Chapter Eight
Soap Opera Insight
Enduring, for three weeks, three loud teenage girls that happened to be sisters and also spoiled nobles of one most preeminent clans of the Land of Fire was excruciating. They had asked for the former Copy-nin to be their escort just so he could be added as another shiny striking piece of their entourage to the capital.
The oldest one, barely seventeen, had those sharp arrogant eyes of a girl that knew she was pretty and rich, a girl who had never been told 'no' in her entire life. Kakashi was fine with enduring some flirting and lingering touches, it was an infinitely uncomfortable position to be in, but still safe in its clear limit.
Of course, things could never run so easily, not with him, not this month.
His fingers were still latching to the knob of his caravan compartment, the sense of security that had lulled through him at the prospect of a couple of hours of sleep without the constant murmur of bickering or gossiping girls was now shards on the floor.
Nothing could ruin a person's peace and quiet, or attempt at it, more than finding a naked seventeen-year-old on his bedroll. One that could ruin his life over a small crack to her glass pride.
Kakashi employed all his charm and diplomatic skills into rejecting her without her realising she was being rejected. For a delusional moment, he thought he was being successful until a frown creased her face, eyes narrowed.
"Are you a homosexual?" She asked him.
His jaw closed a little too tightly. He had underestimated her intelligence, and most of all he had underestimated the sheer size of her ego.
"Please get dressed and leave, Akari-sama." His voice came out as a gravelly demand, his patience entirely spent.
Her hand fisted around the fabric of the bedroll and pulled it up to her neck even when she refused to put on clothes. But, for an instant, that haughty spoiled sharpness of her gaze cracked, a thin sliver of confusion, maybe even hurt slipping through it.
"I didn't mean to upset you. I thought I would please you."
Kakashi could see what it was now, the girl was completely baffled by his rejection but the cause of it wasn't a simple overblown ego.
"I'm not upset, Akari-sama but you should be more careful next time you decide to surprise a man like this, be certain they aren't the type to hurt young girls."
The girl glanced down with a blush, true shame marking her frame and not the coy pink flush and turn of her eyes she had used before on him.
"I don't… I just…" Her voice broke and with it whatever conceited mature air she had thrown at him before.
Tears fell down her face as her fingers tightened around the fabric at her thighs. His spine stiffened as he looked at the girl like she was an exploding tag sizzling away. It didn't feel right to touch her, or speak or interact in any way.
The only other teenage girl he had tried to comfort as she cried had been Sakura and even with her, his student and then his teammate, he had been mortified of saying the wrong thing. He was still mortified of saying the wrong thing to Sakura, so perhaps with her it was less a matter of age and more of her significance in his life.
How had his night ended up like this? All Kakashi asked for were a few silent peaceful hours of sleep without teenage drama and now he was being shoved into a whole soap opera of it.
What saved him was that the girl entertained herself with spilling away her pains, how Kakashi had ignored her the entire journey and she had thought this was what he wanted of her.
He had forgotten that this was a pretty rich noble that he had escorted to be presented to the Daimyo's court and attract a suitable husband for her family, just as her mother had done and her grandmother, just as her younger sisters and her own eventual daughters would do.
She found her worth in being desired, wanted by men, and now she had laid herself naked on his bedroll in an attempt to reaffirm that worth.
The girl didn't ask Kakashi for any advice, but he still decided to impart some stereotypical wisdom of finding worth in one's own self and not others, especially men, men were pigs. The girl chuckled at that. He knew it was more complicated but he didn't feel it was his place to comment on the workings of a society he wasn't privy to.
It almost didn't faze him when her parting words were "I'd never met a homosexual before. That I know, of course. I'm glad I did, you're very kind, Hatake-san."
Feelings of worthlessness and all, she still had a big ego.
It wasn't the first time people assumed he was gay, in fact, he was certain it was one of the reasons some of the Clan Heads had found it imperative that they force a wife onto him and order him to get her pregnant.
Kakashi didn't really care what they thought, he knew more than a few women that would eagerly testify against it, and knowing that they could was enough for him. Whatever he did behind closed doors was his and the people he was with business.
Until he realised it had put Sakura's life on the line with his. Now he was regretting being private about whom he liked to fuck.
He wasn't sure if that made him want to laugh or pull out his hair, maybe both at the same time, because how had his life ever come to this, when not boasting over the women he slept with had harmed Sakura?
It was absurd. It was cruel. It was tragic.
And at the centre of it was Sakura.
The realisation of it had never pierced through him so deeply and painfully felt as now.
Kakashi welcomed the bitterness of guilt gnawing into his chest until he could barely breathe. He welcomed the burning remorse of not fighting harder against the Council's order, of not making it work with the woman that had been willing to marry him even for the conservation program.
Why hadn't it worked out? He couldn't even remember it, whatever hitch there had been seemed inconsequential in the face of the chains he had fastened around Sakura.
It was his curse. It infected everyone Kakashi touched, everyone that had the courage of becoming close to him.
The delight he had taken from Sakura's company for the past months made bile rise to the back of his throat.
He bit his thumb and pushed his palm onto his stomach. Pakkun appeared with a puff of smoke, his snout in the air. "Why was there a female in your tent?" He grumbled, accusation clear in his tone and his glare.
"I kicked her out, she was just confused."
That appeased the pug, who curled into a furry ball on his belly. Kakashi's fingers rubbed lazy circles over his head.
"How's Sakura?"
"Fine, but working too much."
It didn't surprise him.
Somehow he had seen Sakura in that girl whose purpose was to marry men, sustain political relationships and breed. She had given her life to her duty to Konoha and her comrades, but, in the end, her purpose to the village was reduced to being his wife and raising a Hatake heir.
