Chemistry
Fifth Hokage Senju Tsunade issued an official proclamation: before the year's end, Hatake Kakashi would replace her as Hokage during the interim period before Uzumaki Naruto comes of age.
The news was received with equanimity for the most part; Kakashi had proven himself a capable leader during the war, and Tsunade made it clear that her duty as the last surviving Sannin was to resume her nomadic lifestyle.
Kakashi knew the announcement was coming, of course, but he thought he would have been further along in his personal project by the time he was thrust into the public sphere. It was bad timing that the proclamation had come so soon after Sakura had visited Sasuke, because even though Kakashi wanted to keep an eye on her, he was also painfully aware that his new celebrity status would impact anyone close to him.
Case in point: Sakura had invited him to Ichiraku's to celebrate his impending promotion. Naruto and Sai were planning on attending as well, but Naruto was still caught up in Hyuuga business and had apparently roped Sai into helping. And so for the first half an hour it was just he and Sakura at the long bar, slurping noodles in companionable silence.
"Who's that girl with him?"
Their shinobi instincts were too well honed for either of them to give away the fact that they had overheard the feminine voice in the corner, but when he met Sakura's eyes he could tell she was listening too.
"I wonder if they're dating. She's not very pretty, is she?" Another girl.
Kakashi clenched his chopsticks, wondering if it was better to say something and potentially cause a scene, or say nothing and potentially insult Sakura. But before he could decide, Sakura snorted. Before the war, she probably would have been appalled at the notion of dating her annoying old teacher, but now she seemed more amused by his embarrassment than embarrassed herself.
"Oh wait, I know her. She's one of his students, the one that went crazy after the war."
The laughter in Sakura's eyes died almost immediately, and she returned to her ramen with feigned focus. Now Kakashi definitely wanted to cause a scene. But then what? He'd get maybe five minutes of satisfaction, and then weeks of the rumour mill making life that much harder for Sakura. If it were only his own reputation on the line, that might have been a fair trade, but he hadn't worked this hard to protect her just to put her in the firing line over a pair of civilian gossips.
"I'm sorry," he muttered, the words feeling utterly insufficient. But Sakura met his eyes again.
"Don't be. I'm used to dealing with jealous fangirls. You're worth the drama, I promise."
And then her smile was back; small, meant only for him, but beautiful.
"Can I show you something?"
They were in the woods, the spring air lush with the smell of pine and freshly-turned earth. They had been sparring, a rare one-on-one bout that Sakura had insisted upon for some reason.
Kakashi was sweating, partly because their fight had been long and brutal (as evidenced by the broken branches and craters) and partly because Sakura was also sweating, the beads rolling down her neck and the half-moon of exposed upper back from her sleeveless top. She dumped the rest of her water bottle over her head, turning the beads into rivers. Kakashi's mouth felt suddenly dry.
"Kakashi?"
"What?" Had he been staring? Well, yes, but had she caught him?
"I said, can I show you something?"
"Oh, right. Sorry, I spaced out. Yes, you can. Sorry." Smooth, jackass.
"Okay, watch this." She made a series of complicated seals that seemed to have neither rhyme nor reason nor end. If it was meant to be a jutsu, it was a pointlessly long cast that any enemy would interrupt long before it finished.
He was about to point this out when he felt a warm hand on his back and a breath of laughter tickle his ear. "Boo."
The Sakura making hand signs disappeared, and he turned to see the real, flesh-and-blood Sakura standing at his back.
"You've certainly come a long way with your genjutsu." He was genuinely impressed, because he'd been watching her, ahem, rather closely for the past few minutes, and hadn't noticed the transition point.
She flushed with pride. "I've been working on that one for a while, hoping to catch you out. You weren't just pretending to fall for it, were you?"
He shook his head. "Nope, you really got me."
"Okay great, then let's head back, shall we? It's getting late and I want a shower before tonight."
"What's tonight?"
"Oh, just birthday drinks." Sakura grabbed her water bottle from where it still sat, half-full, on the ground. "It's still weird to think of myself as eighteen, if I'm honest; but Ino said a girl's night is well overdue and this is just a good excuse."
"It's your birthday?" He scrambled to process this new information.
"Don't worry," she gave him a knowing grin. "I consider this training session your present, so there's no need to panic."
No need to panic, indeed.
