Author Note: Please excuse any poor attempts or inaccuracies in any of the soon-to-happen slashy scenes. I have 0 experience with romance. And also beware of my liberal use of mistletoe, a full three months after the Christmas season ended. If it makes any difference, this fic has been floating around in my head since before then…
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Kakashi Unmasked: Take 2
Chapter Three: The Mistletoe
Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura were panicking. It wasn't because of the day's mission, pre-commencement of the PLAN jitters, or even Iruka's chore-list from Hell. They were panicking because Kakashi-sensei was following them to the academy, where they were supposed to be meeting Iruka-sensei.
"DAMNIT!" Inner Sakura wanted to yell. "We've finished our mission. Get the Hell out of here!" But Sakura was silent. They couldn't let Kakashi suspect. Naruto was being conspicuous enough as it was, looking back at him every five seconds, poking his teammates, pointing at Kakashi, and making throat-cutting gestures. Sakura didn't know whether to sing or scream when they finally arrived at Iruka-sensei's door. Kakashi lagged behind, staying right around the corner from the classroom in question. Sasuke, who was the calmest of the three in the middle of such a monumental crisis, knocked on the door.
"Kids! I'm glad you're here. I've thought of a wonderful plan to try-" He trailed off as his former students waved their hands wildly and pointed down the hall. He followed their fingers and caught a glimpse of silver hair. 'Oh, shit' was the only thought that his ever-so-helpful mind was kind enough to supply him with. He stared for a few moments, and finally managed a wooden "Good afternoon, Kakashi-san!" before Sakura rescued him.
"Iruka-sensei, we're here for the chores we're doing for you, in exchange for helping us on our mission." She winked and told him. Unfortunately, her acting skills were no where up to par with her intelligence. Kakashi didn't seem to notice though; since he'd been caught, he emerged and waved at Iruka from behind his latest Icha Icha novel.
Iruka grabbed the students and dragged them into the classroom. "We'd better get started on those chores, then." He shouted as he slammed the door. Kakashi would have been confused by Iruka's strange behavior, if he hadn't been distracted by Jiraiya's masterpiece.
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"What the HELL is he doing here?" Iruka shouted at the genins as soon as the door was shut. "It's too early!" Iruka had spent the night before preparing for the confrontation, but he hadn't had time to test it, and he would've liked to have allotted himself a few hours for emotional preparation before the chips hit the fan, so to speak. In fact, now that he thought about it, there were a lot of things he needed to do before he went through with his plan: eat a last meal, say goodbye to loved ones, rewrite his will before Kakashi killed him for what he was about to do (as it was, it left everything to Naruto, except for some money that would be donated to the Konoha Orphan's Fund; it he was going to die because of Naruto's stupid curiosity, he would be damned if he was going to leave him all of his stuff!).
"We could distract him for you and give you more time to prepare," Naruto offered. He was smirking, which meant he was already thinking of mischievous ways to deal with his instructor. He didn't notice that his old sensei has starting to hyperventilate.
"Breathe, Iruka-sensei. Calm down. We'll see it another day. You don't have to do it today." Sakura suggested kindly. Yes, breathing. Breathing was good. 'Iruka and air are friends,' Iruka decided. Tranquility washed over him.
"The plan is commencing now. Naruto, I need you to send three clones out of here, so Kakashi will think you've left. You'll stay over there, on the far wall. Konohamaru had a little mishap last time there was a substitute. He decided to try his hand at teaching giant shuriken throwing. There are still some holes in that wall, hidden by the shadow of the desks. You'll be able to see through to the next classroom." Iruka paused to breathe again, while Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura were nodding in agreement. "You'll have to stay here until we've left, and more importantly, you'll have to stay quiet no matter what. Any noise you make will be jeopardizing all our lives." He stared at Naruto, who paled, but nodded. The blond made the hand seals for his favorite jutsu, and produced three clones in a puff of smoke. He henged one into his rival and the other into his crush, and sent them out the door. Iruka took a few last breaths, schooled the worry off of his face, and followed the clones. The genins looked at each other in wonder.
"Why's he so nervous, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura asked.
"I don't know." Sasuke admitted. 'I wonder what he's planning.'
