Title: Talking in a Winter Wonderland
Prompt: Lights
Author: Kita
Rating: PG-13
After Naruto had left, Iruka locked the door and returned to the kitchen, where Kakashi was staring at one of the sugar cookies like it might tell him the secrets of the universe.
Iruka sighed and stepped up behind the man, slipping his arms around his waist to pluck the cookie from his grasp. "I smell smoke. What's got you thinking so hard?"
"I was going to eat that." Kakashi grumbled.
"Before or after you stared a hole in it?" Iruka chided.
Kakashi sighed and turned in his arms but didn't move to share the embrace. His arms remained down at his sides. Iruka felt his chest tighten.
"What is it?"
"Why?"
"Why what?" Iruka stopped and pressed a hand over those masked lips. "No, don't answer that. I don't want you to have doubts. I want you here because I want you. I wanted you from the moment I met you. Not that anyone would have realized after the fight we had over the nominations." He tilted his head to stare straight into Kakashi's uncovered eye. "I seldom spoke to you after that. Mostly because I didn't know what to say."
Iruka sighed and released his hold on Kakashi's mouth. "When you were assigned to help me, I saw an opportunity to get what I wanted. I teased you because, frankly, it is so much fun seeing you off-balance like that. I like you as a person, as a ninja, as a friend… and I won't deny the sex was great. I'd like to do it again sometime."
Kakashi looked down into his eyes. Iruka smiled up at him. "Now the question becomes, what about you? What do you want?"
Kakashi sighed and held still for so long that Iruka started to get nervous. He would hate it if Kakashi rejected him. He might not be broken by it, but he'd still be hurt.
"I don't know." Kakashi said at last. Iruka swallowed and moved to step back, but Kakashi's arms rose to hold him in place. "I don't know, but I like this. I liked waking up with you this morning. I like your teasing and even those shirts you seem to have in my size for no reason." He lowered his head to press masked lips to Iruka's jaw. The chuunin shivered at the brush of fabric and hot breath. "I liked the sex too, and I'm holding you to your word."
Iruka shuddered and forced himself to focus on matters at hand and not the feel of those fabric covered teeth nibbling a slow line down his neck. "W-what word?"
A dark chuckle rumbled through the chest pressed against his. Kakashi interspersed his words with stinging little nips. "Just… who… gets… to… be… on… top… next."
Iruka sighed and grabbed Kakashi's head to hold him still. He caught that cloth-covered bottom lip between his teeth and growled softly. "If you don't stop that, I'll take you up on that right here and now."
Kakashi growled low in his throat and slipped his hands up under Iruka's shirt. "I'm not arguing."
Iruka deftly twisted out of his grasp. "But I am."
He leaned back against the counter, breathless and flushed with arousal. "The next time we have sex, it will be without masks and so slow, long and hard that I can't fucking walk come the morning."
Kakashi reached for his mask but Iruka stopped him again. "Not here. Help me put most of these cookies away and then we'll take the rest out into the living room and eat them in front of the fire." Iruka smiled heatedly. "And we'll see where things go from there."
Kakashi obediently put cookies in the jar as Iruka made cups of hot chocolate and set them on a tray with a plate of cookies. He carried it into the living room while Kakashi finished up.
When Kakashi emerged from the kitchen a few moments later, Iruka had moved his low table and set a futon and a pile of pillows on the floor in front of the fireplace. The lights were out, only the multicolored lights on the tree twinkling and glittering on the skin of Iruka's now bared chest.
Kakashi sat beside him, folding his legs and accepting the cup of cocoa Iruka handed him. He met Iruka's eyes and tugged down his mask to take a sip.
A/N: Do I even have to leave a warning about the next chapter?