A/N:
please lmk if you have any better names for this fic, because I have like, 2 braincells working rn and that's not enough for clever wordplay
this'll be updated on either tuesdays or fridays, i imagine
anyways happy twosday and all that, have fun reading
Naruto inhaled, then promptly began hacking out the cloud of dust that had made its way into his lungs.
"Dumbass," Sasuke commented as he fell into a crouch, eyes flicking towards the blonde's direction.
Naruto's eye twitched, and within the second, he was up and pointing at his teammate. "You haven't been able to climb the tree either, bastard!"
"Idiot!" Sakura shouted, slamming her fist on his head and causing him to yelp in response. "Sasuke-kun has still made it higher than you !"
The blonde rubbed his head, pouting. "Not that much higher, Sakura-chan. And besides, it won't stay that way for long!" He pointed in Sasuke's direction, and the raven-haired boy simply gave him a deadpan look. "You hear that, bastard?!"
"Maa, Naruto, standing around yelling isn't going to get you up the tree any faster," Kakashi pointed out, not bothering to raise his gaze from his book.
Naruto's face scrunched up and he directed his gaze towards the silver-haired man. "Well maybe if you helped us instead of standing there reading your perverted book, sensei ."
Kakashi remained silent for several seconds before glancing up at his blonde student. "Hmm? Did you say something?"
Naruto scowled, and an amused Kakashi allowed him to swipe the book from his hand. "What's so great about this, anyway?" he grumbled, beginning to skim through the pages. Slowly, he turned an alarming shade of red before sputtering and throwing the book back at Kakashi, who caught it with a hand before it could hit him in the face. "What the hell, sensei?! That's so…," His face became pinched, and Kakashi's eyes curled upwards.
"It's rather fantastic literature, if I do say so myself."
"Baaah!" Naruto groaned, raking his hands down his face. "Why is everyone in the village a pervert?!" He paused, then turned to look at Sasuke with a horrified expression. "You're not a pervert too, right bastard?!"
The raven-haired boy's cheeks actually dusted pink and he twitched slightly, whereas Sakura looked to be a mixture of embarrassed, offended, and enraged. "Of course he's not, you idiot!" She turned towards her other teammate with a faint blush. "Right, Sasuke-kun?"
Sasuke looked as if he wanted to be anywhere else, but gave a short, jerky shake of his head nonetheless.
"Well you never know, Sakura-chan," Naruto said, still looking vaguely suspicious, "Even Jiji's a pervert, y'know."
"I still can't believe you call the Hokage 'Jiji,'" Sakura muttered before her entire body suddenly twitched in realization. " Wait - the Hokage is a pervert?"
Naruto nodded as if this were common knowledge. "Yeah, yeah! I used my Sexy-no-jutsu on him and—"
"Your what ?"
The blonde stilled, looking suddenly terrified. "Um— I, uh… Well you see—"
Kakashi cleared his throat suddenly, interrupting whatever argument was about to break out between his students. "As entertaining as this all is, we only have a few days until Zabuza shows up, so I suggest you get on with your training."
Sasuke grunted, looking almost grateful for the change in topic, and picked up his kunai from the ground.
Sakura bit her lip, glancing between Naruto - who she was still shooting slightly murderous looks, even after he moved to pick up his own kunai - and Kakashi. Finally, she settled on the latter, fidgeting slightly. "Um… sensei…"
The man's lazy gaze found her hesitant one. "Yes, Sakura?"
"Well… um… If Zabuza really is going to be back so soon, shouldn't you…" Her lips twisted into a grimace. "...Be teaching us more?"
Both Naruto and Sasuke turned at that, and the former began nodding vehemently. "Yeah, sensei, shouldn't you be teaching us super cool jutsus instead of trying to climb trees?!"
Kakashi hummed, re-opening Icha Icha. "This exercise teaches chakra control," he explained lazily. "You need chakra control so you can perform jutsus more easily and without wasting so much chakra. And besides," he added, flipping a page of his book, "None of you would be able to learn any useful jutsu that fast."
