Chapter Text
Once spread out, now a tiny fraction
Travels right through solid walls
Then reappears
One from broken pieces
Waving from the other side
It took him three days to get back. Three days of longing. Longing for… something. Something like the night he’d spent on top of Hashirama’s likeness. Something like… a home. Something like… a horse carrying him to the gates of Konoha.
It was weird to yearn for something he’d only ever felt once for a fraction of a moment. It was weird to yearn for two things so different at the same time. And yet, despite him wanting to see Iruka again – experience the sensations he had felt while kissing him again – he had started dreaming of the brown horse again. For his way back, he had shifted into his wolf form – he was faster like that. And he ran ever faster when he sensed the scent of Konoha in the wind. He ran and ran… and stopped abruptly in his tracks. There she was. Right in front of him. Big and strong, rippling with muscle and soft, kind eyes. They stared at each other – prey and predator. Kakashi expected her to run. She didn’t. Instead, she made a few steps toward him, lowered her head and sniffed him. Was she… looking for injuries. Kakashi took his least frightening stance. ‘Friend’, he signalled. She huffed, her tail swished, and she started to groom his head. The feelings that overcame him were indescribable. It was pure bliss, love and belonging. ‘She knows,’ he thought, ‘She knows that we are soulmates.”
He yipped hoarsely and tried to repay her kindness, but he was too small to reach any of the good spots. Recognising his struggle, she huffed again and lowered herself into a kneeling position. Kakashi couldn’t believe his luck. He jumped around her excitedly, nipping her fur, licking her neck, her head, her ears when she lowered her head to lie on the ground. She huffed happily, her tail lazily swishing the leaves from left to right. This horse was absolutely relaxed in the presence of a wolf. She felt safe and Kakashi… Kakashi wanted to stay here forever. Never shift again, never move again. Just stay here, with his mate and leave the human world full of responsibilities and hardships behind. Just be and not think about the consequences.
But, like any good thing, it didn’t last. After lying in the sun for a while, occasionally licking the other, she got up. She nickered softly, nibbled his ear as a goodbye and turned around to walk back into the forest. Kakashi wanted to follow her, but he knew that he had to return. He ran until he could nearly see the gates, then shifted into his human form and entered the village.
His sleep that night was filled with the scent of horse, the feeling of teeth nibbling on his ears. When he woke up, he had shifted again. The last time, he had shifted while he was asleep had been when he was a child. His father taught him how to keep his human form stable during the night, and he hardly ever slept deep enough to risk shifting. But now it had happened. Twice. Thankfully, the first time he had woken before Iruka had.
Iruka…
Now, that he had spent time with his mate, he knew that he couldn’t deny her. He felt extremely bad for it, but he knew that going on dates with Iruka was selfish and mean. He knew that, if he ever met his soulmate in human form, he would run towards them without hesitation and never look back. Iruka didn’t deserve that. He had to end this relationship before Iruka developed proper feelings for him. If it wasn’t already too late for that.
He wrote his mission report as quickly as possible. So fast that he didn’t manage to make it sloppy and unreadable. Iruka stared at it for a second when he got it.
We need to talk, the little hand-written note said,
Meet me at the bridge tonight.
K.
“Thank you for your hard work, Kakashi-san,” Iruka responded without hesitation but he didn’t look at him.
Kakashi was dying a thousand deaths while he was pacing the bridge. He practiced what he wanted to say for the nth time and he still wasn’t happy with the wording. He didn’t want to hurt Iruka. He had to hurt Iruka to protect him from an even worse pain. Why couldn’t Kakashi’s life be nice and easy for once? Because he was Hatake Kakashi, cursed to bear the mistakes of generations of Hatakes before him.
“Kakashi?” Iruka had, once again, managed to escape Kakashi’s detection. “What’s the matter?”
“Iruka” Just seeing him shook Kakashi’s determination. The tan face open, worry and curiosity openly portrayed for everyone to see. Brown eyes that spoke of the unshakeable trust in the goodness of humankind. Warm hands, extended to embrace the lost and lonely. Broad shoulders for worrywarts to cry on. He was everything Kakashi wanted and yet… there was something he wanted more. “I… I’m sorry. I can’t do this. We’re not meant to be.”
“What do you mean?” Iruka took a step towards him. Kakashi flinched and fled two steps back.
“We should stop seeing each other. I’m sorry.”
Realisation set in. Iruka’s shoulders slumped. His eyes widened, his mouth opened in disbelief. “Why?”
“I met my soulmate on my way back from mission. I spent some time with her and…I like you, I really do, but meeting my soulmate… I can’t go back. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“Your… soulmate…” Iruka sat down and leaned his back against the bridge’s railing. He stared at his hands and didn’t say anything for a long time. Kakashi didn’t dare move. “What do you mean ‘you met your soulmate’?”, he piped up eventually, now sounding more angry than devastated. “Last time I checked, you don’t just go around meeting them.”
