Chapter Text
That day was hotter than usual. Well, truth be told, in Rio de Janeiro you always felt that heavy heat that clung to your skin. Iruka liked those nights; they reminded him of his mother, who would always bring some fresh coffee and lie down in the hammock, settling him beside her. Those nights with his mother, who always smelled of coconut and vanilla. But she was gone now; it was a scent that had vanished when he was twelve, when he understood that the world wasn't going to give him anything for free.
Born in Brazil, Iruka was the son of a nikkei, a Japanese-Brazilian. His father was the man who taught him the little Japanese he knew: the language, the culture, and that place that felt so distant no matter how much it was in his DNA, running through his blood. And his mother, a Brazilian woman with a warm smile and coffee-colored eyes. His parents; his heroes, who ended up being snatched away by the force of nature.
It was on February 27th that an earthquake struck the coast of Chile, creating an urgent need for humanitarian aid; a mission his parents, as military medics, didn't hesitate to accept. They left Iruka in Rio, waiting for a return that never came. They died in a landslide triggered by an aftershock, while trying to save and protect the victims of that terrible earthquake. In Brazil and around the world, their names were engraved under the title of "heroes."
The government of that South American country also called them heroes. They told Iruka he should be proud, but for a twelve-year-old boy, medals and honors meant nothing. He simply couldn't bear the idea that his parents were no longer with him.
The night in the favela doesn't go out; it just changes its rhythm. Through the window without glass in his small room, the echo of distant funk and the roar of motorcycles climbing the alley mixed with the constant buzz of crickets and the heavy, almost solid heat that refused to leave the exposed brick walls. At fifteen, Iruka had already learned to translate the noise of the night; he knew when a shout was just a party and when it was the prelude to something dangerous. But today, his mind was elsewhere, floating in a strange stillness, almost detached from the reality surrounding him.
He ran a hand over the bridge of his nose, grazing the rough texture of the scar that crossed his skin. It was still fresh, a recent reminder that on the streets of Rio, weakness was paid for in blood. Yet, looking at his hands in the twilight, he didn't feel his usual resentment. Tomorrow, everything would be different. Tomorrow, the plane from Tokyo would arrive.
On the nightstand, next to a worn notebook where he jotted down Japanese words to not forget his father's voice, lay a crumpled brochure with the logo of the Amaterasu Foundation. It was the international NGO for medical aid and reconstruction that had channeled help after he was orphaned; the same organization that, after his parents' death, had refused to let the son of two of its best military medics fall into the oblivion of the suburbs.
And among all the members of that foundation, there were them. Minato and Kushina.
Iruka remembered perfectly the first time he saw them, three years prior, when his grief was still an open, festering wound. Minato Namikaze didn't look like a man of high rank or an important official; he had a smile so bright it seemed to defy the gravity of the hospital where they met, and an aura of calm that immediately soothed the mental chaos Iruka was already beginning to experience. Kushina, on the other hand, was a whirlwind of red hair and overflowing emotions; she didn't speak with the condescending pity of government bureaucrats, but rather hugged him with a force that almost knocked the air out of him, crying for her fallen comrades and swearing to that twelve-year-old boy that, for his father's blood and his mother's sacrifice, he would never truly be alone again.
Since then, they had become his godparents from afar. Although Japan was on the other side of the planet, the Amaterasu Foundation ensured he had basic sustenance, but Minato and Kushina did more: they sent him handwritten letters, books to practice his Japanese, and once a year, they crossed the ocean just to see him, to remind him that there was a future waiting for him beyond the borders of the favela.
But this time was special. This time, they weren't coming alone.
Iruka smiled in the darkness, feeling a slight warmth in his chest that had nothing to do with Rio's climate. Tomorrow, he would see little Naruto for the first time. The baby was already a year and a half old, an age at which, according to Kushina's latest chaotic letter, "he was already trying to run everywhere and destroy the garden plants." For Iruka, that boy who shared Minato's blond features and Kushina's unquenchable energy was not just the son of his benefactors; he was the living symbol of a life that continued, a spark of pure light in the midst of the darkness he carried on his own shoulders.
He settled onto the mattress, listening to the beat of his own heart, trying to calm the hyperactivity that anticipation caused in his fingers. He imagined himself holding the little one, speaking to him in that slow Japanese he struggled so hard to polish, maybe teaching him some Portuguese word that would make Kushina laugh. For a few hours, poverty, marginalization, self-loathing, and the racism of his Japanese family toward him wouldn't matter.
Tomorrow, when the sun rose and the passionfruit scent of his skin mingled with the travel smell of his guardians, he would feel like part of something again. A dysfunctional family, broken by tragedy and separated by thousands of miles, but united by an invisible thread of gratitude and pure love. With that certainty etched into his soul, Iruka closed his eyes, letting Rio's heat lull him, waiting for dawn.
The sun crept in through the window without glass long before Iruka was ready to wake up. It wasn't that he had slept well, but the golden light and the sound of street vendors hawking their wares down below were as familiar as his own breath. He sat up slowly, feeling the weight of the night on his eyelids and the electric tingle of anxiety in his fingertips.
Today was the day.
He got up with an agile movement that contradicted his lack of sleep and walked to the bucket of water he kept in the corner of his small room. He washed his face roughly, as if the cold water could also erase the doubts accumulating in his mind. He looked at himself in the small cracked mirror hanging on the wall; the scar on his nose stared back, white and firm against his tanned skin. It had been a gift from the boys in the neighborhood on the other side of the favela, a reminder that his mixture of Japanese and Brazilian blood wasn't always welcome. But he survived. He always survived.
He dressed in his best shirt – the one Kushina had sent him from Japan, with a small collar and a simple pattern – and ran a worn comb through his brown hair, pulling it back into his characteristic high ponytail. When he finished getting ready, he stopped in front of the mirror again.
"Everything is going to be okay," he told himself, in Japanese, to practice. The words came out clumsy, with a marked accent that his father would have corrected with a smile.
He took a deep breath and stepped out into the hallway.
Galeão Airport was a tide of bodies and noise, a chaos Iruka tried to contain by counting the floor tiles. One, two, three. Rio's heat seeped through the large windows, heavy, mixed with the smell of fuel and coffee. At fifteen, anxiety wasn't a concept for him, but an electric vibration in his fingers that only subsided with movement.
Then the crowd parted.
Minato's blond hair was a flash of light among the gray mass of travelers, immediately followed by the unmistakable red tide of Kushina. Iruka's chest reacted before his mind. He ran.
"Iruka!" Kushina's shout broke through the airport's murmur. A suitcase fell to the floor, and the woman's arms wrapped around him with the force of an impact.
