Chapter Text
Kakashi believes in soulmates.
His friends tend to tell him that he doesn’t – or that he’s believing in them incorrectly, something he consistently tells them doesn’t make sense. Gai in particular is insistent that Kakashi just needs to have faith and optimism and work hard – and then everything will work out in the end, but all of them, even Gai, miss the main scope of the problem.
Kakashi believes in soulmates.
He simply doesn’t see their value.
Soulmates, Kakashi knows, can be more damaging than anything else, and from when he was little, he’s had no desire to meet his.
He’s tried to explain this to Gai – who is inexplicably his best friend – on more than one occasion. “It’s not that my soulmate’s a bad person,” he says, twenty years old, watching Gai attempt to break the record for one-handed handstand in the middle of the gym Gai somehow has conned the owner into letting him manage. “It’s just that I could make him one, or he could make me one.”
Gai’s face is red from the effort, but he still manages a blinding grin and thumbs-up. “That,” he says, completely contrary to his agreeable expression, “is not at all how soulmates work.”
Kakashi raises an unimpressed eyebrow and considers tipping him over early. “And you’re such an expert?”
“I am!” Gai declares.
He does not elaborate.
Having known him since they were ten years old, Kakashi thinks he probably shouldn’t be surprised by this anymore.
“You aren’t,” Kakashi says. “No more than I am. And I’ve seen enough of soulmates to last a lifetime.”
“Really?” Gai asks. “Whatcha got in your pocket, then?”
Gai knows good and damn well Kakashi has a rock in his pocket that’s slick obsidian, glistening and bright and somehow seemingly imbued with a warmth from his soulmate that should be absolutely impossible. Kakashi knows it’s impossible, and yet –
And yet, he hangs onto every piece of his soulmate he’s ever found.
He doesn’t have a good explanation why. He knows he should throw them out – it’s not like he’s ever found anything particularly valuable. The first time he found anything, he was nine years old, waking up with red eyes from another night of listening to his parents – perfect soulmates, of course – scream at each other until he faded away into distant dreams.
There, in the middle of his bedroom floor, was a drawing. It was barely more than stick figures, a kid in the center labeled “ME” in messy handwriting with two parents.
Everyone was smiling.
Kakashi had almost thrown it away. He had thrown it away, actually, but ended up fishing it out later – and it’s still tucked into one of his books now, sitting on a shelf, waiting to be opened.
Kakashi doesn’t know that he’ll ever be ready to meet his soulmate, but everything he’s found has been so – kind. Gentle. Rocks from what must be a collection that he moves a lot, given how often they show up; the occasional sock; a set of notes from a science class once, as far as Kakashi can tell, based on how cramped and illegible the writing is; and a shoe that he keeps purely because he desperately wants to know how someone can lose just a single shoe.
He doesn’t want to meet his soulmate, but he likes thinking that he’s good at heart in a way that Kakashi isn’t, in a way that maybe his parents could have been had they never met each other and self-destructed.
He wants to believe there’s someone out there who collects rocks and sketches dogs in the margins of his notes and is meticulous enough to never lose anything big but somehow loses a single shoe, and he’s not interested in shattering the illusion.
Maybe someday, but he doubts it.
“Shut up,” he tells Gai. “You’re turning purple.”
Gai is, in fact, looking incredibly uncomfortable. “How much longer?”
Kakashi checks the stopwatch and turns on his heel to leave the gym. “You passed it thirty seconds ago. Congratulations. You’re the biggest idiot in the country.”
He lets the door swing closed on Gai’s shout.
Soulmates are fine.
But they’re best left alone.
Kakashi continues to think this way for another seven years, and he carefully manages his things so as to manage his soulmate’s expectations.
He doesn’t want to hurt this distant, kind human – it is, in fact, the entire point of maintaining this distance, and losing things will share information. He doesn’t need anyone guessing at who he is and trying to find him. He’s sure if he ever loses a paper with his name on it, that’ll be the end of things anyways – but these he manages even more carefully.
