Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Naruto’s name featured prominently on Hiruzen’s list of greatest sins and regrets as he approached the end of his life. It had been necessary, that was the only way he could comfort himself. Nothing short of the heir to the Uzumaki and Namikaze bloodlines with tailed-beast chakra could have defeated the evil he’d known was coming. She’d gone through so much at his direction—isolation, harsh training, rapid progression from child through soldier to general—and suffered greatly for it, was in many ways a deeply hurt, maladjusted, and broken young woman, heavily dependent on the team Jiraiya had forged from the ashes of the fox’s attack for day to day functioning from what he’d seen over these scant few weeks after the war. Yet still she shone. Yet still she sacrificed herself, keeping her medical concerns a secret Yet still she had saved them all, given her own blood to trade ten years of war for the defeat of Madara and his followers.

Literally, she had given her blood to power the seal. Enormous amounts of it. He’d watched, as had the leader of every other shinobi village on the continent, each of them swearing a decade of peace. They’d drained her nearly dry over and over, made her pale and shriveled and nearly dead, and she’d cracked jokes while she rehydrated and the fox replenished her, even trembling and distant-eyed as she’d been. Most of her team had been forced out after her sensei snapped and tried to attack the healers making careful incisions along her arteries. Only Sakura had been allowed to stay, as the healer who knew her body best, tears rolling down her pretty cheeks as she kept a careful eye on Naruto’s status. Hiruzen often saw that scene when he closed his eyes.

Seven gallons of virgin blood and ten years of war from every corner of the continent. That was the price they’d paid for the deal Naruto had brokered with the universe, the deal she’d sold an entire generation on through her skilled leadership and diplomacy. That’s how they’d powered the weapon that destroyed Madara.

There was no fixing what they’d done to make her the girl capable of doing that for them. He knew that; Jiraiya had known that. Her poor sensei, the previous target of all their hopes turned tool in training Naruto when it became clear he wouldn’t be sufficient on his own, was himself so broken by the process that Hiruzen wasn’t sure he understood what a fix would even look like. But he knew that Hatake hated him for how their savior’s childhood had progressed. He could see it in the man’s averted eye any time they were in the same room, working together alongside the rest to figure out what foreign policy and trade looked like in an isolationist world with set borders and no international conflict.

Virgin blood for a dark, arcane forbidden jutsu. Naruto had been so relieved that she could give that to them. She’d waited so long to tell anyone that her health was compromised, refusing to acknowledge it until the dust had settled and their hospitals had emptied of casualties from the last battle of the war. She was always so ready to sacrifice herself.

Hiruzen was tired of taking things from the poor kid. The problem that had landed on his desk that day made him want to drink, made him wish that whatever hurt so badly deep in body—cancer of some kind, he assumed—would hurry up and kill him faster.

By the time he was home in his slippers and robe in his favorite armchair with a cup of sake in hand, he had narrowed his options down to the ones that made the most sense. It needed to be somebody who would take the mission seriously, treat it with the gravity and respect it demanded. Nobody who would fuck around, even for a second. Anything short of impeccable service to the village was unacceptable, and given the necessity of collaboration with Naruto, he needed to consider existing relationships and loyalties, who was likely to work best together towards the objective.

There was Sasuke. Obvious choice. A little green in this particular area of expertise, but not a complete novice to his understanding. But there was the matter of his primary mission; he knew that it would be cruel to draw his attention away from the commitments he’d made to his clan after everything he’d done for the village and everything the village had done to him. If it had just in terms of suitability to the target, it would have been obvious, but…

Nara. Perhaps not as good a fit as Sasuke to the profile, but he had the skills and loyalty required. No current major projects or distractions he was aware of. Rock had the loyalty to the Leaf and the discipline in spades, would treat the matter as life or death, but he was perhaps ill-suited to the sensitive nature of the mission. Guy would be a superior choice in that sense, but he lacked the same level of familiarity with the target.

He knew he could trust Hatake to serve with the precise perfection he always did; the kid was a machine, his perfect tool rusting in the drawer now that everything had changed. He couldn’t predict how it would interact with the target if he sent Kakashi, that was what was making him hesitate. It precisely half perfect and half perverse, a kindness and a cruelty in one.

There were other possibilities… As Hiruzen ran them through his mind again, though, he ended up with the same list. Uchiha, Nara, Hatake. Three imperfect fits to a problem he felt he owed the perfect assignment. He weighed them each again, over and over, trying to view the mission from every possible angle.

It took hours, but he found the answer at the bottle of his bottle of sake.

…

Kakashi had rather hoped that his days of being called to the office of the Hokage for clandestine midnight mission assignments would be over with the end of the war, but he didn’t resent being wrong. He wasn’t the type to put himself above the village; it had been so trained out of him that the thought of refusing crossed his mind akin to the way a room full of rats scattered when the light came on, split off into a dozen pieces and then gone, impossible to grasp.

He kept his posture loose and lazy, slumped in his chair with his fingers locked over his stomach but his eye sharp on Hase-san, Hiruzen’s administrative right hand for as long as Kakashi had been alive and the temporary shepherd of all of the Leaf’s most sensitive activities until Tsunade could be found and brought home—any day now, two weeks after the Sandaime’s death. He logged every word carefully, as well as every hard line of discomfort he saw around the set of the woman’s shoulders and the press of her lips, though she kept her countenance neutral, businesslike. He wasn’t to break confidentiality at any time. His comportment needed to be impeccable. He would be compensated according to policy. While he was free to decline, he should understand that this is a direct order from the late Sandaime.

Nothing new, he concluded, running everything she’d said back in his head for clues, but there had been no vague language in his orders. He knew, in broad strokes, what he was agreeing to. She showed him to the basement floor of the Hokage tower, where all its darkest secrets were kept. He expected to be taken to one of the many hidden stashes of records tucked away around the space, but instead, he was led towards the not-for-outside-eyes-or-ears cells. The ones people didn’t come back from.

Torture, he assumed, ignoring his body’s urge to swallow against the idea, his mind showing him how raw a man’s torn nail beds could look and reminding him how it felt to shatter teeth with pliers, all in a room that looked more like a doctor’s office with a cot and a drain on the floor than a torture chamber. He walked with ease and purpose as he carefully folded those thoughts away, his hands in his pockets and his eye politely on his superior officer as she concluded his briefing. “All the supplies you’ll need will be on the counter,” she told him, and he nodded, running over how he wanted to begin. Waterboarding often put his target into state of too much panic to commit to withstanding pain. It was worth doing as a first stab, though maybe he should establish willingness to cause harm first. Take a chunk of his ear, maybe. Or her ear, he didn’t know. “The village thanks you for your service. Please— Thank you.” The last part was clearly unscripted; for the first time, something felt truly off as he watched Hase-san blink rapidly at him, something sincere in the lilt of her voice that set his teeth on edge with certainty that something was wrong. “I—I think— It didn’t make sense to me at first, but I think you were the best choice for this mission. I can’t imagine this decision was made lightly.”

“I am pretty good at my job,” he joked in his usual tone of sarcasm delivered so straight it was often mistaken for sincerity.

She grimaced. It was slight and over in a second, but she grimaced, and it occurred to Kakashi that there was another major group that could be behind that door other than man or woman. Children’s fingers broke like they were made of celery, his mind reminded him, and he breathed through it. “You’ll be locked in until you signal to be released. Then you’ll be retrieved, and the record of this event will be destroyed,” she finished. “Goodnight, Hatake,” she murmured, and then she was gone, patting his arm in a nonthreatening way as she went.

