Author's Notes: Hello Lovelies! It's been a while I know, and I'm sorry. But here we are with another chapter, and I do hope you enjoy it. As usual, Naruto and characters belong to Masashi.

It had been a long few months. Genma had spent the majority of November through to March running S-ranked seductions for ANBU all over the shinobi nations. He had missed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and Valentines Day, as well as multiple birthdays and small scale celebrations. The tokujo, run down and tired, didn't seem to notice or care too much. After their initial argument concerning Special Ops, Iruka had convinced his older lover that officially moving in together would help the situation. He had given up his apartment, and his ANBU gear had been moved to a box that was now stashed under their bed. Genma would come home, throw his gear in the wash, hop in the shower until the water ran cold, throw up, cry, fold his gear back under the bed, throw up, cry, scream, crawl into bed, scream, and shake until Iruka found him.

Any time Genma left for any length of time, every day he was gone Iruka would go to work and act as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He talked with friends, he filed reports and ran errands, and he taught his class with the same care and attention as usual. When the end of the day rolled around though, Iruka could no longer quell his anxiety. He would run home in a chakra enhanced frenzy. He would throw open the door to their apartment and burst into the bedroom, desperate to see if his lover was home and in need of gluing back together. Most evenings, the bedroom door would swing open to reveal a closed window and an empty bed, the bathroom just as untouched as he'd left it when he left for work that morning. On those nights, Iruka would swallow around a lump in his throat and take a deep breath, then firmly close the bedroom door and begin his grading and lesson plans. He would make himself a small, light dinner of miso and rice, and he would fall into a fitful sleep wrapped in a blanket on the couch, the light from the television dancing across his tired expression.

There would be one evening every few weeks though, that the bedroom door would swing open to reveal a wide open window and a mass huddled on the far corner of the bed. The shower would be running even though no one was in it, there might be smudges of blood on random bits of wall or the occasional floorboard, and Genma would be curled into an agonized and trembling ball of limbs and sadness. On those nights, Iruka would swallow around a lump in his throat, close the window and strip out of all his clothes, then climb into bed and wrap himself around his lover's shivering form. He would whisper sweet nothings into Genma's battered skin and gently finger through the fine blond hair. He would ease Genma to sleep, and when the tokujo woke screaming and trying to claw off his own skin, Iruka would be ready with steady hands and a tongue poised with prepared words of comfort.

Genma didn't sleep much.

Iruka didn't sleep.

It had been a long few months. They were hard on Genma, but with Iruka's help it was becoming easier and easier for him to snap out of his seduction induced depressions. It was taking less time to become himself again after each mission, three hellish days turning to two, and slowly, ever so slowly working itself into an ailment that could be almost eradicated after one hard night and a few evenings of residual nightmares. He was pleased with his progress, and so were his superiors. A clear and rested mind provided a more efficient operative, and Genma was nothing if not the poster boy for efficiency.

Perhaps it was because Iruka had never been in a relationship before. Perhaps it was because he had never dealt with nightmares other than his own. Perhaps it was a combination of things that, individually, wouldn't have affected him too much but because they ganged up and worked together were actually quite a detriment to him. No matter the reason, the winter months seemed to be crueller to Iruka than they were to Genma. The nights where Genma needed his undivided attention, though less in frequency than in the beginning, were not getting any shorter in length, and while Genma was gone Iruka hardly slept due to his own demons. His imagination would conjure up terrible images of foreign, monstrous men and women hurting Gen in sickeningly intimate ways, and the nineteen year old would jerk awake drenched in sweat and body trembling. If you didn't look at the teen, it'd be hard to notice anything was wrong. The quality of his work didn't suffer and his voice was as cheerful and relaxed as ever. And, because not many people actually took the time to look at the young man, not many people noticed.

His students noticed, of course, but nine and ten year olds weren't too articulate and didn't have the life experience to describe what was happening to their sensei. If asked, many of them wouldn't have been able to come up with much more than, "Well, he seems more tired than he used to..."

Anko and Mizuki noticed, but when either of them expressed concern over his exhausted state he would just give a tired smile and shove his trembling hands in his vest pockets.

Raido noticed, and he was far less lenient with his young friend. "What in Kami's name is happening to you, Kid?" he asked one night at the bar while Genma had excused himself to use the restroom. The large tokujo had been shocked to see Iruka's state, and even more shocked to see that Genma didn't seem to notice.

"Nothing," Iruka murmured around a sip of sake and a self deprecating chuckle. "Kids are running me in circles is all. I just can't seem to get the boys to focus!"

"Don't bother giving me that crap, Ru, we both know that's not it. What's going on?"

Iruka's eyes darted towards the back hall and the bathrooms before turning to Rai and lowering his voice. "I'm just having a bit of a hard time coping with his career, that's all. It's no big deal. I'll figure it out."

"Iruka, that's-"

"Oh, shove it, Rai. I'm a big boy. I can deal with a little sleep deprivation."

"Seriously? You look less sleep deprived and more like a zombie. You need to say something to him Kid, honestly."

"Say something?" Iruka laughed. "Like what? I'm not going to ask him to quit, if that's what you're getting at. He feels like this is the best way he can serve our village, and I won't be the one to take that from him. He'll leave it when he's ready. Besides, you know how ANBU works; it's all in waves. Right now it's hard because he's so busy, but I just have to wait out the wave and then it'll go back to being the occasional call. It's fine."

"Is he helping you out at all, anyway?" Raido asked, his drink forgotten.

Iruka's whole body seemed to pause before it restarted again and he took another drink. "I've let him believe everything's just dandy. And he'll go on believing that until it's true again, okay? I don't need him out on the field and worrying about me. If he's not focused, it could get him killed. This whole conversation stays between you and me, ne?"