He may not be ready to meet the person on the other end of the rocks and socks, but he’s not ready to lose the connection, either, which he knows he will as soon as he learns his name. Hatake has been infamous in this town since he was seventeen years old.
And if his soulmate doesn’t live in town, well. The internet has never been kind to Kakashi’s family, either.
So, with this in mind, he keeps careful track of his things. Everything has a place. His room, then apartment when he moves out of the house his parents owned, stays neat and orderly.
Still – no one’s perfect, and Kakashi (as far as he’s aware) has lost three things over the course of his twenty-seven years.
The first is the rough draft of an essay, torn from his notebook by his dad and lost in the chaos of another bad night when he’s twelve years old. It is, ironically, on the topic of soulmates, and is just personal enough to give his soulmate the idea that perhaps Kakashi is not entirely disinterested in him.
As true as this may be, it’s an unfortunate thing to lose, and Kakashi doubles down on his resolve not to lose anything, a determination he keeps for another five years.
He loses both his resolve and his beanie the night his mother dies.
He knows he wore it to the hospital.
He doesn’t remember wearing it out.
He doesn’t remember much of anything, really, from the rest of that night and most of the next four days. He remembers Gai finding him somewhere in the street and taking him home, making him eat and sleep. He remembers Kurenai and Asuma (the one pair of soulmates that he does, perhaps, believe are meant to be together) helping him find clothes for the funeral and talking to his dad, getting permission to have Kakashi stay with Asuma for a few weeks instead.
He remembers the whispers.
He remembers how much the town hated his father – how they blamed him for his mother driving off drunk and getting herself killed.
He remembers agreeing with them and hating them, too, because it was never that simple.
And he remembers coming home to find his father dead on the floor two weeks later.
The beanie slipped his mind somewhere in all of that, and by the time he thought to look for it, it was long gone.
He wonders, sometimes, what his soulmate thought when he found that on the floor.
He wonders if he’ll see it again. He doesn’t know if he wants to or not.
The final thing that Kakashi loses is lost in the following few months.
He knows between Asuma’s and Kurenai’s and Gai’s parents, he’s allowed to stay in his home until he becomes an adult. He knows that if nothing else, his parents didn’t leave him with debt, and so he keeps the house and goes into the workforce after graduation, taking college classes at night. He knows that it takes him five months to clean out his parents’ room completely.
It’s sometime in that fifth month that Kakashi finds his father’s watch behind the dresser.
It must’ve slid off the top where it was carefully kept when not on his father’s wrist.
It’s the kind of the thing that should be deliberately handed down from father to son – or at least left with a note.
Instead, it’s behind the dresser, a victim of his father’s inconsolable grief and guilt as much as Kakashi, and when he finds it, he hurls the damn thing out the window.
By the time he realizes he wants it back and runs to help Kurenai search, Gai at his side, it’s too late.
He doesn’t know if he wants his soulmate to have kept that, either.
Sometimes, he thinks it would be better if all three things disappeared.
But he likes it when rocks and socks and that set of notes show up. He likes believing in something even if he can’t believe enough to grasp it or risk destroying it, and so when he hears about the Uchiha Foundation, he doesn’t apply for the job.
He doesn’t quite trust himself yet to make the right decision when it comes to his soulmate, and so how can he make that decision for anyone else?
There’s a part of him that believes that it would be best to break the bond before anything else can happen, and yet he can’t do it, so he doesn’t think about it too much. He tries not to, anyways.
He goes to Asuma and Kurenai’s wedding and celebrates. He makes Gai go with him to every event requiring a plus one that doesn’t require any real decorum (he steals Kurenai or Asuma for those).
He thinks, perhaps, he could live his life happily this way, until his soulmate – clearly completely unintentionally – forces the issue.
He does so by losing what is obviously the most important folder of his life.
Kakashi wakes up one morning to find a green folder on his bedroom floor, and he blinks, bewildered, as he flips through it.
This is not the average sock or rock.
