Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the first story I've published in many, many years. Last time I wrote a fic, I didn't have a driving licence yet. I have to thank Naruto for this.

What's to know about this fic of mine:

-It's a slow burn romance. And I mean sloooooow. Don't expect them to do the dirty any time soon.

-It's set two years after the end of the Fourth Shinobi War.

-Kakashi never became Hokage after the end of the Fourth Shinobi War. Tsunade is still in charge, and is currently training Naruto to be Rokudaime Hokage after her.

-There are two kinds of henge: the first, easiest and most common, is only an illusion (though genjutsu specialist can make it feel solid), and the Solid Henge, which actually allows a person to change their body is a thing. Not common, and usually not worth the effort to achieve it, because it's a huge chakra drain.

-In general, The Last never happened, although my fic is set in the same Konoha (for examples, the younger generation has a bad case of hero worship on Naruto just like in the movie)

This fic has been Beta-ed by my lovely friend Giorgia, who is so patient with me and my fic, even if she doesn't actually like Naruto. She's awesome, and checked over by Elena (who hates this pairing but loves me 3 )

Fanart cover: redhothollyberries (put a dot here) tumblr (another dot) com / post / 145751290179

Chapter One

Six whole years spent at the Academy gave Naruto a near-perfect sixth sense when it came to the school bell. It didn't matter that it had been years since the last time he had heard it as a student: the bell-sense still wouldn't fail him. With a grin, Naruto executed a snake seal and had the inscribed paper on the desk explode right as the school bell rang. The result was a delightful chaos made of smoke, a loud bang, the bell's shrill ringing and the students' excited cries. Naruto's grin widened into a fox smile. Sow chaos at the Academy: check.

The smoke quickly dissipated and Naruto waved at his excited audience. "Very well, class dismissed! Go out and play." The twenty-something children stood up with a loud scraping sound of chairs being moved with little grace and started collecting their things into their backpacks, chatting all the while. Two students, eager to escape the classroom, made a beeline for the door, but Naruto stopped them. "Two things before you all go."

Naruto held up the index finger. He used his right hand, so that the sight of his bandaged hand might reinforce what he was about to say. Not that he really hoped a bunch of kids might appreciate the perks of safety, but it didn't hurt to try. "First, don't blow yourself up. When penning a tag, check three times you draw the seal right before activating it. If it's only the tiniest bit different from the one I drew, trash the paper and restart. Else, your guts will be all over the room, and blood is a pain to clean. Are we clear?" He looked at the class: the eleven-years-old kids all nodded with a chorus of 'yes Naruto-senpai!'. Some looked green at the gross warning, some looked excited. Weird little buggers. He loved them.

He held up a second finger, smiling widely. "Next week you're going to have a test on fuinjutsu. Whoever gets the highest grade will get a personal lesson on sealing by yours truly. Study hard, kids!" All the kids squealed and cheered at the announcement. Knowing the severe case of hero worship the younger generation had on him, Naruto wasn't above using underhand ways to motivate the kids.

Half the students filed out of the classroom, already fighting among themselves on who would get the prize, while the other half crowded around the teacher desk, talking all at the same time. "You're so cool, Naruto-senpai!" "Make something explode!" "Show us more sealing!" A green-haired girl climbed on the desk to get closer. "Teach me, Naruto-senpai!"

Overwhelmed, Naruto laughed and stepped back, his back connecting with the blackboard. Looking at the children surrounding on him on all sides, he felt like a fox cornered by over-excited puppies. "Thank you, but that's enough for today. Why don't you go out and enjoy recess?" The kids pretended not to hear him - or maybe they honestly didn't hear him over the sound of their own chatter - and pressed on, at least until Konoha's Hero was saved by the well-timed arrival of a real Instructor.

"What are all you doing still here? The bell rang five minutes ago. If you dislike recess so much, you can all kiss it goodbye for a week if you're not out of here in ten seconds. Off with you!" Hearing the ring of a threat, and well knowing Iruka was more than able to carry it on, the children promptly ran out of the door, waving Naruto goodbye with loud cries and cheers.

Iruka oversaw the students' exit by the door, arms crossed on his chest and a frown on his face, until the classroom was finally - blessedly - empty. His threatening stance melted away, and he raised an eyebrow at Naruto, a smile on his lips and shoulders shaking in silent laughter. The blonde smiled awkwardly back at him, rubbing the back of his head.

"You know, you shouldn't have said that. Now they will try twice as hard to cheat on the test," Iruka complained.

