Archive of Our Own

Sai woke to the sound of a teakettle whistling and was immediately on guard: he didn't own a teakettle. He was lying on a futon set out on a clean, uncarpeted floor, and his head felt like Yamato had wrapped a board around it and pulled tight. The last thing he remembered clearly was Naruto volunteering him as a drinking partner despite his protests. There seemed to be another futon laid out to his right, but he couldn't see it without moving, and whoever was in it was snoring too irregularly for it to be faked sleep. Someone was moving around in the next room, turning off the kettle, clicking dishes softly. He let his chakra trail towards the sound, and felt two people: one known, and one not.

Reassured by the familiar prickle of Kakashi's chakra, Sai sat up, pushing away several blankets that had been tucked around him. Blond hair poked out from under the blankets on the futon next to him: almost certainly Naruto. What were they doing in Kakashi-sensei's apartment? Or if this wasn't his apartment, what was Kakashi-sensei doing in someone else's kitchen?

Sitting up seemed to have been a bad idea: when he moved, his head started pounding, and he felt faintly nauseous. He stood anyway, and began folding the blankets into exact squares, placing them in a neat pile on top of the folded futon. Instead of subsiding, his head decided to add spiking pain behind his eyes and temples, and an unpleasant sense of vertigo. It was not entirely unlike the training he had undergone in Root for being drugged for interrogation, though this time he thought he could be fairly sure that the walls and floor were not, in fact, actually moving.

A head peered around the doorframe, dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. "Sai! How are you feeling?" The man ducked back into the kitchen, and emerged a moment later with a mug in one hand. He was dressed too casually for this to be somewhere he was a guest, wearing neither his vest nor a weapons holster on his leg.

With the long hair, the distinctive scar across his face made it almost certain that this was Umino Iruka. Sai ran quickly through what he knew about the man. From Naruto, he knew that Umino liked ramen, was strict, fair and short-tempered, and that Naruto considered him family. From his education in Root, he knew that Umino had no close living relatives, had friends but was unmarried, had played shogi and drunk tea regularly with the Third Hokage, but only interacted with the Fifth Hokage in the context of work. Umino had graduated the Academy at 11, but had not made chuunin until 16. He had completed 17 A-rank missions, twelve before he took his job as an Academy teacher and five since Orochimaru's invasion three years past. He believed in the Will of Fire. He was far too emotionally invested in his students for Danzo's taste, but was popular among the children.

None of these explained why Sai had woken up on the floor of his apartment, or why he was now being offered a mug.

"Thank you, Umino-san." Sai said, being careful to smile as he took the mug. "May I ask where I am?"

"You're in my apartment, Sai-kun. And please, call me Iruka."

"You don't know me," Sai pointed out, still carefully smiling, "Why would you allow me to sleep in your home?"

"Well, I couldn't very well leave you passed out in the street, could I?" Iruka sounded ... amused? Sai thought. Or maybe irritated. Iruka's smile was hard to read.

"Why not?" he asked, cocking his head to one side at a slight angle - the book had mentioned that people often did this unconsciously to indicate interest. "Even if you were motivated by worry for the wellbeing of a stranger, it was very unlikely to get cold enough to harm me, and the chances of someone stealing from a shinobi in Konoha are negligible."

"Leaving aside that 'very unlikely' is not 'impossible', and that it snowed last night, I suppose that's true," Iruka said, not answering the question. "Drink up. It'll help your hangover."

Sai straightened and looked down at the mug he was holding. The contents bore no resemblance to any tea he had ever seen. The polite thing to do would be to drink it, and to say something appreciative after he'd tasted it. And poisoning him now would make no sense. He lifted the mug and took a cautious sip. The smile slid from his face: it tasted horrible. "Thank you," he said, hoping to be able to pour the rest out a window while Iruka looked away. He tried to form the words "It's very good" but couldn't force them past the bitter sliminess at the back of his mouth.

"I'm afraid you have to drink more of it than that to chase away your headache," Iruka said, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. "All right. To answer your question, I brought you here because you were very drunk and needed somewhere to sleep it off.” He paused, then added: “Sakura said I should tell you to consider it one of those "unnecessary things" that people do. And that if you tried to understand why when you first woke up, you'd probably make your headache worse."

Sai nodded, and lifted the mug to his lips, downing the contents in one long swallow. His next question (what, exactly, had he just drunk?) was interrupted by a sudden yell as Naruto came flailing up out of his blankets, and then collapsed, face-first on top of them, whimpering.

"Good morning, Naruto," Iruka said. Sai closed his eyes - the world kept swaying, just behind closed eyelids. He opened them again.

"Owww-!" Naruto's yell was muffled only slightly by the blankets. Sai tried not to wince.

"Breakfast will be ready soon," Iruka said to the two boys. "If you'd like to freshen up, Sai, the bathroom is to the left of the kitchen. I'll be right back." Iruka went back into the kitchen, Naruto didn't move, and Sai went to the bathroom as instructed. The inside of his mouth tasted terrible after whatever it was he had drunk, so he filled a cup with water and rinsed his mouth out. Then he drank the rest, put the cup down and pinched the chakra point between the metacarpals of his thumb and first finger, counting to thirty. The headache receded slightly. He sat down and re-played the last night's events, waiting for the walls to stop wavering quite so much.

