A Little Bit of Both
Characters: Jiraiya and Hatake Kakashi
Words: 2537
Another day, another disastrous fail in securing some company for the night.
Nursing a wounded ego and a new bump atop his head, Jiraiya returned to his seat to find Kakashi still sitting in the exact spot he’d left him. For ten minutes Jiraiya had been gone trying to secure himself some company for the night, and Kakashi hadn’t moved an inch.
He barely even paid attention to the three women sitting behind him in a corner booth. All three of them were staring at him as if they hadn’t just berated Jiraiya two minutes ago for being ‘creepy’ and ‘gross’.
It was insulting.
“Hey.” he placed a hand on Kakashi’s shoulder, careful not to spook the kid. He might be a Sannin but he wasn’t about to underestimate Hatake Kakashi’s reflexes with a kunai when he was already aching from that beatdown the last two women delivered onto his head.
Dragging his eyes away from the drink he was currently nursing, Kakashi focused on his drinking companion and offered a drunken smile.
“I see you’ve had a few more since I left,” he couldn’t help but chuckle. Seeing Kakashi loosen up and drink was such a rare occasion that every second of it had to be enjoyed. “How many?”
“Only th-“ a hiccup interrupted Kakashi’s sentence. “Three.”
Three Sakes.
The kid was gone to the wind. No doubt he’d be waking up with a headache and no memory of the night.
“Well,” sliding back into his seat, he pointed towards the three girls still staring at Kakashi. “You have your choice for the night and are a lot luckier than me for it.”
Another blow to the ego. Here he was putting in all his effort to secure a bit of fun for the night, and Kakashi was just sitting here doing nothing. “Just like your old man,” he muttered, shaking his head as memories of a flustered Sakumo surrounded by infatuated women filled his mind. “Always the ladies' man without even trying.”
His words were meant as a compliment, but as soon as they left his mouth Jiraiya felt a sudden shift in the mood. Kakashi’s shoulders tensed up and the hands that had been holding his cup of Sake so tenderly just a moment ago were now curled around it. Gripping it so hard that Jiraiya would hardly be surprised if it shattered.
In a desperate attempt to avoid whatever was about to happen, Jiraiya threw an arm around Kakashi’s shoulders and pulled him in close. “Come on,” he grinned “Three beautiful ladies.”
Kakashi simply rolled his eye. “I’m not interested.”
“Not Interested!?” The words felt like a hot kunai piercing his heart. Not only was Kakashi able to catch the attention of beautiful women without even trying, but to add insult to injury he didn’t even want anything to do with them. All of that beauty was wasted an a man who couldn’t appreciate it. “How can you say that? Surely one of them is your type. Or maybe…” he narrowed his eyes. “You’re not about to run off to the land of Iron to find yourself a pretty wife, are you?”
Kakashi stopped suddenly, his eyes narrowing into a confused expression before focusing on Jiraiya once more. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t understand?” Jiraiya threw his head back and laughed, almost knocking himself right out of his chair with the force of his laughter. “Kakashi, you really are something.”
He expected the younger man to join in on the laughter, but it never happened. After a few awkward moments of being staired at, a harsh realization struck Jiraiya.
Kakashi had only been one when Illness took his mother away from the world. Worst of all, Sakumo had never spoken of her after her death. Not to Tsunade who’d formed a strong friendship with her over the few short years they knew each other, or with Jiraiya who’d often spend time hanging out with her when he wasn’t on missions.
There was no one he could think of whom Sakumo had spoken to about his wife after her sudden death, and now he was faced with the fact that this included Kakashi. The boy who’d lost his mother before he even had the opportunity to know her.
“What a buzz kill,” he sighed, annoyed at himself for bringing up such an upsetting topic. “And here I was having a good time.”
“Oh, I-” Kakashi seemed to panic for a moment, his eyes scanning the area for a quick escape. “You know I think I have some work to do. Maybe I’ll leave you to-”
Recognizing this as an escape tactic Sakumo had used all too often to get out of awkward situations, Jiraiya reached out and placed a hand on Kakashi’s shoulder with enough pressure that the man knew he wasn’t going to be going anywhere.