His soulmate’s name is Iruka – family name Umino. He’s twenty-three years old, four years younger than Kakashi. He’s recently graduated, and he’s pursuing work as a teacher at an elementary school. Kakashi vaguely recognizes the name.
He knows all of this because this is clearly the folder he’s supposed to bring to this interview, complete with lesson plans, reference letters, test scores, application copies – everything they could possibly need to consider Iruka is currently sitting in Kakashi’s hands.
Including his contact information and the time of the interview, which appears to be taking place shortly after lunch.
Shit.
Kakashi has absolutely no desire to reach out, and he’s never tried to find his soulmate for a reason. It’s not a good idea. His parents were dangerous alone and deadly together, and he knows he can be dangerous. His genes prove it.
He doesn’t want to hurt this person he doesn’t even know, and he doesn’t know how else to protect him except by staying away.
But now, if he ignores this – does he damage Iruka’s future? At the very least he hurts him by choosing not to reach out –
Fuck.
Everything he sees somehow confirms all the things he’s hoped – there’s kindness here, and hope, and a sense of humor that shines through surprisingly strongly given the documents he’s seeing. If he’s this quick professionally, what might it be like to talk to him?
Kakashi doesn’t know what else he can do.
He has to at least call. Or text.
He’ll give him the folder. And his name. And if Iruka wants nothing else to do with him, then – then at least he knows.
And Iruka will get his folder back and get the job that he clearly deserves.
Not that Kakashi’s biased or anything.
He takes out his phone and sends a text to Gai, Asuma, and Kurenai telling them briefly that he’s going to contact his soulmate and then puts the entire chat on mute. He knows they’re going to lose their minds, and honestly, Kakashi only has the space for one person’s insanity at a time, and he currently has that spot.
He can maybe make room for Iruka.
If that’s something he wants.
And so he sends a text.
Iruka? This is Kakashi, your soulmate. I have your folder, if you need it.
The response is almost immediate.
Thank you!! You’re such a lifesaver!! I was hoping you might get it!
It’ll be great to meet you! If you can meet? Are you in the city?
I can meet you. Coffee and folder exchange only.
That feels too harsh. Kakashi frowns.
I don’t mind meeting you, but I’m not anyone’s ideal soulmate.
I mean, an ideal soulmate would imply an ideal person, and that does seem pretty unlikely, huh?
Don’t worry, no pressure from me!
I’m just grateful you got it and reached out.
Send me the address??
Kakashi does, slightly more relaxed. And curious, although he’s loath to admit it – that response was unexpected, and…kind.
Just like his soulmate has always seemed to be.
Perfect! I can be there in probably an hour.
Is that too soon? Sorry, I’m in a rush. I want to prep for the interview more beforehand.
It’s fine.
And then, before he can talk himself out of it –
You’ll be fine. See you then.
Kakashi, for all his talk, is an idiot.
Still, he’ll give him the folder, wish him luck – because it would be a bad thing to crush any soulmate-related dreams he might have right before a big interview – and disappear afterwards. No harm, no foul, which is the approach Kakashi has taken with his soulmate all his life, and he sees no reason to change now.
Meeting Iruka gives Kakashi a reason to change his strategy.
Mostly his face. Also his eyes, which are bright and kind and hopeful in ways Kakashi can’t quite describe.
Also a little bit his body, which is far from bad, and Kakashi is having a very difficult time banishing those thoughts.
Iruka’s already in the coffee shop when Kakashi arrives, flustered and flushed from the crisp winter air, and Kakashi wants to blame his instant fixation on him on the photograph in the folder, but really, if he’s honest, it’s a pull somewhere deep in his chest of I want to know this person better.
He walks straight up to him, this young man with his hands in mittens despite being wrapped around a hot mug, sitting near the door and says, “You should be more careful,” before slapping the folder on the table.
Iruka smiles and laughs, a thing that sparkles. “I know! I can’t believe I did that, honestly. I’m usually more careful. I can’t thank you enough for bringing it to me.” He stands, outstretches his hand, still mittened. “Kakashi, right?”
Kakashi should leave. Iruka’s gotten his coffee and folder, and Kakashi should leave.
