Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Hey, how’s it going, old lady?” Naruto called, shoving through the peeling white door, the rusted bell announcing his presence after his voice had already flung itself into the quiet shop. He dropped his backpack in its standard spot beside the front door, eyes roaming over the unusually empty pool tables in the side room before landing on the 50-year-old woman behind the counter, absentmindedly thrumming through the same book on medicinal plants she had been reading since he had known her.

“Brat.” She acknowledged without looking up from the pages. “Food’s on the table upstairs as soon as your work is done.”

Naruto slipped easily through the aisles and out the back door, falling into familiar routine with the rows of potted plants in the back alley behind the building. The gloves old lady Tsunade gave him to use were too large on his hands, but he had fixed that by tearing the unfilled space of the fingertips off with his teeth after too many failed attempts at pruning the more delicate plants. He watered and pruned all the pots, starting with his favorite aloe plant, Spike, and moving along until he finished with even the ugly cactus, Carl. By the end, blood bloomed on the tip of his thumb, and he sucked it into his mouth, shooting one last glare at Carl’s new red hat before he climbed up the stairs in the back to the old lady’s apartment.

The food was the old lady’s standard assortment of the leafy greens and vegetables she thought Naruto needed. At least, he thought, she didn’t include the broccoli this time. As he filled his mouth with the food on the plate without care, his eyes drifted over the pictures on the wall that drew his attention each time he was here, which had been rare at the beginning and now occurred on an almost daily basis. His favorite picture was of a man with smiling eyes and laugh lines with a boy on his left hip and his right arm wrapped around the old lady’s shoulders.

Naruto liked it because of the old lady and the boy. Her eyes were locked with his, and Naruto could almost see her shoulders shaking with laughter when the boy stuck his tongue through the hole left by two missing front teeth the moment the picture was taken. Old lady Tsunade had never even smiled at Naruto, and the only time he had tried to ask about the two people in the picture, she had tossed him out of her apartment and closed her shop for a week. When the open sign was flipped around again, and Naruto slunk in the doorway with a yellowing bruise on his cheek and bones a tad sharper than before, the old lady had only pointed towards the back door where only a few of their plants were not showing mild signs of neglect.

Shaking himself, Naruto finished the food before he washed the dish and returned it to its spot in the cabinet. Old lady Tsunade was still downstairs, he knew, so he let himself touch the picture for a brief second, fingertip tracing over the smiling faces, and let out a breath he had not known he was holding. A second later, he was skipping back down the stairs and into the store. He rested his arms on the counter, dipping his chin and blinking slowly.

“Oh, don’t give me that look.” Old lady Tsunade snorted, eyes pulling away from her book for only a moment. “I already put the bag in your pack.”

Naruto grinned, feet already moving towards the door to grab the backpack and practice with its new contents when the old lady called after him, halting him in place.

“Tell Iruka hello for me, would you, Naruto?”

Naruto’s shoulders tensed, and he raised his hand in the barest acknowledgement before grabbing his bag and hurrying out the door. Naruto had not spoken to his half-brother at all in the four days that he had been in the hospital. He went to school, visited Tsunade, and then spent the rest of night in his room, pretending not to look at the empty bedroom across the hall. It was stupid of Naruto to assume that Tsunade would be out of the loop. The old lady got all the gossip from the neighborhood from the men at the pool tables, and she cared about Iruka and Naruto enough to keep an ear out for anything related to them. Naruto knew she had even smiled at Iruka once. He only knew because he had been peeking through the window, watching Iruka from a distance as if that would make his brother’s secrets reveal themselves. He felt a flash of guilt at his nosiness. He had only wanted to know why Iruka always snuck around at night.

