[Fic] december

[suchacharmer]

November
I. That whisper down the lane isn’t exactly a secret anymore.


I’m often surprised by the amount of restaurants Arden houses within its confined limits. But then, I’m equally often surprised by just how much of a tourist attraction this town really is. To me, Arden doesn’t exactly seem like a hot-spot for activity. The town, small, but big enough to have an impressive downtown district, has never felt to me as if it were a part of the world at large. I rode my bike down these streets, went to the elementary school, and stopped Sasuke from chasing dogs in the park, even though we both knew he’d never catch them on tiny five-year-old legs. I buried my mother and father in the cemetery.

Looking at their graves, at all the graves spread out around me in neat rows and columns, that was the moment I realized how very big Arden is and how very small my world had become. Me and Sasuke. And money. How much we don’t have, but need, to stay alive.

Sasuke doesn’t know this, but I was terrified. Most days, I’m still terrified. Of more things than I can really name, but mostly that I’ll let him down more than I’ve already managed. I killed his parents and now I foist him off every single day on man I only superficially knew when we struck the arrangement. To this day, I can’t figure out why Kakashi looks after Sasuke for no charge. After what happened to me, my hands were shaking the first time I let Sasuke go home with him from the Den, hoping and praying to a god I swore not to believe in anymore that there were still good men left in the world.

Someone answered, if not God. Kakashi curses and teases him and gives him coffee with way too much sugar, but he’s a good man. Sasuke likes him more than I ever imagined. We got lucky.

And I might have found another one.

If he shows up.

The Wok Grill is a place I haven’t been to in quite a while. A money constraint is the same thing as a time restraint, because I utilize the majority of my time to make money. I’m at work from nine in the morning to eight at night. I’m exhausted and full of Raido’s scraps, so by the time I pick up Sasuke and walk home, sleep is at the top of my list. Restaurants are a luxury on all fronts.

So, naturally, my stomach began howling at me as soon as I stepped through the door, the light but intoxicating aromas of soy and sautéing vegetable a welcome assault on my senses. It smells a lot like the old house. The only thing it is missing is the cigar smoke. Before, in the years when he didn’t touch me everywhere you aren’t supposed to touch children and I still missed him when he came home late from work, I’d sit in his arm chair and breathe in the sharp-sweet fragrance of the cigars he smoked and wait until he came home, afraid he’d be shot on the job. When I stopped, after, in the years when he did, Sasuke took up the occupation.

I close my eyes for a minute and lean back against the wall, willing the memory away when I feel the unmistakable pinpoints of heat prickling in my neck. I’ve been thinking too much ever since I last talked to Dr. Hoshigaki in the park, random reminiscences cropping up every now and again listening to other people talk. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all Dr. Hoshigaki’s fault, but I also can’t shake the feeling that it’s mine, too. For being too stand-offish, for letting the tension of our stand-offs build up to that breaking point. I think a leak sprung in my resolve. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have spent so many days after meeting him in the park back in memory land trying to figure out what I can do to fix my mistakes. I’ve made one too many mistakes to let this slide.

Most of the memories in memory land are pretty bad. I judged him on nothing but assumptions. That was unfair of me. Dr. Hoshigaki is probably a wonderful guy if I’m willing to give him half a chance. I’m the one who’s been going about this wrong. After all, I’d been afraid that Kakashi would be like my father.

I’m just not ready to talk about what happened yet. He has to understand that. He can’t push me to talk about it. Most of the memories I’ve been recalling aren’t so bad. Mostly, they’re good ones that I’ve forgotten. I’d rather them stay that way and I don’t know if I can do that around him. I don’t know if I can trust him entirely, but I did trust in his stalwart attachment to me. I trusted that he wouldn’t go anywhere.

I figure that’s why I’ve been thinking about home and Mom and Dad and my little brother so much. I feel guilty. More so than usual, which is a pretty spectacular feat considering my track record with crimes against the people I supposedly care about. Dr. Hoshigaki wasn’t trying to use Sasuke to get to me, anymore than I was using Sasuke to get to him. I was using him though, to justify my behavior. The guy just wanted to buy me dinner. Us dinner. That makes me the culprit in this blame game, and the one who needs to apologize for making this a battle royal.

