Iruka yawned as he finished up the last batch of papers he had to grade for the day. He was careful not to move too much. He didn't want to wake the slumbering man that was currently snuggled into his side. Kakashi was sleeping peacefully now, all but attached to Iruka's side with his arms draped across Iruka's legs and his head resting in Iruka's lap. He'd barely left the bed, getting up when Kakashi had one of his nausea spells, to fetch him some more painkillers when they wore off, or when he absolutely had to. Other than that, he stayed sitting on the bed, and Kakashi slept blissfully through most of the afternoon.

He was reaching for the remote for the television Kakashi kept in his room when the other started to stir. He sat the device back down and turned his attention to the waking man, only to realize that he wasn't actually waking up. He looked…disturbed, and his fingers twisted into the fabric of Iruka's slacks. He was muttering quietly, but Iruka couldn't make it out. It sounded frantic, almost frightened, and that was enough for Iruka to deduce that it was a nightmare.

"It's okay. It's just a nightmare," Iruka soothed, fingers running through Kakashi's hair almost habitually now. "Nothing but a nightmare." Without really thinking, Iruka bent down and kissed Kakashi's forehead softly, brushing some hair from his forehead.

To Iruka's relief, Kakashi quieted down, settling limply back into Iruka's side as the sensei went back to channel surfing. Neither moved for a good while after that.

The ringing of a phone woke Iruka from his light doze. It apparently woke Kakashi too, because with no particular semblance of coherency, he stretched across Iruka's lap reaching for the phone on the end table beside him.

"I've got it," Iruka told him, picking up the phone and putting it to his ear. "Umino Iruka speaking. Kakashi can't get to the phone right now," he said, and it wasn't a lie. Kakashi physically couldn't reach the phone, and even if he could, he had to have some serious doubts about his ability to communicate properly given his obvious lack of lucidity.

Kiiro's voice came through the other end of the line. "That's okay, you're the person I wanted to talk to. How's he doing?" Iruka had expected as much. School was out now, he realized as he looked at his watch.

"Better now. He's been sleeping most of the day," Iruka replied as Kakashi rubbed his eyes, pulling at his bandana and rolled onto his back, his head staying in Iruka's lap as he stared up at the caramel-skinned teacher. Iruka looked back up, trying not to think about how adorable Kakashi looked. "Do you think he'll probably be able to keep something down?" Iruka asked.

"You'd be a better judge of that than me. Sounds like you've got things under control though. I'd stop by, but I think it might do more harm than good. Let me know if you need anything though. Thank you for all your help, Iruka-sensei!" And with that, the other end of the line clicked off, and Iruka hung up the phone with a sigh.

He felt Kakashi shift again in his lap and looked to see him still rubbing his eyes. He moved his hands, and Iruka realized that sometime while he had been on the call, Kakashi's bandana had been shifted off of his head.

When Kakashi stopped rubbing his eyes, and dropped his hands back to rest across his belly, Iruka the scar that Kakashi always hid. It stretched from above his eyebrow down over the ridge of his cheekbone, and had clearly been a serious wound.

Still, Iruka had a scar that, though not quite as severe, still marred his face, across his nose, and he didn't cover it up. Why did he feel the need to hide something like that?

And then he saw, when Kakashi opened his eyes. One slate grey orb, out of focus, and one crimson red one peering out from beneath the scarred eyelid. A red eye.

Kakashi, despite his sleepy haze, saw where Iruka was looking and casually reached up to pull his bandana back down. Iruka stopped his hand though, and Kakashi looked at him questioningly.

"You don't have to hide it," Iruka said softly. As far as he was concerned, it was just another part of Kakashi. There wasn't a part of him that he didn't love. The color of an eye was so completely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, it was almost funny.

Kakashi chuckled, but both of his eyes clenched for a second and he stiffened. He still wasn't feeling well then. "It's wrong," Kakashi said after the pain passed. And it was. It was the embodiment of everything that troubled him – the manifestation of the evil that plagued his body.

Iruka frowned. He didn't know why Kakashi hated a part of himself so much, but he would do his best to try to make him feel better. "It's not wrong," he told Kakashi. "It's just part of you. You were born with this, right?" Kakashi nodded.

"Another perk to the genes that have me in this mess," he muttered sourly.

"Well, I don't think it's that bad," Iruka said, tracing the end of the scar above Kakashi's eye lightly with his fingertip.

Kakashi thought about retorting, but he didn't have the gusto. He was enjoying Iruka's attentions too much to ruin it. Instead, he settled on a quiet snort as his eyes slipped closed again.

Iruka, however, didn't seem as satisfied. "You weren't born with the scar though," he said quietly. "What happened?"

Now Kakashi opened his eyes again, a small, ironic smile on his face. "When I was nineteen, I decided I was tired of seeing a freak every time I looked in the mirror. Of course, Kiiro would probably tell you I was a bit unstable at the time. My two best friends had just died. But I just got so sick with it…I tried to fix it." Kakashi didn't really think he should go into any great detail of just how he tried to fix it. The gory details of how he took a knife to his own eye might not carry well with the soft-hearted teacher. Honestly, he didn't even know why he'd told him so much already. He blamed it on the sickness.

Iruka was shocked. "God Kakashi…that's…"

"Sick?" Kakashi suggested, seeing Iruka struggle to find words. "Wrong?"

