For Livruka
Winter In A Bottle
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.
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.
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.
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 Spanish Ladder. 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 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.
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 eyes 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.
"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.
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.
"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; probablyit 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. 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 he side of this 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 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 on 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. 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, thankfully, and 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's 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.
The first thing to do was fix the temperature. Kakashi pulled off his over-shirt. Really, it was getting ridiculous. 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."
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.
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.
"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 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 go 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 Other was 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, of habitation or else they tended to get spotty.
He'd also done a cloaking spell in the entrance at a suitably private time of night, once Iruka had woken up. 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."
"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.
"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 makes Rite Guard turn left."
"So wrinkled, she has to screw her hat on."
"Your mother's twice the man you are."
"Ouch."
They 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 telling 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 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 patrolling's 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 wouldknow he'd moved it, the bastard.
Saggy, droopy Buddha and his saggy, droopy balls.
Kakashi. Iruka was not at all 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. 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. Kakashinoticed things, and normally he could deal with some agent guessing, but he was trapped here and sometimes people had bad reactions.
Iruka tossed to 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 couldstrangle 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 rat-bars didn't seem to be jump-starting things, which was just as well. Hopefully, the rest of the 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 Kakashi had taken everything except the food, and 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 material 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 accepted the short, sharp sticks Kakashi had been whittling.
"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 sorcererous 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.
—
It was awkward. Well, awkward for Kakashi, at least. Who knew what Iruka was thinking? He'd just appropriated the transmitter Kakashi had lugged back and set to work on it with a frightening single-mindedness.
Probably he should make another run into the village soon; he hadn't been able to get everything he needed last time. The patrols were fewer and further between these days, but not gone entirely. This little war was simmering down nicely, like a slow-burning mine fire, here to stay.
As a result, Kakashi was spending more time out hunting and familiarising himself with the terrain. He had to admit, the way Iruka handled a skinning knife was...formidable, although a strict diet of rat bars for going on a month would to that to about anyone. Still, Kakashi judged it best not to mention the pie he'd, uh, happened across cooling on a windowsill. It wouldn't have carried well anyway.
It was getting dark; day was precious short, anymore. Kakashi inhaled the dusk and started eeling his way reluctantly down slope. There was a new tension between him and Iruka ever since he'd, well. Or maybe it had been there before; but Kakashi, for one, was very conscious of it now.
There was very little for Kakashi to do in the cave. He couldn't even read Icha Icha because it got him too wound up. So he clambered up and down the mountainside like a goat and Iruka experimented with using his affinity to smoke rabbit meat.
The sky was growing darker; moon would be up soon, and it was full tonight. Kakashi was good at hiding his traces, but best be inside. The weres here were mostly of the traditional wolf variety, with the odd bear and goat or large cat thrown in. This was no time to get careless.
Kakashi breathed a sigh of relief as he crossed the wards. Iruka sat on the ground with one leg drawn in, the bad one sticking out to the side. A gutted radio and bits of circuitry were spread out in front of him. Not the rabbits again; good. He held a screwdriver in on hand and a throwing knife in the other.
The temperature had surged briefly and the subsided when Kakashi breached the wards, and it occurred to him not for the first time to wonder about the exact nature of Iruka's magic.
Kakashi crouched down next to Iruka. It was closer than they'd been in days, except when he checked Iruka's wounds. Which were almost completely healed. Stop stalling.
Kakashi pulled the mask down this time. If he was going to do this, he ought to do it properly, after all. A giddy wave swept over him. Oh, yes.
For all his stiffness and accusations of perversion, Iruka kissed dirty. Filthy tongue-fucking, in fact, that threatened their precarious balance as Kakashi fought not to break the moment by pitching over backward and doing something really regrettable to Iruka's leg.
At length they broke apart, wobbling a little. They blinked glassily for a moment at one another.
"Mrawr," Kakashi said, leaning in again.
"Rrrr," growled something behind him.
Oh, crap.
Iruka's hand reached once more for the throwing knife even as Kakashi palmed his own and turned around. The best way to fight weres was from a distance. A lengthening one was generally considered preferable.