Naruto laughed out loud. "But Iruka-sensei, I was only trying to motivate them to study! Isn't that a noble goal?"

His ex-sensei shook his head with a sigh, but he was smiling. "A few will throw themselves on the books, but all the others will just double their efforts to cheat." Iruka jerked his head towards the door in a silent invitation. Naruto nodded and hurried to collect his belongings. "Well, if they can pull it off without getting caught by you, they deserve their prize, don't they?" Naruto closed the ink bottles and placed them on a sealing scroll covered in scribbles, alongside with his many brushes and a few spare papers. "They are ninja, cheating is part of the job description." Touching the scroll, Naruto activated the seal with a small burst of chakra and the materials disappeared into the paper with a puff.

Behind him, Iruka snorted something that sounded awfully like 'show-off'. Naruto pocketed the sealing scroll and stuck his tongue out at him, showing all his maturity. Yes, he kept his sealing materials in a sealing scroll. It was both practical and funny, like an inside joke.

"And you know all about cheating, don't you, Naruto?"

Naruto grinned at his old Instructor, absolutely shameless, as they headed out of the classroom and down the hallway. He pretended not to remember all the times Iruka had caught him cheating during tests. "You know, the first task of my chūnin exam was all about cheating. They put us all in a big room and had us answer nine super difficult answers. All they said was that anyone caught cheating would lose points, and who got caught five times would be kicked out. It was a game of cheat, and only the best cheaters could get the answers!"

Iruka this time raised both his eyebrows, the scar running over his nose somehow giving him even more a sceptical expression. "And you passed that test how...?"

Naruto pouted, covering his heart with his right hand as if wounded by his Instructor's lack of faith. "Aw, come on Iruka- sensei!" Iruka's answer was a loud snort. "Okay, so I couldn't answer any of the answers, and passed because of the tenth question, which was a test of our resolve to take the exam. As if I would give up so easily!" Naruto didn't even bother to pretend to be embarrassed at his terrible skills at subterfuge. It was kind of a common joke, how bad the Hero of the Hidden Leaf, one of the strongest shinobi of the Village, sucked at subterfuge. Subterfuge and genjutsu. Give him flashy jutsu any day over that.

His ex-sensei laughed at that, and squeezed Naruto's shoulder - his left one, for Iruka was always considerate enough not to touch his right one - in approval and affection.

They turned a corner and finally got the staff room. Iruka opened the door and let Naruto in, closing it after his ex-student. The Instructors' safe heaven consisted mainly of a small kitchenette, a pantry, a few desks swallowed by towers of papers and a few sofas, over which three other chūnin teachers were lazily slumped. The two women and the man waved at Naruto and greeted him cheerfully, but none got up. They looked like nothing but the Hokage's direct order would make them get up before their free time was up.

"I remember I thought being a student was hard, but now I see the Instructors have got it worse," Naruto joked. Iruka sent an over-exaggerated eyeroll at his colleagues (who happily ignored him) and headed to the balcony overlooking the playground. There the scarred man leaned against the wall and did that teacher multitasking-thing that allowed him to both keep an eye on the children playing below and pay attention to Naruto. "Thank you for coming, Naruto. The kids love having you over," he said with a smile.

Naruto leaned against the railing of the balcony, fully enjoying the sunny spring weather. "It's no problem. I like teaching. It's fun." He wouldn't do it for a living, though. Even if he liked children, the repetitiveness of the job would drive him mad, sooner or later. He always needed new challenges to keep him on his toes and fully concentrated.

"What did you teach them?" Iruka asked him. Naruto hummed and crackled his knuckles absent-mindedly. "The basics. I showed them the Enclosing Technique and the corresponding Unsealing Technique." Naruto grinned at Iruka. "I also showed them the Uzumaki Sealing Technique."

That was just for show, obviously. It would be years, if ever, before any of the students would be proficient enough with seals to apply them with a touch of fingers instead of using paper, ink and brush. "For traps, I showed them the Sealing Tag Barrier and the Smoke Bomb-" Iruka frowned, sending Naruto a dirty look, and the blonde raised his hands in defence, quickly backpedalling. "Only a minor one, I swear! Jeez, even I wouldn't trust an explosive tag in their hands!" He did set off an explosive tag in front of the class, even though he hadn't shown the design of the seal to the students. His ex-sensei didn't need to know that, however.

That sparked another thought, and Naruto tilted his head with a joking smile. "Why, weren't you watching, Iruka-sensei?"