“Now, where should I start?” he spoke more to himself than Kakashi, going over the memories he had of that beautiful fierce brunette that Sakumo had brought into their village. “Tell me, what do you know of her?”
“Her?” Kakashi stared at him as if he’d just said the stupidest thing in the world. “I don’t- Who are you talking about?”
“I see,” sighing, Jiraiya picked up the empty glass he’d left on the bar and held it up to signal the barkeeper for another round. “Sakumo didn’t really tell you anything.”
“About?”
“Your mother.”
Realization struck and in an instant Confusion washed away and settled into a sorrowful expression. One that Jiraiya was all too used to seeing on Kakashi’s face and which he’d hoped to chase away for a few short hours with alcohol.
“She was quite something, you know,” he continued, not wanting to linger in that sorrow for too long. “She had a great-”
Kakashi slapped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t,” he warned, his eyes narrowed into a glare that reminded Jiraiya too much of the woman he was trying to reminisce about. “I don’t want to hear your comments about her. I put up with it with Tsunade-sama and every other woman that you see, but-”
Realizing what the man was saying, Jiraiya wrapped a hand around his wrist and gently pulled his hand away from his mouth. “I was going to say she had a great personality,” he clarified, unable to hold his laughter when Kakashi leveled him with a rather unimpressed glare. “I mean it! I know I can be loose lipped about the women around me, and who can blame me? They are beautiful.”
“I’m pretty sure ninety-five percent of the things that leave your mouth could be counted as sexual harrassment,” Kakashi huffed. “Just keep whatever thoughts about my mother you may have in that regard, to yourself.”
“Oh of course,” his laughter simmered into a fond chuckle. “I have no doubt Yua would come back to the land of the living just to kick my ass if I ever spoke about her in a less than respectful manner.”
“Yua…” Kakashi speaks softly, a fondness in his voice. “Is that her name?”
“It is,” Jiraiya confirmed, wondering how much she had yelled at Sakumo when he joined her in the afterlife. No doubt she was insulted at the fact her son couldn’t even remember her name. “Did he tell you anything?”
Slumping forward, Kakashi scooped up his glass just as the bartender reached them and started pouring them another round. “He never had the chance,” he whispered. “I asked all sorts of questions, but it was like something was blocking him. No matter how hard he tried to tell me about her he just never could. I think the only thing I know is-” a hand came up to his face and hovered in front of the cloth mask that hide the lower part of his face from the world. “I’m not sure how, but I look like her. That’s the only reason I can think of for the sadness in his eyes whenever I smiled.”
That Jiraiya found hard to believe. If there was anyone in Konoha that could be labelled as the spitting image of their father, it was Hatake Kakashi. With the same spiky silver hair, those sunken bored looking eyes, and a height and body that matched Sakumo perfectly, there was no one else that Kakashi looked like.
He didn’t have Yua’s soft brunette hair, or the wavey style of hair that hung over her shoulder’s whenever she didn’t have it tied up in a pony tail. There was no fierce brown eyes staring at Jiraiya whenever they spoke, or firm features that molded his face into the look of a warrior.
When Jiraiya looked at the man in front of him, he saw Sakumo. There wasn’t a hint of Yua in her son, and it was a pity in his opinion. She’d been a beautiful woman.
“It’s hidden,” Kakashi spoke up, an apologetic look greeting Jiraiya when he snapped back to the present conversation and properly looked at him again. “I know I look like my father. Trust me, everyone makes sure I know that.”
“Well then,” waving a hand towards the mask, Jiraiya smiled. “What is it you think Sakumo saw?”
He didn’t expect Kakashi to remove his mask. If anything, he expected the conversation to be dropped almost immediately when he asked such a personal question. Hatake Kakashi was not a man who spoke about himself when it could be helped, a fact that Jiraiya relied on most days.
He hated such intimate conversations almost as much as Kakashi did.
“Well that’s…” he stared at Kakashi’s face, trying to find just what it was the man was trying to tell him with this dramatic reveal. “That’s a face.”
“You don’t see it?”
“I see your father, if that’s what you’re asking,” he added quickly, cringing when Kakashi sighed. “Just, one second,” fixing his position, he leaned in a bit closer to Kakashi and examined the face he always kept so well guarded from the rest of the world.
Sakumo’s jawline.
Sakumo’s chin.
