Fic: Other Time: The Hour of the Wolf
Title: Other Time: The Hour of the Wolf
Author: Kita_the_spaz
Rating: Mature
Category: M/M
Fandom: Naruto
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka, Hatake Kakashi/Maito Gai | Might Guy
Characters: Hatake Kakashi, Umino Iruka, Maito Gai | Might Guy
Additional Tags: Dysfunctional Relationships
Words:3638
Summary: He'd tried, he really had, to understand this strange thing between himself, Kakashi and Gai, but somewhere deep inside Iruka knew he never would. Shinobi had lovers, or friends with benefits or fuck buddies, or on rare occasions, spouses. They did not have a platonic life-partner and a separate... a separate sex partner.
Notes: Inspired by The Other Time by megyal.
Written because the world Megyal created in "The Other Time" would not leave me alone! So this is ALL her fault. Every bit of it.
You may want to read her story to understand what exactly is going on here. Not Betaed, so feel free to point out any and all mistakes.
"Have you ever heard of the hour of the wolf? ... It's the time between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning. You can't sleep, and all you can see is the troubles and the problems and the ways that your life should've gone but didn't. All you can hear is the sound of your own heart."
-Susan Ivanova “Babylon Five”
Umino Iruka had long since come to terms with the fact that he had no idea what to call the strange not-a-relationship he had with Hatake Kakashi. He’d gone through several variations and found that none of them were a satisfactory answer. Friends with benefits would imply that they were actually friends, while these days they rarely interacted outside of the bedroom (or wherever they happened to fuck- not always confined to the environs of a bed.) And truth be told, Iruka knew that was partly his fault. He’d taken to avoiding places where he knew Kakashi might be. Not that he would go to extraordinary measures to do that avoiding; they still interacted in places like the mission room and on the street, and Iruka knew well that to go out of his way to avoid the copy-nin would only result in the other seeking him out. It had happened before.
To call them lovers would insinuate that there was love in the equation. There was, but it was entirely on Iruka’s side of the board. At first, during that first haze of confusion and lust, Iruka wouldn’t have called it love, but as he had gotten to know the real Kakashi, his agonized feelings had solidified and he knew that to lose Kakashi would destroy him. But that didn’t matter because Kakashi didn’t, and never would love him.
Kakashi had told him- regretfully, damn his eyes- that he didn’t have the emotional capacity to love him the same way he loved Gai. And therein lay the rub. What Kakashi and Gai had... Iruka could only give it the fitting enough term of life-partners. While it didn’t involve sex (Both Kakashi and Gai had told him that, on separate occasions.) that did not mean there was not love. He’d witnessed it with his own eyes once, when Kakashi had come back badly injured from a mission gone horribly pear-shaped.
Iruka had gone to visit him in the hospital, because he was broken and couldn’t stay away. When he’d reached the room, Gai had already been there, seated on the side of Kakashi’s bed, with his arms around Kakashi’s quivering shoulders. Neither of them spoke, but the way Kakashi leaned into Gai’s hold had said volumes. Iruka had frozen outside the door, unable to move for the sickening ache it left in his gut. When Kakashi had fallen asleep, still curled into Gai, and with Gai holding his hand with genuine tenderness, Iruka had finally gathered up his wits enough to flee. That had marked the day when he’d begun to avoid places they might meet.
He’d tried, he really had, to understand this strange thing between himself, Kakashi and Gai, but somewhere deep inside Iruka knew he never would. Shinobi had lovers, or friends with benefits or fuck buddies, or on rare occasions, spouses. They did not have a platonic life-partner and a separate... a separate sex partner. Because, as much as he hated knowing it, that was all that it was between them; the sex. The sex was amazing and wonderful, but whatever passion there was, was entirely for the physical act, at least on Kakashi’s part.
Each time he saw Kakashi, every time they had sex was just another brand on the funeral pyre of Iruka’s rationality. Because, as much as he wanted to hate Kakashi and Gai for that love they shared that he wasn’t able take part in, he couldn’t. Gai had warmly welcomed him as Kakashi’s... sex friend, admitting that between them, they kept Kakashi happy. That had seemed to please Gai to no end, for Gai kept inviting Iruka to eat with them, to go places with them, and more out of fear for his sanity than anything else, Iruka had agreed. At least a few times.
Gai was effusive and far too much for Iruka to deal with on a regular basis, so he found more and more excuses to decline, pretending he couldn’t see the wounded surprise in Gai’s eyes. It made him feel guilty and sick inside, and Iruka hated that.
