"Hey," Shikamaru waved when he strolled over to where Naruto was sulking under the picnic table, "so how did the date go?"
"I poisoned Kakashi," Naruto wailed.
Shikamaru's eyes went wide, and then Naruto knew that he had done something terrible because he had never seen Shikamaru look anything other than bored.
"Wow," the boy said, "you blew it then?"
"It wasn't my fault!" Naruto cried.
"Aren't you going to try again?" Shikamaru asked as he plopped himself down next to Naruto.
Naruto shook his head, "no."
"Scaredy cat."
Naruto growled and poked his head out from beneath the table so that he could glare up at Sasuke who was lounging on the top of it.
"Shut up!"
"You won't try again because you're scared," Sasuke said simply.
"It's alright for you to say that!" Naruto yelled, "your parents already live together and everything!"
"Moron," Sasuke twisted and jumped down from on top of the table, "just try again."
"And what am I supposed to do next? Huh?" Naruto demanded to know.
"What are you yelling at Sasuke-kun for Naruto?" Sakura bellowed as she marched towards them.
Naruto scowled at Sasuke and returned to hiding beneath the picnic table.
"Naruto set up his dad and Kakashi on a date," Shikamaru informed Sakura and Ino when they came to a halt on either side of Sasuke.
"Huh?" Sakura was momentarily shaken from her adoration of Sasuke with the mention of romance, "date? What are you talking about?"
"The idiot poisoned his mum," Sasuke smirked.
"He's not my mum!"
"He wants his dad and Kakashi to get together," Shikamaru said, "but the date he set them up on didn't work out well."
"What kind of date did you send them on?" Ino asked, stepping away from Sasuke to peer at Naruto under the table.
"Chouji and Shikamaru and me made them food," he pouted, "and it made Kakashi sick."
"Ch, figures," Ino placed her hands on her hips, "if you want to know about romance, you don't go to Chouji and Shikamaru."
Naruto frowned up at her, "well what would you do then?"
Ino's grin became slightly frightening, "you really want to know?"
oO0Oo
Kakashi appeared in his apartment in a swirl of leaves, and went very, very still.
"What the..." he took a single step forward and then froze.
He sneezed inside his mask. Loudly.
"Oh, yuck," he whined, right before he sneezed again. It was then that he peered at the countless flowers camouflaging his apartment more carefully.
"Oh no," he hissed, "orchids."
A lot of orchids. One or two he could handle, but an entire room full... even with the mask he could feel his throat constricting. His eyes were watering like there was no tomorrow and itching terribly, but he knew that if he rubbed them that they'd just sting even worse. He pressed forward, searching for the door, when he knocked over one of the mammoth bouquets, and the angry sound of buzzing filled the air.
"OW!" he blinked down at his arm, but he couldn't see anything through the water in his eyes. After another sneeze he screwed his eyes shut, held his breath, and vanished in a swirl of smoke.
He managed to stagger into the Hokage's house despite the sneezing and the fact that he couldn't see. He spared a self deprecating moment to wonder why he always seemed to run to his teacher whenever something like this happened. He should really try letting go of the man, the Hokage didn't owe him anything. He probably thought of Kakashi as a nuisance. But he couldn't think of anywhere else to go, he was technically blinded and he didn't want to sit on the roof of his apartment to wait for the allergic reaction so subside.
"Kakashi?" he heard the man call out, "what on earth... what happened to you?"
"Orchids," Kakashi yanked his mask down and sneezed again, "do you have any tissues?"
There was incredulous silence for a moment, before he heard the Hokage move around and then press something soft into his hand. He sneezed into the tissue, relieved by the fact that the urge to sneeze was becoming less insistent now.
"Come on," there was a firm hand on his shoulder, guiding him further into the house, and Kakashi suddenly felt embarrassed about the state he was in.
"What happened?" the Hokage asked as Kakashi was manoeuvred onto the couch, "you said something about orchids?"
Kakashi blinked and wiped his eyes, "my apartment is full of them."
"Why?" his sensei asked, "you're allergic to them."
"I know that," Kakashi snapped irritably, "I don't know who left them, but there were hundreds. And a bee!"
"Huh?" the Hokage frowned.
Kakashi held his arm out and indicated the large red lump that was swelling on his forearm.
"Oh," the Hokage chuckled.
"Are you laughing at me?" Kakashi pouted.
