Chapter Six
Wounds
They were six weeks into their marriage and Kakashi already had strange men sneaking in to see Sakura.
He twirled the kunai around his index finger, slithering along the shadow of the corridor for their living room. Sakura hadn't woken up at the shuffling that should be the shame of any shinobi and, while that concerned him, it also made things much more entertaining for Kakashi.
He leaned against the living room wall, kunai still spinning in his hand, and tried to keep his laughs to himself at the man grumbling and tugging at his flak jacket, which was wedged in the window frame, looking almost too drunk to keep himself standing. Kakashi would never have guessed he was staring at a former ANBU taichou.
"What are you doing sneaking into my wife's house in the middle of the night?"
"Senpai!" Tenzou yelped, the jump from his startle so strong that his jacket ripped and freed him to fall on his side, a grunt of pain tearing through his throat as he curled into himself.
"It's not what you think, I promise. Yes, I came for Sakura, but because I need her—"
Kakashi only raised a single eyebrow and Tenzou's pale face was suddenly overcome with a fierce red.
"Not like that, obviously I'd never do that to you, or her—I… she always helps me." Deciding it was best to let his words die, Tenzou twisted his torso with a wince to show a blood soaked vest.
"Ah." Kakashi let out as if he hadn't smelled the blood before or seen the red stains on the sill.
At least Kakashi wasn't the one to blame for the bloody mess this time and the one that would fall under Sakura's rage. He had sneaked into her apartment with a bleeding wound enough times to know what the consequences of a few drops on her wood floor were.
With his new insight into how disconcerting a misarranged piece in the apartment was for her, he realised Sakura had been patient. But even before, Kakashi had always been careful with either cleaning it himself or making some poor soul do it for him.
He wasn't selfish and self-centred enough, as some people made it seem, not to know the enormous favour it was for Sakura to bother herself in the middle of the night with healing him. He usually only came when he knew he would not be able to sleep it off or endure it until she inevitably found him out and force-healed him.
The one time he had gone straight home with a more serious wound was while she had started dating Raidou and Kakashi had been maybe slightly afraid of interrupting something. It was when the grogginess had started lapping at the edge of his eyes and the pain washing away from his stomach that Kakashi realised he had made a minor misjudgement.
Someone might even have called it the most moronic thing he ever did, someone like Sakura, or Tsunade, or Tenzou, or Guy, even Genma and Naruto. And maybe it had been, Kakashi never did get the blood stain out of his mattress, not that it mattered anymore, it was now gaining dust in his empty apartment.
He had dragged himself from his bed, somehow slipped out his window and stumbled through Konoha's empty streets for the hospital, passing out just a block away from it.
Even the time Kakashi had imprinted his bloody palm into her sofa or thrown up on her rug that she had informed him, between violent threats, cost the same as five S-ranks – which he very much doubted – would never compare to the rage erupting through her on his hospital room, Kakashi almost fresh out of unconsciousness.
The rage had washed out into sadness, and then rage again, only to an even more miserable sadness, and Sakura had made him promise that he would never be that big of an idiot again, that her window was always open for him.
The light of the bathroom spread through the corridor, at its door stood Sakura with hair tied back and a medic kit in her hands.
"Kakashi, help him up."
He sighed long and painfully, as if Sakura had just demanded that he move a mountain, and walked over to Tenzou, who had resigned himself to being a log on the floor. How particularly fitting.
He grunted into Kakashi's ear as he guided his arm around his shoulder, mindful of the impossible task of not getting blood in his pyjamas.
"Why are you always there in my most humiliating moments?" Tenzou grumbled, head slumped down as they took steady steps for the bathroom.
"Now, don't be so dramatic, Tenzou, I'm sure there are a lot more humiliating moments happening behind closed doors that I'm not privy to." Kakashi's tone flowed with just the right insinuation, knowing his kohai would certainly catch exactly what he was teasing him about.
"Not even when I'm bleeding to death are you kind to me, Senpai…"
He wasn't even close to such a critical stage, his wounds might be painful ones, a kunai still sticking out of his shoulder blade, but it wasn't life threatening. A dying Tenzou was something forever imprinted to Kakashi's eyelids and he would recognise it in an instant.
"It's only fair. Poor Yugao will probably never look at a tree branch again without reliving the most traumatic experience of her life."
"What are you even mumbling about? Just hurry up, Kakashi." Sakura called from the bathroom between the sounds of clattering utensils, the bite of impatience prickling through her tone.
That was enough to make him obey her. He put Tenzou down on the toilet seat and Sakura gestured with a finger to turn him around, so he would be straddling it instead.
"Just Tenzou's inability to differentiate between literal and metaphorical language. Wood doesn't always mean wood."
"Do you two ever stop flirting?" Sakura asked, the eye-roll clear in her voice, as she began slicing the back of his shirt.
Her words spurred a coughing fit through Tenzou, ears burning red and face hiding in the crook of his arm, which turned into a fit of pained groans.
"Stay still." Sakura's voice was gentle even when she slapped the back of his head.
