A/N: I was actually expecting to finish all of my Gaa/Naru fics before I started on this. But, things don't always turn out how we like. Sometimes, it's best to just stfu and go with the flow. Which I tried to do here. Enjoy it--or don't. I don't have a damn to give it.

Spring

Spring is a good time to die.

When he finally makes it back to the front gates of Konoha, it's much warmer than when he left. The snow is just starting to melt, and the dirty sunlight of winter has been replaced with the thin, weak rays of almost-but-not-quite-yet-Spring. Short blades of grass peek out from the too-moist earth and he's glad for this; for this moisture, for the little saplings of grass, for the muddy soil, because when he falls face first into the ground unable to move any further, these things sooth the impact. His face hits the soil with a watery 'splat', and the melted snow hiding just beneath the surface bubbles up beside his mouth. He's been so thirsty for so long, the sharp taste of the stagnant water is almost welcome; almost, but it stings the wounds on his body, the cuts on his dry lips and he's still not desperate enough to not desire the crisp, clean taste of fresh water. He's waiting and bleeding under the superficial warmth of the weak sunlight. And it's alright, because he's made it this far, farther than he thought he could, and it's quite alright to die here now. So he closes his eyes, thinking he'll do just that.

"Dammit, stop bleeding! It hasn't eased since I found him." The voice is familiar in it's tone, but not it's pitch; the words are strained, frantic, but laced with sheer determination, as if by word alone he can force a miracle.

"Iruka-sensei, we're trying bu--"

"It isn't stopping." He feels a hand press into his wounds on, the finger tips surge with a warm, soothing chakra that starts at the surface and then sinks lower, deep into the jagged flesh.

"It's the toxin, it won't let his blood coagulate--it isn't clotting so it won't stop until we--"

"Flush it out with chakra." This voice is different, less involved, colder, mechanical. The voice of a medic-nin who's probably been on the job for years, used to losing against death, resigned to the fact that his skills wouldn't save everyone, but willing to try. Sometimes failing, never stopping.

He knows their efforts are futile--valiant, but futile nonetheless. He wishes he had the strength to tell them to stop, to stop wasting their chakra on him and give up, especially the chuunin. He doesn't think the stranded dolphin has enough in him to spare. The sounds continue, orders being shouted and followed, concerns being voiced and answers given. Among it all, the voice of Umino Iruka is loudest, strongest. Possibly the weakest person in the room ( next to Kakashi, but he doesn't count himself because he isn't weakened in this moment by choice but by circumstance ) and yet his determination is the driving force behind their efforts. His mind becomes foggy, and he suddenly feels light, lighter than anything and the beating in his chest halts. He thinks this is what dying is like, different from the painful image he carried in his mind for so long. This is easy, gentle. He thinks maybe he's lucky, and that it isn't always like this. Maybe he's an exception. Then he stops thinking altogether.

The next time he opens his eyes, he expects to see either clouds, or fire or seventy-two virgins lined up before him. Instead, he looks up into dark irises set in a scarred, heart shaped face. The head band and hair-tie are missing. Ringlets of hair stick to the chuunin's temple, frame his high cheekbones and hang limply along his collar bone. Iruka looks haggard, stressed, restless, but most of all, as Kakashi blinks up at him, grateful. The copy-nin blinks a few more times, not daring to speak just in case this is some fucked up passage into Heaven or a heartless prelude to Hell. He turns his head a little to the left, and the nightstand beside him is covered with potted plants, get well cards, and a fairly large ( no doubt custom made ) Gai plushy smiling at him. Kakashi turns his head to the right, the cloth of his mask tugging lightly at his lips, and sees thin strands of sunlight easing into the small window. He inhales the lukewarm air and it holds the light scent of promised rain. He feels a hand prodding lightly at his chest, and looks back to see Iruka adjusting a layer of bloody gauze.

