Hey there. Read this.

Unless 'ass' counts as a swear word, I'm pretty sure I didn't curse in this one, even once. Amazing. I don't normally manage that.

Normally when he finds that he needs to sneeze, Kakashi will stop himself. Anything to prevent unnecessary noise; a shinobi must always be prepared, even if the situation doesn't call for it. And he doesn't like sneezing, because it makes the inside of his mask pretty gross. It isn't very hard to stop a sneeze, at least not for him–just a matter of concentrated breathing, and maybe rubbing the bridge of his nose a little, and nothing happens. In desperate, unstoppable sneezing situations, pinching his nostrils closed makes it much quieter than it would otherwise have been, which is better than nothing. A shinobi must always be willing to make slight compromises, even if it means having itchy sinuses for up to a few minutes.

And the first few times his face tried to make him sneeze, he stopped it, as usual. But this one is persistent, and every time it fades away it tries again a few seconds later. So, in a rare case of laxness, and only because it doesn't actually matter right now or even most of the time whether people can hear him or not while he's in his own village, he decides to let his guard down for a moment to let himself sneeze. Once.

"Kakashi-sensei, why are you sneezing?" Naruto asks.

"...pointless question," Sasuke grunts.

"Naruto, we're in the middle of something!" Sakura yells.

Quickly Kakashi is forced to admit to himself the main reason he doesn't usually sneeze in public; because certain people overreact to everything he does. So concerned about one of the least important things Kakashi has ever done, Naruto, in the middle of a training exercise he's supposed to care about performing, drops what he's doing and bounds across the two or three meter distance between the two of them to ask for more details. Kakashi is sitting on a bench with both feet on the floor, and Naruto decides that he has permission to put his hands on his thighs so he can propel his face as closely into Kakashi's as possible. "Are you okay?" he asks, looking up into Kakashi's eye and breathing on his chin, a look of obviously exaggerated concern on his face.

"Yes," Kakashi replies. He puts a hand on Naruto's forehead and gently pushes him away, grabs his wrists and removes them from his legs. "Don't climb on me."

Naruto shakes Kakashi off and moves in close again, though thankfully without touching him this time, eyes fixated on the underside of his nose. "You're not going to sneeze again, are you? Maybe you should take your mask off so you don't get boogers all over it."

"I won't," Kakashi says, shielding his face against Naruto's breath with his hand. "Now, don't let a small noise like that distract you from training. You're supposed to be practicing chakra manipulation, not invading other peoples' personal space."

"Shouldn't I be distracted by small noises?" Naruto argues. "A shinobi must be aware of everything going on around them, right? I was practicing noticing stuff!"

"Good job noticing, but there was no need to respond to something like that. Get back to work."

Naruto crinkles his nose and folds his arms. "This practice is boring, all we're doing is crushing gravel," he complains. Beneath them the ground is primarily loose stones, and he kicks at them, because he couldn't think any less of gravel right now. Kakashi is very good at reading faces, and Naruto's says that gravel is annoying. Stupid gravel. Gravel is stupid. "Can't we do something more interesting? I don't have time for this butt stuff."

"Says the only one who hasn't done anything more than split a clod of peat yet," provides Sasuke, standing a few feet away and scowling like his life depends on it. The front of his shirt is powdered with grey dust he hasn't bothered to brush off. "You haven't even learned the basics, let alone mastered them. Get over yourself."

Slighted, Naruto's mouth opens to respond, but is covered by Sakura's hand before any words are released. He tries to pry her arm away, but her grip is too strong for him and he cannot. "Don't start something because you're not doing the drills!" she growls. She lets him go and he gasps for air, rubbing his cheek where her nails pressed into his skin. She puts her fists on her hips and sneers at him. "You're supposed to be practicing, not complaining!"

Naruto frowns and looks at his feet. "I'm not-"

Sakura stoops down, picks up a rock, places it in Naruto's hand. "No."

