A/N: Evening my lovelies! Thank you so very much for waiting. This has been a massive 3 week wait and I really truly appreciate the patience. This chapter is a thumper and I've invested so much time, emotion and thought into it. And I can only hope it is well received. Coming in at just under 10k words I hope that's payment enough for your patience & that the quality hits the mark. I do have to throw some warnings out...

Mature Content: Swearing and Lemon Chapter Trigger Warning: Mention of sexual molestation (rape)

A/N: Anyways, with that out of the way, happy reading- look forward to hearing what you all think of it :D And thanks for waiting xx Oh oh oh there is an absolute masterpiece of artwork that goes with this chapter. It's a whopping 3 frame stunning piece from the talented Lesya : (you know the drill copy and paste the link need to throw the www. beforehand) lesya7/art/NSFW-Commission-Kakashi-x-Nina-OC-875888516

~Chapter 46: Tremendous, & Foolish & Human~

Upon the third wobble almost topple, Nina counterbalanced her weight against the rickety slats of a fence bordering an abandoned lot two blocks from her apartment. Under a flickering street light she yanked off her heels; it'd been a substantially long day. Doubting that she could possibly fit any more into the few hours left before a new day started, she fobbed off low iron in favour of the admission she was just exhausted. There was little wonder as to why she had come unstuck at Shushu-ya; at the end that was. As for what had been stirred when blindfolded, that had been unforeseen and she just didn't have enough energy to unpack whatever the fuck that had been at the moment.

Thank the Fourth they'd won though, and redeemed themselves for the atrociousness of the first attempt. There was no chance she was going to let Genma forget his humiliating loss anytime soon and that was worth more than any amount of Ryo. In all the calamity of tonight the wound inflicted by the half-witted bet had been healed. Cocky idiot got his just deserves, but his heart was one hundred percent in the right place, and you could always trust that life would never be boring with him around. Maybe he was the Naruto of their generation?

Her lips tweaked into a smile of gladness and pausing to look to the star bare sky above, Nina swore she could see the figuration of a smiling Asuma in the black abyss of the night. In his absence she was turning to Kurenai. Not out of expectation or active seeking, but just like it was… had been with Asuma. With the constant interruptions and in the presence of Konoha's queens of gossip Nina's replies were told in veiled ambiguities. She wondered what tonight had looked like from the outside, from Kurenai's perspective or Guy's. Did she and Kakashi look as they always had- like comrades?

Swinging her heels by her right index finger at her side, she hopped and skipped over the cracks in the pavement. That was their life, wasn't it? A giant leap forward, a skittering of borderline shaky hops left, right and backwards, before going forward. Or perhaps a little more like friends- the type who spoke and acted like lovers? Nina's feet flattened to the uneven pebbled footpath and her hand coursed over her abdomen extracting the memory from her mind of how it'd been Kakashi's and not her own. She stumbled backwards falling to the emptiness at her back and not his sturdiness.

And if it were the latter, then there was no longer a need for them to entertain their one-up game. How long did they really have? The bars on the Konoha's cage of protocols were closing in on her and Kakashi. Too bad she'd eradicated possibly the single chance they had at extending their circumvention of the inevitable. Tch.

Suddenly, the staircase stretched to the heavens manifesting into an insurmountable inclination to the place Nina called home. Shit. Slapping her back firmly against the cold stone wall of her apartment caused a shiver to run down the length of her spine making the bell chinkle. Angling her head to the top of the stairs she made out a massive shadow which took up the bulk of her patio. She had a visitor. The ghosts, demons and innumerable bunches of pink lilies which awaited her on the other side of the door mattered not, and with lead-laden feet Nina took the first step up. She skipped over the splintered step and flopped down to curl into the creature which guarded her entry.

"You sound like a cat."

"Heh. I suppose I might."

Her apartment was yet another part of her life she'd been fleeing from, taking up a temporary residence with Kakashi for the past two nights. However, for that temporary happiness Nina had been ignoring truths. The demons which had bedevilled her subconscious and the harassment of an inexplicable disappearing chakra were no longer separate disreputable entities. Orochimaru. What she couldn't piece together was the why and somehow that would have to wait until she could confer with Master Jiraiya.

"You smell like the Boss."

The back of her hand stroked over his wrinkled boof head, then around to half scrunch and half scratch his ear. The canine's tongue lolled out of his salivated mouth in an uncontrolled appreciation for her efforts. "I could say the same about you but…"

"I know, I need a bath. That's not a deal breaker though, huh?"

"Heh. No." Nina cocooned herself into Bull and rest her head against his broad shoulders, lazing her face away from the spikes of his collar. She wondered about an assemblage of things in that very moment. Did Kakashi send him or was he here on his own accord? How much would he drool? Should she get a bigger bed? How many times had Kakashi cushioned against his muscular but almost teddy bear-esque body? If she didn't go inside, would her dreams still be haunted? What did Orochimaru want? Did she really have to move?

Temari gave Shikamaru a convivial elbow, interrupting him mid yawn. "That wasn't so bad."

"Heh. No, it turned out alright."

She was acclimatising to the way the shinobi of the Leaf Village interplayed with each other and tonight offered another insight into life here in Konoha. For her, the challenge originally came off as immature, but in the company of someone like Nina it induced a flare of curiosity and competitiveness within herself. "Did we ever stand a chance?"

"Hmm?"

Admittedly, Temari didn't know a lot about Kakashi and she was only slightly acquainted with Nina; most of her knowledge had been based on the assumption they were like personalities and what she'd read in Bingo books. Nonetheless, she at least thought they stood somewhat of a chance because it wasn't a straightforward task of target practice. The success of hitting a target came down to skill, effective communication and trust. All competitors were skilled shinobi-Jonin; excepting Shikamaru. Well, they were all at the level of standard associated with the rank of Jonin and all perfectly capable of throwing a shuriken at a target without too much difficulty. "Just how far back do they go?"

"Kakashi-sensei and Nina, you mean?"

"Yeah."

