Scarlet Scroll
Eros
Sakura had never paid much attention to Kakashi's hands before, but now she had plenty of time to examine them when they were pressed to the mattress a few inches from her head. Short nails. Blunt fingertips. He was mildly double-jointed, judging by the way his thumb bent into Z-shape when he convulsively dug his fingers into the sheets. They were covered in all kinds of scratches and scars – he didn't take care of them, though he should have. They were strong hands and ever so large… but always gentle.
Always gentle. She had to remember that.
Even so, when the hand suddenly disappeared from beside her, she instinctively hunched her shoulders and squeezed her eyes shut, expecting a blow – a slap across the back of her head, or a hard smack to bruise her backside – or perhaps just to be seized around the neck and her face pushed into the pillow. But it never came, of course. He was only readjusting her leg, nudging it wider to accommodate himself. He was always gentle with her.
There were a lot of words for what they were doing. Screwing. Fucking. Having sex. Intercourse. Making love. Sleeping together. Being intimate. Copulating. But there wasn't a word passionless enough to fit. They couldn't have been more clinical if they'd been doing it on an examination table surrounded by a fleet of men and women in white coats, taking down notes. But this was a dark room in an impersonal love hotel where the soft squeak of the mattress beneath her stomach was nearly drowned out by the amorous screaming of a woman next door. By comparison, Sakura was silent, keeping her arms tucked in as she concentrated on her breathing to help distract her from… other things. Kakashi was taking longer this time. Sakura wincingly tilted her hips back, trying to find a more pleasurable position for him. She hoped he would finish soon; it was beginning to hurt.
Over their noisy neighbour and the rhythm of the bed springs, Sakura caught another sound, of footsteps moving down the corridor outside and she turned her head to listen. A sudden bang made the door jump in its frame. She jumped and instinctively tried to recoil away from the door, almost off the bed. Kakashi's weight held her pinned. He paused and went still, but only to touch her shoulder. "It's ok," he said. "Just some drunks."
He was right. Slurred laughter faded away down the corridor, but the adrenalin kick still pumped in Sakura's veins. She didn't tremble, but she felt weak enough that if she didn't watch herself she might start to. If anyone caught them here… if anyone knew…
She was always so sure that next voice she heard or the next footsteps would belong to Jin pr Ari.
Kakashi resumed again, but it was too soon. Her composure had been scattered, and she struggled to reign in her breathing. Her shinobi instructors – Tsunade, rest her soul, and even Kakashi himself – had always taught her that to control the breathing was to control the self. With that control slipping, her focus was lost, and she was unbearably aware of his body pushing into hers. Invading. She must have made a noise because Kakashi suddenly stopped again.
"What's wrong? Does it hurt?" he asked.
So he had noticed.
"My… my arm," she said, which wasn't a total lie. Her wrist was healing faster than it normally would, but it wouldn't stop aching for a few days.
"We can stop," he said.
He sounded hopeful, and Sakura desperately wanted to agree. Each time he asked and gave her a way out of this madness, he made her a little weaker… which was why he needed to stop asking. "Just get on with it," she said, more sharply than she felt.
She heard him sigh, and after another minor readjustment he began to move against her again. Sakura held herself still and waited… counting her breaths, counting the seconds, counting his thrusts. When she felt his body tighten and those thrusts became shorter and rapid, she knew he was approaching the end, and she almost welcomed that moment when he finally tensed and gasped. His whole body shuddered and strained, and compared to Hiroshi who climaxed with all the energy of a dribbling belch, there was no mistaking what was happening to Kakashi.
But sometimes, like now, he was slow to get off her and seemed to forget their agreement for no unnecessary touching when his hand absently massaged her hip as he tried to catch his breath. Things like that sent a web of tiny hairline cracks across her composure. She knew where she was when they limited contact to only that which was required, and every time he touched her like a lover he threatened to throw her off balance, into a place where the lines between lover and teacher blurred, and the memories of everything Hiroshi had done to her felt so fresh she sometimes thought he was still the one on top of her.
But how could she blame Kakashi for things she couldn't share and he couldn't guess at? He was doing his best, that was obvious, and it wasn't easy or natural for either of them. All Sakura could do was wait for him to remember himself, and the moment he eased back onto his heels she quickly rose and flipped her robe back down over her hips. Even if it was too dark for him to see anything, correct propriety between them always reasserted itself as soon as he was done fucking her.
If anything it was those moments that were the worst. She always wondered if she should say something to him in those precious seconds when it seemed like their relationship was hanging by its last fraying thread, but what could she say? Inane non-sequiturs about the weather wouldn't do. She could comment on the things that had been different tonight – like his sudden increase in stamina or how he'd had no trouble getting aroused this time – but she didn't want to sound like she was rating his performance, or worse, ridiculing him. She saw how he looked at her sometimes, or rather, refused to look at her, and knew that guilt and self-loathing was eating away at him. She knew far better than to mistake simple physical reactions like arousal or climax with desire, or even willingness.