The front of her dress is soiled by mineral dust as well, though she has been more diligent in avoiding it than Sasuke, whose shirt is so filthy that you would only know it was blue if you saw him from behind. Naruto's shirt is dirty as well, but not any more so than it would be midway through any training session; grass stains and dirt smears abound, but there is no evidence on his clothes that he has successfully crushed even one rock yet. Which he hasn't. Kakashi isn't paying much attention, but he doesn't need to even be listening to know exactly what Naruto is doing at all times.

Sakura turns to Kakashi and frowns. "Why are you sneezing, though?" she asks. "You're not getting sick, are you?"

Kakashi has to stop himself from rolling his eyes at his normally astute pupil. The suppressed sarcastic gesture comes out as a sigh and a dismissive wave of the hand instead. "Nice of you to be concerned, but I've only sneezed once today," he says. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

This is, apparently, the wrong answer. Sakura crosses her arms over her chest and pouts the poutiest pout Kakashi has ever seen her pout before. "'A shinobi must prepare before it is too late to'," she quotes, drumming her fingers on her elbow. "Just because you're not already feeling sick doesn't mean you shouldn't be ready for it to happen! You know that, right?"

"Sometimes we must take things as we see them instead of just following the rules," Kakashi replies. A shinobi must prepare before it is too late to, but not if it's for something stupid like a cold. "There is nothing to prepare for here; I already know how to be sick. I would go so far as to say that the more one worries about getting sick, the more likely one is to actually become sick."

"Be that as it may, you should still be wary of what it could be–"

"Hush your face," he commands. "It's just somebody gossiping about me. You know how interesting I am."

Sakura unknits her eyebrows and uncrosses her arms, grumbling quietly but dropping the conversation as asked. So close to convincing her to freaking leave him alone about this already, it is a shame, truly a shame, that Kakashi's body takes this exact moment as an opportunity to sneeze again.

"You did it again!" she accuses, jamming her index finger in his face. "If you're not sick, why does it happen more than once, huh?"

Kakashi scratches the side of his nostril through his mask. It doesn't accomplish much.

He says, "Sakura, even if I do have a cold, what is the big deal."

Sakura takes in a deep breath. "Well, first of all–"

"That wasn't a question. It is not a big deal, and it is not a good idea to react so strongly to something that hasn't happened yet. Drop the subject and keep training."

And, reluctantly, she finally does. One of the more difficult rules to adapt to is that a shinobi must always listen to their commander, no matter how unbelievably stupid you think they are being. And normally he would let her explain her objection instead of cutting her off, but he just doesn't have the patience today. Maybe he is getting sick. He's pretty sure he's not usually this dismissive. Is he being dismissive? Is he actually acting any differently than he normally does? It's hard to tell, but since his students don't seem confused by his behavior, it can't be much different, if at all. Sasuke doesn't seem to mind, anyway. His eyes move between Naruto and Sakura.

"If you guys don't want to practice, that's your problem, but do it quieter and stop distracting me," he requests, bending over to pick up a rock about the size of his foot. He examines it with squinting eyes, glares at it, loses a staring contest with it as he tries to scrutinize a good location to focus his chakra on. He doesn't find one before Kakashi stands up and calls for attention.

"Training is officially over for today," he decides. "Continue practicing as long as you see fit. I'm going home." He waves at them as he turns to leave. "See you tomorrow!" he says with a smile that no one notices. Which is pretty much fine, because a shinobi must never show emotion or whatever even though the context of that rule isn't met when he's just been watching his students train all day and not doing anything himself besides sitting on his ass and staring into space.

Behind him, Naruto loudly accuses Sasuke of being a show-offy jerk. Sasuke responds by calling Naruto a sore loser. By the time Kakashi is far enough away that he can't see them effortlessly, he can still hear them yelling at each other. He sighs, pulls the front of his mask down to his neck, and sneezes.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to write a second chapter for this, jsyk. Thank you for reading! That was nice of you.