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“Do you know what I am?” says the fox in Kakashi’s dreams. It’s always the same fox, red and huge. Nine whip-like tails lash behind it, like blood sprays congealed. Black fur surrounds its eyes and carves back into two long, rabbit-like ears. Sometimes, Kakashi dreams it over his sensei’s village, remembering how it destroyed the town that fateful night. Other times, the Nine-Tails paces a gigantuous cage, and red-black water washes over Kakashi’s feet.
Fire licks at the base of the cage like the flames that stylised sensei’s cloak. Kakashi thinks about walking through them and entering the Nine-Tails’ domain. But he’s never been the curious sort. The self-destructive part of him urges him anyway, and Kakashi dithers despite himself, watching the Nine-Tails gnash its incredible teeth. Its eyes are rubies through the gloom. Kakashi has a ruby eye of his own. Some part of him wants to open that eye and see what the Nine-Tails will do, and the other part of him knows that this is all a dream.
“You are not enough to stop me,” the Nine-Tails says. Its red eyes narrow at Kakashi, and there are sharingans in its gaze. Powerful chakra seeps through the gaps in the bars like a mist, obscuring its impossible eyes. The chakra is hot - scalding - but goosebumps shiver over Kakashi’s skin. He’s afraid. The Nine-Tails laughs at his fear, smoke spilling from its mouth. The smoke builds until Kakashi is near-blind in it, until all he can see is a golden-tinged darkness and yellow hair from within.
A flicker of chakra snaps Kakashi awake. It feels like fire over his skin, the cold layer of sweat on his skin burning with ice. He jolts into awareness and stillness all at once, poppy-red eye flashing. It swirls through his eyelashes, black and red and blood against white, and he sees that fiery world of his dreams, again, in Obito’s crimson haze. His apartment is cluttered and dark, and perfect for a fox. Hot, summer air warms the sweat on his face, and it could be the Nine-Tails’ molten breath escaping the cracks of its smile. Kakashi inhales sharply with fear - a primal fear. It scorches his throat; he tastes smoke and feels ashes in his mouth. He thinks of the Nine-Tails’ fire-tongue, madly, and the sizzle of metal bars as it roars. He can see it, almost, stalking him with red eyes in Obito’s red world, and Kakashi slaps a hand over his sharingan, seeing too much.
He gasps with the relief of darkness. At once, he notices he’s without a mask. He drags his hand down his face, pulling his eyelid, cheek, and the corner of his mouth into a frown. Wolf teeth bare at the night. Kakashi’s heart thunders. That fiery chakra lingers. He swallows hard, still tasting the Nine-Tails’ ashes, and feeling the smoke of its laugh in his throat.
The same dream for weeks. Ever since...
Kakashi groans, mere seconds after waking, and peels his face from his cushion. The kotatsu is a cumbersome weight atop him, and the dog sleeping at his side is warm and calm. Deep breaths push its chest against Kakashi’s. He knows it’s Pakkun without looking, knows the chakra of all of his dogs, and he reaches to pet Pakkun’s floppy ears. The chakra that woke him wasn’t the white-capped lightning of his pack, and Kakashi comforts himself with the thought that it never could be. His pack is safe, and Pakkun is sleeping, and Kakashi darts his gaze to the little boy that most definitely should be.
“What.”
Naruto starts as though he hadn't expected Kakashi to notice him a foot away. He smiles cautiously. His eyes are Minato’s blue and wide, and his whisker-marked cheeks blush red.
"It's hot," he whines, like steam hissing from his mouth. "I want to sleep with you."
That doesn't make sense. Kakashi's not sure anything makes sense. Under the kotatsu, he pinches his thigh. Naruto peeps down at him, still a little boy, and the Nine-Tails' chakra swirls about them, glinting orange in the moonlight like ignition in a mist. Either Kakashi's freaking out, or Naruto's seal is leaking chakra into the room.
Sensei's seal. Kakashi kicks himself for doubting it. It’s much more likely that he’s losing his mind. He smiles to himself, briefly, humourlessly, and forces himself to calm. He imagines cool porcelain against his face, and narrow, targeted eyes. ANBU armour is heavy and it grounds him, and Kakashi remembers that weight even in its absence. Focus, demands Hound’s red-toothed sneer, and Kakashi runs his tongue across his own teeth, feeling his ancestral grin. He holds his chakra down, down deep within himself, and smothers the flighty lightning under his skin. ANBU are nothing, and no-one, and they can be anywhere and nowhere at once. Kakashi’s good at disappearing - and making things disappear.
“Your teeth are big,” Naruto says.