His mind had strayed there too. During the masterclass the pair had put on a display that made the other matches inappreciable and tonight was no different. They had history; he knew that much. Time span wise he was a little unsure. However, if you went off the photograph he'd come across in Nina's collection, they were barely teenagers in it; definitely younger than his generation were currently. Knowing someone wasn't enough to achieve what Kakashi and Nina had. Running through his comrades there wasn't one person, maybe Choji, whom he could connect with like they had. Heh. Even still, what he had witnessed, as well as everyone else who had been in attendance at Shushu-ya, wasn't something attainable for just the average shinobi or couple. "A long time."

"Six shuriken though? And blindfolded."

"Yes. Hard not to appreciate and equally …"

"Bothersome."

Leading up to and including the first throw of the challenge, their dispositions as individuals and with each other gave no vestige of what had taken place. It was intimidating. They were intimidating. Imagine being an enemy and coming across them in the dead of night? If they could achieve that in a social setting what the hell would they be able to accomplish for the sake of a mission?

"Do you think if… if Asuma was here they could, you know…?"

She was good to him and Shikamaru returned the squeeze to her hand. "No. Maybe two or three," and his answer was a soft-hearted guess in light of the adoration he felt for his master. Kakashi and Nina weren't a couple, although Shikamaru wouldn't call anyone a fool if they had assumed they were, and perhaps that was what had made the difference. "They're shinobi."

"Um, in case you haven't noticed, we all are."

"We aren't just shinobi. That's all they are and all they know."

"What's your point?"

He stood behind Temari, positioning her like Nina had been in front of Kakashi. "If I did this." Shikamaru performed the same movements he'd observed by running one hand across the plane of Temari's stomach. "What would you think?"

Her abdomen sucked in, and slapping his hand away she stood with her hands on her hips. "What has this got to do with throwing a shuriken?"

"I thought the same thing that you did when I first seen Kakashi-sensei touch Nina like I touched you. He grabbed Temari's hand and motioned with his head for them to continue on their way home. "As I said, we aren't just shinobi, but they are. In other words there was no emotional attachment for them."

"Are you blaming me for losing?"

"Erm, no." Temari gave an airy mock of breath. "He had no cause to make allowances for Nina. His movements enabled her to assume the role as an extension of him. Nothing sexual. Kakashi-sensei could have thrown the shuriken himself."

In review it was the practical rationale behind the strict formalities when shinobi entered a relationship. He and Temari had been confronted with more political centric hurdles when they'd fronted the panel because of their respective ties to past-crenelated villages of Konoha and Suna. Relationships weren't for everyone and to some degree, villages benefited from having people like that; those who were institutionalised, in a sense. They were priceless possessions, tools, of the Leaf village and were boorishly reminded of their place when they roamed outside of the shinobi regulations.

He spent a lot of time in his head, and this discussion made him ponder on the makings of a shinobi. Was the lifestyle choice of a shinobi borne of environmental factors or were they simply predisposed from birth? People watching was similarly enjoyable as cloud watching, and with that Shikamaru had something to occupy his time with during the mundane component of the Chunin exams that began tomorrow.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Eh, I'll fill you in tomorrow." Leaning over he flicked the lamp off. As for him, he had a goal to support the knuckle-headed Naruto on his dream to one day be Hokage. He didn't need to be a shinobi to protect the kings of Konoha. Ultimately, he supposed he was happy to be a cloud.

Should have chosen more carefully Hatake.

Tossing the stick which had held three balls of dango into a nearby bin, Anko sunk into shelter of the narrow laneway at the back of Shushu-ya to avoid being seen. The silver-haired man was walking home unaccompanied, hands in pockets and as solemn as ever. He'd gone to all that trouble with an impressive show involving the shuriken and yet his bed would remain empty tonight. What a waste.

Stupid Sarutobi. She had men throwing themselves at her feet and out of stupidity or sexual ineptitude, either were likely, their efforts were for nothing. Stupid and frigid. There was no way she would be cut out to for sex with someone like Hatake. He fucked like an animal- hard, fast and once both parties were thoroughly spent he was gone. The only loyalty he had rested with the village.

As tantalising as it was to offer her services to warm Kakashi's bed having been left out to dry by Sarutobi, she did have a previous engagement with Raido. Also, if Hatake was daft enough to chase someone like Nina and turn down her propositions on not one, but two occasions, then he deserved the dissatisfaction of a lousy wank in the shower.

There's always been this mystification as to why dogs spin in several circles before they lay down and Kakashi's guess was as good as anybody's. Regardless, he was stuck on a spin cycle of indecision in the doorway to his laundry; embattled with the want to stay and go at the same time. He really should return the undergarment which was lonesomely hanging over the wooden rod, just like he should really go to bed.

Shit. With his forehead to his forearm and his forearm to the door frame, Kakashi released a languid sigh full of defeat. Silence isn't always empty, it's often full of answers and he had his. Paying no heed to the poorness and absence of an excuse, he was en route to Nina's and bundled in his right pocket was the forgotten underwear.

He'd been throwing around the simpleminded term of different to describe her. There was something about her. There was an element of Nina that drove her, yes, but it also disallowed her to do things that were, or should be easy-like asking for help. She'd built up walls and not to pose a purposeful difficulty. Her natural kindness had been muzzled from an early age, leading her to perfect the art of being cold and distant. And wasn't that just all too familiar?

Kakashi's feet scuffed the pavement at the bottom of the staircase…Nina. He found her asleep and clutching into Bull as if he were a life-sized teddy bear and in the hope he would keep her safe from the monsters who visited during the dark hours. Good grief.

Bull's protective instincts had him growling before realising the incoming presence was his master.

"Watch the step."

Kakashi missed the next step as cautioned, trusting the bulldog and crouched down on the step below to check on Nina. "How long has she been here?"

"Dunno. A while, I suppose. She didn't even make it inside."

The cooled temperature of her skin alarmed him and it was imperative to get the kunoichi inside before she caught a chill. Inching his hand in between Bull and her, Nina began to rouse; her face creasing reactively to the disturbance of her slumber. Her persistence to snuggle into the canine made the task more cumbersome however, Kakashi eventually managed to part the two.

