1
Morning.
The rich scent of petrichor, and dewy leaves; of sizzling eggs--tamagoyaki, perhaps, hopefully--coffee, and warm rice.
"Early day?"
Outside is a white wall of fog and fuzzy shadows through clouded glass windows. Dark, but not too much. Through thin walls in the next room, buried by crackling oil over stove-fire, the rhythmic ticking of an old clock--6:15, almost exactly.
"A lot of meetings, Sasuke."
"Hn."
Slow, today. The floor is cold. Kakashi's feet drag across the tatami, greedily hoarding every stray bit of warmth as he folds up his futon and stores it away. Morning ablutions seen to, he heads for food.
The hallway light is on, and flickering.
The kitchen is bright.
"Don't just stare," Sasuke scolds, still in his pajamas, though he's carefully tied up his hair as he navigates the short span of Kakashi's kitchen. He throws a thumb over his shoulder--the dining table, clean but bare. Kakashi hums.
"Smells nice," Kakashi takes last night's bowls from the drying rack and serves out a mug of coffee for himself. Sasuke doesn't like the stuff but never fails to make use of Naruto's thoughtful little Christmas gift. Sweet of him, though Kakashi knows better than to whisper a word of thanks. "Slept well?"
"Mn."
Quiet. Water dribbles from the faucet as Sasuke plates breakfast. Kakashi makes himself comfortable, by now knowing better than to take off without at least a bowl of rice. For both their sakes.
"You know, I had a very peculiar dream last night." Shadows beneath listless eyes, though not as thick as they could grow to be. Sasuke's been restless lately and taken to roaming the parameter of Kakashi's apartment complex to work off steam. Midnight Excursions, he called them, as if it were like any other routine. "It involved a circus bear, two pencils, and a gong."
Sasuke scowls.
"No. Absolutely not. I don't want to hear it."
Kakashi clasps his hands together, grinning.
"We all need silly things in our lives sometimes, Sasuke! It was a very fun dream. Full of heroics, fireworks, flying~"
"I will char all your food."
At least he's eating well, if absentmindedly. Kakashi insists on doing the dishes after and watches from the corner of his eye as Sasuke curls into the far end of his lumpy, old couch.
Kakashi knows from experience that, unless he brings this current issue up himself, word-for-word, Sasuke will keep his mouth stitched on the pain of a slow, messy death.
One would think they'd be better at talking to each other; that Kakashi wouldn't be so cowardly as to let Sasuke be.
Soap-suds cling to the crevices between his fingers, slippery where he holds up their used utensils. He sees his own reflection in the rounded metal of a spoon, clouded by fluorescent light and watery residue, and sighs.
Kakashi's never really been good at emotions, and with Sasuke, he always seemed to flounder.
Still. This feels unbearably like the turn of a chapter.
The beginning of an end.
1.5
Ichiraku's again, this time for a celebration.
To prepare, Kakashi fills his morning with back-to-back meetings and prays for no emergencies as the afternoon rolls near.
"Yo!" Three conspiring heads whip around to glare Kakashi into some form of chastisement. Kakashi adds a wink to pretty the picture he makes, and savors their collective groan as he settles in.
"You're late!" Naruto and Sakura grouse, clearly having expected somewhat better from him. Kakashi waves Ayame near and offers up his order before turning, and catching a glimpse of Sasuke's rolling eyes.
"Maa, you see, an old woman tripped and spilled all her groceries past the crosswalk. As Hokage, what would I look like if I left her to suffer her fate alone, hm?"
"Busy." Sasuke's comfortable, at least, which is all Kakashi could have asked for when he signed his release papers yesterday. A little pale, a little tired around the eyes, but no worse for wear.
"A Hokage too busy to help his dearest villagers? Wouldn't you then call this person snobbish?"
Sasuke gives Kakashi a look.
"Someone called you that to your face, eh, Kaka-sensei? Want me to beat 'em up for you?" Sakura flexes her biceps to the tune of Naruto's toe-curling cackle, which leads Sasuke into another eye roll and a deliberate glance at Kakashi's fast-approaching food. Kakashi sighs, allowing his shoulders to loosen into something more relaxed.
"That's fine, Sakura. I'm sure whoever thinks that will be more than happy to never speak of it where you can hear."
"Hey," they drift into silences too quickly, all four of them. One would think it'd be easier, having known each other as long as they have, to hold simple conversations. It is, on the battlefield. Away from the fighting and bloodshed, they'd never left the uneven fields of training ground three. "So Sakura-chan and I were talking to Sasuke before you arrived, obviously, and we hit a bit of a stalemate on things, y'know? Sasuke's a picky bastard, and we can't trust anybody, apparently--"
Sasuke does get a workout for those eyes of his, which is probably fair for how long he's been incarcerated. Naruto, small mercies, doesn't notice and marches through this latest anecdote with fervor.
