Warning: the following fanfiction contains very deep wrongness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please, click the back button. If slash is not your brand of vodka, then turn around immediately and don't even bother flaming.
These Are All Things You Don't Understand
Chapter Nine
Kakashi allows the embrace only for another half-minute. (Any longer might threaten his control, and he doesn't like to admit it but he knows it is true.) He counts down the seconds, his eyes closed and his face pressed into the Yellow Flash's shoulder as he memorizes the feel and the smell and the absolute peace these blunt fingers digging into his skin bring along with broken veins and growing blue smears under flesh -
And now the thirty seconds are up; he rolls back his shoulders in a silent request to be released. Sensei immediately breaks off his stream of almost incomprehensible words that Kakashi has not bothered to try to decipher (lie lie lie - Kakashi is a liar to himself and the world. These are the words that he will set gently in a corner of his mind and wall off carefully, brick by brick, so that he will never talk himself into pursuing the man: I missed you I was so worried I came as soon as I heard I can't believe you landed yourself in the hospital are you alright can I do anything for you - ) and lets Kakashi go.
He feels almost dizzy in the clarity of this. The medic has left the room, thankfully, and Kakashi doesn't have to kill her for witnessing this private moment.
Kakashi lies again by telling himself that the loss of the man's arms around him does not feel like a limb has been torn away - tells himself that he cannot still feel the phantom warmth and comfort and strength.
The Yellow Flash is the first to speak, as always. Kakashi falls into their familiar old habits as if they are oxygen and he has been drowning. (He feels like Kakashi again, almost - he has been Katsu for so long that he is having trouble finding the distinction between them, too used to acting one way and thinking another. He believes he managed to fool the Hokage, but the awkward conflict is still there, manifest in split-second pauses before reactions and speech, and it is so good to see his mentor again.)
The first thing the jounin says when he gets a good look at Kakashi is: "You're so skinny! I didn't hurt anything except your pride with the hug, did I?"
"...No, Sensei."
But the man's protective instincts have been roused by Kakashi's pause, and he immediately starts checking Kakashi over. Kakashi allows it for a moment before calmly grabbing his teacher's fluttering hands by the wrists and guiding him to a nearby chair.
The Yellow Flash cooperates from the shock of the uninitiated contact alone. He stares at Kakashi and is suddenly calm and analytical, blue eyes sharp and calculating and back to baseline.
"Sit," the man says. "And tell me about the mission."
Kakashi complies, dropping into a surprisingly comfortable chair next to his sensei. He is glad to obey, wearied already (and that is so incredibly irritating. He wants his old fitness and strength back). "What do you want me to say?"
Blue eyes scan him. "Start with what took you so long. You've been gone for over two months, Kakashi."
(It felt like two decades, and it is hard for his body not to betray the overwhelming - it is some kind of emotion that surges through every cell of himself at the sound of his name from the jounin's mouth.)
Calmly and without hesitation: "The mission required tracking and careful preparation before engagement. The target was rarely in a vulnerable position, and the opportunity to eliminate him did not arise for some time."
"He must have been a dangerous mark."
"Yes."
"We'll talk about that later then. Injuries?"
"Nothing serious. A few bruises and scratches. The medic-nin says I am suffering from extreme exhaustion." (And this is a lie, but Kakashi can live with lies. Obviously.)
"That explains why you look like shit," the man teases with a blinding grin, switching moods as erratically as always.
"Sensei," Kakashi says reprovingly, and everything is so goddamned normal that an alien feeling tightens his throat.
His teacher grins again and ruffles his hair. "I've missed you."
Kakashi nods, not trusting himself to speak. The blond sighs happily and lays his arm across the back of Kakashi's chair; comfortable silence falls between them.
It comes when Kakashi doesn't expect it: "I'm very proud of you, Kakashi."
Kakashi lets his eyes crinkle very slightly in a tiny smile and doesn't say anything. (The silence is for Sensei, because people break too easily. It is for Kakashi himself because this mission couldn't break him, but he knows, starting deep in a place that he is not aware of and spreading through his entire being as undeniable fact, that Sensei's full knowledge of it just might.)
But now the man is grinning back at him, delighted with the small show of emotion (emotions are a weakness), and so Kakashi finally replies, "It was nothing, Sensei."
He lies because he knows he is good at it - because he has discovered that he is a good liar and a good lie and a good fuck and a good whore and a good actor and a good shinobi. He lies because people break too easily and there are secrets that can never be spoken of outside of Sarutobi's office. He lies because the man lounging in the chair beside him is one whose entire being necessitates it. He lies because he is selfish. He looks the Yellow Flash (not Minato anymore, never again) in the eye and lies and doesn't regret it and never will.
