AN: This is the first of three interconnected oneshots based on prompts I received on Tumblr, all of which lined up quite nicely to form a mini-series.
This prompt was by the lovely Lindt Luirae or BouncyIrwin over on Tumblr, who requested Kakashi accidentally confessing incredibly awkwardly and Sakura finding it adorable.
It was past midnight, she was in her pyjamas, and she was in Kakashi's living room. Working. But that was just what they did these days, the endless grind of paperwork threatening to overwhelm even the boundaries of decency as they bent hunched over work in the small hours.
Sakura held in the sigh that bubbled behind her teeth, eyes sliding to the Hokage as he tried valiantly not to fall asleep chin-first on the trade negotiations. At her look he gave her his best crinkle-eyed smile, the same one she'd seen time and time through the years when Kakashi was trying to distract from what he was (or wasn't, in this case) doing.
"If you don't finish that," she scolded, nodding towards the curling paper beneath his mask, "then we'll never get started on the next thing."
"Is the next thing more work?"
The medic fought to keep the grimace from her face. "The next thing is always more work."
"Then I think I'll just sit here and give my back a cramp instead, thanks."
It was true that his coffee table was far too low for them to be sitting at but the kitchen table was worse, a monstrosity left behind in one of Tsunade's stranger gambling sprees that was uncomfortable to even look at, never mind sit for hours. And if she found their current predicament awkward then Kakashi was definitely contorting himself, his larger frame squeezed poorly into the space and suffering for it.
"What I wouldn't give," Sakura said, chin in hand and a longing look stretching across her features, "what I wouldn't give for my beautiful kotatsu table."
Which was currently sitting cold and abandoned in her own cold and abandoned flat, too far across the village to be worth going home to at this time of night. Hence, the pyjamas. She frowned lightly; actually, the last time she'd even been in her house was to pick up some spare scrubs last week after one too many pointed sniffs in her direction from Ino. Maybe she'd go home tomorrow night, she considered, but at that moment one of the piles of 'urgent' documents slid precariously from the table and she heaved another sigh.
Not. Likely.
"Maybe you should buy a kotatsu," she murmured hopefully, rearranging the fallen sheets in an order incomprehensible to either of them.
From his position beside her, Kakashi snorted. "But there's no point in us having two," he said distractedly, eyes on where he was signing with a flourish.
It took her a moment. Us. Us? Gasping, Sakura let the pen fall from her hands as she slowly placed them flat on the table. The clock ticked mournfully in the background of the room as she stared at the man opposite her. He probably hadn't meant-
"What do you mean?" she had to ask.
Kakashi didn't look up right away. "Well…" he started, then stopped. Laid his pen carefully on his work and looked up with the frozen shock of a stricken rabbit. "Uh, I mean… you know."
She didn't, not really. Their closeness started at the threshold of his house and had never crossed hers, some unspoken rule between them that if it was just in the Hokage's official residence then it was mostly business, nothing more; never mind that Sakura sometimes climbed into bed next to him on days where it got really bad and sometimes Kakashi woke up with his nose pressed firmly into her beautiful hair.
"I tell you what," Kakashi began after a moment of staring, but he was speaking too fast and she knew for a fact it was nerves, "there was much less paperwork when we didn't have to think about diplomacy with other villages, do you remember?"
"Are you advocating starting a war to avoid this trade deal?" Sakura intoned.
"I'm not ruling it out," the Hokage said darkly.
"Uh huh," she replied, unmoved. "Why don't you think there's any point to you buying a kotatsu?"
She could see the swallow as he cast grey eyes nervously around for inspiration. "I remember you said yours was really nice," he offered eventually.
"It is," Sakura agreed. "It goes with my decor. In my house."
"WOULD you like-" Kakashi spluttered, "-a cup of tea?"
"No."
"Oh, okay, ah, would you like-"
"Kakashi," Sakura interrupted, leaning forward slightly to put her face closer to his. "Did you just express... something towards me, vis-à-vis furniture?"
Even asking was playing with the risk he'd stand up and make a break for the window. The last time she'd confronted him - somewhere between the first time she'd stayed and the second time she'd woken up with him - Kakashi had booked three days of back to back meetings for himself and eventually had to be carried home by a disgruntled ANBU who told her to 'choose her moments'. Right now, her old friend was shifting in acute embarrassment, the tips of his ears sizzling as he looked anywhere but at her.
"What did you mean," Sakura said gently, taking pity on his ingrained reticence, "when you said there's not much point to us having two kotatsu?"