"--Sasuke's sticking around for a while, which is great! But he doesn't have a place to stay yet, and I guess we can help him fix that up later or whatever, but Sakura-chan had me thinking about connotations and stuff when I said Sasuke should live with her in the meanwhile, since Sasuke-teme thinks my place is 'too fuckass gross' for him, which is rude, by the way! So fucking rude! So I was thinking…"
Kakashi draws back, allowing Naruto to natter onward with shy input from Sakura as the lunch hour ticks slowly by. Sasuke is quiet--not unusual for him, all things considered--but he doesn't try to give his two cents on any part of this conversation. Not an opinion, nor a humming confirmation, nor any stray, unrelated insults.
Very unlike himself, that.
"Anyways, Sensei, whaddya think? I mean, I could probably talk to Sai or maybe even Iruka-sensei, I'm sure they wouldn't mind but--"
"Ah, I don't think there'll be any need for that."
This would have been an easy consideration for Naruto--and who knows, maybe whoever's asked would have agreed to house their resident Uchiha for a time. But Naruto and Sakura have both had the benefit of… being absent for the last year. Warded away from the cells, and from Sasuke's first tentative steps towards socialization and recovery.
They don't know the bite of steel bars against the muscles of their back. They don't count blood stains in their memories of that frigid prison hallway whenever they close their eyes.
"You've probably made up your mind as well, ne, Sasuke?"
Metal on ceramic, the slow drawl of Sasuke's spoon across the bottom of his empty lunch bowl.
"I have no preference for where I'll want to live."
Technically true, if diplomatic.
"Yes, well, if you'll recall--"
"Eh, wanna clarify where you're at for the rest of the class, Teme, Kakashi-sensei?"
Heavy kotteri broth--fattier than he's used to, but ever so satisfying. Kakashi breathes in the steam, savors it, and allows the seconds to roll past in silence.
Sakura, of course, is the first to catch on.
"You've already made plans together." She doesn't sound as relieved as she thinks she does. Kakashi will have to pull her aside, probably. Later. Or maybe not. Kakashi's never been one to understand the romantic love she claims to still hold for Sasuke, nor any of her hopes of acquiring that same love in return.
"It's more an agreement of a sort. We have all afternoon to sort things out, yes, but--"
"I don't trust anyone." To Naruto and Sakura's stricken expressions, Sasuke amends: "No one outside this team."
"Who's gonna try to hurt you, Sasuke? The war's over, and you helped a whole bunch! You even--"
It's easier to see now, shadows chased away by harsh sunlight, how waxen Sasuke gets when he feels overwhelmed.
"No one." Sasuke states firmly.
Kakashi sighs, miming a zip when Naruto tries to be combative about his response.
"Well, it's decided. Sasuke obviously can't stay with Sakura, and Naruto--quit looking at me like that--you were planning to move out of your apartment by the end of the year, anyway. I have a guest bedroom, plenty enough space, and a security detail. Sasuke?"
Fresh out of energy, Kakashi would guess, eyeing the way Sasuke droops into the edge of the bar.
"Whatever," Sasuke says. "Better you than anyone else."
2
Shikamaru is conspicuously less of a hard-ass about paperwork deadlines than he tries to be most mornings. Kakashi eyes him over his latest stack, one hand whittling through a brief requisition letter, the other sifting through his desk for a binder he'd tucked away the day before.
"You're staring." Shikamaru intones helpfully.
"I am suspicious," Kakashi replies. Minutes, and several sheaves of scattered documentation later, Shikamaru groans.
"Yes, Sensei? May I be of service?"
"Sass? In this industry?"
With a huff, Shikamaru stalks his way to the front of Kakashi's desk. He's too respectful for a whiny 'What?'--which is sad, Kakashi will have to beat that out of him somehow--but his annoyance is evident.
"Why are you suspicious, Sensei?" Kakashi raises a brow, and waits. The Nara, as it turns out, share a similarity in their utter detestation of Kakashi's usual brand of horse-shit, and Kakashi exploits Shikamaru's twitching-brow temper with much aplomb. "I'm not being kind, you're not being stalked, and no one is dying."
Kakashi raises his brow one micrometer higher.
"I don't want any favors, either."
Higher.
"...A little bit kind."
"Very unlike you, Shikamaru. Explain?"
It says a lot about how comfortable they've grown into their positions--into being around one another--that Shikamaru allows himself to slouch against the hokage's desk, back to Kakashi and the broad expanse of Konoha.