Eight hours pass, and Kakashi sleeps.
He dreams.
When he wakes, he is hard and slightly flushed and still trapped in the frozen mental image of damp yellow hair brushing against a sweat-gleaming left shoulder that is decorated with a two-second old bite mark, dark and red against tan skin. Kakashi's body is burning with arousal, twisting in his chest and pooling in his gut and making it hard to breathe normally -
And now he notices the head of blond hair pillowed on tan arms that is half-on his bed, three inches from his left pinky finger, and what twists in his chest -
It is -
Wrongness. Guilt. Resignation. Tragedy and agony and a moment of -
(Hatake Kakashi cannot recognize four components of this pre-dawn drowning.)
He leaves the hospital two days later. He sneaks out while doing it because there is a very mutually exclusive conflict of interests: the Yellow Flash is ecstatic Kakashi is back and seems unwilling to let him go out of sight range. The man has been constantly underfoot, like a big blond puppy. Before the mission, Kakashi would have been quietly pleased with this. Now - now he is tense and uncomfortable and incapable of expressing it without also having to explain exactly why he wants his teacher to stop touching him and grinning at him and falling asleep slouched in the chair by his hospital bed and looking at him like that.
Kakashi is too aware of things that are the farthest thoughts from the other man's mind.
But Kakashi has said no, and he meant it. He has said no to even trying to make his mentor look at him that way. He has said no to pain and unachievable goals and becoming human in the way that matters. He has said no to pursuing Mi- fuck. To pursuing his sensei.
So this is Kakashi going to his family home.
The reason for this is that he knows the man won't even think to check for him at the old Hatake house. (The civilian kids always run when they have to pass the small compound because they think it is haunted. Kakashi - if he ever discovered this and felt that speaking of such important things did not devalue them - could tell the children a story that would at first interest and then intrigue and then break away a few shards of idealism as it peels off of hearts in the silence that follows.) Kakashi -
He needs some space - just a few hours to gather himself, to try to fix whatever is malfunctioning in his brain because he is different now (he knows this with the surety of the color of blood), and it isn't going away on its own like he had secretly half-thought it would. Just a few hours -
And here.
Here is the house Sakumo bought sixteen years ago when he was seventeen and immortal and strong and successful, darling of the Leaf and freshly dubbed the White Fang of Konohagakure. Kakashi does not look at the abode that was once his father's (his family's) as he makes his way through the old wards and traps to the stone wall of the courtyard. He does not want to see the lewd harshness of the peeling plaster or the -
He doesn't want to see it. That's all that matters.
Kakashi does not hate his father's house, but that is only because emotion is a weakness and he is not weak.
Oh. Oh, wait, no no no. The tense must be corrected. He wasn't weak. That is why he is here, isn't it? He has come to think, to return to the Hatake Kakashi of a few months ago.
(Here is a half-considered thought made ironic and therefore worthy of mention by breezed-by, intrinsic factuality: Maybe it is the house. Maybe there has been some sort of fearsomely brilliant jutsu whispered into the woodwork - maybe he has been acting under its influence his whole life and it is only just now wearing off. Isn't that ironic? Isn't that hilarious? Look at the scrabbling, desperate, last-pitch attempt to rationalize, the increasing internal fear and lack of understanding made obvious and tangible with every succeeding word, and agree that it is abso-fucking-lutely sidesplitting.)
He is going to pry this enormous, uncontrollable want out of his ribcage and the spaces between the vertebrae that make up his spinal cord. He is going to delete even any small twitch that was birthed in Ishida's warehouse or brothel from the muscle memory of his shoulder blades.
He doesn't - he doesn't understand a lot of things, things too numerous to list. Relevant to this moment: all experiences affect the personality. Relevant to this moment: there is no picking and choosing which happenings and environments and thoughts and actions and reactions integrate into his clever clever clever brain. Relevant to this moment: change cannot be politely refused. (Kakashi is a creature of habit and belief - his mentality has not changed in ever, and this persistent uncertainty in his actions and thoughts is slowly beginning to frighten him.)
He doesn't understand. He was never taught how to. All he knows is that he doesn't want to be in love with the Yellow Flash for the rest of his life. (This is his father's failing - but wait. Wait. That will come later.)
Kakashi slides the door open and steps inside the house of his blood.
The building is too big. There are twenty-two rooms all told, and Kakashi slowly walks through them, bare feet leaving tracks in the dust. (There were no house slippers in the entryway - this is no home in any sense of the word.)
