KakaTobi: You and your soulmate share the same talents. What one learns, the other can also do. (lmao crack version: creating space-time jutsu that break the fabric of the universe and reasing porn without getting nosebleeds XD)
highkey nervous about this tbh
i have made the executive decision to go with an “everybody lives” au i just want these bbs happy dammit or at least less miserable
fair warning: i have not watched the anime aside from a few episodes; i’ve only read the entirety of the manga so
it’s currently 4 am i’ve been working on this for at least 6 hours ...i was really nervous okay
Kakashi has always been odd. He’s been called a prodigy. A genius. He hears the whispers around him, both in awe and fear. He knows he has quirks that others found odd but let’s be real, who isn’t?
He’s one of the few who have mastered all chakra natures, lightning most especially along with water.
He wielded the water in the air as well as the lightning that buzzes under his skin ever since his childhood. He uses them as he would his arms, like they are part of him.
He assumes his affinity for water is a talent of his soulmate since the rush of flowing water doesn’t sing to him like the crackle of lightning in his hands ever did but bends just as easily as his natural affinity.
When he stepped onto his teen years, he gains another talent. A less known quirk of Kakashi is his propensity for creating universe-breaking jutsu when the mood strikes. He’s been forced to stick to a theory-only approach after an incident with Rin and Obito and three-story tall multi-headed elephant for some reason, banned from performing his theorized jutsus by a very harried Rin who looked ready to strangle him as he affected a casual air after the said incident.
(“Konoha can only take so much of this, Kakashi!”
“Maa, Mr. Elephant didn’t kill anyone did he?”
The only reason Rin hadn’t mauled his face off was a tired Obito holding her back before she could lunge. Kakashi buys him copious amounts of dango in thanks after that.
The world would weep if his handsome mug was shorn off after a minor incident like that.)
The only other shinobi alive that he knows can do this much prefers biology-leaning endeavors, thank the gods. Seeing as it’s Orochimaru… yeah.
Aside from spacetime jutsu, he also adores other jutsu just for the joy of it working, adding to his repertoire to protect his precious people is just a bonus. He mostly keeps it to himself aside from a trusted few.
He is suddenly reminded of a moment in the few times he was put in Senju Tsunade’s security detail years ago.
(The Senju Princess had seen Kakashi in a discreet area close enough to keep watch but far enough away that the jutsu he’s currently testing wouldn’t affect anyone nearby too badly.
He smells her as she nears but focuses on the lightning in his hands. It wouldn’t do for anyone, especially himself even with his strong affinity for lightning, if he lost control of the crackling light he’s trying to shape.
“You know—” The Senju hiccups. ”—you remind me of someone.”
A bit caught off-guard by the rare soft smile on the Senju Princess’ face, he humors her. “Who, if I may ask, Tsunade-sama?”
The princess leans her face in her hand as she leans on a tree, her eyes gaining some melancholy but her smile remaining warm. “My uncle.”)
On the rare days when loneliness hit hardest, he thinks about the possibility that his soul could possibly be bonded to a dead man.
(He remembers an entry in a history book about the First Shinobi World War back in his academy days. “The Nidaime’s body was never found.”)
Surely the universe wouldn’t be cruel. But with all the crap that’s gone on with his life, it sounds unlikely that the universe would be so merciful.
Looking at the thought-dead Nidaime, or at least someone who looked a lot like him, bleeding out on the training ground he’s been training his cute little students in, just appearing in front of him without fanfare, he reconsiders. He puts those thoughts at the back of his mind to carry the heavily injured man to the hospital, hastily dismissing his still-shocked students. Aa, he'll have to train them out of that.
Kakashi knows this is dangerous. This is an unknown shinobi in his arms who bears a strong resemblance to one of Konoha's esteemed founders, the one who hauled Konoha into the shape it took today if memory serves right.
But his instincts are telling him that while the individual in his arms is dangerous, he won't be a danger to him or the village. He senses no henge, smelled nothing that hinted at deceit. He trusts his instincts and so continues his dash for the medical building.
When he arrives, it's to Senju Tsunade walking into the reception and halting in shock at the white-haired bleeding man in Kakashi's arms.
The Princess visibly shakes herself out of her stupor to focus on the pressing situation, barking orders to the personnel around her and directing Kakashi to lower the man in his arms to a bed and getting herded out.
With nothing else to do and with blood on his clothes and skin and under his fingers, he opts to get into a change of clothes and nap.
To his relief, he succeeds.
Weeks pass and Senju Tobirama, the Nidaime Hokage—certified by a Yamanaka once the man relented to a mind-walk—, walks the streets of the village he helped raise.
Within the first week, Kakashi is assigned, along with Shisui, to help the Nidaime acclimatize to the future the man had teleported himself into.