He makes his first attempt to speak. "Iruka-sen--"

"Your heart stopped but...they brought you back, Kakashi-san." He speaks in a whisper that makes his voice sound a little raspy, "Just sleep. Sleep." It starts off as a request and ends as a demand, but Kakashi is alright with that. He's tired, so tired and that's really all he wants to do for the moment. To close his eyes and melt away into his own consciousness; this time, knowing he'll return. Iruka's head is bowed as he inspects the copy-nin's chest wounds, cleaning the edges of the tattered flesh with delicate touches of an antiseptic drenched cotton ball. His eyes are soft and moist as if he might cry, the chocolate warmed and melting into something that mimic two pools of fresh honey with specks of emerald near the pupil. Eyes that remind Kakashi of the soft earth and new blades of grass that cushioned his fall when he could no longer walk. Eyes that remind him of spring; Of rebirth, renewal and second chances. Suddenly, Iruka breaks out into song, hands still working gently on pale, battered skin. The chuunin's voice is hard, and sweet, like a plum picked from it's tree too soon;

"Dawn came and went as easy as men's lives,
Every living breath was spent,
But war-like men did thrive.
There midst the blood pooling round their feet,
Sweat and dirt and tears did flood,
And to that deathly beat,
They all did march to silent drums,
And hum to soundless hymns,
But even as sweet morning comes,
Light couldn't cleanse their sins,
Surely as the swirling breeze,
Whips them from behind,
Hell's dark devils tease,
Where souls they do not find,
Round tree stumps black,
And broken ground and darkness through the sun,
Hell and Heaven each draw back to let the mourners come.." ( 1 )

Kakashi's head lulls to one side, and his eyes begin to close as he listens to the Chuunin's song and feels soft hands working on his injuries. He falls asleep, dreaming about the deep eyes of a dolphin swimming across a night sky.

So when Kakashi thinks of spring, he thinks of the rich voice of a sugar-brown Chuunin and someone with hands who does not want him to die.

Summer

He intended to leave after tea.

He'd only wanted to stop by and finally thank the Chuunin ( something he'd been putting off for months, but he decided better late than never ) for saving him. He was only going to stay long enough to have a nice, easy going chit-chat and he would casually take his leave. But Iruka had been wearing a white yakuta, turning red with embarrassment when he opened the door and explained it was too hot to wear much else and Kakashi was inclined to agree. He offered to make tea, an invitation he was hesitant on accepting, but Iruka convinced him to make himself comfortable. And then, he begin to sing; quietly at first, then his pitch rose and quivered with a sad sweetness that made Kakashi enter the kitchen and wrap his arms around the man. To his surprise, Iruka didn't stiffen, didn't push him away; he didn't even stop singing. The pitch changed when his his lips curled into a smile, but his voice never faltered, even as Kakashi's fingers undid the sash holding his yakuta together, even when he calloused hands parted the silk fabric and touched the softer skin of his abdomen. He dragged his lips over the juncture of Iruka's neck and shoulder, feeling the suppleness of the skin beneath his mask. He wanted more, wanted to taste and nibble and devour, so he raised a hand and slipped his finger between the front of mask. At the feel of the jounin's bare lips on his neck, Iruka's breath hitched and suddenly the singing was replaced by soft sighs of pleasure.

They make love the first day of summer.

Iruka is bashful at first, with the shy smiles and nervous delicacy of a woman. It amuses Kakashi. He's possessed others bodies before, male, female, the ones who were a little in-between (and those, he reminds himself, are the escapades that are never to be spoken of ever again). But somehow this is different, this is sweeter; Iruka doesn't taste like sweat and dried blood, he isn't eager and impatient. There is the faintest scent of jasmine and ginger on his body. He doesn't have the skin of a shinobi, he isn't calloused, hardened and scabbed. Just the scar of his nose ( which Kakashi kisses lightly, because he can't resist the way it makes Iruka's golden cheeks glow with a pink tint ) and the long, diagonal scar in the middle of his back. He touches it with the tips of his fingers, and feels the chuunin flinch beneath him, as if he's had a lit match pressed to his back.

"Not that," he mutters quietly into the pillow. "Please...just..." And Kakashi understands. It's too soon. That small part of Iruka still belongs to someone else. That one part of him is not yet his to own, and that's alright for now, because he makes it his business to leave his mark everywhere else.

He really did intend to leave after tea.

But with Iruka above him, rising and lowering like the tides of the sea, his thin chest expanding outward with each trembling breath and strands of dark hair sticking to his sweat-slick face, he's glad he didn't.

So when Kakashi thinks of summer, he thinks of white yukata's, the faint scent of distant jasmine flowers, lying tangled in silk sheets and sweaty limbs and the sweet sound of feather soft laughter in the dead of night.

