Author's Notes:
Prompt: Sunday Morning
Bonus Prompt: How do you like it?
Errors within this piece are my own.
Sunday Morning
by ryekiree
Summary:
Sunday morning meant eggs and ham for breakfast. Sunday morning meant delicately brewed coffee, perfected up to the foamed topping and sprinkled with marshmallows.
Sunday morning also meant missing a certain silver-haired shinobi for another week.
—
In which Sakura's Sunday mornings mean differently.
Sakura woke up later than her usual wake-up time. It was a Sunday morning at the start of Spring anyway.
Sunday morning meant eggs and ham for breakfast. Sunday morning meant delicately brewed coffee, perfected up to the foamed topping and sprinkled with marshmallows. Sunday morning meant that the fresh dews of the budding daffodils by the park slipped down to the moist ground. Sunday morning meant a few more hours of laying down on the twin-sized bed of her quaint one-bedroom apartment.
Sunday morning also meant missing a certain silver-haired shinobi for another week.
"I'll be back, Sakura. Don't worry about me."
It had been five Sundays since Sakura last saw the back of his quicksilver hair and his flak jacket as he walked out of the gates of Konoha for a high-ranking solo mission, and she came home glaring at her ceiling for hours.
They had a moment—the week before. For the first time since their closeness developed, he asked her out to have dinner with him. A normal dinner, he had said, where he cooked. He told her that he needed to just use up all his ingredients before he bought new ones. He smiled when he said it to her, and she always knew how sincere his smiles were, even under his navy mask that he never takes off.
And whatever reason he gave, she would agree. She would still agree if those ingredients were new. She would still agree if he told her they'd just buy take-out. And at dinner, he had watched her sipping his favourite miso soup with his cheekbones lifted and his eyes gleaming.
The next days were like a daydream as he visited her at the clinic at the same time every day and walked her home. And by the time it all sank into her, she realized that the drumming of her heart meant she felt more than she should have.
The day after he left, she had begun counting the days until he came back, and she had hoped it would only last three days, or five days, or a week max.
But when the week turned to two, she started to pace. When it turned to three, she caught herself bargaining. When it turned four, she had stormed into Tsunade's office intending to ask about him—but the sound of his name only caught her Shishou in a cold sweat and dried lips, and Sakura was out of the Hokage's office as soon as an Anbu arrived slipping through the window like it had been timed.
Sakura had missed Kakashi, and his antics, and his banters, and his eyes, and his fingers, and his voice. And his warmth. And it was the start of Spring.
And she hoped she could survive the winter cold that never seemed to dissolve after he left.
Three more Sunday mornings passed, and by midday, there was still no shock of silver on sight amid the village of Konoha. She had tried to ask Naruto and Sasuke if they knew, but it was either they really didn't know, or they had been tight-lipped.
Sakura felt a hollowness in her chest, and it was eating her up. She never thought his absence would get her to this state. Sasuke's departure didn't even come this close.
She tried stopping by his apartment at night to pick up some clues. He'd always leave the keys by the plant near the fire escape at his apartment building, in case someone needed it. And when she found it, she didn't hesitate to stroll in like it was hers.
Kakashi had always trusted her in getting stuff for him while he was away. On some of his missions, he'd send her instructions on what his apartment needed for the week, and she'd do it in a heartbeat. She was smitten, could anyone fault her for that?
Sakura was wrapped with the familiar scent of pinewood and mint as she closed the door to his apartment. It felt warm and cold at the same time, like that moment they had more than two months ago. He was warm, and she was cold from nervousness, but as the evening went on, they had been laughing at his balcony with the stars as their witnesses, gazing at each other for a brief moment before looking away.
He had never confused her before. And the more she thought about him, the more she needed him to come home.
She passed by his living room and sat on the acacia chair Kakashi had occupied in the balcony—the warmth from that night replaced with a cold chill.
It had been eight Sundays since she last saw the dullness in his eyes as he promised to come back. She looked up at the cloudless, starlit sky that reminded her of his eyes on that night at the same balcony, and she wished that he was still awake and doing the same.
It wasn't a Sunday when she got called by an Anbu to go to the hospital immediately. She just got home from a ten-hour shift and had started stripping her qipao when the name she had been dying to hear for months ringed in her ears.
"Tsunade-sama is looking for you. Hatake-san—"
Sakura didn't let the Anbu finish. She fixed her qipao and darted outside the door.
"Kakashi, I'm here—"
"Breathe—"
"Please—"
"Come back to me."
