#Sirry for reminding you that Boruto aged Iruka like an old prune

[depressedhatakekakashi]

Androgynous Bill Clinton? You made me really sad about Boruto era Iruka. Can I please have some sweet and tender kakairu moments (HCs or otherwise) to cheer me up?

Ao3

It’s not uncommon to find Iruka standing in front of the mirror in the morning. He always talked about wanting to look good before heading out for the day.

“Not all of us can make messy hair look good, Kakashi.” He’d laugh every time Kakashi asked him why he was so worried about his looks. Why it mattered.

But today was different.

Today, Iruka wasn’t trying to fix his hair or smooth out his cloths perfectly.

Instead, he was focused on his face. Fingers tracing over Newley formed wrinkles and eyes scrunched up in a disapproving look.

“You’re fretting over nothing,” he smiled when Iruka glared at him through the mirror. “You have better things to worry about. Like all of the paperwork you have waiting for you at the academy.”

“You’re one to talk,” Iruka huffed. “The piles of paperwork you get as Hokage are three times as much as my own, and yet there’s not a wrinkle on your face.”

Touching the skin under his left eye, Kakashi chuckled fondly.

He didn’t make a habit out of looking at himself in the mirror. At least, not as often as Iruka did. It hadn’t occurred to him that he wasn’t aging the same as Iruka.

“I’m four years younger than you too,” Iruka huffed, pulling his attention back to the current crisis. “How is it that I’m the one aging worse?”

“You’re not aging worse,” Making his way to Iruka, Kakashi wrapped his arms around his waist and pulled him tight against his body. “They’re wrinkles, Iruka. Not the end of the world.”

“Easy for you to say,” Iruka huffed. “I wish there was a way to turn back time. Get rid of all of these wrinkles.”

Thinking about it for a second, Kakashi extracted one arm from Iruka’s waist and ran his fingers up his back, chuckling when Iruka shivered under his touch.

“Aging is a good thing,” he spoke softly, pressing a tender kiss against Iruka’s left cheek. “It means you survived. You lived to see the future. It’s something a lot of people didn’t get.”

Obito.

Rin.

Minato-Sensei

Kushina

Asuma

The list went on and on. Names engraved into stone, forever remembered with young happy faced. Never to grow old and sport those wrinkles that Iruka complained about, or the sparkly grey hair that peppered Yamato’s hair.

“Every wrinkle is a reminder of that,” he continued, placing a kiss against Iruka’s neck this time. “A way your body can celebrate making it another year. Persevering. Living in a world that was so desperate to take as many of us as possible before we reached the age of 20.”

War, missions, the kyuubi’s attack. There were so many ways they could have died before today, but here they were.

Alive.

Together.

“Your wrinkles are beautiful, Iruka,” a small smile pulled at the corner of Iruka’s lips as his body relaxed into Kakashi’s. “They tell a story of the man who survived. The man who chose to love a child hated by his own village. to teach future generations to survive in a world that would try to destroy them. The man who would make the mistake of falling in love with Konoha’s most broken Shinobi.”

Iruka reached back and smacked him lightly in the shoulder, laughing when Kakashi simply responded by burying his face into his shoulder.

“You’re not broken, Kakashi,” his voice was full of fondness when he spoke again. “You’re just... special.”

“And your not aging ‘badly,” Kakashi fired back at him. “You’re aging perfectly. Here by my side.”

He can feel Iruka’s laughter vibrating against his face.

“I love you too, Kakashi.”