"You're here most of the time," Kakashi offered, picking up the pen and fiddling. It was an obvious tell and she had to keep the amusement from her face lest he think it was directed as his words, not his actions.
"Yes, which means I rarely get to enjoy the furniture of my own home," she answered. Pity she might feel, but Sakura was no pushover.
Kakashi was unlikely to offer to shift their nightly meetings to her house, because he knew as well as she did that the two of them convening in her small, private space was different than a meeting of two village leaders in the open plan Hokage residence. The rumours would start, the thin veneer of legitimacy that this place gave them gone in the insatiable wake of gossip that followed the Hokage's every move. Though there truly, honestly wasn't anything more than cordial conversation and the mutually beneficial sharing of workload between them, in the eyes of Konoha's people the facts would, of course, be less interesting than the possibilities.
Sakura had more than once considered leaning over and kissing the silver-haired man just to get something out of the whole knife-edge affair.
"Sakura…" Kakashi sounded long-suffering and she instantly bristled. Indignation began to worm its way through her thoughts but then- "Sakura, I'm helplessly in love with you, okay? I don't see the point of buying a kotatsu because I want yours, here, with you, with all your precious things in my house. With me."
The medic blinked. Opened her mouth and closed it again, silent against the slow descent of Kakashi's face into the table. When it looked like he might start hitting his head against it in despair she reached a hand across the expanse of paper between them.
"Um," she stuttered. If she squinted his words were in fact surprisingly romantic despite the circumstances of their delivery, and Sakura felt the colour rise to her cheeks as he looked up and met her eyes. She noticed instantly that the Hokage's face didn't hold any kind of hope.
"Mah, I'm sorry," he said dolefully. "I'm tired. That's not how I wanted to say it."
"Actually," he continued, finally extricating himself from the table and standing up with a wince. "I didn't plan to say it at all."
Before he could leap out the window or put his head in the oven or whatever melodramatic reaction Sakura thought he might resort to she stood hurriedly, stepping heedlessly over the messy mountains surrounding them.
"Why not?" she asked simply, following behind as he walked to the kitchen island, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Because you don't- you don't feel…"
Sakura watched closely as Kakashi filled the kettle, mundane action powering his movements in the wake of his emotional confusion. Her heart constricted, recognising the way Kakashi must have always, always dealt with what he thought were bad things, difficult things: pushing through it like he always had.
"Kakashi, I get into bed with you," she said slowly.
The tap shut off abruptly.
"Yes, but…"
"But we don't do anything?" Sakura finished.
"Hm."
She leaned on the counter beside the Hokage, watching as he flipped the kettle on emotionlessly and pulled two mugs from his cupboard. He'd said his piece - she'd say hers.
"I know you don't think I'd just climb into bed and sleep beside anyone, Kakashi," and her words were hard but her hand was soft as it covered his on the counter, "so this must be about you thinking- thinking-"
She paused, trying to find the right way to express the tangled complications of Kakashi's feelings around his happiness. Sakura tried very, very hard, but her temper had never been the most stable.
"Cha!" she suddenly exclaimed. "You can't just confess your love in the most awkward way possible and then go and mope about it, you stupid man!"
It might have been the wrong thing to say to anyone else, but Kakashi knew what she'd said - what she hadn't said, which was a rejection. At her exclamation, a small smile spread across his face and he upturned his hand, hesitant fingers winding through the gaps between hers.
"I thought it wasn't that bad," he mused, still a little cautious.
"You tried to deflect by considering war against the Five Nations."
"I like to dream big," Kakashi said, grinning now beneath the fabric of his mask.
Sakura very nearly said something outrageously confident about how she was his biggest dream yet or that she could make his dreams come true but that wasn't her and despite Icha Icha protestations it wasn't him either. So instead she simply leaned into his side as he poured two cups of tea, a soft smile on her face that he wasn't likely to misunderstand.
"I do too," the medic confided. "My current dream is that one day we'll sit at a kotatsu together - here - and there'll only be one pile of bureaucracy to get through."
Kakashi groaned, picking up his tea and depositing hers in her favourite spot with a mock-glare. "I was talking about war, but I think it's worse that you're talking about work."
But Sakura just smiled, salaciously, showing teeth as the silver-haired man sat back down in protest. "Well, the sooner we finish in here, the sooner we can…" she trailed off and looked pointedly at the closed bedroom door.
And when Kakashi spluttered hot tea all over the treaty he'd spent the last few hours on, well, nobody had ever accused Sakura of being a particularly good girl.