He 's never told Toshiro that he loves him.

To be fair, Kakashi hasn 't spoken of love in years 'decades, even. There 's the patriotic love for the village, but it feels more like monotonous duty most days. It leaves scars and ingrained exhaustion. It carves out whole swaths of him, leaving him empty and without identity. A wooden puppet for Konoha, to do with what they wished. Finding himself is the hardest mission he 's ever taken.

Love is associated with pain, with loss and hearts in his palms and empty graves and jars of ashes because leaving bodies is too risky. Love is a gamble. It 's terror and euphoria, his lungs squeezed of air and his blood roaring in his ears like the crash of a waterfall. He never understood what the saying '

butterflies in your stomach

'

meant until Toshiro. It doesn 't really feel like butterflies 'it 's more like a thousand massive birds flapping their wings all at once, creating a hurricane in his solar plexus.