Wasn’t my head I was thinking of.

Kakashi took a breath and leashed the dark swell of anger back down, where it could temper until he was free to stab someone with it. You weren’t supposed to show emotions. Didn’t mean you couldn’t have them.

And Kakashi had some very specific ones about people who made plans to murder his former sensei. Especially Fire Country nobles who’d sworn oaths.

Naruto was too young to be an orphan.

“I’m calm,” he said, focusing back on the more immediate concern of Minato’s slow, increasingly sleepy-eyed slide down into the bathwater. The level was up to his mouth. “And you’re about to pass out. Time for bed, old man.”

Minato made an attempt to rouse himself. “You’re adorable when you get bossy, Kakashi-kun,” he said fondly, levering himself up against the side. Water cascaded down his bare shoulders—and further down, as he stood up.

Kakashi’s glanced aside. “I’ll remember you said that.”

His crush was old, well-worn, and mostly burned out, but every now and then it rekindled to bite him—especially when the rest of him was stirred up. Crush was the wrong word, really. It was love, and sometimes it wanted to rip out throats. He took a slow breath and a half-second reality check. Minato was his Hokage, his former teacher, still grieving a marriage that had ended in blood and fire, and most importantly, not interested. Never would be. Which was how it was supposed to work. Kakashi could guard him, kill for him, and learn from him—and that was where the line ended.

“Just so long as you remember Naruto’s adorable, too, and I still don’t let him get away with everything he wants.” Minato stepped out of the tub, steadying himself on the side. “Just mostly everything."

“Naruto knows less blackmail material than I do,” Kakashi said, and climbed out of the bath. He liberated one of the fluffy white towels, knotting it efficiently around his waist, and—when Minato stood staring blankly at the towel rack like he’d forgotten what it was for—dropped a second towel over his teacher’s head. “Like this moment, for instance.”

“Sell it to the tabloids,” Minato said, pulling the towel down and wrapping it around his waist. “‘Hokage Nude In His Own Bathroom! Those Abs — We Knew They Were Painted On!’ You’d have to cut me in for a share of the profits, though.” He grabbed a second, smaller towel and rumpled it through his hair. “Sixty percent.”

“I could see an argument for fifteen,” Kakashi said.

Minato gave him a wounded look. “You’re taking the food from my child’s mouth.”

“Chocolate Frosted Pirate Ships are not food,” Kakashi said, naming one of his top culinary pet peeves in the Namikaze household. He set a hand between Minato’s shoulderblades, giving him a push. “Brush your teeth.”

“And now you're depriving my dentist of income, too.” Minato heaved a heavy sigh, but allowed himself to relocated to the sink, where he reached for toothbrush and paste. “Remind me never to let you near Payroll.”

“Math,” Kakashi said with distaste, and left Minato working on a mouthful of foam while he went to change clothes—jounin blues, new mask—and collect clean pyjamas from Minato’s room, taking a second to pull the covers back on the bed. When he returned, Minato was still standing at the sink, eyes closed, with his toothbrush hanging down from the corner of his mouth.