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“Hey Boss? Boss. One of your kids is at the door.”
Kakashi groans and rolls deeper into the futon. It’s barely morning. The sound of rain slapping down onto the balcony foreshadows a miserable day of training. One of the gutters along the rooftop is leaking, and its steady drip-drip-drip cuts through Kakashi’s slumber like the pitter-patter of Guruko’s paws. Further into the apartment, a showering is running. Gai’s jubilant humming is an almost recognisable tune.
Something about Guruko’s whisper nags at Kakashi’s half-awake brain in the same way. Almost recognisable. Kakashi buries further under the duvet and ignores whatever it is.
“Boss. It’s the pink-haired one. She’s at the door.”
Sakura? How can she be at the door? This isn’t even Kakashi’s apartment. He squints at Guruko’s floppy-eared silhouette. The sun trying so desperately to start the morning is cloud-covered and grey, and its light casts Gai’s bedroom in a stormy haze. Gai probably went out running in this weather regardless. He will be all pink and warm after his shower at least and Kakashi’s other brain stirs at that welcoming idea.
“Pink?” he mumbles, tasting morning breath in his mouth. He needs a coffee. Maybe two. There will be plenty of time for it if the rain keeps up. His students should know by now that he won’t turn up to teach them if anything inconveniences him along the way - absolutely anything at all.
He hears the knock at the door this time. Guruko’s long-whiskered snout twitches with a, “Boss. She’s getting wet.”
Kakashi sighs. He’s not sure a little girl choosing to loiter on a porch in the rain at whateverthefuck time it is is his problem, but he kicks off the duvet at Guruko’s righteous look. Fine. Fine. He supposes he should give a damn.
It will only be worse if Gai ends up answering the door anyway. Luckily, half of the village could detonate while he’s in the shower and Gai wouldn’t hear a thing.
Kakashi stumbles into a pair of slacks and grabs a mask. The alarm clock in the corner says it’s just shy of seven AM. He slides open the balcony door to let in the humid air and considers, for a second, making a quick escape over the rooftops. But it would be pretty pathetic to be judged by all of Gai’s plants.
He shuffles to the front door in a dog-chewed pair of slippers and braces himself for the pre-teen on the other side. The rain is slightly quieter on this side of the flat. That’s probably because Sakura’s poor-ass decision making and her ridiculous hair is soaking up all of the rain.
Guruko sits obediently at Kakashi’s feet. As though he wasn’t the one to gnaw holes into these slippers. There’s no point blaming Shiba this time.
Kakashi opens the door. As expected, Sakura is standing there with her waterlogged hair and perpetually overwhelmed expression, as though after two months of this teaching nonsense she somehow still thinks Kakashi is the scariest man in the village and will eat her alive; but unexpectedly, she appears to be wearing her pyjamas.
Well, it is the crack of dawn. Kakashi would live in his pyjamas if given half the chance. Unfortunately, he has eight dogs to bully him into being a functional human being. One of them is even sitting at his heels right now.
“Sakura,” Kakashi starts, figuring he might as well lean into that aloof, child-eating persona she thinks he has if it means making her skedaddle. He really isn’t cut out for this teaching shit. “I certainly hope you’re here for me, and not Gai, because otherwise I’ll be very upset.”
She stares at him. Wonderful. Maybe she really was expecting Gai. The sight of Kakashi in the doorway seems to have struck her dumb, not that it was particularly difficult in the first place. She’s, like, twelve. Thirteen. Eleven?
She’s also shivering. Kakashi thinks of the nice, warm bed he abandoned and the nice, warm shower he could be having with Gai, and beckons her inside.
He grabs her a pair of slippers (Tenten’s, they’re probably the same size) and gestures for the jacket she’s wearing. It’s either a coat, a blanket, or a dressing-gown - he doesn’t understand the fashion choices of teenage girls. Upon hanging it up, he decides it’s a dressing-gown, which begs the question of why the hell she was wearing it out in the rain.
“I had a fight with my parents,” Sakura mumbles. Her eyes dare him to say even one word about it, but her posture screams help me and I’m small and been crying, and if Kakashi was any good at keeping his nose out of other people’s business, well, then he wouldn’t be a very good spy.
“And you came here because…?”
“No-one answered the door at your place. And Gai-sensei’s your… friend. I thought you might..."
She says friend in the same way her grandparents might say bit on the side. It’s amusing to think that she has grandparents. Most of the shinobi Kakashi knows don’t even have their parents anymore. Most of them died. Most of them popped out a child and then left it to fight in a war all alone.
“Gai-sensei is definitely my friend,” Kakashi says in a completely different tone. She’ll be too young to understand it, but she’s also too young to be storming out on her parents and traversing half the village in search of a man she’s known for two months for… What? A neutral party?
“I’m not paid enough to get involved in fights with your parents,” he adds. “Also, it goes against my moral code to threaten, maim, or scare defenceless citizens, or something. Go and sit under the kotatsu, I’ll get you a towel. Guruko will keep you company.”
