A KakaIru Christmas (Naruto, Kakashi/Iruka)

December that year started with an almost suspicious amount of normalcy. Each day closer to Christmas had his students wound tighter and tighter with a mix of excitement and far too much sugar. Like a virus, Christmas cheer was slowly spreading through the village and the school was not immune. Christmas carols greeted Iruka every time he walked into the staff lounge and it seemed that there was some sort of baked good or candy at hand no matter where he went. It was the same as last year and the year before and all the years before that, since Iruka had become a teacher, down to Iruka balanced up on a ladder hanging decorations by himself in the hour before the mission room opened. Perhaps it was a sign that he was a little too set in his routine that he was caught completely off-guard when his holiday suddenly took a sharp veer off into the unexpected.

In retrospect, he blamed the garland.

Red garland was wound around the top rung of the ladder, looping down one side. Iruka perched easily at the top of the ladder, garland in one hand, staple gun in the other. He’d already made it half-way around the room – just a little more left. The staple gun thunked into the wood walls as Iruka completed the loop in front of him. Hooking the handle of the gun over one end of the ladder, Iruka unwound a long strand of garland to give himself room to move. Carefully, Iruka tilted the ladder up onto one foot and quickly swung around until his back was to the wall.

After years of putting up decorations by himself Iruka counted himself a master at moving around from the top of a ladder. He wasn’t a ninja for nothing. Tilting the ladder onto the other leg, Iruka spun around to face the wall again.

He wasn’t expecting the door to open. Admittedly, he probably should have locked it.