Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Need You Now
By : djserani
Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male
Views: 3670 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do NOT own Naruto and I make no money from it!
Chapter List
- 17
- 18
- 19
A/N: Additional warnings: Violence. Minor, yes, but it's there. You've been warned!

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When they landed, they headed straight for Iruka's bed, curling up together again. "That has to be the… oddest thing I've ever done," Iruka said, quietly.
"It's at the top for me, too. I've never done anything like that in front of other people before." Raido tightened his arms around Iruka. "But God it was so good. You felt so good." Their eyes met and Raido laid his lips over his lover's. This kiss was soft, a confirmation of love rather than a beginning of something more physical.
They didn't say anything more for quite a while, simply lay quietly in each other's arms, minds filled with the evening. Iruka tried not to think of Kakashi and Yamato, tried to leave that part out of it, but it was impossible. And every time he did, every time they invaded his mind even a little, it took over.
What he'd done that night felt like a betrayal of them. He didn't understand how it could be. They weren't his, he wasn't theirs. So he couldn't figure out why it bothered him so much, but it did.
It wasn't fair. He loved Raido, he really did. But he found himself wishing he hadn't welcomed him back into his bed. He wished he'd never told him he loved him. He'd still be alone, but confused and alone was better than confused and hurting someone else. And he had a feeling that, before this was all over, he was going to end up hurting Raido very, very badly.
And that in itself hurt him. He didn't want to! He felt his chest ache at the thought of doing that to him. In that moment, all he wanted to do was curl into Raido and give him everything he could. Love him in every way he knew how. Show him everything. Promise almost anything.
But when he thought of the possibility of never seeing Yamato or Kakashi again, it hurt just as much. And he knew he couldn't make promises. Because he didn't know if he could keep them.
Why? Why did this have to happen now? Just one damned day. One day, if he'd waited, he might have avoided this.
He didn't realize that the tears were falling until Raido wiped them away. "Do you really love them that much?"
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! Was he that easy to read? He swallowed hard, trying to will the tears away, trying desperately to force his damned emotions under control. He couldn't not answer him. That was as much a lie as if he just said no. And he couldn't - wouldn't lie to him, either.
Did he love them? Did he know them well enough for that? He knew the answer to that question. He'd certainly spent enough time in their company for it.
And in answering the second, he knew the answer to the first. God, what a mess. But what was he going to do about it? They were still partners, they still loved each other. They'd made noise about spending time with him, as crazy as that seemed. But wanting to spend time together, even dropping the honorifics didn't mean that they were suddenly ready to declare their love, for God's sake.
And that's when he realized that a big part of his problem was that he was being a coward. He wanted to hold on to Raido because he just didn't want to be alone. The man loved him and he loved Raido, that much was true. And without this, they might have had a chance. They had problems to work through, there was no doubt about that, but they couldn't do anything with the problems unless he could get rid of the other two in his mind and heart.
And he knew he couldn’t get rid of them.
That's where the cowardice came in. If he let Raido go just in case there really was something possible with Kakashi and Yamato, there was the chance that he'd end up just alone in the end.
Because he knew that if he pushed Raido away, that would be it with him. There would be no other chance and it scared him. He'd been alone so much in his life, so long, that he didn't want to be alone anymore. Even the problems they had together was better than being alone. The last couple of months showed him that.
But it wasn't right to hang on to Raido just in case. It wasn't right to keep him there with him until he found out about the other two. Not that it was likely that there was anything. Partners didn't just suddenly decide to open their relationship up to someone else!
He could take this night and the next day and just be with Raido. Just love him and concentrate on them. He'd be alone, sort of, with the other two for quite a while on his mission, and there was bound to be time to talk then. But that wasn't right, and he knew it. That was selfish and unfair.
He swallowed hard, staring at the chest in front of him. He had to be honest with this man, regardless of the consequences. "Yes."
Raido's arms tightened even more and he heard the sharp intake of breath. "I'm going to lose you, aren't I? Again."
The tears fell freely now. "You know, I'm not some kind of prize. I'm a mess, Raido. I'm selfish and a coward. I'm afraid to let you go, afraid of what I'll end up without entirely." He tried to take a deep breath, but couldn't. "I don't want to lose your love, but I can't let go of them, either. And all it's doing is hurting you." He tried to pull away, but Raido wouldn't let go.
Combined with the fucking water works he couldn’t turn off, it pissed him off to no end. He gathered chakra and transported, landing a few feet away in the middle of the room. "Don't! God, don't! Don't you have any pride? Fuck!" He spun on his heel and started pacing away.
