October 22
A dark and stormy night
Tea, rain and chawan mushi"If I must die someday," Kakashi said, in a sepulchral voice, "It had better be on a night like this."
"Don't be morbid," Iruka muttered. They sat in an upstairs room of a garishly painted teahouse (orange and purple? Good Gods), waiting out the torrential downpour with Kabusecha green tea and chawan mushi. The occasional rumble of thunder, and the heavy thudding of rain on the slate roof vied with the melancholy strains of gagaku music from the hall below them. Their private room, walled off with rice paper walls and doors, had a window on the single solid wall, where a sloping roof kept out the rain. As he ate another spoonful of the warm, delicately flavored egg custard, he added, "You didn't have to follow me."
Kakashi grinned, his mask pulled down to his chin as he sipped his tea. "I'm on a break after that A-class mission I took last week."
"Exactly my point, Kakashi-sensei," Iruka pointed out, with a wave of a bone china spoon. "You should relax, not follow a chuunin out to another village on a C-ranked mission."
"Who says I'm not relaxing?" Kakashi put down his tea and scooted around the low table, pressing up behind Iruka and slipping his arms quickly around the chuunin's waist before he could jerk away. "Hmm? Besides, you wouldn't have been able to enjoy this place's famous side dishes on your own."
"Mou…" Iruka hesitated, still uncomfortable with any display of affection outside of their homes, let alone in a relatively public area where waitresses could come in at any moment. "Well, it's not supposed to be… it's just a mission," he finished, a little lamely, as he relaxed reluctantly into the warm grip, feeling the pockets of Kakashi's flak jacket dig into his shoulders.
"Buying anpan for Tsunade-sama," Kakashi chuckled, nuzzling his hair, then using teeth to undo the ribbon, despite Iruka's protesting yelp. He purred, when the hair fell loose, burying his face within it – when he spoke, his voice was muffled. "Sure she didn't pick you on purpose with an ulterior motive?"
"Well…"
"Otherwise, what would you have done on the three day break?" Kakashi shifted as he reached for his own portion of chawan mushi, the spoon tinkling in the fine porcelain cup.
"Extra tutoring," Iruka admitted grudgingly, digging up slivers of meltingly tender chicken from under the egg custard. Outside, the roar of the rain heightened steadily. At least the food and tea were exquisite – and also priced high above what he would have been able to afford on his chuunin's pay. As to Kakashi's… "I didn't think even what you earn would be able to cover this sort of indulgence."
"Hm? Oh. I have savings. And it's not like we'll do this often."
Iruka, with a teacher's finely honed senses, noticed the evasion, and decided (in revenge for the embarrassment of having a jounin dog his tail all the way from Konoha for a C-rank mission) to press him about it. "Savings?"
"I used to be in ANBU," Kakashi reminded him. "They're paid really highly, you know, to try and build loyalty."
"Why did you leave?" Iruka asked, before he could stop himself, then ducked his head quickly, staring at the remnants of his egg custard, as he felt the lean body behind him tense. ANBU and Kakashi's past were taboo topics, under the unspoken rules of their relationship. "Sorry." A nuzzle against his neck told him that no offense had been taken.
"Also," Kakashi said, more quietly, after they listened to the rain for a while, "My father – because of his rank and the sort of missions he was entrusted with – he was quite wealthy. He gave much of it away after the… after the incident… but I still inherited the house and some other properties."
"Ah." Iruka exhaled, guilt a cold stone in his stomach, for bringing up something so painful – he could hear ragged breathing, and the arms had tightened until it was almost uncomfortable. He placed the unfinished chawan mushi back on the low table and twisted around in Kakashi's arms, to straddle his lap. Kakashi's visible eye was closed, and his jaw twitched, lips forming shuddering breaths. Iruka gently pried the cup out of gloved hands against the small of his back, and leaned up to press a kiss onto an unresponsive mouth, fingers squeezing wiry shoulders.
It took two more kisses before Kakashi shook his head, pinched his nose, then smiled, the raw pain leaching away, and he slid hands up around Iruka's waist, under the form-fitting black shirt. Iruka grinned in response, though a little hesitantly. "Forgiven?"
"Only if you forgive me for following my lover out on missions in the hopes of seducing him in tea houses," Kakashi countered, winking, his ghosts seemingly banished, at least for now. Iruka relaxed in relief, then yelped as long fingers pinched his rump – glaring at the jounin.
"You're not serious."
"Oh, I am, Iruka-sensei," Kakashi's purr somehow made the honorific sound scandalous.
"If it didn't rain, we'll probably be back at the inn," Iruka poked the aquiline nose.
"Inns are good," Kakashi said, agreeably, working with the straps of Iruka's flak jacket – he smirked when his fingers were snatched away. "Saa…"
"The walls are rice paper," Iruka hissed.
"The rain is loud."
"Anyone can walk in."
"It's a private room."
"It's scandalous."
"We're not in Konoha."
"We'll make a mess."
"We're not the ones who'll be cleaning up."
Kakashi's eye crinkled. Iruka exhaled, irritably, and attempted to sit up, but arms held him firmly in place, and he could feel the jounin stir, under his rump – he yelped in panic. "Iruka-sensei." Please.