Biology
"I can't believe Tsunade gave you those for your birthday!" Ino crowed, picking up an orange-covered book like it might bite. "Mind you, our next Hokage will probably make them required reading, so it's a good idea to start now."
"Oh, hush." Sakura grabbed Icha Icha Paradise out of Ino's hand and tucked it back in the bag on the table. "And don't wave them around or I'll take them home."
They were at one of the mixed bars in the shinobi district. Anyone at chuunin level or higher could enter, but you still had to be over twenty to order alcohol.
Hinata, the other member of their trio, raised her glass of pink lemonade. "Should we drink a toast to the birthday girl?"
Sakura groaned. "My birthday is the least toast-worthy thing here. Let's toast your progress with the Hyuuga branches, or all the incredible things Ino's done with her clan lately."
"You've done some incredible things too, Sakura," Hinata said, at the same time that Ino said "No clan talk, please."
"What happened?"
Ino raked her fingers down the side of her face, staring into her lemonade like a drunk stares at their fifth beer. "Shikamaru is officially dating Temari."
Sakura cocked her head to the side. "And…?"
"And, it means they're gonna get married before too long. Which means they're gonna start thinking about kids, which means Chouji and I both have to start thinking about having kids of our own soon too."
"Oh, because of Ino-Shika-Chou?" Hinata asked, and Ino nodded.
"The clan knows I'm never gonna find a husband, but I'm still expected to find a suitable surrogate and have heirs at some point. Which is fine, I do want kids, but I thought I'd have more time, you know?"
The door opened, revealing a handful of familiar faces. "Jounin are out in full force," Ino commented, as Kurenai, Genma, Gai and Yamato made a beeline for the bar. "That'll be you soon, Miss Jounin-in-training."
A half second before the door swung shut, one last patron stepped through and joined the others at the bar.
"Oh, and there's Mr Hokage-in-training."
Sakura stared openly. She had only seen him a few hours ago, but there was a difference between sweaty training Kakashi that she'd technically known for years, and a Kakashi who had actually put on a nice-ish shirt and was presumably about to order an alcoholic beverage. The reality of their age difference hit her like a slap.
She sunk a little further into the booth, tugging at the straps of the silly green dress Ino had made her buy. She felt like an adult pretending to be a child pretending to be an adult.
"So how do you find a surrogate?" she asked Ino, forcing herself to look away from the bar. "Is there like a registry or something?"
"Yes and no," Ino said. "There's actually a lot of limitations about whose genes would be suitable. For example, obviously any with a bloodline limit of their own would be right out."
"Makes sense."
"And ideally they shouldn't have brown or black hair."
"What?! Why on earth would that matter?"
"The Yamanaka clan have to be blondes by necessity. Blonde hair is a recessive trait, but the genes that inform hair colour are linked to other traits like our bloodline limit. It means that we have to find co-parents with a hair colour the same or more recessive than ours. Plus it's partially a matter of reputation. The blonde hair of the Yamanaka clan is as iconic as the black hair of the Uchiha clan."
"Or the red hair of the Uzumaki clan?" Sakura quirked an eyebrow.
Ino shrugged. "Naruto's blond hair just proves my point about how finicky genetics can be. Blondes and redheads are pretty much my only options."
Sakura turned to Hinata. "Do Hyuuga have to jump through all these hoops too?"
"Not with hair colour, but the eye colour of our partners can sometimes cause problems. A Hyuuga that doesn't inherit the Byakugan is very rare, though."
"Hmm, so you'll probably want to find someone with blue or green eyes, if possible," Sakura mused, before realising one person who fit that description.
The others seemed to realise it at the same time, because they all laughed in unison.
"And he's blond too! D'you think I could borrow him?" Ino said, which prompted another burst of giggles so loud that the jounin by the bar glanced over.
"But seriously," Sakura said, sobering, "I guess you don't necessarily have to produce heirs with the person you marry…"
"Case in point," Ino gestured to herself.
"...But I can't imagine how stressed out I'd be if I had to consider all this stuff before I could be with the person I loved."
Ino and Hinata exchanged the look of clan heirs who had been aware of their purpose since the day they were born, before turning back to Sakura. "You get used to it," Hinata said, and her smile was only slightly wistful.
