Theme: Rainbow

OOOOOOOOOOOO

Any casual observer wandering by might think that his dresser had decided to throw up on the floor, and Iruka dropped his head onto the corner of the drawer he currently had in his lap. Even though he knew that he was making things better, the fact that he had to basically destroy his bedroom in the process still bothered him.

But he had to find some room to put away the pile of clothes that was slowly overtaking all of his free space.

"What is that?" Iruka wrestled with the drawer until he managed to pull it off the rails and completely out of the dresser. Something white was jammed into a crack in the very back corner of the drawer.

He held up the white t-shirt and almost instantly started to chuckle. He hadn't thought about the outfit he used to wear as a genin in years. The shirt seemed ludicrously small, and he couldn't help but hold it up to his chest.

Iruka figured he might be able to fit an arm into it now…if that.

The clock above his head chimed, and he groaned. He should have been at the mission desk fifteen minutes ago, but he was loathe to leave the room in this disastrous state.

He dropped the shirt on the kitchen table on his way out.

He still remembered the first time he wore the monotone shirt – his mom had let him pick out clothes before heading to school, and he'd come down in that white shirt and a pair of matching shorts. His mom always wore bright colors, even if it was in the form of a neon scarf wrapped around her throat under the standard vest. Consequently, she'd bought a variety of colors for him and was thoroughly scandalized when he decided to dress only in white.

He'd never really been able to figure out why he'd preferred pallid clothing – perhaps he'd thought that the vivid tones were solely part of his mother's domain – but after her death he'd packed all of the colorful clothing, bedding and decorations into storage, unwilling to be reminded of what had been taken from him.

The first addition of color to his outfit was the blue hitae-ate he'd received on graduation from the Academy.

He'd finally ditched the white outfit on his fifth try taking the chuunin exam. It had seemed strange to fill his closet with completely different clothes. He'd been practically broke at that point, without any regular missions and no extra job, and buying just the generic vests and unadorned shirts had wiped out any of his petty cash, so the Konoha patches for the sleeves had to wait.

Against the black background of his shirts and pants, the green vest was the brightest color in his closet.

Iruka'd passed the teacher's exam by the skin of his teeth, and only because of Mizuki's help. He was sure that the committee must have known about how much aid he'd gotten from his fellow chuunin, and he'd confronted the Sandaime, demanding to know why he passed when even he didn't think he deserved to.

The old man had tilted his red hat down over his face while puffing away on his pipe, and had told him that he was going to do his job that he'd been assigned and if, in five years, he still didn't understand why he'd gotten it, he could come back and ask again.

He didn't sleep for two days before his first class and had almost collapsed on his way home after the first day simply from pure exhaustion. As it was, he'd still fallen flat on his face after tripping over absolutely nothing. Two heeled shoes planted themselves in the dirt in front of him, and a kunoichi with purple hair put her hands on her hips and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he looked like he needed a drink.

Mitarashi Anko then proceeded to drag him to the nearest bar and get him drunk out of his mind.

The second day of school had been infinitely worse.

Over the years, he'd managed to convince Anko to not get him drunk on a weeknight, but she'd still always been there to listen to him rant about the general all-around stupidity of his students.

He must have bitched about Naruto more than anyone else – mainly because he didn't think the boy ever tried to live up to his potential while he was in school – and Anko'd just smiled the whole time, clearly aware of the fact that Iruka saw himself in the boy and wanted Naruto to make more of himself than he ever had.

The first time he met the kyuubi boy, Naruto was so short that he couldn't even see over Iruka's desk, and he was treated to a shock of spiky yellow hair telling him to get bent and that there was absolutely nothing 'Iruka-sensei' could teach him.

Iruka sighed and hefted the groceries higher on his hip. Despite the brief scolding he'd gotten for being late, his stint at the mission desk was completely uneventful, and he was looking forward to getting back to cleaning out his dresser.

He kneed the door open and started to drop the bags onto the table next to his childhood shirt, only to stop short.

Iruka glared at the blatant evidence of the most recent addition to his life, a bright orange porn book oh-so-casually placed on top of his pristine, childhood shirt.

"Kakashi!"

OOOOOOOOOOO

I am soooo ludicrously happy with this. I've been trying to come up with an idea for weeks for this theme, and finally it occurred to me while driving home from dance today.

Hope you enjoy!