"I wouldn't be a very good senpai if I allowed my little kohai to go out into the world with no training, scaring off women with his poor communication skills."
"Your own senpai seems to have failed you then."
Tenzou found her comeback incredibly entertaining, a small chuckle rocking his shoulders even through the pain. Kakashi was faster than Sakura, flicking his ear with his finger. "Stay still."
He retreated to give her space, leaning against the doorframe of the small bathroom, arms crossed. She and Tenzou exchanged pleasant talk, he was thanking Sakura for the dates he was having with a nurse from radiology, his words sometimes leaving through clenched teeth. Perhaps she had been the one to orchestrate the whole thing.
Kakashi remembered how as a genin he was her favourite piece in her games of match-making. First there had been Ayame from Ichiraku, several of their female clients, only the pretty ones because she had seemed to believe he was a man with no interest in anything other than looks, then any woman that he happened to strike up a conversation with. When all that failed she even tried a man, a dark-haired boy that looked too much like Sasuke and was just at the edge of being underage.
Her games had ranged from describing to him future scenarios with the convoluted sappiness of an entire soap-opera while he hummed along, eyes on Icha Icha, to actual plans with several steps that entailed forcing Naruto and Sasuke to work behind the scenes. Kakashi had allowed them, feigning obliviousness, but only because it had been good teamwork and definitely not because it was fun being used as a puppet in a love play against pretty women.
Sakura had always pouted when they failed, putting the fault solely on him, saying he was too lame or too weird, the porn book a better repellent than Naruto's rancid socks. She always finished her rants detailing every off-putting thing about him with a shake of her head and soft, almost affectionate, 'Silly sensei'.
But she had never given up hope on him when Kakashi had done it years ago, or he liked to believe that had been it. Most likely she had simply relished in orchestrating real-life enactments of scenes from books and movies. Maybe a part of her had lived vicariously through it, the women beautiful, confident and graceful, a real deceptive picture of the ideal that she dreamed of being, and that stray boy a stand-in for whom she dreamed of being with.
The game dissipated with the years, toned down into something less intricate and idealistic, a few pointed eyebrows or nudged elbows against his arm at some of the women that leaned a little too close to Kakashi or put their hands on his arm, or whose smiles and words had a flirty shine to them.
He never gave her or them anything back, at least not when Sakura was with him, and she always sighed a 'You're a bore.', or 'Come on, even I would go for that' (earning him a smack as he answered, 'Then I'm more than willing to participate'), 'How haven't you burst at the seams?', and the realest one 'Aren't you lonely?', he always answered with a shrug and lifted his Icha Icha as if it explained everything.
Even one time they had left Tsunade's office after a mission report and she had let out with all the casualness of a comment about the weather, 'You two should fuck.', Kakashi had choked on his own saliva, taking too long to gather his bearings before yelping, 'She's old enough to be my grandma'. Sakura had shrugged, 'So? Shishou looks three decades younger, you look three decades older. It all balances out.' She had evaded the kick to her bottom with a twinkling laugh.
But that was all before this thing.
All that match-making work, all those rants on why he was a terrible match for anyone with an inch of common sense, all those dreams of a perfect love and man, and the Council had invaded their little play, shoving the two together instead. It would have been humorous if it wasn't too viciously cruel.
The longer he watched Sakura tending to Tenzou the more a prickle in his stomach grew. Something didn't feel quite right and on a mission it would be enough to set him on alert. The person straddling the toilet was clearly Tenzou, him knowing about his and Yugao's unfortunate experiment on an ANBU mission years ago was an irrefutable proof.
Was the problem Sakura? Her handling was less gentle than with Kakashi, but maybe that was because he liked to whine the entire time and she was generous enough to play along with it, even between admonishes and insults, like calling him a man-child. That was especially effective at shutting him up, and, no matter what she said, not sulking. He had never sulked once in his lifetime.
Suddenly both of their gazes settled on Kakashi, the constant murmur of their talk fell into silence. He only raised a single eyebrow back.
"Why are you acting like a controlling husband, Senpai?"
It was then that Kakashi noticed there was a frown carved into his face, but he didn't try to smooth it out. "I am a controlling husband."
Sakura's answer was to snort and turn her eyes back to the mending wound.
He really wasn't. But something felt wrong about this healing session, even if Kakashi had done it plenty of times before, and couldn't quite pinpoint what exactly was misplaced here.
It didn't take Sakura long to finish. Tenzou stood from the toilet seat and twirled his shoulder around to test it, before giving her a smile of gratitude.
"Thank you, Sakura. I'll send someone here tomorrow to clean up the mess."
"Not Shino's team, those kids like to snoop and they're not even skilled enough to know how to hide it."
"Take care." Tenzou patted his shoulder as he passed through the threshold. "Senpai."
Kakashi offered him a small grunt of acknowledgement, but his eyes were entirely on Sakura, watching her through the mirror as she cleaned her hands under a hot stream of water. Her ponytail was still tangled from a bed head, her skin a yellowed pale shade under the artificial lighting of the bathroom, lips without colour in them, but worse were her eyes. While she healed they had been sharp with focus, masking away the lingering puffiness of sleep, the lidded downturn of fatigue and the stark dark circles under them.
