Chapter 30!
Title: "Irresponsibilities and Improprieties"
Discliamer: I own nothing!!
Note: (First of all, sorry for the extremely long wait! D:)
But, Wow, we've come a long way… all the way to the big '3-0'…. Thank you guys so much for somehow sticking through all of those chapters…. But there are quite a few more to come… hopefully that's okay with everyone. :)
Anyways, hope you enjoy!
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…. Here I am….
…Walking to Kakashi-sensei's apartment…
… Alone…
… Practically being ordered to go to his apartment by Tsunade-sama…
…. well, actually I was ordered to… as a medic-nin.
…
Apparently, with Kakashi's wounds, if he's going to get healed in time for our next mission, which no one's really told me about, he needs periodic healing from a medic-nin.
They decided this morning, after they had sent me out of Kakashi's room,, who was going to be his personal medic-nin…
And my name was the one that came up.
I wondered if Kakashi had anything to do with the choice… or if it was just the luckiest coincidence ever.
I'd be happy with either, because in the end, I was still going to spend some time with Kakashi-sensei in his apartment, but it wasn't a secret… we wouldn't have to hide about it.
I almost smiled, but I felt a little too anxious.
Somehow, everybody's amount of trust in Kakashi and I was rather guilt-inducing.
Nobody expected a thing.
Nobody even seemed to give a thought about the taboo of a female student in her male teacher's house when they assigned me to this job.
Did we always seem this distant from each other to everyone, so distant that no one would even think about the possibility we were together like this!?
…
Well, it had definitely surprised Iruka, almost traumatized him, and he knows both of us really well (despite his initial inappropriate suspicions)…
… So everyone else… probably have never thought about Kakashi and me that way either.
…
I ended up sighing, losing that almost-smile.
I had no idea why that thought was actually a little sad.
My feet seemed to drag along the dirt road, the people's voice in the stores and restaurants faded into white-noise as I tried to think all of this through.
Well, before that awkward hot springs encounter… I had never thought about it either.
He had always been just my teacher.
I never saw him as a man before that.
…
Seems like such a silly thing to have started all these overwhelming feelings I have for him, when I look back at it, now.
…
I wonder how he could have ever developed these feelings for me.
When did he stop seeing me as only his student… but as a girl…
I didn't like the way I couldn't quite bring myself to call myself a 'woman'…
I pushed that out of my mind as an especially pressing question came to mind.
…
How long has he felt like this?
…
Did he have feelings for me before I did for him?
…
That thought resonated in my mind strangely… was there a point in time where Kakashi-sensei had unrequited feelings for me?
That just seemed too strange…
Kakashi-sensei would've had better control over his emotions, right?
But if he didn't feel that way before I did… then did he only start to think of me this way after I kissed him, efficiently confessing to him, for the first time, under that tree…
At that thought I remembered something, something so embarrassing that I wish I had forgotten…especially now that looking back on it, I felt a bit more insecure.
It was the day after I kissed his masked lips for the first time.
He snuck us away from Naruto and Sai for a few minutes… he looked kind of troubled, hesitant…
And that's when I blurted out, like a weak little schoolgirl: "I-I… I like you, sensei…"
I wanted to pull my hair at the thought of that extremely embarrassing memory. I didn't, I was already thinking too deeply about how he had responded.
His hand had fallen on the top of my head, and curled around to my chin… "You don't have to say 'sensei', anymore, Sakura."
... I could still remember how my heart felt funny when he said that...
… But that was't a straight answer... Was that his way of telling me he liked me back? Or just his way of kindly telling me that he didn't feel the same way yet, without completely turning me away?....
…
Did he just go along with it at first?
…
Did he just not want to turn me down… and tried to like me back?
…
That was an even stranger thought.
That definitely couldn't be true…. Probably.
But I couldn't seem to make sense of this….
When did Kakashi-sensei grow feelings for me!?
And why!!?...
I tried not to think about these insecure questions… I got a welcome interruption.
"Sakura-chy~an!!"
