Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Kakashi ran. Forest flew by him, an indistinguishable green blur as he leapt from tree to tree, covering distance in giant, chakra-burning bounds. He ran with a desperate speed, keenly aware of time slipping away from him. He had to make it back to Konoha, to deliver the intel he'd gathered, if not for himself. His body ached, burned, but not from the strain of his current pace.

It had been a jutsu, one he'd never seen before. He didn't know what it'd done. What it was doing. He'd felt it hit, but the effects hadn't been immediate. There had been a faint buzz, a warmth deep in his body, but that was it. It hadn't been enough to distract him from killing the missing-nin, a former medic-nin from Grass Country.

But the death of the missing-nin hadn't stopped the jutsu, if anything it'd gotten worse. It spread and grew. The warmth became a burning in his bones. The buzz, a constant vibration threatening to rattle him apart.

He ran, ignoring the burning, ignoring the shaking, focused solely on getting home. Each step caused white-hot jolts of pain to lance up his legs and through his body. He ignored that too. There wasn't time for anything else. The speed the jutsu's strength was increasing guaranteed that.

He might not know the finer details of what it was doing, but he didn't need to. It was killing him.

The tremors became full-body shakes, making his steps unsteady, but he pushed on. Konoha was less than an hour away. He'd make it. What happened after that would no longer be in his control.

He marveled at the clarity of his mind. His head ached, but it wasn't keeping him from thinking. Whatever this was, it wasn't affecting his cognitive functions, instead leaving him with crystal clear awareness of the way his body felt like it was trying to combust, like it was ripping itself to pieces.

He made it past the gates, through the town, into Tsunade's office. He handed over the intel. Then he collapsed.

His last memory was of Tsunade cursing him out as pain overwhelmed him and darkness claimed him.

The white walls and sterile scents of the hospital were never pleasant to wake up to, but at least they meant he wasn't dead. Kakashi tried to push himself into a sitting position only to realize it wasn't going to happen. He felt weaker than a two-day-old ninken. He resigned himself to looking around the room instead. Even turning his head was difficult. His neck was stiff, like he hadn't moved in days.

This wasn't a standard hospital room, that much was immediately clear. It was a single occupancy room, reserved for only the worst cases, and while the window was large, it was the kind that didn't open. Short of breaking it, there'd be no escaping that way. A set of Icha Icha books were sitting on the table next to his bed, a bookmark stuck about two thirds of the way through Tactics. Kakashi stared at it for a moment. He never bothered to use a bookmark.

He lifted one of his arms, looking at the IV and various sensors attached. Even more concerning, a silver chakra-restricting cuff gleamed around his wrist. There was a matching one on his other arm.

Moving was an effort, but it didn't hurt. He was willing to bet that was the drugs speaking though. His mind was fuzzy enough he had to be on something. He frowned at the way his arm shook, then let it fall back to the bed. There'd be no escape from the hospital in his near future, glass-breaking or otherwise. He doubted he could stand without his face making a sudden and forceful acquaintance with the floor.

He tried to assess his physical state. His mouth was sore and dry, but that was to be expected. His entire body ached distantly, though nothing felt broken. He didn't have any casts or large bandages, which was always a plus. He felt exhausted, but not chakra depleted. Or at least, not exactly. He must still have chakra though, otherwise why the cuffs? He didn't know what was off, but something was. Something felt... different. Something that seemed to flicker at the corner of his awareness, obscured enough that he couldn't make it out.

There was no point in delaying the inevitable any further. With a shaky hand, he pressed the button to call a nurse.

Only moments later, Tsunade came instead.

Tsunade was glaring at him. That had to be a good sign. If he were dying, he hoped her usually brusque bedside manner would be slightly softer.

"What did you get yourself into this time?" she asked as she laid her hands on his chest, her bright blue chakra tingling as it scanned his body.

"Got hit by a jutsu," he said, his voice a dry rasp, quieter than a whisper.

"That much we'd figured out without you. Do you know what jutsu?"

"No," he said, feeling his eyelids already starting to get heavy.

"You killed the missing-nin who used it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Let's hope the jutsu died with them."

"What did it do?" He knew he wasn't going to like the answer, but he needed to ask.

She frowned. "We'll talk about it later. For now, you need sleep."

He was pretty sure sleep was all he'd been doing lately. He wanted to argue, wanted to stay awake and get answers, but he couldn't. Not with how quickly the room was dimming and he was being pulled into darkness again.

He did rest, though it wasn't like he had much choice in the matter. He dozed off and on, waking for a few minutes whenever a nurse came to check on him.

The door opened, bringing Kakashi out of his slumber. He expected to see another nurse coming to poke and prod at him again, but this time it was someone different.

Umino Iruka stood frozen just inside the door and Kakashi blinked slowly at him in surprise. He wanted to grin. Iruka was better than a nurse any day of the week.

"You're awake," Iruka said after a moment, rubbing at the scar on his face, the slightest blush on his cheeks.

"Woke this morning," Kakashi said, voice still hoarse.

"Oh. That's good."

The beeping of the monitors echoed off the walls of the room as they stared at each other.

There were signs of exhaustion on Iruka's face, slight dark circles under his eyes.

"Are you okay?" Kakashi asked, before he could think better of it.

Iruka glanced around, trying to find something to look at besides Kakashi. There wasn't much else in the room. "I'm fine," he said.

