Found You

A/N: Well, I'm glad everyone's enjoying their strange little relationship! And that even if Sasuke might be the slightest bit out of character, people can still enjoy him. But, Like Kakashi surmised: Uchihas are only nice to people that have kicked their ass!

And it seems Karma works the same for Uchihas as it does for Tonberries. DOINK*!

Pairing: Kakashi / Sasuke, and Itachi / Sasuke, depending on how perverse you wanna be.
Spoilers: We've been through this. This time: before Chuunin Exams
Lemon: So soon? Naw.
QUOTA: 15 on-site reviews. Come on people! You can do it! 600 hits and some 4% reviewing? I won't accept that! Not if you people really think it's a good story! I put such a demanding number last time because that means I have more time between chapters to proofread, and shows how quickly people want the next chapter! Though, maybe 15 was too demanding for last chapter? Ah well. I got some five reviews from friends on my list. I guess that adds to the pool ne? Seriously. As much as it strokes my Ego to be told how great this story is, I really would appreciate all sorts of things. Plot ideas, character anomalies - even flames! HEY! It adds to my total! Flame away!

Cameos: Last chapter...? None really. Save Kakashi offering wasabi and mustard, even though it's much later when Sasuke tells the public that he doesn't like nato or sweets. I figure that, if he doesn't like sweet things, and doesn't like bitter things like rotten tofu, then he's gotta like something either spicy or sour. Or bland, like a good little richboy.

Diclaimer: I do not own the rotton milk.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Tummy Ache.

"Aaahh! Kakashi-kun! My eternal RIVAL!" Confident fingers closed around a super-smooth chin with consideration as a lone icy eye drifted to him. He smirked, not yet blinding the other jounin with his formidable Beacon of Youth!

So bright a shine, lost stars could weep and find their way home!

"...Yo, Gai." He... had better things to do than stand around and be contemplated on. Bags in his hands shifted.

The rustle of plastic made sparkling, beady eyes open and take in the fact his comrade had dinner.

In two hands.

One gargantuan brow lifted. "Kakashi... You won't be any use to your team if you get a stomachache from eating all of that. OHOHOHO! And I don't think you have the spirit to work off all of the calories! Of course a rookie-teacher wouldn't have understood how much his team relies on him!"

Sweatdrop. "It's... not all for me."

A long silence drifted between them, until at last his brutally skilled, artful hand pulled away from his chin. Puzzled, hands settled on wonderful hips with a wriz of lime spandex as weight shifted from one leg to the other.

And then...

People two blocks around stopped in their tracks, silver fluff caught in the wake of Gai's screaming. He remained disinterested as the finger threatened to jab in to his nose, hysterical eyes wide and eyebrows vibrating.

"YOU'RE HAVING DINNER WITH SOMEONE?!"

Kakashi didn't bother to point out how loud his 'friend' could be. He had given up a long time ago. Besides. This was a sort of compensation for his own lack of expression.

Slowly a silver brow lifted. "...What about it?"

Blinking, he looked about right quick, spotting the red spiral of the jounin vest that belonged to Maito Gai.

. . . Huddled in a corner, attempting to control his sobbing. Between loud, shaky breaths, Kakashi could make out the depressed whimpers and grumblings of, "Again he shows me up, bringing a woman home and having dinner with her. No doubt fallen for his mysterious charms! Oroo..."

"...It's not a woman," the other corrected, not bothering to get angry over the fact such a master at taijutsu could jump to conclusions so hastily. Almost feeling sorry for a guy that had... --Er, wasn't all that bad, once you got past the eyebrows.

Just loud.

...How much his own relationships were similar to his team's had not escaped him.

A sleepy lid retracted slightly from his vision when he was confronted with a squeaky twitch from one of the black caterpillars on Gai's forehead, pitch eyes serious, unforgiving, and...

...jealous, maybe. He couldn't tell really. He was still thinking about another pair of black eyes that burned more like candle-lit glass, where Gai's had no restraint and tended to explode with passion.

Uchiha eyes exploding with passion...

. . .

"...Hm? Sorry. You were saying something?"

"UWAAAAH!!!" By now he could almost hear the waves crashing behind the man clutching his bobbed hair. "That reaction of yours is always so hip! No wonder this woman is falling for you!"

Sigh, shoulders slumping with the seeming weight of the sacks on his hands. "It's not a woman," he groaned with a bit of frustration.

