I know, I know, it's been a while. But I worked on the whole story over again – for the last time, I promised myself – and I like to think it is better written and more fluid now, for your reading pleasure. I highly suggest you all to read it over (especially since it,s been such a long while since the last time I updated) but that's up to you.

Anyhow, I want to warn people not to expect a lot of updates from me in the following months, since I intend to start working on a book project very soon and will probably have little time left for fanfiction. Plus, I'm still in Japan, so I'm not really productive anyway. I still intend to continue writing this story though, don't you worry. Just be patient. As always ;)

And leave reviews of course :)

Chapter 18

They Say Curiosity Killed the Cat

Kakashi sighed. He could feel the tiny ball of warm fur shift slightly against his throat as he breathed out and couldn't help but smile bitterly at the irony of the situation. There he was, Hatake Kakashi, the Great Copy nin, one of Konoha's most effective killing machine, caught in bed because he didn't have the heart to wake up and move the kitten quietly sleeping against his neck, waiting with resignation for the little pest to wake up by himself.

To think that now that he wasn't bed-ridden anymore, he still couldn't move because of a stupid kitten who couldn't tell apart his ears from the chewtoys Iruka had bought him... Because he was able to move now, the jounin remembered with some satisfaction. Tsunade herself had showed up the previous evening to examine him and had been satisfied enough with his healing process to lift up his moving interdiction. He was still forbidden to use chakra of course, but he was allowed to leave his bed and move by himself again, which was a big relief for him. Tentatively, he stretched his fingers, fighting a frown at the numbness he still felt in his muscles. The Hokage had warned him that his muscles would be atrophied from disuse after all those weeks of rest and had ordered him to stay at Iruka's for another week so that the chuunin could help him and make sure he wasn't pushing himself too far, much to his dismay. He wished he would be able to go back home already, but there was nothing he could do about it so he silently complied to the woman's wishes. Besides, living with Iruka wasn't all that bad anymore – as incredible as it sounded, the academy teacher and he were getting along rather well now and if he was to be entirely truthful with himself, the silver-haired man had to admit that he didn't mind staying there for another week or so. Especially since he would be able to tend to his daily needs by himself from now on. The prospect of not being hand-fed, washed or shaved by the chuunin anymore was making the Copy nin so happy that he didn't even have the heart to feel annoyed at the little mischievous furball for sleeping on his neck and preventing him to get up.

… Needless to say, the said furball was better not be planning to use his throat as a cushion for too long or else he would learn the hard way that Hatake Kakashi's indulgence was not limitless.

The silver-haired man suddenly heard a small chuckle. Looking up, he saw Umino Iruka slouching against the doorway, staring at him with a playful smirk.

"Awww, what a cute sight you make together," the chuunin teased him with a grin, "You really are inseparable, aren't you?"

Kakashi glared at him for good measure and the brown-haired man chuckled some more as he walked toward the bed and took the sleeping cat away. "Come on, let's get you dressed; breakfast's ready."

The jounin bit down his sudden irrational desire to tell the man he didn't need his help to get dressed and nodded silently. Slowly, the silver-haired man sat up on the bed and started unbuttoning his pajama shirt with some difficulty, inwardly cursing his fingers for refusing to cooperate in front of the academy teacher. But fortunately for Kakashi's pride, Iruka didn't try to help and waited patiently for the man to be done before he helped him to remove his pants and put on some standard jounin uniform, which proved to be far more problematic to do than removing the shirt in his state. Then, the jounin slowly got up on his feet. His legs felt weak and shaky under him but at least he was able to stand up, which was far more than he had hoped for.

"Do you think you'll be able to walk on your own?" the chuunin asked him silently and Kakashi nodded once again, feeling a bit more confident now that he was already up. But as soon as he tried to lift one foot to walk, his legs started to wobble and gave out under him. The next second Iruka was by his side, holding the older man up to prevent him from falling. The academy teacher then passed Kakashi's arm around his shoulder and put him back on his feet, lifting him with such easiness that Kakashi felt even more vulnerable and weaker as he leaned heavily on the strong chuunin's side.

"… Or maybe not," the Copy nin mumbled awkwardly in the man's arms and Iruka laughed softly.

