Originally written as a Pride Month drabble on AO3 on June 1, 2020.

Resemblance

Naruto was young when he transitioned.

Not as young as Kakashi had been when he transitioned—though, to be fair, not many people were capable of understanding the concept of gender at the age of four, much less articulating their own thoughts on the subject. How Naruto had managed it at five years old, when he was so widely ostracized that it was questionable whether he even knew the word "gender", was anyone's guess.

Even more astonishing was the fact that everyone in the village seemed to know about the change immediately. Which, given their aforementioned distaste for the nine-tailed jinchuuriki, was both impressive and utterly baffling.

Perhaps Naruto had simply asserted himself so vehemently that no one could be bothered to refute him. Or perhaps the citizens of Konoha cared so little about him that, when he vanished into the woods for a few months and returned with short hair and a new name, none of them even noticed the change.

Or maybe Konoha was simply becoming a more accepting and tolerant place than it had been back in Kakashi's day (bigotry towards jinchuuriki notwithstanding).

All Kakashi knew was that, one day, when he overheard a group of chuunin whispering about the "demon brat", they were saying things like "he's a disgrace to the village" and "we should just get rid of him while we can". So, after intimidating the assholes enough to make them flinch at the sight of him for months, Kakashi spent an hour or so tuning in to the civilian gossip mill.

Minato-sensei's son was named Naruto. Apparently he'd decided to name himself after his favorite ramen topping. Kakashi could have burst into laughter at the news. In the later stages of her pregnancy, a very stir-crazy Kushina had used her ANBU guard as a captive audience, bemoaning the fact that Sensei wanted to name their child 'Naruto' if it was a boy.

"I know that, to him, it's the name of that book character or whatever, so it's, like, meaningful and stuff," Kushina had whined. "But, to literally everyone else, it's a ramen topping. A ramen topping! I mean, I like ramen, but no one likes ramen that much, ya know?"

"I think Naruto just loves to prove people wrong," Kakashi whispered almost reverently to the Memorial Stone later that day. "I honestly don't know whether he gets it from Sensei or from you."

Ever since he'd first cradled the wailing, newly-orphaned child in his arms, Kakashi had always thought that Naruto looked like a younger Minato plus whiskers. With short hair and more masculine clothes, however, the resemblance to Kushina was ironically made much more apparent. The Red-Hot Habanero stared out through his upturned eyes and wide, toothy grin framed by deep dimples.

Nevertheless, Kakashi could hardly believe that Naruto's heritage wasn't common knowledge by now. Now that his hair more closely matched Minato-sensei's, if a bit shorter, he could have won a Yondaime costume contest without even wearing the signature Yellow Flash robes.

If anyone asked, this was the reason Kakashi randomly took two weeks of his accumulated sick leave in order to tail Naruto around the village almost 24/7. To double-check that no one was connecting the dots between the Yondaime and his son.

It had nothing to do with menacing anyone who so much as looked at Sensei's son for more than a few seconds. And, if one of Kakashi's own binders from when he was younger somehow found its way into Naruto's apartment, folded neatly beside the pile of stretchy compression bandages the boy had purchased for a similar purpose—well, Kakashi had never been a sentimental person. He simply didn't need the binder anymore, as he'd long since outgrown it, and it was in too good of condition to justify letting it go to waste, so it was common sense to pass it on to someone who needed it more. It was likely to fit Naruto by the time he had any need for it, since both he and Kakashi were rather scrawny kids.

(The reason he'd kept his first binder, which he hadn't been able to fit into since he was twelve years old, need not be discussed.)

And he had plenty of obvious reasons to research the current state of things like gender reassignment medical ninjutsu. After all, while he'd never shown interest in such surgeries before, that was mostly because of the risk involved back then, when it was a relatively new and amateur practice. Now that such surgeries would no longer be jeopardizing his career as a shinobi, it was only natural for him to start looking into them again.

(Even though he was old enough to be emancipated and live on his own, Naruto wasn't old enough to provide medical consent for any procedures without a guardian present. So the idea that Kakashi was doing this research for Naruto's sake was ludicrous. But if this was something that Naruto wanted someday, then he would need someone to guide him through the process—and, if the job fell to Kakashi, he would be ready.)

Anyway, it wasn't like there was anyone there to catch him doing any of these things. Naruto was too young to even be wary of a random gift left in his home, and the Sandaime had always refused to assign the boy an ANBU guard, so Kakashi's justifications for his actions weren't even necessary. No one was watching except for himself.

Which was fortunate, because he had absolutely no idea how he would have justified leaving his own first-edition copy of The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi on Naruto's doorstep, wrapped neatly in shiny orange paper. And he certainly couldn't justify the amount of time he spent in front of the Memorial Stone, staring at Minato-sensei's name and whispering sentimental nonsense like "He looks just like you," and "I know you would be proud."