In spite of the distance he’d deliberately made between them, Iruka could not give up Kakashi completely. He was an addict and Kakashi his drug. Because in the darkness, with Kakashi moving below him and around him, he could forget, could pretend for a little while that it wasn’t all about the sex. Could imagine that those little gasps and sounds he made in the night were actual sounds of affection, and not just of satiation.
Morning light brought the truth back to him, in the form of a pale body that rose, kissed him ferociously and left him. Going off to visit the memorial stone or spar with Gai or... something; anything else that didn’t involve Iruka. Unless Iruka went to him and Gai, he was excluded from so much of Kakashi’s life.
Iruka had almost convinced himself he liked it that way.
For a while he was angry, furious at himself for the strange tangle he’d gotten himself enmeshed in and at Kakashi for... so much he couldn’t even begin to explain it. For being everything Iruka desired in a sexual partner, and those glimpses into the real man that had, more and more, made him everything Iruka wanted in a partner. And everything he couldn’t have.
He’d actually worked himself up to a rage and gone to confront Kakashi once... only to deflate, feeling cold and empty inside, when he’d found Kakashi, bandaging a fist Gai had split open in training and scolding him and Lee (for imitating Gai’s boneheadedness) impartially. Iruka had fled before any of them had seen him and spent the rest of the day and well into the night holed up in a dusty records room, sorting and cross-indexing files until his brain was numb and the ache in his chest had settled into a hollow feeling in his stomach.
He’d stumbled home in the hour of the wolf, tired and hurting in body and soul to find Kakashi dozing on his bed.
Kakashi blinked at him, looking utterly rumpled and sleepy in a way that Iruka’s brain declared could not be real. “You’re late,” he’d mumbled, in a tired and disgruntled voice. “I was waiting for you.”
Something inside Iruka had broken with a near-audible twang at the scene before him. It was everything he wanted and couldn’t have, because that part of Kakashi belonged to Gai. That loving part he’d glimpsed every so often, hidden under the mask and the unrepentant assholishness, that Kakashi had only ever shown around the other man, the person he trusted with all of him, not just his body. For just a second, Iruka had imagined... but, no. It was a fever dream brought on by his own traitorous heart and too little sleep.
Iruka dropped his satchel to the floor, feeling cold and far too dead inside. “Kakashi, I’m too tired for this,” he muttered, turning his face away from the image that haunted him.
He felt more than saw Kakashi rise from the bed. A firm, warm hand lifted his chin. Sighing, Iruka closed his eyes, to block out Kakashi’s own gaze from seeing just how broken he was.
Kakashi’s lips closed over his.
Iruka didn’t fight him, not kissing back, just waiting patiently for Kakashi to be done.
When even a nip to Iruka’s lower lip failed to elicit the reaction he wanted, Kakashi sighed against his mouth and steered Iruka down on the bed. His hands left Iruka’s face and worked on the opening to his flak vest.
Iruka wondered distantly if Kakashi was going to try and dominate him, when he was usually more than happy to have Iruka fuck him. At the moment, he didn’t care. He’d let Kakashi have his way, just to get him to go away and leave Iruka to wallow in his new-found numbness. He refused to play though; Kakashi wanted him, he could have him just as he was, too tired both in mind and body to do more than lie there limply.
He kept his eyes closed while Kakashi eased the vest off his shoulders and went to work unfastening his weapons pouches and unraveling the bandages around his thigh that hid rows upon rows of deadly senbon needles.
It was with some startlement that he felt Kakashi ease him down and draw the sheet over him and brush a surprisingly gentle kiss over the scar on the bridge of his nose. He opened his eyes just in time to see Kakashi exit quietly through the bedroom window. For a long moment, he stared blankly at the wall that held the night-shrouded window, unable to think or feel anything outside of that distant surprise.
After what seemed like hours, his eyes found focus on the small calendar tacked to the wall. Tomorrow- no, now today’s date was circled in red and it took him several long moments of sluggish thought before he could remember why. Classes went on break today, leaving him for a week with no place to go but to take extra shifts in the mission room and continue to avoid Kakashi.
He lay there staring at the page until the bright red grading-pen circle faded to something closer to the color of blood. His last thought was that he needed to take a mission.
Iruka woke in the half-light of predawn with that thought still buzzing around in his skull. Surprisingly clear-headed despite the very little sleep he’d gotten, Iruka dragged himself out of bed and checked his mission pack over quickly, adding new ration bars and a few chakra-enhancers to fill in gaps from the last time he’d taken a mission outside the village. He climbed in the shower and scrubbed down with the special scent-deadening soap all active duty shinobi used, doing his best to erase the ravages of too little sleep and too many troubles from his face. He had to get to the mission room fast, before the Hokage rose, and got a good look at him. It was a given she’d forbid him a mission with how he looked, he thought, staring at his haggard reflection in the foggy mirror after he’d shaved.
