Chapter Five
Falling into Place
It had taken them only a single journey to carry everything that Kakashi considered his life. Two boxes for each one of them and most of it was an endless reprint of the same shirt and pants of the jounin uniform. The rest of the space was filled with scrolls, which in turn were filled with mission and jutsu related materials.
Everything of sentimental value for Kakashi was safe in a smaller box, on top of the two he carried. His plant Mr. Ukki, Naruto had gifted him years ago, three porn books, which said a lot about her supposed husband, and three picture frames. He didn't even have a picture of his parents or his friends. It left a sour tinge in her chest. She had pictures of everyone and everything scattered around her home and saved inside albums tucked away in the upper shelf of her closet.
But worse of all was the sight of his horrible shuriken printed duvet, slipping from one of his boxes. Kakashi had said that was non-negotiable, seeing as his ninken loved to lay on it, but they had still spent half an hour with Sakura glaring at him while he seemed perfectly content in his stubborn, lazy stare, the thing folded and stacked on his lap.
He had won in the end, Sakura lamenting that new green stain that would infect her living room and the dreadful realisation that her apartment would now be permanently coated in a layer of dog hair. Their apartment.
When he saw her dejected look as they entered the apartment, Kakashi pushed her shoulder with his. "You should be glad, do you have any idea the trouble it is to match the things to the person moving in?"
Sakura wouldn't have minded the work and headaches, wouldn't even have minded having her apartment infested in tacky ninja-themed décor, if it meant Kakashi had more cherished things in his life than a tiny little box, three books and three photographs. He deserved to have it full, overflowing, not reduced to erotic literature that was also a mask and the ghosts of dead people haunting him from team pictures.
She had even told him they could buy another bookcase for his books and he had shrugged, telling her he had already donated all of them to the library, except for three special ones.
Sakura only raised an eyebrow at his words. "Do you?"
"Maa… I helped Naruto move in with Hinata."
"No, you didn't. We said 10am in his old apartment," There was a shiver of disgust that still ran through Sakura's spine every time she remembered the smells coming off that thing. "and you got to their new home at 8pm, just in time to mooch off the dinner and beer meant for the ones that had to endure instant-ramen soaked furniture."
"Huh" Kakashi let out as his head fell back, brow furrowed in the perfect semblance of wondering. "I don't remember it quite like that."
"Shut it. I'm still mad about that."
Her hands ripped the first cardboard box open to find piles of navy and black fabric and began taking them out.
"Why?" Kakashi asked with genuine curiosity.
"Because it was fun and it was important to Naruto and you should have been there."
He went very quiet behind her but the resentment bittering that memory was too entrenched, even after two years, to let her feel bad for him. She remembered still Naruto's forced smile as he said, 'You know how Kakashi-sensei is, he probably got stuck helping some old lady or rescuing a cat from a tree. When he sees that people need him, he can't say no to them.'
If Naruto hadn't needed her then, she would have upturned all of Konoha in search for one elusive former Copy-ninja and dragged him there by the ear.
Her arms picked up a clump of his shirts, walked into the bedroom and dropped them over her dresser.
"I didn't know he wanted me there that much."
"You should have known, Kakashi. You're Team 7."
Gods, they already sounded like husband and wife arguing about their heartbroken child when they were childless and had been married for one day.
"I hope your reread of Tactics was at least worth it." Sakura winced slightly at the venom she put into her words.
"I wasn't reading Icha Icha, I was…" His voice trailed off and he never picked it up again.
Sakura opened one of the drawers of her dresser and occupied herself with folding his shirts and tucking them into it. When that was done – not that it took too much effort, seeing as his clothes were all a mass of the same thing and didn't require much organization – she opened one of the smaller ones at the top.
"You can put your underwear in here."
Kakashi did have some more formal pieces and those would be stored in the closet. Sakura pulled out the new hangers she had bought just for this, placing them at the corner that would now belong to him. She took a step back to admire her work, his clothes arranged on size alone, seeing as their colour were a variation of the same dark tone. It was a little more cramped that she was normally comfortable with, but she would have to get used to it.
"I was at the memorial stone."
Sakura didn't move as he talked.
"Feeling sorry for myself because of how I wasn't there during his childhood and there I was, doing the exact same thing when I should have known better." His bitter tone clenched around her heart.
She had thought it had been about Kakashi and one of his streaks of laziness, but, of course, it had been one of his streaks of guilt. How stupid of her not to have seen it before, too blinded by her anger, her self-righteousness when she was also failing him.
This was Kakashi, you peeled one mask and underneath there was another one, and when you reached the core of him there was mostly love and guilt. He had felt he didn't deserve to be there because of how he hadn't been there before. It didn't completely excuse his terrible decision but it did melt all her resentment into compassion and a little guilt too.
Sakura finally had the courage to turn around and found him shoving his underwear into the drawler, burying the part of her that cringed at the sight of his complete lack of tidiness. She stepped towards him, her hand holding his arm gently, but he didn't look down to her.
"Don't be so harsh on yourself, Kakashi. You were there later in the day. You helped him grow into the amazing person and shinobi he is today. And, yes, you should have known better, but we all have stupid oversights, even geniuses like you, well… especially geniuses like you. What's more important is that you hopefully now know better and won't fall into the same thing again."
Kakashi shook his head. "You're too kind to me, Sakura."
A chuckle rumbled in her throat. "No, I'm not. If you knew the list of names I called you in my head. Not to talk about how I thought you'd bailed out of laziness, I should have known you'd never be that selfish." Her arm wrapped tighter around his and she leaned into it in a semblance of a hug. "Thank you for telling me, Kakashi."
She pulled back not wanting to completely overwhelm the man, sharing it with her was already a difficult step for him. Her decision last night only fortified itself now. This thing was a mission for Konoha but it could also be her own personal mission to help Kakashi shed himself of the ghosts and guilt that had always haunted him, his constant harshness against himself, and open his heart for the wonderful person he actually was.
