Second Time Around
By Frozzy

Chapter Nine

She was making breakfast when she turned around with the pan in hand and found a sullen looking Sasuke sitting by her kitchen table. Unsurprisingly, she needed minimal time to recover. Discontent was written all over his finely cut features and for a moment Sakura wondered why her younger self had ever seen anything attractive in the Uchiha. Then she reminded herself that there was a good side to him, too. Unfortunately that side was almost exclusively reserved for Naruto. And on occasion Kakashi. Sakura didn't mind. She didn't need to be reminded of the foolishness of her younger self. Those days were in the past.

"Morning, Sasuke," she said and set the pan down on the table. "Did you eat already or do you want to join?"

"When were you going to clue me in?"

She turned back to the sink and moved the dishes around, even though she had no intention of cleaning them.

"Naruto figured it out on his own," she said. She felt the natural need to defend herself despite the fact that she felt no remorse about not having poured her guts to Sasuke. Her private life was her own. And contrary to what the populace of Konoha believed, the Uchiha had no privileges there. In fact, Kakashi might have begun to take first place on that account.

"Did he screw you yet?"

She could have told him not to speak to her like that in her home. She could have told him that he was being extremely rude and that he knew better. She didn't. She went for the simplest option.

"No," she answered.

She didn't really have to ask why Sasuke was acting the way he was. She pretty much already knew. It had nothing to do with her and Kakashi. Rather it had everything to do with the Uchiha heir feeling like the leftovers of a great feast that every single one of his friends had attended. He felt excessive. And she knew that feeling very well herself, which explained why she was so overbearing with this attack on her person.

"Sasuke," she began. She leant back against the kitchen counter and folded her arms over her chest. "Let's talk about what's really bugging you. You can't blame us for reaching jonin status before you. You knew the consequences when you reapplied for citizenship. You knew you would have to pass the Hokage's psychological tests eventually. You only got off easy in the beginning because the war was still going strong."

Of course he had also neutralized the threat that was Orochimaru. And his brother. But they didn't talk about that. Nobody talked about that.

"I know I fucked up," he said.

"You didn't fuck up. I'm saying, you can't come now and blame us for moving ahead without you, when you moved ahead without us. All those years ago. You left. We stayed. This is the consequences."

She was surprised that he hadn't smacked her yet. She was surprised that he was actually letting her say these things straight to his face. And she was surprised that she was actually saying them.

"I don't think I'm gonna pass those tests."

The 'ever' was implied.

"Sasuke, that's not tru-"

"Have you been in my head, Sakura?"

"No."

"Then don't give me false reassurances. I don't want false reassurances."

The way he repeated the word made a chill run down her spine. She felt that the space of the kitchen couldn't put nearly enough distance between her and the man seated by her kitchen table. The eggs on the table were turning cold, yet she made no move to reach towards the pan and reheat her breakfast. To be honest, she didn't even feel like eating her breakfast. She wondered why the Uchiha had come to her with his insecurities. Because that was what this was about. He doubted himself. Uchiha Sasuke was openly, albeit perhaps inadvertently, admitting that he doubted his own sanity. He had wrapped those doubts up in a package labeled 'Sakura fancies Kakashi', but those doubts had absolutely nothing to do with her and Kakashi. Whatever he was feeling, it was wearing him down. And she felt that she should have paid better attention. She hadn't seen this coming. Sasuke was hard to read, but he was also very far out at this point. She should have sensed something. Anything.

"Naruto is out on a mission again?" Sakura guessed. That had to be why Sasuke had come to her and not Naruto. Sasuke gave her a blank look. Sakura was bad with subtlety and her situation with Kakashi probably hadn't remedied that.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Sasuke," she said and rubbed her arms where they felt like two blocks of lead hanging down from her shoulders. "You don't want reassurance, you don't want consolation, you don't want a topic change. What do you want out of this visit?"

"I wasn't aware there were conditions for visiting you."

"Don't twist my words."

"Don't ask for words that I can't give you."

"You can't expect me not to. I want to know why you're here. In my home. Unannounced," she said. All the men in her life were challenges. They were sick to the core in one way or other. Naruto had an inferiority complex, Sasuke was an attention whore and Kakashi was just an ass and a bastard. Sakura was probably the sickest of them all, however, seeing that she was the one who befriended several men whose mentality was way over the deep end.

