Enjoy!
OOOOOOO
The door to his apartment stuck as always, and Iruka threw his shoulder against it, yanked up hard on the handle, and wrestled the door open. He barely registered the difficulty, as his brain was still insisting on complete concentration on the events that had transpired scarce minutes ago.
The only thing he was absolutely sure of was that he was going to kill Kakashi for running off.
He stripped out of his vest and tossed it over a chair. He would normally have gone to the trouble to hang it up in the closet, but he had other, more important, things on his mind. He settled on the edge of the couch and slowly unwound the wrappings from his lower leg.
Kakashi had been 'dropping' in on him for several weeks now. In fact, lunch was almost a scheduled occurrence to the point where the jounin actually left him notes when he wasn't able to make it.
On the days when the other man was busy, Iruka had to admit that he actually missed the silver-haired pervert.
That particular revelation had shocked him only a couple of days ago, and he'd spent the entire lunch break –alone – staring at the worn wood and trying to collate the thoughts racing around the inside of his head.
Someone had once said that 'attraction is beyond our will or ideas sometimes,' and Iruka had never believed that phrase more than he did right now. He would never have chosen the jounin – Kakashi was too far out of his league – but the other man had fallen into his life and made himself a cozy nest in Iruka's rather dull life.
And if he was absolutely honest with himself, he'd never been happier.
Still, the invitation to something other than lunch had taken Iruka by surprise, but in his heart he'd hoped that the motivation had been something other than friendship. However, he knew better than to hold his breath.
Given his general state of mind about what was between him and Kakashi, the kiss had floored him. He had never expected Kakashi to do anything like that. And as such, he'd frozen, unable to process what had happened soon enough to respond the way he wanted to.
He'd even reached for Kakashi in the split second before the jounin had vanished, fingers closing around empty air.
Iruka dropped his head back on the couch with a frustrated groan. He didn't even know where the other man lived and wasn't sure when he'd see Kakashi again. But there was nothing he could do now. Perhaps he'd raid the personnel files tomorrow.
He pushed off the couch, walked slowly to the bedroom, and sprawled on the bed. Sleep was long in coming, and he'd memorized most of the imperfections in his ceiling before his eyes finally slid shut.
OOOOOOO
Iruka sat bolt upright, clapping his hands over his ears. He'd heard this particular alarm only once before – on the night his parents died. The screaming sound penetrated walls, ground and eardrums, making his entire body throb in rhythm with the siren. It was absolutely unmistakable and impossible to ignore.
He threw the door open as he strapped his weapon pouch to his thigh and almost collided with Kotetsu and Izumo as they sprinted down the porch from their shared apartment. "What's going on?"
"No idea." Izumo tightened the knot on his skullcap and vaulted the railing, dropping lightly to the floor below. Kotetsu followed a heartbeat later.
Iruka's gaze went immediately to the horizon where a foreboding glow lit the edge of the town. The Konoha was under attack was indisputable – the alarm could only be sounded by the Hokage – and it seemed like the first attack had been to set the wall on fire. He scampered up the side of the building to the peaked roof in order to get a better handle on the situation.
As he reached the top, a group of shadows swarming across the two adjacent roofs drew his attention, and he dropped to a crouch, huddling in a tiny shadow beside the chimney. The moon above was almost new, and Iruka both cursed and blessed the phase as it made it easier for him to hide while making it almost impossible to pick out whether the incoming group was friend or foe.
They finally drew close enough the he could pick out the cross-cut symbols etched in their hitae-ate. Missing nin. He thumbed the catch open on his weapons pouch, shifting to free his arm.
The first kunai buried itself hilt-deep in the tile directly in front of the leader's foot, spraying shards the glittered in the low light. Iruka hissed a curse under his breath – he had intended to hit the hulking target. He dove across the top of the roof, moving as silently as he could manage. He'd given away his location with that attack, and he felt the breeze as several shuriken whizzed through the space his head had been seconds before.
His sleeve snarled on the peak of the roof, forcing him to roll as he crossed it, and he slid down the far side feet first. The tiles made a god-awful racket under him, and, instead of channeling chakra to stop his fall, he let himself tumble over the edge. The railing of the balcony below caught him directly under the ribs, driving all the air out of his lungs in one strong blow. He scrambled forward onto the ledge and under the overhang of the roof all the while trying to ignore the fierce burn in his lungs.
Only moments after he'd flattened himself against the wall, a dark-robed shinobi dropped inches from him. Iruka could barely believe his luck – the man faced away scanning the surrounding buildings, likely looking for their attacker.
Iruka gnawed on his lower lip to resist the urge to gasp air back into his lungs. His nostrils flared as he struggled to maintain control over his own body and keep his breathing uneven but quiet. Rhythmic sounds, like breathing, were so readily identifiable in the dark that most shinobi learned to alter the pattern with each breath to blend with background noise. But even so, he could feel his heartbeat thrumming just on the inside of his skin, sounding so loud in his ears that he couldn't believe the other man didn't hear it.