She'd endured Hiroshi long enough to remember those occasional twinges of pleasure... and how devastating it felt afterwards.
That was probably how Kakashi felt right now, sitting in silence, in the dark. There was nothing either of them could say to make it better, so she simply rose to her feet and crossed to the bathroom where she could wash and change again.
The walk back to the inn was always conducted in silence, to the point where Sakura wondered why they even bothered walking together, and Kakashi had stopped saying goodnight to her as they parted ways outside her room. If she was lucky, he might touch her on the back as she stopped outside her door and he carried on to his, but the contact between them was fleeting compared to what it had been like before...
And tomorrow, they would both continue doing their best to pretend it had never happened.
The book was a bore and Sakura had been steadily tearing pages out of it all morning. Chapter three was now making up the best part of an origami crane army that she lined up next to her futon, and chapters five through seven were now somewhere out on the street, having been turned into airplanes and thrown from the window – to varying degrees of success. The prostitute's daughter in the brothel opposite had watched her, and now as Sakura settled down to scribble pictures on the blank pages between chapters, she could look up every now and then to see other rudimentary planes flying past on the wind.
Before coming to Otafuku Gai, Sakura had never been good at handling her boredom. Being shut up in a little room all day would have driven her mad with frustration, but necessity had forced her to cope with her restless nature here. She'd learnt to stave off her fidgets by occupying herself with trivial activities, even if they were quite destructive. The woman who cleaned the rooms was growing increasingly exasperated with her, for every time Sakura left her room it bore an uncanny resemblance to the site of a bomb-blast. In turn, Sakura was growing pretty annoyed with this cleaner too. She sometimes had to seriously debate whether or not to leave for a bite to eat, knowing that the little shrew would sneak into her room the moment she was gone and dismantle her nest of clothes, bed sheets, shredded paper and boxes of take-away food.
She'd had to clear a space for her crane army, and now she was devising an army of paper dogs to challenge them. In the grand finale she might set fire to them, and hope -just a little bit- that they took the whole inn down with them.
When the door jerked open behind her she knew immediately who it would be. The maid would never disturb her, Kakashi would always knock, and even Ari tapped twice before he flung it open with or without permission. Jin, true to form, strode over the threshold and at once made a disgusted sound. "Don't you ever clean up?"
Sakura carried on folding a little dog. "Does it bother you?" she asked, with a strong hint that if she discovered anything that bothered Jin, she would utilise it to the fullest extent.
However, Jin ignored the jab and stepped over a small barrier of clothes she'd formed from all the wardrobe cast-offs she no longer needed for Hiroshi. "It's a fine day. Why don't you go play outside?"
Sakura snorted. "Why? You want to search my room?"
"Got something to hide?"
Now Sakura was the one who ignored the question, pretending to be too absorbed in her craft to acknowledge him. She heard Jin step closer, and in the next moment, her crane army was soundly crushed beneath his foot.
There went her grand finale.
Slamming her hand down on her half-finished dog, she glared up at Jin. "What?" she snarled at him "What do you want? Why is it so important that you have to pester me all the damn time?"
He crouched down, uncomfortably close. "You know, I was just thinking it might be best to warn you... Suda Hiroshi may be coming back to town sooner than we thought. Maybe you ought to be picking these clothes off the floor and getting ready?"
"Bite me," she growled.
"Don't tempt me," he said, dragging his fingers down her arm from shoulder to elbow, stopping short of her cast. Sakura immediately regretted her choice of sleeveless dress today, and she glared at his hand like she would a snake. "You better stay in our good graces, Sakura-chan. We are the ones deciding your fate."
"That sounds like a threat," she said, teeth clenched.
"Just a fact," Jin retorted.
He reached out as if to stroke her again, but this time Sakura smacked his hand away "As if! You two seem to forget that you're just chaperones! Kakashi is my handler - not you, not Ari - no one but Kakashi!"
"And how does that feel?" he asked her suddenly, voice dropping into an eager whisper. "Sakura-chan, how does it feel to have your sensei bear witness to all of this? To have him standing there, watching his protégé become a slut? You do know he watched it all, don't you? We all watched. It was a beautiful thing."
Sakura was quivering. Not with fear or disgust, but with bone deep rage that radiated through her muscles, demanding that she give in. Demanding that she kill him.
"You know you better watch out for that guy," Jin continued, "he always got really into it, if you know what I mean."
Sakura's arm lashed out, clubbing him around the head before she could stop herself. It might have been worth it, for that brief instant where she saw him flinch and duck his head against the blow, but the satisfaction was fleeting. Jin retaliated fast, grabbing her injured arm and shoving her just enough to overbalance and land on her side.
He didn't release her arm, and she held herself rigidly in her awkward position, refusing to let him see she was in pain.
"Give me an excuse," he whispered to her. "Oh, please give me an excuse."
