Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Please be forgiving, and be prepared, we will likely hit bottom with this chapter (and no, I am not intending any pun, how cruel do you think I am? Don't answer that.)

xxxxx

"What kind of man lets a little boy take the fall for him? Tries to kill him? You think you'll reduce me to your level just because you're going to rape me? You're nothing to me anymore. Nothing! It won't have any effect on me! And it'll just add to your penalty. You'll never see daylight again!" His hands ached, fiercely trapped and tied at the wrists, stretched above his head; his injured back reopened and all but rendering him unconscious. The rough hands positioning him stopped long enough to pound a brutal blow up into his stomach. He smelled the hot breath above him, felt every nuance of the physical being attacking him. He'd crowed bravely enough but his heart was afraid to beat and quaked madly in his chest.

He heard the blade being unsheathed behind him and felt the sting as it made a tentative cut; it shocked him forward off his knees. He was too horrified to cry out at first, stunned that an assault beyond his worst imagination was actually happening. The blade reconnected, twisted and sawed, the pain unbearable and in his desperate struggling he felt himself screaming but the sound hung far away like a bad connection. Because the only thing he really heard was that voice, very clearly in his ear. The moisture from the breath gusting the back of his neck carried the seething words, mocking him all over again, cruel and unforgettable.

"No, you're wrong. I'm about to be everything to you. There will never be a day when you don't think of me after this. You feel it, don't you? Now feel this…oh, yes…how's that for foreplay, huh? Now you're mine forever. Keep squirming, baby, don't pass out on me, you noisy piece of…"

"Iruka! Wake up! Iruka, come on, wake up!" he jerked hard, at once shot with relief in the midst of being uncontrollably terrified. The dream, the damn dream again. Precise and minutely accurate, like a blu-ray replay of that one event. He had been on a couch, he'd fallen asleep from boredom mid-day. Now he was on the floor next to it, attendants staring at him, Marsh kneeling close to his head.

"Don't get up yet, easy," he held his hand up over the prone man, not touching him. "Do you know where you are?"

Iruka covered his face with his hands and tried to gather himself somehow because the voice was still vivid and real, the words "mine forever" still crawling up his neck. One of the orderlies had brought blankets and Marsh was throwing them over him on the floor. It didn't make sense, but it helped a little. He dug his hands into the blankets and fisted the material up to his eyes. The voice finally faded from his ears, quiet washing over him and then nothing hurt but his elbow. He must have landed on it when he came off of the couch. He looked up sheepishly after another long minute of silence, embarrassed that he was still out of breath.

"I'm okay," he tried to say, but his lips moved soundlessly.

It brought back memories for Marsh too, of Iruka's screams echoing in the wee hours down the darkened halls when his sleep hadn't been sufficiently medicated when he was admitted after the incident. He'd still been injured then, though, and those cries had been much weakened.

"Not too fast," he hovered as Iruka pushed himself up onto the couch.

He cleared his throat, finding his balance. "I'm all right." Suck it up, this is nothing new, just the same old dream. I know how to survive this, he reminded himself anxiously. Plenty of experience there.

Marsh nodded, waved to dismiss the waiting assistants without turning away.

His breathing was returning to normal. He rubbed anxiously at the scar on his nose and looked up. "Pretty loud, I guess."

"Yes."

"People will start to think I'm crazy. Again."

"No one ever thought you were crazy. The only people here are professionals that understand what's happening."

"Oh, and I know I can trust everyone to be quiet about it," he said, trying to work up some sarcasm. "Good thing I'm so thick-skinned. What am I supposed to do with all of this time on my hands? I want to go home."

Marsh sighed. "Tsunade's orders."

"Right." he let out a deep breath. They sat in silence while regaining composure.

"Well, maybe this is a fair time to bring this up. On the subject of visitors and well-wishers. Do you want your stay here to be confidential?"

Iruka shook his head. "You're kidding. I don't think this place knows the meaning of the word. I guess there's no use pretending for my sake anymore."

"Then I'll tell you that some of your friend have been asking where you've gone, and Kakashi and Genma have asked to come see you. They both had a pretty good idea where you were anyway."

"I've been wanting to ask Kakashi something anyway." he looked at his hands. "Is there anything I can do to get out of here sooner?"

"Make great strides in your treatment?" Marsh suggested. "That's what Lady Tsunade is looking for."

"I guess. When's the next session?"

"I was trying to gauge when you'd be ready again."

"Now, let's do it now. I want to go home." He sniped with forced confidence. "You wanna touch me? Rub my elbow, I think I hit it when I fell off the couch."

