Drabbles.
Drabbles that I've written over the past few months, mostly in G-Chat. 'cause drelfina's always about, and willing to listen to my babble.
Anyways, read at your own risk. Some are obviously better than others, and most of them are crack at best, and crack at worst.
Oh, yeah. Beware pairings that make people cringe.
Vague "if you squint and look side-ways" Jiraiya/Naruto. Mostly Jiraiya-gen. For nezumiko
Coins
Jiraiya hated making decisions. He hated the feeling of the world resting on his shoulders; he hated the pain in his gut when things went wrong, because he said 'yes' or 'no.' He hated success, loathed failure, and feared responsibility. Every time someone said 'why,' every time someone frowned at him, Jiraiya wanted to scream, or yell, or swear, or-- Or do something, but he could never decide what, because he hated those decisions, too.
Team Sandaime had never be one to take fate lightly. Tsunade had her games of chance, throwing everything in on a whim's chance, leaving it to fate. Orochimaru had his dreams, biting back at fate with sharp words and cruel actions and quick, little deaths that lead to a longer, slower life. Jiraiya had his coins. And his shoes. And the road.
It was easy, to turn his back on Konoha, because it was fate. It was simple, to say he was following Tsunade, who was following Orochimaru, who was following fate. It was easy to flip a coin, to roll a pair of dice, to deal out cards. It was easiest to leave everything to fate, because if all the blame was to fall upon fate's shoulders, then Jiraiya's shoulders were free to carry nothing at all.
So when Naruto showed up, in his stupid jutsu with his child-face and woman-body, it was easy for Jiraiya to flip a coin.
Tails.
A Kakashi/Iruka ficlet I wrote for fuyu_no_fuhei months ago.
Blue
Iruka didn't really like the color blue. He didn't hate it, but it wasn't very high on his list of "tolerable colors." He preferred red and orange and yellow, bright colors that usually meant painfully tight hugs and almost-but-not-quite obnoxious cries for ramen.
Blue, on the other hand, meant boys who ran away. Blue was like grey, and black, and every other color that meant teammates who betrayed their villages, and their families, and their teammates. Blue meant that Iruka had failed, somehow, way back when he was teaching all his students the meaning of loyalty.
Kakashi seemed to be the opposite. Everything in his apartment, from his rugs to his pictures to his shuriken-patterned quilt, was shades of blue. The only bright things there were the Icha Icha novels, stacked up in the windowsill, and the yellow of Naruto's hair, in the picture frame next to the window.
Iruka tugged at the quilt, made it lie flat, and stretched out his legs a little more.
"It's not that I'm lonely," he said, and it was true, somewhere inside. "Just thought that you might have a little more free time."
Kakashi made a humming sound, nodding his head as he took down the teacups from a cupboard.
"I have more free time, too, I guess," Iruka continued, looking around the apartment a little more. It seemed a little smaller than his, but it seemed emptier, too.
"Is the Academy opening again?" Kakashi asked, all politeness, and Iruka took the teacup Kakashi held out.
"A few months, I guess." The tea was hot, scalded Iruka's tongue, and he ran his teeth over the burn.
"Of course," Kakashi murmured, and Iruka noticed his mask was blue, tugged down below Kakashi's chin.
The tea cooled down, over time, and the room grew smaller, over time. Kakashi sat at the head of the bed, leaning against the wall, and Iruka took up the foot of the bed, cross-legged, empty teacup inbetween his hands.
They didn't say much, because there really wasn't much to say. There wasn't anyone to talk about, anymore, because there weren't any more students. The room got a little darker, and Iruka tilted his teacup to the side, looking at the traces of dark stains inside.
"Sake?" Kakashi finally asked as he got up, plucking the teacup from Iruka's hands. The room's light was bright when the switch was flipped, white and a little too artificial.
The sake-cups were paper-thin, porcelain old enough to be as delicate as dry leaves or butterfly wings or something else Iruka couldn't think of, because he couldn't quite bring himself to be poetic. The sake-cups were blue, too, dark on the inside, light on the outside.
It didn't take long to get drunk, but when two men are drinking, and not talking, it doesn't take long to do anything. Kakashi leaned over once, grabbing Iruka's chin, and Iruka leaned forward on one of his hands, sake-cup held carefully between his fingers. The kiss wasn't much of anything, but there wasn't anyone left to have anything for. Somehow, along the way, Iruka had messed up, and Kakashi had messed up after him, and now they were the only ones left, trying to make something out of all the broken pieces the children had left behind.
Kakashi sat back after a few moments, tilting the jar to pour more sake, and Iruka watched him.
"More?" Kakashi asked. Iruka looked at his cup, thin and blue, and held out his hand over the side of the bed.
The cup shattered magnificently, tinking sounds of porcelain scattering across wood floorboards, skittering under the dark bed.
Kakashi didn't ask, didn't say a word, just handed his own sake cup to Iruka. Iruka threw it, hard as he could, at the wall, watching sake spill and porcelain break and pieces of blue rain down, like the sky was breaking and falling down.
"I hate," Iruka said, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes until bright spots of yellow and red and orange appeared, "the color blue."
The rest of these were written due to prompts from drelfina
Not so vague Kakashi/Sasuke.
Taste of Betrayal
Kakashi didn't like the taste of betrayal.
It tasted like sweat, blood, fear-- It tasted like Sasuke's skin, hot beneath Kakashi's hands, Kakashi's mouth.
Kakashi didn't like a lot of things about Sasuke. He didn't like the way Sasuke moved, didn't like the way Sasuke breathed, the way Sasuke spoke or ate or slept. He didn't like the look in Sasuke's eyes, and maybe that's what he hated most about Sasuke. He hated looking at Sasuke, and seeing Obito's eyes, red and black and swirling in dizzying circles.
Obito has never been a traitor, though. Obito had always been too young, too loyal, too stupid. Obito had lived for his team, and died for his team, and Kakashi hated looking at Sasuke and seeing Obito's eyes staring back at him, bitter and angry and empty. Sasuke wasn't a thing like Obito, and Kakashi hated it, hated the way he kept pulling and tugging and looking, biting and licking and kissing and fucking, always looking for Obito.
Kakashi hated a lot of things. He hated Sasuke, he hated traitors--
He hated Obito.
Confusing Orochimaru/Kisame, Kisame/Itachi, and Orochimaru/Kisame/Itachi.
Partners
Kisame's first partner in the Akatsuki had been Orochimaru. It'd started like so:
Kisame had been twenty years old, just a few months from twenty-one, and he'd wandered, more or less, into the Akatsuki. The world was large, and the world was empty, and the world was almost a lonely thing, and the campfires of the Akatsuki had been bright. Even a fire that burns is warm, and warmth was something that Kisame had missed for a long time, since he was a child in his village, since he was a boy who hung onto his mother's hand and clung to his father's pantleg.
The Akatsuki had been amused when Kisame had walked into their arms, and they'd laughed about it that night, chuckles that sounded more like the snap of firewood and the rasp of snake's breath than the laughter of men, old and world-weary.
"We're killing your kind," Orochimaru had said, his breath hissing near Kisame's ear.
"You can't kill me," Kisame said, full of young-man arrogance and old-man wisdom.
Orochimaru had looked at him thoughtfully, yellow eyes blinking slowly, and Kisame had stretched his hands out over the fire, feeling his skin tighten from the heat.
"I want him," Orochimaru finally said, and the eyes around the fire, all watching Kisame, laughed.
It hurt to be burned, but sometimes it was better than being cold.
x
Old men died, because that is what old men did. They died, one by one, and new men, younger men, slid into the Akatsuki's circle, one by one. Kisame watched them come, one by one, as he sat by Orochimaru's side, listening to Orochimaru plot and scheme and dream about eternal life.
Kisame would slide down in his seat, eyes half-closed, breathing by half-steps, half-in, half-out, wondering what would happen if he just stopped , and Orochimaru would twine his pale fingers through Kisame's blue hair.
"Like you," Orochimaru would murmur, slow and silky voice low, beneath the high-pitched laughter from the circle. "To be like you--"
Sometimes Kisame would let his head roll back on his neck, eyes catching the sight of Orochimaru from the side, just a flash of pale skin and dark hair and yellow eyes, and Kisame would swallow thick air, would feel his throat tighten and clog and choke, would feel his gills tighten, then open wide, body trying to take in oxygen.
He'd watch Orochimaru's eyes, yellow, and he'd smile at Orochimaru's jealousy. He'd choke, and he'd laugh, and he'd live, because his body was too-big, too-strong, too-full of chakra and life and hate to ever give up and do something as simple and easy as dying.
x
Uchiha Itach was fourteen when he joined the Akatsuki. Kisame watched Itachi from the distance of being twenty-six, and Kisame wondered when he'd grown so old and when children had grown so young.