Iruka flushed, glancing away, to the package in the decorative bag of expensive flower-patterned origami paper, on the table – Tsunade-sama's anpan. "We can't." Lips and tongue against his neck, careful not to leave any visible marks, a warm hand cupping the swell of his rump, the other massaging his thigh. "I can't."
"You didn't," Kakashi said, lapping at the hollow his neck, fingers stroking the cleft of his rump through the fabric of his trousers. "You didn't let me kiss you all over, nip you here…" his free hand slipped under the loosening jacket and pinched a nipple through the thin black shirt, making Iruka shiver and gasp, "… kiss all the way down here and press my tongue here…" a thumb, dipping into his navel, "and then do all sorts of things to this…" a squeeze over his growing bulge that dragged out a whimper, "with my mouth, until you came."
"And… and then?" Iruka's voice resembled a squeak, full of horrified fascination at the scandalous, matter-of-fact illustration.
"And then you didn't let me make love to you until the rain stopped." Kakashi said all of that with an absolutely straight face, his eyes darkened with lust, his lips upturned in a sexy quirk that beckoned and challenged. "Because you're the very prim and proper Iruka-sensei of the Konoha Academy, who won't get corrupted by the likes of Sharingan Kakashi."
Iruka laughed, shakily. "You… you read too much Icha Icha."
"But?"
Iruka looked over his shoulder, at the downpour, that drowned out even his hammering heart. "It doesn't look like it'll stop anytime soon."
"I know," Kakashi purred.
--
Toshimo Unae cursed the rain as she climbed the staircase as carefully as possible in her kimono, balancing two trays of hot tea and dishes on her arms. Living halfway across the town meant that she could end up drowned by the damnable downpour by the time she reached home. However, Dojiro-san seemed to feel that idling was a sin against the Gods, and so she had been pressed, unwillingly, into doing overtime. And since she was too tired to handle her biwa, she had been shanghaied into waitressing. And the only kimono she had on her was the formal sakura one for gagaku. And it was damnably annoying to wear while scaling stairs and balancing trays.
At least the overtime pay was good, she consoled herself, as she served tea and dishes with a smile that became decidedly fixed by the fifth set of customers in the private rooms. Why, if her normal pay were even near equivalent to it, she would even consider settling down in this backwater town famous only for its tea, chawan mushi, tofu and anpan.
Another crack of thunder, this one uncomfortably close and loud, made her cringe, then fight to balance the remaining tray on her hand, taking the baby steps that her formal kimono allowed. Breathing out a sigh of relief as equilibrium was established, she continued padding down the corridor. Two more rooms, and she could go back down and maybe rest her poor feet.
She knelt down before a rice paper sliding door, placing the stacked trays on the ground, rapped her knuckles on the wooden ground and said, respectfully, "Sorry to keep you waiting, sirs." She picked up the plate of mochi for room six and pulled back the sliding door.
And promptly flushed crimson, shut the door with a snap, and yelped, "Sorry! Sorry!"
Unae stared at the mochi on the bone china plate in her hands, numb with shock and sheer mortification. Why did she have…? Oh, right. Room six wanted mochi.
She then inched the door open again, eyes shut, enough to nudge the plate into the room, then closed it, picked up the tray, and hurried away, wishing the ground would swallow her whole, beet-red with embarrassment.
On the other hand, both of those men had been very attractive, in their own way.
It was really a shame.
She wasn't paid enough for this!
--
Iruka only stopped wriggling and struggling, absolutely mortified, when he realized it was actually having the opposite desired effect on his lover – Kakashi's helpless laughter took on a strained note, and arms tensed to either side of his ribs. "Mou, Kakashi-sensei…! I told you someone could come in! Now… get… off!"
"I totally forgot that we ordered mochi," Kakashi managed to say, before melting back into laughter again, in fits and starts, absolutely shameless. Fuming, Iruka's mind remembered that this man, after all, was well known in Konoha for reading porn in public. "Maa, Iruka-sensei, if… uhh… if you keep doing that… I'm going to… aah…"
"Hen…tai!"
--
Tsunade peered at the package on her desk, and then up at a visibly squirming Iruka, then back at the package. "What happened to the decorative bag?"
Iruka flushed bright red – the Hokage arched an eyebrow. "Er… er… there was an accident, um you see, it rained, and the bag was, um, ruined. I'm very sorry, Hokage-sama."
Iruka-sensei, Tsunade noted, with amusement, was a terrible liar. "Really."
"Ahahaha! Er… yes, it was a very bad storm," Iruka laughed nervously.
"Which only ruined the paper bag and not the paper package," Tsunade said, dryly.
"R…right."
Tsunade smiled at Iruka for a long moment, and then decided it was unnecessarily cruel of her – whatever had happened to the bag, the chuunin was obviously sorry. "Oh. Well, you can go. Thank you, Iruka-sensei."
"Um. Er. Okay. Er… You're welcome. Hokage-sama." He fled.
Tsunade frowned, as she unwrapped her package of anpan. For a moment there, it looked like Iruka had something else he'd wanted to say.
-fin-
