A/N: Wow, I promise I haven't died! I'm so sorry that my RL takes up so much of my time. Stupid RL...go sit in a corner and feel shame. But please believe that every time I got a notification about this story, I grinned like an idiot, because this is kind of a pet project for me, and it holds a special place in my heart. The response you guys have given it has made me dance-worthy levels of gleeful...I love you all so hard.
Hitting the emotions of all of our Team Seven members this time around, reaching out past our boys a little, because I have so much love for the whole team, and that shit needs to be documented. Also, a wild plot appears! Hopefully it keeps you all interested.
I do not own Naruto, and am making no money off of this story.
Chapter Three
Chamber
Kakashi
"So, I don't understand you."
Kakashi blinked his one available eye in an upward direction, and then at the stack of papers on his desk, and refused to admit to himself that he was a little bit pissed to be caught actually grading shit. He had a reputation to maintain. A reputation made of lazy asshole, and he'd worked so hard to cultivate it, too.
"None ever do," he answered solemnly, and refused to reach for his orange book, because that would obviously be a cover at this point, and he wasn't going to let this asshat win. "Accept it. Embrace it. I am anti-understandable."
The man standing across from him, a math teacher from the lower level, made a face. It was a face that Kakashi inspired in all who knew him. An expression that communicated emotional pain without words, a work of art that Kakashi always took time to savor. Because he was a fucking connoisseur, had a Master's degree in English Literature and also How to Be a Mysterious Dickhead, and that meant it was an art form for him.
"I mean," the man continued, rather bravely really, considering that Kakashi's blank face was the stuff of legends, and that's what he was looking at now. "You pretend like you don't care. Like being a teacher is…offensive to you? But then your test scores. Are off the charts."
"Hmmm," Kakashi hummed non-committedly, and turned his attention back to grading.
Sakura had answered her questions neatly, thoroughly, and with the ease of someone who understood exactly what a teacher was looking for in textbook answers.
Sasuke had answered his questions in a way that managed to communicate both I am an actual genius and But also, fuck you and your quizzes, Kakashi-Sensei. It was actually rather impressive. Kakashi's heart was positively swollen with pride.
Naruto had answered exactly half of his questions correctly, before apparently becoming bored with the entire institution of education. The bottom half of his paper was decorated instead with an extremely detailed picture of a cat, and the words Boom. Kittyface. Scribbled into the margins.
Kakashi fucking loved that child.
He gave Sakura the 'A' she deserved, because she'd probably actually try to kill him if he didn't. He gave Sasuke a 'B', because watching annoyance and borderline murderous rage darken his face made Kakashi's day considerably brighter. And on top of Naruto's paper, he scribbled a bright, red '100%' and after a moment of serious thought, added the words 'You're a fucking moron' underneath, using a cheerful smiley face as his ending punctuation.
"Aren't…aren't you going to grade the rest of them, Kakashi-Sensei?" the math teacher asked, a bit desperately now, because he so clearly didn't understand why Kakashi was opening his orange book, when he'd only graded three papers.
"Meh. These three are my favorites. The rest of them suck, and shall receive no feedback from me."
The math teacher staggered a little.
"I…you…wow, that's against all kinds of rules."
Kakashi gave him a one-eyed smile. The kind that communicated, 'How fucking cute are you, that you think I care, come here and let me snuggle you with my scorn and bad habits'. The math teacher began to look just a little bit desperate.
"Kakashi-sensei!" sang out a new voice. "Light of my life, bane of my existence, I need to swaddle myself in your presence!"
"Holy shit," the math teacher added, spooked, and then escaped out the door by ducking around the new body.
"And I'll never see him again," Kakashi concluded happily.
Hiro, the science teacher from Kakashi's grade, and also Kakashi's closest friend/confidante/future hospital bed buddy when their livers finally surrendered this bullshit battle against their totally righteous alcohol consumption, grinned wide and bright and a little maniacal and boosted himself up to sit cross-legged on Kakashi's desk.