"Anyway, it's easy for you to say, with your pink hair and green eyes." Ino smirked. "Your genes are so recessive that the only way you could produce a pink baby is if you married a Hatake."
Sakura's rejoinder was interrupted by a glassy clunk and the sound of muffled coughing from the bar. She glanced over to see Gai thumping Kakashi on the back with enough force to break a cinder block.
Yeah, he definitely heard…
The door opened to admit a brunette with brown hair: Tenten. Sakura waved to her.
"Over here! Scoot over, Ino."
Ino scooted, pale brows raised in a silent question. They all knew Tenten, of course, but were not particularly close with the older girl.
"Hi guys," Tenten greeted the trio before gesturing to the bar. "I'm just gonna grab a drink; you need a refill?"
"Sounds great!" Sakura answered before anyone else could respond. "Maybe Hinata could give you a hand carrying them all?"
Ino's perplexed expression grew as the other girls left for the bar. She leaned forward. "What's going on? How long have you been besties with Tenten?"
Sakura grinned. "Okay, so I ran into Tenten at the baths the other day, and I'm pretty sure she's into girls."
"What?" Ino stared at Sakura, then at the back of Tenten's head as she chatted with Hinata and the bartender. "What makes you say that?"
"Well when I first got into the bath, she did the thing." She dipped her eyes down to Ino's chest to demonstrate.
Ino's mouth worked silently, as if she were repeating what Sakura had just said to herself. "Forehead, the thing doesn't count if you're literally naked in a bath!"
"Sure it does," Sakura sniffed. "She was definitely looking in a 'checking out' kind of way, not a comparing kind of way, which means she likes girls, which means she might be a good match for you!"
Ino's cheeks were so red that Sakura was half-expecting steam to come out her ears. "Are you seriously trying to set me up with Tenten right now?"
"Why not? She's cute, she's cool, she's an incredible kunoichi. And she doesn't have competing clan ties! Bleach her hair and she'd be perfect, right?"
"I'm not about to make a fool of myself just because you're trying to play cupid. She's not into girls."
"She is!" Sakura protested, before realising they were getting a little too loud. "She is," she repeated, quieter. "I bet you five anmitsu from Cafe Blue that you at least have a shot with her."
Ino looked murderous, and Sakura thought she might just get up and leave instead of responding. But instead she said, "I don't like sweets half as much as you do, Forehead. If I'm right, you need to help me at the florist for five days."
"Deal," Sakura said quickly, because the girls were returning with their drinks and Ino already looked like she wanted to renege.
A little while later, it was Sakura's turn to get drinks. As the bartender worked, she kept one eye on her table, trying to read Ino and Tenten's lips and body language.
"How's your birthday celebration going so far?"
Kakashi's masked face and (highly recessive) silver hair floated into her peripheral vision, as he approached the bar and signalled his drink order to another bartender. She turned away from her friends to smile at him.
"Great, actually. I'm getting way too involved in my friends' personal lives; which sounds bad, but in this particular instance I think I might have nailed it." She nodded toward her table, where Ino was actually laughing at something Tenten had said. She had let her guard down a lot in the last hour. "Look at that and tell me there isn't chemistry there."
"Sure," Kakashi agreed, "it looks like they're having fun. But I'm sure I don't need to warn you about the risks of meddling with other peoples' love lives, right?"
Beats thinking about my own, her inner voice muttered. Aloud, she said, "tonight I learned that clan heads have to be really careful about who they marry. Something about certain genetic traits being linked in weird ways."
Giving no sign that he had already overheard some of that very conversation, Kakashi nodded. "That's true. Preservation of abilities is the ultimate priority of our strongest clans, even if it goes against the desires of one's heart."
"Is the Hatake clan like that?"
Kakashi shook his head. "We don't have a bloodline limit to maintain, so our choice of partners was never particularly important. But the flipside to that is that even though there are several people in Konoha and beyond who have Hatake blood, I'm the only one left who is also a Hatake in name."
"Do you ever think you'll marry, and keep the name going?"
"No." His reply was immediate.
Message received.
Sakura's drinks had been ready for a little while, beads of condensation running down the sides of the glasses and onto a tray the barman had provided. She took a sip from one before taking up the tray. "Well if you ever change your mind," she said, and enjoyed the minute sharpening of Kakashi's perpetually bored expression, "I'm thinking of getting into the matchmaker business." She left for her table before she could torture herself with an in-depth analysis of his reaction. Relief? Disappointment? No, it was far better to put him from her mind and focus on her friends, who actually had half a chance at happiness.