"He's young," Kisame said with half a thought, leaning against Orochimaru's chair. When he touched Itachi that night, a hand pushing on Itachi's shoulder to move the boy out of his way, he saw Orochimaru's eyes, half-closed, lazy and jealous and yellow, watching them both, and Kisame felt like he'd been burned when his fingers slipped past Itachi's neck.
Orochimaru watched Itachi, and Itachi watched Orochimaru, and Kisame touched them both, a slip of a hand and scratch of fingernails. He murmured nonsensical words, laughed in Orochimaru's ear, and hummed in Itachi's. He sat by Orochimaru's feet, leaning against Orochimaru's leg as Orochimaru's fingers slipped through his hair, and at night he'd lie next to Itachi, staring up into the black as he told the boy stories with morals that Itachi never understood.
"He's like you," Orochimaru whispered once, and the tip of his tongue touched Kisame's neck. Kisame swallowed thin air, let his eyes slide shut and head roll back. "He's just like you."
"A matched set," Orochimaru said bitterly, and the eyes around the circle laughed louder. "Two little boys playing, don't even understand that we kill their kind."
"Do you understand," Orochimaru asked, and his breath was warm on the back of Kisame's neck. "We kill little boys like you. Little boys would don't know what they have, don't realize that we kill them for what they've got."
"Do you understand?" Itachi asked, and his voice was small in the dark, his eyes a flicker of red from across the fire. "He'll kill you, because you're what he wants to be."
"He can't kill me," Kisame said, and he stretched his hands over the fire, felt the heat burn and tighten his skin until it split, blood dripping slowly into the fire.
The chuckles around the fire were soft, breathy rasps in Kisame's ear, and Itachi's smile from across the fire was sharp and white.
"That," Itachi said, "is why he'll kill you someday."
"And you?" Kisame once asked, leaning against Orochimaru's old chair, and Itachi slipped his small fingers through Kisame's hair.
"He can't kill me," Itachi murmured into Kisame's ear, hair brushing against Kisame's neck.
"A matched set," Orochimaru said once, bitterly, and his sword was stained red. Kisame swallowed hot blood, felt it stick in his throat, choking him, and Orochimaru stared at him with yellow eyes.
"A matched set," Orochimaru said once, "but you were mine first."
Strange, maybe-unfinished vague Iruka/Hayate of anger. And teen drama. Woot.
Boarding House Games
Sometimes, late at night, Iruka wouldn't be able to sleep. His ceiling would look too far away, then too close. His blankets would be too heavy, but his sheets were too light, and there wasn't enough air if the window was closed, and there was too much noise when the window was open.
Sometimes, late at night, Iruka would roll over onto his stomach, then his back, then his side, and his other side. The sheets would feel to smooth against his skin, and sometimes he'd lie his fingers, cold, against his stomach, hot. He'd breathe in, deep, until his lungs felt like they'd burst, and then he'd let out all of the air, until his lungs felt like they'd collapse.
He hated not being able to sleep, to be stuck on the spot where he was close, so close , but not close enough. He hated the feeling of his eyelids, dry and scratchy, and the feeling of his lungs, heavy and full. He hated the feeling of his entire body, a cumbersome thing that locked him down, tied him to Konoha.
Sometimes, when the night felt so very long, but not long enough, he'd get up and walk around his room. He'd throw things, sometimes, or he'd punch the wall as hard as he could, because the taste of the blood on his knuckles, a bitter tang of salt when he licked it, made him feel a little better.
Sometimes he'd leave his room, and he'd walk down the hallway, past all the other doorways, until he reached Hayate's doorway.
Hayate never slept. Hayate's light was always on, dim beneath the doorframe, and his door was always unlocked. The orphanage mother always complained about Hayate's sleeping habits, or lack thereof, but after a while, she made a little less noise, because if Hayate wasn't making trouble, then there wasn't enough time for Hayate.
There wasn't enough time for Iruka, either.
There was a sheet tacked around the light on the ceiling of Hayate's room. It was pale blue, and made the room a dim, swimming color. Iruka sank to the floor, just inside Hayate's room, and he felt like he was drowning. When he breathed, deep, and bit his lip, hard, he felt tears, hot, spring to his eyes.
"What is it?" Hayate asked, not looking up from the maps spread out over the floor.
"Couldn't sleep," Iruka said, and he pushed his heels over the floor, stretching out his legs until his feet were scrunching up Hayate's maps. "Amuse me."
Hayate tugged the maps away from Iruka's feet, folding them with a look of exasperation. "Just go to bed, Iruka."
"Can't," Iruka snapped back. "Can't fall asleep, so amuse me."
The room wasn't nearly big enough, but none of the rooms were big enough. The orphanage told them to be grateful for any room at all, so when Iruka stumbled away from Hayate's swipe, crashing into the bed, he told himself he was grateful.
He laughed, too.
"You're fucked," Hayate said, exasperation and pity combined. "You're all kinds of fucked up."
"Yeah?" Iruka shot back, and he knotted the blankets inbetween his fingers, clutching to the wool and cotton. "At least I sleep at night."
"I'm busy ," Hayate said irritably. "I don't have time, I have missions--"
"We can all hear you screaming," Iruka interrupted, voice smooth and lungs screaming at him to breathe. He took a breath, and held it, and felt his body grow heavier.
"We can all hear you, too, Iruka."
The pillow didn't make much of a sound when it hit the wall next to Hayate's head, but the cup shattered, glass tinking against the wall, muffling as it bounced across the floor. Hayate cursed, loud, and Iruka threw the pillbottle next, aiming for the blood that ran thready in the water splashed over Hayate's cheek.
"Shit! Bastard!" Hayate caught the pillbottle, surging to his feet. "Do you want to wake up Mum?"
"She's not my mother!" Iruka snapped. He wanted to scream, punch something until it broke, make Hayate bleed as much on the outside as Iruka felt like he was bleeding on the inside.
"I know that," Hayate said, and his face was pale. "We all know that. She's not any of our mothers, we know that, but why do you have to fuck everything up--"
Iruka didn't aim for Hayate this time. Instead, he hurled the clock at the window, watching the window break, jagged edges falling from the frame. The pillbottle rolled on the floor, and Hayate punched Iruka, bent over Iruka on the bed.
"I hate you," Hayate screamed, and Iruka could taste blood in his mouth. "I hate you! I hate you!"
Iruka grabbed Hayate's shirt, clenched the fabric, and tried to hold on. "I'm sorry--"
The blood was thick in his throat, trickling down into his lungs and his stomach, wet on his face like tears he couldn't cry, because there was never enough time in Konoha for Iruka.
A strange what-if fic, involving Naruto and Iruka.
A Masterpiece
It was a miscalculation, and he was sure that he should've seen it long before it occurred. Of course, "long before" wasn't much more than a turn-of-phrase, because there was little more than an hour or two between the initial idea and the finished result.
The finished result was a screaming baby and a bleeding teenager and himself, gasping for breath while his chakra bled out of his body.
It wasn't quite what he'd been aiming for, but he'd take what he could get. This, he decided, even with its flaws, cracked and unpolished and somehow a little bit ugly, would be his masterpiece.
x
Naruto grew up in the Hokage's house. He didn't know much about who he was; all he knew was that he was the Yondaime's son. The dead Yondaime's son.
So Naruto grew up, spoiled and tired and always fighting for someone to see him for him, rather than some dead man whose face was carved on the monument (even if that dead face was his father's).
Naruto had never known the Yondaime. As such, he didn't see why he should place his allegiance there. There were no kinly feelings, no family yearnings. No love, lost or found, missing or misplaced. After all, it's impossible to misplace something that never existed in the first place.
Sometimes, when Naruto was very quiet, and sitting very still in the hallway, just outside the Hokage's office doors, he could hear people complain about a man in the village. They never named the man, though, just called the man "him" or "it" or "fucker." It'd taken Naruto a few years to realize that it was always the same person people complained about.
Naruto wondered if "his" father was just as "misplaced" as his own. Or not misplaced, however the case may be.
x
It was when Naruto was eleven that he ran into Umino Iruka. Naruto had nicked a scroll of the Hokage's after a particularly heated fight about how it wasn't exactly respectful to paint crude words and signs on a father's carven image. Naruto snuck out of the village, headed for the Forest of Death, and it was on his way there that he ran into Umino.
Umino was tall, a little stocky, and very tired looking. Naruto paused on his way, hanging on a tree branch, and the Umino-man's shoulder's tensed.