It’s not his fault it’s too painful to even think about, much less talk about. It’s not his fault that when I have managed to fall asleep in the past two years I wake up in night sweats, or feel heat choking me when something suddenly reminds me of him and I’m tricked into thinking about him.

I’m sure he thinks he can help, but I still don’t. Not the way he wants to help me. The nameplate on his desk, the notebooks they carry and the pencil jots they make on your file remind me of the court psyche evaluation they gave me at a metal desk, handcuffs safely on in case I was really a nut case and decided to take them all out with my bare hands. They chaffed, I remember that, itched while I recalled anything and everything I’d ever read about temporary insanity, knowing that if they deemed me sane I’d lose him. They’d take him away from me and I’d go to jail until he forgot he’d ever liked me and that’s how I’d die, really, really alone.

I hadn’t needed to fake it, really. Afterwards, I’d almost known I’d gone crazy as I stood there, unable to feel remorse when I knew I should until I heard him start to cry behind me in heavy, racking sobs. And then all I could do was stare straight ahead, unable to comprehend what I’d just done, knowing that it would never, ever be alright again.

I didn’t mean to kill her. Something happened in the struggle, so quick I don’t even know what it was anymore. It’s not like I really knew how to handle a gun when I picked it up off the floor as he pushed his hands further into my boxers, drunk and full of hormones he couldn’t have taken out on some gritty slut in the bar. Has to take it out on me and Mom just one more time when I was sick and tired, sick to my stomach, tired of his fingers in me, and Mom is pounding on his back with a bleeding lip. I’ve never hated you more than in that moment – when the pain in my lower back is threatening to split me right in half, and the gun is so close – it was so easy to get him off of me once and for all.

Sounds like fireworks, those deafening kamikaze bangs. There’s smoke and the hissing of the gun cooling off in my hand. Can’t let go. I think Mom screamed. Blood. Soaking into our carpet the way rainwater from the leaky ceiling does now. Sasuke walks barefoot in that water, the moisture squelching between his toes.

The prickling heat in my neck creeps down my spine and moves through my nervous system. Should have known it was coming, too vivid of a memory to just pass over. There’s still smoke around my head, a throb in my lower back that feels like a million red-hot needles stabbing all at once, like Friday nights. As always, it winds through my extremities first, the burning sensation following the panic like rats following the Pied Piper. They’re crawling, some on my skin, some under, itching so badly that I could crawl right out of my skin to get the hell away from it. The temperature has climbed ten degrees in the room. I bring my hand to the collar of my shirt while the pinpoints reach their destination in my chest, wrapping around my lungs and all of a sudden I’m choking, I can’t breathe. Something’s wrong, something’s wrong with my lungs and my heart, beating faster than it should. I pull at my collar, because with my lungs on fire and the rats crawling on my skin and the threat of asphyxiation (god, isn’t that a pleasant word to describe dying) I’m grasping at straws.

Pinpoint are reforming, taking on solidity. Hands, around my waist and on my chest where the smoldering is concentrating. Or maybe the hands are made of fire, I don’t know, it’s all the same now.

No air. There’s no air to take in.

Colors heighten, distorting everything. Faces are peering at me with exaggerated expressions of concern, blurs of movement as they close in. Someone mentions 9-1-1. They fade in and out like bad radio reception. (1)

I let my knees go, sliding down the wall to the decorative tile floor. It’s the only thing in the room that’s remotely cool.

I close my eyes again, the too-bright colors leaving imprints on my retinas, waiting for it to pass. It always passes, even if it takes a while. The hands on my neck aren’t real, I know that. He’s dead, for god’s sake. I shot him almost three years ago. Nothing about this is real. Even the pain in my back is phantom.

But the hands on my shoulders, those might be real. They’re too heavy to be hallucinatory, and surprisingly cool through the fabric of my shirt. And I think I hear my name being said, repeatedly, like a chant. Since when do strangers know my name? I didn’t tell anyone my name, I remember that. The voice is male, I think. A deep voice. I know that voice.