A few hours later the four friends were standing outside the bar, enjoying the fresh air and preparing to head home. Sakura had watched Ino and Tenten like a particularly unsubtle hawk the entire night, and could practically taste the sweet anmitsu in her future.
"Oh Hinata, I meant to talk to you about something tonight," She lied. "Can we walk together?"
"Don't you live at different ends of town?" Ino might have loosened up, but not enough to let Sakura get away with the most obvious play in the book.
"Hinata's home is to the west and mine is to the north-west." Sakura defended. "Whereas you and Tenten both live more or less to the east, right?" She nodded in the opposite direction. "You two should walk together too! Safety in numbers!"
"We're ninjas!" Ino shouted, but Sakura had already grabbed Hinata's arm and started dragging her off into the night.
"So what's up?" Hinata asked, once they had rounded a corner and disappeared from sight of the bar. Her eyes were round and innocent, waiting for Sakura to speak.
Sakura stared, waiting for her brain to come up with something to say but experiencing only static. Yeah, I got nothing…
The innocent face cracked into a sly smile, which on Hinata was practically a belly-laugh. "It's okay, I knew you didn't really have anything to tell me. You're almost as bad a liar as Kiba."
"You got me," Sakura laughed, a little taken aback. She had a lot of false memories of adult Hinata, who always presented as a good wife, wise mother, capable kunoichi, and regal clan princess. She silently updated her mental file to include a tab on Hinata's sense of humour. It was refreshing, and a little reminiscent of Naruto. "We should hang out more often, by the way. Make some memories while we're still young, and all that."
Physics
The next morning there was a knock on Sakura's front door. She opened it to find Ino standing there.
"Hey! How did it go last night?" Sakura grinned. "I was just about to leave for class, so I might not have time for all the juicy details, but-"
It was then that she noticed Ino's expression.
Crap…
"You owe me five days of work at the florist," Ino said, and would have left with no further explanation if Sakura hadn't grabbed her arm.
"Wait what? Tenten wasn't interested in you?"
"No, Forehead, Tenten wasn't interested in me! I doubt she's interested in girls at all, based on the way she reacted when I tried to…" her pale face burned red. "Ugh, I'm such an idiot for listening to you!"
"I'm so, so sorry, Ino." Sakura gave a comforting squeeze to the arm she was still holding. "I swear, I honestly thought she'd be a good fit for you."
"No," Ino glared, her deflated embarrassment suddenly replaced with sharp fury, "You thought my love life would be a fun little distraction from your own, and at the tiniest suspicion that someone else in town might have been a lesbian, you decided to push us together! Don't pretend you weren't considering our compatibility beyond that!"
Sakura fought the urge to glance at her clock. Sword classes was the one thing Kakashi was inexplicably always on time for, and would ream out any student who showed up later than him. He usually came to class straight from Hokage Tower (where both he and Naruto were now shadowing Tsunade), so she couldn't even listen out for him in the mornings and try to leave at the same time.
"Listen Ino, I have to go to class right now if I want to avoid Kakashi feeding me my own sword, but I promise I'll come to the florist straight after." She tilted her head so that Ino was forced to look her in the eye. "I'll work five weeks if that's what it takes for me to make this right. Purple hyacinths and horseshoe geraniums." Meaning: I'm sorry I'm such a fool.
"You're late Haruno."
Fuck.
"Sorry, Sensei." She got armoured up at lightning speed, and grabbed a wooden bokken sword without being asked.
"If you have time to go out partying, you have time to get to your jounin classes without delay," Kakashi continued, and Sakura grit her teeth. Commenting on the unfairness would probably make it worse.
"Sorry," she repeated instead. She was saying that a lot today.
"Come to the front."
Double fuck.
"May I change swords first, sir?"
"You may not."
She bit down on her sigh of defeat. Kakashi called people to the front when he wanted to test their progress in a sparring match, summarising their strengths and weaknesses so that the rest of the class could take note. Sakura had thus far managed to avoid being called on, mainly because her wooden sword meant that even with all the speed and technique in the world, any proper duel always ended in the same embarrassing way.
