Just Give Me Many Chances V/VI

Naruto's asleep. Unconscious, really, but asleep sounds better, sounds safer.

Or that's what Jiraiya says. Tsunade's found that which words you dress it up in doesn't change the baseline shittiness of the world.

She forced Minato away to deal with things, now that it's clear that Naruto will survive, and she should get going too. She can admit to herself that she's pleased to leave Sasuke sitting on Naruto's bedside, to all appearances enraptured by the rise and fall of Naruto's chest. The Sabaku kids are on the floor, positioned defensively around the doorway.

Yui's standing by the bedside, stroking Naruto's hair, again and again, like the motions of prayer.

I'd like to be alone with him, she said.

Sasuke hadn't looked away from Naruto's breathing. You can't protect him. We can.

It's the first time he's made a we with a shifter other than Naruto.

So things have settled and Tsunade's leaving, only then she has to pick up her phone very quickly, praying for Kakashi to come on, come on, answer already, because Itachi Uchiha is bearing down on them.

Tsunade doesn't exist to him, she never has. This means she has the doubtful pleasure of watching from quite close by as he drags Sasuke out of Naruto's room. They're hissing at each other, slipping between languages; she realises she's never seen Itachi express emotion before and that he's absolutely livid right now.

"…doing what it takes!" Sasuke yells, just as furious. "As if you wouldn't!"

"That's different," Itachi snaps. "You're mine."

"And Naruto's mine!" Sasuke screams back, and then seems to realise his mistake as Itachi comes to a stop, turning back towards Naruto's room. "Iie da! Itachi, yamerou!" He's hanging on to Itachi physically, pulling and dragging with all his might. It's completely useless and Tsunade's going to have to get between Itachi and the door, buy time for Kakashi to get here, and –

And thank God, there he is, running full tilt down the corridor.

"…dame da," Sasuke's insisting, "it's my sin, hurt me instead, Itachi-niisan, boku dake…"

And then Kakashi's really there, putting his hands on Itachi's shoulders as if Itachi's a person who can be touched and not heavenly fury and God's judgement in the shape of a person. Kakashi twists him around until he's turned away from Naruto's room and lifts an eyebrow, as if nothing much is going on.

"The Council sanctioned that rescue mission, you know," he tells Itachi. His voice is light and careful and amused, as if Itachi's someone who can be talked to, someone who understands human reason. Even so Kakashi keeps hold of his shoulders, standing very close and keeping himself between Itachi and Naruto's door. They look – like they're embracing, almost. "Anyway Naruto's irrelevant to this."

"Hn."

Kakashi tilts Itachi's face to his. "Always so articulate, you Uchiha boys. One might wonder if you're really your mother's sons." He seems to steel himself, his drawl sharpening as he stops babbling. "But this is about Sasuke, right? So let's take Sasuke home and do penance. Ne, Sasuke?"

Sasuke keeps his eyes downcast, Tsunade imagines in order to hide simmering fury or painful relief, and takes Itachi's hand.

"Ikuzo, Itachi-niisan."

Kakashi takes Itachi's other hand, and between them they lead him away.

xxxxx

"Talk to Itachi before he does something irrevocable," Kakashi snaps. For the first time in years, he's so angry it's difficult to stand still.

Mikoto lifts an eyebrow. "I agreed to hand over Sasuke's care. You need to start getting Itachi towards accepting that."

"I'm working on it! I've been a little distracted just now making sure he doesn't actually murder Sasuke. I realise fratricide is a fine biblical tradition, but really."

"We will both increase our efforts," Mikoto says after a short silence. "Now get back in there, and I'll have word with him at first opportunity about Council guidelines for children's penance."

Kakashi nods, returning to the guest room that is in effect Itachi's and Sasuke's room. Sasuke's lying on his stomach on the bed, breathing carefully as though he's trying to trick the pain into easing up enough that he escape into sleep.

"Hey, you," Kakashi mumbles, settling next to him and stroking his hair. Sasuke glares at him half-heartedly, eyelids heavy. But Sasuke's ultimately irrelevant to this: Sasuke's a prop. What matters is Itachi coming in a few minutes later, and seeing Kakashi touching Sasuke just the way Itachi likes to – building the association between desirable touch and Kakashi. "Come join us," he suggests to Itachi, making an inviting gesture almost like holding out his hand.

