Iruka had heard the call of his wolf for over a dozen years. It came just as he entered the bridge between consciousness and sleep, urging him to cross into his wolf's domain. If Iruka slept first, he crafted a world all on his own, landscapes that Wolf might join or disrupt. He could always tell when Wolf arrived; his presence rippled like water around a pebble, causing tiny tremors that affected the world around him in small, but notable ways. Often, scents and sounds would become sharper, but hues grew muted; birds and insects and small rodents would burst to life in the trees or fields, signalling an awareness of creatures and surroundings that Iruka himself lacked in favor of textures, temperatures, taste.
On nights that Wolf neither called nor entered, Iruka's dreams faded from his mind as wakefulness came, leaving behind vague impressions, fleeting images that were bled of all color and time. Only the ones with Wolf lasted, forging memories that shaped his waking self.
Iruka didn't expect the call every night. Sometimes it wouldn't come for weeks or months, and sometimes it was there in every long blink of the day, yearning for him to answer it.
Three nights passed in silence after Wolf met him on Hokage Rock. Then, Iruka's head barely hit the pillow when the howl came.
It was more of a scream.
The world wasn't one of Iruka's making. It felt rigid, immutable, as if someone had discarded Iruka in a lockbox and closed the lid. Concrete walls without windows or doors imprisoned him. There was no definable light source that Iruka could see, but the space was bathed in a dingy yellow glow, like an old bulb filtering through a screen of grime and bug guts. Damp humidity clung stickly to his skin, but the walls and floor were as dry as bone.
If it were reality, it would have taken Iruka's eyes a moment to adjust to the low lighting. As it was, it took less than a breath of moldy air for him to focus on the man in the center of the room.
The man.
The wild silver mane had hardly changed, except it was confined to a skull and the individual hairs were finer, softer. Rather than a rounded muzzle, Iruka was treated to pale skin and high cheekbones. Smooth black coated from straight nose to angled jaw; it took Iruka a moment to recognize the ebony was a fabric mask rather than a shadow or war paint.
One eye was closed and scarred, the eyelid nearly split open from the depth of an old wound—perhaps it had been. It was a scar Iruka knew well, although it had grown over the course of the last few years, changing in texture and length, aging and re-opening in turns. This iteration disappeared beneath the mask; Iruka couldn't tell how far it went, whether it reached down a slender neck to gouge a mark over Wolf's heart.
There was no doubt in Iruka's mind, even for a moment, that this was his wolf.
He was beautiful.
If the situation had allowed, Iruka would have greedily drank in every inch of his features, pulled down his mask and traced his skin, memorized the strong lines of his face and mapped them to the boy, his wolf, his friend—
The situation did not allow.
A dark eye stared at him. It was sharp and urgent as steel.
The other eye slowly blinked open to join it, revealing a matching charcoal iris. It shimmered as Iruka viewed it, hints of blood red swimming through the sclera and pooling in the pupil.
The rest of Wolf's clothes were simple, a jōnin uniform without flak vest or hitai-ate. Fingerless gloves covered his hands, and a bandage wrapped around his thigh as if to hold a kunai, but no weapons or accoutrements could be seen on his person.
Iruka stood in stark contrast, guarded in full chūnin attire—armed to the teeth by the aggressive nature of Wolf's call.
There was no one here to fight.
But there was someone to protect.
"Iruka."
Wolf's voice was different. Rather than the low, primal rumble Iruka had come to associate with the wolf, this voice was smooth and rich in undertones. Iruka had heard it only once before, on Hokage Rock.
That voice bounced around the room and slid down Iruka's chest, burrowing deep in the pit of his stomach.
Although Iruka had never seen this man before—not since he could actually be called a 'man'—he could read the piercing exigency in his tone and eyes, the soldier-straight line of his spine.
"I need you to give a message to the Hokage."
Iruka didn't have to ask whether it was urgent. He swallowed, hands clenching into fists.
There was no question that Iruka would do it.
"What's the message?"