Kakashi sat down on the opposite side of the bridge. “Before we started dating, I was heavily injured and bleeding out. I would’ve died but I was saved by someone. Another shifter. You know the old folktale that you can summon your soulmate when you are on the brink of death? Well, there seems to be some truth in it. In this moment, I knew with absolute certainty that she was my mate.” He leaned back, his eye directed at the sky and tried to blink the tears away. His hitai-ate was already getting wet – Obito’s eye was so much more prone to crying than his own. “I started looking for her but found you instead. And I thought I could make it work. Mariko said I could make it work. But meeting her again yesterday afternoon, I realised that I can’t. It’s not fair to you. You deserve something real.”
“I don’t know. It felt pretty real to me.” Iruka sounded like he was pouting. Well, if he was pouting, maybe he wasn’t hurt as badly as Kakashi had feared.
“Many people fall in love and are happy and never meet their soulmate. I had the misfortune to meet them.”
Iruka laughed. It was a cold, bitter laugh. “Most people wouldn’t call that a misfortune. Doesn’t everyone dream of meeting their soulmate?”
“I guess most shifters do. I never did and I wish I had never met them. I want to be with you.”
Suddenly, Iruka sat up, anger distorting his face. “Well, if you really want it, why can’t you make it work?” Kakashi flinched as if Iruka had thrown a kunai into his guts.
“Because I will always run back to her,” he admitted meekly. “Meeting her felt… better than anything I have ever experienced. I can’t be with anyone else.”
“Well then, run back to her! What are you even doing here?” Iruka had jumped up and pointed at him accusingly.
“I don’t know who she is…” Kakashi gave back even more meekly. “I’ve only ever met her in her animal form. All I know is that she is a beautiful brown bay horse…”
“A horse…” Iruka started to walk away, then stopped. “Wait… a brown horse… you said you met her yesterday afternoon.” He turned around and stared at Kakashi accusingly. “Are you, by any chance, a white wolf?”
“How do you know?”
“Because I am that horse, you idiot!”
Kakashi blinked confused. “… What?”
Iruka began to change right in front of his eyes. Kakashi checked their surroundings, but it was getting dark, and no one was near enough to see them in this light. He had never watched anyone change before. Sure, ANBU changed in and out of animal form during battle, but it was very quick, and he was always too focussed on the enemy and not dying. Iruka’s limbs stretched, fur filled his skin, he grew until there was a brown bay horse standing in front of him. Her fur a little darker than Iruka’s skin, her mane the same colour as his hair. A scar across her nose. Now that Kakashi knew, it was obvious that this was Iruka. The mare made a deep, annoyed sound in the back of her throat and started nibbling Kakashi’s hair. Still in disbelief, he reached up to stroke her nose. She huffed softly but obviously annoyed and signalled him to mount her. Kakashi didn’t have a lot of experience riding horses, much less mounting such a huge one without stirrups, but she knelt down, and he climbed onto her back. He was still in disbelief when she started walking off the bridge and along the river. He felt the strong muscles move underneath him, the soft fur in his hands, the warmth of the horse’s… Iruka’s… body seeping in everywhere they were touching. Kakashi threaded his hands through the dark mane, he stroked the fur and felt the sudden need to lie down and embrace the neck which he moved to do, but she suddenly bucked and sent him flying.
Kakashi caught himself and landed, ungracefully and rather painfully in a pile of leaves at the foot of a tree. When he had regained the control over all his limbs, Iruka was already leaning over him, a shit-eating grin on his human face. But that grin was replaced with a very serious look just seconds later. “Never” He said, and Kakashi started to remember what fear felt like. “Never do anything like this again.” Kakashi just nodded, as quickly as he could and pressed against the tree when Iruka came even closer but there was no way to escape without hurting Iruka. He didn’t have to worry though, because the next assault was directed at his lips.
Kakashi welcomed the kiss and moved against Iruka eagerly, hungrily, not holding the moans that crept up his throat. It had never been a choice that required heartbreak. His feelings had never been conflicting. He loved Iruka and he might have said so when Iruka moved away to catch his breath. “Aww, you’re so sweet, Kakashi,” Iruka nickered. “Are you sure that you are a wolf and not a dog?”
“I don’t wag my tail,” Kakashi gave back.
“Yeah, I can see that.” Iruka’s hand descended upon his loins and Kakashi realised that he was very much erect. “Say, have you ever had sex with another man?”
Kakashi shook his head. “I haven’t had sex with anyone. I… wasn’t interested in it… until now…” His voice had turned into a whisper for these last two words.
Iruka chuckled and pressed a short kiss against his lips before he moved away. “Don’t worry, boyfriend, I will teach you everything you need to know. In due time.” When Iruka shifted this time, Kakashi followed his example. And when Iruka started galloping away, Kakashi chased after him, playfully. They spent the best hours of the night playing and running, just a wolf and a horse who loved one another.
And when they returned to their respective beds, they did so with a big smile on their face and a promise of companionship in their hearts.
Did you know
There is no honest way of telling us apart?
You're not alone
Because I know we've been entangled from the start