Autumn

They are covered in blood that is not their own.

But Kakashi still drags his lips over the tanned skin and his mouth is filled with the tastes of battle, what Iruka tastes like after a mission; blood, dirt, sweat, tears and vomit. Nails dig into his shoulder, stretching out across his back and leaving red welts reminiscent of scarlet wings. The 'sides' of the small, dome tent is thin and does little to keep the raw October wind from easing in and slipping over sweaty, bruised skin. Outside the tent a wash of red leaves fall from nearly barren tree limbs. Though they have left the corpses far away, they are still surrounded by death and no one feels the effect harder than Iruka.

"Save me," Iruka cries into his shoulder; a bitter, doleful sound.

He wraps his arms around the chuunin's lower back, holds him in place as he fucks him harder--because that's what he needs right now, not soft kisses and gentle caresses, sugar-coated promises or tiny whispers of devotion. His fingers slid down, gripping the brown hips and taking control of his movements. He thrusts up as he crashes Iruka's hips into his, and its so hard, so deep that he knows something has torn by the way Iruka throws his head back and cries out. But it doesn't disway the man. Even when Kakashi tries to stop, he shakes his head and continues riding, harder, faster, pressing their foreheads together and muttering, "Please...please, I just want to...kami-sama, I want to forget that face..."

Underneath the metallic sharpness of blood, he can taste faint traces of Iruka; that light, summery sweet taste that almost reminds him of the day he didn't refuse an offer of tea. And in between the leftover acidity of regurgitated rations, his tongue finds tiny leftover flavors of coffee and chocolate, what Iruka usually tastes like when he's just come from the academy, or from a long day at the mission room. Academy Iruka and Mission Iruka are two horribly different people. But he's learned, through trial and error, how to love both. In moments such as these, Kakashi understands why the man isn't a jounin. He has skill; speed, stamina, a tactical mind. But he doesn't have the one thing that really counts--the ability to turn his humanity off and on and the heart to live the rest of his life with blood on his hands. One of the things that Kakashi loves about the brunette is the very flaw that prevents him from ever ascending the ranks of Shinobi. When he thinks on it, he doesn't know whether to feel grateful or sorry for his lover. The scarecrow wishes he didn't feel so detatched from the situation. He's lying when he says he understands because he doesn't ( and Iruka knows this ). He's a living, breathing weapon of mass destruction, he's followed on the coat tails of death since he was a boy. He's been twisted, broken, beaten, tortured and often left lingering in a half-state between this world and the next. The act ( or is it the art? ) of death no longer scares, entertains or disgusts him.

He wants to say "It's not your fault," or "You couldn't have saved her." But that will do nothing but reinforce the dolphins belief that it was all his fault and he hadn't done enough. So in silence, he fucks him and contorts the loving, tender words to the greedy, frantic thrusts and iron grips that Iruka needs. And though he may not admit it, because he's convinced to some degree that his humanity was lost long ago as a boy on the battlefield, he needs this savage release too. This angry, dreadful copulation that hurts and heals and forces him to damage Iruka in ways and in places he could never even bare to think of doing back at home. For Iruka it is a way to forget; to forget the way his hands choked the life out of a young shinobi, or how they couldn't move fast enough to save the life of a small girl who didn't get the chance to do much living before she did a whole lot of dying. The soft, slender brown hands that carefully plant pots of bleeding heart and white gardenia outside his apartment window. The hands that tucked Naruto into bed when an entire village couldn't even stand the sound of his name. Hands that cradled pre-genin when they fell and scrapped the skin off their knees, thinking it was the most painful thing imaginable because they weren't yet ninja and didn't realize that the real pain was only waiting in the wings. For Kakashi it is a way to remember; that he is alive, that his hands--the hands that sweep away wisps of sable colored hair away from honey colored eyes and draw abstract patterns against cinnmaon skin--were fast enough to deflect an attack, prevent a counter and end a life. So long as he ended lives, he could keep his own. And having someone to live for makes him greedy for life.

Sometimes, Kakashi wonders who is saving whom.