"If you want to kick me," the Umino-man's voice said, "you'll have to do better than that. I know you're there." His voice sounded as tired as his face looked, and Naruto wondered if maybe his father was just as heavy on the shoulders as Naruto's was.
"Ne, ne," Naruto said, dropping from the tree, propping the scroll against the overgrown roots, "who're you?"
The first time Naruto met Umino Iruka, the village was in an uproar over a missing scroll. Naruto was found, and Umino, too, and the scroll was found inbetween them. Umino was blamed, and Naruto was coddled, and Naruto never saw Umino again.
He heard, a few years later, that Umino had finally turned traitor, though that was to be expected. Sometimes Naruto heard rumors about Umino, about how he had joined a band of missing-nin, how he was considered unstoppable, how he could level mountainsides and destroy entire cities, and Naruto wondered.
Naruto wondered if maybe Umino had finally lost the weight of his father (and his father).
And Naruto wondered why he felt so jealous.
It wasn't a nice feeling.
lolz, omg, vague Gai/Iruka and vaguer Sandaime/Iruka.
Green, Yellow, Red
There are three highlighters on the mission desk. Green, yellow, and red. Late at night, when the mission room is closed, the last person on duty uses all three highlighters, highlighting the tops of mission reports. The reports are then separated, stacked, organized and set into folders, then left on the Hokage's desk for perusal come morning.
More often than not, Iruka runs the late shift. It doesn't interfere with school hours, and it's usually the quietest shift, so he can use his time to grade scrolls and work out lesson plans. The only time he really needs to work, really, is after the room closes and he has to take out the highlighters, popping off caps and drawing bright greenyellowred marks across the pages.
It's on his shift that Gai's report comes in. He doesn't even catch the name for the first moment. The red highlighter is already skimming across the page, highlighting name, sex, age, rank, number, and date of death.
It's when he's double checking that everything is highlighted that the name clicks in his head. That's about the same time he bites clean through his lip.
When Sandaime looks over the reports in the morning, he sees Maito Gai's name highlighted in red. There are blooddrops below it, dried and a little flakey, and Sandaime doesn't have to guess who was working the shift last night.
He finds Iruka on the roof of the Academy, cigarette held loosely between his fingers. Sandaime watches him for a moment, and Iruka doesn't quite watch him back, and when Sandaime finally plucks the cigarette from Iruka's fingers Iruka doesn't do much more than look away.
"How're you doing?" Sandaime asks, because this is his role in the village. They're all his children, and he has to care about them, and so he has to ask these inane questions that he already knows the answer to.
"Fine," Iruka lies glibly, and he's already pulling another cigarette out.
"Of course," Sandaime murmurs, folding his hands behind his back. He stands there for a long time, far longer than he expected, and when Iruka finally breaks, falling to the roof with a breathless sigh, eyes clenched shut, cigarette crumpled, Sandaim crouches next to him, putting his hand gently on Iruka's shoulders.
It's too easy by half, to murmur something nice and nonsensical, empty of any meaning. It's just as easy to stop Iruka's shaking, to calm him down, send him home, sans carton of cigarettes.
Sandaime has grown talented at being a father. It's not quite a skill he wants.
A crazy Ebisu and Genma gen-fic.
Snow at Five
Ebisu never liked visiting Genma. Mostly it was because he could always hear people screaming, crying and shouting and screaming, at the top of their lungs, until their throats were raw and bloody. Ebisu didn't like screaming. But when Ebisu did visit Genma, he always visiting at precisely four in the afternoon. That, after all, was the hour when Genma was best.
Genma usually didn't scream at four.
He didn't cry, either, or rock back and forth, or lie under the blankets and whisper "can't find me, can't see me, can't find me, can't see me."
Usually, at four in the afternoon, Genma would smile, or at least blink, and sometimes he'd be by the window, looking out at the trees.
Today he was sitting on his bed, crosslegged, looking down at a few crumpled papers. There were colors on the papers, mottled and bleeding together, redorangeyellowbluegreenpurple makes brown.
Ebisu stood just inside the doorway for a few minutes, and wondered if maybe today he could get away with just saying hello and goodbye.
When Genma looked up he smiled, and Ebisu resigned himself to an afternoon spent on glass and eggshells.
"Here," Genma said, holding out one of the papers. Ebisu took it gingerly, moving to sit on the very edge of the bed.
"What is it, Genma-kun?"
Genma moved closer, his breath hot on Ebisu's neck, and Ebisu pushed down the urge to run away.
"It's the trees," Genma said, and his fingers rested on the piece of paper, on the muddled colors.
"It's nice," Ebisu said half-heartedly, straightening one of the corners of the paper. He saw Genma frown out of the corner of his eye, and hurriedly bent the corner again. Genma smiled.
It was quiet for a few minutes, then not so quiet, as Genma looked at the other pieces of paper, folding them and unfolding them, tearing them up, piling them together, murmuring under his breath. Ebisu watched him, still holding the paper Genma had given him.
At five o'clock, and precisely five o'clock, because five o'clock was when the nurse came by with pills and needles and a sleepy-bye smile, Ebisu stood up, a half-hearted half-lopsided smile on his face.
"I've got to go, Genma-kun," he said, and Genma blinked, a confused look on his face.
"Where...?"
"Home." Ebisu fingered the picture in his hands, paper almost soft between his fingers. "I'll come see you again."
"When?" Genma asked, little scraps of white paper sticking to his fingers. Ebisu reached out, brushing the pieces of paper off, and Genma stared at their hands.
"Tomorrow."
Genma nodded, still staring at their hands, and Ebisu felt a shudder. "What is it?" he asked, pulling his hand away slowly.
"Snow," Genma said, and he picked up a handful of the scraps of paper, blowing them towards Ebisu with a puff of breath. Ebisu tilted his head back, watched the pieces of snowflakes whirl around him, and wondered how long it'd be before he'd be here, too, making snowflakes out of picture-trees.
Random Iruka-angst, in another "what if?" Featuring Iruka with side-glimpses of Naruto and Raidou.
Die Trying
It was easy, Iruka learned, to die trying.
It wasn't that he didn't try. It was that he tried too hard, and in the end, trying was something that he died to do.
He tried to be a good man. Tried to be a good teacher, tried to pound drills and lessons into his students' heads.
He tried to be something of a father to Naruto, because God knew Naruto wouldn't ever find anyone willing to try anything. So Iruka tried, because that's what Iruka did.
He tried to be a friend, tried to be a confidante. He tried this, and he tried that, and in the end, he tried his life away.
When Konoha stabbed him in the back, whispered sweet lies of danger and betrayal and monsters that were too dangerous to be trusted, Iruka tried to stab them back.
To be a traitor wasn't something Iruka had ever expected to do.
He'd never expected to crouch over Raidou's body, panting for breath, fingers slipping bloody-warm over Raidou's throat, rifling through Raidou's pockets, burning Raidou's body.
He didn't expect a lot of things. He didn't expect to find himself, at age 29 and a half, trying to save the world.
The world, though, never did want saving. The world was full of men and women who were too tired to care anymore, too tired to do much more than shuffle through life, saying bitter words that cut and stung.
So Iruka tried to run away.
Iruka tried to save the world, because Iruka hadn't been able to save Naruto.
Iruka tried, and Iruka cried, and Iruka prayed and screamed and bled and at the end, trying to breathe for a few more seconds, to make his heart beat a few times, Iruka died.
It was easy, Iruka learned, to die trying.
Iruka-torture, 'cause it's, uh...well, I hate to say fun, but~
Hell on Earth
The cloth was soft beneath his fingers, worn into a smooth satiny-feeling that felt strange. He was used to coarser things, to flak vests and long sleeved shirts of thick, rough material. He was used to a great many different things. He was also, he learned, used to peace. Or rather, he was used to the feeling of not being in pain. He was used to Konoha, of the sanctuary where it was an unspoken rule to bury hurt and pain at the doorstep. He was used to the Academy, to the heart of Konoha itself. He was used to children's scraped knees and scabbed hands; he wasn't used to his own. So his knees screamed in pain. The stones were cold, and hard, and he could feel where his skin was wearing away, bleeding onto the floor.
His fingers tightened around the smooth, soft cloth, mostly worn away, and he wondered how long, exactly, he'd been here, for the cloth to become this thin. Or maybe it wasn't so much as how long he'd been here, or how long in his life he hadn't been here. He was sure that he'd been here, kneeling in the dark, throat closed off, breaths ragged and pained, for longer than he'd ever been in Konoha. Iruka missed Konoha.
He missed everything that there'd been, that wasn't in this room. Missed the grass, the sand, the dirt that got caught beneath his nails.