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"I guess one of the other teachers must have straightened up my classroom," Iruka told the clones as they stepped out the door, "so you three are off the hook for today. Now, was there something you needed, Kakashi-sensei?" Iruka asked the silver-haired man.
"Ah…" Kakashi was deep in thought for a moment (or so Iruka thought; but it is very hard to tell what a person is thinking when the only part of their face exposed is an eye). Then he held up a finger. "I have a mission report to give to you." He said with his eye closed in a Kakashi smile.
"But I'm off duty right now, Kakashi-san. You can turn that in at the mission board."
"But you're closer." Kakashi handed Iruka his mission report, which the academy sensei looked over in disgust. It was burned in at least four spaces, and his first year students had better handwriting than the scrawl it was written in.
"But Kakashi-sensei, I thought you hadn't finished it yet!" clone-Naruto piped in. "At least, that's what you just told the mission board people right before we came over here." Iruka raised an eyebrow at Kakashi, who glared at the clone. 'Can't hit child in front of Iruka' he repeated to himself. "Shouldn't you be heading home now?" he asked, shooting them a one-eyed glance that quite clearly said 'if you stay another minute, I'll kill you with a stapler.' Kakashi's eye was very expressive when it chose to be. The clone-students quickly shuffled out of the academy and disappeared.
"I guess I can take that for you, if you're too busy to go back by the board." Iruka told Kakashi, leading him into the classroom next to his own. "Come with me and I'll get you a folder to file it in."
"Thanks." Kakashi followed Iruka into the room, happily reading his porn. He never suspected the trap awaiting him…
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Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke crouched in the shadows of the adjacent classroom and watched through the shuriken holes in the wall as their two sensei's crossed the room. They heard the pop of a jutsu, and saw the two men freeze.
Kakashi lazily looked up to see what it was that had trapped himself and Iruka in a jutsu. A green sprig of mistletoe hung innocently from the ceiling. His jounin senses told him it had been infused with chakra.
"I can't move." Iruka proclaimed. "How about you?"
"I'm stuck." The two men tried to dispel the jutsu, but it failed. They remained immobile, unable to move their lower halves.
"Maybe we should kiss," Kakashi suggested at last.
"What!" Iruka blushed.
"I think it'll let us go if we kiss." The jounin explained. "It's mistletoe. You're supposed to kiss under it. Although, it is out of season."
"All right, I guess it wouldn't hurt to try," Iruka admitted, still pink. Kakashi leaned towards him…
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And placed a masked kiss upon a burning cheek.
"He didn't take the mask off!" Naruto hissed to his teammates. All three of them were watching with wide eyes and blushing. Sakura was transfixed, so Sasuke took it upon himself to smack Naruto's head in her place.
"Keep watching, dobe." He whispered into the kyuubi's ear softly. "I have a feeling Iruka's plan isn't over yet."
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Kakashi walked over to the cabinet that they had been heading for before the mistletoe-y interruption and retrieved a manila folder.
"I told you kissing would do the trick!" he proclaimed.
"Kakashi… I'm still stuck." Iruka said. Kakashi turned around. Sure enough, the chuunin was still paralyzed. "The mistletoe didn't free me because I didn't kiss you."
Kakashi returned to Iruka's side in a flash and presented him with a cloth covered cheek. Iruka placed a tiny peck on it and found he had regained the use of his legs. The sprig of mistletoe vanished in a tiny cloud. The two ninja looked at each other and chuckled.
"I'm sorry, Kakashi-sensei. I guess someone in the academy must have been trying to trap someone else."
"It's chakra-infused. A simple idea, but it would take pretty advanced level ninja to make it hold up against a dispel. Someone intelligent did this. I wonder who?"
"Maybe Sakura was trying to ensnare Sasuke here, eh Kakashi-sensei?"
"Or Sasuke was trying to catch Naruto!" Both shinobi chuckled again as they thought about the love triangle that was Team 7.
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Sakura's jaw dropped as she listened to the men talk. Was it true? That explained a lot…She tore her eyes from them and turned to look at her male teammates.