"I thought we agreed not to frighten the fluffy duckling-type teachers," he pointed out. "Because they so obviously can't handle the sheer weight of our awesome."
"I am innocent. I am blameless. He initiated contact, and I am never responsible for what comes out of my mouth."
"Accurate," Hiro said with a seasoned nod. He pulled Naruto's assignment out from underneath his leg, and studied it. "I love this child. Love him. He lit a whole set of beakers on fire during our last class experiment."
"That…completely defies the laws of physics."
"I know," Hiro said, and grinned at Naruto's cat picture like it was his first-born child. "He's going places. I mean, potentially to juvie or maybe the bottom of a muddy river. But still. Places."
"This right here? Is why our fearless leader has an ulcer. Another one. Multiple ulcers caused by us."
"He loves us," Hiro agreed cheerfully. "He just expresses it by growing holes in his stomach lining."
"Hiro. I…you remind me. Of someone."
Hiro tilted his head a little, mouth caught in his ever-present grin, looking ready to cause trouble, always.
"Yeah? Who's that?"
"I don't know."
"Okay. Well, while you're pondering that, want to go and rearrange the principal's office, and then act like it always looked that way, no really sir, I don't understand what the problem is?"
"Yeah." Kakashi shook his head, shook away the puzzling sensation of seeing a different person under someone's skin, the curious sound of falling rocks, where was that coming from? "Yeah, let's do that."
"Awesome." Hiro put down Naruto's assignment gingerly, like it was made of precious gemstones. "I'm thinking desk upside down and in the corner?"
"Yeah," Kakashi said, and shook himself a little harder, cleared the lingering cobwebs away, committed himself to this endeavor. "And his rolling chair on top."
….
After school detention was just the best. Best thing ever. Better even than the time he and Hiro had woken up after a night of many adult beverages in their boxers, covered in glitter and something that looked like baking soda, with the entire contents of Hiro's lab and the neighbor's cat inside the living room.
They still weren't one hundred percent clear on what exactly had gone down that night, but obviously it had been awesome, and mutually agreed upon that it was actually even better for the uncertainty.
But, this. This. Sasuke dragged himself in after the final bell like there was a firing squad awaiting him inside Kakashi's classroom. Naruto fell through the doors five minutes later, face-first and clutching armfuls of various snack bags. Sakura followed directly behind him, satisfied smile on her face suggesting that she had been the one to help Naruto enter the room.
"I don't think we're supposed to have food," Sasuke said, just a little bit desperately, and seriously, how was he even still fighting this? "This is detention. Aren't we supposed to just…sit? Silently?"
"Kakashi-Sensei doesn't care," Naruto said, bounding to his feet and arranging the snack bags in an intricate pyramid. "Right, Kakashi-Sensei?"
"Oh, are you still here?"
"See!" Naruto beamed, a smile so bright it bordered on blinding. "Sasuke. We have so much time. To talk. To bond." Naruto stepped forward, face completely serious. "Sing me the songs of your people."
"I hate," Sasuke informed the inside of his elbow, mouth muffled by his sleeve.
"Hate what, Sasuke?" Sakura asked, settling herself comfortably on the sill beneath the window.
"Everything."
The next hour passed in a whirlwind of cheese crackers, Naruto's howling laughter every time Sasuke attempted to death-threat him into submission, Sakura smiling soft and sweet and then egging Naruto on in a voice like spun sugar. If Kakashi were a little less cool, he would have started snapping pictures seven minutes in. He could have labeled the photos a collection, and called it "The Progression of Sasuke's Baby Panda Pain". Could have included a couple of shots of Naruto attempting to stick pretzel sticks in Sasuke's ears as he fought desperately to maintain stony silence, of Naruto attempting to demonstrate exactly how he would have won that fight between the two of them by performing increasingly bizarre and borderline pornographic acrobatics while Sasuke and Sakura looked on in bewildered horror, of Sakura suggesting so nice and gentle that Sasuke's hair might be long enough to braid, of Naruto actually attempting to braid it.