He missed his nails, too. He missed the days when his fingers bent correctly, the days before they were broken, then rebroken.
He missed the sunlight. Missed the wind on his skin, when he had skin, rather than the muscle on his back that bled sluggish trails, trickling down his thighs to the floor.
He missed being able to breathe.
He missed being able to think.
He missed being able to live, and he wondered if he really was living, because sometimes, when he was curled up here, stomach gnawing a hole that he couldn't feel for all the other pain, he wondered if he was in hell. Hell was an eternity. Long, long, long, long, longlonglonglonglong--
"Itachi-san," a voice said over Iruka's head, and Iruka wanted to open his eyes, but he wasn't sure he still had eyes.
"Itachi-san," the voice said, a low rumble, sounding somewhere between amused and tired, "are you sure you didn't over-do it?"
Iruka tried to breathe in, a rush of breath that moved to quickly, and he coughed, forehead pressing against the grass.
"Iruka-san," the low voice said again, closer to his head. "Iruka-san, where's the kyuubi?"
Iruka swallowed, bit his lips. Shut his mouth, clenched his fingers shut. Kisame made a wordless sound, Itachi blinked, and Iruka's hell began again.
Iruka. And his first crush. Are you sensing a pattern here?
A Crush to End All Crushes
When Iruka was seven years old, he had a crush.
It was a manly crush.
It was a beautiful crush.
It was the crush to end all crushes.
It was a crush upon Orochimaru.
Orochimaru was beautiful (prettier than even Iruka's own mother, Iruka thought), and quite a lot better than all the girls in Iruka's class.
Orochimaru was often standing around Jiraiya, or Tsunade, and they, in turn, were often standing around the Hokage.
Who was often standing by the Yellow Flash.
Who happened to stand, quite often, next to Iruka's father.
Which meant that Iruka, in all his boy-crush glory, could often stand near his idol.
It was a crush to end all crushes.
Iruka's mother thought it was kinda cute, in a slightly disturbing way.
One day, in a day that would live in infamy, Iruka decided to give his crush a gift.
Now, he couldn't quite decide what to do.
He didn't have much pocket money, and he wasn't sure Orochimaru-sama would care for Iruka's pieces of string and sealing wax quite as much as Iruka did.
So Iruka did the next best thing (which happened to be a thing he'd often seen the older boys do at Academy).
He plucked a flower.
And gave it.
To Orochimaru.
Jiraiya laughed. Tsunade giggled. The Hokage choked, the Yellow Flash snickered, and Iruka's father felt the pressing need to chuckle.
Orochimaru blinked at the flower, then blinked at the peculiar little boy standing in front of him.
He blinked at the flower again, then touched his lips thoughtfully.
"Iruka-kun," he said, and Iruka suppressed a little shiver of crush-ness, "would you care to join me...for lunch?"
The lunch, Iruka decided then, was the best ever.
After all, who ever knew that squid tentacles were so good?
Iruka centric. Rape, torture. Graphic. Not pretty.
not/hero
Iruka was only a chuunin. He knew this, understood it, and he wasn't under any delusions of grandeur. He could hold his own in a fight. He could complete A-class missions.
He couldn't, though, survive the Akatsuki.
He'd never seen the need to downplay his affections for Naruto. He'd never seen Naruto, all of Naruto, from the bright blond hair to the brighter blue eyes, as a threat. He'd never thought of a lot of things, though.
And right now, when his throat is raw, and his mouth is bloody, and he'd bite his tongue, except he's sure that would just make things worse, he can't think of anything. At least, he can't think of anything other than the way he's in so much fucking pain, and he wants to die, except he's not sure he knows how to die anymore, because to know how to die, you have to know how live, and Iruka doesn't want to live. So by default, he doesn't want to die, either.
So he's here, digging his fingernails into the cloak in front of him, and the cock in his mouth hits the back of his throat again. He gags, and the fingers twisted around his hair yank all the harder. He can feel blood, or something warm, in between his thighs, and he makes him tell himself it's blood, because the thought that it's something else, that it's someone's come, because someone was fucking him, makes him want to throw up all the more. He can't throw up though, gag all that he does. He can't do anything, and he's so fucking helpless, and he may be a chuunin, but he's never been this helpless before, and god, he wants to die, but he didn't know he could ever want to die like this.
And he's scared.
He's scared.
He's never been scared like this. So pathetic and weak and so fucking whipped, because he was never the strongest, and he was never the smartest. He didn't think, and he befriended Naruto, and now he's getting raped-- fucked-- torn apart at the seams, because someone has more than a passing interest in a little boy with blond hair and blue eyes.
The cock in his mouth is yanked out, and then there's come splashing on his face, wet and hot and a little sticky, over his mouth and cheeks and nose and eyes. Hands in his hair pull harder, yanking his head to the side, and his teeth cut his lip. This is better, he thinks, than them coming in his mouth, because at least this time he's not choking.
"Sensei," a voice says, and Iruka doesn't flinch. He's learned, over the past few hours, that there's not much to flinch at anymore. "Sensei, where's the binjuu?"
There's heat between Iruka's legs, and more liquid, and then another cock's pushing into him, forced inside, and Iruka hates himself for thinking that this time it doesn't hurt quite so much, because this time, there's a little more blood, and this time, it's a little more slick. This time, Iruka thinks, this time, maybe he'll be lucky, and maybe he'll die. The voice is saying something, slow and smooth words, like a salve, except the words just burn more, because Iruka has never felt so ashamed and scared and humiliated in all his life. And this time, when someone's shoving their cock down his throat, and another person's shoving their cock up his ass, and he's covered in shit and piss, blood and dirt and vomit, Iruka thinks that maybe, just maybe, he never loved Naruto enough for all of this.
So this time, after someone's come down his throat, and Iruka's coughing and choking and gagging and vomiting, he tells them exactly where Naruto is.
Iruka's never been more than a chuunin, and Iruka has never had delusions of grandeur. After all, Iruka's never been a hero.
Umm, more Iruka-torture. 'cause drelfina asked. Are you sensing a trend?
Touching Games
Iruka never touched Kakashi much. At first Kakashi didn't notice it; after a while, though, he began to notice all the ways Iruka shied out of touching. A hand on the shoulder had Iruka glancing at Kakashi, then moving slightly out of range. Friendly punches to the shoulder got the same reaction, only quicker. Kisses were nearly non-existent, and sex was unheard of. Kakashi watched Iruka hug Naruto once, catching the kid when Naruto launched himself at Iruka. Iruka laughed, rubbed Naruto's head, and slipped far enough away that Naruto's hand was barely touching Iruka's arm. Kakashi watched, and Kakashi wondered, and that night, when Kakashi was sitting in Iruka's apartment, sake set between him and Iruka, Kakashi asked.
"Why not?" he asked, curious and a little put out. Iruka looked at him, a long glance, and then picked up the sake bottle, wrapping his fingers around it a little too tight.
"When you're little," Iruka said, "an adult is very big."
"When you're little," Iruka said, "you can't fight off an adult."
"When you're little," Iruka said, "no one hears you screaming."
A continuation of the Kissing Game, more or less.
End in the Middle at the Beginning
Iruka fucked Kakashi once.
It involved sweat, blood, tears. Involved swearing and cussing and fighting, nails and teeth, fists. It involved a lot of things, really. Involved Kakashi getting so fucked up in the head that he ran to Iruka. Involved Iruka getting so fucked up in the head, he tried to run away.
It ended in Kakashi screaming at Iruka, and Iruka closing his eyes, and Kakashi throwing his coffee mug, and Iruka walking out the door. Except the end never ended like that. The end always ended with Iruka fucking Genma, too, and Genma letting him do it, letting Iruka come in and go out, letting Iruka crawl into his bed, then slink of his room.
The end had Raidou, too. The end had Raidou snapping at Genma and swearing at Iruka and snarling at Kakashi, and it had Kakashi picking up the pieces of the broken mug, one by one, nicking his fingers and thumbs.
The end was a lot like the beginning, with Kakashi running after Iruka and Iruka running away, with Genma watching it all, and Raidou closing his eyes.
That was the middle, too, with Iruka kissing Genma in the middle of the street late at night, pavement yellow beneath the streetlights.
With Kakashi standing to the side, hands shoved into his pockets.
With Raidou behind Kakashi, eyes closed, because he was tired of seeing all of this, over and over and over again, like a record that kept skipping into repeats.
Kakashi said it was his salvation. Genma said he was the salvation. Raidou said there was no salvation, never had been.
Iruka said it was all just a game.
Woosh. Wow. Uh, that took a while, but at least my G-Chat is now more or less empty of drabbles.