Kakashi watched him. He should say something. Thank Iruka for visiting. Tell him to come in all the way and take a chair. That'd be nice. But he couldn't work out what to say, not with sleep tugging at his consciousness again.

"Right," Iruka said, "I should let you rest. I was just here to... see someone. Someone else. And thought I'd stop by."

Iruka's cheeks were getting redder. It was cute, Kakashi thought, mind a pleasant sort of fuzzy as his breath slowed and deepened. He wondered who Iruka was there to see. Hopefully they weren't injured too severely. It'd be nice to have Iruka there to visit him.

"Okay," Kakashi slurred out, reaching the end of the time he could stay awake far quicker than he would have liked, especially given his present company.

As he was drifting off, he thought Iruka took a couple steps closer.

"Take care, Kakashi-san," Iruka said quietly.

A thread of warmth ran through his blood as sleep reclaimed him.

The following day he was able to prop himself up into something that vaguely resembled a sitting position and even stayed awake long enough to demand answers.

"What did the jutsu do?" he asked when he finally had Tsunade in his room again. This time she didn't put him off.

"Whatever it was, it caused your blood cells to vibrate at an ever-increasing rate until they tore themselves apart, basically destroying you from the inside out. I've never seen anything like it."

Kakashi's eyes widened. If he hadn't felt it firsthand, he wouldn't believe something like that was possible. Medic-nin that became missing-nin were the worst.

"We attempted an exchange transfusion," she said, "replacing as many of your damaged blood cells as we could, but it didn't work. Each time we did it, the effects lessened for a while, then started to increase again. The jutsu had settled too deeply into your bones. All the new blood cells your body created were infected by it, and that infection spread to the donated blood cells as well."

Breath shallow, Kakashi's mind whirled. The rattling buzz he'd felt on his rushed journey home was no longer present, so they had to have found some way to fix it. At least temporarily.

She studied him for a moment, then continued. "We destroyed your bone marrow then replaced it. We couldn't regrow an untainted version of your own in a timely manner, so we used a donor's instead. It was the only way we could counteract the jutsu."

"So it worked?"

Her mouth tightened. "That remains to be seen. You're staying here for observation for at least another few weeks until your immune system fully recovers, not that you'll have enough energy to do more than lie in bed anyway. After that, we'll see what happens. This isn't going to be a quick recovery. We can use jutsu to make sure the transplant takes and to speed things along, but there's no instant fix for something like this, and we don't have much precedent to go on. You need to be careful with physical activity and chakra usage until your strength is back and we know there are no lasting side effects."

He nodded. Definitely no daring hospital escapes in his near future then. "How long was I out?"

"Nearly three weeks. We kept you under until it seemed like we'd found something that was working."

Kakashi let out a breath. He'd guessed days, not weeks.

"Rest," she told him. It was a command, not a suggestion. She turned and walked towards the door. Right before she left, she yelled back, "AND ABSOLUTELY NO USING CHAKRA."

Kakashi snorted. With the cuffs on his wrists, that wasn't even an option.

He stared at the door she'd forcefully shut behind her. What had he gotten himself into?

It was another few days before he could do much more than push himself into a semi-sitting position, until even just thinking about picking up one of his books wasn't enough to make him realize how exhaustion still ruled his body. Whatever combination of drugs they were giving him, it was the good stuff. Directly after his doses, he floated in a haze that blurred the lines of awake and dreaming. Even between doses, the lingering fuzz of dulled senses remained.

But exhaustion retreated, grudgingly giving him more time awake, and eventually he managed to sit up fully and grab Tactics from where it had been placed beside him. The other books were neatly stacked, but it laid apart from them like he'd been in the middle of reading it.

It felt good to have one of the books in hand again. He opened it to the bookmarked page, curious. It was just a small slip of paper, not even two centimeters square, possibly torn off a blank scroll. Maybe in all the chaos, it'd slid in between the pages of the book and someone had figured he'd been using it to mark his place.

Shrugging, he put the scrap of paper on the table and closed the book. It wasn't where he'd left off. It wasn't even the right book. He set down Tactics and grabbed Violence, flipping it open to the last chapter he remembered reading.

His mind was still fuzzy from the painkillers, but he was lucid enough to read. He grinned and settled in. This was one of his favorite parts of the book. The big climactic action scene, not to be confused with the Big "Climactic" Action Scene, which happened just after this battle, another of his favorites.

Himeko saw the domed tower rising before her,
standing tall and proud on the hard plains. A
wiry bunch of plants grew just to the north of
the impressive structure, only accentuating its
massive size.

"Phallic much?"

Kakashi blinked. That had been Iruka's voice. Clear as day, as if he were sitting right next to Kakashi. Feeling more than a little stupid, Kakashi glanced around the room. No Iruka in sight. He turned back to his book, amused at the direction his mind had just taken.

Himeko's chest heaved as her breath came in
harsh pants, expansive breasts bouncing with
each long stride she took, desperate desire
twisting deeply in her core. She had to arrive
in time.

"Oh, I'm sure she'll arrive in time. Come in good time too," Iruka said with a snort.

Kakashi blinked again, and glanced around the room a second time. Still no Iruka. Okay, these painkillers were even stronger than he'd thought if they were making him hallucinate Iruka giving Icha Icha commentary.

