Wow, I'm so sorry at taking so long for this chapter! I have the main scenes for chapters here on out planned out and I'm all excited about them, and this is more of a filler chapter. So, beyond the initial beginning scene here, with the misunderstanding with Ibiki in Iruka's bedroom, I wasn't super excited about writing this. But I sat down tonight and pounded out the rest because I was really wanting to not take so long on updates.

Enjoy!

Iruka had known from the get-go that his stupid new mission was most likely going to be horribly embarrassing. And he hadn't been wrong so far. In fact, it was a little scary to admit that he was actually becoming used to the bizarre and undignified circumstances he had found himself in when coaxing, or forcing, kisses out of the various jounin on his list. As much as he wished for it, he knew that there was unlikely going to be any lessening to his humiliation until this mission was done and over with for good – and even then, he expected the clean-up process of time making everyone (hopefully) forget all about it to take a good while.

However, he had not been expecting to endure anything close to the level of mortification as having to face down three of his ex-students while in a compromising position – in his bedroom – with another man in his bed… while he was mostly naked…

The flustered teacher was still rooted to his spot on the floor, his face beet-red, and mouth opening and closing stupidly as he tried to think up anything that could possibly be appropriate to say in such a situation. Ibiki was, thankfully, no longer in 'attack mode,' and he seemed to be trying to figure out what exactly was going on, but his internal confusion wasn't making for productive conversation either. Sakura was now hiding her face behind her hands, though she had yet to leave her spot in the window. Sasuke's face had gone deathly white, and the Uchiha was more silent than usual, trying desperately to look anywhere but at the two higher-ranked shinobi in the room.

Naruto was still pinned to the wall, his face rushing through every possible emotion on the spectrum while he attempted to take in the scene in front of him. And for once, Iruka was glad that Naruto, no matter the circumstances, could always find a way to regroup himself quickly and destroy silence like a verbal sledgehammer. He didn't think anyone else would have had it in them to do so… In fact, the chuunin might have even placed money on the idea that the other four would have sat and stared at each other all day if not for the kyuubi-holder, because not a single one of them seemed anxious to speak.

"WHAT. THE. HELL?"

Not that it was the most eloquent thing ever spoken, but it broke the stiff silence enough for everyone to jolt back into some sort of action. Iruka scrambled up from his undignified position on the floor, Ibiki slowly stepped off the bed, Sakura hid around the corner, and Sasuke quickly stepped through the window and began removing the shuriken from his teammate's clothes.

Naruto was now whipping his blonde head back and forth rapidly between his ex-teacher and the interrogation expert. "What is going on in here!?" he demanded hotly. He glared and pointed an accusatory finger at Ibiki as one arm was finally free. "Are you trying to kill me!? What's your problem!?" he shrieked, apparently not caring that he was talking to the supposedly scariest man in the village.

Ibiki scowled at the loud noise, though he refrained from actually grabbing at his pounding head out of pride. He opened his mouth to tell the little loudmouth to shut up – maybe throw in a well-timed threat for good measure, as it was obvious the kid had no idea who he was dealing with – but Naruto had now whirled on Iruka, clearly not really caring about the jounin's answer.

"And why are you naked!?" he practically screamed, and Iruka swore that a squeal of embarrassment came from outside the window.

The teacher, if possible, blushed even brighter, and he whipped his head to the floor, snatching up the clothes he had dropped in his hasty dodging of the shuriken. He hurriedly began pulling his pants on. "I'm not naked!" he defended loudly, tripping slightly over a stuck pant leg. Since no one was obviously paying him any mind anymore, Ibiki grunted and took a seat on the edge of the bed tiredly. Sasuke finished unpinning the boisterous blonde from the bedroom wall as Iruka completed buttoning his pants.

The chuunin attempted to put on a stern teacher glare as he finally brought his gaze back up to look his students in the eye.

"And can I ask what on earth you three are doing in my bedroom this early in the morning?" he bit out sharply, trying to sound threatening.

Naruto narrowed his eyes at him probingly. "I think the better question is, what is he doing in your bedroom this early in the morning!" he shouted, throwing his finger in Ibiki's direction again.