Over those weeks, Kakashi finds out more about the man out of time.
He learns that he’s not as cold as he seems. A passionate man with an explosive temper, the former Hokage has the zeal that could fill an army, brow-beating the council who had grown too power-hungry into compliance.
He learns that the Nidaime—“Just call me Tobirama. Formalities between us will just make this unbearably tedious, yes?”—is, without a doubt, a nerd. A dangerous nerd but a nerd nonetheless. The white-haired man would often go on tangents about various theories, salivate over new knowledge, even get into chakra theory debates with Kakashi. And Kakashi can’t help but be endeared.
He learns that even with his niece older than him, he still dotes on her as if she is still the child he probably bounced on his hip, carried on his shoulders. He even still did so with his students who are visibly much, much older than he is now.
He learns that the man would let children climb all over him, topple him, play with him without any care for the damage to his reputation. That he would rather subject himself to mind-numbing boredom (and wow the Nidaime's coping methods for boredom are worse than Kakashi's) than turn a child away.
(Kakashi looks disbelievingly at the scene in front of him: the great Nidaime, Demon of the Senju, Terror of the Battlefield, is buried under children and laughing. He’s never heard the white-haired man laugh before, thought that the cold face would never break out into smiles and laughter. He was wrong.
Kakashi wasn’t ready to see such a bright smile on the usually stern man’s face as the man is surrounded by children. Kakashi’s knees feel weak all of a sudden.
Tsunade stands beside him, smiling wistfully. “He and dad have the same laugh.”)
He learns that, even after how much time has passed, Tobirama would start his day by lighting incense for his dead brothers, would sit vigil, praying for his brothers’ souls’ peace in the Pure Lands, until the incense finishes burning.
(“I had hoped to see them in the Pure Lands soon but alas I sent myself here instead. I wonder why,” Tobirama says when the last of the incense burns, still sat on the cushion in front of the shrine in his house in the Senju Compound.
Apparently, no one had the heart to clean it out when the man hadn’t returned from his mission. Kakashi remembered someone mentioning that the Shodaime’s wife had kept saying that he wasn’t dead, that he would return. He absentmindedly wonders if Tobirama had learned of that, that his honored sister had died waiting for his return, certain of it but never having seen it come true in her lifetime. It’s a small consolation to know that Tsunade had been there for her mother until she passed.
Kakashi can’t help but scrutinize Tobirama’s wording, wondering if he’s also just a little bit suicidal. Though, Kakashi supposes, aren’t all shinobi just a little bit like that?
Shaking himself of the thought, Kakashi doesn’t deign to acknowledge the gaze prodding at him, instead commenting on the spartan decor of his dwellings. Nevermind that he’s being hypocritical.)
He learns that the famously sharp-eyed man actually had horrible near-sightedness, often needing to use glasses—they frame his pale face really, really well—when reading anything. Tobirama often used his sensing to make up for his eyesight on the battlefield.
(“Tobirama-san—” Kakashi chokes mid-sentence.
“Yes?” Tobirama doesn’t look up from the book on sealing Kushina had given him yesterday.
“Y— You were glasses,” Kakashi says weakly.
“As you can clearly see, yes.” Tobirama glances up through his lashes, gaze curious. “What are you here for, Kakashi?”
Kakashi gathers his thoughts in a mad scramble behind a casual mask, glad that only three-quarters of his face is visible. “Tsunade-san told me to tell you to go to the river. She didn’t tell me any specifics,” he says with an eye smile at the end. Job done, he gets out of the room before his mind gets scrambles further.)
He learns that underneath all that shrewd genius is a man who loves as deep as the ocean his chakra felt like. Tobirama loves like he would not have a second chance at it and so gives his entire being into it. Kakashi gets it, Tobirama grew up in a generations-long war where life was a constant uncertainty. He loves his family, children, the village, everything he does is for what he is passionate about.
When he figures it out, Kakashi finds himself in too deep to climb back out.
He doesn't talk about his suspicions about their probable soul-deep connection. He doesn't want to be wrong.
Kakashi finally gets his confirmation after weeks of wondering.
A group of rogue ninja apparently thought it would be a great idea to sneak in and wreak havoc in Konoha, forgetting that the recently returned Nidaime is also one of the greatest sensors in history and could sniff them out without trouble.
The rogues don’t even get the chance to get farther than the walls of the village when a team of shinobi comprised of Tobirama, Kakashi, and Shisui arrive to dispatch them.
A bit of an overkill if anyone asks Kakashi but he saw that look in Tobirama’s eyes when he felt the intruders during a picnic with Tsunade. It looks like someone needs to get some energy out of his system with an all-out fight.