Suddenly Kakashi realised what had been bothering since the moment Tenzou decided to jerk him up from sleep, his arm perfectly slotted around Sakura's waist, her delicate fingers wrapped around his wrist.
"Sakura, how many people use your home as a private night clinic?"
"Not many. The boys, Rookie 9 and Guy's team, some of our friends…" There was a frown as she tried to recall someone she might have forgotten. Then she smiled up at him through the mirror. "And you, of course."
Kakashi had always thought he was the only one. Of course he wasn't, why hadn't he noticed it before? Maybe Sakura arranged it so they all thought they were the only ones barging into her sleep to have her heal them like spoiled children.
When the frown didn't lift from his face, Sakura's smile faltered.
"I didn't think about how this could affect you now that we're living together. I'm sorry you were woken up, Kakashi."
"You were also woken up."
Sakura shrugged and looked down at her hands. "It usually doesn't take longer than an hour. If it did it'd be a bad sign and I just send them to the hospital."
Kakashi already knew about it. He had suffered through it, even if he always managed to convince Sakura to treat him there and not force him into the nightmare that was the hospital. He felt like a complete fucking spoiled asshole.
"I thought I was the only one."
"Are you disappointed that you're not special?" Sakura teased, but when that didn't lighten his demeanour, she looked at him again to repeat, "I really am sorry I forgot to tell you about it, Kakashi. I know how you hate people barging into your privacy. I can try to think about a way—"
"That's not the problem, Sakura. The problem is you." Kakashi interrupted too forcefully, his tone involuntarily slipping into his taichou one.
"Excuse me?" She hissed back.
"Not like that." He corrected softly. "Don't you think it's too much? You need to sleep and rest like everyone and it's not like you no longer work at the hospital—"
Her eyes rolled at him. "You've been doing this for more than half a decade and now you worry."
And that was another giant problem, but Kakashi was more concerned with her. She closed the tap with too much force and moved past him for the bedroom, Kakashi following behind her.
"It's different when it's more than one person sporadically springing up on you."
Another shrug. "I don't mind."
Sakura fell onto her stomach on her side of the bed with a sigh, wiggling into the mattress, and he sat at the edge of it.
"And Tenzou was making an awful lot of noise and you didn't wake up—"
"For someone so worried about my sleep you sure feel like keeping me up now." Her tone was light, voice muffled by the pillow as she nuzzled it.
His eyes fell down from her pink cascading hair to follow the movement of her leg as she bent and raised it up to her torso. For some insane reason, that contortion was Sakura's favourite position to sleep in. It had given him too many aches, because not only did she kick him with her knee in her sleep, but because she slept in shorts, even in colder nights, saying she enjoyed the softness of the linen on her bare skin.
Kakashi also enjoyed the softness of her bare skin on the linen, a little too much, especially those long muscled legs, her ass perking up under the loose fabric, which sometimes rode so far up he could see the edge of her panties.
The sight now made him forget exactly why he was sitting down watching her lay there. Kakashi forced his eyes to rip away and up to her face.
"Don't you think you're overworking, Sakura?"
"No." The word had too much of a bite to it.
"You are."
Sakura twisted her neck to turn her face away from him. "Maybe I was wrong, maybe you are a controlling husband."
His hand came to rest on her ankle. "I'm not talking as your husband, Sakura, I'm talking as your friend."
Kakashi looked down at his fingers around her thin ankle. The gesture had come thoughtlessly to him, his hand moving on its own, and now the silk of her skin seemed to burn under his rough callouses. It was the shorts and that forsaken position that would be the death of him.
Sakura didn't seem bothered with his touch, not shaking it off, even as she grumbled. "Then as my friend shut up and let me sleep."
And she complained about him being stubborn.
His fingers tightened around her leg and this time Sakura stilled. He wasn't sure just why he hadn't pulled away yet.
"And as a friend I'll stop asking you to heal me in the middle of the night."
Sakura snorted again. "We'll see about that."
Kakashi could understand Sakura's mistrust over his decision. But she probably thought he came every time to escape the hospital and her rage in case he didn't, which was true. What was also true was that he smiled on the way to her apartment even through aching exhausted muscles and the shocks of pain that each step over the roof tiles sent through his body.
Most times it wasn't the least painful of options, but he couldn't resist her care over him as she mended his wounds, her watery soothing chakra flowing through his pathways, easing the aches. Above of all it was knowing that he could trust her when he was the most vulnerable and she would take care of him with her tender warm hands.
It was intimate, Sakura probably didn't realise how intimate it felt to him, she did it to every one of her patients, but Kakashi never let himself be that submissive while being that vulnerable. Even sleeping in the same bed as her, with her long bare legs and the curve of her body tucked to his, didn't feel as intimate.
