Chapter Text
“Mm. No surprise. Kakashi is hot,” says Ino, dipping her soba into a small bowl of tsuyu. The four of them (Ino, Sai, Kiba, and Naruto) are having lunch, a semi-regular weekday occurrence for their larger friend group.
“What?!” Naruto shrieks.
Ino looks over at him, rolls her eyes, and focuses back on her noodles. “Don’t yell, Naruto. Kakashi has been Konoha’s most eligible bachelor for years. If you think you’ll take his place, you’re delusional.”
Naruto sputters. “What?! No. That’s not – I thought I heard you say Kakashi was hot,” he says around a mouthful of noodles.
“Uh, yeah.” Kiba says. Sai is nodding placatingly, as though Naruto is a lost cause. Kiba shakes his head slowly. Naruto doesn’t appreciate that, but Kiba was a total bro by paying for Naruto’s meal, so Naruto isn’t going to fight back.
"He's our Hokage," Naruto says, like this invalidates everything.
"So?" Ino sets down her chopsticks. She's looking at Naruto like he's an idiot. Naruto hates that look. "Being Hokage makes it worse. Or better, depending on how you look at it."
"That's… He wears a mask—"
"Mysterious," says Sai pleasantly.
"He's old—"
"Distinguished," adds Ino.
"He's always late—"
"Keeps you wanting more," says Kiba.
Naruto stares at them all.
"Yeah, well." Naruto crosses his arms. "I never said he wasn't attractive." The table goes quiet. Ino is looking at him. Kiba is looking at him. Sai is looking at him. Naruto replays what he just said. "I meant. That's not! Argh. I was ADDING to the general, y’know..." He trails off, waving his hands around.
"Naruto," Sai says, in the careful tone he uses when he's read something about human social dynamics. "There is no shame in finding Kakashi-sama attractive. Studies suggest that authority figures who project an air of—"
"We're done with this topic!" Naruto screeches.
"Mm," says Ino, very serenely. She is going to gossip about this with Sakura forever. Naruto knows it. He knows it and knows he can't do anything about it now.
Naruto holds his head in his hands. He feels like the world has been quietly operating on a different set of rules than the ones he was given. Like there was a meeting. And he missed it.
"Does Kakashi know?" he asks. It bursts out of him. "That everyone—does he know?"
"Naruto." Ino picks her chopsticks back up. "He absolutely knows."
Naruto thinks about Kakashi's eye-crinkle. The lazy way he leans in doorframes. The little wave he gives when he's late.
He sinks slowly down over his bowl.
"I need more noodles," he says to no one in particular.
Kiba signals for the server without even being asked. Because Kiba, whatever else he is, is a total bro.
The thing is, now that Ino has pointed out that Kakashi is handsome, Naruto can’t stop noticing it.
Of course he finds Kakashi handsome. Who wouldn’t? It’s perfectly normal, Naruto tries to rationalize. Kakshi is strong, and skilled, and kind. He’s the Hokage. It’s normal to be infatuated with the Hokage. And he has a nice body, because he’s a shinobi. And a nice face – or whatever Naruto can see of his face. A nice eye. It’s nice. So what.
Naruto buries his face in his pillow to stifle his scream.
No.
No, this won’t do.
Having a crush is one thing. Having a crush on Kakashi-sensei? Kakashi’s a pervert. He reads Jiraya’s awful pervy novels in public. He slouches around like he doesn’t care about anything and never files paperwork and makes Naruto complete D ranks just because. He can’t be crushing on Kakashi-sensei.
But Kakashi isn’t really Kakashi-sensei anymore, a voice in Naruto’s head whispers. Kakashi is no longer his teacher, and hasn’t been in years. Kakashi is his colleague and friend.
And Kakashi, Naruto's brain supplies helpfully, has very nice hands.
Naruto screams into his pillow again.
He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling.
Okay. Fine, fine. Naruto can be an adult about this. Naruto’s going to be the next Hokage. He won’t be defeated by thoughts of Kakashi-sensei. He can interact with Kakashi and be normal. He's working in the Hokage's office (volunteering, technically, since Kakashi had told Naruto he needed training in paperwork, which had felt like a slight at the time but now seems, in retrospect, extremely convenient for the purposes of having a legitimate reason to be in the same room as Kakashi for six hours a day) …
The point is. Naruto isn't a quitter. He's not going to fall apart just because he thinks Kakashi-sensei is hot. He isn't.
He's just... He's just going to notice it. And his hands. And his eye.
Naruto gently lowers the pillow from his face.
The truly terrible thing (the thing that he keeps circling back to, against his will) is that it's not even really about Kakashi being handsome. Naruto has known objectively handsome people. Sasuke is handsome. Naruto has never once lain awake thinking about Sasuke. Never. Ever. Never, no matter what his teenage self might say.
The problem is the other stuff. The way Kakashi laughs at his own jokes a half-second after he tells them, like he surprised himself. The way he takes Naruto's shouted, increasingly unhinged policy opinions seriously in meetings, even when everyone else is visibly pained. The way he'd shown up at Naruto's apartment with takeout the night of the Shadow Clone incident, the one they'd agreed never to speak of, and hadn't asked any questions, just handed over the food and sat on the floor with him until Naruto felt like himself again.
That's the problem.
The hands are a problem. But that is the real problem.
Naruto sits up. His hair is doing something catastrophic. He doesn't care.
He needs to talk to someone about this. He needs advice. He needs help.
Except he cannot tell Ino. Ino will be insufferably smug about it until one or both of them is dead.
He cannot tell Sakura. Sakura will be kind and thoughtful and then tell Ino.
He absolutely cannot tell Sai, because Sai will bring it up at the next mission debrief in front of Kakashi, with the particular brand of sincere helpfulness that makes Naruto want to dissolve into the earth.
Sasuke…. No, Naruto decides. Absolutely not.
Naruto falls back onto the bed.
He'll just. Handle it himself. He's handled worse. He'll just act normal, is all. Completely normal. Around Kakashi. Whose hands are–
Normal, Naruto thinks loudly, at himself.
He stares at the ceiling for a long time.