He smelled fresh flowers, travel, a home Iruka only knew from letters. Minato enveloped them both a second later, bringing with him a gust of clean air and that calm of his that seemed capable of stopping time. The group hug held him, tight and warm, dissolving the bitter knot the boy carried in his throat.
"Look how big you've gotten!" Kushina held him by the shoulders, pulling him back just enough to devour him with her eyes, bright with pride. "You're a full-fledged man!"
"Kushina, it's only been eight months," Minato intervened, his voice laced with amused warmth. "Not a miracle."
"What are you saying! Look at these shoulders, he's stronger."
Iruka lowered his gaze, scratching the back of his neck with a shyness that made his cheeks burn. His pulse was still racing.
"And the baby?" he managed to ask, looking for a space between them.
Kushina stepped aside with a knowing smile. On top of a mountain of luggage on a cart, a small whirlwind of orange fabric and tousled blond hair kicked its legs enthusiastically. Naruto, barely a year and a half old, looked at him with two blue eyes that were the spitting image of his father's, round and clear.
Seeing Iruka, the boy let out a hoarse laugh and stretched out his arms, losing his balance on the leather of the bags.
"Naru!" he babbled, demanding space.
Iruka's armor shattered. He took two strides, slid his hands under the baby's armpits, and lifted him toward the airport ceiling. Naruto was heavy, a solid warmth that smelled of baby powder and the sweetness of milk. The little one clung to his shirt with his chubby hands, laughing against his neck.
"Hello, little one," Iruka whispered, feeling the thick air in his lungs.
The boy stopped his play. Fascinated by the dark ridge crossing the tanned boy's face, he reached out a small, chubby finger, delicately tracing the rough skin over the bridge of his nose. Iruka held his breath, suspended in the child's soft touch on his war mark.
"Ouch?" Naruto asked, tilting his head with a seriousness mature for his age.
Iruka swallowed the knot in his throat, looking at the absolute purity in those blue eyes.
"No," he assured him, sketching the first genuine smile of the morning. "It doesn't hurt anymore."
Kushina came up to them, erasing any distance, her face lit by a genuine smile.
"I'm giving him to you!" she let out a clear, relieved laugh. "Keep him for a while, I need to stretch my legs."
"Kushina," Minato chided, though the reproach died in a soft grimace.
"Oh, leave me alone! Look at them. It's lovely."
As Iruka cradled Naruto's warm weight, his attention drifted to the background, where the tide of passengers continued to flow slowly. Only then did he notice they weren't alone. A boy, perhaps a couple of years older than him, materialized from the labyrinth of suitcases. He was tall, with a wiry thinness, silver-gray hair falling messily over his forehead, and a black cloth covering half his face, hiding his features. He carried a backpack slung over one shoulder and his hands buried deep in his pockets.
He walked with a slowness detached from the airport's frenzy, as if inhabiting a different time zone. He didn't look at anyone; his dark, languid eyes, laden with a heavy weariness, floated in some blind spot between the floor and the horizon. He seemed like a ghost dragging his own remains in a mockery of life.
Iruka held him with his gaze, caught by a sudden curiosity. There was something in that voluntary isolation, in the rigidity of his shoulders, that struck a chord; a frequency of pain he knew all too well.
Minato intercepted the direction of his eyes, and the line of his mouth became severe, tinged with a protective gravity.
"Iruka," he called, lowering his voice, "we want to introduce you to someone."
The boy raised his eyelids. For a second identical to a blink, his gray pupils clashed with Iruka's. There was no spark, no courtesy; only an icy void, a plain of wet ashes that silently demanded to be left to disappear. But Iruka, forged in the streets, didn't know how to look away from danger or ruin.
"Iruka, this is Kakashi," Kushina stepped forward, moderating her usual energy to an unusually sweet tone. "Kakashi Hatake. He's... well, he's the son of the director of the Amaterasu Foundation in Japan."
"Was the son," Kakashi corrected. His voice was a flat line, an edge of ice that cut the air without the slightest trace of emotion.
Silence fell among the four with the implacable weight of a rock. The airport atmosphere became dense, and Naruto, sensitive to the drastic change in emotional temperature, stirred uncomfortably against Iruka's chest. Kushina looked at Minato with a shadow of anguish in her eyes; her husband nodded silently, sealing a pact they had been maturing from the other side of the world.
"Iruka," Minato closed the distance, looking him straight in the eye, "there's something we want to ask you. A very important favor."
The brunet blinked, bewildered. That the man who had rescued him from oblivion would pronounce the word "favor" felt almost like an anomaly in the order of things.
"Sure," Iruka managed to articulate, as a cold knot settled in his stomach.
Minato placed a firm hand on Kakashi's shoulder. The boy didn't move, not an inch; he remained static, like a salt statue.
"Kakashi's father passed away a few months ago," Minato explained, measuring each word with painful delicacy. "It was... a very difficult process for him. For all of us, for the community. Sakumo was a great man, a pillar of the foundation, and we couldn't leave Kakashi adrift."
"We brought him with us to get him out of Japan for a while," Kushina intervened, forcing a hint of hope into her broken voice. "We want him to see a different world. To... to let him breathe."
"And we want," Minato continued, fixing Iruka with a disarmingly honest gaze, "for him to have a friend. Someone to walk beside him. We can't be everywhere, and Iruka... you know this abyss. You know exactly how loss roars. But you also have a heart that knows how to heal."
Those words landed in his chest with the force of a cement block. Iruka's primary impulse was to back away, to shout that they were wrong. He wanted to tell them he was just a kid from the favela, a survivor barely managing to keep his balance over his own mental chaos; not a therapist, not a lifeguard for someone else's important son.
However, his eyes returned to Kakashi.
The silver-haired boy was still stuck in his limbo, but Iruka noticed a tiny detail: his fingertips were rhythmically, almost imperceptibly, grazing the seam of his pants. It was an electric back-and-forth, a desperate anxiety tic that Iruka recognized instantly. It was the same physical anchor he used when his mind worked against him, desperately seeking something real to cling to, to avoid completely dissociating.
"It's okay," he heard his own voice say, before pride or fear closed his mouth. "I'll take care of it."
Kushina let out a breath she seemed to have been holding since Tokyo, and Minato infused warmth into Iruka's shoulder with a grateful squeeze. The brunet stood in front of Kakashi, forcing an ease he didn't feel, but with a new determination igniting under his skin.
"Hey," he said, searching for a tone that sounded casual. "Kakashi, right?"