It had also been nice when he pouted at her even if the wound wasn't serious, and she let him sleep on her couch knowing she was just on the other side of the wall or sitting a sliver away, working at the dining table.
Now the enjoyment had been stolen out of it from knowing it came with the price of Sakura's much needed rest.
Kakashi was only a burden to her.
"Now, if you're not getting in bed, at least tuck me in."
His hand finally freed her ankle with a brush of his fingers over her soft skin, dragging a small shudder from the muscles of her leg.
Kakashi reached for the duvet at the end of the bed and let it spread across Sakura's body before slipping into his side. Once there, he leaned over her to tug the fluffy fabric up to her chin and pat it down around her shoulders, covering her from any possible draft, just as Sakura liked it.
The corner of her lips turned in a smile, pulling a mirroring one from him. The lines of her face smoothed with a sigh, almost like a purr, as Sakura melted into the comfort of her little cocoon.
"Best perk of marriage." She mumbled into her pillow.
In an instant she was asleep, which, even if incredibly endearing, wasn't a particularly good sign.
"Glad to be of use, wife." Kakashi teased, even if Sakura wouldn't hear it.
His smile never wavered, his fingers selfishly brushing away the strands of pink hair to uncover her face, the cool light of the moon spilling through the blinds painting it a soft lavender.
It ached how beautiful Sakura was. So many times he had to tear his eyes away from her and the delight he took in simply watching her walk, work, clean, be around the apartment. It wasn't fading after more than a month of seeing her every day when he was in Konoha. And with each new day, Kakashi was more certain that he would never tire of it.
His lips were an inch from her temple when Kakashi realised, with wide eyes and a stilled heart, that he had leaned down to kiss her there.
What the fuck.
He pulled back, careful not to jostle the mattress and wake her, and turned his back to Sakura, laying on the farthest edge of the bed.
What was happening to him tonight? Why couldn't he control any of his urges?
It was just a small kiss on the temple but they weren't there yet. Besides, Kakashi only wished his biggest problem were his inability to not innocently kiss Sakura. She was an affectionate person, kisses weren't the earth-shattering gesture they were to him, neither were hugs, or brushes on the arm, or squeezes to the thigh.
Kakashi was starting to feel the toil of living with her, of sleeping next to her for weeks.
He felt like a teen boy again. A sliver of belly skin from when she reached up the cupboards, the curve of her back from when she stretched in the morning, the line of her thigh muscle when she crossed her legs, the outline of two hard nipples when cool air waved in through the window. Every little thing was enough to ignite his blood, fill his skin with tingling anticipation, make his mind run away with more explicit images of her, and of her and him together.
Sakura had teased him for overreacting when she had woken up to him poking her, saying it was a natural bodily reaction, except that wasn't quite the natural reaction his body was having. What she had failed to notice through the post-mission tiredness and because she wasn't inside his head was that it had been the middle of the night not the morning and he had been dreaming of her under him, legs wrapped around his hips.
Every time Sakura was right there beside him, her presence was like electricity in his skin, so close it was almost unbearable and never close enough to take him out of his misery.
Kakashi tried to scoot himself even farther, his arm hanging off the side of the bed. It was useless, she was imprinted into his back, the room imbibed in her sweet scent and the soft sounds of her breathing purring in his ears.
A long-suffering sigh washed out of his lungs and he started inhaling through his mouth. He could do this, Kakashi had always prided himself on his self-control and the iron-rule he had over his urges, physical, emotional or psychological. He wasn't one of Konoha's best jounin for nothing.
He had already decided to take it one day at the time and not think about the future, the endless future of sharing a life with Sakura and not touching her. Or worse, the moment he would have to.
With a delighted hum, Sakura rolled inside the warm linen cocoon, her arm dragging the cool pillow to bury her face in it, toes curling as she breathed in Kakashi's delicious manly scent, soaked deep into the fluffy fabric. She always woke up before he did, so only when he left on missions could she relish in it, tending to linger longer than what her schedule allowed.
Through a sliver of her lid, Sakura spied the clock on the bedside table to know how much time she had for dozing around his side of the bed before her alarm ripped her away from it.
Sakura jerked up at the pointers of doom that read 10 am. It was only when she was stumbling out of bed for the shower that she remembered it was Thursday and she didn't have any appointments that morning.
"Moron." Sakura grumbled out before flopping back down on Kakashi's side of the bed. Her arm stretched above her head and she arched her back with a throaty wail. Now that he wasn't there with her she could be more vocal and physical on her waking up routine.
Her eyes opened to the shadow of a person sitting on the armchair at the corner of the bedroom, with messy spiked hair and leisurely rolling the wrappings around his ankles.
"Fuck!" She yelped at another sight that jolted her soul out of her body.
It seemed that her thought over his absence had summoned Kakashi out of pure spite. The chakra she spent healing Yamato had taken a stronger hit to her than she had expected, her a mind cloudy jumble without an ounce of alertness.
"Why the hell are you suppressing your chakra!"
