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Kakashi only heard Iruka was back home from his mission two days after he’d actually gotten in, and that was through gossip in the Mission Room. Alarmed, because unless he was hospitalized, Iruka would have come to see him first thing, Kakashi teleported to the hospital, only to find that Iruka was not there and had not checked in there after his mission.His alarm growing by the minute, Kakashi made for Iruka’s apartment with all speed. But there was no sign of Iruka, and the wards were still active, something they would not be if Iruka were home and waiting for him.Truly disturbed now, Kakashi summoned his pack. They knew Iruka’s scent as well as his own and could be relied upon to track him down no matter where he was.They tracked Iruka’s two-day-old scent from the mission desk to the Headquarters of T&I.Ibiki stepped outside, arms folded across his brawny chest and shook his head slowly at Kakashi. “Go home,” he told Kakashi solemnly.Naturally, Kakashi refused and would have bulled right past Ibiki, if Guruko had not picked up Iruka’s scent leading away from the building.Giving Ibiki one last glare, Kakashi followed his ninken all the way to the top of the monument, where they reported that Iruka’s scent was fresher, as if he’d been there a long time. Kakashi knew that Iruka often sat up on the monument to watch the sun rise and sort out his thoughts when he was troubled, but to have been there so long...?Dreading the thought, but compelled to anyway, Kakashi looked down the cliff-face. No blood, no broken body lying in a heap at the foot of the monument.Buru found Iruka’s scent from there. He’d taken to the rooftops and headed for the outskirts of the village. They tracked him to one of the bathhouses that catered to ninja returning from missions and reported that his scent was freshest there and did not lead away.Thanking the dogs, Kakashi sent them away and went in.He knew the old woman that ran this place, and found her seated at the desk, smoking a long-stemmed pipe and watching everything with shrewd eyes. “You’re not here for a bath, Hatake-san,” she observed, baring her teeth in something that was not a smile.Kakashi glanced around briefly, and seeing that none were paying them attention, henged himself to look like Iruka. “I’m looking for someone.” He dropped the henge, catching the bright spark of recognition in her gaze.“He’s here,” she puffed thoughtfully on her pipe, gazing past him in a calculated show of indifference. “Rented a private room for today and tomorrow. He in some kinda mess?” Her tone made it clear that she wanted to know if he would bring trouble to her bathhouse.Kakashi shook his head, but answered honestly. “I don’t know. He’s acting strange. I’m... concerned.”Her sharp eyes darted back to his face. “Heh, you really are, aren’t you, boy?” A weathered hand emerged from her long kimono sleeve, holding a set of keys. Deftly she took one off the ring. “He’s in the Heron room, straight down that hall and take a left at the end. Last door on your right. Keep it quiet, and if he’s going to break, make sure you take him someplace safe for him to do so.”Kakashi darted a quick glance at her face, and she grinned at him. “Didja think I always ran a bathhouse, boy? I served my time on the front lines during the war. You think I don’t recognize someone near to breaking?”Kakashi nodded sharply and took off down the hall at speed. He let himself into the room and scanned for Iruka. A trace of familiar chakra led him to a glass-walled shower that let out onto a private pool. Iruka was kneeling on the tile, methodically scrubbing his tan skin. The reddish hue of his flesh indicated he’d been doing so long enough to have abraded the top layer of skin away.Letting his chakra touch Iruka’s own, Kakashi opened the door and stepped into the shower. Iruka’s chakra was like a hedgehog, curled into a tight ball and spiked jaggedly, an outward sign of inner turmoil.Iruka didn’t look up. “Don’t touch me.” His voice was toneless, with no inflection at all. He continued scrubbing his arms mechanically, his gaze focused on the pale tiles between his knees.“Iruka?” Kakashi knelt in front of him, heedless of the water soaking into his clothes. Carefully not touching Iruka, he pulled the washcloth from Iruka’s hands.Iruka sat there for a moment, hands flexing and curling on his thighs like starfish, aimless and nerveless. His gaze darted up to Kakashi's face and just as quickly away. “Kakashi-san? Can I please have my washcloth back?”Kakashi frowned at the distance Iruka had put between them with one simple honorific. “I’m going to wash your back for you.” His tone was firm.Iruka flinched. “Please, don’t touch me.”Kakashi obeyed, but shifted a little closer to his lover. “Iruka?”Iruka shuddered, a full-body rippling of his skin. His head sagged and he let out a ragged breath. “Please, Kakashi. I can’t.”“Can’t what?” Despite the calmness of his voice, Kakashi could feel a hard ball of fear lodged in his throat.Iruka took up the bar of soap and began convulsively rubbing it against his thigh. His eyes never strayed from the white lather and he let out a half-strangled laugh. “I keep thinking it should be black with all the filth,” he rasped. “But I scrub and scrub and the dirt never washes away.”Kakashi recognized those word with a start. He’d said much the same thing, trying to scour blood from his hands, but unable to wash away the taint. He caught Iruka’s frantically moving fingers in his own.Iruka yanked his hands away and stared at him wide-eyed, the whites showing all around. His pupils had shrunk to pinpricks and his breath was too rapid. “No! Don’t touch me. You can’t touch me until I’ve gotten all the filth off,” his voice broke and Iruka started shaking so hard his teeth chattered. “I have to get clean.”Breath catching in his lungs, Kakashi drew Iruka in, quelling his struggles with gentle strength and cradled him against his chest. “You are clean,” he murmured, in a low, quiet voice. “The dirt and blood are only in your mind. You’re clean.”Iruka shuddered against him. He wasn’t actually crying but his breath was coming in great, ragged gulps that shook his whole lean frame. “No,” he half-sobbed, half-spoke. “She touched me. She kept touching me and I have to wash her away before you can touch me again.”Something clicked for Kakashi, and it made the pit in his stomach yawn wider. He’d had this reaction before; not similar, this exact reaction. It had taken Minato-sensei and Iburu-san, the then-head of T&I, three days to talk him down after a disastrous miscalculation had put an eleven-year-old in the clutches of a pair of whack-jobs with far too much creativity in their perversions. Kakashi barely remembered what happened; he’d been told he’d broken out of his chakra-suppressing bonds in a burst of hysterical strength and killed every living thing in the compound where they’d secured him. All he’d known was that he could not bear to have others, even those who cared for him, touching him, fearing that the taint of those bastards would somehow transfer itself to them. It had been weeks before he could tolerate even the most fleeting of touches, always afraid that the filth that had touched him might somehow infect others. Kushina-san, in her indomitable way, had helped; crushing him to her in a bear hug and refusing to let him go until he had seen that she was still the same whirlwind she’d been before hugging him.Kakashi decided to use that same tactic, crushing Iruka to him with desperate strength. “You’re clean, Iruka. See, she can’t touch you anymore. I have you.”It took the better part of two hours for Iruka to stop struggling against his hold and sag into his embrace, and Kakashi’s voice was ragged from murmuring the comforting litany over and over.Iruka drew himself up and pulled away from Kakashi’s hold. He looked terrible and his eyes were red-rimmed, but he smiled tremulously and touched Kakashi’s bare cheek with wondering fingers. “What you must think of me...” his voice wavered.Kakashi cupped his hand over Iruka’s, reveling in the fact that Iruka had been the one to initiate the touch. “I think you’re everything that matters to me, and I’m glad you’re okay and here with me.”~fin~