his head had slightly changed and his visible eye narrowed for a second of estimation. Kakashi knew him well enough to sense the upcoming outbreak. Sakura, who stood across, was at a loss for words and surely aware of the danger, but wasn't sure what to do about it.
He couldn't hide the small smirk on his face. Their most fearsome duel twenty-five years ago would've mowed down a few trees. Now, he had to evacuate every villager in a radius of… a couple of villages.
"I will, when he proves to me that you don't carry his clan's name only because he needed a concubine to-" Before Naruto could finish, the sound of metal unsheathing echoed as if after Sasuke's katana was against his throat. Sakura gasped at the suddenness of the movement, but Kakashi only lowered his mask to sip from the sake cup he held in his hand. This was getting quite entertaining.
"I will not hesitate to slice you… Seventh," Sasuke announced in a low voice, "if you call my wife with that word one more time."
Naruto's glare was steady for a while, then he glanced at Sakura before pushing the edge away with the back of his palm and huffed, filled with exasperation.
"There is no love between you two, I've seen more freaking affection between business partners." He uttered with some deep melancholy and Sakura's eyes widened, and her lips parted with surprise upon hearing his words.
Kakashi raised a brow, meeting her gaze and then broke away, to look at Sasuke, who was a bit stupefied by Naruto's straightforward way of showing his concern, but mostly angry. Generally angry. His hand trembled.
"Sasuke, calm down." Kakashi decided it's time to get involved; Sasuke's eye changed color as the four of them stood in silence and waited for something to happen so things were going in a bad direction. "I know you really want to torture him in your mental basement, but trust me, it's not worth it."
Sasuke startled as if woken from a dream and his Mangekyo dissolved, his attention now on his sensei. Kakashi shrugged, smiling at him.
"There's still food, you know," Kakashi gestured at the table, eyeing the other two.
The atmosphere was still pretty tense and he knew it wouldn't ease up quickly. Not with Sasuke's condensed wrath and Naruto's painful honesty. At least Sakura had the composure and manners to not raze his house to the ground. For now.
"Naruto, tell me about Hinata, I wanna know about your life together more, I barely see her nowadays." Sakura chuckled nervously, attempting to restore the previous cordiality with something that didn't involve food. He was thankful to her for keeping up with new strategies.
Strategies that didn't work.
Naruto stared down at his plate and Sasuke had sunk in one of his thick silences, glaring at the window beside them. And Sakura, she was sad and somewhat bitter with their current situation, her eyes bouncing between Naruto and Sasuke.
The wind outside howled loudly, taking over the renewed island of silence. The apartment always used to look big years ago, but now that he saw his team dining in it, it appeared pretty small. They had just grown so much since he last saw them together here, both physically and mentally. And that was a great thing.
Kakashi slowly left his cup on the table and sighed.
"Who started this?" He said, a smile quivering on his lips when Sakura's eyes fixed on him. Then Naruto's and Sasuke's as well. They were fazed for one long minute and he hesitated whether to ask again. Because they needed to remember what it was like back then, before all the wars they waged and the pain they suffered. What it used to be. And treasure that whenever he was not around to remind them anymore and they find themselves torn apart.
Sakura's expression gradually changed until it didn't light up with joy. He knew she would remember, it was a good memory.
She nodded at him in deep appreciation before shifting to Sasuke's side and intruding his personal space as much as she could, the thoughtfulness never leaving her face, even when she found herself leaning her forehead on his.
"He just doesn't understand, anata, don't listen to him." She whispered against his lips with a little smile. "Our love is bound by a sacrament and sealed with blood."
Sasuke closed his eyes when she tilted her head a bit, to kiss him briefly and sighed in reverence as he replied tenderly, hand wrapping around her thin waist to bring her closer. Kakashi had just started to really enjoy the view when Naruto's snort and a hit on his arm snapped him out of the pleasurable reverie.
"Sasuke kissed a girl. Who knew?" Naruto mumbled to his side, hand half-covering his mouth like he's telling a secret, but then a growl resonated from Sasuke and Kakashi couldn't help but laugh out loud.
"I'd say take cover, Lord Seventh." Kakashi leaned in, imitating Naruto's furtive gesture. "Amaterasu's coming."
"If you only touch my Hokage mantle, I'll touch yours!" Naruto warned, pointing at Sasuke ominously, but whatever dark impression he had intended to create, his words just broke a dam and Sakura and Kakashi burst into laughter. He likely knew he had conveyed a wrong message when he even made Sasuke's smile at the ridiculousness.
Kakashi shook his head, his laughter fading a bit as he watched Naruto shifting next to Sakura only to take from Sasuke's plate.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, dobe?" Sasuke hissed, letting go of Sakura to try and save his food.
"I'm stealing your food, teme! I'm hungry."
"Are you blind? There's plenty of food in front of you."
"Yeah, but I want yours. Dumbass."
"Guys…" Sakura's voice was deafened soon enough, by the rising voices of her teammates and their meaningless quarrel.
Kakashi chuckled breathlessly, feeling some kind of pride as he observed the three of them in silence. He was so glad he was alive to see them that it brought tears to the corners of his eyes.
They were breathing and they hadn't changed at all.
He did it.
A/N: Thanks for reading. I've been thinking about a parental!Kakashi fanfic for a long time and this is what I came up with. I think Kakashi's efforts and sacrifices are still not appreciated enough. Even if they are, I'd never stop underlining their importance. Iruka and Kakashi are my heroes.