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The notice arrived early in May, about three weeks ahead of Iruka's seventeenth birthday. Izumo's had arrived last year at the beginning of November, three weeks before his seventeenth birthday. But he had Kotetsu waiting for him. As soon as the notice arrived, they walked together to the Hokage tower to register as a courting couple.
Iruka didn't have a ready-made prospective mate waiting in the wings for him, though, and if he didn't find one in three weeks, the village would start matchmaking for him. Konoha needed the new generation to be full of children with the potential to manipulate chakra after the heavy losses in the last war and the Kyuubi attack. Omegas no longer had the luxury of waiting until they were ready to find a mate.
Iruka read over the notice over and over again, even though he knew what it said. Maybe there was some loophole. He just had to find it.
Dear Umino Iruka, shinobi and omega of Konohagakure,
The Sandaime Hokage & Konoha's Council have put a program in place to assure Konoha's place in the future with a new generation of strong shinobi. As an omega, you will be called on to carry pups for the village and mate with an appropriate alpha.
Village records show that you will officially reach the age of adulthood in the Land of Fire in less than 1 month.
On or before your seventeenth birthday, should you have a prospective mate or be in a courting relationship with an alpha, you both must present yourselves at the Hokage tower to register the relationship.
If you are not in a courting relationship or have no potential mate, the beginning of the matchmaking process will begin within one month of your coming of age.
As a reminder, all omegas are expected to be mated within three years of their coming of age and will be asked to bear at least three pups, health allowing. Bearing pups is considered an A-rank mission, and omegas will receive a monthly stipend while bearing and through the time that their pup is weaned.
The Sandaime and Council look forward to your cooperation on this matter.
And there was the imprint of the Hokage's seal, as well as the Council's at the bottom of the letter.
And that was it. He was going to be paraded in front of a never ending string of alphas, all overly eager or overly picky, until he found one he could stomach enough to take as a mate. And if he wouldn't pick one by the time he was twenty, he knew one would be picked for him. It had happened to other omegas already, although Anko seemed oddly content with Maito Gai.
"This whole thing is outrageous!" Iruka whisper shouted at Ichiraku's that night. "Only clan heads are supposed to be able to require omegas to have children. And I'm not in a clan!"
Kotetsu and Izumo tried to be supportive, but really, what could they do?
"You know once the population gets high enough they'll put this to bed," Kotetsu said. "Maybe you can just hold off enough —"
Iruka glared.
"We're down by a full third of our expected forces, Ko. Every single omega in the village would have to have a chakra-potential pup tomorrow to get this stopped."
"Isn't there anyone you know that you get along with?" Izumo asked desperately. "Any alphas, I mean?"
Iruka, still glaring, pursed his lips. Alphas tended not to like him. And he didn't like most alphas. They thought he was a lot, whatever that meant, and he thought they were all puffed up assholes. Starting the teacher training program after that had made things worse; the alphas of the village seemed to think being an Academy teacher meant that he was going to behave himself, as a role model.
Screw that. A few weeks ago, when Genma had said something about him being tamed, Iruka had retaliated by filling his jounin dorm with cicadas. The sound he made when he opened his wards after returning home from a mission to find every single surface of his dorm crawling with cicadas that then swarmed him trying to get out would be something Iruka treasured.
He deserved it, in Iruka's view, but the Sandaime had looked disappointed.
"You're getting to old to act like this, Iruka," he had said, even though Iruka was clearly justified. At least Hound wasn't around lately to grab him and haul him in; Cat was always much more polite when telling him that the Hokage requested him.
That particular incident was not helpful here.
"You know that most of the alphas I meet don't exactly mesh with my personality," Iruka said finally. "It's going to be me rejecting them or them rejecting me until the Council forces me to accept someone."
"You're in the village most of the time," Kotetsu said. "Why not find someone that's out on missions a lot? You'll barely have to see them. Just tolerate each other a few days a month."