"It's funny," the Uchiha began. "Half a year ago you wouldn't have stood up to me like this."

"Implying?"

"That the turn you've taken is preferable," Sasuke said.

It wasn't praise. It wasn't contempt. She didn't understand. And she suspected that it was because she didn't want to.

"I don't get where you're going with this, Sasuke."

He stood up from the chair. She eyed him warily. His demeanor was off. She could feel it as clearly as if had he proclaimed his undying love for cake. He was advancing on her. She realized this from her position by the sink. He was two steps away from her when she decided that she should probably ask him what he was doing.

"What are you-"

The rest of her sentence was drowned he crossed the last bit of distance and claimed her lips with his. They were just there. It wasn't soft. It wasn't nice. It wasn't any of those things. It was just there, his lips on hers, and all she wanted to do was to forcibly remove them. So she did. She punched him in the jaw and he staggered backwards from the force of the impact. It had been unexpected both for him and for her.

She was surprised that she wasn't angry. She stood there, watching him and waiting for him to recover. She could see the bruise forming on the side of his face already. She hadn't realized she had put that much force behind it.

"Bad judgment," he said. "Sorry."

He fled from the scene, escaping through her open window, and she was left staring after him with her stomach dropping to her feet and her heart following. She wasn't angry. She was sad. For them both.

There was no hesitation when she knocked on Kakashi's door. If she had been in her right state of mind and hadn't felt like an imposter in her own skin, she would have picked up on the total blankness of the older man's face when he opened the door. As it was, however, she was as far away from being in her right state of mind as she could be, and she sensed nothing besides the familiar sight of the older jonin.

"Now isn't a good time, Sakura."

She stared. Circumstances kept her from understanding the fact that he was sending her away. Something changed on his face when he realized that something was wrong. He appeared much more alert. His spine was straighter and his eye sharper. But before he got to ask her what was wrong, a third voice joined in on the conversation.

"Hello. You must be Sakura?"

Sakura looked at the woman without really looking at her. She hadn't come for her. She had come for Kakashi.

"I'm Kumiko," the brunette introduced herself.

Sakura tried to be polite and introduce herself in return. On a normal day, she would have done so. On this day, her mind remained stuck on the fact Kakashi never had turned her away for the sake of another woman before. A quickie, it looked like. A quickie with another woman, while he was waiting for Sakura to make up her mind. Sakura didn't know if this hurt worse than Sasuke's violation of her person.

She turned around and left.

Behind her, she could vaguely hear the woman asking Kakashi if it was something she had done, but Sakura was down the stairs before she could hear the man's answer. It would have been nice to have him come after her. But that only happened in the romance novels on Ino's bookshelf, and neither Sakura nor Kakashi fit the criteria to get cast in the lead roles of those novels.

She went for a walk around the village. She didn't want to return home and she didn't want to go to Naruto. Sasuke was Naruto's best friend. She feared the blond would take Sasuke's side, even though her logical self told her that he most certainly wouldn't. No. That wasn't right. She didn't want to go to Naruto because she knew he would make her admit things that she didn't want to admit. Not because he would take Sasuke's side. She had wondered for a long time what it was that made the blond man so indestructible to his enemies. How he could turn bad to good with words that weren't even that eloquent or well-phrased. A year ago, when she had witnessed him reasoning a suicidal blacksmith turned killer into giving up his idiocy – yes, that was how Naruto himself had put it – she had decided that it was his ability to make people see sense. He worked like a mirror. He gave you a close-up of your own reflection. And then it was up to yourself to decide whether you liked what you saw or not. And whether you were willing to work on whatever issues that were reflected in that mirror.

She wasn't ready to work on any cracks in her mirror.

An hour had passed when she turned the corner of the bakery that led to her street. The minute that she stepped into the apartment, she knew he was there. Heaving a sigh, she turned towards the armchair in which he was seated.

"What are you doing here?" she asked and locked the door behind her. She walked into the kitchen with heavy feet. She had no idea where Ino was or if she would suddenly show up. It was like living with a cat; you never knew if you were alone or not.

"I'm not a complete dick, Sakura," Kakashi said.

She could hear Kakashi get up from the chair and follow her into the kitchen.

"No, I'm an idiot for expecting you to be available to me every hour of the day," she said.