Was that the cause of all those nights slumped over textbooks and spreadsheets? Her work was her own.
"I pitched your idea about taking the pack to train. We think she really liked it, she even let us sleep on the bed with her." Pakkun shuffled to face him, his chin resting over his paws. "Things are all right between you two?"
Kakashi had wondered when his ninken, usually with Pakkun as their emissary, would ask about his argument with Sakura. The day after, they had been clearly uneasy, their steps softer against the floor, their eyes rounder and more attentive to the interactions between him and Sakura, or lack of them.
Things had been stifled but for only a couple of days until she left on a mission.
It hadn't been the first time he had been alone in her apartment while Sakura was away, but it had been the first time he had felt as if he was invading a place he didn't belong in.
Tsunade had called him for this mission and while he would have whined at the purpose of it before, he had eagerly ripped the scroll from her hands and fetched his pack.
It had been a month now and he was still blind to where he and Sakura stood.
"I don't know." Was Kakashi's only answer for Pakkun.
Their timings were entirely mismatched. Just, it seemed, as were their timings in kissing.
A whine ripped through his throat as Kakashi shoved his hands into his face at the piercing wave of mortification that surged through him. Nighttime always made it rise up to the forefront of his mind with a ruthless jolt.
Even his first rejected kiss hadn't ended that poorly. Yes, his ego had been devastated and he had spent a few days completely pissed off at the ways of the universe, as the dramatic moody teenage boy he had been then. But it had been with a girl he hadn't cared about outside the length of that one night.
Kakashi cared about Sakura for the length of all his nights and days, her place in his heart, his life, cherished more than any other.
She was the one person he wasn't willing to ruin things with. And yet he had. Of course he had.
His misguided mind, drunk and grieving, had made hostages of his common sense and motor functions. All the want that had been fevering through his body rose right to edge of his skin, stirring impulses that on common days were held back by his perfectly honed self-control.
That look she had given him… it had snapped the last frayed threads of his restraint, yanked him to her with an inevitable pull.
Sakura had looked at him as if she wanted, at the same time, to break him and to ravish him.
Even now, a month later, heat swirled low in his belly at the memory of it. He still found his thumb brushing over his fingertips, an attempt to reclaim the lingering touch of her soft rounded lip against it.
But that look had clearly been tugged forth by her pain. Kakashi knew how in those days when the grief suffocated him, his body responded in kind, needing something to drown away the pain.
The next day had made it clear that Sakura was uncomfortable with taking a farther step in the physical side of whatever was happening between them. The emotional too. He was certain she didn't want anything more than the easy boundaries established now.
The last thing he wanted was to pressure Sakura when she was only tangled in this because of him. Kakashi could never ask her anything more than the immensity of things she was already willing to share with him now. And what if he had already lost her?
They would have both ended up regretting that kiss and anything that could happen after. Perhaps their mismatch was a perfect piece in the grand scheme of their relationship. But that seemed too much wishful-thinking on his part, too farfetched, a pathetic attempt of grasping at straws.
Pakkun hopped over his stomach to call his attention. "We like her a lot, and I think she likes us, I think she likes you even more, Kakashi. Don't run away."
Pakkun was a ninken, for him it was simple. They were mates and that was it, there was no confusion, there was no need to wonder about what it meant or what they wanted out of it, they just needed to be mates to each other.
For a delusional moment, Kakashi had thought it could be as simple as that too. Maybe Sakura had as well, but their argument only showed how groundless their marriage was, how meaningless.
It pierced through him that word – meaningless – it seemed to haunt him now. Not so long ago he had been troubled with the realisation that the battlefield had become meaningless, now this… but no, his relationship with Sakura wasn't meaningless. It could never be, her place in his life overflowed now and it would never stop doing so.
There was a new unfolding dimension of it, one that the Council had forced around them, still uncertain, still wavering, but never without meaning, not to him.
Their marriage. His wife.
The words were heavy in his mind and he knew neither them nor his heart had quite captured the entirety of what that meant.
Only on that day did he start making sense of some of the things going around in his chest and that had flooded onto his actions.
Restoring his childhood home and offering it to Sakura had been one of them. Kakashi had thought the gesture as nothing other than his attempt at giving her everything that she might need, mirroring the gesture of Minato-sensei to Kushina who had known a few things about being a husband.
Only as he heard Sakura's dismissing words had Kakashi realised how deep the roots of that first gift in their marriage had been, because for a moment his chest had been nothing but a shattered crater.
It was a gesture to give their marriage meaning, to make it something real, something full.
The hypocrisy of her hurt over his admission that them being married didn't have significance beyond a piece of paper, her using her status as his wife as leverage, everything had made him boil with anger, a surface expression of that bleeding pain.
It hadn't been hypocrisy, not when it came from being entirely confused, entirely lost, in what this marriage was, in what each of their places and purposes were in it.
That night on the red bridge, Sakura had been the stout one. She had laid out a clear vision of the future for them in the complete mess that was this order from the Council.
Kakashi had let her lead him, wanting most of all to do things right for her. He had seen only the certainty and not the doubt, not the insecurity underneath the underneath, deluding himself in the simplicity of their agreement: to make a loving home for an eventual child.
Nothing about that idea could ever be simple.
He should have known Sakura was as lost as he was. Who wouldn't be?
She had asked him what he wanted out of it and his answer hadn't been a lie. It was the one thing that kept him grounded in it.
Duty.
His life had been ruled by duty and that was one of the few things Kakashi never regretted. Duty to Konoha, to his father, his teammates, his friends, his loved ones.