"It's okay, let's just take it slowly, hn?" he said encouragingly to the Sharigan user and with his help, Kakashi managed to steady his legs enough to walk awfully slowly to the kitchen, where he let himself fall heavily on a chair. As Iruka served him breakfast, the jounin hoped that he wouldn't be so helplessly pathetic for too long; how was he supposed not to need the academy teacher's help anymore if he couldn't even stand on his own damned feet?

Uneasily, Kakashi stared at his breakfast. It was just juice with toasts, something the Copy nin was quite glad for because he doubted he had enough coordination left in his state to eat cereals or groats. Nevertheless, he felt somewhat uneasy and shy as he took off his mask and took a bite into his toast. He knew it was stupid – Iruka had already seen his face plenty of times before. In fact, there wasn't a part of his body the chuunin hadn't seen before – but Kakashi pushed that thought away. He didn't want to go there.

It just felt different, somehow. Because back then, having his face revealed without his consent had been humiliating, sure, but stripping himself of his mask in front of the chuunin made him feel strangely self-conscious and that embarrassed him. It made him feel shy, even. Somehow he felt more naked at that precise moment than he had ever felt before the tanned man, even though it made little sense to him. The academy teacher must have felt it because as soon as he sat down, he immersed himself into the newspaper and never looked up at the Copy nin. Kakashi warily eyed the chuunin for a while before allowing himself to relax and enjoy his simple breakfast, inwardly thanking every god he knew for the other man's thoughtfulness and respect for his privacy.

They ate in a rather companionable silence for a while. When Kakashi was done eating his toast, the brown-haired man spoke up without looking up from his journal.

"You aren't drinking your cranberry juice, Kakashi-sensei?"

The jounin looked up at the reading man and didn't even bother to hide his grimace.

"You aren't drinking it either."

Iruka raised an amused eyebrow at his journal. "Well I'm not the one who was told by the Godaime to drink cranberry juice."

"But my chakra channels are mostly healed right now," the man almost whined.

"Yet you still look weak to me, Kakashi-sensei," Iruka answered back with such obviously fake concern that the jounin couldn't help but glare. But he knew better than to argue any further and started to sip the foul reddish beverage, feeling annoyed at the small satisfied smile tugging on the chuunin's lips as he kept on reading his journal.

Suddenly, somebody knocked on the front door and Iruka put down his journal and got up to meet his visitor. At the very moment the man's back was out of sight, Kakashi took the opportunity to drag his chair as silently as possible to the sink and emptied his glass into it. When Iruka came back thirty seconds later with a package in his hands, he eyed suspiciously the jounin's suddenly empty glass and the man did his best to look perfectly innocent. Which only got him a sceptical raised eyebrow. Damn, he should have known that looking innocent wouldn't work on that man: he was an academy teacher. But to Kakashi's surprise, the chuunin then smirked at him.

"… Well, if you're feeling better then you should help me washing the dishes, don't you think?"

Sometimes, Hatake Kakashi wondered why people thought he was such a genius.

---

"Kakashi-sensei?"

No response.

"Kakashi-sensei."

Still no response.

"KAKASHI-SENSEI!"

The silver-haired man grunted in acknowledgement, not even bothering to look up from his book.

"I'm going out, do you need anything?"

The jounin let out another noncommittal grunt that Iruka translated into a no. With a small amused smile, the chuunin put on his coat and left the apartment. When he had lent his first book to the Copy nin, he hadn't imagined in his wildest dreams that the jounin would like them so much. In only two days he had managed to wolf down four of Iruka's favourite detective stories and was working his way through his fifth one. The academy teacher had wished to show the jounin that there were tons of books more interesting and better written than the Icha Icha series; well, he had been successful. So successful in fact that at two in the morning the previous night, Iruka had been forced to threaten to take the jounin's book away if he wouldn't close the damned thing and go to bed. The chuunin had a bitter smile at the thought. Well, he guessed that dealing with an unreasonable Kakashi was a small price to pay to get the silver-haired man to start reading something else than porn.