The jounin grunted, hardly fazed, but Iruka's face heated up to boiling temperatures once again. "He stayed here last night! I mean – " The teacher quickly backtracked as Sasuke and Naruto's faces both took on rather nauseated expressions. "I mean, he stayed in here – I was on the couch. He just – he crashed here – he took the bed cuz… I just… I DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF TO YOU!" he finally shouted, and all three other men in the room jumped. The two former students scrunched back a bit as they caught the old 'I am your damn sensei and you will fucking obey my authority' note in the teacher's voice.

Iruka swallowed hard, using every shinobi power he had crafted since a young age to dismiss the blush off his face and keep his features perfectly schooled into commanding anger. "You, however, will tell me what you think you're doing bursting into my home at the crack of dawn."

Naruto's demeanor became decidedly cowed under his former sensei's stern look and biting voice. His eyes shifted to the floor as he mumbled "uhh's" and "umm's" under his breath. Sasuke merely coughed and looked off to the side as well. Even though Kakashi was a jounin and Iruka a mere chuunin, the Uchiha still had never mastered talking back to Iruka-sensei the way that he was able to give Kakashi-sensei attitude… especially when the brunette got that look on his face.

Iruka sighed, irritated. "Sakura, get in here," he demanded loudly. A pink head slowly appeared back around the corner. The poor girl was still blushing, but she seemed to relax slightly at her old teacher at least having pants on now… The chuunin leveled her with the same strict, no-nonsense glare he had been giving the other two, and, just as he anticipated, her natural teacher-pleaser instincts instantly broke her down into an embarrassed stuttering mess of apologies.

"We-we're sorry, Iruka-sensei! We just wanted to talk to you!"

Iruka still looked annoyed, but his face softened slightly into more exasperation than rage. He startled slightly when Ibiki slapped his hands on his knees and pushed himself resolutely to his feet. The teacher's cheeks dusted pink minutely. He had almost forgotten about the interrogation specialist after going into angry teacher mode. "Well…" Ibiki coughed lightly. "I'll take this as my cue to leave. Thank you for the place to stay, sensei." Iruka bowed shortly, and with those short, gruff words, the other man was gone.

The chuunin let out a soft breath, closing his eyes. He wondered how much Ibiki actually remembered, or what he thought about anything he did remember… Aside from the initial startled wake-up, the jounin had kept his features perfectly blank. Even if he had let an emotion slip onto his face while Iruka was standing there lecturing his old students, the teacher wouldn't have noticed. And nothing he had said in his brief good-byes gave away anything going through his head. Iruka bit the inside of his cheek to bring himself out of his reverie. It really wouldn't do him any good to try to analyze the freakin' head of T&I – it was Ibiki's job not to give anything away. He'd only drive himself crazy trying to get into the head of someone like that…

So he snapped his eyes open again and trained them on the three teenagers in front of him. At least them he could probably get information out of. "So…" he breathed loudly, placing his hands on his hips. "Who wants to start?"

The three genin in front of him shifted uniformly in discomfort. Iruka almost felt his patience snap again, but Naruto regained himself quickly this time. "What's going on with you and Kakashi-sensei?" he demanded with determination and just a hint of bravado making its way back into his voice.

Iruka blinked, then squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. "This again?" He gave a disgusted sigh. "Naruto, I told you the other day I wasn't getting into this with you. I believe I also said something of that nature to you several days ago, Sakura." He shot a look at the teen girl who cast her gaze away in chastisement. "In fact, I'm pretty sure when Sasuke was here a few nights ago, scooping you up," he pointedly brought his stern brown eyes back to Naruto, "I told him something to the same extent."

The teacher took his time dragging his 'No-nonsense' glare across all three students, watching them all (even Sasuke) shrivel back minutely in submissiveness. "I'm not sure why you three are so very interested in me and Kakashi-sensei, but I can definitively tell you that whatever it is, it's none of your business." He stopped and studied them for a short moment, watching the emotions war on their faces. He let his intense glare soften and merely raised a curious eyebrow at them instead. "Why are you guys so concerned anyway?"