"Good morning, dear wife." Kakashi answered with a wide smile, too pleased with himself. It reminded her of the sadistic eye crinkles he gave the team above his mask when waking them up on missions, accompanied by threats whispered in a honeyed voice of all the terrible things he would do to them if they weren't out of the bedrolls in less than a minute. "Not to wake you, of course."
Her eyes narrowed at him and at his reasonable excuse. "How long have you been there?"
"Not particularly long." He answered with a nonchalant shrug and turned back down to finish wrapping his ankles. When it seemed Kakashi wouldn't say anything more, in a streak of indulgence and kindness towards her pride, his gaze lifted to watch her, still bent over on his seat. "Only long enough to see you purr like a kitten, stumble like a penguin and wail like a dying whale."
Sakura didn't wait for him to finish his taunt before throwing his pillow at him. He caught it with easiness, bringing it up to his nose and giving an audible sniff.
He bunched his eyebrows together. "I don't get it."
A ruthless blush burned down her cheeks and into her chest at being caught doing the most humiliating thing Kakashi could ever have seen, even with a hand down her panties would have been better. Everyone had that particular need, but going around sniffing things that belonged to others while they weren't around was something only creeps did, creeps and people in serious real relationships, not whatever this thing was between them.
"If you don't get out of this room right now I will make you watch as I shred to tiny little pieces every single one of your Icha Icha—"
Kakashi shrugged. "I can just buy more of them."
"And then burn the remains and you along with them." When she finished the venomous threat, she added as an afterthought, "And it was just because the pillow was cold!"
He stood up, voice perfectly innocent as he said, "Of course. What else would it be?"
"Out!"
"Here." As he was passing the foot of their bed, he threw the pillow back, the thing plopping down onto her face. "This might put you in a better mood."
This time Kakashi flashed out of the room with a little bratty giggle at his own joke. The pillow hit the door with enough force to slam it shut behind him. Sakura buried her face in her hands and rolled to press her body into the softness of the mattress, hoping that sheer mortification and desire would be enough for it to swallow her away from existence, going out in a cocoon of Kakashi's smell, the very cause of her downfall.
Unfortunately she had yet to gain the ability to permeate objects or make them move out of her own desperation. After soaking for a few minutes in her own embarrassment, she left their bed, ready to face the world and the man on the other side of the wall, or at least pretend that she was.
The warm sprinkle of the shower on her face and back, and the healing aftermath of eight hours of sleep did wonders for her capacity to relativize the whole situation.
Sakura had caught him smelling her hair a few times, his nose buried into the strands, even if it only happened inside the severed realm of sleep and spooning. She needed it to count and serve as a balm for her cracked ego.
Besides, they were technically married, this was tame considering the things married people did. Her mind entertained itself with throwing into the spotlight an image of them in their bed doing exactly what married people did. It was slightly concerning for her heartbeat, as the few other times it had happened to her, but nothing that wasn't easily shrugged off.
Her anger and resentment, unsurprisingly, had washed away from her and vanished down the drain. This wasn't the first time Kakashi embarrassed her into a fit of range and somehow Sakura could never quite hold on to her anger for as long as her shattered pride wanted to.
There were worse things over which to be mad, as how he had acted like the controlling husband Yamato had accused him of, meddling in things that concerned only her and no one else. Ino had learned years ago not to put her foot in the work topic.
As Sakura stepped into the living room, his eyes lifted from the papers he was working on to give her a wary, measuring glance.
"Good morning." She wished, just as any other day.
"Morning." He greeted with his smooth voice and a warm and genuine crinkled smile, a perfect copy of the morning smiles he gifted her when he was home.
And peace was made with the same easiness as all the other times.
It was a very pleasant way of restarting the morning and reshaping the anticipation for the rest of the day into something better.
As she passed by him for the kitchen Sakura showed her appreciation by burying her fingers in his messy bedhead, combing the strands back to press a kiss to his hair.
It was only when she was standing at the counter, pouring coffee into her mug, that Sakura took conscious notice of the simple and oblivious show of affection. Her fingers tingled, her teeth clamped on her lower lip, they seemed to finally remember the heaviness of her touch on Kakashi's hair. It had felt so normal.
They cuddled while sleeping, never before falling asleep, and usually one disentangled from the other right after waking up even if still dozing off in bed. Sleeping time was safe, they were both unconscious and whatever urges or needs for human touch they yielded to, it couldn't be blamed on them. It was an idyllic bubble with no weight over the real waking world.
Apart from that, their touches were kept to the necessary. Their boundaries were even sterner after getting married, that one piece of paper adding an inevitable new weight to every trivial small touch.
And it wasn't like her thank-you kiss that had been a planned sign of gratitude. This was spontaneous, this had felt as natural as the greeting words she mumbled every morning.
The shadow of a touch on her ankle surfaced in her skin. Kakashi had also held her unexpectedly last night, enough to make her still under the warm rough feel of his fingers around her leg. And when he had brushed them over her skin… it had sent a shock through her entire body.
