Side Effects, Chapter 4
Iruka woke to the smell of pancakes. Burning pancakes, to be more precise, and he coughed a little on the smoke.
"Kakashi--"
Kakashi was kneeling at his side in an instant. "...You're awake? Don't move -- I'll get something -- uh -- want a washcloth? Or maybe a--"
"Kakashi, put out the pancakes before you burn the whole damn HOUSE down!"
Kakashi turned around, stared at the flames that had started shooting out of the frying pan, paled, and lunged for the stove. He juggled the hot pan into the sink, turned the water on full blast, breathed a huge sigh of relief, and only then looked over and thought to turn off the stove too. Then he started back towards Iruka on the floor.
"Kakashi--"
He froze in his tracks, looking for all the world like a scolded puppy. "How mad are you...?"
"Kakashi, turn off the sink before you flood the place too," Iruka said, rubbing his temples against an incipient stress-headache.
"...Oh. Yeah. Right..."
Iruka glanced cautiously around the kitchen. Nothing else looked like it was in imminent danger of rendering the place uninhabitable, so he thought it was safe to move, starting to sit up very, very carefully. Kakashi dropped to his knees at his side again, hesitating between helping and keeping himself out of instantaneous-lethal-strike range.
"Are you sure you ought to move?"
"I am damned well not spending the rest of the year on the kitchen floor," Iruka growled.
"Er, no, I meant, are you sure you ought to move right now...?"
Despite himself, Iruka did another two-second frantic scan of the surroundings. No blades, nothing lunging, nothing burning, nothing falling, no homicidal ki -- well, other than his own -- in other words, no reason not to move, and the thought of the feel of Kakashi's vocal cords being torn out and crushed between his bare hands had a certain amount of aesthetic appeal. He stepped hard on that urge, because if nothing else, he needed a little more information first.
"So tell me," he said, almost conversationally. "What did you think you were doing?"
The poor man actually flinched. "I didn't -- I -- honest to God, Iruka, it never even occurred to me you might get p-pregnant, I mean, we didn't, not that way anyway, I still don't want to think about what that's gotta mean about how -- I mean -- hell, for all we know, you could've gotten yourself pregnant when everything went through the mixer in there, not that I'm trying to dodge or anything, because I swear to God I'm going to be here for you through this, that is unless you kill me first or something, which I probably couldn't blame you for, but--"
"No," Iruka said, the minute he thought he could get a syllable in edgewise. "I mean what did you think you were doing with the pancakes?"
"...The pancakes...?"
"You know," Iruka said, rubbing his temples again. "Pancakes. As in, at some point you must have thought it was a good idea to put some pancake batter in a pan and leave the stove set on 'blowtorch' underneath it. I'm just wondering why."
"...That's what you're wondering about...?"
"It's a place to start," Iruka said.
"Well... uh... you said you were hungry... so I thought... maybe if I cooked some of them fast... there'd be something edible by the time you got yourself un-fainted... except I think I was cooking them a little too fast or something." Kakashi dropped his face into both hands. "Sorry. I'm a little rattled. It's not exactly every day you figure out you actually got your lover pregnant, you know. At least, not when your lover's usually male, that is... er... that's not helping, is it. --I think I should shut up now. Er. Yeah." Then he looked up with an almost comically desperate hope in his visible eye. "Do you want some pancakes? There's some batter left..."
Iruka considered two or three of the possible responses, decided a couple of them involved too much cleaning blood off the walls afterward, and finally decided on, "Yes. But I'm watching you this time."
Kakashi scrambled to his feet and pulled the pan out of the sink and put it back on the stove. Iruka groaned aloud, and Kakashi flinched.
"What is it? How bad did you hit your head? Should I--"
"That pan has got to have the charred remnants of the last batch chipped out of it before you can actually use it again, you know."
Kakashi looked at the pan, at the sink, at the rest of the batter, and managed a sheepish sort of grin. "Well. How's about some nice pancake ramen instead?"
Iruka put a hand over his mouth to try to stifle the slow roll and heave his stomach gave at the thought of Kakashi's most likely method of making pancake ramen. "...No. Please, merciful God, no."
In the end, they ended up having cup ramen for breakfast, because even Kakashi couldn't burn boiling water. Iruka ate it cautiously, because he'd been eating everything cautiously for the past few months, but Kakashi's work on his energy flow must have helped more than he'd expected. He didn't even feel sick afterward. And it was Kakashi's cooking. Of course, the only actual cooking involved was pouring some boiling water and waiting three minutes, but still, it was progress of a sort.
Kakashi wasn't even eating himself; he was watching Iruka eat, raptly, obsessively, the way some people watched... things Iruka preferred not to think about. Things Kakashi probably read about in Icha Icha Paradise.
"...Still feeling okay?"
Iruka nodded.
"Want some more?"
Iruka thought about it for a moment, and nodded again.
Kakashi promptly pushed his untouched cup ramen into Iruka's hands, and kept watching. Iruka could feel the embarrassment reddening his face.
"You're the only person I know who could make eating cup ramen feel... dirty, you know."
Kakashi scratched behind an ear, sheepish. "What can I say? Occupational talents, I suppose. It's just... amazing. It's almost like watching you having sex; I mean, you're eating for our child... the child we screwed each other into making inside you..."
Iruka's blush redoubled itself suddenly. "Don't tell me you're going to turn every meal into some kind of voyeuristic orgy, you pervert!" He put down the ramen, and looked away.
"...Awww."
"Look, can you at least not stare like that?"
Kakashi chuckled. "Don't you like an appreciative audience?"
Feeling like three kinds of fool, Iruka said, "Turn around."
"What?"
"You heard me. Turn around. Otherwise I just know you're going to be... watching."
Kakashi's enthusiastic laughter didn't salve his battered pride at all, but the silver-haired shinobi dutifully turned away from the table until Iruka finished eating his ramen.
"Can I look now?"
Iruka leaned both elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. "Short of ripping your eyes out, I don't see how I could stop you. --And don't tempt me."
Wisely, Kakashi said nothing; he just reached over to stroke Iruka's hair.
Iruka tilted his head against the curve of Kakashi's hand, and looked down at himself, and sighed deeply. "This is real, isn't it?"
"I think so," Kakashi said. "Are you angry at me?"
After a moment's thought, Iruka said, "I don't think so. I mean, you're right, neither of us would have expected... this. I'm just... adjusting, I think. I never thought I'd be the one thinking about things like this..."
Kakashi chuckled, low-pitched. "That makes two of us."
With a rueful hand flattened against his still-trim waist, Iruka said, "Sakura-kun's taste is going to get to be inconvenient, isn't it."
"Huh?"
"Skin-tight dresses. And me. I mean... um... us. Both of me. And six or seven more months. What am I going to do? I sew up holes in things that get ripped so they don't fall off. I don't know how to, er, loosen these... in the... er... stomach area. --I don't even know how long I'll fit into something like this..."
"Don't worry," Kakashi said, grinning from ear to ear. "I still have the centerfold with the dog collar and the leash! There's nothing you can outgrow! It'll be perfect--"
And so, while Kakashi lay on the floor recuperating from the cranial trauma of being repeatedly beaten over the head with a pancake-charred cast-iron frying pan, Iruka went to the market to find a seamstress.