Roommate Haunted

by Adelaida, akaparalian

Summary:

Iruka moves into a surprisingly cheap apartment only to find that there's an irritating ANBU already in residence who only he can see.

Notes:

Thank you very much to morningblossom for beta-reading!

 

It was the third broken teacup that day that really set Iruka off.

The first had been annoying, a little disappointing, but it had been old, not particularly sentimental, and bought on sale — nothing he couldn't easily replace. The second had been likewise not especially important to him, but irritating just on the face of the fact that he had somehow managed to break two cups in one day. But then, not an hour later, the third teacup had gone flying off the table just as he reached for it, and irritation and suspicion had unfurled inside him instantly and with a vengeance.

Growing up in a shinobi household and then going through years of arduous training did tend to breed a healthy sense of paranoia into, well, everyone. And, as the Academy's newest-minted full-time teacher, Iruka had an advantage over many of his colleagues throughout Konoha: his moment-to-moment awareness of whether or not something was about to come flying at his head was higher than most, as it had to be when one spent much of one's time dealing with both children and sharp objects. Contextually, what this meant was that the second teacup had started to arouse his suspicions, and from that moment until the time when the third cup had broken, he'd been on edge, his senses searching hard for any hint of the less-than-ordinary, even as he went about his day at home, grading papers. And then, in the moment before that third cup flew away from his hand and shattered against the wall, he'd felt it.

"Who are you?" he called out sharply, standing quickly enough that the cushion he'd been kneeling on went skidding across the floor. There was a kunai in his hand out of instinct, but no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't see any trace of a threat, only yet more shattered porcelain and half-cooled tea dripping down the wall. All the same, he knew he hadn't been mistaken, knew he'd felt a rush of unfamiliar chakra in the moment before the cup broke. Even if all his senses were telling him there was no one in his apartment, Iruka was absolutely positive he wasn't alone.

His question echoed into silence, and one long minute passed, then two. Iruka stayed frozen, his heart pounding, his eyes tracking steadily across the room, over and over again.

He didn't jump when the sound of breaking ceramics echoed from the kitchen, though he did feel a bit of righteous indignation on behalf of his poor defenseless drinkware. He took a deep, steadying breath and crept forward, keeping his body intentionally loose, ready to spring into action at the slightest hint of a threat — but when he passed through the doorway into the kitchen, he found no one. A cabinet was standing open, and three more cups were broken on the floor, but there was no sign of who might have been responsible for their demise.

Iruka straightened just slightly, still alert but a bit less tense. The way he figured it, there were two options at this point: either he was currently being attacked by some sort of missing-nin or rogue element with a particular vendetta against ceramics, or he was being pranked. He couldn't think of a practical reason that any sort of genuine threat would have focused on harming his teacups rather than coming after him — or why they'd target him in the first place instead of someone a little higher value, though that was a whole other question. So, more likely than not, someone was screwing with him, which meant that his life wasn't in immediate danger, but theirs sure was, just as soon as he figured out who —

"Sorry, sensei," a bored voice drawled from the entirely empty space next to Iruka's right ear. "I swear I only meant to break one."

—

Admittedly, Iruka had kind of expected there was something about the apartment when he rented it. He just hadn't had a sense of exactly what.

"The, ah, last tenant was shinobi as well," his now-landlord had said while showing Iruka the place, patting his damp forehead with a stained handkerchief and glancing repeatedly at Iruka's hitai-ate as he spoke. He was very clearly a civilian, which Iruka was well aware could lead to issues down the line; civilian landlords tended to be a lot less understanding about hard-to-remove bloodstains and kunai holes in the walls.

He was a little short of options, though, so he was willing to take that risk. He wasn't exactly flush with cash — serving as a career chuunin wasn't particularly lucrative, and neither was being a low-ranking Academy peon, go figure — and most of the places available for rent close to the Academy were family homes, far too large and far too expensive for a single person living alone. So, in order to live out of the chuunin dorms, closer to his place of work, and in a bit of a quieter area, Iruka had known he would likely have a few sacrifices to make.

This place had popped up just a few days prior, and was well within his budget, so Iruka had made arrangements to meet with the landlord as quickly as possible. Potential civilian anxieties aside, he'd been more than happy with what he'd seen by that point — the place was a good size, with a bedroom that actually seemed like a bedroom rather than a glorified closet, and a little living area where he could easily see himself reading and relaxing in the evenings, or reviewing lesson plans over breakfast, or setting up a little desk to work on sealing projects.

It did pay to be prudent, though, so he'd said, "Can I ask why the last tenant left?", just in case the answer was that the landlord had gotten fed up with one too many late-night returns from missions or random loud noises or mistimed jutsu. He hadn't wanted to look too interested, so he'd kept on examining the apartment as he asked, and kept his tone carefully idle.

The landlord had hemmed and hawed a bit — Iruka was already forming a pretty clear impression that he was a bit fretful — but then finally he said, "He — er — became indisposed —"

And that, Iruka had understood well enough. The previous tenant had died in the line of duty, something civilians often seemed to have trouble addressing head-on. Rather than let his landlord continue to fumble through the explanation, he'd simply said, "I see," and allowed the conversation to move on to other, more practical matters, such as maintenance questions and the rent schedule, which his landlord seemed much more comfortable with.

He signed a lease later that day, and within a week, he was dragging several sealed scrolls' worth of belongings over the threshold of what was now his own apartment.

Moving was uniformly terrible as far as Iruka was concerned, and unpacking was no one's idea of a good time, but things went smoothly enough, and he found he couldn't complain. He un-sealed each scroll one at a time and carefully organized his belongings, giving them each their new location in this unfamiliar space. It certainly wasn't quick and easy, but he had enough unpacked by dinner time to be able to cook himself a real meal rather than resorting to his emergency stash of instant noodles, so he felt he was doing a more than adequate job. The stove proved to be oddly temperamental, turning itself off more than once when he wasn't looking, and when he sat down at his little table to eat, he was hit by a sudden draft and shivered all the way through his meal, but then again, the stove was old and the building had housed shinobi before, and shinobi dwellings had the habit of picking up all sorts of odd little quirks. He'd just have to learn all of the things that made this apartment unique, and soon enough they'd feel like second nature, like he'd always lived here.

The building shifted and groaned a bit as he cleaned up after dinner, as though to concur, and he hid a smile as he scrubbed the dishes at his tiny sink. The chuunin dorms were so much more... impersonal. They saw so many residents come and go that, perhaps counterintuitively, they displayed far fewer quirks than shinobi homes that had time to fully attune themselves to only a handful of individuals. But this apartment — its last resident must have lived here a long time. Iruka could almost feel it as a physical presence in the apartment with him.

That thought seemed innocent enough at first — charming, even. But then, just as he was lying down and preparing to go to sleep, on his very first night in his brand-new apartment, he turned to grab his pillow and caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. Not just something: a figure. A person.

He was turning and on his feet immediately, right into a defensive stance, a kunai slipped from the pouch by the bed and gripped firmly in his hand. But by the time he was up, there was no one there.

Iruka held perfectly still, sweeping his senses for any hint of unfamiliar chakra. None of his wards or alarms have been triggered, which is evidence enough that whoever was in the apartment was skilled, jounin level at least. He couldn't sense anything at all, which didn't bode well, either. He was certainly no sensor, but even so, the combination of his not being able to detect any hint of another presence in his apartment along with the fact that they'd also gotten past his traps — at which he was a bit of an expert — did not bode well.

He moved slowly from his bedroom to the living room, steps cautious and quiet, attention on his surroundings in order to detect even the slightest hint of motion or sound. But there didn't seem to be anyone in the living room, not even the barest hint of a disturbance, and when he eventually moved on to the kitchen, it, too, was empty. An examination of his traps and wards confirmed that none had been disturbed in the slightest. By the time he'd made three very thorough top-to-bottom sweeps of the entire apartment, he was starting to feel a little bit insane.

Surely it was just nerves and emotions and the stress of being in a new place, he told himself a little more than an hour later, when he finally admitted defeat and went to go lay back down in bed. Even for a shinobi, after all, moving into an apartment recently vacated by a dead man was less than pleasant. And he'd worn himself out unpacking. There was no one but himself in his apartment — Iruka was as sure of that as he possibly could be. That forced him to the conclusion that whatever he'd seen had been his eyes playing tricks on him. A trick of the light.

So all there was left to do was go back to bed and tell himself he'd think the whole thing was silly in the morning light, and, admittedly, he had, shaking his head and cursing himself for eating into his already meager sleep schedule when he'd known damn well he'd have another full day of unpacking ahead of him. If there were someone out there dead set on breaking into random chuunin teacher's apartments, clearly they hadn't targeted him. And what other explanation could there possibly be — a ghost?

—

Iruka spun around instantly when the voice spoke in his ear, every ounce of released tension returning to his body at once and drawing him down into a fighting stance. "Who's there?" he said sharply, scanning the room for threats, but he found — nothing. Nothing at all. His apartment appeared completely empty, save for him.

He'd been in this situation once before, and he didn't like it any more now than he had then.

Heart pounding, muscles trembling very, very slightly, he spoke again, his voice rising. "Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?"

Still no response. The silence dragged itself out for several long moments, during which time Iruka stayed frozen, on high alert and not wanting to move a muscle lest he miss anything.

Then, suddenly, there was a crash from the direction of his bedroom, and Iruka was sprinting silently in that direction before he could stop to think about it, feet moving on the worn floorboards with ease. He froze in the doorway, taking in the scene, but there was still no one there. His lamp was shattered on the floor, sure, but that was the only sign that anything whatsoever was out of the ordinary. The source of the voice he'd heard, whatever the hell that was — and already he found himself half-wondering if he'd imagined it — was nowhere to be found, and it certainly wasn't speaking anymore.

And so, once again Iruka found himself with nothing to do except go over every inch of his apartment with a fine-toothed comb, all the while trying not to crawl out of his skin at the warring thoughts that either someone very skilled is hiding in his apartment, breaking his shit and toying with him, or the place is haunted, or he's going out of his mind. Or, worst of all, some horrible combination of the three, which he's currently trying very, very hard not to think about too much.

It was just — well. Iruka may not have ever made jounin, and he may have been pretty young, but he knew full well he was a capable shinobi. Contrary to popular belief, Academy teachers had an incredibly rigorous set of expectations put on them from the headmaster and administrative staff — and, more distantly, from the Hokage himself, for that matter — and they were expected to keep up their own skills and knowledge in order to ensure that the next generations of Konoha nin are up to snuff, on top of all their nine-to-five duties. And besides that, Iruka had been barely a chuunin when the Sandaime first started insisting on having tea with him on a regular basis — and all of that was without even considering his years-long reign as the top prankster in all of Fire Country. By the time he'd scoured his apartment, and then scoured it again, and once again found nothing that even hints at the presence of another shinobi in his home...