The night it happened Naruto had followed Iruka out of the quiet house and down the street. Iruka’s hands were shoved into his pockets as he ducked around the corner, and Naruto hurried after him, his own arms swinging at his sides in his effort to catch up before Iruka disappeared. He didn’t need to worry, though. Iruka had stopped only a few yards around the corner. Holding his breath, Naruto pressed himself against the cool brick, barely peeking his head around the edge in order to see into the alley. Naruto was frozen as he watched Iruka lean towards another person who lounged against the fence behind him. He could tell Iruka was laughing from the familiar shake of his shoulders, even though he was facing the other boy and not Naruto.

When Iruka’s head tipped forward and landed on the other boy’s shoulder, revealing his face, Naruto realized with a jolt that he recognized the pale face underneath a shock of silver hair. Kakashi had been his brother’s best friend the past few years, and he was always seemed to show up, no matter where they were. Naruto liked Kakashi well enough. He wasn’t the most expressive of people, but his deadpan responses to Iruka, which only made Iruka more passionate and emotional in response, delighted Naruto.

The first time Naruto had met Kakashi he had attempted to prank him, following his brother’s instructions to the letter. Somehow, even with water flattening his tall hair on his face and revealing slight shoulders under his oversized but now soaked shirt, Kakashi had only raised an eyebrow at Naruto as if the prank was barely worth noting. After that, of course, Naruto focused a significant amount of his time on attempting to illicit any sort of reaction or emotion from Kakashi, but he never had any luck. Kakashi was an ever-present source of calm next to Iruka’s and Naruto’s constant tidal waves.
In retrospect, Naruto should have expected Iruka would only ever sneak out to hang out with Kakashi, but despite their close friendship, he had never even seen the two touch, not even the casual fist bumps that Naruto exchanged with his own friends. But here they were, pressed against each other completely, and before he could begin to process this, Iruka’s head lifted while Kakashi’s dipped, and their lips met. Kakashi’s almost translucent skin stood in stark contrast to Iruka’s golden brown, silver hair mixing with black.

Naruto glanced away as their kiss deepened, cheeks warming. Kakashi and his brother? He never would have guessed it. Why didn’t he tell me? Naruto wondered, and he couldn’t help the hurt that blossomed in his chest that he was somehow not worthy of their secret, that they both hung out with him each day and lied to him just to sneak out to meet each other later.
A hand clamped down onto Naruto’s shoulder, jarring him from his thoughts. Naruto turned and lifted his head, chin tilted defiantly until he realized he was staring at his father, not one of the boys from his class that lived down the street. He dropped his eyes and scuffed his show against the concrete.

His father pointed behind his shoulder back towards their house and didn’t say a word, light eyes gleaming with the promise of punishment if he disobeyed. Naruto hesitated for a moment, wanting to turn back towards Iruka, to warn him somehow, but his feet moved before he told them to, and he slunk back to the house alone.

He stayed awake even when he made it home, staring at the glow-in-the-dark solar system Iruka had helped him glue to his ceiling when he was still in elementary school and waiting for the sound of the front door. When the silence finally broke, it was by a sharp rap on his window, and Naruto hurried to push it open only to come face-to-face with Kakashi. He was even paler than normal, and when he reached up to ruffle Naruto’s hair, Naruto could see that his knuckles were bruised red.
“Iruka’s in the hospital. Your dad... caught us, and Iruka made me leave, but I went back and dragged him in. He told them it was a mugging, the usual drill.” Kakashi’s voice was brusque and to the point, but Naruto could hear the tremor underneath the words, could hear the concern. “Visiting hours start at 9, okay?”

“Yeah, alright.” Naruto nodded, and he forced down the desire to tell Kakashi that it was his fault that their father had found them, his fault that Iruka had borne the brunt of his anger again. As it was, he didn’t think he could stand to look Iruka in the eye again for some time to come. Kakashi might think it was odd that he didn’t question what he had been doing out with Iruka at this time of night, but Naruto couldn’t find it in himself to pretend that he didn’t know what had happened that night.
“You want me to stay the night?” Kakashi offered, but when Naruto shook his head, he nodded and left without another word. Even if the context of this night is different, they both knew how this sort of thing always goes. Naruto or Iruka step on a fault they had not known before, get roughed up, and end up in a hospital bed spinning a story about a street fight for the doctors. Naruto knew that part of them doesn’t want to believe their lies, but at the end of the day, their stories were the more convenient truths, and it was never hard to imagine either of the brothers throwing fists in the streets anyways.