They hadn't passed the wards, but that was a matter of time. It was only vampires that had to be invited in. Free-wards with all of a month behind them weren't going to keep out a werewolf pack for long, even if they had been drawn by a sorcerer. This wasn't a fortress, it was a table with a blanket thrown over it.
Kakashi reached for his power and felt the rustling crack of winter air feeding it. Only three weres were visible in the cave mouth, but there had to be more lurking out of sight. Maybe. Maybe this was a patrol, not an attack. In any event, Kakashi would need to get out. He worked better in the open.
—
Iruka sent the knife flying. It was silver; all his knives were silver. Kakashi was gathering himself for some spell, words rippling the tattoos on his lips. Iruka didn't need a spell; he bent heat on the air where the enemy stood growling, fighting the wards. Had they followed his scent?
No time to worry about that now. Sweating with the effort, Iruka pushed harder, towards the catching-point—he numbered them, but this one he knew in the grinding of his bones and the way his eardrums felt like they'd burst. When he reached it, there was a howling like Fenrir calling Ragnarok. A little further and it stopped.
Kakashi didn't wait. He was out and the entrance with—yes, Iruka's ruined shirt. Covering all bases, good. Iruka sagged back, wary but exhausted. He couldn't follow the fight out of the cave on his, hmph, walker; had to trust Kakashi.
Or, failing that, wait with knife in hand to nail anything that came through. He was a ninja, after all.
There were no more snarls in the night. Iruka heard what he thought might be hard, marcato claps of thunder. Kakashi? It didn't sound like any duel he'd witnessed, but then, everything people did with magic sounded different and looked stranger.
Iruka waited as the sounds of battle grew distant. This could be Kakashi's chance to make a break for it; nice of him to at least draw them off Iruka's trail. As long as Kakashi was being conspicuous, he could probably just lift himself over the mountains. Not the subtlest escape, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
Time stretched and the hubbub faded away. It was beginning to feel like all Iruka did anymore was wait. Like some idiot heroine in the sorts of books people in fusty studies called Classics. Oh, how the wind wuthers. Wuther, wuther, wuther.
He almost took Kakashi's ear off when he came back, just after dawn. Thankfully, Kakashi's reflexes were still at least as good as Iruka's.
Impatient, Iruka tripped him and grabbed him by the collar. Kakashi's mask was still down, so Iruka lost no time in kissing him. Still high on the magic, Kakashi overcame his startlement and impulse to strangle almost immediately.
"Kakashi. Sex. Now."
"Yes. 'S clear."
"Nngh."
Iruka was wearing not much at all, what with one thing and another. This made it very easy for Kakashi to slide down and take one of Iruka's nipples in his teeth. That was more like it.
Iruka worked on taking Kakashi's shirt off. It was smearing blood on him, for one thing, though none of it seemed to be Kakashi's. Skin; Iruka was tempted to compare to marble rippled underneath.
Kakashi kissed and bit his way down Iruka's stomach, body rubbing Iruka's intensely interested cock as he went. Little gasps and jerks escaped Iruka, who buried his hands in Kakashi's hair, where it was warm.
The left side of Kakashi's face was visible for the first time he could remember. His eye was closed, but Iruka could see a fine-lined tattoo on the eyelid that made him wince to think about. The balance of tattoos was odd, lips and jawbone and the hollow spaces above and between. Not always symmetrical, but the sigils were almost familiar. And strangely compelling. Iruka brushed his thumb along a line that had been inked across a raised scar.
It was a shock when Kakashi's mouth closed over his erection. Just the head at first, his tongue teasing the slit. Iruka keened and clenched his fists in Kakashi's hair. Damn his leg, pinning him immobile to the floor.
Drawing off, Kakashi licked a broad stripe up his cock, pressed kisses all along its length, His thumb massaged the big vein, down at the very base.
Heat again, wet, sudden. Hand and mouth worked together in a maddening rhythm full of intent. Iruka could feel his cock brush the back of Kakashi's throat. Heat and motion, tongue and lips. Still high on the magic all right. He was playing Iruka like a violin.
