Chapter 12

Beta'd by Black Sparrow

No really, the silver haired Jounin fell LITERALLY into her lap.

Shiori had been tending to the tea bushes she had planted only a week before when a silver haired shinobi in full ANBU uniform but without the animal mask collapsed from a tree and landed only a scant meter beside her in her back lawn. She hadn't even heard a branch move or creak and so nearly had a heart attack when the ninja just fell out of the tree like a stone.

After a moment of shock Shiori had hurried over to the sprawled out figure and checked for a pulse and a heartbeat. She didn't even think about the fact that Kakashi probably could easily kill her in his unconscious state if he perceived her as a threat. Looking back Shiori was unsure how she had maneuvered the man that was twice as heavy as herself up the three stairs of the patio and onto the blanket before she had dragged him like this to her guest room that was thankfully on the first floor and only one room away. She had used her last strength while moving the worryingly still form of Hatake Kakashi onto the guest bed before she hastily made her way out of the house and to the Konoha hospital. There she explained as discreetly as she could to one of the medics on duty what had happened in the last half hour at her home. In less than a minute after the wide eyed kunoichi had hurried away another medic had shown up and shunshined them both back to Shiori's house.

There the male medic instantly started to check over the unconscious shinobi, Shiori left to give the medic space to work. Said shinobi diagnosed Kakashi with severe chakra exhaustion after a thorough examination, the silver haired Jounin would have to be on a strict bed rest for the next forty eight hours at least. After Kentarou-sensei had made the direness of Kakashi's situation clear to Shiori, she immediately agreed to house the shinobi until he was back on his feet. The medic-nin in his late twenties left her a pill container and strict instructions about the dosage. He also told her that the medicine would increase Kakashi's chakra recovering rate but that it was no miracle cure, in the end he prognosticated that her unexpected guest would mostly likely wake up with a ravenous appetite in a day or so.

Shiori spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in her living room reading a book. The black haired civilian wasn't expected at Mariko's for another four days and so she returned to her leisure activities that had been interrupted by Kakashi's sudden appearance.

On the next morning Shiori harvested the different kinds of tea leaves from her herbal and tea garden before putting them up to dry in her work room. Afterwards she routinely started to check up on her house guest every half hour. Around eleven o'clock when Shiori peeked in on her injured guest once again she was surprised to find him struggling to get up.

"Oh…you are awake," Shiori stated somewhat awkwardly. What do you say to a man that has just awoken in your house?

The injured shinobi in front of her stilled, Shiori could clearly see that he was still disorientated and so she was surprised when her only response was a half loud, "Hhm."

Shiori took Kakashi awareness as sign that he was getting better and then started to explain to the taciturn ninja where he was and what had happened to him. After she had ended talking the black haired civilian offered him a glass of water, at first Kakashi didn't want to take the water but when he saw her taking some big sips herself he reluctantly agreed. Shiori tried to place the glass into Kakashi's hand so that he could take a drink but the two soon realized that he was still too weak to lift the glass to his lips. As a reaction the civilian woman sat down on the corner of the bed and turned her face away from him and lifted the glass in the direction of Kakashi's face, with some help of his weak ones they moved the glass to the Jounin's mouth. It took quite a while until Kakashi was finished but Shiori had learned to be patient with ninjas and so didn't complain or move too fast in the Jounin's presence. Shortly before Kakashi went back to sleep she also somehow convinced him to take the medicine the medic had left for him.

Now that she knew that the silver haired ninja would wake again in the near future Shiori started to prepare a healthy and especially nutritious meal for him as well as put some cake and cookies in the oven to give the silver haired man some fast calories.

The second time Kakashi awoke Shiori could force some cake into him before he fell asleep once more. When he finally awoke for good around ten pm, Shiori reheated dinner for him and left him with the bowls full of food alone. An hour later she knocked on the guest room door and when she peeked in Kakashi had finished with everything she had brought him and was close to falling asleep once more. Shiori reminded him to take the chakra supplements before she removed the cleared plates and left him to his sleep.

The next day Shiori witnessed one of Kakashi's escape attempts from her home, he had only made it out of the guest room before she pointed more than a bit irate back at it. Who did that man think he was to just ignore the medic's orders? And then the ninja tried to justify his unsuccessful attempt with the reason that he didn't want to be even more of a bother, the civilian had showed him clearly how unimpressed she was while she silently pointed back at the guestroom. Shiori didn't know why the, as stubborn and bullheaded described, man decided to give into the demands of a weak civilian female but after she had made sure that he returned to the bed, the black haired young woman started to prepare a big breakfast for him.

Like the day before she left him with the food alone and included some desserts which were rich in calories and would hopefully help him recover faster. Shiori repeated the whole procedure sometime after lunch before Kakashi finally had enough energy to stand without assistance for short periods of time. At this point Shiori left him with some towels and shampoo so that he could take a shower if he wanted to and returned to the kitchen to start dinner. Kakashi had eaten nearly continuously since waking up and all the plates were always empty, this worried Shiori slightly because that could mean that he still didn't get enough nutrition and calories for his body and so promised herself to continue to cook large amounts until he started to leave some leftovers.