Now his duty to Sakura was what ruled higher in him, but to share with her the depth at which it was ingrained in his heart would be demanding more than she could give him.
That was the only glimpse, blooming from his duty to her, of what he wanted: more.
What was this more that seemed to haunt his heart in the shape of Sakura?
Kakashi was exhausted, body and soul, the only sliver of hope in his life was the sight of their apartment's opened window, light still gleaming from it.
Sakura was home.
The last month had been spent immersed in the fear that their time apart had only cemented the abyss settled between them, only made it stretch and crack into something larger, unamendable. The fear that he had lost her.
Even through his exhaustion his heart wanted to flee away from his body, his forehead leaning against the door as he tried to muster the courage. As pulling a kunai stabbing into his flesh, fast and sudden, all he needed to do was twist the key and see Sakura with his own eyes.
No thinking, no cowering away from the inevitable, from the pain.
Kakashi burst through the threshold of their living room, sandals still on his feet, pack still flung over his shoulder.
Four sets of wide feminine eyes stared back at him, just as startled as his own were.
Oh no. Please, no more girls.
"Kakashi!" Sakura's twinkling voice broke through the stillness. "Hi! Welcome home. I didn't think you'd be back so soon."
Her lips were set in a wide grin, cheeks a lovely pink, and the green of her eyes glazed and dazzling.
Well, she was most definitely drunk.
The last time she had been surprised by his early arrival, there had only been depression in her voice and a trace of anger that he would dare interrupt her loneliness.
Now Sakura seemed almost glad, almost because Kakashi couldn't be sure if it was truly there or wishful thinking on his part, his heart beating oddly against his ribs.
It was unexpected…
"I'm home." He returned.
The familiar words left his lungs alongside the gnawing weight that had festered there, tasting overwhelmingly sweet in his tongue, a smile widening his lips. With that practiced routine, the sense of misplacement, the fear that had troubled him vanished, and in its place bloomed a fluttering giddiness.
Kakashi dragged himself away from the pull of her beautiful eyes to their packed living room, almost having forgotten there was more than Sakura and him in the world.
His eyes narrowed down on Pakkun's placid face as he laid on the Hyuga heiress's lap receiving belly rubs and then to Bull stretched on the couch, his massive paw resting almost possessively on Sakura's bare thigh, Guruko with his head on Guy's student's lap, Uhei and Akino pressed to each side of Ino.
His ninken certainly seemed to be enjoying this new attention from the women in Sakura's life, only three of them missing from the party. They had never looked that pampered, that irritatingly self-satisfied, around his friends. 'You spoiled traitors' he mouthed to them.
Various glasses of sparkly colourful drinks, bottles of pure alcohol, and a selection of opened cases of sweets – fancy ones from the frills and laces decorating the boxes – were littered the on coffee table. They certainly knew how to treat themselves and not just the ninken.
"Sensei!" Ino called after him with a coy wave of her fingers and a seductive edge to her voice. "Come sit with us."
That was his cue to leave.
"Have a good night, ladies." Kakashi gave them a lazy raise of his fingers and turned on his heel.
He was about to shut the front door behind him when a hand clamped around the wood. Sakura hauled it open, her rosy cheek coming to lean on the edge of it, most likely to support herself against the drunk sway of her body.
"You don't have to go, Kakashi. You can join us."
"There's still some mysteries concerning the fairer sex I'd rather leave undiscovered."
His missing had festered too deeply and for too long because Kakashi couldn't take his eyes away from her, beautiful in her messy ponytail, that tempting blush of her skin, languid bright eyes, pointing to all the ways he wanted to make them so without the alcohol.
"Or go to our bedroom."
Giggles broke out from the living room.
Sakura glanced over her shoulder at the sound and turned back to look at him, her voice quieter, barely a whisper. "I don't want you to feel unwelcomed in your own home."
"I don't." He reassured her softly. "I haven't seen Guy in a long time and you know how mopey he gets when he misses me."
Kakashi's brow creased in a frown at the sudden pleasant sensation on his stomach. He glanced down, trying to make sense of what was happening to his body, only to find her fingers grasping his shirt, playing with it as she tugged and twisted the fabric above his navel.
His gaze shifted up to her alluring green eyes, watching him through pink lashes, hoping they would shed some light on what was happening.
"But I also get mopey when I miss you."
Sakura's glistening lower lip jutted out in a pout and Kakashi's brain stopped working.
She used her leverage on his shirt to tug him closer to her. All his mind could see was the softness of that mouth, how easy it would be to give in to the impulse burning through his skin and lean down to take that full tempting lip between his teeth.
But he knew how bad thoughtless impulses and drunkenness ended between them. They led to bruised noses, shattered prides and raw feelings.
He sucked in a harsh breath as her hand slipped inside his shirt and her cool fingers brushed up the sensitive skin of his stomach over his undershirt.
Kakashi snapped his gaze up to her own but Sakura was suddenly serious, not teasing or seductive, considering the burning paths her hand was tracing up his torso.
His hand fell above her own to stop it from wandering and maybe allow some space for his brain to work. "Sorry?"
"I asked if you were injured."
"It was an escort mission, teenage girls, the only injury is to my eardrums."
Still she let some of her chakra seep into him, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment at the familiar fresh feeling of it. "Mm, okay."
Then Sakura just stared up at him, her teeth worrying her lip, hand still pressed to his stomach, only the thin layer of his undershirt between her skin and his skin.
Kakashi stared back, trying to make sense of what was going on behind her eyes and find if she was interpreting this interaction the same way his body clearly was. Her chakra had pulled back but his skin still tingled with the heat of her body so close to his, her scent soaking into his lungs, that hand under his shirt.