Blue, that’s all I see when I open my eyes. Lots and lots of blue. So close to me, touching me so softly he almost isn’t until he hooks his arms under mine and I’m back on my feet, the world spinning again. He’s someone I know, though I couldn’t have put a name to all the colors. He’s saying something as he leads me away, but I can’t make out any concrete words.

All of a sudden the temperature drops down twenty degrees. As soon as the cold night air hits my skin, my vision starts returning to normal, although breathing is still an issue.

“Calm down,” the deep voice that I know from somewhere says. “You aren’t breathing right.”

“I know,” I say through ragged gasps, only just realizing the extent to which my breathing is erratic. Now that the murmurings of concern and restaurant sounds are gone, I can hear it rushing through my eardrums. “‘Dizzy.”

Both of his hands leave after guiding me to the column holding up the pseudo-pagoda and leaning me against it. “Itachi, listen to me,” he says, and now that there aren’t so many people I can focus on his face. I look, see blue again and finally recognize Dr. Hoshigaki, looking concerned but exceptionally calm. “You have to concentrate on regulating your breathing. Just breathe.”

Until I have another one, I correct idly, but nod nonetheless. I want this to end, this horrible, uncomfortable itch. He’s saying something again, a quiet authority that I follow without question, because it’s nice to have one of us know what we’re doing. In and out, in and out. I take to watching his chest fall up and down, up and down. I’ve never been especially skilled in mimicry, so I just keep my eyes on the rise and fall. Watching, trying my best to breathe, and not die as time passes.

It’s slow, time in passing. But it heals. One follows the other, just like in the attack. My breathing calms, dizziness goes down, the crawling under my skin fades. The chilled air on my skin seems to replace the prickly heat, also helping me breathe easy as Dr. Hoshigaki continues talking rhythmically. I wonder though, as I feel the prickles fade into something that feels like a healing sunburn – tight, a bit itchy, but no longer painful – how he knew that cold air would catalyze the process.

“Better?” he asks, after what feels like five minutes have passed. I crane my neck to look at his face, feeling small as I notice again how tall he is, especially in such close quarters. We aren’t touching, but he’s standing directly in front of me, hands braced a foot above my shoulder on the pillar. Protecting me, I garner, from the glare and somewhat frightening-from-this-angle smile he’s giving a man in a tweed jacket, an inquisitive onlooker.

It’s so undeservedly sweet of him. It’s sweet and it’s funny. I laugh. I laugh like I haven’t laughed in years. It feels good. Except that it makes me even dizzier and bounces around the hollow of my chest. Is this why I don’t laugh anymore? This horrible, tipsy world must be the reason I don’t laugh anymore.

In and out, up and down. Dizzy, dizzy, please not again.

I blink a few times to focus, sucking in a ragged breath through my concave chest cavity. Must still be out of it?

He quirks an eyebrow as he redirects his gaze at me. His eyes aren’t as blue as they looked a few minutes ago. That’s a good sign. “Did you hear what I just said?”

Of course, everything else on him is more than blue enough to compensate. His shirt, button down as usual, is a light blue left unbuttoned to show off a darker blue T-shirt. Or maybe long-sleeve shirt. I can’t tell. Not that it matters. But still, that’s a lot of blue. Too much blue.

“Do you ever wear anything else?” I muse aloud, counting the buttons on his shirt to distract myself from thoughts of having another one. I’ll go under if I think of that. Dad won’t have anything to do with it. One, two, three, four, five, six buttons. Also blue. “Every time I see you, you are wearing some variation of the color blue. You’re very monochromatic.”

That eyebrow of his goes up a little higher. He reminds me of Kakashi. And Sasuke. Sasuke’s starting to do it now, too. “I was going to say that you look better, but now I think you might be a bit on the delirious side.” He peers at me with an infuriating smile on his face. “Still dizzy?”

I appraise the thought, desperately reeling in my focus, looking outside the circle of his body to see if the rest of the world is making any sense. It’s mostly alright. I do feel light-headed, though. My brain is still playing catch-up from oxygen depletion and it seems to be making me say things. “Kind of. Kind of not.”