"Faster," Iruka panted, and it was. He stuffed his fist in his mouth to muffle his sounds—this was not the time for more interruptions.
Kakashi sucked harder, cheeks hollowed, deforming their markings. His free hand wandered, caressing the taut muscles of Iruka's abs, nails scraping his thighs and, more gently, his balls.
Orgasm hit him light a fireball and left his ears ringing, synapses slightly singed. Iruka let his arms fall limp and closed his eyes. He'd forgotten how endorphins felt. It was like floating in a hot bath.
"Iruka," Kakashi chided playfully.
"Mmmm?"
Kakashi slid his hands up Iruka's chest. He was completely naked now. Jesus fuck, that smile should be illegal.
"I think you broke me."
Still smiling, Kakashi kissed him."We'll see about that."
Kakashi climbed the rest of the way on top of him and pinned his arms over his head. Slowly, indulgently, he thrust against Iruka's belly, painting his abs with precome. His cock slid along the smooth contours of muscle at a speed that felt like luxury. There was pressure but no haste, like Kakashi was savouring each moment of contact, the texture of Iruka's skin against his leaking dick.
When he came, it was as the head of his cock bumped over the raised skin of a scar. Collapsing mostly not on top of Iruka, he rumbled a lazy, sated sound. He licked a spatter of his own come from Iruka's face. Iruka shivered happily.
"Yes," he said."Definitely broken."
Kakashi snorted.
—
They were probably mostly safe until the next full moon. That was the thing about a town of weres: problems either went away or met with some pretty severe justice. Just a patrol, Kakashi had said, just luck, albeit the bad kind. Iruka trusted he wouldn't have let himself get jumped if it weren't actually safe.
Iruka yawned and shifted, the Flame warming his left side, Kakashi sprawled on his right. The man was a patchwork, like Bradbury's tattooed sorcerer, the one whose ink showed the future.
Live tattoos weren't that rare, magic-handler or not. Sorcerers tended to really load up, which might account for some of their reputation for instability. Active spells sewn into your flesh. It was a strange feeling. Iruka had heard it compared to having an extra arm, this being able to hold multiple or more complex spells together without having to co-operate with another magic-handler. Admittedly, that was tricky in the best of circumstances.
Iruka had tried it twice; that had been enough. The first one, a simple circle for the purpose of gathering his element to him, had been settling fine, so he'd added a more complicated charm to facilitate wind-shaping. He hadn't known what was happening when the circle disappeared and knocked him dizzy. When the second one healed over and dumped all that tangle of magic into his system, he'd been sick for a week and a half.
Iruka's skin just wouldn't hold tattoos like it wouldn't hold scars. All the marks he had now were less than three years old. Not something likely to be noticed, not to mention commented on, in a Hidden Village; but in a place with regular physicals like the government's Special Other Forces it would have been hard to miss. They'd use sorcerers for agents, if they could get them, but Others were right out. The beat cops, as it were, generally had about as much occult presence as fruit flies, from what Iruka heard.
Accelerated healing or no, Iruka's leg was still taking forever. Fiddling with the junked radio took his mind off it some, but much as he hated to admit it, Kakashi was going to have to make another raid down into the valley for parts before either of them could do any more with it. And the patrols were thick again in the wake of the disturbance. At least Iruka had something better to do with his free time now than ruin leftover meat.
Sex was definitely a better outlet for the ever-mounting claustrophobic tension than shouting matches. It made Iruka feel like his body was something other than a withering lump, so much carbon slowly ossifying. He woke in the night sometimes from dreams that he'd grown into the stone of the cave floor, unable to move or speak, his mouth frozen in a silent scream, a living gargoyle.
Kakashi didn't ever ask when that happened. He'd lie there, watching silently with his single dark eye, if he woke at all. Sometimes he would press a few soft kisses to Iruka's neck or stroke a single long line down his sweaty side. Sometimes his eye was a little wild, and there were mornings Iruka would find him already dressed and crouched staring into the Eternal Flame. Iruka never asked either.