"I need a little more prep time than that. It's about 2:30, let's say I come back around 4:00. Are you okay now?" Iruka rubbed his own elbow and nodded reluctantly. Maybe when the session was over he could go home and at least get some clean clothes and a book or two. No more afternoon naps.

By the time four came around, he was sweating and pacing, considering just exactly what Tsunade could do to him if he just walked out. His sex life was certainly none of her business, how could it be that he was restricted to the center over something like this? Ridiculous! He was perfectly fine before this meddlesome surrogate thing. So Marsh couldn't be his therapist. Maybe therapy ought to be over. He was well, he'd dealt with everything else, so just forget this. He'd just tell him to forget it, leave now, tell Tsunade to mind her own business. Report to school Monday and tell the substitute that plans had changed. That's it. Take my life back and just lock the world outside when I get home at night.

A light knock, the door swung open. Dr. Marsh stepped inside, smiling professionally. "Sorry to keep you waiting."

Iruka tried to get his interrupted thoughts into a declaration, and failed. Marsh was too close, had him pegged as distraught already.

"Please sit down, Iruka. Tell me what's going on."

"This is stupid. I need to go home. If I can't do this on my own schedule, I'm done."

"Why do you say that?"

"I was fine. I don't see how using you as a surrogate makes me nutbin material. I'm not staying."

"You were fine? Didn't you come to me just days ago looking for a prescription because you couldn't sleep anymore? Because the dream was back? You know, the one you were just screaming about over on the floor there? Your OCD symptoms?" Marsh peered at him expectantly.

"No. Yes. I wasn't…" damn him! "I just need the pills, is all. Then I can go back home."

"Do you believe that?"

Iruka stared at him, frustrated. "I'm not crazy. That's the only reason you should hold people here against their will!"

"Tsunade makes people do things against their will ten times a day. It makes us all crazy. I wouldn't have kept you here like this. You recall that I asked you to stay for a week voluntarily. I never ordered it. I still consider you an outpatient, your confinement here is between you and your leader. Frankly, I don't appreciate it. It makes it harder for me to help you."

"You're only arguing that you don't need help so you can get out of here. But you do need help right now. You came to me for it. Don't let Tsunade's confinement order drive you away from getting things sorted out."

He sat down on the couch, hooked a finger in the hem of his patient's t-shirt.

"Take some deep breaths for me. Do you remember talking about intent?"

Iruka boggled at that. "We're…we're starting a session?"

"You want out of here. I want you out of here. Let's keep moving forward, get you away from your nightmares. I'm going to touch you here…"

Iruka watched his hand like it was a snake as it went to his elbow.

"Does it still hurt?"

"No." he huffed, not knowing what to do.

Marsh wasn't sure if he'd ever disliked his boss more than he did at this moment. "Iruka, please sit down. Please."

Iruka sat, hunched and arms crossed, head down.

"Is it me? Is this insurmountable?" Marsh asked gently. "You can't work with me anymore?"

His deep brown eyes were looking up now, uncertain and worried. "I didn't say that."

"You don't have any need to touch another human whatsoever?"

"Just stop. Please." he was wincing. That question hit a raw nerve, one he seldom acknowledged.

"No, we need to go forward. But I'll tell you what…" he had Iruka's eyes on his, it was a good opening. "You do it now. You touch me any way you like, anywhere you like. You just need to agree to stop if I say so. Other than that, I give you complete control."

The blush was expected, the hesitation predictable, the dark head shaking 'no' inevitable. So the sudden approach, the muscled arms wrapping tight around him, the head buried softly in his neck caught him completely off-guard.

"It's all right," he said quietly, returning the embrace with a carefully gauged supportive hug.

His patient was a strong ninja and it never left his awareness that he could be formidable if he was to lose control. Marsh was no field agent, and he had made his concerns about surrogate work with a chunin clear to Tsunade . There was a reason that there were no other surrogates available, the few who tried to help the chunins bowed out quickly after one or two patients. Only one had tried to treat a jounin, resulting in the basic ban on that practice.

Iruka pulled back just enough to tip his face up, place a tentative kiss on the blonde's soft cheek, another on his lips. He began kissing him slowly and warmly, fighting to be gentle in the honest style of one who is starving for affection. Marsh's own emotions startled him. He felt the pain and sadness embedded in those careful advances and his own chest ached in sympathy. He could feel Iruka's raw loneliness from being untouched for so long. All those long days and nights when no amount of support and comfort would have been enough to heal him, and he had instead survived on none at all.