She held her breath, glaring up at his mask. She had to remember that Jin and Ari were untouchable as far as she was concerned; anything exacted against them would be exacted against her and Kakashi two-fold. He was only trying to goad her into giving him an excuse to kill her or turn her over to Danzou to be executed, and it wouldn't surprise her if he was under express orders to push her until she snapped.
Sakura gathered her temper, forcing herself to breath slow, measured breathes. "You'll get what's coming to you one day," she said quietly.
Jin seemed amused by this. "Oh, is that a threat?"
"Just a fact."
Evidently Jin didn't like smart-asses who turned his words around on him, and for a moment his grip around her tender arm tightened so hard she almost let out a whimper.
"What's going on?"
At the sound of Kakashi's voice, Jin smoothly dropped her arm and stood as if all he'd been doing was crouching to pet a beloved puppy. He turned to the door where the other man stood and raised his hands. "Don't get your panties in a twist. Can't two people have a conversation without being accused of something?"
Kakashi stared at him intensely as he brushed past and absconded down the hall. When he was gone, he turned to look at Sakura, almost as angrily. "What did he do?" he demanded.
Sakura straightened, ignoring the pain in her arm and began picking over the squashed remainders of her paper cranes. A few had survived but the rest were now little paper pancakes with muddy boot marks. She sighed. "He didn't do anything. He barely touched me."
"Barely?" Kakashi said loudly. "He shouldn't be touching you at all. What did he do?"
"It's not your problem!" she rebuked.
"Of course, it's my problem. You never tell me anything, but it's always my damn problem," He slid the door shut and crossed the mess of her room to the window. As he passed her, a plastic bag dropped onto the mattress beside her knee. Sakura peeked inside curiously, then made a revolted sound.
"Apples?" She plucked out the offending fruit. "Tossed salad and fish-? I asked for deep fried-"
"That's not healthy," he interrupted.
"Who cares? If I'm pregnant, you should be listening to my cravings, not ignoring them." When Kakashi looked at her sharply, she fell quiet, half feeling like she'd said something rude. Taboo. It was probably a little inconsiderate to speak so flippantly of pregnancy when it might be true...
Nevertheless, she pointedly set the food aside and shifted her attention glumly to her arm, rubbing her abused flesh and picking at the rough, fraying edges of the cast. It was past time to remove it. The injury was still tender, but the bone had set for a while now and would heal better with a simple strap bandage than a cast. The medical bag with her scissors was buried somewhere beneath her hills of debris so she set about trying to unearth it.
"What are you doing?" Kakashi asked.
"I need my scissors to take the cast off," she told him. "I know they're here somewhere."
"Perhaps if you cleaned up once in a while you wouldn't lose things."
"You're beginning to sound like Jin."
That shut him up.
But the medical kit persisted in hiding from her and she sat back on her heels with an angry sigh. Perhaps there was a logic to keeping things tidy, after all, for right then she didn't have the patience or energy to mount a proper search.
Kakashi pushed away from the window, slipping something from his hip. "Here," he said, dangling a kunai into her view.
"I can't use that with my left hand," she pointed out. "I'll cut myself to pieces."
"Then give me your arm," he said, like he was talking to a petulant child who was just making excuses.
Kakashi knelt down in the small clearing she'd provided for her armies, oblivious to his crushing the remaining cranes who'd survived Jin. Sakura pressed her lips together and offered her arm silently.
It didn't even take a second. Kakashi lined up the kunai against the cast, and then in one savage pull he slashed it open from end to end. Some might have called that reckless, but only those who didn't know how Kakashi's hands were as precise and reliable as lasers. Sakura never felt even the faintest flicker of wariness when he held a blade less than an inch from a major artery. She was more concerned about the hand gently cradling her elbow as he stripped the empty shell of the cast from her arm and tore away the tufts of cotton beneath. His fingertips were brushing her inner arm. She could feel the raised scars and calluses against her comparatively soft skin and wondered if he was aware of the contact as intensely as she was.
Why was it that she could put one of these apples on her head and happily let him take aim at it with a knife from a hundred feet away, but the gentlest of touches made her want to scurry for the nearest closet?
When the last bandage came off, her arm felt remarkably naked, and was scored with bands of red from the wrappings. It also smelled quite like a sweaty sock. "I'll get you a cloth," Kakashi said, who was always kind enough to notice such things.
"I've got two legs," Sakura responded. "I can walk to the bathroom myself."
Kakashi groaned as she stood. "You don't have to be like that."
"Yes, I do," she shot back, "or you'd coddle me to death."
As she left the room and stalked down the corridor towards the bathroom, she realised that since the moment Kakashi had arrived she had not looked him in the eyes. That was getting harder, she thought, but it was easier to keep him at a distance this way. Was that unfair? Was she being too hard?