… Alright. There was no point putting it off.

The door was sealed, he noted as he opened it, the knob clicking under his palm, which wasn’t so unusual given the range of abilities that could be exhibited by the people they’d needed to hold here, but he was fairly certain that there was only one such cell that hadn’t been decommissioned. Was it intentional, or random? Was his target dangerous? He hadn’t been provided any weapons, though of course he was armed. He’d still have liked a warning.

But then the door swung open, and pleasant surprise washed over him. “Naruto,” he greeted the young woman leaning against the far counter with her arms crossed, who was giving him a smile the way she always did when she saw him. Something in his spine loosened just a tad—if Naruto was involved, it couldn’t possibly be too terrible. She wouldn’t tolerate being a part of it if it were.

“Hey, sensei,” she returned; the words were chipper as usual but for the slightest hint of strain, and that was when he smelled it.

It wasn’t something he encountered often; suppressants and pheromone patches were used almost universally in public, and omega only came off of them in the privacy of their homes, stocking their pantries in advance, clearing their social calendar, and taking conception leave from work. He’d only ever caught whiffs on passing alphas when they returned before their partners, who typically took the day after to sleep, but it was nevertheless unmistakable.

Heat.

“Ah,” he heard himself say as he stepped into the room with a glance at the condoms and lube on the counter where he’d been expecting instruments of torture, closing the door behind himself with a soft click. The sound of a half dozen mechanical locks whirring into place followed the syllable, alongside a pulse of chakra as the seals activated. They were alone in a box, no way to get out and no way to look in.

Naruto’s smile melted away as she met his eye, inhaling steadily, but her expression wasn’t grim, like when she had bad news. It was closer to how she looked during an intense but unexciting brainstorming session, all focus and preoccupation. “I’m in heat,” she told him smoothly, her fever-flushed face reddening perhaps the slightest bit darker but her expression unwavering. He did not have time to ask why on earth she would stop taking suppressants while unmated, not to mentioned unmarried, because she went on, “I’ve known for about six months that I would have to have a heat. It’s for medical reasons; our theory is that with the fox influencing my endocrine system, I’m building up a tolerance to the medication. I needed to take a break from it. I should be able to restart next year before I have a second one, and by then they think they’ll have a formulation I can take permanently. I asked old man Hiruzen to assign me someone. I didn’t know until about an hour ago that it would be you.”

There was a note of apology in her words, Kakashi noted through a long, long tunnel. He was frozen. His brain was a wasteland. His mind hadn’t been that quiet without benzodiazepines in decades. “I see.”

“That alright?” She asked it like she was asking him to water her plants while she was gone on a mission.

“… Yes,” he answered, the word echoing between his ears. He didn’t move. He didn’t let himself breathe in a molecule more air through his nose than usual. His cock was throbbing; it had been weeks since his bodily urges had last become urgent enough to warrant the risk of being in such an intolerably vulnerable state for enough time to hit the reset button on his hormones. “That’s fine.”

“Great, thanks.” Her voice stayed casual, the gratitude within it sincere, but her whole body spasmed, tightening on a near-silent sharp inhale, and it hit him like a punch to the gut that she must have been in heat for a while already, must have been… “So, should I just…?”

Kakashi watched, numb, as his favorite student and closest friend, a person he had privately considered to be his baby sister and most precious person for the last eighteen hard years, bent over the cot in the center of the room that was bolted to the floor, braced one arm on the thin, waterproof mattress, and eased her clothes down over her behind, just to her thighs, showing him an ass like in his most beautifully illustrated novels and a dripping-wet slit that smelled so good in such a darkly compelling way that he felt everything inside him that was animal coil up and snarl. He kept it off his face, steadied the tremor in his hand almost as soon as it’d started. He’d never taken a risk like this before; it had always seemed like the potential consequences outweighed the rewards. He couldn’t count how many men’s throats he’d slit while they were inside a lover.

It didn’t matter. He’d given away much bigger parts of himself than his latent virginity on missions all his life.

He braced himself, turned his mind to the mission, and it mostly worked. He knew, as he crossed the room in a few measured strides, that something about the freckles across the golden globes of flesh that had been revealed to him made his balls and stomach clench and his brain stutter, but he kept his movements smooth and his comportment professional. He grabbed the lube and a condom, pumping a small amount of the slick substance into his hand, and undid his pants with the other, stepping up behind her and trying to figure out the most efficient way to accomplish their goal. He was too tall. He eyed the cot, which was rather high off of the ground for reasons he didn’t want think too hard about, and suggested low and without emotion, “Perhaps you should put your knees on the mattress.”

He did not say why. He did not say ‘maybe you should get on hands and knees.’ He was at work, he reminded himself as he watched the little blonde nod her head with a mumble of agreement, getting up onto the bed and holding herself stiff, her legs together and her hands fisted in the thin, papery sheets. Her cunt was drooling, fragrant like honey, red and swollen, her clitoris visibly erect, barely peaking out from between her lubricant-slicked labia. A tremble wracked her body before she fell still, and a wave of empathy washed over him. He couldn’t fathom being in her shoes, forced to accept a rut for the first time in his life, to be the most vulnerable he could possibly be, helpless in every meaning of the horrible word. The idea was untouchable, like the infinite nature of space, something he could think about but never understand the enormity of.

The lube was cold on the head of his leaking erection even through the condom, but Naruto’s pussy was red hot, the first brush of her flesh against his latex-covered skin a deeper pleasure than any he’d ever known, in a different realm from taking care of his needs as quickly as possible in the shower after waking up at his limit, or when his sleeping body did the chore for him. He stared hard at the wall, inhaling slowly and deliberately as he pressed inside the leaking omega he’d been assigned to knot. By the time their hips met, every nerve in his body glowed, and he tried with everything he had not to think about it.

His voice came out strained. “Does anything need adjusting?”

Her cunt squeezed him, and she gasped when he involuntarily flexed inside her in answer. He’d never felt anything better in his entire life, and he didn’t know how to handle it except by pretending he wasn’t feeling it. Naruto shook her head, seemingly unable to speak, and he began to fuck her.

It would be the least intrusive, take the least autonomy from her, be the most respectful thing to do to keep their encounter as simple and impersonal as possible, he reasoned, and so he started immediately with a pace that he thought was likely to be sufficient, much harder than he would have if foreplay had been called for—if she hadn’t been in heat—and faster than he would have wanted his precious girl’s first time with her future alpha to be if he’d been asked, but nothing uncivil. A steady slap of hips, a slick slosh of their flesh meeting hot and wet and filthy. Keeping his composure took everything he had, and more than once, he broke and glanced down at her, sweeping his gaze over the way her flanks heaved with her heavy yet controlled breathing, the way her back arched just a tad deeper and her thighs repeatedly began to tremble and then still by force.

She kept her head down. Neither of them spoke, and they gave little verbal sign of what they were doing or how it felt.

It must have been good for her. Her body writhed on the inside, powerful ripples of pleasure that had him biting the inside of his cheek bloody. Twice, she grunted, the sound so erotic it nearly made him lose his rhythm, and once, she squirted, soaking the placket of his pants all the way down to his briefs and smearing into his pubic hair, his tight-as-a-drum balls.

Kakashi served his village to the absolute best of his ability, until his spine quivered and his jaw creaked under the force with which he ground his teeth, and then he could fight the persistent screaming of the pelvic muscles he had locked solid no longer and started to knot inside his precious girl, his student, his sensei’s daughter.