The addressed blinked with pendulum slowness, dragging his gray pupils toward Iruka's face. He made no sound.
"Okay, I don't know how much you like food, but around the corner they sell fried pastries that reset your life. Want to try some?"
Kakashi examined him with icy scrutiny, as if trying to decipher whether this bilingual, scarred kid was making fun of him or if he really intended to drag him into the streets of Rio. Iruka didn't look away, holding the visual pulse while adjusting Naruto's warm weight against his side, assuming the responsibility of the promise he had just sealed.
"I'm not hungry," Kakashi stated. His voice sounded dead again, a desert-like reverberation from behind the cloth.
"Well," Iruka shrugged, downplaying it, "then you can sit and watch me eat. I don't mind. Although, you'll have to put up with Naruto using you as a gum scratcher and pulling your hair, because that's what he does to everyone."
Kakashi blinked again. And in that millisecond of friction, Iruka saw it: it wasn't a smile, nor an emotional opening, but a tiny crack in his armor. A conscious pause in the middle of his own void.
It was no longer absolute nothingness; it was a starting point.
The neighborhood breathed around them with that electric, unquenchable pulse typical of afternoons in Rio de Janeiro. The air smelled of hot asphalt, fried garlic, fresh coffee wafting from open windows, and the constant murmur of music rising up the steep streets. Iruka walked slowly, settling Naruto's weight against his chest; the boy had surrendered to sleep after the airport bustle. Kakashi moved a few steps behind, camouflaged in his own silence, mimicking the discretion of a shadow trying not to get in the way.
A little ahead, Minato and Kushina shared confidences in low voices, heads together and steps synchronized. Seeing them, Iruka felt a brief pang in his chest, that dull echo of nostalgia for the home he no longer had. But he shook his head, chasing away the ghost of discouragement. He wasn't going to sour the afternoon.
"Hey, Hatake," Iruka said without stopping, raising his voice a little to compete with the noise of a motorcycle coming down the street. "Does it bother you when people talk too much?"
The silence he received in response was almost absolute.
"Because I'm warning you in advance, I don't know how to shut up. You've been warned."
A couple of seconds passed before a hoarse vibration crossed the air from behind:
"It doesn't bother me."
"Good. Because I also don't know how to stay still. ADHD, courtesy of genetics. It's like having a motor running twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes I look for the switch to turn it off, but I'm afraid it came with a factory defect."
Kakashi didn't reply, but Iruka perceived the subtle sound of footsteps quickening behind him. The distance between them shrank a little. The brunet avoided the temptation to turn around; he knew that in such fragile ground, any sudden movement could scare him off.
They arrived at a small community square where the shade of a huge mango tree alleviated the sun's severity. Kushina pointed to a blue-painted concrete bench.
"I'll go get something to eat from the stalls on the corner," Minato announced, adjusting the strap of his bag with a smile. "Any special requests?"
"Fried pastries!" Iruka ordered, raising one hand while holding Naruto with the other. "Cheese and meat, the ones that crunch when you bite them. Neighborhood specialty."
Minato laughed, nodding, and headed toward the street market, closely followed by Kushina, who insisted on accompanying him to make sure he didn't get confused with the currency exchange. Iruka clearly saw the maneuver: a strategic retreat to leave them alone. He didn't blame them, but the pressure of responsibility hit him all at once.
He sat down carefully, resting Naruto's head on his lap. Kakashi remained standing a couple of paces away, motionless in front of the empty planter in the square, shoulders slumped and gaze lost on the dirt floor.
"Look," Iruka began, softening his tone, seeking a rhythm that wouldn't sound invasive. "I know this is a strange situation. You probably wanted to stay home, in your room, and they forced you onto a fourteen-hour flight to bring you to a place where the heat overwhelms you. We don't know each other at all, but I know exactly what it feels like when the rest of the world decides for you because they assume you're broken."
Kakashi didn't make a single move to respond, but his hands gave a slight shudder inside his pants pockets. His fingers drummed against his thighs in an invisible rhythm. The airport tic.
"I lost my parents too," Iruka said, feeling the weight of the confession on his tongue, direct and unanesthetized. "Three years ago. They went on a humanitarian mission in Chile after an earthquake, and while helping the victims, a piece of land gave way. I know what the silence that remains is like. And my father's family looked the other way, and here... well, here life is learned through blows. What I mean is, I perfectly understand the language in which you're remaining silent."
His voice trembled slightly at the end, but he forced himself to hold the tone.
"I'm not telling you this so you feel sorry for me. Or to pretend I know exactly what you're going through. No one knows, except you. But I wanted you to know that, if you look around, the ground isn't so empty. That's all."
Iruka fell silent and waited, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.
Around them, the neighborhood continued its usual choreography: a dog barking in the distance, the muffled murmur of a television on, and the laughter of children chasing a ball down the street. In his lap, Naruto stirred with a slight whimper; Iruka instinctively placed his hand on the baby's back, rocking him with a subtle, rhythmic sway. The child's warmth seemed to radiate outward, warming the air between the two boys.
Then, Kakashi spoke.
"My dad killed himself."
The words fell dry, with the clean gravity of a stone sinking into deep waters. Iruka didn't tense, but his breathing rhythm changed, tuning almost unconsciously to the silver-haired boy's.
"He was a good man," Kakashi continued, and his voice, though still flat, revealed a tiny fissure, an almost imperceptible vibration. "He helped people. Everyone respected him. But he made a decision others didn't understand, and the community punished him for it. They isolated him. Humiliated him until he couldn't take it anymore."
Iruka didn't interrupt. He understood immediately that silence was the only safe space he could offer.
"Now everyone looks at me through that filter," Kakashi added, and a slight trace of bitterness tinted his words. "'Poor Sakumo's son.' 'What a tragedy.' 'You have to be strong for him.' I don't want them to look at me like I'm made of glass. I don't know how I'm supposed to be strong."
Iruka let the air out slowly, feeling a strange urgency to calm the tremor the other hid in his pockets.
"Then don't be," he said, softly.
Kakashi looked up, a quick movement that betrayed his surprise. His gray eyes, previously desert-like, clashed with Iruka's warm, steady gaze. It wasn't a brusque impact, but a silent brush, a suspended instant where Rio's heat seemed to concentrate solely in the space between them.
"You have no obligation to be strong," Iruka insisted, lowering his voice, speaking only to him. "You can be broken. You can be furious, or sad, or just not want to get up. That doesn't make you weak, Hatake. It just shows you're alive."