Naruto was running up to me from one of the other streets that connected to this one.
How does he always manage find me?
I smiled at him, having to put in a little effort.
He galloped up to me, Sai following after him, walking calmly.
Those two were always together… I got the feeling Sai was almost studying Naruto… trying to pick up more sociable habits. That thought was seemed a little sweet to me for some reason…
"Are you going to go visit Kakashi-sensei, too?!" He asked excitedly, smiling.
Hearing his name out loud right now shook me back into my previous thoughts a little too violently.
"Uh, yeah…" I answered, still a little lost in my own world.
Then that last little, almost-overlooked word popped up in my mind…
'too'?...
"You guys are going to go see him?"
"Yeah, we just heard from Iruka-sensei that he just left the hospital…" Naruto explained casually, starting to walk down the street again, his hands behind his head. "And we didn't get to visit him again yet, so we just wanted to see how he was doing…"
Some very skeptical part of me wondered if Iruka-sensei had somehow convinced Naruto and Sai into visiting Kakashi-sensei at the exact same time I was told to go to Kakashi's apartment…
I knew that Iruka-sensei had gotten better about this whole situation… and approved of us on some level... but I was sure that it was still in his nature to have a problem with Kakashi and me now having an excuse to be alone in his apartment.
Sometimes worrywarts never really stop worrying…
I sighed again as I kept pace with the placid Sai, following a chipper Naruto towards an inevitably awkward situation.
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Paperwork again....
He sighed.
No rest for the wounded…
Kakashi flipped through the papers sprawled along his bed around him. He had almost forgotten the differences between normal mission reports and ANBU missions.
ANBU questions were a lot more varied, but didn't ask for details, probably due to ANBU's deep-running secrecy, while normal reports were all about the details.
In the end they both required the same amount of work.
Kakashi let out another heavy sigh, definitely not feeling physically or mentally up to such tedious, mind-numbing work.
His mind inevitably wandered to the recent subject that's been plaguing him almost every other minute.
Asaka…
He leaned back in bed, staring at the ceiling, his brows furrowed.
He let the paperwork in his lap lay there unattended, trying to forget about it.
Even though he definitely didn't want to think about the past right now, he couldn't help but worry for the future….
Especially Sakura's future…. What this next mission will do to her, do to them…
He rested his forearm across his eyes, already feeling so exhausted when it was barely the afternoon.
…
Knock knock knock
...
He immediately sat up, his side stinging a little, he didn't really care about the pain.
He had nearly forgotten that he was expecting a visitor.
He anchored his feet off of the bed, slowly lifting himself up, not wanting to create any further work for his own personal medic-nin that he had requested that morning.
He knew he really shouldn't have requested Sakura… it was highly irresponsible.
But he needed more time with her… not just because those feelings he felt last night still hadn't gone away, but because he needed to tie her closer to him if he expected this relationship to survive the next mission.
…
He was already half-way to the door when he heard another knocking rhythm.
It was loud and hyper.
"Oi! Kakashi-sensei!" A muffled voice called loudly.
He immediately wanted to punch Naruto in the face again for the second time in two days…
… maybe this was becoming a bad habit…?
Then again, Kakashi knew, too well, that bad habits weren't always that bad… Sakura probably felt the same.
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Naruto ran up to Kakashi-sensei's door before I could.
But I was the one who knocked on it …
I wondered for a split second how Naruto knew which door was his. I guessed he must've visited Kakashi before... back when Kakashi was closer to Sasuke and Naruto, and I… was too hung up on either myself or Sasuke to notice anyone else.
I was woken from that strange, nostalgic moment when Naruto started knocking on the door in front of me, a little too loudly. "Oi! Kakashi-sensei!"
"Hey!" I scolded him for a second.
Kakashi definitely didn't need any annoyances right now.
"I just wanna make sure he heard." Naruto explained, whining a little. He really didn't understand that even though Kakashi-sensei could walk around now, he still needed to take things easy.
"He's injured right now, you shouldn't stress him out." I lectured shortly.