He gasped. It was the only sound he made in the entire encounter, quiet but audible, and he couldn’t help but view it as a failure. Naruto, for her part, briefly lost her composure completely, not that he blamed her in the slightest; she buried her face in the sheets to muffle a short, harsh scream, her body going hard as a rock under him and tight as a vice around him, and her breathing was ragged when she managed to silence herself.

He didn’t touch her. He kept their bodily contact minimal, and she didn’t relax much more than he did as they settled in to wait. She was staring blankly off to the right, so he stared blankly off to the left, trying not to think about anything and especially trying not to think about how good everything still felt, the fact that this orgasm had made every other one he’d ever had feel like a sneeze.

Eventually, Kakashi gave a little backwards shift of his hips, silently indicating that he thought his knot had subsided, and Naruto eased herself off of him, neither jerking away nor lingering in the slightest, like they did this every day. He stepped back and she got to her feet, pulling her pants up in time with his removal of the condom and tuck of his still half-hard, wet cock back into his own.

“Well,” she told the wall, her tone casual. “That’ll work. I only need to do this once to prevent lasting damage from spending my heat unmated. You can go. … Thanks, sensei. If you flare your chakra twice, they’ll come get you.”

He stared at the back of her head for a fraction of a second too long. “No problem,” he told her truthfully, turning to discard of the condom in the empty trash can by the door. He’d have done literally anything for her. “See you around.”

Twenty-five minutes later, he was standing over his sink drinking whiskey straight from the bottle.

Chapter Text

Things went back to normal immediately. There was no time for anything else.

It was only the day after the next that Tsunade took office and the transition of power and restructure of government took over their lives, both of them appointed to positions within the tower. This overturn of government had been a long time coming; even if they’d ultimately been on the same side, the corruption of the Sandaime’s administration ran deep. The only reason they hadn’t gone ahead with a coup was that the old bastard’s health had been poorly enough at the end of the war that it had seemed more prudent to simply wait to enact their quiet, bureaucratic revolution. They worked twelve to sixteen hour days together but in conference rooms and bent over policies splayed out across their new Godaime’s desk. They had to talk to each other to do their jobs, and Kakashi had taught Naruto far too well for her to let any of what she felt shine through, nor was there any risk of him failing to keep his internal disarray out of his behavior, and by the time things calmed down, they had practice at being normal together.

They each worked four days in the tower with three of those overlapping and trained together twice a week, slowly working through the remaining holes in his favorite student’s education, the things that hadn’t been pressing for her to learn as they faced down war; often, the other members of their team joined them. Not quite every week but multiple times a month, they went on missions together, all of them strictly domestic, usually with greener shinobi on their squad to train passively. Every morning that he would see her, which was most of them, Kakashi would pause at the door to breathe deep and imagine how Jiraiya used to pull him aside in the early days of Naruto’s heavy training, back when she was new to missions and the most dangerous terror organization in the history of the continent was out for her blood.

Jiraiya—the man who’d taken them both in when Minato and Kushina died, who’d raised them both knowing war was coming and adopted Sasuke and Sakura into their lopsided family without even blinking—used to take him by the shoulders, duck his head the scant inch or two to bring them to eye level, and remind him with uncharacteristic seriousness, “She’s your little sister, Kakashi. Take care of her.” More than once, he’d come home bloodied, bruised, and nearly chakra exhausted when something went wrong, his precious girl without a hair out of place and whining that he was too overprotective, but it always got him the nod of approval he’d craved from the older man, so it had been easy to ignore her.

“She’s your little sister,” he would whisper to himself in the silent entryway of his home. “Take care of her.”

All of the new things that had sprung up inside him like ferns unfurling in a rainy, mild spring were just impediments to that, he knew. He wore compression shorts to hide how often even just the patch-filtered smell of her got him hard as a rock. He never let his gaze linger, even for a moment. He teased her the way he always had. But two months on, it was still very nearly intolerable, like his entire life had been offset by a half-beat and he couldn’t keep up, like if he so much as breathed wrong, the normalcy they’d built would shatter to pieces and they’d be forced to confront that he’d knotted her and it had felt incredible.

It was during one of their Friday drinking sessions with team seven, a ritual they all clung to in the aftermath of what they’d gone through together, the long, hard months they’d spent alone and surrounded by mortal peril on all sides. In the immediate aftermath of the war, they’d all had trouble being away from each other—frequently, his students had ended up sprawled across his couch and his futon in the living room while he slept shallowly in the bedroom—but they were gradually learning to live more independent lives, to not feel a deep unease whenever they didn’t know where the others were. This ritual was vital to that process, a careful exercise in letting go in a controlled yet unpredictable environment. The bar wasn’t a truly safe place to be intoxicated, but they felt safe enough knowing they had each other’s backs to practice normalcy.

Their bodies and minds weren’t built for peace. It was something they were learning together.

That particular night, their circle was wider—many of the others of this students’ cohort were in attendance crowded around a table with too many chairs and drinks, as they were celebrating Sakura’s first pregnancy of what would be several. They were all feeling protective of her, Kakashi knew, but it was a little easier to not hover and to take his hand off of the kunai in his vest when she was surrounded by other capable shinobi, smiling wide and taking sips of seltzer water as her friends toasted her. He didn’t blame Sasuke for the hand he kept on his omega’s shoulder, not in the slightest. He’d himself been walking her to and from the hospital when she worked on days Sasuke was gone since he’d gotten the happy news a month before, just as things began to settle down under their new Hokage. And there was a reason Sakura had found herself sandwiched between her team’s alphas; it hadn’t been an accident on the part of any of them, nor had it been an accident that Naruto took the seat across from them with a clear view of all the entrances and exits.

“It’s definitely cheating,” Kiba was arguing, Shino and Tenten nodding along seriously as Lee loudly asserted his support of this sentiment.

“It is not,” Naruto cried indignantly, leaning around Ino to give Chōji—who looked rather conflicted—a commiserating pat on the shoulder. “Don’t listen to them, Chōj, they’re just repressed. Friendship can absolutely be physically intimate and still completely platonic.”

The matter being discussed was that of a civilian girl—friend of the family of Chōji’s—who had recently sat in his lap for a few minutes at a crowded family event and whose boyfriend was now upset. It didn’t surprise Kakashi in the slightest that his entire team was on the side of not viewing that sort of contact as inherently romantic or sexual; he’d seen them seek comfort in each other that way, seen Naruto return from a scouting trip shivering violently from the cold and be invited to lie between her dating teammates by the fire, all of their bodies pressed tight together for comfort and warmth. Personally, having seen Chōji together with the civilian girl in public, he was certain that it hadn’t been a friendly lap-sit for her at the very least, and he wasn’t sure if his students had a good understanding of what was and wasn’t considered appropriate contact with a friend either way.

“Bullshit,” Kiba asserted, his voice too loud, and the bartender shot them another exasperated look. “Nobody is doing any platonic co-ed lap sitting, Uzumaki, it’s not a thing. If it was—”

“It absolutely is a thing,” the little blonde insisted, her gut-punchingly blue eyes glazed with drink but flashing with passion. “Just because your friends don’t like you enough to put up with the wet dog smell—” Hinata, who tended to flush prettily and stop talking almost completely when she drank, snorted, earning a glare from her ninken-affiliated teammate. “—doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist!”

“You wanna bet?”

“You’re on, dog breath.”