"Kaka…shi?"

Using the back of his heel to kick the door closed behind them, "Mhmm." Midway through carefully dropping Nina to her feet, the crash of glass and the glugging of spilled water stunned them both.

She had her back pressed into his frame in the pitch blackness of her apartment. "Bull?"

"Yeah. Sorry Nina. Don't know if you realise, but your apartment is full of flowers."

"Don't be." Nina turned to look up at him. "And yes, someone thought it was a bright idea to convert my living room into a florist."

"I do think my damaged jaw is punishment enough. Don't you?"

Bull decided he'd head back to his boss' place. If Kakashi was here then that meant his bed was free.

Shit. The recoil damage from a shadow clone inflicted on the original caster wasn't clear-cut and she'd assumed because he had been able to talk throughout the remainder of the night it hadn't been all that serious. However, maybe she was wrong? Why else would Kakashi have turned up on her door step? "Sorry. Is it that bad?"

"Not really."

Hmpf. This coming from the guy who didn't inform her of his damaged shoulder? "Help me make some room, please?"

"Sure."

Vase by vase they cleared a space in front of the two double bay windows where she would be able to use the moonlight to tend to his jaw without the need of the ceiling light. She unsnagged the hair clip and placed it next to the card on the coffee table. Reefing on the band that held the top half of her hair into a small bun, she raked her fingers through the unconstrained lengths. "Sit."

"Nina it really isn't -"

"Who's the medic here?" Kakashi grumbled, but sat on the wooden floor in front of her where she too was sitting on her feet. There was no winning this argument. "Thank you."

With one hand out onto Kakashi's chest, she walked forward on her knees towards him until there was approximately twenty centimetres between their kneecaps. Pushing up, she reached around to untie his hitai-ate and she found herself uneasy with the article of shinobi attire. Dammit. Once it was untied she sat back and laid it across her lap. It had an emotional weight that wasn't there before. Rather, an emotional weight that she had dismissed a long time ago.

"Something wrong?"

"Uh, no." Breaking from her wayward thoughts and she refocussed on Kakashi to roll down his mask. The bruising was already evident and showed as darkened patches on his pale complexion. Under the green glow of her healing chakra the injury faded away with no trouble.

She hadn't asked nor expected him to be here for her tonight, but here he was. And whatever the reason, his jaw or a reason of his own, it brought her contentment and she didn't want him to go because…

"Here," she whispered, almost a squeak.

Laying across her upturned palms was his hitai-ate; the metal gleaming in the fractured light of the darkened room. He clasped his fingers around either end of the metal insignia, the bands' lengths gradually unfurled from around her wrists. Looking up from the return of his belonging to her face, there hidden behind the moonshine glimmer of the unspoken request, was an affrighted cautioning not to break her. The reticence demanding him to listen carefully and understand this would be another lesson in patience; to take things slowly.

Looking at her startled gaze, Nina was deep in contemplation. Tilting her chin up in the curl of one of his knuckles, Kakashi kissed her lips; tasting the trepidation in her breath.

She regarded his hitai-ate. Just the thought alone made her feel small and weak … just like that night.

She couldn't blame them- not the Third Hokage, her big brother, her busy work schedule at the hospital nor her shinobi lifestyle. Because of them, she'd been able to avoid dealing with it appropriately. But now… now and unexpectedly she was in the presence of a person who could bring out the deepest parts of herself. It scared Nina because there were things inside her that she had been trying so hard to ignore.

He confirmed his suspicions of her focal point when her eyes intently followed his hitai-ate as he subtly passed it from one of his hands to the other. What he'd observed tonight hadn't been the same reaction she had on their mission and yet, he was inclined to apologise all the same. "I'm sorry. The picnic…"

"What? No. That was fine. It's not that." As quickly as her eyes snapped to his they then darted away to one of the vases of lilies off to the side. Bringing her eyes back to him, she concentrated on her fingers fumbling over his, which were still holding onto his hitai-ate. Try as she might, her quivering lips could not be quelled enough for her words to come out unaffected. "Doesn't this," she licked her dry lips, "doesn't this scare you?"

This- this being not him and not her. They were afraid of the realness. Fearful for possibly the first time in their lives of something they couldn't walk away from. And it was scaring the fuck out of them both. "More than ever, Nina."

Tucking the stray strands of hair behind her left ear, he ran a single finger along her jawline and brought his hand back down to the hitai-ate. He knew the answer, his memory of that night and mission had not faded. "I have asked you once before under different circumstances, but for that mission were you…?"

"I started that mission as a virgin."

She stared searchingly back at him, with the flow of history passing between them. She appeared ever the indomitable and independent shinobi. That mission Nina had been barbarically bereaved of her innocence by two nefarious strangers at a very tender age; even by shinobi standards. Being a shinobi wore away at your soul, changing the climate of your heart and thus making you less trusting; numb. From that night she'd been truly broken on a profoundly intimate level, and in the shinobi world a broken human made a lethal weapon. Her father and the village had run with that, without as much as a second thought.

"Whatever I felt that night got bottled and shelved; just like everything that ties us to being human." Nina walked two fingers up Kakashi's right arm, like they were a pair of legs, to where she knew his scar was. The one that ran along his collarbone and dipped into his jugular. "Even by then I was accustomed to death. Killing someone was elementary; as was dying. Shinobi life." Her hands fell down to the hitai-ate. "When I came back to the village I handled it the only way we are taught to- I got stronger."

She'd invested a lot of time into her medical and genjutsu training in light of that mission. "And that worked until-"

It was a legitimate interest and he hadn't meant to cut her off, "What was the difference between tonight and the picnic?"

Nina's fingers traced the grooves of the leaf insignia. Oddly enough the answer to his question and the end of her sentence were one and the same, "You. Your presence." The rising vulnerability she felt made her flush. Her eyes fluttered to his mismatched eyes. Kakashi's placidness was drawing out her bottled humanness.

