To Not Feel Like a Failure
"Oh, god. I am so sorry about last night, Kakashi-san," Iruka-sensei said, wide-eyed and blushing bright red as he scrambled from the bed. "I think I was drunk."
"You were," Kakashi said, rolling out of the bed. He didn't want to be here any more than it seemed Iruka-sensei wanted him to be here. "I'm sorry. I wasn't exactly sober, either. I should have put a stop to things."
"I– ah– I hope I wasn't too inappropriate," Iruka-sensei stammered, backing away a little.
"I should be the one apologising," Kakashi assured him, feeling his face aflame beneath his mask. "It was inappropriate of me to have come into your apartment while we were inebriated. Particularly since I've been your squad leader on a mission."
Iruka-sensei blinked.
"What, because you could have... coerced me, or something?" he asked dumbly.
Kakashi tried to clear his throat around the tightness there. He'd always tried to be so careful about interpersonal relationships with his subordinates (never mind that in Konoha, virtually every shinobi had been his subordinate at some point or another), and all it took was one night with a drunk Iruka-sensei to throw all that care out the window.
Words couldn't make it past the knot in his throat, so he looked away and nodded.
"You didn't coerce me," Iruka-sensei said, mouth agape. "If anything, I pushed you, which I'm terribly sorry for. I truly didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."
"No, it's.... You didn't," Kakashi said awkwardly. "It was... fine."
Iruka-sensei gave Kakashi a long look. A lesser shinobi would have squirmed under the piercing gaze.
"Oh," Iruka-sensei finally said quietly, as if he had suddenly realised something unexpected, though not unwelcome. "I'm... I'm a very cuddly person. Especially after I used to get home from missions, I enjoyed cuddling."
Kakashi blinked, trying to figure out where Iruka-sensei was going with this.
"As long as you're not injured enough that you need to go to the hospital, if you'd like to, you could...."
Iruka-sensei's voice broke off.
I could... Kakashi thought, mind suddenly filled unwillingly with the thought that he could find that closeness he craved when the exhaustion set in and the iron boxes in his ribs began to press too heavily against his heart.
"At least once," Iruka-sensei said, his voice trembling but his eyes flashing with challenge. "After your next mission, if you're able. Come here."
"Is that an order?" Kakashi asked teasingly despite himself, feeling too hot and too cold all at once.
Iruka-sensei hesitated.
Then: "...Yes. ...Yes, it is."
How had he known that Kakashi would reject a simple invitation, but that an order... an order was something Kakashi could follow?
How could he know what Kakashi needed to hear?
"I need to go," Kakashi blurted. "Thank you for...."
For socialising. For cuddling. For the order to come back.
Iruka-sensei smiled then, and it nearly blinded Kakashi.
Kakashi fled.
◈❖◈
Kakashi didn't go to Iruka-sensei's after his next mission, nor did he go following the mission after that.
But several weeks later, home from an extended mission that had nearly cost Kurenai's life, he stopped shuffling home in the middle of the street and... stood.
He felt like a failure. Only luck had kept Kurenai alive; only luck had enabled him to cut down the missing-nin instead of it being Kurenai cut down, instead.
He wanted....
He wanted to be held.
He wanted, just for a moment, to feel like he was a brilliant shinobi rather than a failure of one. Or, at least, to feel like he was alright.
Kakashi had wanted these things before, on many occasions. None of them were new thoughts or desires.
The difference was that this time, he could actually go to someone and be held. He could actually pretend, just for a few minutes, like the iron boxes in his ribs weren't suffocating him as he came closer and closer to shattering.
He didn't consciously notice when he abruptly changed direction and began slouching toward Iruka-sensei's apartment.
The apartment was empty. Of course, he remembered. A school day. Iruka-sensei is at work.
He was barely aware of his own movements as he lifted his hitai-ate and began picking at the barriers around the apartment.
They came apart in under half an hour, aided as Kakashi was by his Sharingan and the fact that he used similar barriers on his own apartment.
He put the barriers and seals back up and moved, ghostlike, into the bathroom.
He showered quickly and changed into his uniform blacks from his spare set in an enclosing scroll. He laid his things on Iruka-sensei's desk, careful not to get blood or dirt or mud on Iruka-sensei's things, and crawled into the bed.
The pillow smelled like Iruka-sensei.