He seemed to just want to kiss and embrace obsessively, so Marsh relaxed into it somewhat as he realized his function was more teddy bear than surrogate at this point. The kissing was so unbearably sweet and thoughtful, he suspected that his patient felt a great deal for whomever he must be fantasizing about.

Xoxoxoxo

He hated the way his neck seemed to be the dividing line that compartmentalize the people he knew into those who were after outright sex or just casual friendship. Affection (love? Not even his thoughts would allow that term) for him, as a person, never seemed to be an option. In the midst of resisting the push into physical intimacy that the surrogacy represented, this exercise caught him by storm.

He could do whatever he wanted? When it sank in, and he reached, no, grabbed for Marsh. It could happen. He might have someone kiss him, kiss his face instead of groping meaninglessly for sex, acting as if he were a real person who merited their interest and caring. The back of his mind warned him that it was a parlor trick, this man was a paid courtesan, someone who wouldn't give him the time of day in normal circumstances. But it was too much to resist. He touched warm flesh and he was powerless to turn back.

His partner seemed to welcome the advance, sliding his warm wet lips open, compliant, sweet to the taste and touch. He even kissed back, for some reason that wasn't what Iruka expected. Marsh was responsive and it felt so real. It was dizzying and his heart was sucked into the moment like it was quicksand, the more his common sense struggled to pull it back the deeper his heart sank in. It hurt terribly and it was going to be much much worse when he had to let go, but this was what he needed. Even this amount was more than he had dared hope.

Many minutes had ticked by and Marsh began to push away a little, time to back off and see what was going on in his patient's head, and to clear his own. It wasn't easy, the much harder body resisted his first attempts at subtlety. Iruka clung even tighter for a moment as he realized what he was expected to do; then he took a shuddering deep breath and let go, pulling back and holding himself instead.

"Was that wrong?" he asked breathlessly. "You said I could do anything."

Marsh swallowed hard, regaining his clinical point of view. "It's okay, that was just more activity than I expected. What were you feeling just then?"

He looked at the floor, the yawing feeling of emptiness from the clinical words and the broken embrace erasing all other thoughts. Words failed him. If they were through touching, he wanted to be alone to try and lock the feelings in his memory, capture it before it got away.

"I…I need to use the restroom." he got up and walked quickly into the bathroom, latched the door, and leaned over the sink to see clearly in the mirror. His face was flushed, his lips reddened slightly - so little evidence that anything had happened. He closed his eyes and rewound the scene, played back from the initial kiss, and tried to let the feelings well up again .

He knew Marsh wouldn't wait forever. Eventually, he'd be banging on the door and want to know what was wrong. He flushed the john and washed his hands for show after a few minutes and stepped out.

He shook his head 'no' when Marsh waved him back to sit. "We're done, right?"

"No, we're only halfway through our session."

It took forever it seemed , fielding questions he couldn't quite answer, hoping in vain for another interaction like the last and getting nothing. From the questions he could see Marsh thinking along the wrong lines, suspecting that he had fled to the bathroom to conceal physical arousal, not completely believing Iruka when he said that the interaction had not taken him there at all. The doc seemed annoyed by the time he left, sensing that he wasn't getting 100 percent cooperation.

When they came in right after Marsh left, interrupting his thoughts again to bring him dinner, it was the last straw. Iruka ignored the tray and slipped out and down the hall as soon as it was clear. He needed to replay it in his head until he could make more sense of it, and he needed to be left alone to do it. He knew the compound better than almost anyone, and he climbed the winding stairwell to the very top of the Hokage Tower. As far as he knew, the village was still on low alert status, so no one should be manning watch. It was a perfect place to look out over the countryside and the village, watch the sunset, reflect on confusing issues. He'd been up here many times before, both on official watch and on personal time to think.

He perched on the edge of the parapet, arms wrapped around one leg, his chin resting on his knee. The sun was still above the horizon, plenty of time to think before the coming sunset. He allowed himself to let down his guard and bask in the ebbing warmth of the sun and the remembered embrace. A feeling like this might never come again, he couldn't remember having anything like it before. It was worth preserving, reliving. He hung in the moment and let time flow on by.

He felt the familiar chakra, and tried not to be too disappointed. He'd have to stop daydreaming sooner or later. He didn't even turn from his position facing the village.

"Found me, huh?" he asked mildly.

"Hi sailor, come here often?" Kakashi strolled into the roof.

"Just waiting for the sunset."

"Mmm. Yeah, nice view up here." He leaned on the low wall near Iruka. "You doing all right?"