She hadn't had enough time to prepare for the
battle she was about to face. The messenger
had come just as she'd stepped out of her
bath, rivulets of water streaming down her
smooth skin as she stood, nipples hardening
in the chilly evening air. She'd thrown on a
short, silk yukata to answer the door. It
clung to her skin as her serving girl gasped
out the news.

It was all in Iruka's voice now. Every single word of it. Like he was reading the book aloud. Kakashi held back the giggle that idea brought up. Iruka reading Icha Icha to him. These were definitely good drugs. Feeling his face heat, he continued reading.

Her true love. He'd been taken. They'd
captured him.

Those short sentences were all it took to get
her moving. There was no time to put on more
clothing, just the short yukata covering her
glistening skin. She hadn't even tied it
properly, the shoulders slipped dangerously
low, threatening to slide down completely
with each shuddering breath. Only the
moisture on the generous swell of her breasts
stopped its downward motion. She felt cool air
against the most delicate, sensitive parts of
herself as she moved, a liberating feeling
even in this harrowing situation.

"Poor girl is going to fall out of her yukata at this rate." There was a pause. "If that's how she ends up defeating the bad guys, I swear to god, I'm throwing this book against the wall, Kakashi."

Kakashi grinned. Himeko did defeat the bad guys, but not via a wardrobe malfunction.

She'd grabbed her sword, but there was no
time to fasten it properly across her back.
The scabbard slapped against her firm,
curvaceous ass with every step she took,
driving her forward that much faster.

"It was a long, hard sword. So hard. So long. Perfect for thrusting into things. In long, hard thrusts. First in, then out, then in again. The hilt stood up proudly, just begging to be gripped with a firm hand," Iruka added in a dry voice.

Kakashi snickered. His imaginary Iruka had excellent commentary. He also read at a different pace than Kakashi. It was almost like reading the book for the first time all over again.

Well, if it was going to be like that, he needed to do this right and take full advantage of the Umino Iruka-read audiobook that his imagination hopped up on pain meds was supplying.

Almost regretfully, he put down Violence and picked up Paradise, starting from the beginning. He was delighted to find that his imagination was more than ready for the task, giving him an audio track complete with commentary, though it was more hesitant at first. Kakashi could almost hear the embarrassment in Iruka's voice at the beginning, reading quietly like he didn't want anyone but Kakashi to hear. Kakashi couldn't hold back a gleeful giggle at that mental image. A few soft snorts and one or two "oh dear god"s were all Kakashi got for asides in the first chapter. It wasn't until midway through the book that Iruka seemed to get into full swing, voice picking up confidence and sharp wit coming out in full force.

The sex scenes were a particular treat. The first one had been read in a halting, awkward fashion, the dirtiest parts rushed through in a nearly inaudible whisper. The second one had been greeted with a loud sigh then read in a near monotone. The third one though, the third one was when things started to get good, and the fourth one had Kakashi squirming as Iruka's voice caressed each word, just a little deeper and huskier than usual, like he wasn't entirely unaffected by it either. The commentary had been kept to a bare minimum, but Kakashi hadn't minded. There had been one thoughtful, low hmm right after the hero confessed his deepest desire to the heroine, of having her bend him over his desk and peg him, that had Kakashi's toes curling. It had been followed by a slight pause, then the sound of a throat clearing before the reading had continued. Kakashi had always liked that scene and he was glad to know that imaginary, book-reading Iruka did as well. There were a number of scenes that he couldn't wait to get to, especially one towards the end of Tactics, but he wouldn't let himself skip ahead.

He was so absorbed in it, he didn't realize how late it'd gotten until he looked up from the last page of Paradise and saw how dark it was in his room. He vaguely remembered nurses coming in to check on him a few times. They were giving him smaller doses of medicine now, making him less groggy, but it was still enough to keep Iruka reading in his head. He hadn't paid them much mind and they'd eventually left, which was all he really cared about.

Exhaustion hit him hard. Placing Paradise back on the table by his bed took more effort than it should have.

He snuggled down into his blankets, snatches of Iruka's voice still floating in his mind. His eyelids felt heavy, and he didn't try to fight sleep, instead letting his mind wander as he waited for it to take him. He wasn't surprised to find where his thoughts went.

Hallucinations, drug-induced or not, were never the best sign, but he couldn't bring himself to care. If this is what his unconscious mind decided to do while he was under the influence, it was time well spent. Maybe it meant he'd been letting his fantasies get the better of him lately, a sign he'd been getting a little too attached, but there wasn't much he could do about it at the current moment.

He'd always liked Iruka's voice. He liked a lot more than that, but Iruka's voice was definitely high on the list. More than once he'd hung out in the mission room when Iruka was on shift, just to catch little snippets of his conversations. Not that he'd admit it to anyone but himself. As far as everyone else in the village was concerned, they were simply two colleagues who'd shared students and were now on semi-friendly terms, nothing more.

And sure, he might hit on Iruka a little from time to time as he picked up his missions and dropped off his reports. Or it might be more than a little, and perhaps more frequently than from time to time. But it didn't matter how much or how often, Iruka didn't notice. Kakashi wasn't sure if he was completely oblivious or just uninterested, but either way, Kakashi didn't push it. Flirting was enough. If he was being honest with himself, it was probably better that way.

Kakashi shook his head a little. No point in dwelling on it. It was just a crush; it'd go away. Eventually.