Kakashi stared at him. For a second, the black cloth covering his face seemed to lose its function as a shield; his eyes no longer hid, reflecting for the first time an absolute attention toward the brunet. Iruka kept his distance but gave him a small smile, barely a compassionate gesture, as he shifted a few centimeters on the concrete, inviting him in without touching him.
"If you want, you can sit down. You don't have to talk, or pretend. Just stay here."
Time stretched between them, dense and peaceful. Then, with a slowness that seemed to measure the risk of every millimeter, Kakashi closed the distance and let himself fall onto the bench. They didn't touch, but the closeness was immediate: Iruka could perceive the subtle scent of wood and rain emanating from the silver-haired boy, a fresh contrast that cut through the heavy afternoon air.
They remained like that, sharing the space in a muteness that no longer felt uncomfortable, but strangely protective. When Minato and Kushina returned, bringing with them the crispy aroma of the pastries, the sky was already beginning to tinge with deep violets and oranges.
Naruto woke up with the smell of food and, with the clumsiness typical of his eighteen months, began to crawl along the bench. Reaching the end, the little one stretched out his chubby hands and, with a giggle, grabbed a lock of Kakashi's silver hair. The older boy didn't pull away; he simply tilted his head with a newfound patience, allowing the baby's fingers to play with the gray strands.
Iruka watched the scene out of the corner of his eye, feeling his own heartbeat finally settle into a calm rhythm. There were no verbal promises or declarations, but as the afternoon fell over the square, he knew the rigidity in Kakashi's shoulders had eased a little. At least for today, both their storms had found common ground to subside.
The following days settled into a strange but deeply warm routine. Minato and Kushina stayed at a nearby inn, but their hours belonged entirely to the community, immersed in the infrastructure projects the Amaterasu Foundation managed in the area. Kushina, with her unquenchable magnetism, improvised art workshops that filled the afternoons with children and laughter, while Minato coordinated logistics and resources with that serene efficiency that characterized him.
That left Iruka and Kakashi floating in their own space. At first, the shared silences were dense, but as the hours passed, they found a comfortable frequency, a rhythm of their own.
Iruka, driven by that luminous stubbornness that defined him, silently decreed a personal mission: to extract a flash of life from Kakashi's eyes. Not out of pity or commitment, but because in the rare moments when he glimpsed something behind the mask, he knew the crack was worth it. The silver-haired boy was a master of evasion, an expert at dissolving into muteness, but the brunet didn't know how to give up.
"Hey, Hatake," Iruka said, leaning against the doorframe. "Either you dance with me for two minutes, or I condemn you to listening to my entire biography at the foundation's welcome dinner."
Kakashi raised his eyelids from the hammock where he rested, a worn paperback resting on his chest.
"I don't dance."
"You can't know that if you've never tried."
"I don't need to try to know I'm not interested."
"That's cheating!" Iruka approached with a rhythmic, almost elastic step, and extended an open hand toward him. "Come on, one minute. If you hate it, I swear I won't bring it up again."
Kakashi held his gaze with icy distrust, but Iruka's brown eyes flashed with such clean resolution that they ended up disarming any line of defense.
"One minute," Kakashi finally conceded, letting out a long sigh from behind the cloth.
He stood up with lazy slowness and planted himself in front of the brunet, rigid, arms hanging at his sides as if awaiting a sentence.
"No, no, not like that," Iruka tilted his head, letting out a chiding laugh. "First, drop your shoulders. You're about to learn the basic steps of samba, not march in the army. The trick is in the hip sway, the head has nothing to do here."
"I have no idea what that is."
"That's what I'm here for."
With a naturalness free of ulterior motives, Iruka positioned himself behind him and placed the palms of his hands on his hips. At the contact, he perceived the immediate tension that ran through the silver-haired boy's back, the firmness of a body used to protecting itself, but he didn't back down.
"Feel the weight," Iruka murmured, imprinting a gentle, almost imperceptible sway, forcing Kakashi to follow the rhythm of his own body. "Don't analyze the steps. Just let the rhythm decide for you."
Kakashi made an attempt to replicate the movement, but his initial coordination evoked the grace of a rusty gear. Iruka let out a clean, resonant laugh, devoid of any trace of mockery, a sound that floated in the room like a gust of fresh air.
"Slow down, no one's rushing us. Look."
The brunet stepped forward, gaining visual space, and began to move. His hips slid with an innate ease that came straight from the soles of his feet, an absolute contrast to the other's rigidity. Iruka moved as if the music floated in the hot afternoon air; every movement was fluid, harmonious, and light. His arms accompanied the beat with shameless grace, and the vibration he gave off was so magnetic that even Naruto, who was exploring the corners of the floor, interrupted his journey to watch him with wide eyes.
"See?" Iruka said, his breathing barely altered and a wide smile on his face. "We're not looking for perfection. It's about losing control for a moment, letting the body forget someone's watching."
Kakashi stood still, watching him in silence, and for a second, Iruka feared he had pulled the string too tight. However, after a suspended pause, the silver-haired boy imitated the movement with his hip. It was a shy gesture, slightly offbeat, and decidedly clumsy.
Iruka, however, felt his pulse quicken in a warm flutter.
"Yes!" he celebrated, eyes alight with enthusiasm. "Again!"
"Don't exaggerate," Kakashi muttered, looking away.
"I have the makings of a great master! My only student is making historic progress!"
Kakashi tilted his head, hiding behind his gray strands, but Iruka would have sworn a new spark, a distinct and elusive light, shone in his pupils just above the edge of the mask. It wasn't a declared smile, but the ice had cracked. And for Iruka, that small crevice in the rock was space enough to keep sowing something green.
The days slid by with the constancy of vines climbing the brick walls of the streets. Between them, trust grew without haste, gaining ground in the daily details. Iruku soon discovered that, behind the lethargy, Kakashi hid a dry, biting wit that poked its head out from time to time, like a grounding wire amidst the pain. He also discovered, to his own amusement, that the silver-haired boy carried in his backpack pocket novels with overly explicit passages, and the vivid color that lit up Kakashi's ears when Iruka discovered them became one of his favorite triumphs of the week.
The brunet also noticed that Kakashi possessed a strange and magnetic affinity with animals. The stray dogs of the neighborhood gravitated toward him as if recognizing a silent code. One afternoon, while they rested on the stone steps of the small local church, a limping dog timidly approached them. Without a word, Kakashi took off his jacket, spread it on the ground to offer the animal shelter, and began examining the injured paw with gentle fingers and impressive tenderness.
"Do you know veterinary medicine?" Iruka asked, fascinated by the scene.
"No," Kakashi replied, focused on his task without looking up. "But every living being deserves to be cared for."
