Chapter Eleven
Kakashi woke up to the sound of the Yondaime's heart beating. He had fallen asleep with his head pillowed against the blonde's chest, his teacher's arms still wrapped around his waist. The man had refused to release him, and Kakashi's half-hearted attempts to wriggle free had only resulted in the Yondaime tightening his grip.
He had given up trying to escape after a few moments anyway. It felt far too nice being held by the man to want to break free. He had fallen asleep sprawled over him, smiling to himself. He was still smiling when he awoke, warm and comfortable and content.
The beating of his teacher's heart was lulling him back to sleep. If he allowed himself to wake up then he'd have to come to terms with what he had allowed to happen last night. What he had done with his teacher. He would have to invite in the guilt that was swimming around his consciousness. He couldn't help but feel like he had taken advantage of the blond.
He desperately wanted the Yondaime to regain his memories. But he would then have to deal with the man's reaction to what they had done.
The thought made him feel sick.
He felt the pattern of the blonde's breathing change. The man was awake, and Kakashi groaned on the inside, not wanting to have to move yet. He tried to pretend that he was still sleeping, in the hopes that the Yondaime would let him lie against him for a while longer.
"Kakashi," the Yondaime shook him slightly, "we need to get up."
Kakashi shook his head sleepily, burrowing into the man's chest as he did so. It wasn't time to get up yet, it wasn't time to worry about what would happen when the Yondaime remembered and blamed Kakashi for what they had done. Not yet.
"I think we're being watched," the blond said softly into Kakashi's hair.
Kakashi stiffened. His eyes snapped open, but that was the only movement he allowed himself. He hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, he hadn't sensed anyone watching them.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
The blond released his hold on Kakashi and nudged them up into a sitting position, "not really, I might be wrong."
Kakashi scanned the landscape, listening carefully to the noises that filtered towards them, but there was nothing suspicious about the morning as far as he could tell.
Apart from the faint smell of smoke.
"We should go," Kakashi said as he reached for his pack.
The Yondaime nodded and rolled himself to his feet, "Kakashi?"
"Hm?" Kakashi rolled the blanket up so that he could fit it back into his pack and glanced up at the blond standing over him.
Without a word, the Yondaime crouched down in front of him, and stole a quick kiss from Kakashi's lips, before he fixed Kakashi's mask over his face and stood up again.
Kakashi sucked in a breath as flames rose to his face. His heart had started to gallop even though it had been only a relatively chaste kiss. It brought back to him just how different their relationship was from the one he and his teacher had had before the Yondaime had died. It reminded him of what they had done the night before, of the way the blonde's hand had curled around his erection.
He swallowed and pushed himself to his feet. The scent of smoke was still clinging to the air, making him nervous. He could better recognise the scent now, as though it had moved closer.
It was cigarette smoke.
A startled yelp from behind him made Kakashi whip around. His heart had leapt to his throat, choking him. There were three Iwa-nin facing Kakashi. One was holding a kunai to the Yondaime's neck.
"We'll take Blondie," the kunoichi to the left of the Yondaime flicked ash from her cigarette as she spoke to the third member of their team, "you deal with him." She nodded in Kakashi's direction before she turned away, and the Yondaime was slowly pulled backwards by the man holding him, the kunai pressing dangerously into his neck.
Kakashi's entire frame went taut as the shinobi closest to him smirked superiorly and stepped towards him. Out of the corner of his eye Kakashi could see the Yondaime's expression, slack with shock and eyes slowly widening as he was forced backwards.
Kakashi's hands tightened into fists. He wouldn't let anyone take the Yondaime from him. Not now, not ever. He would kill anyone who tried.
Before the shinobi could take another step, Kakashi saw the Yondaime's expression change. The shock fell out of his features, his eyes narrowed and hardened to blue ice.
Kakashi blinked, and the kunai was no longer at his teacher's throat. It was in the Yondaime's hand, and the man who had been holding him captive was falling to his knees, bleeding all over the ground.
