KAKASAKU ;; plain and simple

per the request of tumblr user homusubi

When Kakashi first told Sakura he loved her, she didn't quite get it. It came out as I'm proud of you and she blew him off, telling him to stop poking her yin seal because it wasn't a toy. Sadly he acquiesced and laid back in his hospital bed, allowing her to knit him together again with her chakra. She was eighteen then, with shaggy pink hair and a flak jacket she'd never shed after the war. Kakashi thought she was beautiful, but it might have been the drugs pumping in his veins meant to make him forget he had been all but disemboweled.

Before he was well enough to escape the hospital she visited him and asked if he'd really meant it, if he was really, truly proud. He assured her that yes, he was. Very much so. He then asked if she would kindly discharge him. Sakura told him no.

The second time Kakashi told Sakura he loved her, she was angry with him. It came out as I need you, but she was a new jonin and couldn't be convinced to stay. She waved him off saying there were other medics, that her time as a member of Team Kakashi had come to an end. She was twenty two and her hair was long again, and he recognized the scroll in her hand. His little student would have students of her own as soon as the graduation exams were held. The thought put a pang in his chest. He didn't want to let her go, but she didn't belong to him. Pain bit him even as she was walking away.

She was still beautiful.

Sakura found him sitting in his sensei's ear, holding a copy of Icha Icha but not bothering to crack it open. She would take a mission with him every once in a while she said, but she needed him to see her as his equal, not a subordinate, like he did Naruto and Sasuke. He agreed, neglecting to mention that he already thought of her as vastly his superior in all the ways that mattered. Instead he took her to lunch and stiffed her with the bill. As equals, shouldn't she pay for him? He was after all a poor old man. The punch she threw it him must have meant she disagreed.

The third time Kakashi told Sakura he loved her, he said it plain and simple. It was easier to speak frankly when you were speaking to a rock. I love you.

Sakura didn't respond.