The line she'd drawn between them at night had its purposes, though now she wondered if it had extended beyond, interfering with all their other interactions. Why else would little touches that she'd never noticed before start scraping on her nerves like sandpaper? Why did it bother her so much that he still wanted to do considerate things for her – things she had previously always appreciated? How could it all feel so suddenly inappropriate?
She passed her teammates' room on her way to the bathroom and glanced casually inside. There was no sign of Jin, thank goodness, but Ari was certainly in there. Sakura barely contained her snort of contempt. If he was going to seduce the cleaning maid up against the wall like that, he ought to have the presence of mind to shut the door first.
What did women see in men like that?
It was something to tell Kakashi about. However, by the time she returned to her room, he'd vanished.
"What'll it be?"
"The usual, please," Kakashi said.
But the bartender only blinked at him slowly, as if it was an old joke he'd heard a million times before. He didn't remember Kakashi's face, let alone his 'usual', despite Kakashi having crashed into his bar every night for the past week. True, Kakashi was not very familiar with the rules of alcoholics. He'd only been dabbling in drinks each evening because, if nothing else, they gave him the little lift of courage he needed before he went back to Sakura.
"Beer," he clarified.
The bottle clunked on the bar before him and Kakashi dropped his head into a hand. By now he'd gotten used to the atmosphere, though he mostly tried to ignore it. He'd grown up lecturing his friend, Asuma, over the dangers of smoking, and guilting him over the dangers of passive-smoking, and yet here he was allowing himself to be gradually wreathed in smoke and alcohol fumes and sad bastards just as miserable and quiet as himself.
And if Sakura never noticed he smelled like the armpit of a boozehound... well, that was because he showered religiously before he ever went near her.
It always seemed like no time at all before both the hands on the clock were both pointing to the '12' and the beer in front of him was drained. Kakashi paid – but didn't tip – and began to weave his way back to the inn, feeling the same old apprehension mount with every step. As innocuous as he thought he was, he never managed to escape the notice of the working women, and they were not unlike ninja in the way they could move in the shadows and attack from nowhere.
"Need some relaxation, my love?" one called from a doorway. Another just attempted to grab him and pull him into an alley. He wasn't sure what had brought on the sudden upswing in attention. Except one did comment as he passed, "You look like you need cheering up."
Kakashi had passed the days when he would have even thought about accepting such generous offers. He wasn't a kid anymore, nor an old pervert looking for new thrills. The glamour of sex without meaning or feeling had lost its appeal and for the last few years as Konoha had succumbed to fear and insecurity and the demons that preyed on them, he'd begun to think there were important parts of life he'd passed over. The village he'd consigned himself to protect had turned its back on him, so what was left to do? Chip away futilely at the new power structure until he died? Or move on with his life and find an adequate woman to begin the family he'd denied himself for so long?
But then Sakura had trampled through his plans with her typical finesse. It wasn't her fault; she hadn't asked for this mission and he could just as easily have refused her request and condemned her to suffer alone in the process, but he still felt... stunned, like someone terrifyingly strong had come up and kicked him in the side of the head. He no longer knew what was up or down, whether he was moving forward or retreating, or whether this plan of theirs was genius or criminally insane.
Most of all, he no longer knew what this meant for his future. Sakura's fate, he was already certain of. He'd overseen enough subjects of this project to know what happened to the women once they got back to Konoha, and he knew that she would have a few options, however limited, however pitiful the consolation. Himself? What kind of part would he play in her life? How exactly was one supposed to carry on normally after fathering a child with a subordinate – not out of love or even a fleeting affair – but out of abject desperation for survival?
He had to remember he was getting ahead of himself. Sakura was not pregnant yet and perhaps she still wouldn't be by the end of the month. Not everyone was compatible, and he remembered perfectly healthy couples like Asuma and Kurenai took almost a year to conceive.
That thought left an unpalatable taste in his mouth. He didn't want Sakura subjected to a year of this... not with him, or Hiroshi, or anyone.
And hey... even if she did conceive, there would still be the possibility that he wasn't the father, especially if she really had been lying about Hiroshi being sterile.
When Kakashi reached the inn, he found the maid just inside the entrance buffing shoes. Ari and Jin's shoes were gone, and Kakashi almost felt like relaxing. Once those two headed out for the night, they wouldn't be back till the break of dawn.
Upstairs he passed straight by Sakura's room and headed for the shower to wash the smoke stink from his hair and brush the beer breath from his mouth. From what he could tell through the film of slime on the mirror there were no serious defects in his appearance tonight, not that it ever mattered. Sakura remained insistent on darkness every time they were together, probably out of some physical antipathy towards him or her own insecurity.
He arrived outside her room punctually and tapped on the door before entering. He expected Sakura to be fully dressed and ready as usual, which was why he was momentarily stymied when he saw her stretched out on her futon, dressed in her sleeping yukata with a thermometer of all things sticking out of her mouth. Not only that, her room was unusually tidy, and he suspected the maid may have dropped by if Sakura had gone out to find a proper meal. She sat up sharply as he stepped inside.