"Sad…" Iruka finished. "I'm sorry…I had no idea. I'm sorry I brought it up." Kakashi couldn't believe it. He'd just confessed to trying to cut his own eye out, and the teacher wasn't even a little bit disgusted with him? He was even sympathetic. Truly sympathetic, not just the "I pity you" kind of sympathy.

I could never deserve him, he realized miserably.

Iruka noticed his change in mood, and decided it was time to change the subject. "Do you think you could eat something?" Iruka asked. Kakashi turned his head, gazing up at Iruka with a contemplative look.

"I could eat something," Kakashi answered finally, "but I can't promise it would stay down." And despite the levity he tried for in the statement, he meant it. He was still hurting, pretty damn bad actually. He had only recently reached an agreement with his stomach, and he didn't want to upset the balance.

He tried to shift so that he was off of Iruka's lap so that the teacher could go get himself something if he wanted – was about to suggest it, actually, but the moment he moved it felt like ice cold steel constricted around all of his limbs. He'd been lying in bed all day, so a little stiffness was to be expected, and combined with the usual pain and soreness that accompanied this, it didn't really surprise him. It just caught him off guard, and his breath caught in his chest for a second.

Again, Iruka noticed. "Are you okay?" Kakashi nodded, but other than that, he made no moves to shift further.

Iruka checked his watch. "I don't think you should take any more painkillers without anything on your stomach." Kakashi frowned. One bad thing about having Iruka as a babysitter was that he kept his painkillers out of reach. Either he knew Kakashi too well, or it was purely miserable coincidence, but if he hadn't commandeered them, Kakashi probably would've popped about twice, if not three times as many of the little tablets by then. He certainly wouldn't have made considerations about having food on his stomach or anything.

Kakashi groaned, but couldn't work up a retort before Iruka had left the room, presumably to fetch him some grub. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Iruka returned with a bowl of what smelled like miso soup, sitting it on the end table before he set about propping Kakashi up against the headboard. Sitting upright didn't make too much of a difference – most of what he was suffering now wasn't dizziness or nausea, just pure, biting pain. That didn't change whether you were lying down or upright.

Iruka's vigilant eyes caught how Kakashi seemed to be glaring at the soup in his hand as Iruka sat down on the bed, facing Kakashi, and he laughed a little. "I'll make you a deal: if you can stomach half of this soup, then you can have another dose of pain meds, and I'll leave you alone and let you sleep, okay?"

Kakashi smiled, his eyes twisting into crescents even as his body throbbed miserably. Somehow, just being around Iruka made the whole ordeal just a little more bearable. Even if he was making it a lot more complicated. "Maa, Iruka-sensei, you drive a hard bargain. I surrender to your will," he said. Now it was Iruka's turn to smile as the somber mood of before lightened up.

Holding the bowl in one hand, and a spoon in the other, Iruka held a spoonful of soup just in front of Kakashi's lips.

Kakashi wasn't cooperating though. An eyebrow quirked and he eyed the spoon of miso amusedly. "Well, open your mouth," Iruka told him, moving the spoon a bit for emphasis.

Kakashi opened his mouth to reply, and ever the opportunist, Iruka took it as a chance to slip the spoon in his mouth. Kakashi was still blinking when Iruka got another spoonful.

"I can feed myself," he protested finally as the spoon neared his mouth again.

Iruka smiled. "Maybe, but you might as well sit back and let yourself be taken care of. Besides, it would be more work for me if it did just happen that you couldn't manage and spilled the soup." Kakashi looked at him pointedly, but didn't argue. Iruka seemed to be rather proud of himself, and Kakashi felt bad for having to make him sit through hours of him practically screaming where the teacher couldn't do anything but watch. Now that Iruka could do something that he felt to be important, Kakashi wouldn't deny him that, so he obediently ate each spoonful proffered to him.

Luckily, true to his word, Iruka stopped at half the bowl. He didn't know if Kakashi would stop him, but he knew that he would tell him if he was hungry, so he sat the bowl to the side and grabbed the bottle of pills off the other side of the bed table. He knew it exasperated Kakashi, keeping his medicine where he couldn't reach it, but something told him that it was a wise choice.

Still, Kakashi was going pale again, and his arms had subtly curled around his stomach, so Iruka decided it was time for another dose of his painkillers. He got one from the bottle and held it out to Kakashi, who tossed it back the second it touched his palm. Iruka was already waiting with a glass of the carbonated orange juice which Kakashi seemed to have taken a liking to, and he drank some of it gratefully.

"Why don't you lie back and get some sleep?" Iruka suggested as he helped Kakashi shift so that he was lying back down flat. But Kakashi was already asleep.

With a quiet laugh, Iruka pulled the covers back over Kakashi. With all of his papers graded, and his ward sleeping peacefully, Iruka decided that that would be an opportune time to go clean up.

Before he left though, he watched Kakashi for a moment, and suddenly…he got the inexplicable urge to kiss him, and so, sure that Kakashi was asleep, he couldn't help but lean over and kiss him lightly before hurrying out of the room.

Little did he know though that his sleeping prince…wasn't quite as asleep as he thought.

Once Iruka was gone, Kakashi pressed his fingers to his lips, staring up at the ceiling above him. A grin broke out on his face, and no amount of pain in the world could have ruined the sheer bliss he felt.