Anyways, uh, I'm working on the Christmas fics, however slowly.
Also, Happy New Year!
Anyways, read at your own risk. Some are obviously better than others, and most of them are crack at best, and crack at worst.
Oh, yeah. Beware pairings that make people cringe.
Vague "if you squint and look side-ways" Jiraiya/Naruto. Mostly Jiraiya-gen. For nezumiko
Coins
Jiraiya hated making decisions. He hated the feeling of the world resting on his shoulders; he hated the pain in his gut when things went wrong, because he said 'yes' or 'no.' He hated success, loathed failure, and feared responsibility. Every time someone said 'why,' every time someone frowned at him, Jiraiya wanted to scream, or yell, or swear, or-- Or do something, but he could never decide what, because he hated those decisions, too.
Team Sandaime had never be one to take fate lightly. Tsunade had her games of chance, throwing everything in on a whim's chance, leaving it to fate. Orochimaru had his dreams, biting back at fate with sharp words and cruel actions and quick, little deaths that lead to a longer, slower life. Jiraiya had his coins. And his shoes. And the road.
It was easy, to turn his back on Konoha, because it was fate. It was simple, to say he was following Tsunade, who was following Orochimaru, who was following fate. It was easy to flip a coin, to roll a pair of dice, to deal out cards. It was easiest to leave everything to fate, because if all the blame was to fall upon fate's shoulders, then Jiraiya's shoulders were free to carry nothing at all.
So when Naruto showed up, in his stupid jutsu with his child-face and woman-body, it was easy for Jiraiya to flip a coin.
Tails.
A Kakashi/Iruka ficlet I wrote for fuyu_no_fuhei months ago.
Blue
Iruka didn't really like the color blue. He didn't hate it, but it wasn't very high on his list of "tolerable colors." He preferred red and orange and yellow, bright colors that usually meant painfully tight hugs and almost-but-not-quite obnoxious cries for ramen.
Blue, on the other hand, meant boys who ran away. Blue was like grey, and black, and every other color that meant teammates who betrayed their villages, and their families, and their teammates. Blue meant that Iruka had failed, somehow, way back when he was teaching all his students the meaning of loyalty.
Kakashi seemed to be the opposite. Everything in his apartment, from his rugs to his pictures to his shuriken-patterned quilt, was shades of blue. The only bright things there were the Icha Icha novels, stacked up in the windowsill, and the yellow of Naruto's hair, in the picture frame next to the window.
Iruka tugged at the quilt, made it lie flat, and stretched out his legs a little more.
"It's not that I'm lonely," he said, and it was true, somewhere inside. "Just thought that you might have a little more free time."
Kakashi made a humming sound, nodding his head as he took down the teacups from a cupboard.
"I have more free time, too, I guess," Iruka continued, looking around the apartment a little more. It seemed a little smaller than his, but it seemed emptier, too.
"Is the Academy opening again?" Kakashi asked, all politeness, and Iruka took the teacup Kakashi held out.
"A few months, I guess." The tea was hot, scalded Iruka's tongue, and he ran his teeth over the burn.
"Of course," Kakashi murmured, and Iruka noticed his mask was blue, tugged down below Kakashi's chin.
The tea cooled down, over time, and the room grew smaller, over time. Kakashi sat at the head of the bed, leaning against the wall, and Iruka took up the foot of the bed, cross-legged, empty teacup inbetween his hands.
They didn't say much, because there really wasn't much to say. There wasn't anyone to talk about, anymore, because there weren't any more students. The room got a little darker, and Iruka tilted his teacup to the side, looking at the traces of dark stains inside.
"Sake?" Kakashi finally asked as he got up, plucking the teacup from Iruka's hands. The room's light was bright when the switch was flipped, white and a little too artificial.
The sake-cups were paper-thin, porcelain old enough to be as delicate as dry leaves or butterfly wings or something else Iruka couldn't think of, because he couldn't quite bring himself to be poetic. The sake-cups were blue, too, dark on the inside, light on the outside.
It didn't take long to get drunk, but when two men are drinking, and not talking, it doesn't take long to do anything. Kakashi leaned over once, grabbing Iruka's chin, and Iruka leaned forward on one of his hands, sake-cup held carefully between his fingers. The kiss wasn't much of anything, but there wasn't anyone left to have anything for. Somehow, along the way, Iruka had messed up, and Kakashi had messed up after him, and now they were the only ones left, trying to make something out of all the broken pieces the children had left behind.
Kakashi sat back after a few moments, tilting the jar to pour more sake, and Iruka watched him.
"More?" Kakashi asked. Iruka looked at his cup, thin and blue, and held out his hand over the side of the bed.
The cup shattered magnificently, tinking sounds of porcelain scattering across wood floorboards, skittering under the dark bed.
Kakashi didn't ask, didn't say a word, just handed his own sake cup to Iruka. Iruka threw it, hard as he could, at the wall, watching sake spill and porcelain break and pieces of blue rain down, like the sky was breaking and falling down.
"I hate," Iruka said, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes until bright spots of yellow and red and orange appeared, "the color blue."
The rest of these were written due to prompts from drelfina
Not so vague Kakashi/Sasuke.
Taste of Betrayal
Kakashi didn't like the taste of betrayal.
It tasted like sweat, blood, fear-- It tasted like Sasuke's skin, hot beneath Kakashi's hands, Kakashi's mouth.
Kakashi didn't like a lot of things about Sasuke. He didn't like the way Sasuke moved, didn't like the way Sasuke breathed, the way Sasuke spoke or ate or slept. He didn't like the look in Sasuke's eyes, and maybe that's what he hated most about Sasuke. He hated looking at Sasuke, and seeing Obito's eyes, red and black and swirling in dizzying circles.
Obito has never been a traitor, though. Obito had always been too young, too loyal, too stupid. Obito had lived for his team, and died for his team, and Kakashi hated looking at Sasuke and seeing Obito's eyes staring back at him, bitter and angry and empty. Sasuke wasn't a thing like Obito, and Kakashi hated it, hated the way he kept pulling and tugging and looking, biting and licking and kissing and fucking, always looking for Obito.
Kakashi hated a lot of things. He hated Sasuke, he hated traitors--
He hated Obito.
Confusing Orochimaru/Kisame, Kisame/Itachi, and Orochimaru/Kisame/Itachi.
Partners
Kisame's first partner in the Akatsuki had been Orochimaru. It'd started like so:
Kisame had been twenty years old, just a few months from twenty-one, and he'd wandered, more or less, into the Akatsuki. The world was large, and the world was empty, and the world was almost a lonely thing, and the campfires of the Akatsuki had been bright. Even a fire that burns is warm, and warmth was something that Kisame had missed for a long time, since he was a child in his village, since he was a boy who hung onto his mother's hand and clung to his father's pantleg.
The Akatsuki had been amused when Kisame had walked into their arms, and they'd laughed about it that night, chuckles that sounded more like the snap of firewood and the rasp of snake's breath than the laughter of men, old and world-weary.
"We're killing your kind," Orochimaru had said, his breath hissing near Kisame's ear.
"You can't kill me," Kisame said, full of young-man arrogance and old-man wisdom.
Orochimaru had looked at him thoughtfully, yellow eyes blinking slowly, and Kisame had stretched his hands out over the fire, feeling his skin tighten from the heat.
"I want him," Orochimaru finally said, and the eyes around the fire, all watching Kisame, laughed.
It hurt to be burned, but sometimes it was better than being cold.
x
Old men died, because that is what old men did. They died, one by one, and new men, younger men, slid into the Akatsuki's circle, one by one. Kisame watched them come, one by one, as he sat by Orochimaru's side, listening to Orochimaru plot and scheme and dream about eternal life.
Kisame would slide down in his seat, eyes half-closed, breathing by half-steps, half-in, half-out, wondering what would happen if he just stopped , and Orochimaru would twine his pale fingers through Kisame's blue hair.
"Like you," Orochimaru would murmur, slow and silky voice low, beneath the high-pitched laughter from the circle. "To be like you--"
Sometimes Kisame would let his head roll back on his neck, eyes catching the sight of Orochimaru from the side, just a flash of pale skin and dark hair and yellow eyes, and Kisame would swallow thick air, would feel his throat tighten and clog and choke, would feel his gills tighten, then open wide, body trying to take in oxygen.
He'd watch Orochimaru's eyes, yellow, and he'd smile at Orochimaru's jealousy. He'd choke, and he'd laugh, and he'd live, because his body was too-big, too-strong, too-full of chakra and life and hate to ever give up and do something as simple and easy as dying.
x
Uchiha Itach was fourteen when he joined the Akatsuki. Kisame watched Itachi from the distance of being twenty-six, and Kisame wondered when he'd grown so old and when children had grown so young.