After a little bit, Itachi does. He sits on the other side of Sasuke's semi-conscious body, and together they pet Sasuke like petting a cat, until Kakashi's stroking Itachi's hand stroking Sasuke's face.

Itachi looks at him in question. His eyes at times like these are the eyes of a child, wide open and absolutely serious, so extremely focussed on the person he demands answers of.

Kakashi shrugs, indolent. "You like touching Sasuke. I like touching you."

"You like touching Sasuke too."

"Maa, yes. But he's asleep now." There's a pause, Kakashi's hand lying unmoving over Itachi's. He's extremely aware of it, the slight curl of Itachi's fingers around the curve of Sasuke's head, the thin bones and the blood and light flowing just under his skin. It's like touching a person and it's like reaching up and touching the heavens, having them tangible as flesh in your grip. "Did you mind?"

Itachi thinks about it. "No," he says at last, cautiously.

Kakashi offers him the glitter of a practiced smile. "Good."

He's been touching Itachi more, lately. Leant against him, rested his chin on his shoulder, stood and sat very close indeed. Itachi hasn't said anything.

It's not something Kakashi could have done before Minato: before he was comfortable in his body, secure in its ability to appeal. Before he had a place with the shifters, and consequently with the exorcists. Steady ground under his feet, someplace he matters and is wanted.

He turns Itachi's hand over in his own and strokes Itachi's wrist, his thumb pressing gently against Itachi's flesh. Itachi's pulse jumps towards him.

"What are you doing?"

Kakashi smirks at him, lopsided and close. "Perhaps I'm seducing you."

"I thought you wanted Sasuke."

"I'm not interested in little children."

Itachi squints at him, head tilted just the same way as Sasuke's. "Do you want…?"

"I've wanted this for a long time."

"Oh." He looks at Kakashi as though at a revelation, as if something familiar has been made new in front of his eyes.

Slowly, gently, Kakashi puts his hand on Itachi's face, drawing him in. He leans forward over Sasuke's sleeping body and kisses Itachi on the mouth, eyes open, suddenly desperate not to miss an instant. Itachi shudders, when Kakashi leans back he's wild-eyed, his breath stuttering. "This –"

"I will carry this sin," Kakashi cuts him off, sees Itachi's eyes and then his pupils widen. "All this, between us – it will be my sin, not yours. I can bear it."

Itachi swallows. When Kakashi inches forward again, he doesn't turn away. His mouth tingles and hums with heavenly fire under Kakashi's, Lucifael extremely present just under the thin skin of his lips. Gabriel rises in response, Kakashi feels suddenly and ridiculously like a shifter, with an inner being taking a sudden interest in carnal proceedings.

Itachi's hair catches in his fingers, slicker and smoother than Sasuke's wild cowlicks.

It's nothing like with Minato. Minato has technique, kindness; Itachi has ardency, shrapnel sharpness.

Kakashi makes sure to stop himself before Itachi stops him, lying back and sprawling as best he can despite being relegated to a third of the bed. He keeps hold of a strand of Itachi's hair, lets his hand lay on Sasuke's back as his fingers play with the hair, idly braiding and unbraiding.

Eventually, Itachi too lies down, on the far side of Sasuke.

After some time he laughs. His laughs have always been strange, low and a little guttural, animal-sounding. "What would Mother say? She already thinks I'm too intimate with Sasuke."

"Actually," Kakashi tells him airily, "she approves."

Itachi lifts an eyebrow in question. Kakashi fancies he would've felt the movement, even if he couldn't see it over the top of Sasuke's head.

He shrugs, absently re-braiding Itachi's hair. "Well, the way she sees it, I'm already taking one for the team with Minato, so a few more sins for me to carry won't matter. It's all for the greater good, and etcetera. And she thinks I'm better for you than Sasuke."

"You're nothing like Sasuke."

Kakashi collects his breaths, controls them. He looks at his own fingers tangled in Itachi's silly hair. "He's your brother. He'll always be your brother. But if you want – adult intimacy, I fancy I'm a better option."

"Carnal pleasures are sinful."

"I'm okay with that."

"You don't care about God." It's half statement, half question.

"I care about people. Look, it's – Lucifael doesn't interest me. You do."

"You talk as though we are entirely separate," Itachi says carefully.

"Maa, there's some overlap, of course, but – I'm not Gabriel. And Gabriel's okay with that."