"Thought today would be a rough day, finagled your schedule a bit."
"Rough?"
Shikamaru's answering look is just short of judgemental.
"Naruto and Sakura, they talk a lot, and I know you, Sensei. You won't complain, and if no one asks, you won't say anything. I figured you'd need a breather for a little while, is all."
Kakashi's crumpled at least one of the papers in his hands. He'll need to fix that. Later.
"...that's nice of you."
"Look, Sensei, I'm going to say this very plainly: you've been broody all morning. I won't pretend to get it--I don't. I probably never will. But Uchiha means a lot to you, and if you need some space to think about whatever, well. You have that much."
Small as this freedom is, it's a very considerate gem for Shikamaru to have arranged for Kakashi. That while time forges onward, relentless as it ever was, Kakashi can take a spool of today to think about it all.
Life and loneliness.
Missing the shadows of something he can't explain.
He considers lying for half a breath… sighs.
"Thank you, Shikamaru."
2.5
They leave at dusk, purple sunlight scattering through brown-spotted leaves as autumn winds make headway through Konoha's deserted back-roads. Sasuke's tote is a featherweight on Kakashi's shoulder, with nothing to show for itself except the hush of cotton-polyester against Kakashi's armored fatigues.
Kakashi's dreamed of this day in starbursts throughout the years. A withering hope in the weeks following Sasuke's capture; a hard-striven goal in the three years of silence thereafter.
A fantasy after Itachi's death, when Kakashi stood convinced he'd lost Sasuke entirely.
It's a little quieter than Kakashi thought it would be. A little more awkward, with too many in-betweens: a rough-draft sentence that goes nowhere, a wry joke he tucks between the seam of his lips.
"Thank you," Sasuke's gratitude comes a little too early--a little too late--a sunspot along the bleak foragers' road of Kakashi's happy little life thus far. "I'm sorry."
It isn't anger, this feeling that clogs Kakashi's throat, making it difficult for him to breathe. It isn't the eternal sandpits of long-depression. It isn't the dried blood and wound-stinging grit of old fear.
Unnameable, Kakashi calls it. This unnameable, unquantifiable, deadly emotion.
"What do you want me to say?" Kakashi asks, just this once, truthfully. Sasuke shrugs.
"Whatever you want. Nothing, if that's how you feel. I just wanted you to know."
Kakashi purses his lips. He thinks of Sasuke as he was, pint-sized and angry at the world. He thinks of Sasuke as he is now, sharing a height with Kakashi and dourer than he ever was. Kakashi's afraid he'll say the wrong thing, and that when he does, Sasuke will be lost to him once again.
(Kakashi thinks of the man behind Konoha's steel trap prison cells and swallows around his urge to scream.)
"Nothing…" The word is dust on Kakashi's tongue. "If I told you I just needed a while to respond, will you believe me?"
Sasuke turns to him, then, with too-large eyes and a twist to his frown that shouldn't look so bitter.
"Of course, Kakashi."
Kakashi closes his eyes and simply breathes.
3
Sakura pops open a bottle of sake with a swear on her lips, and a crease between her brows that's all-Tsunade. 3:45 pm--too early for drinks and otsumami, but summer days draw long, and they've all been ground under the heels of reparations and peace-keeping; this new life after war.
"This time tomorrow," Naruto says through a grin that doesn't reach his eyes. "Teme will be frolicking off through Fire Country while the rest of us suckers suffer Konoha's heat. Lucky bastard!"
"Kanpai!"
Naruto and Sakura quickly lose themselves to three bottles of fizzling alcohol, and the odd chill of Kakashi's living room floor. They're the happy-sappy sort of drunk--which is good, of course--but their play-fighting leads them to the stack of movies beside Kakashi's box television and takes them away from the main party nearby the coffee table.
"I almost envy them," Sasuke murmurs offhandedly, knocking his knee against Kakashi's shoulder as they watch the duo tumble into a stack of books Kakashi will force them to clean up once they're hungover. Kakashi hums to show he's listening. "Seems nice to be so stupid. No plan, no worries."
"Maa, Sasuke, that's not a nice thing to say about your friends."
Sasuke's laugh rumbles through Kakashi's back: lilting, with a smidgen of exhaustion. Kakashi closes his eyes and savors what bits of it he can.
A floorboard cracks beneath Sakura's fist when Naruto makes a mad scramble for the DVD player's remote control.
"I don't think Yamato will appreciate having to replace your floors again." Sasuke slides a foot up the side of Kakashi's thigh, deceptively warm to touch, comforting. Under the haze of cheap alcohol, and giddy celebration, Kakashi allows himself to lean into the back of the couch, and the voice by his ear; into Sasuke's soft touch, and glossy, dark hair.
