AN: Hey look! An update in only 2 days! Much love!

First off, you can thank Lucca-Ace for this update. I had decided once I got twenty reviews, I'd start working on chapter 4. And she (or is it he? Lucca-Ace, what is your gender!?) happened to be the twentieth reviewer. Lucca, can I call you Lucca?, you're turning out to be one of my fav reviewers (I do remember my reviewers, too, like siriuscandid who has reviewed every chapter of this and it's prequel, or icantremembersn, who I do not think sounded harsh in his (her?) first review and I sincerely appreciated the fact check. I like being called on my inconsistencies). I read each and every review.

Second, in case I don't get chapter 5 written in time, happy birthday Zackara! Just for you, I'm going to try and get it up by next Tuesday. If I don't, I'll post somethign else (oneshots are always easier than fifth chapters, I've found). So, is there anything else you'd like to read on your special day? (How old will you be, maybe I can tie that in :) )

Which reminds me, I do take requests. This entire story can be considered a request, considering Pieces was a oneshot until enough people begged (well, asked, but I like thinking of it as begging) for me to continue it.

They ended up at a ramen stand.

"Ichiraku?" Kakashi asked, ducking under the flaps of fabric hanging from the entry way.

"I like ramen," Iruka explained. "And since I, a mere 'baby chuunin,' as I've heard you jounin call us, am buying, I'm buying cheap."

Kakashi shrugged. He didn't really care one way or the other.

The baby chuunin remark did get a grin out of him, though.

After their orders were placed, they fell into an awkward silence, Iruka keeping a weak grin on his face and Kakashi looking thoughtful. Now that he had the chuunin next to him, calm and smiling, what did he do with him? Wryly, Kakashi realized this was just what his nin pups must have felt like when they finally managed to catch the mail cart.

Come on, Hatake, He chastised himself mentally, you're a ninja. A jounin! You can do this. Think ninja.

And that's when Kakashi realized what this was.

A recon mission…

He could do recons. Hell, this should be even easier because, theoretically, Iruka should want to tell him things. They were practically on a date, and that's what you did on dates, right?

Just then, two bowls of noodles were placed before them. Kakashi barely hesitated before pulling down his mask. Despite kissing Iruka last night on the training grounds, he didn't often reveal his face in public.

It's for the good of the mission, he thought to himself, suddenly determined. But where to start? What do people usually talk about on dates?

Obito had liked talking about his clan. He had always been very proud of the fact that he was an Uchiha - something that completely escaped Kakashi, but he hardly had the market corned on good family relations.

Oh, what was it that Gai was always talking about?

His team! Kakashi remembered. Most nin like talking about their teammates, as long as their not dead or defected. Genma and Anko didn't seem too dead, so that's probably a safe topic.

Besides, there was something Kakashi was wonder…

"So," Kakashi drawled, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, "Genma seems a bit old to be your teammate."

Iruka nodded, not caring in the least that he was slurping his noodles.

"Yea. Makes it hard sometimes, with how Anko likes to tease him. He can't tease back yet. Hell, once Genma was arrested and he didn't even do anything. Can't go back to the stake house anymore, which is too bad because the cook there would put up with damn near anything."

He'd have to ask about that later, but that wasn't the point now.

"What I meant was how'd you get such an old teammate? He has to be at least twenty."

"Twenty-three," Iruka corrected, stretching across the counter to wave down the waitress - a fourteen-year-old girl that vehemently claimed she was just making extra cash and would not be working here much longer. Iruka liked her and thought she'd make a lovely waitress if she didn't spend such a long time ogling all the teen ninja that ate there.

Kakashi thought about this for a moment. Twenty-three and on a team with two sixteen-year-olds? A lot of things didn't add up about this team (though Kakashi supposed he didn't have much to go on, considering the only team he had ever had contact with had been his own…).

"Why would the Hokage place you on a team with him? He must have been a chuunin before you were even a genin."

"It's complicated." The teen looked mildly uncomfortable for a moment. "They aren't my original genin squad."

"I wasn't aware that they changed them after the fact."

Iruka shifted as the waitress brought his new bowl of ramen. This wasn't the place to discuss this.

"Look, I've never talk about this with someone that wasn't involved in the situation. So you can't make this any harder, okay?"

Kakashi gave Iruka a grin as if to say "would I do that?" while inwardly realizing, no, this was not a safe topic.

At least he's still talking.

"It's not really much of a story," the chuunin muttered. "I was a genin for nearly six months when the Nine-Tails attacked. My original squad was made up the way they all are. We had a jounin teacher and there were three of us. Risa, the girl on our team, was the outgoing one. She always wanted harder missions. She was stronger than me and Hayate - the third genin in our squad - which was saying something because Hayate was already as strong as a chuunin."

Iruka sighed. It'd been a long time since he'd thought about Risa and Tosuke-sensei.

"When the village was under attack, Tosuke-sensei was one of the first to report to the front lines. She was always like that, very duty oriented."

He paused there and Kakashi made a point of looking down at his food as he took a bite, giving Iruka a moment to collect himself.

"She didn't last long." It was little more than a whisper when he finally said it. "Not many did. Risa couldn't believe it. She lost it and if Hayate had my help, I'd like to think we could have stopped her. But I was at the hospital, demanding to see my father. He'd died that morning."

Chocolate brown eyes stared at the Copy Nin and Kakashi felt compelled to return the look.

"She didn't even last the night.

"I'm not sure what happened immediately after that. A medic sedated me as I was too weak to even consider fighting and I was just wasting their time bothering them. Afterwards, though, the third told me that both my parents had died and so had my teacher and teammate. Hayate was fine, but it was just the two of us, hardly a genin squad. He took a special interest in the squads that had been dismantled.