“Think you’re okay?”

Normally, I would object to the imposition. Heavily. We’re in close quarters. It might be my slightly foggy brain, but this time it’s not so bad. Especially because he’s acting as a barricade for me.

Yes, definitely a nice guy. And he looks nice in blue.

Breathing. Very important, breathing. “Getting there.”

“Good,” he says, pulling back. “I thought maybe you’d passed out in there.” He chuckles softly, rubbing his hands before sticking them in his pocket. He must find it cold. “To think, I came for the pork-fried rice.”

“Funny man.” I take the opportunity to glare at (an inquiring mind myself???? What does that mean? I think I know, but that reference is too distant and confusing.) “Do you always play the hero?”

“When I need to, yes,” he replies quietly, unwilling to take my previous statement as either a joke or and insult. I’m not even sure what I meant it as. I don’t think it was nice. I’m not a nice person. “It’s funny, your file didn’t mention anything about panic attacks. Probably would have been helpful, you know, in passing. I can prescribe medication for panic attacks.”

I sigh, closing my eyes one more time and leaning back against the pillar. My protective instincts tell me not to divulge too much information, but that’s not why I came here. I’m trying to fix the mistakes I’ve made with him. We don’t need anymore confrontations. I don’t need to feel like any more of an ass. And I don’t need the crawling sensation flaring up again. “I can’t afford it. Neither of my jobs have the insurance coverage.”

Dr. Hoshigaki nods dolefully. “Sorry, didn’t think of that.” He jerks his head toward the restaurant door. “Do you want to go inside, sit down? It’s kind of chilly out here.”

My head jerks at that, reworking something. He didn’t know that the cold helps relieve my panic attacks. He just took me outside to get me away from people. Equally insightful of him, because I felt claustrophobic, but he has no idea how much the cold air helped bring me down from the anxious high. It’s not the first time he’s helped someone through a panic attack. He probably does it for plenty of his clients. “Not yet.” I take a breath, steeling myself for unprecedented honesty, but passing it off as supplying my brain with more red cells with which to work. “I want to say that I’m sorry. For being a jerk.”

“Yeah?” he whispers. “I was hoping you might be. But I was wrong, too.” He pointedly makes eye contact with me, and, like always, they pull me in and keep me there. I really do think he practices that in the mirror. No one is born with that kind of gift. “Coming to see you at work and all. I shouldn’t have once I realized it bothered you.”

No you, shouldn’t have. That was wrong of you. But I was wrong, too.

He twiddles with the topmost button of his shirt. Fidgeting. Nervous, I guess, about this meeting. This has the potential, much like everything we attempt, to be disastrous. I don’t want to be on bad terms with him, whether or not we finally part here or make amends and try something new, something like friends. We have to really clear the air this time. I need to clear the air. I’m the one who made it smoky and hard to see through, who distorted everything. He made his intentions clear right from the beginning.

“Did you like the coffee,” I ask quietly, cringing as the words leave my mouth. Okay, I’m not great at the whole honesty bit. I’m just hoping he gives me credit for trying. Just like I hope Sasuke gives me credit for trying.

I have so many amendments to make.

“Well,” he pretends to muse as he begins walking backwards to the bench just outside the imitation pagoda, “I did come into the Red Lantern for the coffee. Told you that, didn’t I? About a month ago? Or maybe two.” He sits down, sprawled in the bench the way he seems to prefer to sit. His long limbs need room to flop naturally. “Was the coffee supposed to be an apology?”

I follow him, in smaller strides, to the bench. We always end up coming back to benches. “The dinner was actually supposed to be the apology,” I admit, sinking gratefully down beside him. My legs aren’t as steady as they could be. “To make up for the one I ruined.”

“Ahh.” His thumb twitches on the back of the bench seat, close to my shoulder. Twitches again. “That was pretty bad.”

“I really do have a reason,” I cut in quickly, before he can think on it too much and before I lose the bit of nerve I have. “It’s not a good one, but it’s a reason.”