Besides, it'd helped him get through a day of bed rest so quickly he hadn't even realized it'd gone by. He might be stuck in the hospital for a while longer, but until then, he had some interesting, drug-induced material to keep himself entertained. Very entertained, once he had the opportunity. He had every intention of rereading that fourth sex scene as soon as he knew a nurse couldn't walk in on him at any moment, especially not to check why the monitors said his heart rate was suddenly skyrocketing.

He grinned to himself as he started to drift off. Tomorrow he'd read Violence from the beginning. There were quite a few scenes he was looking forward to hearing in Iruka's voice. He hadn't thought there was a way Icha Icha could be better, but he'd been wrong.

His last thought before sleep was that Iruka could probably make everything better.

Two days later, they'd cut him off from the painkillers, and he was more than a little disappointed to find the hallucinogenic properties of the medication gave out abruptly about two thirds of the way through Tactics. He read a few more pages, but while he could force himself to imagine it in Iruka's voice, there was no more amusing commentary to go with it, and it just wasn't the same. Tactics had always been his favorite in the series, but the last third of it felt boring now in comparison. He skimmed through the rest, but his heart wasn't in it.

For a brief moment he considered asking for another dose, one more should be enough to get him through the end of the book, but he didn't. He was still a little fuzzy from the last one, but he wasn't in pain. He couldn't imagine Tsunade responding well to "Listen, just give me one more dose. There's this scene coming up in about 50 pages that demands a cute, hallucinated chuunin read me the dirtiest parts. And could you maybe disconnect the heart monitor and keep the nurses out while I read it?"

His eyes caught on the scrap of paper that was still on the bedside table, and for one moment he wondered if maybe, just maybe.

He snorted. Now he really was imagining things.

Still, just for the hell of it, he tucked the bookmark back into Tactics.

Shaking his head, he set it down and picked up Paradise again. His memory was good enough, he could remember what he'd hallucinated. Maybe he didn't have the last third of Tactics, and sure that was the best of the series, but he still had hundreds of pages just begging to be reread.

Grinning, he imagined a red-faced Iruka sitting by his side, casting worried looks at the door as he started reading the first chapter.

If he had to be confined to a hospital room, this was definitely a good way to spend the time.

At the end of the two weeks, Kakashi had seven chapters mentally bookmarked for further perusal once he was home. He'd started skipping most of them during his rereads, his mind painting pictures of Iruka that were far too vivid to be thinking about anywhere outside the privacy of his own bedroom. The tiny hitches in his breathing, each quiet clearing of his throat, a few audible swallows, even some rustles like he'd been shifting in his seat. They all echoed loud and clear in Kakashi's head. He hadn't realized his imagination could be quite so detailed. He wasn't going to complain about it though, not when it'd given him words like aching, throbbing, straining, writhing, thrusting, fucking in Iruka's voice, rough and low.

Tsunade ran test after test on him before she was willing to take off the chakra-restricting cuffs and let him go. He'd started to become suspicious of the amount of blood she'd taken from him, like she was trying to bleed him dry one syringe at a time. But each test came back negative for any remaining traces of the jutsu and slowly they allowed him more freedom. First letting him exercise, a nice way to work off steam after days of having nothing to do but imagine Iruka reading him porn, then eventually they let him use chakra again. Under the observation of roughly half of Konoha's medic-nin. He had a feeling more would be there, they just couldn't fit in the room.

It was anticlimactic. He'd half expected something to explode, possibly himself, the first time he gathered his chakra, and from the look on some of the medic-nin's faces, he hadn't been the only one.

It felt good to mold chakra again, to have the cuffs off and to be able to shape the energy of his body.

There was an audible sigh of relief from the assembled medic-nin as he walked up a wall, across the ceiling, and then back down the opposite wall with no issues.

They'd even brought out chakra induction paper for some reason Kakashi couldn't fathom. The moment he touched the paper it crinkled in the exact same way it always had, but that didn't stop a handful of the medic-nin from gathering around it, one of them even bringing out a magnifying glass to take a closer look.

Eventually Tsunade released him with a warning about taking things slow and only using minimal chakra until his strength had fully returned. She said he'd get tired quicker than usual for the next month or two, but he could start taking easy missions with no risk of enemy engagement once his strength was back. He had a standing weekly checkup with her, and was commanded to report any anomalies in his health, no matter how small.

Kakashi nodded like he understood and would follow her instructions to the letter, though they both knew otherwise.

Halfway home, Icha Icha series in hand, a sudden urge to veer off the quickest path to his apartment hit Kakashi, a pull telling him there was somewhere else he needed to go first. His instincts rarely let him down, so he went.

It wasn't long before he saw Iruka sitting on a bench, looking out over the town. It felt right to run into him so soon, given how much Kakashi had been thinking about him, but that didn't mean he knew what to say.

Iruka blinked at him in surprise and got to his feet. "Kakashi-san, you've been released?"

Iruka's eyes flickered down to the books in Kakashi's hands and quickly away. There was a hint of pink on his cheeks. A shiver tried to run through Kakashi's body, but he suppressed it. Two weeks of near constant fantasies about Iruka reading him smut weren't doing any favors to his social skills.

"Yeah," was all Kakashi managed to get out, glad he had a mask, otherwise it'd be clear he was blushing harder than Iruka.

