Alrighty, I managed to get the next one out! Sorry this has taken so long, all I can do is apologize (please forgive me!)

OOOOOOOOOOOOO

The air drifting out of the open window curled up around the awning and over the edge of the roof; it smelled of water, trees and chalk dust – a combination that was distinctly Iruka – and of….

Dead fish?

Kakashi dropped into the open window, landing in a crouch and raising his hand in a half-wave, "Yo, Iru….ka?"

Shizune grinned up at him from where she was sprawled on the couch, hands full of fish, calmly bending the scaled body back and forth, and Kakashi was sure that he heard soft snaps emanating from it. "Morning, Kakashi-san!" She paused to study the fish, and then, seeming satisfied, dropped it onto a growing pile on the table in front of her.

Kakashi looked from the pile of fish, to Shizune, and back to the pile of fish, "What are you….?"

"Shizune-san, will this work?" Kakashi turned his attention to the doorway as Iruka turned the corner into the living room and stopped dead. "Kakashi-san? Why are you here?"

"Morning Iruka-sensei!"

The chuunin blushed, fidgeting with the piece of cloth in his hands, "Gomen, that was really rude. Ohayo, Kakashi-sensei."

"Maaa, I thought I'd stop in and see how the training's going." He cocked his head at Shizune, moving his hand towards his hitae-ate. "Maybe learn something."

Shizune shook her head and said in mock seriousness, "I thought you couldn't teach an old dog new tricks, Kakashi-san?"

His visible eye curved up, "I'm sticking my tongue out at you."

"Really?" Shizune teased him back. "If you'll pull your mask down, I'll know for sure." The dark eyes brightened significantly at the thought. "Iruka-kun's going to get to see you without it, ne?"

Kakahsi winked broadly, "Maybe." He was inordinately proud of how the slight lilt in his voice turned the simple statement into innuendo, and he had to hide a smile as Iruka dropped his head to hide the blush creeping up the sides of his face. The chuunin had, apparently picked up on the subtle undertones of his comment.

Shizune patted the couch beside her, "Come, join us, Iruka-kun!" Iruka's head snapped back up, and made his way too the couch, looking rather dazed.

"So," Kakashi folded his arms and leaned against the wall, "What are you doing?'

Shizune had scooped up another fish carcass and was calmly wiggling it between her fingers, "Iruka-kun's learning how to heal broken bones. There are a lot of fine bones in these fish, so he can have lots to practice on."

Iruka was leaning over the table, spreading the cloth across the worn glass and moving the already-broken fish onto it.

Shizune tossed the last fish onto the pile, "It's either this, or we get Anko to break some of his bones, but I think we want to keep him mostly in one piece."

Kakashi nodded, "Preferably." Again with the innuendo. He would have stopped, really, but there was so little effort involved, and the play of colors across Iruka's face was so completely worth it.

"And, besides," Shizune continued, "I won't have much time with him this week once Ibiki gets his hands on him, so I have to impart all my vast wisdom to him today."

A slight gagging sound cut off any response Kakashi might have made. Iruka looked like he had swallowed his tongue. "Ibiki…san?"

One of Shizune's brows went up, "What, exactly, did Anko's note say?"

"Only that I was to meet with her that afternoon."

Kakashi deflated, the happiness brought on from being in this warm room and the teasing atmosphere rushing out of his system. That, at least explained why Iruka had not taken the option to leave; he honestly had no idea what he was getting himself into.

Iruka plopped down onto the couch, the faint blush vanish from his cheeks and his eyes focusing sharply on the backs of his hands, "So," He started slowly. "Is there anything else I should know about this training?'

After a moment of thought, Shizune shook her head "Nope. Anko, Ibiki and I are the only ones. You know about Anko and I; Ibiki's going to be teaching you some resistance methods. Most Anbu don't use genjutsu, but Kakashi-san," She gestured towards the defeated-looking jounin, "Uses everything. It's better to be safe then sorry – especially when it comes to the sharingan."

