Warnings: (I promise this is fluff) Slight Angst. spoilers about Naruto and Iruka’s backstories in the first paragraph so be careful when scrolling!
Prompt: Naruto Uzumaki has definitely had his fair share of dissenting words. When visiting his favorite student one day, Iruka discovers what the boy does with the affirmative ones…
(This is pretty shitty bc I’m sleepy but I wanted to write rlly badly tonight)
Tags: General taglist! @littlebbyleesfw, @0s0me0n30, @justanunknown. Plus @lonely-occultist bc Naruto buddy and @cupcake-spice13 bc your day was bad
Among the upper ranked shinobi in the hidden leaf village, all of them knew of the jinchuuriki boy. They all were aware of how he was sealed with the chakra of the nine-tailed fox spirit, during the siege of the Hidden Leaf. They all were aware of the awful beast inside of the boy, and ensured that they made the kid’s life a living hell because of it. All of them, except Iruka.
Iruka Umino: son of two great shinobi warriors, whom were killed by the very spirit sealed within the young boy. As years went by, he began to feel bad for the blonde boy. The chunin didn’t know what drew him to Naruto, but he viewed the boy as a son and had such a strong urge to keep him safe and protected.
So, the two became inseparable. While the rest of the village shot insult after insult after him, Naruto was always met with a distracting conversation, or a bowl of ramen.
When the blonde boy entered the shinobi academy, their relationship deepened. By now, Naruto viewed Iruka as his father/older brother, and everything that he said mattered most to the shinobi-in-training.
As much as he tried, Iruka-Sensei couldn’t always be Naruto’s superhero. The young boy was exposed to threats of violence and malicious words on the daily. He never understood why the village hated him so much… were his pranks really that unbearable?
The whispers crawled up his back and into his ears, settling into their proper places. For years he didn’t understand, but at age thirteen, he finally did.
—
“Little fox bastard.”
The blonde shinobi-in-training turned around at the sudden hurled insult, “What?”
“Get out of here, demon child. We don’t want monsters like you in our village.” The voice belonged to an older man, waving his cane in the boy’s general direction.
“I’m not a monster! I’m going to be a shinobi and be the next Hokage!” Naruto shot back in rebuttal, hands shaking slightly.
“If you aren’t a monster, why do you have one within you? You’re a liability and will inevitably kill us all! We don’t want you here!”
Naruto’s eyes widened as he gasped. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, not ever.
Sighing dejectedly, he left the market without a word. Naruto arrived to his small apartment and sat on his bed, head in his hands. His mind ran wild as he began to weep gently.
‘Is that really what they all think of me?’
‘Maybe I am a monster’
‘I’ve never made any friends in the academy’
‘Academy….’ ‘Academy….’ ‘Academy….’
As if he had a sudden epiphany upon thinking about the word, the boy jumped to his feet and ran to his closet.
Reaching up on his tippy-toes, Naruto grabbed a large cookie tin and retrieved it off of the closet shelf. He sat criss-crossed in the center of the room and pulled the lid off.
As he picked up one of the contents of the container, his stress instantly melted away…
—
Iruka’s had been feeling off all day. He had a sneaking suspicion that something was being plotted against one of his students. Perhaps it could be one of his students preparing to pull a prank, but he never felt more uneasiness than he had that day. He tapped his correcting pen anxiously against his desk, wondering what could possibly be wrong.
When school was out for the day, he noticed his little blonde student go off his normal way. When he turned to leave, the uneasiness got much stronger.
That was it. That was the problem! Something was going to happen to Naruto of all people. Something bad would happen to the student, to his student moreover.
So, he did what any rational chunin would do, and spied on his student. From that point on, he realized that he truly couldn’t do much to protect the young shinobi-in-training anymore.
He could always…? No, that shouldn’t be an option, it’s too much for the poor boy. Iruka opted to visit Ichiraku’s and get the boy his favorite dinner.
When Iruka arrived at Naruto’s with dinner in hand, he heard gentle giggles through the boy’s front door.
“Naruto? It’s Iruka-Sensei.” He said with a gentle rapping on the door.”