"Ne, Sasuke? What did Kakashi-pervert mean by that?" Naruto asked his rival in a whisper. Sasuke's face looked like it had just been hit by one of his clan's fire jutsus. He quickly turned his head to the side with a 'hmph!'. Naruto would've kept pestering, but his attention was diverted from the sound coming from the next room.
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Kakashi and Iruka heard the sound of a replication jutsu and felt their lower limbs seize up again. A quick glance upward revealed a ceiling blanketed in mistletoe from corner to corner, expect for the one tiny spot where the lone sprig had hung before. Iruka leaned forward to press his lips to Kakashi's cheek once more, but the other ninja placed a finger on his lips to stop him.
"It would be more time-efficient to kiss each other at the same time, rather than one at a time." He told Iruka, eye curving down in a smirk. That said, he gave Iruka a chaste kiss on the lips with his own clothed mouth. They both took a step toward the door and froze under the next plant. They kissed again. Five kisses, five steps, five mistletoe traps later, Iruka pulled back from Kakashi, flushed.
"Maybe we should go back to the way we were doing it before. It feels strange kissing a mask."
"Yes, I bet it does." Kakashi agreed. Iruka cursed inwardly. 'He's not supposed to AGREE! He's supposed to take the mask off, not go back to pecks on the cheek. I guess he really doesn't like kissing me.' Kakashi tilted Iruka's chin up with one hand and gave him one more masked kiss. Then he let go and hooked a finger under his mask
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"He's taking it off! He's taking it off!" Naruto whispered excitedly to his friends.
"We can see that, dobe! Shut up!" Sasuke hissed back. Sakura didn't respond; she was concentrating valiantly on stemming away the nosebleeds.
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"Would this be better for you, sensei?" Kakashi asked, pulling the mask down tantalizingly slow. "Or do you really not like kissing me?" Iruka blushed as the handsome face was finally revealed. It was pale and smooth, unmarred but for the one scar that extended from under the tilted hitai-ate. And the lips… red, soft, kissable. Iruka stared and blushed and eventually remembered to breathe.
"I think that will work." He said at last, wondering when it was that his throat had gotten so dry. Then he latched his mouth onto those delectable lips. Kakashi blinked and smirked into the kiss. 'Better than porn' was the only thought floating around in his head.
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Had Sakura still been conscious, she could have noted another new first in her journal: Naruto discovers silence. He was watching with eyes wider then even the ones he had used in his puppy-dog stare against Sasuke. His mouth twitched a couple of times, trying to form words, but nothing seemed to emerge. But alas, Sakura missed the monumental occasion; she had already fainted from blood loss.
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Iruka wondered if Kakashi had spotted the loop-hole in the mistletoe-jutsu: it only snared you if there were two people beneath it. If they were to free themselves from one sprig, they could both simply step away from each other and safely leave the room. But, if Kakashi didn't realize it, then Iruka definitely wasn't going to point it out…
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Sasuke had seen many traumatic things in his life: his clan murdered before his eyes, his village ravaged by Orochimaru's sound-nins, friends and enemies slaughtered before him, Tsunade-sama without make-up… but that didn't prepare him for the sight of the his two near father figures making out like there was no tomorrow (in fact, in terms of intensity, they were making out like there was no five minutes from now!). Sasuke didn't know why he couldn't tear his eyes away from the fascinatingly disturbing sight. He didn't know why he couldn't just look away. And he certainly didn't know why the sight of the two handsome male shinobi kissing each other was making him feel butterflies in his stomach. Poor, repressed Sasuke.
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Kakashi and Iruka were almost to the door of the classroom. Somewhere along their journey, although neither one could quite remember when, Kakashi's hand had snaked its way under Iruka's Chuunin vest and shirt, and Iruka's legs had wrapped tightly around Kakashi's waist. When they reached the door and the end of the mistletoe, both pulled apart, panting. Kakashi looked at the door mournfully, but made no move to leave Iruka's embrace.
"Kakashi…" Iruka murmured.
"Yes, Iruka?"
"I think it would be rude to leave all this mistletoe for someone else to get caught in." Kakashi grinned.