A gust of wind rips through the courtyard, upending my bangs and a few strands of hair that must have come out when I slid against the wall. Dr. Hoshigaki’s curls do the same, though the general impression isn’t of disarray like mine. His hair is always slightly messy. It strikes me as unfair that destruction looks good on him and so bad on me.

I push the loose ones behind my ears, knowing that I look like shit. I can feel the lack of blood in my cheeks. “I’ve been a jerk to you. I didn’t want him to like you because, I thought . . . .” I thought a lot of things. Neither here nor there. Simply everywhere. “If he didn’t like you, then I wouldn’t.”

“You’re right,” he says succinctly. “That’s not a good reason.” He gives me a long once over, during which my heart beats like a wild thing. I fear another attack if he keeps looking at me like that. “Believable, though.” He slouches further down into the curve of the bench, putting his head just at my shoulder level. I blink once or twice, unable to believe that for all my fretting, this is all, that easily. “You were rather articulate for someone in the middle of a panic attack, you know.”

And there it is. I suppose he thinks this gives him the right to tease me. Like I’m indebted to him for enduring my cold, aloof, asinine behavior and still liking me enough to shield me from prying eyes during a panic attack.

Hell, maybe it does. Even if he is partially responsible for all of this. “Oh?” I humor him. “How’s that?”

He throws a mischievous smirk my way. “You called me ‘monochromatic.’”

“Well,” I deadpan in exchange for his mischievous smirk, reacquainting myself with the practice of fair-trade, “care to contradict?”

Dr. Hoshigaki looks down at his outfit, as if assessing the clothes he threw on that morning for the first time. Blue jeans, blue tee, blue oxford. He frowns for the briefest of moments, then smiles. “No,” he finally says. “Not tonight.”

I smile too. Minutely. I’m pretty sure he didn’t notice, still looking down at his blue oxford. “Can you promise me something?”

He stops counting the buttons on his shirt and looks up at me, noticeably wary. The only things I’ve ever asked of him were to give up and to leave me alone, to get the hell away. I understand where he’s coming from and what this’ll sound like. But it’s not the same. Things aren’t the same as they were when I first walked into his tiny, cluttered second floor office. And I blame it all on him.

Whether he knows all that or not, he nods. I continue in the hope that he won’t jump to the wrong conclusion. Like I did. “If you want to help me, you have to promise not to ask me about what happened. With my parents.”

He bites his lip immediately, which I hope isn’t as bad of a sign as I think it is. “Itachi, we tried this tactic, didn’t we? All I got from you was the accusation that I wasn’t doing my job.”

I remember that. I remember being frustrated that he could play my game so easily. Giving me exactly what I wanted so that I had no logical complaint. To frustrate the fight out of me. It had worked so well until I wanted a rematch. “It’s going to be different this time. You promise not to ask about. . . . that, and I’ll promise to answer all the other ones.” As long as they don’t connect too much to the still taboo topics. It might not be a lot, but it will be a step in a different direction.

Dr. Hoshigaki tilts his head back to look at the sky. It’s littered with stars. Daylights savings is a week past and seven o’clock is well past evening. “You promise, huh?”

He doesn’t know if this is right. I don’t know if this is right. Neither of us knows, this early on, if this has a chance in hell of working or if we’re both just kidding ourselves. But, nevertheless and because of it, I’m relieved when he nods. Apparently, he’s willing to hang around and find out. “Then I promise, too. To try it your way.” He glances at the restaurant longingly, hunched up inside his shirts. He must be cold. “Can we go inside now? It’s chilly and I’m hungry.”

In wake of my panic attack, eating is the last thing on my mind. But I suppose I could order something for Sasuke while he eats his pork fried rice. I can take it home in a bag for him like I used to do with desserts from the restaurant.

It’s been a while since I brought home a pie.

“That’s fine,” I agree as I stand up, thankful that the world doesn’t seem to be rotating too quickly on its axis anymore. My legs are steady. “You did come for the rice, didn’t you?”