Kakashi was stunned into stillness, his shock mirrored by the shinobi who had been moving towards him.
The kunoichi was the only person who had retained the ability to move. Kakashi could only watch in mute horror as her hands came together to form a sequence of seals, and Kakashi couldn't find his voice to shout a warning.
But the Yondaime was behind her in a flicker of movement, the bloody kunai in his hand painting her slender neck in her companion's blood.
"Don't move," he growled into her ear.
"Fuck you!" she spat.
The Yondaime's eyes narrowed even more, turning his expression into something that caused a shiver to move up through Kakashi. The blond brought the heel of the kunai down into her temple, and let her sag to the ground, unconscious.
The shinobi that had been about to attack Kakashi was slowly edging away from the blond, but he ended up backing up towards Kakashi.
"Where do you think you're going?" Kakashi asked as he grabbed the man by the wrist and twisted his arm so far up his back that he cried out before he could stop himself.
"Who hired you?" the Yondaime demanded as he walked purposefully towards them, across the bloody body that was sprawled face down in the dirt.
Kakashi tightened his grip and twisted the shinobi's arm further upwards when he failed to answer.
"A man called Matsura," the Iwa-nin ground out around a pained grimace.
Kakashi's eyes flickered towards his teacher, who was still glaring with the intensity to melt rock as he watched the shinobi Kakashi was holding.
Kakashi should have killed the scientist when he had the chance.
The Yondaime's eyes moved from the Iwa-nin's face to Kakashi's, and his expression softened slightly.
"We need to go," he said.
Kakashi nodded, and slipped a roll of wire from his pouch to tie the Iwa-nin up. He was still slightly shaken, but he wasn't sure if it was due to the impromptu attack, or the way the Yondaime had turned into the deadly efficient shinobi that he had once been.
"Are you alright?" the Yondaime asked once Kakashi had fastened the wire around the Iwa-nin to keep him immobile.
When Kakashi looked back at the blond, the fierceness was completely gone, the ice in his eyes had melted. He was looking at Kakashi with only concern, and Kakashi was torn between relief and disappointment. He wanted the Yondaime to go back to being his old self. But he also wanted to be able to kiss the man, and touch him, and hear him gasp out his name.
In the pit of his soul, he knew he couldn't have both. He felt guilty for not knowing which he wanted more.
"I'm fine," Kakashi replied, "let's go."
oO0Oo
"We should head away from Iwagakure for a while," Kakashi called out to the blond.
The Yondaime halted and turned back to face Kakashi, "away from where?"
"The hidden village that those shinobi came from," Kakashi replied as he came to stand beside the other man, "we'd get to Fire Country faster if we head towards it, but it would probably be safer if we try to steer clear of it."
The Yondaime nodded and held out his arm, "let me carry your pack for a while."
"That's alright," Kakashi replied as he shook his head, "you don't need to."
"I want to," the blond smiled in exasperation as he grabbed the straps fixed over Kakashi's shoulders and attempted to pry the pack from him, "give it here."
"Sensei," Kakashi whined in protest as he tried to back away from the man.
"Hey," the Yondaime frowned, "I told you not to call me that," then he did something that caught Kakashi so off guard that he stumbled backwards and fell onto his ass.
The Yondaime tickled him.
The surprise on the blonde's face quickly melted into an evilly gleeful smirk, "you're ticklish."
Kakashi shook his head in horror, "no, I'm not, honestly," he replied. But he was marginally thrown off balance by the fact that the man had known instinctively where to tickle him, the exact spot on his side that no one but his teacher had ever found.
"Yes you are," the Yondaime grinned and leant forwards, arms reaching towards Kakashi.
Kakashi grabbed the man's hands before they could touch him, "you don't want to do that."
"Yes I do," the Yondaime's smile faded from amusement into something far more seductive as he lowered himself to his knees between Kakashi's legs, "can I have my hands back?"
Kakashi shook his head, eyes widening as the Yondaime leaned closer to him.
