Winter in a Bottle

[windfallswest]

Title: Winter in a Bottle
Author: windfallswest
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: <----
Length: c. 11,000 words
Warnings: Only for Kakashi's bedside manner. Well, and maybe if you like rabbits. No animals were harmed in the production of this fic. Except indirectly through my omnivorism.
Notes: This is a slightly redacted version of my kakairu_fest winter exchange fic for livruka. I'm posting it here (in two parts) now the reveals are out. It's sort of a fusion with Robin McKinley's book Sunshine, but if I've done my job right this time you shouldn't need to know anything about it to enjoy this. Also with ten per cent less typos!


It was cold.

His hands and knees crushed tumbled snow down into the rocks. Icy fire lanced up his leg every time he moved it.

It was cold.

The ice was in his throat now, too. It jabbed at his lungs and wind pipe. His breathing was harsh and loud and made him nervous. He had to keep fighting the mad impulse to look over his shoulder for Darth Vader. Oh, god.

It was cold, and he couldn't make it warm.

Hatake Kakashi picked his way up the slope of Edge Mountain as quickly and carefully as possible. This place was a hole, and as soon as he topped Rowe Pass, he would be out of it. As assignments went, this had been fairly routine. A little intrigue, a little espionage. His enormous talents would have been so wasted on this little speck except for the insane gamut of cultural mores everyone danced around, presumably to relieve the boredom of these long, cold winters, and the fact that a completely normal human would have stuck out like a red flag at a bull-running.

He was almost to the pass. It was closing on dark and the temperature was dropping fast, but the sooner he made it over, the better. There had been some singularly ominous noises coming from up here earlier, and any day now the pass was going to close.

It was still early in the year, he told himself. But the snow was already deep and the ice was a thick glaze on the exposed stone. The pass was not closed. It was a low pass, and it should stay open for at least another week. Everyone in town said so.

It was a low pass.

Kakashi dragged himself up another outcropping. A sharp gust of wind hit him and his hand slipped. A galvanising rush of adrenaline slammed into his body like a lorry and he threw himself up over the edge with a prodigious wrench of the sort of muscles that are mostly only used doing Chinese Pole. Glancing back, he saw the valley narrowing below him. Close, then. It should be coming into view any minute now.

Here. The ground was levelling out a little. Kakashi looked upwards hopefully. There was just white, a jagged white face bridging the peaks on either side.

The pass was closed.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Right. First step was, find someplace he could ward and defend for the night. There were demons and weres tonight and, this close to even so weird a population centre, probably suckers in these mountains, too. So step one was hole up for the night, make a plan. Possibly, one of the other of the other passes was still open. Failing that, there were still the roads that drilled through the range or humped the lowest passes.

He didn't like that. Kakashi preferred to operate off-grid as much as possible. A Hidden Villages had much the same preferences for working around the law instead of through it. He'd never live it down in Konoha if he got picked up by the cops for hitchhiking.

There were caves dotted through the mountains. It was a safe assumption; there were caves in any mountain range. And anyway, Kakashi had been through here before.

The wind that had almost succeeded in knocking Kakashi back down the mountain returned. It whipped the dry, powdery snow around his knees, erasing not only his own tracks, but the tracks of anything else up here, too. Kakashi edged over and down a different path (well, path was a strong word in either case) than he had climbed, senses alive to any changes in his surroundings. The avalanche looked fairly settled, so far as it was possible to tell, but he'd rather not tempt fate.

When Kakashi finally found a cave, it was by literally tripping over it. He hadn't even noticed it until his foot caught in the lip of the cave-mouth. He'd known he was getting close to something; there was the faint sense of a track, almost like a ward-line but fainter, with no inside or outside. People had walked here before-not many and not often, but enough had followed this path of least resistance to some goal that they had left a mark on the patterns of the world. People, or animals. Or something. But no, it felt mostly human.

