The sick sticking sound as he pulled himself free of his sheets almost made Iruka hurl. As he staggered slowly to the bathroom, he was incredibly grateful that he’d been too busy to eat lunch yesterday and too tired when he’d gotten home to even consider the possibility of dinner.  Unfortunately, the rumble of the ancient pipes in his bathroom as he turned on the shower failed to drown out the word ‘dinner’ as it echoed around inside his pounding head, and he had a sudden flashback to Kakashi sitting on the side of his bed, one hand on his shoulder, and all to fully aware of how badly Anko had kicked his ass.


Iruka groaned, wincing as the water pounded against the open wounds on his back. How long’s it going to be before he realizes this was a mistake…?


The shower made him feel slightly more human, but the contortions he had to go through in order to get his shirt over his head pulled some of the half-formed scabs, and he was sure a couple of them started bleeding again. As he limped into the small kitchen and rummaged through his fridge – the milk was stuck behind three half-eaten ramen cartons that Naruto had brought over recently, he was very glad that it was Saturday, and he didn’t have to teach. If he had, the majority of his notes would be confined to the lower half of the board because he didn’t think he could raise his arms any higher than his shoulders.


The soft knocking on his door took him by surprise, and he checked his watch, wondering if he’d slept in longer than he’d thought. Only 9. If Naruto was to be believed - and Iruka had spent enough time with the kyuubi boy to know that what he said needed to be taken with a grain of salt - Kakashi had yet to show up before noon on any of their training days. The jounin, of course, had never been late for any of the missions Team 7 had taken, but Iruka had to figure that, on a Saturday at 9 in the morning, Kakashi was not going to be knocking at his door.


Though the list of people who were likely to be visiting him at this hour was short, he hadn’t even considered… “Shizune-san?”


“Ohayo, Iruka-sensei!” She smiled brightly and tossed a bag of something in his general direction. Either her aim was poor or she was testing him, Iruka wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t quite hide a wince as he reached out to snag it.


“Oh, guess Anko-chan wasn’t exaggerating, eh?” Testing, then. Shizune paused for a moment, and then leaned forward slightly to look around the room. “Can I come in?”


“Uh, sure.” Iruka stepped back, letting her pass and shutting the door behind her.


“Wow! This place is really nice!” Shizune strode into the living room and past the couch to lean out the open window, taking in the view of the rest of the village.  “What a view!”


Iruka followed her, wondering if the bewildered feeling that had settled in his gut after Anko’d thrown the first kunai at him yesterday, grown with Kakashi’s appearance in his apartment – seriously, how had he gotten in there? – and was now working it’s way up to his vocal cords was going to become permanent. “Shizune-san?”


“…I mean the sun must shine in through these windows during the afternoon…. Oh, what?” She spun back around to face him.


“Why are you here?” Iruka rested one hand on the stack of scrolls on his end table and raised an eyebrow at her.


“You… I thought…” Shizune looked puzzled. “I thought Anko added my name to that note of hers.” She had the decency to look sheepish when Iruka shook his head. “Sorry! I’m taking charge of one of your other lessons.”


“Other lessons?” More bewilderment, Iruka sighed and figured he should just get used to it.


“Tsunade-sama didn’t tell you?”


“I didn’t even know about that thing with Anko until she started attacking me.” Iruka pointed out.


Shizune rolled her eyes. “Tsunade-sama seems to believe that surprise is the best way to learn. You learn how to react better to unknowns if you’re not prepared for your training.” She took in the disbelief painted across Iruka’s face and laughed out loud.  “Yeah, I don’t buy it either.”


“So,” Iruka tried to wrap his brain around this and still make some effort to be polite, but he’d only been up for about 15 minutes, and he was still aching from the day before. “Why are you here?’


Shizune dropped down onto the arm of his couch, drawing several scrolls from the pockets of her overcoat, and waved them at him. “Healing lessons.”


OOOOOOOOOO


The green light blazed around his hands for a brief second, and then spluttered out, much to his extreme annoyance. He’d been working at this for a good two hours, and while he was incredibly thankful for Shizune’s infinite patience, chakra control was not something he was naturally good at. And if he was going to be absolutely honest with himself, there really wasn’t anything that he was naturally good at – except maybe teaching. Everything he’d mastered had come from hard work that had lasted much longer than two hours. In short, it was going to be a while before he could confidently heal a hangnail.