"Should I tell them to break the door, too? Give Tenzou some sense of urgency?"
Sasuke's feathered laughter, there again like a tree-runners wind.
"I'll help you, then."
Kakashi luxuriates in it all, knowing that by morning, Sasuke will be gone.
3.5
"I don't want you feeling restricted or uncomfortable in my apartment, okay? This isn't another jail cell." Sasuke, when it comes down to it, is simple enough to content. He prefers consideration in most aspects, especially in things and people he considers himself involved with. He prefers, above all else, blunt honesty. "You know the drill. Follow the house rules, but you're free to do whatever else you want."
Kakashi watches as Sasuke carefully toes off his sandals before lining them beside the entrance door. He's been quiet since their little conversation on the way here, and Kakashi hasn't seen fit to drag him out of it.
Sasuke looks up, smiling stiffly.
"No murder where it stains?"
It isn't lying, their playacting. Sort of like omission--side-stepping the root of the problem, allowing the wound of their reality to scab under breathless sun--nothing deliberately perjurious, just… careful.
Always careful, the both of them, with everyone and--these days--each other, especially.
"Not in front of the pack, either. They're very sensitive."
Kakashi's apartment hasn't changed overmuch in the last seven years. At least, not as far as he can tell. Kakashi hasn't, and isn't interested in moving despite his recent promotion, and Sasuke--well, they had once trusted each other very well.
"It's still here…" Sasuke pitches a brow at the sight of Kakashi's battered couch but makes no further comment as to its appearance. Instead, with all the grace of a lazy cat, he sags into the cushion near the armrest and sighs. "I guess this will do."
Kakashi purses his lips.
"You're aware I have a guest room, yes?"
Sasuke doesn't answer. Doesn't visibly react, really, which is a tell on its own.
"Kakashi," Sasuke pauses. Swallows. He doesn't turn when Kakashi settles into the cushion beside him. He looks relaxed enough, head tipped against the backrest--almost nosing at it. It takes a while before he continues, and Kakashi says not one word in that interim. "…there's a window right where my futon's supposed to go."
Kakashi could point out his apartment itself was a fine-mesh of booby-trap seals and every laughing consequence Kakashi's paranoia could conjure. He could mention the ANBU who make up his protection detail or Sasuke's own physical prowess.
He doesn't think that's the issue at hand.
"Okay," Kakashi concedes easily. "Well, make sure you tidy up every morning, alright? I'm not quite the shut-in you remember me as, what with my fancy new title and everything. Lots more pomp and circus and visitors these days. We can both, at least, pretend to be part of a more civilized people."
Sasuke does roll his eyes at that, finally. The smile he wears, while still far from anything resembling happy, softens.
"Sure." he drawls.
4
By midnight, Sakura and Naruto have both taken up space in Kakashi's guestroom to sleep off the alcohol, leaving Kakashi and Sasuke to clean up the mess of their small party.
Kakashi finds that he doesn't really mind.
The going is slow on both their ends. Sasuke takes his time running a duster through the lines between Kakashi's floorboards, and Kakashi gathers their empty bottles of cheap, corner-store alcohol with the careful solemnity of a rice harvester.
"I bet you're relieved," Sasuke tells him sometime later, water rushing through the kitchen faucet and drowning out all other ambient sounds.
"That my living room isn't irreparably damaged?" Sasuke shakes his head, rinsing off a soapy bowl before handing it to Kakashi for drying. "What?"
"Lots more space. Some peace and quiet. You're going to have your apartment back to yourself again."
Kakashi stills. It lasts barely a moment, and he's back to drying the bowl and whatever other utensil falls into his hands in record time. He knows Sasuke notices, anyway.
"Oh," Kakashi tries to keep his tone--with much effort--light. "I don't know about that."
Sasuke hums, handing over a wet serving tray. Minutes tick by.
Kakashi hates when his own tricks are used against him.
"Look, Sasuke, I'm happy for you. I'm happy you finally get some time to yourself, that you can go out exploring the wilds. I know how much it means to you. I know how much this journey matters."
"But?"
Kakashi's throat closes around the words.
Too soon, too soon, too soon--he barely knows the shape of it, this feeling that threatens to swallow him whole.
"…the pack will miss you. I don't fit the bill anymore--never fed them as generously as you do."
Sasuke scoffs. He opens the faucet to a thunder of water against the cheap aluminum sink; too fast, too suddenly. He doesn't dare look at Kakashi when he finally answers.
"I'll be back before they can mourn my absence."