Her eyes fell down to the drawer, catching inside of it a blinding and sudden splash of colour. The surprise of it rose like a wheeze, before Sakura broke out in a full laughs, her shoulders shaking and stomach cramping with the force of them.
"What?" Kakashi asked as he looked down at her as if she had completely lost her mind.
Maybe she had, this thing could break anyone's mental order, and maybe that was why she thought it was hilarious that the only colour in Kakashi's wardrobe came from his choice of boxers. There was now a rainbow inside the drawer and little pugs, shuriken, kunai, ramen cups – definitely a gift from Naruto –, and… were those Icha Icha books?
Of course under all the dark moody layers of his clothes, Kakashi was hiding the most cheerful and loud underwear Sakura had ever seen.
It was just like him, she saw glimpses of it, the moments when he became unguarded and some of that warm bright side slipped through the cracks of his bored droopy eyes.
"Just your boxers." Sakura managed to rush out between chuckles.
The drawer closed with a sharp thud. "What's wrong with my boxers?"
"Nothing, I just—"
Kakashi swirled around to leave her bedroom, definitely sulking.
"Hey now, Kakashi." Sakura started as she followed him. "I like them, I promise. It's just that I wasn't expecting them to be so… colourful." But her words weren't very convincing when she couldn't drop the remaining chuckles from her voice.
He was sitting on the sofa, pretending to read Icha Icha and not listen to her. It took her some time to heal his wounded male ego and reassure him that while his underwear made him cute, it also didn't make him any less attractive and intimidating, and she loved the boxers of course, especially the pug ones.
Sakura had never expected she would ever compliment those parts of Kakashi, but here they were, one day into their marriage and she was already trying to reassure him that he was still sexy.
Only at the end of her pep-talk did Sakura realise Kakashi had definitely started pulling her leg and was enjoying her uplifting words a little too much for a sulking man.
She shoved him to the side, the beginnings of a rebellious smile on her lips. "You're an idiot."
They needed to go back to arranging his things into her apartment, their apartment.
Sakura was a little more uncertain when it was time for the last box, watching Kakashi open it and slotting his Icha Icha into the nook that she had made for them in her bookshelf. He stared for a long time at the frames while Sakura entertained herself with folding the boxes and giving him space.
Kakashi slipped into the bedroom and when she followed him a few minutes later, he was still standing there, the photographs in his hands.
"You can put them wherever you want." Sakura told him softly, but he still didn't move.
She walked to the windowsill where her own Team 7 photograph was, along with one of her and her parents, and one of Team Kakashi with Sai and Yamato, but – her heart pinched – not Sasuke. She knew his had also been on the sill of in his own room, Sakura had seen them just that morning. She moved her own two copies to the top of her dresser where she had others with Ino, all of Rookie 9, Tsunade. Not that she needed them anymore, Kakashi's would now also become her own.
"Here, what do you think?" Sakura asked, brushing her fingers over the opened space on the windowsill.
Kakashi finally moved and carefully rested the three frames there. Her eyes lingered on the one of his own genin team, with Obito, Rin, Naruto's father and one cute scowling Kakashi. Seeing Namikaze Minato in the same pose Kakashi had chosen for their Team 7 picture only made her guilt over his absence from Naruto's move flare.
Sometimes she forgot Naruto was more than his student, more than a boy he had seen and helped grow and a friend. He was his beloved sensei's son.
"It looks good, doesn't it?" Sakura asked once he took a step back to simply watch.
Kakashi looked over his shoulder at her, his fingers lowering his mask to show the entirety of his smile. "It does."
When they finally stopped and faced the house, Sakura curled her hand impossibly tight around the strap of the bag carrying their bento boxes. It was a traditional countryside manor, with deep indigo roof tiles and a white and wood façade, the ones imbibed in the charm of older days before the Hidden Villages.
Kakashi had told her there was no pressure on her part, they would see the house and later decide if it made sense for them to live there. Still the leisurely walk on the dirt road along the rice fields had been a constant struggle against the frantic hammering of her heart and the nauseous swirls in her stomach.
Moving to the outskirts of Konoha was certainly tempting, where she could wake up to the smell of dew and oak trees, where she could take her morning coffee staring off into the glass reflections of the sun over the rice paddies, away from the bustling of the village.
Still, Sakura enjoyed her mornings contemplating the village beneath her slowly come to life. The woman on the other side of the street opening her shop and greeting the baker a few doors down. The children hurrying and shouting as they made their daily way to the Academy. The old lady watering her flowers and waving over to Sakura with a smile.
Kakashi had always been a man of silence and reclusion, which only made her more surprised at learning he had the perfect home for it, yet decided not to live there. But Sakura loved being immersed in the hectic and yet strangely synchronised life of a village. The murmur of a home bursting with people and life, with noise and business, the reason Sakura had given so much of her life to it, the reason the Will of Fire burned in her veins.
No pressure, Sakura reminded herself as Kakashi opened the creaking gate for her to pass, the diamond of the Hatake carved into the stone pillar.
He smiled a little awkwardly at her as the front door jammed and forced him to use some amount of force to pry it open, making it clash against the frame. Kakashi took his sandals off at the genkan and she followed his example.
The shoji doors inside slid effortlessly to reveal a wide room divided in two by a beam and tiled with long wooden boards. But what made Sakura's breath catch was the glass doors leading to the backyard, a seamless stretch between the green painted background of trees and grass saying with the breeze and the slanted rays of sun coming to rest over the floors.
An image of mornings and evenings spent gazing to the outside filled with flowerbeds that Sakura nurtured herself bloomed in her mind. It felt almost too easy to fall in love with that house.