"I know that…" Naruto said, folding his hands behind his head, closing his eyes, frowning a little.
Naruto still had that childish habit of getting pouty when he's told to do something.
"Hey, you three…" Kakashi-sensei was suddenly standing in the recently opened doorway, wearing his casual pants and a loose T-shirt, looking down to us, speaking with that voice that reminded me of all the times he's greeted us, as a team, in the past… casually, politely…
I couldn't focus too much on his voice though.
As soon as I saw his eyes, (both of them were uncovered, probably due to the fact that wearing a forehead protector when you're home alone would be annoying) I noticed something was different… even though he was smiling just like he always did, he definitely didn't look the same.
His eyes had dark circles under them, his expression was weaker, a little pained…
His condition must've gotten worse since this morning… what happened?
I barely noticed it when Naruto and Sai walked past Kakashi-sensei, who was still propped up against the door.
"Sorry for barging in…"
"Sorry for disturbing you…"
You could tell a lot from someone in the way the alternated that simple etiquette phrase.
...
His slightly sick eyes immediately found mine after Naruto and Sai passed him.
He smiled warmly… he never smiled like that to anyone else…
I smiled back, not as brightly as I wanted to… I was a little too worried.
I walked in, feeling his eyes on me as I walked passed him... I loved it.
"Sorry for disturbing…" I said politely as I quickly took off my shoes, just as Naruto and Sai did before they immediately wandered into the open door of his bedroom.
By the time I turned back to Kakashi-sensei, who just closed the front door behind him, his hand was already slinking around the side of my waist, landing on the small of my back.
He leaned down, the side of his masked face pressing against mine.
My hands found his arms, too afraid to touch his chest.
Such a small gesture… but it still made my heart beat harder… just the way he did that really told me what he was feeling. He didn't have to say anything or do anything else.
I knew he had missed me, wanted to be alone with me… just as I had been looking forward to being alone with him…
But we couldn't stand like this for longer than a few seconds, or Naruto and Sai would start to wonder…
…
This definitely was a little awkward, both of us walking into his bedroom, his hand still brushing along my back till right before we walked through the door…. Meeting Naruto and Sai who were already rummaging through the paperwork and looking at Kakashi-sensei's small collection of books.
"Make yourselves at home…" Kakashi-sensei sarcastically commented on their rummaging as he started limping over to his bed, his hand slowly grazed off of my back. He sat down, his back leaning against the shelf at the head of his bed.
I wondered why he had to limp for only a moment until I heard Sai speak up.
"Kakashi-san…" Hearing Kakashi's name like that was always a little strange, "Do you mind if I borrow this… I only have to first two volumes…"
And like that, the ever-returning subject of the Icha Icha novels resurfaced when Sai carefully slid Icha Icha Tactics from Kakashi's book collection.
It looked kind of dusty…
I didn't think about that observation for too long when I heard Kakashi's reply.
"Sure…" He said indifferently, paying more attention to his recently reshuffled paperwork. It only took him a moment before he suddenly remembered something.
He looked up at me, smiling apologetically.
I just gave him a look that told him exactly what I was thinking.
So, it's okay if he can read it?
I'd have to talk to him about that later....
I heard Naruto pick on Sai a little.
"You really read those perverted books, too?!"
I surprised that Naruto didn't remember exactly where Sai got his idea for sleeping in Naruto's sleeping bag that night by the hot springs, back when this all started.
Thinking about that night, again, reminded me of those questions that were bothering me a few minutes earlier, before Naruto showed up.
Kakashi-sensei's feelings… when did they….
I looked back over to him, he was smiling with a playful grimace at Naruto's description of his favorite book trilogy… probably unable to deny Naruto's apt word choice.
I almost got lost in those mental questions again, until he looked over at me, smiling that smile he didn't give to anyone else.
I couldn't quite smile back.
For a split second he looked a little confused.
He waved his hand over to me with a single flick… calling me over to him.
I was hesitant at first, but I definitely didn't want to turn down an offer to get closer to him.