"I tried," she swallowed, fighting back the salty burn in the back of her throat. "I tried to think about anything else when..." closing her eyes, the words to finish her sentence left her. Waiting for them to return, she opened her eyes and absorbed the sensation of the faint brushes of his fingers on the backs of hers. "How silly…" she coursed the sides of the metal plate with her finger tips. "How silly for a hitai-ate to have such power over a fully- fledged shinobi."

Like the lightening in a storm was to him, the blindfold was her trigger. An unhealed emotional wound reminding them there is still a scar. Nina wasn't afraid of the blindfold itself. She was afraid of what the blindfold could conceal- something or someone with the potential to hurt her, standing right before her eyes and unable to register it as a threat.

He held her face in his hands, his callused thumbs drawing circles over her heated cheeks. "Ask me Nina."

She closed her eyes again and as she shook her head from side to side, his hands fell away. There was something she intended to ask of him, but didn't know how and was afraid to. It would mean submission, letting down her guard, and she didn't know if she could. The sensual closeness and thrill of intimacy using only four of her five available senses. The breathing in of someone else's breath as they breathed in yours, touching and being touched, opening for and to them- doing all that and more in complete blindness. She couldn't imagine it without bringing forth an instant recall of that night. "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to let go, just to see what stays. You know?"

As soon as her deep brown eyes caught a glimpse of his hitai-ate that he was lifting from below their line of sight, Nina dissolved into undisciplined cyclical trembles. Unhurriedly, he continued to bring the makeshift blindfold up from the floor and towards her face. "Breathe Nina."

Her breath hitched and then halted completely. Fuck. Was this really happening? She tunnelled her eyes into his, for soon she wouldn't be able to see them. Kakashi was being veritably sweet-tempered in both sound and in touch. His husky command meaning that much more when coupled with the empathetic pace he was taking with his hands; it compelled her to let him in.

The air filled with a charge of emotions belonging to the revelations of shinobi regarding their humanness. He was listening; listening to the unsaid. Delicately he bestowed his hitai-ate onto the bridge of her nose, allowing the bands' lengths to thread through his fingers as he wrapped it around her head. Whilst tying the knot his mouth aligned with her left ear, so he skimmed his bare lips along the shell of her lobe. "Breathe and let go."

Let go? It was something she desperately needed, and yet, so foreign that she'd been limited to do so with only him.

Unsatisfied with the tension of the original knot, Kakashi undid and readjusted it by pulling it firmer and then reknot it. Nina's vacillating breaths puffed into his own ear, upsetting his heart rate, as he retracted his mouth along her cheek towards her lips. Suddenly, he stopped from meeting her mouth, closed his eyes and pressed their foreheads together; expelling the nerves he'd been bolstering fearing Nina may have pulled back. Her hands scrambled to intertwine with his as soon as it was possible. He tried to lessen the clammy, iron-hold grip from her with cadenced brushes of his thumbs. "Let go of it all."

Her internal panic button had been pressed and all of her movements suspended, other than the uncontrolled desultory panting. She'd built walls and lots of them. But with time and tenderness just maybe, brick by brick he could erode the walls, erect a window and perhaps one day, a door. He knew they'd never be gone entirely, they were a part of her and what made Nina, well… Nina.

Before his eyes was Nina; her soul ripped open and raw. She'd not handed over his hitai-ate, no. She had handed him her heart just like a gift; like he'd handed over the box containing the hair pin. He held it utterly so, and in its' infinite preciousness knew that there was nothing he wouldn't do, no line he wouldn't cross to keep it safe.

Angling his head, Kakashi tenderly met his lips with her trembling ones. As if he were whispering to her soul, he ran his hands lightly up Nina's arms and over her shoulders to ensnare Nina into him. She continued to shudder in his hold while he ghosted his fingertips across her flesh at the top of her spine that had been hidden from touch before he'd swept her mass of hair to one side. Pressing his lips to her collarbone, he then turned his head to whisper reassurance into her ear, "You're safe with me."

She was feuding against her mind, with what her body knew already. The tingle of Kakashi's breath caused her nipples to crinkle and harden; easily felt on her forearms that were locked between their bodies. The building apprehension stemming from her abdication of control to him and the unknown of where he could lead her. Each time they came together and made love Nina felt like she was giving him new ways to hurt her. What was extraordinary was she didn't actually think he ever would. From all her experiences, Nina had come to know that the world was full of monsters with friendly faces.

Her fingers cinched firmly into his shirt as the stricture of her top lessened with the disconnection of each pairing of zipper teeth. Her shudders had increased to borderline convulsions and she felt faint with the lack of oxygenated blood pumping through her body.

"Concentrate on your other senses, Nina."

Senses? She couldn't fucking see. The pressure of the outside world was enclosing in on her. Her world was fraught with so many unseen entities, and what she wanted she couldn't have. She wanted to see Kakashi- to be reassured. If she just sat up she could pull the hitai-ate off and this would all be over.

"I…I…"

"Talk to me. Tell me." Maintaining a calmness to her disarray, he trailed his other hand down to the bottom of the zipper and unclasped it. In the hands of a man, a woman could become a hundred different personas, limited only by imagination, his willingness to make her feel safe and to lead her. "Tell me what you can smell?"

Smell? With her nose buried into her balled up hands, she sucked in the stifled air. "I can smell…" in her firm grasp was his shirt. "Home. I can smell home." Flickers of random moments of finding Kakashi lazing around and reading in the branches of many a tree in Konoha, with swirls of dancing leaves, played in her mind.

"Hnm."

He was warm. The tension from her shoulders slackened with the warmth exuded from Kakashi's fingertips brushing over her denuded skin to snag into the cuffs of her sleeves. Distancing herself from the huddled mess against his chest, she sat up "And I can smell the lilies."

She only permitted one hand at a time to come away from his chest as her top was removed; returning them to the spot she could detect his heart beat the clearest.

He was endearingly unwrapping her. Never going faster than the fall of her guard.

The first of the interruptive layers of their clothing had been shed. Her shirt tossed over yonder, in the direction of the lounge while he beheld the two well-formed globes that were rising and falling in stuttered waves. The cool night air animated the dusky-pink areolae surrounding her puckered darker nipples, which had teasingly mocked him from behind the all-but-transparent white fabric top.