More than show it to her, Kakashi let her explore as he simply followed behind her into every room. He never shared much about them, only small one-word sentences about what they had been before, the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom. All except for one.
It was the only room that was still filled with things, a layer of dust over them, as if it had been paused in time and left to rest, untouched. Was he using it for storage or had it been his parents who had left all of these behind?
Sakura looked back to ask him but Kakashi wasn't there. She peeked out the door to see him leaning against the corridor wall, Icha Icha opened in one hand as he read.
"And this one?"
Kakashi didn't look up from the pages. "My father's study."
His hold was tighter around the book, frame tense.
She knew his father had died when he was just a child. Suicide.
Sakura had read about it in the library once Chiyo-baa-sama confused Kakashi with his father, the White Fang, in an attempt to find a clue about the face under the mask. Her fingers had trembled with excitement, ready to find a clue and show it to Naruto, to find a glimmer of joy to brighten the heaviness of their days.
Sakura had peeled one layer of his mask.
At the time, the words written on the newspaper had trembled through her, unbalanced her so completely the paper still had small splotches from the tears for her poor sensei, whose father had killed himself after failing a mission, the article with a hint of malice to it, talking of shame, disgrace, failure.
The following week she had tried to be especially attentive to him, cutting him apples and bringing him his precious books, anything to make his stay at the hospital tolerable, knowing how much he hated them, knowing how awful it was to feel powerless in a bed.
Then they had left in search for Sasuke with Yamato as their taichou, the boy had taken rule of her mind, with the horror of Naruto's loss of control as a jinchuuriki. Slowly she let herself forget about those words printed into the paper that had given her a glimpse of Kakashi the man, the boy, under Kakashi, the Copy-ninja, the sensei, the shinobi.
And now, as she looked at him, even with the mask hiding half his face, even with the careless way he seemed to read his porn, Sakura knew this was the room where his father had killed himself. Her eyes turned back to the wooden floors, the shoji doors casting a slight glow over them, as if they could show her the pool of blood of the man that was Kakashi's father, show her all that he had suffered so she could better carry it in her own shoulders.
Sakura closed the door carefully and smiled at him as he looked up, passing into the next room.
They ended the tour back on the main room, her eyes always pulled towards the beauty of its windows that made the forest seep right through them.
"How old were you when you left?"
"Hmm, thirteen maybe?"
Her eyebrows raised in surprise. "No one's lived here for more than twenty years… how is it still so nice?"
There wasn't any sign of rotting in its wood or plaster, any sign that it had been abandoned for three decades.
"Thanks for reminding me that I'm old." Kakashi grumbled before shrugging, his hands inside his pockets. "I asked Tenzou to come fix some things."
But it wasn't just fixed, it was clean. Except for his father's study, there was no dust, no weeds in the garden and overgrown shrubs, no scent of must or the thick stale air of a closed home. Even if it was mostly empty, this was clearly a house ready, waiting to be lived in.
And was that…? A lump tightened around the walls of her throat.
A small vase with wild flowers on the low table facing the backyard.
Her heart twisted.
This was the Hatake manor.
This was Kakashi's childhood home.
And it was so much more than that.
Sakura had seen his apartment. He didn't fix anything that wasn't in dire need of fixing, like something that he couldn't live without. His radiator had been broken for years and he never bothered paying for the repair or doing it himself, choosing instead to spend his winters in a small cocoon of blankets and ninken. There was the leaking sink that constantly plinked and forced him to close the water in his kitchen when he left on missions, and not to talk about the worryingly massive crack on his wall, right beside the place where he slept.
Kakashi hadn't done this for himself, he did it for Sakura.
"What do you think?" His voice was nonchalant but under it was also a small waver, a small expectant rise at the end, something Sakura knew all too well.
Insecurity and a burning need to please, to be accepted.
In that moment Sakura gained more compassion for Sasuke than she had ever felt, because finally she understood what moved in his heart every time he rejected her. There had been more than cruelty, even when he had gone about it cruelly, there had been these smothering fingers that wrapped around her lungs, pressed down onto the tender flesh of her throat until she could barely breathe.
"Sakura?"
"I have to go…" The words left only as a strained whisper.
"What?"
"I'm sorry, Kakashi, but I have to go." She repeated, not brave enough to watch him as she said it and as she left him there, abandoned, alone.
Kakashi didn't turn back to watch Sakura disappear out of the Hatake manor.
He stepped out into the engawa and sat down on it, elbows supported on his knees, eyes unseeing in the freshly cut grass covering the earth of the backyard, the swaying wildflowers speckled through it.
This was only for if it made sense to Sakura, if she didn't want to move there, it was all the same for him. A part of Kakashi should even find relief in not moving back to his childhood home, haunted with its emptiness and soaked with the blood of his father, scarred with the devastating slash of his suicide.
His head slumped down, fingers burying in his hair and the heels of his hand pressing into his eyes.
So why did it feel as if his heart was being carved out of his chest?
Perhaps it was because it hadn't been a simple 'no'. His idiotic gesture had scared Sakura enough that she had run away. Kakashi had never actually seen her run away from anything, not on the field and not in the troubles life threw her way.
He wasn't Minato-sensei, he would never even reach the hem of the man that he had been, shinobi, husband and father. He wasn't his father, who, for all his great desolating fault, had raised him alone and loved him with overflowing fullness, flooding the large and silent manor with his care, his love for Kakashi's mother always shining in everything he did even in her death.
It was inevitable, he shouldn't have let himself hope that maybe this time he would be different.
They were a week into this thing and Kakashi had already shattered it in his hands.
Her head leaned against the door of her apartment as Sakura tried to drag her courage up from where it was hiding in a fissure of her chest. Sleeping in her office one night and burying herself in her work had helped pacify some of the turmoil clashing through all of her, but there was still a great unknown on the other side, one that she could feel like lightning against her skin.