The words were spent between them but neither seemed particularly inclined to part away.
His hand moved on its own. Only when he felt the smooth touch of her chin against the pad of his thumb, did he became aware of it.
Kakashi wasn't even drunk this time.
He tugged the soft skin down slightly.
"You'll hurt your lip." He murmured, as if concern had been the only reason he had felt compelled to touch her.
Her lip slipped from the clamp of her teeth with a tiny bounce, holding all of his attention captive in it, bright red and tender, wet, as it would look like after he thoroughly kissed her.
His hand promptly dropped. He didn't trust himself not to let his thumb reclaim that same pliant touch he had learned more than a month ago.
She swayed slightly forward, towards him, against his better judgement his face leaned into her in a mirroring gesture.
With any other woman, this prolonged and pointless exchange by the door was a clear sign that they wanted to be kissed goodbye, but, for all her bold touches and sways closer to him, Sakura's glazed eyes gave him nothing now.
"I'll let you leave now, then." She whispered as she pulled her hand from under his shirt and away from his feverish skin. "Bye." Her voice came out breathless, almost seductive.
The door closed on his face and Kakashi was left to stare at it.
"What took you so long, Sakura?" Tenten asked from inside with a clearly suggestive tone.
Ino had none of her subtlety. "You were making out by the door!"
He wished, the winced that followed was almost simultaneous with the thought.
"I was healing him!" Sakura squealed back.
"Mhm, I also love giving my man a good healing rub."
Ino's words managed to make him choke around nothing, as he lingered against the closed door. He knew she had little qualms with being lewd. Had it been any other circumstance or about any other people, Kakashi might have laughed.
But at the moment, his humour was neglected in face of the images spurring through his mind and that he was trying to push away. It was a failed enterprise when Sakura's hand had left a feverish brand on his stomach and the coy tilt of her voice as she admitted she had missed him still rang in his ears.
Their interaction had been one the most confusing and also one of the most exhilarating, the two blending together into something he hadn't felt a very long time ago.
Haruno Sakura made a teenage boy out of him.
He smiled, the turn of his mouth wavering between a self-deprecation and giddiness, as he huffed and shook his head.
Only when Kakashi was standing on the empty street, a lamp flickering above his head, did he realise he had banished himself from his own home when it was already past midnight and he could barely spare the energy to string a coherent thought.
Sakura had been right, he could just have gone to their bedroom and crashed down on the bed, noise had never really bothered him when falling asleep.
Maybe it had been the sight of the four women on what people called a 'girls night' after enduring the same for four weeks, maybe it had been Sakura's gleaming smile as she called his name like it made her happy that he had come home.
Something had made him bolt out of there. Now he was left alone on the street to fight a few very pleasant but inappropriate thoughts and there was no one better for that than Guy.
It took him very little time to find the door to his apartment and rasp his knuckles against it. Had it been slightly earlier than 1am he wouldn't have bothered to gentle his invasion.
The door opened to the second gleaming smile for Kakashi's return home, even if this one didn't have the power to make his stomach swirl. "My eternal rival! What brings you to my home?"
With his hands inside his pockets, Kakashi looked down at him, not wearing his pyjamas, which was a good sign for his own guilty conscience. "Just got back from a mission and Sakura was having a girls night."
"So you've come to me for a guys night! Perfect!"
"I wouldn't say—"
Guy veered his wheelchair away from the door to give him space to enter. "Come, sit! I'll bring us some beers. And are you hungry?" Before Kakashi could answer Guy had already disappeared into his kitchen.
He sat down on the couch and didn't bother fighting him on the food, Guy would find a way to shove it down his throat either way, while complaining Kakashi was getting too skinny, even if he hadn't changed weight measurements in a decade. Sakura had witnessed it once and whispered that it was the spitting image of her own grandmother.
Kakashi took the cold beer Guy handed him and brought it to his lips, next it was a warm plate and chopsticks. He dug into the food without much thought, his eyes settling on the flickering images of the television but his mind on the woman he lived with, the woman that was his wife.
"Mm, what do you suppose we should do?" Guy drawled out. "What do women do at girls nights?"
"Your guess is as good as mine."
Except it wasn't. Kakashi was willing to bet his entire Icha Icha collection that he knew a lot more about women than Guy did. He wouldn't have bat an eye at the idea that Guy was still a virgin at thirty-eight, if he hadn't decided to describe to him his first time in such vivid detail and flourished poetry it could have passed for a sappy romance, even if far beneath the magnificence of Jiraiya-sama's genius.
"Truth or dare, maybe."
"No."
His eyes brightened up, Guy always seemed to brighten up with his denial. "Yes."
"Guy, we're not thirteen anymore trying to kiss some girls." Even if tonight Kakashi could pass as that more than the grown experienced man he actually was.
"Why not? You were a very gentle kisser, Kakashi."
He threw the first thing his hand found, which happened to be the sculpture of a turtle, at Guy's head. He easily caught it, a satisfied smile plastered to his dreadful face.
It had lasted less than a second, there had been no gentleness in that kiss for Guy to admire, just a reluctant glance of lips, some disgust and endless mortification.
The sacrifices he had been willing to make for a friend.
All because Anko had made the dare and called Guy out on being a coward for not playing the rules of the game. And of course, even for his friend, Guy wouldn't back down from a challenge from the girl he had wanted to kiss.
Fascinating how even after almost three decades, Guy's interests hadn't swayed very far.
"Come on, Kakashi, truth or dare?"
"No."
"Dare it is!"