Kakashi sighs. He covers his face, weirded-out by the observation. It’s true, of course, but he’s unused to people commenting on it. Naruto’s at that age where everything is worth commenting on. He’s also staring at Kakashi’s face, which few people have ever seen. It seems Naruto is the exception of every one of Kakashi’s rules - including who deserves to disappear.
“I’ll have to get the fan,” he says, conceding to the request. Summer humidity or Tailed Beast chakra aside, Naruto is five. Kakashi can no sooner turn one of his dogs away. He drags himself out from under the kotatsu, focusing on that thought. Naruto is a five-year-old boy, oblivious to the monster within him. It’s not his fault that the Nine-Tails’ chakra is erupting Kakashi’s anxiety through the roof.
The chakra is thicker in the bedroom, prowling like the Nine-Tails in its cage. Kakashi half-expects the fan to bite him. Turning on a light might help, but it might also illuminate things Kakashi doesn’t want to see. (His threadbare living space; half-dead plants. His father’s blood-dyed hair and Minato’s blood-dyed cloak).
He returns to the front room with the fan and a pillow. Naruto peeps at him from under the kotatsu, big eyes like blue fire in the dark. He’s his mother in every way except the sunflower hair, and he laughs with her chaotic tune. There was something wild in Kushina’s laughter, something with teeth too big for her mouth. Before Kakashi knew of the Nine-Tails, he’d thought her strange. She was sensei’s girlfriend, bright and quick like a will-o’-the-wisp. That terrible fire is inside Naruto, now, and it twinkles behind his eyes, on the edge of his chakra, on the tips of his teeth.
The orphanage said Naruto would bite the other children, a creature possessed. Kakashi’s seen glimpses of that creature himself, in his waking moments and dreams. He sees it now in the corner of his apartment, flickering around Naruto like smoke from a flame.
Get a grip.
Kakashi drops the pillow onto Naruto’s face, who squeals. It’s much too late in the evening for laughter but Kakashi cracks a smile. It’s hard not to when Naruto is safe, and happy, and has Pakkun squashed against his chest.
Kakashi isn’t the parental sort. He’s nineteen. His mother is a name on a tombstone, and his father is a name left unsaid. He thinks they loved him, anyway. He loved Minato-sensei and Kushina more than he ever put into words, and now he has their son. In another life, Kakashi and Naruto could’ve been brothers.
Maybe in this life, too.
Kakashi has no idea what he’s doing. He plucked Naruto from the orphanage like a wolf snatching a rabbit, and now that rabbit is running amok in his home. Naruto certainly has the energy for it - and the rashness to bounce off the walls. Legally, Kakashi isn’t yet old enough to care for a child - but when has a shinobi village cared for legality? The people at the orphanage were terrible for Naruto.
Kakashi’s probably terrible for Naruto.
“Lie down,” Naruto orders, and what can Kakashi do but obey?
He settles down next under the too-hot kotatsu, next to Naruto’s too-hot chakra. Pakkun yawns. Naruto does too, and he snuggles up next to Kakashi cautiously, clutching Pakkun between them like a toy. He doesn’t have tails, or fangs, or tomoe spinning in his eyes, but Kakashi can’t shake the feeling that the Nine-Tails is watching his every move.
“Hey,” Kakashi says, feeling stupid. “You feeling all right?”
Naruto blinks at him blearily. He seems content to sleep. If the Nine-Tails or the seal are bothering him, then he’s keeping quiet about it. “It’s really hot.”
Yeah. Go figure.
“Your tummy hurt?”
“No,” Naruto says - and that’s good, great, fantastic. Kakashi’s losing his marbles. “Does yours?”
“Huh?”
“Does your tummy hurt?” Naruto asks, and luckily he doesn’t seem to register Pakkun laughing. “That happens when you eat a lot. Or need to pee.”
“Uh.” Kakashi tries to imagine Minato-sensei in this position, talking about stomach aches with his son. Everything came so naturally to sensei. Kakashi’s completely out of his depth, lost in those black-red waves from the cage. He can almost hear the Nine-Tails laughing at him again, and its voice sounds like Kushina’s as he struggles to look after her son.
“I… did not know that,” he lies stupidly. Minato-sensei had been kind of stupid, now that he thinks about it, but Kushina had always laughed. “You should go back to sleep.”
Naruto nods and gives Pakkun a squeeze. He’s asleep in the blink of an eye, and Kakashi certainly blinks at him, wondering how his life has come to this.
Safe and happy, Kakashi reminds himself, settling down. As he falls asleep next to Kushina’s prisoner, he wonders what it means to be safe. And he can’t remember being happy. But at home with his dog and Minato-sensei’s son might be the closest he’s ever been.