He hadn't vanished from her apartment and that was already a good enough sign that she hadn't punched a crater between the two of them.
This was Kakashi. There was no need for this much fear, whatever was waiting for her inside, Sakura would face it and she would face it with him, not against him.
She pushed her key in and breathed a deep calming breath before twisting it. The door clicked open, with enough sound that she knew Kakashi would hear it. Immediately the delicious smell of grilled fish waved towards her alongside the sound of clanking kitchen utensils.
It was entirely too unbalancing to arrive at her own home, where she had lived alone for the past eight years, and be welcomed with the warm scent of dinner. It yanked her back to a time when she had lived still with her parents, coming from team trainings to a family, when home was something shared and not a place to be alone.
The nostalgia ravaged through Sakura, every piece of her having grown dangerous and painfully sensitive to every little ripple around her, since that day on Tsunade's office that sealed them to this thing. Sakura was unprepared in face of all the turmoil, unfamiliar to this sharpness of feeling, as during her lost teenage years. At least, it hadn't come with the tears.
Her feet wavered as her eyes were pulled to the corridor that led to her bedroom, but she already knew what path to take, even if the weaker part of her was dreading the confrontation, dreading the questions Kakashi would make. She had prepared her own words, rehearsed for every possible question her own mind could come up with, an uncompromising reason for why she had abandoned him there, in his childhood home that he had fixed for them.
It was that them that terrified her. Even if it wasn't real, even if it was all pretend. A lie.
Kakashi didn't turn back from the stove as she hovered by the door of the kitchen, his attention on the vegetables he was flicking around the pan.
Maybe it wasn't too late to swirl around and flee to Suna, or farther even, to Iron Country, and not deal with any of this. As if hearing her cowardly thoughts, Kakashi chose that moment to look over his shoulder and smile at her, maskless.
"Welcome home." He said simply before turning back to his work, turning off the stove and opening the grill on their oven. "I'm almost finished here."
It was as an uncanny mirage where she had just returned from work and they were already a perfect couple, a perfect family, a perfect marriage.
Sakura stayed frozen by the threshold, completely baffled and unprepared for this abnormal and too casual behaviour.
As he took the fish out, two servings worth of food, her eyes looked up to him, searching for what exactly shook behind the façade. Did he know she would return that evening? Or had he been waiting, hoping she would come back and prepared dinner for her too in case she did? Would he confront her during dinner? After? Was he just going to pretend nothing had happened?
There was nothing. Why was Kakashi always so normal when she was freaking out on the inside?
She hadn't considered this possibility. Perhaps she should have, this was Kakashi after all. He could do this entire marriage thing without once acknowledging it.
The corner of his lip upturned in the beginnings of a smirk. "I know I'm pretty, but it's a little rude to gawk, Sakura."
She tore her gaze from his bare profile to her hands, the beginnings of an embarrassed blush already burning down her chest. "Are we just going to have dinner?"
"Aren't you hungry?"
After a full day at the hospital and a surgery to mend a shinobi's shattered radius, Sakura was beyond starving, but that was beside the point at the moment. She had wished there would be no confrontation but the avoidance on Kakashi's part only rattled deeper into her nerves. A misplaced unspoken piece, no matter how well hidden and ignored, was still misplaced.
They ate dinner and cleaned the kitchen as if it was any other evening when Kakashi had visited her. They lingered in the living room, Icha Icha in his hand and a medical textbook in her lap, and they read together as any other day when they hang out in her apartment simply to hang out.
Everything the same until the moment he rose from the sofa and wished her goodnight, moving towards the bedroom.
That single change of direction on the corridor sprang as a kunai through the comfortable familiarity and shattered everything like glass around her, baring the unnamed displaced thing between them.
Before Kakashi could disappear, Sakura mustered all of her courage and called out, "So we're pretending nothing happened?"
He stilled between steps, for too long seconds remaining there, as if deciding to run or fight back. Kakashi finally decided to turn around to face her, his expression the smooth surface of a porcelain mask. "Do you want to?"
Sakura shifted slightly in her seat, fingers taking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Maybe. You?"
"We're okay?" His words fell between a question and an affirmation, letting her know that, despite the unmoved and nonchalant domestic role he had enacted all evening, Kakashi was as uncertain about where they stood now as she was.
She nodded with a small smile, between relief and an attempt at comforting him back. "We're okay."
Kakashi smiled back. It was all they needed.
Some of her routines were disrupted as Sakura had to shape her home life around the other person that now also belonged in it. It wasn't so bad, Kakashi wasn't home very often and when he was he had the ability of melting into the background, unlike two blondes whose presence smothered any room. Except, of course, for the times he was especially bored and amused himself with nagging her while she worked.
His presence wasn't a mental burden on her, it even seemed to comfort her, to complement some of the empty space in her apartment. Sakura could only hope that her presence was the same for him. Kakashi was like an independent cat that sometimes sneaked into the room to grace her with his presence and nestle into a nook of the armchair by the window.
He had never been more offended than when she voiced exactly that.
That armchair was her favourite spot in the living room. Sakura had let him take it without a word, knowing it was difficult enough for him when he had to learn how to make her apartment feel his own.
Living with Kakashi meant also living with a pack of dogs. It was more of a perk than a downside even if they had forced Sakura to put a quilt over her sofa, trying to reign in the endless amount of hair they shed, and to have that horrendous shuriken duvet tainting the floor of her living room, or to spend a large amount of her mission pay on sausages because her heart couldn't resist their puppy eyes.
Still, there was nothing quite like snuggling into a warm fuzzy pillow, her hands soothing down their soft hair, or their sparkly joy and flapping tails at when Sakura arrived home, making her feel needed, wanted. The pack seemed to be there more often than their contractor was even when they had their own home realm.
