He used to think he was strong, not the way Asuma or Kakashi are strong, but in a different way, the way involving his heart and his soul. Maybe, once, he really was strong, but he’s not anymore, hasn’t been for so very long. All of his strength had been sucked out when Mizuki turned against him.
He turned against Mizuki, too, had covered Naruto with his body, because that’s what he did, that’s what made him strong. He’d turned against his best friend, his lover, because that was the right thing, and Iruka always did the right thing, always had, ever since his mother had told him that doing the right thing is what would make him strong, and if nothing else, Iruka would become strong. In the end, though, Iruka hadn’t been strong enough, didn’t have the strength to stand up against Mizuki, let alone kill him. He was too weak, so weak that all he could do was sit under the tree, waiting for Mizuki to end it all, and let him be. Then, Naruto, a child, a little child who was so young, so innocent, had to save him. That was the day Iruka became weak.
Everyday he became weaker, bit by bit. He begged for Mizuki’s life, even though that was the wrong thing to do, and made him weak. He argued against letting the rookies enter the chuunin exam, because that would let them become stronger than him, and that, too, made him weak. Now he’s sleeping with Kakashi, and that makes him weaker than anything else.
He’s not quite sure how it started, but he thinks it’s when they’d been arguing about the chuunin exam. Sometime during their sharp conversation he’d looked at the jounin’s hair, and had thought, absurdly, ‘Mizuki.’ A few weeks later found him slamming Kakashi into the older man’s door, taking the jounin simply by surprise, pulling the mask down and viciously kissing him, biting and pulling, until he could taste blood in his mouth. That’s when he had been shocked back into his senses. Feeling nauseous, he apologized and fled back to his own apartment, not venturing back out into daylight for half a week. When he finally opened his door to leave his sanctuary Kakashi was standing across the hall from his door, leaning against the wall lazily, reading his book. This time, Kakashi initiated the kiss, and somehow the two found themselves back in Iruka’s room, panting and moaning, clothes scattered about haphazardly.
When the morning came, Kakashi woke to find Iruka gone, and the chuunin remained gone for a very long time. Whenever someone asked where the teacher had disappeared to, the Hokage would assure them that Iruka-sensei was on a mission, a very long one, but when a month had passed, the old man had told Kakashi and a few of the other ANBU that soon Iruka would be considered a missing-nin. A week later, the day before the paperwork was to be filed, proclaiming Iruka a missing-nin, the sensei reappeared, a little worn around the edges, but far from looking as though he was a day away from having hunter-nins coming after his head.
When Kakashi found him, standing in the hallway outside the Hokage’s office, he’d asked, in a curious, lazy tone, why he’d left.
“I hate you,” the teacher hissed before he stalked past the confused copy-nin.
That night found Iruka crawling into Kakashi’s bed, all seething-rage and sharp teeth, apologetic licks and purrs. That started up the pattern of way things would happen. Kakashi never set foot in Iruka’s apartment again, instead waiting, sometimes days, sometimes weeks, once or twice even months, for the chuunin to return, crawling into Kakashi’s bed and pants. Iruka hates himself for this weakness, this constant longing for the man, writhing beneath him, silver hair spread across the bed. If Kakashi ever notices that Iruka seems a bit obsessed with his hair, if he ever notices that Iruka never looks at his eyes or his body, only at his hair, he never says anything. If he ever hears the whispers of another name, a different name, come off Iruka’s tongue, he never does a thing.
Iruka can’t stop this, this progression into hell, this continual descent of madness. He’s growing weaker, day by day, all because of this head of silver hair, so similar and yet so different from another head of silver hair, and sometimes, when he’s kissing this hair, soft and slippery, he’s almost glad for this weakness.
Yes, Iruka is truly weak.