He dressed quickly and made short work of strapping on the weapons that Kakashi had removed from him and left stacked neatly on his bedside table. With a last glance around while strapping on his sandals, Iruka slung his mission pack over his shoulder and locked his apartment behind him, He pressed a hand to the wood of the door and used a tiny sliver of chakra to tease layers upon layers of traps into active mode.
If Kakashi tried to sneak in while Iruka was out of the village, he’d be in for a bit of a surprise.
Iruka allowed himself a small smile at the thought. Maybe by the time he’d gotten back, he’d be more in control. Maybe even enough to break off this not-a-relationship that was slowly killing him, heart and soul.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maybe he wouldn’t have to break up with Kakashi, Iruka thought grimly some four days later, trying to staunch the flow of blood from a deep gash carved through his bicep, crouching hidden in the lightning-hollowed bole of a massive tree.
What had started out a simple B-class scroll retrieval had rapidly gone to pot. He didn’t recognize any of the nin that had attacked him from the bingo book but at least one of them was jounin level, and he was willing to lay odds on the heavily cloaked one being some sort of S-class missing-nin. He’d been the one to pin Iruka to a tree with a thin blade of what looked like bone infused with chakra. Iruka had only just managed to dodge it enough so that it went through his arm instead of his chest. He’d had to literally wrench himself free, cutting open his arm, to escape before another of those blades went through his heart.
Whoever they were, they were playing for keeps. They didn’t want him alive for questioning, they wanted the scroll back and him dead, not necessarily in that order.
Iruka knew his chances of actually making it back to Konoha were somewhere between none and zero, not with at least four nin bound and determined to make fertilizer out of him. He was already dizzy with blood-loss and his arm was the next best thing to useless. He had to get the scroll home no matter what happened to him.
Knotting his improvised bandage with his good hand and his teeth, Iruka tossed back an iron supplement and and a handful of chakra boosters. He swallowed them all grimly, knowing he might do himself irreparable damage by taking so many at once, but he needed all the chakra he could afford to do this. For the first time he truly regretted that he didn’t have enough chakra to support a summons of his own, but he did have contingencies.
As a boy, Iruka had worked at the mews for the Hokage’s messenger hawks, a punishment Sandaime had given him when a prank gone awry had hurt someone. The mews were hard and smelly work, but the messenger harks were proud, smart creatures and respected the clever “hatchling” who did not fear sharp talons and slashing beaks. The queens, larger and smarter than the tiercels, had been especially pleased by the smart boy who had proven himself not afraid to help an injured flockmate, even when his arm was slashed down to the bone by the hysterical, delirious fledgling queen. That queen, now a matriarch of the flock, had shown Iruka how to make a scroll that would summon her to wherever he was. It required a great deal of his chakra, but it had saved his life on several occasions.
It might not save him this time, but it would get the scroll safely home.
Lining the interior of the hollow bole with outward facing explosive tags, Iruka dripped blood from his wound on the tiny scroll he wore on a chain around his neck and shoved chakra into it, knowing the release would give away his position.
Rai appeared in front of him with mantled wings and a hiss. She was wearing her scroll harness, indicating she had been out of the mews for duty, but was a blessing in this case. He could slip the scroll into her harness and that would leave her talons free to defend herself if need be. He fastened the scroll into the carrier under the watch of her bright gold eyes. “Take this home,” he bade her, already feeling the chakra signatures of his pursuers closing in. “Fly like the lightning.”
Rai reached out with her beak and delicately tugged a loose lock of his hair. “I will; fly safely for home, fledgling, and show them you have talons of your own.”
Iruka managed a feeble smile for her. “No promises, but I’ll cost them dearly.”
She hissed and drove upwards toward the sun.
Iruka grinned grimly and clenched a kunai in his teeth and his good hand.
He thought briefly that at least he wouldn’t be leaving anyone but Naruto to grieve for him.
The world exploded with the flash of exploding tags and the sound of splintering wood.
~~~~~~~~~~
He dreamed of flying back to Konoha on Rai’s wings, soaring free above the clouds. If this was death, Iruka reasoned, it wasn’t so bad. He no longer hurt, and the soul deep ache that he’d been suffering for months mattered little. Kakashi wouldn’t mourn him. He still had Gai, after all.
Iruka folded his wings and plunged into the welcoming billows of clouds, white all around him.
He dreamt of the hospital, and saw Naruto struggling with Shizune and a male medic-nin. The boy was hysterical, tears streaking his whisker-marked cheeks. “No!” he wailed. “I’m not losing him too!”