Pakkun had very nicely thanked her for finally becoming Kakashi's mate, which, although unnerving when coming from a pug's mouth, was also heart-warming. Kakashi had spurted in mortification, trying to ease the embarrassing weight of the word 'mate', and shooting a deadly glare at Pakkun, who responded with a satisfied innocent gaze of his own.
Sakura had saved the compliment and welcoming words in a trembling heart, offering pecks and pets to all his ninken, a lump in her throat at their trusting belief that she was good enough for the person they loved most in the world.
It was also nice to share dinner with someone, no longer sitting on her sofa with the television turned on into some news channel or home renovations. The evenings Kakashi was in Konoha, they cooked together or Sakura arrived with dinner ready for her, and they sat at her dining table to eat while he was kind enough to let her talk his ears off, the same as in their past missions.
The same except for one monumental detail.
Kakashi now lowered his mask without a care and he took his time healthily chewing each bite. Sakura didn't even try to hide the gawking, her chin falling to her palm as she admired the enticing movements of his mouth while he spoke, drank or chewed, that endearing beauty spot at the edge of his lips. She wasn't sure when the novelty would wear off, but she would enjoy every moment until it did.
Her appreciation only fed into Kakashi's ego so he was never bothered by it.
Still, even through the surprising easiness of their daily life, Sakura relished the days when Kakashi was out on a mission, where she could walk around naked while her skin absorbed the moisturiser, sing and dance without care for others' eyes on her, or read in the spot he had stolen from her.
Most of all she could enjoy the contents of the box hidden under her bed. If Kakashi had found it when snooping around, he thankfully hadn't teased her for it. That would be entirely too mortifying and there were still some things she wanted to keep to herself.
Perhaps he had had the sensibility of realising that was a line not to cross in the first moments of this entire thing, already at the constant verge of collapse by its very own nature.
When he was in the village, she kept her alone time to the shower, knowing his freaky nose would catch any lingering scent on their bed.
That nose was the thing that annoyed her the most about living with him.
Still Kakashi and Sakura settled into a routine, slotting themselves together as they had learned to do when fighting.
They were more like two roommates that slept in the same bed. Tying the circumstances of this thing with that uncompromising bow helped appease the turns in her head, especially when Sakura lingered too much on where one single month had landed them when it came to their sleeping positions.
It started with the first contact between their legs, entirely too burning and piercingly felt, and still too innocent and insignificant that neither of them thought it would be sensible to break it, because breaking it would be giving it too much weight.
Everything had been very gradual. A hand on his arm, an arm curled around her stomach, an arm thrown over his chest or back, then his hand on her hip, her leg over his body, and his fingers pressing down on her thigh, until one morning Sakura's eyes opened to the realisation that she was spooning with Kakashi, his front perfectly melted into her back.
They never acknowledged it. What happened when they were unconscious belonged to a realm completely separate from their worldly existence.
Kakashi was also extremely careful and only one time had she felt him poking her. Sakura could have pretended it wasn't there, nicely pressed into her ass, except every fibre of her body had been aware of it and her hormones seemed to enjoy it a little too much.
It had happened in the early moments of the day, only two measly hours of sleep in her after arriving home from an exhausting mission, with only the remaining energy to slip into bed and sink into the mattress.
Without opening her eyes, Sakura could barely muster the strength to reach behind her and pinch his thigh.
It had had the opposite effect. Kakashi had rasped a grunt against her ear, arm dragging her impossibly closer into him, hips pressing into her. Her teeth had clamped down on her lip at the burning feel of him, the warmth of his breath and of his body moulded around her back driving a shiver down her spine and sparking a dull ache between her legs.
Now that was the last thing that Sakura could ever allow to happen to her.
"You're poking me."
Kakashi had sprung away from her and off the bed, the thuds of his fall jarring her poor tired head. If Sakura had known he would have that overblown reaction to his morning wood, she would have bothered her aching muscles instead and simply slipped away from his body.
She had peeked over her shoulder to see his mortified expression in puffy eyes from sleep. "You don't need to be embarrassed, it's—" Kakashi rudely interrupted her with a death-like groan, hiding his face in his hands. "It's a perfectly natural and healthy function of your body. I just didn't want—"
"Please shut up, Sakura."
"So you can make a perfectly minor situation..."
Kakashi had already left the room and closed himself off in the bathroom, the door hitting too hard against the frame, acting like the mature and experienced almost forty-year-old man that he was.
"…spiral out of control?"
Sakura had shrugged and settled back into her pillow with a sigh. She had tried, now he could suffer from his self-induced giants all he wanted and she could simply go back to sleep.
It had taken Kakashi three days to look her in the eyes for longer than half a second and without blushing. Somehow, in all her madness since this thing started, Sakura found the teenage-with-a-crush behaviour endearing.
Maybe because it was a side of Kakashi she was first learning about.
There had been a few mortifying moments between them before, inevitable when it came to being regular teammates, as when he had first walked in on her changing, naked and bent over to put on her panties.
Then he had frozen with wide eyes until she screamed at him to leave, later grumbling an apology and deciding to ignore her the entire journey back to the village and an entire week in Konoha until he could pretend nothing had ever happened. His cool nonchalant front left untouched through the whole ordeal.
Now he had nowhere to hide, since he at least wasn't desperate enough to flee a few days from home and come back when his humiliation had washed off.
Maybe it was endearing because she was slightly sadistic and her ego enjoyed that she could make a man like the Hatake Kakashi tremble with a look, a dusting of pink above the mask.
Whatever it was, she relished in it every chance Sakura could.
Sakura took a step back from the bookshelf to admire the pristine white-painted wood. Her fingertip swiped over its surface, not finding any residue of dust tainting it. Finally she could breathe easily without the prickles from poorly cleaned furniture hammering the back of her mind. Too many times Sakura had caught Kakashi doing the worst possible job of cleaning their home, even when they had decided he would take the least demanding or annoying chores.