"Anko was put on our team almost immediately. She'd just made chuunin a few weeks before the attack, but she'd been without a teacher for a couple years. She was our age and her temperament fit great with mine and Hayate's. Finding us a new teacher was harder. A lot of jounin had died and the hokage told us that we weren't top priority to get a new sensei. So he added another chuunin to the group. Genma isn't our teacher, but he was strong and could help us find our own strength."

Suddenly, Iruka grinned.

"Genma had it in his head that he was our new teacher. He'd been trying to boss us around and be a general pain in the ass. As Hayate was nearly as strong as him and Anko's last teacher was insane, it didn't work very well."

"You guys seem friendly enough now," Kakashi pointed out, feeling like enough of the tension had lifted to join into the discussion.

"Aah." Iruka looked nervous all of a sudden. "That was because we decided to teach him a lesson. You know, about stealth and stamina and, um, rejuvenation?"

"Rejuvenation." Kakashi's voice couldn't have been more dry. "What the hell does that mean?"

"That means that the three of us took it upon ourselves to drive him bat-shit crazy. We put traps and pranks around his apartment, in his apartment, around our training spot. Basically wherever we knew civilians and other nin would be unlikely to run into them. We'd made up and memorized three different codes and each of us spoke in a different one. You know, nothing serious, just-"

"Hazing," Kakashi finished, grinning widely. "You hazed the hell out of him."

"Basically." Iruka's grin matched Kakashi's.

"How long did he last?"

"A few months. But it didn't end because he broke. We were sent on a C-rank mission. We got attacked by a group of missing nin on the way back, but Genma had burnt himself out. He always tried to impress us into respecting him. We realized that he couldn't fight them. Hayate and Anko spread out to fight so they couldn't be too surprised by them and I stayed with Genma to make sure they didn't take him out. We were able to fight them off and Anko killed one of them. That's when Genma realized he wasn't doing us any favors acting that way and when he started being less of an ass, we laid off."

"Less?" Kakashi felt the need to ask.

Iruka's grin shifted into a smirk.

"He's still an ass. Just… more bearable."

Of course. Because one didn't just stop being an ass because a group of preteens didn't like you.

"So, what happened with him at that stake house?"

"Not telling!" Iruka exclaimed happily, finishing off what he decided would be his last bowl for the night. "You want to hear that, you'll have to offer me a meal full of stories of your genin squad."

That brought about a scowl.

"You don't want to hear about my past."

"You don't know what I do and don't want to hear about and you won't get anymore stories about me or my past unless I get something from yours. Ball's in your court, Hatake."

"Oh? My court, huh?"

Iruka wasn't sure he liked how Kakashi was smirking.

"So, you'd come to dinner if I invited you? Say, tomorrow night at my place?"

"Not your place," Iruka said, voice polite but firm.

"Why not?" Kakashi asked, sounding a bit put out.

"We don't' do well in private places," Iruka countered. He ignored Kakashi's suggestive "I disagree," and continued. "I've decided you're not a complete ass-"

"Like Genma?"

"Yea, like Genma. Anyway, I've decided you're not a complete ass, so if you're going to insist on doing this, whatever the hell you're doing, then I'll let you for now. But in public."

"I didn't know you were that kind of person, Iruka," Kakashi said, faking surprise.

"Don't ruin it! I don't want to be jumped or molested, you hear? So I'll have dinner with you or chat or whatever, but only if you can prove you can behave yourself."

"That's not fair," grumbled the jounin, looking very much like a dog that had just been hit on the nose with a slipper.

"It's not fair that my friends won't stop talking about what we'll call the kids!" Iruka exclaimed. He looked sheepish when the man beside him choked on his noodles and lowered his voice to add, "They don't care that it doesn't make sense because it keeps getting laughs. Do you know how long it takes to get a group of sixteen year old boys to forget something like this? Especially with Anko thrown in to the mix? Kakashi, you've essentially ruined the next year of my life."

Kakashi rolled his eye at this.

"I didn't ruin your life you drama queen." Suddenly he grinned, the sort of grin that turned his eye into a happy little crescent and meant those around him would either A) be very excited about the news or - more likely - B) cause the one it was aimed at much emotional distress. "I've just made it more interesting. From the looks of things, you could deal with a bit of interesting."

He swooped in then, to steal a kiss. It was supposed to be quick, chaste even. Just to remind Iruka.

It was Iruka who opened his mouth, and really, what was Kakashi to do? He couldn't just ignore and out and out invitation like that, could he?

He didn't get a chance to deepen the kiss properly, though, because Iruka had already sucked his bottom lip into his mouth.

Ah, he's repeating himself, Kakashi thought, amused.

He wasn't amused for long. Suddenly, his bottom lip erupted in pain and he jerked back in surprise. Well, he tried to, but Iruka still had his lip firmly between his teeth.

Gray bore into deep brown and a long moment passed until Iruka released Kakashi's lip. He licked the bite - a small apology - before breaking the kiss completely.

"You don't seem to be a masochist, Kakashi," he said, voice gentle. "So every time you do that from now on, that's how I'm going to respond. I'll bite or scratch or whatever will work to get you to get a grip, okay?"

Kakashi just barely kept himself from pouting.

"What if you want me to kiss you?" he asked, knowing he was grasping at straws.

He froze as lips met him in a firm kiss. It only lasted a few seconds before Iruka leaned back.

"If I want you to kiss me," he said, for some reason sounding breathless, "then I'll make it happen."