"Alright." Iruka said, shifting to lean forwards towards the table. "So what am I supposed to do with these fish?"

Kakashi had never been more grateful for his mask. At this point, it was the only thing keeping mouth from hanging open.

OOOOOOOOOO

The ropes creaked ominously as his body fell forward, and Iruka could hear his breath rattling in his lungs. His eyes searched for the walls and floor - relieved that the room had finally returned to its proper orientation; there was something incredibly sickening about looking at the room around you and realizing the you, and you alone, were standing on the ceiling, with the chairs, tables, and other people looking up at you from the floor -- and finally raised his eyes to focus on the single other figure in the room.

"That's enough for today." Ibiki remained in the same spot he'd started in, arms folded, staring at the exhausted chuunin with an intensity that threatened to burn through him.

Iruka was glad that Ibiki had insisted on tying him to the chair. He'd protested when the subject had first come up, but Ibiki had pointed out that the reason people didn't survive genjutsu was because they tended to injure themselves while trying to escape from the illusion, and now he was sure that his face would have made friends with the floor long before now.

With a few movements of his wrists, the ropes fell lose, and Iruka rose slowly to his feet, balancing himself on the back of the chair. "How long?" He was afraid to ask, sure that he had only been under for a few minutes, even if it had felt like several days inside the twisted world.

"About an hour." Ibiki bent to retrieve the rope from the floor, coiling it around his hand. "Have you had training for genjutsu before?"

Iruka shook his head, "Nothing besides the academy lectures." He paused for a moment, "Definitely nothing practical."

Ibiki turned his back on him, opening the door and moving almost completely out of the room before turning back to him, "Then it's not bad, for your first time."

Pride kept Iruka standing until the door shut – he would not show the special jounin just beat he was – but the minute the latch clicked, he allowed his legs to buckle and folded down into the chair, resting his head in his hands and fighting the headache that was working it's way up the back of his skull.

OOOOOOOOOO

By the end of the next week, Iruka was trying to convince himself that he was settling into the new routine, but he had never been good at lying to himself.

During the first full day of training, Ibiki'd grabbed him before school, and Iruka'd stumbled into his first class almost twenty minutes late. He'd closed his eyes after the genjutsu, to rest his pounding head, and had promptly passed out. He wasn't entirely sure what had woken him – he vaguely remembered something nudging his foot, but that was quickly forgotten in the storm of swearing he'd set up when he had realized what time it was. He made it through the rest of the day, barely, and had been only a couple of minutes late to his meeting with Anko, who had attacked him the moment he stepped onto the training ground.

When he reached his home that night, he was more than a little pleased to discover that, even though she'd chased him around the grounds for at least twice as long as last time, he had the exact same number of wounds, and most of them were much shallower than last time. He had only hoped that she hadn't been going easy on him.

At the end of the day, he only had enough energy to heal the worst of his wounds before falling into bed.

After Ibiki's training, Iruka had made a concerted effort to keep from falling asleep, but he paid for it later when he passed out at his desk and his oh-so-delightful class decided to prank him.

He woke up ten minutes before his next class – which he figured was plenty of time to get ready, until he discovered that all…all…of the pockets in his vest were filled with something that was the consistency of pudding; they squished when he pressed against them. Iruka moved to open them and remove the offending substance.

Only to discover that the little turkeys had sewn the flaps shut.

He was pretty sure Kotetsu and Izumo heard his howl of fury all the way out at the village gate, and he was not amused when they asked him about it later that night.

On the other hand, the pudding-substance seemed to soften the blows dealt to him by Anko, who'd decided to switch it up and try to hurt him using taijutsu. She seemed a little miffed that she was less able to hit him using hand-to-hand combat and dropped into a deep spin kick that he did not see coming. Her heeled foot connected sharply with the front of his shin, and Iruka heard the bone crack.

As bright flashes of light bloomed behind his eyelids, which had snapped shut so he didn't have to look at her overly victorious face, he figured that, on the bright side, he'd actually get to practice healing bones on a real, live person. He just tried to ignore the fact that said live person was actually himself.