But, as Iruka soon discovered, Hatake kakashi's new-found obsession for reading didn't mean that he had given up on his old reading habits. Quite the opposite. Because no matter how engrossed the jounin was with the books he was reading, Iruka knew that at the very moment he put one foot outside his apartment, the book was laying forgotten on the couch as the Copy nin indulged into his new favourite activity: the Icha Icha Hunt.

It was actually quite amusing to see the man go at it. Every time he thought that the chuunin was not looking, the silver-haired man was combing the whole apartment for his orange book. Iruka even caught him looking in the kettle for it the previous day and found it enormously amusing. He had meant hiding the man's porn as a punishment but strangely enough, the Copy nin seemed to have even more fun than him at this little game, if the way his uncovered eye gleamed with gleefulness when he started hunting again for his book was any indication. Iruka couldn't help thinking he was looking like an over-grown child who had never played hide and seek before and had to admit that it was somewhat cute, in a twisted kind of way. He guessed that the fact that book hunting was the only activity he could do that allowed him to use both his brain and his ninja skills to avoid getting caught accounted a lot for the man's gleefulness.

One would have thought that Umino Iruka wouldn't have allowed – and even encouraged between the lines – the silver-haired man to go through his belongings after what had happened between them. But it wasn't like the brown-haired man had anything interesting to hide from the healing man either – he sure didn't mind the Copy nin going through his lesson plans and his kitchen tools if it amused him. So the chuunin was okay with having a playful Sharigan user combing his apartment - as long as he didn't search his bedroom, he had made that quite clear from the beginning. Besides, the ex-anbu's game could only be good for his healing process and it prevented the man front reading all day long, which wouldn't be healthy. So Iruka let Kakashi indulge into his newest little hobby and it kept the Copy nin happily entertained. Interestingly enough, it seemed like the hardest it was for him to find his book, the more interested he was getting, as if loosing was actually stimulating him. Iruka inwardly smirked at the thought. He was quite proud of his hiding spot – no matter how hard he tried, he knew that jounin would never think of looking there, he was quite sure.

Iruka put in the back of his mind thoughts of the silver-haired man when he turned around his block and henged himself into a fifteen years-old teenager – he wasn't careless enough to walk around without a disguise in Konoha's streets anymore. Then, he headed for the mission room to hand in his latest report on the jounin's healing process, hoping that nobody would see through his disguise and that he would be able to be back on time to make dinner.

The chuunin reached the mission room without a fuss, much to his relief, and was greeted by a few knowing smirks from his coworkers as he entered the mostly empty and miraculously Genma-free room.

"Fancying a new look again, Iruka-kun? Trying to confound your fans?" a coworker teased him and Iruka frowned as he henged back into himself.

"You would if you had people like Anko hunting you down," he answered shortly as he gave his report to the grinning desk chuunin.

"Thank you for your hard work. Oh, by the way, the Hokage stopped by a few hours ago. She said that she'd like you to drop by her office to have a word when you would have some time."

Iruka's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Did she?"

"Yeah, we were wondering what that was about too. D'you know?"

Iruka stared defiantly at them. "Do I look like I'd tell you even if I knew?"

"Told you the direct approach wouldn't work," a chuunin mildly reprimanded the other man.

"Well it was worth a try, wasn't it?" Iruka snorted at that comment.

"You guys spend far too much time with Genma," the academy teacher mumbled as left the room and jumped his way through the village's roofs to the massive tower, pondering about the same thing as his curious coworkers. What could the Godaime want with him? Such an informal request to see him was unusual, to say the very least. And very un-Godaime-ish. He didn't know why, he knew it was stupid, but he had a bad feeling about this…

Shrugging his paranoid worries, the chuunin walked past the silent guards posted in front of the Tower's imposing entrance doors and to the woman's office. Before he could even lift his arm to knock on the door, the Hokage was already telling him to come in, a command he complied to with mild uneasiness – somehow, he couldn't shrug the feeling that he had just walked into a trap.

Behind her huge desk and half a dozen of alarmingly high piles of paperwork, the blonde woman greeted him with a tired smile.

"You wished to see me, Hokage-sama?"

"Yes, I've been meaning to have a word with you Iruka-kun," the sannin answered lazily. "Don't stay there standing at the doorway, take a seat."

