Kakashi stared down at the sleeping form beside him and he tried not to feel anything.
Would this be the last time? It was all he could wonder, even when the feel of her satin skin still lingered on his fingertips.
I love her, I love her, I love her.
He wanted to say it out loud but he couldn't risk her hearing and ending all of it. She'd call him a creep and leave. After all, Anko most certainly had when he'd first confessed to her. Didn't matter that she came back an hour later and after kissing him senseless, she'd said she felt the same. This time it could be different. Too different. She'd hear how he felt, how she had once felt, and she'd be...
Kakashi turned the page in his book but he wasn't actually reading anything. Just staring mindlessly and thinking. Seeing nothing except the fragments of memories and images burned into his skull. He could remember all too well the second time they'd met. The nights in which they'd talked so endlessly it had been as if they were the only two people in the world.
"Sharingan Kakashi, we meet again!" she'd said to him, with a grin on her face.
It had been those senseless words that had made him remember the first time they had genuinely met. Kakashi had forgotten all about it, of course, but at the time it had come back into full focus and he had been unable to leave it alone. Especially because in that point of time, he had already lost Obito and couldn't think of a way she could have known it would happen in advance.
Three days he'd spent trying to get her to tell him how she knew. Threatened her in all the ways he knew how and instead round and round they went, talking about the most ridiculous things. Too bizarre to fathom and yet too much said to retell it to someone else.
He wished she could remember. All of it. Not just what they said to each other. Rather, so much more.
"My first kiss! I'm giving it to you for thanks."
He could still hear her saying it, and even more, distantly he could recall the soft hesitance of her mouth dusting across his. She'd been so rude about it, tearing down his mask as if it was just useless decoration. But the kiss couldn't have been any sweeter. It had been his first too.
"If only you knew," he breathed, looking at her sleeping form.