This is named after the IAMX and Imogen Heap song, My Secret Friend.

Please enjoy.

I wanna be much more like you
Your effortlessly graceful scene
That drips from every pore of you
Where logic cannot intervene
I wanna take a bath with you
And wash the chaos from my skin
I wanna fall in love with you
So how do we begin ?

My Secret Friend

Chapter One

Sakura was a creeper.

It had taken her the disquieting sum of five of her little adventures to finally realise this actuality. That she was, indefinitely, a creeper.

It had dawned on her, the moment her milkshake had missed her mouth and instead trailed the corner of her lip, her chin. With the taste of cherry on her teeth, it was with utter embarrassment that she wiped the dribble hastily from her face like a self-conscious child coming to terms with hygiene. It was lukewarm and clammy and she realised this streak of milkshake must have been on her face for the better part of half an hour. There were few things in this world that enthralled Sakura enough to forget etiquette. She slurped at her now habitual Saturday drink, getting it all over her face. Enthralled— and this was perhaps the most disturbing part of the whole escapade— with her teacher.

The way she found him was the smallest coincidence.

Saturday night, and she was dedicated to getting filthy drunk. She had forceful hands wrapped around her forearms, and in the midst of growling at the blonde dragging her along there was a glimmer at the corner of her eye that made her head turn. Lanterns. And something else.

Seeing him there, in that strange way. It made her stop dead.

He was in the far corner of a bar she hadn't ever noticed, in all the times she'd first skipped and then slumped her way past this road. Her boisterous friends often had her body attuned to the more appropriate setting of throbbing music and half-naked bodies rubbing up and down each other erotically in the dark. Sakura realised she must have passed this place a hundred times with a snub nose.

But it was lovely. The bar was uncovered for the most part, a curt timber roof slanted over the main countertop and surrounding stools. Rows and rows of booths were squared off between a quaint stage and a perimeter of tall wooden fences. Between columns swayed the lanterns. He resided beneath the sky, surrounded by the lights that seemed to sway with every breathy laugh of ever customer. It was like a world of its own, not bothered by the bustle on the streets before it. Under the lanterns glow, of orange and yellow and ruby, he didn't look like her sensei. He looked like a sensual creature.

Kakashi Hatake. While other people raced and aged, he was left behind on slow feet with nothing but his signature porn, a signature gaze. You would think this would make it easier for people to bump into him, but that was not the case. Outside of a mission, Kakashi was a ghost that you met in passing, and to some— to Sakura— his existence, and any attempts at recording it, was futile. She knew nothing of the inside of his home, or the undisclosed rooftops he progressed to laze about on, even after being his student and friend (or so she assumed) for so many years.

He was like impassive stone, once you tore through his jokes. When you stopped taking him for granted and tried to understand if that crinkle to his eyes was legitimate amusement. Sakura had come to know that every front he put up, were it that sluggish way he bent over his porn or the way he pretended to ignore you, was fake. She came to realise that when he looked like he was about to fall into a nap, it meant he was especially on edge.

But it was her belief that that night she saw Kakashi at his most raw. His book was beside him, but he wasn't reading it. Instead he was preoccupied with a mug of alcohol. She noticed one hand pressed against his hitai-ate in a way you would in the process of experiencing an unpleasant headache.

Her heart hurt, with the guilt of being captivated by his pain.

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen seconds and Ino was insulting her forehead and tugging her along. With her own wisecrack she allowed herself to be taken back into her world.

It was safe to say she didn't remember seeing Kakashi for the remainder of that night, or the few nights that followed.

Sakura much preferred to lie there awake grinding her teeth into oblivion instead of getting the decent amount sleep her job entailed. It is stupid how lying there with your own thoughts can unwittingly lead you down the path of self-loathing and remembering all the stupid mistakes you had made in your life, and all the times you'd felt something as cruel your mother's cold corpse hand at the age of thirteen. The radical change it brought about in your father.

When Sakura did remember him it was three days later, while she was tossing and turning in her insomnia, trying to think of something other than the fact that she really did have a gigantic forehead that no man would ever come to love. It was him, under the lanterns. Broad shoulders slouched, holding his face with that tense hand. She'd thought about him, and how lucky those strangers that sat around him were, compared to his friends.

Compared to her.

She woke up the next morning, bemused and troubled that it had been her musing of him, him as he glowed in those dim lights that had finally lulled her to sleep.

A few weeks later, in a very similar situation, her eyes swooped across the bar only to find his spot taken by an elderly couple. Slightly disappointed, Sakura had double-checked just as they rounded the corner, only to nearly choked on her dango and have Naruto thump her repeatedly on the back, because Sakura had seen him there again. On a Saturday, with his worn-out book and a slosh of alcohol. She was closer this time, eyes locking on the signboard that named this nestled out-of-the-way bar "The Lantern". Well, how fitting.

His despondent face shocked her. The eye she wasn't able to see before was now downcast and ridden with something so horribly human, that she had never seen on her sensei before. Compunction, a tad bit of misery. Loneliness.

She'd tilted her head like a curious little girl.

This time she didn't forget, as it was pinning her brain all night with the details of his tired eye, and the dark tint that rimmed it. She nibbled at her lip and pulled at her limp just-out-of-the-shower hair, knocking her knees together in an awkward way.

Another week and she went back.

There he was, the only slight variation was that he was actually reading this time. The realisation punched her in the face— she'd found a consistency in Kakashi. She knew something about his life, a habit, a commitment she was sure few were privy to. She might have been happier if it didn't feel like she was invading something wholly personal. She didn't stay, she didn't have the nerves to, so she ran home like the girl she thought she had left behind, feeling bittersweet. She left, with hot pink on her cheeks.