“Fine.” Kiba drained the last of his fourth beer and sat back, crossing his arms over his chest defiantly. “Fine, Naruto, if you’re so sure, give us a demonstration. Go sit platonically in your sensei’s lap, if you’re so sure it’s not weird.”

It felt like time stood still. It felt like Kakashi froze, like the knowledge that it wouldn’t be in any way platonic or brotherly for him after what had happened in November was written across his face, branded into his forehead straight through his hitai-ate. It felt like the table fell silent with the gravity of what was being asked of them, with the fact that the Inuzuka kid had just accidentally poked at something that was raw and mangled between them. But in reality, he didn’t react beyond a roll of his eye, the teenagers all around him erupted into howling laughter at the absurdity of the dare, and Naruto got directly to her feet without pause, snapping back, “Fine! No big deal.”

Sasuke and Sakura were laughing, the latter making room to allow Naruto to squeeze between them, and gods, she smelled like flowers and sunshine and patched-omega and his. “I don’t recall consenting to this platonic lap-sitting,” he drawled in a bored tone, and nobody looked at him with an ounce of suspicion as he conspicuously neither helped his student into his lap nor resisted the way she moved his arms to facilitate her change in locale. Her weight was warm against his thigh, and he felt every point of contact acutely—her calf tapping against his shin, her back shifting against his chest, her hair trailing across his clothes—as she settled, slapping her palms down on the table with a stubborn, “See? It’s not weird.”

It felt simultaneously like the most natural thing in the world and like a sighting of an ancient cryptid. It took everything he had to keep his countenance casual; he created a fraction more space by leaning back in his chair, draping an arm over the back of Sakura’s and shrugging placid agreement. He expected accusations, knowing looks, but none came. The argument merely continued, Kakashi logging what was said but not participating, fearful of the moment that Naruto would gesticulate too hard and—

Yup, there it was. She’d spread her arms out, nearly knocking over several glasses with the violence of the motion, and in balancing herself on his thigh, she’d just barely brushed the side of his throbbing, leaking erection with her perfect ass. For the first time, one of them acknowledged what was happening; blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, she stiffened, and she stuttered just slightly on her next word. “—s-sure, yeah, but at the end of the day, even if a boundary was crossed that her boyfriend doesn’t like, it’s still not intimate like that. It’s not cheating.”

As she said it, she leaned forward a tad, and Kakashi felt it distinctly against his thigh as her cunt clenched. A loud buzzing started up in his ears as he heard himself throw in his two cents in a lazy tone, “I’m under the impression that for grey areas like this, the definition of cheating changes from couple to couple. So if the boyfriend thinks it’s cheating, it is, no matter if it’s about lap-sitting or dancing together or whatever else.”

“Traitor,” Naruto pouted, nothing on her face giving away that her internal muscles were still working, squeezing every time she shifted, and he was suddenly positive of two things that he couldn’t process at all: first, she likely had no idea that he could feel it, and second, something about being close to him was having an effect on her the way it did on him. His head swam, and he reached for his whiskey, taking a fortifying sip through his genjutsu mask as he pretended he didn’t have a hundred percent of his attention focused intently on his precious student’s sweet little pussy.

The conversation moved on, but stubbornly still making her point, Naruto didn’t. For another hour, she tortured him with occasional brushes against his erection that were, as far as he could tell, entirely accidental and flutters of her pelvic muscles that seemed to be involuntary. He imagined that he could smell her through her clothes, smell that she was wet for him, and his body felt over-sensitized, like he’d been sanded down all over. He wanted to bend her over the table then and there, but the idea of doing anything to the eighteen year old girl he’d known her entire life without it being strictly necessary for her health and safety burnt him; he felt Minato and Jiraiya’s hands on his shoulders as, at long last, he pushed back from the table and urged her up with a casual, teasing, “Maa, alright, up you go. You’re heavier than you look, you know.”

He made a show of pretending his leg had fallen asleep, using it to disguise the way he was stiff, would have staggered if he’d tried to stand up straight immediately. It seemed like he barely blinked before they were outside in the cold winter evening air under the stars and he was watching his students and their peers evaluate each other’s sobriety or lack thereof, poking fun at the most visibly intoxicated among them as they traveled as a pack towards the residential part of the village. His own significant drunkenness went unnoticed; Naruto got called out for slurring her words. His erection chafed with every step, but he trailed behind them like he usually did, intent on seeing everyone at least most of the way home safe before he set out for his own apartment.

As they traveled, pairs and groups gradually split off, calling goodnights and congratulations; eventually, it was just team seven at the juncture where the Uchiha compound laid to the left, Kakashi’s apartment a few blocks to the right, and Naruto’s a half mile into the poorer part of the village, standing under a streetlamp and reluctantly bidding each other goodnight. Then Sasuke and Sakura left, and he and Naruto lingered, discussing work like nothing was amiss.

“I’ll probably have it done by Tuesday lunch. If you don’t have it by then, come remind me, I’ll have it by end of day,” she was promising him, scratching at the back of her head as she thought, her brow scrunched up in a way he’d always found cute but that had never made his body throb with desire until recently. “Gives us plenty of time to get it reviewed before my mission next weekend.”

“I’m already regretting accepting my position,” Kakashi rumbled, sighing. “But yes. If I get it by Tuesday end of day, I can get it turned around by our Thursday meeting with Tsunade. Did you do alright with the new grain trade agreement draft?”

“It was slow going at first, but I think I’ve got it,” she assured him, and with a blade to his throat, he couldn’t have said who moved first in the next moment. They were just suddenly pressed together in a violent, clumsy kiss through his mask that was made all of fire and desperation, stumbling together down an alley where he picked her up, shoved her against the wall, and began tearing at their clothes, certain that if he couldn’t get inside her immediately, he would explode into dust.

They didn’t get any more undressed than they had the first time, nor did they begin any slower. He sheathed himself inside the omega’s dripping cunt in one thrust, forgetting to think about protection until the sensation of fucking bareback winded him, made him feel unbalanced and dizzy and overwhelmed. He fucked her hard, the only sounds their heavy breathing and her canvas jacket scraping against brick, and she buried her face in his shoulder so they didn’t have to look at each other, her fists clenched white-knuckled in his vest. He came too fast, left her tugging silently at his fisted clothes in protest, and blindly, still reeling with his knot stuck deep inside her, he rocked his hips and fumbled at her clit desperately. She gave no signal as to what felt good, but she inhaled sharp when it hurt, and that was enough guidance to urge her clumsily over the edge after him, dragging a ragged, under-his-breath sound from deep in his chest as she went rigid, pressing her forehead hard against him, and began to clench rhythmically around his knot.

They didn’t speak through the entire encounter. Afterwards, he pulled out too soon and they got dressed, Kakashi’s horrified mind fixated on the fact that his precious little sister’s panties were flooded with his come as he turned away with a neutral, “See you Monday.”

“See you Monday,” Naruto answered, only the slightest hint breathless. They didn’t look at each other, exiting the alley in different directions.

…

So Naruto felt it, too.

Kakashi wondered what that was like for her, to be attracted to somebody so forbidden. A man who’d changed her diapers, spoon fed her, tended her scraped knees before he’d become her sensei, and then her ally and superior officer in an awful, bloody war. He imagined it was hard, confusing, isolating. He ached for her when he thought about it. For himself, all he knew was that he had no idea what these feelings were, how to quantify the way they made him suddenly feel wrong in his skin in the best possible way, every place their attraction rubbed against the sensitive walls he’d built around himself exquisite and agonizing. He felt like he’d been drugged, maybe, like he was under a genjutsu, because he had never wanted like this before.