The chuunin walked to one of the large cushioned chair the woman waved at and sat down, trying to ignore the small voice inside of his head telling him to run while he still could. Why was he feeling so paranoid anyway? The blonde woman probably only wanted to have news of how things were going with Kakashi. There was nothing to get so worked up over. Seriously, he hoped he was not starting to lose his touch already; he had thirty pre-genins to go back to in a week, he couldn't afford not to be sharp.

"So," the Godaime started off casually, "Are you and the brat getting along any better?"

Iruka relaxed at the predictable question. "We are getting along well enough, Hokage-sama."

The Hokage raised an eyebrow at him. "So you are on friendly terms now, am I to understand?"

"… 'friendly' would be stretching it, Hokage-sama."

The sannin eyed him thoughtfully for a long moment and Iruka stared at her desk, refusing to acknowledge the mildly sceptical eyebrow raised at him. Kakashi and him sure enough were not friends; true, they had developed over the weeks a strange kind of silent understanding of each other and were getting along surprisingly well lately, but that didn't mean they were friends. At the best, they were on good terms, he'd admit so much. But certainly not on friendly terms.

"And how are the blind dates going? Have you found yourself a nice girlfriend yet?" The women suddenly asked and the question caught Iruka by surprise.

"Er, no, I haven't," the chuunin answered a bit uneasily, feeling suddenly wary about where that discussion was headed.

"What's wrong with you, Iruka?"

"Pardon me?"

"What's wrong with you? You have the whole single female population of the village at your feet to choose from and yet none of them ever seem to catch your eye."

Iruka fidgeted, feeling increasingly uneasy under the Godaime's piecing hazel eyes. Why was she staring at him so seriously? He had been asked this question several times before, but somehow now it just felt… wrong. There was something off about this whole discussion. Iruka couldn't put his finger on what it was, but he was starting to feel anxious about what that informal meeting was truly about.

"…I don't know, Hokage-sama."

The woman let herself fall back into her huge armchair and stared at the chuunin, an unreadable expression on her deceitfully young features.

"Have you ever asked yourself why none of these women seemed to turn you on, Iruka? Have you ever considered that maybe those women don't catch your eye because you have different tastes?"

Iruka frowned warily but remained silent – he didn't know what to answer to that. Sure, he had asked himself those questions countless times, but somehow he couldn't shake off the feeling that there was something unsaid, some nasty surprise waiting for him in store. When he wouldn't answer, the Hokage bent forward him and spoke up quietly, her piercing eyes never leaving his.

"Have you ever considered that maybe women might just be your thing, Iruka?"

It took the chuunin's brain five seconds to understand the implications behind he blonde's words and when he did, he felt shocked panic spread through him.

"W-what?!" he squealed in protest and the Hokage gave him a dull look.

"Come on Iruka, you're what? Twenty five? Twenty six? There's no need to panic about it like some pre-teen in denial."

"I'm afraid you're mistaken, Hokage-sama," Iruka said nervously, trying his best to pull himself together. "I'm not… not interested in men that way."

"I didn't say you were, I was just speculating, that's all. But if you're not, then maybe you should ask yourself why you always react so strongly when the subject is brought up."

The academy teacher gaped at her, at a loss for words. He felt himself deflating and let himself slump in his chair, his tired mind feeling strangely foggy.

"You think…? But… I…" he mumbled in a small voice, frowning in confusion.

"It's okay to be confused, Iruka," the Godaime reassured him quietly. "You never quite took the time to think about it before, haven't you?"

The chuunin shook his head a bit warily and the woman nodded knowingly. Then, she grabbed a small flat paper parcel and put it in front of the brown-haired man.

"I have a mission for you. Here."

Perking up at the mention of a mission, Iruka took the thick envelope and opened it. His eyes widened and the next moment, he was closing the envelope in a rush, blushing furiously.

"WHAT!?" he shouted with indignant embarrassment. "W-what's that?!"

The Godaime smirked at the younger man. "Judging by your mortification, I guess that you have a pretty good idea what it is. As for what to do with it, I think it's pretty self-explanatory."

The academy teacher gaped at the woman as if she had grown a second head. "You - You can't be serious?!"

"Do I look like I'm kidding?"

"What kind of mission is this?! You're asking me to – to read porn!? It has to be a bad joke!"