Kakashi flopped back on his sofa, his arm draping over his face. Maybe he should have accepted Sakura's invitation. His mission seemed to have been enough girls night for a lifetime, but those had been teenage girls, how bad could it be to spend an evening with four beautiful women? It was something out of Icha Icha. Except that judging from the sweets on the table, their greeting, giggles and parting words to a closed door, not very different at all.
"I dare you to… drink your beer in one swig."
"That's not even a good dare." Kakashi grumbled to the nook of his elbow.
"Too easy for my eternal rival, of course! Then I dare you to go into the Hokage's office now and steal one of Tsunade-sama's elastic bands."
"I have no intention of being impaled tonight."
For that Kakashi preferred to follow on his impulse of pressing his mouth to Sakura's.
"Well, it is a hard dare I suppose… and even you can't beat Tsunade-sama's sharp senses. Maybe it's best not to risk your wellbeing for a simple dare, we're not that drunk yet. Perhaps something more feasible… what about—"
Kakashi stood up with a slap to his knees. "I'll do it." Guy gave him a brilliant smile and he pointed a finger at him with narrowed eyes. "And don't think I don't know what you are doing."
He jumped out the window into the cool autumn night for the Hokage Tower. This might be one of the stupidest things Kakashi would do in his entire life, but there was a buzz under his skin that hadn't left since his interaction with Sakura.
It was asking him to do stupid things, like bursting through the door of their apartment straight for her, eyes set on her rich green ones, lowering to her parted mouth for a sliver of a second, before he would hold her jaw, fingers light around the gentle curve of it, and pressed his lips to hers.
Kakashi gave him one last lazy wave before disappearing into the night. Guy had been genuinely surprised when he showed the broken elastic band on his palm – Tsunade had been passed out drunk and all he had needed was to wrestle a disgruntled Genma.
They went back and forth with it for a couple of hours, Kakashi's energy having completely dripped away from his limbs by the end, until he could only nurse the beer in his hand, tepid by now and tasting like something akin to piss.
"You're very pensive tonight." Guy mumbled and Kakashi decided it was best not to say anything and incriminate himself. "How is everything with Sakura?"
That was a very good question Kakashi had asked himself non-stop since this thing started. How were things between them?
What were things between them?
Sometimes it was as if they were already a perfectly content married couple.
In the morning, when Kakashi snuggled into the armchair by the window with a book and a cup of tea. Sakura sipped her coffee, leaning over the windowsill to breathe in the morning air and enjoy a waking Konoha, watering her flowers on the window box, always breathtakingly beautiful, her silhouette cut out from the gentle light, messy pink strands gleaming and long legs bare for his eyes to trace up to her perky ass. Then she would look over her shoulder at him and smile, Kakashi smiled back, his heart flipping in his chest.
Or when he came home and she always called from whatever division she was in 'Welcome home', those words always wrapping around his throat in a lump and a wide smile on his lips, when she asked after his day or mission and tried to pry something more from him than monosyllabic answers.
The quiet moments he woke up to find her back moulded to his chest and Kakashi laid perfectly still, his lungs full with her feminine scent and the floral perfume of her shampoo, the warmth of her body reaching the coldest fissures of him.
Their dinners together, when Sakura lost herself in babbling about something that excited her, voice raising into impossibly high decibels, and he listened, captivated by the glowing green of her eyes, his chin resting on his opened palm, his chest warm with delight.
When she vented about all the drama circling the corridors of the hospital and threw disgusted glances at him when he offered a piece of what he had thought was sensible commentary and advice, but by her expression were clearly the stupidest suggestions any human being could have ever made.
Then there were things where before they had moved around with oblivious naturalness, and now were more fragile than they had ever been.
It wasn't unnoticed how Sakura had pulled back from her easy, thoughtless affection of before, offering him hugs and pats on the arm, squeezes to his thigh and ruffles of his hair. Her touches were measured now, heavy, too self-aware.
Kakashi was certain he was the one confusing them with his inability to control his urges, breaking through boundaries Sakura had set between them. But then she said things like she had tonight, looked at him through coy eyes, or through wanting desperate eyes, and twisted her fingers in his shirt. Whatever lines he had thought were drawn between them washed away.
He rubbed a weary hand down his face and tugged the hitai-ate away from his forehead, burying his face in his hands.
"Things are confusing."
"Of course they are, Kakashi, if they weren't then it was probably a worse sign."
He realised now that part of the peace from the first month of this thing had been built on their lack of acknowledgement. They had concealed themselves under the guise of two roommates that also shared a bed.
They were more than that. There was no way to pretend there wasn't a contract between the two of them and a promise that stood in front of them, not made to each other, but to Konoha.
Or perhaps that was wrong. Because that night on the red bridge had weaved a commitment between one another and to an eventual future child, more than it had ever been for Konoha.
It was that promise to Sakura that made him throw himself into this marriage with the burning dream to make it everything she wanted it to be, to make it a loving home between them.
And now that they had voiced and questioned what was truly happening, where had it led them?
"I feel like we just took ten steps back from where we were." Kakashi whispered, as his fingers combed his hair back. "Or I thought we were…"
"I think that's normal. Even in common relationships there are ups and downs as people continue to find their place in it. You entered a marriage with a month's notice, of course things won't be immediate."
Guy's strong and painful hand came down against his back. "And, please, don't overdramatise this hitch, my friend, like you always do. Hiding away in guilt, going around thinking everything is pain and devastation all because of you."
His voice turned quieter, softer, hand falling away as he said, "I… I am of the unpopular opinion that thinks that this is good."