He needed Naruto. He needed to touch her again or he’d die, he was absolutely certain.

Normalcy persisted, even as his body begged him for her, even as every time sparring or a crowded office brought them close, her pupils dilated and she shivered. Things stayed perfectly, agonizingly normal. When they sparred, it was professional, exactly the same as it had been before even though he knew she knew it got him hard, even though it occasionally got them tangled up in ways that let him catch a whiff of her slick. Afterwards, technically alone but in public, the air between them would be electric, thick enough with tension to choke on, but their conversations remained unchanged, and the knowledge that people joined them to spar about as often as they didn’t kept him from doing anything stupid. They were surrounded by some of the most suspicious, well-trained shinobi on the planet, including the other half of their team who knew them better than anyone, and as far as he could tell, nobody noticed that they were frothing at the mouth for each other.

They didn’t seek out time alone. Strictly, they didn’t, and if they could do so casually, they avoided it, so it was spotty. Three weeks after the alley, it was over the Hokage’s desk at two in the morning and then straight back to the foreign intelligence report they needed decoded by noon the next day. Two weeks after that, it was on top of the Hokage monument during the spring equinox festival fireworks after Sakura got nauseous and left early with Sasuke. A month later, it was against his front door when she and Guy insisted on staying to help him clean up after the meal he’d made for his team, his ‘rival,’ and Kurenai, and then Guy rushed out to go for a leisurely evening sprint before Naruto had managed to get her shoes on to go with him.

A week after that, it was with her sitting in her singular kitchen chair in a nightgown, sick with the flu; he’d brought over the okayu and herbal tea Sakura had asked him to take her and they’d had half of a completely normal conversation at a distance that would keep him from getting sick, and then he’d been on his knees with his head up her skirt, his mask around his neck, and his cock in his hand, eating pussy for the first time in his thirty-two years of life. When he’d gotten sick a few days later, Sakura—feeling awful she’d put him in the miniature epidemic sweeping the village’s line of fire—sent the now-immune Naruto to his place with the same care package, and without any exchange of words or eye contact, she’d knelt down on his entryway mat and sucked his soul out through his dick, leaving him struggling to be silent with his nose clogged and his head stuffed full of cotton and fluid, his arms limp at his sides but his hands itching to bury themselves in her thick, gorgeous hair.

He didn’t know what to call what they were doing. The idea of talking to her about it, acknowledging it, was too much to swallow, made him choke on his tongue. She was simply too precious to risk alienating her. What if it was just sex to her, and if he expressed interest, she’d back off? What if he opened a dialogue and it turned out she’d been doing it because she felt like she had to, or because without her suppressants, her sex drive was high and she didn’t want to outsource the job to anyone she didn’t trust? What if he laid his heart bare to her and she rejected him? The mere idea was intolerable.

A long spell of no serendipitous moments alone left the situation simmering so long it threatened to boil Kakashi alive. Weeks passed, then a month, then two, and he threw himself into his work, certain Naruto was doing the same, and eventually, they worked so hard for so long that Tsunade called them into her office one afternoon just after lunch and dismissed them to start their weekend early and get some rest.

Kakashi knew, logically, that past the social stigma, the strangeness of the fact that he’d been in her life since before she was born, the fact that he was her sensei, they were both adults, an alpha and an omega engaging in the natural behaviors they were designed for. He could turn to her where they stood outside the Hokage tower, frozen with desire to be together, and ask her if she wanted to come to his place. But he said nothing, and eventually, Naruto rolled up onto her toes, flashing him a toothy smile to ask, “Wanna spar, sensei? All out, taijutsu only? I could use a hard workout after being chained to a desk all week.”

“Maa, sure,” he answered her easily, letting himself lead her towards the training grounds without an ounce of his relief at her suggestion showing on his face. “It’s strange to not have any healing bruises, isn’t it?”

Sparring put them in intimate positions that made his compression shorts an absolute necessity, but they never lingered; they couldn’t afford to. Most of their fights were dead even, and every time one of them tapped out, it was the moment they knew they were pinned and the person pinning them let go to separate calmly and immediately. Nobody on the outside would have been able to tell how badly they burned for each other, he was certain, and the excuse to have physical contact held them in a vice grip for hours. They took breaks, sure, sat under a tree and drank water, and Naruto just barely hinted at how it affected her—spending a beat too long flat on her back with her eyes closed, breathing deeply and deliberately as her thighs occasionally twitched against each other, something about the splay of her perfect body unbearably sensual to his eye—but something drew them back into it, had her popping up with a bright, cheerful, “Again, sensei, or are you getting to be too old to keep up with me?”

They wiled away the afternoon into early evening before they had to admit that it was time to stop, both of them covered in sweat, breathing unevenly, and unable to look the other in the eye. It was the most abnormally they’d ever behaved towards each other out in the open where anyone could happen upon them, and the unspoken acknowledgement of the thing writhing between them like dark, quickened vines had him feeling unbalanced, something deep inside him quivering with anxious energy and need as his traitorous body threatened him at knifepoint with an orgasm, irritated by hours and hours of teasing and tension after two months without any sexual stimulation. Naruto’s legs were shaky when he helped her to her feet, and his words wobbled just a tad as he told her, “Should probably head home and get some rest. Eat something other than ramen, yeah?”

“We both know I won’t,” Naruto answered him, her voice its normal playful lilt but her face delicately flushed and her irises eclipsed to a thin ring of blue by her dilated pupils. “Read something other than porn, yeah?”

“It’s erotica,” he returned, not telling her that these days, he couldn’t read it because he always imagined her in the place of the heroine if he tried and that in public, he was just staring at Icha Icha and turning pages to keep up appearances. “And we both know I won’t.”

The walk home almost did him in. Every step rubbed against him just enough that the next one was a risk, and mentally, he prepared himself to keep his composure and just keep walking if he came in public, but luckily, such extreme measures did not become necessary. By the grace of the gods, he managed to calmly unlock his apartment and shut the door behind himself before he was shoving his pants down to free his erection of any and all stimulation, gasping for air and fisting his hands in his shirt to keep himself from jerking off thinking about his precious baby sister’s tight cunt on his tongue.

As a matter of course, he only masturbated when he had to, as quickly and securely as possible, usually in the shower in less than two minutes, not dissimilar to how he handled nature’s call on dangerous, high-risk missions. He hadn’t masturbated at all since this thing with Naruto had began, though, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it without thinking about his student’s heat in his nose and her upturned ass presented for him and how it felt to knot her perfect little pussy, and then he’d have to admit to himself that this was a whole thing. There’s no coming back from sorry, sensei, but I jerked it thinking about my little sister, your precious daughter. It would open a box that needed to stay closed.

He clicked the lock shut, sinking to his knees right there on the floor and bending over his lap, trying to breathe through it, but he couldn’t help it; even with all of his impeccable self-control cultivated over decades of careful effort, he couldn’t fucking help it. He was thinking about Naruto kneeling right here with a blush on her face, her eyes firmly shut and her fingers clenched in the canvas over his thighs as she visibly worked out how best to blow him. He was thinking about the sound she’d made when she came on his tongue, a sharp, shocked gasp, the way she’d bucked into him just once with a mumbled apology before she was even done pulsing against his lips.