He doesn’t. He shakes his hand. He sits down. “You ready for the interview, then?”
“I hope so,” Iruka says sincerely, flipping through the folder. “What do you want?”
Kakashi stiffens. “I – can leave, if you’d –”
“No, no!” He laughs again. “I meant to drink. To eat, too, if you want? On me. It’s the least I can do after hauling you all the way out here.”
“I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh.”
Kakashi raises an eyebrow at the clear disbelief.
Iruka shrugs. “I just graduated university a bit ago, Kakashi. In my world, no one is ever fine unless they’re actively drinking coffee or they’re asleep.”
He laughs despite himself. “I hate to tell you that that doesn’t change as you get older.”
“Oh yeah, old man? Are you speaking from experience?”
“I’ll have you know my hair’s been this color all my life,” Kakashi tells him, feigning offense, but he’s smiling, just the smallest bit, because it’s impossible not to smile at the quirk of Iruka’s eyebrow and teasing lightness in his voice.
“That’s what all the old men say,” Iruka says, leaning forward like he’s telling Kakashi a secret, and Kakashi feels something inside him warm when Iruka’s hand skims lightly over his as he finally discards his mittens on the too-small table. “Coffee, then? Anything to eat?”
“Coffee’s fine.”
Iruka tilts his head, and it’s endearing in a way Kakashi didn’t expect. He watches as he pulls his hair back into a ponytail, the movements practiced and precise. “Anything special, or just a black coffee? Nothing I can do to sweeten it a bit?”
Kakashi’s starting to think his mere presence is sweet enough and then immediately hates himself for it. “Black is fine.” He deserves the bitterness. He’s being ridiculous. He needs to come back to planet Hatake where soulmates are shit, and he –
He doesn’t want to damage Iruka, this soft, kind soul who’s nodding and going to the counter to get him a coffee, black, because he’s listening to what Kakashi wants –
This was a bad idea. Kakashi considers leaving before he gets back. It’s not like the coffee will go to waste; from what Iruka’s already said, he’s practically mainlining the stuff at this point, so he can get his cream and sugar if he wants it (Kakashi’s sure he does) and drink it himself.
Kakashi should leave, but before he can muster up enough resolve, Iruka’s back, sliding a muffin in front of him, a gentle touch to his wrist that’s surprisingly unobtrusive. “You looked hungry,” he says simply, “and I had them warm it up, so it’ll be good, I promise. I’ll be right back with your coffee.”
“I –” Kakashi doesn’t know if he should thank him or scold him, but Iruka’s walking away by the time he’s picked gratitude.
He doesn’t – he doesn’t know the last time someone showed him care like this. It’s something so small – a warmed up muffin to go with his coffee, but he –
Kakashi shifts in his seat and takes off his jacket, draping it gently over the back of the chair.
Iruka’s made no demands but to say thank you, and as long as Kakashi is completely clear, maybe this doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Maybe just knowing Iruka will be fine.
Will be enough to keep him from wanting more.
It’s easier said than done, but Kakashi manages it – to a degree. It helps that Iruka never pushes. He seems glad to be in Kakashi’s life in whatever way Kakashi allows, and so – and so it’s easy to allow him more and more space there, somewhere he seems to belong, and Kakashi –
Has never been so terrified. This goes against everything he’s ever taught himself, and he wonders, there must’ve been a time – did his parents ever feel like this? Did they ever seem to fit so perfectly together that they thought yes, yes, it will be like this forever until suddenly it wasn’t? Did the break happen suddenly or did they fracture slowly from the inside out?
Soulmates are as far from a guarantee of happiness as it’s possible to get in Kakashi’s world, and he – he can’t imagine doing to Iruka what his parents did to each other.
It’s Kurenai who calls bullshit on this.