"That's wonderful," Iruka said, genuine happiness in his voice and it made a pleasant warmth run through Kakashi's veins.

They stood there for a moment, staring at each other. Kakashi was hit by the urge to step closer. He pushed it down. His instincts might be good most of the time, but he knew when they were off.

He made his excuses and Iruka wished him well. His quiet "Take care" as Kakashi turned to walk away brought back the fuzzy memory of Iruka shuffling closer to his bed, whispering the same thing. It pulled Kakashi to a stop.

"Thanks for visiting," he said.

Iruka's eyes widened. "You remember?"

"Yeah. Is your friend okay?"

"Oh." Iruka blinked, his blush getting darker. "Yes. Everything's fine now."

"That's good," Kakashi said. They stayed there, staring at each other for a beat, then Kakashi made himself walk away, not sure what else to say. The entire way home, the only thing he could feel was a desire to go back to Iruka. He really was going to have to figure out how to get over this crush.

Kakashi recovered quickly after his release. His release from the hospital, that was, not any other, more fun and life-affirming kind of release. Though the one of that nature caused by his first post-hospital reading of the fourth sex scene in Paradise also had a refractory period short enough to put most 18-year-old boys to shame.

Some people might feel guilty for getting off to the idea of a respected member of the shinobi community reading them porn. Kakashi was not one of them.

His weekly checkups with Tsunade were uneventful no matter how many tests she threw at him. She let him go back to his regular workout routine, though she did repeatedly remind him to inform her if anything abnormal happened during training. He was fairly sure she wasn't referring to Gai, so he kept all oddities of that nature to himself.

Getting her to let him take on his usual missions again was another matter altogether. It took far longer than he could call justified before she okayed his return to active duty, especially considering the fact that he'd shown no side effects from the jutsu. But finally she did allow him to take missions again, even if it was only semi-active duty.

"B-rank at least," he tried, not for the first time.

She stared at him blankly. "Maybe we should start you out with D-ranks," she said after a moment.

"C is fine." Kakashi gave her his best eye-smile to show exactly how okay C-ranks were. There was no way he was getting stuck on a bunch of D-ranks when he didn't have a team of genin to do the worst of it.

He excused himself quickly, getting out of Tsunade's sight before she could decide D-ranks were the way to go.

Who knew, maybe he'd get lucky and get assigned another very-much-not-a-C-rank mission. A jounin could always hope. He might be able to bribe the mission desk workers to give him the closest thing to a B-rank they had. There were always a few missions that never fit neatly into one rank or another.

Kakashi grinned. Being on (slightly restricted) active duty again meant regular trips to the mission room. He'd never thought he'd be this excited for paperwork. Paperwork, and the people who collected it.

As it turned out, he wasn't lucky. The mission desk workers had clearly been warned that C-rank meant C-rank and definitely not almost-B. They gave him a mission that involved clearing about a dozen trees from a lot just north of the Academy that was going to be developed. If anything, it was a D-rank masquerading as C-rank, classified as such for the simple fact that no one trusted newly made genin with large amounts of explosives within the walls of the village.

There was also a disappointing lack of anything resembling a pony-tailed chuunin in the mission room. To be expected, given that it was a school day, but stranger things had happened. Though, those stranger things usually involved Gai.

Between the mission and the person who wasn't there to hand it over, today was not Kakashi's day. At least they were going to let him blow some things up. Maybe if he tried hard enough he could pretend the trees he'd be demolishing were enemies. Very slow, dim-witted enemies that just stood there as explosive tags were carefully attached to them in a way that would ensure all resulting debris was contained within an acceptable perimeter.

Kakashi had a good imagination, but it wasn't that good. He didn't even think Tsunade's drugs would help. It was going to be a long day.

The only plus Kakashi could think of was that he'd be working near the Academy. Close enough that he might conceivably drop by just because he was in the neighborhood. To check on the future of Konoha and all that. There was also a chance that he could possibly run into some unspecified teacher on their way home for the day and casually suggest that a bowl of ramen could potentially be in order.

Not that he was going to do any of that. It was just nice to know he had options.

On the other hand, being just a few blocks from the Academy and all the possibilities it offered was distracting. To keep himself from dwelling too long on things that weren't going to happen, he mentally recited a few of his favorite Icha Icha scenes. He'd reread the books so often in the last few weeks, he could easily recall his imaginary Iruka's commentary.

And so he got to work, as Iruka's voice caressed words of passion and love. And more than a little abuse of ninjutsu.

With chakra vibrating his hand, his signature
O no Jutsu, he trailed his fingers up her thigh,
loving the way her legs shook and her nails
dug into his muscled biceps as she clung to
him with desperate passion.

There was a long pause. "Wait. Is this why Naruto accused me of not teaching the "interesting stuff," then went bright red and refused to say another word for a full ten minutes?" Kakashi could imagine Iruka shaking his head. "It was the longest I'd ever seen him be quiet."

"How do you want me?" Miko asked, her voice
as hot as he knew it would be inside her.

"On the ceiling," he said as he pulled her
closer and leapt up, releasing chakra through
his knees to anchor them there.

Iruka snorted. "Sure, ceiling sex is all fun and games right up until you remember that 99.9% of ninjas lose control of their chakra when they orgasm. The hospital should have sent Jiraiya the bill every time someone came in with a broken dick after they fell eight feet onto it."