"YOU LIE!" Wet cheeks glistened as rivers of emotion poured down his bronzed, sculpted cheeks. "Ohhhn?! Is it Kurenai-hime?! How dare you move in on your colleagues! MY colleagues!" The smallest sniff to suck mucus back up his flaring nostrils. "You KNEW I was going to ask her to have lunch with me!"

With a loud sigh the younger jounin's head fell. "...It's a member of my team."

Maybe because Gai had stopped reciting a list of beautiful, womanly prospects the two blocks had become silent again. Maybe he had said it louder than he had intended.

No, Gai had certainly shut up, from the horrendous maw of one row of teeth under his nose, and the other somewhere around his naval.

For a very long moment, Kakashi was convinced he would be losing his ear with all of the yelling that would commence.

So when a hand clapped on to his shoulder there was a hesitation in lifting his head.

...This had to be far worse.

Gai was smiling at him. Pleasantly. Satisfied, of something. Something Kakashi wasn't quite sure he wanted to know. But had a feeling he was going to be told anyway. And an even deeper, sinking feeling he was forgetting something...

"That's good to hear, Kakashi. I was thinking it was some super-hip thing of yours to throw out every cel that came your way." Smirk. "Just to make the rest of us look soft. How slick, Kakashi~!"

For doing absolutely nothing, the jounin was greeted with a thumb's up and a sparkle of teeth. As he was recovering from being dazzled he could only sigh, guilt sending his eye to the floor.

"...Saa, Gai."

Said man struck a pose before falling in to place beside his rival, walking alongside him and claiming the closer of the bags out of the thinking one's fingers. "Hmmm?"

"It's a good thing, to care for my team, ne?"

"Of course it is! And from your mission reports, they sound like a lively bunch." Grinning suavely to himself he could only chuckle. "I was beginning to think you were seducing the Hokage with lies about wanting to be a cel-leader."

Seducing, right... Sweatdrop. Kakashi's head fell to the side loosely, hair bobbing.

"They're even the ones that talked you in to going after that Zabuza, ohoo?"

"That's... not exactly how it went..."

"You don't have to be so modest with me Kakashi!" The smaller jounin stumbled with the clap on his back. "You were swayed by the Springtime of Youth. Aa, I heard that Uchiha is in your team...?"

There was only a mute nod from him, eye closed to think it out. Gai was telling him that it was perfectly healthy to love his students.

He had not yet said if picking favorites was safe, much less actually having one sleep in your bed. Even so, the guy's sense for what was on his mind... He didn't like being known so well, sometimes. It was... troublesome.

"Hokage-sama is a brilliant man. And even though his charming visage has faded - he is still celebrating his--"

" 'Springtime of Youth', right? Yare, yare, Gai... You don't have to keep your arms up. That bag's not mine."

Blinking to him, bobbed hair glittered as he looked up to his fists in the air and the bag that had been dragged for the ride. He coughed, then dropped the limbs to his sides. "My apologies. Ahem. ...So," lips peeled around the word, blatantly flashing everyone within a few yards. Not Kakashi, whom still had his eye closed. "...has he told you anything about what happened?"

"What's there to tell...? They already got his testimony back then." With only one bag, he could mosey with a hand in his pocket, glomming at the rubber shuriken on his keychain.

He had keys to his house.

It just always seemed to him that anyone in Konoha that wanted in there bad enough could get past a lock, and anyone lucky enough to not know would invariably be caught for stealing...

...his wasabi and mustard.

Besides.

The seals on his Icha Icha shelf were completely different.

A sweatdrop. If this was going to be a regular thing, Sasuke making himself comfortable there - and making Kakashi comfortable for being there - he was definitely going to need more than...

...his wasabi and mustard.

"...Hm? I... wasn't listening."

Blank eyes ogled him a long moment, disbelief scribbling Gai's face worse than the mascara (all jutsus Kakashi hoped it was mascara) thick on his eyes.

"I was giving you superb advice, as a seasoned sensei to a rookie!! *Sob* I refuse to repeat myself to a man that won't appreciate it!"

"I... do, Gai. I was just... thinking. Sorry. Try again eh? It's the Springtime of Youth to not give up what you believe in?"

As though it wasn't bad enough the man always self-imposed conditions, but now he was buying that. His empty fist clenched, smirking proudly. "YOSH! You are right! Even for a rookie to teaching rookies - you are indeed a master of inspiration to the most seasoned of jounin!"

