So yeah, here, have these. Fair warning, I like my Kakashi neurotic and awkward and emotionally haunted- there'll be no 'sex god' Kakashi here.
She was colorless, pale and bleached on the stiff hospital pillow. Even her ridiculous hair looked somehow less.
He took another look at the steady beep of her heart monitor and then leaned over to pinch her cheeks; the rush of color was a relief. She looked like Sakura again, like she was all ready to hop up and beat him half to death—
"Ow," she said, cracking one eye and giving him an unimpressed glance. The pink in her cheeks was already fading. "Will you please stop being so melodramatic?"
Damn it all, he was not dramatic. "Who taught you to fake sleep so well?" Kakashi demanded, raising a brow to hide his internal embarrassed horror. "It surely wasn't me."
"Isn't that the truth," she mumbled, lifting a hand and eyeing her IV with professional skepticism. "My face hurts now."
"You're always complaining about being pale," he retorted, slumping down in his chair and lifting Tactics higher in front of his face. "I just thought I'd help."
She sighed. It sounded painful. Then again, she'd had practically a whole cliff fall on her— and that was a memory he'd give a hand to forget, the rumble and her startled spring back, her eyes locked on his as she turned to run from heavy chakra-laden earth… She was looking at him now, too, just as if she knew what he was thinking, with that heavy press to her lips that made each beat of his heart come faster and faster in frantic sequence. "Yeah, I bet. Because helping's what you do best, right?"
That sounded lonely, and upset and— suspiciously like a trap. He lowered his book an inch to peer at her. She only blinked back innocently. He took a few seconds to go through his usual routine when she looked at him like that: step one, melt like a teenage boy at the sight of her fluttering eyelashes, step two, become painfully aware of his own pathetic crush, step three, say something vaguely rude and/or incredibly lame to throw her off and then dive out the nearest window. Often there was a step four in there in which he admired her biceps, but not today— too many bandages.
It had always worked in the past, but today, for some reason, what came out of Kakashi's mouth was, "Do you need anything else? I can go get you… do you need anything?"
She very nearly clapped her hands, injured as they were. "Really? You're not going to run? Well, do you think you could sneak me something that's not hospital food?"
Crap; there was no way to beg off now, she'd kill him dead before she'd let the opportunity for food slip away. He had to open his mouth twice before he could croak out a faint, "Sure…"
She frowned at him. "Kashi?"
That fucking nickname would be the death of him. He was sweating, by all the gods, his palms were clammy and if he weren't wearing gloves he'd probably have dropped his book already. "Sure," he mumbled again, and then he did finally dive out the window, ignoring Sakura's startled squawk.
It took him half an hour of aimless wandering through Konoha's scorched streets just to get his head on straight, to remind himself that she was young and wildly talented and heading nowhere but up, whereas he was closer to forty than anything else and had a caravan's worth of baggage.
So he reminded himself, deliberately and painfully, worrying open the old scars with a resigned sort of inevitability, and then he slunk back into the hospital to wave her favorite tempura under her nose,with a chocolate milkshake to finish it off.
Pathetic, he thought. He'd even paid. Her delighted smile and her terrible attempt to wipe whipped cream on his nose were quite nice, though, and somehow he ended up lurking in her room— in the hospital!— for another hour before coming to his senses and escaping again to go mow his non-existent lawn.
Sakura, astoundingly, didn't chuck her empty milkshake cup at his head or anything when he told her he had to go. She just raised a brow at the flimsy excuse and then offered him a stiff shrug. "Okay. I guess you won't get hay fever, anyway, with the mask, huh?"
"Guess not."
"Check the lawn for animals first, though. One time my dad mowed over a rabbit and it was really horrible."
He eyed her sideways, even more deeply confused than he generally was around women. "Oh. I'll keep that in mind."
"All right." Her smile stayed fixed and tired. "Go on, get out while the going's good."
He went, feeling vaguely off balance, craving something sweet.
"How's Sakura doin'?" Naruto said innocently, later that day while they were sparring, and Kakashi nearly drowned beneath his own water dragon.
"What?" he choked, panicked for no discernible reason.
