A/N Well I found the missing chapter.
For anyone who's interested, I had planned to call the baby Wild Oat. I think a scarecrow is a likely suspect for sowing wild oats don't you? But I couldn't find a Japanese equivalent. Poppies are wildflowers that grow in cornfields (around scarecrows?) so I picked the Japanese word for poppy instead. It's keshi and sounded enough like Kakashi to my untrained ear to be a nice substitute.
A/N 2. I will continue this, I always finish my fics and always keep my promises. But although I don't like to leave things hanging, I can't promise any particular timeline. RL is a bit too insane right now even by my standards. Maybe in a couple of weeks to a month things will have settled down.
Hatake Kakashi was full of it.
Sand that is.
His clothes, his skin, his hair. He blinked his gritty eyes in the darkness, trying to see through the blear, as he climbed in through his apartment window. There was only one thing on his mind right now, a nice soothing hot shower to get every last grain of the damned stuff off his body.
Well, two things on his mind. The other was the warm brown body, with its unique fresh smell of sunshine and skin, that he knew lay waiting for him, softened by sleep, as soon as he was clean enough to feel fit to curl up beside it.
He shampooed his hair and soaped his body, cringing as the sand scoured his wind-stung skin. As the last of the hated stuff rinsed down the drain he blotted himself to medium dampness on a clean towel and crawled into bed. A strong sleepy arm folded over him and he fell into a deep sleep.
Suddenly his sweet rest was shattered by an ear-piercing shriek. He leapt up, shoving Iruka behind him, as he grabbed the weapons stashed under his pillow.
A sneak attack by Hidden Sound, had to be, a noise like that. Only a mind like Orochimaru's could create something so nerve-wracking. He waited for the explosion, or concussion, or whatever damage it was about to incur.
Iruka pushed him aside roughly, very roughly. Yelling with volume to match the jutsu coming from the far side of the room.
"KAKASHI! What the… what are you doing here? Put some clothes on, there's a child here, and get rid of those knives, and what the hell do you think you're doing getting in bed with me anyway after what you've done? You certainly have some damn nerve!"
Kakashi's mouth opened and closed once or twice by itself, but no sound came out. What had he done? He hadn't even been here to do anything. Then through his sharingan he noticed a cage beyond the bed. Something within it was the source of the sound. And Iruka was walking towards it.
Dammit did the man have to take in every damn demon that crossed his path?
As he prepared to protect his beloved teacher from whatever danger he'd brought into their home, Kakashi noticed that the 'cage' was in fact an old fashioned wooden crib, and the howling creature within it was a baby.
He let out a long breath, and was about to follow Iruka to investigate when he was met by a glare so cold that it made his balls retreat inside his body.
"I said clothes. Now!"
"But… but, Iruka, it's only a baby."
If possible the glare intensified.
By the time he'd pulled on an old T-shirt and a pair of boxers, Iruka had switched on a dim nightlight and was seated on the edge of the bed with the child on one shoulder. He sat next to his partner and tried to ignore the screams, which, although they were no less shattering, now seemed much less menacing.
"I think it's hungry."
"Really, you can tell? There's some bottled formula in the kitchen. The hospital nursery gave me a case, they said it should last a week or two, long enough for us to get set up. It's all ready, you just have to take off the cap."
Sure enough in the middle of the kitchen table there was a large box of glass bottles, filled with ivory liquid. Kakashi snapped off the plastic protector from one, and found that it was already fitted with a soft nipple. He carried it back to the bedroom, gently infusing it with chakra to warm it to body temperature, then handed it to Iruka.
"So who's is it?" He asked as he sat back down to watch.
Iruka's eyes took on a luminous misty quality. "It's not an it, it's a she, and she's yours. Ours. She's our Keshi, Keshi-hime unless you want to call her something else."
Kakashi almost fell off the edge of the bed.
He looked the other man over in shock. "OURS! But… but Iruka… I've only been gone two weeks!"