When Kakashi stumbled, he threw an arm out into what really shouldn't have been empty space. His elbow banged off rock, and Kakashi scrambled not to fall on his ass or head-first down slope.

Well, that's interesting. Kakashi examined the cave mouth, rubbing his elbow. It was narrow and cut back slantwise into the mountainside, which was how Kakashi had almost walked past it. Looking closer, he found the traces of old warding across the gap, feeble and dimmed with disuse. Nothing to indicate recent habitation. Kakashi's own scrabbling had disturbed whatever traces might have lingered, though the ground here was mostly icy rock, swept bare by the wind.

Kakashi didn't have to look up to know the sunset was fading. He would have to take the chance.

Cautiously, muted silver knife in hand, Kakashi slipped around the lip of rock that sheltered the cave from sight and padded silently into the darkness. Warm darkness; Kakashi frowned. His eye had adjusted to the weak light that trickled in behind him just enough to tell he'd passed into a larger space when the wave hit.

It was heat, sudden and unnatural. Kakashi was instantly drenched in sweat. For a split second, Kakashi thought he'd walked unwitting into a dragon's lair and was a breath away from being incinerated, but there was no change in the ambient dimness. Thankfully. Saint George he was not.

"No friend, no foe," Kakashi gasped out over his moment's confusion, the standard greeting of truce between magic-handlers. Human; it had to be, or he'd have sensed it. Vampires or full-blooded demons were fairly hard to mistake. Part-bloods...could be trickier. But he was in no position to argue semantics.

Silence answered him, but at least it stopped getting hotter. A scraping sound-like-breath?-rasped along the bottom of it. Kakashi held himself very still.

"You were trying the pass?" The voice was quiet and rough.

"Yes."

"It was the last one open."

Kakashi absorbed that in silence.

"How would you feel about a truce for the night?" he asked finally.

It was his captor's turn to fall silent. Kakashi could actually see what little light there was seeping away. He thought he heard a distant rumble. Rockslide? Or maybe it was just a distant helicopter. They were in the Old World, not the Third World, after all.

"You'd be better off leaving the area as soon as possible," the hoarse voice said at last.

Kakashi was still trying to decide if this guy knew something he didn't, or was just running from something when the explosion knocked him off his feet. Definitely explosion, and much closer than the one he'd dismissed.

Kakashi caught himself with one knee and one hand braced on the floor, knife blade pointing carefully out, not in.

"A moment, please," Kakashi excused himself and padded cautiously back to the mouth of the cave.

Kakashi didn't have to look long to see what was making all the noise, even in the dark. A fire burned in-so far as Kakashi could tell-solid rock about a kilometre away halfway down the slope. A few other points of light dotting the valley glowed with a distressingly similar colour. Two brighter sparks caught his eye, swerving crazily around one another. Was that-airborne duelling? Better off leaving soon, indeed. Unfortunately, it seemed that was no longer an option. Well, I knew there was another agent operating in the area.

Shivering from the effects of the chill wind on his sweat-damp skin, Kakashi walked back into the cave proper. No one else was near, so he let his footsteps sound for the sake of his twitchy host's nerves.

"What happened?"

The cage of heat, briefly broken in the shock, swept in again, engulfing him. Kakashi took a deep breath to steady and set himself.

"It's a bit of a mess out there; not something I'd stick my nose into voluntarily. They've got sorcerers laying into one another. Any idea how long they're going to keep at it?" Kakashi asked, but refrained from making any more allusions to his suspicions about his host's connexion to what was going on outside.

"Probably not anytime soon." Kakashi caught a note of reluctant humour under the strain in the other magic-handler's voice. Oh, he knew something all right.

"It takes two to maintain free-wards," Kakashi said.

"So it does." Pause. "If you would set the Pact?"

"Of course." So he could keep an eye on Kakashi and fry him if he tried anything. Prudent. And he sounded weak, wounded; probably it was all he could do to hold Kakashi. Escape was possible, if not the best option imaginable.