"I'll need a verbatim repeat-back." Wolf's body shimmered, like a flame flickering in the wind. The image restabilized as he spoke, as if the message itself were anchoring him to the world.
The message was several sentences long, and densely packed. Iruka didn't know all of the codes, some of them far above his pay grade and clearance level, but the general aspects were devastating in their clarity:
Wolf had been captured by at least three missing-nin of jōnin rank.
His chakra was sealed, and was being held near the border of the Land of Lightning.
Probability of escaping alive without friendly intervention was low.
But Iruka hadn't needed a code to tell him that. Wolf wouldn't have been there otherwise. Iruka was grateful that there was a possibility of survival at all; messages were often a shinobi's last act.
Iruka's pulse raced to a gallop, adrenaline starting to surge through his system. The fear would no doubt wake him if he couldn't control it.
Iruka always woke from nightmares.
Training took Iruka over. He repeated Wolf's message through numb lips. Wolf nodded in confirmation. Iruka repeated it in his mind twice more, for security's sake.
He swallowed the keys to saving Wolf, the bitter taste of brass lingering on his tongue as the words clinked down to fill his stomach. One by one they slid, settling heavy between his vital organs, and became secured with his life. His life and Wolf's had been intertwined from the start, cords that braided together, becoming more than the sum of their parts.
Wolf's image blurred again.
The ends were starting to fray.
Strong arms wrapped around Iruka's back, pulling him in tight. Wolf's chin rested against Iruka's shoulder, and Iruka realized he couldn't breathe—not for pressure, but for the fear that swelled and expanded in his chest, squeezing from all sides the fleshy walls of his heart.
Iruka closed his eyes.
He returned the embrace.
"Would it be crazy to say I've dreamed of this?" Iruka's shaky whisper was nearly swallowed by the gravity of the empty room.
Wolf let out a harsh breath, one that might have been a chuckle in his other form.
When he spoke, any sign of amusement was gone. "I'm sorry." He murmured. His clothed nose dragged against Iruka's neck as he pulled back, resting his forehead to Iruka's.
The gray and flint and graphite flecks in Wolf's eyes… they were more familiar to Iruka than his own.
He prayed he would have time to learn the features that held them.
A gloved palm slid to cup Iruka's jaw. Wolf's quiet, firm words didn't disturb the fabric of his mask, but Iruka could picture lips forming around them, imagine vocal cords vibrating to produce them.
"Repeat it back to me. One more time."
Iruka did.
Wolf tilted his head and their lips brushed. Though the fabric was never displaced, Iruka could feel warm, soft, thin skin beneath his mouth, could taste something clean and astringent like tannins.
Iruka's throat closed, because it wasn't a kiss.
It was a soldier's last words.
"Thank you, Iruka."
Swirling leaves took Wolf's place. They wilted and dried during their fall to the ground.
Iruka watched the leaves crumble to dirt on the hard cement floor.
When he woke, it was with a gasp, and hardly a second's thought before his feet hit the floor.
It wasn't until he was standing outside the Hokage's residence, spilling insanity to an impassive porcelain mask, that Iruka realized another piece of the information he had been given.
It had been nestled within the code as a single word among many, a razor-sharp shuriken buried between layers of others that were dulled and bent by pre-genin hands. But there the sharp one sat, waiting for chubby, unsuspecting fingers to dig down and slice themselves open on the hazardous edges, a sharp sting felt only long seconds after the blood began to seep.
When Iruka was finally allowed through to see the Hokage himself, he recited the information perfectly—except for a slight hitch, when that shuriken sliced through Iruka's jugular.
"Kakashi."
Kakashi came up with seventeen different scenarios on what he would do when the fūinjutsu barrier came down, depending on many factors: his physical strength at the time, the range of movement in his dislocated shoulder, his chakra levels, whether the stone slab of a door was taken down or another entrance opened, how many of his captors were visible at entry, et cetera.
He repeated each scenario in his mind, mentally going through the motions of each one, over and over. He tensed muscle groups to simulate movement, sparing himself the consumption of energy he didn't have.