Ino would call her a prude for making a big deal out of such light displays of physical affection. But Ino didn't know Kakashi, he didn't display affection, he hid it behind hidden gestures of care. As allowing himself to be trampled over by sparing with Naruto, the challenges with Guy or how he enjoyed pushing his wheelchair through the most difficult uneven terrain, or with Tenzou, his weird flirting or mocking or domineering play or whatever that sexual tension between them was.
With Sakura, Kakashi allowed her to heal him, let her talk his ears off over a fire on missions, did his best to infuriate her, sometimes even flirted with her, made her laugh, and now he cleaned the house just as she liked it, or bought some sweets with groceries just for her.
When he showed affection through touch, it was only through awkward pats on the shoulder or even more awkward hugs where he didn't know where to put his hands, leaving them limp at his sides or stiff against her back.
The last time he had touched her this much had been at their wedding because they had danced together and in the first few moments, he had left enough space for Chouji to fit between them.
Sakura couldn't make a big deal of it, if she did, it would gain too much weight and space in her mind. It would gain too much weight and space in her heart.
"Sakura! Not fast enough! Not strong enough! Never good enough!"
Two cool charcoal eyes, burning with hate, with love, his heart shattered in his hands, glared at her, the dark mingling into red.
"Each tick of the clock is one more ruined life. One more life destroyed like mine. Unamendable. Irredeemable. Death its only grace."
Her eyes snapped open to the familiar darkness of her bedroom, heartbeat thundering in her chest, and still all she could see was cavernous twisted flesh and the red of blood against grass, soaked into her hands.
It was one of those nights.
Sakura turned around on the bed, her back to Kakashi as he snored gently beside her. He had been snoring for hours now, while she tried to quiet down the clashing in the walls of her mind and the ones of her stomach.
It was one of those nights when Sakura was piercingly aware of the monumental size of the Children's Mental Health Clinic, its weight scrapping her shoulders raw and trembling through her knees as a battle hadn't done in years. She was piercingly aware that all she had of the project was a small piece of everything that was yet to be accomplished.
But 'yet' meant that it would happen someday. She couldn't forget that, even if now all Sakura could feel was smoke slipping through the gaps of her fingers, all she could see was a dream too large for her, a dream that in her hands could only ever be an illusion.
Her fingers grasped onto the fabric of her shirt as Sakura tried to breathe through her crumbling chest. There was a hole at the bottom of her lungs and the deeper she inhaled the more air slid away from where she needed it to be. Her ears roared with the frantic beats of her heart, smothering her head until she couldn't think past the war in her own body, her own honed weapon, immune to poisons and self-healing.
Sakura hated these days, she hated feeling like she hadn't grown out of that useless little girl.
She threw her legs over the side of her bed and brushed her hair back with shaking hands. She couldn't sleep now, she needed to work.
This time failure wasn't an option. There were people counting on this project, the hospital division already busting at the seams, there were overworked personnel, parents with desperate wide eyes, strong and terrified, and most of all hurting children.
Konoha's children had suffered for too long, their voices falling on the deaf ignorant ears of the ones that should protect them. The ones that survived without breaking were hardened shells around a forever weeping wound and the others unstable, borderline deranged shinobi, their sense of duty the only thing to keep them in check.
When duty failed, there were people like Orochimaru, Obito…
Sasuke.
They were immersed in this way of life, in the shinobi rules that forbid tears and demanded the trauma to be endured silently, alone.
Naruto had been one of the few that challenged it and succeeded in opening people's eyes to a new way, a better future. Her own tears had always been weakness, her eyes wet at any small pain, her face the mirror to her heart, while Naruto hadn't followed the rules out of courage, goodness.
After the war, when peace was made and the villages were slowly rebuilding themselves, Sakura had attended to a child, no more than ten years old, his hands resting on his thighs, head cast low, frame so stiff he seemed frozen. His mother had called out for him with a frail loving tone, asking that he acknowledge Haruno-sensei. He had listened to his mother's voice, his head lifting and he met Sakura's eyes with two dark ones. Hollow.
The only thing that kept Sakura from breaking was her professionalism.
Those dark hollow eyes, older than any child's should be, had tied themselves to Sasuke's final gurgled words.
Sakura had searched for that same haunted gaze in every child she passed the following day and at the end of the week she presented her proposal for a hospital department on children's mental health.
Those eyes of that boy haunted her still. They had unveiled a dream already brewing deep inside her heart.
How could she fail all the other children that hadn't been lucky enough to receive treatment right after the war? The ones on the waiting list because there were no vacancies in an already overworked staff and bursting facility? The ones still hidden through the blind streets of Konoha, without an adult caring gaze that would linger on them long enough to see, or worse, the ones that were hidden away in their homes and their shinobi families?
So many of her precious people had been one of those children and Sakura was already too late for them. Sai, Yamato, Sasuke, Kakashi.
What if she failed? What would it be of them then? Of her?
Sakura filled the coffee brewer and put it over the lit stove. The heavenly smell seeped deep into her lungs and it soothed some of the churns in her stomach. It smelled like the hope of a new day, it smelled like usefulness, worth. She grabbed a cup and poured the dark liquid almost to the brim and watched the white grains of sugar submerge under it.