He was so completely exhausted after healing his leg and a few of the other rapidly forming bruises that he just didn't have the energy to deal with his vest.

He awoke the next morning to discover that, not only had his pranked vest been removed at some point during the night, but a clean, though well-worn one had been left in its place. The new vest fit decently well, though it was a little big in the shoulders, and smelled of something that Iruka couldn't quite put his finger on until he'd almost been run over by Kiba and Akamaru on his way to meet Ibiki for training. The overpowering smell of dog washed over him, serving as a very brief early warning, and he leapt to the wall, allowing them to pass by. As the scent faded, Iruka sniffed the air, and then buried his nose in the high collar of the vest, inhaling. Though it was faint, the vest definitely smelled of dog.

Despite his best intentions, his body decided that he could no longer stay awake, and he passed out at his desk again. When he awoke, however, all of his body parts and associated clothing remained intact. And his students were sitting properly in their seats waiting for the next class to start. At least that's what he assumed they were doing; Iruka'd never had so many problems reading his students faces – they all looked like they had the fear of god put in them.

OOOOOOOOOOOOO

Kakashi was still chuckling under his breath as he made his way to meet his reinstated team for training. He'd been on his way there earlier – only one hour late instead of the 2 he was going to be after this incident – when he'd felt a rise of anger wash down the link between himself and Pakkun and had quickly diverted back to the academy, inordinately worried that something had happened.

When he arrived outside the window of Iruka's classroom, he saw Pakkun standing on the desk between Iruka, who was still sleeping soundly, and the entirety of his class, who were armed with superglue, scissors and sharpies. He had no idea what they were planning to do, but he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Pakkun was in mid-rant when he arrived, "….in all my years of service to this village, I have never seen such disrespect for the people who are giving their all to make sure that you are not only protected but are teaching you everything you are going to need to survive as shinobi! This person is willing to give up all of his time for you and their fellow shinobi, and this is how you repay him!"

The kids were all staring at their feet, looking very ashamed.

"If this is the future of our village, I'm disgusted." Pakkun glared around at the kids to make sure that he'd made his point, and then continued with a deep growl that belied his size. "And if I ever catch any of you pups trying something like this again, I will personally bite each and every one of your hands off!"

Kakashi had to choke down a bark of laughter. Pakkun had taken an almost immediate liking to Iruka after Kakashi had asked him to keep tabs on the chuunin. Once he'd seen what Anko'd done to Iruka the first time, and the fact that the chuunin had made no effort to patch himself up that night, Kakashi had insisted that someone make sure Iruka was okay; he would never forgive himself if the chuunin was permanently injured because Kakashi had requested him as his touchstone.

Pakkun had grumbled about it the entire way to Iruka's apartment, but since Kakashi had asked him to do it, he'd stayed, but with the same resigned attitude he'd adopted whenever Kakashi suggested that Pakkun smelled a little too ripe and it was bath time (the pug, of course, had tried to avoid it in the past, but had discovered quickly that Kakashi, armed with sharingan and soap, could chase him down with very little trouble).

The real surprise had come when Pakkun appeared demanding one of his vests. After a few minutes of confused explanation –the dog had never been really clear on the concept of the 'past.' Time existed here and now in the minds of most animals, and Pakkun had struggled from the very first to understand that something that happened yesterday could be as or more painful than something that happened today, but Kakashi had learned to deal with the bizarre mix of past and present sentence structure that littered the dog's speech when he wasn't trying to be clear– Kakashi, at Pakkun's request and his own self-motivated interest in the chuunin, had followed the pug to Iruka's apartment and helped him replace the soiled vest. When they'd returned to his own apartment, without Iruka even stirring from the bed he was sprawled across, Kakashi had asked a simple question, "Why?"

Pakkun had simply given him the closest thing to a shrug the dog could manage, "I would have done it for you."

OOOOOOOOOOOO

Iruka woke to a strange breeze winding it's way through his bedroom and sat up sharply in bed, peering at the hazy darkness before leaping from bed when a deep thump echoed from the general vicinity of the living room.