“AGH!- Oh! Hi Iruka-Sensei!” A sharp metal scraping sound was heard atop of Naruto’s startled speech, “Come on in!”
The older male obliged and opened the door with a smile. “I brought you ramen. I figured we could have dinner here together?”
“Hmmm… what’s the occasion, Sensei?” The blonde pondered, “AM I FINALLY GETTING A HEADBAND?!” He asked with excitement.
“Ehhh… not exactly.” Iruka replied sheepishly. Truthfully, he couldn’t tell Naruto the true reasoning behind his actions, so he would have to make up an excuse. “I wanted to tell you how well you’ve been doing at the academy lately.”
A noticeable pause occurred in the boy’s brain as it processed the rare praise. While it flowed easily from Iruka’s lips, it rarely settled into Naruto’s ears. “I um- oh… thanks, Sensei!” He chirped as he brought the food to the microwave to warm it up.
Iruka’s curiosity overtook him, and he craved to understand why Naruto had reacted the way he did to the praise. When the boy had his back turned, the chunin slowly grabbed the poorly-hidden cookie tin from under Naruto’s bed.
He opened the lid gently, being careful not to make any noise. When the contents were exposed, Iruka wasn’t sure what emotion he felt the most, but he sure as hell felt all of them.
The chunin felt loved by the little boy, angry at the village for treating the boy so horribly, sad that he had to resort to this just to be reassured, happy that he was chosen for the boy’s comfort.
Inside of the cookie tin were ripped up pieces of paper. Written on all of those papers? All of the praises Iruka had ever written on the boy’s assignments.
Hundreds of tiny “great work!”s and “fantastic job!”s and “Very good! So proud!”s were folded up and placed inside of this tin.
Iruka hastily closed the lid and stuffed the tin inside his vest. “Ready to eat?”
“You bet, Sensei!”
Conversation after conversation, smile after smile, the chunin felt blessed to be able to connect with the young boy so easily. He’d never admire it, but Iruka always found himself growing even fonder of Naruto’s pranks and antics.
It was almost like… having a son around…
—
When Naruto arrived at the academy the next morning, he was confused to see that Iruka was not there yet. Instead, he was stuck with stupid pervy Sensei, Ebisu.
“Hey, Pervy-Sensei! Where’s Iruka-Sensei?!” The blonde boy yelled in anger.
“He wasn’t feeling well today, so Lord Third had me come in as his repl-“
Before the other chunin could finish his sentence, Naruto ran past him and out the door. Ignoring Ebisu’s shouts, the little blonde boy ran and ran. He wouldn’t be caught dead sitting in class when his Sensei was sick! He had to take care of him!
When Naruto arrived at Iruka’s apartment, he knocked hastily on the door. “Iruka-Sensei! Open up! Pervy-Sensei told me you were sick!” He turned the doorknob urgently, wanting nothing more than to help his Sensei. To his surprise, the door was unlocked.
Stepping cautiously into the apartment, his eye caught something along the floor… a small piece of paper. Written in loopy letters, with bright red ink, were the words “good job!”
Naruto looked up to see a trail of the little papers all across the chunin’s floor. Oh man, Iruka-Sensei had caught him! He was in for it now… The blonde shinobi-in-training traveled across the floor and picked up every little piece of paper.
When he finally reached the living room, Naruto was surprised to see Iruka standing before him with a smile on his face. “I figured you’d come here.”
“Iruka-Sensei?!” The boy yelled, “What’s this about? Where did you get these papers? Why do you have them here of all places? How did you know ab-“
“Naruto.”
The blonde boy stopped his rant to focus on his Sensei.
“As much as you love those papers…” Iruka began, picking up a small stack of papers from his table, “I think you may like these ones more.”
With huge bouts of confusion, Naruto looked at the writing on the paper, then at his Sensei. Iruka’s smile was still wide and bright, and the chunin looked as if he was fighting tears.
“I don’t… I don’t get it.” The shinobi-in-training said as he bit the inside of his cheek.
“These…” the brown-haired shinobi said softly, “are adoption papers.”
Tiny cerulean eyes widened.
“How would you feel… if I became your real dad?”
Without any words in his reply, Naruto jumped into his new father’s arms, sending them both falling backwards onto the couch.