"Fine." He slapped at some dust that had settled on his khakis. "Actually, Kakashi, I was wanting to talk to you. I have to ask - did you tell anyone about me?"

Kakashi had figured that was coming at some point. "Just one person, Ru. And I know he'd never tell anyone. "

"You mean, the way that I knew you'd never tell anyone?" he turned a bit, slightly tense.

"It was Gai. And I made him promise he'd keep it to himself."

"Oh."

It didn't require much contemplation. Gai would probably die before betraying a confidence, and both of them knew it.

"Must have been someone who saw my file then. I have to admit, I really didn't think you'd tell anyone." He found it even easier to believe in his current mellow mood.

Just my luck to tap some damn drunk who can't refile a file, thought Kakashi.

"I wouldn't have told Gai but it threw me at first. I shouldn't have told him. I am sorry."

Iruka shook his head dismissively. "Let's just drop it."

"Oh, hey, I got my crossbow back." Kakashi aimed a mimed version of the weapon, grinning. "They got it fixed just in time, too."

"Ki, I don't think I can go. I'm confined here for three weeks at least." Iruka frowned.

"Oh." Three weeks? "Well, it doesn't have to be this weekend. We'll wait until you get out."

"No. don't make everyone wait on my account. It'll break tradition."

"It'll be broken anyway, if you aren't there. I'd rather wait. No one else can scare the fish like you do!" he chucked evilly, reminding Iruka of his faux pas from the last trip.

"No, you guys go. We can still take a trip later. Don't argue, Ki. I don't want everyone waiting to see when I'm released, get it?"

"Oh, yeah, I guess. I don't have very fond memories of this little establishment here, either. It's never a good sign when they make you stay overnight, and then everybody's gotta ask about it. Sucks." he sighed. "Still, I don't know if I'll go this time if you don't…oh, hey. I almost forgot. Is that your shrink down there? He sent me up here to save you."

He gave Iruka an abrupt shove, tipping him out into space so he hung in midair over the perilous drop - it enabled him to catch sight of Marsh, watching intently from below. The figure on the ground appeared shocked as Iruka was shoved skyward. Iruka caught himself in effortless instinct and was back securely in his spot without blinking an eye.

"He seemed to think you're pretty helpless, he was worried you were up here and might be thinking of jumping." Kakashi laughed lightly. "I would have slapped him for the insult but I wasn't sure if it as an inside joke or something."

Iruka reddened, stuck his head over the edge and waved at Marsh, trying to reassure him he was okay.

"Don't be mean to him, Kakashi, he doesn't understand that! He's not a field guy."

"He's a housecat, huh? I thought all the psych-nins had field training. Maybe you should enlighten him, it's relevant to his work. No chunin worth his salt could defeat their training enough to take damage from a fall like this, even if they wanted to." He peered over the edge as well, grinned evilly and waved, too. "You seem to like him pretty well. Is he your usual guy?"

"Yeah. So I mean it, don't screw around. Maybe you should go let him know it's fine." Iruka had an inspiration, maybe Ki would go and Marsh would come up to check on him. And they would be alone up here, with the sunset and the view…

"He's not the only housecat who noticed you were up here, Ru, you have a fairly distinct silhouette. And since your secret's out, everyone's pretty sure you've been on the verge of blowing your brains out on a regular basis. So I was actually sent up here to make sure you come back down with me and stop panicking the natives." He checked his nails absently. "But I care about you more than I care about the natives, so do what you want. Just so long as you're all right."

Iruka looked at Kakashi, wishing suddenly for his friend to have personality traits he had been bankrupted of by fate long ago. He wondered if Kakashi ever had similar thoughts, wanting the same things he was struggling with. It didn't seem likely.

"Let's go down, then - you should have told me earlier." he said guiltily.

"He's that good, huh? Maybe I'll make an appointment myself. He's kinda cute."

Iruka kept going, hoofing it down the stairs, biting back on his protest. Wanting to tell Kakashi to stay away, but knowing that it would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. He doubted a guy like Marsh treated any jounin, anyway.

They burst out of the doorway, and Iruka looked around, disappointed. Marsh has already gone. But an orderly stood by the landing with a meaningful look.

"No hall pass?" Kakashi asked, peering at Iruka in surprise. Seemed out of character. Maybe the doc had his reasons for worrying.

"I just needed some air. Looks like I have to go now."

"I'll come see you when I get a chance. Hang in there." he cuffed Iruka gently on the chin, forcing a smile. "Make 'em earn their pay."

Iruka submitted to the orderly and headed back to his room.