Hello!

Just a little apology story because I've been away soooo long. Next Players is almost ready! Just need to fine tune it and spice up the sex scene ahahahahah enjoy!

I

Kakashi was humming a song. It was a tinkly little tune that penetrated the air and got right under Sakura's skin, making it twitch and ache with nostalgia.

Hmm, this would be the perfect opportunity...

The sound of metal clashed in the background but that was the only indication that the two people, the pink haired medic and the infamous copy nin, were not alone. Sakura knew her scheme would only work if they were alone. Were they alone enough?

"Kakashi?" she asked, his humming stopped.

"Hn?" he wasn't listening, not really, he was still reading, his eyes never leaving the page of his dirty, Icha Icha book.

"What's that song?"

"What is what song?" Kakashi stretched against the tree trunk as he asked with the mild uninterested air he always surrounded himself with. He was half sitting half reclining in the midday heat in a strangely self-satisfied manner; they had already finished their fight (Kakashi winning, again) and were awaiting the return of the two, sweaty, overexerted members of their team who were still fighting, despite the fact that this fight had been going on since six a.m. and had been borne out of the fact that whenever they fought neither one could beat the other, it was always a tie, so the fight continued the next day and the next and the next...

"The song you were just humming." Kakashi scratched the back of his head and for a moment looked like he'd tell the truth, opening his mouth to speak.

"BREAK!" It was the unmistakeable voice of Naruto.

"No dobe, you can't stop just because you're about to be beaten."

"Don't be stupid you couldn't defeat me!"

"Then why are you backing out?

"I'm not backing out! It's just..."

"Just what?" Sasuke was standing in the clearing near them, hand clasping a kunai, looking at a sulky Naruto who had just been sent sprawling by a kick to the shins.

"Sakura-chan made me special food today."

Sasuke rolled his eyes but backed up and walked to where his teacher and only female team mate sat on the grass.

"Hn, Sakura-chan never makes me special food," his usual brooding tone with a hint of a suggestion creeping in; it made Sakura feel uncomfortable.

"Yes well you don't have the brain capacity of a – Naruto!" Sakura forgot her sentence as a beaten up Naruto limped into the clearing, "oh for god's sake, can you two never play nice?" She got up and walked to her blonde friend, she should have known Sasuke would put his new taijutsu skills to good use, he had, after all, been training with Lee for half the summer.

She sat Naruto down and began welding the large gash on his head with healing chakra in one hand whilst searching around for her pack with the other.

"Kakashi-sensei can you pass me my bag?" she asked absently, peering into the spilt in her friend's head and the grim spectacle of bright red blood splattered on bright blonde hair. Kakashi must have silently tossed it to her as it fell with a clunk by her left thigh but as she looked back he was still engrossed in his fantasy book world. "Thanks" she murmured quietly, picking out a sterilised wipe with one hand, keeping the other flowing healing chakra into the wound. She managed to mop up most of the blood with the wipe.

"Come on, let's go again." This was Sasuke.

"No, food first!"

"No food until I beat you."

"God, you sound like Kakashi."

"Yeah? You fight like Kakashi" – this had become an insult since both boys had realised they could both win a battle against their prodigious teacher on the odd occasion. Naruto snorted and Sakura noticed Kakashi give a slight flinch.

"He knocked you on your ass last time you fought him." Sakura reminded Sasuke.

"Hn." What else could he say; it was true.

"Don't you tell me you're not hungry!"

Sasuke shrugged and grunted again, "hn."

Sakura allowed her team mate's banter to fade into the back ground as she looked at her only other silent comrade. He seemed oblivious to their presence and engrossed in that bloody book! What was it about she wondered. What was so wonderful about it, except the obvious: it was filled with page after page of sex, both literary and probably literal, knowing Jiraya. But even so, what possessed a man to read that stuff in public?

A few years ago, as a confused teenager with racing hormones she had nicked a copy of 'Icha Icha Paradise' from Naruto's room and read it cover to cover and back again, intrigued by a mixture of fascination and disgust, but she would never read it in public, for one it got her all hot and bothered and pink cheeked.

She glanced sideways at her teacher, he wasn't reading 'Icha Icha Paradise' but he was reading one from later in the series. She wondered what the main character was up too, had he got the girl yet? And if so, how the hell was Kakashi sitting there so emotionless whilst reading it.