"Just... What were you saying...?"

Now the leading finger wagging as if to chastise the air in front of them as punishment for Kakashi's bratty ways he continued. "I was saying, that his testimony isn't what is at stake here. He's an oprhan, Kakashi-san. Like many of them, after the Kyuubi. But unlike them, born in to abandonment, that Uchiha has had to adjust. As his teacher, and all of theirs, it is your responsibility to be as father and brother and trusting, generous uncle and spoiling grandfather to them."

The smirk riding his face bore no sparkle, his own eyes closed in thought as they walked. Invariably, with Gai's much-faster, always-excited heartbeat, or maybe the fact Kakashi had already stepped a little off to the side to make them lose rhythm, the bobbed-hair'd jounin was getting ahead of him.

"He should be able to tell you things he won't even be able to tell his woman. And, it's not particularly healthy for someone not to grieve when they have lost a precious person. He has lost very many. It is important that he can come to you, even when there's no one else. And that is why...

"It is a very stupid thing to die for your team."

That piqued his attention, masked chin lifting from the obscurity of his vest collar so he could drift a hopeful, silently inquiring frosty eye to his 'rival'. "Is that so...?"

Sandals stopped, first the leading pair and then the slower pace of the other's as they had caught up to him. What was an unreadable expression from one fluffy-haired jounin was greeted with a hearted smile from the other.

"It is also a teacher's ambition to make sure his students surpass him. There is no progress, no ambition, and no grand adventure if he cannot do that, for his team. So long as you raise them well, train their strengths and help them identify their weaknesses, none of you will have to die for each other."

The logic made him... unbearably curious, as judged by the way his sleepy lid lofted enough to let his eye widen.

"What does it mean... to be Hokage then...?" What did a man have to be, to put his life on the line for everyone...?

As if expecting the question, Gai's smile broadened, eyes rolling up in the same kind of smile his rival was prone to giving his party.

"You don't have to ponder that, when you're not the Hokage. Our hearts just aren't big enough to take in everyone and protect those with no desire or ability to protect themselves. The students that surpass us, surpass that limitation. They're the ones that have that duty placed on them. It seems our splendid and fiery rivalry will continue even in our teams."

A lone finger lifted to point that fact out, grinning enough to dazzle a bird off its perch on the power line above and send it flopping to the ground with a screech of feathers.

"Hoho, and I'm ahead of you on that. Yosh, my super-cute Lee-kun would definitely look good in that hat!"

Be it by sheer disbelief, or by knowing that he tolerated Gai and his prowess for a reason, Kakashi too was smiling. No sparks or miniature stars of brightness, but there was his upturned eye that promised he wanted everyone around him to be happy.

And then he turned on his heel to begin walking again. At the sound of footprints, assured that his words of wisdom had at least sunk in this time, since there was no blow-off, Gai eagerly followed. He threw a leg forward, chest puffed out and elbows high.

And crashed beautiful-face-first in to the telephone pole.

The feigned advance of his feet stopped, Kakashi sliding in to place alongside him with a sing-song smile in his voice as he took the bag that was up on Gai's frozen arm. "Thanks for the talk, Gai. Ja matta na?"

Now he could whistle on his way up the steps. In the distance, Gai was both sobbing and cheering a goodbye with a limp wave of his air'd hand, not quite in a mind or body enough to stop being wrapped around the pole.

Inky disks fled to the corner of his sight when he heard the door shut, but he didn't cease in his stretches. He switched to holding the other ankle when he felt more than heard the approach of his teacher to the kitchen.

Kakashi rifled through the plastic sack of carry-out as he chided the boy with a casual, "Seems pointless to shower twice in a day," between sniffing each box for what was what.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Now, he knew, he was sorely mistaken to think that sharing a bed with even a furious Uchiha was not a condition that could keep him from reaching sleep. Beside him...

...Against him, was the back of a youth that exposed it to no one, curled up on his side with the pillow gripped under his head.

Kakashi Grocery List: 1x (2x?) pillow.

Not that he was particularly against having to remain molded against a proud spine and a rigid labyrinth of sinew cased in a hedge of fine marble, vines with blossoms of scars dotting the surface.

With his sensitive nose, air conditioning was a bane, moist and miserable air resulting in a light sticking of flesh only alleviated by the lifted window that passed flattering notes from other foliage to the forlorn Mr. Ukki on the breeze.