Six of the rooms are boarded up, the first five by Sakumo's hand when - well. (He won't think about this now.) Kakashi did the last one himself when he was eight, very carefully and exactingly and calmly hammering the nails through. He'd had to fetch a chair to reach the lintel and finish.
He remembers this as he stands in front of the study. His father's study. He stands in front of his father's suicide room and stares at the pine planks affixed across the doorway. They don't smell like he remembers. (Kakashi stayed in this house for eleven months after Sakumo gutted himself. He used to stand where he is now and stare at the too-precise barricade for hours, memorizing every whorl and pit in the wood. He knew the sight better than his own face - better than Sakumo's face as well, but that isn't saying much.) It has been two years since he left the house of his father's blood, and the fresh pine scent faded while he was unable to mark its passing.
Not that it matters.
He rips down the planks and steps inside.
See: a dark stain mapping out the hardwood floor, stretching from the farthest left corner to half a foot into the formerly magnificent oriental rug in the middle of the study. The blood has long since seeped into the grain of the wood. Note the odd effect the layer of dust has on the color, giving it the fashionable rusted-steel hue.
See: the beautiful antique desk that makes Kakashi flinch (because it looks so similar to Ishida's and he had forgotten - he had forgotten what Sakumo's desk looked like).
See: a library, scrolls of hundreds of jutsu resting innocently in their slots.
See: the room where Kakashi taught himself to read and write - where he slept if Sakumo was on a mission until he turned four and entered the academy.
See: the useless, empty study of Hatake Sakumo, failure.
And now Kakashi is suddenly and completely -
Something. He is suddenly and completely something he cannot name. It is burning in the tips of his fingers and blazing in the pit of his stomach and resurrecting all of the blood-breaking words he has swallowed like they were sustenance, firmly and naturally and daily weekly always.
Sakumo is years dead and was nothing but a fucking failure anyway - Kakashi knows that he won't turn into the same. He doesn't need to swear it.
In this overwhelming conflagration, he doesn't know why he even considered this too-big house of failure and shame and blood and weakness to be a good place to think.
And now - his lungs feel like they are stiffening into cardboard, and his mouth is dry and his throat tight with words he first swallowed five years ago. His fingers have curled into fists without him noticing. The thick heat in his gut has somehow compacted itself into - it is like the sun has been plucked from the sky and shoved down his esophagus, only the sun is too big so all the fire and fuel has been squeezed into a ball the size of the Yellow Flash's fist, every particle a thousand times concentrated to make up for the size-down.
He - it is so difficult to breathe. He can only take in short breaths with his new cardboard lungs, and his exhalations are quick and harsh. He is practically panting, he realizes distantly, but he cannot do anything about this senselessness because now the incredible, almost-familiar heat has found its way into his cranium and his fists are tingling and his teeth are clenched, air whistling through them like a song that isn't as driving as the pulse he can feel in his ears -
His vision goes red and hazy, and -
There is a moment of movement and air and timelessness - and the sound of wood shattering.
Kakashi stares down at the splintered fragments of his father's desk.
He leaves and very stoically does not want to burn this showplace of decay to ashes.
Kakashi fails at a lot of things, the necessary, important, human things that matter.
He didn't used to realize this deficiency. Now that he is back, however, he sees it in the number of people he knows by name (nine) and the people who expect to see him smile (none) and the recognition in his landlord's eyes (again, none).
And he - he is too used to talking and interacting now. He is too used to pretending to be social and a little naive and determined and amusingly stubborn and entertaining and sexual and - all the things he isn't. He is too used to pretending to be Katsu.
He isn't allowed to be Katsu anymore, not by his peers or superiors and least of all by himself.
He tells himself that he isn't tempted by it.
He manages to avoid the Yellow Flash for the entire afternoon after leaving his old house. And then a night passes, a night spent sleeping in a tree at Training Ground Thirty-Two because seeing his landlord and his dusty, barren flat made him want to puke - and he wakes with the dawn's light stretching through the branches to caress his hair.
It is a miracle that the jounin hasn't managed to track him down yet. Except: not a miracle. Kakashi doesn't believe in the divine - can't even comprehend such a concept. (One of the village's failings in Kakashi's raising is that they never taught him to accept blind faith. Then again: look at Namikaze Minato and look at Hatake Kakashi and try to say that some measures of blind faith aren't innate.)
Noon comes, and for no reason at all Kakashi finds himself back at his flat for the second time since his return.
Here is Kakashi. Waiting.
He doesn't have to wait long.
(The Yellow Flash will always find him. Except when he can't - except for the time that will come when even their too-precious people will die screaming because there isn't time and he has to choose, dammit, and there isn't time. Choices. Choices and time and time and choices.)