He raised his right hand, slowly, and wiped the sweat off his forehead before lowering his hand to cup a couple of inches over one of the smaller wounds –where a senbon had ripped across his left forearm instead of sticking in.  “Tell me again why I’m doing this to my own wounds? Don’t most students deal with dead fish at the beginning?” The words: where they’re not going to accidentally hurt what they’re trying to heal were left unspoken.


“Usually. But this is faster.”


“Faster?”


“Mmm, once you get to the point where you’re actually trying to heal yourself, it’ll hurt like hell if you’re doing it wrong.” Iruka looked a little shocked. “Pain’s a remarkably good motivator. Alright, focus within yourself, extend your chakra to ‘feel’ the wound and heal it.” Shizune suggested. The expression on her face seemed to suggest that the infinite patience was wearing a little thin.


Feel it. Right. Iruka squinted at the back of his hand, feeling the chakra peel out from the center of his heart, flowing down his arm to focus in the center of his palm.  The green fire flicked up his fingers and faded. Damn. Something was wrong; something felt wrong when he tried to reach out to the wound on his arm.


Shizune gnawed briefly at the edge of her thumb. “The release needs to be smooth. It’s almost like you’re pushing the chakra, and it’s coming out in pulses.” Her brows drew down, and she irritably shook her hair out of her eyes.


Focus within yourself. Iruka repeated as he started the process over, following Shizune’s well-laid-out steps for focusing. Right when he reached step three, a bird flying by the window snapped his gaze off the back of his hand, and he growled, mentally slapping himself and telling himself to pay attention. Focus and… He’d barely completed step one when the bird swooped by for a second pass, snatching his attention again.


Feeling rather defeated, Iruka closed his eyes, concentrating on slowing his breathing down to throttle back the rising frustration. I am here. The words rolled through his mind easily; the technique was something he’d done since he was a kid. He was pretty sure his mom had taught it to him, but he honestly couldn’t remember the point when he’d started using it. But it worked well to settle him during training, so he figured it certainly couldn’t hurt here.


Following the words, he brought his chakra slowly into the center of his body to regain his control over it, and then released it back out.


At least, that’s what he intended to do, but he’d been practicing for so long on releasing along one conduit, that his muscle memory betrayed his brain. The chakra raced down his arm, and it felt completely different, rolling, cresting inside his skin and then breaking.


He could see the wound on the inside of his eyelids, and it looked just like a puzzle piece. Insert tab A into slot A. He forced down a giddy laugh, pulled gently with the chakra flow so that the two edges met and smoothed the light down the center of the cut as it slid together.


“Well.” Shizune sounded surprised. “That was different.”


Iruka peeled his eyes open. The green glow that surrounded his hand had taken on a bluish hue and continued to burn softly without the flickering or spitting that had plagued it earlier. After a moment’s hesitation – end the jutsu, try again, and hope it wasn’t a fluke, or heal the rest of the wounds before starting over – he called his chakra back into him and watched the fire fade to nothing. Only after he was certain that he had everything under control did he turn to Shizune.


“You didn’t focus the way I told you to.”


“Sorry.”


Shizune actually laughed. “Don’t apologize! If it works, it works. I’ve just always used those instructions because they seem to work for most people who are becoming medic-nin. But we’re all sort of the same type of personality, so there’s no reason they should work as well for you.” She grabbed his left arm, tugging him around hard, and examined the slightly paler skin where the wound used to be. “Good job. We’ll have to do a bit more work to get you up to speed on more complicated injuries, but you should be able to heal anything Anko dishes out at you now.” She reached over and tugged at the hem of Iruka’s shirt, ignoring the yelp of indignation as she pulled upwards. “Heal the rest of these before I go, and we’ll be done for the day.”


Iruka edged away from her, fighting to suppress the blush spreading up his cheeks. “I’m fully capable of taking off my own shirt!”


OOOOOOOOOOO


Looking decidedly puzzled, Kakashi raised his hand to knock on the blank door a third time. He was about half a heartbeat away from just ‘letting’ himself in, probably through the window. He rapped loudly, resisting the urge to call out the chuunin’s name; he’d learned long ago not to be noisy on the weekend in a shinobi apartment building. While he was perfectly able to dodge any weapons thrown in his direction, neighbors tended to frown on that type of new decoration in the hallway.


This time he heard movement inside, followed by a voice calling out, “Yes, yes, I’m coming.” The door was pulled open with a fair amount of force. “Wha….” Iruka trailed off as his brain processed Kakashi’s identity. “Kakashi-sensei?”


