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When Iruka fails the chuunin exam for the third time, just after her fifteenth birthday, she goes to Mizuki’s house instead of going home. Her sensei was consolatory, but she thinks she saw the hints of doubt in his eyes, and the idea frightens her too much for her to risk seeing it again when he looks at her. He invited her to dinner out at a restaurant, his treat, but Iruka knows some of her classmates and some younger kids who just passed will be there, and she’s too proud, too ashamed, to talk to them right now.
She feels like an idiot: who fails the chuunin exam because they’re too protective? Only Umino Iruka, that’s who, she tells herself bitterly. Falling for a genjutsu of a teammate being pushed into the arena, what is she, an idiot? Even if one of her teammates had fallen, he could take care of himself. To make matters worse, neither of them had even gotten to the final stage: it couldn’t possibly have been either of them falling from that balcony. But, no, she had to rush over, had to run right into her opponent’s hastily jutsu’d pit-trap and nearly get herself skewered.
Mizuki opens the door on the first knock, and pulls Iruka indoors.
“Oh, Iruka,” she says, putting an arm around Iruka’s shoulders and pulling her in, “it’s okay. It’s only six months to the next test, in Kirigakure.”
“Can’t take it there,” Iruka hiccups, “Katsume-sensei says so. He won’t tell me why, just that I have to wait a whole year for it to be in Iwa.” She can’t even begin to articulate her fear that he doesn’t believe in her anymore, that maybe he never has, not even to Mizuki.
Iruka hiccups again, and then gives in, throwing her arms around Mizuki, clinging tight. “I was so stupid, Mizuki!” she sobs, “I was so, so stupid!”
Mizuki pats her back, and then detaches herself, pulling Iruka over to sit down.
“I’m getting you a drink,” she says, “and then we’ll see about getting you cheered up.” She turns in the doorway and smiles back at Iruka. “Don’t worry, Iruka: I’m sure it’s not actually impossible to pass the exam on your fourth try.”
Iruka blinks after her, and then buries her head in her hands, giving in to the tears a true shinobi would never shed. Mizuki wouldn’t do this, she thinks bitterly, Mizuki would be all composed and perfect and only show her sadness with, with a poem or a flower or something. Iruka almost hates her, just for a moment. She pulls her knees up and presses her face into them, curled into a little ball like she hasn’t done in years.
Mizuki comes out with a glass of water, a washcloth, and a shot glass.
“Okay,” she says, “sit up.” Iruka shakes her head, refusing to uncurl, and Mizuki puts the glasses down with a clink, then wrings warm water down the back of Iruka’s neck. “There we go,” she says, when Iruka jerks her head up, “drink this.” She puts the glass to Iruka’s mouth and tips it back.
Iruka sputters as the alcohol hits the back of her throat. “Mizuki, what- that tastes horrible!”
Mizuki hands her the glass of water, and starts scrubbing at Iruka’s face.
“You’ve completely ruined your face, you know,” Mizuki says disapprovingly, scrubbing Iruka’s nose. “We’ll have to make do with what I have here, or we’ll be late.”
Iruka blinks, and pulls the washcloth away before Mizuki starts on the edges of her eyes: Mizuki is many things, but gentle has never been one of them.
“What?” she asks, “where are you going? Where am I going?”
“To your consolation party, dummy,” Mizuki says, “we’re going to meet some of my friends and celebrate you not having to risk your life doing stupid message runs, like my last mission.”
Iruka remembers that. Only two of the team had come back, and Iruka had been so worried until she found out Mizuki was one of the ones who was okay. The shinobi who had died was someone Iruka hadn’t known very well, and she felt almost traitorous in her relief: surely it betrayed the Will of Fire, to be pleased that someone she hardly knew had died in place of a friend? She’d gone to the memorial stone for a week running to apologize.
“But-“ Iruka says, “but isn’t it late? What if they’re busy?”