"Pride? What good is pride? I have none left! I've practically begged you as it is!" He fell silent a moment, staring at the younger man. "How can you? How is it possible for you to claim to love all of us? You can't love three people, Iruka! You're going to have to choose and you know that you can't choose them! They can't love you and each other! That's not how it works."
He spun back around. "And you know about love? How long were we together, Raido? How long? MONTHS! We were together for months! And you never once gave me any reason to believe that you did. And last night, after fucking me once, you tell me and I'm supposed to believe it? That bam magically it's all clear in your head?" He wasn't being fair, and he knew it. He was too angry to stop himself.
"So, what? You don’t love me, either? You just said it because I was fucking convenient, right? Horny little Iruka found himself a fuck for the night. Oh look! He loves me! Maybe I can get more than one out of someone! I don’t have to pick someone up tomorrow night, too! Right?"
Iruka flinched, then shut down. He hadn't felt like that in years. Hadn't had the need to do it in years. His tears stopped, his body went very still, his face blank, his eyes dead. "Get out." The words were barely above a whisper, barely able to be heard, but Raido heard them.
The color drained from Raido's face, but Iruka wasn't seeing it. "Ruka, oh God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it, I--"
"Get. Out."
"Ruka, listen to me! I didn't mean it! Don't do this!"
"Now."
Raido swallowed hard, staring at his lover, but said no more. He picked up his clothes, sent one more look at Iruka and transported away a few seconds later. Iruka sat carefully in the middle of the floor and crossed his legs. He closed his eyes, placed his hands on his knees and focused his concentration before he broke everything in his apartment.
* * *
When Iruka approached the gate Monday morning, Kakashi and Yamato stared at the man. He smiled at them, greeted Naruto and Sakura like he always did, but something was very, very wrong.
"Iruka?" Kakashi asked. "Are you okay?"
Iruka looked at the man for a long moment. "I'll tell you later. Now isn't the time," he sent a pointed glance at Naruto and Sakura.
"Hey, Iruka-sensei! I think it's really cool that you're going on a mission! Oh, how's Raido?" Naruto asked.
It was a testament to how bad things were that the man showed no outward emotion at all to the question. "I'm sure he's fine. I haven't seen him since Saturday. We've been busy." He gave another false smile.
Kakashi and Yamato exchanged glances. Kakashi turned to the other two. "Well, um, let's go. Naruto, tell Gaara we'll be there when we can, but I have no idea how long it will take."
Naruto gave a thumbs up. "Okay, Kakashi-sensei. We'll see you then!" He waved and he and Sakura took off.
Iruka turned to the other two. "Am I missing something?"
"We'll explain it all in a bit. Let's get out of here," Kakashi said, wanting to put distance between them and the gates. They took to the trees and travelled in silence for quite a while. Mid-way through the afternoon, before they hit the river that borders Grass Country, they dropped to the forest floor. "Let's sit. We have a lot to tell you."
.
"A coup?" Iruka said, staring at him. When Kakashi nodded, he stared at the ground. "I can see where that would make things difficult for us. So that's why they've been raiding." Kakashi raised an eyebrow, watching the other man process the information. "They're trying to start a war. If they can, they can claim he's unfit, weak, then they can replace him with their own."
"That's… basically what we came up with," Kakashi was impressed, despite himself. He knew the teacher was smart, but it had taken them a little while to come to those conclusions. Then again, they didn't have all the information up front, either.
"The Mist nin is the muscle. He's running the outside operation." Iruka said, thinking it through.
"Probably. We don't know that for sure, but that's our guess as well. We… got some information from a captured nin that included the location of their outside base." Iruka looked up sharply at that and Kakashi frowned, nodding. "Yeah."
Iruka frowned, but gave his own nod. "So where's Sai?"
"We have a leak in ANBU." Yamato said. At Iruka's raised eyebrow, he explained what happened on the mission and what went wrong.
"No wonder you were so beat up." Iruka frowned. "And there've been no leads yet?"
Yamato shook his head. "That's why they've held Sai back. He's going in to try to work it from the inside. Even if we find the missing nin and get rid of him, the core group planning the coup is still out there. Gaara's working to find a way to protect the current Tsuchikage, but he's a stubborn man."
"Yeah, I've heard." Iruka paused. "So where's the base?"
"We suspect it's in the cliff faces below the strip of trees where my team was ambushed." Yamato said and Iruka nodded.
"That makes sense." Iruka frowned. "So what's our objective?"
"First is to find the base itself. If we can manage to do what six ANBU didn't, we're to try to take out the missing nin." Kakashi's eye crinkled at the snort from Iruka. "Right." He sighed and considered the younger man. "What happened, Iruka?"