Kakashi doesn't know what else to say or do to reassure himself--doesn't know why he feels the need to reassure himself, to begin with. He loves Sasuke, he always has. He loves all his students, as it were.
He's never been one to grow attached.
The silence, this time, extends for a good, long while. It's only as they've finally finished, with the last of their used utensils on the drying rack, and most of Kakashi's living room practically spotless that it breaks.
"Your plan--your course, I mean. Could you run it by me again?"
4.5
It feels like an intrusion. Kakashi tells himself it's okay--a simple assurance, just enough to allow himself a good amount of shut-eye--so by early morning, with the moon low over the horizon, Kakashi sneaks his way out of his room and… looks.
Sasuke shouldn't have been awake, by then.
The cold draft was his first indication. Not from the entrance of his apartment, as he expected, nor the kitchen windows. He turns to the door adjacent from his bathroom, slightly ajar and creaking.
He sees Sasuke there, sitting right under the window when he looks in.
Kakashi doesn't know what Sasuke sees in the vast, starless sky. He doesn't know what Sasuke's searching for, only that he watches, and waits, and nothing happens for the entire while he's there. Finally, he hears a sigh. Something like a grumble, low in his throat and not entirely unfamiliar.
"I was tempted," Sasuke says softly. "I only just got out. I don't have anywhere else to go."
Kakashi swallows around a mouth full of air.
"But you want to?"
Sasuke looks over his shoulder. If he'd had nightmares, he doesn't look it. Only tired, though Sasuke always looks tired these days.
"You don't really want me to answer that question, Kakashi."
Sasuke is right, however much Kakashi wishes he wasn't.
"No." Kakashi confirms.
5
They cluster, again, in the living room. For a while, there is only silence between them. Only the warmth of their brushing shoulders, and the pulsating tick of Kakashi's wall-mounted clock.
Sasuke's bag is packed, and resting beside his sandals by the door.
Sasuke's futon is spread across Kakashi's living room floor for the last time in what will, no doubt, be a very long while.
"Nervous?" Kakashi asks, dragging his fingers over the hand-span gorge between their crossed thighs. Sasuke, somehow, sits even more rigidly.
"Does it matter?"
"Not at all."
If Kakashi closes his eyes, he can almost sense the descent of the moon across the sky. The night is as chilly as summer will ever allow it to be, but the southern winds are cold and unrelenting and flood through the open windows of his apartment until cold is all Kakashi feels.
"I'm not staying, Kakashi." Sasuke has this way of speaking--Kakashi could never describe it well. Soft-spoken, almost, and never commanding, though he did have his moments. A breath away from a whisper.
Blunt as anything.
"I'd never ask you to."
Kakashi can feel the way Sasuke's shoulders tremble, the quiet breath Sasuke takes to still them. Kakashi doesn't know how to calm him down: what he should say, or do, or feel, even.
After all, he's never been good at quiet aftermaths.
"Okay," Sasuke says. Kakashi smothers his instinct to reach out to him. "And you're not angry at all?"
The ache those words bring him doesn't make any sense. Kakashi has never been selfish--has never felt the need to tie others to himself. Quite the opposite, really.
It doesn't make sense.
Kakashi's throat tightens. His tongue feels too big for his mouth, clumsy.
"I want you to be happy, Sasuke."
Sasuke bumps Kakashi's shoulder with the point of his chin. His eyes are so, so warm.
"Generous of you, Kakashi." It isn't an insult.
The realization comes slowly, like sand through an hourglass, and then--through his reflection in Sasuke's dark eyes--all at once.
That Kakashi will miss their hard-won companionship; their quiet mornings and idle late afternoons together. Like the warmth of his family home, and the crackling campfires of out-of-the-village team missions, like nothing and everything Kakashi has ever known.
He will miss Sasuke desperately.
"I don't see anything wrong about that," Kakashi says, finally. Sasuke snorts, resting his head against Kakashi's shoulder.
"I suppose there isn't."
Kakashi opens his mouth, racing after new words to continue this conversation--their last for a while, he knows. The unnameable emotion swells in his chest, blocking the air from his throat until those words fall to mist, unspoken.
Kakashi doesn't know how to tell Sasuke he'll miss him, because he doesn't understand why it hurts to think of him gone. He knows, even still, that he will never ask Sasuke to stay.
So with nothing left to say, they fall into silence once again.
Kakashi hopes it will be enough.
End
Later, just a little after the sun has risen, Kakashi's room door opens a crack. A cold draft enters alongside silent feet, and a warm hand runs through the tangles of his hair.
By the time Kakashi wakes properly, the apartment is silent, and dark, with nothing to show for the morning but the smell of dew.
Sasuke, he knows, is already gone.