Kakashi's head snapped up to watch Guy with wide horrified eyes, making sure that he had spoken the impossible words.
"Sakura's caged to me." His voice left in a broken hiss, a viciousness in it that burned like bile at the back of his throat. "Every good thing I feel, it's stolen from her."
And that he was always forgetting it, just as he had minutes before at the mere presence of her, was the worst part.
"No matter what you think, you also didn't choose this, Kakashi. Do you think every good thing Sakura feels because of your marriage is her taking advantage of you?"
"You don't understand, Guy…"
"I know I understand better than you think I do."
There was a knowing sharp glint to Guy's dark eyes, it pierced through every of Kakashi's layers and seemed to reach right at the core of his heart, laying it bare between them.
He ripped his gaze away from his friend. It was the one thing that Kakashi wanted to keep secret, or at least pretend it was secret between them.
The war had helped some of the bleeding wounds from his life heal into ragged scars. Some days they were ripped open, raw again, but mostly they had mended.
The one left to heal was Sasuke's death, another crater in his heart, another loss, another failure to the three annoying pests that had delved around his walls and he had dared love. It was the most recent, without the time the others had had, but Kakashi felt it was unhealable when Naruto and Sakura were the ones suffering from it.
There was a track record etched into his heart.
This was how good things ended with him: failure, loss and pain.
"I'm scared I'll ruin her."
Kakashi was terrified. He was terrified out of his fucking mind.
A heavy hand fell onto his shoulder and squeezed, a silent request. Kakashi raised his head slightly to look at Guy's soft smile and strong certain eyes.
"You won't."
Two o'clock, the hands pointed.
Kakashi was known for his tardiness but to his credit and her own absolute surprise he was more or less on time when slipping through the window of her office with two bento or take-out boxes. Sakura's lunch break ended now and Kakashi hadn't come, he always came when he was in Konoha.
In the beginning she had been wary and slightly offended, because Sakura had known it was a ploy to make her drop her work and take an actual break, but it hadn't taken long for her to spend the mornings looking forward to the respite, maybe even his company. It also helped that he brought her a new dessert every time, even if it had started as a bargaining chip against her temper.
It had been enough for her to wake up that morning with a throbbing hangover head and his side of the bed unturned, now the idiot was also standing her up.
His purpose had worked all the same even without Kakashi actually showing up. Sakura had opened the medical textbook but spent the entire hour fretting over what horrific thing she might have said or done to him while drunk to make him want to avoid her.
Or most likely he was avoiding the can of worms that had been spilt at both their feet more than a month ago, their mismatched mission schedules not allowing them to work through what had and hadn't been said in their argument.
Healing wounds on the missing-nin infested Land of Snow had helped keep her spiralling thoughts locked into a tight box. Safe and free to unleash on the peaceful forests of Fire, she had dreaded uselessly all the way back home. Sakura had arrived to a note.
Left on a mission.
A henohenomoheji scrawled at the corner of the piece of paper.
That was the message her supposed husband left for her to find and it was even more depressing when Sakura had been pleasantly surprised that he had left a message at all and not expected her to simply put the obvious pieces together.
On top of it all, she had saved it between the pages of the main textbook she was currently studying like some lovesick teenage girl with an unrequited crush. Sakura knew too much about those and how every little piece of attention could be easily blown into a dramatic love story and scenarios of happily-ever-afters.
But it was different this time, because there was no crush and no scenarios, the last having been dreamt for them by the Council without the concern for happiness, only the ever-after part of marriage.
She kept the paper because she was worried he would pull back from her, crawl back into his hard unbreakable shell and the relationship they had built over ten years of being in each other's lives crumbled.
Even through this entire mess Kakashi was still one of her most precious people, one of her closest dearest friends.
Sakura had spent the past two weeks alone in Konoha trying to hold on to the lid of the bursting box, only disrupted more with the realisation that his scent had begun to wash away from his pillow.
Thinking too much only led her to create monsters and problems where they didn't exist. She had decided to wait for Kakashi to return so they could face this thing together like two mature adults.
But of course, Ino chose to destroy everything, insisting on a girls night because Sakura had been working too much and, according to her words, particularly bitchy. She didn't miss how her friend tried to stir the topic of their conversations towards her marriage and Sakura very expertly swatted it away someplace else, like a few sordid gossips that were Ino's weak spot (much of the same way Kakashi's ninken couldn't resist a piece of fresh meat dangling in front of their snouts).
Of course, the man himself had had the perfect aim of arriving in the middle of it and gained the also perfect excuse to disappear before Sakura could gauge where they stood with each other.
She had tossed around their bed, whatever courage she had built through the month she hadn't seen him sinking away into the mattress. When it had become clear Kakashi wouldn't return home, she called Pakkun and Bull, who were still lounging in the living room, to fill the empty spot on the bed.
Eight o'clock, the hands unhelpfully pointed.
Her shift was ending and she would have to face whatever was waiting for her at home, whether it be an empty apartment or a stiff, serious Hatake Kakashi ready to spill the words 'It's not me, it's definitely you', 'overbearing bitch', 'annoying'. Sakura pushed her things into the tote with a little more force than usual as she packed to leave the hospital.
Each worried step that took her closer to the apartment was quickly morphing into anger, until she stomped all the way up the stairs of their building.
How could he have stood her up? How could he be ignoring her instead of coming out and simply saying that he didn't want to have anything to do with her anymore?
Sakura didn't expect the wave of relief that flowed through her chest at the sight of Kakashi's silver hair peeking from the back of the sofa and his voice as he welcomed her home, just as any other day. It was enough to wash away the anger she had spent the day harbouring for him.