It was a bit unsettling, to say the least.

He'd been a bit... harried during his previous searches, so he made a point of forcing himself to take it as slowly as possible this time. Presumably that was why, when he finally made his way to the bedroom and searched it from floorboards to ceiling like he had the rest of the house, he thought to be especially careful in searching the closet as well, taking out every one of his belongings until the shelves were empty and he could carefully feel around for anything —

— like, for example, the trap door tucked into the farthest corner. Hidden skillfully, as far as these things went — the landlord certainly hadn't found it, but more to the point, Iruka hadn't spotted it when first visiting or when moving in or when he was searching for what he was so sure had been an intruder previously. He frowned at it, eyes narrowing, and tried not to feel stupid for having missed it. He'd found it now, at least, he thought with a sigh, before slipping a fingernail through the seam and cracking it open.

Under the trap door was a small cavity dug out of the floorboards, barely more than a few square feet — but its contents made Iruka feel significantly better about having missed the trap door previously, because sitting just beneath the surface was an ANBU mask.

It wasn't one he recognized, though he supposed he wouldn't recognize more than one or two, just those couple of ANBU who most commonly guarded the Hokage's office, who he passed on his visits to the Sandaime. If he had to guess, he'd say the markings were angling at something avian — with a long beak; perhaps a crane? — but, to be blunt, many of the ANBU mask designs were a bit too abstract to confidently guess at which animal they were meant to be representing. Regardless, the important part was that, evidently, the previous resident of this apartment had been ANBU, and, evidently, they'd left a few things behind when they died that likely shouldn't have been left behind.

There was a slight twinge of guilt in his stomach, guided by the thought that he should probably find someone to report this to or else just ignore it, but, well... Iruka couldn't deny the curiosity that overpowered that little swell of guilt, and besides, it was his apartment now. If ANBU didn't want masks turning up in dead operatives' places of residence after they passed, they should probably do something about that before new residents moved in.

He lifted the mask out carefully, only to discover a few more underneath. Spares, presumably. He removed those, too, setting them carefully to the side, acknowledging as he did so that he really should find some way to turn them in — take them to the Hokage, maybe. It wouldn't exactly be good if someone got their hands on spare copies of an ANBU mask, which worked as a ticket to get most folk in Konoha to listen to anything you were saying. Hopefully the mask was retired, so that any current ANBU would know not to trust someone wearing it, but of course that only worked for those who were in the know... Iruka shook his head and pushed the masks to the side a little more firmly. That was a problem for later; he'd make sure there was nothing strange here first, nothing that could possibly explain the things he'd been experiencing the past couple of days, and then he'd deal with the masks.

The only other thing hidden away, though, was a small, nondescript box of what seemed to be aged bamboo. The top was dusty, but there were obvious clean streaks where someone must have opened it somewhat recently. Iruka slowly felt his eyes narrow, and he only stopped to check for traps or tricks before he picked it up and removed the lid. This felt a little different than the masks — less obviously a breach of Konoha security, but also much more uncomfortably like he was digging through a dead person's belongings, which, of course, he was. He had only a vague sense of what he should do in this particular situation — put the box away and ask around for next of kin, probably, but then again, surely any living relatives would have already been contacted to come and clear out any possessions that mattered, or else the landlord would have gotten rid of anything that remained — after all, there hadn't been anything else left behind. And, yes, the trap door had been hidden, enough so that it took him a couple of tries to find it, but it wasn't that hidden. Certainly if he'd known where to look, he would have found it almost instantly. So if this box was, evidently, discarded, and not visibly important the way the ANBU masks were, then surely it was because no one wanted it, right?

Or... perhaps some other reasons, he thought as he moved to kneel in the middle of the bedroom floor, clearing a space from amongst his own half-unpacked boxes. Theory and drills were important, but instinct was critical for any good shinobi, and in that moment, Iruka's instinct was telling him that something was off in his apartment, and that this box might well have something to do with it. It just seemed like too much of a coincidence, too many odd things happening in concert, too many little hints adding up.

So, with a bitten-off little hm, he opened the damn box.

The contents weren't immediately illuminating: a few dented shuriken, faded scrolls, a scratched-up hitai-ate with a broken strap. Mementos and detritus of shinobi life. Nothing that made anything else about the situation make any sort of sense, though Iruka had to wonder what he'd expected — a little note saying Sorry to whoever comes next, but the apartment talks to you sometimes and has a vendetta against drinkware? Hardly. Still, Iruka sorted through each item piece by piece, looking carefully for something, anything, that might be of interest, might provide him some sort of insight. Maybe an old photograph of a man who looked strangely familiar, or an obviously haunted doll...? He rolled his eyes at the thought even as he kept digging. But it seemed that there truly was nothing — he took item after item out of the box, carefully examined them each in turn, and then set each one aside, and nothing had anything more to say than that the previous inhabitant of this apartment was an active duty shinobi, which he already knew, damn it. He knew they were ANBU, even. That didn't actually help anything.

Despite himself, Iruka felt frustration starting to mount. More and more with each passing moment, he was really starting to wonder if he'd just flat-out gone insane. It wasn't unheard of for Academy staff to get a little odd, but usually that was the really old, tenured ones. He certainly didn't have the excuse of years of stressful service to explain away insanity yet.

But then he looked down into the almost-empty box and stared at the very last item remaining — an entirely unassuming little bit of dark, almost-black metal in a sort of rounded-off square shape. There was a long, tapered hole in the middle, and all around it, in gold, a design of waves. It took him a moment to recognize it, since no one in his close acquaintance used any kind of bladed weapon longer than a kunai with regularity: it was a tsuba, a sword guard. If he had to guess, this one looked like it may once have been an heirloom, though it had clearly seen actual use, and could use a bit of love and attention; the metal was dull and there were scratches and dents in places. Still, it undeniably stood out from the rest of the box. That same instinct that had Iruka opening the box in the first place told him that this was what he was looking for.

Slowly, carefully, but with determination, Iruka reached for the tsuba, refusing to let his fingers shake as he picked it up.

In the instant he touched it, a jolt passed through him, and though it should by rights have been impossible to say, he knew it was that same chakra that he felt earlier. The chakra of, presumably, whoever the hell was with him in this apartment.

And then he heard the voice again.

"You actually found it. I'm impressed."

And this time — this time, when Iruka spun around, fueled by instinct, to look for the source of the voice, he wasn't met with an empty room. This time, he saw... someone, though he wasn't really certain that he understand the situation any more than he did a moment prior.

Standing just inside his bedroom door was a young ANBU with a shock of silver hair. It was hard to guess at an exact age, given the mask, but he couldn't have been more than a decade removed from Iruka's age — it was fairly common knowledge, after all, that most ANBU were either fairly young or decidedly veterans. This mask was easier to read than the ones Iruka had just found — clearly a dog, or perhaps a wolf, with little canine ears and a stylized mouth and eyes.

Don't mess with ANBU was one of the first thoughts ingrained in every young resident of Konoha, taught by parents and teachers and peers; even troublemakers, and Iruka certainly had been one, didn't dare. He still had to restrain himself from leaping toward the intruder, though, and one hand clutched at a spare kunai tightly as he palmed it, while the other gripped the tsuba so hard it started to cut into his palm.

"ANBU-san," he said, tightly. He didn't know what this ANBU was doing here — retrieving the masks, perhaps? — but no matter what it was, he didn't appreciate being startled and toyed with. He was very sure this was the same voice he'd heard in his kitchen. "Can you explain to me what the hell is going on?"

The ANBU ignored the question, which, of course, didn't do anything to improve Iruka's mood.

"Interesting," he said instead, eyes locked on Iruka's clenched fist. "You can see me." The mask tilted, contemplative. "And hear me? Consistently?"

Iruka grit his teeth and glared, but the ANBU seemed more than content to wait him out, so after a long minute engaged in trying to stare down an expressionless mask, he ground out, "Yes."

"Interesting," the ANBU said again. Then, in a tone so self-assured it was almost bored, "Drop the tsuba."

"What?" Iruka asked. "Why?" In some sort of instinctual defiance, he gripped it harder. "What is it?"

The ANBU tilted his head again, and, despite the mask, it was more than obvious that his expression was unimpressed, though his tone remained fairly mild. "My, my, sensei, do you always question orders this much?"

With a slight shiver, Iruka realized that was the second time this man had called him sensei. Of course, it was no surprise that he knew more about Iruka than Iruka knew about him — he was ANBU, after all — but it did seem to confirm that he was, somehow, actually linked to what was going on. That it wasn't a coincidence. This man — this ANBU — knew who he was, and was here for a reason.

Still. He had a point. When an ANBU told you to do something, you generally were expected to do it. Iruka wasn't particularly happy about any of this, but he found himself shoving down a flush of embarrassment at allowing his personal frustration with the situation to get in the way of his duty, even if that was perhaps a bit of a dramatic way to phrase taking minor orders from a stranger with no understanding of what was going on or why it was going on in his apartment. Maybe the tsuba had belonged to someone ANBU was interested in — maybe the prior tenant hadn't actually died, or maybe they'd been murdered, or heaven only knew what. Iruka supposed it didn't matter, really, or at least it didn't matter to him. He sighed just slightly, squared his shoulders, and matter-of-factly did as he'd been told.

The instant the tsuba was no longer touching his skin, the ANBU disappeared from view.

Iruka startled despite himself, and before he could stop to think about it, he dove to pick the tsuba again, almost before it had even had a chance to fall. As soon as he touched it, the ANBU reappeared, without ever appearing to have moved at all.

Mind racing, Iruka stared directly at him. Neither spoke. Much more slowly this time, and with much more care, Iruka slowly set the tsuba on the ground. Once again, the ANBU disappeared. And, once again, he reappeared as soon as Iruka reached down to pick it up again.

The ANBU's mask tilted ever-so-slightly downward, and Iruka could almost feel the weight of his gaze on the tsuba, now clutched in his open palm. "Only when you touch it," he said, and Iruka noted that his voice had become significantly more serious and focused. It was, he thought with a tiny bit of misplaced amusement, very much a "mission report" voice. "That complicates things."

"Complicates?" Iruka asked, unable to stop himself. "Complicates how?"