“Iruka,” Mizuki tells her, sweeping her thumbs across Iruka’s cheekbones and wrinkling her nose as they brush the edges of Iruka’s scar, “don’t be stupid. I planned this ages ago.” Iruka feels the bottom drop out of her stomach. Even Mizuki had known she’d fail.
“Wh- what?”
“After all,” Mizuki continues, pulling the washcloth away from Iruka, “if you’d passed you’d’ve wanted to celebrate, right?” Iruka blinks at her, and nods, tentatively.
“So,” Mizuki says, “you need a shower, and then we can go get you completely plastered so you forget all about it for a while.” Iruka doesn’t normally drink very much, so she’s not sure about this: genin aren’t really encouraged to drink before they’re sixteen. But when Mizuki brings Iruka somewhere, she always buys extra and gives Iruka one of her glasses: bartenders don’t seem to care.
“Um,” she says, and Mizuki looks at her with the beginnings of disappointment in her eyes, “O- okay!”
“Thank you, Mizuki,” her friend choruses at her, “for being such a good friend and setting up a party for me!”
“Thank you, Mizuki,” Iruka parrots back obediently. “But. Really, Mizuki” she says, catching one of Mizuki’s hands in her own, “thank you.” For an instant, it looks like Mizuki’s smile goes hard, almost predatory, but it must be her imagination.
Mizuki goes to look through her closet for something Iruka can wear, and Iruka ducks into the shower. When she gets out, Mizuki towels her hair dry and combs it to fall around her shoulders. Iruka itches to put it up, out of her face, but she knows if she messes with it Mizuki will make a disappointed face at her. The shirt Mizuki hands her is a little too small - Mizuki is taller and slimmer than Iruka is - but it must still be okay. Iruka fusses with the skirt until Mizuki slaps her hands away from the hem: she’s still not used to anything this short.
* * *
A few hours later, Iruka doesn’t know why she wouldn’t have come out. She’s having a great time. Mizuki’s friends are all older than she is - many of them are even older than Mizuki, but they’re nice enough. Iruka finds out that a couple of them are still genin, like her, though they don’t seem to mind all that much. Iruka finds the idea of being an eighteen or nineteen year old genin horrifying, but she tries not to say so.
Iruka doesn’t like having to order drinks: she doesn’t really know what things are, and she doesn’t want to look stupid by accident. But tonight that isn’t a problem — Mizuki challenged her friends to find something Iruka would like, and they’ve been putting little miniature drinks in front of her all night, cups of sake and mixed cocktails and even some beer. The sake tastes like licking a partly-burnt-down tree, and the beer makes Iruka make a face and push it away, but some of the cocktails are okay. She knows there’s a really bright green one she likes, and thinks she’ll have to ask Mizuki what it is later, because she can’t really keep track of which names go with which drinks.
“Iruka,” Mizuki says around midnight, “I’m going home, do you want to come back with me?” She glances back over her shoulder, and Iruka looks too: there’s a boy standing a little ways back, looking kind of impatient, and Iruka might not be eighteen, like Mizuki is, but she knows what that means, so she says no, of course not.
“Okay,” Mizuki says, “but go home soon, okay? And drink lots of water.” She looks around the table. “Taki, can you make sure Iruka gets home okay?” He nods, and Iruka smiles at him across the table. Taki was in Mizuki’s class, and Iruka has nursed a tiny crush on him since they met and he kissed the back of her hand in greeting.
Iruka stays out only a little longer: when she gets up, she’s glad she only sipped each of the drinks that was handed to her, because she’s a little unsteady on her feet as it is.
* * *
Taki is a perfect gentleman and sees her home. Iruka feels grown-up and almost special, walking home with his arm around her shoulders. She lets herself imagine that they do this all the time, that he maybe even likes her.
When they get to her door, she leans up and kisses him, just beside his mouth.
“Do you want to come in?” she asks, fearless in her tipsiness. Taki looks down at her and doesn’t answer right away. “Please,” she says, “the house is so empty, and I — ” Iruka clamps her mouth shut, surprised at herself. She never complains about living alone, or how much she misses her parents: there are plenty of people in Konoha besides her who have lost family. And it’s been nearly four years: she should be used to it by now.
