A/N: Hello!

So, this is my first ever KakaSaku fic as ryekiree! (Hurray!)
This was actually a plot I had for Valentine's Day, but I felt like it was something I needed to edit further. It may not be much, but I hope y'all like it.

Errors you find are my own.


good to you

Summary:

Beautiful; a word Sakura never thought she would have used to describe Kakashi.

Sakura was never good at falling in love. Would she try her chances with Kakashi? Would he leave?

Or would it be better for her to just leave it?


Beautiful; a word Sakura never thought she would have used to describe Kakashi.

He was strong—had strong arms, legs, core—she got all that through his physical examinations, of course. It was not because she was ogling him, no. Biceps that looked like it couldn't be scratched; veined, nimble hands that caught her attention every time he would twirl a kunai as he thought of the next plan of action for attack; thighs from all that climbing exercises that he had made them do in between missions. Yes, it was all through his physical examinations.

He was focused, undeterred—he never wavered to pressure, not like her. He already had been through too much—experienced more wars and near-death experiences, and had been surrounded by deaths left and right, but she never heard him complain. He always stood with a focus, in the middle of the Hokage office, in front of Team 7, intently hearing out the mission details from Tsunade-sama, like it had been ingrained in him, an automatic reaction. Sometimes, Sakura thought if he really was just like that—didn't have any feelings at all, but something flickered in his eye when it met with hers. She would count the number of seconds until the flicker would go away. She would count five—but sometimes it would be more. And sometimes, it took her five more seconds to realize that she'd been the one drowning into his lone obsidian eye, and not hearing the mission details altogether.

He was brilliant—at everything. At every little trivial thing. He was brilliant when it came to her. Like he had been studying her. Like he had known her. Things that don't even linger in her mind. Words that come out of her mouth that she couldn't even remember saying. Her favorite dish. Her favorite book. Her favorite shampoo scent. If she didn't know any better, she'd think Kakashi was in love with her. But she knew he wouldn't.

And it was her who had fallen for him, despite all of these signs.

And with all that—even without seeing his face, she clumped everything that she knew about him into this nine-letter word that had been at the tip of her tongue.

"Beautiful," she whispered to the cold night breeze under the cloudless night as she observed his serene sleeping form, facing towards her.


The last few missions with them as partners had been good—better even, but her feelings for Kakashi never dwindled. The proximity didn't help either.

Sakura thought that if she spent more time with Kakashi, get to know his quirks and his weaknesses and all the things he's bad at, her feelings would just die down slowly and she'll just laugh at it a few days after that and not let anyone else know about it.

So, she took more missions with him. Sparred with him. Ate meals with him. Visited him in his apartment. But it just backfired at her.

At one point, she thought he was perfect—with his silver hair that highlighted under the moon's glow; his lone eye that looked like the midnight had been compressed into an orb; his masked cheekbones that lifted whenever she would say something about the projects she'd been working on. And the more time she spent with him—be it just a few minutes at the marketplace with him creeping behind her or a full day of him helping her with the hospital documents that she had forgotten to file the day before—the harder she fell.

And when she tried to leave him alone for three days or three weeks, Kakashi would seek her out, oblivious to her attempts of keeping herself from developing more feelings for him—as if her heart could still take in more feelings.

Maybe he actually knew, and she just wasn't good at hiding from him.

God, she really was an idiot.

Sakura was never good at falling in love. She experienced that with Sasuke—confessed on the night he decided to train for power with thoughts of avenging his clan, and he left. She tried it with Naruto—tried to confess to him in the middle of winter in unfamiliar territory, in hopes he would change his mind about saving Sasuke, but he still left.

Would she try her chances with Kakashi? Would he leave?

Or would it be better for her to just leave it?

She knew she couldn't. Sakura was the type to face her challenges head-on. And all she needed was a little bit of courage; a bit of a push.

Maybe a trip to the nearest bar would be a good idea. Maybe.


Tonight.

Tonight was all it took; a night of being uninhibited, unaware, full of courage that she didn't have just five hours before. A night of drinking away her sorrows and uncertainty, and silently hoping that her feelings would just go away.

A night with the intent of confessing, and after that, she would decide what to do.

It took her weeks—seven, to be exact—to actually set her plan in motion. The hospital had been buzzing and her patients took her away from all the pining and her feelings for the most time of the day. But at the end of it, as she arrived home after an eventful twelve-hour long shift, her thoughts would drift again to a certain silver-haired shinobi—like it had been her daily routine.

Sakura could never ignore her feelings any longer.

She had asked for Ino first to accompany her tonight, but she learned from Shizune that she was away on a mission and she would arrive after a day or two. As was Tenten, with Lee and Gai. So, her only chance was supposed to be Hinata, but she had a family affair she needed to attend to, and in the end, she had said at least ten different ways of apologizing to Sakura. To which she had responded that it was really fine. Her friends had their own lives. This problem of hers would be the least of their worries.

Now, she was alone at the bar with an empty bottle of sake settled at her left while holding a shot glass with her right hand. She could count only by her left hand the number of people at the bar. It wasn't the typical bar scene that she had been familiar with.

Then, she realized it was still the middle of the week, and Sakura thought that maybe tonight was such a bad idea. She pondered whether she should scrap the idea of confessing altogether and think about it again in another few weeks.

