Chapter Text
The sweet taste of the air is cloying on Iruka’s tongue. Humidity curls up around his neck, making drops of sweat bead and drip in endless cycles. The silence in the sky hints at a storm fast approaching. The dark, rolling clouds indicate a fierce thunderstorm that will rattle the roofs through the night. The barn is full of bleating sheep stumbling around in panic. The storm has always unsettled them.
He’s missing two sheep, Manju and Ahi. The wind picks up outside as he takes another count. Lightning flashes in the distance, but he can’t hear the thunder that follows.
Iruka has an hour, maybe less, to find the sheep and get back home. There aren’t any caves or decent cover from storm for miles around. There are only tall trees that sway dangerously in the wind and empty grasslands that lead to the shore. He debates staying in the warmth of his home and searching for the lost sheep in the morning, and then feels like absolute scum.
Iruka quickly grabs the torchlight hanging by the door, in case the sun sets before he gets back, and runs out into the wind.
Manju was hiding in her usual bush north of the farmhouse. Ahi was much trickier to locate and ate up much of the hour. Now that Iruka has both sheep tucked under his arms, the patter of rain is heavy and the wind is strong enough to almost push Iruka sideways as he trudges home.
As the child of shinobi, Iruka knows a thing or two about chakra. His parents had left him a multitude of scrolls that Iruka perused whenever curiosity got the better of him. He had taught himself, over the years, to control his chakra in ways that help immensely in his daily chores. He’d skipped through anything minutely dangerous and focused on things that could help him climb slippery slopes, calm noisy sheep, heal scrapes, and move faster without trouble. The wind picks up even as the farmhouse comes to view, and it is only his chakra that keeps him sticking to the ground step after step.
He considers taking the sheep into the house instead of going to the barn behind the house and then shakes his head roughly. The last time he’d done that, Oden had chewed through his sofa. His eyes glaze over at the memory and the sheer exhaustion he feels at the prospect of walking some more. And suddenly his head snaps up. There are people outside his door. Five cloaked figures (two big, three small) huddled on his patio. That takes precedence, for sure.
As Iruka stomps up the steps to the patio, the sheep resume their bleating, as though prompted by the familiarity of their surroundings. Turning to the strangers, Iruka tries to look firm and intimidating with bleating sheep wriggling in his arms. He comes face to face with three scraped-up children, a tall, slim man whose face is completely obscured but for an eye, and an old, bespectacled man. Iruka cannot, on his conscience, turn children out into a storm. However, he knows how foolish it is to take people in without question.
‘Who are you?’ Iruka shouts over the sound of the wind.
‘Uzumaki Naruto,’ one of the children yells, way louder than the wind could excuse.
‘Konoha shinobi,’ the tall man replies at the same time, at a more reasonable volume. ‘Please let us take shelter in your home until the storm abates.’
‘Ah, Konohagakure,’ Iruka says fondly. ‘The dango shop next to the yakiniku place sells the best dango for miles.’
Uzumaki Naruto fidgets. ‘Nobody car-,’ he grumbles. A hand shoots out from the child-sized cloak behind him and clamps over his mouth.
The tall man, hearing the test for what it is, says, ‘I could’ve sworn that dango shop is on block 22, beside the okonomiyaki stand.’
Iruka quirks a brief smile and shouts, ‘I’ll be right back,’ before dashing off into the barn. He all but throws the sheep in and hurries back to unlock the door. Iruka props the door open as the strangers and Uzumaki Naruto shuffle into the large genkan. The tall man brings up the rear. Iruka slams the door shut behind him. After that, the sudden silence is jarring.
‘Leave your coats and everything wet here and stay here,’ he says as he toes off his shoes and goes to get some towels. When he gets back, the children have emerged from their heavy outerwear to reveal their tired little faces. Uzumaki Naruto has spiky hair the colour of lemons. Beside him are a brooding boy with dark hair and a girl with pink hair. They had dumped their packs by the door and were now extracting ration bars from its pockets. The tall man’s cloak lies neatly folded beside the children’s haphazard pile. Strands of his silver hair glints in the dim light. Even with the hitai-ate and mask, Iruka can see the strong shape of his jaw and an eye that betrays deadly intelligence. Iruka’s breath catches in his throat. The man extends his long fingers and reaches into his breast pocket to pull out a book with a garish orange cover. Icha Icha Paradise—that’s porn, right? That broke the spell. He feels heat rise into his cheeks in mortification. He’d known that shinobi are weird and rude but… Iruka quickly hands out the towels and ushers them all into the dining room.