Kakashi used every tool in his arsenal to survive.
Iruka had his name now.
Kakashi couldn't let him see it engraved in stone.
Before Kakashi slept again, the barrier came down.
Tenzō had long ago remarked on Kakashi's unparalleled ability to elevate the simplest of missions, adding to them the nifty elements of sucking chest wounds and lengthy hospital stays.
Apparently, leaving ANBU didn't change that.
At least all the fatal blows were to his enemies' chests this time.
Unconsciousness was not the same thing as sleep. (Which Kakashi thought was a damn shame; if it was, he'd have accrued a good extra week or two's worth in his life). Hospitals were particularly conducive to the former—not so much the latter. It was a combination of that, and perhaps Iruka's own sleepless nights, that led to three days in Konoha's illustrious care without a single hint of brown hair or wings.
At least, Kakashi wanted to believe those were the reasons.
On the third night, he cheeked an azure, oval pill that burned his tongue with each second before the medic-nin turned their back. Then he spat it out and crushed it to dust beneath his thumb.
The pills were pain-killer and sedative, perfect for enforcing rest on a chakra-depleted patient.
Kakashi let the agony spread through his limbs.
Sleep was a long time coming, but come it did.
Iruka did not.
Twenty-six hours added several blue stains to white linens, and tore the skin from the inside of Kakashi's cheeks until they were raw and bleeding and still not as agonizing as the rest of him.
Then, blissfully, the buzzing fluorescents faded into darkness.
Grainy sand materialized under Kakashi's paws. The scent of salt and clams replaced harsh antiseptics. Waves lapped up to dampen the sand, but they didn't stick to Kakashi, providing a stable surface as he crossed empty distance to the shadowed figure on the shore.
It took hours.
Finally, the shape began to change, color and texture illuminating the person's form.
Iruka faced out into the distance, hair loose and ending around his neck. It swayed gently in the breeze. Sand was embedded in his ratty sweatpants and well-worn t-shirt. It was impossible to tell the colors of those, or perhaps they changed. The sun rose and fell with only minutes in each day, casting reds and pinks and oranges and blues onto the fabric in turn.
His skin was untouched by the light.
Kakashi sat by Iruka's side and watched as the waxing sun's incandescence blotted out stars.
"You look like shit." Iruka commented, looking over for the first time. His eyes reflected a moon they wouldn't see for another two minutes or more.
"How does a wolf look like shit?" Kakashi glanced down to check that nothing was stuck in his fur. The motley scars were no more than his typical fare.
"Your ears are drooping." Iruka reached up to flick one of them, causing it to twitch away reflexively. "But I'm also projecting."
Kakashi tilted his head to the side, raking his gaze across Iruka's multi-hued person. He couldn't see much that was different, except for his hair ending just before the crest of his shoulders, and the rapid pace of the sun and moon's courses through the sky that asserted a frantic rhythm into their once-timeless world. "Hard day?"
"Hard five days." Iruka grimaced. His eyebrows furrowed. "I thought you'd find me sooner."
"Hospital." Kakashi answered shortly.
Iruka looked back out to the ocean. He extended his feet and the tide rose up to meet them, lapping at his toes. "I wouldn't have been able to come anyway, I think. Not with them in my head."
Kakashi's lips twisted along with his stomach. "Yamanakas?"
Iruka grunted a confirmation. "And the Sandaime himself. We both knew it would happen eventually. I'm just glad they haven't broken anything."
Kakashi hadn't been the only one worried.
"Did they have an explanation?"
Iruka shrugged, kicking his feet lightly. The sand sank to form a depression under his heels, liquid quickly seeping in to fill it. He rolled his sweatpants up to his knees and dangled his legs in the reservoir of ocean water.
"They're having a lot of fun with that part." The corner of Iruka's mouth quirked into a wry smile. "Maybe I'll tell you after we wake up, Kakashi."
Kakashi held his breath. He waited for "of the Sharingan" to follow.