Itachi levers himself up on an elbow, his eyes finding Kakashi over the top of Sasuke's head. "Does he speak to you?"

"Hmm, not in words? There's a presence, sometimes when I exorcise there's a humming, like he's singing and I can almost make out the melody? It feels like – grace, and glory, and home. I can never quite reach it. Perhaps going nova is going there." He sits up a bit, keeps hold of Itachi's hair. "And I will still get to go nova, I'll still get to go there, despite my carnal sins. We were created human: human frailties are forgiven us."

"Tch. Cherry picking."

"Oh really, and you're not? When have you ever gone with blessed are the meek? You certainly won't inherit the earth in that case."

"There's a logic to it," Itachi insists. "It's just – hidden from unclean eyes. One has to see underneath the underneath, to the Lord's plan."

"Maa. I don't know, if I'd made man this way – made him so the only way he could have any happiness was by sinning, and even so happiness was just a few seconds in a whole life of suffering… I don't see how I could forgive myself. I could've just made him happy."

"Happiness is overrated."

"Au contraire. It's the only thing worth anything."

They breathe together in thoughtful silence. It must be almost an hour later when Itachi rouses Kakashi from his slumber by saying, "Mother's sending us out together for a slew of exorcisms. Is that part of your seduction plan?"

"Knowing your mother, probably."

"You like her," Itachi says. He sounds thoughtful, as if this is interesting.

"A lot," Kakashi agrees.

"You think she's horrible to Sasuke."

Kakashi breathes out until his lungs are empty. "I think you're horrible to Sasuke too. I don't stop liking people because they're horrible." He tries a laugh, a breathy sound that comes out more like a sigh. "If I did, I'd never manage to like myself."

"You hate yourself," Itachi points out.

"Well," Kakashi says blankly. He feels flayed. "I try to like myself aside from that."

Itachi makes a low sound.

"You hate yourself too." He's never dared to say that to Itachi before.

"I love God," Itachi says.

"A love that makes you hate yourself, what's the good of that?" But Kakashi recovers himself, forces levity back into his voice and schools it into a lazy drawl, into a voice that won't draw blood. "Jesus, it's like you're in an abusive relationship with God."

"You're strange," Itachi says, which is actually no denial.

"Always have been," Kakashi agrees. "You know, when we leave for the mission… I want to leave Sasuke with the shifters."

It's heartening, he supposes, that Itachi demands, "Why?" instead of just saying, No.

"Your mother wants him gone. She actually brought up trading him away to Orochimaru."

Itachi becomes extremely stiff. "That's out of the question."

"Of course that's what I told her, but it might be better he's somewhere else. Minato wants him for Naruto, so he'd never hand him over."

"You're sure of that?"

"I'm staking my life on it, aren't I?" Kakashi says dryly.

Itachi snorts, sounding rather amused.

"Anyway," Kakashi continues, entering land mind territory. He thinks how this is why Sasuke never gets anywhere with Itachi: that Itachi cares too much about him, listens too carefully for any fault, but also that managing and manipulating people is very much not Sasuke's skill set. That Sasuke doesn't know how to talk around things until people lose track of what they didn't mean to agree to. "It might be a good test, in its own way. If Sasuke is – the way you want him to be, he'll reject all of it, even without any guidance. And if he doesn't, well, then he might not be worthy of quite so much of your interest."

Itachi sits up, leans over Sasuke to look at Kakashi properly. "Are you trying to trick me?"

"Maa, I do feel I should've ideally been born a trickster, but – no more than usual?"

"Hn."

Kakashi leans up, startles Itachi by kissing his cheek, at the edge of his mouth. "Good night, Itachi."

xxxxx

Through some magic of Kakashi's, Itachi eventually agrees to countenance a change of residence for Sasuke. He talks as though he considers it a test, on which Minato chooses not to comment.

Sasuke is absolutely livid. It's mostly a silent fury, white-faced and stomping, but it erupts every now and then into screaming in languages Minato can't understand. Several shifters have fallen to the force of Sasuke's anger, burnt beyond what they can heal. Sasuke has never evidenced a shred of regret: Minato's prepared to believe he really does see little difference between immolating shifters and trashing furniture.

Presently Kakashi kneels in front of Sasuke, still taller but no longer towering over him, and catches Sasuke's face in his hands. "You remember what we talked about? When I said I was working on Itachi, to make him not kill Naruto."