Iruka ached for him and wished he’d had time to bid the teen he thought of as his brother goodbye.
The ache intensified and made the hospital shatter around him. And there was only darkness, filled with the whispering shadows of regrets.
After a timeless interval, the whispers grew stronger, dragging him from the dark and back into the world of pain. He hung suspended in a cloud of agony and a haze of drugs. He knew then that they had not allowed him to die, and wished bitterly that they had. He was tired of the chaos and uncertainty his life had become.
The whispering grew stronger and finally pierced the haze of pain. “I can’t do this!” He knew that voice and it awakened the dull anguish that he’d wanted to escape.
“You must.” That voice too, was familiar, and Iruka wondered sourly if Gai had forced Kakashi to come to his bedside. He’d rather that the obnoxiously green man had left him to die in peace, without forcing him to suffer more.
“No.” It struck Iruka dimly that he’d never heard that tone from Kakashi before. The man had always been cool and unflappable, or stern and demanding, but never this frightened.
“Kakashi, look at me,” Gai’s voice was still loud, but now it bore a note of demand Iruka had never heard from him. It made him want to open his own eyes, despite the fact that he could not feel his body for the pain. “You cannot continue like this. You do not deserve it, and neither does he.”
Kakashi laughed, a sharp-edged bitter sound. “You’re right, he doesn’t,” he snarled. “But me? Oh, this I deserve. This and more.”
The shark crack of flesh against flesh startled Iruka and he knew if he’d been able, he’d have jumped.
“The fuck-?” Kakashi growled like an angry wolf.
“I will not allow you to say such things. You have paid for your crimes in flesh and blood, you do not need to punish yourself more.” Gai said firmly.
Kakashi punishing himself? Iruka would have laughed if he could. Kakashi had everything. He had Gai for support and love, Iruka for sex and was one of the most respected and feared nin in all the shinobi nations.
Kakashi’s voice was anguished. “I can’t. I can’t give him what he wants, and I can’t be what he needs me to be.”
Gai’s voice softened. “You’re not a fool, Kakashi. You already are what he wants you to be. And if you cannot give him what he needs, why are you here, at his bedside?”
“You’re the one who dragged me here,” Kakashi barked, bitter and scathing.
“Two days ago. You could have left at any time.” Gai’s voice was surprisingly reasonable and soothing.
Iruka thought fuzzily he could listen to it for hours. If Gai would speak like this all the time, and wouldn’t make those overblown declarations and speeches, people might take him more seriously.
“T-two days?” Kakashi sounded stunned.
“Indeed.” Gai answered, still in that calming, reasonable tone. “It is lacking an hour or two from dawn, which will mark three days, Kakashi. The time for lies is through, my friend. Answer me this; if you profess not to care, why are you holding his hand? Why have you not left?”
Iruka’s chest hurt, a sharper, brighter pain than the dull haze of agony that held him suspended somewhere between life and death.
“I-,” Kakashi’s voice wavered.
Iruka thought crazily that Gai should put him out of his misery and at the same time wanted Kakashi to speak; to say something to end the suspense.
“Iruka-” Kakashi faltered. “He’s--”
“No more lies. No more hiding the truth. There is still room in your heart for him, and he is already there.” Gai continued, implacable as a mountain.
“He is...” Kakashi’s reply was barely a whisper, but it rang through Iruka with all the force of a tidal wave, sweeping away the fog of drugs and pain. “I don’t know h-how it happened, but suddenly he was there in a place where I didn’t think anyone else could be.”
Iruka finally was able to drag his eyes open. The room was dimly lit by a single lamp and in the light of it, Kakashi was a hunched ball of darkness, topped with a shock of silver-white hair. He was seated beside the bed, but turned away from Iruka, his attention on Gai’s looming form.
Gai’s bright eyes darted to Iruka’s face and he grinned blindingly. “Then perhaps you should admit it to him, now that he has rejoined the glorious land of the living.”
Kakashi whirled so fast, he nearly spilled himself out of the chair. “Iruka?”
Iruka licked his lips and tried to force words out of a throat and mouth both dry and numb. “-heard you,” he whispered painfully.
Kakashi sagged, holding Iruka’s bandaged hand up to his cheek. “I’m an idiot,” he admitted in a low, mocking tone.
“...yes,” Iruka breathed, feeling a lightness in his chest that felt as if it might lift him right out of his pained body. “Our idiot. Gai’s and mine.”
Gai leaned over, resting a hand on Kakashi’s shoulder and fixed that brilliant smile on Iruka. “Indeed. Rest now, Iruka-sensei. When you are well, we will discuss things. I think this is the beginning of something wonderful.”