"You're upset," Kakashi said and studied her with a scrutiny that made her uncomfortable. He didn't apologize, because he didn't really have anything to apologize for. And they had both accepted that.

"Not because of what you think," she said and grabbed a glass from one of the wall cabinets. She poured herself a glass of water, not caring if Kakashi also wanted one.

"You were upset when you came to my door," Kakashi rephrased his words.

"I had a talk with Sasuke. He brought you up. He felt… I don't know. Stepped on? But pulling that card on me is just low. Even of him. He knows all the stuff he's dragged all of us through, and still he has the actual nerve to guilt trip me. I've finished my guilt. I felt plenty of that while he was off to Sound. I've done my part on that account, and it's not fair that the little shit can still do this."

She hadn't counted on the last part coming out as venomously as it did. For a second, she entertained the wild thought that Sasuke had gone to Kakashi and told him about the kiss. Then she reminded herself that Kakashi was a master of masks. Literally and figuratively. He wasn't completely calm because Sasuke had reported back to him. He was completely calm because he was handling the situation like he would handle a mission. Attack and resolve. That was the practice he lived by. Sakura couldn't fault him for that. She even admired him a little for it.

"I agree," he said.

Sakura stood with the glass of water in her hand and stared at the jonin. "That's what you have to say?"

She debated if she would be diagnosed insane if she hurled the glass at Kakashi's head.

"If you're gonna be an ass, you can just leave," she said and pushed past him, shoving the glass into his hands. The water spilled over and onto his vest. Kakashi put the glass down on the table and followed Sakura, scratching the back of his neck in confusion.

"I think I missed something here," he said.

Sakura ignored him and headed straight for her bedroom. She was intent on creating as much distance as possible between her and Kakashi. A hairsbreadth away from crossing the threshold of her bedroom, she let out an embarrassing squeak when her arm was grabbed and she was pulled face to face with the Copy Ninja. His fingers dug into the softer flesh of her upper arm.

"You wouldn't be this upset over a simple conversation with Sasuke," he said. "What did he do, Sakura?"

It was as if she was ten again and was standing before her teacher, having to give an account for her actions on the battle field. He was angry. The grip on her arm tightened and she clenched her jaw. She didn't try to wrench free. That would literally do more damage than good. But she didn't want him to touch her. Not when she was about to say something very bad.

"He kissed me," she said. "That's what happened. When I came to your door, I wasn't in my right mind. Just let it go. I made a mistake coming to your door. I shouldn't have told you this."

That was when she realized, thick as she was, that Sasuke was the one Kakashi was angry with. He was angry at Sasuke, because Sasuke had put that look on Sakura's face. The look that she had come to Kakashi's door with. She wanted to take her words back. But she didn't want to make any excuses for the Uchiha either.

"Does Naruto know?" Kakashi asked.

"No," she answered, confused as to why he would bring Naruto up. "I didn't want to tell him. I went straight to you."

The last part had felt natural to add. There was a moment of high tension before Kakashi let out a quiet sigh.

"It's never nice to have something taken from you right under your nose," he concluded and let go of her arm. She had to refrain from rubbing the sore muscle. Instead, she focused on his words. All anger had seemingly deflated from the older man and she couldn't help but wonder why. She knew better than to ask, however, so she kept that thought to herself. It was just another thing to keep her awake at night.

"Are you talking about the kiss?" she inquired softly. "That he took it from me and it wasn't nice?"

She wasn't about the object the niceness of the kiss, because there really had been none.

"In a sense, I suppose," Kakashi answered. She began feeling stupid just standing there.

"I punched him," she said and rubbed her elbow awkwardly. "He said it was bad judgment. He said the kiss was bad judgment on his part."

"I bet he did."

She looked up, surprised by the bite to the man's words.

"I hadn't known you would…" she stopped, thinking too late that perhaps now wasn't the time. She stopped too late, though. Kakashi had caught onto her train of thoughts.

"That I would care? I think it's pretty obvious by now that we have progressed beyond simple friendship, Sakura," he pointed out in a dull voice. For a brief second she felt almost ashamed that she had thought so little of his involvement with her.

"I may not act upon it, but the sense of ownership is still here," he said.

"Ownership?" Sakura asked and even to herself her voice came out harsh and bitingly cold. Kakashi seemed to realize his mistake in the space of half a second. He held up his hands in a show of surrender.