Sasuke stills. It's a moment that makes Minato think of horses not yet broken in, skittish under your touch.

"Well," Kakashi continues. "This is part of that. He needs to loosen his hold on you. So this is what you have to do to ensure that Naruto escapes a hellfire ending."

Sasuke doesn't try to leave anymore after that, though he still smoulders with resentment. Itachi seems pleased at least, with how plainly Sasuke wants to stay with him.

Do well, little brother, Minato remembers him saying, when he'd come here with Sasuke and left alone. He'd kissed the nape of Sasuke's neck before forcibly putting him down. Don't be weak. Don't be foolish.

Naruto too is pleased, for all he fights ferociously and constantly with Sasuke. Largely because of their fighting, Minato's coming to understand that Kyuubi is monstrously strong, stronger possibly than any beast on record. He's not a subconscious presence rising occasionally to the surface like Arashi, not a power for Naruto to call on, but rather a constant pressure against Naruto's thoughts, an almost separate awareness.

Minato's seen what that kind of pseudo-schizophrenia has done to Gaara, and frets.

It's easier to worry about something concrete, like the fact that Naruto's and Sasuke's fighting has reached the point where they're damaging each other. Naruto turns up with black lines on his cheeks, burnt into his skin and deeper, the lines of a child's hand scratching, tipped with heavenly fire. Sasuke has claw marks on his face and broken fingers.

"That'll scar," Tsunade says. "Not too badly, but if you look it'll be there." She's sewn up Sasuke's face and anticipates thin white lines after the skin has closed and the swelling gone down. "Well, he was too pretty for his own good, anyway."

For all this, Sasuke still sleeps next to Naruto, their heads on the same pillow and Kyuubi's tails caught around Sasuke. Kakashi's never had much of a reaction to that one way or the other, but Minato gets the impression that Sasuke likes it.

"Of course," Kakashi shrugs, later on when Minato mentions it. "He's used to sleeping in with Itachi as a treat. It wasn't uncommon for Itachi to have his wings out a bit."

It must be a strong memory for Kakashi: their bond is extremely closed off, but Minato has a vague image of the Uchiha brothers in a room that feels almost but never quite like home, white sheets and white moonlight and white wings.

"Don't," Kakashi says.

"Sorry. It wasn't intentional."

"I know." It's part admittance, part annoyance. "Don't worry about his face, he's used to much worse from his family. He knows to tell Itachi it was an accident."

"That's horrifying," Minato says, and at Kakashi's raised eyebrow adds, "Also a relief, yes."

"Because he doesn't have to be asked to lie, or because it allows you to feel better about his relocation?"

"Both," Minato admits. "Of course both."

"Ah," Kakashi agrees. He seems – antsy, jittery, keeps pacing the room. It's distracting because he's usually so still. This is one of those times that Minato lets Arashi sneak up to the very edge of the demonic wall bisecting the bond and cutting him off from Kakashi. It's been there for a long time, that wall, and appears to baffle other shifters with its permanence, its strength, with how little he feels Kakashi and how vague those impressions usually are. Kakashi only lets the wall down if either of them is in danger and their location needs to be broadcast.

How do you live? Jiraiya asked, but Minato thinks it's for the best. They're both separate, individual people who don't like to be forced into closeness, don't like someone tearing their way into the private hurts and shames and dreams.

He didn't always think like this. He used to believe it was possible to understand other people, and that understanding was acceptance: that you could love someone into loving you, that people need people and belong to people. That they could all do better.

Suddenly he feels hopelessly old, like all the best parts of life are gone from him and he's not young enough to fool himself otherwise anymore. "All these things I said," he says, and his voice comes crackling and rough, "That I used to say, all the promises I made. I believed them at the time. I still want them. But I have no way of realising them. So they're just words now."

It's always been easy for Minato, he's never had to try very hard. He's powerful and well loved, gifted and popular, with a strong beast and the right pedigree. People have always listened to him and cared about him, about what he thinks: he's been perceived as a leader, and he guesses on some level he's thought of himself that way too. As someone who'd find the right way forward.

Now he's losing himself in the futility of it all, failure creeping up on him and hollowing out those golden boyhood ideals, but he has to keep trying, he has to do better, because after all what's the alternative?

Kakashi gives him a level look and nothing else.

