Side Effects, Chapter 2
The past three months had been fairly uneventful, but Kakashi was still worried. They'd arrived in their assigned village, pretending to be a married couple, and settled in as a teacher (Iruka, of course) and a professional slacker (himself, of course).
Iruka complained about it, since Kakashi's originally-intended facade had been "carpenter" rather than "slacker," and he'd pointed out with a reasonable amount of justification that Kakashi was good with sharp things and must have been trying to half cut his thumb off carving a bedpost.
Kakashi had replied that he showed far more natural talent in the slacking field than in the carpentry field, which not even Iruka could argue with.
That was, of course, perfectly true. But there were two more reasons why he'd quietly excised himself from the carpentry business and taken over the position of "world's best-articulated bar ornament." As a carpenter, he needed to work at other locations. As a slacker, he could go wherever he liked, whenever he liked, and overhear whatever might be interesting. And working on other people's houses kept him too far from Iruka.
It had taken more out of him than either of them had expected; the daily, ongoing use of energy to maintain the female form was something he'd never done before. Iruka had been a teacher, not a field scout and assassin. He wasn't used to maintaining martial forms for so long. After a while, Kakashi had managed to harangue and embarrass his partner into not bothering with the sexy-no-jutsu, and just employing a couple pairs of rolled-up socks and some makeup in its place. That had been a couple of weeks ago -- but Iruka was still losing weight, and sleeping badly, and waking with shadowed circles under his eyes.
Iruka must have worn himself further past the limits of his endurance than Kakashi had ever suspected. Either that, or he had actually taken ill while he was draining himself like that. As a trainer and a field team leader, as a person responsible for the lives of the people under him, it bothered Kakashi badly to have misjudged the situation that much.
He'd even taken over trying to do some of the cooking, to let Iruka rest after a day's teaching -- he didn't cook particularly well, but then they'd both been bachelors for a long time, and Iruka mercifully didn't tease him about the scorched omelets, and not even Kakashi could manage to burn ramen.
Iruka would tease him about everything else, but not about something that Kakashi did out of concern for him. Kakashi suspected he was embarrassed to be a chuunin seen as needy by one of the top jounin, and also suspected that Iruka had been hiding as much of his weakness as he could manage, for too long. And that was another miscalculation that Kakashi couldn't forgive himself.
You had your fun teasing him into dressing up like a woman. And he's so damn cute when he blushes like that. You never stopped to think how he might take that. Adding that to the fact that you're always on top when we make love... you make him the woman in everything; of course there's only one way he'd take that.
You were too busy having your fun to stop and think that he might seriously believe that you thought him weak, too scholarly, effeminate -- and you were too busy laughing to realize that he'd be hurt by that thought, and that he'd do more than he ought to in order to try to prove you wrong. You let your own entertainment blind you to your partner's needs. How magnificently well done of you, scarecrow.
It was deeply unsettling to be sitting on the roof of their house, listening to Iruka's gently wearied voice explaining the stroke order of the kanji for "prayer" to his class, and feeling the unaccustomed brush of wind against his face -- because he went without his mask here; the masked, faceless Sharingan Kakashi was a legend, but a shaggy silver-haired and goofily smiling slacker with an eyepatch, a stubbled chin, and some highly implausible stories of "carpentry accidents" was quite another. The entire situation had him on edge in a way he couldn't even define.
It's almost... peaceful.
No, that IS the problem. It IS peaceful, here, living like this. It's too peaceful. I can keep myself braced for a surprise assault for a week on end if I have to. But twelve months... I've got to be sure that I still know when to jump at the right shadows, after spending so long learning how to live amid all this edge-dulling peace.
And what the hell is wrong with Iruka?
There was a sudden chatter of little voices, and children burst out the front door, scattering toward their homes; Iruka stood in the doorway smiling, and leaning a little against the doorframe for support.
Kakashi swung down from his perch on the edge of the roof, and looked at the younger man. The makeup was surprisingly plausible, after this many weeks to practice, but the dress now hung too loosely on his frame. Iruka felt out of balance, as though he were leaning precariously forward trying to overcompensate for struggling up a hill that wasn't there.
Iruka noticed his scrutiny, and smiled at him, reaching up to rumple his hand through Kakashi's untamed silver thatch of hair. "Stop worrying," he said. "I'm not that weak."
"I never said you were," Kakashi murmured, hating himself.
Iruka's eyes widened a bit, and he bit his lower lip, and then looked away.
...Damn. I'm pissed at me, not at him, but it looks like that's not what he heard. How do I say that without embarrassing us both?