Iruka sighed. He spoke slowly and clearly, as if the genius and former child prodigy was one of his denser students. "Not ours that way, as in yours and mine. Yours because you're her father, and that makes her mine too, because what's yours is mine... right?"
Little Keshi chose that moment to let out another piercing wail.
"Oh no, not again. And she seemed fine a moment ago. It's like this every time I feed her, she seems too hungry and anxious to be able to drink properly."
Kakashi took the squalling child, nestled her in the crook of one arm, then took the almost full bottle and shook it. "Mmm, she's sucking too hard, not letting in air so she's not getting any milk. Probably used to being breast fed."
The baby clamped back onto the nipple as soon as it was put in her mouth, but after letting her take two swallows Kakashi pulled it away. She filled her lungs ready for a loud protest, but he slipped it back, so she changed her mind and went back to feeding. Almost at once she fell into the rhythm, suck suck breathe, suck suck, breathe. Soon he didn't need to take away her source of comfort and food, so she relaxed and by the time the bottle was almost drained she was fast asleep.
He stood carefully and lay her on her back in the crib.
Iruka watched with something close to awe. "How did you know that? About the air?"
"Oh, sometimes a bitch will have more pups than she has milk for. Then you have to bottle feed the runt. Puppies have to learn the same trick."
Kakashi turned to face him slowly, hovering like a long white shadow. "So what makes you think I'm the father?"
Suddenly Iruka felt very cold. He folded his arms across his chest, hugging his shoulders. His initial dismay, anger, disappointment, pick an emotion, had diffused over the past few days. But it was a conversation that he knew they'd have to have some time.
"That's what the girl said."
"Girl?"
He steeled himself, there was no easy way to say this. "Yes the girl who brought her here. You knocked up her cousin when you were on a mission in Thunder Country last year."
Kakashi tilted his head to one side. "Mmm, maybe."
Iruka exploded with rage. "MAYBE! WHAT THE… " He was cut short by a whimper from the crib and sat on the edge of the bed, shaking with anger and struggling against his need to scream.
Kakashi sat next to him. But sensibly, he kept a few feet away.
"You can hardly expect me to remember every detail of a mission a year ago."
The look Iruka gave him would have killed a lesser man. "I'd hardly call impregnating and abandoning a servant girl a 'detail'."
Kakashi drew himself up, very stiff and very straight. "You know as well as I do that we do whatever we have to do on a mission. If I needed information and sex was the best way to get it, then that's what I'd have done. Condoms can fail you know."
It was as if he'd pulled all his stiffness from Iruka, who wilted like a damp rag. "So you didn't have an affair?"
It was Kakashi's turn to bristle with fury. "What the hell kind of accusation is that? Don't you trust me Iruka?"
"I'm sorry." Iruka's eyes shone with unshed tears as the tides of emotions roiling through him took their toll. "I'm just glad I don't have to love you any less."
Kakashi smiled and moved closer. "I can see it must have been quite a shock, and the evidence is pretty damning." He risked putting an arm around the other man, drawing them together. "Would you have? Loved me less?"
Iruka shook his head, making his untied hair brush against both their faces. "No." Dark eyes stared up into unmatched blue and red. "I tried to, at first. But I couldn't."
"You really want to keep her don't you?"
"Yes I do. I really do."
"Neither of us know anything about babies, or about being parents for that matter."
Iruka gave him a sneaky look. "We'll learn, besides you know everything, you're a genius."
"It will be a lot of work, especially for you."
"It won't be work, it will be fun."
Kakashi kissed his forehead. "You fall in love too hard too fast."
"Just wait until she smiles at you for the first time." Iruka found his lover's lips and pressed his against them. They opened allowing him to enforce him claim as his pulse quickened.
He felt himself guided onto the bed and under the covers as a familiar hard body snuggled against his warm brown one. There was nothing to do but fold his strong, sleepy arm over it. Kakashi sighed as he inhaled the sweet fresh fragrance of sunshine and skin.
Within a few minutes, everyone in the household was sleeping as peacefully as its newest, and youngest member.