Lowering his head into the crook of Nina's neck to pepper a wake of heated kisses and licks of his tongue, he was suddenly blocked.

"I n-nee..."

Her words were stilted from the accumulation of too much dubiousness. She'd been naked in front of Kakashi before, countless times, but this time was significantly different. This time she wasn't supported by her sense of sight, she was reliant on her other four senses and thus, her mind had diverted impulsively to that night.

"I need…" Her words caught on the tip of her tongue. She tried a third attempt. "I need…"

"You need what, Nina?" He murmured as his thumbs and forefingers pinched her hardened sensitive beads making her straighten her back.

He was strong. Guided by one hand on his cheek, she leaned up to his mouth, she confided in hushed tones, "I want to touch you too, Kakashi."

Taking a second look at Nina, this was new and uncharted territory. Most women took what they needed from him or the reverse, he'd taken what he needed, all without a word being uttered. She was meekly requisitioning her desires and it didn't instil improper thoughts, instead it inspired a tempered awe.

Clawing at the back of his shirt, he pulled it overhead and discarded it to the same place as hers. Nina's fingers felt glacial cool when they splayed across his collarbones, down and kneading his pectoral muscles and stopping at a little left of the middle of his breastbone.

And she didn't stop there. Following an airy hum, he spied the curl of her lips in the moonlight and concluded that Nina had generated a dose of daring. How far was she willing to go?

The evened rhythm beat under her touch and in a way, it lulled her insecurities. He was steadfast. Which was a good thing because this part was easy and what was to follow, as they trickled through her remaining senses, would surely be more challenging.

With unbound hands she was free to stroll over the entirety of his body with her fingertips. Using a lone index finger she traipsed the groove of his chiselled abdomen downwards to the fastening of his pants. Two birds, one stone? No. Another site on his body called for a revisit. Skimming her hands up to his left collarbone, she located his physical scar tied to that mission; the one she had given him, herself.

"I need to ask you the extent of what those…" they weren't men, not even close. "…what they did to you."

And took.

She couldn't help but jar, curling her fingers into the blemished tissue when Kakashi's question broke the silent air.

He was human. The displeasure of having to ask the question was not unnoticed and she bit back the urge to apologise. It wasn't that it was glorified, however it was accepted as a form of passage to becoming a true kunoichi. It was kind of warped when she thought about it, that you gained value as a shinobi for sacrificing your body as a human for a mission of that nature.

As for that night- what hadn't they done to her?

The genjutsu she's used on Guy, was a skill she'd researched and practiced with the initial intention to use on herself. For a while Nina had adapted her routine to include multiple showers a day or whenever the need arose; never feeling clean.

"Everything."

He exhaled deeply as her lips pecked at his scar with her hot breath fanning outwards and one hand still situated over the fist-sized organ, which was undoubtedly thumping into her touch. He dipped his head to hers, kissing her very sweetly, muffling into her mouth, "Hold on."

Kakashi could make out the feel of a shy smile as he caressed her lips with his own, deepening their contact until hers parted granting his tongue entry to plunge into the warmth of her mouth. One hand supported the back of her head and the other smoothed around from her hip to her lower lumber, laying her backwards onto the wooden floor. As their tongues entangled and his body came in between the constricted hold of her thighs, they savoured each other, letting little bits of their souls melt into each other.

Her hand on the nape of his neck towed him down to her, whilst her other mirrored his own by cupping his face and roughly massaging his cheek bone where another of his scars were. Unchecked by the way in which she was kissing him- how he wanted to fuck her- hard, insistent and determined. Kakashi ground himself into her core; his groan and her moan and their gasping gulping breaths, meshing into a wordless mess between their mouths. He had to stop, they had to stop. Hastening through any of this wasn't what was needed; what Nina needed.

Pushing up on his forearms, against the strain of her pull, he tenderly stroked her swollen and glossy lips with his thumb. Further mellowing their rapidness to satiate their sacred hunger, he sifted his fingers of his other hand through her hair. "Slow down, Nina."

What was that? Maybe a frenzied response for allowing Kakashi to tread into the shadows of her soul? Allowing him into a part of her that she'd forbidden from everyone else coming near. Her mind was painted in a smearing of light and dark memories; where that night was the dark and he was the light. She could taste his burning appetence with each coil of his tongue and yet, somehow, he brought them back to the steady-going process of healing; an exact contrast to the slammed-door pace of the trauma she'd suffered. His forgiving touches subdued her internal warfare, until the darkness enveloped her. It wasn't Kakashi's thumb on her lips, it was theirs. And they were hushing her and threatening that if she didn't keep it down, they would make use of her mouth or take her tongue.

The slap of skin on skin, Nina's hand striking his, panged against the walls of the room and Nina's head turned away to the side, lips pursed and body trembling. Her response was purely defensive and it savagely wrenched at his insides to imagine them…

Kakashi clenched his jaw tight, putting his chin to his shoulder and exhaling through his nose, while he ruminated over what to do about the road block he'd encountered.

Nina's sensitivity to touch was both a blessing and a curse. For now his digits were off limits. Surveying their surroundings, the stars of the night sky reflected in the rippling water that had spilled out onto the wooden floor from the vases of lilies….

Reaching over, Kakashi plucked a single flower from the closest bunch that had been knocked by his canine companion, whom was nowhere to be seen; presumably in another room or not here. Her thighs fastened firmly around him, but her face remained averted, opening the full curvature of her neck.

The shifting return of his presence intermingled with the sensation of droplets splattering the cleft between her breasts, causing the elicitation of a shiver when Kakashi's heated breath mobilized them and they streamed upwards to pool into the hallow of her neck. The coolness of the liquid was sure to precede the blaze of his fingers or lips. In their place came a floating tickle down the lithe skin of her neck that was exposed, along her left collarbone, under and over her chin, and finally glancing along her lips. The heavenly perfume filled her airways revealing that his hands had been replaced with a lily. Its delicacy enlivening the jealousy of her unattended buds and nether. Drawing her shoulder blades together lifted her breasts upwards in a muted solicitation for a sensatory reprieve.