Kakashi closed his eyes and focussed on his magic, suppressing a string of out of the frying pan, into the fire jokes that threatened to well up. It was sharp and unpredictable, a crackling vitality deep inside him. Kakashi smoothed its jagged wilfulness and channelled it into the spell. The Pact was simple to work. It could be shaped with simple words and it would hold in a place until the involved parties-all of them-dissolved it.

It expanded to fill the space inside the cave. Kakashi felt as if through a mirror its dimensions and an obstruction that might be his host. Kakashi knelt and precisely sliced the side of his thumb with the point of his dark, serrated silver knife-full moon night, but this was hardly a were.

"It's ready," he said.

The Pact sprang to life like an invisible flare as Kakashi pressed his blood-smeared thumb to the gritty stone of the floor. He felt clear as seeing the bloody palm as his host sealed the working.

Kakashi let the spell detach, drifting away from him to settle over rock and random cave debris. He inhaled deeply and stood once more.

"You're injured."

"Hnh."

"Let me see."

Calling up a gentle light, Kakashi walked towards where he'd sensed his host's presence. His companion was definitely the worse for wear. He was sitting, supported by the cave wall with his legs stretched out in front of him. Both hands were applying pressure to a bleeding chest wound.

"Well, that's no good."

His host shot him a dark look with dark eyes. He was young; good physical condition, looked like. Kakashi would expect no less from an operative. He'd thought he'd glimpsed his competition once; this guy was about the right size. Not too tall, and rather beefier than Kakashi himself. Their missions hadn't interfered with each other, so he'd let it be.

Loosing the magelight to float free overhead, Kakashi took off his field pack and jacket with all its useful little secrets.

"Left leg's broken," his companion grunted when Kakashi went to move him.

"Really." Kakashi gave him a flat look. "All right-"

"Iruka."

"-Iruka. You need to be laid out flat. I'll try to save your clothes Is there anything I need to know about?"

"Just," Iruka heaved a pained breath in and out, "watch the pockets."

Kakashi nodded. "Can you keep quiet? I can set up a bit of a Silence, but I'd rather not take th-"

"I'll be fine," Iruka replied through grit teeth.

Kakashi raised an editorial eyebrow, but did not press the issue. Iruka had lost a lot of blood. He'd definitely have to do something about the entrance soon, even if it was just free wards, or they'd have suckers and weres and who knew what else following the blood spore here. Not to mention, some weird things lived deep in old mountain rock.

Iruka didn't look any better prone than he had sitting. He blenched as Kakashi slid his trousers off as gently as he could over the injured leg, piously tamping down the impulse to investigate the pockets. He wasn't worried about Iruka catching a chill. The oppressive heat had fallen away with the Pact's completion, but it was still quite comfortable into the cave.

Privately, Kakashi had already decided to take care of the leg first in hopes that Iruka would make the rest of his job easier and pass out. Plus, he didn't want to jostle the chest wound once he got it stabilised.

"Maa, looks like a clean break," Kakashi said, probing gently. "Ready?"

Not waiting for an answer, Kakashi braced himself and jerked the bone back into alignment. He glanced up to check on his patient. Iruka looked half like he was giving himself a hernia and half like he was popping his eardrums. Still conscious. Oh, well.

He wrapped it as securely as he could. Have to see about a splint later. Now for the hard part.

First thing was to pack the wound, stop the bleeding. Kakashi sliced through Iruka's shirt-it was a complete loss anyway-and pushed the pieces aside.

The wound was a gash, a nasty one, like something had sunk its claws in and they'd had to be ripped out. Didn't look like they'd hit anything too important, which was good because Kakashi wasn't a surgeon of any sort, magical or mundane.

Kakashi tried to be careful getting the parka off. Iruka tried to help him and was soundly rebuffed. The amount of wincing he was doing told Kakashi he was right to do so. With delicate precision, he cut away the rest of the ruined shirt.