Kakashi wasn't even embarrassed to admit that he was using his orange book to mask legitimate tears of laughter by the end of the hour.
Sasuke ran from the room like a scalded cat as soon as Kakashi waved them away (he didn't speak, because he didn't trust himself not to giggle things at Sasuke that would probably get him sued), but they'd all seen his grin, towards the end, when he'd elbowed Naruto to floor (because Naruto had been descending upon Sasuke's hair with a gleam in his eyes and a truly terrifying level of concentration). And so it was understandable that Naruto's, "Night, Crazy Teacher" was filled with a soft sort of contentment.
There was one little mouse left standing in the inevitable vortex of absent sound that accompanied Naruto's departure. Kakashi wasn't even surprised, not really at all.
"Sakura, shouldn't you be scampering on home before Naruto decides that the three blocks to your house are an unacceptable sexual harassment risk and comes back to escort you?"
"Kakashi-sensei."
He waited. Because he knew she wasn't done.
"Kakashi-sensei. Please. Don't."
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Sakura."
"Please. Just…please. Okay?"
Kakashi didn't answer. After a while, Sakura walked out the door.
….
The next day, Naruto brought board games. He and Sasuke fought ferociously across the chosen battlefield, slinging insults and denouncing entire family ancestries, while Sakura quietly dominated them both in the background, and Kakashi pinched his game piece between his fingers and never actually allowed it to touch the board.
"What the fuck, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said fondly, after Kakashi ducked out on rolling the dice again by claiming an allergic reaction to numbers represented by dots.
Kakashi just gifted him with a sleepy eye-smile and kept all of his attention fixed on a different student.
Sasuke's face had been growing darker and darker as the game progressed, sleep-bruised eyes fluttering to the walls around him, shoulders twisting tight and restless. Maybe from getting his ass kicked so badly, but probably from something else, and Kakashi wasn't even surprised when he hissed out a frustrated, "Fuck this," and pushed back from the table they'd been playing at.
Naruto was up and on him instantly, hands cupping Sasuke's elbows and arms, because Naruto would never be okay with Sasuke leaving. Sakura watched with quiet eyes, her game piece curled against her palm, waiting and watching instead of immediate action.
"Let go," Sasuke said, and Naruto made a soft sound of discontent, because he hated it when Sasuke's voice went empty like that. "Just…Idiot…Kakashi-sensei, I'll come make up my detention another time, okay? I can't…I need to go."
Sakura stayed silent, but Kakashi watched her open palms curl into fists and knew that she would give exactly zero fucks about throwing punches to keep Sasuke stationary.
"Kakashi-sensei," Sasuke said again, and he didn't say please, but they could all hear it trembling on the air.
"Don't go," Naruto said. "C'mon Bastard. Stay."
"Get off," Sasuke hissed, and shoved an elbow into Naruto's stomach. Naruto chose to see the action as an invitation and inched even closer to Sasuke's back. "Why do you even…why do you care, you don't even know me, not really, get the hell off you idiot."
"Meh," Naruto said, and Sasuke's tightened fists meant that he'd accurately interpreted the sound as 'Doesn't matter, you're so totally ours anyway, suck it up and sit your ass down, just try and mosey out that door, I will bite your ankle and everything'.
Mouth thinned to a tight line, grey eyes dark and desperate, Sasuke looked to Kakashi once again. For a moment, everyone just breathed, still and silent.
And then Kakashi smiled and said, "No redos, student-mine! Looks like you'll have to tough it out with your friends."
Sasuke's shoulders slumped, dark eyes bruised with exhaustion and something like relief, and Kakashi thought to himself that maybe this was always what Sasuke had needed to hear.
You're not leaving. We're not letting you.
And then Naruto laughed and punched Sasuke's shoulder, and Sakura added some comment about the fact that the boys weren't allowed to rage-quit the game just because they were getting their asses kicked, and Kakashi was able to settle back to watching them, watching out for them, as he always did.