Iruka managed a smile of his own. “Think... you’re right.” Pleased, he let his eyes closed.
Author: Kita_the_spaz
Rating: Mature
Category: M/M
Fandom: Naruto
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka, Hatake Kakashi/Maito Gai | Might Guy
Characters: Hatake Kakashi, Umino Iruka, Maito Gai | Might Guy
Additional Tags: Dysfunctional Relationships
Words:3638
Summary: He'd tried, he really had, to understand this strange thing between himself, Kakashi and Gai, but somewhere deep inside Iruka knew he never would. Shinobi had lovers, or friends with benefits or fuck buddies, or on rare occasions, spouses. They did not have a platonic life-partner and a separate... a separate sex partner.
Notes: Inspired by The Other Time by megyal.
Written because the world Megyal created in "The Other Time" would not leave me alone! So this is ALL her fault. Every bit of it.
You may want to read her story to understand what exactly is going on here. Not Betaed, so feel free to point out any and all mistakes.
"Have you ever heard of the hour of the wolf? ... It's the time between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning. You can't sleep, and all you can see is the troubles and the problems and the ways that your life should've gone but didn't. All you can hear is the sound of your own heart."
-Susan Ivanova “Babylon Five”
Umino Iruka had long since come to terms with the fact that he had no idea what to call the strange not-a-relationship he had with Hatake Kakashi. He’d gone through several variations and found that none of them were a satisfactory answer. Friends with benefits would imply that they were actually friends, while these days they rarely interacted outside of the bedroom (or wherever they happened to fuck- not always confined to the environs of a bed.) And truth be told, Iruka knew that was partly his fault. He’d taken to avoiding places where he knew Kakashi might be. Not that he would go to extraordinary measures to do that avoiding; they still interacted in places like the mission room and on the street, and Iruka knew well that to go out of his way to avoid the copy-nin would only result in the other seeking him out. It had happened before.
To call them lovers would insinuate that there was love in the equation. There was, but it was entirely on Iruka’s side of the board. At first, during that first haze of confusion and lust, Iruka wouldn’t have called it love, but as he had gotten to know the real Kakashi, his agonized feelings had solidified and he knew that to lose Kakashi would destroy him. But that didn’t matter because Kakashi didn’t, and never would love him.
Kakashi had told him- regretfully, damn his eyes- that he didn’t have the emotional capacity to love him the same way he loved Gai. And therein lay the rub. What Kakashi and Gai had... Iruka could only give it the fitting enough term of life-partners. While it didn’t involve sex (Both Kakashi and Gai had told him that, on separate occasions.) that did not mean there was not love. He’d witnessed it with his own eyes once, when Kakashi had come back badly injured from a mission gone horribly pear-shaped.
Iruka had gone to visit him in the hospital, because he was broken and couldn’t stay away. When he’d reached the room, Gai had already been there, seated on the side of Kakashi’s bed, with his arms around Kakashi’s quivering shoulders. Neither of them spoke, but the way Kakashi leaned into Gai’s hold had said volumes. Iruka had frozen outside the door, unable to move for the sickening ache it left in his gut. When Kakashi had fallen asleep, still curled into Gai, and with Gai holding his hand with genuine tenderness, Iruka had finally gathered up his wits enough to flee. That had marked the day when he’d begun to avoid places they might meet.
He’d tried, he really had, to understand this strange thing between himself, Kakashi and Gai, but somewhere deep inside Iruka knew he never would. Shinobi had lovers, or friends with benefits or fuck buddies, or on rare occasions, spouses. They did not have a platonic life-partner and a separate... a separate sex partner. Because, as much as he hated knowing it, that was all that it was between them; the sex. The sex was amazing and wonderful, but whatever passion there was, was entirely for the physical act, at least on Kakashi’s part.
Each time he saw Kakashi, every time they had sex was just another brand on the funeral pyre of Iruka’s rationality. Because, as much as he wanted to hate Kakashi and Gai for that love they shared that he wasn’t able take part in, he couldn’t. Gai had warmly welcomed him as Kakashi’s... sex friend, admitting that between them, they kept Kakashi happy. That had seemed to please Gai to no end, for Gai kept inviting Iruka to eat with them, to go places with them, and more out of fear for his sanity than anything else, Iruka had agreed. At least a few times.
Gai was effusive and far too much for Iruka to deal with on a regular basis, so he found more and more excuses to decline, pretending he couldn’t see the wounded surprise in Gai’s eyes. It made him feel guilty and sick inside, and Iruka hated that.
In spite of the distance he’d deliberately made between them, Iruka could not give up Kakashi completely. He was an addict and Kakashi his drug. Because in the darkness, with Kakashi moving below him and around him, he could forget, could pretend for a little while that it wasn’t all about the sex. Could imagine that those little gasps and sounds he made in the night were actual sounds of affection, and not just of satiation.