"Now, lie very, very still."

Kakashi awoke suddenly with the unmistakeable certainty that something was wrong. It took a moment's silent evaluation lying cautiously motionless on the ground for him to realise that the feverish heat choking him was not the residue of nightmare and adrenalin. Swearing, Kakashi scrabbled over to where he'd draped his field blanket over Iruka and left him to sleep, calling the light back up on his way. Fuck, fuck, and fuck.

The blanket was twisted and pushed aside now. Iruka thrashed agitatedly, mouth open but making no sound. . Fever and chills. Kakashi had to snatch his hand back before it even got close to Iruka's forehead. Heat. It was an unusual element to have, a little too much air to quite be called fire proper, but Kakashi's own affinity was rather nonstandard. He was lucky Iruka hadn't flash-fried him.

Kakashi took a breath and drew on the dry crackling in the air. One's element, as a magic-handler, was what one drew power from in the world, and what was easiest to influence. Kakashi's buzzed in his centre, like light trapped in a many-faceted crystal. He called a shield for his hands, first to touch Iruka's forehead-disturbingly cool-and then to try and slap him awake.

No good; he was delirious. Kakashi tried putting slow pressure on his shoulders. To calm, not to threaten. He noticed again something that had struck him earlier, that although Iruka possessed a smattering of interesting scars, he had no tattoos. No self-respecting magic-handler would get ornamentals, but live tattoos were practically a given. Kakashi had thought it might have been a glamour, but there had been no tell-tale charm around his neck when Kakashi had sliced open the high collar of his shirt.

Well, at least he'd got the wards up, after a fashion. The wound had been messy and time-consuming, but not ultimately difficult. Kakashi had cleaned it out and stitched it up as best he could. Claws, yes, but thankfully not fangs.

Kakashi pulled the blanket back over Iruka's shivering form. He didn't like this heat. It might be sweating the fever out now, but it was also draining what had to be the last of Iruka's strength. Kakashi was unsurprised by the fever, given how long Iruka had dragged himself bleeding over who-knew-what. The parka had been zipped over it, as though he'd been too hot initially. Whatever other supplies he'd had had been lost-where? Lucky for him Kakashi had come along. As it was, he would just have to wait it out and see if Iruka was still strong enough to fight through the infection and blood loss.

Well. He sat back, considering. Kakashi had never done well with letting things lie.

Kakashi pulled off his over-shirt. Really, it was getting ridiculous. The first thing to do was fix the temperature. That decided, he set to work.

Ten minutes later, he was sitting by the roaring flare of Eternal Flame he'd summoned. He felt a little absurd about it, but what else was he supposed to do? Even if they hadn't been above the tree line, he wasn't about to go dashing about in a magical battle to look for firewood. In the middle of the night. During a full moon. Besides, what would he do about the smoke?

"C'mon, Iruka," he muttered. "If you die now, I'm tossing your carcass out for the weres."

Iruka moaned and coughed weakly in reply.

"And what a sparkling conversationalist you are. All right, come on."

It did seem to be working. The palpable shield of hot air around Iruka was dissipating somewhat as the Flame took over some of the work of heating the cave. Careful still to protect his hands, Kakashi checked the bandage. His stitches were holding. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Kakashi had been expecting Iruka's temperature to go down. What he hadn't been expecting was for him to yank all the warmth out of the air around him at a speed which, if Kakashi hadn't fallen asleep right next to the Flame, probably would have caused him to expire from the shock.

Growling, Kakashi dragged Iruka closer to the Flame, put his own clothes back on, and lay back down on the opposite side, shivering.

"-to expose an endless vista of smooth, creamy flesh. Her eyes smouldered like twin braziers burning incense to the goddess of love. Sumptuous, rolling hills filled his vision, their peaks pink with the waking dawn and the valley below veiled in soft, golden mist.

"'Touch me,' she commanded.