With a sigh and a smile, she turned to him as he read his Icha Icha by the window, a perfectly content expression in his eyes.
That was her spot, her hobby, her relaxing time, while she did his job. The smile turned into a sneer.
With a flick of her wrist, Sakura threw the duster at him like a kunai, deadly enough to gouge out one of his eyes. He didn't move his gaze from the book as his hand caught the impromptu weapon.
Kakashi lifted his head to give her an eye-crinkled smile. "Finished?"
"You're making me do your chores!" Sakura hissed out.
"You offered."
"I didn't offer! You forced me to do it!"
"I remember you saying 'give me that' while taking the duster out of my hand and proceeding to do it yourself."
"You were missing every spot! You—!"
Her eyes widened with the realisation before zeroing on him with deadly sharpness. Sakura stamped towards him, waves of chakra crackling through the air around her. She towered over him, her anger only widening her frame, and was pleased to see the slight tremor to his hands as they held his damned book.
"You did it on purpose because you knew I'd be forced to do it for you! You manipulating asshole!"
Kakashi chose to keep himself silent while looking up at her with a perfectly innocent expression. Her hand snapped out to catch the offending book from his hands, maybe rip it to threads or burn it along with him, but he was faster. She swerved for the collar of his shirt instead.
"Now, Sakura," Kakashi said in an attempt to pacify her, which only made her anger burn brighter.
She dragged him away from the armchair by the collar until they were standing in front of the bookshelf. "Clean." She ordered, shoving the duster into his hand.
"Sakura, I don't see how—"
"Clean." Her tone was the sharp edge of a blade.
Kakashi turned his head to face the bookshelf, knowing nothing good could ever come out of trying to reason with her in one of these moods. His hand lifted to pass the duster over the ledge, wiggling it around with thoughtless flicks of his wrist, scattering the absent dust into the air, where it would only irritate their noses and delay the moment when it would settle on the furniture again.
His complete incompetence was once again too much to bear and Sakura's hand snapped to his, ending his movements.
"Not like that, just— I have no idea why they ever called you Copy-ninja." Her fingers slithered through his and Sakura had to stop herself before unconsciously taking the duster from him once again.
"Here." She whispered through clenched teeth that helped her hold onto her control for a little longer. Her hand rested above his and showed him how to grab the particles of dust. "Now do it yourself."
Kakashi actually tried this time, which always resulted in a perfectly accomplished job, instead of slacking off on purpose to get her to do his task. Sakura sat down on the arm of their sofa behind him, her own book in her hand, eyes lifting up to him to oversee his work. Once Kakashi had finished the last shelf, kneeling down to reach it, she closed the book with a smack and stood up.
"See it's not that difficult, is it?"
Kakashi muttered something under his breath that she was kind enough to ignore.
"Next it's the floor."
"Yes, Kaa-san." His tone seeped with all the sassiness of a sulking teenager that he could put into it.
Her fingers sank into the thick strands of his hair, tightened into a fist. Sakura tugged his hair, curving his neck back so she could meet his gaze, happy to hear a small gasp slip out of Kakashi's masked lips. "If you didn't act like a child, maybe I'd treat you like a man."
His dark eyes shined with a dangerous glint. "You're enjoying this too much, Sakura."
He was trying to embarrass her with the insinuation but she wasn't going to back down and let him take the win. Besides, she had no trouble admitting that she took a particular kind of pleasure from bossing Kakashi around, something that he was all too familiar with after years of partnering on missions. It was only natural after he had made her suffer under his rule as a sensei and later a taichou.
Sakura leaned down into him, face nearing his. "I put you on your knees, didn't I, Kakashi-sensei?" The honorific rolled off her tongue like a purr.
Kakashi went still under her, his eyes unreadable, before puffing out. "Maa, you ruined it." He stood up and her fingers slipped away from his hair. "And I was even thinking of wearing a maid outfit just for you, Sakura."
"If it makes you clean better, don't let me be the one to stop you."
"I always knew you were a secret pervert. I just didn't know marriage would be the thing to finally pull you out the closet."
The corner of her lip stretched into a smirk as she took a step closer to him, head falling back so her eyes were in line with his. "I did." Her voice sharpened. "Now floor."
To his credit, Kakashi's cleaning abilities increased exponentially over the next weeks, even if he now chose to do his chores away from her watchful eyes, his excuse being that he didn't want to fulfil her perverted fantasies. Sakura knew his pride just couldn't bear someone's critical gaze following his every move.
The morning sun came to rest in a gentle yellow light over the cool tones of her living room. Sakura snuggled into the arm of her sofa, mind lulled with the rising murmur of a waking Konoha, a medical book opened in her lap, Bisuke's warm flank tucked to her side and a steaming cup of tea in her hand.
These mornings when she didn't need to rush while ignoring the offensive and indolent rhythm of her roommate were the best ones. Sakura could share in his relaxed routine and enjoy the first hour of the day without the constant worry of being late and trying to force Kakashi not to be late to his own appointments.
Her sigh of contentment caught in her throat, her cup halfway to her lips, as she spied the build-up of dust on top of the books on her lower shelves. Her eyes closed and she breathed in the smell of tea and let the hot liquid meet her lips. She opened them to the lines on the page and started to read once again.
Halfway through the page Sakura realised her eyes had been tracing the words but her mind hadn't taken in any of the meaning. Even if she had forced herself not to look back at it, her head was buzzing with the prickles waving off the bottom shelves, that layer of dust overflowing her awareness.
She shifted on her seat, turning her back to it, sacrificing away the warmth of the sun on her face as long as she couldn't see the bookcase.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Except Sakura couldn't take it out of her fucking mind and it was driving her insane.