"What alpha is going to go for an arrangement like that?" Iruka said.
"There has to be someone," Izumo said. "Alphas are required to find and take mates, too. Someone really focused on missions that isn't really interested in omegas."
"Someone old enough that the Council has been pressuring them to take a mate."
"Someone I don't think anyone else would want to court," Iruka said, and although he didn't know it, he grinned like the Grinch in the 1966 TV special narrated by Boris Karloff. It's a very particular grin.
Which is how Iruka ended up outside of Hatake Kakashi's hospital room, after visiting hours, having sold the civilian, beta nurse at the front desk on being "so worried about his alpha."
He didn't bother knocking. What worried omega would wait to see their courting alpha when he had been injured on a mission?
Once the door was closed behind him, the first thing Iruka said to Kakashi was, "How old are you?"
Hatake Kakashi was lying in bed with one arm in a sling and the other holding some trashy romance novel. He gave a blink in Iruka's direction before saying, "Twenty-one. I am old enough to buy this book, Iruka-san."
Whether the unexpectedness of his arrival had shocked Kakashi into just answering a straightforward question in a straightforward manner, or Iruka's growing reputation as a teacher-in-training that could shout the paint off cinder block, Iruka was just happy that Kakashi wasn't giving him some kind of runaround.
He sat in the visitor's chair beside him.
"Is the Council harassing you about finding a mate yet? I bet they are. Alphas are supposed to take mates and make pups just as much as the omegas are. I bet the only reason you aren't already being forced into a contract is because you're out of the village so often they haven't found a way to corner you with a bunch of pre-heat omegas."
The stupid book snapped shut and Kakashi's laconic voice took a much more brittle edge.
"What's all this to you, Iruka-san?" he asked.
"I am almost seventeen," Iruka said, pulling the stupid notice from a pocket and waving it at Kakashi. "I need to either be registered as courting an alpha or be forced into the matchmaking process. But I don't want an alpha; I'm definitely not ready for pups; and I want to focus on my teacher training."
"What does this have to do with me?"
"You're the last Hatake; you're a genius; you're a weirdo that spends most of your time out of the village, and I asked around - no one remembers you ever dating anyone enough to get to the courting phase. I don't know if you're not interested at all or you're just not interested now, but the Council definitely wants pups out of the Hatake line. We could help each other out."
Kakashi, genius that he was, was quick to catch on.
"We register together as a courting couple. You get to avoid matchmaking for a few years more; I get to dangle the possibility of Hatake-Umino pups in front of the Council and get them off my back; with me being out of the village so much, the relationship will be expected to proceed slowly, so we just have to see each other once or twice a month to make it look like we're serious."
"And by the time I finish my teacher training, I'll have bought a few years and we can go our separate ways," Iruka confirmed. "And that'll give me enough time to figure out how to get out of this more permanently, and you'll get a few years with the Council leaving you be."
Iruka grinned, and although he couldn't see three-quarters of Kakashi's face, the way his eye crinkled made Iruka think that Kakashi was smiling, too.
"You've always been a pain in the ass, Iruka-san, but I'm glad to see you're using your powers for good. I'll meet you in three days, under the monument. Bring your seal."
As promised, three days later, Kakashi had either been released or escaped from the hospital, and met Iruka in his shinobi blues in the little park below the Hokage monument. His arm was out of the sling, and he held a blue and red checked furoshiki bundle.
"To make this work, we'll have to share some scented items and swap them out when I'm in town," Kakashi said. "They won't believe we're courting if we don't put up a decent smokescreen."
"At least two meetings a month, whenever you're in town?" Iruka asked. "A hospital visit can be one."
"You'll have to pretend you want to be there," Kakashi said. "Which means bringing me books or food or something."
"Not your trashy -"
"Any books. The hospital is very boring."
"The other outing can be training, or ramen, or just walking in public."
"After a few months, visiting you at your place."
"Or yours."