Her bowing motion righted her head, so that he was now looking upon her whole face. It also dislodged the water, creating a liquefied channel tracing around her neckline. His erection pulsated with the incoming fluttering of impure thoughts, where he bequeathed to Nina a pearl white necklace made of his own release. Staving off the salacious images for the time being, he read her body language.

Buying into her wanton offering, Kakashi glided the blossom to her billowing breasts, twirling it so that the petals caromed the pebbled pink tips. When alternating to the other beautifully formed mound, he dipped the bloom to drift along the creamy soft line of her under-bust. With her first murmured mewl humming from behind sealed lips, Nina's inner arch of her right foot locked in behind his left thigh and her right hand snaked up his left forearm. As he made the lily continue performing pirouettes, he assessed her skirt; remembering it had a bow at the back and he guessed the zip would be there or on the side. Which one, he'd just have to find out when he got there.

Taking the gamble to re-engage physicality using his hands, Kakashi lobbed the flower to the side and dove on and seized one of her ripened peaks with his mouth. Then sailed his right hand up from her left ankle that began as tissue-like grazes of his fingertips and ramped up to a heavy-handed coercive groping of her thigh, which had Nina heaving out breathy croons in the quietude of her home.

Kakashi. Not them but him. He, whom was rasping hungrily and nipping at her recklessly imprisoned nubbins and whose hand was riskily close to her moistened core. Drawing in sharp breaths and expelling shallow puffs she lifted her bottom, feeling his hand curling around to the base of her spine for the ribboned tie of her skirt.

"The… the…" she swallowed quickly, fighting for oxygen as Kakashi's fiery breath beat on her tongue-dampened nakedness, "the zip is at the si…"

His questing down her uncontrolled undulating torso with his wet tongue stopped at the skirt's hemmed waistband, then he started to seductively sweep his parted lips along her pelvic line. At a drawling pace and working from one side to the other, sprinkling sweet whisks of his tongue that had her shifting restlessly under his attentions. As his fingers clutched into the side seams of her skirt, the demons of that night made a resurgence and she found her idle hands fossicking with the blindfold. Fuck. Could she do this? She'd done it before and with Kakashi. All it was, was a piece of material and metal… but…but…

"Lift up."

Planting her palms to the floor for balance, her nails grating into the wooden grains, while she elevated her body as requested, her lungs and throat strangulating her with the careening of her demonic mental barriers. Momentarily, Kakashi's proximity faded away from her as he slid down her unfastened skirt which only stood to accelerate her dissention.

Kakashi observed the mess of gorgeous chaos that was Nina. Her silky nakedness barring her midnight black underwear and his hitai-ate. She was flushed pink in an anguished arousal and in his full view under the silvery hues of the moon and star light streaming through her windows.

Her burgeoning musky scent saturated the air he was breathing in as he worked his way down between Nina's soft, curving legs and deposed the skirt from around her bottom half. Imperilled by an insuppressible voraciousness to consume her, Kakashi rid himself of his bottom attire without delay.

In the midst of doing so, he reckoned with the sight of Nina's fragility before him; seamlessly coordinating the surrounding floral arrangements gifted by him truly. The fifteen year old Nina had swallowed her suffrage from that night whole, allowing it eat away at her from the inside out all these years. The poetic justice of it all, then and tonight, goaded his determination to work harder in rewriting the misgivings of her ordeal. Consequently, the instrument he had set aside would be integral.

Notwithstanding the recovery of their closeness- Kakashi nudging her knees apart and settling himself within the cradle of her legs. Nina was feeling unprepared with the furthered propulsion into the unknown of what would come next. Every movement of his pleasure-giving mouth was pulling at her, dragging her closer. She chanted to herself inwardly: This was Kakashi and not them. Kakashi whom was warm, strong, human and safe.

He endued interspersed butterfly kisses to the insides of Nina's sun-warm thighs. In a hoarse susurration he asked for her to "spread them wider," whilst composedly angling down towards the juncture of her thighs.

Keeping a vigilant eye on her disposition before proceeding, but by piecemeal degrees, her choppy struggles for breaths eased, her body flexibly moulding itself to his, reshaping itself to allow his steely contours to lower with his arms hooking under the subtle bends of her knees.

Braced on his forearms he sank stalling with his face mere millimetres from her wanton core that was screened behind a flimsy, sloe undergarment from his awaiting rapacious tongue. With his left hand, Kakashi plucked the triangular front of her panties, tugging them to his left and took a peak.

Fucking exquisite.

Under Mother Nature's night lights, the overflow of her seeping nectar glistened from the slit where her folds met. Rounding his lips, Kakashi tunnelled a coltish gust of breath on her unveiled sex and allowed the fabric to snap back undirected. Transferring his weight to his left side, between her convulsions Kakashi twisted his right arm under her left leg and collected the ingot tool in his right hand.

Air was feverishly piped into her lungs as she gave shuddered gasps at his enkindling breath. When the left string line of her underwear seemingly snapped into tatters, opening her apex to him, unhindered, and as her hips bucked, Nina was sure she was dripping.

Tucking the surviving fabric to the side, want become reality as his avid lips pressed into her sweetness. With a growling reception to the meeting, Kakashi flit his tongue gaining a brief sip of Nina's arousal. For the desire of moreness, he drank in her abounding excitement, hardly parting her folds with shallow, pulsed laps, and passed the blade to his left hand which had been pinning Nina's fervidly body in place.

Her hissing pleasure-infused moans timed rhythmically with the leaping arcs of her tipping hips, meanwhile, his subconscious reminded him that there was a fire storm burning within Nina's veins and not just her haven. Although she was wanting him presently, he was about to collide directly with her demons. Kakashi opened the fingers of his left hand, allowing the casted hilt to rest on her hip, right above the twenty year old jagged scar from that night; acquainting her with the weapon.