Dr. Hoshigaki smiles widely, wider than I’ve ever seen before, showcasing all of his teeth. “You just made a joke, kid,” he says as he stands and stretches before taking a few of his long strides back towards the pagoda. He doesn’t have to walk fast for me to feel like I’m losing him. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

I open my mouth to say something in retaliation and close it abruptly. I probably made a snapping sound in my jaw. He always does this to me. He has the uncanny knack of saying exactly the right thing. I’m not one prone to making jokes. I didn’t even realize I was making one. So, I’m not putting my foot in my mouth. Not tonight. Tonight, there was no grand explosion, no forever parting as veterans of a civil war. No broken negotiations. We have called a truce; tentative, undefined, and liable not to withstand excess strain though it may be, there is peace.

I’d like to keep it that way.

***

The house smells completely wrong when Sasuke and I walk through the front door. I should have been clued in by the closed, unlocked door. Sasuke certainly was. He cocked his head at the door as if it had said something foreign, and then curled his lips into a frown.

If someone’s home, I leave the door open. If no one’s home, I lock it. Simple as that.

“Is Iruka home?” Sasuke asks as I prop open the door with the potted cactus I use as a doorstop.

I don’t answer at first, gazing around for evidence of his whereabouts. Nothing looks out of place on my end. The mint-colored blanket is draping from the back of the couch, the assorted magazines scattered on the coffee table, the dictionary on bookshelf next to an old snow-globe of Vermont in winter. His shoes, however, aren’t by the door where he normally keeps them, and I don’t see his car keys on the table by the door. The lights are on though, every one of them, from the floor lamp to the upstairs hall light.

Iruka likes the lights on.

“He’s home,” I affirm, nudging Sasuke towards the couch. “Sit tight. I’m going to put the coffee on.”

As Sasuke nods and toes his shoes off, I head into the kitchen to check for more signs of Iruka. The kitchen is in as much order as the living room – sugar bowl in place, cabinets closed, blinds drawn. The only thing off is the state of the papers on the table. Iruka left the newspaper, notebook, and pen he’s been using for his apartment hunting quest right where he’d been sitting that morning, instead of stowing them in the drawer where I keep the bills and other manners of paperwork.

The unusual scent is stronger in here than in the living room. It’s unusual different, not unusual bad, doubly so because it’s rather familiar. I know this scent. Some time ago, another time ago. It’s a subtle, understated scent, stronger than vanilla and cranberries but lighter at the same time. Vanilla is earth. This is air.

I scoop coffee grinds into the paper filter, three scoops because I dilute Sasuke’s with milk anyway, loosing the airy fragrance to the rich, heady scent of roasted beans. Coffee is an earth smell, keeps you on the ground.

Makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing drinking it.

Without Iruka lording over the process, I’m free to take a gander at the notes he’s been making on the houses in the real estate section. I’m not at all surprised to see that he has an orderly little system for picking out a new place. The entire notebook is dedicated to it. Each number on the page has a circle around it, like questions on a math test, and quick jots on the good and bad aspects of each house. The page I’m looking at has numbers thirty through thirty-four and directly corresponds to the circled houses in the newspaper, also labeled thirty through thirty-four.

The first four are apartments. He meticulously copied all of the details directly from the newspaper – real estate agents, locations, prices, living room dimensions – and then just as meticulously picked each one apart. For a small one bedroom in Sharon, which is only twenty minutes by train, negative points were subtracted once again for the commute. He also took off points for the size of the kitchen and the extra half-bath.

I sigh as I read through the apartments, berating myself for believing him when he said he’d only be here a few weeks. That was in September. It’s November, and Iruka is no closer to finding an apartment than I am to quitting coffee.

The fifth apartment on the list, however, isn’t an apartment at all. It’s a house that looks, I realize as I crosscheck with the picture, about the same size as mine. I blink a few times, attempting to dispel this illusion as the house takes on my front porch, my front bay window. Iruka wouldn’t be looking for a house. A house is too big for him. Two-bedroom apartments are too big for him. I don’t understand how this fits in with the pattern we’ve established, this house that looks like mine.

If I put the papers down now, I can chalk this up to a trick of my mind. It’s easy enough to say that I’m imagining things, considering my history with the dead. I can just say the psychosis is expanding.