She took up her stance across from Kakashi, the man who made her heart sink and soar in equal measure. The best and worst part of her day. Her annoying teacher and her closest friend.
For the love of god please let's fuck him up just once.
"Begin."
She sprang forward, hoping that an aggressive start might throw him off his rhythm. If she could just last a few seconds more than usual, she'd call it a moral victory.
He sidestepped her wooden sword and went for a thrust to her throat. Instead of parrying with her stick of a sword (which would have been about as effective as throwing it at his head) she twisted her hips so that the blow went past her, and aimed a blow of her own to his shoulder.
Kakashi parried with ease, and Sakura was forced to let her sword be moved with the momentum of his even as the instinct to resist screamed at her. She was strong; one of the strongest ninjas alive. It was galling to be pushed around like this.
With a snarl of frustration, the dam of her restraint broke open. She focused on the fulcrum of her bokken, the first few inches at the base where it was strongest. She focused on her chakra, on the way she could extend it out from her body and use it like a scalpel.
As it turned out, it was even easier to imagine a blade when you had one in your hands.
Kakashi went for a riposte to the side of her head, and this time Sakura caught it at the base of her weapon. There was a green flash as the knife of chakra simultaneously protected her wooden sword and slashed through Kakashi's steel.
Almost the full length of Kakashi's blade toppled to the floor and stuck into the mat with a dull thud.
Sakura stared at it. Kakashi stared at it. The entire class stared at it.
"What the hell was that?" Kakashi sounded nonplussed. He was still holding his useless sword hilt with its scant inches of steel. The rest had been shorn off with a line so straight you could have used it as a ruler.
"It was…a scalpel," Sakura tried to explain, but she hardly knew how she'd managed to do it.
"That was a chakra scalpel?" Some of the class were murmuring to one another. "That was a chakra scalpel?"
Sakura nodded mutely, and to her surprise, Kakashi laughed.
"That was incredible," he said, his gruff teacher persona slipping to reveal the man underneath. "Did you mean to do that? Do you think you can do it again?"
True to her word, Sakura went straight to the flower shop after class. She wanted nothing more than to capitalise on her breakthrough, both with the sword and with Kakashi, but she was forced to part ways wondering if he'd be back to running cold by the next time they met.
Ino was at the front counter, but when she saw Sakura, she removed her apron and flung it at her. "I'll be out back. Try not to ruin anything."
"Ouch," Sakura murmured, but donned the apron and got to work without protest.
Three hours and seven customers later, Sakura was sorting ribbons by colour. Did this need to be done? Probably not, but Sakura wanted to prove she was serious about making amends. She had cleaned the windows, wiped the counters, replaced the bucket water twice, and even used her significant strength to sweep under the displays. Ino hadn't emerged from the back room yet, but the occasional sigh and sniffle let Sakura know that she was still around.
The door chimed once again, and Sakura put down the ribbons and shifted into Customer Mode. "Welcome to - oh, hey Tenten." There was a small squeak from the back room that Sakura attempted to cover with a cough. "What can I help you with?"
"Is Ino here?" Tenten glanced around the store as though the blonde might leap out from behind the daisies.
"She's left me in charge for the day," Sakura said, not quite lying but definitely not doing anything that would encourage further punishment from Ino. "Are you looking for some flowers?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. A bouquet."
Sakura had become something of a connoisseur of sleep-deprivation, and the bags under Tenten's eyes were no joke. She drifted over to the flowers on display, hand hovering over the purple hyacinths on a hunch. "What would you like it to say?"
"'I'm sorry.'"
Sakura grabbed a handful. "Hyacinths for apology. What else?"
"Um…surprise?" Tenten blushed. "But like, a nice one."
"Betony for surprise, Venus' Looking-glass for 'I'm flattered'?"
"Yep, that works. And perhaps…interest?"
Sakura froze. Tenten's blush deepened. Something in the back room shattered on the floor.
"Or, uh. Is there a flower that says 'I'm bi and also maybe an idiot for the way I handled things?"
"Trillium and horseshoe geraniums." Ino burst into the room, back door banging on its hinges. "And also some striped carnations and cyclamens for savagely rejecting me wouldn't be amiss."
"And could I purchase an olive branch to go along with it, please?" Tenten gave Ino a weak smile. "I was hoping I might run into you."