The next full moon was nearing before Kakashi judged it safe enough to venture down into the town again. He left Iruka with a fat pile of hares to occupy him and airy promises about spiced tarts.
Kakashi was gone longer this time. Iruka was down to playing at scrimshaw on the brittle little bones by the time he slipped through the wards, once again just on the cusp of night. Probably, he should have asked which of the three valley towns Kakashi was planning to visit and if he was going to do anything else while he was out and about, but Iruka knew a futile topic before he broached it.
"Anything follow you?" Iruka asked, readjusting his grip on his knife.
"I was careful," Kakashi replied, the slightest warning in his voice for Iruka's teasing. Iruka rolled his eyes."I got everything."
"Including a power source?"
Wordlessly, Kakashi held up one hand in a loose fist and drew thumb and forefinger apart. A thin arc of electricity sparked between them.
"Oh." Well, that would do it."I think I can finish repairs in time to transmit on the full moon."
Kakashi nodded approval of his sense of timing."Any listening posts will be undermanned then."
"Here, try this."
Kakashi regarded the meat like it might explode, but nibbled dutifully nevertheless."Not as rubbery."
"I think I might be onto something. The ration bars are running low, and it's not always safe to hunt."
"Or light a fire. Hm."
Iruka was so engrossed in his repairs—the original radio had been slagged; he wasn't even guessing how—he didn't notice dinner being cooked until Kakashi was waving it in his face. No tarts, but Kakashi had been able to pilfer a loaf of dark, homemade bread, which was even better.
—
Work progressed quickly after that. Iruka attacked the whole project as though he'd never wanted anything in his life so much as he wanted a distraction. Kakashi sympathised and allowed himself to be used as a battery, though they couldn't try the actual signal for days yet.
Inside their cave was always the same cosy warmth and low flickering light, while the outside world was putting less and less effort into pretending it had daylight. It was like living in a winter evening stretched to unending. Death's lands might be like this, though how Kakashi had landed himself on the warm inside and not been trapped out with the blowing cold and the ripping teeth he'd no idea. He watched the full moon rising over the opposite ridge and felt his mind slide once more into a professional mode of thought.
Iruka was sitting as far back in the cave as possible out of respect for Kakashi's security protocols. Kakashi hadoffered to power the transmitter for Iruka. Iruka had declined, reluctant, Kakashi surmised, to put that kind of information in outsider hands.
Understandable. The first thing Kakashi was going to transmit was channel compromised. He didn't get a chance. Iruka shouted, pointing out past Kakashi's shoulder, where eerie lights signalled an occult duel. They were close.
"What the hell?" he muttered under his breath, letting the radio go dead.
"Is that what I think it is?"
"A duel, headed our way."
"What? That makes no sense."
"Yes, well, if you don't want to be melted into the mountainside—" Kakashi cut himself off. Iruka still couldn't walk.
From the way Iruka's eyes narrowed, he'd picked up the part of that sentence Kakashi had censored.
"Can you burn us a tunnel through the rock?"
Iruka shook his head, hobbling to the front of the cave to take a look."Not fast enough. And I couldn't keep the air around you cool enough to stop you frying. Not to mention, the spirits that live in rock take that sort of thing badly."
You, Kakashi noted, not us. Well, he'd been too hot for Kakashi to touch with that fever.
Kakashi frowned, already pulling on his parka."I'll try and draw them off."
"And get yourself smoked?" Iruka asked dryly.
"Have a little faith."
"They're not going to be so easy to fool this time. Even if you distract them tonight, they'll have marked this as a suspicious area. You were right the first time. We need to move."
"Iruka..."
"Tale the cast off; I'll be fine."
"It's a month early; you'll just snap it again."
Iruka's expression darkened."You think this is the first time I've broken a bone? You worry about the radio; I'll worry about my leg."
"Iruka—"
"Fine," Iruka snapped.
Taking a knife, he ripped through the air cast and peeled it off. The leg took his weight. For now.
"See? Now, give me a minute to find my pants."
Kakashi watched him unhappily, and not because mostly-naked-Iruka was easy on the eyes. He had a bad feeling about this, but their options were thin.