Naruto shook himself out of the memory, focusing on the sidewalk in front of him until he had walked back to his driveway, and he paused to look at the house in front of him. Its gray and battered exterior was a gloomy visualization of the emptiness inside. He sighed, knowing his father was inside, likely still feeling the effects of his most recent drunken binge. It was a relief in a way to not be alone in a silent house, but Naruto wasn’t sure being around his father, especially the version that awaited him, was worth it. Nothing to help it, he thought with a sigh and slipped through the front door.

The house was quiet and dark on the inside, too, and Naruto tiptoed his way down the hall and towards his room away from where he could hear his father muttering to himself in the kitchen. If he didn’t draw his attention, he could feed Biscuits, Iruka’s cat, and then hide out in his room for the rest of the night. Naruto managed to coax the cat out from under Iruka’s bed and towards the food bowl without fanfare, but when he moved to go back to his own room, he stumbled into Iruka’s bookcase, knocking a few books off the shelf. He paused, hands held up as if it soften the sound of the books falling to no avail. His father’s footsteps moved down the hall towards his room.

“Oh, it’s just you. The queer’s not back yet?” His father’s laugh rang hollow in the poorly lit hallway. “Good sense of you to stay away from him. You wouldn’t want him to rub off on you.”

Naruto’s fist clenched and unclenched at his side, but he stayed silent, letting his dad laugh to himself as he continued down the hall and back towards his own room. He stood for a moment longer, twisting his backpack strap in his hand before he steeled his gut and made up his mind, heading back towards the front door and down the street.

Naruto wove his way through the hospital until he stood outside room 304 and waited. He could go in, he knew. Iruka never held Naruto responsible for anything, but even if there was nothing Naruto could have done that night, even if Iruka didn’t even know he had been there, he knew he should have at least visited before now. If it was fear of their father holding him back from opening the door, it might be okay. But it wasn’t that. It was Kakashi asleep next to Iruka’s hospital bed, a book forgotten on his lap, one hand resting on Iruka’s knee. Naruto didn’t know how to cope with the realization that his brother was not his in so many ways. That he had other people than Naruto he would protect with his life. That he had secrets even from Naruto. And it was knowing that his desperation to know those secrets is what had landed Iruka here in the first place.
His stomach twisted at the thought, and that is what kept him at the doorway, looking in on the two-person family his brother had made for himself without Naruto realizing. He wasn’t sure he was needed here. Naruto felt like an outsider in the same way he felt when he was in Tsunade’s kitchen, imagining stories and jokes that led to the smiles and laughter in the photograph of her old family on the wall, and his feet refused to step into the room to attempt to bridge the distance.

With a sigh, he pulled his backpack off his shoulder, digging out the teas that Tsunade had been slipping into it for the past couple of weeks to at least leave at the door for Kakashi and Iruka to find when they woke up. It would be an apology of sorts. He bent to set the bag just inside the open door before turning away to leave.

“Naruto?” Iruka’s half-asleep voice stopped him. “Are you leaving already?”

He turned back, shrugging and scratching the back of his neck when faced with Iruka’s frown. “I’m sorry.” For everything. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Don’t be an idiot.” Iruka patted the empty space on the bed beside him, lips tugging into the fond smile he reserved for Naruto. “How are Tsunade’s plants doing?”

Naruto hesitated for a second before crossing the room and climbing onto the bed. As he launched into an explanation of the new watering test he was trying out, Naruto met Kakashi’s partially open eyes and laughed as Kakashi’s lips quirked up into a rare smile.