Title: Daddy is a Verb
Challenge: Love
Words: 438
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There was nothing left of Iruka's parents to bury. He was given an empty box at their funeral – just one of many in the days that followed the nine-tailed fox's defeat – and was quietly forgotten.

Naruto's first day of class was marked by three water ballons, a frog in a girl's desk (they all shrieked, so Iruka was never sure whose desk it was), a lunchtime tussle for the last fresh meat bun that somehow ended up with half of the the class sporting bloody noses and black eyes, and the worst ninjutsu form Iruka had seen since, well, himself. Whatever dislike Iruka expected to feel was lost in sheer exasperation.

The first few weeks were the worst, especially the mornings. He'd wake up and wonder why he couldn't smell coffee, and then he'd wake up further and remember that there was no one left to make it.

Iruka was usually late for school those days. Boys weren't supposed to cry, and red eyes took a while to go away.

Naruto's apartment was a mess. Half the kitchen was taken up by the overflowing trash and the dresser in the bedroom might as well not even exist. The training area managed to be the cleanest by virtue of having the least amount of stuff. And it was all Naruto's. Nothing to indicate anyone else had ever lived there, or even visited.

Iruka had come over to chew Naruto out for drawing mustaches on the pictures in the teacher's lounge. (The teachers and the rest of Naruto's class had been at the graduation ceremony.) He looked at at Naruto sitting on the bed, legs drawn up and shoulders tensed for another lecture, and then back at the piles of empty instant ramen cups.

"Want to go get some real ramen?" Iruka asked instead.

In the evenings, Iruka would go to the bookshelf in his parent's bedroom and take down the volume on monsters. He shut the windows so he wouldn't have to hear the woman next door yell for her daughter to come in, and sat between his father's pillow and his mother's. The book fell open easily to the picture of the fox.

"I hate you. I'll always hate you," Iruka promised.

"And then that perverted sage tried to get me to use my sexy-no-jutsu to sneak into a women's only hotspring. He said it wouldn't count as peeking if he was looking out for his student," Naruto poked his chopsticks in his fifth bowl of ramen and snorted. "Like I was gonna fall for that again."

Iruka smiled, and knew some promises were meant to be broken.