"I won't be able to wait on you," he warned.
"I can take care of myself. Plan?"
"Get up and over, fast as we can. Go to ground on the other side."
"You sure?" Iruka asked.
"Too many weres; we can snow them for a while, but if we keep running they'll chase us down."
They tossed what they couldn't carry into the oubliette before Kakashi collapsed it. Iruka shouldered the food pack, then helped Kakashi strap the radio, wrapped in the blanket for minimal protection, to his back. The sounds of the duel were getting louder.
"All right," Kakashi said instead of voicing further reservations."Keep close and stay quiet. I want to get as far as possible before anyone sees us."
"Scents us, surely," Iruka said instead of reminding Iruka he'd done this before.
"Whatever. There's a ravine about a half a klick south of our current position." And then the cliffs, if they made it that far. Risky, but quadrupeds didn't do so well on vertical terrain.
"Lead the way."
Iruka's face was set and determined. Kakashi suppressed a sigh and pulled his mask up. No more time for that.
Kakashi murmured a few words and the Eternal Flame flickered and disappeared, released to rejoin the Great Fire and they slipped out through the cave mouth very quietly, careful not to disturb the traps they'd set.
The air was cool and brisk, the night clear and flooded with light from the moon's large, watching eye. Kakashi felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck, and not from the cold. There was still something unnerving about going out under a full moon.
—
The path followed the curve of the mountain along a series of narrow ledges scoured of snow by turbulent winds. Kakashi led the way, every sense straining futilely to detect the werewolf packs before they scented the intruders. Hopefully, whatever little imbroglio was playing itself out down slope would distract them. Kakashi could only guess what the duel was about. When he'd left, at least three girls had been pregnant who shouldn't ought to have been (well, it wasn't his fault; at least, not directly). That was probably about due to come out. Not to mention the blood feuds, unsolved murders, and mage rivalries.
Only the sound of quiet breathing told Kakashi that Iruka was still with him. They reached the ravine and started up. It was slippery, messy going, over ice and deep snow. Kakashi risked a spell to lighten his weight.
Iruka must have done something too, because when Kakashi glanced back, he was trotting silently atop the drifts and not sinking in the way he should. It had to be taken on faith that he was minimising his tracks.
A kilometre yet to the cliffs. Muted explosions still reached Kakashi's ears. A wolf howled, closer, and its call was taken up in a plangent chorus. Behind them, yes.
There were no concealing trees at this elevation, only rocks and rounded boulders. And the snow, reflecting white and unhelpful. Half a kilometre to the cliff. Nothing had any reason to be at the top of it. No game up there; scarce any even here. Two hundred metres. The cliff was visible, rising high on one side of the ravine while the other dipped lower.
A flash of motion caught Kakashi's eye. Right side, lowering. Was something pacing them up there? Kakashi pushed his bandana out of the way and opened the warded eye.
"We're about to have company," Kakashi said. Little sparks of life-light, Other-light. Seven...no, ten of them, closing in from behind and to the right.
"Eleven," Kakashi muttered, disgusted. Twenty metres from the base of the cliff stood a growling werewolf. She was a female, young, her brown fur bristling. As a woman, she had danced around the solstice fire, smiling with all her teeth. He could almost feel the racing of her heart and the way her muscles bunched to spring—
Kakashi pulled the lightning from the air between his hand and her chest. He grabbed Iruka to drag him forward again and yanked his hand back from the biting cold. The snow in front of Iruka was solid, flat ice now, melted and refrozen.
The pack leader glared at them across the obstacle with evil yellow eyes, muzzle open and slavering. Chidori, Kakashi decided, and felt the inked patterns on his skin hum to life.
Iruka beat him to it.
"Hah!" he grunted, his body tensing, and the alpha collapsed, howls choked to whimpers.
The pack charged then, scrabbling and sliding and leaping over the ice, landing badly and barrelling into one another. Kakashi loosed the chidori, trying not to think of his hounds back home. He had no intention of being the one to settle the debate about what happened when a were bit a sorcerer.
