“Shh,” Sensei said, covering his mouth a second time, but this time with his big hand. “Don’t tell, it’s a secret.”

He went home, stumbling and confused, feeling dizzy and out of control. When his mother asked him why he was blushing he shrugged, and when his father asked, over dinner, why he was distracted he smiled.

The next day he pulled prank after prank, waiting for Sensei to tell him to wait after class, but he never did. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and he left Sensei’s class, never staying after school after that first time.

When the Kyuubi attack came, years later, his parents died, and he was alone. The second night after their death there was a knock at his empty home’s door and he answered it, looking as bedraggled and miserable as he felt. Sensei pushed him back into the house and shut the door. Sensei leaned down and he stood on his tiptoes, and this time, he kissed Sensei back.

Sensei died a few years later, and he missed him, missed kissing Sensei, missed all the pretty little secrets that made him feel like a pretty little boy. Now he kisses Sasuke, the pretty boy with pale skin and dark hair and no family. He covers Sasuke’s pretty little mouth with his smile, real soft, like Sensei would, and he leans back, smiling more. Sasuke stares back at him with big black eyes, his mouth open in a little ‘o.’ He covers that mouth with his hand, and he wonders when his hand got so big, and he admires it, big and tan compared to Sasuke’s little white hand.

“Hush,” he says, like he would to a baby, like Sensei said to him, so long ago. “It’s a secret.” And Sasuke blushes, a pretty little blush on a pretty little boy, and Iruka wants to kiss him again.

“It’s a secret.”

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