Morning light brought the truth back to him, in the form of a pale body that rose, kissed him ferociously and left him. Going off to visit the memorial stone or spar with Gai or... something; anything else that didn’t involve Iruka. Unless Iruka went to him and Gai, he was excluded from so much of Kakashi’s life.
Iruka had almost convinced himself he liked it that way.
For a while he was angry, furious at himself for the strange tangle he’d gotten himself enmeshed in and at Kakashi for... so much he couldn’t even begin to explain it. For being everything Iruka desired in a sexual partner, and those glimpses into the real man that had, more and more, made him everything Iruka wanted in a partner. And everything he couldn’t have.
He’d actually worked himself up to a rage and gone to confront Kakashi once... only to deflate, feeling cold and empty inside, when he’d found Kakashi, bandaging a fist Gai had split open in training and scolding him and Lee (for imitating Gai’s boneheadedness) impartially. Iruka had fled before any of them had seen him and spent the rest of the day and well into the night holed up in a dusty records room, sorting and cross-indexing files until his brain was numb and the ache in his chest had settled into a hollow feeling in his stomach.
He’d stumbled home in the hour of the wolf, tired and hurting in body and soul to find Kakashi dozing on his bed.
Kakashi blinked at him, looking utterly rumpled and sleepy in a way that Iruka’s brain declared could not be real. “You’re late,” he’d mumbled, in a tired and disgruntled voice. “I was waiting for you.”
Something inside Iruka had broken with a near-audible twang at the scene before him. It was everything he wanted and couldn’t have, because that part of Kakashi belonged to Gai. That loving part he’d glimpsed every so often, hidden under the mask and the unrepentant assholishness, that Kakashi had only ever shown around the other man, the person he trusted with all of him, not just his body. For just a second, Iruka had imagined... but, no. It was a fever dream brought on by his own traitorous heart and too little sleep.
Iruka dropped his satchel to the floor, feeling cold and far too dead inside. “Kakashi, I’m too tired for this,” he muttered, turning his face away from the image that haunted him.
He felt more than saw Kakashi rise from the bed. A firm, warm hand lifted his chin. Sighing, Iruka closed his eyes, to block out Kakashi’s own gaze from seeing just how broken he was.
Kakashi’s lips closed over his.
Iruka didn’t fight him, not kissing back, just waiting patiently for Kakashi to be done.
When even a nip to Iruka’s lower lip failed to elicit the reaction he wanted, Kakashi sighed against his mouth and steered Iruka down on the bed. His hands left Iruka’s face and worked on the opening to his flak vest.
Iruka wondered distantly if Kakashi was going to try and dominate him, when he was usually more than happy to have Iruka fuck him. At the moment, he didn’t care. He’d let Kakashi have his way, just to get him to go away and leave Iruka to wallow in his new-found numbness. He refused to play though; Kakashi wanted him, he could have him just as he was, too tired both in mind and body to do more than lie there limply.
He kept his eyes closed while Kakashi eased the vest off his shoulders and went to work unfastening his weapons pouches and unraveling the bandages around his thigh that hid rows upon rows of deadly senbon needles.
It was with some startlement that he felt Kakashi ease him down and draw the sheet over him and brush a surprisingly gentle kiss over the scar on the bridge of his nose. He opened his eyes just in time to see Kakashi exit quietly through the bedroom window. For a long moment, he stared blankly at the wall that held the night-shrouded window, unable to think or feel anything outside of that distant surprise.
After what seemed like hours, his eyes found focus on the small calendar tacked to the wall. Tomorrow- no, now today’s date was circled in red and it took him several long moments of sluggish thought before he could remember why. Classes went on break today, leaving him for a week with no place to go but to take extra shifts in the mission room and continue to avoid Kakashi.
He lay there staring at the page until the bright red grading-pen circle faded to something closer to the color of blood. His last thought was that he needed to take a mission.
Iruka woke in the half-light of predawn with that thought still buzzing around in his skull. Surprisingly clear-headed despite the very little sleep he’d gotten, Iruka dragged himself out of bed and checked his mission pack over quickly, adding new ration bars and a few chakra-enhancers to fill in gaps from the last time he’d taken a mission outside the village. He climbed in the shower and scrubbed down with the special scent-deadening soap all active duty shinobi used, doing his best to erase the ravages of too little sleep and too many troubles from his face. He had to get to the mission room fast, before the Hokage rose, and got a good look at him. It was a given she’d forbid him a mission with how he looked, he thought, staring at his haggard reflection in the foggy mirror after he’d shaved.