"Of course, sensei! We should definitely get rid of the rest of it, for the good of Konoha." Kakashi's lips were back on Iruka's. He pushed the chuunin up against a wall and continued his assault on his mouth. Iruka's brain might have protested faintly that it needed air, but it wasn't getting enough blood to really assert the idea. Besides, Iruka had decided that breathing was highly over-rated.
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"Hey, Sasuke?" Naruto had somehow regained his power of speech. He always had recovered quickly, although he wasn't sure that this healing could be attributed to the kyuubi.
"Do you think they even remember we're here?" Sasuke asked, not paying attention.
"I don't know. I'm hungry; do you want to go get some ramen after this?"
Sasuke was finally able to look away from the hole in the wall to flash his companion a look of disbelief. Then he sighed.
"Sure, dobe. We'll get ramen, if my appetite has recovered by then." Yes, Naruto had a remarkable power of recovery. Sasuke wondered if there was anyone else in the world that could be thinking about food when that was going on not five feet from them. Probably not. But that was why Sasuke lov…er…tolerated him.
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Iruka loved mistletoe. He loved its berries and its stem and its festive holiday colors. Most of all, he loved whatever saint it was that had put a jutsu on it and coated the classroom ceiling with it. Wait…. Had that been him? He tried to remember why. It was so hard to think with Kakashi doing that with his tongue…Mmmm. Something about ramen. Did Kakashi like ramen? Maybe Kakashi would like to eat ramen off of him. Yes, that had to be it. Anyways, he loved whoever it was that had jutsued the mistletoe. And who needed a reason, as long as Kakashi kept running his tongue along his teeth, and nibbling his ear, and nipping at his throat. The mistletoe was disappearing rapidly. They were elite ninja, after all.
Iruka could have cried when Kakashi's (lovely, talented, wonderful) tongue went back behind those kissable lips and into that delicious mouth. He whimpered.
"It's all gone now, Iruka." He pointed up to the bare ceiling. Iruka wanted to protest that he could get more, just wait, the hand seals were on the top of his head-
"Now that that's taken care of, shall we go back to my place?" Iruka didn't say anything, what with his tongue halfway down Kakashi's throat, but he was pretty sure the jounin understood him. They teleported to Kakashi's apartment, still tangled in one another's arms.
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"Sakura! Sakura!"
"Sakura-chan! Wake-up!"
Sakura awoke to find both teammates bending over her, blushing.
"What happened?" she asked. Everything seemed blurry.
"You fainted after Kakashi-sensei took off his mask. Isn't Iruka-sensei brilliant, Sakura-chan! I knew he would be able to able to help us!" Naruto beamed. The fact that his brilliant PLAN had worked, and that he was going to get ramen, seemed to cancel out all of the potential emotional scarring.
Sakura remembered what she had seen, and blushed. Was she allowed to think boys kissing boys was hot? She needed to have an emergency fan-girl meeting with Ino.
"Gottagoseeyoulater!" She shouted in one breath, as she ran out of the room. Sasuke and Naruto looked at each other and shrugged. Girls didn't make sense. They walked out of the room together, Naruto rambling about what kind of ramen he was going to order. As they opened the door that Sakura had slid shut, a note drifted down. It read: 'Don't look so shocked. Did you really think I was going to risk my life for a lousy free ramen pass and a few chores? I had to get something out of this. Enjoy!'
"What does it mean?" Naruto asked. Just then, Sasuke and Naruto heard the sound of a jutsu activating. They felt their legs freeze. Above their heads, they saw a green sprig. So, as Iruka and Kakashi made out in the hallway in front of Kakashi's apartment, and as Sakura and Ino opened the shonen-ai chapter of their fan-girl club, Naruto and Sasuke leaned forward and experienced their first consentual kiss together.
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Awww! It may not seem like much to you guys, but this is my first shonen-ai moment! I didn't expect this chapter to be so long though (its going on seven pages!). Soooo tired now. But yeah, this is kind of the end of this fic. I don't think I'm going to make this one yaoi, so you'll just have to use your pervy little imaginations to decide what happens when Iruka and Kakashi get back to his place. There might be a short epilogue, but you'll have to review if you want it. That's right, folks, REVIEWSEPILOGUE! So get to it!