"Look at the light through the windowpane.
That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us."
01. The Bold
It is deep-deep night when Kakashi and the key client of the mission, a woman named Sora arrive at her house, unharmed and content. The moon has a dim shine that sets their faces into more shadow than light. Sora smiles when he stops the carriage. It is an undercover mission, and his civilian clothes etch at the neck, sends some shivers down his spine.
"So" whispers the woman. "Here we are."
She has rich-red hair that seems lighter in this glow and when she puts her hand on his thigh, he grimaces to himself. Smiles into the scarf he still wears as a camouflage, but this curve of his mouth is more bitter than sweet.
This one is a bold one. All teeth and dare.
In the novels he adores to read, this would be the exact point he says something enrapturing, making this all-fire woman jump into his arms. Instead, he goes rigid and nervous. Trembles when her hand travels up-up-upwards.
"Are you cold too?" she asks, looking at the goosebumps on his arms. Her laugh is low and playful. His heart accelarates under the itch of his scarf, because her voice is dizzying in its familiarity. He bits on his tongue and waits.
When Sora finally dips closer, the dark erases her features, and Kakashi can finally pretendpretendpretend that she is someone whose hair is shorter, face sharper, body tougher. The kiss is raw and rough, the way she would be if desperate, the way Kakashi wants to have her. He sneaks an arm around her hips to yield into this female warmth, so outlandish. Tongues and hands dance now in polysyllabic rythm, all calculated, a kind of murder. He is sloppy because he is anxious to do this right.
She moans.
He makes the mistake of whispering something back.
A name. The name of -
She freezes.
The slap in his face is like a dip in an icy lake.
"My name is Sora." Her voice is a block of winter.
The magic shatters. No subtle serenity anymore.
Kakashi's heart falls into his stomach, aware of his sin. But he lets the shame go. Lets the illusion falter and disappear in the glint that is too bright now. His heart beats slowly now, because the apathy in him is sincerely more heavier than his desire.
"I will escort you home" he says, more out of politeness than guilt. This is no act anymore, because he does not try to lighten this. Does not even apologize.
She slaps him again. He lets her because he deserves it.
"Is this a no?"
Sora tears herself from the seat and his arms. Jumps from the carriage, practical and swift. But before she storms away in her fury, she turns to face him once more and spits;
"Go find that girl you just mistook me for. And leave me the fuck alone."
02. The Compassionate
Although the lanterns in the small, crowded restaurant are blinding, there is a paravan separating Kurenai and him from the rest of the tables. The folding screen is from rice-paper, pink as a cherry-flower.
"Six o'clock. Mine." he signs with his chopsticks. The dumplings on the table are getting cold, which is a shame, really. Kurenai fiddles with a gold earring that Kakashi recognizes as Hinata's. He saves this detail for later - Hinata should have been the one accompanying him on this mission, but Kurenai volunteered instead - and watches as his partner locates their target in the neighbouring screen.
As Kurenai touches her left ear, then reapplies her lipstick, bloodred and gleaming serenely in the roseate light, she is already coding back. There is a haze which through he acknowledges this, a lovely haze which makes Kurenai sharp angles soft, and it is a surprise. They both been drinking quite persistently since the early afternoon, as if they were truly the newly-weds and passionate lovers they act to be.
His partner finishes the sign.
"Goto-san just drank a very expensive poison with a healthy dose of wine." The code says.
He hears the rustling of a napkin, then a cough and as Goto's atrocious cologne hits his nose - too much musk and some oud - he imagines the scent of swift decay lingering underneath all that gold yukata. This pity landlord-to-be will be dead in half an hour. The mission is basically a success, and yet and yet -
Folding the napkin twive in his lap, Kakashi touches his right hand to his left eyebrow.
"Where is he heading?" he signs.
Kurenai is the same age as he, but for a moment, as her eyes narrow and her eyes flicker to follow, Kakashi sees another, a younger woman sitting in her place. This light tints his partner's features creamy and pink and his heart tightens, springs, drips something tangible. He must have drunk more than he thought.