But when I shake my head, the little house is still there, and the notes Iruka made in his notebook don’t help matters. They’re twice as detailed as the ones for the apartments. There’s something in these notes, affection in the strokes that’s disquieting, too personal, really. Hardwood floors, he wrote under all of the basic details. Bathroom has peeling paint and the kitchen needs new wallpaper. Bedroom window is cracked. Great afternoon sun in the kitchen. Airy. Too detailed for someone just perusing, these notes, set the blood boiling under my skin. For all his talk about how far away Garret is and how small a bachelor pad needs to be, he has a soft spot, went out and toured a house with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an airy kitchen with a dining area. None of the other apartments, I see as I flip through page after page of notes Iruka wouldn’t let me see, have notes about peeling paint and the wonderful afternoon sun. He didn’t walk through any of the apartments he could afford, the ones that were plausible.

Seems like I’m not the only one who’s been keeping secrets.

The floor above me creaks. My bedroom straddles the kitchen and the living room, and the joints of that floor have probably been creaky years before I moved in. This house is old and it wants everyone to know it.

Seconds later, the creaking increases but moves away, in the direction of the stairs. Iruka is coming down. If I had any sense of decency, of respect, I would have put the book down. The last thing I felt like doing, however, was respecting his privacy after he’s spent the past month closing doors and opening windows. Let him see. Let him call me a hypocrite. It won’t change a thing.

“Kakashi,” Sasuke calls from the living room. The footsteps stop a few feet from the stairway, coming towards me. “Iruka’s here.”

If ever there wasn’t a time for stating the obvious, this is it. Iruka says a hurried hello to Sasuke and continues on his way to me, walking a bit faster than the footsteps upstairs.

When we look up, make that first moment of eye contact, something bad sparks. I feel it in the way his gaze slips, so damn quickly, from my face down to my hands and to the newspaper he left on the table. There are so many things that he could be contemplating as we stand apart, the distance between us as wide as ever and so much more real than a metaphor. It might be his carelessness, his dismay, fear, anger over my disrespect. It might just be all of those and I might just be mesmerized; Iruka shows emotion, let’s the players flit across his jaw and eyes, there and alive and moving through the stages of what we’ve been through the years.

I smile, which is unnerving, I know, I’ve been told before, smile at Iruka in snug jeans and lightweight red sweater. I smile and watch his face come alive again. Concentrating on that instead of the notes in my hand, the lies I’m holding. “It’s a very nice house, Iruka. Especially the porch. It will look great with a glider, maybe some potted plants. You can keep them in the kitchen, you know, when it gets cold.” I toss the notebook back on the table, where I found it, hearing it skid a few inches after bouncing on impact. “I hear it gets great afternoon sun.”

“Kakashi,” he says, like he’s talking to a wounded animal. “Don’t jump to conclusions, okay. I was just looking.”

“More so than the rest, it seems. Something about it struck your fancy.” I lean my hip against the table, looking back down at the stupid little notebook with Iruka’s crimped, penmanship-of-the-year award writing. “Must be the airy kitchen. Does it have a nook, Iruka, because you should really invest in a place with a nook.”

“Don’t,” he snaps violently, the final bite of the “t” trailing off into a pregnant pause where I swear I can hear whispers, angry whispers of all the things he’s been dying to say. He falters, the words he might have said dying out as thoughts on his tongue. “Ju-just don’t.”

In a way, he did say everything. Silence can speak a thousand, a million times louder than words. I’ve said a lot through silence. I say it now, my gaze steady as I appraise him. I don’t yell when I’m frustrated. I don’t even raise my voice unduly. It’s all unnecessary, because words sting, words lacerate no matter how softly or how loudly they’re said. Even unspoken words, the ones I’m biting down, hurt.

Iruka, he needs words. He needs words now, jaw twitching with the need to say something that will make this moment better. I’d rather let it lie; let it seep under the surface to simmer with everything else. This too shall pass. He won’t be here forever.