Naruto and Sakura shared a quick look before the pink-haired girl's timid voice rose over the silence of the room. "Kakashi-sensei's been acting… weird…" she offered mildly. When no on interrupted her, and she snuck a glance up at Iruka's still confused face, she cleared her throat and continued. "We've never seen him so upset, so we thought… maybe we could help fix whatever is wrong between you two." She started to blush at her personal knowledge of the situation, though she continued trying to remain cool to those who didn't know she was so intimately involved. "I mean, if there was anything we could do to help you guys… patch things up or communicate better…"

Iruka's eyes lost their sharp edge and he almost looked pained and worried. "Kakashi-sensei is… upset?" he asked softly.

Naruto caught the strange look on his self-appointed guardian's face and stepped forward as though to comfort him, though he was still well on the other side of the room. "Yeah, I mean… we're sure whatever is going on is his fault." He ignored the sideways glare from Sakura. "But, you know… I guess…" The blonde boy scratched nervously at the back of his head. "It's affecting him enough that he's been ditching our training and normally I'd say he was just being a lazy bastard, but…" He trailed off as the three-man squad studied Iruka's face carefully.

"We just want to know if we can help." Three pairs of eyes snapped to Sasuke in surprise. The Uchiha looked like he wanted to shuffle uncomfortably or take off after saying such kind words (even if they were still said in his usual gruff, uncaring tone), but the raven-haired boy made it point to lock his muscles and stay rooted to the spot, not wanting to humiliate himself further by looking like a wuss and fleeing.

Iruka seemed to finally snap out of whatever daydream he had been going through and closed his eyes tiredly. "I appreciate the concern…" He bit his tongue softly. "But Kakashi-sensei and I are… fine." The tightening feeling that he had come to associate with declarations about Kakashi engulfed his chest again. "If he's acting strange about your training, that's something you need to discuss with him or the hokage. Our issues have been resolved."

Sakura's eyes turned sorrowful, and she spun back to the open window to hide it. She knew nothing was 'fine' – at least on her jounin sensei's end. And with the way Iruka's words were catching in his throat and coming out less than assured, she had a feeling that things weren't totally resolved from his perspective either. Inner Sakura wanted to shout at her old sensei that he needed to stop being such a doofus and go talk to Kakashi-sensei again, but, not only would she never show that kind of attitude to Iruka-sensei, but Kakashi had come to her in confidence. She couldn't betray his trust and start spewing all she knew, even if it was to the instructor's crush in question. That didn't stop her thoughts from turning dark, however. "Well," she started in a clipped tone that had all three men blinking curiously at her back. "We'll leave you alone then, Iruka-sensei." She leapt out the window without so much as a polite bow or 'good day.'

Iruka stared stupidly at the spot where she had been, confused and taken aback by the normally docile girl's tone, wondering what had happened to upset her. Sasuke and Naruto stared after her, wondering the same thing. But they turned back to Iruka and nodded goodbye. "Have a good day, Iruka-sensei," Naruto called over his shoulder, before Iruka was left standing alone in his previously packed bedroom.

The chuunin slowly plodded over to the mussed up bed and sat on the edge carefully. Kakashi was really that upset? Iruka knew that he had obviously pissed him off by riling him up and then dodging his molestations. It probably wasn't every day that someone rebuffed the great copy-ninja. In fact, Iruka could probably safely bet that no one had ever turned him down or teased him in such a way before. He could definitely see how that would annoy the other man, especially coming from someone like Iruka who was not only lower-ranked but who Kakashi seemed to actively dislike…

Except when he didn't…

This whole complicated situation with Kakashi was made even more confusing by the fact that the jounin didn't seem to be able to manage any sort of uniform behavior toward the academy teacher. One minute he was putting him down in front of his colleagues, the next he was trying to make pleasant conversation… only to devolve into snarky comments that left the brunette flushing and angry… then he would try to ravish him against the nearest hard object, only to turn around and act almost shy about asking him to a social engagement. And now he was finding out from the man's genin team that Kakashi was actually falling behind in his job because of his mood about the whole thing…

Not that Kakashi was the most responsible teacher to begin with. For all Iruka, or anyone else, knew, the man was having other issues in his life or schedule and was simply skirting his teacherly duties for other reasons, which could involve anything as trivial as outright laziness. There was no proof that it was Iruka that was upsetting him so much. No one could come to that conclusion since Iruka couldn't even come to a conclusion as to what Kakashi was thinking, let alone determine how deeply it was affecting him.