"He's young," Kisame said with half a thought, leaning against Orochimaru's chair. When he touched Itachi that night, a hand pushing on Itachi's shoulder to move the boy out of his way, he saw Orochimaru's eyes, half-closed, lazy and jealous and yellow, watching them both, and Kisame felt like he'd been burned when his fingers slipped past Itachi's neck.
Orochimaru watched Itachi, and Itachi watched Orochimaru, and Kisame touched them both, a slip of a hand and scratch of fingernails. He murmured nonsensical words, laughed in Orochimaru's ear, and hummed in Itachi's. He sat by Orochimaru's feet, leaning against Orochimaru's leg as Orochimaru's fingers slipped through his hair, and at night he'd lie next to Itachi, staring up into the black as he told the boy stories with morals that Itachi never understood.
"He's like you," Orochimaru whispered once, and the tip of his tongue touched Kisame's neck. Kisame swallowed thin air, let his eyes slide shut and head roll back. "He's just like you."
"A matched set," Orochimaru said bitterly, and the eyes around the circle laughed louder. "Two little boys playing, don't even understand that we kill their kind."
"Do you understand," Orochimaru asked, and his breath was warm on the back of Kisame's neck. "We kill little boys like you. Little boys would don't know what they have, don't realize that we kill them for what they've got."
"Do you understand?" Itachi asked, and his voice was small in the dark, his eyes a flicker of red from across the fire. "He'll kill you, because you're what he wants to be."
"He can't kill me," Kisame said, and he stretched his hands over the fire, felt the heat burn and tighten his skin until it split, blood dripping slowly into the fire.
The chuckles around the fire were soft, breathy rasps in Kisame's ear, and Itachi's smile from across the fire was sharp and white.
"That," Itachi said, "is why he'll kill you someday."
"And you?" Kisame once asked, leaning against Orochimaru's old chair, and Itachi slipped his small fingers through Kisame's hair.
"He can't kill me," Itachi murmured into Kisame's ear, hair brushing against Kisame's neck.
"A matched set," Orochimaru said once, bitterly, and his sword was stained red. Kisame swallowed hot blood, felt it stick in his throat, choking him, and Orochimaru stared at him with yellow eyes.
"A matched set," Orochimaru said once, "but you were mine first."
Strange, maybe-unfinished vague Iruka/Hayate of anger. And teen drama. Woot.
Boarding House Games
Sometimes, late at night, Iruka wouldn't be able to sleep. His ceiling would look too far away, then too close. His blankets would be too heavy, but his sheets were too light, and there wasn't enough air if the window was closed, and there was too much noise when the window was open.
Sometimes, late at night, Iruka would roll over onto his stomach, then his back, then his side, and his other side. The sheets would feel to smooth against his skin, and sometimes he'd lie his fingers, cold, against his stomach, hot. He'd breathe in, deep, until his lungs felt like they'd burst, and then he'd let out all of the air, until his lungs felt like they'd collapse.
He hated not being able to sleep, to be stuck on the spot where he was close, so close , but not close enough. He hated the feeling of his eyelids, dry and scratchy, and the feeling of his lungs, heavy and full. He hated the feeling of his entire body, a cumbersome thing that locked him down, tied him to Konoha.
Sometimes, when the night felt so very long, but not long enough, he'd get up and walk around his room. He'd throw things, sometimes, or he'd punch the wall as hard as he could, because the taste of the blood on his knuckles, a bitter tang of salt when he licked it, made him feel a little better.
Sometimes he'd leave his room, and he'd walk down the hallway, past all the other doorways, until he reached Hayate's doorway.
Hayate never slept. Hayate's light was always on, dim beneath the doorframe, and his door was always unlocked. The orphanage mother always complained about Hayate's sleeping habits, or lack thereof, but after a while, she made a little less noise, because if Hayate wasn't making trouble, then there wasn't enough time for Hayate.
There wasn't enough time for Iruka, either.
There was a sheet tacked around the light on the ceiling of Hayate's room. It was pale blue, and made the room a dim, swimming color. Iruka sank to the floor, just inside Hayate's room, and he felt like he was drowning. When he breathed, deep, and bit his lip, hard, he felt tears, hot, spring to his eyes.
"What is it?" Hayate asked, not looking up from the maps spread out over the floor.
"Couldn't sleep," Iruka said, and he pushed his heels over the floor, stretching out his legs until his feet were scrunching up Hayate's maps. "Amuse me."
Hayate tugged the maps away from Iruka's feet, folding them with a look of exasperation. "Just go to bed, Iruka."
"Can't," Iruka snapped back. "Can't fall asleep, so amuse me."
The room wasn't nearly big enough, but none of the rooms were big enough. The orphanage told them to be grateful for any room at all, so when Iruka stumbled away from Hayate's swipe, crashing into the bed, he told himself he was grateful.
He laughed, too.
"You're fucked," Hayate said, exasperation and pity combined. "You're all kinds of fucked up."
"Yeah?" Iruka shot back, and he knotted the blankets inbetween his fingers, clutching to the wool and cotton. "At least I sleep at night."
"I'm busy ," Hayate said irritably. "I don't have time, I have missions--"
"We can all hear you screaming," Iruka interrupted, voice smooth and lungs screaming at him to breathe. He took a breath, and held it, and felt his body grow heavier.
"We can all hear you, too, Iruka."
The pillow didn't make much of a sound when it hit the wall next to Hayate's head, but the cup shattered, glass tinking against the wall, muffling as it bounced across the floor. Hayate cursed, loud, and Iruka threw the pillbottle next, aiming for the blood that ran thready in the water splashed over Hayate's cheek.
"Shit! Bastard!" Hayate caught the pillbottle, surging to his feet. "Do you want to wake up Mum?"
"She's not my mother!" Iruka snapped. He wanted to scream, punch something until it broke, make Hayate bleed as much on the outside as Iruka felt like he was bleeding on the inside.
"I know that," Hayate said, and his face was pale. "We all know that. She's not any of our mothers, we know that, but why do you have to fuck everything up--"
Iruka didn't aim for Hayate this time. Instead, he hurled the clock at the window, watching the window break, jagged edges falling from the frame. The pillbottle rolled on the floor, and Hayate punched Iruka, bent over Iruka on the bed.
"I hate you," Hayate screamed, and Iruka could taste blood in his mouth. "I hate you! I hate you!"
Iruka grabbed Hayate's shirt, clenched the fabric, and tried to hold on. "I'm sorry--"
The blood was thick in his throat, trickling down into his lungs and his stomach, wet on his face like tears he couldn't cry, because there was never enough time in Konoha for Iruka.
A strange what-if fic, involving Naruto and Iruka.
A Masterpiece
It was a miscalculation, and he was sure that he should've seen it long before it occurred. Of course, "long before" wasn't much more than a turn-of-phrase, because there was little more than an hour or two between the initial idea and the finished result.
The finished result was a screaming baby and a bleeding teenager and himself, gasping for breath while his chakra bled out of his body.
It wasn't quite what he'd been aiming for, but he'd take what he could get. This, he decided, even with its flaws, cracked and unpolished and somehow a little bit ugly, would be his masterpiece.
x
Naruto grew up in the Hokage's house. He didn't know much about who he was; all he knew was that he was the Yondaime's son. The dead Yondaime's son.
So Naruto grew up, spoiled and tired and always fighting for someone to see him for him, rather than some dead man whose face was carved on the monument (even if that dead face was his father's).
Naruto had never known the Yondaime. As such, he didn't see why he should place his allegiance there. There were no kinly feelings, no family yearnings. No love, lost or found, missing or misplaced. After all, it's impossible to misplace something that never existed in the first place.
Sometimes, when Naruto was very quiet, and sitting very still in the hallway, just outside the Hokage's office doors, he could hear people complain about a man in the village. They never named the man, though, just called the man "him" or "it" or "fucker." It'd taken Naruto a few years to realize that it was always the same person people complained about.
Naruto wondered if "his" father was just as "misplaced" as his own. Or not misplaced, however the case may be.
x
It was when Naruto was eleven that he ran into Umino Iruka. Naruto had nicked a scroll of the Hokage's after a particularly heated fight about how it wasn't exactly respectful to paint crude words and signs on a father's carven image. Naruto snuck out of the village, headed for the Forest of Death, and it was on his way there that he ran into Umino.
Umino was tall, a little stocky, and very tired looking. Naruto paused on his way, hanging on a tree branch, and the Umino-man's shoulder's tensed.