He was either a very good lover or a very bad one she had concluded, once she got used to seeing the man as more of a person and less of a sensei. He was always telling her to call him Kakashi but 'sensei' just kept slipping out. She had concluded this because he seemed so impassive and detached whilst being presented with such a stimulus...or, perhaps he was silently learning from it...she blushed at the thought.

"Sasuke!" The exuberant boom rang though the clearing, jerking Sakura, who had been dozing in the shade of Kakashi's tree, awake. "Quit sleeping and come fight me."

"Naruto you've hardly given digestion a chance," Sakura scolded, watching a disgruntled Sasuke sit up from where he had been lounging on a tree branch, "wait a while."

"Sakura-chan, I have to beat Sasuke bastard!"

"Naru-"

"He's alright, Sakura," it was the smooth voice of their sensei, "he's never needed digestion before." Sakura jumped slightly at Kakashi's voice, she always did, he never said much, not in this setting, always content to sit back and allow the boys to thrash it out on their own. Sasuke got up, ignoring everyone, and walked back into their makeshift arena.

"Come on then."

"I'm going to beat you." Naruto said, eyes sparkling with challenge as he bounded up to the brooding Uchiha.

"Hn" – a half laugh.

Again the funny sort of silence descended, except it wasn't silent because the boys could be clearly heard clinking weapons and summoning jutsus and hollering battle cries. Kakashi looked sideways at his pink haired student who was watching the boys' movements as intently as if she had a Sharingan to memorise them with.

"My mother was a civilian," he said after a while, "it was her song."

And there it was, what she'd been waiting for; that little piece of extra that he seemed to be imparting unto her more and more these days; how long it had been happening she didn't know because only a few weeks ago had she first noticed. It began with her noticing the first truthful reply he'd ever given his team's medic when asked about a scar – 'I was playing with my father's kunai pouch when I was little' – it wasn't much to be sure but it was more than she could ever recall him saying by way of his past. In truth she had been expecting some ridiculous story of wild fantasy and heroism that she wouldn't believe - wasn't meant to believe - and hearing something about his childhood seemed...intimate, almost too intimate. Nevertheless it had only made Sakura uncomfortable for a few days, then it felt nice for him to impart these quietly intimate comments to her: he never said them when the boys were around.

She wondered if she was reading too much into it? The underlining meaning was that both her parents were civilians and so was his mother so it must have been a song heard in childhood, hummed over a pink haired baby who would not go to sleep, but then why didn't he say that; why not say 'it's a kid's song' or just 'hn', that annoying inarticulacy that he shared with Sasuke, and a shoulder shrug. Eighteen months ago, that's exactly what he would have done, she remembered so.

He was silent now.

"You...your mother?" she asked, shocked he'd spoken about something that he usually kept as covert as his face, hidden under his mask. He was still silent but he nodded in the affirmative. She wondered if she should ask about her; did mentioning his mother mean he wanted to talk to Sakura about her? Silly little bubblegum pink Sakura who had two fully functioning parents and had grown up loved and sheltered, Sakura who didn't understand the hardships of life, Sakura who he'd taught and been an authority figure to for years, having to watch by as she disgraced herself in the name of love for her brooding ex-team mate? Probably not, she concluded; when she put it that way. 'No,' she thought, 'it was just a throw away comment'.

But then miraculously he began again!

"Yeah, my Ma," he said quietly, still not looking at her, "I think it's a song from Sound because she lived up there, near the coast." Then he was silent and it almost left Sakura wondering if he had spoken at all.

"And now?" she asked tentatively, "where is she now?"

...

"She's dead," he said, after a pause.

"Oh, I'm sorry Kakashi," for once calling him solely by name.

"It's okay, Sakura-chan," he said, for once looking up at her and giving an eye crease, "I don't remember her much anyway, she died when I was young."

"Oh," she intoned quietly, not quite sure what to say. She noticed he was still looking at her, his eyes hadn't fallen onto the words in his book the moment he'd finished speaking to her like they usually did, if he ever managed to tear them away in the first place.

"I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable, Sakura," he said lightly, his voice barely carrying over to her.

"No, of course not..." she replied just as quietly, not quite sure if she meant it.

Hurrayy! Next chapter up soon! It won't all stay rosy for long :D Hurrayyy! Please review even though I've been a v bad writer and not written in ages :( xxxx.