* * *

When Sai came out of the bathroom, Iruka was holding a mug in the air above Naruto's head. Naruto appeared not to have moved at all.

"Hey, hey, Iruka-sensei, make it go away!" Naruto whined, flattening his palms and pressing his hands together.

"You have to sit up and drink this first, Naruto," Iruka replied. "What possessed you to challenge Kiba to a drinking contest?" Naruto sprung up - or tried to - and ended up sitting in a tangle of blankets, one arm wrapped tight around his stomach, the other still clutching his head.

"It wasn't that bad an idea, you know!" he protested. Sai silently disagreed. Drinking competitively against an Inuzuka had been a terrible idea. Unfortunately, by that point Naruto had been too drunk to understand why, and Sai too drunk to explain, or to protest quickly enough to be released once Naruto volunteered him as a partner.

"Which is why you have a hangover," Iruka said softly, crouching to put the mug in Naruto's hand. "Just drink that, and come get breakfast." Naruto nodded, and stared into the mug.

“Hey, Sai,” he said, “what’s in this, anyway?” Sai looked at him blankly, and turned to follow Iruka into the next room.

Naruto said “Okay!” and, a moment later, started coughing and making sounds of disgust. Then he got up, and followed Sai into the kitchen. When they walked in, Naruto jumped in the air, one arm pointing straight out in accusation, and yelled: "Hey! Kakashi-sensei, what are you doing here??"

Sai winced at the noise, though neither Kakashi nor Iruka seemed to much notice how very painfully loud Naruto’s voice was. "Good morning, Kakashi-san," Sai said, more quietly, pulling Naruto's arm down and pushing him toward the table. "Naruto, you're too loud."

Kakashi waved at both of them, over his shoulder, stirring something on the stove with his other hand. "Yo, Naruto, Sai."

While Naruto stood staring, Sai sat down to watch. Unlike Iruka, Kakashi was wearing his vest, but it wasn't zipped shut, and his shins were unbound. It was the least dressed Sai had ever seen him, other than after the fight against Hidan and Kakuzu, but something else about him seemed slightly off.

"Iruka-sensei," Naruto called, "what's Kakashi-sensei doing here, huh?" Naruto looked from one to the other and then grinned wide as a thought struck him. "Kakashi-sensei, did you get really drunk, too?"

Sai heard Iruka cough, and Kakashi slouched a little more, lowering his head a bit and shaking it. Iruka seemed to have something stuck in his throat: he was still coughing behind a raised hand.

Finally Kakashi got a word in: "Naruto," he said, "did you really think Iruka carried you both here by himself?"

"Ehh?" Naruto stared. "So you were being helpful, Kakashi-sensei?"

Behind Naruto, Iruka began coughing again. He brought two other bowls of rice to the table, and Kakashi put down a plate with omelets, and one with vegetables and grilled fish. Naruto looked at the food suspiciously, as if he expected it to turn into ramen. He opened his mouth, and Sai popped a piece of fish in before he could complain.

"Thank you for the meal," he said, inclining his head, and kicking Naruto in the shin, as Sakura did when she wanted Naruto to pay attention. Naruto yelped in pain, and turned on him - ah, so he had misjudged the strength of the kick. Sai filed that away for future reference. "This looks very good."

Naruto glared at him, but didn't retaliate. If Iruka was like family, perhaps Naruto behaved better around him. Families seemed remarkably inconsistent in that regard, but it seemed that most shinobi tried to impress their parents.

Iruka asked a question about their training, and Naruto eagerly launched into a story that bore some (slight) resemblance to the truth: Sakura had not seemed that impressed to Sai. Kakashi and Sai mostly listened, and Sai noticed that Kakashi seemed only to pull his mask down when Naruto was looking the other direction. He was remarkably good at it.

By the time they had finished eating, Sai's headache had almost disappeared, and turning his head didn't make the room wobble around him. Naruto seemed to have recovered entirely. Sai stood to help with the dishes, and Naruto hovered for a minute, before declaring that he could be helpful, too! And running into the other room. Iruka followed him out, and Kakashi and Sai cleaned up in silence, Sai washing while Kakashi dried and put dishes away. He was very familiar with the kitchen, Sai noticed. Voices drifted in from the other room.

"... sleep?" Naruto asked, banging something shut.

"When you're already laying out two futons, one more person is no problem" Iruka replied.

Sai didn't see how the effort would be any less than if there were only one person, but perhaps it was one of those things that people said, like "Oh, it's no trouble" or "Of course I don't mind." He shrugged it off, and turned to go. Kakashi caught his wrist, and looked at him closely - Sai stared back.

"Hm" Kakashi said, and let him go. It was only on their way out the door, bags and jackets and odds and ends all gathered together, that Sai realized what had caught his eye earlier. His and Naruto's clothing was rumpled and very clearly slept-in. Kakashi's was uncreased, and had smelled only of soap, not the smoke and alcohol Sai might expect. If the clothes had been borrowed, then they fit remarkably well. He turned to ask, Naruto already halfway down the stairs, and saw Kakashi resting one hand in the small of Iruka's back, leaning in towards him. He caught Sai's eyes, and winked before closing the door.