Naruto is the first through the sliding doors, poking his head in with a suspicious squint. He catches sight of something that makes him freeze in his tracks and then yell. The grey-haired man is at his side in an instant, peering into the room.
‘Aaah, is that- Is that a kotatsu?’ Naruto spins around, exhaustion all gone. He doesn’t wait for a reply and shoulders past grey hair, who follows silently. The rest follow after them, pooling at the doorway in the dining room. Naruto stops in front of the kotatsu, watching it with reverence for a long while. The girl’s face is bright with restrained excitement. Iruka breaks the silence first.
‘Go on, sit in the kotatsu,’ he says to Naruto, walking away without a backward glance to put a kettle on the stove.
Once everybody is seated with steaming cups of tea in front of them, Iruka decides the introductions ought to begin.
‘I’m Umino Iruka,’ he says, dipping his head.
‘Hatake Kakashi,’ the silver-haired man says, flicking his gaze up from the book. ‘Thank you for letting us stay.’
Ah. It finally clicks. During her frequent unwelcome visits, Anko likes to tell him about Konoha. She rambles on and on about the dango shop, the juiciest gossip, who to be careful around and who’s the biggest softie despite appearances. Hatake Kakashi is one of the village hotties, she said once, and one of the people she’d considered in her long and fruitless quest to end her singledom. Sharingan no Kakashi, master of a thousand jutsus, a legend almost as outstanding as his father, Konoha’s White Fang. A moderately-sized softie inside who believes in teamwork over all else. His strange obsession with Icha Icha makes Anko think he might be a beast in the sheets, but she’d never had the chance to find out. He is solitary and unapproachable at best. Iruka’s grip on his cup tighten for a moment.
She had told him about Team 7 once, about the Uchiha survivor and the container of the Kyūbi.
‘Our mission,’ Kakashi says after everybody’s introductions are done, ‘is to escort Tazuna-san to Wave Country.’
‘We were attacked by missing nins earlier!’ boasts Naruto.
‘Really? How did you fight them off?’
Sakura pitches in to explain and a blush steals up Naruto’s face. He hides his hand under the table and moans, ‘I froze up!’
Iruka knows that shinobi children have a different kind of childhood from civilians. Once upon a time, he could’ve been one of these children, freshly graduated and sharing stories about a recent battle. He feels an odd mixture of regret and relief in his gut, and drinks more tea to drown that out.
Kakashi is content to let the conversation pass him by. The silence that crops up is not uncomfortable, but the wind is howling madly outside and Iruka wants to distract himself. Luckily, Naruto is set off by the simplest questions like someone starved of attention. Which he probably is, being a container of the hated Kyūbi. Iruka asks the children questions about their recent missions. They answer animatedly (with the exception of Sasuke, whose answers are variations of an annoyed grunt) and Iruka listens as Tazuna sips his tea and Kakashi reads his book. After a while, the children begin to ask him questions, too.
It’s nice to have visitors that aren’t half-dead shinobi or crazies like Anko. The few shinobi he is friends with like to use his house as some sort of free rest stop. He doesn’t mind, because it’s nice to have some company, even if Kotetsu and Izumo are always eating through his fridge and Raidou sits in silence for most of his visits.
As the night wears on, the children’s speech begins to deteriorate, words slurring together as their heads droop onto the table. One by one, the children begin dropping off to sleep, tucked to their shoulders under the kotatsu. Tazuna excuses himself to use the guest room. Only Kakashi seems unaffected by the passing of the night, flipping through the pages at the same sedate pace. He has to keep watch, of course. Iruka’s eyes are already drooping.
When he wakes up, it’s morning, there’s a blanket draped over his shoulders, and the visitors are nowhere to be found.