Iruka watched him in silence, sketching a slight smile. That image of discreet generosity, that capacity to give without fuss or expectations, was etched into his memory with the force of a high-tension cable. It was, without a doubt, the trait that most captivated him about the boy.
At night, when the asphalt heat subsided and the adults retired, the room became a suspended space. They stayed awake in the dark, exchanging fragments of stories, loose ideas floating in the gloom without the weight of outside judgment.
"What are you going to do when you grow up?" Kakashi wanted to know one of those nights, his voice barely a thread in the room.
Iruka shifted in his spot, looking at the ceiling.
"I don't know for sure. Be a teacher, maybe. Something that lets me protect children, keep them from falling into the potholes along the way. I'm not one to plan the future."
"That sounds like a good purpose," Kakashi reflected, in a slow, melancholic tone. "Children need someone who doesn't look down on them."
"And you?" Iruka returned, turning his head toward him. "What do you have in mind?"
The silence that followed was long, dense, almost tangible. Under the bluish light of the moon filtering through the window, Kakashi's gray eyes remained fixed on nothing.
"I don't know," he finally confessed, and the rawness of his tone sank deep into the atmosphere. "I think I never assumed I'd reach fifteen."
The air froze in Iruka's throat. A sharp cold, born of his own ghosts and the hidden scars he himself carried, forced him to sit up on the mattress.
"Kakashi," he articulated with extreme care, measuring the pulse of his words. "Are you thinking of hurting yourself?"
The absence of an immediate response made Iruka's heart pound violently against his ribs.
"If that idea is floating around in your head, I need you to look at me," he insisted, his voice firm but laden with urgent tenderness. "You're not alone in this pit, Hatake. You don't have to carry the weight of that pain by yourself."
Kakashi turned his face toward him. In the darkness, stripped of the mask by the intimacy of the hour, Iruka glimpsed pure helplessness. It wasn't a fear of ceasing to exist; it was the absolute panic of the void threatening to swallow him.
"Sometimes," Kakashi whispered, and the vibration of his voice betrayed the internal fracture, "I feel like there's no ground beneath me. Like I'm trapped at the bottom of the ocean, without the strength to decide if I want to find the surface or just let the current take me."
Iruka didn't think. He closed the distance between the two mattresses, reached out, and found Kakashi's hand in the darkness, interlacing their fingers with deliberate firmness. He felt the defensive rigidity in the silver-haired boy's tendons, a tight knot that, under the persistent warmth of his palm, began to give way gradually.
"Then I'll be your ground," Iruka declared, though his own voice trembled slightly. "I don't know what tools I have or how long this journey will last, but you can drop your weight here. I won't let go of you."
The muteness that settled afterward was radically different. It was no longer a desert distance, but a dense space, inhabited by an implicit commitment neither dared to name. And for the first time since they met, Iruka felt Kakashi's fingers reciprocate the gesture, closing around his with a trembling but clinging pressure.
Hours later, when the first golden threads of dawn began to outline the favela's silhouettes, Iruka understood a silent truth that would stay with him forever: in the mechanics of survival, the strength you use to hold another is often the same that keeps you afloat yourself.
On the penultimate day of the Namikaze family's visit, Rio's heat gave them a reprieve, yielding to the arrival of a sunset that painted the hills in deep oranges and violets. The boys met at their usual refuge: the bench by the dry fountain in the community square. At that hour, the neighborhood seemed submerged in a pause; the noise of engines and children's laughter seemed distant, muffled by the heaviness of the air.
They sat very close, shoulders almost touching. The silence that settled between them wasn't the emptiness of the early days, but a shared stillness, charged with a latent electricity neither knew how to name.
"Tomorrow you're leaving," Iruka finally articulated, breaking the muteness without looking at the silver-haired boy.
"Yes," Kakashi replied, his gaze fixed on his own shoes.
"You'll be back next year."
"I suppose."
"So, this is a goodbye."
Kakashi didn't reply, but the space between their bodies seemed to shrink. There was no obvious movement, but the atmosphere became so dense that oxygen began to feel scarce. There was something deeply innocent and, at the same time, overwhelming in the urgency with which they sought each other without touching.
"Iruka," Kakashi's voice was barely a murmur grazing the fabric of his mask. "I want to thank you. For everything."
"You have nothing to thank me for, Hatake," Iruka sketched a soft smile, though his pulse had skyrocketed in his throat.
"I know. But I want to anyway."
The silence returned, but this time it came with a different vibration. Seized by sudden audacity, born of the fear of the next day's absence, Iruka turned toward him. Without calculating the distance, without measuring the weight of the consequences, he leaned in and pressed his lips timidly against the black cloth covering Kakashi's mouth. It was a brief, warm, frightened brush.
"Sorry," Iruka stammered, pulling back immediately, his cheeks burning. "I shouldn't have..."
The apology hung in the air. Kakashi had raised a hand with long fingers, brushing with disbelief the exact spot where Iruka's skin had met the cotton. Their gazes met, caught in an astonished, clumsy, desperately adolescent scrutiny.
"Iruka," the silver-haired boy pronounced, and his voice took on a lower, cracked tone, broken by surprise. "Are you sure about this?"
"No," the brunet admitted, letting out a nervous laugh that tried to sound light. "But I already jumped. It would be very cowardly to back out halfway."
Kakashi watched him for an eternal moment, measuring the truth in the other's brown eyes. Then, with a slowness that betrayed the tremor in his own fingers, he hooked the edge of the black cloth and pulled it down to his neck.
Iruka felt the air freeze in his lungs.
Kakashi possessed a raw beauty, far from any standard, marked by a firm jaw and a line of thin but strangely soft lips. Without the barrier of the mask, his scent of cedarwood and rain smoke was released with a clarity that intoxicated Iruka's senses, acting as an instant balm for his agitation. But what truly disarmed him were those gray eyes, stripped of their walls, looking at him with an almost painful vulnerability.
Kakashi didn't seek words. Instead, he closed the last centimeter of distance and sought Iruka's mouth.
The real contact was slow, a clumsy and reverent fumbling where both discovered the warmth of the other. Kakashi's lips were soft, and the touch felt like a refuge amidst the harshness. Iruka half-closed his eyes, giving in to the sensation that the outside world was completely fading; the streets, the lights beginning to turn on on the slopes, and the murmur of the afternoon all vanished, reduced solely to the frantic beat of their chests.
Kakashi repeated the gesture, this time with a nascent confidence that made Iruka's skin prickle. By pure instinct of grounding, the brunet's hand rose to Kakashi's cheek, tracing the line of his jaw with his fingertips, memorizing his texture for the winter months to come.