He’s over having dinner with her and Asuma like he does at least once or twice a week because they and Gai are the family that held him together when his parents ripped him apart, and when Asuma winks and nudges and pushes and pries about Iruka with a surprising gentleness that has Kakashi telling the truth (he’s a friend, but a best friend; he calls almost every night; if he doesn’t call, I do; he’s probably the smartest person I’ve ever met – the part he doesn’t say is that Iruka is most definitely the kindest), Kurenai sighs.
Kakashi’s eyes flick to her. “What?”
She frowns at him. “And he knows you don’t…want to be soulmates.”
“Can’t help being soulmates, last I checked,” Kakashi says flippantly, knowing good and damn well that that isn’t what she means – and that it’s not strictly true, either, given the Uchiha Foundation.
“Fine. He knows that you want to keep him at arm’s length despite knowing that you two are a really, really good fit.” She raises an eyebrow.
He shrugs. “Yeah. Hasn’t pushed it.”
“Just a thought, but…” She bites her lip, glancing briefly at Asuma, who nods. “I know you don’t like talking about it, but you should probably tell him why.”
Kakashi stiffens.
Asuma shrugs. “If he’s like you say he is, he’ll probably get it, dude. And bring him around sometime! We wanna meet the guy you definitely don’t wanna get closer to.”
“Asuma –”
“Just think about it,” Kurenai tells him, and Kakashi does.
He thinks about it all day. He thinks about it at work, at night when he lies down for his daily routine of staring at the ceiling until he eventually manages a restless sort of sleep. He thinks about it when he texts Iruka and when he calls, and he’s wondering if he has any right to disturb this man with any of this information at all that he hasn’t heard a word of what Iruka’s said –
“Kakashi? You there?”
He startles, tilts the phone back against his skin from where it’s fallen lax against his pillow. “Yes, sorry. Please, continue.”
“You haven’t heard a word I said,” Iruka points out, but it doesn’t sound like a rebuke, and Kakashi can’t rally the defensiveness that’s usually so quick to scratch against his skin. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s okay if you aren’t,” Iruka says, and Kakashi closes his eyes against the emotions that brings, a heat there that he’s suppressed for so long that it burns. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, either. But you can if you’d like.”
Kakashi stares at the ceiling. “You’re being very patient,” he says after a long moment.
“I don’t see a reason why I shouldn’t be.”
“I’m your soulmate who won’t engage with you like soulmates traditionally do and hasn’t told you why. Most people would be angry.”
“Most people expect soulmates to solve all their problems. I think there are many ways for souls to complement one another. I think so far, we’ve complemented each other well. Don’t you?”
Kakashi doesn’t answer for a moment, but there’s a shift on the other line that betrays the nerves Iruka’s kept so far down, and as much as he wishes he could avoid this conversation, he doesn’t want Iruka to think for a second that he’s the problem. “Have you heard my name before?”
“Kakashi?”
“Family name. Hatake.”
“Can’t say I have. Should I have?”
Kakashi closes his eyes and listens to the buzzing in his own head. No way out, no way back. “Made the tabloids big a few years back. Pretty notorious for a while.”
“Ah, well – there’s the problem,” Iruka says, and he sounds so goddamn apologetic about it that Kakashi has to suppress a laugh. “I’m great with names once I meet someone, but really quite bad with them on paper. Even if I read it, I probably wouldn’t remember.”
“Didn’t look me up when we met?”
“Did you look me up?” Iruka asks, and there’s a sudden sharpness to his voice, a rebuke that Kakashi knows from his stories works nearly perfectly on his students, a question he's asking despite clearly knowing the answer. “Why would I create a version of you in my head that’s any different from the one you want to share with me?”
And there’s something – something so fucking vulnerable and open and honest and accepting about that that it cracks Kakashi down the center, breaks him wide and lets hope swim into the places he’s kept locked for so long he’d nearly forgotten they existed. “Ah,” he says, and the rawness creeps in there too, something too bloody and fresh to keep hidden.
“What do you need?” Iruka’s voice is still kind and understanding, still inevitably hopefully him that Kakashi has a moment of terror where he realizes that if – if he goes too deep, he’ll never be able to deny this man anything, and he swallows it back because it doesn’t matter.