Iruka was pretty sure Kakashi made a face at that, but he agreed quickly enough.
"Or mine."
"What else do we have to do aside from share scented items?"We will have to actually scent each other sometimes, won't we?"
"To pull this off, yes. But we can do that around our outings. People will expect the smell to fade with as often as I am gone."
"Hand holding is fine," Iruka said. "Most people don't go much farther than that in public anyway."
"A kiss on the cheek should the need arise to really sell it," Kakashi said. "And we drop the honorifics."
"It's a deal."
Iruka produced his own scented cloth, this one a blue and white wave-patterned furoshiki wrap and handed it to Kakashi, who promptly folded it up small, unzipped his flak vest, and tucked it inside without even smelling it. The placement was typical, even if not taking a good sniff wasn't. Alphas frequently carried an omega's scent, but they didn't want other alphas getting great lungfuls of an omega they were courting. Kakashi undid his own bundle, put his seal and a few other things in his pocket, and offered it to Iruka.
"You'll have to wear yours," he said apologetically. "As long as you're in the village, people will expect it."
Iruka nodded. Izumo wore his courting cloth from Kotetsu on his wrist, but Iruka didn't like having things on his hands or forearms. He didn't even wear gloves until frostbite was a real threat in the winter. Around his neck, between the turtleneck of his chuunin blue shirt and the olive green of his own flak vest would do.
He did take a sniff, and noticed Kakashi had gone a bit stiff at the sight.
"People will expect me to be able to give an idea of your scent," Iruka said. "Especially if this lasts awhile and I ever have to identify you for some reason."
Smells were harder to recreate than appearances.
"It's not bad," Iruka reassured him. "Kind of reminds me of gunpowder tea and that smell grass has when summer's about to turn."
Kakashi relaxed minutely. Probably every alpha, even weirdos like Kakashi, wanted to be told that omegas liked their scent. Iruka wrapped the furoshiki around itself several times until it was a long strip, and tied it on, the knot resting at the opening of his flak vest.
"Shall we?" Kakashi asked,and held out a hand.
"Let's do this," Iruka said and took it.
The registrar barely looked up when they entered her office until Iruka spoke.
"We're here to register as a courting couple," Iruka said to the registrar. "Form forty-two stroke c, please."
"Just a moment," she said, and then actually looked up from her paperwork. "Oh, Iruka-kun! Who — Kakashi-san?"
Her mouth actually dropped open for a minute before she produced the required forms. Iruka filled it out, knowing that Kakashi's handwriting was awful from their encounters at the mission desk, leaving him just to sign and seal in the required spots. Iruka's own signature followed, and when he pressed his seal into red ink, he saw the registrar smiling.
"Well, this is nice," she was saying. "You two could both use someone. And I'm sure the council will breathe a sigh of relief."
(Iruka assumed she meant because Kakashi was a step closer to taking a mate. Kakashi assumed that it was because the council would think an alpha might be able to keep Iruka in line. They were both right [although the Council was very wrong]).
"Courting" with Hatake Kakashi ended up going pretty smoothly. Kakashi was out of the village at least twenty days out of thirty on missions, and when he was village bound, he was often dealing with chakra exhaustion or in the hospital. For the first few months of their relationship, all of their dates consisted of Iruka sitting in Kakashi's hospital room, bringing him books that he then had to read to him to prevent whining, or eating take out ramen from Ichiraku's by his bed. Sometimes audibly chewing him out about taking stupid risks. And every month, Iruka would give Kakashi a new scented cloth, and Kakashi would swap one back. Except for that first one; he didn't know what happened to that.
And to Iruka's surprise, everyone bought it. Izumo and Kotetsu were the only people in on it, and they allowed that it was working better than they thought possible.