Her gaze inevitably fell onto it again. It would take her five minutes to fix it. Maybe she could do it while Kakashi went to the bathroom so he wouldn't notice. She valued that he was actually trying, following her tips even if always after long suffering sighs, and didn't want him to feel as if she didn't appreciate him or was too overbearing.
They were at the beginning of this thing, it wouldn't be good for anyone if she came all out with her need for perfectionism. Sakura heard enough comments under people's breaths and circling around the corridors of the hospital about her overbearing attitude and pedantic expectations for the medics and nurses under her.
It was just dust, not people's lives, not a poorly healed scar a patient would be marked with for the rest of their lives and a hurried post-mission check-up that ended up leaving a shinobi with an infected cut.
Kakashi had already caught glimpses of her meticulous side after more than a decade on the same team, but now that they lived together he was the one taking on the full blunt of it, her home the place where she could unleash it freely and without judgement. Her home was the only place in the world where she could be certain everything was where it belonged.
After the war, Sakura had suggested that Ino to move out of her parents' home and in with her. The loneliness of returning from work, or worse Team Kakashi's boisterous missions, to an empty cold apartment had chipped at her heart. Ino had said they would kill each other by the end of one week and that she enjoyed being able to live in a home and not something akin to a museum where nothing could be an inch out of order or place. When they had dated, Kiba had refused to stay the nights at her apartment, saying she became a freak in it and not the good kind of freak.
Kakashi was infinitely more patient than Ino and Kiba – how they had even lasted eight months together was the deepest mystery in the universe, which Sakura attributed to his horniness and her misery after the Fourth War.
Kakashi and she were now almost on the sixth week of this thing and she had yet to find true heavy signs of intolerance on his face. There were the suffering sighs but he had always dispersed those into the air at the smallest things, meant as something playful and not to take too seriously.
Now, as her eyes roamed through him, there was only contentment swimming in his expression as he seeped his tea, nestled in his armchair nook. And once he felt her gaze on him, he looked up to gift her a lopsided smile.
Yet there was always a poking cold finger in her chest that told her these moments were fleeting, a small band-aid in a growing wound, pestering at him with each new day they lived together. That in truth, every time he looked up at her, his mind whispered 'annoying'.
Everything was easier to accept than that, the word the one that would always cut her the deepest. It was easier to accept that he was bored by her, easier still that he hated her, anything that wasn't annoyance.
Sakura took her gaze away from him and it inevitably fell back to the bookcase, beckoned on by the sight of those misplaced flecks of dust.
"What did I do wrong this time?" Kakashi grumbled as he munched on a piece of toast.
Her startled eyes ripped away from the shelf and she gave him a tight smile. "Nothing, you did fine."
"Fine, not great?"
"Is cleaning the thing to finally humble always-perfect-shinobi-san?"
His eyes narrowed dangerously at her and Sakura tried not to smile at the leverage he had just offered her on a silver platter.
Kakashi had always had weird bouts of perfectionism that seemed to spurt up for no apparent reason, like how needed to wake up (and everyone else) at six o'clock sharp during missions, or how he couldn't bear frayed handles on their weapons, or every activity he started and that actually managed to catch his interest. Cleaning seemed to have finally fallen inside that privileged little box.
"The books are still a little dusty, but it's okay. I don't want to ask too much of you, Kakashi." Her tone was genuinely kind, because above the cunning, there was also truth to her words. "I know you're trying and that's all that matters."
Kakashi took his eyes away from her and settled them on the bookcase, a light crease between his eyebrows. Sakura downed her tea and left for her office, she couldn't find an ounce of productivity in that house.
In the evening, she arrived to a spotless apartment. She let herself fall on the sofa with a satisfied sigh and melted into its cushions as she hadn't been able to do in the morning, a placid smile on her lips.
Everything was where it belonged and how it belonged.
Well, there was an empty spot on a particular armchair where an annoying man was missing.
Sakura let herself enjoy the comforting feel of home after a long day at the hospital before pulling herself up to buy some groceries. Kakashi had said he would spend the day out with Guy but come home in time for dinner.
She was waiting for the rice to cook and checking on the grilled saury when Kakashi arrived.
"I'm homhm!" His greeting from the door drawled into a delighted hum at the smell and Sakura's mouth curled into a wide smile. Kakashi leaned over her head to see what she was cooking. "It smells amazing."
"You not so much." She did love his scent after a workout but she wouldn't tell him that.
Naruto's was like a wet fox, Kiba a wet dog, Shino of insect pheromones, and Sai's a little too sharp for her when Ino spent her days swooning over it.
Sasuke smelled like blood and burnt flesh.
Kakashi's was clearly sweaty and musky and male, but tantalising.
The first time she had noticed was on a mission together a year ago.
They had tumbled together down a crumbling mountainside and somehow reached the end of it alive. Sakura had drawn in a long breath after holding it in anticipation, her nose pressed to his collarbone, Kakashi's hand still cradling her head to him. All of her awareness zoned into his smell, sharp with the sweat of a battle and weirdly reassuring. Addictive.
'Maa. We almost died.'
She had breathed in once more, unmoving in the comfortable and wonderfully scented cocoon of his arms. No other man had ever smelled this good to her.
'Sakura?' Kakashi had called with worry thick in his voice, trying to pull her back to see her eyes.
Her cheeks had burned with a blush and she smiled. 'Just getting my bearings. Are you injured?'
Her mind had clung itself to his scent as a lifeline after the trauma of almost dying. There had been no other reasonable explanation for her to take such deep relish in sniffing her team captain and former sensei.
Later her theory was refuted, when on a team training in the safety of their village walls, Sakura had had her arm wrapped around his throat, her nose too close to his neck damp with sweat, his scent as delicious as on that mission.
