8. Substitute Teacher
Character(s): Iruka-sensei, Kakashi
Summary: Kakashi brings illicit reading material into Iruka's class. This was a mistake.
Iruka would never understand how they chose substitute teachers. He wondered if all the acceptable candidates simultaneously dropped off the face of the earth, forcing them to draw from the most wretched pool of ridiculously inappropriate shinobi imaginable – and then to thrust said appalling role model on his most vulnerable classes of children.
He'd spoken to his superiors about it. Hell, he'd spoken to the Hokage about it. However, the former had just murmured something about making use of idle resources, and the Hokage had smirked at him.
All of this lead to Iruka's rationalization that he must never, ever get ill.
Generally, this worked well, except he did occasionally have to go on missions. This happened for a week, late one autumn. He'd left hasty but specific instructions, hoping against experience that at least part of his objectives might be accomplished. And then, worried but resigned, he left.
Kakashi wouldn't ever understand how they chose substitutes at the academy. He wondered if they took the names of all the nin in the village who most disliked children and rotated them in as some kind of perverse punishment.
How he hated Konoha's larvae progeny. After all, he wasn't a daycare provider. What a complete waste of time. He'd set fire to the drivel of instructions the teacher left behind on the first day.
"What did you do with them all week then?" Iruka asked him later.
Kakashi had felt a twinge of regret when he'd discovered it was Iruka's class he'd taken over. However, it was hardly a crisis of conscience; more a mild fear for his life. "Just what I'm doing now," he responded, flipping a page of his favored volume of Ichi Ichi nonsense.
Silence. Then, with a tinge of rage coloring his voice, Iruka asked, "You read that in front of the children?"
Kakashi should never have smirked in the teacher's face, or made that tasteless comment about teaching them how to be adults. He definitely should never have leered afterward suggestively. And he should have noticed the flush on Iruka's face, darkening his tan to a livid maroon.
Though whether or not the book would have been saved from the inferno of flame it erupted into was a mater of contention.