Iruka swallowed, the first real emotion he'd shown that day. "We're no longer together." He took a deep breath. "We…said some things. It's better this way, anyway."
"I'm…sorry." Yamato said.
"I'm not. I'm glad I know what he really thinks." He glanced up at the sky. "We should get going."
"Right." Kakashi said and he and Yamato looked at each other again.
.
They approached it from the east, this time. It was further north than the direction the ANBU unit had come in. The hope was that it would give them a better advantage, more warning.
Unfortunately, it put them closer to the water and as evening was coming on, there was a nasty mist moving in. "Shit." Kakashi said, looking around.
"I can do this," Iruka said and they dropped from the trees as silently as a cat stalking its prey.
When they landed, he held a finger up and closed his eyes. Concentrating on his hearing, he began the process of separating sounds. Rustling leaves, blowing grass, and animal sounds were pulled out and ignored. He heard the tiny flutter of bird wings, the heartbeats of the smallest animals. There, now he could hear them. He counted carefully, focused on them and zeroed in on their locations.
"Drop," he said very softly, and years of training had both Yamato and Kakashi falling into a low crouch. Before they knew what happened, Iruka had two kunai in his hands, his arms flung outward and the knives released. Seconds later, they heard the thud as they were embedded into something. That was followed right after by the unmistakable sound of bodies hitting the ground.
His teammates stood up and looked at the teacher. His eyes were flat and his face blank. They knew that look, had seen it on countless others. Had seen it in the mirror many times. But there was no time to figure out how it had gotten onto his face.
He closed his eyes again and refocused his attention. "Three. First due north, one hundred five meters, twenty meters up in the tree. Second is twenty five degrees east, one hundred twenty meters out, thirty meters up. Third is fifty five degrees east, one hundred thirty five meters out, ten meters up."
Kakashi nodded as Iruka opened his eyes. "Go."
The three of them took off. Yamato to the left, Iruka to the center, Kakashi to the right. They leapt into the trees silently and Iruka concentrated on the nin in front of him. He led with a kick, catching the unsuspecting nin in the chest and knocking him from the tree. Iruka rolled in the air and spun as he landed, facing the surprised Rock shinobi. He pulled another kunai out and launched it at him, and a few seconds later, the other ninja was silenced.
They caught up to each other and slowly approached the edge of the tree line. Ahead of them was the cliff face and narrow grove of trees. Kakashi looked to Iruka once more and he closed his eyes again, then silently shook his head. He motioned above to the right, then held up four fingers, then pointed down and held up three more. The three men slipped backwards and retreated.
.
When Iruka signaled to them to stop again, they dropped from the trees once more. "This area is clear."
The other two breathed a small sigh of relief. They couldn't relax, but they could reform a plan. "Did you have a chance to see the base?"
"It's deep. I couldn't get very far in, but there are an extraordinary amount of people in there right now. There's no way we could get in."
"Um, how did you know?" Yamato asked.
Iruka sighed. "It's called echolocation. I don’t know why I can do it, but I can. Super-sensitive hearing. If I concentrate, aided by a bit of chakra, I can separate all kinds of sounds including the different types of heartbeats from one another." Iruka said. "It's what drew me into ANBU."
Kakshi didn't look surprised, but Yamato did. "You…"
"I wore an eagle mask. Ibiki recruited me from my teaching. About two years after I'd started, I got antsy. I loved teaching, but I wanted to do something more. I'd let the comments about my lack of rank get to me, the snide remarks that I couldn't do anything else, and Ibiki played on it."
"He's good at that," Kakashi said, quietly. "How long were you in?"
"I lasted a year." Iruka stared at the grass between his feet as it swayed in the light breeze. "We were sent on an assassination mission. The target was a political rival of the Fire Daimyo. He was supposed to be alone in his house, everyone else gone, but they were taking no chances. So they sent three of us. If anyone else was there, we were to kill all of them." Iruka's eyes unfocused as he went back.
.
Their target was on the first floor behind his desk. The squad leader, the jackal, was supposed to handle him. He and the hawk were simply to check and clear the rest of the house. It was supposed to be empty.
Iruka crept to the top of the stairs. He found himself glad that the rooms were empty, but as he started for the steps to meet back with his other team members, he saw the movement out of the corner of his eye. He didn't hesitate, as he'd been trained, his katana was in his hand and he'd swept it in the lethal arc without conscious thought.
It took him two full minutes to register what he saw. Two full minutes for the import of the wrong level of sound from the falling corpse to penetrate his brain, for the sight before him to clarify. She couldn't have been more than about three feet tall, if that. She had short red hair and clutched in her hand was a doll. It had a porcelain face and long blood red gown. The gown had once been white, Iruka was sure of it. It was only now red because it was sitting in and soaking up the little girl's blood.