“You’re looking a lot better.” Kakashi studied the chuunin’s frame, looking for evidence of the beating that he’d taken the previous day, the decided lack of a shirt making it easy for him to take an inventory. The bruises were still vivid against the tan skin, but all of the open wounds had been healed, or at least he assumed they had; no sign of them remained.


“I…thank you?” Iruka somehow turned the simple statement into more of a question. “Would you like to come in?’


Kakashi grinned happily at his back as the other man turned away and held up a plastic bag. “I brought dinner.”


Iruka had started down the hallway towards the living room, but turned back at that statement. “Dinner?’


“Maa, food, mouth…”


Iruka rolled his eyes, “I know what dinner is!’


“See, I figured that last night, but you keep repeating the word whenever I use it.” Kakashi didn’t think it was necessary to add that this was only the second time that he’d used that word in Iruka’s presence. Iruka didn’t seem to be listening to him anyway; he was staring blankly at the clock on the wall in the living room.


“It’s 5…” Iruka muttered, rubbing his hand across his face.


“Lose track of time?”


“Shizune-san came by this morning to give me a crash course in healing, but she left at about noon. I must have fallen asleep….”


“Healing takes a lot of chakra.” Kakashi offered, setting the bag of food down on the coffee table. “You’ll be exhausted every time you do it, and you’ll be…”


A deep rumble from the vicinity of Iruka’s waistline interrupted him, and the chuunin dropped one hand to cover his stomach, flushing with embarrassment. Only then did he seem to notice the fact that he wasn’t wearing his shirt. The blush deepened rapidly, and Iruka snatched his shirt off the couch, pulling it on over his head and dropping down onto the cushions, staring fixedly at the carpet off the corner of his coffee table.


“….starving.” Kakashi finished.  He pulled out one of the containers and waved it at the other man, who took it without actually looking at him.


“So,” Iruka said, pausing for a few moments too long as he was clearly considering what he was going to say. “You’ve been in ANBU for a long time, right?”


Kakashi nodded silently, setting the empty container back on the table – he’d inhaled his food with the same speed that he always did, if only because Iruka seemed to be averting his gaze so that he could eat in peace, and he really liked looking at people when he talked to them.


“So am I a replacement touchstone?”


“Nope. I’m new at this whole thing too.”


“Then why are you getting one now?” Iruka turned to look at him, confusion written all over his face.


Kakashi shrugged. “The Gondaime decided that she was going to enforce the touchstone rule.”


OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


Iruka bit his lip in frustration – Tsunade wasn’t known for her adherence to the rules, he found it very hard to believe that she’d suddenly decided to unilaterally enforce this one, so he couldn’t quite hold back the waspish comment. “Kakashi-sensei, if I’m going to be your touchstone, you’re going to have to trust me!” He felt his face heat up again and ducked his head, “Gomen. T-that was out of line.” He cast around desperately for any subject other than the current one. “I hear Naruto and Sai haven’t actually managed to kill each other yet.”


Oh yeah, Iruka, real smooth change of topic.


Kakashi seemed to relax and turned towards him, eye curving upwards. “Not for lack of trying. Well, at least not for lack of trying on Naruto’s part. I’m not sure that Sai cares.” His shoulders slumped slightly, “It was much more interesting when it was Naruto and Sasuke. At least Sasuke fought back.”


Iruka laughed. “They tore up my classroom one day. Sasuke threw Naruto through one of the desks. I made them stay and clean up after it, but then there was name calling, and things rapidly deteriorated after that, and I wound up with another broken desk.”


“Class always that interesting?”


“I wish.” Iruka snorted. “Nine times out of ten they’re all half asleep, and it’s all I can do to get them to pay attention.”


Silence descended between them, getting more and more awkward by the second.  But in that silence were the unspoken questions that neither of them was ready to ask or answer.


Why did you ask for me?


Why did you say yes?


OOOOOOOOOO


The bright sunshine reflected off the smooth surface of the memorial stone and the dew on the surrounding grass. Sunday mornings had always been Kakashi’s favorite time to visit Obito and the Yondaime. Very few people were out and about this early on the weekend, and he had nowhere to be.


The jounin crouched down in front of the stone so that he was eye to eye with their names. “I think I’ve finally made a good decision.” He paused. “Yeah, his name’s Iruka.