"You're sick?" he blurted.
She stuffed her thermometer back into her medical kit. "I'm fine," she said. "I just thought I felt hot, so I took my temperature. And... it's up, so..."
"Oh." They'd been through this around the same time last month, and since she was approximately in the middle of her cycle right now, a raised temperature was one of the first and few signs of ovulation.
If that was the case then by tomorrow the window of opportunity would be closed, and they could finally stop. Whether or not their attempts had worked would remain to be seen, but there was little they could do to affect the outcome after this point. In fact, there probably wasn't much point in even trying again tonight. "So you don't want to..." he trailed off, never comfortable with actually voicing it aloud. "I assume that's why you're dressed like that."
"Well, it might be a bit late," she said uncomfortably. "Although, I could be wrong. Normally I get a pain if I'm ovulating, but I don't have that... so maybe we should keep trying just to be sure?"
He waited for her to go on, but Sakura had fallen quiet. "What do you want to do?"
"What do you think is best?" she asked instead.
Kakashi exhaled loudly. Great. She just had to shuffle the choice onto his shoulders. Logically, he knew they should continue for however long the window remained open, yet here was a chance to end it.
Sensing his hesitation, Sakura shook her head. "Look, never mind. We should see it out... but tonight will probably be the last time."
He sighed, almost glad she'd taken the choice out of his hands again. "Probably?"
"Definitely," she said more firmly. "But don't look so relieved."
Kakashi knew for a fact his carefully schooled expression was exactly that. "Are you going to get dressed?" he asked graciously.
She looked down at herself and around at her mild pigsty of a room. "I don't feel like trekking all the way across town right now," she said quietly. "Can we just use this room instead?"
"Here?" He glanced down at the bed dubiously. "Are you sure?"
"Why not?"
"Well... it's your bed. I didn't think you'd want to use it for that... with me," he said.
"You don't smell that bad," she told him. "And I really don't care. But if I have to spend one more night in that insipid love hotel, I'll scream."
Sakura seemed fairly certain of this, and he couldn't profess much love for the place either, even for its most tame and inoffensive rooms it was too sordid for his liking. This room, however, had become Sakura's private space over the course of the past few weeks; her home away from home. Did she really not mind him encroaching like this?
"Ari and Jin won't be back for hours," she continued, in case that was why he hesitated.
He didn't feel like arguing with her, so he reached behind him to slide the door shut and crossed to the futon where she sat. There was that moment where he got to witness flashes of discomfort and awkwardness cross her face, but the moment he began to unbutton his coat she all but dived for her lamp to switch it off.
Kakashi paused. Under other circumstances Kakashi might have been offended that his body was only palatable when the lights were out, but in this case it hadn't done much good. The window let in more light than the one at the love hotel, and they just happened to be situated across from a brothel that was glowing with so many lights, signs, and lanterns that it might as well have been daylight. Kakashi could see Sakura perfectly well, and from the way her face was vigilantly turned away from him, she knew she could see him too.
Stripped of everything but his underwear, Kakashi lowered himself to the futon, where Sakura shuffled sideways a fraction to make room for him. He wondered if she was going to remind him of their no-nude rule, but she only gave him a small, painfully weak smile before she turned over onto her stomach without a word and hauled one pillow beneath her head and another beneath her hips.
That was her part over. The rest was up to him.
He swallowed, familiar enough with what came next that his body was already reacting. He knew better than to desire Sakura's body, intellectually speaking, but his prick was far simpler creature, and just the thought of being inside her had him hard. He knew it was pathetic. Hopefully Sakura just thought his control was masterful.
Kakashi slid off his boxers and drew the covers before he moved over to position himself over Sakura. As respectfully as he could, he lifted the hem of her yukata up and out of the way, doing his best to ignore how her soft thighs brushing against his or how full and firm her backside felt. These were not things he was permitted to enjoy, though normally they were things he enjoyed above all else. Likewise, when he lined himself against her and pushed in, he tried not to think too much about how hot she was, or how tight, or how unbearably good she felt.
To hold himself in check and not hurt her, he always moved slow, at least at first. It was hard to tell if Sakura ever felt uncomfortable, since from beginning to end she would lie there, breathing as slowly and regularly as if she was asleep. Her fortitude was as admirable as it was off-putting, but now with the glow of pink and orange lights spilling through the window, he could see she also fixed her eyes on the far wall and stared at it almost unblinkingly, like the glazed stare of a doll.
It was easier for Kakashi to close his eyes and picture someone else – someone closer to his own age, less scarred, not so slight, and blonder, with warm brown eyes instead of glassy green ones. Someone he was allowed to touch and who didn't so blatantly hate being near him.