Naruto squinted at him. "I asked how Sakura was, she threw a stethy— a stepo— she threw one of those listening things at my head when I tried to see her last night and I think it's still stuck in the wall. She was in a really pissy mood, I mean, even for her."
"Ah." The mist began to clear and Kakashi took a ragged breath. "Well. She'll be just fine, I imagine."
"You imagine?" Naruto's blue eyes were wide and more than a little irritated. "You haven't been to see her either? Every time you end up in the hospital she sits by your bed, jeez, sensei, and she says I'm an ungrateful little twerp!"
Naruto was by no means little any more, in fact he had a good inch on Kakashi, but 'twerp' was spot on. Kakashi glared at said twerp and tried very hard to ignore the little voice in his head that painting an extremely vivid picture of Sakura sobbing dramatically at his bedside like a heroine in a novel.
Kami, she'd been right to call him dramatic. "I've got to go hunt some rabbits," he told Naruto, wandering off.
He brought her another milkshake that night, slipping past the nurses with his very best notice-me-not jutsu.
"Sugar's bad for people in recovery," she told him between brainfreezes, smiling from ear to ear. "I should be eating veggies."
"You caught me. I'm sabotaging your recovery via sweets so that you have to stay here longer and I don't have to worry about you breaking into my apartment to do my grocery shopping."
"Well, you never have anything in the fridge! I can't train with a dead man," she pointed out, grinning.
"I eat," he mumbled, mildly insulted. "I can give my own dogs their baths, too." And he could water his own houseplants, he could vacuum his own floor and get his own mail— now that he thought about it, she was at his damn apartment more than him, and what a funny thing that was, because he didn't even blink when he found her passed out on the couch anymore, or when he caught pink hairs in his brush.
She rolled her eyes and offered him the milkshake, shutting her eyes tight as he pulled his mask down to take a slurp and keeping them shut until he poked her in the forehead.
"Ow," she said. "You're extra mean to me lately." He looked pointedly at the milkshake, and she sniggered, holding her ribs. "Okay, well, you're abusing my face."
He snorted before he could stop himself, and her laugh, delighted and light, and the way the blue glow from the street signs outside iced the line of her throat as she threw her head back—
"Gotta go," he said thickly, and he leapt out the window so quick he nearly smooshed a passing squirrel.
She was out the next day, as Kakashi discovered when he came in through the hospital window and severely startled a little old lady who'd been sleeping.
He dodged the remote she threw at him and made his escape on autopilot. He'd gotten into a bit of a routine, then, which was silly because Sakura had only been in the hospital three days. Nonetheless, habit was habit, and he wandered about a bit, lost, before heading home sourly, following the trash in the gutters like it was family.
"Hi," she said, a bit sheepishly, as soon as he opened his door. She was sitting on his couch, Pakkun on her lap, feet drawn up under her, just the way she always sat.
"Hi," he whispered, possibly a long time later.
"I sort of missed you," she said, with the air of someone leaping off a cliff. "I hope you don't mind I came in."
"Not at all," he said, watching one hand twirl in her hair, a chipped pink-painted fingernail and pale pink locks, and pink cheeks… "You're blushing," he said in utter amazement, though it came out perhaps a little accusatory, because she threw one of his own throw pillows at him.
He evaded, thankfully, because it shattered one of his kitchen chairs. "Erk," he said, in a totally manly way, and then he hastened to clarify. "Not that that, uh… matters. In fact I barely noticed."
She put her fingers to her temples, muttered under her breath for a moment— Pakkun huffed a laugh, ominously— and then sent him a glance like sweet tea and summer nights. "I missed you," she repeated. "And you— you bought me a milkshake, I mean, you brought this on yourself!"
He paused, closed his eyes to all the tender nervous depths in her voice, then said warningly, "I'm not taking my mask off for you, Sakura."
"I didn't expect you to," she said, resigned and a little amused, tucking her feet tighter up beneath herself like a happy cat. Kakashi blew out a long breath and went over to settle beside her on the couch. He slung his arm along the back of it, and after a moment, glancing carefully up at him from beneath reddish lashes, she tucked herself into his side.
It was nice, after all that, just simply nice, and they both laughed when Pakkun jumped down with a disgruntled squeak, and he looked at her, and he kissed her.