A Better Place

A/N: Okay, so I royally suck at updating. >>; My studies will be more lax from now though and final wedding of the season is the upcoming weekend, so HOPEFULLY I will improve a bit. xD; THANKS FOR STICKING AROUND AND READING!

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“If you want to leave the hospital any time soon, you’re taking the drug,” Tsunade said firmly, holding the small vial in clear view as she observed what was visible of Kakashi’s face for a sign, any sign of what he could be thinking at the moment. His eyes just remained locked on the small bottle however as he contemplated his options. In the bed to his left Genma lay asleep after a long day of endless whining over Iruka’s wasabi-attack. He was starting to look quite a lot his usual self though and would by the morning only be mentally scarred from the event.

“Explain to me how it’s working again?” Kakashi requested after perhaps half a minute without turning his eyes away. His focus wasn’t quite there though, but he didn’t avert his gaze as he had no reason to.

“It will start taking effect in an hour or two and then you’ll be much more sensitive than normally, perhaps three times as sensitive,” the hokage explained in a bored voice, shifting her weight over on the other leg where she stood. “I’m giving it to you already tonight, because once it does take effect you will be feeling rather disoriented for five to six hours as it’s a rather strong drug, but then it will stay in effect for a couple of days which should be enough for you to learn not to push yourself and your healing tendon.”

Basically, she didn’t trust the jounin to take proper care of himself and this drug would help the man to look after himself the hours of the day when Iruka would be at the academy. She could arrange cover for him at the mission desk, but she did not want to take him away from his students. He was too competent a teacher and one of the few nins not completely nuts in this village. In Iruka’s care Tsunade could trust the kids wouldn’t be under any weird or bad influence.

“Okay, I’ll take it,” the hospitalized man finally decided and held his hand out. With a sigh of relief, Tsunade handed him the drug but stayed to make sure he actually took it and swallowed. Kakashi didn’t appreciate her consistent glare as he was going to have to pull his mask down, but as she wouldn’t look away, he quietly turned around instead before quickly draining the vial. It was no use pretending as he doubted Tsunade wouldn’t retort to foul methods if she as much as suspected he hadn’t taken the drug.

Seeing the now empty bottle though, the busty woman was satisfied and turned to leave the room, turning the lights off on her way out.
“I’ll send someone to escort you over to Iruka’s place in the morning, so now make sure you’ll have a good rest, because you’ll need it with that drug,” were her words from the door and then her clicking high heels echoed for a couple of steps down the corridor before she turned back to add one thing more. “And if I find that you retched that up or managed to come across some antidote then I’ll tie you to that bed and make sure you’ll regret the attempt for all the three months of your recovery.”

Kakashi’s eyes only crinkled into a mysterious smile in the darkness as he waited for the footsteps of his leader to disappear completely in the vast building. Then he tossed the blanket aside, revealing legs already clad in pants that he with much trouble had managed to get past the large and clumsy brace that prevented him from moving his foot. Genma opened a sleepy eye at that, ceasing to feign sleep only to sigh at the silly man in a manner similar to how Tsunade had sighed.

“You’re a crazy fuck,” he commented and coming from him, that said a lot. If someone was crazy in comparison to himself, then they truly were out of their mind. The senbon nin would never go back to Iruka’s neighborhood even after the wasabi-incident, but he certainly wouldn’t try to cross town drugged and with his foot in a brace just to claim the couch of a temperamental academy teacher with violent tendencies involving spicy edibles.

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With no Genma around, mission desk duty had actually been rather bearable, but Iruka was tired nonetheless. His head felt both heavy and light all at once and he hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. Not only did he hate being sick, but right now wasn’t the time to get ill. His students had their graduation approaching quickly and from tomorrow and onwards he’d also have another person to look after, which wouldn’t be easy if he was busy looking after himself.

Fully intent to get himself a cup of steaming tea before heading to bed, Iruka stepped through his door and carefully slipped his sandals off. Stretching his slightly stiff arms above his head, he walked up to the light switch that would light up the living room, but stopped himself as he realized there already was a strip of light in the room. Light poured out underneath the bathroom door and the teacher could only frown as he had no memory of forgetting to turn the lamp off this morning. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d checked that nothing left on when leaving for work. Not yet suspecting that he had yet another visitor in his apartment, he approached the door only to jump as there was a loud crashing sound, with a series of less loud noise following in its wake. Kunai already drawn, alarmed and freaked out of his wits by the sudden sound, he tried to jump into the bathroom only to be stopped as the door was locked. With a curse and resolve not to let the bastard in there get away, he stabbed the sharp blade in his hand in between the door and the door frame to bend it open. The force made deep marks in the wood and the lock was ripped out of place.