"You can't be serious!" Raido nearly shouted, concern, frustration, and alcohol nibbling at his vocal control. But before he could say anything else Genma was making his way back toward them, and Iruka had plastered a huge smile on just for him, and Rai found himself bending to the Chuunin's wishes without even really understanding why.

Mizuki had never known when to leave well enough alone. Even as children, Iruka had always had to reign his silver headed friend in.

"Just let it go, Zu."

"Don't get hung up on it, man."

"Relax, it's not a big deal."

He had always been a force of nature, with habits that no one except Iruka could make any sense of. It came from growing up together. Mizuki had been playing with Iruka's toys since before Iruka was even born, had been having play dates with him days after his birth when he was still too little to do anything that even resembled playing. He had spent more time at the Umino household than his own up until the demon had come and decimated everything. Mizuki's parents had been ANBU, and had left him alone quite often, dumping him on the Umino's. One time, during his second or third year at the academy, he was asked to write an essay about family. He had written about the Umino's. And then the fox had taken from him the people he'd replaced his parents with.

Mizuki hated ANBU. He thought they were classist elitists that looked down on everyone else and didn't have any emotions. He thought they were mindless killing machines, programmed by the council to do nothing except follow orders. "They don't have brains, just programming," he'd said to Iruka once while they were still in the academy. And he'd always figured that programming could be overridden. People without hearts or brains were more of a liability to the village than an asset, he had proclaimed, because if their programming was rewired they could go from being allies to enemies in the blink of an eye without anything stopping them. He had never trusted ANBU. Anyone who knew this would know it stemmed from feeling abandoned by his parents. But nobody knew, as Mizuki had a very hard time letting himself feel anything other than mistrust for everyone except Iruka.

Mizuki hated the nine tailed fox. He had built himself a little family, using Umino Makato as a soft and loving mother. Umino Takahiro was a firm but affectionate father who just wanted to share his knowledge. Umino Iruka was his best friend, his brother, and after the attack, his everything. His only thing left. He waffled between gluing himself to Iruka's side and indulging his desperate need to grieve alone, and for years that meant that Iruka only saw him in cycles. But while Mizuki was alone, he watched Iruka from the sidelines, too afraid to let him go too far, afraid that if he took his eyes off his last important person, something would snatch him away.

But that's exactly what happened, even while Mizuki watched. And there was nothing he could do about it.

First, it had been the hokage. Sandaime-sama had taken interest in Iruka after he'd started causing trouble at school. But instead of punishing the boy, Sandaime-sama would take Iruka into his office and they would talk and drink tea, and it seemed that Iruka was rebuilding his family. Mizuki wanted in on this, and so too started to cause trouble to get attention. Mizuki, though, had never been as charismatic as his tanned counterpart. Where Iruka's pranks and jokes made him popular amongst their peers, Mizuki's attempts just seemed to annoy them. Where Iruka's shenanigans would have their teachers yelling at him and the hokage offering him tea, Mizuki's equivalent mischief only got him detention and disappointed looks from his sensei. The whole thing was infuriating to him, and one day he'd spat at Iruka that, "He's only using you as a replacement for Asuma-san, you know that right? As soon as he comes back from wherever it is he's run off to and they make up, Hokage-sama won't even give you a second thought." Iruka had punched him in the face, and they'd never talked about it again.

Asuma returned to the village, and Sandaime-sama's attention to Iruka never faltered.

Then, it was Shiranui. Mizuki had been Iruka's only real friend pretty much their whole lives. He had learned early on to share everything with Iruka, but never how to share Iruka with others. One day, everything is the same as it always had been, and the next day there's some blond asshole who'd somehow managed to monopolize all of Iruka's time and attention. He was jealous and angry and fucking scared. He'd already given up enough of Iruka to Sandaime-sama, he couldn't, wouldn't let anyone take more of him away. But two, three years had passed and Shiranui was still around and he had brought with him others that had infiltrated Iruka's inner circle, the inner circle that used to consist of only him. And that bastard was ANBU. ANBU. He wasn't supposed to know that, but he'd always been smart and Iruka had always trusted him.

And then, Kami, it was Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto, the jinchuuriki. The vessel for the demon that had destroyed everything Iruka and Mizuki ever loved. And Iruka, damn him, took the creature to dinner after school sometimes, had taken to giving him extra help with his lessons because not only was the boy the fucking jinchuuriki, but he was actually fucking stupid on top of it all. Mizuki was furious, absolutely disgusted, and at a complete loss. Iruka had actually had the nerve to say to him once that, "Zu, he's just a little kid. He lost everything that night too, just like us. He's just like us." But Mizuki wouldn't accept that because no, that thing was not just like him. He was just a shell that held a demon that stolen everything he loved, when he himself had never hurt anyone and definitely not killed anybodys parents.

The past few years, Iruka had turned into someone that Mizuki could barely recognize. He went from being his brother, his everything, his only thing left, to being just a guy that sometimes hung out with Anko at the same time that he was. He hated it, and he wanted his brother back. So when Mizuki had started seeing the strain that Iruka's relationship with Shiranui was under, he just couldn't help himself. He had tried to pry the couple apart before and it hadn't worked. But he'd learned from that. He should have known that he couldn't attack it from Iruka's end, because Iruka was stubborn and naive and just wouldn't quit, but he didn't see why he couldn't advance by pushing it too far on Shiranui's end. All he'd have to do was push the right buttons, and that stupid ANBU pig would destroy everything on his own.

Mizuki was a force of nature, and he'd always needed Iruka to reign him in. But Iruka had neglected that responsibility for over a year now, and really, he should have known better. Mizuki had never known when to leave well enough alone.