"If you want to kick me," the Umino-man's voice said, "you'll have to do better than that. I know you're there." His voice sounded as tired as his face looked, and Naruto wondered if maybe his father was just as heavy on the shoulders as Naruto's was.
"Ne, ne," Naruto said, dropping from the tree, propping the scroll against the overgrown roots, "who're you?"
The first time Naruto met Umino Iruka, the village was in an uproar over a missing scroll. Naruto was found, and Umino, too, and the scroll was found inbetween them. Umino was blamed, and Naruto was coddled, and Naruto never saw Umino again.
He heard, a few years later, that Umino had finally turned traitor, though that was to be expected. Sometimes Naruto heard rumors about Umino, about how he had joined a band of missing-nin, how he was considered unstoppable, how he could level mountainsides and destroy entire cities, and Naruto wondered.
Naruto wondered if maybe Umino had finally lost the weight of his father (and his father).
And Naruto wondered why he felt so jealous.
It wasn't a nice feeling.
lolz, omg, vague Gai/Iruka and vaguer Sandaime/Iruka.
Green, Yellow, Red
There are three highlighters on the mission desk. Green, yellow, and red. Late at night, when the mission room is closed, the last person on duty uses all three highlighters, highlighting the tops of mission reports. The reports are then separated, stacked, organized and set into folders, then left on the Hokage's desk for perusal come morning.
More often than not, Iruka runs the late shift. It doesn't interfere with school hours, and it's usually the quietest shift, so he can use his time to grade scrolls and work out lesson plans. The only time he really needs to work, really, is after the room closes and he has to take out the highlighters, popping off caps and drawing bright greenyellowred marks across the pages.
It's on his shift that Gai's report comes in. He doesn't even catch the name for the first moment. The red highlighter is already skimming across the page, highlighting name, sex, age, rank, number, and date of death.
It's when he's double checking that everything is highlighted that the name clicks in his head. That's about the same time he bites clean through his lip.
When Sandaime looks over the reports in the morning, he sees Maito Gai's name highlighted in red. There are blooddrops below it, dried and a little flakey, and Sandaime doesn't have to guess who was working the shift last night.
He finds Iruka on the roof of the Academy, cigarette held loosely between his fingers. Sandaime watches him for a moment, and Iruka doesn't quite watch him back, and when Sandaime finally plucks the cigarette from Iruka's fingers Iruka doesn't do much more than look away.
"How're you doing?" Sandaime asks, because this is his role in the village. They're all his children, and he has to care about them, and so he has to ask these inane questions that he already knows the answer to.
"Fine," Iruka lies glibly, and he's already pulling another cigarette out.
"Of course," Sandaime murmurs, folding his hands behind his back. He stands there for a long time, far longer than he expected, and when Iruka finally breaks, falling to the roof with a breathless sigh, eyes clenched shut, cigarette crumpled, Sandaim crouches next to him, putting his hand gently on Iruka's shoulders.
It's too easy by half, to murmur something nice and nonsensical, empty of any meaning. It's just as easy to stop Iruka's shaking, to calm him down, send him home, sans carton of cigarettes.
Sandaime has grown talented at being a father. It's not quite a skill he wants.
A crazy Ebisu and Genma gen-fic.
Snow at Five
Ebisu never liked visiting Genma. Mostly it was because he could always hear people screaming, crying and shouting and screaming, at the top of their lungs, until their throats were raw and bloody. Ebisu didn't like screaming. But when Ebisu did visit Genma, he always visiting at precisely four in the afternoon. That, after all, was the hour when Genma was best.
Genma usually didn't scream at four.
He didn't cry, either, or rock back and forth, or lie under the blankets and whisper "can't find me, can't see me, can't find me, can't see me."
Usually, at four in the afternoon, Genma would smile, or at least blink, and sometimes he'd be by the window, looking out at the trees.
Today he was sitting on his bed, crosslegged, looking down at a few crumpled papers. There were colors on the papers, mottled and bleeding together, redorangeyellowbluegreenpurple makes brown.
Ebisu stood just inside the doorway for a few minutes, and wondered if maybe today he could get away with just saying hello and goodbye.
When Genma looked up he smiled, and Ebisu resigned himself to an afternoon spent on glass and eggshells.
"Here," Genma said, holding out one of the papers. Ebisu took it gingerly, moving to sit on the very edge of the bed.
"What is it, Genma-kun?"
Genma moved closer, his breath hot on Ebisu's neck, and Ebisu pushed down the urge to run away.
"It's the trees," Genma said, and his fingers rested on the piece of paper, on the muddled colors.
"It's nice," Ebisu said half-heartedly, straightening one of the corners of the paper. He saw Genma frown out of the corner of his eye, and hurriedly bent the corner again. Genma smiled.
It was quiet for a few minutes, then not so quiet, as Genma looked at the other pieces of paper, folding them and unfolding them, tearing them up, piling them together, murmuring under his breath. Ebisu watched him, still holding the paper Genma had given him.
At five o'clock, and precisely five o'clock, because five o'clock was when the nurse came by with pills and needles and a sleepy-bye smile, Ebisu stood up, a half-hearted half-lopsided smile on his face.
"I've got to go, Genma-kun," he said, and Genma blinked, a confused look on his face.
"Where...?"
"Home." Ebisu fingered the picture in his hands, paper almost soft between his fingers. "I'll come see you again."
"When?" Genma asked, little scraps of white paper sticking to his fingers. Ebisu reached out, brushing the pieces of paper off, and Genma stared at their hands.
"Tomorrow."
Genma nodded, still staring at their hands, and Ebisu felt a shudder. "What is it?" he asked, pulling his hand away slowly.
"Snow," Genma said, and he picked up a handful of the scraps of paper, blowing them towards Ebisu with a puff of breath. Ebisu tilted his head back, watched the pieces of snowflakes whirl around him, and wondered how long it'd be before he'd be here, too, making snowflakes out of picture-trees.
Random Iruka-angst, in another "what if?" Featuring Iruka with side-glimpses of Naruto and Raidou.
Die Trying
It was easy, Iruka learned, to die trying.
It wasn't that he didn't try. It was that he tried too hard, and in the end, trying was something that he died to do.
He tried to be a good man. Tried to be a good teacher, tried to pound drills and lessons into his students' heads.
He tried to be something of a father to Naruto, because God knew Naruto wouldn't ever find anyone willing to try anything. So Iruka tried, because that's what Iruka did.
He tried to be a friend, tried to be a confidante. He tried this, and he tried that, and in the end, he tried his life away.
When Konoha stabbed him in the back, whispered sweet lies of danger and betrayal and monsters that were too dangerous to be trusted, Iruka tried to stab them back.
To be a traitor wasn't something Iruka had ever expected to do.
He'd never expected to crouch over Raidou's body, panting for breath, fingers slipping bloody-warm over Raidou's throat, rifling through Raidou's pockets, burning Raidou's body.
He didn't expect a lot of things. He didn't expect to find himself, at age 29 and a half, trying to save the world.
The world, though, never did want saving. The world was full of men and women who were too tired to care anymore, too tired to do much more than shuffle through life, saying bitter words that cut and stung.
So Iruka tried to run away.
Iruka tried to save the world, because Iruka hadn't been able to save Naruto.
Iruka tried, and Iruka cried, and Iruka prayed and screamed and bled and at the end, trying to breathe for a few more seconds, to make his heart beat a few times, Iruka died.
It was easy, Iruka learned, to die trying.
Iruka-torture, 'cause it's, uh...well, I hate to say fun, but~
Hell on Earth
The cloth was soft beneath his fingers, worn into a smooth satiny-feeling that felt strange. He was used to coarser things, to flak vests and long sleeved shirts of thick, rough material. He was used to a great many different things. He was also, he learned, used to peace. Or rather, he was used to the feeling of not being in pain. He was used to Konoha, of the sanctuary where it was an unspoken rule to bury hurt and pain at the doorstep. He was used to the Academy, to the heart of Konoha itself. He was used to children's scraped knees and scabbed hands; he wasn't used to his own. So his knees screamed in pain. The stones were cold, and hard, and he could feel where his skin was wearing away, bleeding onto the floor.
His fingers tightened around the smooth, soft cloth, mostly worn away, and he wondered how long, exactly, he'd been here, for the cloth to become this thin. Or maybe it wasn't so much as how long he'd been here, or how long in his life he hadn't been here. He was sure that he'd been here, kneeling in the dark, throat closed off, breaths ragged and pained, for longer than he'd ever been in Konoha. Iruka missed Konoha.
He missed everything that there'd been, that wasn't in this room. Missed the grass, the sand, the dirt that got caught beneath his nails.
He missed his nails, too. He missed the days when his fingers bent correctly, the days before they were broken, then rebroken.