His mouth stayed dry, so dry, and his heart continued to beat hard and fast beneath his jacket though, even after the kids had finished their game and gone home, sleepily content and strangely satisfied.
"Kid is made of bitch-fits," Hiro commented later, over chicken fingers and beer. "Like, ninety percent of his DNA. Dedicated to bitch-fits."
"So you don't think I should have let him leave? Make up detention by his solitary little self?"
Hiro hummed thoughtfully and sucked salt off of his fingertips.
"Nah," he said. "Sad panda needs some friends. And him being the way he is, he needs friends who will ninja-love him into submission." Hiro smiled and tipped his beer in Kakashi's direction. "Everyone needs friends. Even if they don't want them. Right?"
Kakashi smiled back. It felt like razorblades against his cheeks.
"I miss you," he said.
Hiro laughed, eyebrows barely curved in confusion.
"Aww, thanks snuggle-bunches. Good thing I'm right here then, isn't it?"
"Yeah." Kakashi brought his beer to his face, swallowed hard. "Yeah. Good thing."
…
On the third day, Naruto brought a bag of homemade treats, with notes written by his mom taped to the containers.
"She said that I need to get over my angst boner," Sasuke said with something like real anguish in his voice. "And she signed it with a lipstick kiss."
"She told me that I need to use my boner," Sakura said, and Kakashi feared the way she sounded so approving. "On Naruto."
Naruto just grinned and grinned and helped himself to some homemade banana bread.
Kakashi had a note as well. On cheerful pink paper, it said the following:
Hi Kakashi-Sensei!
Don't give Naruto your porn. Not because I care if he looks at porn or not, but it's a special joy for me to give him MY porn and watch him traumatize himself thinking about where it came from.
XOXOXOXO!
Kushina
Kakashi grinned so hard beneath his mask that he feared his face might break. Especially since, underneath Kushina's note, a different handwriting added:
Sorry about the XOXOXO. I already told her that a threesome was out, no matter what a 'sexy scarecrow-thing' you are.
Minato
Sasuke sat at his desk with his head buried in his arms.
"Your mom makes me sad inside," he said flatly, but the corners of his mouth were twitching in a smile as he stared at his plate full of stuffed tomatoes that Naruto's mom had stuck Sasuke's note to.
"That's her way," Naruto said wisely, with a nod. "Don't worry. Soon you'll start to interpret it as love."
"Really," Sakura said, eyes dancing but also darting in Sasuke's direction.
"Dad calls it Stockholm Syndrome Parenting!" Naruto chirped brightly.
Kakashi reached out and gave Sakura's back a gentle poke, disguising it as an accidental bump as he reached for the bag of cookies.
"What's wrong, Sasuke?" she asked, giving Kakashi a short glare that told him she hadn't needed his prompting.
Sasuke looked over, fingers freezing from where he'd been trying to ninja a tomato out of the bag while simultaneously maintaining his apparent belief that the entire institution of food was beneath his notice.
"Nothing," he said, with a frown.
"Your eyes look like someone punched them out," Naruto added helpfully, spraying crumbs all over the desk. "And I know it wasn't me this time."
Sasuke's frown deepened, but he also flushed a little.
"Just…whatever," he said. "Haven't been sleeping well. It's nothing."
"Nightmares?" Sakura asked.
Sasuke shot Sakura a glare that might have sent her crying, once upon a time. But now, she simply raised her eyebrow back at him, and Sasuke huffed, before turning his head away.
"Nothing," he repeated, firm but still gentler that he could have been.
Sakura nodded, face tense. Sasuke retreated to the corner, tomato clutched gently between his fingers. He didn't say anything for a long while, but he let Naruto poke at his ears all of three times before punching him in the face, so Kakashi figured he was okay for the moment.
….
After detention, once again.
"Sakura! Two special visits in one week. I'm touched, humbled, ready to burst into manly tears of joy-"
"Kakashi-sensei."
"Sakura."
"Please."
"You know this isn't up to me."