He dressed quickly and made short work of strapping on the weapons that Kakashi had removed from him and left stacked neatly on his bedside table. With a last glance around while strapping on his sandals, Iruka slung his mission pack over his shoulder and locked his apartment behind him, He pressed a hand to the wood of the door and used a tiny sliver of chakra to tease layers upon layers of traps into active mode.
If Kakashi tried to sneak in while Iruka was out of the village, he’d be in for a bit of a surprise.
Iruka allowed himself a small smile at the thought. Maybe by the time he’d gotten back, he’d be more in control. Maybe even enough to break off this not-a-relationship that was slowly killing him, heart and soul.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maybe he wouldn’t have to break up with Kakashi, Iruka thought grimly some four days later, trying to staunch the flow of blood from a deep gash carved through his bicep, crouching hidden in the lightning-hollowed bole of a massive tree.
What had started out a simple B-class scroll retrieval had rapidly gone to pot. He didn’t recognize any of the nin that had attacked him from the bingo book but at least one of them was jounin level, and he was willing to lay odds on the heavily cloaked one being some sort of S-class missing-nin. He’d been the one to pin Iruka to a tree with a thin blade of what looked like bone infused with chakra. Iruka had only just managed to dodge it enough so that it went through his arm instead of his chest. He’d had to literally wrench himself free, cutting open his arm, to escape before another of those blades went through his heart.
Whoever they were, they were playing for keeps. They didn’t want him alive for questioning, they wanted the scroll back and him dead, not necessarily in that order.
Iruka knew his chances of actually making it back to Konoha were somewhere between none and zero, not with at least four nin bound and determined to make fertilizer out of him. He was already dizzy with blood-loss and his arm was the next best thing to useless. He had to get the scroll home no matter what happened to him.
Knotting his improvised bandage with his good hand and his teeth, Iruka tossed back an iron supplement and and a handful of chakra boosters. He swallowed them all grimly, knowing he might do himself irreparable damage by taking so many at once, but he needed all the chakra he could afford to do this. For the first time he truly regretted that he didn’t have enough chakra to support a summons of his own, but he did have contingencies.
As a boy, Iruka had worked at the mews for the Hokage’s messenger hawks, a punishment Sandaime had given him when a prank gone awry had hurt someone. The mews were hard and smelly work, but the messenger harks were proud, smart creatures and respected the clever “hatchling” who did not fear sharp talons and slashing beaks. The queens, larger and smarter than the tiercels, had been especially pleased by the smart boy who had proven himself not afraid to help an injured flockmate, even when his arm was slashed down to the bone by the hysterical, delirious fledgling queen. That queen, now a matriarch of the flock, had shown Iruka how to make a scroll that would summon her to wherever he was. It required a great deal of his chakra, but it had saved his life on several occasions.
It might not save him this time, but it would get the scroll safely home.
Lining the interior of the hollow bole with outward facing explosive tags, Iruka dripped blood from his wound on the tiny scroll he wore on a chain around his neck and shoved chakra into it, knowing the release would give away his position.
Rai appeared in front of him with mantled wings and a hiss. She was wearing her scroll harness, indicating she had been out of the mews for duty, but was a blessing in this case. He could slip the scroll into her harness and that would leave her talons free to defend herself if need be. He fastened the scroll into the carrier under the watch of her bright gold eyes. “Take this home,” he bade her, already feeling the chakra signatures of his pursuers closing in. “Fly like the lightning.”
Rai reached out with her beak and delicately tugged a loose lock of his hair. “I will; fly safely for home, fledgling, and show them you have talons of your own.”
Iruka managed a feeble smile for her. “No promises, but I’ll cost them dearly.”
She hissed and drove upwards toward the sun.
Iruka grinned grimly and clenched a kunai in his teeth and his good hand.
He thought briefly that at least he wouldn’t be leaving anyone but Naruto to grieve for him.
The world exploded with the flash of exploding tags and the sound of splintering wood.
~~~~~~~~~~
He dreamed of flying back to Konoha on Rai’s wings, soaring free above the clouds. If this was death, Iruka reasoned, it wasn’t so bad. He no longer hurt, and the soul deep ache that he’d been suffering for months mattered little. Kakashi wouldn’t mourn him. He still had Gai, after all.
Iruka folded his wings and plunged into the welcoming billows of clouds, white all around him.
He dreamt of the hospital, and saw Naruto struggling with Shizune and a male medic-nin. The boy was hysterical, tears streaking his whisker-marked cheeks. “No!” he wailed. “I’m not losing him too!”
Iruka ached for him and wished he’d had time to bid the teen he thought of as his brother goodbye.