"You don't own me," she said and poked him in the chest with a finger. "Though granted, you have more right to me than Sasuke, I suppose."

"That's a consolation," he said and the sarcasm didn't go unnoticed by Sakura.

"I think you've overstayed your welcome," she said.

"You wouldn't send a poor old man out on his own at this hour of the day, would you?"

"It's five."

"Oh, really?" he asked as if he didn't know. "Then it's the right time for a drink, isn't it?"

An hour later, Sakura found herself swayed by the Copy Ninjas charm. Or his use of fancy words and manipulative techniques. Whatever you preferred. She was downing her second glass of liquor down the bar at the corner of her street. Thankfully being a shinobi meant having a high alcohol tolerance. That and most bars happily turned a blind eye to age regulations. This one is particular, seeing that it was primarily inhabited by minors during the weekends. Minors who had returned home from severing heads and knotting innards on enemies of the state. The word 'minor' was a relative word in Konoha.

Kakashi was taking her thoughts off Sasuke. Sakura realized that much and she felt grateful that he was trying.

"You think I should have gone to Naruto?" she asked.

He twirled the glass in his hand. "No."

"Sasuke probably went to him, yes," Sakura agreed with a sigh. Her head felt heavy and it wasn't the alcohol.

"Not necessarily," Kakashi said.

"What?"

"I believe Naruto would have taken your side and sent Sasuke to the hospital with a broken body. And however much in the wrong, the guy doesn't deserve a broken body for stealing a kiss."

She sniggered when a sudden thought hit her.

"If he'll put Sasuke in intensive care for kissing me, imagine what he'll do when-"

"No," Kakashi cut her off with a pointed look and emptied his glass in one gulp.

"No what?" Sakura asked.

"Don't ask for obvious answers."

"I don't think it's obvious," she lied, baiting him. "Otherwise I wouldn't have asked."

"You're pushing it," the other jonin replied, his eyes fixed on the bartender in an attempt to get a refill. Irritated by his aloofness and the fact that his attention wasn't on her, Sakura licked her lips and leaned closer.

"Do you want to kiss me?"

Her uncharacteristic forwardness was rewarded. Kakashi one exposed eye swerved back onto her face, and she could have sworn that a jolt raced through his body. For a moment, she thought he was going to leave. And with good reason, she had to admit. She had been out of line with that one. But what had he expected when he practically showered her with alcohol? Then his gaze flickered down to her neck and up again, sweeping past her mouth and up to her unblinking eyes.

"Yes," he said. Sakura blushed, hot and heavy, and she looked away.

Kakashi finally caught the attention of the bartender and ordered his refill. Sakura used the moment to regain her composure. Her heart hammered away like a trapped bird in her chest. That might also have had something to do with the fact that she was drinking rather heavily, but she was pretty sure that it had more to do with Kakashi's admission just now.

"It's nice of you," she said. When Kakashi looked at her strangely, she figured she should elaborate.

"To take my mind off Sasuke," she explained and waved her fingers in her air as if to illustrate his kindness. "I feel bad for punching him, though. A simple no would have sufficed, I guess."

"Don't think of his intentions as purely good," Kakashi said. "He may seems sorry, but he can be manipulative to get what he wants."

"As certain others," Sakura reminded the older jounin. "So, what do you think?"

"What do I think?"

"His reasoning," she elaborated, curious to know if the older man had reached the same conclusion as her. When he answered, the words were calculated and sounded rehearsed.

"I think he saw you slipping away and acted upon that."

"Slipping away? I've had boyfriends before this. And the two of us are not even really a couple," she finished lamely, though Kakashi didn't seem to notice. He shrugged and took another smooth gulp.

"I'm not an oracle, Sakura. What do I know?"

More than most, she wanted to say.

"I remember how we used to worship you," Sakura said.

"Yes, why did you stop?"

She rolled her eyes. "You passed your expiration date."

"Oh?" he asked, raising his brow.

They spent the next two hours like that. Gibbering back and forth, pausing only for refills and bathroom breaks. When she got home around midnight, all thoughts about Sasuke were erased from her mind. Instead, now that Sasuke was successfully wiped away, she found her thoughts circling the woman Kumiko and how she had been in Kakashi's apartment. Jealousy finally reared its ugly head. Hours too late and way too powerful.