The mask tilted back up again, and though Iruka couldn't really see the ANBU's eyes — how they saw out of those damned tiny holes was beyond him — but he knew for a fact that they were boring directly into his own. For a long moment, neither of them spoke, or moved, or even seemed to breathe; they just studied one another, Iruka with frustration and confusion still roiling, the ANBU with a cold detachment that could be covering up any number of emotions Iruka had no hope of discerning.

Finally, after a long moment, the ANBU jerked his head very slightly back in the direction of the main room. "Perhaps you'd better get comfortable, sensei," he said, in that mild, unflappable tone that Iruka could already tell was going to give him a complex. "I think there's a lot for us to discuss."

—

"Call me Hound," the ANBU said, once Iruka had made himself a cup of tea (standing in a defensive position in front of his remaining mugs while waiting for the water to boil) and, for lack of anywhere better, settled himself at his table. Hound didn't join him, instead standing in a lackadaisical slouch that somehow managed to convey both boredom and tension, peering down at Iruka. If he wanted to be taller, then fine, but Iruka was damn well going to sit.

"All right," Iruka agreed slowly, taking a long sip of his tea and waiting. Hound just stood there, though, staring back at him through that unreadable mask, clearly expecting something. But Iruka — well. For one thing, he was frustrated with this entire situation, and feeling admittedly a bit petty. But for another, he genuinely had no idea what Hound wanted him to say, so he just looked back with his eyebrows raised, waiting for an actual question to be asked.

After a minute, Hound sighed. It was the same sort of sigh Iruka himself might use at a mission desk shift if someone were being intentionally obtuse, which didn't do anything to improve his mood as far as the situation was concerned. "And you are...?"

"Umino Iruka. Wait — you don't know?" he asked, surprised into both honesty and bluntness.

"Obviously I wouldn't ask if I did," Hound replied, and, yes, that tone was familiar, too. Iruka used it himself, as did any mission desk shinobi who wanted to avoid being completely walked all over. It didn't imply anything particularly kind about his intelligence.

"Excuse me for assuming the ANBU in my apartment would know who I was," he snapped, glaring. Hound's shoulders tensed for just a moment at that, but it was so hard to tell what that could be about under the mask and body armor, which, of course, was the point of the mask and body armor. "And — you called me sensei! It sure seemed like you knew me."

"I saw you grading Academy assignments," Hound said dismissively, then paused, frowning. "Your apartment?"

"Yes, my apartment." Honestly. It wasn't like there was anyone else here.

"For how long?"

"For —" Iruka paused. Well, maybe that explained why Hound didn't know who he was. Had he not realized the previous occupant was out of the picture? (Was ANBU really that bad at communicating to its members when one of their fellows had died? That really felt like a security risk. Iruka was going to have to point that out to the Hokage, just as soon as he figured out how to bring it up without explaining this entire ridiculous situation and consequentially painting himself as a lunatic forever.) "Well, not very long. I moved in two days ago. Um, I'm sorry to tell you, but the old inhabitant is dead."

He still couldn't see it, but he was somehow certain that Hound had quirks an eyebrow under his mask. "I'm sure I'd be devastated if I knew who they were."

That, more than anything, really gave Iruka pause. If not for him or the previous inhabitant, then why was Hound here?

He shook his head slightly. It wasn't really his business, other than that they were still in his home — ANBU secrets were secret for a reason. He couldn't help but be a bit concerned, though, that it seemed like Hound didn't know what he was doing here more than Iruka did — but surely he was imagining that?

"I don't know what I'm doing here," Hound said bluntly. It was a miracle Iruka prevented himself from just falling face-first onto the table in sheer irritation and disbelief.

"How can you not know?" he snapped, then thought about it for the space of a heartbeat and froze, because he could actually think of a number of potential answers to that if he tried, and none of them were good. Amnesia, jutsu, psychological damage — high-powered shinobi usually seemed a lot more unstable when they broke, rather than cryptic and vaguely irritating, but there was a first time for everything, surely.

Hound didn't seem to have a good answer in mind — or, if he did, he didn't seem inclined to share it, which really didn't come as much of a surprise. He shrugged, a spare yet fluid movement, and didn't speak for some time. Iruka waited, though, his gut telling him not to break the silence, and eventually he was rewarded when Hound, at long last, actually joined him at the table, his hands knitting together neatly in front of him.

"I'll probably be in deep shit for telling you this, but I'm likely in deep shit already, and I suppose I am in your apartment," he said, in a tone so mild that it would be obviously fake even if everything about this situation didn't already point to a tightly coiled tension just behind the words. "I don't know where I am. Konoha, I assume, and, yes, I know it's your apartment," he added sharply, cutting Iruka off before he could so much as open his mouth to reiterate that fact, "but we could be in the middle of the Forest of Death or underneath Hokage tower and I wouldn't know. So I don't know where exactly I am, or how I got here, or why that—" he points to the tsuba "—is important, but it clearly is."

It was Iruka's turn now to sit in silence, mind whirring. Forget what Hound had said about getting in trouble for talking to him — he was the one who was probably going to be executed for tripping sideways into some sort of no doubt ultra-classified ANBU business when all was said and done. But what choice did he have? Hound was right here, sitting at his table. The tsuba, whatever it was and whatever it meant, had been here, hidden away under his floorboards. Even if he wasn't meant to be involved in any of this, he was certainly mixed up in it now.

"What's the last thing you do remember?" he asked. Partially, it seemed as good a place to start as any if they were going to actually figure out what was going on — and, partially, it was a test. He wanted to know exactly how much Hound was willing to tell him up-front, if possible.

Hound hesitated for just a moment more, so quick and subtle that Iruka almost missed it, but then he inclined his head slightly. "Well, I certainly wasn't in Konoha," he said, and Iruka felt himself sit up a little straighter, his shoulders tensing. "I was in the Land of Waves."

He wouldn't say more than that, apparently, but Iruka was well aware that that was already so much more than he was supposed to know. He nodded, looking down at the tsuba. Perhaps it was from the Land of Waves — perhaps it was something Hound had somehow run across on his mission. But then how had the ANBU who'd previously lived in his apartment had it? And what exactly was tying Hound to it? Because it certainly seemed more than obvious that that was the case. A jutsu of some kind, most likely, but certainly not one Iruka had ever heard of — more than likely a bloodline limit from some highly specialized clan.

That, or the damn thing really was haunted. If that was the case, he might just as well move again and leave Hound to his own devices.

Iruka sighed a little, his grip on the deceptively innocuous little piece of metal tightening. "So, you were in the Land of Waves, but now you're in Konoha, and people can only see you when they're touching this?" he summarized, waving the tsuba for emphasis.

Hound tilted his head. "Not quite."

Was being cryptic a prerequisite for joining ANBU, or was it trained? Probably a little of both. Iruka's mouth tightened, but he didn't say anything. He refused to rise to the bait. He refused. The sooner Hound learned to just talk to him like a normal person if he wanted Iruka's help, the happier they'd both be.

He would not play this game. He wouldn't."

He cracked after about thirty seconds.

"What do you mean?" he asked, through gritted teeth. His students were bad enough, but he swore he could actually feel his blood pressure rising for every second this conversation went on.

"Well," Hound said, sounding entirely too smug about having won that little stand-off, "it's just a theory, sensei, but someone would have had to touch the tsuba to put it in the box. Probably several times before that, too. You're the first one to touch it in a while, but you're also the first one who's been able to see me."

So then, was Iruka personally, directly tied into this situation somehow? But it wasn't his tsuba. He didn't put it in the apartment. He'd never seen it before. Why would he be able to see Hound instead of anyone else? He looked down at it, brow furrowed, and turned it over and over in his hands like a worry stone.

"I should take this to the Hokage."

"No," Hound said sharply.

Iruka looked up in surprise. "Why—?"

"If you are the only one who can see me," Hound said, "and let's assume you are — how are you going to explain any of this?"

Well. That was a decent point. It was a pretty ridiculous story, after all, and that was without the knowledge of ANBU missions he certainly wasn't supposed to know about. He'd either be labelled a missing nin, or labelled insane, most likely. Probably the latter — plenty of missing nin were insane anyway, so why bother to split hairs?

"You'd care if I got added to the bingo book?" Iruka said, a touch dryly. "I'm honored."

Hound's ability to radiate an unamused aura was, frankly, impressive. "What would happen to me when you were killed the first time someone ran across you on a mission?"

He was an ass, and Iruka badly wanted to tell him so, but he did, admittedly, have a bit of a point. Few lasted long as missing nin unless they were absurdly powerful in their own right, and Iruka took pride in his skills, but he was realistic enough to know he wouldn't get far if every Konoha jonin had orders to kill him on sight.

Still, he didn't know where any of that left him in terms of actually solving this problem. Hound, the tsuba, his connection to it all — Iruka frowned. There were about a dozen different things to be concerned with, and those were just the ones jockeying for space in the front of his mind right this moment. He was sure he'd think of more later, when he was inevitably trying and failing to sleep that night. For now, though, he chose to focus on the ones he could do something about.

"Well, I can't be walking around just hanging on to this all the time," he said, waving the hand still tightly gripping the tsuba to make it clear what he meant. "Wait here a second."

Hound, of course, didn't actually listen, and followed after him without a word. Iruka rolled his eyes as he padded back to his bedroom and dug through his nightstand, but he didn't say a word — if he wanted to waste his time acting as Iruka's shadow, he'd tolerate it for now. Especially if it meant no more broken teacups.

He stood up after a moment with a little noise of triumph, pulling a length of leather cord from the riot of not-yet-organized detritus in his drawers. He fed it through the hole in the center of the tsuba and then knotted the ends together, leaving it long enough that it would sit comfortably under his clothes. Hound nodded silently when Iruka slipped the cord around his neck; it was more than a little disconcerting when he disappeared briefly as Iruka transferred the tsuba from his grip to his neck, but Hound reappeared as soon as it touched skin again, popping right back into view as though Iruka had merely blinked. With the close fit of his undershirt and uniform vest on a normal day, the tsuba should be held against his neck at all times, so hopefully he wouldn't have to get used to Hound popping in and out of view like that.

"All right," Iruka said briskly, snapping his drawer shut and straightening up. "If you don't want me to go to the Hokage, then let's get a few things straight."

"I'm incredibly excited to learn where this is going," Hound said mildly.

Iruka scowled at him, voice hardening a little. "I am going to figure out what is going on here," he said, blunt and a little fierce. "If it's at all possible, I want to get you out of here. But I can't — I'm not going to — shirk my other duties in the meantime."

"Other duties," Hound echoed. He didn't quite sound derogatory, but it was close.