"Wait here," his teacher sighed. Kakashi snatched up some more tissues from the box that the Hokage had left on the couch next to him and wiped his eyes angrily. He was even angrier with the way he was behaving, like a petulant child who expected his teacher to fix everything. He didn't even know what he was doing in the man's house, he was being childish.
"Right," the Hokage said determinedly as he strode back in, holding some cotton wool and a bottle of something that smelled like vinegar, "give me your arm."
Kakashi watched as the man perched himself on the coffee table in front of him and gently took his wrist into his hand. He pushed the sleeve of Kakashi's top further up his arm to get a better look at the vivid red swelling there and winced in sympathy.
"Who on earth would fill your apartment with orchids?" he asked.
"I don't know," Kakashi replied, and then sneezed again, "someone who doesn't like me much."
If Kakashi didn't know better, he would say that the Hokage looked upset about something. But he was blinking at him through bleary eyes, and after a moment the expression faded to a cheerful smile.
"Maybe you have a secret admirer," he teased.
"Shut up sensei."
The Hokage chuckled and held Kakashi's hand loosely in his own while he pressed the cotton wool to Kakashi's arm. It had been soaked in vinegar and Kakashi hissed when it first touched his skin.
"Sensei," Kakashi said softly, "I'm sorry for bothering you with this."
The Hokage looked up from Kakashi's arm and goggled at him, "sorry? You don't have to be sorry Kakashi-kun. When you were a kid you would have suffered by yourself, I'm glad that you can come to me with stuff like this now."
Kakashi frowned. He wasn't a child anymore. But his teacher would always look back upon the time when he was, and no matter what he did he would never be able to make the man look at him as anything other than 'Kakashi-kun' the little boy he used to teach. It was frustrating beyond belief, he just wanted to kick the man and make him see him.
He jumped slightly when the Hokage ran his thumb lightly over Kakashi's knuckles, holding his hand almost tenderly while he pressed the cotton wool against his arm. Kakashi stared at their hands and just longed for a moment, before he squeezed his teacher's hand gently.
The Hokage looked up into his face and squeezed back, with a smile that almost seemed sad.
oO0Oo
"Dad!" Naruto called when he swung into his house and kicked his shoes off, "guess what! Sakura-chan played with me all day! She let me braid her hair, but I couldn't do it properly so she hit me, and Ino did it for her, but then we ate some dango and..."
Naruto came to a halt in the doorway and frowned at the scene before him. Kakashi waved, a tissue held firmly in his hand.
Naruto's dad was holding Kakashi's wrist gently and dabbing something that smelled like vinegar onto his arm.
"Kakashi, what's the matter?" Naruto asked in horror. His eyes were all red and puffy, he looked like he had been crying. He hadn't been crying had he? Kakashi never cried! Who had made him cry? Naruto would pound them into the ground!
"He just had an allergic reaction Naruto," his dad smiled at him over his shoulder.
"A what?" Naruto asked as he clambered onto the couch beside Kakashi and watched in sympathy as his dad dabbed that vinegary stuff at a swollen red lump on Kakashi's forearm.
"Someone left bunches of orchids in my apartment," Kakashi explained, his words muffled through the tissue, "there were loads of them, and in such a small space so even my mask didn't help."
Naruto's lip had started to wobble. He bit it.
"And he got stung by a bee," his dad told him, "it was hiding in one of the bouquets apparently."
"Hurt like a bitch," Kakashi muttered.
Naruto's dad whacked Kakashi upside the head, "language," he warned, "and don't be a baby. You're a war hardened shinobi; you've lived through far worse than a bee sting."
"Will you be okay?" Naruto asked. Something in his voice must have given him away; he was so incredibly close to tears he didn't know how he had managed to stop any from falling, and both his dad and Kakashi turned their full attention to him.
"Hey, Naruto," his dad leant closer to him and rubbed his head gently, "what's the matter?"
Naruto sniffed. He really didn't want to cry in front of his dad and Kakashi, but his dad was looking at him with so much concern, and Kakashi had wrapped his arm, the one with the bee sting, around his shoulders and was rubbing his arm affectionately. He couldn't do anything right, he had made Kakashi sick with the eel, and he had done it again with the flowers. Kakashi had forgiven him for the eel, but if he found out it was him who had sent the flowers than he probably wouldn't speak to him again, and he had said that the bee sting had really hurt and hurting Kakashi was the last thing he wanted to do.