The chuunin let out a long sigh and leaned his elbows on his knees, burying his head in his hands. Ibiki's words regarding Kakashi and how he generally acted how he felt, regardless of how he tried to play it off, spun around Iruka's head in a frenzy. He tried to listen to them, as Ibiki had probably had a lot more contact with the copy-nin than he had, but that didn't really help him if Kakashi's actions were so schizophrenic, one couldn't pin down a concrete behavior or attitude in the first place.

Iruka might have dwelled on the puzzle longer if a quick glance at his bedside clock didn't have him cursing under his breath and snatching up the rest of his clothes as he realized he was dangerously close to being late for classes… again.

Ibiki's head pounded as he made his way across town back to his own apartment. He only vaguely remembered leaving the bar the previous night, and remembered even less of arriving at the chuunin sensei's house and making the decision to stay there. Though there was one particular scene that was trying to make its way through his foggy memories, but it seemed so absurd he wasn't quite ready to believe that it was real and not just a strange, drunken dream…

His thoughts were interrupted and his head throbbed even worse as he reached his apartment building and was making his way down the hall to his own abode. "IBIIKI!" echoed off the walls of the narrow hallways and the harsh pounding on wood that accompanied the shouts was just as loud. The interrogation expert gritted his teeth as he could only imagine the complaints he'd be getting on his door later (none of his neighbors were ever brave enough to complain to his face – that didn't make their stupid anonymous, passive-aggressive notes any less irritating). "IBIKIIII! OPEN UP!"

The jounin whipped around the corner finally, eyes narrowing. "ANKO!" The kunoichi in question jumped and spun away from her intense assault on the apartment door. She blinked innocently at him, confused. He wandered up to her slowly, wanting to run up and smack her upside the head, but not wanting to show her just how much her antics were affecting him… He also had no desire to start an impromptu sparring match with the insane female shinobi who would no doubt take any sort of physical violence as an invitation to retaliate. So he stuck with detached annoyance instead. "What the hell are you doing?" he growled.

Anko looked between him and the door a few times before answering. "I came to walk with you to work."

"We didn't discuss walking to work together today, Anko."

Anko shrugged. "What? I need an invitation?"

"It would be nice if you didn't just show up unannounced, yes."

Anko snorted. "Really? I need to make an appointment? Do I make this appointment through you or do I need to go through the hokage herself?"

Ibiki ignored her sarcastic tone and brushed past her to unlock his door.

"Wait a minute…" Anko was staring at him with wide eyes, it finally clicking that the older man was just getting home and hadn't been in his apartment the entire time she had been causing a ruckus out in the hallway. "Where are you coming from?"

"I don't know what's going on in your head that you think that would ever be any of your business."

"Hold on, hold on." A wicked grin was spreading across her already slightly insane features. "Are you doing a walk of shame right now?"

Ibiki popped open his door. "Good god – "

"Holy shit, you are!"

"Goodbye, Anko."

"Oh my god! And this entire time I thought you were a eunuch or something!"

"What!?" Ibiki froze and snapped his head back to stare at her angrily.

Anko continued grinning a big Cheshire cat grin at him. "You're just always so stoic and detached – "

"You work in T&I with me, Anko. You know it's my job to be that way."

"Well, yeah, but I just found it weird that you never let loose even a little and took care of your 'baser' needs outside of work."

Ibiki held back a disgusted groan and turned back around. "I'll see you at work."

"Who is it!?"

But the inquisitive kunoichi was answered by having the wooden door slammed in her face.

Iruka arrived to class right on time. It left him a bit flustered as he was accustomed to arriving early and getting things set up well before his students started filing in, but at least he was on time. He didn't know how many hits his credibility could take in the course of a week before his class just up and revolted against him and tried to take over the school.

Having spent the previous day going over tedious lectures, even he was ready to let everyone outside for some actual field practice. The class cheered uproariously and stampeded out the door before he could actually tell them what exactly they were going to be practicing, and Iruka sighed through his nose, marching out the door behind them.