“….YOU!?” Iruka exclaimed as soon as the word could form on his tongue. He didn’t know whether to fall down on his knees and check the man out in his worry that he’d been hurt or to scream out his anger at the idiot on the top of his lungs. After a couple of ragged breaths he kneeled next to Kakashi who lay sprawled on the bathroom floor, one leg still in the small bathtub and one towel covering his face, another loosely wrapped about his hips. First when Iruka shook his shoulder quite violently, yelling all sorts of profanities at him, did he show any sign of still being conscious. A rather pained groan left the pale, but toned body as the drug made that hurt the fall hurt like hell. It felt like every bone in his body had broken and unfortunately he knew roughly what that feeling felt like.

“What are you doing you damn idiot?!” Iruka continued, but stopped shaking the man, instead using surprisingly gentle hands to examine him for damages. He found nothing visible that was worse than the still healing tendon though, but the jounin did seem too out of it to not have taken a bad hit in the fall. The man’s normally quick reflexes were slow and everything about him seemed dull compared to his usual elite level. “Did you hit your head?”

In response came another groan, but then Kakashi shook his head. Miraculously he’d managed to avoid such a hit, but the drug had just started taking its effect and he could clearly understand now why Tsunade had wanted him in bed when this happened. As she had said one to two hours though, he had hoped he’d have time for a shower, but obviously the drug had hit earlier rather than later. Also, being a good boy and using the crutches it had taken quite a lot longer than normally to reach it all the way to Iruka’s place.

“Just a little dizzy,” he tried to explain to the man in whose care he now was. “Tsunade said this would happen, so it’s okay… just not very nice.”

“Because of the tendon?!” Iruka asked, not guessing there was a drug involved, his eyes darting to the brace around the foot that lay on the floor. His face was all flustered , making the scar a bit darker than usual and his breaths still came out a bit short as Kakashi had given him quite a scare. The silver-haired man couldn’t help but note that the usually quite tidy hair looked much better a bit messed up like now. Iruka looked less wound up like this, more free.

“No… some drug to make me more careful,” he said, but even as he said it, it was obvious the original idea with the drug had completely failed. “I did use the crutches though. They are standing over there by the toilet.”

Making a lazy gesture towards them, he mentally patted himself on the shoulder for having cleverly poured chakra into them to even be able to climb the wall with them and so making it up to Iruka’s kitchen window. He could of course have made it easy on himself and entered the place the normal way, but the front door seemed alien to him as he’d never really used it.

Iruka just sat shaking his head for a moment, trying to wrap his mind around how Kakashi’s logics worked, his hair coming undone and falling down, nearly reaching his shoulders. The taller man just lay on the tiled floor, looking up at him as the drug kept messing with his senses. His sight was momentarily blurry, illuminating the man above him in a fascinating way and sounds came to his ears as if through a long pipe. He wouldn’t be able to get off of the floor without another person’s help, but at the moment he felt quite comfortable where he was. Sure, the edge of the tub was cutting into his leg, but the original pain right after the fall had almost completely faded and now he was drifting in the daze of the aftermath.

“You jounin are just a different breed,” the academy teacher mumbled more to himself than to Kakashi and started to look around in order to figure out how to best get the other out of his current predicament. For a moment he considered getting the larger frame into the tub first, but as he realized he maybe wouldn’t have the strength and energy to pull him out after a bath, he opted for the second option which was dragging the man straight to bed. “Let’s get you off this floor.”

First things first, all feet had to be on the floor or else things would get complicated. As Kakashi seemed too out of it to take orders quicker than Iruka could do things for him, the chuunin simply took the leg in the bathtub and brought it out where he wanted it. Then he slowly turned the nearly naked body around so they were facing each other and the other man was resting his back against the tub he’d failed to climb into. Crouching over Kakashi’s stretched out legs, he wrapped his arms around the paler torso and began pulling him up. It went well almost all the way up, but then the tiles failed him and he slipped, nearly dropping them both behind the shower curtain. In thoughtless panic he gripped after the frosty plastic drapes and pulled them with him in the fall, the pole hitting his neck before making its way down to the floor behind him.

The new position was even worse than the previous one where the jounin had laid spear out on the floor as now Iruka himself wasn’t free to run around and do something about it. One had kept Kakashi from falling painfully into the empty tub and the other was braced against the wall, trembling slightly with adrenaline and the weight of both of them depending on it. This was not good.

“Kakashi?” he spoke, mentally cursing at how weak and strained his voice came out. The man answered with another of those pained groans. “I need you to hold onto me now so I can use both my hands to push us back on our feet… or well your foot. Push yourself as close as you can so I can more easily balance us over…”

As there initially was no reaction, Iruka thought that maybe he’d used too much information for the other’s drugged mind to register, but then the other body indeed came closer, for some reason making him swallow hard. Slowly he let go of the other, mentally making a note to erase this moment of his life from his memory in the morning as it surely was one of the strangest experiences ever, and once he was sure that Kakashi wouldn’t fall without his support, he used his now two free hands to push them back up into vertical position. Having used all the force he could muster in the strange situation, he nearly caused them to topple over, but a quick back-stepping foot saved the day. Standing there with safe balance however, made the proximity all the more noticeable. Glancing down in the tub, he also realized that the copy nin’s larger towel had not made it up with them. In other words – he had a naked man clinging to him. Oh fuck?