"Dinner's ready." Kakashi drawled out, his gaze not shifting away from where it was pinned to the TV.
He was watching one of those soap operas about the lives of some daimyo's court. Sakura had caught him doing it a few times and had thought it had been out of boredom, his droopy eyes had made it seem that way.
"I can't believe you actually watch these." Sakura let out as she passed along the back of the sofa.
"Don't act all high and mighty, Sakura, I remember when you were all about Team Kurou and just wouldn't shut up about how he was the perfect man for Miyaki. And you for that matter."
A blush of embarrassment heated her face, down her chest. "I grew out of it, unlike certain people."
Sakura flicked his forehead with her words, tugging a shy smile from him. Before she could move away, Kakashi held her wrist.
His face was serious when he asked, "When did you?"
"Probably after…" Sasuke had defected. "after I entered my apprenticeship with Tsunade." Her voice was light as she added, "Our shinobi life isn't the most conductive to stupid unrealistic romance stories."
There had been too much disillusion in her life, too much death and blood stuck to the creases of her skin, for Sakura to relish in the giddy expectations she had had as a civilian-born girl, eyes bright and innocent and so entirely idiotic.
There were only so many times reality could shatter through a girl's heart before she learnt from it.
"I think it's the most conductive of all." Kakashi answered simply, honestly.
There was too much heaviness in his demeanour and his gaze, intent on her, seemed to be peeling her layer for layer.
"So Team Kurou?" Sakura started playfully, leaning over the sofa to near his face. "I can't believe you actually listened to anything I said, Kakashi-sensei."
He dropped her wrist. "Don't call me that. And yes, of course I listened, between Naruto's ramblings about his undying love for ramen or his dream of being Hokage, and Sasuke's brooding, you were the one that actually said anything of use. For a teenage girl yet to 'grow out of it', you had some interesting takes on the whole thing."
The blush only burned deeper on her cheeks and this time it wasn't from embarrassment. Sakura searched for any deception or edge of a joke through his expression but found only honesty.
She had always thought Kakashi hadn't been listening while she let her tongue run, and only pretended he did with his quiet hums and ahs. Sakura had been content enough with pretending with him.
"Thank you." She told him gently. "For listening to me."
Maybe her view of Kakashi would have been different if she had known then, her view of herself.
His face melted into the softest of smiles and it trembled right through the centre of her heart. "Of course."
Her fingers tightened around the book in her hands, where that little note was saved, and she had to rip her eyes away from him.
"I'm guessing this means you'll eat here."
"And you'll eat with me." He chirped, hand patting down on the cushion of their sofa.
She wouldn't, but she was feeling generous enough to bring dinner to the spoiled boy. Before she could go back to her route towards the dining table, her own bowl in her hands, Kakashi grabbed her arm, each of his fingers piercingly felt on her naked skin.
"Where are you going? Come on, Sakura, it just started."
She lifted her medical textbook. "I need to work."
"Then work here."
Before she could protest, Kakashi dragged her around the back of the sofa to sit down on it. She surrendered easily, even if with a huff.
Sakura tucked her feet under her and Kakashi's ankles fell naturally onto her thighs. She never minded it and he always had a necessity for having at least one leg stretched out. The warmth was nice and her fingers could play mindlessly with the hairs of his calf, trace patterns in his skin.
After a few minutes, her eyes were pulled to the screen as a woman's voice raised to a dramatic lament. It seemed she was fighting with her lover, something about clans and their secret affair. The man's face was carved into a porcelain mask and suddenly she was watching Sasuke, with his pale skin, dark hair and impassive expression as she pleaded at him not to defect Konoha.
Sakura threw a glance at Kakashi to find him fixated on what was happening.
Maybe Kakashi hadn't showed any interest in what she had said as a genin, because he knew that once Sakura had her babblings encouraged no one could shut her up. Even Tsunade had been bored to death more than a few times by her over something medical. Her shishou had soon learned to stop her before the gates between her passions and her mouth burst open.
She wondered if he had also listened to all the convoluted plans and scenarios she had made up of him and the beautiful women they came across on their missions or around the village. Her matchmaking abilities had always been disastrous concerning him, possibly because Kakashi was too smart to follow the advice of a twelve-year-old with only rose-coloured eyes.
Also possibly because he had always seemed too content with being single. It was sad, she had never wanted him to be alone. Kakashi, for all her pre-teen rants over the faults of her silly sensei, was a great catch if people lingered long enough to see underneath the underneath.
He would have made an amazing partner for any woman, painfully handsome, caring and a good cook. Sakura should know, seeing as they were technically married and living together, the dinner he had prepared for them in her hands.
But he hadn't settled down soon enough for the Council and now he was stuck to her.
Was he glad it was her?
Remembering she had work to do, Sakura turned her eyes back to the book. They didn't linger long on the words until they were once again pulled to the screen, the tension between the lovers had reached its climax and they glared at each other for a breathless second before crashing their mouths together.
Cliché.
Another glance at Kakashi and he was as captivated as if it were the first time watching the trope. A chuckle fought to break out but she hid it in her chest. If only her genin self had known this man she was watching now was her sensei.
The most conductive of all, he had said, the words still settling uncomfortably in her.
All she had seen in these stories was perfection. Easy and unreachable.
The pain meaningful. The loss necessary. All the good and bad pieces slotting themselves together into an overwrought whole. In the end, the characters' love was full and mending, everything the other needed it to be.
Their love was perfect. Their love was all Sakura's had never been.