"Hey, I lied you know," Kakashi confided, "it didn't hurt at all; I was just trying to get some sympathy out of you."
Naruto couldn't hold his tears in any longer, he wrapped his arms tightly around Kakashi's neck and sniffled loudly against him.
"Not this much sympathy though," Kakashi said in alarm. Naruto felt Kakashi wrap his arms around him and hug him tightly, and his dad climbed onto the couch next to him and kissed the back of his head.
"Come on kiddo," his dad soothed, "tell us what the matter is."
Naruto hiccoughed, "you g-got stung..."
Kakashi chuckled against the top of his head and hugged him tighter.
Naruto wriggled further into Kakashi's arms, and even though he felt so utterly guilty, it felt really nice to have his dad and Kakashi shushing him softly and hugging him.
"What are you going to do about your apartment?" Naruto heard his dad ask quietly when Naruto had finally quietened down.
"I'll ask Gai to get rid of the flowers for me," Kakashi replied, still rubbing Naruto's back, "but I have no idea where they came from in the first place."
"Mm," his dad shifted slightly in his seat, "like I said, maybe you have a secret admirer."
Naruto frowned at the tone of his dad's voice. He sounded like he was sulking slightly; he had never heard his dad sound like that before.
Kakashi chuckled, "yeah, I wish. It was probably someone with a grudge against me. Who else would send me flowers that I'm allergic to?"
Naruto bit his lip in worry. Everything he did ended in disaster. He should just forget the whole thing.
oO0Oo
"You stupid idiot!" Ino screamed as she kicked out at Naruto, "why didn't you tell me that he was allergic to orchids?"
"I didn't know!" Naruto protested, "it's not just my fault! There was a bee in those flowers and it stung him!"
"Are you trying to blame me for this?" Ino screeched.
Sasuke was rolling his eyes and doing his best to ignore them, while Shikamaru dozed upon the grass and Chouji watched the entertainment while munching on a bag of chips.
"I don't care any more!" Naruto yelled, "I give in!"
"So you're giving up this time?" Sasuke sneered, "I knew you were a scaredy cat."
"Shut up!" Naruto pointed into the Uchiha's face and snarled, "everything I do ends up making Kakashi sick or something! I've tried everything! I'm not doing anything else!"
"You haven't tried everything," Sasuke replied.
"Well what else can I do?" Naruto huffed and flopped angrily onto the grass, "I can't think of anything else."
"That's because you're stupid," Sasuke said, "just lock them in a cupboard together or something."
"No, I..." Naruto paused, "would that work?"
"No," Shikamaru interrupted, earning himself a glare from Sasuke, "you can't do that. Your dad's the Hokage; you can't lock the Hokage up for any length of time, what if he's needed?"
Naruto folded his arms and stuck his tongue out at Sasuke.
"Oi!"
All of the heads in the area swivelled around to look at Kiba as he marched towards them.
"Naruto!" the Inuzuka boy yelled, "is it true? Is your dad gay?"
"Huh?"Naruto climbed to his feet and glared at the other boy, "what do you mean?"
Kiba stopped in front of him and shrugged, smiling, "nothing, I was just asking. Hinata said that he's going out with that old guy with the mask."
"Kakashi's not old!" Naruto yelled.
"But is he going out with your dad?" Kiba asked.
Naruto huffed and dropped back onto the grass.
"We're working on it," Ino snapped.
"What does that mean?" Kiba frowned.
"It means that Naruto wants Kakashi to be his mum," Chouji explained.
Naruto pouted and glared at Chouji. He didn't want Kakashi to be his actual mum, he just wanted Kakashi to live with them so that they could be a proper family.
"But nothing is working," Shikamaru sighed.
"Naruto keeps screwing up," Sasuke smirked.
"Shut up!" Naruto yelled as he crossed his arms over his chest, "it's not my fault!"
Kiba gave them all a puzzled frown and crossed his arms, "how can he be your mum? He's a man!"
Naruto narrowed his eyes angrily, "I don't care! I just want him to go on a proper date with my dad so that he can move in with us!"
A sly grin spread slowly over Kiba's face, "a date huh?" He dropped onto the grass beside Naruto and chuckled, "in that case, I know exactly what you need."