This would be their last night together. He guessed he should have felt relieved about that, and perhaps he would have if he wasn't already aware of what lay ahead. If they failed it would have all been for nothing. If they succeeded they would have to watch their backs, conceivably for the rest of their lives however long or short they proved to be. And what if the child resembled him in some way? People often knew exactly who his father was the moment they clapped eyes on him, and the resemblance between Naruto and his father had grown so strong that by the day he was exiled, there were few people left in the village who didn't realise the young man they were forcing from the village was the son of their most beloved Hokage.
What was important was the here and now. Whatever happened nine months from now was something Kakashi didn't have the strength or courage to face. Bridges couldn't be crossed before they were reached, so he concentrated on the short term goals: getting Sakura home safely, keeping the two idiots away from her, and making sure she never had to go near Hiroshi or someone like him ever again. And, more immediately, he needed to finish what he was doing. Then at least these excruciating encounters would be over.
Brown knitting in focus, he moved against Sakura, savagely willing himself to reach his release sooner. Sometimes it worked, but tonight his head was too full of other fears jostling for attention. He tried to shift his position for a better angle and closed his hand over hip, his fingers slipping between her and the pillow beneath her so that his fingertips almost touched her belly.
Her skin felt just as creamy and supple there as she did elsewhere, he thought, despite doing his best not to think, period. He couldn't quite stop his fingers from moving either, pressing in tiny feather-soft circles that was more instinctual than deliberate.
And there were other things he couldn't help noticing either... like how a fine tremble rippled through the muscles beneath his touch. Or how her breathing changed from something so steady and measure to something a little quicker whether she realised it or not.
That was interesting, and it made Kakashi slow for a moment. It was the first time in all their nights together that he had noticed any kind of reaction from Sakura, or at least one that he was fairly sure was positive. He slipped his hand further beneath her till it spanned her belly completely, under the guise of adjusting his angle, and when he began to move against her again he took careful note of the way the muscles of her abdomen fluttered. He could feel her pulse too, and realised it wasn't the dull drumbeat he normally felt.
"Kakashi..."
Was that a moan of longing or a warning? One thing he knew was that her voice wasn't so even anymore, and when she had spoken it had become obvious how close she was to panting.
If it was a warning, Kakashi didn't heed it. After one particularly hard inward stroke he let his hand drift down to cup her moist sex and pressed until she gasped and writhed. "Kakashi!"
Her inner muscles clamped down around him, tightening like a fist. "Sakura," he groaned.
"Kakashi! Get – off!
Her gasp had been of shock and her writhing was of protest, and in one violent shove she bucked him off and escaped to the other side of the futon, breathing hard. "What the hell are you playing at?" she demanded, forcing her flyaway hair back down with an angry hand. "You're freaking me out!"
A little too slowly, Kakashi dragged the abandoned pillow over his lap for some semblance of woebegone modesty. He saw Sakura's flashing green eyes and the righteous anger that quivered through her frame, and didn't for a second feel sorry. "Heaven forbid sex actually feel pleasant, Sakura," he deadpanned.
"I told you I didn't want to do things like that," she growled. "It's not necessary. It's weird. You only need to concentrate on yourself and it's not that difficult!"
"It's not difficult?" he repeated loudly, irritation scraping at his badly frayed nerves. "What do you know about how difficult it is! Do you have any idea what it's like to do this while you just lie there like a lifeless corpse? I'm not some kind of animal, but you expect me to rut like one!"
Sakura compressed her lips as she glared at him, but she at least seemed to hear him. She didn't scoff or ridicule him. For that he was at least grateful.
"This isn't natural... and it's not right," he said, dropping his voice once more. "We've done it your way every night so far but I'm drawing the line now. If we continue, we do it my way, Sakura, or not at all."
Her eyes glittered in the low light and her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Define 'your way'," she said quietly. Her posture might have radiated defensiveness but she hadn't thrown him out yet.
"We do this properly," was his only answer. He skimmed her rigid form and the threatening scowl she levelled at him, and decided to brave her wrath. "First, you can't be scared of me or what I do. And secondly, you have to take off that robe."
If it was possible, Sakura stiffened even more. "What?" she asked icily.
"Or I go back to my room and we forget this."
For a long time they sat in silence. Kakashi waited for his answer as Sakura's glare dropped from his face to the mattress between them. The noises of the street outside that he'd tuned out began to intrude again. Distant laughter, the sharp pops of firecrackers, and the faded twang of a shamisen that Sakura hated so much. A whole chorus must have played out before Sakura stirred and spoke. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be touched by a man after you've been through everything I have?"
His head dropped. "No." He would never pretend he could ever fully understand or share the experiences she'd been subjected to.
"It sucks," she said plaintively.
He nodded lightly. "Yeah," he sighed.
After more thoughtful staring at the sheets of the futon, Sakura straightened her shoulders and sat up. She reached for the belt of her robe.
"Don't force yourself," Kakashi said quickly.
She paid no attention to him now. A few tugs of the knot and it fell loose... the robe slipped off her shoulders and pooled around her.
