Day 9 - Fattening Foods

Each holiday season, Iruka baked cookies for the children in his class who had no loved ones to care for them. The project grew more time- consuming by the year. So, for the sake of time, Iruka enlisted Kakashi s help. His partner was begrudging at best. Iruka could not tell if the gagging was for show or because the smell of sugar genuinely repulsed the man.

"This is torture." Kakashi complained bitterly as he haphazardly squeezed icing onto the gingerbread men he had just finished baking. "You're cruel and unusual."

"That may be true but I don't think you're using that phrase right." Iruka didn't look up from the molasses he was measuring. "Also, this isn't torture. I know torture. And this isn't it."

"You've been tortured? You've never been captured..." Iruka resisted asking Kakashi how he knew that. He had the feeling it had something to do with breaking into his dossier. "No scarring indicative of torture, unless I missed something. Did I miss something?" Kakashi took this as an opportunity to grope Iruka in all the places where he was ticklish: his waist, the backs of his knees and the inside of his thighs. "Waterboarding? Genjutsu? Drugs?"

"And sleep deprivation."

Kakashi was silent for a moment then asked, "Why?"

Iruka put the cup down and looked Kakashi square in the face. He saw he had a bit of flour streaked across his mask. He reached out to wipe it away for him before he calmly explained:

"Because you know, when you're standing in line at the bank or the grocery store and a civilian says, 'This is torture' because the line is long or something else totally inane is bothering them, kind of like you just did?"

"Yeah," Kakashi narrowed his eyes in confusion.

"Well, I wanted to be able to turn to them and say, 'If you think that's the case you've never been tortured.'"He shrugged as though this wasn't a big deal. "So I went and I asked Ibiki to torture me a little bit. Just a little, so I would know what it was like."

"Really?"

"No, not really!" Iruka turned back to his baking. It was part of my espionage training. "You're gullible."

"That's not true at all," Kakashi argued. "Your training just made you an incredibly convincing liar. It's awful. I cannot believe they let you near children. You could make them believe anything. Try again. Lie to me."

Kakashi scrutinized him. Iruka didn't look up from filling a baking sheet with blobs of cookie dough.

"I've never slept with a woman not because I m a homosexual but because I hate to top. When you're getting grabby and I say down boy I really mean please rape me."

"You have absolutely no tells. I've never seen anything like it." Kakashi sounded fascinated in that dangerous sort of way that warned Iruka he would be trying to talk him out of his pants within the next quarter of an hour. "Lie again."

"I believe that love conquers all," Iruka continued. "I have always believed that I have one soul mate, who I hope will find me and make me his wife. And while I'm at it I also believe in coddling children."

"More," Kakashi insisted. He embraced Iruka from behind, hooking his head over his shoulder.

"I've never killed a man. I am not the one who hid Princess Tsunade s hangover remedy and if I did it certainly was not with the intention of getting revenge on Shizune for rigging a bet. The aphrodisiac hypnotics hidden in an undisclosed location in this apartment are not mine and I have never used them on you."

Kakashi's hands started to slide up Iruka's shirt. "That first one of the last set again."

"Stop restlessly grinding your hard-on into my ass, pervert," Iruka scolded. "I'm trying to open the oven."

Kakashi moved aside just long enough for Iruka to get the last batch into the oven. Iruka barely managed to set the timer. But, that didn't prevent the cookies from burning.