The ache intensified and made the hospital shatter around him. And there was only darkness, filled with the whispering shadows of regrets.
After a timeless interval, the whispers grew stronger, dragging him from the dark and back into the world of pain. He hung suspended in a cloud of agony and a haze of drugs. He knew then that they had not allowed him to die, and wished bitterly that they had. He was tired of the chaos and uncertainty his life had become.
The whispering grew stronger and finally pierced the haze of pain. “I can’t do this!” He knew that voice and it awakened the dull anguish that he’d wanted to escape.
“You must.” That voice too, was familiar, and Iruka wondered sourly if Gai had forced Kakashi to come to his bedside. He’d rather that the obnoxiously green man had left him to die in peace, without forcing him to suffer more.
“No.” It struck Iruka dimly that he’d never heard that tone from Kakashi before. The man had always been cool and unflappable, or stern and demanding, but never this frightened.
“Kakashi, look at me,” Gai’s voice was still loud, but now it bore a note of demand Iruka had never heard from him. It made him want to open his own eyes, despite the fact that he could not feel his body for the pain. “You cannot continue like this. You do not deserve it, and neither does he.”
Kakashi laughed, a sharp-edged bitter sound. “You’re right, he doesn’t,” he snarled. “But me? Oh, this I deserve. This and more.”
The shark crack of flesh against flesh startled Iruka and he knew if he’d been able, he’d have jumped.
“The fuck-?” Kakashi growled like an angry wolf.
“I will not allow you to say such things. You have paid for your crimes in flesh and blood, you do not need to punish yourself more.” Gai said firmly.
Kakashi punishing himself? Iruka would have laughed if he could. Kakashi had everything. He had Gai for support and love, Iruka for sex and was one of the most respected and feared nin in all the shinobi nations.
Kakashi’s voice was anguished. “I can’t. I can’t give him what he wants, and I can’t be what he needs me to be.”
Gai’s voice softened. “You’re not a fool, Kakashi. You already are what he wants you to be. And if you cannot give him what he needs, why are you here, at his bedside?”
“You’re the one who dragged me here,” Kakashi barked, bitter and scathing.
“Two days ago. You could have left at any time.” Gai’s voice was surprisingly reasonable and soothing.
Iruka thought fuzzily he could listen to it for hours. If Gai would speak like this all the time, and wouldn’t make those overblown declarations and speeches, people might take him more seriously.
“T-two days?” Kakashi sounded stunned.
“Indeed.” Gai answered, still in that calming, reasonable tone. “It is lacking an hour or two from dawn, which will mark three days, Kakashi. The time for lies is through, my friend. Answer me this; if you profess not to care, why are you holding his hand? Why have you not left?”
Iruka’s chest hurt, a sharper, brighter pain than the dull haze of agony that held him suspended somewhere between life and death.
“I-,” Kakashi’s voice wavered.
Iruka thought crazily that Gai should put him out of his misery and at the same time wanted Kakashi to speak; to say something to end the suspense.
“Iruka-” Kakashi faltered. “He’s--”
“No more lies. No more hiding the truth. There is still room in your heart for him, and he is already there.” Gai continued, implacable as a mountain.
“He is...” Kakashi’s reply was barely a whisper, but it rang through Iruka with all the force of a tidal wave, sweeping away the fog of drugs and pain. “I don’t know h-how it happened, but suddenly he was there in a place where I didn’t think anyone else could be.”
Iruka finally was able to drag his eyes open. The room was dimly lit by a single lamp and in the light of it, Kakashi was a hunched ball of darkness, topped with a shock of silver-white hair. He was seated beside the bed, but turned away from Iruka, his attention on Gai’s looming form.
Gai’s bright eyes darted to Iruka’s face and he grinned blindingly. “Then perhaps you should admit it to him, now that he has rejoined the glorious land of the living.”
Kakashi whirled so fast, he nearly spilled himself out of the chair. “Iruka?”
Iruka licked his lips and tried to force words out of a throat and mouth both dry and numb. “-heard you,” he whispered painfully.
Kakashi sagged, holding Iruka’s bandaged hand up to his cheek. “I’m an idiot,” he admitted in a low, mocking tone.
“...yes,” Iruka breathed, feeling a lightness in his chest that felt as if it might lift him right out of his pained body. “Our idiot. Gai’s and mine.”
Gai leaned over, resting a hand on Kakashi’s shoulder and fixed that brilliant smile on Iruka. “Indeed. Rest now, Iruka-sensei. When you are well, we will discuss things. I think this is the beginning of something wonderful.”
Iruka managed a smile of his own. “Think... you’re right.” Pleased, he let his eyes closed.