He couldn’t do it there. It was too vulnerable, too risky, too exposed; he’d rather be locked in the bathroom or hidden under the covers. He wasn’t the type to ever have an inch more skin exposed than was necessary for even a moment. But he couldn’t move, not with the way his balls were drawn up tight and his knot forming without any pressure to provoke it. He shoved his fist against his lips, biting so hard to try to distract himself from the mounting waves of pleasure that his canines tore through his mask unpleasantly, but it didn’t help; with a grunt, he was staring hard at the wall and coming untouched, trying with everything he had not to think filthy thoughts about the sweet, beautiful girl who had trusted him with everything she had her entire life as he spurted come onto his knees and the carpet, doing his best to think about what sensei and Jiraiya would want him to do (She’s your little sister, Kakashi, take care of her) and not about how good it felt to fuck her, to lick her, to feel her lips wrapped around his—

Fuck.

Chapter Text

In the end, it was Naruto who broke the pattern. That next Monday, after work, she told Kakashi casually, “I was thinking we could grab Ichiraku, and then I could swing by your place to pick up that theory book you were talking about letting me borrow.” When he froze, unable to meet her gaze where she was staring up at the side of his face, she tacked on breezily, “Maybe we could have a cup of tea.”

It was the first time they both knew they were going to have sex, and it was electric to the point of short-circuiting his nervous system. He was so nervous he almost forgot to activate his genjutsu and take down his mask before he ate, and every time their knees brushed, something in his stomach spasmed. The conversation stayed light, friendly, but they didn’t dare look at each other. They talked strategy for an upcoming mission as they walked back to his place, and he barely heard a word of their conversation past the ringing in his ears and Jiraiya’s voice reminding him what his responsibilities to Naruto were as his erection strained at a painful angle in his shorts.

The door had barely shut behind them before Naruto was shrugging off her pack and tucking her shoes next to where his usually went, never taking her eyes off of his coffee table as she asked with her arms crossed over her chest, “Bedroom okay?”

Kakashi nodded, and then he was taking off his boots and following her to his room, heart in his throat and his stomach in knots. She took her shirt off as she went, showing him the beautiful expanse of her golden back for what was likely the thousandth time but felt like the first, and then she flicked off the light he’d left on, throwing them into darkness, and they tumbled into bed together, her hands as rough as his as she helped him strip her of her pants. A choked, cut-off cry ripped from her throat when he penetrated her, so abrupt and loud that he froze, certain he’d hurt her, only for her nails to dig in at his hip and drag him deeper into the paradise of her body.

There was no rush; they weren’t going to get caught. He forced himself to take his time, not exactly slow but unhurried, trying to savor it, trying to really listen to how she breathed, trying to make it as good for her as it was for him. He made small adjustments until he found what made her breath stutter every time he did it while she was inhaling and kept at it, absolutely determined that if he was going to do this, commit this sin, he was going to do it right.

Then she dragged his hand to her breast, pressing his palm to her hard nipple through her sports bra, and he broke.

It was like blacking out. One moment, everything was tightly controlled, his mind focused on his goal, and in the next, he was groping her, his mask pulled down in the pitch dark of his bedroom to dig his teeth into the side of her neck, an inch up from the patch over her gland, hiding her scent from him. He fucked into her hard, overcome by the depth of his desire, and he caught her skin with his nails as he clawed at the patch, desperate to smell her again, for the proof that she—

A wave of horny omega pheromones washed over the room, and Kakashi choked on them. He felt her brush his neck through his mask where his own patch had been placed diligently after his morning shower, but unlike him, she was able to contain herself, to respect his boundaries. His mind wiped blank, he buried his nose in the intoxicated bouquet of Naruto, and he fucked her so hard she let out little yelping cries every time he bottomed out inside her.

He didn’t make her come before he knotted her. In the mindless dark, he kept fucking her the best he could through a spine-melting orgasm, jerking his knot back and forth as he shoved his hand between their bodies to rub her clit. She tightened around him, gasping, her nails digging into his back through his shirt and vest, and a single word left his lips, strained and rasping and desperate: “Omega.”

Naruto made a sound that may have been the first syllable of alpha and may have just been an involuntary exhalation as climax struck her. They ground together, shivering with pleasure and breathing loud, and then they were alone in bed together, their bodies tied with nowhere to go and no excuse to separate early and painfully like they usually did.

Their breathing slowed even as his mind raced with panic. He didn’t know what came after this, didn’t even know what this was, or what she wanted it to be. Surely she didn’t want him, so what exactly was she asking him for?

In silence, the moment he thought he could get away with it, he slipped out of her, his knot catching just enough to make their breathing hitch. He knelt over her in the dark and did up his pants with shaking hands, crushing guilt threatening to press him to the floor, and it felt like one of Minato’s punitive holds, the kind that used to make it so hard to breathe he would thrash trying to escape it while his sensei calmly talked him through what he should do if he ever found himself pinned. He got up off of the bed, pushing his hitai-ate up to squint at the room through his sharingan, and located her discarded shirt, throwing it to her without looking.

“… You’re welcome over for tea any time,” Kakashi told her stiffly, keeping his back to her as she got dressed and he flicked the light on.

“Cool,” Naruto answered him, and then she was walking past him, her steps never faltering as she smoothly saw herself out of his place.

…

At first, like clockwork, Naruto came by for ‘tea’ every other Monday. Then every Monday. Then every Monday and every time their sparring stretched into the evening or a social gathering Kakashi’s team dragged him to ended late. They still never acknowledged what was happening between them unless they were perfectly alone, still only fucked in the dark with most of their clothes on and in silence, but no matter how many times he knotted her, the fire inside him only flared brighter.

His fantasies grew more fucked up and elaborate. He imagined chaining her to his bed, making her look at him and say his name as he fucked her, spanking her and making her call him alpha. Or her pinning him and riding his cock, as frantic for his knot as he was for her pussy, using her chakra to make him give it to her. What it would be like for her to sit on his face, or for him to knot in her ass. What it would be like to wake up and brush their teeth together, take turns making breakfast, what it would feel like if she kissed his bare cheek before leaving for work in the morning.

Almost three months passed that way, and suddenly, it was a hot, sticky July, two seasons removed from the cool late autumn day in November that Kakashi had been summoned at midnight to the Hokage tower, and as the days grew longer, Naruto was… staying. First for a few minutes, like she was testing the waters, helping herself to juice from his fridge and making casual conversation on her way out. Then it was long enough him to actually make her tea, talking about nothing at all more important than work, Sakura’s progressing pregnancy, or the weather until her cup was empty, and lately…

She’d started staying longer. It was a different kind of tension, still sexual in some ways but deeper and warmer, squirmier, harder to tolerate. They sat on the couch together after tea sometimes in silence, not quite touching, Kakashi still as the grave settled back against the cushions and Naruto perched on the edge, bouncing her heel with so much energy that the couch shook and his downstairs neighbor had submitted a formal complaint to the building’s management. When he couldn’t sleep at night, he let himself think about that, how he wished it was because she wanted to just be around him the way he craved being around her.

And for the last two weeks, she’d been dragging him around to her myriad social engagements anytime they were both off work, a perfect picture of a young woman spending platonic time with her reclusive old sensei, trying to pull him out of his shell. The illusion was so complete and perfect that eventually, it convinced him, had him thinking that maybe it was unrelated to their dalliances, more to do with her worry about his mental and social health than a desire to spend time together. It made sense, really, and the slow but steady trickle of social input was… easing something in him. Slowly convincing him that he could invest in the people around him now that there was no more violence to snatch them away. He could hold Kurenai’s giggling, snot-nosed toddler and tell her stories about her father to make her mother laugh. He could bring a dish to Guy and Lee’s annual joint potluck. He could play Go with Shikamaru while Sakura, Ino, and Naruto chattered about anything and everything over glasses of the sweetened iced matcha that had been the subject of many pregnancy cravings at the cute new tea house west of village square. He could build things on a foundation sturdier than sand, for the first time in as long as he could remember.