"Yes, other duties," Iruka snapped. "I may not be ANBU, but the work I do is important. And if I don't do it, gods know no one else will." Not to mention that he was currently teaching his very first class. He wanted to do right by them, and he did know how important his work was to Konoha, but he was also well aware that if the fucked up too badly his very first time out of the gate, he'd be setting himself up for a very, very boring and disappointing career.

"Of course," Hound said sweetly. "Far be it from me to delay the education of Konoha's next generation."

Iruka's scowl got far fiercer, and he opened his mouth to snap back a retort when Hound raised a hand. It was rude and presumptive, but despite himself, Iruka stopped, teeth clenched and arms folded.

"I understand our options are limited," he said, and even with as much of an ass as he was being, Iruka could detect a note of grudging honesty underneath the tightly-leashed frustration in Hound's voice. "Just remember, the sooner we learn what's going on, the sooner we won't have to deal with one another anymore. Won't that be nice, sensei?"

"Believe me," Iruka muttered, already turning away. "I'm not going to forget."

—

—

Iruka's assumption, as he lay in his bed that night and processed the ridiculous turn his life had taken, was that the broken teacups had been something of a cry for help. Until Iruka had picked up the tsuba, he hadn't been able to see Hound, or reliably hear him; while he was invisible, Hound had no way of really interacting with the outside world, and certainly not with other people. It made sense that he'd figure out some way of attracting attention, though Iruka was still irritated that the method he'd chosen had resulted in breaking his belongings. Couldn't he have just written words on the mirror in blood, or something, like a normal ghost/not-ghost/victim of an unknown jutsu? Still, he understood. Smashing a cup was dramatic and attention-grabbing. It was hard to miss. Now that Iruka could see him — he peeked over his shoulder to where Hound was resolutely slumped against the wall on the other side of the bedroom; it seemed that whatever he was, he did still need rest — surely they could avoid any further material possessions meeting an untimely demise.

He woke the next morning to Hound staring at him, his dog-faced mask pointed directly at Iruka's sleeping form, which was... well, not the absolute creepiest thing he'd ever woken up to, but certainly well up the list. (Once, on a mission, he'd woken up to a spider summon — a spider summon! Who thought that was a good idea? — not three inches from his nose. The thing had been the size of a large dog. He'd like to see Hound beat that.) Neither of them spoke as Iruka went about his normal morning preparations, and Hound at least shifted his stare while Iruka dressed, which made it feel a bit less aggressive. It wasn't until Iruka was preparing to leave the apartment to head to the Academy that his brain caught up with all of the ridiculous developments of the past twenty-four hours, and he paused in the doorway.

There was no reason to think Hound was tied to the apartment, was there? At first he'd thought it was something to do with the apartment, sure, but now it seemed fairly clear it was the tsuba that was the key. So, as long as he kept the tsuba on, he'd still be able to see Hound — but would Hound be able to come with him? After all, if he wasn't trapped here, why wouldn't he have left already, rather than staying in a random apartment with a random Academy sensei? He glanced back over his shoulder, and Hound tilted his head.

"Why don't you just go ahead and leave and we'll see if it works, rather than dithering about it," Hound said, and Iruka bristled. Was he that easy to read, or was there some sort of ANBU mind-reading jutsu? Maybe one of the Yamanaka had —

Or maybe standing there in his doorway gripping the tsuba, which he hadn't even realized he was doing, was a bit obvious.

Iruka grit his teeth and stepped over the threshold, then, after a half-second's pause, kept walking until he reached the end of the hallway. When he stopped, Hound was there, just behind him, gaze steadily turned in his direction. Iruka nodded at him, resolved to having a ride-along at work for the foreseeable future, and set off.

His class was chattering noisily as he walked in the door, though they were mostly all in their seats, which was an improvement from the start of term. They also settled down fairly quickly once the lesson began, though Iruka knew well enough that that wouldn't last, and he almost managed to forget that there was anything out of the ordinary about the situation until he was halfway through his lecture about chakra pathways and a voice said, "I remember this being much more practical."

It made him stumble in the middle of a sentence, which was bad enough, but out of instinct he glanced back over his shoulder — well, glared over his shoulder, more to the point.

Glared, as far as his students could tell, at the blackboard.

He realized what he was doing quickly and turned back around, clearing his throat as though he'd merely lost his train of thought. None of the students looked like they thought he'd lost his brain, though a few were still looking at the blackboard as though they thought he might know something they didn't, but behind him, Hound was laughing, the bastard — low chuckles that grated at Iruka's nerves. And he couldn't even say anything, because that really would make his students think he'd gone crazy. He just had to try his best to ignore it.

For the entire rest of the day.

Hound did not relent.

And that was only Monday. On Tuesday, Hound behaved during class, but began a running litany of inane commentary throughout Iruka's shift at the mission desk — which might have been fine, if Iruka had been able to talk back, but having the constant stream of deadpan snark in his ear while trying to do his job and not even being able to ask Hound to shut up, seeing as no one else could see him, was a form of torture he almost felt he should recommend to T&I. On Wednesday, Iruka didn't even make it out the door; he barely made it out of bed, in fact, seeing as how he immediately tripped over his table when he tried. Hound had taken the liberty of moving around all of his furniture while he was asleep. Thursday was something Iruka initially thought he could handle: Hound simply stood in front of every person Iruka was talking to, so that he had to hold his conversations with him instead. But fighting the instinct to lean around Hound to get a proper look at the other party was harder than he expected, and while not being able to see their facial expressions thankfully didn't lead to any awkward situations, it did make him feel like he was missing half the context for any given statement.

Friday, though, was by far the worst. From the moment Iruka stumbled into the kitchen to scrape together his breakfast, on his commute, throughout his entire workday — Academy and mission desk — and all the way home, including a trip to get groceries, Hound decided to regale him with what might charitably be called a story. It took a while for Iruka to recognize it, but by mid-morning he finally remembered where he'd heard the character names before: Icha Icha Paradise, unless he was very much mistaken. He'd never read it, per se, but Kotetsu and Izumo had acted some of it out drunk one time, though unfortunately that experience, which had been hilarious at the time, especially through the haze of alcohol, was now going to be tainted forever by the fresher memory of having smut recited at him all fucking day, including while he was trying to teach children, by a smugly self-satisfied piece of shit ANBU who Iruka couldn't even scream at until he finally, finally, finally got home.

Slamming his front door shut was probably hell on the hinges or something, but it was very, very satisfying. Iruka would repair the damn thing himself if his landlord complained.

He wheeled around to face Hound right there in his tiny little genkan, drawing himself up to his full height — unfortunately still a bit shorter than Hound, since towering over him would have been incredibly satisfying in that moment — and reveling in the feeling of saying, at long last, "Fuck you."

"My, sensei, I hope you never use that kind of language with the children," Hound said. He was amused, damn him. He was lucky Iruka couldn't actually see the smirk that was no doubt plastered over his face under that stupid mask, or things would really get ugly.

"That kind of language?" Iruka exploded, shoving himself even further into Hound's personal space. He half-expected Hound to step back, not out of intimidation so much as a desire to keep some space between them, but he didn't, allowing Iruka to get so close they were practically nose to nose. Well, nose to porcelain, at any rate. "You were reciting porn all day!"

"The little ones couldn't hear me," Hound said mildly. "That was for your ears only, sensei."

"My—" Iruka cut himself off, angrily swallowing the tirade that wanted to come steaming out. This wasn't worth it, he told himself. Hound, clearly, found pissing him off enjoyable, or he wouldn't have kept doing it, and Iruka wasn't going to indulge him for even a second longer. He clenched his fists and took a long, harsh breath in through his nose, then forced himself to let it out, slowly. Only once he was able to keep his anger on a bit of a tighter leash did he say, "I've had a long week. I'm going to go take a very nice bath. And you are going to leave me the hell alone for a while."

Hound didn't respond, not that Iruka really gave him a chance to. He pushed past him in the direction of the bathroom, refusing to spend any more time or energy on the annoying bastard.

This apartment being what it was, the bathroom wasn't exactly luxurious, but there was a tub large enough to soak comfortably, at least. And Iruka had never felt more ready for a long, peaceful, quiet, solitary bath.

He slammed the door shut behind him, choosing not to think about whether or not that would even really work on a ghost or chakra echo or whatever the fuck kind of metaphysical concept Hound turned out to be. While he waited for the tub to fill, steam starting to billow up from the hot water pouring out of the tap, he dug through his belongings until he turned up the few fancy bath products he covetously hoarded for days like this one. Well, not exactly like this one — there had never before been a day quite like the one he'd just had — but the point remained. There was sandalwood-scented oil, and salts that turned the water a pale, milky color, and, as a finishing touch, bubble liquid that made his skin feel softer than anything he'd ever experienced. Iruka lit candles around the perimeter of the tub, too; he figured he might as well really go all in if he was going to.

He started stripping out of his clothes efficiently and throwing them in the general direction of the door, mostly just interested in getting into the water; he didn't have even close to enough energy to fold them neatly right now. But when he peeled off his undershirt, he paused, because somehow he'd almost forgotten about the tsuba.

Its weight had been a constant presence over the last week. Not a comforting presence, certainly, but familiar. Iruka wasn't normally one for any kind of jewelry, but he'd gotten used to wearing it quickly and barely even noticed it was there.

He very deliberately lifted it over his head and set it on the counter, just to the side of the tub. He needed space, dammit, and he needed to wind down, and this was the only way he could think to guarantee that Hound wasn't going to pop in whenever he felt like it and wind him right back up again.

Stepping into the bath was heaven, and Iruka didn't bother trying to hold in the contented sigh that gusted from his lungs when he slowly lowered himself all the way into the water. The tips of his hair dipped into the bubbles, and he laid his head back against the back of the tub with a slight thunk. The room was dim except for the candles and the little bit of light trickling in through the window, and filled with deliciously-scented steam, and the water was perfect, the heat working its way into his muscles and soothing the day's — hell, who was he kidding, the week's — tension away slowly but surely.

Iruka's eyes slipped closed, and he let his mind drift for long minutes as he soaked. It wasn't like he didn't have enough stressors in his life already — most Academy teachers seemed to go gray by the time they were thirty, and working the mission desk wasn't exactly a cakewalk either, when you considered the nonsense his fellow shinobi tried to pull sometimes. Adding in a mysterious ANBU who seemed to find nothing so entertaining as watching Iruka's face flush with anger and his blood pressure rise, well... He'd more than earned this bath, to say the least.