Naruto, of course, would just say it -- probably accompanied by a scalp-scrubbing noogie, a sticking-out-of-tongue, and a race to the ramen shop. Sakura would blush and stammer and giggle for two or three hours and only belatedly realize the other half of the conversation had walked away without her. Sasuke... who am I kidding? Ah, hell...
Well, there are some shameless advantages I can take of the fact that everyone knows the poor hard-working schoolteacher's been hitched to the most incorrigible good-for-nothing for miles...
Not caring who might be watching, Kakashi caught Iruka by the shoulders and pulled him into his arms and proceeded to kiss the living daylights out of him. It took a while for the tension of surprise and embarrassment to drain away and leave Iruka completely limp, breathless, and blushing in his arms. Fortunately, Kakashi enjoyed every moment of his work.
And he says I'm not a craftsman. --Well, not a carpenter anyway. If he wasn't so tired out, I'd remind him I know a thing or two about pounding and nails and...
...stop it, you lecher, he's all but passed out in your arms.
What do you mean stop it? You just half-suffocated him unconscious from the kissing. Best opportunity a man's going to get, suggested a small impish corner of his mind.
Iruka blinked bliss-hazed eyes up at him, and said huskily, "Why the hell did you stop there?"
See? See? said the little imp, vindicated. When faced with persuasion like that... well, who needed dinner anyway. And there was always takeout.
Kakashi swung Iruka off his feet despite a yelp of startlement, and carried him inside, and kicked the door shut and elbowed the latch into place. That was as good as it needed to get; there was a perfectly usable floor lying right there waiting...
Kakashi's conscience nudged at him again, and with an internal sigh, he carried Iruka upstairs to lay him on the futon. Softer, and more comfortable, and better for resting afterwards. He wasn't going to think about the possibility that Iruka might be seriously sick. That wasn't a possibility. He was just being considerate. That was all.
Consideration lasted about as far as getting the dress off him. After that, he considered he'd made enough of an effort at being gentlemanly already, and with all that temptation lying right there, it would have taken a saint to resist any longer.
When they were both sated, an exhausted Iruka fell asleep in his arms, smiling, with his head nestled into the hollow between Kakashi's shoulder and throat. Iruka's hair was softer than it looked when he just dragged it up into a bushy ponytail and left it to fend for itself; unbound, it spilled partway down his back, and Kakashi found himself stroking it smooth and thinking things he had to classify as uncharacteristically mushy.
...I told him he didn't need sexy-no-jutsu for anything.
Kakashi closed his eyes, and listened to the rhythms of their lives, and of the world around them. There was one unusually "bright" spot dancing away downstairs -- Kakashi had discovered that Iruka harbored a secret and somewhat baffling passion for strawberries. Natural strawberries wouldn't be growing for at least another month, so Kakashi had found some seeds and given them a bit of a nudge. Now they were exuberantly strawberrying away at the world in general. Iruka blushed whenever he saw them, so Kakashi kept moving the plants around, to surprise him in new spots, although he claimed it was just to make sure they got as much sun as possible.
By the end of the week, another batch of them would be perfectly ripe for the harvesting, if Iruka hadn't surreptitiously picked and eaten the lot by then. If there were any left, Kakashi resolved, he was going to get some housewife around here to dip the things in chocolate, and see what that did to their normally-so-proper schoolteacher...
There were many, many advantages to not needing to even pretend to hold down a full-time job...
Even inside his own mind, Kakashi blinked. Something else nearby was brighter than it ought to have been, like the strawberries. No threat, though - not even consciousness, just... a spark of something. An odd almost-echo of something familiar and yet unfamiliar...
Kakashi opened his eyes, and looked down at Iruka, sleeping in his arms. Looked as deeply as only one of their kind could -- Kakashi still didn't see anything resembling a disease in him, just more warmth than he'd expected, and that odd sense of overbalancing, overcorrecting, even when he'd given up the rather silly sexy-no-jutsu and...
...Iruka. Overcorrecting for something. Unconsciously, overcorrecting for something that didn't need correction...
...Echoes. A too-warm spot nestled deep in the flow of his chakra, something he was trying too hard to compensate for...
..."Iruko" had been "alive" for almost two and a half months, but she'd never...
...wait, that was ridiculous, they'd never... not while he was a she, that was...
...but they'd certainly been busy when he wasn't a she, and then he became a she, so then...
"Oh my God," Kakashi said, and then started laughing. "Oh, God, Iruka, you're going to kill me."