Sakura's sleeping pattern went off the rails ever since Kakashi came back. She worked with her junior medics, Tsunade and Shizune to heal his damaged body. Thankfully, nothing vital was hit. But it still took them at least six hours to bring his vitals to normal and his breathing even.
She planted herself beside him every day, gently holding his hand, willing him to wake up. And every day, Shizune would wake her up, telling her to go home and rest, as Sakura's head rested beside Kakashi's arm, fingers intertwined with hers.
On Saturday, Sakura received a scroll from her Shishou that Kakashi woke up, and was only allowed visitors by tomorrow.
She arrived in front of Kakashi's hospital room before the sun had risen on Sunday morning.
She bit her lip and her hands were wrapped in cold sweat as she rapped on the wooden door. At a beat of silence, she let herself in.
And there he was, sitting on his bed, with his back leaned against the headboard and with the blanket on the lower part of his body, gazing at the greens and the blues outside his window as the sun starts to reveal itself behind the mountains. As the light illuminated his features, he faced in her direction and his eyes widened.
Sakura approached him slowly. With each step, the ache she felt all those months lessened. With each step, the clearer everything had become.
She took in the flush on his face and the glimmer of his hair as the light reflected against it—the paleness from the week before all gone—proof that he was indeed alive.
And here.
And just as she stood at his bedside, her lips quivered and her eyes pricked.
"I'm so gla—"
He pulled her arm and wrapped her around his arms, and she trembled against his chest as he stroked her hair with his fingers. She could feel his warmth. She could smell him. He was alive. He was finally here.
"You don't know how much I've missed you, Sakura." His voice trembled with a rasp after only waking up a few hours before. "You don't know how much I thought about you. And how much I wanted to come back to you."
He pulled away and placed his palms on her cheeks, gazing at her as he continued, "I wished I didn't go. I wished I was here with you. I wished I could have told you—"
Sakura had the habit of cutting people off and never letting them finish. And with Kakashi, she could do the one thing she had always dreamed of doing. She cut him off with a press on the lips—soft and chaste—before he pulled away.
And he smiled at her as a single tear strolled down his cheek, and crushed her again into his arms.
He was home.
"How do you like it?"
Kakashi was discharged from the hospital after another week due to a couple of check-ups that Sakura needed to clear him. Now, it was Sunday and he was as excited to go home to his apartment and rest on a real bed as Sakura was. But what he didn't know was that Sakura cleaned up his apartment and organized his stuff—from the kitchen to the living room, to the bathroom, even his bedroom, and his cabinets—so it would be liveable to him again. He could use the extra set of hands, she thought.
"Hmm…" he propped a hand on his chin as if he was thinking, and Sakura rolled her eyes.
"What is there to think?" she teased.
"I think something's missing." he deadpanned.
Sakura's jaw dropped and her brows furrowed, thinking back to all the things she had pulled and placed in the right places, just so it would be easier to see when he's looking for it.
"What?" she asked him in a sharp tone that made his eyebrows rise.
Then, he chuckled at her and faced her with a soft smile on his face. She could never get used to him not wearing his mask in front of her. It leaves her flustered and bothered and she always looked elsewhere other than his face.
"You."
She blinked.
"What?"
"You." he was still smiling, and then continued, "You're what's missing here."
She blinked a few times more.
"I—"
"If you're ready…" he started as he placed his hands on her shoulders. "Will you move in with me?"
Then, she looked up at him. How could this shinobi who had almost lost his life a few weeks back be smiling like this? And at her, for that matter?
Sakura bit her lip. He was so considerate of her. Like always. Only if she were ready, he said.
"Who says I'm not ready yet?" she smiled back at him, and his eyes widened.
"Are you sure?" he asked, tentatively.
"Why don't we try?"
Then, he pulled her to his chest, wrapping his arms around her. The citrusy scent of soap she provided for him a few days back filled her senses as she wrapped her arms around his waist, sinking her head onto his chest.
"Okay." His answer vibrated on his chest, and she wrapped her arms tighter around him.
She looked up at him and whispered, "Thank the gods, you're home."
And as he pressed his lips onto her forehead, a realization came to her.
He was her home, and she was his.
End notes: Thank you for reaching the end of this one-shot!
This was posted first on Twitter as a reply to the prompt from kakasakuprompts and it provided me an opportunity to do a multi-scene fic for a single prompt. I wanted to do something angsty, but I didn't want y'all to be hurt until the end. :)
Please let me know what you think of it.
You can also find me on Twitter and Tumblr. (ryekiree)