He sprinted through the door, armed with a kunai snatched quickly out of weapons pouch, and skidded to a halt when he saw Kakashi leaning heavily on the back of his couch and running his fingers back through his spiky hair.

The steady drip of blood coming from the gash at his hairline shook Iruka out of his daze, and he dropped the kunai to the floor, crossing to Kakashi's side and ducking under the jounin's arm to support his weight, feeling his heart skip slightly at the sight of the blood. A quick search, however, revealed that the cut on his head, while bleeding profusely, seemed to be the only injury. Iruka was grateful that he had at least one week of training behind him; the control of healing chakra was starting to come naturally to him after all the practice he got thanks to Anko.

A brief pulse of light surrounded his hand as he pulled the edges closed. "Kakashi-san?" Iruka had pulled the hitae-ate away from the jounin's face so that he could access the wound more readily, and his hand slid up from the cut to push back the soggy mop of hair. "Are you alright?"

The jounin nodded slowly before shaking water off himself like a dog (all over Iruka) and yawning hugely, "Maaa, it wasn't that bad a mission. Just a little too much rain." He smiled up at Iruka, and the chuunin felt his worry for the other man quickly disintegrate into irritation that Kakashi had led him to believe the whole thing was more serious than it actually was. Iruka stepped away, raising his hands to catch the jounin in case he was unstable on his feet.

Kakashi remained standing, grinning like an idiot and dripping all over Iruka's rug. The chuunin glared at him for a minute before wheeling around and stalking back to his bedroom. The jounin could stand there soaked for the rest of the night, for all he cared.

At least he kept telling himself that, but as he slid back under the covers, he wondered whether Kakashi was going to change clothes or risk hypothermia and thought seriously about going back out there and forcing the jounin to take care of himself. The rattle of the pipes in his shower took him by surprise, and he sat up in bed, staring at the closed door of the bathroom. He slowly lay back down, dropping his head back to the pillow. At least Kakashi seemed to have the sense not to freeze to death, which would make his job that much easier.

There seemed to be no point in trying to stay awake; his body had other ideas, and even though he didn't have training with Ibiki in the morning, his body had decided to make up for all the lack of sleep during the week. And it was 2 in the morning. The drumming of water on tile continued as he fell asleep.

OOOOOOOOOOO

A brief attempt to extract himself from the covers twisted around his waist proved completely useless since the usually loose left side of the bed absolutely refused to move. Iruka pushed himself up onto his elbows, trying to figure out what on earth was going wrong in his bedroom.

Kakashi was curled, thankfully, on top of his blankets, dressed in his mask, hitae-ate and a pair of Iruka's pajama pants.

"What are you...?" Iruka couldn't quite hold back the indignant squeak. The single gray eye opened and gazed up at him. "You didn't ask to borrow my pants!" Iruka clapped a hand over his mouth the minute the words were out; he hadn't meant to say that, really. It had just popped into his head, and for some unknown reason, the filter that usually sat between his brain and his mouth had deserted him.

Kakashi stared up at him, looking down at the blue flannel pants before bursting into laughter. "I need permission to borrow a pair of pants?" The visible eye flashed dangerously, "But not to sleep in your bed?'

Iruka turned scarlet, grabbed the pillow and smacked the annoying jounin in the face.

But as he stood in his bathroom waiting for the hot water to reach his floor, he pressed his hand to his waist, where he could still feel the ghost of warmth from…Kakashi's arm? And wondered if that's why he had slept without any of the nightmares that were typically brought on by the sight of another's blood. His hand remained on that spot even as he stood under the water, and he only removed it when he realized he needed both hands to wash his hair.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Eh, extra long to make up for the long wait. Please tell me if you like it, if something's wrong, or if you really hate it (I can take it, and I'd like to get better, so let me know; I'm a big proponent of constructive criticism)!

I'll try to get the next one out sooner...I really hope...

Sunlight through Leave