When they reached the kunai training fields, he spent a good 15 minutes trying to coral everyone into straight lines. It was another 10 before he could get his entire safety lecture out of the way without having to stop and confiscate various training kunai that were being flung without permission. Once he was satisfied that the troublemakers were deprived of weapons, and everyone was listening raptly, he stepped forward to demonstrate the formation he wanted them to throw in. He was slightly put off when he reached for the dulled training kunai he always kept in his inside vest pocket and pulled out a smoke bomb instead. Then he remembered that he still didn't have his own vest… So he regrouped quickly and pulled real kunai out of his pouch and demonstrated with those, with strict instructions that they were for demonstrations purposes only and even those students who possessed real kunai were NOT allowed to use them during this exercise.

Iruka stepped back and leaned against a tree, letting his mind wander a bit as his class fell into a fairly good rhythm of practice shots. Not having Naruto in his class anymore meant he didn't have to monitor the throwing of weapons quite as closely as he used to. Konohamaru might have been a bit of a show-off, but at least his aim was better than Naruto's had been, even if he was still a bit of a brazen klutz.

The chuunin ran his fingers over the vest he was currently wearing, hands diving into various pockets, looking for any sort of clue as to who the owner could be. It wasn't Kakashi's, that much he was certain of. Kakashi had to have his own vest back by now, if only because Iruka had yet to have him come knocking, demanding an explanation about the mission scroll, and also because he hadn't heard anything about a deranged jounin with silver hair tearing around the village on a murderous rampage, looking for a missing Icha Icha Paradise book. But if Kakashi was back in possession of his own vest and Iruka didn't have his vest back, whose vest did he have and who had his?

The wheels in his head turned rapidly, trying to recall the details of the day he had lost it. He blushed hotly to himself as he realized he had been so distracted by – ahem – other activities and thoughts, he hadn't been paying proper attention to his surroundings like a good shinobi. The brown eyes closed as he dug deeper into his memory – it all had to be there, whether he knew it or not. He just had to focus…

He had come to the lake, and Kakashi was swimming… why was he swimming? He was with someone. Who would he go swimming with?

The tally sheet he had found… Kakashi and… Me… who was me? What were they keeping track of?

Iruka's forehead scrunched in concentration. He felt like he was missing something so obvious – like the answer was on the brink of bashing him upside the head and screaming "DUH!" But it just… wasn't…

"Why do you have two vests?"

"It's just a spare vest."

"Why are you carrying around a spare vest in the middle of the night?"

Iruka's eyes flew open as he, of course, mentally smacked himself. 'Gai-sensei! Duh!'

Then the sensei's eyebrows knit together in confusion and worry. It had been several days since the incident. Surely, Gai had noticed something amiss about the vest he now had in his possession. 'And found the mission scroll… And realized who it belonged to…' Iruka gulped. Why else would he have shown up at Iruka's window late at night holding an extra vest? 'But… wait… They had a mission… Maybe…'

Maybe it wasn't Gai's? Maybe that was coincidence. After all, Gai could be a little weird – It wasn't like it was outside the realm of possibility for him to just be carrying around a spare vest like he had claimed. But who else would be the owner of the vest Iruka was currently wearing…? No, it had to be him… But why hadn't he come back to confront the teacher since then?

'Oh shit.' A thought slammed into Iruka's already pounding head, making him feel nauseated. Gai was Kakashi's friend – his best friend. If he had figured out what was going on… wouldn't he tell Kakashi? Iruka needed to find the taijutsu master now.

"Class, we're breaking for early lunch! Get back to the academy!" A chorus of groans went through the crowd of pumped-up children. "If I come back and you're all being well-behaved, we will resume kunai practice after lunch. If not, you will be writing an essay."

Amid a few more grumbles, his students seemed to get the hint and started trekking back inside. Satisfied, Iruka sprang off.