“I’m sorry,” she says, pulling her keys out and fumbling the lock open, “I just. Just don’t listen to me. I think I had a little too much to drink.” Taki pushes the door open, and holds it open for her, motioning for her to go in. He follows her in, and closes the door softly behind himself.
“Where’s the kitchen?” he asks, toeing his sandals off. “You should probably have some water.” Iruka points while she tries to pull her sandals off and ends up almost pitching over. Taki’s hands around her waist stop her fall.
“Thanks,” she says, face bright red. His hands are warm against her sides where her shirt has ridden up, and she suddenly remembers how short the skirt she’s wearing is, how Mizuki told her she shouldn’t lean over while she was wearing it. She unbuckles her sandal straps and straightens up fast as she can, head a little swimmy.
“It’s in the back,” she says, “here, I’ll have to show you where things are.” The kitchen setup is intuitive to Iruka, but there are a lot of cabinets full of things she doesn’t use very often, and she doesn’t really like people poking around in them.
Iruka points out where the glasses are, and starts the tap running, wondering if she has any ice.
“Taki,” she asks, “do you want any—?” He puts a glass under the tap and presses a soft kiss next to her mouth, mirroring her kiss at the door.
“Just water,” he says, pulling the full glass out of the sink and handing it to her. “Drink up. Trust me, you don’t want a hangover in the morning.” He takes the second glass, now full, and drains it in one long swallow. Iruka tries to do the same thing and only manages to spill part of her glass down her front. She looks down at Mizuki’s shirt in exasperation, as if it’s the shirt’s fault for absorbing the water. It’s a pale powder blue, which looks great on Mizuki: on Iruka it’s pale enough that the difference between her bra and skin color is, it turns out, pretty obvious when the shirt is wet. She blushes.
“I’ll just be right back,” she says, gesturing vaguely at herself. “Sorry.” She hurries to her bedroom, and catches sight of herself in the mirror, all messy hair and dark stripe-scar across her face. Mizuki’s shirt looks way too tight on her, like she’s trying too hard, and Iruka pulls it off, throws it angrily at the laundry basket.
She looks awful in the mirror, and she wishes, not for the first time, that she were built more like Mizuki, slimmer and more graceful. Iruka can’t believe Taki walked her home. She can’t believe she let herself imagine he might like her, even a little bit.
Iruka goes to her closet and rattles through it, looks through her folded shirts, none of them what she wants, the comfortable one that she was wearing earlier, that used to be her mom’s. Then she remembers: she left it at Mizuki’s house after she got the test results.
Iruka hadn’t really expected that she’d passed, with how stupid she'd been. But it was different, thinking she must not have made it, and seeing the list of new chuunin with her name conspicuous only in its absence. She bites her tongue.
Finally Iruka just sweeps all of the shirts off onto the floor. And because it’s just her luck today, she brings the shelf down, too, the noise of which brings Taki in after her.
“Iruka,” he says, looking in, “are you oka — whoah.” Iruka whirls on him, frustrated and almost angry.
“I know it’s a mess,” she says, “I know.” Then she drops to her knees, and picks up one of the shirts, pressing her face into it.
“I’m sorry,” she says into the shirt, “I’m sorry, I just.” She takes a deep breath. “I just really,” she hiccups, but does not cry, “really wanted to pass this time.” She hears him moving closer, and then something is draped over her back. Taki sits next to her and rubs her shoulder through whatever it is.
“I know,” he says, “I know what it’s like.” Iruka doesn’t even think, just turns and burrows her face into his chest, wrapping her arms around him tight, hiccupping little not-sobs and shaking. His arms close around her hesitantly, and she can tell he doesn’t want to be here, can feel how rigid his posture is.
“I’m sorry,” she says, after a minute, sitting up and wiping a hand across dry eyes, feeling him still and stiff beside her. “I’m sorry, Taki.”
