Author's Note: Alright, this chapter is going to have some Kakashi whumpage, just warning you. if you don't like it, turn back now, and if you do, sit back and enjoy. Soem good old fashioned hurt/comfort is on the way in the next one, so don't think I'm not without my gifts to Kakashi. I'm working to update at least once every other day, and it'll really help if I get some reviews, so everyone! Review!
Things had been going well for Kakashi. Iruka hadn't confronted him again so far that week, or the week before it, and it was a Friday, so unless he happened upon him sometime that weekend (here's to hoping) then he would probably get off scot free. By the time the next week rolled around, Iruka probably would've forgotten the whole thing, if he hadn't already.
One might wonder why it was such a big deal to Kakashi to avoid such a conversation as the one he'd had with Iruka. It was for one very simple reason: of all the people Kakashi could lie circles around, his mouth chose any moment when Iruka was around to spew the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (so help him God.) He'd narrowly avoided pouring his heart out to the sensei the other day, and Kakashi knew how that would've ended. Lots of awkward silences, aversion, and an altogether ruining of anything he had with him. There was, after all, no way the sensei would feel the same way about him. Him, the lazy asshole of a man who was always late, crude, and never apologized for any of it. Not a chance in hell.
Still, despite all that, things were still going well. Iruka and he were what someone might consider to be best friends, and even if that was as close as he would get to the sensei, it was better than nothing at all. It meant dinner after school, hanging out outside of work, and all those other fringe benefits that made it a little easier to pretend that he was okay with the way things were.
Today though, things were not going well. Kakashi woke up, and the second he opened his eyes, he wished he hadn't. The light streaming in from his window hit his eyes like a thousand separate daggers. With a groan, he rolled over, only for his stomach to lurch violently and send him running to the bathroom. He barely managed to collapse in front of the toilet before the vomit forced its way up his throat, and he gripped his stomach as the heaves wracked his aching body.
Not this again, he mentally groaned as another round of retching once again doubled him over his porcelain shrine.
Finally, he got his stomach under control and leaned back against the side of the bathtub. Every part of his body ached, from his head to his feet, with only one exception. It seemed fitting, too, that the only part of his body that didn't hurt was the part caused by the same tormentor as this illness. His eye, a result of the part of him that was…less than human, remained blissfully painless as the rest of him burned like it was on fire.
That was because his pain was brought on by that same part. A virus, for all intents and purposes, that entered his bloodstream before he was even born, and would stay with him probably until he died. The same virus that had caused all those people to die so long ago in Konoha, his mother included. When his mother had become infected, he was still in the womb, and each day, more of the virus was introduced into his blood. By the time he was born, his body was ripe with it. "The perfect balance," they had said. Doctors, they'd had the gall to call themselves. Apparently, they'd missed out on the "do no harm" lesson in med school.
Lacking the proper medical background though, Kakashi imagined it was like being conceived with the chicken pox. Once you have it, your body builds up an immunity to it so that you don't suffer from it.
Only his particular brand of the chicken pox was a virus that not only killed you, but made you crave human flesh. It hadn't managed to kill him when he was born, the monster virus, so now every time the effects surfaced it just skipped that step. It felt like he was dying though. His stomach was the worst. It wasn't really human flesh that he craved – he'd managed to train himself out of that, thank God. No, now it just felt like he was being ripped apart from the inside, as his compromised immune system fought to get everything back into the rather tenuous balance that kept him normal.
Thus the reason for the orange juice stock in his fridge that could supply a third world country.
Sadly, it seemed to have fallen short. A cold, of all things, had been going around the school, and if he had to take a bet, Kakashi would put his money on that being the cause of his anguish. It didn't matter how puny the bug was, if his immune system had to cope with it as well as the virus, something was going to have to give. Sometimes, this was the result. Symptoms of the virus came through. No foaming at the mouth, and if what had happened that one time with Kiiro was any indication, he wasn't…contagious.
Kakashi shuddered at the word. Contagious meant an outbreak, which meant more of those things. Granted, he hadn't been alive during the first outbreak. He'd seen one of those things up close and personal, when it had tried to rip his throat to little pieces. His mother, right before his father put a bullet through her brain.
Deciding he really needed to get moving before more of this reflective mood got to him, Kakashi worked on standing up, using the side of the bath and the wall of his bathroom. Today wasn't as bad as it had been in the past. He could still move, which was always a plus.
It took some doing, but he eventually managed to get undressed and in the shower, leaning heavily on the wall for support as the water cascaded over his aching form. His stomach still hurt worse than anything, and once he got himself cleaned up, he'd go and down a couple of painkillers, and maybe some Pepto.
Nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, undead virus, Kakashi thought sarcastically. He was feeling a little better now. The heat of the water was at least helping to ease his muscle aches and migraine. Still, as he turned off the water and stepped out of the tub, his legs and hands were shaking like leafs, and he almost fell down while he was drying himself off and getting his briefs on. Dizziness, weakness, and standing precariously on one leg were apparently not a really good mix. He was still on his feet though, which he considered to be an accomplishment, and once he'd downed about three times as many pain killers as the dosage suggested, he was feeling much better.
Checking his watch, he sighed. He still had time to get to school before his first class if he hurried, and if he didn't show up, then he'd have to think of some sort of excuse. Saying he'd gotten the cold going around and stayed home with it would make him sound kind of pathetic, so instead, he sucked it up, and got ready. He didn't feel like dressing up that day, and color coordination was probably just a little bit beyond him, so to be safe and comfortable, he just went with a pair of well worn black jeans, a black t-shirt and worn (to the point of holes) grey sweater. He stuck with the usual black boots though, just because the next most comfortable pair of shoes he had were sneakers, and those didn't work too well for stopping his motorcycle. He'd take a little more time on the lacing over the loss of the bottoms of his feet, thank you very much.