He laughs, then, which I wasn’t expecting. A soft, sad, weak laugh that barely carries its weight. The words, they follow. “It’s funny, you know.” I sense before he even says it that he means funny in the ironic kind of way, just because he can’t find humor in this house. He needs a new house, a spacious, empty one that he can fill with his furniture and his memories and forget about the way mine is choking him. “I thought I might have some good news for you.” He crosses the room carefully, still treating me like a skittish animal. Or just like a crazy person. “I found a place to live. I should be out in two weeks.” He reaches across the table for the newspaper, folds it, and takes it to the drawer along with the notebook. Shuts it away. “Can you hold on for another two weeks?”

Can I? I don’t know. This is hard, this he and I, draining in a way that ghosts aren’t. I’m tired of it, tired of him being here, just so tired of waiting for something big to happen. For us to break in half or dissolve, like all the hardness in my face is doing.

I wonder, when he leaves, if I’ll miss him.

I sigh, rubbing the eye with the scar running through it, feeling ten times more exhausted than a normal day at the cemetery. “You’re a glutton for punishment, Iruka.”

Iruka grins an ironic grin to match the ironic laughter. It’s a sad grin, but isn’t most irony sad? His lips part to say something, maybe cheeky, maybe grateful. The knock on the door leaves them at the part.

I know I’m not expecting company.

“Kakashi,” Sasuke calls, warily this time, “someone’s here for Iruka.”

Iruka offers no explanation before hurrying off to the living room to greet his mystery guest. I frown, catching something I missed before. He’s wearing shoes.

Unlike me, Iruka doesn’t wear shoes in the house. He takes them off almost as soon as he walks in the door. All at once, pieces of the puzzle click into place: the missing car keys, the closed door, the cologne, the clingy red sweater.

I follow him. I don’t hurry, because it’s going to happen whether I’m there or not, into the room where plates are shifting under my earth, changing and rearranging. The guy in my house, a guy with hair nearly the same color as mine and a smirk that I’m not fond of as he introduces himself to Sasuke, is dating Iruka (2). He doesn’t have to say it. I know it already.

“Kakashi,” Sasuke says from his corner of the couch. He looks more puzzled than I’ve ever seen him before, and just as worried. “Why does Iruka have two boyfriends?”

“Two?” the stranger to me says easily, slipping an arm around Iruka’s waist. “I wasn’t aware you were dating anyone else, babe.”

Iruka looks up at me, momentarily apologetic. “I’m not,” he says simply, the truth of it stinging more than I thought Iruka capable of. It hangs there, tempting me, practically daring me to say something to the contrary. “He’s just a friend of mine.”

I won’t, though. It’s true, after all. And Iruka wants the truth. I nod.

Iruka nudges his boyfriend in the ribs and whispers something in his ear. He nods, gives Iruka a squeeze and walks out the door. At his back, Sasuke sends a glare worthy of his brother’s praise. I’m surprised the newcomer doesn’t feel it boring a hole into his spine.

“Not mad, then?” Iruka says as soon as the real boyfriend is out of earshot. “Not that I would know. You don’t tell me anything.” A half-chuckle tumbles from his lips. He’s looking at Sasuke instead of me. “Fine. But it’s funny, you know. With all the lies. It’s just funny. Funny that when I went to see him at practice, you weren’t there. No one was.” He laughs a bit more, sounding too hysterical and not at all like him. I think he might be catching onto something. Still laughing, leaving Sasuke frozen like a deer in the headlights in the aftermath of his gaze, Iruka crosses the room and kisses me. Fully, sloppily, and just as desperate as his laughter. In my ear, which he finds after leaving me dizzy on a shifting earth, he whispers something. It’s a loud whisper. I think the whole world heard him. “The kid’s not the only observant one, Kakashi.” His breath, warm and hot and smelling of mint, tickles my ear. “And you’re not the only one who can keep a secret.”

He’s backing away from me, step by step closer to his empty house with the airy kitchen, to buying paint. He leaves the door open, like he’s supposed to, sprinting down the stairs, past the dying tree in my yard that he says is an eyesore.

I think the branches sway as he passes.

Chapter Seven