"And I mean, don't even get me started about how difficult it is to release a steady amount of chakra through your knees even under normal circumstances."

Kakashi had to admit that imaginary Iruka was right. Not that he'd ever tried to see if it were possible. Absolutely not.

He fell into a rhythm, exploding a tree with tags, then sorting the resulting pieces into piles by size, which would be collected later by genin teams on actual D-rank missions. The work was as boring as predicted, though it was still better than no missions at all. Even if he was sure Tsunade had handpicked it herself, punishment for the dozen or more times he'd done everything but beg to be put back on active duty after she'd repeatedly told him not yet. Besides, Iruka commenting on Hiiro's apparently endless stamina made it go fast enough to not be completely maddening.

Compared to Kakashi's normal missions, this was on the easy side, but it used more chakra than he'd expected. Mostly because he was using jutsu instead of physical labor whenever possible. It wasn't laziness, he told himself, he just needed to test his limits and make sure he was back in top form. As far as he could tell, he was close. He was using chakra a little faster than normal, but not at an unreasonable rate.

He finished in a decent amount of time, and then headed to the mission room to turn in his report. That was when his luck seemed to improve. Iruka was on shift. Kakashi knew he'd be there even before he entered the room. It wasn't that he'd memorized Iruka's schedule, it was just that deep inside of himself, he knew who he'd see behind the desk. It felt right going there. If Kakashi's instincts had been good before, they were now on an entirely different level.

As he walked into the room, he felt... he wasn't exactly sure. A little lightheaded, maybe. Perhaps being outside most of the day and using more chakra than he had in weeks had drained him more than he'd realized. But it didn't feel like exhaustion or heatstroke. It felt like excitement, anticipation. He'd gotten flustered around Iruka before, mostly when Iruka had given him an offhanded compliment or had just looked at him for a moment longer than normal, but this seemed different somehow. It wasn't just his heart beating a little faster, his face feeling a little hotter. It was a restlessness just under his skin, a sort of nervous energy that he wasn't sure he could blame entirely on Iruka. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was, but it seemed to build as he got closer to the desk.

Overly aware of his body as he walked up, he felt his chakra shift almost imperceptibly as he handed over his report to Iruka. It jumped and crackled, bridging the small gap between their fingers. The sharp snap and tiny jolt of electricity caused them both to jump.

Iruka laughed, but Kakashi couldn't do the same, too embarrassed by what had just happened. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Iruka headed him off.

"It's been so dry lately, I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often."

Kakashi frowned slightly, but nodded in agreement. It'd been such a small spark, Iruka probably hadn't noticed the difference. Maybe only a sensor would have. But it hadn't been static electricity, it'd been chakra. For one brief moment, he hadn't had control and it had jumped out at Iruka.

Kakashi beat a hasty retreat out of the mission room, mumbling something he hoped could be taken as a polite goodbye as he did so. All of Tsunade's warnings tumbled around in his head. If anything seemed strange, if anything went wrong, go straight to her, tell her immediately. The jutsu might be reemerging from some long dormant state. It might start ripping apart his cells once more.

He could still remember all too clearly the way his body had shaken, the ripping feeling, the tremors and pain. This hadn't been like that. It'd been warm and momentary. A fleeting spark with just the barest suggestion of loss of control. It hadn't felt wrong. If anything, he wanted to test it. To go back to Iruka and reach out towards him and see if it'd happen again. But he didn't.

If there really was something wrong with his chakra, there was more than one way to find out.

By the time he reached an open training field, he could almost believe he'd imagined the whole thing. He felt completely normal. Maybe a little low on chakra after his day of work, but nothing a good night's sleep wouldn't fix. Possibly his crush really was growing to a ridiculous level and it was making him more flustered than ever before. That combined with all of Tsunade's warnings and a long day of boring work might have just assembled into some bizarre delusion.

Still, he needed to make sure his chakra wasn't acting strangely. If anything felt off, he'd tell Tsunade, but there was no point in bothering her if he'd just been flustered over a cute scar and a pair of warm eyes.

The basics were easy enough to run through. He whipped through half a dozen jutsu in a blink of an eye. Nothing felt wrong. His chakra was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing. The rattle and shake of his cells was nothing but a memory.

Feeling sure of himself now, he moved on to higher level jutsu. His Raikiri was perfect; bright and sharp and deadly. He released it after a moment, the air around him fading to silence. An earth wall and a water clone also caused him no problems. Neither did a genjutsu or summoning Pakkun, though the latter did get him a rather unimpressed look when he explained he was just running through a few jutsu and Pakkun was free to leave.

Pakkun sat and stared at him.

"I'll buy you steak later?" Kakashi tried.

Pakkun continued to stare.

"Now?" This seemed more acceptable. "Let me just do one last jutsu."

Kakashi made a tiger hand seal then blew out a large ball of fire. Only it wasn't just large, it was gigantic.

Pakkun flattened himself to the ground, narrowly avoiding a severe case of singed coat syndrome, while Kakashi jumped back in surprise. He hadn't planned on making the katon quite that big.

Kakashi blinked the afterimage out of his eyes. Nothing had felt wrong, it'd just been more powerful than he'd intended. He'd always been decent with fire, but not that good. Producing a katon that size should have taken a fairly large amount of chakra, more than he'd gathered at the moment, but he hadn't used more chakra than he'd meant to.