"Say something," Minato says, suddenly needy. "Please."

"I'm not a politician."

"All the better," Minato tries, holding out his hand.

Kakashi takes it, squeezes it. Drops it. He's drawn to the window, like any bloody exorcist, feeling the call of the sky.

"Kakashi," he tries again. It feels like he's saying, Let me in, about a house he's lived in so long he never realised he could find himself locked out of it.

"Mmh." Kakashi drums his fingers against the window, leaving cracks. "You know Yahweh never made sense to me. The olden gods, the Greeks and the Egyptians and the lords of Asgård, you can figure them out. They don't pretend to be sympathetic, they're pathetic and egoistical like us, they love and they revenge themselves and take what they want. You can respect that. But with Yahweh, everything he does seems so pointless."

"I thought you didn't believe in God," Minato says.

"Of course not."

"So this is about Itachi, then."

"I should've hoped that was obvious."

There's something thorny here, something that matters to Kakashi, burns like wasps under his skin. Usually he's amused and dismissive when Minato brings up the Uchihas, shutting Minato out with a knowing little smile. Perhaps Minato could take it as a sign of trust that Kakashi's being openly caught up now in – not distress, not anticipation, but something that eats at him.

It's the opposite of the cold chasm that opened when Naruto stopped headbutting his arm and whining about everything Sasuke had done to piss him off that day: when Naruto's loyalty to Sasuke completely eclipsed his desire to tell Minato about what is clearly the central part of his life.

"Do we need to be concerned about him reclaiming Sasuke?"

"No," Kakashi says. "Mikoto and I have him in hand."

There's a flash then, of his hand in Itachi's hair, Itachi's hair wet and feathered out across a pillow.

"What," Minato says blankly. He almost laughs, a cold hateful laugh that tints his voice, "What the hell?"

Kakashi blinks at him. It looks like an honest question, as if he doesn't know what Minato's talking about.

Minato doesn't know how to get the words out but then he does. They leave a taste like after he's vomited. "Are you sleeping with Itachi Uchiha?"

Kakashi lifts an eyebrow. "Not that it's really any of your concern, but not yet, no."

Minato feels himself blink. It's an automatic response, as if he has to keep closing his eyes until he can open them to a world that makes sense again. "You're – trying to sleep with Itachi?"

"It's going quite well," Kakashi drawls. He's leaning back against the window, looking shy and pleased the way he does when people give him things he wants too much to ever ask for.

"This is insane."

"No? Mikoto and I are in agreement. It's a good distraction for him."

For some reason Minato's standing up. "You're sleeping with Itachi as a distraction for him?"

Kakashi seems only now to catch on to Minato being actually upset. "So?"

"That is completely unacceptable."

Kakashi still doesn't seem angry, or even upset. Surprised, even baffled, maybe a little hurt. "I'm sleeping with you, aren't I?"

"You love me," Minato points out.

"I love Itachi," Kakashi says, as though this is obvious and Minato makes no sense.

"Well, yes, quite, but – but you want me."

"And I want Itachi." Kakashi makes a gesture as though caught between impatience and tenderness, as if Minato were the child. "Look. I want a lot of people. I'm hardly being a martyr here, with either of you."

"Jesus."

Kakashi gives him another frowning, helpless look. "I never expected you to be faithful. I mean, I know better than to ask."

He means, of course: I know better than to expect you to be faithful.

"Since we – started this," Minato says, "I've never once looked at anyone else with desire."

"That strikes me as odd," Kakashi remarks, and then interrupts himself, "No, but that's not what this is about. It doesn't matter."

"I thought we were doing better," Minato says, the ground unsteady suddenly under his feet. "You were – happier."

"It's not enough, Minato." It's said softly and almost sweetly, like Kakashi's a very good executioner and lets the axe fall without pain. "Look, it's like," and he makes a frustrated gesture, hiding his own eyes before letting his hand drop. "If nothing good and nothing bad happens, you're okay. Your baseline is being happy. I'm – not like that. I'm just, I don't know, I'm not built for just being happy. I always ask too much, and then I don't get it, and – well. That's how it is."

Minato walks around the desk, but Kakashi's face, cynical and too old for his years, does not invite closeness. "I'm not sure what I can say to make this better."

Kakashi shrugs. "You don't owe me what I want. In fact I think you can't offer it, whether you want to or not. So there's little point to this discussion."