Iruka never asks for anything for himself. He asks for what Kakashi needs, emotionally, physically; he cares for him in a way that no one else has, and Kakashi can only reach back in whatever small ways he can to make sure Iruka knows – he is cared for, too.
“You should come over on Friday,” he says instead, a non-answer. “I’d like to tell you about my family.”
“You’d like to or you think you have to? Because those are different things, and Kakashi… I want to know you. Of course I do. But you don’t have to.”
Kakashi finds himself settling into those words like they’re a woolen blanket Iruka’s draped over his shoulders, warm and safe, and he considers them for a moment before saying, “I want to. Come over on Friday.”
“I’d like that,” Iruka says softly, and then, “What can I do for you tonight?”
“Talk to me,” Kakashi tells him. “Tell me about your students today. Any troublemakers?”
“God, you wouldn’t believe. I swear, Lee is the sweetest child, but if I can’t figure out a way to keep his ADHD brain entertained, he’s going to be bouncing off the walls all day every day. I really think he needs to be in a sport, but he’s so clumsy that anything he joins, the coaches just bench him.”
An idea sparks. “I have a friend,” he says slowly, “who manages a gym and runs a dojo. He’s – well. He’s…” Kakashi searches for a word that describes Gai accurately without being inherently terrifying. “Eclectic?”
Iruka bursts out laughing. “Well, that’s promising.”
Kakashi chuckles despite himself. “Look, he’s a lot, but he’s generally good with kids who are doing their damnedest but can’t quite fit in anywhere else. I’ll text you his number.”
“That would be good, thank you.” There’s a short pause and then – “It’s Gai, isn’t it,” Iruka says flatly, and Kakashi bursts into laughter.
“It is.”
Iruka sighs heavily, and Kakashi laughs harder. “You’re sure he’s good with kids? He’s not just going to terrorize Lee, is he?”
“Probably a little,” Kakashi admits, “but not in a bad way. He is my best friend, you know.”
“Your best friend who literally took a train from two cities away after a competition to sit across the restaurant from us and send alcohol to us with suggestive messages the first time we had dinner together.”
Kakashi snickers. “You know, I don’t think he’s terribly sorry about that,” he says thoughtfully. “I’ll have to return the favor when –” He stops, swallows.
“It’s okay,” Iruka tells him when the silence has stretched too far. “I know soulmates are a difficult topic for more than one person. I understand.”
Kakashi hesitates. “It’s not my story to tell,” he says eventually, lets the words come out stilted with uncertainty. “Gai isn’t shy about it, but –”
“Yes, well, I imagine Gai is shy about very little,” Iruka mutters, and Kakashi’s laughing again, the tension broken. “I’m sure you two will find many a way to torture each other in the future.”
“Undoubtedly.” Kakashi finds himself smiling at the ceiling. “Come over Friday,” he says quietly. “I know your week is going to be long. I’ll make dinner. We’ll talk.” He knows it sounds like a date. It isn’t a date, though, and Iruka doesn’t ask him if it is, and after Friday –
Well, after Friday, he’ll know why, which is something, anyways.
“I’ll be there,” Iruka says simply. “Thank you.”
Kakashi falls asleep listening to him mutter as he grades science tests over the phone, and he knows, he knows this is a dangerous path, but –
As long as they’re just friends, it can be okay.
They can be okay.
By the time Kakashi opens the door to let Iruka in on Friday evening, he’s much less certain of everything he wants and everything he can actually have. He’s half decided to back out – to tell Iruka to look up his family online if he’s curious and let him make his own decisions, but then he sees him.
Iruka looks fucking exhausted.
His smile is kind and warm as always, his eyes gentle, but there’s a tension in his shoulders, the lines of his body drawn shaky with stress and worry, and all Kakashi wants is to take care of this man, to sit him down and feed him and make him laugh and keep him safe from a world that tends to treat its best people the worst (and if Iruka isn’t one of its best, Kakashi doesn’t know who is).
He immediately draws him in, taking his jacket and pointing him towards the slippers and leading him to sit. “Stay,” he says, the first word he’s said, and Iruka smiles.