So yeah, maybe it was unrelated. After all, he knew better than to second guess Naruto’s dedication to her friends, and for all he didn’t know what he was to her, Kakashi knew she considered him to be her friend.

It wasn’t the first time she’d dragged him out of his apartment early to grab coffee with Sasuke and Sakura, but it was the first time that they’d gotten it to go and spread out a picnic blanket at the park, the summer’s day pleasantly breezy. Kakashi couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat on a picnic blanket; it had probably been when Kushina was pregnant, sitting with her legs splayed out the way Sakura was to accommodate her growing stomach late in her seventh month of pregnancy and complaining about the heat. Through his genjutsu mask, he took a sip of the coffee Naruto had gotten for him because he refused to order anything other than hot black coffee and she insisted it wasn’t appropriate for summer. It was cold, and a little sweet. Floral. An iced lavender latte, he’d been told. He didn’t think he’d ever had a latte before. It was good.

Naruto had a huge iced matcha in her hands (like she needed the caffeine; she had more energy than the rest of them combined now that her work was so much less physical than she was used to) that sloshed when she gestured with it, demanding, “I got it because I know you want a little bit, Sakura. It’s not that much sugar, come on.”

She’d had a blood sugar test come back a little off at her last prenatal appointment; nothing to be worried about, but they were monitoring it to make sure it wasn’t going to develop into anything more serious. She seemed to be getting rather irritated with Sasuke taking readings from her on the hour, but she was trying not to show it. Privately, Kakashi was leaning towards the side of caution, but Sasuke set his hand on her knee and squeezed, urging her with a voice he never used in company other than theirs, “Really, Sakura, the dobe’s right. Just a sip won’t hurt.”

She looked at Kakashi, and he shrugged. “It’s not going to make or break the situation,” he opined, and with an eagerness about her, she relented, reaching for Naruto’s cup to take a swig that made her pink eyelashes flutter with pleasure.

“Oh, fuck, that’s good,” she groaned, handing it back a little too forcefully. “Don’t let me have more even if I cry. Gods, the cravings are insane. I bawled my eyes out over the devastating fact that there is nowhere to retrieve a watermelon from through legal means at three in the morning the other day.”

“She wouldn’t let me steal one and go back the next day to pay,” Sasuke supplied, sounding miffed, and—a little distracted by the lovely day, the surreality of blood sugar and a picnic in the park and the matter of acquiring a watermelon being the biggest tasks he and his team had to face these days outside slow-but-sure bureaucratic endeavors—Kakashi looked around at the fluffy clouds in the sky, the civilians pushing strollers along the paths, the pond where a family of ducks was diving for frozen peas that a little boy was throwing from atop his father’s shoulders, giggling madly. He looked back down at his frivolous, tasty drink, relishing that he was with his team and they weren’t in danger. He had moments like these a lot lately, like his brain and body were finally catching up to the reality that there would be no war for a decade at least.

“Because it’s illegal, ‘ske.”

“Like we’ve never done anything illegal.”

“I’d have done it.”

“Of course you would have, Naru, you’re an agent of chaos. You’d have stolen as many as you could carry and left behind a week’s worth of wages.”

“And it’d be worth it, hands down.”

“See? The dobe gets it. The cravings of a pregnant woman transcend the law. I don’t make the rules, that’s just how it works.”

“You’ll have a hard time getting me my other cravings to me if you get into trouble, though.”

“Like they’d catch me.”

“They could!”

Kakashi zoned it out, feeling the wind in his hair, the fabric of the blanket under his fingertips. Being present and aware of how pretty the omega across from him was in the morning sun, the breath in his lungs, the scents of growing things on the air. Very, very slowly, like he expected to be reprimanded, he reached up and removed his hitai-ate like he’d been practicing, because it was just part of his uniform, not something he’d die without. He kept his sharingan closed as he set it in his lap, running his fingers through his hair, and to his relief, nobody commented, like it was normal. Because it was normal.

“Can I ask you two something I’ve been wondering for a while?” Sakura suddenly asked, disrupting a conversation about how awkward it was to pretend to be in labor in her birthing classes with Sasuke. She was looking between Kakashi and Naruto, and he blinked at her, refocusing on the people around him with a hum of agreement. “I just— You don’t have to answer, and to be clear, it really— We’ve talked about it, and we don’t care what the answer is, okay?”

“… Okay,” Naruto allowed, sounding as concerned as he felt. He couldn’t imagine what this was about. Did they need help with something personal when the baby came, maybe? He’d been hoping they’d let him come over and clean at least once a week like he had for Kurenai. Or maybe it was—

“Are you two… dating?”

Kakashi froze solid, as did Naruto. For a beat, nobody moved; slowly, his mind blank, he dragged his gaze from Sakura’s face to that of the omega that had been tearing his sanity into shreds for half a year, that he spent all his time with, having no idea whatsoever how to answer that question, and it was all over her face that she didn’t know, either.

He’d trained his students too well.

Holy shit, Sasuke breathed, swallowed up by a startled, “Oh, fuck, you aren’t sure, are you?” from Sakura, whose pretty green eyes had grown wide and worried, regretful. “But something’s going on. Isn’t it?”

Kakashi’s tongue wasn’t working and the air in his lungs had turned solid. He didn’t know what the right answer was, and he kept his panicked gaze trained hard on Naruto’s face as she broke eye contact with him, her face flushing a fetching pink. She jerked her head in a tiny nod, unable to lie outright inside the bounds of the unhealthy codependency that their team had developed to survive the war.

“I thought you were crazy,” Sasuke told his pregnant omega, shock giving way to intrigue as he turned his attention to Naruto. “I didn’t think you had it in you, dumbass. Is it like a fling? You’re sleeping together?” Neither of them responded in any way, not even twitching a muscle, but to Kakashi’s profound nausea as his fight or flight kicked in, they didn’t need to. Their team took their beat of silence correctly as an admission of guilt, and Sasuke pressed on in an impressed tone of voice, “I really didn’t picture you sleeping with an alpha you weren’t in love with, dobe.”

Naruto’s eyes went big and distant, and Kakashi’s heart stopped, only to start up again exclusively in his ears and loud as fuck. He choked on his next breath, coughing, and returned his real mask, fighting the instinct to put on his hitai-ate as well as he dismissed the genjutsu, panicking, his mind flailing at the impossibility that—

“Okay,” Sakura decided firmly, her tone apologetic but leaving no room for argument. “That’s okay, guys, we’ll help. Sasuke, take Naru over to the other side of the pond and get her story. I’ll work on sensei.”

…

The first thing Sasuke said to her was, “So, I take it you didn’t actually find an alternative to going off your suppressants last fall,” and Naruto full body flinched away from him on the bench he’d led her to and forced her to sit down on. He was standing in front of her, his arms crossed over his chest and his stance telling her clearly that they were having this conversation whether she wanted to or not.