Sasuke looked like he wanted to argue that point, but instead clenched his jaw, whereas Sakura simply frowned.
Naruto, on the other hand, didn't have so much restraint. "No way, sensei! I could totally learn a jutsu that fast! I mean, maybe Sasuke would struggle, but he'd figure it out eventually, and I'm sure Sakura-chan could figure it out after a while, too! Not as fast as me, of course, but pretty fast, since she's the one who managed to climb the tree first, after all."
"I somehow doubt that," Kakashi said, still not even looking up. "And even if you could, it wouldn't be enough to take out Zabuza. I already told you - he's on a different level."
When Naruto made to argue, Sakura looked down, frowning. "Maybe he's right, Naruto. I mean, you saw how Zabuza caught Kakashi in that water prison. And we barely managed to free him…"
"Hn," Sasuke let out, eyes narrowed. "Kakashi-sensei was caught off guard, then. It'll be different this time."
"Yeah, yeah!" Naruto agreed with a yell. "So c'mon, Kakashi-sensei, teach us something cool!"
"Maa…" Kakashi pretended to think about it before cheerfully crushing their dreams. "Nope!"
Naruto immediately slumped, only to jump up, waving around indignantly a moment later. "That's so… so stupid! What kind of sensei are you, anyway?!" he shouted. "I hear everyone else talking about what their senseis teach them all the time. And they never show up late to training, either!"
"Hmm…" Kakashi snapped his book closed, glancing between Sasuke and Sakura. "Do you two agree?" he asked.
Sasuke pursed his lips before giving an agreeing grunt, and Sakura hesitantly nodded.
"Ah, well…" He scratched his masked chin, then shrugged. "Too bad. I teach my way, they teach theirs. And personally, I don't think you're ready to learn any 'cool jutsus' just yet."
They all looked annoyed at that, and Naruto shouted once again. "That's so not fair ." Before Kakashi could spout off something about the world not being fair, he huffed and pointed at the man. "You're not Kakashi-sensei. You're Bakashi -sensei!" he proclaimed.
Naruto's expression turned smug, Sakura's turned exasperated, and Sasuke closed his eyes for a long, pained second before reopening them. Then, all at once, they looked at Kakashi, who'd gone completely still.
"Um… Sensei?" Sakura asked after a few seconds, throwing a glance over her shoulder before drawing her brows together upon being unable to see whatever Kakashi was staring at.
A moment later, the man swallowed and took in a breath, eyes curling into an insincere eye-smile. "Well, I think that's enough for today!" he chirped out, disappearing before anyone could protest.
"Eh?!" Naruto let out, staring at the falling leaves that had been left in their teacher's wake, "Where the hell did he go?!" He looked to the left and right as if he'd suddenly appear in either direction before turning towards his teammates with a huff. "C'mon, we've gotta go find him!"
"No."
Both Sakura and Naruto turned towards Sasuke, who wore an unreadable expression as he continued staring at Kakashi's vacated spot.
"What?! Whaddya mean no ?! Kakashi sensei's supposed to train us! He can't just—"
"Shut up ," he hissed out suddenly, jerking his head in Naruto's direction. "Didn't you see him?"
Naruto jerked backwards at Sasuke's sudden interruption before scowling. "'Course I did, bastard! He was right there ."
Sasuke looked seconds away from throttling his male teammate. "No, you dumbass," he said, sounding like he couldn't believe he had to be explaining this. "He froze."
The blonde's face scrunched up, though his brows drew together and his eyes flicked to where Kakashi had been before. "Well, yeah. We all saw that. Why does that matter?"
There was a pause where Sasuke raised his gaze towards the sky as if to ask, 'kami, why me?' before he let out a quiet sigh. "He probably had a flashback. Whatever you said made him think of something bad." He moved in front of his tree, gaze trailing up the trunk, and spared his teammates one last comment before beginning to train once again. "You probably shouldn't bother him too much for a while. Either of you."
Kakashi grimaced as he fell against the wall of his designated room, stumbling in the direction of the mess of blankets and pillows he'd been given. The increase of soreness in his muscles was almost enough to make him regret pulling a disappearing trick on his students, but not quite enough.