When they finally pulled apart, both were breathless. Iruka felt his face burning and his heart pounding with such force he feared Kakashi could hear it.
"That..." Iruka whispered, breathless. "That was..."
"I know," Kakashi completed, his gaze fixed on the brunet's lips, sharing the same turmoil.
They didn't need to add anything more. The complicity was sealed in the way their fingers remained intertwined on the concrete, and in the tilt of their shoulders, which refused to break the closeness.
Later, when night took over the sky and stars began to twinkle over Rio, the two boys walked the steep streets back, allowing their hands to brush with each step. That kiss had opened an unknown territory for both, and although the weight of tomorrow was inescapable, they silently agreed to inhabit only the present. Because in that square, under the smell of earth and asphalt, what they had was more than enough.
The night closed in completely over the city, unfurling its usual mantle of twinkling lights and echoes of distant music. Iruka guided Kakashi through the narrow passages to the small room he inhabited in the upper part of the neighborhood. The space was austere; barely a mattress on the floor, some worn-out candles, and that air impregnated with acidic passionfruit that seemed to emanate from his own skin like a seal of identity.
"I didn't plan for this to end this way," Iruka admitted, his voice breaking the dimness with a nervous laugh. "I still can't process how we got here."
"Me neither," Kakashi replied, maintaining that slow softness in his tone. "But I don't regret it."
"You'd better not," the brunet joked, trying to lighten the mood. "If you did, I'd condemn you to practicing Capoeira."
Kakashi let out a short laugh, a sound so clean and unexpected that Iruka stared at him, genuinely amazed.
"Wow," the brunet whispered. "Turns out I do have the superpower to make you laugh."
"It's not such a difficult achievement," Kakashi retorted, feigning a seriousness that immediately unraveled at the edge of his lips.
"Oh no? Because I've been racking my brain for seven days to get it."
"You've been too focused on criticizing my lack of rhythm to notice."
The complicity floated between them, dissolving the last remnants of shyness like the smoke of a dying candle. Iruka let himself fall onto the mattress, and Kakashi imitated the movement, reducing the distance between their bodies, fingers still interlaced in a warm, firm grip.
"Kakashi," Iruka began, modulating his voice to a more serious frequency, devoid of jokes. "I want you to be clear that I don't expect anything from you. You have no pressure to reciprocate what happened."
"And if it's what I want?"
The brunet fell silent, feeling the violent flip of his own heart against his ribs.
"Are you completely sure?" he insisted cautiously, searching his gray eyes.
"No," Kakashi confessed, looking at him without filters. "But I know that when I'm near you, things start to make sense again. And that's much more than I've been able to feel in months."
Iruka felt a tear escape down his cheek before he could stop it. It wasn't a manifestation of sadness, but the pure relief of someone who, after years of inhabiting invisibility on the margins of the world, finds himself finally seen by someone.
Kakashi reached out and, with his thumb, wiped the wet trace with a touch of such unexpected tenderness that it ended up disarming the brunet.
"Don't cry," he asked in a barely audible whisper. "I don't want you to."
"They're good tears," Iruka managed to say, with a laugh caught between sobs. "It's strange, you know? That someone assures you you're not alone, and for the first time, your body actually believes it."
"There's nothing strange about it," Kakashi replied. "It's real."
Iruka closed the distance and kissed him. It was a deeper encounter, charged with everything that the silence of the previous days had secretly matured. Kakashi's fingers tangled clumsily in the brunet's hair, loosening the high knot that held it; the brown strands fell over his shoulders in free waves. Iruka felt the entire universe shrink to the perimeter of that mattress, to the warmth of Kakashi's lips, and to that scent of cedar and rain that isolated him completely from the rest of Rio.
When they parted, both were breathless. Iruka rested his forehead against the silver-haired boy's, keeping his eyelids closed.
"Kakashi," he murmured, his voice reduced to a thread. "Can we stay like this? Just for a moment, without tomorrow getting in the way?"
"Yes," Kakashi nodded, seeking his fingers again in the twilight. "As long as you want."
Iruka smiled sideways and settled on the mattress, gently guiding the other to share his space. Kakashi hesitated just a moment before yielding and lying down beside him. They lay face to face, knees brushing, their exhalations mingling in the darkness. It was a gradual surrender, devoid of adult urgencies, where the shyness of their fifteen years dictated the pace.
Their hands began to move slowly, recognizing each other's silhouettes in a reverent fumbling. Kakashi's fingers traced the skin of his back, discovering the relief of the first tattoos that his clothes hid from prying eyes. Kakashi, in turn, allowed Iruka's hands to roam his chest and abdomen, blurring the garments that stood as unnecessary barriers.
"What's this?" Kakashi asked in a whisper, stopping his fingertips on an irregular mark on the brunet's shoulder.
"A scuffle in an alley," Iruka explained, letting out a slow sigh. "A couple of years ago. It almost ended very badly."
In silence, Kakashi leaned his head and pressed his lips to the scar with such touching delicacy that Iruka held his breath in his chest.
"You shouldn't have gone through all that alone," Kakashi murmured, a fracture in his voice betraying his empathy for another's pain.
"But I did," Iruka replied, interlacing his fingers with the silver-haired boy's. "And I'm still here. We're here."
The rest of the night was woven with slow caresses and silent confidences, an exploration where skin against skin felt more like a refuge than a physical rush. For Iruka, each touch acquired the weight of an implicit pact; a shared vulnerability that made him feel protected, far from the fear of rejection.
When silence returned and the candlelight began to flicker before dying, Iruka settled against Kakashi's chest, feeling the comforting weight of his arm around his waist.
"Kakashi," he said, eyelids heavy with sleep. "What's supposed to happen tomorrow?"
The silver-haired boy didn't reply immediately. He pulled him a little closer, joining their bodies in an attempt to hold onto the last remnants of the night.
"I don't know," he confessed with absolute honesty. "But I don't want this to stay just in the goodbye box. Not for me."
"What do you want it to be, then?"
"I don't have the answer yet," Kakashi admitted, resting his chin on his hair. "But I want it to be something real."
Iruka smiled in the twilight, letting the scent of wood and rain lull him completely.
"Something is a good start," he concluded. "And for now, it's enough for me."
The next morning rushed over the favela too soon, with that cruel haste that dawns have when one would wish to freeze the night. Iruka woke with the first threads of light filtering through the open window, aware of the warm, firm weight of an arm around his waist in the twilight.
"Don't move," Kakashi murmured against his neck, his voice dragging and hoarse with sleep. "It's still early."