It didn't.
Kakashi hoped it never would. Perhaps Iruka did, too.
A lunar moth floating in the ocean-pond slowly morphed, wings reshaping and expanding, pigment leaching into their surface, until a monarch fluttered its wings. The sun conquered the sky once more.
They both knew that the Yamanakas would tell Kakashi as much as they had Iruka, after conducting similar tests. The only reason Kakashi had escaped interrogation thus far was the chakra depletion and dehydration he suffered from his mission. That reprieve wouldn't last for long.
Iruka's offer was of something else.
Kakashi didn't know what, exactly—but he knew one thing:
He needed hands to seize it.
The transformation was easier, accepting what he asked without trying for more. His toes elongated into fingers, fur retracted into smooth black cloth clinging to a straight nose, and the moon surged to overtake its battlefield, shining silver that gleamed off the Konoha leaf.
Iruka was watching Kakashi when he looked up. The waves of the ocean mimicked the pounding pulse in his ears.
It was Iruka that bridged the chasm. His hand parted empty space, damp fingers gathering Kakashi's, weaving sepia and alabaster together. Iruka brought both hands to rest in the sand between them.
He always was the one with the power to change their world.
Kakashi looked down into the ocean-pond, watching tanned legs move the water. Ripples continued past the pond's edge, carrying through the sand and expanding to reform the sea.
The sun rose to midday, flashing against iridescent blue and umber scales within the waves.
Maybe Kakashi had the power to change it, too.
"Are you ever going to call me Wolf again?" Kakashi asked suddenly.
Iruka considered for a moment, lips pressing together in thought. "You're still Wolf to me. This…" He squeezed Kakashi's hand. Tingles shot up Kakashi's wrist, collecting like lightning in his chest. "I don't know Hatake Kakashi yet."
"Yes, you do."
Iruka didn't say anything until the moon had risen for three more nights.
Then, it was a simple request.
"Show me."
Kakashi woke up on scratchy sheets, phantom warmth clinging to his palm.
Hospitals were a shinobi's hell at home. Out in the field, it was a shinobi's job to control their surroundings, to keep keen watch and account for areas of weakness, to set up a perimeter, barriers, traps, whatever else was needed to stay alive. Many shinobi, particularly jōnin, treated their actual homes the same way, guarding them with wards and alarms that would put a fortress to shame. To be invited into a jōnin's home was an honor, a sign of trust not to be taken lightly.
In hospitals, all control was seized by cold hands. From the starched linens to the ass-out gowns to the timing of meals and number of visitors, the sterile rooms were little more than prison cells. Perhaps civilians had options for healthcare, had the freedom to decline unwanted drugs or take elective procedures—shinobi didn't. A shinobi did what was necessary to get back in the field, whether they wanted to or not.
Kakashi resented this as much as the next shinobi. He followed it just as well as the next, too.
Iruka had a tendency to overcome the immutable.
The halls came alive as the shift changed. Konoha was still dark, stars barely beginning to fade, when a new medic came in to change Kakashi's IV bag and check his vitals.
Ten minutes later, they were gone.
So was Kakashi.
Iruka's address wasn't hard to find. This early, there was a single exhausted person working the records room. After stopping at his apartment for pain pills without sedatives and clothes that covered his ass, slipping past them was far easier than it had any right to be.
There was only one Umino Iruka in Konoha. The file was crisp and thin in Kakashi's hands.
It took longer to actually reach his destination, given that preserving his tiny modicum of chakra seemed more important than racing rooftops. Kakashi found himself wishing for four paws, but he wouldn't have used the wolf if he could.
Iruka wouldn't want him to.
The door was solid with a scratched veneer. The street lamps were still on, illuminating rusted apartment numbers in a flickering glow. Kakashi's decision was long since made. He knocked.
It took a few seconds for stirring to come from inside, then soft thumps, footsteps approaching the door.