He put on his bandana, brushed his teeth once, chugged some orange juice, puked up said orange juice, and brushed his teeth again before finally deciding that it was now or never and heading out the door. He grabbed his leather jacket on the way out, because even though it was in the high sixties outside, he was freezing.
Keeping his bike under control the relatively short distance to school took all of Kakashi's concentration, but he made it there in one piece. About twenty minutes late, albeit, but he had planning first today, so he figured he could take his sweet time.
He made it to his desk just in time for his shaky legs to give out from under him and he collapsed back in his chair with a quiet "oof." The distance he'd fallen hurt a little more than he'd expected it too, and it knocked the air out of him. Luckily, air was the only thing it knocked out, and his stomach and esophagus stayed thankfully calm.
Sighing, Kakashi folded his fingers across his belly and leaned his head back, closing his eyes and crossing his feet atop his desk.
The next thing Kakashi knew, he was being awoken to the sound of books being slammed onto desk. The noise was acutely loud – louder than any such sound had a right to be – and he immediately knew that things had gotten worse. His head throbbed in time with his heart beat, louder than any percussion instrument you so often hear headaches compared to. It beat in his ears, behind his eyes, at the base of his neck, and the pounding rhythm continued down through his limbs, pounding through his veins and muscles until his fingers twitched in time with it. It felt like someone was pulling him apart from the inside, and it was all he could do to keep from falling out of his chair to his knees and emptying his stomach's contents on the floor.
Instead, he somehow managed to stand. All the kids were sitting by now, or at least he thought they were.
"Kakashi-sensei, I think you need to go lay down. I'll go get Tsunade-dono." The voice belonged to Neji Hyuuga, mercifully quieter than even the students in the back of the room. Kakashi nodded, but that, as it turned out, was not a good idea, and suddenly it felt like the floor lurched out from under him.
His hand reached out to the wall, and he caught it just as another hand caught his shoulder. If Neji was gone though, it didn't make sense that this hand was on his shoulder.
"Don't hurl," Shikamaru said, his voice as quiet as Neji's had been. "That'd be a real drag." Kakashi would've nodded his agreement, but he remembered what had happened last time, so instead he gave an attempt at a verbal agreement (it came out as sort of a muffled grunt) and headed out into the hall. The hall was clear now, no child wanting to face the wrath of the Vice Principal, Tsunade Nendei.
Even Kakashi was hoping to avoid it. Sure enough, no loud-mouthed, vulgar woman who looked about half her age and acted even less than that accosted him as he stumbled down the hallway, hand on the lockers just to keep himself upright. He didn't go unmet though, and a hand found his shoulder again, making him jump. He hadn't seen it, but that was probably because he had one eye closed and the other squinted, trying to keep out as much of the stabbing bright light as possible.
"Kakashi." Kakashi recognized the voice as it boomed against his throbbing ears.
"Kiiro," he ground out from between clenched teeth. His stomach was working against him now, he was sure of it, and it was all he could do to keep it from staging a full-scale revolt. He tried to say something else, but his throat was caught, cutting him off before he even got to expel the breath to form a word.
Sensing the inevitable, Kiiro, a guiding hand firmly between Kakashi's shoulder blades, quickly turned Kakashi into the bathroom they were passing and in front of one of the toilets just in time for him to lose the fight with his rebellious insides.
"You shouldn't be here," Kiiro said, coughing quietly. He didn't get a response for a bit and then,
"Think y'…wait 'til…'m not hurling…t' lecture m'—." Despite his noble effort, Kakashi again fell into a round of retching, grimacing at the taste of the yellow-orange muck that continued to force its way up. Orange juice flavored stomach acid was an acrid substance, that much was certain, and it wasn't made any more pleasant by the fact that each heave constricted Kakashi's miserably sore abdominal muscles more and more.
"This way I know you can't interrupt me," Kiiro said. Regardless of his humor, though, Kiiro really was sympathetic. He hated seeing the young man sick, and it didn't take a genius to figure what he was sick with. He'd seen him like that – the weak, pale, shaking state of his body, the constant retching, the headache – too many times not to be able to connect the dots. He had read all of the reports, after all, after raiding that monstrosity of a research lab with his team and…
No, he was not going to go there. There were more pressing matters, anyway. Kakashi seemed to have been reduced to dry heaves, which meant that he would probably be able to move in a bit, which meant that that would be time to get him up off the bathroom floor, and probably onto the sofa in his office until he could find someone to take him home and babysit him for a while. Sniffling, he realized that that person definitely could not be him. Kakashi's illness was brought on by something compromising his immune system, which was already taxed with the task of fighting off the virus that was born into his blood. The last thing he needed was Kiiro and his cold hanging around. No, he'd have to find someone that could deal with Kakashi's stubbornness, take care of him, and who had somehow avoided the cold that was going around school. Between the three, that really knocked down the list of candidates.
Kiiro ran through a list in his head as he steered Kakashi down the hall, all but carrying the twenty four year old to the school office, and then back into his own office. Kakashi all but crumpled into the couch when Kiiro released him, as the principal set about tracking down a garbage can. He slid it in front of the couch, and went to his desk, the name of a teacher already in mind. The one he had in mind was too kind, caring, and good-natured to turn him down, and he was probably the only one beside himself that could deal with Kakashi like this without it resulting in any form of homicide.
"Shizune," he called, poking his head out of the door into the main office. "Get me the extension for Iruka-sensei!"