"My neighbors are early risers," Iruka commented, letting out a muffled laugh that vibrated in his chest. "Doña María must already be sweeping the entrance and asking questions."
"Let her."
"Aren't you even a little embarrassed, Hatake?"
"With you, no."
Iruka turned slowly on the mattress, facing him. He found Kakashi's gray eyes half-lidded, disarmed by the laziness of waking. The black cloth remained on the floor, just as they had left it, allowing him to contemplate the other's face without customs or mysteries. He then discovered a small scar interrupting his left eyebrow and a tiny mole just below his right eye; visual treasures the brunet locked away in his memory.
"I'm going to miss you," Iruka confessed, before pride could put a brake on his tongue.
Kakashi opened his eyes completely, looking at him with a clean fixity, devoid of shields.
"I'm going to miss you too," he assured, and the honesty of his tone brought the air back to Iruka. "But this isn't a period."
"No?"
"No. It's a see you later."
It was in that last moment of intimacy in the room, just before packing their backpacks, when Kakashi took out his phone. With a quick, almost shy gesture, he showed him a screen with his Instagram handle written in both Japanese and Western characters. Iruka, feeling a quick flutter in his chest, searched for the profile from his own and hit "follow" instantly. It was a modern pact, a digital bridge to shorten the thousands of kilometers bearing down on them. What Iruka didn't notice in the rush, and wouldn't discover until much later, was that Kakashi put the phone back in his pocket without returning the follow. Not out of disinterest, but because of that habit of his of watching life from a corner, remaining a silent spectator of the brunet's light.
Galeão Airport repeated the same tide of people from the first day. Kushina cried shamelessly while squeezing Iruka in a hug that smelled of flowers, Naruto squirmed restlessly in Minato's arms, and the atmosphere was tinged with that bittersweet density that international goodbyes carry.
Kakashi remained a step behind the group, hands buried in his pockets and the mask firmly in place, observing the environment as if trying to blend in with the building's columns. Iruka made his way toward him as soon as Kushina let him breathe.
"Take care of yourself," he told him, holding a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"You too," Kakashi returned, his tone softened by the closeness.
"And don't forget the samba," the brunet added, seeking refuge in humor.
Kakashi tilted his head. It was a tiny attempt at a smile behind the cloth, but Iruka had learned to read his eyes with surgical precision.
"I won't," Kakashi promised.
"You'd better. When you come back, I'm going to strictly evaluate your progress."
"Then I suggest you arm yourself with patience."
"I have plenty of that," Iruka affirmed, lowering his gaze for a second. "I've had to train it my whole life."
The silver-haired boy watched him in silence, stopping the airport clock for them both. Then, with a quick impulse that broke any formal distance, he leaned in and pressed his covered lips to Iruka's forehead. The contact was so unexpected that the brunet stood frozen, feeling the heat of the gesture engrave itself under his skin.
"So you have something real to remember," Kakashi whispered, turning around.
"I didn't need a kiss to not forget you, Hatake," Iruka managed to say, his voice brushing a fracture. "I couldn't even if I wanted to."
"Good. Because I won't either."
Kushina raised her hand from the migration area, calling Kakashi, and the boy quickened his pace to catch up with his guardians. However, just three strides from the control line, he stopped short and turned his face in profile.
"Iruka."
"Yes?"
"When I come back, I'm going to prove to you that this wasn't locked away in a summer story."
Iruka felt a warm echo expand throughout his chest.
"I'll hold you to that," he replied, giving him a smile that swept away the airport's grayness.
Kakashi nodded once and crossed the threshold, disappearing into the flow of passengers without looking back. Iruka remained there, motionless in front of the security cord, watching the exact point where the silver hair vanished into the crowd.
For the first time in three years, the future stopped seeming like an imminent threat. Kakashi had made a promise in that square, and he had every intention of waiting for him on that same bench.
He was running. Running with that savage desperation only understood when the alarm clock decides to betray you on the most important day of your life. The Tokyo air burned his lungs, the soles of his shoes protested against the asphalt, and his heart rebounded against his ribs in a frantic rhythm.
Shit, shit, three times shit.
Could he blame jet lag? No, definitely not. He'd been in Japan for exactly one month, plenty of time to adjust to the schedule, settle into his new apartment, and finally assume legal custody of Naruto. His stomach still clenched remembering the tear-filled eyes of the little blond two years ago, when tragedy snatched Minato and Kushina away in the blink of an eye. Iruka hadn't been able to travel to Tokyo immediately due to a nightmare of bureaucratic paperwork, but he never contemplated the option of leaving the child adrift. It was a debt of blood and soul. Kushina and Minato had rescued him when he was just a broken teenager sinking into the mud of Rio's favelas, dealing with depression, his own disorders, and the danger of addiction. They didn't let go of him in his worst moment; he wasn't going to let go of Naruto now. Never.
The problem was that the son of heroes; the godson of other heroes was Umino Iruka. And Iruka was no hero.
Twenty-nine years old, half Brazilian, half Japanese, and an omega with a spicy passionfruit scent that usually intensified when he was in a bad mood – that is, almost always. He also carried a healthy and well-justified disdain for traditional alphas, whom he considered, for the most part, a bunch of idiots of dubious intellectual coefficient.
As a psycho-pedagogue, he had had to move heaven and earth to get a vacancy at one of the most prestigious, conservative, and elitist institutions in Japan. A nest of vipers governed exclusively by alpha directors and teachers. The reason for all that segregation? Iruka couldn't care less. He only needed the job to be close to Naruto and ensure his financial stability. Fortunately, Jiraiya, the child's interim legal guardian, hadn't hesitated to use his influence to recommend him, accompanying the favor with a blunt warning: "That school is an absolute chaos of hormones and arrogance, Umino. I think you're the only one with enough character to put order in there. Especially, because of certain alphas." Iruka didn't ask questions; he accepted the challenge without blinking.
"Naruto, through that alley! To the left!" Iruka roared, adjusting the strap of his backpack as sweat began to ruin his neat and immaculate teacher's uniform.
The boy, a fourteen-year-old blond whirlwind, was hot on his heels.
Exactly five minutes remained until the entrance bell rang. Iruka calculated the distance, measured the obstacle, and, with the agility of someone who spent his adolescence dodging dangers in the Rio suburbs, vaulted over the concrete wall in one bound. Naruto imitated him with a clumsy but effective pirouette. His first day of school was about to begin, and the peaceful Japanese educational system had no idea of the hurricane heading its way.