He slides Guruko across the floor with his foot and then retreats to the relative sanity of the bathroom where Gai is still humming, and oblivious, and hopefully not about to exit in nothing but a towel.
Steam wafts into Kakashi’s face as he enters. The lights are brighter here. The only hint to the grey world outside of the flat is through the little rectangular window at the top of the wall. A neat pile of green clothes sits on top of the washing machine, and the spare towels stack on a shelf above that. Kakashi grabs one of them just as Gai steps out of the shower.
He’s naked, pink, and sparkling. He smells of that distinctly nothing-smell that Kakashi can tolerate in a shampoo. He’s very naked. Kakashi keeps his back pressed against the door just in case it tries to open behind him. Gai smiles as though Kakashi’s presence in his apartment is a complete surprise - and did Kakashi mention that he’s very utterly naked?
“Kakashi! Good morning! This is an unusually chipper time for you to be awake! You could have joined me in the shower. I will be finished momentarily if you are most patiently waiting your turn.”
Kakashi appreciates the unhurried view of Gai dressing for longer than is strictly appropriate given that one of his students is probably sobbing all over the front room, and then says, “Sakura is here.”
“Sakura? Here?” He looks alarmed for a second, as though Kakashi is about to pull her out from behind his back. But then his chakra stretches out across the flat, warm and rolling, like smoke from a never-ending flame. “She’s with Guruko? She’s…”
Gai frowns. He’s never been great at reading people’s chakra. Sakura’s teeny tiny presence in the front room will be about all he can gather.
“Crying,” Kakashi supplies. “And wet. Apparently, she’s had a fight with her parents and now she’s come… to me?”
Gai stares at him. Then his face breaks open with a beaming smile. He hurries into the rest of his clothes, rambling, “Your student has sought you out in a time of need? Kakashi, this is wonderful! She’s reaching out to you, trusting you! Oh my Rival, I knew you would make swift progress with your students. We mustn’t keep her waiting!”
Kakashi keeps his students waiting all of the time. But there’s little he can do in the face of Gai’s enthusiasm (and those big, strong arms) and quickly he finds himself shepherded into the kitchen. Gai throws open the partition between the kitchen and the living space with such commotion that Sakura, sitting tidily under the kotatsu, jumps about a foot into the air.
“Miss Sakura!” Gai cries, whipping out an apron. “How do you take your tea? With honey?”
She looks just as startled as she did on the front porch, as though she’s not quite sure what she’s doing here. “Oh, um, yes please.”
“And have you had breakfast?”
“No, I -” Sakura looks down at her flower-printed pyjamas. Guruko is sitting in her lap, happily accepting pets. Her hair is long enough to brush against the top of his head. “Please don’t worry about it Gai-sensei, I probably shouldn’t be here.”
That’s true. Kakashi hands her the towel anyway because there’s no arguing with Gai. He sits to the left of her so that he can see both her and Gai at the same time, and his back isn’t to the window. And since she’s here now, he casts a quick glance over her for any hint of injury. She looks fine.
Good. That’s good. He honestly might fight Sakura’s parents if that wasn’t the case. He didn’t have many parental figures in his life as a child but he knows he was lucky with the ones that he had. The thought that Sakura, the only member of Team Seven to even have parents anymore, might have shitty ones is suddenly a thought Kakashi knows he can’t bear.
“What were you fighting about?”
She shrugs and looks at her lap. “It’s stupid.”
“Mhm, probably. But it also made you come here at ass-o’clock in the morning, so probably not. You could have gone to your friend’s - Ino, is it? Or any of Ino-Shika-Chō.”
Sakura shakes her head. “No, it’s different. They’re different. Ino’s parents are shinobi. They wouldn’t get it.”
“Perhaps your teammates?” Gai suggests from the kitchen, flourishing the kettle. He sparkles in a child-friendly manner this time, but Sakura doesn’t appear particularly taken by it.
“Naruto and Sasuke-kun? I couldn’t do that! They don’t even have parents.”
“Neither do I,” Kakashi says, mostly just to be a pain. “Neither does Gai.”
“But you’re - you’re adults!” she cries, which is a completely nonsensical thing for a civilian to say, but not so much for a shinobi. Hilarious. And kind of crushing. “And you’re my teacher,” Sakura goes on. “And - and - I don’t know. Looking for you made sense at the time! Naruto’s always going on about how we’re a family and my family’s stupid and think I’m wasting my time as a shinobi so…”
Yeouch, that’s a lot to unpack. Kakashi shoots a pleading look over her head to Gai, who waves a spatula in a vaguely encouraging but also worm-like dance motion, which doesn’t help at all.