Carefully, trying to dig his way up without starting any avalanches, Minato points out, "You love Sasuke more than he loves you."

"Of course I do," Kakashi says. "And of course that's – how it's meant to be. He's the child, I'm his adult." The impatience bleeds out of his voice, its sharpness dulling as he shrugs, like he's trying to shrug all these feelings off, remove them from his person. "But. I just – you were my adult."

"I see what you mean," Minato says. "Naruto will never love me best."

Kakashi turns away, glances out the window. He seems calmer: he doesn't mind Naruto anymore, hasn't minded him in years. Certainly not since he became Sasuke's adult, and perhaps understood some of the useless, ground-breaking love of a parent.

"I suppose it's funny," Minato says, wanting to rest a hand on the small of Kakashi's back and holding himself back from the gesture. "I always thought it was Sasuke you wanted."

Kakashi twists back around. "Why does everyone think that?"

Minato keeps his expression warm and kindly, as though he were speaking to a child. It makes him realise that he hasn't spoken that way to Kakashi for a long time. "Possibly because you obviously care more for him than for Itachi?"

"Of course I do," Kakashi says, as though he really cannot understand that this is not obvious: "Sasuke's little. He has to come first. But that's exactly it, he's tiny, how could you think –"

Minato shrugs. "I didn't mean now, of course. But he'll grow up."

"Well, yeah, sure. If he were older. I mean, yes. I'd want. But of course that's never going to happen."

"Oh? Because of Itachi?"

Kakashi gives him a look like he's a complete tool. "Because of Naruto. We all know Sasuke doesn't do well with sharing."

"Right," Minato says rather weakly. That's the kind of feeling Kakashi respects, love as ruthless as a force of nature, a love that will stop at nothing: the kind of feeling that Kakashi himself has never inspired in anyone.

So that's where they are: Minato isn't enough, and finds himself sharing his…well, his boyfriend, he supposes… with a crusader prodigy teetering on the crumbling edge of insanity.

Kakashi's smoother about it than Minato had expected was possible, classier and more discreet. There are no awkward chance encounters, very few lingering smells. He never suggests that he prioritises one of them over the other.

Minato might choose to be blind to the whole thing, if not for the sudden intermittent flashes, slices of scenes he could never have dreamt up: Itachi laughing, gravelly with sleep, Itachi's bones bird-like under the soft casing of flesh, Itachi smirking at him over an open book, Itachi being grouchy and stealing his conditioner, Itachi taking his hand and pulling him to his feet, Itachi hyperventilating into his ear as his skin burns with desire, Itachi talking about the Lord's plan and the weaknesses of the Council and how to interpret Russian literature and make vegan lasagne, and which character he prefers in the reality shows Kakashi persists in watching. He wears hair shirts and dreams in Latin, he's saved and condemned hundreds of thousands of people and loved and tortured and given up his brother, but he also plays the occasional video game and likes raspberry/liquorice sweets.

For the first time, Minato truly understands that beyond all the insanity and fanaticism and holiness, beyond Lucifael, Itachi Uchiha is a human being, a boy scarcely out of childhood.

Since he is also the most powerful creature who has ever lived or likely ever will live, in all the long history of the world, this is a truly terrifying realisation.

"I've got it handled," Kakashi insists, yawning.

"Something like that can't be controlled."

Kakashi lifts an eyebrow, his face still swollen with sleep so it looks ridiculous. "No, and that's way I said handle. Well, also I suppose I was going for some grade school level innuendo, but… Anyway my point is, I'm not controlling him, that's impossible. I'm managing him."

"You manipulate him."

"Only with the truth."

"Oh?"

"Mmh."

For the first time, Minato permits himself to ask, "So how does he feel about me, then?"

Kakashi shrugs, then dives for the blanket as it slips off his shoulder, always sensitive to the cold. "He's a realist about some things, it doesn't bother him. He's long since accepted that I'm a whorish temptress."

Minato laughs, putting his arm around Kakashi and feeling Kakashi relax into his warmth. "Is that so?"

"Mmh. I tried, once – you know, I said some stuff. Like I do with you. He, well, I think he was mostly bemused. He took it literally."

"Oh dear," Minato says, trying and failing to imagine Itachi's reaction to creative and utterly filthy dirty talk.

Kakashi snorts, rueful. "Yeah. But it worked out well enough in the end."