Of Harrowed Hearts

I kinda forget to post this before the 9th chapter.

Notes:

For the record, this entire chapter almost didn't happen.
But my roommate found it in my folder of random shit and demanded it be a thing, so thank her not me.
Moving on.
I regret nothing.

Iruka brings his second cup of coffee for the morning to his mouth and takes a swallow, flipping through mission reports at his kitchen table while he debates on the merit of a third dose of caffeine. He figures another mug decreases the likelihood of him actually strangling Kotetsu to death at the mission desk, but also increases his chances of being too nice to Anko on accident and having to deal with her unsubtle harassment/flirting all day.

Just as he decides against it, figuring more caffeination would be worse for both his health and his sanity, there's a soft, hesitant knock on his door.

Iruka freezes immediately, his mug halfway to his mouth.

Not a single person Iruka could be considered friends with would ever knock like that. Only two people he knows would bother knocking at all, the first being Hayate, who is chronically polite, and the second being Gai– whose pounding usually startles Iruka's neighbors and occasionally breaks his door. The rest either just barge in or are overly paranoid Jounin who tend to fall through his window late at night.

Iruka scoots his chair back and gets to his feet. He's not dressed yet– he hadn't planned on going in early today so he's still in his civs– a pair of grey sweatpants and a navy longsleeve, hair loose around his shoulders. He pulls a kunai out from under the table and slips it into the waistband of his pants, covering the handle with a tug of his shirt.

He's prepared for a lot of things when he eases the door open, but the last thing he expects to see is the familiar swath of blond hair belonging to his favorite student, hunched beneath Genma's sorry unconscious carcass.

Blue eyes blink up at him, entirely too red and exhausted for Iruka's liking, but the bright smile offered to him is genuine, if tired. "Hi, Iruka-sensei."

He swings the door open immediately. "Naruto?" He asks, dipping down to relieve his unconscious idiot of a friend from his student's small shoulders. "What's going on? What happened?"

Naruto leans out from underneath Genma's weight as soon as he's able, an oddly graceful bend for an almost ten-year-old. "Uh, I think he's mostly okay, but he passed out in the hallways outside Jiji's office."

Outside the Hokage's office? What the hell was Genma doing there? Unless...

"You moron, Shiranui..." he growls softly, throwing the other shinobi's limp arm over his shoulder, looping his own around the man's waist to haul him upright against his side. Naruto hovers nearby, looking uncertain. Iruka can't help but smile a little. "Think you could help me with this idiot, Naruto? Knowing him he's going to need stitches, do you remember where I keep my med kit?"

Naruto nods smartly and ducks past Iruka into the apartment, vanishing around the corner into the bathroom. Iruka drags his friend to the couch and begins undoing his jounin vest; eyes searching for the red he knows must be beneath the thick fabric of the flak jacket. He finds the pooling stain of crimson over the flesh of Genma's right side, a long swath of it visible in the underside of the jacket like a slash of red paint. The blood is invisible against the standard shinobi longsleeve, so Iruka will have to get him out of it before he can see the extent of the damage. The shirt is otherwise clean and untorn, which raises Iruka's blood pressure because it means the idiot literally went home and changed before he thought of seeking out medical attention. He wants badly to punch the stubborn moron, for that and for apparently passing out on one of his kids, but it will have to wait until Genma is conscious for it.