But every time she chose to delay her confession, it would eventually become a terrible idea. And it would still be a terrible idea right until the time she would think of Kakashi again.

And she thought of Kakashi quite often—and most of the time, she didn't like it in the slightest.

Sakura downed the last drop of sake from her shot glass—its contents warming up her throat, and slammed it in front of her, left the bartender a few bills, and stood up. Her head began to spin as she scanned for the door, and she thought she saw a tuft of silver hovering at the corner. With her head spinning, she couldn't turn her head as fast—but when she turned in the direction where she found silver, the table was empty.

She wondered if she'd been thinking about him again.

"Are you okay, Miss?"

Sakura found the bartender's scrunched eyebrows on his face, tilting his head to her as he asked. She merely nodded and did her best to smile, but it didn't quite reach her eyes.

Then, she left for the door. Surely, she didn't drink too much to not be able to go home alone, right?

Once she got out of her rather drab visit at the bar, she was able to breathe. Although her head was still spinning a bit, her shoulders felt loose, as well as her lungs, as she breathed the humid air. It wasn't a perfect night, but it was sure nice to inhale nature's own rather than the hot, suffocating, stuffy semblance brought by the bar. As she took her steps as slowly as she could, she could feel someone's chakra signature at a distance.

And she didn't need to overthink who that someone was.

She looked behind her shoulder, and she saw Kakashi taking the same path as her as she walked sluggishly to her apartment. At least two meters behind her, in fact, but she wasn't counting.

Who am I kidding? She scoffed to herself.

She thought of the hovering tuft of silver in her periphery from earlier. So, maybe she wasn't just imagining things.

When she arrived in front of her apartment building, gentle drops from the sky started to crash against the ground, cold against her hair, her scalp, until it poured. Water seeped into her unclothed arm, and thankfully, even with her tipsiness, she remembered what she had intended to do.

As the rain continued to pour, without anything shielding her, she took the chance and faced him. He was still two meters away from her—far enough to not see the pricking tears at the corners of her eyes, but close enough to let him hear her next words. She took this one chance—embraced it one last time—before it went away.

It's now or never.

"I'm in love with you." She blurted out, her eyes not leaving his.

He stared at her, confused and guarded, and Sakura did the last thing she thought she would do—she smirked.

She smirked because she knew this would happen. Rejection had loomed over her ever since she had thought about those very words—those words that had been breezing through her brain and stuck like a kunai to her heart. She knew it would just result in confusion, reluctance, and most especially, heartbreak. It was the most typical Hatake Kakashi reaction that she would have expected.

But under the pouring rain, he didn't leave. Instead, he moved towards her and held her—surprising her. Under the dark clouds and the dimly-lit streetlamp in front of her apartment building, his strong arms wrapped around her. His hair fell drenched, drops of water slipped onto her shoulder, mixing with the ones stuck in her hair. She almost felt sober, and the only thing she could hear was the loud beating of her heart, ready to push out from her chest.

She looked up and saw midnight in his lone eye. It made her think of the time they couldn't sleep in the middle of a mission, gazing at the cloudless sky. It probably was the time she had admitted to herself that she was falling—falling into this existence that was Hatake Kakashi.

And even more so, as Kakashi leaned into her, closing the gap between them, pressing his masked lips against her chapped, trembling ones, she fell harder and faster with nothing to grab in order to stop her.

And she kissed back, her drunkenness crawling back, her head spinning as their lips moved, attuned. The warmth on her skin countered the coldness of each drop of rain against it.

When they reached her apartment, they fell onto her couch without pulling away from each other. And she chuckled against Kakashi's masked lips—all her sorrows and uncertainty from earlier had lifted from her—all forgotten. She pulled his hitai-ate off, his wild hair glistening against the moon, and the scar donning his left eye revealed itself to her.

Kakashi pulled away briefly, looking down at her, with the same softness in his mismatched eyes as he always had. She caressed his cheek and stroked her finger against the hem of his mask. He nodded in understanding, and slowly, but surely, she tugged his mask down until it settled on his neck.

The word was still there. At the tip of her tongue. And it was a word she never would have thought to describe the man in front of her, with his back resting on the pillows of her couch. Not when he was awake and conscious. He was always strong, focused, brilliant. But seeing what was in front of her now, and feeling the rough stubble, or his lifted cheeks, or his sharp jaw—he was indeed…

"Beautiful." Sakura breathed as the word escaped from her lips before she could stop it. Just like that cloudless night, that night she observed his sleeping form when she couldn't sleep.

He smiled at her, with full healthy teeth that she thought could have been sparkling. Not buck teeth, she mused. Then, he lifted her up gently, her face now hovering over his, as his veined, gloved hands stroked through the wet locks of her hair. Her eyes swam into his mismatched ones, and there, she saw the light flicker she had seen all those months ago in missions where she was almost in danger, in briefings at the Hokage office, in his visits before he would say his first words to her for the day.

And Sakura understood.

Kakashi had been falling for her as much as she did.

"You're beautiful, Sakura." He chuckled softly, breaking her train of thought as she focused on his unmuffled voice. "God, I've always wanted to say that to you."

Her heart thumped and her eyes pricked.

Sakura was never good at falling in love. She may still not be good at it in a few weeks, or months, or years.

But as Kakashi lowered her head down to meet his warm, waiting lips, she thought—no, she decided—that she would try as hell to be good to Kakashi.


End Notes:

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