It smelled like 2 a.m. . Maybe 2:15... Four hours and he still had not fallen asleep.

It also smelled of floral green, pungent in the midnight strands his masked nostrils were consumed in.

Kakashi Grocery List: body soap 1x - Uchiha scent.

...Whatever an Uchiha was supposed to smell like. Maybe like lemon ginger...

Well. If Sasuke wasn't going to bother with bringing his own - it was going to be Kakashi's duty to make him smell like whatever the hell he wanted to go to bed with. A bit of variety would be nice.

...Pina colada? ...Ooh...

Nah. That would just make him hungry. And it was bad enough he was already bothered and longing. Moonlight was treading on the sheets in blissful unawares of how the glow made raven hair gleam, and throw pale, relaxed features in to stark relief. Shredded feathers on his nape elongated a thin neck rarely noticed in the hang of a tall shirt's collar.

Though Kakashi had never made it a point to ask, he could only guess the shirt came from an inventory of things he had not yet grown in to, and left it awkward on a frame that...

Felt much less runty against him than Sasuke tended to make himself look in his blue&white. Kakashi also never made it a point to ask why his student wore such warmers, when he could see clearly from here that wrists were perfectly alright.

A fact that had erased a great amount of distress. When he had heard, back then, that Konoha's last Uchiha had given attempts at psychological therapy the silent treatment, he had been worried that he would be given a boy that had no ambition to keep himself alive and away from his family.

To be absolutely sure, he shifted his arm that was comfortable between another and the steady rise of a ribcage, collecting the dainty joint. There was undisturbed breathing bestowed to him while he inspected the span of flesh with his thumb. Eyes closed against the back of his Top Rookie's head, immersing himself in the feel.

Just like marble. Cold to the first touch, quickly after taking on the temperature donated to it. In the most skilled divine hands, such as the case seemed, there were indeed countless imperfections that made Sasuke human, and still made him heavenly.

However, any scratch made in finished marble stayed forever. He could feel the entrance and exit of senbon, but aside what obviously any genin possessed in terms of roughened flesh from thrown shuriken and fingered kunai, scrounged earth, and the flow of seals... There wasn't anything in his multiple searchings to indicate Sasuke had ever shamelessly threatened his own life.

Only a pulse that had gained the need to sing against his thumb and turn the Uchiha's lungs in to caverns to allow his new deepness of breath.

Behind the mask, eyelids thick with fuzz at the implication of sleep, Kakashi was grinning.

His Top Rookie also had sensitive wrists.

The more his thumb rubbed, circling the powerful thrum of life in the genin's veins, the more Sasuke sighed than breathed. He shifted, bundling tighter in to himself despite the humid air that made it horrible to do so.

In his nuzzling on the back of fluffy down - it really did remind him of some black kitten, hair not quite black, and still blacker than any black a person could wear.

A grave sliver of faded blue took in the neck he was against, the slightest twitch of fury in silvery lashes at what he heard.

One word, and it tempted him to pursue unforgivable things. Long fingers closed around the thin branch of Sasuke's right wrist, which he had been stroking for the last while. He wasn't angry at Sasuke... Not in the least. Not for saying it, nor stuck in his own dreamy world.

Itachi really is the only thing on his mind... He parted with a grievous sigh, eye falling shut once more. The guy really fucked him up. Yare yare... He never cared about the messes he left in everybody else's hands. Some of that must have rubbed off to Sasuke. He was sure of it.

Disgusted, he let go of the wrist to close his own pale arm around the boy, adding to the unneeded warmth of the evening. In Konoha's eversummer, a person had to either cope or burn.

...Kakashi tended to burn. Not that his team needed to know that.

What does he need with an Avenger...? Though the prodigal Uchiha, that made Sasuke's efforts pale in comparison, never did a thing half-assed and paid little mind to even his superiors, it was... off. The day his suspicions were confirmed on the first day of selections, he knew that Itachi was up to something.

It wasn't... like him, to leave such an open end. He had purposely sabotaged his little brother's development. Having looked back on their academy grades, Naruto was always on the bottom. But, even before the massacre, Sasuke had been at the top; had not let his grades suffer in the least with any sort of mourning.

And the days counted as 'illness' had later been confirmed that he was slacking at a creek pier practicing what they couldn't teach in the academy.