“Hi, sorry.” Iruka waves awkwardly as he sits. “I’m – it’s been quite a day, but I’m alright. You don’t need to wait on me.”
“I want to,” Kakashi says honestly. “You haven’t been taking care of yourself well enough. I can see it. So sit and stay, and I’ll be back with food. Do you need a drink?”
“I – you don’t need to –”
“Iruka, you’re getting a drink whether you want one or not, so you might as well tell me what you like.” Kakashi pauses in the doorway of the kitchen, glancing behind him with the smirk that he’s noticed makes Iruka’s eyes linger, a flirtation he shouldn’t indulge but can’t quite resist because it makes Iruka’s cheeks flush, and the man needs some damn color in his face right now.
It works. His eyes drop, his face turns red, and he says, “Well – hot tea, then. If you have it, and it isn’t too much trouble.”
That – that’s bothersome. Kakashi turns all the way, walks back to the couch, and ghosts his fingers over Iruka’s chin, just to make him look him in the eye. “You are not a bother,” he says clearly. “Now you’re going to sit and eat and drink your tea, and then you’re going to decide if you want to hear what I have to say tonight or another time.”
“Tonight is –”
“You’re exhausted.” Kakashi frowns. “You know I haven’t given you what you want, and maybe you don’t need to have to think about why tonight.”
“I’d like to understand you better,” Iruka admits, and his eyes are wide and earnest. “I’m not – I’m never going to expect anything from you that you don’t want to give, but that – that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what you’re thinking.”
“Food and drink first, then you can ask if you want.” Kakashi nods, decided, and goes to the kitchen to the get the food. His hands aren’t as shaky anymore, and he isn’t sure exactly why – except that it matters more that Iruka is taken care of than that Kakashi has a conversation he’s been dreading anyways.
Kakashi isn’t good at this part. He’s not inherently comforting unless people find blunt honesty comforting, and few do. Still, it turns out that Iruka may be one of them. He lets Kakashi encourage him; he takes the criticism in stride when Kakashi suggests that perhaps parent night might go better if Iruka schedules the meetings in advance; he lets Kakashi give him food and tea, and by the time they’ve eaten and the dishes have been cleared, his eyes are brighter.
If that’s all that comes out of this night, Kakashi thinks that’s okay.
He made his soulmate’s life better, if only for now, if only for this.
It’s something.
He’s brought Iruka his third cup of tea before the man finally looks at him and says, “Thank you. Your turn.”
Kakashi’s jaw tightens. It’s not so much that he thought he was getting out of this – or even that he wants to, but this has been…good. For both of them, he hopes, and he doesn’t want it to end.
It’s bad enough that he hasn’t pursued a relationship with his soulmate. It’s a miracle enough that Iruka’s accepted that. But his reasoning? His family?
Well. Who wants to be tied to that?
“Are you sure?” he asks, shifting on the couch, curling a leg up onto it so that he can face Iruka fully, the other tapping anxiously on the floor. “It can wait.”
Iruka reaches out and places a gentle hand on his knee, stilling his movement. “It can,” he says softly, “but you shouldn’t have to. I promise, I’m okay to hear what you have to tell me. I’m not going anywhere.”
Kakashi can’t help but snort. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“Maybe you should let me decide my own capabilities,” Iruka tells him lightly, but his hand squeezes on his knee, a gentle reassurance Kakashi wishes he didn’t need.
Kakashi takes a deep breath and tells him.
It’s been a long time since he’s told this story. He’s not sure he’s ever actually had to tell it in its entirety. Gai lived so much of it with him, was at Kakashi’s side every bad day after every fight, kept him over at his house as long and as often as he possibly could; Kurenai and Asuma picked up the pieces more often than they ever should’ve had to, and –
Kakashi hasn’t cared about anyone else enough to be this kind of honest with them before, but Iruka – Iruka deserves to know.
Iruka with his stupidly kind face and good heart makes him want to try.