It was the first time he'd ever seen her naked, and the shapeless yukata had never done her justice. She presented a neat figure, full of compact curves that voluptuous women who boasted measurements twice as generous would envy. But she didn't look particularly worldly or sexy at the moment, with one arm looped self-consciously across her chest and her eyes fixed conspicuously on the floor. She was a petit, perfectly formed nymph, and she had the self-confidence of a mouse.
Hard to think that a few nights ago she had been the one to initiate things between them so boldly and with so little hesitation. As an actress she was second to none, but with the clothes off he saw her for what she really was.
Just another scared kid so far out of her depth that she may have already drowned.
Kakashi shifted across the sheets till his thigh kissed hers, and reached out to cup his hand around her cheek. Her gaze jumped briefly to his and then away again, like a mouse that knew it had been caught by the cat. It wasn't promising, but as his hand slid down to grasp her nape, fingers tangling in her hair, he thought he felt her relax ever so slightly when her eyes drifted shut.
He leant forward till their foreheads touched. "You know I won't hurt you," he said.
She nodded.
"You know you can trust me," he said, touching his lips to her cheek, then her ear.
After a palpable hesitation, she nodded again.
"You know you have a really cute mole, right here." He gently poked his finger against her side.
Sakura flinched, and a huff of breathless, nervous laughter escaped her. "Stop it," she whispered, though her admonishment held no ire.
Kakashi dropped a kiss to her shoulder and pressed his nose against her skin. She smelled like soap, shampoo, and a zesty hint of faded perfume, and while her arms remained folded across her chest, sill partly shielding herself from him, she didn't shy away.
"Lie down with me," he said, and ran his hand down her gently curving side to urge her.
She resisted. "We shouldn't confuse this with something it's not," she said anxiously. "We're not lovers-"
"Even if that's true, that doesn't mean we have to torture ourselves."
She shook her head. "I don't want to hurt our friendship-"
"Anymore than it already has been?" he pointed out. "I can't pretend this will fix anything, but at least can we stop pretending this hasn't been hurting us? We're not from Root. We can't leave our emotions at the door when we're together. If we can make it pleasant for each other then why is that so bad?"
"Making it pleasurable isn't the same as pleasant," she responded curtly. "Hiroshi was sometimes capable of giving me pleasure. That was when I felt the worst."
"Because it makes you feel so ashamed," he said softly, "I know. You can't reconcile hating everything he does to you with the physical pleasure. And you worry someone like Jin is right when he says you enjoyed it, like maybe you deserve to be called a slut and a liar."
Sakura turned her eyes up to his. "Yes," she said slowly.
"I've seen enough of these missions to know you're not so strange to feel that way." He reached up to stroke her hair, brushing it away from her face. "But you can't believe that, and you can't start fearing your own body because of him. You picked me to help you because you trust me, and we're equals, and if you ask me to leave right now I will. I've done everything you've asked so far because I thought that was best for you, but if we need to make love, we will make love. We have to stop fearing each other and treating it as a necessary evil or it really will ruin us."
With a faint groan, Sakura tipped her head back. "Your chat-up lines are awful," she said.
Apparently he hadn't convinced her. Kakashi dropped his hand and began to look around for his pants, suspecting he would need a cold shower at this point before he would be able to sleep.
Sakura's weight flopped down onto the pillows. He glanced down in surprise to see her resting her hands to either side of her head, leaving her body totally bare to his gaze. "Lie down with me," she said quietly, repeating his own words back to him.
Kakashi felt like all the air might have left the room at that moment, and in a daze he lowered himself down onto the futon, eyes caught by hers. Once he was stretched out beside her, Sakura rolled to face him. "I have one condition," she said.
"Ok."
"You can do anything," she said, "but don't kiss me on the mouth."
If she needed that one ground rule to establish a line between him and a real lover, so be it. "That's fine," he said, smoothing his hand down her side to follow the sharp dip of her waist, and watched as she tensed uncertainly. He raised an eyebrow at her. She looked as if she expected him to ravish her mercilessly to within an inch of her life, although she would be disappointed if that was the case. "I'm no deviant, Sakura."
"That remains to be seen," she responded ambivalently.
Even now after all their nights together, they were as unfamiliar with each other as they ever had been. Kakashi acknowledged her with a grunt. He didn't plan to push his luck with her, so as he gently urged her onto her back, he decided to keep things simple.
Sakura's legs slipped open to accommodate him automatically when he moved over her, and with little preamble he thrust into her. It might have been no different from their usual pattern, if not for the fact that they had never done it face to face like this before. Sakura was doing her best to turn her head away from him and regulate her breathing as mechanically as a ventilating machine, even though she was not as successful as she normally was. Her chest expanded just a little too fast to be indifferent to his weight above her. It could have been because she felt more exposed to him, or perhaps it was just his fingers, sliding through her hair and tickling her nape.