He missed the sunlight. Missed the wind on his skin, when he had skin, rather than the muscle on his back that bled sluggish trails, trickling down his thighs to the floor.
He missed being able to breathe.
He missed being able to think.
He missed being able to live, and he wondered if he really was living, because sometimes, when he was curled up here, stomach gnawing a hole that he couldn't feel for all the other pain, he wondered if he was in hell. Hell was an eternity. Long, long, long, long, longlonglonglonglong--
"Itachi-san," a voice said over Iruka's head, and Iruka wanted to open his eyes, but he wasn't sure he still had eyes.
"Itachi-san," the voice said, a low rumble, sounding somewhere between amused and tired, "are you sure you didn't over-do it?"
Iruka tried to breathe in, a rush of breath that moved to quickly, and he coughed, forehead pressing against the grass.
"Iruka-san," the low voice said again, closer to his head. "Iruka-san, where's the kyuubi?"
Iruka swallowed, bit his lips. Shut his mouth, clenched his fingers shut. Kisame made a wordless sound, Itachi blinked, and Iruka's hell began again.
Iruka. And his first crush. Are you sensing a pattern here?
A Crush to End All Crushes
When Iruka was seven years old, he had a crush.
It was a manly crush.
It was a beautiful crush.
It was the crush to end all crushes.
It was a crush upon Orochimaru.
Orochimaru was beautiful (prettier than even Iruka's own mother, Iruka thought), and quite a lot better than all the girls in Iruka's class.
Orochimaru was often standing around Jiraiya, or Tsunade, and they, in turn, were often standing around the Hokage.
Who was often standing by the Yellow Flash.
Who happened to stand, quite often, next to Iruka's father.
Which meant that Iruka, in all his boy-crush glory, could often stand near his idol.
It was a crush to end all crushes.
Iruka's mother thought it was kinda cute, in a slightly disturbing way.
One day, in a day that would live in infamy, Iruka decided to give his crush a gift.
Now, he couldn't quite decide what to do.
He didn't have much pocket money, and he wasn't sure Orochimaru-sama would care for Iruka's pieces of string and sealing wax quite as much as Iruka did.
So Iruka did the next best thing (which happened to be a thing he'd often seen the older boys do at Academy).
He plucked a flower.
And gave it.
To Orochimaru.
Jiraiya laughed. Tsunade giggled. The Hokage choked, the Yellow Flash snickered, and Iruka's father felt the pressing need to chuckle.
Orochimaru blinked at the flower, then blinked at the peculiar little boy standing in front of him.
He blinked at the flower again, then touched his lips thoughtfully.
"Iruka-kun," he said, and Iruka suppressed a little shiver of crush-ness, "would you care to join me...for lunch?"
The lunch, Iruka decided then, was the best ever.
After all, who ever knew that squid tentacles were so good?
Iruka centric. Rape, torture. Graphic. Not pretty.
not/hero
Iruka was only a chuunin. He knew this, understood it, and he wasn't under any delusions of grandeur. He could hold his own in a fight. He could complete A-class missions.
He couldn't, though, survive the Akatsuki.
He'd never seen the need to downplay his affections for Naruto. He'd never seen Naruto, all of Naruto, from the bright blond hair to the brighter blue eyes, as a threat. He'd never thought of a lot of things, though.
And right now, when his throat is raw, and his mouth is bloody, and he'd bite his tongue, except he's sure that would just make things worse, he can't think of anything. At least, he can't think of anything other than the way he's in so much fucking pain, and he wants to die, except he's not sure he knows how to die anymore, because to know how to die, you have to know how live, and Iruka doesn't want to live. So by default, he doesn't want to die, either.
So he's here, digging his fingernails into the cloak in front of him, and the cock in his mouth hits the back of his throat again. He gags, and the fingers twisted around his hair yank all the harder. He can feel blood, or something warm, in between his thighs, and he makes him tell himself it's blood, because the thought that it's something else, that it's someone's come, because someone was fucking him, makes him want to throw up all the more. He can't throw up though, gag all that he does. He can't do anything, and he's so fucking helpless, and he may be a chuunin, but he's never been this helpless before, and god, he wants to die, but he didn't know he could ever want to die like this.
And he's scared.
He's scared.
He's never been scared like this. So pathetic and weak and so fucking whipped, because he was never the strongest, and he was never the smartest. He didn't think, and he befriended Naruto, and now he's getting raped-- fucked-- torn apart at the seams, because someone has more than a passing interest in a little boy with blond hair and blue eyes.
The cock in his mouth is yanked out, and then there's come splashing on his face, wet and hot and a little sticky, over his mouth and cheeks and nose and eyes. Hands in his hair pull harder, yanking his head to the side, and his teeth cut his lip. This is better, he thinks, than them coming in his mouth, because at least this time he's not choking.
"Sensei," a voice says, and Iruka doesn't flinch. He's learned, over the past few hours, that there's not much to flinch at anymore. "Sensei, where's the binjuu?"
There's heat between Iruka's legs, and more liquid, and then another cock's pushing into him, forced inside, and Iruka hates himself for thinking that this time it doesn't hurt quite so much, because this time, there's a little more blood, and this time, it's a little more slick. This time, Iruka thinks, this time, maybe he'll be lucky, and maybe he'll die. The voice is saying something, slow and smooth words, like a salve, except the words just burn more, because Iruka has never felt so ashamed and scared and humiliated in all his life. And this time, when someone's shoving their cock down his throat, and another person's shoving their cock up his ass, and he's covered in shit and piss, blood and dirt and vomit, Iruka thinks that maybe, just maybe, he never loved Naruto enough for all of this.
So this time, after someone's come down his throat, and Iruka's coughing and choking and gagging and vomiting, he tells them exactly where Naruto is.
Iruka's never been more than a chuunin, and Iruka has never had delusions of grandeur. After all, Iruka's never been a hero.
Umm, more Iruka-torture. 'cause drelfina asked. Are you sensing a trend?
Touching Games
Iruka never touched Kakashi much. At first Kakashi didn't notice it; after a while, though, he began to notice all the ways Iruka shied out of touching. A hand on the shoulder had Iruka glancing at Kakashi, then moving slightly out of range. Friendly punches to the shoulder got the same reaction, only quicker. Kisses were nearly non-existent, and sex was unheard of. Kakashi watched Iruka hug Naruto once, catching the kid when Naruto launched himself at Iruka. Iruka laughed, rubbed Naruto's head, and slipped far enough away that Naruto's hand was barely touching Iruka's arm. Kakashi watched, and Kakashi wondered, and that night, when Kakashi was sitting in Iruka's apartment, sake set between him and Iruka, Kakashi asked.
"Why not?" he asked, curious and a little put out. Iruka looked at him, a long glance, and then picked up the sake bottle, wrapping his fingers around it a little too tight.
"When you're little," Iruka said, "an adult is very big."
"When you're little," Iruka said, "you can't fight off an adult."
"When you're little," Iruka said, "no one hears you screaming."
A continuation of the Kissing Game, more or less.
End in the Middle at the Beginning
Iruka fucked Kakashi once.
It involved sweat, blood, tears. Involved swearing and cussing and fighting, nails and teeth, fists. It involved a lot of things, really. Involved Kakashi getting so fucked up in the head that he ran to Iruka. Involved Iruka getting so fucked up in the head, he tried to run away.
It ended in Kakashi screaming at Iruka, and Iruka closing his eyes, and Kakashi throwing his coffee mug, and Iruka walking out the door. Except the end never ended like that. The end always ended with Iruka fucking Genma, too, and Genma letting him do it, letting Iruka come in and go out, letting Iruka crawl into his bed, then slink of his room.
The end had Raidou, too. The end had Raidou snapping at Genma and swearing at Iruka and snarling at Kakashi, and it had Kakashi picking up the pieces of the broken mug, one by one, nicking his fingers and thumbs.
The end was a lot like the beginning, with Kakashi running after Iruka and Iruka running away, with Genma watching it all, and Raidou closing his eyes.
That was the middle, too, with Iruka kissing Genma in the middle of the street late at night, pavement yellow beneath the streetlights.
With Kakashi standing to the side, hands shoved into his pockets.
With Raidou behind Kakashi, eyes closed, because he was tired of seeing all of this, over and over and over again, like a record that kept skipping into repeats.
Kakashi said it was his salvation. Genma said he was the salvation. Raidou said there was no salvation, never had been.
Iruka said it was all just a game.
Woosh. Wow. Uh, that took a while, but at least my G-Chat is now more or less empty of drabbles.
Anyways, uh, I'm working on the Christmas fics, however slowly.
Also, Happy New Year!