She had already learned to accept that she liked how Kakashi smelled, just as she learned to accept that she liked his hands, with long skilled fingers and pronounced knuckles and veins, or the sound of his laugh, deep and unguarded.
And now she was also learning to accept how very endearing he was while enjoying one of his favourite meals with childish delight. Sakura even found herself with a small content smile and warm chest, that seemed to seep from a spot even deeper than the one reserved for her morning coffee looking out the window into a waking Konoha.
"Sakura." He called once he dropped his chopsticks and leaned his chin on his interlaced fingers. "I forgive you for being a manipulating asshole."
It was his personal way of thanking her for dinner and so Sakura only snorted at him. Of course the former Copy-ninja would use her own words against her.
"The difference between us, wife, is that I knew I was being manipulated and decided to do it all the same with full awareness of it."
There was his ego, or maybe it was him mocking his ego. Sakura could never be certain when he was serious or joking, even without the mask.
She settled for a condescending, "Mhm, of course, husband."
With peace made over the chore situation, their dinner was as pleasant as it always was, with Sakura talking about her day, Kakashi putting in perfectly placed comments that made her laugh and his ninken giving them puppy eyes in search for scraps of food.
She handed Kakashi the last dishes for him to wash, as she had been the one to cook. His contentment at a good meal still brightening his eyes but it didn't seem enough for her.
Sakura was proud but not as proud as he was. Usually her pride was fine with conceding for the ones she cared about.
Her hand rested on his shoulder and she used it as leverage to rise to the tip of her toes and press her lips to his cheek. Sakura lingered, maybe a little too long for an innocent 'thank you' kiss. It was the first time she kissed Kakashi without the rough fabric between them, and it left her with a spike of enticement at the smooth touch of his skin under her lips, warm and freshly shaven.
She pulled back. "Thank you for cleaning how I like it, Kakashi."
Kakashi's face was painted red, his bashful eyes never lifting from how he scrapped the plates clean. "You're welcome."
Sakura was also learning to accept how much she loved shy blushing Kakashi.
He started demanding kisses on the cheek every time he finished his chores like a puppy waiting for treats after doing a trick. He still wasn't satisfied with the analogy even if he accepted it was better than the cat one. And he never stopped blushing from them.
Her eyes closed as his arms tightened impossibly more around her, trying to soak in all the warmth and security he carried in him. Even when there wasn't a conscious weight over her shoulders, Naruto's hugs always helped relieve some of the burden from her life.
Sakura pulled back with a smile and pushed him out of her apartment while he stumbled slightly on his feet. "Now go home, Naruto. And say hi to Hinata for me."
"Bye Sensei!" Naruto managed to let out before she closed the door on him.
Right…
Sakura turned around to see Kakashi lounging on the sofa. It wasn't the first time he stayed later than the boys, it wasn't even the first time he stayed the night, but it was the first time he stayed because he lived there. She had been so completely immersed in the old routine of their monthly team dinners, Sakura forgot things were different now.
Kakashi watched her walk to the living room with a strange intensity, his eyes glazed, languid, from the alcohol, mask already looped around his neck and cheeks pink. His arm stretched over the back of the sofa, a bottle of beer hanging off his hand.
It seemed she was the only one that had kept herself sober, even Sai had gained a slur to his words by the end.
Sakura flopped beside him, taking his beer and bringing it to her lips for a few sips. His eyes flickered down to them as she did, before lifting to her gaze once more and apparently content with simply watching her.
"What?" She asked, placing the beer back in his loose fingers.
"Nothing." Kakashi answered, his head turning away from her, to face the window, an early autumn breeze fluttering through the leaves outside.
Was he also trying to wrap his mind around how weird this thing was?
They were married for fuck's sake. They were fucking married.
It was in quiet moments as this when everything crashed harder into her. No matter how many cursed words Sakura fit into the sentence it didn't help her mind encompass the enormity and strangeness of it.
They could just keep playing pretend, with one foot in and the other foot out. They could keep being two roommates that slept in the same bed.
The lamp on the side table cast a warm glow over his pale skin as Sakura tried to peel all the layers of him with her eyes, tried to see underneath the underneath.
What did Kakashi want out of this?
Did he want to fulfil his duty to Konoha? To restore his clan? Keep his guilty consciousness subdued? Make her happy? Make himself happy? Try to learn how to love her? Be loved by her?
Marriage had never seemed to hold any meaning to him before, not like the earth-shattering thing it had been to Sakura, and yet he had fixed his childhood home for them. Sakura had tried to keep it away from her thoughts because every time she remembered the waver of insecurity in his voice, her own heart trembled and her lungs tightened with dread.
Kakashi could have done it because he didn't know what his place and purpose in this thing was and, yielding to a perfectionist streak, had decided to give everything to make sure he covered every possible blank on his side.
But then… there was that small vase of wild flowers that talked of something more than obligation, more than an order to obey.
The question was stuck to her throat and his profile didn't answer with anything. He also didn't seem bothered with her scrutiny, sipping his beer and looking out the window, fingers strumming the back of the sofa.
Kakashi lounged as he had always lounged in her apartment, as if he belonged there. And maybe he would, maybe he already did…
'What do you want out of this?' It would be so simple to spell it out into the unnamed space between them.
Why couldn't she just ask? Was she scared he would answer? And what answer scared her the most?
Kakashi had always been an enigma, had always been layers upon layers of masks and walls, but this need to know was something else. It was starting to consume her, like a medical question none of the textbooks and archived cases seemed to answer.
Sakura couldn't stop thinking about it.
Sakura couldn't stop thinking about him.
So… the chapters are getting longer each time. I think I prefer writing like this, but can understand if it gets too tiring for people actually reading. Let me know what you like best, lovely readers, shorter or longer chapters, and I'll try to work with that!
As always, thank you for reading :)