Kakashi had never heard Iruka's footsteps in the dreams. He knew them now—the timing, the gait, the weight. He knew now what it sounded like when Iruka shuffled barefoot out of bed, exhausted and cranky, and opened the door to glare at his visitor with bloodshot eyes which quickly grew to the size of ginkgo leaves.
Dark shadows crushed the fragile skin beneath Iruka's eyes. Creases lined one side of his face as if he had been laying on rumpled fabric. His hair was pulled up in a haphazard style, like a ponytail that hadn't been fully drawn through the last time and got stuck in an elongated bun. He wore faded sweatpants of a static green, and a gray tank top that exposed tanned shoulders and strong biceps which were free of scars or wings or crimson swirls.
Kakashi had learned to breathe through sixty-four layers of dirt and rubble and stained tatami. He had learned to control his inhales and exhales when giving himself sutures across broken ribs, had discovered out in ANBU how to breathe quietly, evenly, feigning sleep so he could slit a throat when it stumbled within striking range.
Kakashi could control himself. He could survive and thrive through it all.
Out of all the things he had been through, it was Iruka who took his breath away. Iruka who made him feel like he was standing on the highest mountain peak, with thin air and too much oxygen, too much to see, too much.
It was always Iruka.
Iruka was also the cause of the nerves stinging Kakashi's brain, which propelled him to blurt out words so far from what he had planned.
"You really do look like shit."
Iruka blinked, slowly, lids catching on dry eyeballs.
He brought both hands up to scrub vigorously at his face, rubbing pink to the surface.
Then he looked up again. Letting out a long, heavy exhale, he stepped back.
Kakashi slipped inside, and the door clicked shut behind him.
Their breaths filled the tiny space of the genkan. They slipped into his skull and fogged his thoughts with a heavy mist.
"Do you, uh—" Iruka cleared his throat. "You want some tea?" He reached up to scratch at his scar.
The motion was as familiar as a maternal heartbeat—moreso, to Kakashi.
He had seen it a thousand times, in a thousand forms.
Time slowed with Kakashi's pulse, his breaths and the world evening out.
Kakashi slipped his hands in his pockets and smiled. It grew to touch his eye. "Sure."
Iruka turned on his heel and headed for the kitchen. "You're not a picture of stunning health yourself, you know." He retorted belatedly, grabbing a kettle from the stove and bringing it over to the sink. Kakashi slipped off his sandals as he watched from the genkan. A flick of the tap sent water flowing. The sound broke the silence as droplets splashed on Iruka's fingers, lingering shiny and wet.
Real.
"Maa, I figured I'd be worse after the Yamanaka got to me." Kakashi said mildly as he stepped into the kitchen. His bare feet hit cold linoleum.
Iruka snorted, but didn't disagree. He moved around his tiny kitchen, opening squeaky cabinets and asking for tea preferences. Unwashed coffee cups clinked as he pushed them aside to make room for clean ones. Several had small chips along the rims, matte ceramic cutting through glossy finishes. The smell of black tea leaves wafted to Kakashi as Iruka opened a wax paper bag and fumbled around for a tea strainer. He scooped leaves into it with the sort of ease that comes only from expertise or apathy; Kakashi was more inclined to believe the latter at this hour.
They didn't speak until the kettle whistled, shrill and aggravating the ice pick chiseling through Kakashi's skull. Iruka carefully kept his fingers away from the steam as he opened the spout. The cups clinked once more as he set them and the teapot on a tray, turning and jerking his head to indicate Kakashi should follow him.
Sweatpants bunched at Iruka's thigh as he knelt at the kotatsu, the motion jerky and graceless. Kakashi took a cushion at a diagonal, strained muscles protesting the movement. He heard a light sound of swishing liquid as Iruka set the tray on the ink-stained surface.
Real.
They stared at the tea pot.
They had time.
"You were ANBU." Iruka finally said. Then he seemed to realize he was sitting seiza-style. He purposefully relaxed, flopping back on his ass and curling a knee up to his chest. "You're not anymore?"
"I'm not ANBU." Kakashi rephrased.
Iruka nodded, blunt teeth chewing into his chapped lower lip.