.
"They'd lied. The house had been full. The entire family was still home. The wife was in bed, the two older brothers watching television." His gaze was locked onto his sandal, his eyes unfocused still, that dead look in them.
"I tried to resign at the end of the mission, but Ibiki managed to convince me that they needed me for a while longer, but the image of the doll wouldn't leave me alone. I nearly punched him before he gave in and accepted my resignation two months later." Iruka looked up at them and the haunted look in his eyes was all too familiar.
"I'm sorry." Kakashi said. What did you say to something like that?
"Sorry? I killed a child. I can never teach enough children to make up for that. Ever." He shook his head. "They tried to tell me that I did the right thing, that I was following orders that…" he formed a fist and released it slowly. "I know that's not how it works. I've put it away for the most part. The basic training will never fade, you both know that. But the nightmares did. Until Saturday night."
"What happened?" Yamato said.
Iruka sighed. "We fought. I'm… confused about a number of things and we fought about it. I have a reputation." He looked up and his eyes met each of theirs. "I don’t know where it came from and it's patently wrong, but it bothers me. A lot. The rumor is that I'm a slut. That I'll basically fuck anyone or anything." He swallowed. "I'm not. Raido threw it at me. And I shut down."
"Bastard." Kakashi swore.
Yamato blinked and didn't say anything, but the flush on his face said enough.
"I provoked it, to a point." Iruka sighed.
"Bullshit. Even if you pushed him, he had to know that would be the one thing to hurt you most." Yamato said.
Iruka nodded. "Yes, he did."
"Then it's still on him for using it. Bastard," Kakashi said, again. "And for the record? I punched Ibiki before I left ANBU myself."
Iruka looked up and for the first time that day a spark of amusement was shown in his eye. "I went back to teaching and never looked back. Occasionally, they pull me for missions that my echolocation is very helpful for. I go on missions on school breaks, but I still prefer to teach."
"I left. I almost punched my commander, too." Yamato said.
Iruka looked up at him. "I'm glad. Not that you almost punched him, but that you're out." Their eyes met for a moment and Iruka felt a new connection to the man.
Kakashi sighed. "Even if we're three former ANBU, we can't take that base, not with the current population. I'm not sure what we're going to be able to do ourselves, but it's not that. I think our best bet is to head to Suna and regroup with the rest of the team." He glanced up. "Let's get on the other side of the border, then we can find a place to camp."
With that, the three took back to the trees in silence.
.
They set up camp in the shadow of one of the destroyed villages. Kakashi figured that if the village was already gone and empty, there would be no reason for the nin to come back. None of them would sleep soundly, anyway. They all had too many years of training to allow them to relax too much.
"You know, I'm beginning to think that half of Ibiki's scars came from his subordinates." Yamato said, philosophically.
Iruka chuckled and both men glanced at him, glad to hear it. "I'd bet you're right." He frowned. "I wouldn't want his job. Intel, ANBU, I don't care what he does. He can have it."
"I know I don't have the stomach for that stuff anymore." Kakashi said, softly. "The interrogation we had to do wasn't nearly as bad as some I was in on years ago, but it was bad enough."
"I'm grateful I never had to do any. The echolocation allowed me to specialize enough."
"What did Raido think about you being in ANBU?" Yamato asked, glancing at Iruka.
"He didn't know." He pulled his left sleeve up at their questioning looks. "I had it removed. I wanted nothing to do with it ever again. If you feel, there are a few bumps left, but unless you look for it, you'd never know."
Kakashi leaned forward and ran his fingertip over the skin and Iruka closed his eyes. Any lingering doubt he might have had about whether or not he was still affected by the man's touch was gone. That tiny little brush of fingertip affected him. He sighed to himself.
He still didn't know what the hell he was going to do. He wanted, needed, to find a way to put these feelings away. He knew that he'd never be with them. He had to keep reminding himself that they were partners. In love with each other.
He'd fucked up his relationship with Raido seriously over all of this. They might have had a chance, but that was gone. He was never going to have a normal one if he didn't figure this stuff out. He shoved it aside. A mission was no place to worry about emotion. "We should rest," he said quietly.
Both of the other men looked at him briefly. "Right." Kakashi stretched out to one side of Iruka and Yamato on the other.
Iruka closed his eyes, but it would be a long time before he fell asleep.
- 17
- 18
- 19
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Need You Now	By : djserani Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 3670 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do NOT own Naruto and I make no money from it!

Need You Now