"She took a step forward and extended one delicate, ivory hand to grasp his turgid manhood. It leapt-"

"Is that...Are you reading me porn?"

Ah. Iruka was awake.

"What, you prefer Zane Grey? My mother used to read to me whenever I was sick." He had some vague notion that that made it A Thing To Do. "This is the only book I had on me. Good for long, cold winter nights. It's choose-your-own-adventure. Now, if a beautiful woman stripped off all her clothes and grabbed your dick, what would you do? A) -"

Iruka probably still didn't have enough blood to blush, but he certainly looked aghast enough to get the message across.

"Maa, we'll just check your bandages, then."

Kakashi closed Icha Icha Adventure! and set it aside. Iruka had jerked the temperature around a few more times, but the reading had actually seemed to help. Kakashi checked his temperature now: still too warm, but not nearly so alarming as it had been.

"Hold still," Kakashi instructed.

Iruka complied, sighing.

"Um," he began. "My memory is a little fuzzy. I'm not sure we..."

"Call me Kakashi." Kakashi started unwrapping the bandages.

"Iruk-ow!"

"I know." Kakashi rubbed some more salve over the wound. "I'm not surprised you don't remember. You've been delirious these past couple days."

"Days? What's been going on out there?" Iruka scrambled for his feet.

Kakashi held him down with a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Maa, slow down. Things exploded a little it night before last, but the fighting's mostly died away. They've got patrols sweeping all up and down the valley, though. It's probably best to stay out of sight for a while. Unless your mission's still active?"

Iruka glared at him.

"I suppose I'm not going anywhere for a while," he admitted grudgingly.

"Not on that leg," Kakashi agreed cheerfully. "I'd give it three months, at least. I might be able to find something to splint it with if I can ever get out of this cave. So stay off it or I'll be forced to tie you down." Kakashi couldn't resist the leering, just a little.

"Pervert," Iruka grumbled.

Kakashi smiled under his mask and continued to re-wrap Iruka's wounds.

"So let me see if I've got this straight. I'm stuck in this cave for the foreseeable future with only you and-"

"Icha Icha Adventure!" Kakashi supplied.

"-for company."

"Now, you really shouldn't judge the book before we get to the snake goddess of Sss'ah," Kakashi objected.

Iruka collapsed backwards with a heartfelt groan.

"That's it, Iruka," Kakashi said cheerfully, "get some rest."

Three days later, Kakashi had to admit Iruka had been right about one thing.

He was bored.

"What did you do to piss them off?" he half-complained, sprawled on the rough stone floor and staring up at the roof of the cave. That was marginally interesting; fractures and fractals and the physics of stalactite formation. It was still warm, but he was wearing his shirt again because, Pact or no Pact, paranoia was part of life as a sorcerer. Hard to rogue a tattoo you didn't know was there.

"It's not what I did to piss them off," Iruka retorted primly. "They've been primed to got for months. it doesn't matter who pissed them off."

Right; it didn't matter who had pissed of a valley full of weres. It was something that had happened in a few isolated corners of the world: Other population in the hills around them rose, as marginal people were forced into marginal slots, i.e. banditry. More and more villagers got bit over time until eventually the balance tipped and the Other became the majority. "Well, maybe if they happen to be looking for you."

Iruka gave Kakashi a Look he correctly translated as, we're dead if they find us anyway. Well, fair point. Spies were never popular, alas.

Kakashi restrained himself from poking the wards just so they'd flare. Line wards, or free-wards, worked more or less the same way the trail-line had. They were easy enough to draw but required a certain level of habitation or else they tended to get spotty. Regular wards were like a screen, almost tangible. These felt like gauze.

He'd done a cloaking spell in the entrance at a suitably private time of night to shore them up, once Iruka had come around. Nice enough to look at, Iruka, but a little uptight. Maybe he'd make a run for it once the patrols thinned out a little. At least dodging three Other villages on the war path wouldn't be so.