"No?" the Yondaime purred as he rubbed his nose against Kakashi's. The world had narrowed down to two blue eyes sparkling right in front of Kakashi. There suddenly wasn't enough air, and Kakashi was being consumed by a slow burn as the blond began to languidly rub his cheek against his.
"Well," the Yondaime breathed into Kakashi's ear, "I'll just have to use my teeth."
Kakashi's grip on his teacher's hands loosened when he felt the blond start to tug down his mask with only his teeth. He hitched in a startled breath before the mask was beneath his chin, and the Yondaime was passing fleeting kisses along his jaw, until his lips were against Kakashi's and he had laced their fingers together.
Kakashi moaned and deepened the kiss. He wasn't close enough to the blond, he wanted to be pressed against him, to burrow right into him and lose himself in the heat of his teacher's body. But he had to settle for the Yondaime slowly devouring him, sucking Kakashi's bottom lip into his mouth and causing desire to surge through Kakashi's veins.
Somewhere in the back of Kakashi's mind he thought he could feel the ground moving. The Yondaime was kissing him languorously, as though they had all of the time in the world, and it wasn't enough. Kakashi leant further into him, pushing his tongue into the man's mouth as though he were dying of thirst and needed to drink the Yondaime in.
The Yondaime's hands tightened around his, he was sliding his own tongue over Kakashi's, delving into his mouth, and Kakashi was shuddering with the desire to just push the man down onto the ground and…
The ground was still moving, the vibrations had gotten stronger, and they were accompanied by a low rumble from deep below the surface.
Kakashi pulled back from the kiss. The Yondaime blinked dazedly and licked his lips.
"Can you feel that?" Kakashi asked breathlessly.
"Hm?" the blond tried to focus upon him, "feel what?"
It was only finely honed reflexes that made Kakashi shove the blond away from him and roll to the side, an instant before the ground opened up where he had been sitting. The earth splintered and collapsed, and over the hole that had been made Kakashi caught sight of the kunoichi the Yondaime had knocked out earlier, before she was gone in a cloud of dust.
"Sensei!" Kakashi looked towards the man, breathing a relieved sigh when he saw him standing just on the edge of the gaping crack in the ground, peering down into the darkness that had very nearly swallowed them.
The ground had started to shake again.
"Move!" Kakashi grabbed the Yondaime's arm and spun him away from the hole before a new crack ate into the ground beneath his feet. The kunoichi was nowhere in sight, but further down the path, in the direction they had been heading, the shinobi Kakashi had left tied up was spinning senbon between his fingers and watching them intently.
He should have been paying attention, not kissing his teacher. They knew that there were shinobi hunting for the Yondaime, he shouldn't have been so careless.
He uncovered the Sharingan as the dust cleared. The kunoichi was glaring at them, and Kakashi watched the seals that were formed by her fingers before he skidded to the side to avoid what had become a gaping chasm in the ground.
The Yondaime was looking back and forth between the kunoichi and her companion, before his eyes settled upon Kakashi uncertainly.
There was a glint of silver in the air that caught Kakashi's attention. He rushed towards the blond and pushed him out of the way. The senbon caught Kakashi in the shoulder instead.
The shinobi who had released the senbon was retrieving two more as Kakashi plucked the needles from his flesh and tossed them to the ground. He couldn't believe how careless he had been, and even as he was berating himself internally he was flying through the seals that the kunoichi had made. The earth cracked apart beneath the Iwa-nin before he could throw the senbon in his hands.
He turned back towards where he had last seen the kunoichi when he began to feel dizzy. The world was lurching, and somewhere far away he could hear the Yondaime calling his name.
The ground was trembling, but that might simply have been Kakashi swaying on his feet. For a moment he was looking up at his teacher, he was fourteen again and much shorter than the man. The Yondaime was speaking to him, but Kakashi could only see the movement of his lips, he couldn't hear anything but blood rushing in his ears. It was a long moment before he realised that he wasn't shorter than the man, he was simply on the ground, looking up at him.
A pair of startled blue eyes was the last thing he saw.