Feral Descent

"Hey." Iruka's voice cut through his daydream like a senbon piercing a dust-cloud, "You okay? You looked like you were thinking really hard about something."

Kakashi looked up from the paper cup of vodka-infused fruit punch he clutched carefully in the loose ring of his fingers. He blinked at Iruka with his only uncovered eye for a moment, and was vaguely grateful for the protective cover of his mask and headband. 

Usually this was the point in a conversation where he'd say something just a little bit disarming and pointedly inattentive. Or pretend like he'd only just noticed the person standing next to him.

It was unsettling and more than a little curious that Iruka summoned up no such inclinations. 

He shrugged a little with one shoulder. Became pressingly aware of the weight of Iruka's brown eyes boring into his own and pointed randomly at a painting that was hung up on the wall beside them. 

"That's a bit of a weird theme for a decorative piece, isn't it?" he extrapolated, pondering, "I wonder why the artist has the subject sitting down. And the chair.. on top... Huh. Bit impressionistic for my tastes. But it has a rustic charm all the same."

Iruka stared at him, his smile tilting a little in polite confusion.

"What're you-" he whipped around and squinted down at the painting, "Oh."

"Yeah, that's very odd. You know, of all the times I've been over to Mizuki's somehow I am just now noticing that." Iruka glanced up at Kakashi in stunned bewilderment, "The chair's on top of the guy!"

Kakashi crossed his arms. Nodded in what he hoped passed for a relatively impressed reaction. 

Distracting Iruka was too easy. 

Coming along to 'hang out' with the chunin was quickly starting to look a lot more like stuffing themselves into a quaint, but nonetheless tiny apartment with half the village's nightlife population. Kakashi shuffled awkwardly into a nearby corner as a loudly chatting couple squeezed by them in the narrow hallway. 

Iruka's lips twisted into a curious expression. He laughed. It was halfway between a snigger and simper. 

"What?"

Kakashi raised his brows a little uncertainly. He wasn't used to people laughing at him, and he wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not. For some reason, hearing the brown-eyed chunin's laugh sent several little flutters of nervousness zinging through his belly. This wasn't something he felt able to analyze, at least not right now, not with all these people around. 

Not that it mattered much. Kakashi was mostly sure he looked stupid.

Mostly.

"Nothing, nothing." Iruka smirked around the edge of his drink, "It's just that you're looking around like you've never seen a party before. And..." he trailed off, meandering over to another painting. Kakashi felt his face grow hot under his mask.

"Oh."

It happened sometimes. Rarely was he incorrect, but apparently he could be a little more sure than mostly-He must look stunningly idiotic. 

"And I think I've seen enough of you pressed up against a wall for one night." Iruka slipped the jab in playfully, smiling that strange smile of his into his cup before slinking out the sliding glass door and joining the throng of people clustered together on the porch outside. 

 Kakashi could only stare after him, red liquid trembling against the filmy sides of his paper cup. His uncovered eye blinked dumbly after the chunin. 

He tugged at the nose of his mask and tossed back the entirety of his drink with a singular, loud gulp.

...

"Shoot the boot! Shoot the boot!" a jumping horde of teenagers hooted raucously, bumping into Kakashi's shoulder as they passed.

He spun out a little, his sense of balance strangely off-kilter, but Iruka's warm hand on his waist caught him. Instantaneously, what felt like a gushing spout of butterflies erupted somewhere within the inner workings of his chest at the glancing touch. The Copy-Ninja ducked his head, sure his blush was rising over the edge of his mask.

"Woah haha, easy." Iruka was laughing at him again, but Kakashi didn't have the urge to stop it, "Feelin' that last shot?"

"Uh." Kakashi said a little uneasily, "Maybe-What exactly is going on over there? That kid looks like he's frenching a shoe." He wasn't sure how Iruka would react to him telling him that he'd never actually tasted any alcohol before tonight. Or actually ever had an opportunity to use 'frenching' in conversation before now.

It'd been happening a lot more as the night went on. Him wanting to tell Iruka things... It wasn't like his usual aloof, disconnected self.

Somehow it felt like a concession of weakness. 

Or, more accurately: lameness. Kakashi bit his tongue.

"Huh?" And then Iruka was following his vaguely disturbed glance, twisting in his seat to see the chanting group, and the moment had passed, "Oh, that?"

Several loose strands of dark-mahogany brown hair slipped loose from the chunin's pony-tail, distracting Kakashi so he didn't hear the next words Iruka said.