…
Sasuke fell asleep in Kakashi's class the next day. Kakashi left him to it, and shooed Naruto and Sakura out the door after the bell, dismissing Sakura's wordless worry and Naruto's babbles of, "Bah, Kakashi-sensei, he's my soft and sleepy bestie. Let me snuggle him."
He spent almost half of his planning period reading with the door firmly locked while Sasuke made soft, helpless sounds against his desk.
When Sasuke finally sat up, hair disheveled and eyes wide and strangely lost, he stared around at the empty room silently for a moment before locking his eyes on Kakashi.
Kakashi didn't say what he wanted to say. Sasuke didn't say anything at all.
What Kakashi said instead was, "Look at your sleep cheeks. All adorable and shit. Let me pinch them."
And it had made things a little more normal, a little more balanced, as Sasuke made his scandalized escape out the door.
That afternoon, in detention, Sakura had enough sense not to ask, and Kakashi hit Naruto in the face with a chalkboard eraser before he could ask, so they were okay.
But it didn't take away the slump of Sasuke's shoulders, or the way he stared at the walls around them like he was expecting them to disappear.
….
The last day of detention was awful. Really, really awful, because Naruto dragged himself in late, with an exhausted smile that seemed so, so wrong on his perpetually happy face.
"Naruto," Sakura said immediately, worry evident in her voice.
"Hey guys," he said. "Sorry I was late, Crazy Teacher."
Sasuke frowned and said, "You look like shit, idiot," in a way that almost managed to mask the concern underneath it.
"Yeah," Naruto scrubbed at his eyes with a tiny frown. "Yeah, just…bad dreams last night, I guess."
"Bad dreams," Sasuke repeated, and Sakura refused to look at him.
"Do you want to lie down?" she asked Naruto instead.
"No," he said. "No, c'mon, last detention, right? Let's do something!"
They played a game of towering bricks, stacking pieces together and then pulling them out one by one, hoping that their fingers wouldn't make it fall. And it felt wrong, despite Naruto's perfectly normal shouts of, "Stop cheating, you angsty bastard!" and Sasuke's deadpan answers of, "How. How do you cheat at this game, you idiot?" and Naruto's outraged, "Stop willing the tower to fall when I'm touching it, using your inner manpain for evil is against the rules."
"Hey, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said at one point. "You can play, you know. I don't think the tower will fall down just because you touched it. I mean, obviously you're going to suck at games because you're all old and shit, but still I think you can try, right?"
"Old and shit," Kakashi repeated, with real suffering in his voice. "You're such a comfort to me. Just for that, I'm going to tell your mom I'm totally down for that threesome."
Naruto squawked, but didn't even look surprised, mostly just resigned, and that made the burn of victory all the sweeter.
He reached out with careful fingers, keeping one hand firmly on his book. The tower wobbled, but it didn't fall. Kakashi breathed a sigh of relief, and wondered why he felt guilty for it.
Sakura poked at the tower next. Her fingers were quick and nimble as she pushed a brick free, and for a moment, Kakashi thought it would hold, despite the wobbling. But then it crumpled inward, exploding across the desk and spinning to the floor with a crash that seemed very loud in the sudden silence of the room.
"Oh," Sakura said, and she didn't look surprised, but really horribly sad instead.
Naruto and Sasuke began to bicker about who had weakened the tower more (only, was that the beginnings of a question in Sasuke's eyes, a spark of understanding, not yet fully formed or comprehended, that twisted Kakashi's guts like snakes).
Sakura met Kakashi's eyes across the fallen tower. Gently, protectively, she cupped her hands over the scattered pieces, and the heartbreak in her eyes made his throat tight, his eyes stomach burn.
Kakashi put his book back over his face. But it wasn't tears of laughter he was hiding this time around.
...
A/N: Um. Welcome to the emotional roller coaster, where both angst and humor are bred like bunnies? Next Chapter: Sakura's POV, representing the feminine up in this bitch. Stay tuned and Happy Reading!