...Maybe if he had paid better attention to the files, Sasuke's being an Uchiha wouldn't have been so surprising on that first encounter. Damn his laziness. It was a good thing (or Hokage foresight) that Nara kid wasn't on his team, otherwise they would never get anything done.

"Sasuke," the jounin whispered at the younger's ear, spreading the inside of his hand over the patch of white skin that thudded from the inside with a sleepy heartbeat.

When the other didn't wake he was almost... annoyed. And here the boy was always the early riser and lightest sleeper. Where was that light sleeping now?

He tried again, breathing the genin's name on the outskirts of his ear and letting the sound trickle down. Rewarded with the tiniest noise. ...Which added to the small collection he had: Things You'll Never Hear Out of an Uchiha.

Cold panged in his chest at the response he got, eye lidding heavily to fog his irritation. That word again.

"Niisan...?"

Silver mingled in to the inky crest riding the back of his student's head as he situated himself again, one hand stretched over another's heartbeat and the one the pair of bodies lay on surfacing from beneath the pillow to close around a knobby shoulder.

"...Go back to sleep, Sasuke."

No wonder his student's senses were boggled, he realized, when a nod tickled his eyelids with fluff. In terms of proportion, Sasuke used to be much smaller when he most likely trailed in his brother's shadow. And it must be hard to sleep soundly, no matter how exhausted, when you were still living in the house your parents were murdered in.

Sasuke was having a memory lapse. Undoubtedly, even Sharingan Kakashi would have a handful if word of that fact ever got back to the brunet. He wouldn't risk it.

He had two perfectly good handfuls right now. Bad trade. Now, he didn't feel so guilty for being spooned in to every little cranny of lithe muscle. ...Or so excited about it.

Finally, he could sleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Ohayo," floated through the entryway as the morning-ghost of a jounin equally floated in.

Sasuke didn't so much look up from his meal so much as he grunted a 'morning' to the man from over his leftovers as he leaned against the sink. Another stab of chopsticks.

Scratching at the hem of his shirt as he hunted through the fridge yielded no ideas. Obviously he was enticing the wrong spot for answers to what he wanted this morning.

Besides...

...his wasabi and mustard.

"Oh, good. Thanks for getting rid of the milk." Now he knew what he had been forgetting to pick up the other day... Damn Gai for distracting him.

Those hideous eyebrows were hypnotic.

"Yeah, I finished it since there wasn't much left." Onyx eyes fluttered in their lashes at watching the other stand clean upright. ...A thing he didn't do even when he was serious.

"You... finished it..?" He caught sight of a nod from the boy from over his shoulder.

Then his head fell.

Cautiously Sasuke stopped his chewing, almost afraid to ask. "...Unless you wanted it..?"

The head fell further, until he lifted a hand to scratch at the back of his own head. "...It went bad almost a week ago."

The Uchiha's face deadpanned - even collected a tinge of green to match his tone. "Why... do you keep bad milk in your fridge..."

Nervous laughter would by this situation off! Yes! "Ah-- haha ha aha," he scraped as he turned about on his heel. A single finger went to the itch on the high part of his cheek, under the crinkled smile of an eye, perhaps scooting away the sweatdrop. "I don't usually have company over you see, and I really did mean to get new milk, but there was this green bird that swooped in and tried to steal your dinner away as I was heading home, so I couldn't... It... slipped my mind..."

Lips wobbled with a discrediting raspberry of a sigh as Sasuke nearly faceplanted, the collar of his tee threatening to fall off a dead shoulder. "You lie..."

Kakashi could only shrug and continue his lilted chitter, stopping and having his eye fall open at a sound only comparable to...

...Why would he want to compare it to anything?

Kunai in the genin's eyes shot towards his teacher, calmly setting down the take-out box before he padded across the linoleum and in to the hall, passing him without a word from tightly pursed lips.

He felt... just... a little culpable. A little amused. ....Mostly culpable, though. "Aa, you... want a manga or something to take with you...?"

A sinister look was shot to him from the bottom of the stairs, small knuckles white on the handrail.

Kakashi purposely misinterpreted the look and smiled to him. "Sorry, but Icha Icha's not for kids. I could get in a lot of trouble if I loaned that to you! I'll pick up something nice when I go out to the store."

There was a small hiss, then another one of those incomparable sounds before feet stomped up to the second floor.