Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Iruka's obsession ❯ Part 2 ( Chapter 2 )

A/N- I got reviews so I had to post.

 

part 2

 

Iruka had started to avoid Kakashi, because his guilty conscience would not let him face the man without turning two shades of red and stuttering like a tongue-tied idiot. He'd tried to form half a dozen of ways of confessing his sin, but every time he met Kakashi he'd mumble something and look away. He'd even written a letter once but had thrown it away after he'd absentmindedly doodled hearts dripping blood on the margin -some of them had little kunai's stuck in them.

 

Not that there had been that many opportunities for Iruka to sit and talk with Kakashi, with Sasuke running away to Orochimaru and the new Hokage swearing in…and then swearing her way through office with the vocabulary of a drunken sailor. By the time things had started to settle down once more, Iruka had let his feelings stew inside until he was sure he was going to die of guilt turned septic.

 

It had been rather awkward between them, at least from Iruka's point of view, until the day Mizuki had decided on a prison break and Iruka had been assigned to hunt him down. He'd walked into the Hokage's office ready for anything but for Kakashi to take his hand. Iruka's heart had stopped and he'd thought he was never going to live beyond that point until Kakashi had dropped a pug onto him. A talking pug who gave Iruka a severe case of low self-esteem. The entire fiasco had escalated to the point it had become a full-fledged mission with Naruto and Kakashi's favorite nin-dog.

 

Afterwards, Iruka decided to own up. It had been Mizuki who'd helped him make up his mind. He had seen signs which he had ignored, and he had heard the rumors about the ninja in Mizuki's group that had died of a leg injury. Iruka had felt guilty in the end that he had looked the other way until it was too late. If he had acted when he'd had the changce, just maybe, Mizuki would not be a scrawny old man in prison. Iruka was getting tired of not facing problems. So he was going to own up to Kakashi that he'd done the unforgivable.

 

He had done something wrong, and it was high time he made it right, though he had no idea how. Perhaps Kakashi would force Iruka to forget what his face looked like. Smooth, unblemished, looking so young…. However, Iruka thought with a frown, as he remembered something unpleasant, there were no advanced jutsus for making anyone forget--though Ibiki had a heck of a lot of techniques to help people remember. Unless the copy-nin's collection of a thousand techniques included brain alteration and lobotomy.

 

But he'd plucked up his courage and approached Kakashi with all his good intentions and his strongest flak jacket. He found Kakashi on the top of a tree with a full view of the main gate through which he could see the backs of the three genins going off on a mission. He smiled when he saw the distinctive orange suit that could only belong to Naruto and long black hair which meant Neji. The third genin he identified as Tenten and the fourth their client who.

 

“Kakashi-san,” Iruka said a little awkwardly. “Naruto said he was going to hunt a ghost.”

 

“In the Bird country, no less,” Kakashi said without looking up from his book. “I hope Neji doesn't get too attached to anything there.”

 

“Really,” said Iruka, guilt making him extremely touchy. “There's no need for you to make fun of that boy's bird obsession.” The moment the words were out of his mouth he regretted them and had the urge to bite his tongue. Kakashi had not mentioned Neji's weakness, he had.

 

“What can I do for you, Iruka-sensei?” Kakashi said abruptly, his attention reverting to his little book. Iruka found it disconcerting to speak with someone who was clearly not paying attention to him.

 

“I…” Iruka paused and searched for the proper words. “Came to thank you for lending Pakkun to hunt for Mizuki.”

 

“Uh,” Kakashi looked up from his book, and Iruka blushed crimson and looked down at his feet. So he'd followed Kakashi all the way up a tree when he'd run into the man numerous times and could have told him on any of those occasions. Kakashi nodded and returned to his book, turning a page carefully. “How are you?” he asked casually, almost as if he was reading something off the book.

 

It was Iruka's turn to go “Uh.” He looked up sharply at the question, but all he could see was the spiky silver hair as the jounin looked over the gate at the four dots in the distance. “I'm fine,” Iruka said at a loss for anything to say.

 

“You were close to Mizuki,” Kakashi said, his eye still fixed to the horizon. “Some say you were more than friends.”

 

“That's ridiculous,” Iruka snapped, his defenses going up as his face burned as if he was on fire. He'd had a crush on Mizuki once, but hadn't acted on it, luckily, since shortly afterwards, Mizuki had introduced everyone to his fiancé and …he'd been…a little hurt. But that had been a long time ago, and he had a new crush who was probably more dangerous than the previous one.