A tiny flicker of guilt plagued him at the thought, though, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it. Hound was an annoying bastard, yes, and Iruka certainly wouldn't have rented this damn apartment if he'd known Hound came with it, but Iruka couldn't quite shake the thought that his position wasn't the easiest, either. Based on everything he'd said, it seemed like he'd been entirely trapped before Iruka came along. Whatever his connection to the tsuba actually was, it was keeping him here, invisible and unable to interact with others. Not that there would have even been people to interact with, really, in a vacant apartment. Hell, Hound didn't even seem to know how long he'd been here, and that thought alone was terrifying. What if it had been years since the last time he'd actually spoken to another person, and he didn't even realize it? Iruka would probably act a little strangely under those conditions, too.

No, that was a lie — he would have gone completely insane a week in. The fact that Hound hadn't, and at worst seemed inclined to be a bit of an ass, probably said a lot about him.

And now the one person Hound could communicate with was a complete stranger who'd made his general frustration with these circumstances fairly clear, Iruka thought with an additional swell of guilt. Not that he felt like he should have been bowing and scraping or dropped everything in his life to figure out what was going on, but he'd been fairly confrontational this whole time himself — though Hound had given him some reasons to, to be fair. And while he didn't really know where to start figuring out what was linking Hound and the tsuba, he hadn't really gone out of his way to find out, and instead had just tried to march through his week as though everything was normal, when that very obviously wasn't the case.

So, yes, Hound was an ass. And, yes, he'd seemed to take great pleasure in trampling all over Iruka's last nerve today. But he could still probably spare a bit more sympathy than he has done, if for no other reason than because, the more the thought about it, the more he wondered if Hound wasn't being such a little shit because he was frustrated and lonely and upset — not all that different than how one of Iruka's students might act when they were feeling that way, which might be a slightly less than flattering way to think about a grown ANBU, but it wasn't like Iruka was going to say it to Hound's face.

It wasn't that he didn't think he was justified in getting frustrated, or that Hound owed him an apology — he absolutely did, and he'd challenge anyone to put up with someone hell-bent on annoying them with no way to shut them up for an entire week and not get a bit pissed off. Or a lot pissed off. But all the same, he thought, blinking his eyes open to stare up at the ceiling with a slightly furrowed brow, it probably wouldn't go amiss for him to apologize, too, and try to approach Hound with a bit more patience and understanding going forward.

He looked over at the tsuba, sitting innocently on the counter, and felt a much more acute swell of guilt. In hindsight, taking it off — especially without warning Hound beforehand, when he hadn't taken it off all week — seemed... well, downright cruel. That was Hound's one and only connection to another human being, at least as far as either of them knew. It was the only thing keeping him from being completely isolated, trapped able to hear and see and speak but not be seen or heard or even acknowledged. And Iruka, angry and tired and not quite thinking about it in those terms, had taken that away.

"Hound," he called out quietly, assuming the other man was there even if he couldn't see him, and reached out for the tsuba. He closed his eyes for just a second before his fingers curled around it, not quite sure how to feel about exactly how familiar its smooth metal felt against his skin.

And then he opened his eyes, and found Hound in his bathtub.

It wouldn't be inaccurate to call the noise Iruka made a shriek, and he scrambled as far back against the side of the tub as he could, reflexively covering himself even though the water was milky and opaque enough that you couldn't see much anyway. And, to be fair, Hound seemed to be very resolutely looking at the ceiling, the entire mask tipped upright so that Iruka could mostly only see his chin and a few little slivers of pale skin around the edges of the mask, which seemed to be blushing a bright, brilliant red.

"What are you doing?" Iruka snapped, feeling his anger sweep back with a vengeance. He didn't drop the tsuba, though — if for no other reason than because he wanted to be able to see Hound when he was yelling at him.

"It wasn't my idea, sensei," Hound replied stiffly and swiftly, not moving a muscle. "Believe me, Icha Icha is one thing, but this—" He cut himself off, but Iruka could almost swear the little bits of him that were visible turned an even darker read. Still, the part that really made Iruka's hackles start to drop was his very heartfelt, "I'm sorry."

"What do you mean, it isn't your fault?" Iruka asked, but though he was still tense and his voice came out quite guarded, he took a deep breath and forced himself to be patient, rather than assuming the worst. It was admittedly a little difficult — he wasn't in the habit of giving the benefit of the doubt to men who followed him into the bath, unless they asked first — but even through his shock and outrage, Hound's downright scandalized reaction was almost funny.

"Well, we haven't really tested it, so this is only a guess," Hound said, "but evidence would suggest I'm a lot more tightly bound to the tsuba when you aren't touching it. Physically speaking. I don't have as much freedom to..."

"Not join me in the bath uninvited?" Iruka suggested helpfully.

Hound grit his teeth so hard it was audible, which was frankly both impressive and concerning. "Yes."

Iruka hummed. "And since I wasn't touching it, you couldn't exactly tell me what was happening."

"Yes."

Iruka watched him for a moment. He was still sitting there, frozen, staring up at the ceiling, and his uniform — gods, he was still fully clothed, and all those layers of ANBU armor probably weren't all that comfortable when wet.

"You're going to give yourself a crick in the neck," he said after a long moment, glancing down at the surface of the water and running a finger across, creating ripples. "Look, we're both shinobi, we've seen worse. Just — don't stare, I'll kick you out if you're a pervert about it."

Slowly, as though he wasn't quite sure Iruka was serious, Hound tilted his head back down until they were looking at one another normally, if anything about this situation could be described as normal. Part of Iruka's mind was begging him to just get out of the damn bath, and though he wasn't entirely sure why, he resisted. Maybe Hound really had succeeded in driving him all the way around the bend; maybe it was just that he had spent some time and effort getting this bath exactly how he liked it, and he didn't want that to go to waste, not to mention that all this good-smelling crap is expensive, and he rarely splurged on it given his teacher's salary; or maybe... Maybe it was something else.

Maybe, Iruka thought, surprised with himself but not quite willing to lie to himself, it had something to do with the way Hound had so carefully not been looking, and the bright red flush that had peeked out from around his armor. Maybe it was something about the contrast between Hound, and all the feelings he'd worked so hard to inspire in Iruka over the past week, and their current surroundings — soft, quiet, dimly lit, warm water splashing around their skin. Maybe it was that that contrast made something curl up tight in Iruka's chest, no matter how much he wanted to pretend otherwise. Maybe it was that he had some self-destructive instinct buried deep in his psyche that wanted to lean into that feeling, like pressing on a bruise, no matter how inappropriate it was.

Maybe the reason didn't quite matter, because regardless of the particularities, the fact was that Iruka stayed in the bath, and Hound made no move to leave, either.

He slipped the tsuba back around his neck, partly so that he wouldn't drop it in the water and partly just to have something to do with his hands. Maybe Iruka had gotten somewhat better at reading him, or maybe it was just that he was off-balance at the moment — which was fair enough — but the way Hound relaxed when Iruka did that was obvious, and it made him feel like a complete heel. He bit his lip, then lowered his gaze slightly, not wanting to stare directly into the expressionless ANBU mask for the rest of this conversation.

"I'm sorry," he said, quietly, and felt like even more of an asshole when Hound's surprise was nearly as obvious as his relief had been a moment ago. "I shouldn't have taken it off, I... You've been doing a damn good job of driving me crazy all week, and I let my temper get the best of me. I shouldn't have. I can't even really imagine what this situation must be like for you — I don't think I'd be doing half as well in your situation — and I didn't think, but I should have. I swear I won't do that to you again."

If Hound had been surprised at the beginning of that little speech, by the end he seemed downright shock. Iruka was struck by two flights of self-indulgent fantasy simultaneously: one that begged to know what expression Hound was wearing right now under that stupid, stupid mask, and one that wondered how often people actually apologized for mistreating him, if this was his reaction when it happened. Perhaps not that many.

After a moment, just when the silence was starting to drag on slightly too long, Hound visibly shook himself and shoved his surprise aside. He inclined his head a little, mask slightly askew.

"I appreciate you apologizing," he said quietly. "I owe you one as well."

Oh, that tone of voice was dangerous. This setting, the bath and the candles and all of it, really was starting to go to Iruka's head.

"I don't know how long, exactly, I've been — in that thing," Hound said, with a small gesture towards the tsuba. "But however long it is, I can safely say it's the longest I've been between missions since I took this mask. It's — hell, practically the longest I've been in one place since then, except for deep-cover missions. To be blunt, sensei, I have no idea what to do with myself."

"I don't think anyone would," Iruka said quietly, and Hound inclined his head for a moment, then shrugged.

"Regardless," he said, "I haven't handled it well."

Iruka nodded slowly. There are dozens of different responses to that trying to crawl up and out of his throat, but none of them felt quite right, so he let the conversation lapse into silence instead, and Hound seemed equally content with that.

Eventually, the water cooled, and they climbed out of the bath — Hound first, his armor dripping onto the tile, and then Iruka behind him, wrapping himself immediately in a slightly threadbare towel. Still, neither of them spoke, but it didn't feel like they needed to.

As Iruka laid down that night, he finally let himself think the dramatic, self-indulgent thought that had been plaguing him, by that point, for hours: their relationship, whatever it was, was completely different than it had been that morning, or that afternoon, or when he got in the bath. And, perhaps even worse: he didn't quite know where things were going to go from this point on, but in a complete reversal of his previous feelings, he suspected he was going to like it.

—

—

"I think I'm going to ask Sarutobi-sama some questions about this," Iruka said the next day, staring down at the tsuba where he'd lifted it out from under his shirt.

Hound, across the room perusing Iruka's bookshelf, looked over at him, and not for the first time, Iruka had the very strong mental impression of a raised eyebrow that he couldn't actually see. "I thought we had agreed that that was a very bad plan," Hound said mildly.

Iruka shook his head and settled himself at the table, cross-legged. After a moment of hesitation, Hound set down the book he'd been glancing through and came to join him at the other side of the table, which almost definitely shouldn't have felt as intimate as it did.

"Believe me, I haven't suddenly decided I want to get labeled a missing nin. I'm not going to tell him everything," Iruka explained. He tapped the tsuba with one finger. "But I had a thought about this."

"Well, they do say there's a first time for everything," Hound said, and Iruka rolled his eyes at him and even scowled a little, but there wasn't any heat behind it for either of them. It was a nice feeling, being able to tease and be teased without feeling like he was about to blow a gasket. Who knew.

"You said your last mission was in Land of Waves. That's the last thing you remember?" Iruka raised an eyebrow.

Hound nodded with a thoughtful little hum.

"From what I know," Iruka said, "which I'll acknowledge isn't a lot, but still — something like this might be inscribed with a clan symbol. It might even be an heirloom that's gotten lost and found its way to us. I don't have any resources on the clan seals of Wave Country, though, and I wouldn't really know where to start."