"Just relax," he told her as he picked up a slow, languid rhythm that had always suited him best. All the while he looked for the telltale signs of pain, and though Sakura was prone to squeeze her eyes shut it didn't seem to be out of pain.
For any other lover Kakashi might have dedicated a fair amount of time and energy to exhausting most forms of foreplay before even thinking of joining with her this way. But Sakura was not one to be played with. She was incredibly resistant to the idea of treating sex like it was recreational, and frankly Kakashi didn't want that either, and leaping straight into cheap common tricks to arouse her would be met with more opposition than if he gave her what was familiar, then let the pleasure find her naturally, as all water inevitably found the sea.
She'd allowed him to take whatever liberties he liked with her, but Kakashi only permitted himself a few. He may have pressed his face into the curve of her neck to inhale her sweet aroma, or passed the rough pads of his hand across the silky lines of her arms and over her flared hips, but the touches were brief. Any longer and they would seem more like selfish gropes than reverent strokes intended to put her at ease.
And gradually she was relaxing. The intensity washed from her limbs, eroded. She was beginning to trust he had nothing extreme in mind, and for the very first time she began to move with him, accepting his thrusts with a tilt of her hips, inviting him just a little deeper.
Kakashi closed his eyes and gave himself over to the moment, almost able to pretend that this was normal. Sakura could have been a real lover, albeit a shy one not prone to intense reactions... although that was beginning to change, he thought, when he heard the breath catch in her throat. Sweeping his hand over her belly, he once more felt the flutter of sensitive muscles, before he continued lower to slide his thumb through her folds.
Sakura started at first, grabbing his shoulders as if her first instinct was to push him away. She must have resisted that urge, and in a moment they both had their reward when she sighed shakily and her thighs trembled around his hips. Kakashi bit his lip. His stamina had never been great to begin with, and Sakura's timid yet remarkably earnest reactions could undo him too soon. For her sake he hoped to hold on, though he couldn't stop himself rocking into her a little faster, pressing deeper until the tremors in her legs stopped and she was locking her knees about him just that little bit more tightly. Her fingers gauged dimples into his back.
When the tiny moan escaped her lips, he knew she'd given up her precious indifference. He buried his face in her neck and kissed her skin, moving harder and stronger, until her soft pants became gasps and their bodies slid together, slippery with sweat and shining in the lights of the brothel. Tender, cautious reverence was left behind. Kakashi's hands swept everywhere, clutching her shoulders, squeezing her thighs, and stilling her hips as he drove the rhythm higher. One settled in her hair, the other against her neck, and he put his lips to her ear to whisper senseless encouragements and flattery: She was doing really well. She felt great. She sounded great. She could touch him too. They were nearly there. Just a little more.
Mindlessness gripped them, and for a while they were locked in a tight embrace where nothing else mattered but what was happening to them. They thrust and sighed and melted, until all Kakashi could hear was the thud of his heartbeat.
Even though Sakura never made a sound when she came, there was no missing it when her arms suddenly seized around his neck and she arched off the futon, trembles and shudders running right through her to her very core. Kakashi held her tightly against him, already too close to his limit. With a rough grunt he spilled over the edge for the final time, falling into that place where time was suspended along with his senses.
He came back to the sound of breathy gasping in his ear. Was she laughing? Kakashi wordlessly lifted himself up, ignoring the fatigue that pulled him down, and caught Sakura's chin to turn her face to his.
Her damp cheeks flashed in the pink lights.
"Don't," he pleaded, his heart breaking. "Sakura, please don't cry."
He brushed the moisture from her face with his thumb, but that seemed to only make matters worse. Her face crumpled and tears slid freely down her temples and into her hair. Kakashi quickly shifted his weight off her, onto his side, and gathered her closely against him, pressing her face to his shoulder just as the silent sobs began to shake her frame.
Had he been wrong? What if she hadn't been ready for this? He'd thought all she'd needed to do was open up a little more, but what if she felt he'd bullied her into this? And while he may not have expected smiles and laughter, he had really hoped there would be no tears.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into her hair. "Sakura, I'm sorry."
She shook her head against him, unable to speak more than the odd broken syllable of. Although he didn't understand what she wanted to say, as long as she clung to him he knew at least the embrace wasn't unwelcome. She might ordinarily have kicked him off the bed by now, yet Kakashi couldn't leave her like this. What kind of dog had sex with a woman and then left her in tears?
And this was no fleeting outburst. Sakura choked and sobbed, and if she fell quiet it was only until she could draw in enough breath to begin again. Whatever was hurting her was deeper than he had fathomed, too deep to be bottled up again as soon as it was released. Was it sympathy or shame that brought water to his own eyes?
Kakashi continued to hold Sakura close until, some time later, he gradually became aware that her paroxysms had stopped. Neither appeared to have any inclination to move. Kakashi's fingers had found their place, stroking lightly over her hair in a soothing fashion as Sakura's breathing leveled out. He only stopped when he finally fell asleep.
TBC