Silence lengthened.
Kakashi looked around the room.
It had never been a setting for their dreams. The cluttered walls were laden with pictures of Iruka's family, his genin team—even some handmade ones that had to have been made by his students.
One such picture depicted a crudely drawn orange canine, huge jaws open with yellowed fangs exposed. A blue swallowtail butterfly, crafted in a different, more deliberate hand, hovered just out of reach. It was impossible to tell at a glance if the predator was playing with it or attempting to crunch fragile wings between lethal teeth.
Iruka followed his line of sight. He let out a soft chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. "The butterfly was another kid's, but Naruto thought it was boring so he added to it. He asked me what my favorite animal was before I realized what he was doing."
"And you told him…" Kakashi squinted, trying to make sense of the amorphous shape. The uneven lines remained clear and stationary, but it didn't help in discerning wolf from dog.
Iruka grinned, wide and happy, tired eyes twinkling with mirth. His foot tapped Kakashi's thigh under the edge of the kotatsu. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Kakashi swallowed. Space expanded behind his ribs.
Real, his heart screamed.
But Kakashi knew better.
It had always been real.
Not by explainable rules or logical interpretations—it was real because Kakashi and Iruka made it so.
They, together, had always been real.
Something in Iruka's expression changed. His cheeks flushed and he averted his gaze to the picture. It took him long moments to return.
Kakashi had never looked away.
"Why's there still a mask between us?" Iruka asked quietly.
Kakashi's fingers barely twitched, an unconscious desire to check the garment's security. He suppressed it. "I've always worn this."
"I know." Iruka rolled forward onto his knees, shuffling closer as if peering from a shorter distance would allow him to see through the cloth itself. "But is it one that you want to wear?"
Reasons and lessons and insecurities flickered through Kakashi's mind. He pushed them aside.
They had already created one world together. Why not another?
"Not with you." Kakashi rasped.
Iruka's knees moved flush to Kakashi's thigh, a warm pressure even through thick layers of cloth. He reached up, slowly, gaze locked on Kakashi's.
Calloused fingers caressed his cheeks and removed the last layer of his disguise—
No, not the last.
As Kakashi's bare face was exposed to the fragrant air, nose and lips revealed, Iruka didn't pause to take it in. His fingers trailed up, continued over lips, stubble, cheekbones, the fine creases around Kakashi's eyes... to rest on his hitai-ate.
Kakashi didn't think. He nodded. Iruka's fingerprints brushed his skin with the movement. The upwards path of the hitai-ate carried Iruka's lips with it. The smile remained as the barrier was discarded.
Iruka's thumb traced the scar down Kakashi's cheek, the ridges of split skin that almost seemed as if they could be grasped and pulled apart, revealing all the contents within.
Kakashi would have let him.
"You're beautiful like this, too." Iruka said.
The awe in his voice had nothing to do with the Copy-nin, the ANBU, and everything to do with Hatake Kakashi.
Kakashi swallowed. "Maa, I told you I was cute."
Iruka laughed, throaty and pleased.
In the next moment, his warm lips were pressed to Kakashi's.
Iruka smelled clean and herbal, like sprigs of young rosemary.
When Iruka pulled away, he rested their foreheads together, in the spots where their Konoha leaves normally marked. The symbols of their loyalty, their faith. Everything either of them had worked for, had sweat blood in the name of.
Dawn threw a slim ray of light across Iruka's hair, turning red the frizzy wisps that fought to break free of their restraints. Iruka's head slipped to rest in the crook of Kakashi's neck.
Over time, the light spread across Iruka's back, stretching to each side like wings.
Kakashi favorite memories existed in those moments between tomorrows, in a world that could be anything they believed was possible.
Now, Kakashi looked forward to tomorrow itself.
Sunlight flashed on the teapot, iridescent blue and umber swirls illuminated, drawing Kakashi's eye.
"The tea will get cold." Kakashi murmured.
He felt a smile press into his neck.
"I'll make you more."