( "A shinobi should always be on time," Kakashi said, cutting off Obito's rambles about the newest old lady he'd needed to help. "You being late could put a mission in jeopardy one day."
Obito took a step in his direction, scowling. "You act so high and mighty all the time! Well you're not as cool as you think, Bakashi!" )
Kakashi's eye instinctively snapped shut, and he let out a slightly shaky exhale as he lowered himself to the ground.
It was… stupid to have panicked so much over Naruto simply calling him a name. He could eventually deal with things like 'Cold-blooded' or 'Friend-killer,' even if it made him uncomfortable, so it made no sense to have such an adverse reaction to something as innocuous as 'Bakashi.'
…Except.
Nobody had ever called him that but Obito . And he'd be an idiot to not see how alike his old teammate and his blonde student were.
Kakashi swallowed, leaning against the wall. He wouldn't apologize - he didn't even know how he'd go about that. But he'd make up for his sudden departure eventually.
( "What kind of sensei are you, anyway?!" )
His finger twitched and he withheld a sigh.
Eventually.
Naruto wasn't sure what he'd done wrong. Kakashi-sensei had disappeared suddenly during their training, and Sasuke had mentioned something about a flashback - which made him feel bad, since he wasn't dumb enough to think that people didn't pick up some type of trauma during their shinobi careers - but he wasn't even sure what he'd said that made his sensei look so… broken.
He'd been looking directly at Kakashi-sensei when he froze. It struck him as odd, the way he stopped speaking so suddenly; the way he seemed to stop breathing; the way his eyes glazed over as he stared into the distance. But he didn't know why , and he really, really wanted to because he didn't ever want to see Kakashi-sensei like that again. He seemed too small at that moment, instead of the strong, lazy, unbothered man he was supposed to be, and when he'd given that disturbingly fake smile, Naruto was shaken, to say the least.
He didn't show it, of course. And maybe he was a little oblivious, at first, or maybe he wanted to hope that he'd imagined what he'd seen, but either way, he wanted to make sure Kakashi-sensei would never look like that again. That he'd never feel like that again.
He didn't want to ask, though. As annoying as it was, Sasuke was right - it wouldn't be right to ask him why he was upset. Even he had enough tact to not demand to know why someone was traumatized, no matter what others may think about him. But it was getting really annoying, with everyone skirting around the issue - with Sasuke refusing to interact with him unless strictly necessary and with Sakura-chan constantly shooting him quick, awkward glances and trying to act unnaturally happy or curious about everything else as if it'd somehow fix everything - and after a while, Naruto decided that he was not having any more of it .
"Alright!" he announced, pushing himself up from the table during dinner two days later. "Team meeting!"
"Naruto—" Sakura-chan tried to interject, but Naruto had already made his decision.
"Nope! Sorry, Sakura-chan, but we're having a team meeting right now!" When his teammates didn't move, he increased the force of his glare. " Right now! "
All of his teammates stared at him for several seconds before Kakashi-sensei let out a slight sigh and offered one of his eye-smiles to Tsunami. "Sorry, Tsunami-san, Tazuna-san. I suppose we'll be leaving dinner early tonight, then."
Tsunami glanced between him and Naruto before nodding slowly. "I'll heat it up if any of you get hungry."
"Thank you," Kakashi-sensei replied in that fake-cheerful way of his, and Naruto only paused to mumble his quiet thanks and apologies before stomping upstairs, where he waited for his teammates for the next few minutes.
"Now, Naruto," Kakashi-sensei said, closing the door behind him once they all filed into the man's temporary room, "What's all this fuss about, hm?"
Naruto glanced between each member of his team - who'd all purposely spaced out from each other - and let out a frustrated groan. "This!" he said, pointing between each of them. "I'm sick of this!"
"What are you talking about?" Sasuke asked with narrowed eyes.
"Everyone just keeps avoiding each other, and I'm sick of it!" Before any of them could interject, he shook his head wildly. "No! I listened to the bastard and stayed away from it for the past few days. But now it's just annoying!"