The papers and scrolls and folders at the dining table were all perfectly placed where she had left them that evening. The crucial one, the one right in front of the chair and that had kept her thoughts reeling, slithering like frost into her mind even in her sleep, was waiting for her, perfectly unmoving, perfectly unchanged, unsolved.
She sat, took a few sips of hot coffee, sweet as she loved it, and dove into the 'budget problem'.
"Everything okay?"
Her shoulders startled slightly and she looked up to find Kakashi at the end of the corridor, his eyes puffy from sleep. She looked back down to the sheet.
"Just work. Did I wake you?"
Kakashi stepped to stand in front of her. "And what type of just work requires you to do it at three in the morning?"
"I remembered something and needed to put it down before forgetting it. Go back to bed."
He pulled a chair. "I'll wait for you."
Her foot hooked around its leg to stop it. "Actually I prefer to work alone, so go back to bed."
From the corner of her eyes, she could see his body sway back only to end up fixed on the same spot. "Sakura…" Kakashi's voice was soft as he called her but she continued to write down on the paper.
His warm hand came to cover her own resting on the table, the pen stilled for a second, her eyes fixed on his long manly fingers over her delicate ones. Again with the touching. Why was Kakashi so touchy lately?
Then the pen was once again scratching against paper, undeterred by the weight of his hold, and he let it slip away.
"What's on your mind?"
"Nothing, I just want to finish this in peace."
"Sa—"
"Kakashi!" Sakura shouted, her head jerking back to glare at him. "For fuck's sake, stop smothering when I'm trying to work!" Both her fists came down on the table with a loud thud, the movement scattering papers around, a few falling on the ground.
His stubborn gaze was hard and fixed on hers but Sakura's was harder and more determined, more desperate. She didn't falter, when it came to this she wouldn't falter in face of anything. They glared at each other for a moment until he finally looked away, bent down into a crouch to pick up whatever papers had tumbled with her outburst.
The bangs falling over his forehead hid his eyes from her, but Sakura could see the raise of his jawbone. Still, he was gentle when he laid the sheets on the table, careful not to scatter around whatever order had persisted.
Her eyes followed his back as he left for their bedroom, a prickle of regret in her chest.
But that wasn't important now, Kakashi's feelings and sharing a bed with a man she wasn't fucking didn't matter now. All that burned through her were the numbers on the form and two cool charcoal eyes, dead eyes.
"Wrong choice." Kakashi whispered under his breath as he looked down at the freshly made campsite.
Everyone knew the first twenty-four hours were crucial when making an escape, but it had most likely been a decision out of necessity.
His hands fell onto Uhei and Shiba's heads, scratching the fur between their ears in gratitude. "If you stop by the apartment, Sakura will give you sausages."
They promptly vanished in a cloud of smoke. Kakashi hadn't really arranged anything with her but he knew her weakness were puppy eyes, his ninken's and his own.
Taking a step forward, he let himself fall off the tree branch and land silently on the forest ground below, feet on either side of the fugitive's head.
How had an ANBU team let this guy slip through their fingers? Had standards lowered this much after the end of the war?
His foot nudged the shinobi's cheek. "Good morning, sunshine." Kakashi greeted with an eye-crinkled smile as his eyes snapped open.
The enemy's hands snapped to grab his ankles and to Kakashi's utter bemusement, actually managed to do it before he could evade them. So maybe the standards for ANBU hadn't lowered, maybe the shinobi was fast.
His forearms took the blunt of two sandaled feet meant for his chin. Before they could lower again, Kakashi held onto the ankles and let a current of lightning spread down the shinobi's body. He grunted and released, jumping away into battle ready position, a ninjato in his hand.
The metals of their weapons clanged together, the forest falling silent under the deadly encounter. They exchanged blows, Kakashi familiarising himself with the enemy's fighting style and the small crevasses in his defence.
When he was beginning to wonder when he should go for the winning strike, the enemy managed to catch a slit in his own defence. His sword went for Kakashi's liver and he managed to evade, the blade slashing at his hip, just deep enough to cut flesh.
Kakashi deserved that, he did one of the stupidest things any shinobi could do, he underestimated his enemy and acted like a cocky rookie. He shouldn't have tried to be a cheeky smartass and simply taken advantaged of the shinobi's sleep.
Old age was making him reckless.
Or maybe he was just tired of this… The leaving home and coming back. The missions that all bled into one big mess of blood, cold lonely nights and combat. Nothing really surprised him anymore, not after the Fourth Shinobi War, that was enough surprise to render him unsurprisable for the rest of his life. Nothing made his blood boil with adrenaline or challenged him mind.
Kakashi should be glad for it. It was a sign of the times of peace and prosperity they were living. And he was infinitely grateful, but he was also infinitely bored.
While before this thing with Sakura, Kakashi had at least her company to ignite whatever slivers of boredom, or the boisterous antics of Team Kakashi, now Konoha had started giving them less missions together, assuming the new dimension of their relationship would be a liability.