He talks about how he thinks it might have been good, once. He doesn’t remember it, but they sure look happy in pictures. He knows pictures can lie, but they were soulmates once, so – it must’ve been good, right? They must’ve had something to build on that wasn’t hate and anger and fear and resentment and pain, that didn’t walk the line of passion and aggression like it was a tightrope instead of an eight-lane freeway.
They must’ve, but Kakashi doesn’t remember it, and so he was born into fighting and chaos and pain, an accidental child in a tug-of-war that stopped having any winners long before he came into being. He remembers the times he got caught in the crossfire and the times he didn’t; he remembers more than he wishes and less than he should because at some point, it all started blurring together. He explains why Gai is so protective; he admits that Kurenai and Asuma would like to meet him too (Iruka smiles almost shyly and says he’d love to; Kakashi moves on with the story before he can think too hard about how that makes him feel).
He tells him about how it got worse instead of better; how he was preparing to move out the second he could; how he spent more time with his friends and at school and sometimes just wandering the streets than he did at home.
He tells him about getting the call. He tells him about the beanie and the watch.
He tells him how he loved his parents and hated them too.
He tells him that for his entire life, soulmates have only ever looked like pain, and how he never wanted to meet Iruka because he never wanted to hurt him.
He tells him he kept his rock collection, and Iruka laughs with delight.
Iruka never stops touching him and he never interrupts, and by the time Kakashi’s done talking, his throat is hoarse and the sun has long set.
“That’s it,” he finally says, raspy. “That’s the sordid tale. Surprised you haven’t heard it before, actually.”
“Kakashi,” Iruka says softly, “I don’t think anyone’s heard that before.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Were you not listening to the part where my family became notorious the second I was orphaned?”
“The tabloids say one thing, but only you could tell that story,” Iruka tells him, “and I don’t think you’ve told it before. Have you?”
Kakashi doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything.
“I understand,” Iruka says. He doesn’t break eye contact. “And I want you to know how amazed I am by who you are and what you done. I like you very much, Kakashi. And I’d like to stick around, however you’ll have me.”
Something unspools in Kakashi’s chest, warm and heavy, like a chain that’s been kept curled inside him, protective and restrictive in the same beat of his heart. “I’d like that,” he says softly, and he leans forward, touches his lips to Iruka’s forehead in a brush that’s so light he barely registers the feeling – and yet his lips tingle as he pulls back.
Iruka stares at him, eyes wide and soft and somehow broken open, and Kakashi thinks that that’s somehow worse than a smile, worse than a hug – this vulnerability, and he thinks of his parents, and he wonders if they ever looked at each other like that.
He looks away. They must’ve. That kind of destruction can only have its roots in that kind of openness.
“It’s okay,” Iruka says, as if he can sense the trepidation thundering like horses in Kakashi’s mind. “We don’t have to be anything at all.”
Kakashi takes a breath and looks back at him.
There’s strength there, too, underlying that vulnerable hope.
He wonders if Iruka is worth the risk of ruining them both.
He wonders if Iruka might be able to hold the weight of that kind of love.
“I’d like,” he says softly, hesitantly, “to know you more.”
Iruka smiles, and it’s like the tension in the room relaxes, settling and pooling at Kakashi’s feet before seeping away entirely, unable to withstand the kindness of that smile. “That sounds perfect.” Iruka shifts forward only the slightest bit, leaning sideways into the couch instead of into Kakashi – support and eagerness without any pressure, and perhaps it’s this that makes Kakashi do what he does.
He picks up Iruka’s hand, gently stroking his calf after having shifted from his knee, and folds their fingers together, kissing his knuckles and then tucking their entwined hands into his side, a show of intimacy that is both too little and too much for the speed of his heart. “Okay,” he says.
“Okay,” Iruka echoes, and they sit there until Kakashi’s fear has faded, until he forces Iruka to take the bed while he sleeps on the couch because it’s far too late to send him home now (and certainly not because Kakashi will admit he wants him to stay), until he thinks maybe, maybe, he could do this.
Maybe he could try.