"Maa, Naruto," Kakashi-sensei said after a moment, eyes curled up in a way that Naruto knew was fake, since, knowing him, he'd probably rather run away than actually talk about anything that wasn't related to the mission. Or even if it was related to the mission. "I'm not sure if I see what you're talking about…"
"Oh, don't you pull that crap with me, sensei!" Naruto argued. "You freaked out the other day, and I want to know why ." The man stiffened slightly, and the blonde slumped. "No— I didn't mean— argh ." He raked his hands down his face and fell into a sitting position, sighing. "It's fine if you don't tell us what happened to cause that. But at least tell us what I said that made you react that way so none of us say it again."
He glanced up, noticing that both Sasuke and Sakura-chan were staring at him like they'd never seen him before, and Kakashi-sensei got a vacant sort of look on his face that made his gut curl with dread.
"...Kakashi-sensei?"
The man blinked suddenly, and after a pause, let out a humorless chuckle. "You noticed, huh?"
"Well you made it pretty obvious," Sakura-chan muttered, then flushed when she realized she'd spoken aloud. "Sorry, sensei."
"It's fine," the man replied with a wave. "Hmm… well, I suppose you all have the right to know."
Sakura-chan frowned, glancing between her teammates. "You don't have to, sensei." Sasuke let out a grunt of agreement - which Naruto was almost horrified to be able to somewhat understand, but he supposed that it wasn't the most prominent problem at the moment - and Kakashi-sensei raked a hand through his hair.
"No, no. Well…" He leaned against the wall, and after a moment, shrugged. "It was what you called me."
Naruto furrowed his brow as he ran back the memory. "...Bakashi-sensei?"
The man's eye closed for a moment. "Yes."
He stared at him confusedly for several seconds before letting out a slight sigh, realizing that it wasn't his place to judge. "Okay, whatever. Don't call you that - got it."
Kakashi-sensei hummed and pushed himself back off the wall. "Now that that's taken care of," he said cheerfully, opening his eyes and clapping his hands together. "I think my cute, little genin should get back to their training until it's time to rest, don't you think?"
Sasuke rolled his eyes with a small smirk, Sakura-chan let out a good-natured sigh, and Naruto grinned, mostly glad that everything was mostly back to normal.
"You got it, Kakashi-sensei!"
A/N:
hi so
this is a dumb little self-indulgent piece of trash because i love team 7 as family, and i was like, "man, wouldn't it be awkward if naruto accidentally dredged up kakashi's trauma and somehow the entire team began coming together as they learned little snippets about each other?"
quite honestly, i'd rather have started this *before* Wave, but it wasn't until then that they actually started seeing each other as genuine teammates, so I figured it'd be best for Naruto to 'stew' with D-Ranks and a lack of teaching before finally yelling at Kakashi
as for the timeline of this thing, since Naruto's actual timeline makes 0 sense:
- the first 2 to 2 1/2 months after graduation are spent doing D-Ranks, which is when Naruto snaps and demands a C-Rank
- the next month or so is the Wave Mission
- the next three months after that are various other missions (D-Ranks, movie missions, OVA missions that I don't know the timeline of so they're probably gonna be somewhat out of order, etc.)
i feel like things move a little fast already even though they're in the first chapter, but my reasoning is that Naruto is a stubborn fool and it'd make sense for Kakashi to just say what made him uncomfortable instead of dancing around the issue, because like... why would he do that? it'd make sense for him to avoid telling the story behind the name, but the name itself? i feel like he'd admit it after some prompting
the characters also act... vaguely more mature than their canon counterparts, i think, but hopefully they're not exceptionally ooc or anything
aaand future chapters will also have alternating POVs between the members of Team 7, though it'll probably be more structured than in this one
if you have any input on:
1.) what future interactions should be
2.) OVA missions (because I need to know where they fall in the timeline but I can't hecking figure it out)
3.) what the bridge name should be
...or anything else, really
go ahead at let me know :P
anyways
Thanks for reading!