So much for being Kakashi’s unfaltering pillar of support. What’s the point of Gai if he doesn’t whisk away all of Kakashi’s problems including the three children Kakashi is technically solely responsible for and solve world peace while he’s at it? Sure, Gai is pretty phenomenal in bed but is that dick worth having to put up with the interpersonal conflicts of snivelling pre-teens?
“Do you think you’re wasting your time as a shinobi?”
“No,” Sakura says quickly, atta girl. She loses a brownie point by adding, “Only when you’re really late.”
Gai belts out a laugh, the fucking traitor. He looks immediately apologetic for it, too, but that doesn’t stop both Kakashi and Sakura from reddening to the tips of their ears.
“Naruto and Sasuke-kun think it too,” Sakura admits. (Snitching on their teammates is something he’s going to have to make this team un-learn, pronto). “I thought you didn't care about teaching us at first, but you’re just lazy, aren’t you?”
Wow. From the mouth of babes. Kakashi hums, refusing to look at whatever expression Gai has on his face. “I am very lazy.”
Sakura nods. She’s such a little gremlin. Kakashi really doesn’t get the appeal of having or teaching children, but there is something very satisfying about how unapologetically sassy and hilarious his team is. Hiruzen deciding to lump Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura in a team together was an objectively terrible move but the repercussions aren’t all bad, Kakashi supposes. He’s not admitting that to Gai.
“My parents think you’re dangerous,” Sakura says.
Kakashi hums again. “They’re right. We should probably let them know where you are.”
“They won’t care,” she says, but she doesn’t seem so sure about it anymore. She scratches Guruko’s chin. “Can we send one of your dogs? I don’t think they’ve ever seen a talking dog. They’ll probably freak out.”
All the more reason not to send one of his dogs, Kakashi thinks, but he summons Bisuke anyway, the least intimidating of his pack. Being small and fast, he could also escape the Haruno residence if shit goes south. Sending Bull or, god forbid, Urushi would be akin to a declaration of war. Kakashi glances over to Gai, who responds with a thumbs-up of approval.
There’s not much to say after that, but as Gai serves tea and breakfast, and Sakura starts a conversation about teenage woes that doesn’t seem to require any input from anybody else, Kakashi realises that the awkwardness is gone. He normally only feels like this with Gai’s kids, and then only some of the time. But Sakura has settled into Gai’s flat as easily as Lee or Tenten did (the same cannot be said for Neji, and probably won’t be said for Sasuke) and Kakashi finds… he doesn’t mind.
Maybe Gai’s right. Maybe he is warming up to his team.
“Are we training today, sensei?” Sakura asks after breakfast, her hair finally dry and her face lit in multiple colours from the TV. Most of Kakashi’s pack are surrounding her now. The front room might as well be a slumber party.
Kakashi judges the rain clouds and shrugs. “I don’t fancy going out there today, do you?”
“Not really. But Sasuke-kun and…”
“Let’s not tell them.”
Sakura laughs. He’s glad she’s not such a goody-two-shoes afterall. “You really are lazy, sensei. I still have to walk home.”
Oh, the troubles of genin. Kakashi shoos all of his dogs away and tells Sakura to fetch her dressing-gown and shoes. He grabs his jōnin jacket for deceny’s sake, and his headband to come across as slightly more threatening than he knows he should. Then he holds out his hand.
“Have you ever performed an assisted body flicker before? No? All right, it involves a modified tiger seal…”
He’s across the village and back again in two blinks of an eye. He added a flourish of smoke to his exit from the Harunos’ front porch, just to be annoying. He doesn’t particularly care for the opinions and grievances of Sakura’s civilian parents, but they did make her cry this morning, so a little spite is fair game.
Gai kisses him as soon as he reappears. It’s an awfully chaste kiss considering there are no pesky children in the flat anymore, and Kakashi responds by pulling down his mask with intent.
By the time they’re done, Gai is pressed up against the kitchen counter sans that ridiculous apron and the top half of his jumpsuit, and his fingers are locked tight in the back of Kakashi’s hair. Kakashi tips his head back and bares his canine teeth, and one of the dogs from the disinterested observance of the living room goes BLEH!
“I love you more and more every day,” Gai says.
Kakashi agrees with his dogs this time by responding with, “You’re a sap.”
Gai’s eyes twinkle. He strokes the nape of Kakashi’s neck. “You are a good teacher to them - and they know it.”
Well, Sakura knows it, maybe. Naruto and Sasuke are lost causes so far. Although it’s heart-warming to learn that Naruto considers them family, even if the poor kid has no idea what that really entails, or what he could possibly be getting into proclaiming things like that about Friend Killer Kakashi. Minato and Kushina will be rolling in their graves.
Kakashi tries not to think about that. It’s rather easy with his hands on Gai’s ass. “You can just say I told you so. You’re thinking it. I can see it on your face.”
Gai gasps. “That is not the same thing. And I would never.”
“Mhm. Are you sure? That sounds like a challenge,” Kakashi asks, and he tugs Gai in for another kiss to get his point across once more.