Sakumo’s lips.
No matter where he looked he saw Sakumo. Every bit of Kakashi was Sakumo, except-
“There it is,” he smiled triumphantly as he poked the little mole just under Kakashi’s mouth. Situated to the left of his face it wouldn’t look like much to anyone else, but Jiraiya knew that mole.
He’d seen one just like it everytime he was graced with Yua’s beautiful face.
“I don’t understand.”
“Well,” straightening himself up, he crossed his arms over his chest. “You wanted to show me what your father saw, right? Everything about you is a picture perfect match for your father, kid. Everything except that little mole of yours.”
Kakashi reached up and laid his index finger over the mole.
“The mole?” Jiraiya rolled his eyes. After all of that effort he’d put in finding what it was that Sakumo saw on his son, the response he received was disbelief. As if he’d ever lie about something like that.
“The mole,” he confirmed. “Yua had one just like it, and it was even in the same spot.” He couldn’t help but wonder if that was a family thing. If all of her family had that one little mole under their lips, or if it was something she’d only shared with her son.
Kakashi shook his head. “No,” he sighed. “I don’t think that’s it.”
It wasn’t meant to be insulting, but Jiraiya couldn’t help but feel like his pride was being attacked again. So soon after he’d been regjected by some beautiful women he was being treated like a lier.
As if he could ever forget the face of a beautiful woman, even if he would never dare to flirt with her out of respect for his friend and a slight fear for his life.
“I’m telling you,” he insisted, lifting his cup off of the counter and swinging back the drink in one giant gulp. The sake burned on the way down his throat, but that didn’t stop him from continuing the conversation. “I know Hatake Yua. Her face is imprinted in my memory even now. She had that same mole.”
Kakashi stared at him for a moment, his face void of an emotion. A look that Jiraiya had gotten too used to over the years of interacting with the man. “I- oh, no,” his lips split into a smile suddenly, followed closely by his eyes sliding shut.
In that moment, Jiraiya felt like the world had come screeching to a halt.
Over the years he’d seen Kakashi smile many times. Sometimes with genuine joy, and sometimes in a poor attempt to cover up that sorrow that he buried deep inside of his heart. Everytime, though, it had been just his eyes that Jiraiya saw.
The way that they curved to accentuate his smile. Showing it off even when his mouth was hidden away.
At this moment, though, Kakashi’s whole face was visible and Jiraiya’s entire image of him shifted in an instant.
Where just seconds ago he had seen Sakumo staring back at him with a tiny hint of Yua in his features, Jiraiya now found himself staring into the face of that old Samurai friend of his. It seemed almost like she was actually sitting in front of him again laughing at one of his stupid jokes or telling him about the latest book she’d read.
With just a simple smile, Hatake Kakashi stopped being the spitting image of his father and instead became his mother’s son.
“I see…” he whispered, choking back the flood of emotions that bubbled inside of his chest.
Kakashi’s eyes snapped open, and just as quickly as she’d arrived Yua disappeared again. Replaced not by her husband, but by her son. The man who’d barely gotten to know his parents before having to bury them.
“Jiraiya-sama, I-”
“Don’t worry,” Jiraiya waved him off with a chuckle. “I can see why your old man struggled so much now.”
“You- you can?”
Kakashi stared at him, waiting for an answer, but Jiraiya chose not to provide one. It would do the man no good to know about the way he’d hurt his own father with just a smile. Knowing Kakashi as he did, it would only make him feel worse.
“I will say this,” he whispered as he held out his glass once more and waited for the bartender. “You’re the spitting image of your dad, but when it comes down to personality you are Yua’s son.”
The dry wit.
The aloof attitude.
Even Kakashi’s love of books.
All of it reminded him of Yua. She may have only given her son two attributes that people could see, but anyone who knew Hatake Yua could tell that Kakashi was her son through and through.
“Though,” he chuckled to himself. “You couldn’t escape that Sakumo dorkyness, could you.”
Kakashi grunted at that. “And what of it?” he asked, snatching the cup out of Jiraiya’s hand as soon as the bartender had filled it and tossing it back.
All Jiraiya could do was shake his head and laugh. “You owe me a sake.”
“We both know you weren’t paying for the drinks tonight anyways.”
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