Iruka shook his head. "No, I took the chance to catch up with some of the tons of tests I have to mark. I caught only the last ten minutes or so of the lesson."

"You came to make sure I didn't show your students how awesome pranks are?" Naruto grinned wide. Some of his best pranks had been pulled while at the Academy, and Iruka had taken the brunt of it. The man had been a prankster himself in his youth, though, and had taken it all with grace (most of the times. If 'with grace' you meant that he didn't expel him).

He had expected Iruka to rant against Naruto's past pranks, or maybe even share some stories of his own, but instead the man smiled softly at the blonde. "I came to see you. It's a joy to see you teaching. I'm proud of the man you've become, Naruto."

That had Naruto reeling, startled. He felt the tell-tale feeling of warmth on his cheeks, and he knew he was blushing, both in pride and embarrassment. Despite the status of 'hero' he had gained in the Fourth Shinobi War, Naruto still found himself unused to such heartfelt compliments. He hadn't gotten many in his childhood, and even at nineteen they always left him feeling a bit uneasy, though in a happy way. He never quite knew how to react. Thank the person? Deny it? He often felt he didn't deserve the compliments, but people got sad when he tried to correct them or dismiss their compliments.

The other knew him well, though, and saved him from making an ass of himself by hugging him. When Iruka let him go, beaming, Naruto tentatively smiled back. He felt the need to say something, anything - to thank Iruka, to express how much the man's approval meant to him, but in that moment he couldn't express his feelings any better than Sai.

He didn't need to, though. Iruka let the matter drop by leaning against the railing of the balcony, looking down at the kids. Naruto hesitantly joined him, his elbows on the metal railing and his chin in his palms.

Iruka bumped shoulders with him, winking. Naruto looked at him, questioning, and his old Instructor pointed with a jerk of his head to a trio of particularly loud children, their roughhousing accompanied by lots of delighted war cries. As they watched, a fourth kid with bleach-blond hair joined the fight, diving in with a yell of 'here I come!'. The three kids were bowled over by the child's sudden arrival: any in-fight was instantly forgotten and they allied to bring the pale-haired boy down - and down he went, laughing under the wriggling mass of his three friends' limbs.

Iruka winked at Naruto again before going back to watching over the whole playground, and the blonde chuckled, his shoulders shaking. So what, there were some similarities between himself and the pale-haired boy. If Naruto had any saying in that, that meant the Yamanaka kid was destined to awesomeness (for in a Village full of brown and black-haired ninja, hair that pale a shade of blond was pretty much a dead-giveaway of a Yamanaka).

Naruto looked down at the young boy with a wistful smile, fingers drumming lightly on his cheek. His presence wasn't surprising, for the Yamanaka Clan was one of the most prolific, somehow always managing to have at least one student attending the Academy at all times. Both shinobi and kunoichi from that Clan were expected to have children pretty early.

Yamanaka ninja seemed to find that perfectly natural, as Ino had shown a few weeks before, during Konoha's Eleven bi-monthly Thursday pub night. The discussion had somehow veered off on the subject of children, and Ino had commented wryly that in a year or two they would get all the experience they wanted on toddlers, for she was likely going to have one sooner or later. When a shocked Sakura had questioned her about the seriousness of the relationship with the chūnin she was currently dating, Ino had just brushed it off, saying that it wasn't as if she was going to marry anytime soon. Apparently, marriage and children weren't strictly connected for the Yamanaka.

Ino felt it was her duty towards her Clan to have kids, no matter who the father of the child was. She also wouldn't have to stay out of commission for long, since all off-duty Yamanaka worked in shifts at the family flower shop that doubled as kindergarten for Yamanaka babies whose parents were away on mission. That counted as a win-win situation in her book, or so it seemed. 'Plus, I like children,' she had said with a wink.

"I like children," Naruto repeated out loud, his gaze moving from the Yamanaka boy to the other countless children enjoying recess in the playground.

Iruka's words startled him out of his reverie. "Everyone can see that. I wouldn't have let you teach them if you didn't." Naruto let out a non-committal 'hn' at that, not really knowing what to say to that. He opened his mouth, but instead of generic platitude words about teaching, what got out was "Are you planning to have kids, Iruka-sensei?"

Damn, real smooth, Naruto.

He felt like kicking himself whenever his tongue got the better of him. As Sakura said, it was okay to say what you think, but he should really start to actually think before saying it.

Iruka looked at him flabbergasted, eyes wide. After a second he got his voice back and asked back "Where is this coming from, Naruto?"