 

“I also heard your field skills were a little rusty,” Kakashi continued ruthlessly. “Naruto had to take a hit to protect you.”

 

Iruka bristled, colored and wished the tree branch they were in would absorb him quickly as nutrition. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, then snapped it shut audibly. No matter what, Naruto was Kakashi's student and he, more than Iruka, was responsible for the genin's safety. “I've been training,” he said instead, not wanting to admit it but at the same time unable to keep it in. “I guess nine-year-olds don't exactly present much of a danger for me so…”

 

“Pakkun says you've got excellent chakra control and can detect illusions easily,” Kakashi said, sounding bored.

 

Later on, thinking back, Iruka was sure Kakashi had meant to be nice, but at that moment, it sounded exactly like the praise he'd give to a rather dimwitted student at school.

 

“You know,” Iruka said hurriedly, anger clouding his commonsense. “I don't really approve of your reading porn in public.” It wasn't exactly a great start, Iruka realized the moment the words were out of his mouth, and he swore to himself furiously. Everyone knew Kakashi read porn in public and no one ever said anything about it. And he had gone and reprimanded as if the great Copy-Nin were one of his students. That was just brilliant. He could see his future in black and white as everyone mourned his …

 

“I'm just glad I was out of the academy before you became a teacher,” Kakashi said with a shrug as he closed his book. “You should relax, Iruka-sensei, you look so tense.”

 

Iruka's intestines were in knots, and he was trying hard not to squirm like Konohamaru in need of a toilet break. But he kept his face blank from long experience. He knew that if he were ever to show a shard of weakness in a class full of thirty students they'd tear him to pieces in an instant. “It's just that…” he tried to explain himself, “…I see little point in…you reading such things.” He finished weakly. Now the jounin was going to be pissed that Iruka had belittled his one and only hobby or obsession.

 

“It's got more depth than you give it credit for,” Kakashi said as he looked around at the surrounding shrubbery.

 

“It does?” Iruka asked, his voice tinged with disbelief.

 

“Oh yes,” Kakashi nodded as if warming up to his theme. “Recently there has been a major change in the characters. Now the main female character is always a big-breasted blonde, and the male character's name always starts with J, and the way she screams his name when they ….”

 

“That's very disturbing,” Iruka said as he looked down at his feet, biting his lower lip to stop himself from smiling. “Do you think Tsunade reads those books?”

 

“Jiyaiya will be the first person to know,” Kakashi said slowly, and Iruka looked from under his eyelashes to look at his companion and realized he was being studied closely by a single eye. “Although she might like the sub-plot where the main couple kills a garden snake with the help of a well-placed heel on it's head.”

 

Iruka gave a short bark of laughter before he could stop himself. He did wonder about those books - in an academic way, of course. After Kakashi had started reading Icha Icha books, nearly everyone had shown a great deal of interest in them as well. If one of Konoha's' finest read it, there must be something in it worth reading. There was a horde of adoring females who read the book in the hope of discovering the secret to engaging Kakashi's interest.

 

When a student had tried to sneak his sister's copy of Icha Icha Paradise into the academy, Iruka had thrown a fit -and also thrown the student and the book out. But he'd always wondered about what was in those books. It was just that he couldn't very well ask to borrow it…could he?

 

He was curious.

 

Iruka swallowed, opened his mouth and…

 

“Well, Iruka-sensei,” said Kakashi putting his book into his waist pouch. “I'd better be going. They've gone on ahead so they won't …”

 

“You're going after them to Bird country,” Iruka said in surprise.

 

“Oh yes,” Kakashi smiled gleefully. “Maybe I can scare them on the way with a …” he looked like a small boy planning to play a trick on someone. “It'll take them some time to get there…maybe two days or so…” Kakashi was childlike in some aspects, Iruka thought. Maybe that was why he felt such …such a flutter when he saw Kakashi. Not that he'd ever felt a flutter that started in his stomach and ended in his groin every time he saw Konohamaru or the rest of his students. Now that was sick.

 

Then there was a small flare of chakra, and Kakashi was no longer there. Iruka stood there thinking of Kakashi's childish behavior and again was reminded of just how young he had looked without his mask.

 

He wondered if he should look up Kakashi's age in the mission room; there was record of every jounin, but it would look strange if someone were to catch him looking that up now. He frowned, rubbing the scar on his nose absentmindedly as he thought it over.

 

Oh, yes, there was another way of obtaining such information. School records in the basement of the Academy, and he had access to those quite easily.

 

He decided to take a look at that after his mission desk shift. He was just curious, that was all.