Unendingly.

Dull.

"Entertain me," Kakashi commanded. Pled.

"I'm immobilised. You be entertaining."

Kakashi rolled over onto his side, eyes narrowing speculatively. "Really."

Iruka looked like someone had just used a haddock to slap a lemon down his throat. His eyes were as wide as saucers. Kakashi flopped listlessly back onto his back.

"Your poker face is terrible," he told Iruka.

"Your face is...is.." Iruka groped for a suitably scathing retort, "an eyeball."

Kakashi grinned, swayed by wicked impulse."Your face is so ugly, when you went to the zoo, they wouldn't let you out."

There was an audible click when Iruka's jaw snapped shut. Then, "You're so ugly, when you were born, the doctor took one look at you and slapped your parents."

"You're so ugly, you make demons cry."

"Well, when you were born you were so ugly your parents asked the pixies to hit you with a pretty stick. And it broke."

"You're so ugly, farmers use your picture as a scarecrow."

Kakashi gave him a dry look, but he was smiling under the mask. Maybe he'd been a little quick to judge after all.

"You're so ugly you asked a gang of suckers to turn you so you wouldn't have to look at your own reflection anymore."

"Wha-! Your mother's so ugly tears run up her face."

"Your mother's so low, she plays handball on the curb."

"Your mother looks like a million-every year of it."

"Your mother's so fat, at the beach they thought she was a were-whale."

"Oh-fuck. Don't make me laugh like that." Iruka wiped tears from the corners of his eyes. "Okay, I've got one-Your mother's so fat, I had to take a train and two buses just to get on her good side."

"And your mother's so fat, she fell in love and broke it."

Kakashi snickered. "You're mother's so stupid, she puts lipstick on her head to make up her mind."

"So dumb she runs outside with a bowl whenever someone says it's chilly."

"So nasty she make Rite Guard turn left."

"So wrinkled, she has to screw her hat on."

"Your mother's twice the man you are."

"Ouch."

The were grinning stupidly at one another now. The flickering orange Flame-light bronzed Iruka's dark skin and was swallowed by these dark, dark eyes.

"What, did I hit a nerve?" Kakashi asked to break the sudden and inexplicable tension in the air.

"I'll show you nerves-"

Three weeks had passed, and Kakashi could see Iruka's fracture-lines spreading, ready to crack open. They'd been bottled up in here too long, eating diminishing field rations and keeping their heads well down.

The cave was only a couple metres wide in any direction; the most separation they could manage was to sit on opposite side of the Flame. Kakashi was starting to despair of getting out before the spring thaw. He needed to at least get a message to Base, and he needed to get out of this fucking hole.

He and Iruka jibed at one another. They played weirdest-life-experience (with most of the classified bits cut out) and cast throwing stars back and forth, curving them around the Flame. It was the most physical strain Iruka was permitted apart from the occasional assisted totter to the oubliette Kakashi had rigged for a john because he was a fancy sorcerer and he could do that.

But the ranking inevitably degenerated into bickering, and from there into strings of acid vituperation that left Kakashi itching to slug Iruka. That wasn't like him. Cabin-fever, he told himself. He just needed to get out.

"I'm going down to the village," he announced.

"What?" Iruka broke out of his post-row funk to ask.

"The patrols've dropped off some these past couple of days. I need some equipment to contact my base. I'll be back."

Kakashi was fast with the speed of repressed energy and long practice and was gone before Iruka could do more than sputter indignantly.

There were very few things that could have made Iruka hate Kakashi more than leaving at that moment. Shiva, God, and fat, saggy Buddha. He needed not to be lying here limbs petrifying, brain devolving into a factory for adolescent bickering. He even inched over and picked up Kakashi's filthy little orange book. And Kakashi would know he'd moved it, the bastard.

Saggy, droopy Buddha and his saggy, droopy balls.