“It’s okay,” he says, and she sees that his eyes are closed. “But. Can you put a shirt on? It’s just — you’re kind of … distracting.”
Iruka is pretty sure she’s bright red all the way to her toes, she’s so mortified.
“Sorry!” she yelps, yanking the shirt in her hands on fast, “okay, my shirt’s on! Sorry!”
Taki gives a little laugh. “Iruka, you do know most girls would have smacked me just now, right?”
Iruka hears this kind of thing all too often, and she goes from embarrassed to prickly in a heartbeat.
“Well,” she says, irritated at him and at herself, “I’m not most girls.” He nods: doesn't challenge her, and she relaxes a very little bit.
“C’mere,” he says, holding an arm out, and she hesitates a moment before she tentatively leans into him again, wondering when he’ll try to leave, whether there’s something she should do to make it easier for him to get up, something she should do to give him a way out? If there is, Iruka doesn't know what it is.
But instead of making his excuses and leaving, Taki starts telling her about the first time he took the chuunin exam, how he he was so excited that he got to the final round only to get knocked out by a girl from Suna less than a minute after the fight started.
He segues into some of the other fights from his year, and in a little while, Iruka laughs at one of his jokes, and he hugs her a little tighter. When she looks up at him, he’s smiling, and he leans down and kisses her. She turns into it easily, lets him lead the kiss. After a little bit, she turns around to kneel facing him on her bedroom floor, surrounded by fallen shirts, and kisses him back with a little more certainty.
“Yes,” she says, after they’ve been kissing for a few minutes, when he’s inched his fingers under the edge of her shirt a few times. When his fingers brush the clasp of her bra, she whispers assent again, and again when he draws her hand to the fly of his pants. She likes kissing him, and he wants her: it’s a heady feeling, knowing how fully she has his attention right now. He is warm and real and here, and Iruka doesn’t want him to leave.
So she stands up, and shucks off her skirt, then offers him a hand up, pulls him to her bed. It’s not very big: Iruka still sleeps in the same room she used as a child, even though her parents’ room is larger, brighter. Taki follows her willingly enough, and when she tugs down on his waistband, he pulls the rest of his clothes off.
She sits down on the edge of the mattress; he sits next to her and kisses her. She pulls back for a moment, concerned.
“I don’t want to— you know,” she says, “not all the way.”
“Okay,” Taki says, and kisses her again; the kiss deepens fast. His hands are a little rougher, now, when he touches her, and Iruka leans back gladly when he pulls her down to lie beside him on the bed. She touches him tentatively at first, until he takes her hand in his own and shows her what he wants.
Iruka hasn’t ever done this before, had a boy actually in bed with her like this, though she already knows she wants to do it again: the feeling of his skin hot against hers is amazing. Iruka loves being touched: she’d be happy to just curl up in his arms all night. But she knows he’ll probably get up and leave as soon as they’re done.
Iruka thinks about it for a minute, feeling him react to her touch, wanting him to stay. When he whispers that he’s close and tries to replace her hand with his own, she slides down the mattress and pushes his hand away. She’s never done this before, but she knows how it works. No teeth, she reminds herself, and, deeper is better.
Afterwards she spits into her t-shirt and makes a face. Taki lies still for a few minutes, breathing heavily; she tentatively lies down next to him, resting her head on his shoulder. When he stirs Iruka kisses him, hoping her mouth doesn’t still taste weird.
“I’ll do that again in the morning,” she says softly, “if you want to stay.” He looks at her for a moment, then sits up and Iruka tries not to let her disappointment show. He stands and drops a kiss on her forehead.
“Bathroom,” he says. Iruka flushes a little bit - of course. “I’ll just be a minute.”
When Taki comes back with a glass of water, Iruka practically grabs it from his hand, both glad he's back and eager to wash the aftertaste away. When he lies down next to her, Iruka cuddles up close against him and he wraps an arm around her back, warm and almost protective, and solidly there.
Iruka mumbles a ‘good night’ at him before she drifts off, and if she has any nightmares, she doesn’t remember them in the morning.