She was quick in realising that the weight belonged to the sharpened blade of a kunai which was being pushed onto her protruding hip bone. Also, that it was what Kakashi had used to cut through her underwear. Swiftly though, her breaths transformed into paralytic shivers through tremoring lips. Her legs clamped tightly around his lean and corded-with-muscle frame; paining her with their ceaseless astriction. She attempted to swathe her right hand around his left wrist that held the kunai, but her fingers jounced turbulently, hampering her efforts. Nina's close-mouthed, whimpering voice communicated the plausibility that she may very well close off from him.

Kakashi had laid his hands on her soul, finally privy to the true monsters that dwelled within the lidded and verboten jars which were stored in her elusive locked boxes.

Nina was in a state of almost total petrification. All she'd ever known, as had he, was self-reliance, but he would lead her now.

"I want you to know that it's okay to feel whatever it is you're feeling, right now."

With a sensuous glide of his tongue on and around her most-delicate pearl, Kakashi slipped one finger into her dampened entrance; going as far as the first knuckle and gradually withdrawing. In a metered tempo, he added a second finger; stretching the rigidified walls of her slippery softness. Fine, subtle movements stirred against his digits as he stared up and along at her closely; heeding her every flinch, sonance and grimace.

Her belligerency posed an overwhelming provocation to yield. To rip the fucking blindfold off and run away, seeking shelter from this fucking nightmare. Her breaths arrested in irregular beats and her skin was being flooded with rampant emotions. And this was all for what? With her eyes squeezed closed from the incursion of the kaleidoscope of memories of her abusers, she fell into a pernicious pit. That night and they came back in roaring flashes.

With no sense of sight or hearing she was spared the concentrated sense of touch, taste and smell. Their filth and vileness. Touching and probing her. How they molested every slope, curve and ravine of her body. And how she had abhorred herself for the involuntary responses of her captured chastity. They were taking part of her, no, parts of her that she'd never ever reclaim. But… that was her fucking choice wasn't it? She was fucking fifteen, barely fifteen years old but still, she was a kunoichi.

Because of that pitiable experience, she'd learnt that no matter how broken… how fucking terribly, savagely broken you were, the world didn't stop for it.

In the dead air, in their pilferage she stilled, she calmed, she numbed and she plotted. At least one of the two marauders was their intended target for the mission, meaning he already had a death sentence. The second well, he was just fucking collateral. Both were moronic lugs, whom would likely mistake her sedateness as a weakness. She was going to handle them- give them their fucking dues. When one of them inhumanely drove themselves into her, violating her beyond reformation, and sliced through her flesh of her right hip, she'd went on a fucking rampage. Confiscating their weapon- a kunai, and carved through their stupidity and putrid foulness, until she was befittingly bathed in their blood. On her knees, at the mercy of the fall down from the adrenalin she waited. For what and for who? She didn't fucking care. She'd handled it.

Scantily anchored to him by her trembling hand, Nina's skin prickled with longing. Somewhere in the agony, she wanted Kakashi. The tactility of his edacious tongue swirling and lashing her aching button and the indulgent roaming of his fingers caused her lower body to rise against him; twisting as if obeying an instinct that she was only just coming to terms with.

She wanted him to stop, but more than fucking that, and despite of herself, she wanted him to go on. Kakashi was making love with her demons. His suavity and temperance corresponding with her that he would give her everything; everything she wanted and needed. All she needed to do was let go.

Mournful tears soaking into the fabric and amidst sobs she pleaded, "Don't… don't stop." The primordial craving for hot, wet abandonment electrifying her entire being and sending her lower half into spasmodic waves against his touch in a desperate rhythm. Her breath was in fits of punctuated pants. His fingers dove into her, curling and gnawing at her sweet spot, giving him plenty of her essence to devour. Bit by bit, Nina could hear and feel the faint severing of the skimp fibres of elasticised lace. "Kakashi. Please. Don't. Stop."

Dizzied on the threshold of chaotic rapture, with toes curled and involuntarily arching to elevate her hips to him, her impassioned cries spilled out into the apartment. Nina's hardened exterior resulting from past afflictions and made up of all the makeshift barriers which intricately held all her scars in place, fell away under Kakashi's touch.

Nina erupted in a whimpering climax of sweat-shimmering spasms. While she rode out the trembling waves, Kakashi withdrew his fingers that were drenched in a thick coating of her release and edged his turgid shaft into her glistening core. Her pulsating, vibrating comedown milking him of the first drops of his arousal.

Hmpf. Only a higher power would know how long she'd held onto those tears. Still, Nina made broken look fucking magnificent. Unquestionably, there was a beautiful darkness hidden behind her smile that was creeping across her lips. There always had been.

"Kakashi."

He moved to lean forward, causing a sigh to float from her lips. "Hn?"

He was still here. Heh. Wasn't he always? And why would she have a reason to think he wouldn't be? A strong yearning to be claimed again came over her when Nina propped herself up onto her elbows to meet Kakashi, fuelled by the sensation of his thick hardness embedding into her. Even if she hadn't planned on it, wanted or needed it, here they were and the barrier was gone. Almost.

She'd taken the first tentative steps and now… now, Kakashi deserved to relish in bringing her into full bloom. She felt for him what she had not felt with anyone else. Entrusting him with the unrestricted passage to wherever the fuck he wanted to take her.

The need for soft and gentle, obliterated.

Notwithstanding the cover over her eyes, Nina's growing devious smirk had him scrambling to guess as to what she was up to.

Fuck. He was either really fucking lucky, or in very real fucking danger.

Nina was ever the most inexplicable and unpredictable component in his life. The sensual fawning of his slickened fingers on her quivering lips in the premise of a kiss, unhesitatingly morphed into something a little more erotic. He'd watched as her cheeks hollowed and drew in his lone middle finger deeper, tonguing around its length for her heated desires; lustfully siphoned out air through her nose with a moan.

"Pervert."

"And?" She cooed with a beguiling smile and still gripping his finger between her teeth.

If Nina wasn't already, she was even more fucking so- irresistibly addictive. "If you let go of my finger, I'd be happy to show you."