How he got Kakashi into bed was a miracle and a mystery, but as the larger man sat propped at the foot end of his bed, Iruka kept his eyes gazing up into the cealing not to catch sight of anything private by accident. They were both men, so it probably shouldn’t actually bother him, but for some reason with Kakashi it really did. Knowing that the other man was close to completely naked, only a towel covering the lower portion of his face of all things, made his heartbeat race and his face heat up all unexplainably.

“Here’s underwear and pajamas,” he burst out and tossed three articles of clothing at Kakashi before more or less running out of the room, shutting the door tightly behind him. As his brain kept providing him with images he did NOT want to see right now, he groaned loudly and pulled at his hair. In the morning, he would first kill Kakashi for being such a pain in the ass and then he would go kill Tsunade for not keeping better control over mad hospitalized jounins. When she’d said tomorrow, he had really trusted her to keep the scarecrow until tomorrow.

Without his cup of tea and without anything more comfortable to change into for sleep as he’d run away from his own pajamas, Iruka stripped down to only his boxers and tank top. Neatly folding all the removed clothes, he put them in the armchair with the forehead protector at the very top, then made himself as comfortable as possible in the couch with the blanket wrapped tightly around him. For some reason, he felt rather cold falling asleep.

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When Kakashi woke up again, he lay in a bed much more comfortable than the one at the hospital and there was a smell surrounding him that wasn’t quite his own. Glancing around he took in the sight of a room he hadn’t quite made himself acquainted with before, but as he soon could sense Iruka’s chakra signature in the next room, he instantly knew where he was. The drug having passed through its first and most troublesome stage, his senses were back to normal and some movements just ached more than normally. It served to tell him when he was straining his braced tendon and when not, just as it was supposed to, but he could now somewhat move around, even if the crutches were still left in the bathroom.

Exiting the bedroom and coming out in the living room, he couldn’t help but smile his trademark smile at the sight of the academy teacher on the couch, but stepping closer he noticed the man shivered. The room however wasn’t cold. If anything it was the opposite. Then the phone rang.

Before he could open his eyes, Iruka noticed his head hurt. Like hell. Then it struck him how incredibly cold the room was. Absentmindedly he wondered if he’d left a window open somewhere, but then he registered what it was that had woke him up and forgot about the insufficient temperature. The ringing phone cut his ears and not remembering he wasn’t in his bedroom, he reached his hand out to where the phone usually was, only to land his hand on Kakashi’s leg. Forcing his eyes open, squinting against the bright light floating in through the windows, he looked up at the other man and one could see how his brain was trying to explain what it saw. Soon all memories fell to place though and his eyes closed again.

“Could you get me the phone? There’s a cordless one in the kitchen,” he muttered and Kakashi strangely compliant for once limped away to fetch the requested item. Whoever was at the other end really wanted to talk to him, because they hadn’t hung up by the time he actually received the phone and could press the green button. “Hello…?”

Not many seconds passed before Iruka sat up, full alert, but his sense of balance was slightly failing him as he wasn’t quite awake yet and also, he wasn’t in the best of health. He himself was in denial, but Kakashi could see it as clearly as he could see the brace on his foot, no matter how much he wanted to ignore that darned object. As the academy teacher rambled incoherently, trying to apologize for having overslept, the jounin lowered a hand upon the usually tanned, but now pale forehead and confirmed that Iruka indeed was sick. His skin was burning with fever and it didn’t take a thermometer to tell. Seeing only one and a very simple solution, Kakashi took the phone out of the other’s grip and held it to his own ear.

“Umino-san is having a high fever so he’ll be on sick leave today.”

Hanging up, he tossed the phone back in the other’s lap. No work for either of them today and Iruka would do nothing else than rest. Kakashi was no master chef, but he’d even cook today to keep the brunette in bed. He might be a crazy jounin and annoying as hell at times, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be a decent person when the situation really called for it. This ability to suddenly turn serious was something he normally only used in mission, but it was applicable on home grounds as well.

The phone rang again, but as Iruka picked up a second time he found it was the hospital calling this time. The jounin’s early escape had finally been discovered and they wanted to know that he was safe and well. Once Tsunade found out she would most likely want to punish the man for his stupidity as well, but the busty hokage was not the one calling now. The rather quiet and a little nervous voice of a nurse talked into the teacher’s ear, inquiring about the missing patient.

“Yeah, he’s here and fine, no worries,” Iruka declared and then ended the call, before glaring up at the copy nin towering above him. “And I’m fine too, so I’m heading to work.”

As he tried to stand up though, he was easily pushed down again. Kakashi had the nerve to smile at his sudden weakness. As stubborn as ever the worn out teacher tried to stand once again, but teasingly the scarecrow used only a finger this time to push him back down on the couch. Iruka wasn’t going anywhere and they both knew it.

“I’m sorry Iruka, but you’re stuck with me all day today~.”