Kakashi. Iruka was not at al sanguine about being bottle up here with Kakashi. The man was an agent, obviously, for the Global Council if not one of the other Hidden Villages. Privately, Iruka had him pegged as Hidden Village. He was a little...erratic.

That wasn't the problem. It was a problem because he was observant and quick and had his own priorities. But the real problem was that Kakashi was a magic-handler, and he thought Iruka was a magic-handler. Which wasn't quite a lie. Lots of demons handled magic. It was just simpler to keep his distance from sorcerers.

He was sure Kakashi had noticed the lack of tattoos. The semi-standard protective and keep-sharp wardings that dealt with everything from eye-strain to bullets that any individual might or might not opt for, and the sigils that magic-handlers routed power through to aid and shape their workings. Kakashi was probably inked from head to toe under all that black.

It wasn't unthinkable that Iruka wouldn't have tattoos, but it was...noticeable. Sorcerers noticed things. Kakashi noticed things, and normally he could deal with some agent guessing, but he was trapped here and sometimes people had bad reactions.

Iruka tossed the porn aside-tentacles, really?-and brooded at the hugely ludicrous Eternal Flame. Brooding wasn't his thing. He was a man as in control of his life as was feasible in this line of work, but at the moment he was either screwed or he wasn't and his mind kept circling back to that point.

He had hope for Kakashi sometimes. Keeping him alive wasn't part of the Pact. The Pact just ensured they wouldn't eviscerate each other. Although there were the wards to consider. If Kakashi stayed away long, the line wards would weaken. Even being a sorcerer didn't qualify you to cut wards, after all, or Kakashi really wouldn't have a reason keep him alive. Have had. Whatever.

But still... Iruka regarded the Flame morosely as it fluttered on unconcernedly in the middle of the floor. He could strangle Kakashi. This was insufferable.

"This is stupid," he told it.

Kakashi was insufferable. And degenerate. And the competition, at very least. It was galling, was what it was, to be at the mercy of someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a floating eyeball. It wasn't even an interesting eyeball. It was brown and tended to disappear entirely when Kakashi was laughing at him.

Iruka checked his wounds. They were healing well now. Other marks always took longer to fade. For once, Iruka was glad of being feverishly weak and drained. Now he was gaining strength, his leg would probably go faster. Surprisingly, the nutrient-packed diet of rationed rat-bars didn't seem to be jump-starting things, which was just as well. Hopefully, the rest of his stripes wouldn't grow back either; that was always a bitch to deal with. Iruka rubbed the one on his nose, wincing at painful memories.

Iruka spent his time thinking. Meditating. Pondering. He listened to the sounds that trickled in from outside, wind and patrols. The slow drip of water transferring itself from one spike of rock to another. He couldn't even set real traps because his kit was buried under several hundred thousand feet of snow, and Kakashi had taken everything except the food; but that at least was a good sign.

Listening was what Iruka did the most. He listened for villagers sweeping the valley for intruders and other villagers. Animals found their way up, though even more rarely. He listened, straining, for the dead, dread silence that meant vampires in the long night. He listened for rumblings far down in the valley that might be Kakashi in trouble.

The bone ached and it itched as it healed. Iruka bore it because he still couldn't really bend far enough to scratch it.

Days passed. Iruka gnawed slowly through rat bar after rat bar, his blood pressure rising.

The world seen through the cave mouth had been white all day. If there had been any doubt of it before, winter was here now and hitting hard. Wind whistled past the offset cave mouth, covering the audible world in a scratchy blanket of white noise.

Iruka bumped the temperature a few degrees in sympathy. The chill was purely psychological; Kakashi, damn him, did good work. Why had he even taken this mission? He hated being cold.

He was not expecting the figure that appeared first as a darker shape in the chaotic whirl of white, white white. It stopped in front of cave's mouth and turned. Iruka let thought drop away, throwing stars and knives to hand, the heat simmering in that place just below the base of his skull, ready.