The figure, who was little more than a darker patch in the inky blackness, chuckled so suddenly that Iruka started, and his shoulders clattered against the siding.
"Oh, don't worry." The man's gravelly voice hissed out from under the cloak. "We already knew you were here."
Something solid bashed into the back of his head, and he collapsed to the ground as the world grew dark.
OOOOOOO
Consciousness came slowly, but he finally managed to pry his eyes open, squinting against the overly bright light reflected off the sterile surfaces. He hadn't been here often, but the smell of the hospital was unmistakable. He wrinkled his nose, brows furrowing in an effort to piece together what had happened in the chaos and how he'd managed to get here.
As his eyes adjusted, he became aware of green-clothed figure sitting at the side of the bed. Kakashi had Icha Icha open and was apparently unaware of Iruka's improved state. He sat up slowly, groaning involuntarily as his head responded unenthusiastically. The jounin glanced up from his book. "You're awake."
Ignoring the drum section playing a tattoo between his temples, Iruka dove forward, catching Kakashi's head between his hands and pressed his lips firmly to the cloth-covered ones of the other man. "I'm sorry." He whispered when he finally managed to pull away. His hands were still clenching the shoulders of Kakashi's vest, but his head hung between them. "I'm sorry I didn't… It's not that I didn't want…. It's just, I was surprised, that you….that you…"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Iruka's head snapped up to stare at the jounin.
"That…is… You...and I…" Iruka trailed off at the look of incomprehension plastered across Kakashi's face.
"Iruka-sensei." Kakashi said slowly, prying Iruka's hands off his shoulders and pushing him back. "I'm only here because Naruto was making a fuss about you, and Tsunade-sama banished him. He asked me to wait here since he couldn't."
"A fuss? God! The village! Who was attacking? Is everyone safe? How bad is the damage?"
"The village?" Kakashi was shaking his head with the semblance of a disbelieving sneer on his face. "If I heard the story right, you were stabbed on a mission about two days from here. You've been unconscious since then, only arrived here a couple of hours ago, and recently you almost died."
"Stabbed? No, I was hit…I was…" Iruka pressed his fingers to his throbbing temples, choking back a panicked sob. "This can't be happening…."
"You know, we've all been injured, Iruka-sensei." Kakashi stated flatly.
"It's not that!" Iruka snapped. "This is all wrong! You. The injury. Tsunade-sama. I…" He trailed off at the rapid footsteps approaching his room.
"Iruka-sensei!" Naruto burst through the door.
"N-naruto…kun. You look so grown up."
"Wow, even more so than when you saw me last week, Iruka-sensei?"
Iruka's brain refused to respond. Naruto was no longer the kid he'd seen just that morning, but a teenager well on his way to becoming an adult. It was how the kyuubi-boy had appeared in his dream. If it was actually a dream. "Am I a human or a butterfly?" He whispered into his hands.
Kakashi's head snapped up, eyebrows knitting and gaze piercing Iruka.
"What, Iruka-sensei?"
"It's nothing, Naruto. Now, if you two don't mind, I…I think I'd like to be alone for a minute."
As Kakashi and Naruto slipped out the door, Naruto turned to his jounin-sensei. "When'd Iruka-sensei wake up?"
Kakashi was silent, staring at the opposite wall.
"Oi, Kakashi-sensei!"
"Eh, Naruto?"
"I said, when'd Iruka-sensei wake up?"
"Maa, just a minute ago." Why on earth had the chuunin's first reaction to waking up been to kiss him? And to insist that he'd kissed Iruka at some point in the past. Ludicrous. Plus there was that strange phrase. "Butterflies and humans?" He muttered. There was something familiar about it, but he couldn't seem to place it.
"Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto stared around the now-empty hallway.
OOOOOOOO
Kakashi crouched by the large bookshelf that dominated one wall in his apartment. Despite popular belief, he didn't only read Icha Icha – it just happened to be the only book he read in public, mostly because it fit so perfectly into his weapons pouch, and because it tended to give people a lower opinion of him. And he was fairly fond of being underestimated.
He scanned the titles, hoping that one would spark a memory. He finally pulled off a slim volume that was a collection of illustrated allegories his mother used to read to him when he was much younger. He flipped through it and found the story he was so vaguely remembering. "Was I a human being asleep, who dreamed he was a butterfly? Or am I now the butterfly asleep, who dreams he is a human being?" He read the final line of the story out loud before snapping the volume shut. "A dream?" He queried the room at large.
OOOOOOOOO
Sooo, first of all - this is not the end.
Okay, how many people hate me for this?
I should probably point out that this is where the story was going from the very beginning. I actually had to think long and hard about whether I was going to change it given what people were saying in comments (about how much they wanted to see an alternate timeline, etc etc), but this is what I was planning and I decided to stick with it. Sorry, don't kill me! ^^