Over on his side of things, Iruka was still trying to keep it quiet, melting and freezing snow around limbs, blistering paws and finishing off with knife work. One were broke through, snarling and leaping. Iruka kicked her in the ribs with his bad leg. Kakashi made the mistake of watching with both eyes open.
Just for a split-second, Kakashi's defence faltered. A were launched himself at Kakashi's throat, knocking him over. Kakashi hit him with chidori in one hand and his serrated silver knife in the other, thrust professionally between the ribs. Magic didn't always work on weres, except the really drastic, exhausting sort; but elements did, which was why chidori was so handy. And silver, of course, but lacking a gun, that required a little too much by way of proximity.
Kakashi sprang into a crouch. Iruka had the last two at bay, partially frozen to the ground. As Kakashi watched, he plunged a long knife into one's chest. Kakashi took care of the remaining were. There were no Others left except for the one standing next to him.
"Let's go," he said, cleaning his blade with a handful of snow.
"Where?" Iruka asked warily.
Kakashi gestured upwards with the hilt of his knife. Iruka made a face. Kakashi turned away quickly and started up the cliff.
"Better let me go first," Iruka said."I'll melt the ice."
"Fine," Kakashi said, staring straight ahead.
If Iruka noticed anything odd, he didn't comment. True to his word, the rock was dry and almost warm in his wake. Kakashi closed the warded eye.
The Sharingan was more than that, of course. It was active, mostly in hypnosis, as well as passive. But the passive was the real advantage for night work, ninja's work. He could see the lines of power and sparks of life that tied the world together, like stars and constellations. It showed him the wolf in the man and the man in the wolf, for example.
Kakashi tried never to look at anyone he'd have to deal with too closely or with too much frequency with it. He saw...too much. It was awkward. Among other things, he'd seen Iruka's stripes.
Being part-Other wasn't illegal. One thing having the Sharingan had taught Kakashi was that it was a lot more common than people thought. A lot of people with Other blood never even knew they had it.
If one did know, though, it wasn't the sort of thing one wanted publicised. There was an overwhelming general prejudice against part-bloods. It stopped a career dead, not to mention one's social life. And that of one's family.
Kakashi had never really understood why. Perhaps he'd worked for long in the occult underworld. Living in a Hidden Village certainly had an effect on one's perspective. The Inuzuka clan were werewolves, not so different from the villagers in this valley. The Aburame clan had a strong line of demon blood running through it, which gave them that uncanny way with insects. Some Others were nasty, sure, but more so than people?
The main upshot was that all Village marriages had to be approved by the (necessarily discreet) genetics board. With such a high percentage of magic-handlers and Others, the potential for a bad cross was very real. Bad crosses tended to go very messily insane. There had been an incident not ten years ago, with a descendant of a demon fox and one of the Uchiha clan sorcerers. Very, very messy.
Not a factor here. The fancies of adolescent girls aside, there was not a single species of demon whose males popped their offspring out their asses. There were other things Kakashi saw with the warded eye. The true nature of a man was an intensely personal thing to look at; the scars on a soul were more like echoes, snatches of memory. There were darkness and patches of strange beauty. Sometimes, rarely, Kakashi saw what might be threads of fate.
Kakashi had never been very good at personal. He certainly wouldn't want anyone walking around with that sort of information about him. Some people had tried to explain to him that that was called friendship. It made the space between his shoulder blades itch. Uncomfortable to have half the equation and no use for it, at any rate.
An ominous snarl interrupted Kakashi's thoughts. It came from above, quite distinct from the faint noises down below and the occasional murmur of Iruka's voice telling him where to find the next handhold. They ought to be practically at the top now. Kakashi couldn't see anything past Iruka above him. Slowly, Iruka started to move again. He disappeared over the top onto solid ground. Nothing. Warily, Kakashi followed him.
Whatever Kakashi had been expecting to find, this hadn't been it. A half-dozen shadows were fanned out, herding a larger one crouching on all fours. The large one was a were-cougar. It was badly injured. Kakashi could see blood dripping from its face—it smelled like blood—when it whirled to growl again at these new arrivals on the scene. The chasers—
Vampires. It was there in the way they moved, too quickly and too smoothly, but with entirely the wrong kind of smoothness. Six of them. Oh, hell.