Sometime before she was finished with cooking she noticed Kakashi making his way into the living room. The genius was leaning heavily on the wall for support and Shiori wanted to desperately help him but knew that that would only hurt his pride, so she bit her lip and watched him drop exhausted on the couch. After some inner debate Shiori finally moved to the sitting area and spread one of her throw blankets over Kakashi. Said shinobi watched her actions with an unreadable eye but also didn't reject her silent fussing.

The woman's eyes went to the clean pair of trousers and the simple black wife beater and mask combo and furrowed her brows before she said, "Do I want to know how you got those clothes when the medic told you that you aren't allowed to use your chakra?"

Kakashi's eye gained a mischievous glint and he wiggled his fingers before he said in a slightly tired voice, "Magic."

Shiori just snorted, shook her head and went back to the kitchen. The blue eyed civilian finished dinner a short time later and moved all of the plates to the sitting area, where she then trained her eyes only on her own bowl and the slowly vanishing sun on the horizon that reflected in her Koi pond. They had a slow and halting conversation while they finished the food but it was in no way uncomfortable for the two. Kakashi was more concentrating on inhaling the tasty morsels before him and Shiori was thinking about the Wave mission and the many more missions that would force Kakashi's body on the brink of exhaustion and beyond, and she worried. Shiori couldn't tell why she felt so attached to the shinobi that was practically a stranger to her even if she had read about him in Mangas.

After the two had finished Shiori moved the plates back into the kitchen area and cleaned them up, later in the evening both of the occupants of the house settled back into the sitting area and read a bit, this relaxing atmosphere was only interrupted when Shiori made tea about an hour into their reading, all in all the two spent a relaxing evening in mutual silence and the company of books.

The following morning Kakashi left the house before Shiori woke up, but before that he had neatly folded the blankets and cleaned up the mess he had made in the bathroom the day before. The silver haired Jounin returned still somewhat unsteady to his flat where he slept for the rest of the day, dreaming of delicious food, a warm voice and Shiori's comforting scent.

From that time on it was as if Shiori saw Kakashi everywhere she went. Furthermore she had the suspicious feeling that somebody was watching her when she did her day to day chores. Strangely enough she didn't feel threatened by the feeling which made her more than curious because as long as she could remember the hidden gazes of her civilian admirers had always made her uncomfortable and still did. But with this stalker Shiori even kind of enjoyed being the center of somebody's attention. Her own behavior made the black haired civilian wary and so she took some extra care to stay in high populated areas whenever she could.

Her interactions with Kakashi also changed after that weekend, instead of the polite and slightly fond if formal distance with which the shinobi had treated her, Kakashi had started to tease her or draw her into long and intricate conversations outside the tea house, though this happened only when they were not under the scrutiny of other ninjas or noisy civilians.

Shiori was catching herself completely letting her guard down around the mysterious ninja and even reacting like a bimbo to his body language, though she had to admit that she was now looking forward to those talks and little chance meetings with him. Somewhere deep down she knew she was being manipulated in some way but funnily enough it didn't bother her like it would have had if it had been anybody else. The black haired civilian didn't think that Kakashi would hurt her deliberately or manipulate her into a situation that would make her truly uncomfortable. Though Shiori had noticed that the silver haired Jounin seemed to take some strange kind of pleasure from making her blush with his backhanded or hidden compliments. The black haired woman always had to toss and turn his statements around in her head before she understood them and as a result couldn't hold onto her normally impeccable poker face.

Their relationship changed once again when Kakashi came to her house for the first time since he had left it after recovering from chakra exhaustion a month ago, Shiori had been seventeen for some months now and it was slowly getting colder in Konoha.

The civilian was surprised about his visit but not uncomfortably and so invited him warmly into the house. Strangely enough Kakashi declined her invitation and instead stood on her front patio across from her and fixated Shiori with an unreadable stare before he started to talk.

"So…" Kakashi said casually, "What are you doing on Saturday evening?"

"I… I'm not sure yet," Shiori said confused, with Kakashi she could never be sure where the conversation would end up.

"Have dinner with me," the silver haired Jounin said plainly.

Shiori's eyes widened. "D-dinner as in a…Kakashi-san are you asking me out?" the black haired woman asked disbelievingly.

"Yes," the shinobi simply stated.

"Oh…I…" Shiori blushed and looked on the floor before she shyly said, "I would love to."

"Good. I will pick you up at seven then, Shiori-chan," Kakashi said before he cheekily invaded her personal bubble and stroked a strand of hair out of her face.

Shiori could hear him chuckle while he walked away, thanks to his actions her face was now the color of a ripe tomato. The young civilian woman was unable to move for some time, the only thing that ran through her mind was 'Hatake Kakashi asked me out, THE Hatake Kakashi asked me out. God what should I do? He is right in the middle of all the chaos throughout the series; do I really want to do this to myself? On the other hand I really, really like him, he is everything the manga and some fanfic authors have described him as and so much more, I didn't think it was possible but I WANT to be in his life as more than just a fleeting acquaintance.'

These thoughts haunted the petite civilian all night long before she decided to simply wait and see. She wouldn't try to push for a relationship but if this date went well she also wouldn't distance herself from the man she felt attracted to just because she knew that a lot of trouble would be waiting for him in his near future.