"Get over it already. It's not like it's the first time you see a porn mag, now isn't it?" she asked him flatly and the man's shoulders fell.

"Of course not. But…" Iruka's eyes went to the seemingly innocent brown envelope and he grimaced.

"I don't want to know what you think about it. I expect your mission report on my desk in four days."

At those words, the already appalled man blanched. "Mission... report?"

She smirked at him with blatant amusement "Oh, don't worry, I don't want a detailed report on your, ah, impressions – you can keep that information for you. I just want a description of each page of each magazine. To make sure that you actually go through them. Hopefully, it'll help you to make your mind."

The chuunin gave her a disbelieving look and the blond woman snorted with amusement.

"You're gonna thank me for this one of those days, you know. Okay, you're dismissed. Get the hell out of here."

Iruka stared at the rather smug-looking Hokage and then at the evil envelope on his lap and wondered in despondency how many kittens he had strangled his previous life to deserve this.

----

Hatake Kakashi was thinking.

It shouldn't be that hard. There were only so many places where one could hide a book – and an orange one at that too. Yet he couldn't find it. He had looked up everywhere for it – he even rummaged through the clean towels cabinet and the wastebasket. The only place he hadn't combed was Iruka's bedroom, as the man had made it quite clear that his room was off-limits. He couldn't have hidden it there, now couldn't he? No, he wouldn't do that. The Icha Icha had to be somewhere else in the apartment. He must have overlooked the hiding spot, that was all.

Kakashi smiled mischievously. True, Iruka hadn't lied about his hiding talents; wherever he had hidden the book, it was a damn good spot. That was practically why it was so fun to look for it.

As the jounin was mentally calculating the dimensions of the apartment to make sure that there was no secret rooms hidden somewhere between the walls, he heard the tale-tell sound of the front door being unlocked. As quickly as his still a bit rusty muscles allowed him, the silver-haired man rushed to the chuunin's small living room, where he pretended to be reading his book like a good boy. Not that he was fooling anyone, but he liked the thrill. I wouldn't be the same if he was to go through Iruka's drawers under his nose now wouldn't it?

Kakashi heard his caretaker close the door behind him and walk into the kitchen and continued to read where he had stopped when the man had left an hours or so ago, as Detective Jones was interrogating the victim's old neighbour. As he was starting to get engrossed by Jones' sharp questions again, the jounin got distracted by the unusual absence of sounds in the apartment. The chuunin was in the kitchen, but he wasn't making a noise. Strange. Shrugging it off, the jounin went back to his book without a second thought.

One would think that it was easier to immerse oneself into a book when there were no random annoying sounds to distract them. Yet, the unusual absence of any dishes being washed, lesson plans being written or even tea being sipped seemed more distracting to the Copy nin than could ever had been a construction team putting down some of his host's walls. Because it was juste wrong for Umino Iruka to be there but to produce no sound. When a few more minutes passed by in absolute silence, Kakashi just gave up on reading altogether, closed his book and walked to the kitchen to see what was going on.

Curiously, he poked his head into the kitchen and unsurprisingly discovered that there was absolutely nothing going on; the brown-haired man was standing in the middle of the kitchen and staring at the stove, seemingly lost in thoughts. Thus explaining the silence.

"Welcome back, Iruka-sensei."

The jounin's soft-spoken greeting seemed to startle the brown-haired man, who for some reason appeared to be unusually nervous.

"Oh, Kakashi-sensei. Uh, thanks. How was your day?"

The silver-haired man shrugged and leaned casually on the threshold. "Fine. What are you doing?"

"What I'm doing…?" Iruka blinked dumbly at him. "Oh! Huh, I was… just about to make dinner. Thinking about it, you know."

"That's why instead of buying groceries, you went to the bookstore?" Kakashi asked teasingly as he pointed a brown back that obviously contained magazines laying forgotten on the kitchen table. The words were barely out of his mouth that the jounin got the most interesting reaction from the younger man. At the mention of the seemingly innocent paper bag, the chuunin's eyes widened and his face positively drained from all colours. Then panic clouded his features and before Kakashi even understood what was going on, he made a dive for the bag and put it out of the jounin's reach.