But he couldn't find Gai anywhere. He didn't know where the jounin lived, but he doubted he was at home anyway. So he checked the training fields, but didn't find him. That didn't mean much though, since Gai's 'training' methods were so obscure, he often ditched the traditional training grounds in favor of making up unique exercises all over town… This could take forever…

So in lieu of trying to directly track down the green-clad man, Iruka decided it might be more effective to find the rest of Team 9 and ask about their sensei's whereabouts. But that proved fruitless too…

However, in the course of his frantic search, he happened upon Team 8 bickering amongst themselves without their sensei around. Deciding that he was running out of time before he'd be forced to go back to the academy and make sure his class hadn't burned the building down in his absence, Iruka appeared in front of them, effectively scaring the crap out of the three genin, and Kiba and Shino parted from arguing while Hinata blushed hotly. "Ah, Iruka-sensei!" Kiba looked like he was terrified of being yelled at. "We were just on our way to training. Kurenai-sensei said she'd be late today so it's not like we're dawdling or anything - !"

Iruka ignored the boy's poor excuse, determining that he would inform Kurenai of the reason for their tardiness later, and turned to lock his gaze on Hinata. "Hinata."

The poor girl practically jumped out of her skin at being addressed directly. "Y-yes, Iruka-sensei?" she squeaked out.

"Do you know where Neji and his team are training today?"

Hinata blinked, not having expected the question, but she quickly recovered and shook her head hurriedly. "No, Iruka-sensei. Neji isn't in the village."

Iruka felt his heart sink.

"All of Team 9 is on a mission right now."

Iruka ran a weary hand over his face. "I see…"

"If it helps, they're due back on Saturday," the young girl offered timidly, obviously distressed at not being of help to her former teacher.

Iruka finally smiled down at her. "Thank you, Hinata." He raked his gaze over the entire genin squad. "You guys should be on your way."

"Yes, Iruka-senei!" rang out in chorus, and the kids scampered away.

Well… on the one hand, Gai wouldn't be blowing his cover any time soon… But on the other… he now had almost a whole week ahead of him to worry about what would happen when the jounin returned…

Kakashi shoved his hands in his pockets and turned a tired eye up to the sky. He had been wallowing in front of the memorial stone for almost 3 hours and it was, quite honestly, getting tiresome. He had no real desire to go train his team, but he had even less of a desire to go home and sulk some more.

He felt pathetic enough as it was that he had gotten so tangled up in an emotional roller coaster with Iruka. He felt even more pathetic that he had had the chuunin right at his fingertips and somehow managed to fuck it up. He didn't know if it was because he had pushed him too fast physically, or if he was too socially awkward for the teacher to handle, or if Genma was just super smooth and managed to sweep him off his feet right from under Kakashi's genius nose, but clearly something had changed Iruka's mind since their initial kiss. And, short of bursting into the younger man's home (again) and demanding a run-down of his reasons, the jounin had realized that he'd never actually know why. And dwelling on it was just making him crazy and feel even more pathetic that he was having such a strong reaction to some stupid little crush.

His heart tried to argue that his crush was far from little, but his logical brain was trying its hardest to beat it back into submission. He was freakin' Sharingan Kakashi, for crying out loud! He could kill a man 18 different ways just using a pinecone. It was not a big deal if some chuunin schoolteacher didn't want to be his boyfriend…

Really.

Honestly.

It wasn't.

Or so he had been trying to convince his old team for the past few hours… It really had to be sign of something if you needed multiple hours to argue with dead people…

Shaking his wild silver hair resolutely, the jounin wandered off to meet his team. He popped into the clearing with his normal, curved eye smile and spouted off his most recent lame reason for being late. He pretended not to notice the very strange fact that his students looked shocked to death to even see him, and the even stranger fact that not a single one of them called him liar or said a word about his stupid excuse… He also purposely ignored Sakura's sad glances and the two boys' concerned and concentrated studying of him. And he ordered them to their next job, and fell back into his same ol' same ol' routine, trying to push the brunette sensei out of his mind with the sweet, lulling comfort of familiarity.