While Kakashi tried to reconcile a gang of vampires and a fifteen stone were-cat half-mad with pain and the full moon, Iruka, who had had a few seconds head start digesting all this, acted. It was almost enough to make a guy start to feel inadequate.
Kakashi could feel the wave of heat from where he crouched; Iruka wasn't being specific anymore. The knee-high drifts for twenty metres in every direction melted, rushing past the ninja and over the cliff.
Let's see anyone follow us once that lot freezes, Kakashi thought. The suckers had paused momentarily, uneasy expressions on their moon-shadowed faces. Other sensing Other?
A snarl reminded Kakashi that he was within arm's reach of the were. Somehow, this was preferable. He opened the Sharingan and the world narrowed to eye to what Kakashi could see now was the were-cougar's single, glaring eye. The other had been gouged out and was the source of the dripping blood Kakashi had noted earlier. Nice and easy, nice and easy. Never mind the—
—ferocious explosions as six vampires became six pillars of fire. Okay, so that was sexy. Focus. The were-cougar jerked and yowled and spun. Kakashi rolled around to his other side and caught its eye again, muted silver knife readied. Just when he was either about to spring or back down, he sagged like someone had cut its strings.
"What, were you trying to hypnotise a were-puma?" Iruka asked.
Kakashi looked up. He read that sweat was pouring down Iruka's face. Closing the eye he started walking again.
"Yes. What did you do to him?"
"Same thing I did to the alpha male of that pack down at the bottom of the cliff. Superheated the air in his stomach until it exploded." Iruka sounded almost as bad as he had the night they first met.
"Why didn't you just set it on fire?"
The suckers were only smoking piles of ash as they stole past.
"You have any idea how much hotter the air has to be to ignite a were? Suckers are more, more inherently combustible."
Kakashi made a sound that might have been a laugh. Ye gods."No more heroics tonight," he said seriously."I can handle anything else we run into."
"You could've handled those suckers?" Iruka asked impudently.
"Maa, this isn't just for show," Kakashi said tapping his left eyelid. Although he probably wouldn't have been any better for it than Iruka sounded.
"And here I was thinking it was an ornie."
Kakashi chose to ignore that."Not much further now."
It wasn't, wonder of wonders. From there on, it was at least all downhill, although Iruka made some muttered comment about that only being useful if it were bears chasing them. Despite the interruptions, they'd been moving fast, and any pursuers would be forced to take a less direct route. They had time to be sneaky now, to double back and brush out tracks and pick the rockiest ground where they'd leave least trace.
There was no telling what time it was. Clouds had blown in about an hour before moonset. They had just passed the tree line on the opposite side of the mountain. Kakashi decided it was time to hole up for a while and snatch some rest while they could.
When they found a cave, Kakashi set spells, not wards. They wouldn't be here that long. They performed the Pact without discussing it (it wouldn't do to get sloppy, after all) and collapsed together into unconsciousness.
—
Kakashi regretted waking up almost immediately. His entire body ached. What didn't ached, stung, and there were zippers pressing uncomfortably into various bit if his anatomy. It was also cold.
Groaning, he nudged Iruka.
"Nunnuk c'ld," Iruka grumbled, digging his knee in further where it was lodged in Kakashi's back.
Kakashi rolled over and prodded him cautiously."Your job. Wake up. I'll make some light."
"Euagh," Iruka expressed his opinion of this suggestion, and perhaps also of Kakashi. He flopped onto his back and winced."I am so stiff."
Kakashi snickered.
"Oh, grow up," Iruka told him. His face took on a look of concentration and Kakashi felt a breath of warm air.
Creaking slowly into motion, they consumed a vitamin-balanced meal (rat bars, breakfast of fugitives) and went over the minor bumps and abrasions they'd received last night. Iruka was massaging a salve into a scrape on Kakashi's thigh when his hand wandered to an area which was not strictly speaking in need of healing salve.
