Yamato loves teaching.

He teaches Sai how to do his laundry. They spend a few afternoons at Sai's apartment, remarkable only for its walls full of fluttering, elaborately inked paper. Yamato shows him how to separate his clothes even though they're all the same dull, standard-issue gray-black; he helps him pick a favorite detergent from the corner store down the street; he shows him how to hang the clothes on a line by the window in his tiny kitchen.

Per Yamato's request, Sai's windows stay open the whole time he's there. Not only do they bring in sun and the mild Konoha breeze, which wafts the soothing scent of lavender throughout the space, but they keep out the shadows that threaten to swallow every room in black. They both know all too well how it is in ANBU and its many facets, and they're both trying to find their way out of the dark, slowly but surely.

Sai thanks him politely, but his real gratitude is shown in the drawing he gives to Yamato after they neatly fold the dried garments. The picture is breathtakingly gorgeous, a myriad of swirls and strokes and ink, and after hanging it up over his own bed, Yamato realizes it's a rendering of the house he structured with his mokuton on their first team mission.

He immediately builds a simple frame from his jutsu to keep it in perfect condition, safe and bright and beautiful.

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He teaches Sakura how to cook. She is disastrously bad at making edible food, but he knows her heart is always in the right place, and she's always been a quick learner who readily follows instructions. They start with the simple recipes—savory chicken soup, chocolate chip cookies, chopped and stir-fried fresh vegetables. It takes more than several times for her not to burn something, but he stays patient with her, and the small morsels of positive reinforcement give way to full, successfully-crafted meals. The ecstatic light in her eyes when she gets something right, when she feeds him a spoonful of something that tastes not just good but delicious, is priceless.

They high-five hard enough to bruise his palm every time she sautés a chicken breast correctly, bakes a dinner roll to golden-brown perfection, or seasons something just right. Sakura eventually becomes so confident in herself that it's visible in the way she solidly holds her prepping knife and how she ties her apron firmly across her back, and the sight warms his heart.

The dishes he teaches her to make aren't fancy, but they are satisfying and just impressive enough to shock everyone who's had her cooking before, so Yamato leaves her be once she's handled the basics.

However, to his surprise and delight, she asks him over a few days later to taste-test a recipe she's been working on, which turns out to be his favorite apple crisp. It's a little strong on the cinnamon, but they eat the whole pan in one afternoon, and she hugs him when he says how proud he is of her.

It is the best meal he can ever remember having.

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He teaches Naruto how to clean, and to take care of himself in general. Naruto, unexpectedly, is a rather tidy person, but Yamato quickly realizes it's because he has next to no furniture.

It's sort of a blessing that the kid tends toward the oblivious side; he won't take Yamato's help as pity or charity—a good thing since it's not intended as such. Since the both of them are involved, it simply becomes a weekend of a new kind of training, spring cleaning, with the occasional laugh at the team leader's expense (not that he minds, though he certainly pretends to).

They scrub the black mold from the tiles on his shower floor with bleach that accidentally turns part of Naruto's foot snow white; they clean the toothpaste marks and hand imprints from his hazy bathroom mirror; they wipe the inch-thick dust off the ceiling fan; they wash salty powder from instant ramen off the hardwood floors with hot, soapy water. By the time they're finished, everything is sparkling clean, and Naruto is equipped with a whole new arsenal of tricks that Yamato can only hope he'll use at least once before the next spring.

Naruto insists on going shopping afterward, and though they are both intensely sore, they manage to carry back a low-standing table, some floor pillows, and some mismatched dishes and plastic cups, all of which he nabbed for a cheap price at a nearby yard sale. Yamato buys him a few brilliant green house plants from the Yamanaka shop, which puts a huge, radiant grin on Naruto's sun-browned face. When Naruto tells him how excited he is to finally have some friends over to show off his place, Yamato can't help but smile back just as widely.

The first guest of honor is the team leader himself, on that very same night. They spend the evening watching action movies and playing cards, and Yamato finally feels his age, if not younger and significantly lighter, instead of crumbling at the edges.

Yamato loves teaching, because it is the first job he's had that instead of waiting to die, it requires wanting to live.

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a/n: this is a riff on a yam fic i had on my old ffnet account (which i'm starting to miss pretty intensely the more i write lately). anyway lms if that infinite tsukuyomi episode broke ur heart too.