When she didn't surrender his finger, he rocked to fully sheath himself inside her, then gyrated in slow, insistent circular motions. As intended, her mouth dropped open to pull in a lungful of air.

Before he had a chance to withdraw, she sought his mouth, tasting herself but not minding. Her shaky lips, parting his to exchange her smile for the feel of their tongues entangling. Speaking in a language that was not destined for their ears and in a sight that was not meant for anyone else's eyes. Telling him that 'It was okay. She was okay.'

"Kakashi."

He'd tasted her, drank her soul and she was ready for the next step. Ready for him to show her all the things that her good-girl persona shouldn't know but what she fucking wanted to.

"Hn?"

In a graduated declaration of bearing her soul to him, Nina reclined back onto the floor and allowed herself to be completely defenceless. She trusted Kakashi to undo her. To be lovingly forced open in unbearable pleasure, until the broken pieces narrowed to crevices and eventually would become indistinct blanched scars. Scars that would one day be just a diluted memory having been replaced with him, her, and them. Their everything.

Kakashi gazed upon Nina, in all her unapologetic wonderment. Finally comfortable in her own perfect imperfection. And he could honestly appreciate that, having been with women who gave themselves away so damn carelessly. She was incredibly rare.

"Are you sure?"

She sure as shit better tell him if she needed to stop soon, because she was driving him to the brink of sexual insanity. What he wanted to unleash and what she appeared to be asking for, was well outside the nature of their previous copulations. Kakashi had justified the development of his sexual predilection for dominance and intensity in rough sex, with the disconnection and desensitisation arising from the shinobi lifestyle. Nina had reconditioned him in the ways of gentility.

As if sensing his apprehension, Nina gave a jovial buck of her hips, "Remember, I don't break that easily, Hatake."

No. No, Nina didn't. She made strong look elegantly invincible. Groaning long and low in the realisation that they were possible as romantically twisted as each other, he firmly clasped both hands around Nina's left upper thigh and dragged her violently into a powerful thrust. Her shrill rang out and her hips surged upwards, taking all of him. "Good girl."

"Woman."

"Trust you Sarutobi." Presently, and in the fleeting glimpses prior to tonight, she possessed a coquettish charm with messy hair and both were attributes of her stubborn spirit.

"Remember, you're not in charge anymore, Nina."

Nina yelped when he hauled her closer, his rigidness spearing her and sending her soaring into blissful contentment. Submitting to his larger, more domineering physique unashamedly. He gripped her firmly with her thigh over his right hip and right leg bent between the two of his, and she instinctually rotated, squirming with most of her weight forced onto her right side.

He… they were testing her limits as she experienced her transformation where she felt the sensations and did not resist them. For a reason, unbeknownst to him, he wanted Nina to know that he… fuck. He seethed a guttural groan as her inner walls clenched around him, stiffening him in impendence of their nearing culmination. She was frantically bucking and thrashing beneath him as he slammed into her. "Not yet, Nina." He wasn't going to have their animalistic carnal revelry end just yet. Not a fucking chance.

He thrust into her once, twice, a third and fourth time. And she accepted it, matching his thundering thrusts; one hand knotting in her long tendrils and the other affixing herself clumsily to the floor below, as his thigh and her buttocks crashed against each other. Listening to her every whimper, beg, cuss, mewl, and moan. The more sounds she made the harder and fiercer he fucked her. She wouldn't hear the words anyway, and they sounded contrived to him when he imagined speaking them at this moment. He was fucking close; this was sure to be the longest, hottest, all-consuming release of his lifetime thus far. And Nina only wanted to hear one thing.

"I want all of you, Nina. Do you know that?"

"Mhmm" A hummed response in the ardour of ecstasy, was all she managed.

"Every. Jagged. Piece."

Stressing each word that left his mouth, Kakashi pounded into her, in a fierce paroxysm. He had her screaming out not just fragmented versions of his name, but her worries and fears so they had no fucking way of finding their way back in anytime soon.

Short, harsh heaves of air misted from his grinning mouth into the moonlit room. They were both on the verge of infinity, forsaken to the rush of liberation. She could feel herself contracting harshly around his aggressive arousal and in a blinding, intolerable moment, she was seized by a rush of soul-shattering intensity. Nina howled a final unabashed call of his name as she felt herself levitate off the timber boards.

In a fiery, cataclysmic and simultaneous response with Nina, Kakashi snarled a harsh groan as his dick twitched and he poured himself into her.

Nina rode wave after wave of their shuddering climax; embracing and wallowing in it. The way he had taken her wasn't gentle- he'd fucked her unyieldingly and she'd enjoyed every fucking second of it. He was her destruction and saviour.

Once able, she clambered up to nestle into Kakashi and mindful to maintain their connection. Burying her face into the quadrant of his chest below his shoulder, Nina unwittingly wept. Wept for so much more than the words she had. Wept in sadness and joy. Her fingertips pawing at his rippling muscles as his chest rose and fell in airy jitters. Turning her head to the side, his heartbeat drummed into her ear canal. Slowly but surely, her breaths returned to normal and her eyelids grew heavier, as did the rest of her body.

She then felt Kakashi's warm breath against her scalp as he kissed her hair and removed his hitai-ate; which clunked heavily to the floor. Next came a light peck to her nose, and she scrunched her nose at the strange, slightly patronising sensation. Over the course of a few seconds, maybe minutes, they lost themselves in each other's eyes. After an unidentifiable time, Kakashi cupped her face and said all that needed to be said with a kiss that was heavily imbued with pure devotion. It was just what she needed.

In her bedroom, Nina sat back on the edge of her mattress waiting until he was sorted. Just like in the hotel room in Amegakure, he laid down in a silent invitation on his back with open arms. She crawled in beside him, resting her head on the pillow that covered his outstretched arm and faced away. After she'd wiggled around, he rolled and enveloped her, pulled the sheets up and entwined their fingers. He sank his nose and mouth into the nape of her neck so that he could fall asleep breathing in her and only her. Neither made an effort to take things further or say anything more; satiated and sufficed with just their proximity.

Tonight and together they were tremendous, and foolish, and human.