"Have something in mind, Iruka?" Kakashi asked mildly.
Iruka straddled Kakashi's thighs, an amused look on his face. Kakashi didn't take long to assess the situation. Iruka's leg no longer presented a logistical impediment, the salve was patently benign, and neither of them was wearing much of anything at the moment.
Kakashi nipped at Iruka's collarbone, which was handy, and went exploring with his own slightly slick fingers. Iruka tilted his head up for a kiss.
It was a short one; Iruka broke away panting when one of Kakashi's fingers stopped rubbing his asshole and pushed in. Strong hands in his hair dropped to brace on his shoulders.
Kakashi wriggled his finger and Iruka pushed back into the pressure. With his free hand, Kakashi tweaked one of his nipples. He watched the expression on Iruka's face. Dark eyes flicked open and closed, thick lips slightly parted. Oh, but Kakashi loved those lips.
"More," Iruka demanded, hands gripping tighter.
Kakashi slipped in a second finger, scissoring them to stretch Iruka's tightness. Iruka grunted when he crooked them, feeling for—
—ah. Eyes shit tightly now, Iruka worked his hips like he was determined to make Kakashi cream himself. His muscular solidity was unaffected by a mere few months' inactivity, his thighs rather ridiculously like iron. Kakashi muffled a laugh on Iruka's shoulder.
"Something funny?" asked Iruka little hoarsely.
"Nothing." Kakashi licked a path up his neck by way of apology. Iruka's hard cock brushed his stomach."Nothing at all. Are you ready for me?"
"God, yes," Iruka said."I'm not made out of porcelain, you know."
A smirk twitched Kakashi's lips."Want to show me how flexible you are?"
"Smug—ahh. Uhn."
The smirk became a grin as Kakashi thrust in further. Iruka was tight and hot, making low, sexy sounds in his ear. When Kakashi paused to adjust and maybe try to determine whether his lungs were still working, Iruka took matters into his own hands. He sank with ruthless slowness onto Kakashi's cock until there was nowhere else to go.
"Your turn."
"Brat," Kakashi narrowly resisted the impulse to stick out his tongue. Or maybe spank him; that might be fun.
Instead, he pinned Iruka against the floor and got down to business. Kakashi drew out until only the head of his cock remained inside. Strong legs tried to urge him back in, but he pushed them up over his shoulders and kept to an unhurried pace.
Iruka's hands failed to find purchase on the cave floor as Kakashi fucked him. He started slow, but his own tension was building fast. The leisurely scrape of his nails up Iruka's thigh wasn't enough; he wanted to grab, to use his teeth, to have Iruka screaming under him.
Before he knew it, his tempo was increasing in response to Iruka's steady, stealthy murmur of encouragement. Hips snapped up to meet his hard and rapid thrusts now, drawing sharp exclamations from his own lips. Iruka was vocal about what he wanted, and what he wanted was Kakashi, repeatedly, balls-deep in his ass. Kakashi was more than happy to oblige.
He'd found the right angle now. Iruka was mostly babbling, things like yes and fuck and more and strings of incoherent vowels. He clenched around Kakashi until his eye threatened to cross itself and Kakashi grabbed his dark and dribbling cock.
"C'mon, Iruka. Take...nng. Buddhagodfuck. Come for me. Feel you."
Kakashi abandoned his lips as too complicated and concentrated on the thick, dribbling cock in his hand, the body around him. Thrust and pull. Thumb the head—
Iruka shouted as he came, shuddering and clenching. Kakashi, buried deep in his body, was pulled over the edge in one last shallow thrust.
"Hrangh," Kakashi said eloquently. In a minute, he would muster the wherewithal to not collapse on top of Iruka.
Like that. Good. Now, if only he could remember where his limbs were...
"Still planning on calling your H.Q.?" Iruka asked a few minutes later.
"If the radio's not thrashed again. Ought to go back to Base, anyway."
"Mm." Silence for a long lazy yawn."Don't you think we deserve a vacation?"
Kakashi almost had enough energy to laugh."Maybe. But—someplace warmer."
Iruka's laughter soothed him back to sleep.