And a whole new aspiration for Kakashi Hatake.

Sakura did not become a creeper until she grew some metaphoric balls. And as a very habitual person in her own right, something made her go down there every Saturday to observe him. At first it was from a distance of The Lantern, slowly creeping towards this new foreign world full of wonders her own mind cultivated. Eventually she found herself timidly pouring over the drinks menu. Literally. She couldn't get body closer to the table, hunched and shuffling in her stall, terrified he would see her. She was splendidly surprised when she realised the pub catered milkshakes, and soon her Saturdays of booze and friends was replaced with memorising Kakashi over a tall glass of cherry milkshake, only thing missing was the sparkler she hadn't specified.

Of course work could not be helped and she would find some Saturdays engaged in missions away from home, for either her or Kakashi, or both. When he was away it gave her time to explore The Lantern and eventually she found herself going for her own pleasure. Eventually her friends stopped nagging and perhaps found Saturdays without Sakura to now be the norm. She thought she should have cared more about that.

And over the weeks, eventually the months, she determined a few things.

Kakashi, on some level, was a one-day-a-week alcoholic that binged and tried to drown forthcoming emotions in liquor.

Some nights were worse than others. On the really, really bad nights he didn't even have the strength to pretend that he was reading his silly book. He just sat there in his headache pose and clenched his knuckles to white. Those nights were the most fascinating for her, because it was strange to see this man unable to control his emotions. She sipped at her milkshake and, as mentioned, dribbled all over herself like a fool. Eventually those nights stopped being fascinating and became heartbreaking to her.

And as the gleam of the lanterns did wonderful things to what little of his pale skin was exposed, Sakura began to determine something about herself, as well.

Something, deep in her chest, full of warmth and wonder, was developing for her teacher. That equipped with the nosy, stalkerish way she handled this new affection was becoming confusing. He was attractive, appealing, but at the same time he was still Kakashi-sensei, a lazy old man who used to put her team through living hell (out of love was his reasoning but he lied badly, most likely on purpose), who read filthy novels and left them scarred, emotional wrecks earlier than most (also most likely on purpose).

And what would he think of me now if he knew I stalked him. At least she hadn't progressed to following him home, which would have been easy enough, because he stumbled like a lout. She had to make herself believe that she'd never stoop that low.

'You coming out tonight?'

'I… no. I'm busy.'

'Listen, you're really starting to piss me off.'

'My mission in life.'

Ino's stare was one that ripped through you and burrowed deep into your soul. Sakura shifted, finding it uncomfortable to finish chewing her food when her face felt like it was getting x-rayed. 'The hell you staring at, Pig?'

'Are you fucking someone, Sakura Haruno?' Ino demanded loudly with a wicked grin on her face, and Sakura ducked her head beneath her palm when the people at the surrounding tables glanced over.

'I just don't feel like going out, Pig.' she hissed.

'Every Saturday night we used to be the dynamic duo!'

'Are you being serious?' Sakura said, around a mouthful of food. A spot of noodle flew out of her mouth and hit the bowl. "You used me to make yourself look better and then when you scored a guy you left me with Naruto!'

'Exactly, we had a good thing going!'

Sakura rolled her eyes and slurped up her meal.

'As much as it kills me to say it, I'm a bit worried. Are you sick. Or, or have you found new friends? You better not have.'

'Nothing like that, you jealous prat.'

'Have you found a new man?'

Sakura coughed. Well, she had. Sort of. 'Nah.'

'Hm. Well you are exceptionally good at driving them off.'

'Shut up, Pig.'

Ino groaned. 'Come on, Sakura, come out with me this Saturday. What could be better than vodka and sweaty man-meat?'

'I don't have enough fingers and toes to count.'

'Do you want to do something else? We could go to one of those pubs.'

'It's okay.'

'Far more eligible men will be there. Older, richer, not so likely to stare and your tits? Did I mention richer? Come on, Forehead.'

Sakura smiled. 'Okay. I'll think about it.' She wasn't really going to, but sometimes even Ino could pull at her heartstrings.

His thumb fiddled with the corner of a page in Icha Icha, before flipping it, one lazy eye trained against words he defended copiously as erotic masterpieces. It was a better night. He sort of deflated into his seat, calm.

The Lantern had a certain thing about it; she knew why Kakashi chose it. It suited him. It was easy to forget everything outside the walls, which were intricately woven with the climbing vines of the nearby gardens that grappled at the timber. And from the outside, the place itself was easy to forget.

Everything was a dark, warm oak, and smelt like a rich brewery. Often there was live music. A constant was a slender blind lady, who could play the Biwa like she breathed air. Though that was irony in itself because the woman smoked sixty cigarettes a day, and could be heard coughing repeatedly while not performing.

One day, she thought, she could at least have the courage to thank him for obliviously showing her this place.

She turned her attention to the pocket at her hip, forgoing Kakashi for a moment to get a cigarette at her lip, using her palm to shield the tiny flame of a match from the autumn breeze. She'd have to remember to bring a jacket next time. It was getting chilly.

It was during the process of succumbing to her unhealthy habit that Kakashi was able to execute his meticulously planned entrance.

She took too long to realise his seat was suddenly empty.

And that the one in front of her was suddenly occupied.

'Sakura-chan. What a coincidence.'

She questioned the authenticity of his eye-crinkle. She really should have taken Ino up on that offer.

Cheers.

I Do- Placebo