Kakashi manages to avoid the in-depth conversation about the mission for another two days.
Two days, and this is the promised later - this is the Yellow Flash smiling quietly at him while stirring an almost-empty tea cup absently. The words that have passed between them are so shriveled and devaluing and -
They just aren't enough. Kakashi feels like his lungs can't do anything with the oxygen they continue to take in steadily even as the blond asks casual questions (casual - because Ikari had just been another mission, the only the slight interest factor being its status as Kakashi's first solo assassination) and Kakashi either exhales half-truths or waves them off. Insignificance and wrongness and falsity are so stiff in his blood and his mouth that he wants to affect his environment in a screaming, decimate-the-building way.
But he is Hatake Kakashi, chuunin, and even the Yellow Flash sees nothing amiss in the set of his jaw and the evenness of his gaze.
The casual interrogation peters off smoothly, and now his jounin leader begins chattering about petty happenings that occurred during Kakashi's absence from Konoha. Kakashi sits through it stolidly and occasionally murmurs a response to words he does not hear. He concentrates instead on not staring at the small freckle next to the Yellow Flash's mouth - very carefully does not watch the fascinating gaping of the neckline of the man's undershirt, which flashes an extremely bitable collarbone with every over-exaggerated arm-waving.
He really wishes the Yellow Flash was less - everything that has claimed Kakashi's heart. (Things that he can't put into words. Things that break him and remake him and save him and destroy him.)
It is a few hours before the man makes to leave.
"So I'll see you when I come by tomorrow afternoon. Don't forget to eat that sashimi I brought - actually, maybe I'll just stay for a bit longer. You're too thin, Kakashi - "
And if the jounin thinks this will successfully distract Kakashi, then he is a lot more delusional than Kakashi has previously believed. "I'll see you in the morning."
The babble screeches to a halt, another ploy failed, and the blond half-frowns at him. "Listen, you need more rest - "
"Don't" is what leaps quietly from Kakashi's lips. Now: "Don't...don't do that."
The silence is tense and awkward and heavy for all of two seconds before the Yellow Flash suddenly laughs. (It is very skillfully done. Watch a craftsman at work.)
Now, self-deprecatingly: "I'm acting like a mom, huh?"
That isn't the problem - Kakashi isn't too sure what a mom acts like - but he isn't going to correct the man. He simply looks at him instead. (But not really. Kakashi can't stand to truly look at the man. Not anymore. That is asking too much.) "I'll see you in the morning," he repeats, and when he sees the slight wariness in his teacher's eyes, he tries for a tentative smile. (He is trying to make it so that smiles don't only belong to Katsu. It is difficult.)
The complete joy that sweeps visibly through the Yellow Flash's body language brings a terrible tightening in Kakashi's throat. The man is an onslaught of brilliance in this glimmering second, all bright white coat and sunny hair and a glowing, quiet smile that fills Kakashi to the brim with devastating want.
The moment stretches too far, though, too intimately for Kakashi to stand, and he breaks it by wrenching his gaze away. He stares at the spiderweb in the corner and wants to close his eyes. He needs to clean, he notes.
This is the bare bones of it: he looks anywhere that does not involve his teacher.
There is a shaken silence that the Yellow Flash doesn't know what to do with. When he says, "I - um. I'm - going," Kakashi knows the man is rattled. He doesn't know why. He also doesn't know what to do about it.
So he just nods, still looking past the blond's shoulder at the spiderweb. He doesn't see the jounin gather himself for one last try at their brand of normalcy.
The Yellow Flash shrugs into a grin (because it is almost his default expression) and is suddenly a hair's breadth from Kakashi.
"See you in the morning," the man says.
Kakashi: breathless and scorched and dizzy from the proximity - and now the jounin does a half-hug, half-hair ruffling maneuver. Kakashi cannot keep from flinching away from it.
He is numb to the familiar hurt in his mentor's baby blues. He tells himself there is no fear that he has finally managed to push the man away. (That this time is the last time - that maybe this two hundred and seventy-third distance is the one that will finally make the man give up. It is for Sensei, because people break too easily. It is for himself because he thinks, somewhere -
Just. People break too easily.)
The door clicks shut, and Kakashi comes back to himself.
He walks calmly. He walks calmly calmly calmly to the toilet and vomits until only acid is left. He curls up on the floor when he is finished, flushed right cheek and forehead pressed to the cool tile, and wonders distantly when his life became a masterpiece of secrets and lies.
He doesn't eat the sashimi.
A/N: ...Feedback is grand.