Pakkun stood again, shaking himself. "Two steaks," he said gruffly.

Kakashi nodded. That seemed fair enough.

They left the training field, Kakashi lost in thought. He didn't think he needed to tell Tsunade about this, not yet. She'd probably just laugh at him if he came to her saying he'd made a jutsu more powerful than he'd intended. He must have just put more chakra into it than he'd meant to, that had to have been the case. Nothing else made sense.

By the time they got to his apartment, Kakashi had pushed it to the back of his mind. Surely any side effects of the jutsu reawakening would be much more sinister. What missing-nin would want to make their opponent stronger, after all? With that settled, Kakashi started grilling Pakkun's steaks.

The decision not to tell Tsunade about his paranoid theories turned out to be the right one, because next he was assigned a messenger mission. Still only a C-rank, the reports he was carrying were far from top secret, but for the first time in months, he felt like he was truly stretching his legs.

Running through Fire Country, doing something productive again, it felt good. Or at least it did, right up until he was making his way home and a sizable portion of the forest around him exploded.

Apparently his plan to get a not-actually-a-C-rank mission had gone a little too well.

His eyes were nothing but afterimages of fire and explosions, his ears all ringing and reverberations from the blast as a missing-nin attacked him. Kakashi hadn't seen him before, but the missing-nin clearly knew him.

He was good, easily jounin level and with long-range attacks ideal for keeping Kakashi far enough away that he couldn't use his specialties. But Kakashi was nothing if not resourceful. He hadn't copied a thousand jutsu for nothing.

A part of Kakashi reveled in the fight. It'd been too long since he'd last been in the thick of battle, since he'd felt the way his heart pounded, his senses sharpened, his muscles burned. Kakashi never went out looking for fights, but there was no denying he was good at this. He'd been all but born to do this, and even after months of inactivity, Kakashi's body still remembered exactly what it needed to do. The muscle memory of battle was carved so deeply into him, had been since he'd been old enough to hold a kunai, Kakashi wasn't sure if it would ever truly fade.

Kakashi was unrelenting in the fight. He'd just spent far too long in the hospital, this would not be landing him back there. That more than anything motivated him. He blocked the missing-nin's long-range fire-based attacks with earth walls and sent clones to scout the area, occasionally throwing out a long-range jutsu of his own. He'd never been fond of them, they were often a waste of chakra since the distance from the target made them more likely to miss.

The missing-nin's attacks were powerful. Even behind his walls of earth, Kakashi could feel the heat of them. Trees lit up like matches as fire rained down around him.

But Kakashi didn't give an inch. He methodically tested the missing-nin until he found a weak spot. It seemed his jutsu had a reset time of 30 seconds between attacks, more than enough for Kakashi to exploit.

Kakashi judged his chakra reserves. Even after using the Sharingan, he had a little less than fifty percent. It'd decreased slightly faster than it normally would have, but he'd expected that and worked it into his plan. He still had more than enough chakra to see this through.

The missing-nin attacked again, and Kakashi let a clone take the worst of the fiery blast, then he closed the distance between them.

His opponent's eyes narrowed and Kakashi could see from his expression that this not how he'd wanted this battle to go.

Keeping his eyes on the missing-nin, Kakashi pulled deeply on his chakra, letting a Raikiri form in his hand, preparing for an attack.

But that was when he felt it, felt the way the Raikiri was... different, somehow. His own jutsu felt foreign in his hand. His lightning chakra had always flashed and sparked against his skin, but now it was more than that. It didn't just flicker and crack, it seared and scorched, an all-consuming heat combined with its electric spark.

Unsure of what was happening, he risked a glance at his hand. Shock froze him and he found himself unable to turn his eyes away. Tendrils of flame licked their way around his hand, dancing with the lightning, at times seeming to wrap around the lightning and strike out with it, at others seeming to propel it forward on the burst of an explosion.

He knew he needed to move, needed to attack, but all he could do was stare at his hand. At the Raikiri, if it could be called that anymore. Even the sound of it was different. The chittering so similar to birds was still there, but there was a crackling behind it now, a muted roaring that spoke of raging forest fires just out of sight.

It was unsettling, unnerving, that a jutsu he'd used so many times, a jutsu he'd created, could suddenly be so different without him doing anything to it.

Kakashi might have frozen in shock, but the missing-nin had not.

The attack came, quick and furious, and Kakashi's instincts kicked in. He dodged then struck in one fast, fluid motion. The missing-nin barely had a chance to register his surprise as the Raikiri pierced his chest. At least it still did what he needed it to do.

Kakashi destroyed the body quickly, then left the area, not wanting to get caught by any friends this missing-nin might have had. He didn't go all the way home just yet though.

Once he was within a short distance of Konoha, he stopped. His reserves were low, but he needed to test this, needed to figure out what it was even if it did waste chakra in the process. He was close enough to Konoha that it shouldn't matter, there shouldn't be any more missing-nin.

He held out his hand in front of him and gathered his chakra to create another Raikiri. The first few sparks of lightning seemed normal, but as he drew deeper on his reserves, he felt it: The other chakra, one that wasn't his own. Flames joined the lightning and flickered hot between his fingers, but they didn't burn him. If anything, there were more flames now than there had been before.