"They're not completely 'perverted'… they actually portray an interesting spectrum of human emotions and reactions." I heard Sai defend himself rather dispassionately, as I walked over to Kakashi-sensei's bedside.
"Yeah, but they're still really… perverted!" Naruto argued, unable to find any other synonyms.
I remembered a time when Naruto wouldn't even call them that… he'd only say they were 'boring'.
As I glanced back to Naruto and Sai who were still bickering over 'emotions vs. perversion' I felt a hand close around my wrist, dragging me down slowly so that I would sit on the edge of the bed.
I turned around quickly… I noticed that his smile had turned into his cheeky 'innocent' grin.
Even if he was sick and injured, he still had that, sometimes juvenile, charm about him.
I couldn't say I minded, but I was getting a little fidgety.
We really shouldn't be this close to each other when Naruto and Sai were only a few feet away.
His hand stayed on mind, hidden behind my back.
"Hey, Kakashi-sensei, why do you even like these books?" Naruto suddenly directed the conversation towards us, looking over to the silver-haired man who was currently running his fingers along the inside of my palm.
Naruto didn't seem to notice that I was even there, while Sai was already flipping through the little green book.
Kakashi took a breath, his fingers sliding between mine.
I tried not to react even though my heart was.
"I guess I'm a hopeless romantic…" He answered jokingly.
Naruto laughed a little, while I was left wondering if it really was a joke… He could be really romantic… but I guess I haven't really been with him long enough to say I was an expert on whether he was a 'hopeless romantic' or not.
"Kakashi-san, about our next mission, we haven't been told much about it…" Sai suddenly started up, closing the little book, already bored with it, or perhaps saving it for later. "All I've heard from the other Jonins and some of my previous ANBU squad members is the name 'Asaka'… they wouldn't say anything more than that…" Sai continued, still wearing his business face. I saw Naruto shift on the spot, he was definitely interested in this mission, too. "Could you perhaps shed some light on the-"
Kakashi interrupted.
"I wish I could, but even I won't know much more till the debriefing meeting…" Something told me he wasn't really telling the whole truth.
His hand squeezed mine a little tighter.
"But I think it's about time we let Sakura do her job…" He spoke up again, his voice suddenly very teacher-like. But I think I was the only one who felt like the way he said it was actually a little suggestive.
"Oh, yeah, sure…" Naruto agreed, sitting himself down, calming down a little, looking over at a sitting Sai who, having been denied information, was now reading for entertainment… I could tell that Naruto was trying to read over his shoulder.
I wondered if Iruka was the one who must've told Naruto what my job was… or maybe news just got around fast in Konoha…
I suddenly felt Kakashi's hand reach up to my wrist.
I turned to him just as he lifted my hand off the mattress towards his chest.
I let him guide my fingers under the hem of his loose T-shirt.
I flinched when my hand found his skin.
I still hadn't gotten used to touching his chest… and it was really strange when I knew Naruto and Sai were in the same room.
He moved my hand up, under his shirt, to his wounds.
Something about this was really too dangerous…. Even if really didn't seem like much, and Naruto and Sai were interested in something else right now… I still felt like we were just asking to get discovered.
I lifted my other hand, running it under his shirt, but not letting myself touch him until I found the wounds under my other hand. A familiar green glow started humming at my fingertips.
I tried to hold a professional air.
I wasn't sure if it was working.
From the way Kakashi-sensei was smiling down at me, I didn't think it was.
This was one of the times when his 'juvenile charm' could actually get a little too… playful.
I had to wonder why he was suddenly acting out like this.
But when I really thought about it, it was surprising how much had happened between me and Kakashi in the past several minutes, when we hadn't even said more than a few words.
"Hey, I wasn't done with that pag-" Naruto shut himself up before he finished the obvious sentence.
I guess Naruto didn't find those books so boring anymore.
At the sound of Naruto's voice, Kakashi seemed to take notice of their existence again.
He looked over to them.