Along the line of her life she had stopped finding in them the raptured delight she saw now in Kakashi. She had stopped finding the consolation of her lonely afternoons spent on a nook in the flower field of the Academy, a time before Ino. With a book against her legs, where she could exist only in those pages and forget everything around her, the painful jabs of her schoolmates, the cheerful sounds of them playing around her and yet so far away from her, the loneliness in her chest.
Without warning, the opened pages of a book or the reflected screen of a television had become only a mirror to all that was lacking, defective, broken in her. Whatever sweetness could be taken from the fake, unreal taste of it was only ash, tasteless, bitter, sticking to her throat.
One day, the brown of blood still stuck to her nails, Sakura had opened her favourite book and saw it only for what it was, a delusion, a fleeting unreal shadow slipping away through the gaps of her fingers, the cold artificial touch of marbled stone.
It yanked back the rose veil of everything in her life and showed only the dirt and grit of it, the pain, the blood, the brokenness.
Perfection never existed and it had never pierced through her so painfully as on that night.
It pierced because the desperate crave for it never ceased.
Sakura straightened on her seat and shuffled slightly to get herself away from the make-out session happening on the television, and her own troubled thoughts, to the concrete system of the chakra pathways of the brain, the tip of her pen following the curves of the diagram.
Her fingers tugged a little more harshly at the silver hairs peppering Kakashi's ankle but he didn't seem to care.
When her lids were too heavy to keep reading and her mind drifted off into nothing, Sakura leaned her cheek on her fist and let her attention drift to the television.
She startled suddenly, eyes snapping open when the commercials started at the end of the show. Her head turned to throw a mocking quip at her company only to find Kakashi had fallen asleep. She smiled at the cute sight of his cheek pressed against the pillow and fingers tightened possessively around the remote.
Sakura had been dreading coming home and facing whatever mess she had made of this thing, but life had surprised her with a pleasant evening.
In the middle of the muddle, she couldn't forget this was what had drawn her to Kakashi as a mission partner and a friend – the straightforward restful company – and perhaps it was what had drawn him to her.
It was cowardly of them to sweep it under the rug but for now she was too tired to face it and apparently so was he.
Being a mature communicative adult didn't seem to be in her cards, not tonight.
Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps until the mound of dirt grew too tall and they couldn't ignore it anymore.
Lifting his feet carefully not to wake him, Sakura slithered away from the sofa. She hesitated on whether to move him to bed or just let him sleep there. The idea of carrying him bridal-style was definitely very tempting but he looked too comfortable to ruin.
It would be different from the past nights with the empty spot beside her, this time she would know Kakashi was home and their relationship wasn't unamendable.
Sakura spread the blanket in the air and watched it glide down to cover his body. Supporting her hand on the back of the sofa, she leaned over him and tucked him in, their roles reversed for tonight. His eye opened to squint at her, a sleepy hum rumbling in his throat as he snuggled into the sofa.
It sent an ache through her heart, an impossibly overpowering and yet so simple need to care.
"You were supposed to stay asleep." Sakura whispered in a soft voice and only then did she notice the small smile curling her lips.
"I'll go back to it in a second." He mumbled, but his eyes only opened more, even if to look away from her, a crease forming between his eyebrows. "I have a mission. I leave in a few hours so I'll just sleep here."
A tug at the roots of her hair made her follow his gaze to see his fingers playing with the ends of her hair as it hovered his chest. Sakura sat at the edge of the cushion, her hand coming to rest on his forearm over the blanket. It was Kakashi's silent gesture to tell her there was something he needed to get out.
His eyes lifted to hers.
"ANBU."
Kakashi was telling her, he had taken what she had told him into consideration and now he was telling her. Sakura would have been gladder if the cold touch of dread hadn't supplanted her heart.
It was even worse when she could see a trace of it flicker in the dark grey of his eyes. Asking what the mission entailed wasn't her place, so all she did was reach for his hand.
It was also a faint acknowledgement of their fight, one where her own faults in this had been laid bare.
Her eyes fled away from his, to the trees outside the window.
"If there's… if you want me to change something, talk to me."
"Sakura…" He breathed out, his fingers still playing with the tips of her hair. "I didn't tell you because I want something in return, I told you because I realised it was unfair to leave you in the dark, even if I didn't want to burden you with even more worries."
"You should." Her eyes lowered to his to mark her words into him. "You can burden me with everything you want. Worries or change."
"But I'm not." He answered, tone the same as his dark gaze, stout and decisive.
There was a mad impulse of leaning down to kiss his forehead, sooth the crease that hadn't lifted, but Sakura only squeezed his hand and whispered. "Stay safe. And don't be an idiot."
"Never."
That was a lie and they both knew it, she had been on enough missions with him and pieced him back together too many times to know.
"And if I am, I have my own personal medic to take care of me." His voice had lowered into a dulcet, suggestive cadence, only deepened when he finished, "Haruno-sensei."
The title fluttered in her stomach. Did his mind also flood with too many inappropriate scenarios that should never be associated with the sacred practice of medicine? Or was it just her dirty one, secretly fantasising of that one kinky scenario, and that wanted to hear a sensuous hint to his voice every time he said it?
"Do you now…" She whispered in a tease. "I hope that's not an excuse to be reckless."
He shook his head, suddenly serious. "You only gives me reasons to be careful."
There was an intensity in his eyes, an intensity in how piercingly soft they were, making their grey shade boundless, melting his entire expression. Goose sumps broke through her skin under the weight of it, a lump tightening in her throat and heart throbbing in the cage of her ribs.
Why did it hurt?
Her fingers traced the raises and dips of his knuckles, gaze fixed on them and away from the overwhelming shade of his.
"Good." She whispered, her voice barely leaving her mouth.