"Bathroom." Kurenai is talking now, leaning closer. She hesitates a bit, smiles as if in love, and catches his hand. The lily-perfume she wears goes into his head and he knows he lost this battle for today. He closes both of his eyes and lets her voice lull him. "His bodyguard is scanning the crowd."
"Is he?" he breathes and leans in and kisses her.
Kurenai freezes.
Then goes with it. Then freezes again when she realizes it is not an act of deception, but of desperation. She touches his shoulders, more gentle than angry, and when Kakashi opens his eyes, her eyes are hard and blank.
"The bodyguard went out." Kurenai says, boring her red-sharp eyes into his and he has the decency to blush, like an adolescent caught. "We are done for today."
The implication stings. He hums in agreement and lets his eyes fall onto the table. Icha Icha does not give advice what to do when a woman who turns you down so shamelessly well. So he stays silent in his shame.
"Would you have kissed Hinata too?" Kurenai's voice is dangerous now. "Were it not for the baby shower?"
"I am sorry." Suddenly, Kakashi feels bone tired. Wants to go home and curl up and sleep for a decade.
He hears Kurenai sighing and leaning back. There is silence. When he finally deems it safe to look up, she looks sad; expression a crossroad of pity and concern.
"She will name the child Itachi or Sarada."
The infamous Copy Ninja of Thousand Jutsu, the friend killer Kakashi smiles at that, but it does not reach his eyes, this grimace, frozen in its falsity. Kurenai cringes. Looks away.
He coughs a bit as he refills his cup with sake and clinks it to Kurenai's empty ones on the table, as a joke. He smiles again, terrifying this time, and ignores that his partner is standing to leave. Says his blessings to the half-empty bar and its half-dead habitants;
"Cheers, then!"
03. The Imitator
It would have happened sooner or later, this Icha Icha type of scenario; he reckons, as he lets her in. He feels no finesse, but made sure his room is clean and the curtains are drawn. It is night, but anyone could see, and Kakashi is not truly ready to face this kind of peek into his private life. Ever.
He will have to tell her. Have to ask. No forgetting, he chides himself, but the moment he spots her hair as she steps through his rusty doorstep - hair a true-vivid shade of pink - his thighs waver and she smiles at that, automatically attentive to his responses.
They go through a mundane ritual - Can I put my shoes here? Would you like some tea? Something stronger, perhaps? Oh, this plant is orchidea, mine is white as this wall! - but sooner or later (sooner, as soon as possible, please) he is sitting on his miniature couch and she is climbing in his lap, biting and suckling a code into the skin behind his ear and continuing downdowndown. Down goes the blood too, and the thought that nagged him all morning, and which he carefully wanted to ask before all of this trainwreck of lust, that thought is still pulsing in the back of his brain evermore. But it does not pulse as much as his cock in the present, now, now, as she undresses him. He tries to unclasp her bra, but his fingers are clumsy, and he feels like a child, like an amateur in all of this. Seems like only killing comes and goes elegantly these years, and at his third try she laughs, not cruel, but one who loves and admires this kind of naivety and want.
Yearning overrules logic, because fuck, he has waited so long for this and is oh so eager, and please, it does not matter because they are sliding down to the bare floor from the couch, and it does not matter at all, nothing soes, because her breasts are firm in his palms and under his tongue.
The moment arrives, just when she is freeing him from his pants. His vision jumps from the sensation, his stomach coiling from all this raw want he feels.
And then he remembers the question. His question. The important one.
She is already angling herself to let him in, and he takes her by the shoulders and stops biting her left breast to look up at her, all pink glory and smiles and teeth. He could come by the sight of this only.
"Can I call you Sakura?" he gasps to this stranger. The prostitute shakes her carefully dyed hair and laughs, laughs, laughs. He is shaking with anticipation.
"Dearest, as long as you pay, you can call me by your own name too."