A Man's Priorities

“Kakashi! Don’t go!” Iruka’s voice was filled with despair and his whole body was shaking. He darted his hand towards the silent jounin, his wide eyes secretly begging for forgiveness, wishing to make him stay; to make him forgive and to make everything right again.

He couldn’t see the other man’s face, yet he could picture it very clearly within his mind: The stern expression of his face, the look of disappointment in his uncovered eye, the grim line that would be his mouth…

The chuunin’s slender fingers were close to the familiar cloth; to the warmth that was Kakashi. Just a little bit more… Just a little bit more and Iruka could reach him. If he could reach him, he could make him stay, he was sure. It had to be that way. However, before that happened, there was a cloud of smoke and the next moment the jounin was gone.

Iruka stood there, his hand still in the air, his fingertips still lingering to touch his lover and his face filled with a horrid expression. Kakashi was not coming back. Kakashi was never coming back again. Because he had done a terrible mistake and now he had to pay for it.

The chuunin looked at his other hand, which was holding a volume of the Icha Icha series. It was his fault that it was now torn to pieces, after all. Kakashi’s only copy of the super limited shinobi edition, featuring much more graphic porn,many more illustrations and many extra stories. But the most important thing about it was the writing in the back of the cover:

"To my dear student, Kakashi. May you become great.
Yondaime."

He let it slide away from his hand, slowly, never hearing the slight thump it made when it reached the floor. Finally, he knelt down and cupped his knees with his arms, placing his head to the comforting little nest he had created and started crying.

The sobs were racking his body and his fingers had lost their once tanned color – right now they looked more like Kakashi’s fingers than ever before. He couldn’t think - not even inside his own mind - , he couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear and he couldn’t feel anything. His whole being was numb and the feeling was not going away – Iruka knew that it would never go away.

It made him want to die. Slit his wrists and watch as the last drop of his blood would flow freely on the floor. Forget about everything and everyone – especially Kakashi. Slowly, he got absorbed in his morbid, suicidal thoughts, always crying and always clinging to his own embrace for dear life. He never realized how many hours he had been like this or when exactly he lost consciousness.

He woke up in his bed, his clothes neatly folded nearby and the sheets next to him warm. Did that mean that Kakashi had come back? That he had come back for him and that he had taken care of him? Before realization hit him, a terribly familiar-looking jounin came inside the bedroom holding two cups of warm tea and a clean towel.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Iruka finally found the strength to ask, but was quickly hushed by a pale finger sealing his lips. The jounin then placed a hand on his forehead, while still keeping the pale finger on it’s place, enjoying the silence and looking at Iruka thoughtfully.

“ Well, at least your fever has gone down.”

Kakashi finally spoke and smiled, arcing his single eye upwards. Iruka raised an eyebrow, not believing what he had just heard. Then the jounin suddenly became serious again and cupped Iruka’s face with both his hands, leaving his mouth free to speak and a sweet taste upon his lips.

“ I found you unconscious on the floor when I came back from my mission yesterday. You had a cup of tea and a book about jounin exams lying next to you. Genma has already paid for putting hallucinating powder to your tea. And trust me, it won’t happen again.”

Iruka was frantically trying to grasp the meaning of his lover’s sayings. Hallucinating powder? So… Kakashi had never truly left… And there was no such crime as him killing the most valuable possession of his beloved jounin? A wave of relief washed over him instantly. Kakashi immediately sensed this and looked at him caringly.

“Whatever you saw, was not real. I’m still here, ne? Now let’s train for your jounin exam.”

A cat passed by the neighborhood’s trash can, looking for food. All it found was some garbage and a weird-looking, torn book with an orange cover. Strange world, it was these days.