"They're going to expel us on the first day, Iruka!" Naruto shouted, his voice breathless as he landed on his back on the back lawn of the school after clearing the last perimeter wall. The boy jumped back up, brushing dry leaves off his uniform with a mixture of panic and pure adolescent adrenaline. "Jumping the fences of the most prestigious academy in the city has to be a federal crime here!"
Iruka let out a clean, free laugh that echoed against the concrete walls of the gigantic educational complex. He didn't stop; his hyperactivity ignored fatigue. With a fluid hand movement, he pulled the plastic identification card from his jacket pocket that had been given to him weeks earlier at the legal offices.
"Of course not, get in here," he told him, winking as he slid the credential through the magnetic scanner on the service door. The device emitted an electronic beep, and the lock gave way with a heavy click. "In this world, Naruto, whoever has the key is right. Now move, go to your classroom before the inspector finds you in the hallway. Which teacher do you have for the first period?"
Naruto wrinkled his nose with an immediate gesture of annoyance, crossing his arms.
"With that weirdo, Gai-sensei," the blond grumbled, adjusting his backpack reluctantly. "They say he makes students run around the court if they're late, shouting something about youth."
Iruka planted his feet on the ground, opening his eyes wide involuntarily. A flash of absolute recognition crossed his mind.
"Gai?" he repeated, holding his breath.
"Yeah, Maito Gai. Do you know him?" Naruto asked, tilting his head with genuine curiosity at his guardian's sudden stiffness.
"No. I mean, not in person," Iruka replied immediately, clearing his throat to regain composure before the boy detected something strange. "Just... run, Naruto. Now!"
The blond nodded, turning to sprint down the main hallway at full speed, not before shouting over his shoulder:
"Good luck, Iruka! Don't let the old alphas intimidate you!"
Iruka didn't reply, but a tense smile formed on his lips as he watched the blonde hair disappear. Of course he knew Gai's name. His mind, always quick, suddenly flashed back a couple of years, to those sleepless nights when he scrolled through his phone looking for a sign of life from the other side of the ocean. Kakashi had never returned the follow on Instagram, a detail that initially stung but Iruka ended up accepting as part of the silver-haired boy's mystery. However, Kakashi's account was public back then. Iruka, almost masochistically, would check his stories from time to time.
That's how he learned certain things... Iruka told himself it wasn't his fault. For a couple of years, a guy with colossal eyebrows and an excessively bright smile began appearing on Kakashi's profile. They were boyfriends; the dinner photos, shared workouts, and subtle tags made it clear. Then, the relationship seemed to fall apart. Iruka remembered perfectly the time when Kakashi posted images of rainy landscapes accompanied by melancholic songs and cryptic hints about failed attempts to save someone who doesn't want to be saved. Iruka never knew the details of the breakup, nor the tragic background involving a certain Obito. For him, Gai was simply the energetic ex-boyfriend of the boy who had given him his first kiss in a Rio square. A distant memory, kept with affection and a pinch of irony, but nothing more.
Shaking his head to dispel the memories, Iruka noticed his own state. The run and the vault had ruined the neatness of his hairstyle. He brought his hands to the back of his neck, removing the elastic band that held his classic high ponytail. The long, brown hair fell over his shoulders in messy waves, still impregnated with that spicy passionfruit scent that stirred with his nervousness.
He began to climb the main stairs toward the administrative wing in long strides, using his fingers as an improvised comb to try to gather his mane on the go. Halfway down the second-floor hallway, the slender figure of Shizune, the principal's main assistant, appeared holding a heavy folder of documents.
"Umino-sensei!" the woman exclaimed, stopping when she saw him appear with his face slightly flushed from physical exertion. "I was just coming to find you at the entrance. Principal Tsunade has already gathered the teaching staff in the teachers' lounge for your official introduction. Please follow me."
"I apologize for the delay, Shizune-san. There was a mishap with the morning traffic," Iruka lied with a practiced smile, keeping his arms raised as he fought with the rebellious strands of his hair to tie them back up.
Shizune opened the double carved wooden doors that led to the large teachers' lounge. The atmosphere inside was radically different from the rest of the school: it was a dense space, saturated with the dominant, heavy pheromones of a dozen high-ranking alphas who turned in unison at the sound of the doors opening.
At the back of the room, a woman of imposing presence with blond hair pulled into two low ponytails stood behind an oak table. Tsunade, the feared principal, cleared her throat with an authority that silenced the room's murmur instantly.
"She's finally here," Tsunade declared, fixing her brown eyes on the newcomer with a mixture of rigor and relief. She gestured for him to step forward into the center of the room. "Gentlemen, pay attention. This is Umino Iruka, the new psycho-pedagogue of the institution. He comes highly recommended directly by the board and will be in charge of supervising student integration and performance cases. I expect you to give him the necessary cooperation."
Iruka stepped forward, forcing himself to meet the eyes of the teachers who examined him with evident skepticism, scrutinizing his neo-traditional tattoos that were hinted at under the cuffs of his shirt and that unmistakable scar that split the bridge of his nose. He kept his arms raised for another second, finishing adjusting the band around his brown hair, exposing the line of his neck. His scent of passionfruit and pink pepper expanded subtly through the room like a statement of principles against the barrier of pheromones from the alphas present.
"It's a pleasure to work with you," Iruka began, finally lowering his hands as he raised his gaze with a professional, polite smile.
But the words stuck in his throat.
In the second row of desks, sitting with a languid posture and his hands buried in the pockets of a loose jacket, was a man with unruly silver hair. He wore the lower half of his face covered by a black cloth, identical to the one Iruka remembered touching in a hot room on the other side of the ocean. His eyes, a tired, dark gray, were fixed on him.
The eye contact was instantaneous, a silent collision that seemed to freeze the air in the teachers' lounge completely.
Kakashi Hatake blinked slowly, and for the first time in years, the lazy indifference in his gaze shattered completely, opening into an expression of absolute bewilderment. Iruka, for his part, felt his jaw unhinge just a millimeter before forcing himself to maintain composure.
Iruka didn't know what to feel. His memory of Kakashi in Rio de Janeiro had always been a nice, nostalgic corner of his adolescence, the memory of a summer where two broken boys had supported each other. But one thing was to cherish a good youthful memory, and quite another was to discover that the ghost of your first kiss was now your coworker in a restrictive Japanese school, surrounded by prejudiced alphas, and under the watchful eye of two of Kakashi's exes sitting a couple of seats away.
The implicit and uncomfortable tension settled between them like a high-tension line, while the rest of the room continued applauding with corporate courtesy, completely oblivious to the internal earthquake that had just been unleashed between the new psycho-pedagogue and the literature teacher.