"But the Hokage would," Hound finished, inclining his head. "Not a bad idea. Though I wonder, are you going to just waltz in and ask him?"

Iruka blinked at him for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed. Right — Hound hadn't seen him visit the Hokage yet. This was going to be interesting.

They went the very next day, Iruka's standing appointment to join Sarutobi-sama for tea and go and conversation. It was very, very difficult to tamp down the overwhelming wave of smugness he felt at Hound's resigned bafflement when the Hokage greeted him with a warm "Iruka, how are you?" and a somewhat grandfatherly touch on his arm, leading him into the room.

"You've completed your first week with your own class," Sarutobi said once the two of them were settled in his office with a steaming pot of tea between them. "How did you find it?"

"Exhausting," Iruka said with a slight laugh. It was the truest and most succinct way he could think of to describe the past week — and he was sure it would have been true even if he hadn't had Hound to deal with as well, though perhaps not quite as true.

"That, I don't doubt," Sarutobi agreed with a twinkle in his eye. He leaned forward slightly to pour a cup of tea. "But I don't doubt that you'll continue to do an excellent job with the students, either."

Iruka barely had time to say "Thank you, Hokage-sama," and smile before Hound made an almost disgruntled sound, lurking over his right shoulder and staring at the Hokage like he'd never seen the man before.

Not glancing back at him and only watching from his peripheral vision was hard enough, but then immediately Iruka had to bite his cheek hard to keep from laughing, because Hound chose that moment to wonderingly say, "Are you friends?"

"I'm not certain that's true, but I hope so," Iruka said, responding to both of them, though he could only hope Hound realized that was what he was doing.

Iruka let the conversation wander away for a while, sipping his own cup of tea and giving a carefully edited, non-Hound retelling of his week, his students, how he felt about the class, what he wanted to teach next. He listened, too, as Sarutobi discussed a few things he'd experienced in the past week — not a lot of detail, of course, because Iruka wasn't nearly qualified to hear the nitty-gritty details of what the Hokage did on a weekly basis, but just enough that he felt simultaneously that he was trusted, at least within the limits of his security clearance, and as though Sarutobi was trying to teach him, slowly but surely, how the village worked on a fundamental level. Iruka hadn't yet quite figured out why the Hokage seemed determined to do that — it was a more recent development in these little meetings — but he certainly couldn't say he minded. He found it fascinating.

Still, it wasn't what he'd hoped to discuss today, so after a while, when there was a lull in the conversation, he schooled his expression to hopefully convey that he'd just remembered something and said, "Oh, there was actually a topic I wanted to ask you about today. It's a bit of an odd one."

Sarutobi's interest was immediate and genuine. "Please, go on."

Iruka carefully reached under his collar to pull the tsuba from around his neck, making sure to not lose contact with it as he did. "As I was unpacking in my new apartment, I found this," he said, holding it out for inspection but keeping it in just close enough to his body to hopefully discourage taking it from his hand. "I thought — well, honestly, the previous renter died, and I wondered if I could return it to his family, but the landlord said there were no next of kin. But I wondered if perhaps it could be identified based on the pattern. I know tsuba are decorated with clan symbols sometimes, and I thought this one looked like it might be from Wave Country, but I couldn't be sure."

"Fascinating," Sarutobi murmured, leaning over to peer more closely at the tsuba. He straightened after only a moment, nodding slightly. "I believe you're right about its origin — wait a moment."

Iruka exchanged a quick glance with Hound as Sarutobi stood and crossed the room to a densely-packed shelf against one wall. He didn't want to get ahead of himself, of course, but he felt excitement bubbling through him nevertheless, and he quickly stood and moved to join the Hokage where he stood.

Sarutobi was already pulling out a book with a worn but once-ornate leather cover, and he started flipping through it with purpose even as Iruka stood there, shifting his weight ever-so-slightly from foot to foot.

"Let's see," Sarutobi murmured, paging through. "Not only the pattern, but the shaping of the tsuba can be very particular to certain clans, so I'd expect we can find —" He paused on a page that Iruka couldn't quite see, the book tilted away and the pages old and slightly faded, and for a long minute, the Hokage was completely silent. Still without saying a word, he looked up at Iruka with a contemplative set to his brow.

"What the hell did you find, old man?" Hound muttered, and Iruka was too busy feeling suddenly nervous to even get irritated him for referring to the Hokage so disrespectfully.

He cleared his throat slightly, and, as politely as he could manage, asked, "Did you find something interesting?"

Sarutobi studied him for another long moment, his mouth turning down very slightly at the corners. Then, without a word, he passed the book to Iruka.

Iruka wasn't sure what he expected to find when he took the book and bent his head to look down at the page Sarutobi had it opened to, but his eyes went wide as soon as he scanned enough of the words for the meaning to click. Of course. Actually, he probably should have expected this on some level, not because it made any sense, but because given the way everything else about this situation had developed over the past week or so, this might as well happen.

"Miura," Iruka said, tracing the clan name with one finger of the hand that clutched the tsuba, while the other held the book. Sarutobi nodded slowly, and when Iruka briefly glanced up, his expression was knowing. They'd never talked much about Iruka's family history, at least not much beyond his parents, but he supposed it wasn't too surprising that he'd know a thing or to by this point.

Hound, on the other hand, didn't seem to know what to make of it. He leaned over Iruka's shoulder to peer at the book, then glanced up at him. "This doesn't mean anything to me. Why does it mean something to you?"

"My grandmother's family," Iruka said, once again trying to speak for Hound's benefit without seeming too obvious or strange — he tried to sound as though he were just thinking out loud about it, rater than answering a direct question which no one but him had heard.

Hound's surprise was palpable, but he said nothing. Iruka didn't speak, either, but his mind whirred as he glanced back and forth between the tsuba and the book, the page detailing the insignia and common symbols of the Miura clan, their current clan head at the time the text had been written, their location in Wave Country... Iruka's father had been raised in Konoha, and growing up, he'd rarely met his grandparents, who were now long dead. He couldn't help but think that maybe if he'd been a little more familiar with them, he might have recognized the design of the tsuba right away. If he knew a bit more about his heritage on that side of the family, then maybe...

He felt his spine straighten as something clicked into place in his mind. Of course. He felt completely stupid for not having thought of it before, because there was something he knew about tsubas and Wave Country and the Miura clan, something he remembered his father describing to him as a small child. Granted, he hadn't had cause to think about it for well over a decade at this point, but still.

He wanted to shove the book back into Sarutobi's hands and run out of the room immediately, back to his apartment with all of his own books and supplies waiting for him, so that he could test the theory he'd just formed and been instantly convinced of. But, of course, that would raise several questions, so he forced himself to relax, forced himself to smile and hand the book back with no more than his thanks and a vague statement about reaching out to some Miura relatives to track down the tsuba's owner, not that he had any relatives to speak of, really.

The Hokage may not have been entirely fooled by his attempt to play it cool — though hopefully he thought Iruka's distraction was only due to his father's family line randomly appearing in his apartment, which, to be fair, in a sense it was, it's just that that wasn't even close to the whole story — and Hound certainly wasn't convinced. But no matter how many times Hound hissed in his ear — "What was that? You thought of something. Tell me," as though he weren't well aware that Iruka had already pretty much exhausted his ability to speak with him when there was someone else in the room — he forced himself to stay put for the time being, to continue his conversation with the Hokage even though he felt like he was practically sitting on his hands and bouncing with the urge to immediately get up and run home.

Finally, finally, the Hokage said, "Forgive me, Iruka, but there are a few things I need to see to this afternoon," and Iruka all but jumped to his feet.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama," he said. "I always appreciate getting to speak to you like this." And, of course, he has more to thank him for today than ever, but Sarutobi merely smiled and waved him off, and Iruka smiled back and bowed slightly before walking out of the room at a carefully controlled, normal, reasonable pace.

As soon as he hit the street level outside of Hokage Tower, though, he was all but sprinting back to his apartment. As soon as they got up on the rooftops, where they were less likely to be overhead — normally Iruka rolled his eyes a bit at the drama of roof-hopping unless you were running really late for something, but it certainly felt appropriate now — Hound started back up his barrage of questions, which had mercifully ceased once he realized Iruka wasn't going to answer with Sarutobi there.

"So," Hound said, moving fluidly at Iruka's side, "do you have any idea why I ended up tied to your grandmother's tsuba?"

"I don't think it was hers," Iruka replied, rolling his eyes. "But no, I don't. The best I can guess is that it's a coincidence." He paused, mouth twisting downward with how unsatisfactory that answer was, but after a momentary grimace he said, "I do think I know how it happened, though."

"I thought you might," Hound said. Something in his voice almost made Iruka want to shiver.

"I'll have to look it up to be sure," he said, instead of giving in and reacting the way he wanted to to the satisfaction in Hound's voice. "I have the right book at home."

They sped their pace by mutual unspoken agreement, and Hound said, "Give me the basics."

"It's a seal," Iruka explained a little breathlessly. They were so close to his apartment now, and he felt like his books were all but calling out to him. Cutting Hound off before he could actually ask the question that was so obviously primed on his lips, Iruka added, "Not any kind of seal most in Konoha are familiar with. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only one who's ever heard of it. Not — it's nothing secret, it's just..." He paused, primarily because they were close enough now that he could flash through rapid hand signs to bring down his wards and traps. He all but tumbled through his front door within a minute, flinging those same wards right back up with a few more half-gestured hand signs, already on a beeline for his corner bookshelf.

"Not secret..." Hound prompted after a moment, his tone clearly impatient but with a tiny thread of amusement clearly running through it, too, which Iruka actively chose not to stop and examine too closely. He didn't answer, either, just grabbed a familiar book, turned to a not-so-familiar page, and read intently for long seconds. A little surprisingly, Hound did nothing further to distract him or interrupt, only watching intently as Iruka read. He didn't even try to read over Iruka's shoulder, which he'd honestly expected, especially since he'd done so in the Hokage's office. Not that now was the time, but that sent a little thrill through him; he knew he was definitely over-interpreting things, but it felt like Hound trusting him in this situation, putting faith in his knowledge and expertise.

Or, at least, in his ability to speed-read dusty old sealing tomes.

After what felt like a small eternity, Iruka finally, finally found the specific passage he'd been looking for. He'd never felt so grateful for his ability to half-remember random bits and bobs from books he read several years ago as when he turned to hold the book out toward Hound, pointing decisively at the passage in question.