He could feel the pull on that foreign chakra, exactly like the pull on his own, but deeper, underneath it. He had a decent mastery of fire, though he used it less than most Konoha shinobi did. Even setting his lightning affinity aside, earth and water came more naturally to him than fire ever had. He knew some high level fire jutsu, but he'd never been good enough with it to do something like this. He'd never been anywhere near the point where he'd be able to shape it into a signature jutsu like he had with lightning.

This shouldn't be happening, he shouldn't be able to do this. Shinobi didn't just randomly develop new chakra affinities.

As much as he hated to admit it, this qualified as "something strange." It seemed like their treatment did have some side effects after all. There was no putting it off this time, he needed to talk to Tsunade.

Given the situation, going straight to Tsunade would have made the most sense, but Kakashi was never one for going directly to somewhere he could wander. After all, the scenic route was the best way to experience the road of life. And if said scenic route happened to cross paths with certain people with adorable nose scars, who was Kakashi to refuse? Besides, he'd been getting far too predictably late with his reports. Turning one in the moment he got back to the village would be a nice way to keep the mission room workers on their toes. Really, he was doing this for their sake.

As he got closer to the Tower, he could feel his chakra starting to move, that restless shift beneath his skin again. It only increased as he climbed the stairs to the mission room. He shrugged his shoulders, but it didn't help. His chakra felt excited, agitated, ready for something, though Kakashi didn't know what.

His body auto-piloted into the shortest line in the room while he tried to analyze what he was feeling. There was a strange, uncontrolled buzz to his chakra. It didn't feel the same way the jutsu had, it didn't feel destructive, it wasn't painful. He didn't feel like his body was trying to rip itself of part again. It was odd, sure, but it wasn't uncomfortable. There was something about it that he couldn't quite place.

"Kakashi-san, your report please."

Kakashi was too good of a ninja to jump, but he nearly did. He also should have been good enough to realize he'd reached the front of the line, but apparently he wasn't.

Iruka stared up at him. Kakashi didn't fumble, but he also couldn't say he was particularly smooth as he reached into one of his pouches to pull out his mission report.

"You're early," Iruka said with a warm, amused smile as he held out his hand for the report.

Kakashi's chakra shivered up his spine. He didn't let himself shudder at the thrill of it, instead handing his report over to Iruka.

The rush of chakra into his hand took him by surprise. The sharp crack of electricity between their fingertips echoed in the room. It was loud enough the chuunin sitting next to Iruka looked over in curiosity. Iruka dropped the report and shook out his hand, inhaling sharply.

Kakashi stared at Iruka's hand in horror. There was no way he could pretend it was static electricity this time. There'd been too much chakra in that spark. Iruka had to have felt it, even a newly minted genin would have been able to feel it.

He could still feel his chakra moving in his body, but it'd settled a little, seeming more grounded now.

Iruka looked up at him, a furrow creasing his brow, just a hint of concern in his eyes.

"Ah, sorry about that," Kakashi said, grasping for a reason, any reason, he'd just lost control of his chakra. "I was messing around with a new lightning jutsu on the way back and it seems to be having a few side effects." He rubbed at the back of his neck. It wasn't a complete lie.

Iruka frowned for a moment longer, than plastered on a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Aiming for 2,000 jutsu instead of just 1,000?" he asked in a rough approximation of a joke.

Kakashi let out a huff of what he hoped would be construed as laughter, and forced his eye into a smile of its own. "Well, you know what they say about variety and spice and all that."

They lapsed into silence, staring at each other, both trying to out "Nothing to see here" the other.

The ninja waiting in line behind Kakashi cleared his throat. Both Kakashi and Iruka jumped. So much for being too good of a ninja to jump in surprise.

"Thank you for your hard work on this mission, Kakashi-san," Iruka said. He hadn't even looked at the report yet.

"Right. You too," Kakashi said, then mentally kicked himself. Iruka hadn't been on a mission.

He didn't flee. Kakashi was one of the best jounin in Konoha. He did not flee. Especially not from chuunin armed mainly with paperwork. He did, however, take the moment to practice his speed. It was always good to know exactly how quickly one could exit any given room. As it turned out, Kakashi could leave the mission room with highly impressive levels of speed.

Two hallways later, he stopped his definitely-not-fleeing. He took a deep breath and sagged against the nearest wall. A passing office-nin with arms full of paperwork gave him an odd look, but let him be.

That could have gone worse, he told himself. There had to be ways that could have gone worse. Hundreds of them, he was sure. Gai could have been there, asking Kakashi at the top of his lungs if that had just been A Spark Of Youthful Passion. Genma could have been there and ended up choking on his senbon from laughing hysterically at Kakashi. Naruto could have been there, hauling Iruka to safety from whatever weirdness Kakashi was clearly infected with. It definitely could have been worse.

Kakashi took a moment to try to figure out what his chakra was doing, but as soon as he focused on it, he realized it felt completely normal again. Nothing felt odd, there was no shifting, no unexplained movement to its flow. If it weren't for the fact that he could still feel the hot burn of a blush under his mask, he might be able to think he'd just imagined the whole thing. The sharp tingle in his fingertips from the shock told him otherwise.

He needed to talk to Tsunade. Something wasn't right and he had to get it under control before he accidentally hurt someone.

Squaring his shoulders and facing the inevitable, he headed to her office.