Disclaimed
It's late at night, and Kakashi is laying on his back staring at his white washed ceiling. Sakura is curled up next to him, her warm breath dusting across his cheek with every exhale. He already knows the lay out of his -newly shared- room but goes over it anyway, because there's not much to do at this hour, not without waking up Sakura.
The bed lays dead center in the room on Sakura's side there is a little nightstand with a lamp, his is empty but across from his is his bookshelf, and the open window. On the wall by the door is a collection of pictures and newspapers that are surprisingly mostly his, and the closet which is now brimming with two sets of Jonin clothes though only one fits him, and a few varying red articles stand out. Three pairs of smaller feminine boots overcrowd his two standard issue sandals, and the bathroom across from Sakura now houses a back of girly-whatsits, feminine products, and hair stuff that he has absolutely not a clue about.
For him nothing has changed, same old apartment, same old self but he wonders what has changed for Sakura. A lot he assumes, after all it's not even been a year since her parents outed her and three months since she's past her jonin exam. Two weeks since she's moved in with him.
It's still odd, he thinks to himself, to come home and not have dust covering everything, or to open the door to the aroma of fresh eggplant soup, or even to sleep every night with a smaller, stronger body pressed into his own smooth skin responsive and warm beneath his calloused palms.
He likes it. For a man who avoids company like it's a plague he likes, how her small narrow hips press into his own, and how his beds always warmer now, and how there's someone waiting for him, after a visit to the KIA monument.
Sakura nestles a little closer in her sleep ans Kakashi lets his finger tips wander over her shoulder.
He wonders what it would be like if that person multiplied, so that there were more little smiles for him to return and more mouths to feed, and more pink to appear sporadically across his living space.
He breathes deeply as his fingers catch over a raw raised scar on her right shoulder-blade.
He catches his thoughts before they scatter, folding them away for another sleepless night, or a future conversation maybe, when Sakura isn't seventeen, and the timing is better and when he is sure that she is here because she loves him, and not because she needs someone to cling to.
Honestly he'll take either because he's that old and lonely but he won't bring children into the latter.
And when she does stay, and two weeks becomes a perpetual two weeks, forever happening, and her fingers interlock permanently with his, he'll catch her smile a little longingly as academy students scurry past them and kiss her senseless.
"I want you pregnant," He'll murmur against her spine, and she'll turn and smack him senseless with her fists of feminine glory, and he'll laugh two months later when her blood work comes back and she makes him set up a crib.
He pauses to think for a moment, that their apartment is small and they'll have to find a new place for it-her, he decides, her, a little girl.
If that happens, he corrects, if there is a little her we will have to find a new place.
If.
If.
If.
He never knew that two little letter could make his heart ache so fiercely.
Sakura mumbles something in coherent in her sleep, and Kakashi stops thinking and just leans down to his head forehead.
If.
He's already waited this long, he can wait the rest of his life for her.