"Courting" with Kakashi ended up not being too bad either. He was just as content to hear Iruka read from his text books as he was to hear poetry or less trashy romance novels when he was in the hospital recovering chakra, and the med-nins, doctors, nurses, and orderlies all seemed to think Iruka was a very doting omega for spending long afternoons with Kakashi, even though he always made sure to shout a bit about taking stupid risks. That was for verisimilitude. There was no way Iruka would stop shouting just because an alpha was courting him.
And for their other outings, they weren't too bad either. Sparring, sometimes, which both felt was a good use of their time despite the horrified looks on the elder generations faces. Ramen when Iruka picked dinner, miso and fish or somewhere with roast vegetables when Kakashi picked. After a reasonable courting period of six months, Kakashi began to occasionally make stops at Iruka's apartment, where they would read or place go or attempt to teach Iruka the fine art of cooking without a step by step recipe, and once Iruka visited Kakashi's jounin dorm. The alpha smell was a bit too much for him, though, and Iruka kept scent wards on his bedroom, so his apartment was more convenient. Kakashi began to let him know when he would be out of the village.
Two years passed like this.
Kakashi would join Iruka and his friends for drinks, no more than once every three months but no less than every five months, and - for appearances, of course - he escorted Iruka to the summer and fall festivals when he was in the village. At their second New Year, they prayed at the temple together, and Kakashi spent the night.
Iruka woke up with Kakashi's bare face pressed against his neck, lips mouthing a long his spine, and an erection that felt - yeah, Kakashi was already halfway to a knot - pressed against his ass.
He was also definitely still asleep.
Iruka considered his next course of action. Kakashi (who Iruka had learned was called cold blooded and friend Killer some time after they started "courting") was relaxed enough to not only sleep in his bed, but to stay asleep even when Iruka showed signs of waking. He had pulled his mask down in the night to kiss Iruka's neck. Iruka still hadn't seen his face after eighteen months of courting, but exposing it in the night was still something.
And there was the erection of course.
Much to consider.
The last eighteen months hadn't been too bad. There were roadblock, bumps. Kakashi was very, very slow to open up and very quick to assume the worst of the other alphas around Iruka, which he now realized could read as jealousy. Kakashi would never scent him in public but sometimes snatched Iruka's scented cloths faster than a shunshin. Kakashi threw an arm over his waist in his sleep, and Iruka realized that Kakashi had put up with him longer than anyone in his life, except perhaps MIzuki, and Mizuki was —
Iruka wasn't that much of a glutton for punishment, let's just put it that way.
All in all, Kakashi wasn't a bad alpha to make things more permanent with. He still had no desire to carry pups of his own, but working with the kids at the Academy had made them familiar. And he would be done training at the end of this school year, just a few months away. And if their courtship didn't progress within the next six or seven months, the Council would start to get antsy again about the Hatake bloodline, and Iruka's potential baby-making capabilities.
Ugh.
Familiarity was supposed to breed contempt, but Iruka had found that it mostly bred a sense of ease. Comfort with Kakashi where they had been no more than lose acquaintances after a mission gone bad. He was going to have to mate someone, and why shouldn't it be Kakashi?
The only thing he hadn't done was, er, test the equipment. His dam and sire had warned him - you test the equipment before making a big commitment.
So Iruka closed his eyes, turned around, and kissed Kakashi on the mouth. After a few seconds he was being kissed back eagerly, and on the first day of the New Year, Iruka was pleased to find that Kakashi was in fantastic working order. Top marks all around.
Well, there was his inability to relax and just let a knot fade naturally, and Kakashi's constant rutting to get more stimulation on his knot usually meant one round became several, but that wasn't a problem for Iruka.
On his nineteenth birthday, another letter was sent out, this time from Hatake Kakashi and Umino Iruka, inviting a small, select gathering of friends to their mating ceremony, well before Iruka's twentieth year deadline.
And if anyone was unhappy that the first Hatake-Umino pup was blond, blue eyed, with whiskers on his cheeks, and adopted a few weeks into Iruka's first year as a solor teacher, the Council could go suck eggs.