"What?"

Iruka nodded over his shoulder.

"That kid." he repeated himself, "He's shooting the boot."

Kakashi frowned a little thickly in lieu of a reply. Iruka grinned and then looked a little embarrassed.

"It's when you shotgun a beer from the inside of a... boot."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

There was a slight pause as Kakashi attempted to digest this. He traced the embroidery of a cushion propped beside him against the arm of the couch they were sitting on. 

"Okay..." He said with a bewildered little sigh and a drag of his half-gloved fingers through his silvery locks, "So, he's getting drunk by frenching a shoe then."

Iruka snorted. Laughed a delightfully harmonic laugh that made the tiny hairs along the backs of Kakashi's forearms want to curl.

"I guess he is, ha."

Feeling emboldened by the bright fondness shining in the other boy's brown eyes, by the way they seemed to pry into the hidden nooks and crannies of his being and fill him with a warmth that he was altogether unaccustomed to-Kakashi opened his mouth to tell another joke.

 "Hey, Iruka!" 

 A dusty-haired boy with a wide, jeering smirk of a smile and a green, seamless cap pulled low over his brows poked his head around the corner of the lounge.

"We require your expertise!" the boy called with an obvious wink, "There's business to be planned-Kitchen! Now! Genma-you get your ass in here too!"

The chunin smiled a little apologetically at Kakashi. 

"Sorry." he said, "I guess they need my help with something. I'll be right back, though." And then, thrown haphazardly back over his shoulder as the smirking boy tugged him away, "Don't agree to any card games!"

Kakashi watched him go, and tried not to look too lonely and awkward. He lifted his paper cup up to his masked lips and tipped it back, only to rediscover that he'd already drunk the contents. Looking around in what he hoped appeared to be a unaffectedly casual manner, he scanned the room for a trash can.

In the corner of the room was a poor-looking beige waste-bin with a dent in it's side, overflowing with a deluge of wet and crinkled paper cups. Kakashi skirted around it and a giggling couple weaving drunkenly together in the hallway, and ducked into the living room.

"Oh. Sorry." he grunted as he backed into someone in an attempt to dodge a beach ball someone had lobbed across the room. 

"Watch it."

A wide-shouldered teenager who looked to be a handful of years older than himself turned to glare at him contemptuously from beneath a low-set knitted cap. Kakashi raised a silver brow in exaggerated concern.

"Oh." he chirped, adopting a wide-eyed innocent expression behind his mask, "Yes. Why, of course..."

He reached a flippant hand up to the edge of his hitae-ate and pried it up with a flourish and a little mock-bow. The hellish, pinning stare of the Sharingan in all it's tomoe-spinning glory winked at the heavyset youth menacingly.

"Allow me to keep an eye out."

Kakashi's low-timbered voice husked chillingly into the pocket of air between them. The older boy's beady eyes widened and the paper cup he'd been holding crumpled in his hand with an eruptive splash of frothing alcohol all down his front.

 The off duty ANBU slid smoothly away, dissolving in the crowd with a soft, bemused chuckle and a careless shake of his silvery locks before the stunned teenager could say anything.

 Maybe parties weren't so bad, after all.

Kakashi was not a little surprised to find that he was enjoying himself. He wandered over to a small minibar, where a rosy-cheeked girl handed him another sloshing cup with a intoxicated smile. After wandering around the room a little bit, allowing the driving beat of the music and the sweeping glimmer of the bobbing electric lights to buzz pleasantly in his bones, he went back for another. And another.

Finally, when it seemed his plan of drinking until Iruka made his much-anticipated return - not that he would ever dare admit such a thing - wasn't going to go as planned, Kakashi allowed himself to sink lazily into the cool, leather cushions of a sofa. It was one of three set up in a motley horseshoe ring of seating around a low, off-balance coffee table. Around him, all pressed up against each other in chatting, laughing throngs, Konoha's nightlife pulsed and hummed like a hive of brightly colored insects.

The Copy-Ninja rubbed his fingertips in a half-conscious swirl against the budding throb of a headache that was forming in one temple. How much had he drank again? And, where was Iruka?

Kakashi wondered suddenly, with a swooping feeling much like having the contents of one's stomach go crashing into a puddle amongst one's feet, if the brown-haired boy might have forgotten him. It didn't seem like the sort of thing Iruka would do, but Kakashi didn't really see himself as the sort of person who really captured and held anyone's notice.