Iruka shudders and grips handfuls of silver-gray hair, Kakashi digs his fingers into the tanned hips and sinks his canines into the soft flesh of the chuunin's shoulder. For a few agonizingly blissful seconds, Iruka can forget and Kakashi can remember. He feels the wet hot splatter of the brunettes climax against his abdomen and sternum. Iruka groans at the wet heat dripping down his thighs. Through it all, they cling to each other. Kakashi looks at his lovers face. He's dirty, bloody, teary-eyed, bruised and hurt. He's a mess. He's a tragedy. He's so fucking beautiful.

So when Kakashi thinks of Autumn, he thinks of the broken pleas of an equally broken, painfully beautiful man.

And Iruka thinks of the dead girl.

Winter

Kakashi decides that Iruka is most beautiful in the winter.

Before a scenery blanketed in a heavy layer of white dust, Iruka's skin glows with the perpetual kiss of sunshine and its a stark contrast against the icy landscapes and pale-faced shinobi. His cheeks are almost always a shade of amaranth thanks to the cold that reddens his nose and cheeks. Kakashi likes this, and never tells Iruka that the reasons he takes him out for long walks in the snow is because he likes to see the slow transition from tan, to carnation, to cherry blossom, to all out red.

Even now, his cheeks are a delicate shade of coral, but his lips are stained scarlet, courtesy of the blood rolling down his nostrils and pooling at the corners of his mouth. The gash on his abdomen is pulsing with blood and it seeps through Kakashi's fingers even as he tries to stunt the flow with more pressure. It's sticky and thick and it's the only warmth between them. Quiet as its kept, everyone he's ever loved, he's lost in Spring. Mother to sickness, Father to shame, Obito to war, Rin to circumstance and Minato to the demon. He assumed it was a pattern, something he couldn't escape.

He loses Iruka in winter.

"Someone has to...see him become Hokage." Iruka is looking up into a pair of bi-colored eyes, talking in the way a dying man does; weakly, with deliberate slowness to keep the blood in his throat rising like bile at bay. Kakashi knows what is being asked of him and after planting a kiss on his forehead, he nods slowly. Iruka isn't satisfied. "Promise me. Promise." He lifts a hand to the scarlet eye leaking tears and stops their descent with the tips of his fingers. His eyes are warm but his touch is ice cold.

Kakashi tilts his head a little. Leans into the touch, brings his hand away from the chuunin's bleeding stomach and touches his hand. The sugar brown skin is bruised, torn and slowly growing paler. He's cold, he's dying and he's beautiful. The jounin kisses the tips of his fingers and tells him this, but Iruka only laughs. At least its supposed to be one, but it comes out sounding more like a pained sob. "Promise me," he repeats, in a noticeably weaker voice.

"I promise." He lowers his mask and kisses the scarlet mouth, so pretty and bloody. "I promise, I promise, I promise."

Just like I promised to save Rin.

Just like I promised to save Sasuke.

Just like I promised to save you.

Iruka smiles softly up at him. He doesn't cry though. And Kakashi's heart swells with pride, because even though his chuunin is dying he's doing so with the famous stubbornness with which he's lived. Kakashi blinks, and feels a stream of warmth falling down his eye--his, not Obito's.

"Sing?" The silver-haired man kisses the top of his lovers forehead. "Sing for me."

The dolphin's eyes are growing dark; the small pools of honey are freezing over. His voice is tiny in the middle of the frozen forest, half as strong but twice as sweet;

"Lovers are sacrifices to the Beloved,
and this world is their slaughter-house.
They find this world a royal feast,
while they are needless of food.
They desire no heaven, since without You, Beloved,
a hundred times higher than that is hell.." ( 2 )

Iruka's voice trails off and he shudders. Kakashi notices the sudden increase in weight, the lack of warm breath over his cheek, the sudden agonizing, irrevocable silence. He thinks of staying there, freezing to death. He cleans his tears, hardens his face and his heart and decides against it. He'll carry Iruka back to Konoha, take him home and ride out the grief that follows. And he wills himself, tells himself he won't die. At least not now, not during the winter.

When he thinks of Winter, he thinks of spring.

Spring is a good time to die.

1 - A wonderful poem; Autumn Leavesby Nicola Bouchier.

2 - A beautiful piece of work by Abu-Said Abil-Kheri entitled Lovers are Sacrifices to the Beloved.

**************

A/N: This didn't turn out like I wanted it to, and it didn't end like I wanted it to. I wanted a happy ending, but somehow I ended up killing Iruka. Oops? Accidents happen.