"No! Er, I mean, yes! Yes, I went to the bookstore and I bought a cooking book," The chuunin explained hastily, obviously trying not to sound too suspicious but failing at it miserably. Kakashi raised an eyebrow at the quite unexpected overreaction and bad lie but didn't comment. Obviously, the academy teacher really didn't want to talk about whatever was in that bag, so Kakashi wasn't going to bug him about it. Nodding, he turned around and went back to the couch where he picked up his book again, fully intending to forget about the strange incident and go back to his fictional characters.

Minutes went by and somehow, the Copy nin found himself unable to concentrate on the novel's exciting plotline anymore. For some reason, he couldn't help thinking about Iruka's suspicious reaction, wondering what the hell there could have been in that simple bag for the honest and straightforward man to react so defensively. For Umino Iruka to fail so miserably to hide his distress, the content of the brown envelope must have been quite upsetting. But what would upset the man to that point?

Sighing with frustration, Kakashi tried for the tenth time to focus his attention again on his reading material, but to no avail. Somehow his mind kept on drifting back to the contents of that stupid bag, the seemingly innocent brown envelope nagging him and laughing of his pointless attempts to distract himself from what was going on in the kitchen.

Suddenly, the silver-haired man heard a frustrated sigh and the banging sound of something being thrown into the kitchen wastebasket. The next thing he knew, the embarrassed-looking chuunin was slamming his bedroom door behind him, leaving a very perplexed Copy nin to stare blankly at the said door. He blinked at it, and then his eyes went to the now empty kitchen doorway.

They said curiosity killed the cat. Well Kakashi wasn't a cat, but he was curious as hell about what was in that damn envelope that upset the brown-haired man so much that he had just uncharacteristically thrown it out of anger. In the kitchen wastebasket. Six feet away from him.

Kakashi knew he should respect the academy teacher's private life. Really, he did. Wasn't it the reason why Iruka had been so angry at him to start with? But this was different. It wasn't as if he was breaking into the man's privacy, he told himself as he quickly retrieved the mysterious envelope and slid its lid open, because the chuunin had just gotten rid of the envelope when he put it into the garbage bin. So theoretically, it was anybody's to take now. Therefore there was nothing wrong for him to have a quick look.

Holding his breath in anticipation, the silver-haired man let the content of the envelope slide into his hands and stared in bewilderment at the sight that met his eyes.

A huge pair of naked boobs.

The jounin blinked again, stupefied. That was it? The chuunin had been so upset over… a porn mag? He knew that the brown-haired man was rather prude, but getting so upset over a bunch of images of naked women was overreacting. But then again, maybe he was the one who was not prude enough about those kind of things…

With a thoughtful frown, Kakashi slid the first mag to the side to see the second one and his frown instantly turned into a mildly surprised expression. Now, that was interesting… He sure had never thought that the young man's tastes went that way. But by the distress the man had demonstrated at the mention of those magazines, the silver-haired man doubted that he had been the one to buy them to start with. Huh. Curiouser and curiouser…

Who would be so out of their mind to buy and give to Umino Iruka male and female erotica? And for what reason?

As he quietly put the magazines back into the kitchen wastebasket and went back to his book, the Copy nin mused over that question and tons of others nagging him, realizing with a start that although he had stalked Umino Iruka for months, he actually knew very little about the man. Which bothered him.

Why was it bothering him? What did it change that he couldn't explain what was upsetting the chuunin so much about receiving porn? Why was he caring?

Then, Hatake Kakashi realized that in the end, he knew just as little about himself as he did about the academy teacher.

When later that day the brown-haired man came out of his room and retrieved the brown envelope from the wastebasket and brought it back to his own room, Kakashi pretended that he didn't know what was in there and the chuunin pretended that he didn't know the jounin knew. They ate in companionable silence and Kakashi helped the chuunin washing the dishes. In the evening they did a bit of small talk and had a quite nice time, and Kakashi was quite proud to say that he had somehow with his untactful words managed to make the man smile and forget about his previous embarrassment. Yet when he went to bed that night, the silver-haired man couldn't find sleep, musing about two porn mags and how they had managed to upset so much what had seemed to be yet another quite ordinary day.

To be continued. Don't forget to review :)