The figure took a step forward over the threshold. Cold metal flew. The wards-flared once, then subsided.

Kakashi shook his head, dog-like, displacing the snow that had caked there and waved a greeting, Iruka's throwing star trapped neatly between his fingers.

Iruka's brain lurched belatedly back on track with reality. "You idiot!" he shouted. "In this blizzard? Are you insane? You're lucky you weren't blown right off the mountain!"

"Maa, Iruka, tell me what you really think." Kakashi set down his pack and some sort of sack that clanked interestingly. "Don't worry. It wasn't luck."

Iruka sputtered. Kakashi's eye sparkled with amusement. The heat at the back of his neck was still there, although he'd let the power slide back down to where it lived

Kakashi walked past Iruka to sit next to the Flame, shedding gobbets of melting snow. The sound when the hit stone was disturbingly reminiscent of the sound bloody chunks of flesh made falling. Wasn't thata nice memory. Iruka wrinkled his nose.

No sign of injury, though. Kakashi wasn't even moving stiffly, although he did give vent to a long sigh as he lowered himself to the ground. Water pooled around him.

"Ah. Warmth." Kakashi rubbed his masked cheeks.

Iruka eyed him critically. "You're soaked. And don't give me that crap about how waterproof the uniform materiel is, just get out of it before you catch pneumonia."

"Ka~aa-san," Kakashi whined, rolling his eyes.

"Fine! I'll turn my back if you're that paranoid."

"Oh, please." Kakashi levered himself to his feet and walked back to his gear. "Just make yourself useful."

He dumped a brace of hares in Iruka's lap. Iruka stared at them.

"You're...not going to. Distract me. That, that easily." Iruka was already reaching for a knife to start skinning. God. Real food.

Kakashi watched him, clearly finding enough entertainment value in this to forget his own discomfort. Iruka looked up to glare at him after cleaning the carcasses. Grudgingly, he took the short, sharp sticks Kakashi had been whittling to excuse his hovering.

"This doesn't mean you're not an inconsiderate ass."

Kakashi blinked at him innocently and accepted the skewered hares. Their fingers brushed. It took Iruka a moment to notice that the faint hum he felt was magic from Kakashi setting the sticks rotating in mid-air over the Flame.

"What else do you have in there?" Iruka asked so he wouldn't start drooling all over himself.

"Well, an inconsiderate person wouldn't tell you."

"And here you are, not telling me."

"Hm."

Iruka just gave him a Look.

"I'll just clean up a little, shall I?" Kakashi said like butter wouldn't melt in his sorcerous mouth and proceeded to putter about, sending the inedible bits of hare into the oubliette and spreading at least the sodden outer layer of his uniform near the Flame to dry.

Iruka rolled his eyes and let his head fall back against the rough grey stone. "All right."

"Hmm?"

"You are a kind and generous person who may have the sensitivity and compassion that God gave a mustard seed," Iruka recited in a sing-song voice.

Kakashi beamed at him through the mask. "Now, was that so hard?"

"..."

"You are grumpy today. Well, I was going to wait until after dinner, but since you asked so nicely-catch."

Iruka stared in incomprehension at the object in his hands. "An air-cast?" Balloon cast, more like. Still...

"I got you a walker, too." Kakashi snickered. "Not ideal, but I won't have to carry you around all the time. I assume you want it on now?"

"Please." He'd even ignore the jibe about the walker. This time.

"Give it here, then."

Iruka handed back the deflated cast. Kneeling by his outstretched leg, Kakashi unrolled it.

"Ready?"

"Just get on with it," Iruka snapped impatiently.

"If you say so," Kakashi replied mildly. The cast was in place. He pulled the cord.

Shitbuggerfuck- "Unh."

"All right?" Kakashi asked.

He was still close. The hand holding the rip-cord still rested lightly on the cast. Iruka blinked. before he could say anything, Kakashi kissed him lightly through the mask.

part two