The blonde rubbed his nose with his left hand, looking away. "I dunno. I was just curious." Liar liar pants on fire. The awkward situation had him blushing again.

Iruka blinked and smiled. "What, now that Konohamaru is all grown up and a genin, you want a new baby brother to play ninja with?" Naruto 'nh-ed' again, a sound that could mean everything and nothing. He was starting to get why Sasuke used that all the time - it was an easy way to deal with people when you didn't know how to interacted with them.

Iruka mercifully avoided to tease him, and actually answered his question. "I don't know, Naruto. Not anytime soon, that's for sure, but I'd love to have children of my own one day." He smiled at the blonde. "It's just too early for me and Shachi to think about kids." This time it was Iruka's time to blush and Naruto's to smile widely. The pretty kunoichi and his ex-sensei had been dating for a year, and the woman had only recently moved in with Iruka. The two were utterly adorable, in the blonde's opinion (or anyone else's, for that matter. They were as cute as kittens together).

"You'd make an awesome dad." Wow, his mouth ran off on its own again. It was getting worse (though it was the honest-to-Kami truth).

Iruka's blush worsened, and it was his turn to look away and rub the back of his head in embarrassment. "I don't know..."

Naruto nodded, overly-eager. "I really mean that." Iruka would be an affectionate father. He could also be stern when the situation required it, though, and would not spoil his kids too much. He would the kind of dad to help his children both with their homework and training, and would play with them tirelessly, knowing that childhood was to be enjoyed - especially in a world where they would be asked to kill people at twelve. He wouldn't place unfair expectations on them, and would take pride in their every little conquest. He would always be there for them - literally. His teaching post meant he would rarely, if ever, get missions that could end up orphaning his kids.

"You would make a great father as well, Naruto."

Naruto's head whipped up so fast he had to blink twice to chase away the dizziness. "W-what?"

Iruka poked him in the shoulder. "I said you would make a good father." He smiled, the scar over his nose stretching as he did. "A really good one."

Naruto swallowed and looked away, suddenly feeling light-headed. He hunched his shoulders forward, his right hand tightening into a fist. His stomach felt like a heavy knot he couldn't swallow, even if he hadn't eaten anything recently.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Iruka laid a hand on his shoulder and leaned in. Naruto didn't look at him, but could head the worry in his voice. "Do you really think so?", he asked instead. Suddenly it was very important.

He half-expected Iruka to lighten the mood with a joke like 'please don't think about having kids before I'm retired or they would drive me bonkers', but the scarred man surprised him by gently squeezing his shoulder and answering "Yes," in a soft but firm voice.

Naruto peered at the other out of the corner of his eye. His almost-father, his almost-brother, smiled at him and repeated "Yes, I do." Iruka didn't ask why, or voiced any worries. He seemed to trust him with this.

If Iruka trusted him, then Naruto could do it.

The blonde straightened, raising his head high as he crossed his arms on the metal railing. Right below the balcony, a big group of girls had ganged up and robbed the boys of the ball and were now playing kick-the-ball-and-keep-it-away-from-the-boys. Naruto was glad to see that, at first glance, there was no lone kid in the playground being blatantly ostracized.

His child wouldn't be left alone like he had been. His child would be like the Yamanaka boy. With real friends to play with, and happy.

Being a jinchūriki meant that he had to have a contingency plan to transfer Kurama to someone, if need arose. The Kyūbi wasn't ready to be released upon the world - or maybe the world wasn't ready for the Nine-tailed fox to be released upon it, he thought with an inner chuckle. (Somewhere deep into his mind, Kurama growl-snorted.)

In short, Naruto needed an Uzumaki heir.

The school bell rang, waking him from his reverie. Disappointed, the students in the courtyard burst into choruses of 'awww' and 'nooo', but they all obediently went back inside. Beside Naruto, Iruka stretched, his hands up above his head, and headed inside as well. The blonde followed him.

The Instructor waved him goodbye just outside the staff room. "It's been a pleasure, Naruto, thank you for coming. See you!" Naruto beamed at him and returned the wave. "See you!"

Iruka went down the hallway, heading to his classroom, while Naruto descended the stairs and left the Academy. A quick glance at the clock hung on the facade of the Academy showed him he still had plenty of time before his shift at the Mission Assignment Desk.

Training sounded appealing. Little good came when he thought too hard about things. He needed to vent out, and what was better than some training to tire the body and lighten the mind?

With a nod to himself, Naruto jumped on the roof of the closest building, and headed off to the training grounds.