He’s near the end of dispatching the three shinobi who confronted him when he hears the familiar sound of a thousand chirping birds. Who—
He’d only taught Chidori to his team after they needled at him when he helped Naruto learn the Rasengan, they didn’t relent until he agreed to teach them. No one else should know that jutsu—
A thought comes to him, and hope fills his chest as he moves to finish off the enemy.
Tobirama’s hand is lit up with chirping lightning chakra, white hair and pale skin glowing from the light. He looks majestic, power radiating from him as his chakra permeated the air.
Kakashi stands stock-still as he takes in the sight. He’s always appreciated beauty and this is no different.
He plunges his lightning-coated hand through the chest of the one right in front of him as his other hand moves to control water from thin air into the shape of a blade that cuts through three enemy shinobi in quick succession.
Tobirama turns to look at him after he’s sure the rogues won’t be getting up anytime soon.
It’s him. Senju Tobirama is Hatake Kakashi’s soulmate.
(The both of them don’t see Shisui awkwardly standing with the shinobi he fought tied up and not mortally wounded much unlike the fair-haired men’s that are laying haphazardly in the dirt and bleeding.)
They sit at a table in Tobirama’s house, tea steaming in front of them, finished with bringing in the intruders to T&I for them to deal with.
The silence feels deafening and for want to just get it on with, Kakashi says it outright.
“I think you’re my soulmate, no— I’m sure you’re my soulmate.” There, it’s up to Tobirama to decide if they should pursue it or not. Kakashi can take the rejection, shinobi endure.
“Hmm.” Tobirama sips his tea. “I did feel a resonance with our chakra but I hadn’t been completely sure. I was uncertain about how I should approach it so I let it be. I suppose it was the right decision as I have grown fonder of you as the days went by, it gave me time to discover you.”
What. “What?” Kakashi feels a bit faint and puts his hand flat on the floor beside him, quietly asking the tatami for support in these trying times.
Tobirama sets his cup down and looks Kakashi right in the eye, bold in his sincerity. “I find your company enjoyable; I don’t see any issue with pursuing a relationship. In fact, I would like it if you were to agree to pursuing such.”
Kakashi feels frozen, eyes stuck in contact with intense red. He tries to speak but only a faint sound comes out. “...Oh.”
Tobirama raises a brow, obviously expecting more of a reaction. “Is that an agreement or a rejection, Kakashi?”
Kakashi tries to ignore the tingle he feels at his name being called by that deep resonating voice, trying to articulate his scrambling thoughts. “...I didn’t actually think about what I would do if you accepted.” The I was pretty sure you would reject me isn’t said aloud but Tobirama hears it all the same, it seems, understanding in red eyes.
Tobirama hums, looking out to the garden just beside the table they’re sat.
Kakashi doesn’t know how he’s so calm about this, cool as a cucumber in a calm lake.
Tobirama looks back at him. “Dinner, perhaps?”
“Like a date?” Kakashi says and immediately feels a bit foolish.
Tobirama unexpectedly breaks out into a quiet, serene smile that softens the sharp angles of his face and makes Kakashi’s eye latch on to his long snow-white lashes. “Yes.” He lets out a soft chuckle. “I believe that is how you call it these days.”
Kakashi feels heat starting to creep up his neck. “I— We can— we can do that.” Kakashi’s voice is still a bit weak so he clears his throat and tries again, voice stronger this time. “Yes, we can do that.”
The bigger smile his words invoke made him smile in return, visible eye closing with the force of it.
His chest feels both heavy and light at the same time. He’s not sure if it’s normal but it feels good so he doesn’t think anything’s wrong with having the sensation.
Kakashi isn’t entirely sure that this will work out but he feels hope blooming in his chest. He wants to try.
All he’s sure of is that he wants Tobirama to smile like that because of him again.
As Tobirama and Kakashi stare at each other across the clearing, their suspicions of having a soul-bond confirmed, Shisui awkwardly stands to the side with his tied up enemies and a realization ringing through his head.
He wonders how it took them so long to figure it out. Grandpa Kagami already had an inkling when he had seen Kakashi control water like the Nidaime had years before all this.
His grandpa is going to bust a gut when he finds out why one particular prank they played on their sensei never affected him.
How could Kakashi’s soulmate fluster over reading a porn novel that grandpa Kagami and his teammates exchanged for his book on yin and yang chakra?
The man had never gotten a nosebleed from pornographic material in his life so it stands to reason that his soulmate would also receive the, uh, talent of reading such material without any outward effects.
...i really hope my kakashi’s not too ooc this is the first time i’ve written him also kakashi was that a voice kink at the end there
spot the headcanons i incorporated from the various fics i’ve read ✌️😗