"Here," he said. "It's — my grandmother's family line, the Miura, they developed this seal as a way to impart memories and knowledge from the owner of a blade onto the tsuba, so that it could be passed down along with the weapon. It's not something I've ever seen used before, and I've never heard of anything like using it to bind an entire person — if I'm understanding, it was supposed to be more like... a snapshot, a recording. Not sentient. But it fits too well, right?"

He paused, suddenly aware of the way the words were gushing out of him, and flushed a little. It had probably been ten years since he turned on the nerd like that in front of another person — since he was at the Academy as a student, not a teacher. But Hound didn't say anything about it, his eyes still tracking swiftly across the page. He had to be re-reading the passage at this point, Iruka thought, or maybe re-re-reading it, even. But he wasn't making a sound, wasn't giving any indication that Iruka was even in the room with him still, his attention entirely focused on the book.

Eventually, slowly, he looked up, his gaze clouded but steady. "It fits," he said, in a serious, no-nonsense sort of tone that was entirely different from the flippancy that had come to characterize their relationship. "But why hasn't anyone else been able to detect it? It wasn't just that it wasn't recognized — no one could tell there was a seal there at all, I'm sure of it, or ANBU would have taken it when they cleared the apartment out."

Iruka frowned. It was a good point, or at least a decent one — he still wasn't sure how ANBU had missed the spare mask left behind in the apartment, so he supposed it was possible they'd simply missed the seal on the tsuba as well — and it definitely prickled against his in-built sense of paranoia. If nothing else, he certainly hadn't noticed a seal up until this point, and he'd been up close and personal with the tsuba for a solid week now. If he was going to, he'd have expected that he would have by now.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I guess you'd want it to be invisible if the seal was meant as a trap, but I have no idea how they would have done it." He thought about it, then said, "Let me at least see if I can find it now that I know what I'm looking for."

He waited for Hound's nod, even though the tsuba was around his neck, safely replaced after he'd taken it off in the Hokage's office. Only once he'd received tacit permission, though, did he reach for it, grasping the skin-warmed metal and pulling the long chain from around his neck for the first time since he'd put it there.

Hound didn't say a word, but he shivered, just slightly, when Iruka's fist closed around the tsuba this time. It seemed they both felt that something was slightly but noticeably different about the situation now — somehow even more intimate, not some completely unexpected connection with a near-stranger. Never mind that he'd spent more time with said near-stranger in the past week than he had with most other people in a month; Iruka still didn't even know his name, and likely never would.

He shoved that thought away forcefully and looked down at the tsuba instead of contemplating it, checking it over in more detail than he had since the very first time he laid eyes on it. The shape of it was so familiar now, and the metal was warm from sitting against his skin, but there was nothing on first glance, or second glance, or third glance, or fourth glance that seemed to indicate a seal — or anything else, for that matter, other than plain, dead iron. No hints of chakra, no odd carvings or markings or discoloration that wasn't obviously normal wear, no places where the metal seemed cool when it should have been warm or vice versa. Nothing.

Iruka frowned and turned it over in his hands again, trying to force his thoughts to slow and force himself to think things through rather than letting frustration build, though it wasn't easy. Thank heaven Hound was staying quiet and letting him work, at least.

He listed off in his mind all of the basic or straightforward ways someone might have concealed a seal, and then checked the tsuba one more time for each of them — it couldn't hurt to be thorough — but found himself entirely unsurprised when none of them revealed anything. If it had been that easy, he would have caught it before now, or at least he certainly hoped so. Now it was time to get creative. If only, he thought a little sardonically, there was some inherent knowledge of how to work this thing passed down in his blood...

He paused for a moment, hands stilling on the tsuba. Well. There was a thought. Not a great one, necessarily, because the combination of blood and chakra and seals could get pretty messy pretty fast if you didn't know what you were doing, but Iruka tried to remind himself that he did know what he was doing. At least mostly. And it wasn't like he was going to be able to just sit there and logic it out. Unfortunately, sealing, and especially seal-breaking, was a discipline where the the solution to a thorny problem was very often "throw things at it and see what sticks."

Without allowing himself to think too hard about it, he reached for a kunai and smoothly cut into the pad of his thumb. He didn't miss Hound's slight inhale when Iruka firmly pressed his blood into the tsuba, but he didn't look up, gaze fixed intently on where the blood and metal were meeting.

"Is this because of your family connection?" Hound asked quietly, and Iruka shook his head. But he didn't get a chance to answer out loud, because his blood started to really sink into the crevices of the tsuba and have exactly the effect he'd hoped it would.

The seal didn't blink suddenly into existence, and it didn't appear only where his blood touched; instead, it started in the center of the tsuba, where Iruka had pressed his thumb, and then spread slowly outward, growing more visible with every passing moment. It was very rounded and organic, the shape of it indicating as much as anything else that it was from the Land of Waves, and it was without a doubt the same seal Iruka had found in his book.

"It doesn't have anything to do with blood relations," he said, looking up at Hound triumphantly. "Anyone's blood would do. This would have ben how the seal was triggered initialy — what bound you to it. You must have bled on it."

"Entirly possible," Hound murmured, then tilted his head. "Why aren't you coming to join me, then, if blood activates it?"

"Because you're already tied to it," Iruka said. "It's full. Only one occupant at a time, so my blood just made it visible rather than activating it."

"And you knew it would do that?"

Ah. Well. Iruka shrugged, a bit sheepish, and Hound shook his head slightly, but thankfully moved on rather than trying to lecture him for being reckless.

"Putting that aside," Iruka said hastily, "this is excellent news. Now that I know what it is and where it is, it shouldn't be hard to break it. This seal isn't designed to be malicious — it's supposed to last until it's no longer needed, but it's not designed to keep anyone trapped against thir will."

"We have been due for some good luck," Hound said.

That was certainly true, but Iruka hadn't given him the full breakdown yet. He bit his lip. "There was one other thing I think we should consider."

Hound stilled, the weight of his attention an obvious request to keep talking.

"I can break the seal," Iruka stressed, waving the tsuba a little for emphasis. "And, in theory, you should return to your physical body once I do so. But, well, I don't know that this has ever happened before, and if it has, the effect wasn't documented anywhere I know of. So that's only a theory. And it also assumes that your body is still... er... in a state you'd want to return to."

They had no idea how long Hound had been trapped, after all. No idea if his physical form had been killed and was decaying, or if he'd been laying somewhere for weeks or months, slowly wasting away. He'd said he was on a deep cover mission — what if his body had been found lying helpless somewhere by enemy nin? Hound couldn't remember, and Iruka didn't have any way to find out.

But even before he was trough speaking, Hound was already nodding.

"Do it," he said. That was all; he didn't add anything so maudlin as I trust you, or even if it doesn't work, this is hardly living anyway, but Iruka found he could almost hear those things hiding underneath the quiet, clipped words. And he couldn't argue — it wasn't that he wanted to get rid of Hound, but even after a week, the idea of going on like this forever seemed insane. Being permanently tethered to another person, unable to interact with the outside world in any real way, unable to go back to his life, assumed dead by anyone he knew and cared about...

Iruka nodded slowly. "Now?" he asked, just to be certain.

"Now," Hound agreed. "I don't have anything better to do. Do you?"

They settled across from one another at the table for what Iruka assumed would be the last time. He brought pens and ink and sealing paper and a couple of books, but he didn't think he'd really need them. The seal was designed to be durable against the natural elements and decay and time, not against being intentionally dismantled by a seals user who understood its construction.

He took a deep breath. He looked up at Hound and allowed himself a moment just to stare. And then, very deliberately, he turned and focused his attention on the tsuba, and he got to work.

As he pressed his chakra into the tsuba and molded it to convince the seal to do what he wanted, the softly curving lines of the seal started to glow a gentle blue, and the further he went, the stronger the glow. Unraveling the outer layers of the seal was easy — they were just designed to help it keep its shape as the tsuba which hosted it was worn and potentially damaged with use. It was the bulk of the seal, just beyond that, that made Iruka nervous, more and more so as he went on — not because of the seal itself, necessarily, but because of the threads of chakra that began to spill out as he carefully unwound the seal. He'd only gotten a few brief glimpses of Hound's chakra, so it wasn't as though he could recognize it entirely by feel, but who else could it belong to? And there was so much — there was practically as much chakra in the first few layers of the seal alone as in Iruka's entire body, though he supposed that was what you could expect, comparing an ANBU to a chuunin Academy teacher.

Carefully, so carefully, he unwound the seal, and each thread of chakra, careful not to interfere or damage them as what amounted to Hound's essence streamed out of the tsuba and... away, out of the apartment. He couldn't say where to for certain — presumably Wave Country, or wherever Hound's actual body was. He tried to tell himself the fact that the chakra was going somewhere and not just dissipating was a good sign, but then he looked up, around halfway through the seal, and found that Hound was... the only word for it was fading. While he'd looked entirely solid before, now he really did look like the ghost Iruka had assumed: transparent, almost flickering, like whatever impression of him — or was it the real him, just taken out of his physical body? — had been here was going back to wherever the rest of him was.

Iruka bent his head back down to his work, his mouth set firmly in a frown. There was no way out but through, at this point.

When he finally finished, the seal pulsed with one last flash of blue light, and then vanished. He was left with just the plain metal of the tsuba — now a bit bloody, but still mostly familiar — clutched in his hand. And, when he finally willed himself to look up from the tsuba, he found exactly what he'd expected on the other side of the table.

Hound was gone.

He'd expected it — hoped for it, even, in a sense. But now he was alone — completely alone, and, come to think of it, this was the first moment he'd actually been completely alone in this apartment. Thought he hadn't realized it at first, Hound had always been there. Suddenly the place seemed altogether too large for one person.

That was a ridiculous thought, he told himself firmly. This was a one-bedroom apartment. He'd always intended to live in it alone. And, besides, it was probably a bad idea to weigh too much mental significance on this experience. It had been a very odd week, and he'd helped a fellow Konoha shinobi with a very odd situation that had required them to cohabitate, in a manner of speaking, for a little while, but that was all it was, and he'd be well served to remember that.

After all, he was almost certainly never going to see Hound again.

It wasn't as though Iruka regularly interacted with ANBU. At most, maybe they'd pass on the street when Hound was out of uniform, but then he'd have no way to recognize him. He'd never even know.

So, really, it was probably better to just forget about this whole experience entirely, other than maybe studying the seal a bit more to find out how it might have contained an entire person's consciousness. That was all he could really expect to take away from the past week — a little bit of intellectual curiosity surrounding a seal used by his father's family. That was normal enough. Certainly nothing to have any lingering emotions other, outside of the interest he felt in studying seals and the satisfaction of a new discovery.