"Can you two go to the kitchen, there should be bandages on the counter."
I noticed how his request could've been carried out by only one of them… but I guess Kakashi-sensei was hoping they wouldn't notice.
"Ok…" Sai flipped the little book shut.
I didn't move until I heard both sets of footfalls walk out the bedroom door.
After their footsteps thudded out of hearing range, I didn't have enough time to sigh with relief before I felt his hand reach up to my face.
He leaned down, his masked lips finding mine for only a few seconds before he leaned away again.
"This didn't really turn out the way I wanted it to…" He said softly. It didn't turn out the way I had wanted it to either.
I felt his other hand brush down my arm to my hands, under his shirt.
"You should leave soon, or I won't be able to keep myself from…" He didn't have to finish that sentence. We both knew that he had already pushed this a little too far earlier… but I was the only one who didn't know why…
Not that I had minded his behavior, too much, but if we slipped up by simply touching for too long… Sai would at least catch on.
"… Come back at six…" He offered, his hand on my face moved down to my neck gently.
That was too many hours away… but if he didn't ask for any earlier, then there was probably a reason.
"Of course…" I nodded already looking forward to it.
I saw him inch closer, about to lean in for another kiss, I leaned in too, but those footsteps came back.
"Here ya go, Kakashi-sensei…" Naruto walked right over to us.
I quickly slid my hands out from under his shirt… even if Naruto saw that, he would probably understand… but I still felt like it was inappropriate.
"Ah, thank you…" Kakashi took the bundle from Naruto, inching away from me carefully. "Well, I need to get back to my paperwork, and frankly, you three are a distraction…"
He smiled as he practically threw us out the door with his words… was it strange that he even had charm doing that?
He might've been joking… but there was always some truth to every joke… it was a good idea for us to leave, especially me…
But speaking of distractions, I probably didn't do much good healing him a few seconds ago… it had been really hard to focus when he had been kissed me, even if he was still masked.
…
"Bye, Kakashi-sensei!…" Naruto yelled cheerfully running out the door.
"Bye, Kakashi…-sensei!" I totally messed up as I said my farewell, walking through the front door.
Naruto gave me a second, quizzing glance… while I swore I could hear Kakashi laugh from inside the apartment.
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He set down his pen, his hand a little sore from all the writing…
Okay… that's the last of it.
Kakashi set aside the final questionnaire onto the neat pile of paperwork, feeling a little bit more exhausted than before…but, as if subconsciously rewarding his hard work, his mind finally wandered back to the pink-haired medic-nin who had eased a bit of his pain a few hours before.
"Bye, Kakashi…-sensei!"
…
She finally got into the habit of dropping '-sensei' right when she didn't need to….
He chuckled some more to himself, having to think she was incredibly cute for a minute more.
He looked over at the clock, it telling him that it was barely '3:30'.
He was already impatient to see her again.
… and dreading it at the same time.
… dreading what he didn't know he was going to do.
He had thought that he could've held back those feelings just a little while longer… but every time she was around him, his hands stilled ached to touch her, he still wanted to see her face look up at him with the breathless expression that he loved seeing.
He quickly ran his hands through his hair roughly, like he was trying to scrub those thoughts out of his mind.
Calm down!... He tried ordering himself.
It didn't work…
…
Things were getting so difficult…. The fear and worries of almost losing her when he was nearly killed, the fears and worries of losing her in the near future, and now the fears and worries of these inappropriate desires breaking out…. It was too much pressure for him…
Maybe he should just tell her what was going on?…
No… it would only cause more drama… she probably wouldn't be able to fully understand, yet, anyways.
He leaned against the wall, feeling so tired of thinking…
He sighed roughly, a little aggravated by the increasing drama in his, previously, very calm life…
…
… but at least he still had Sakura…
...
He stared up at the ceiling, suddenly feeling a sense of gratitude... until the next sounds flooded his ears...
Knock! Knock!
And here came the reason why Kakashi's personal medic-nin couldn't have visited any sooner than 6:00….
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