“… No,” she admitted softly to her knees, everything inside her twisted up and wrong, because how the hell could she tell her best friend that she’d manipulated their sensei into sleeping with her? That he’d had to do it the first time, that he’d done it under orders and with a paycheck to boot? That she’d sat in his lap that night at the bar grazing up against his crotch because ever since her heat, she’d been unable to keep a lid on the crush she’d had on her sensei she was a fucking kid? That she craved his attention like a drug, that she wanted him to hold her close and kiss her, that with every tortured cell in her body, she wanted him to want her back? That she knew it tortured him, too, what she was doing, that she could see the conflict and the guilt and the uncertainty in his grey eye when he walked her to his door after he’d fucked her brains out on demand for the umpteenth time? She hadn’t had the self-control to stop herself, once she’d learned how good sex felt, how good coming felt. She knew that yes, technically she could do it for herself, but the ladies at the orphanage had made it abundantly clear that masturbation was unhealthy and bad for her, so she didn’t want it to interfere with her training, but that wasn’t a good excuse for taking advantage of her sensei’s kindness. She was being horribly selfish, she knew, seeking that pleasure out with Kakashi instead of just swallowing her desire like she had all her life. She’d grown up under his feet, she reminded herself harshly, had been his responsibility for more than half of his life, so of course if this is what she asked him for, he’d give it to her, regardless of what he wanted or how it hurt him. He’d never denied her anything she wanted that he could afford to give her, and now—

“I appreciate that you didn’t ask me,” Sasuke interrupted her train of thought, his words low and sincere, and her eyes burned as she stared down at her lap. “For Sakura’s sake.”

“I appreciate that you would have done it if I had.”

“… Did you pick him?”

“The Sandaime did. Before he died. I didn’t find out until…”

Sasuke hummed. “And you’ve always liked him.”

“Yes,” she heard herself admit, distantly, like through thick glass. “Yes, I’ve always liked him.”

“So what exactly is going on now? It must be… six months or so since the date you needed to come off your meds. Where are we at?”

For a moment, Naruto’s jaw worked and no sound came out. She could hear children playing, birds chirping, wind in the leaves, her own unsteady heartbeat. “I—I come over—” She swallowed hard. “—when I want sex, and he… Gives it to me.”

“He never initiates sex.”

“It’s always me.” Gods, she was horrible.

“Okay. And you’re attached at the hip lately because…?”

“I don’t know.” The words came out quick, defensive, and she tried to peel back that defensiveness to catch a glimpse of the truth before she buried it, letting her tongue loose and hoping she’d stumble across it. “I don’t know. Because I want to be around him. Because he doesn’t talk much when we’re alone. Because he only looks at me when we’re out in public, and it’s the only time he treats me normal. Because I don’t want him around anybody else.” Her chest clenched suddenly and painfully, and she knew she’d found it. She pressed her palm over her sternum, inhaling sharply, and scrunched her eyes shut. “Because if he’s with me, I know he’s not with anybody else, and I don’t—I don’t know if he’s with anybody else.”

Sasuke crouched down in front of her, the sudden sound forcing her eyes open, and he bumped her chin with his knuckles, urging her to make painful, awkward eye contact that was nonetheless made easier by the long familiarity of his dark brown eyes shining with affection, an expression he saved for special moments but that proved to her that he loved her as much as she loved him. “Hey,” he said, the words soft. “Let me make sure I understand. You two have been having sex for months, and you haven’t talked much about it. That’s the problem?”

“We’ve—” The absurdity of it struck her mute for a second in which she combed back over everything that had happened, her tone almost amazed as she corrected him, “We’ve never breathed a word to each other about it.”

Sasuke, the fucking bastard, laughed out loud. Instantly, she tried to rip away, but he grabbed her by both wrists, settling into a cross-legged position on the concrete path in front of her, and told her to her face with a bemused smirk, “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that? You both are.” He glanced over across the pond, and Naruto followed his gaze to see Kakashi on the ground with his head in his hands and Sakura pacing back and forth in front of him, her expression serious as she spoke to him at length, gesturing with one hand while the other curled under the curve of her belly for extra support. “Do you really think that Kakashi-sensei, the man who famously refuses to even take his socks off to swim, is getting his dick wet with somebody he doesn’t trust with his life?”

“Maybe—maybe Kurenai—?”

“Bullshit.” Sasuke shook his head, sounding absolutely certain. “I asked him for sex advice once a couple years ago and came away with the impression that he’s probably only done it a couple times. He gave me a couple canned lines about consent and changed the subject like my question burnt him. Does he take his clothes off with you?”

“No, it’s always… and in the dark, too. Mask on.”

That seemed like evidence that he didn’t like or trust her, but Sasuke saw it differently, arguing, “But even though you’re the only person whose watch he can sleep all the way through without jerking awake, you think he’s, what, stripping nude and fucking other girls?”

… Probably not.

“Have you even considered that if you asked him to be exclusive, he would probably just—” Her teammate threw his hands in the air, leaning back, and she folded her freed hands between her knees, wishing she could crawl directly out of her damned skin. “Say yes?”

“… No?” Sasuke stared at her like she was an idiot, and it always made her feel like one when he did that. “There’s just— There’s no way he wants me, bastard. There’s just no way. Why would he—?”

But Sasuke had clearly heard enough. He flicked her hard on the forehead, earning a plaintive ow, and got to his feet, telling her with no room for argument, “Because you’re cute and sweet and fun and people like being around you because you make them feel special and important, dumbass.” … Oh. Oh, wow. Her eyes burned as he went on, “Because he loves you and trusts you and in our world, that’s vanishingly rare. Because you could do way better than an ex-ANBU with PTSD in his thirties who’s never had a girlfriend.”

“Hey, don’t be mean to sensei, he—”

“Trust me, dobe,” Sasuke assured her as he yanked her to her feet and began tugging her back towards the picnic blanket, flaring his chakra to signal their return to his omega and getting a flare of agreement from her in turn. “I’m doing him a massive favor right now.”

…

Kakashi would have liked to curl up and die now, thank you.

Naruto had been thrown down on the blanket next to him, silent but visibly miffed by the manhandling she’d been subjected to; they’d both shifted away from each other, looking off to either side, and he was absolutely certain that no matter what happened next, it would be bad.

He couldn’t quite hear what Sasuke and Sakura were saying as they conversed over by the shore of the pond—the former nodding seriously and skipping rocks so that they sailed straight over to the other bank and the latter miming punching someone repeatedly—but he was sure it wasn’t good. Maybe they were planning how they’d beat him for taking advantage of the events of a top-secret mission and their beloved teammate’s health problem. He’d deserve it, that was for sure. Or maybe they were just trying to figure out how to break it to him that the omega next to him just wanted sex and he was making everything complicated, ruining their precious little family with his selfishness.

Neither of them spoke.

By the time the rest of team seven returned, looking stern, he felt sick to his stomach. He looked at their feet as they came to stand by the edge of the picnic blanket, fighting down nausea by sheer force of will. His sharingan was burning. He wanted to run. He—

“You’re dating,” Sakura informed them bluntly. “You’re physically and emotionally attracted to one another, and you want an exclusive relationship. Both of you.”

Very, very slowly, Kakashi lifted his head to look at her. The words weren’t computing. He dragged his gaze to Sasuke for confirmation, and he raised his eyebrows at him, tacking on sarcastically, “Congratulations.”

“… Huh,” Naruto said next to him, sounding about as confused and distant from the situation as he felt. “That’s… not what I thought you’d say.”

“Because you’re a fucking idiot, like I said,” Sasuke sighed, grinding his palm into his eye. “Now, my pregnant omega is hungry. She wants dumplings or it’s my head. Come on.”