The rest of the week passed by surprisingly quickly for Iruka. Now knowing where his vest was, and knowing that he could do nothing to get it back for awhile, had actually taken that burden off his shoulders, and the thought of where his mission scroll could be floating around, waiting to fall into the wrong hands, was no longer weighing on his mind. Ibiki hadn't come back to beat the snot out of him, so he figured the older man didn't remember their 'intimate' interaction, and so much the better…

Genma hadn't worked with him all week and seemed to be avoiding him for the most part. Not that that made Iruka happy, since he considered Genma a friend, but at least he didn't have to deal with the weird stares or awkward chit-chat that was sure to accompany his rejection of the special jounin's invitation to the social after his already-weird reaction to their kiss. And Kakashi…

Well, as far as he knew, Kakashi was back to living a perfectly normal existence. He hadn't seen him around at all, but he had run into Naruto the next evening and been told that the boy's jounin sensei was back to training them just as hard and giving them just as obnoxious missions as he had before. Unfortunately, though, the rumors about him and Kakashi hadn't quite died down yet… Kotetsu could sure get through a lot of people when he got ahold of really good gossip. And what was juicier gossip than who the famous Kakashi Hatake had their eye on?

Iruka had dodged subtle (and some not-so-subtle) questions and comments throughout the week, but he had no idea how Kakashi was faring on his end. He actually wondered if anyone had the guts to go ask Kakashi himself about it. Either way, the copy-nin hadn't shown up to him again to discuss it.

He got off his shift in the mission room on Saturday, not having seen or heard anything of Team Gai's return yet. Which was disappointing, but there was really nothing he could do at that point, except go home and get ready for the dance.

The teacher 'hmm-ed' in mild distress and chewed on his lower lip. He was a little embarrassed to admit that he was worried about his looks. He never really gave much thought to them, but 90% of the reason for that was because he generally wore the same standard shinobi wear day after day. He didn't own a whole lot of civilian clothes, and he felt a little weird when he looked in the mirror while donning them. He had chosen plain black slacks and a deep red, button-up shirt. It wasn't the most elegant of outfits, but he still felt like he was far too dressed up.

But he supposed that in the context of going to a dance, it was probably good to be looking a little fancy. At least, he hoped so. He really had no clue as to what proper dance protocol was. Being a teacher since only a short time after being promoted to chuunin, he hadn't been on a lot of out of village missions, especially missions that required immersion in social life and functions. And Hidden Leaf didn't really put forth the effort for such things… until Tsunade had gotten bored and decided she was going to make up excuses to drink…

The last time he had been to a 'dance' was when he was 11 and the academy had decided to hold a holiday dance for the students. Of course, his dumb, prankster ass had ruined it for everyone by justuing all the mistletoe in the room into trapping people underneath it and not releasing them until they kissed. That didn't go over tremendously well with a group of pre-teens, half of whom still looked at the opposite sex as though they had cooties, and the other half who were going through so many hormones that their disposition rivaled Jiraiya's. This caused a lot of perverted kids trapping unsuspecting classmates under the mistletoe and basically traumatizing them, leading to lots of tears and lots of confused teachers wondering why these children were just standing under mistletoe if they didn't to be kissed – until his homeroom teacher and the hokage himself got stuck under one such branch and couldn't move until they pecked.

Iruka had been suspended for a week, and the academy had since push a kibosh on any school functions that had any sort of 'romantic' undertone s – such as dances.

Man, he used to be such a little asshole…

Iruka's face heated up and he almost laughed in a crazed manner as he thought about his plans for the night. Here he was, planning to go to a dance with a colleague, with the end goal being to 'trap' said colleague into a kiss.

He startled slightly and took a few deep breaths to calm himself when he heard the knock at the door that signaled the arrival of his 'date.'

History had a funny way of repeating itself.

Hope this wasn't too terribly boring. I noticed it was a lot of long paragraphs and not a plethora of dialogue... hmm... But next chapter will be the Shinobi Social, the resolution of Asuma's kiss, and hopefully Ebisu's kiss. I have a feeling it's going to be an extra long chapter, so look forward to that!

I'm currently going through quite a few big life changes. I ended a 2 year relationship a couple weeks ago, am planning to move from the place I've been in for 6 years, planning a new business venture and a cross-country trip... sooo, I've got a lot on my plate, and since I like to write chapters in large chunks, I'm often at a loss for several hours worth of time to sit down and get out the ideas all at once. But I'll really try to get the next chapter up within the next month. The start of July is when things are really gonna start going down, so I'd like to get you a nice, long, interesting chapter before then!

Peace!

DixieGoddess