That was the right way to think about it, Iruka decided, and forced himself to stand up from the table, put the tsuba on his bookshelf, and walk away. He'd be better off not ever thinking about Hound again.

—

Iruka couldn't stop thinking about Hound.

He felt like an idiot, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to stop himself jumping at shadows in the corner of his eye whenever he was alone in the apartment — or, in other words, whenever he was home — as though some part of him was hoping that Hound would spontaneously reappear, or, even worse, whipping around every time he caught a glimpse of silver hair in the street or a snatch of a voice that sounded like it just might, maybe, possibly, belong to his missing ANBU.

His, he thought derisively. Hound wasn't his anything, other than having briefly been his roommate, in a manner of speaking. But as the days passed, Iruka couldn't stop looking, and couldn't stop the occaisional little daydreams that crept in around his firm mental walls: running into somenoe in the street and just knowing they were who he was lookin for, Hound coming to his classroom to bother him just like he'd done before, coming home from a shift at the mission desk to find him just sitting casually at the table, reading one of Iruka's books...

It was ridiculous. He barely knew the man, and for most of the time he had known him, he'd thought he was the most annoying person in the entire village. Unfortuantely, that kind of logic did exactly nothing to stop Iruka's subconscious from running amok.

He was so distracted by the inner battle going on between the part of his brain that couldn't stop thinking about Hound and the part that thought that part was a moron that he actually broke a teacup washing up after dinner, the fourth night after he'd released Hound's seal. He stared down at the shards of porcelain in his kitchen sink and couldn't do anything else but sigh.

Hound, he told himself as he cleaned up the broken pieces, wasn't having these kinds of ridiculous thoughts. Hound was — well, he might be dead, actually, but if he wasn't dead, he was likely finishing up his very important deep-cover mission, or maybe making his way back to the village to report in, but he definitely wasn't pining after Iruka, the short-tempered, stubborn schoolteacher he'd found himself inadvertently trapped with. If Hound was thinking of him at all, Iruka told himself very firmly as he put the pieces of his teacup in the garbage, it was to be glad he wasn't stuck with him anymore, or maybe—

There was a knock on the door, and Iruka came very close to breaking the already-broken cup into yet smaller pieces.

He glanced at the clock on the back wall of the kitchen. 8 PM, and it was a weeknight. He certainly wasn't expecting anyone. Come to think of it, a good portion of his social circle was out on missions or would be at work right now. And if it were offical business, though he couldn't imagine why anyone would be coming to him on official business regardless, they likely wouldn't knock at the front door, in full view of Iruka's civilian neighbors.

Stupid, he thought, as he felt an extremely misguided little flair of hope in his chest. Stupid, stupid, stupid, as he made his way from the ktichen to the front door so fast that he forced himself to pause once he got there, so it wouldn't be so obvious how on edge he was. Stupid. It was a neighbor coming to borrow a cup of sugar. It was a messenger from the mission desk asking him to come in. It was a traveling salesman. It was a serial killer. It was—

Fuck. It was Hatake Kakashi.

Not that Iruka had ever so much as spoken to the man — or, well, he hadn't thought so until this moment — but he'd seen him in and out of the mission room, or heard gossip and whispers about him around town. Most Konoha nin knew who he was, if not all.

Several things clicked into place all at once in Iruka's mind, but he just stood there, staring slack-jawed across the threshold at the man who, despite his self-indulgent fantasies, he genuinely hadn't thought he'd ever see again. He felt frozen, rooted to the spot, unable to move or speak or, he thought a little wildly, even breathe. Gods. He had Hatake Kakashi trapped in his apartment as, essentially, a ghost.

For weeks.

If he'd thought he'd ever be able to explain this situation to anyone without sounding completely insane, this would have been the final nail in that coffin.

"Hello, Iruka-sensei," Kakashi asked, and Iruka jumped. Without the ANBU mask, it was so much easier to see the bastard's stupid smug expressions in all their glory. "May I come in?"

There was nothing else for Iruka to do but step aside without a word.

The act of letting Kakashi in and then shutting and locking the door did seem to help reboot his mind, though, and by the time he was trailing after Kakashi as he walked confidently towards the living area, he was frowning, having recovered at least some of his wits.

"You shouldn't be here," he said, steadfastly ignoring the pang of guilt in his chest over how glad he felt that Kakashi was here anyway. It was true, though: he really shouldn't be. "This is as good as telling me who you are, and you know I don't have that kind of clearance. Our asses would both be on the line if someone found out."

Kakashi didn't bother pretending not to understand what Iruka meant, at least, which was nice. But he also didn't agree, only tilting his head and smiling in a way that made his visible eye squint shut and saying, "Maa, sensei, I can't be held responsible for you being clever. I'm just coming to visit a fellow shinobi, there's nothing wrong with that."

Iruka didn't bother pointing out that he and Kakashi have never formally met before, and therefore Kakashi showing up on his doorstep allegedly for visiting purposes was insane without him drawing the now-obvious conclusion that Kakashi is Hound. That was well enough understood by both of them, and he won't belabor the point by calling Kakashi's bluff.

"How are you?" he said instead, after a brief pause. Kakashi certainly looked physically healthy — if there had been any negative impacts from his body being unceremoniously separated from his consciousness, apparently they weren't anything a few days of being reunited couldn't fix. "Is it good to be... er... back to work?"

"Mm, it has its ups and downs," Kakashi replied, slouching with his hands in his pockets and one eyebrow raised. "I have to admit, I liked my little vacation."

"Vacation," Iruka scoffed, and Kakashi laughed, a quiet little chuckle.

"I'd say it counts as time off work," he said. He paused, though, and grew a little more serious, tilting his head and pinning Iruka with a steady gaze. "I do have to thank you for being the one to figure out what was happening, and for breaking the seal."

Iruka felt himself flush and prayed his skin tone concealed it, at least a little. "You're welcome," he said, scratching at the corner of scar in embarrassment. His eyes drifted to the tsuba, still sitting on the bookshelf where he'd left it, and he added, "I just got lucky, really. But I'm sure anyone would have done the same; I just happened to be the one to put the puzzle pieces together."

Kakashi didn't answer for a moment, and it took a bit of effort for Iruka to tear his gaze away from the tsuba. When he did finally turn back, he found Kakashi looking at him with the oddest sort of expression. Iruka couldn't read it at all.

"Even if anyone would have," Kakashi said slowly, after another long moment's hesitation, and something about his voice — gods, something about his voice made Iruka shiver, "and I'm not sure I even agree with you there, I think it's very safe to say that not just anyone could have done what you did. So, please, let me thank you." He moved as he spoke, closing the distance between them with every word, until they were practically chest to chest.

Iruka opened and closed his mouth several times, unable to force any words to come out. Surely there was no way he was misreading this, was there? But it didn't make any sense. It seemed utterly unbelievable, just another little fantastical twist to this thoroughly ridiculous tale.

"You — you really came all this way to thank me?" he eventually managed, and watched in shocked disbelief as Kakashi's visible eye actually darkened. "To be honest, I sort of thought you'd never want to see me again, after all that."

"No, sensei," Kakashi said lowly. "I definitively do."

And then, with no further warning whatsoever and no signs of respect for the consequences his actions might have for Iruka's sanity, he leaned forward, pulled down his mask, cupped one hand around the hinge of Iruka's jaw, and tilted his head up to kiss him.

If seeing Kakashi on his doorstep had been a shock to his system, this was the equivalent of being bowled over by and spun around. Iruka felt dizzy with it, his eyes fluttering shut tight and every inch of his face burning as he immediately pressed up into Kakashi's grip and returned the kiss with interest. He hadn't realized the way to his own heart was, essentially, pulling his pigtails, but he had to admit it didn't come as that much of a surprise — and the way Kakashi's hands settled protectively at his waist and his neck as he hummed into Iruka's mouth certainly wasn't hurting anything either.

Iruka was completely lightheaded by the time Kakashi finally pulled away, though whether that was from not breathing or just the sheer overwhelming emotion crashing through his entire body was anyone's guess, really.

Either way, it was apparently enough to shut off his brain-to-mouth filter, and he found himself tipping forward so that his face slotted into the space between Kakashi's neck and shoulder as he mumbled, "I don't even know if we could have done that when you were all ghosty."

"Ghosty?" Kakashi asked, amused, and Iruka felt his face heat even further. Ah, fuck. Right.

"I thought you were a ghost at first," he admitted. "You know, with all the — breaking things, and disembodied voices."

"I need to buy you some new teacups," Kakashi said a little absently, and Iruka laughed into his shoulder before finally pulling back to look at him.

He was gratifyingly pink-cheeked, so at least Iruka wasn't alone on that front, but he was looking at Iruka steadily. The exact shape of his smile was finally unobscured by either porcelain or fabric, and Iruka drank it in hungrily. The way one side of his mouth was twisted slightly by the scar that came down from his covered eye was, in point of fact, dangerously attractive. It might actually be a good thing he hadn't been able to see it before now, or he might have handled the entire situation even more chaotically than he alread had.

"New teacups would be nice," Iruka said. He bit his lip, wondering exactly how much more to say, but — hell, Kakashi had kissed him, hadn't he? "Can I tell you something stupid?"

"Please."

"This apartment feels really empty now," Iruka admitted. "But I'd still rather have you like this."

"It is nice being able to do things again," Kakashi said. He still had a hand on Iruka's hip, and gave him a gentle squeeze.

Iruka shrugged. "I told you it was stupid."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Kakashi countered, squeezing his hip again. "I do understand what you mean. It was... nice, being here with you." He paused for a moment, and then his expression shifted into a smirking grin. "But if you're saying you're lonely without me, I'll come over any time you like, Iruka-sensei. Sure you're not in the market for a permanent roommate?"

"Let's start a bit slower than that," Iruka said, rolling his eyes through a renewed blush. But he leaned up to press another kiss to Kakashi's mouth, too, and couldn't quite stop himself from adding, "That said, if you play your cards right..."

"No more broken drinkware," Kakashi swore, still smirking at him a little. "And no more interfering in your classroom. I promise." He paused for just a moment. "Mostly promise. The thing is, sensei, you haven't gotten to meet my summons yet, but they can get a little rowdy, and sometimes things to tend to get broken, or—"

"That's a more than good enough assurance," Iruka interrupted, smiling at him so hard his cheeks were already starting to hurt. And then, rather than fuss around with talking anymore, he leaned in for another kiss, determined to make the most of having Kakashi right here, in the flesh, live and in person and in his arms.