The blankets were light, not too warm but not too cool, and it was easy to fall into a doze.
He dozed until the sky outside had gone dark.
The sound of a key scraping in the lock woke him instantly, as did the fizzling sensation of the barriers going down.
The door opened. It closed. The barriers went back up.
"Kakashi-san?" came a low call, quiet enough that Kakashi wouldn't have woken if he'd been in a deep sleep.
"Sorry. Excuse my intrusion," Kakashi called drowsily from the bed, where he'd begun to sink back into relaxed semi-sleep.
He heard Iruka-sensei pad through the kitchen and gently push open the bedroom door.
"When did you get back?" Iruka-sensei asked quietly.
"This afternoon," Kakashi replied, masked face buried in Iruka-sensei's pillow. "Sorry. I didn't mean to break into your apartment."
"You didn't mean to break into my apartment?" Iruka-sensei asked, incredulous and amused. "That's not really a normal accident to make."
Kakashi huffed discontentedly.
"I'm teasing, Kakashi-san," Iruka-sensei said, fully amused, now. "I'm just going to wash up and then I'll be there. You can stay put."
Kakashi made a noise of acknowledgement.
"Have you eaten?" Iruka-sensei asked as he went over to the sink by the bathroom.
"Not hungry," Kakashi mumbled. "I'll eat in the morning."
Iruka-sensei gave an amused noise around his toothbrush but didn't argue.
Not long later, he climbed into the bed and collected Kakashi in warm, powerful arms.
He was, if anything, a better cuddler sober than he had been drunk.
He held Kakashi, running his fingertips through Kakashi's wild hair, gently massaging Kakashi's scalp around the knot of the hitai-ate.
Feeling frustrated, Kakashi pulled off his hitai-ate and dropped it behind himself to the floor with a soft thmp.
He shivered as Iruka-sensei's fingertips raked gently down to his spine, sending tingles running from the back of his neck down through his entire body.
It was a pleasant sensation.
At first, it seemed easy to forget about the iron boxes behind his heart and between his ribs, the ones full of memories and guilt and grief.
But after a while, Kakashi suddenly realised that they pressed more powerfully than ever on his heart, strangling his heartbeat and threatening to suffocate him.
He shuddered and pulled Iruka-sensei in more tightly.
The one shudder became more shudders. And the shudders broke over him like waves of a tsunami, uncontrollable and unstoppable.
He felt his eye pricking with tears.
He squeezed it tightly closed and focused on breathing.
Iruka-sensei held him close, carding gentle fingers through Kakashi's hair, holding him through wave after wave of terrible, blinding grief.
This wasn't what he wanted at all.
But Iruka-sensei only held him as he kept back the tears but couldn't stop the shuddering, murmuring meaningless words only for the sound of them in the room, not seeking to silence Kakashi nor coaxing him to actually weep.
It was just as well. Kakashi couldn't remember how to cry.
Iruka-sensei was just there, holding Kakashi as Kakashi desperately tried to shove the iron boxes closed and back behind his heart and between his ribs.
And slowly, in aching seconds and bleeding minutes, the boxes began to descend back into his darkness and the shudders began to slow.
"Sorry," Kakashi whispered hoarsely when he thought he had finally gotten himself under control.
"There's nothing to be sorry for," Iruka-sensei said gently, but in a way that invited no argument. "Do you feel a little bit better?"
Kakashi hesitated, unsure of whether he felt better or worse.
"Maybe," he hedged.
"Okay," Iruka-sensei said, tugging Kakashi into a tighter embrace. "I'll key you into my barriers tomorrow so you don't have to pick them next time. For now, do you want water, or sleep?"
Iruka-sensei neither asked for Kakashi's permission or for his interest in being keyed to the wards, Kakashi noted. He simply assumed that Kakashi would be back.
Kakashi swore to himself that he wouldn't.
"Just sleep," he said, unwilling to let go of Iruka-sensei's clothes that he clutched like a lifeline. "Thank you."
"Of course," Iruka-sensei said, sounding surprised at the thanks. "I'll be right here. You're safe now."
And Kakashi buried his face against Iruka-sensei's chest, and Iruka-sensei buried his nose in Kakashi's hair. And for the first time, perhaps in his life, Kakashi felt like although he might be a failure, he would be okay.