He was as plain and unspectacular as the grey of his wayward locks. Quick to fade into the background, to recede into the dim murkiness of forgotten memory as soon as he was noticed. His own dad - Kakashi shook his head and crumpled the empty cup in his fist. Not tonight.

He wouldn't ruin it with dark thoughts. Not when there was a gentle boy with warm, brown eyes waiting to come back to him from the kitchen who made him feel taller than he was; who knew as little about him as any of the laughing strangers at this party - but somehow, seemed to know just what to say to bring what was most assuredly a stupid looking smile to Kakashi's masked lips.

It was along this very string of thoughts he had been plodding, when a loud hooting cheer burst open quite suddenly around him. Several heavy claps of congratulation rained down heavily on the introverted hunch of his shoulders and back. Kakashi looked up and glanced about him in awkward confusion.

"Uh..."

Directly across from him, smiling with a coy twist of her ruby-red lips and a raven flutter of her thickly-mascaraed eyes, a girl who looked to be about his age grinned hungrily. The narrow neck of an empty wine bottle lay blatantly between the two of them on the graffitied surface of the coffee table, pointing directly between Kakashi's legs. The Copy-Ninja blinked. Why was everyone staring at him?

"Oh, you lucky dog." The boy stuffed onto the couch beside him was elbowing Kakashi in the ribs companionably.

"What..."

 But his confused half-question was roughly overpowered by the chanting of the crowd lounging in the loose circle of couches around him.

 "Rule of three! It spun 160! Rule of three! Rule of three!"

"Spin it!" a short-haired girl with training gloves pumped her fist into the air beside him with a jubilant cheer, "Spin, spin, spin, spin, spiiiin!"

She promptly did an enthusiastic twirl which ended with her collapsing into a giggling heap onto the person standing just behind her.

"Uh-huh..." Kakashi frowned a little, uncovered eye flitting around darkly as he slowly started to realize that all of the cheering was directed at him, "Is-Is she okay?"

No one seemed to hear him.

"Rule of three! Rule of three!"

"Spin it! Spin it you damned lucky bastard!"

Feeling completely at a lost and more than a little unsure, Kakashi reached tentatively for the bottle.

"Whooo! Haha," the voices trebled and rolled around him in a chaotic tilt, and he had only a moment to question if the decision he was making was maybe really not such a good one after all - Before the half-gloved fingers of his hand touched down on the cool, bare glass of the wine bottle and he spun it.

It revolved slowly, ominously slowly on the once-polished surface of the coffee table before him. And finally slid to a stop with the empty neck of the bottle pointing squarely at the smug-looking grin of a tall, impressively muscled young man half-hidden in shadow in the corner of the clustered ring of partygoers. 

 The young man stepped forward to stand directly between the girl with the vibrantly red lips and Kakashi with a rakish smirk. The man had dark eyes and close-cropped black hair. The girl's heavily made-up eyes sparkled, they danced a bouyant zig-zag between the muscular youth's looming frame and Kakashi's lean reclining body.

"Ready for your seven minutes in heaven?" 

The young man's voice rumbled into the air between them at the same moment a heavy hand fell on the slope of his shoulder. It rung familiarly in the Copy-Ninja's ears, which suddenly flooded with the rushing heat of a mortified blush.

He knew that voice...

Kakashi staggered a little under the rising swell of hands that began to push the three of them towards a half-open closet on the other side of the room. He gasped as he was pushed in and collided nose-first into the young man's broad chest. The girl with the ruby-red lips slid in smoothly behind him, and Kakashi heard the snick of the closet door locking closed behind them at the same moment her hands wrapped in a loose fold about his hips.

He looked up slowly to face that unnervingly familiar dark gaze; one he'd never seen without the icy barrier of a painted mask, with a solitary wide, grey eye. Kakashi swallowed and breathed in shakily as the girl pressed herself flush against the tense curve of his spine. Her painted lips closed over the tender skin of his ear lobe at the same moment the dark eyed boy dipped the tips of his fingers down the front of Kakashi's pants.

"Bear..."

The older boy's laugh rumbled against Kakashi's chin when he took a dominating step closer. It was replaced with a bruising grip of the other ANBU's fingers. The girls lips pulled free of Kakashi's ear with a wet, ticklish pop. The Copy-Ninjas lips parted in a caught-sounding gasp behind his mask.

There was a faint clink as the odd change in his pockets touched the floor with the rest of his trousers.