“Ah, Asuma-sensei, Kurenai-sensei, how… fortunate I should find you both here. Together. At the same time.” Iruka then sneezed. Loudly. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Either someone was thinking about him incessantly, or he had a cold. Both thoughts filled him with dread.

Asuma’s brown eyes and Kurenai’s red ones looked up at him, matching expressions of surprise on their faces. Their hands moved apart rapidly…had they been holding hands? Oh dear. Now he felt guilty.

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?”

“No, Iruka-sensei, of course not.” Asuma hastened to reassure him, the cigarette perched precariously on the edge of his mouth as he spoke.

Iruka sneezed again.

“Yes, it’s not as though we were on a date or anything.” Kurenai added, before glancing quickly at Asuma, and then again at Iruka. “Please, sit down.”

“Thank….aaaaaaCHO…. you.” He pulled out the chair and sat across from them at the small, round table. “My, it’s a beautiful day out, isn’t it? I don’t know about your students, but mine always seem to have extra energy on days like this.”

“Ah, yes, students.” Asuma said, in the tone of one imparting a piece of ancient wisdom. “Very important, students.” He took a drag on the cigarette.

“We get together at least once a week. To talk about our students. And compare notes on training.” Kurenai added quickly. “Not… dates… or anything.”

“Certainly not.” Asuma seconded. “Just doing our jobs.”

“Of course.” Iruka said, increasingly confused by the turn this conversation seemed to be taking. “I never meant to… aaCHOO… imply otherwise.” Both seemed slightly mollified by this statement. “I actually came to talk to you about…” he leaned in and looked around, as though expecting the silver-haired jounin to appear at any moment, “Kakashi-sensei.”

“Kakashi-sensei? What about him?” Kurenai asked, looking confused and yet for some reason relieved.

Asuma smashed his cigarette butt into the ashtray, then looked guiltily at Kurenai before lighting another. “Yeah, what about him? He not turn in a mission report again?”

“No, nothing like that.” Kakashi had apparently gotten sick of being yelled at by Iruka for turning in his mission reports late, and now made a point of scrupulously turning them in on time whenever the chuunin was on shift. Of course, being Kakashi, the margins were now entirely filled with doodles involving the mission, other nin, and anything else that happened to strike his fancy. Iruka had taken to reading Team Seven’s mission reports at home, in private, on the off chance Kakashi ever started expanding his doodle repertoire to things small children shouldn’t see.

He really didn’t feel the need to share any of this with Asuma-sensei or Kurenai-sensei. “I have reason to believe he’s been acting… strangely lately.”

“Strange? In general, or for him?”

“Yeah, he’s a pretty strange guy.” Asuma opined. “I mean, he’s always wearing that mask… I don’t even know what he looks like under there. Could be hideous or something.”

“Or handsome.” Kurenai suggested, with a sly glance over at Asuma.

“He probably is handsome.” Iruka agreed with a mild sigh. It was exactly the sort of rude thing Kakashi would do, to turn out to be completely gorgeous under the mask. Bastard.

“Well, anyway, he’s a weird guy. Always reading those Icha Icha books.” Asuma said, pointedly turning the conversation away from the potential attractiveness of his fellow jounin. “I took a look at one of those once, and…”

Kurenai jumped in. “You’ve read those?”

“Yeah, well, I glanced in one once…”

“You’ve read those horrid perverted…” she stood, almost knocking the table into Iruka in her haste.

“It was ages ago! I was young!”

Iruka stayed where he was, forgotten and very very quiet.

“Those horrible… dirty… awful books, full of…nudity… and…sex…” And her voice lost some of her volume, all of her stridency, and none of her intensity as she continued to stare intently at Asuma.

He stood too, and this time the table did hit Iruka in the stomach. His slight “oof” of pain reminded both the jounin of his presence, and they turned to look at him, something still burning in their eyes.

“We really must be going.”

“Yeah, training calls. Can’t forget the students.” Asuma’s cigarette fell to the floor, where he absent-mindedly ground it into the stones with his boot.

“Lovely talking to you, Iruka-sensei. We must do this again sometime.”

And with the speed jounin are capable of, they were gone, leaving Iruka sitting at an empty table with the remains of two half-eaten bento boxes.

Yep. Completely batshit crazy.

His stomach grumbled and then he seconded it as he remembered he still hadn’t eaten lunch and it was already time to head back to the academy.

He sneezed again.

And he had parent-teacher meetings tonight, so he’d be staying late.

Stupid jounin. Stupid Kakashi. Stupid cold.

Kakashi wanted to rush to see Iruka, but Kakashi does not rush. He had a reputation to maintain. Well, okay, he rushed to the bookstore when another volume of Jiraiya’s came out, but he had a different sort of reputation to maintain there. Besides, he didn’t know where Iruka was. The weak point in his surveillance, for obvious reasons, was knowing exactly what Iruka did with his evenings while Team Seven was away on missions.

Eh. He decided to head to Iruka’s apartment. If he wasn’t home, he could at least track the scent from there. Then he could catch a glimpse of Iruka, maybe even hear his voice, and then Kakashi could go home and actually get some rest. It wasn’t as though he were obsessed or anything, he just needed the reassurance that Iruka was there, that he was okay. Maybe if he were lucky, that Iruka was showering regularly. Good personal hygiene is so important.

If asked, most ninja will tell you they prefer traveling on rooftops because it is faster, stealthier, and generally more efficient. This, of course, is true. But if asked repeatedly… with katana at throat, preferably after a long torture session… not that we condone torture, but if you were to do so… they might have admitted that frankly, it was just really cool to travel via rooftop. It is also a little known fact that one of the best ways to determine if you are, in fact, in a hidden village is checking to see if the roofs of all of the buildings have been reinforced. Even non-nin get the hint when one too many family dinners are interrupted by a genin falling onto the table.

So Kakashi, being a bit of a traditionalist in some matters, began leaping across the rooftops towards Iruka’s apartment. He got there in minutes, just in time to see Iruka struggling with the lock.

Kakashi felt something internal he hadn’t even known was tense relaxing at the sight of the chuunin. Who looked cute. His shoulders were hunched over, and even his ponytail was drooping slightly. Absolutely exhausted, but still cute. Why was he so tired? Kakashi wished he could…fix it. Get him dinner or give him a massage or have wild passionate sex…which, admittedly, wouldn’t do a great deal for the tired but would probably improve his general morale.

Man, but Iruka looked cute. In the way he fumbled for the key in his chuunin vest, even in the way he turned and looked directly at Kakashi, he was just…

Oh. Bugger.

Hatake Kakashi does not ‘eep.’ And even if he ever were to make such an undignified noise, it was completely covered up by his mask.

“You may as well come down here,” Iruka called up. Man, even his ‘voice of unavoidable doom’ was adorable. Kakashi had no choice but to jump down from the roof, wondering all the while how he could have let his guard slip enough for Iruka to have spotted him. And mentally chanting “bugger” over and over.

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