He was tired of missions.
Hatake Kakashi was tired of missions.
The sudden realisation hit him with too much surprise when it should have already been obvious. The sharpness and solidity of his own voice made a prickle of panic spread through his chest.
He stopped skirting around the enemy and threw two kunai at him that he easily evaded, burying deep on the tree behind him. Kakashi tugged harshly at the wires in hands, biting burning lines into his palms even through the gloves. The enemy realised his mistake when he found himself being shoved back and locked against the trunk. Kakashi let a current of lighting flow through the wire and the enemy grunted between spasms before his head fell forward, his muscles still twitching.
Everything Kakashi was, and had always been, was moulded out of the battlefield, his life nothing without it.
Since the first few years when he waved goodbye at his father and wished he could grow up and be strong enough to accompany him on his missions, so that he would never have to part away from him, so the he would never have to be alone. When he died, all that was left in Kakashi was the thirst for perfection during missions, something that could correct the fault of his father and heal the wound he had left. Later, all of him had become the shared life with his team, the comradeship, the burning impossible need to keep people safe and not let anyone else die. They always died.
At the core of his heart was the battlefield.
So why did it feel like exile to be here now, handcuffing the enemy shinobi and hoisting him onto his back to bring him to Konoha for interrogation, the sign of a successful mission? Why were his fingers shaking with the anticipation, the relief, of going back to the village?
And he missed Sakura, he missed Sakura too much, so pitifully much that the only thing that seemed to make it worth it to leave Konoha was coming back to the sound of her soft feminine voice as she said 'welcome home'.
Welcome home.
Kakashi had never thought his life would end up in a place where someone would answer his bit out habit of calling 'I'm home', something that lingered still from his few early years of family life. Yet it did.
And the someone that always answered was Sakura.
Never had the sound of it felt warmer, never had the relief of opening his front door and feeling the click behind him as it closed, the world only a nebulous thing that remained outside, felt as much as joy, as safety. The deep rooted ones that were a new breath of life into his lungs, the ones that came from a place where everything was where it belonged, Kakashi was where he belonged.
He shouldn't be thinking about this, he shouldn't be realising these things. Things whose rightful place was deep into the hidden corners of him, where they had been shoved into since the moment the Council decided Sakura would be the mother of the Hatake heir.
Whatever he felt was only selfish delusion. He didn't belong there in her apartment, his presence like a parasite festering through her life, like a blade attempting to pass as a fitting piece, destructive and wounding in its misplacement.
Kakashi brought his hand to his wound and pushed down with a wince of pain, fingers coating in blood, skin hot and stinging, but nothing he couldn't shrug off.
It didn't take him more than two hours to pass the gates and during that time Kakashi tried not to let his annoying realisation gnaw at him.
So what if he was bored? What if he was tired of missions? What if the purpose of his life had crumbled in his hands from a mere moment of desolating epiphany? What if he was married to Sakura? As long as he didn't let it get to his head and make stupid mistakes like getting stabbed, like the time he fixed his childhood home for her, everything would be okay.
He greeted the guards stationed at the Torture and Interrogation facility with a crinkled-smile and a 'Yo'. They directed him to room MI-2C.
Ino was already waiting for him there, the room prepped to receive its victim.
"I gave him a sedative about two hours back. He should be waking up any time now." Kakashi explained while passing down the burden off his back onto one of the chunin.
"Thanks, Kakashi." Ino said. "We'll take it from here."
Before she could enter the observation room, Kakashi called, "Ino, can I talk to you?"
Already those piercing blue eyes of the Yamanaka tried to cut through every layer of him. Kakashi threw a nod of his head for her to follow him and moved down the corridor, turning onto a corner that led to rooms that in peacetime weren't used as much.
He leant against the wall and Ino crossed her arms, foot tapping lightly on the ground. "So, what do you need that is so secretive?"
Sakura's relationship with Ino was something he had never quite understood and had honestly never tried to. They could swing between fighting, giggling and heart-felt support in the span of few minutes, and it completely bemused him that such fickleness could offer so much apparent stability to their lives.
In the past month, Sakura had vented over Ino more than anyone else in her life, even her most irritating staff at the hospital, but Ino was also the person she called to talk to for hours on end and the one that always had a space reserved in Sakura's hectic schedule.
"You're Sakura's friend."
She only raised a pointed eyebrow at him, urging him to get pass the obvious statements and to the crux of the matter.
"Do you think she may be overworking?"
"Since the day she was born."
A light frown settled over his forehead. Sakura had always worked hard, but Kakashi assumed it was a habit gained under her time as Tsunade's apprenticeship.
In Team 7's days, he had had to admonish her quite some times during practices for her tendency to slack off and whine, or lose focus on the task to stare off at Sasuke, or just settle on that nauseous teen expression like she couldn't wait to get out of the training field and the mere act of being there was like death to her.
"You were her sensei." Ino's voice was harsh, laced with accusation.
"Maa," His hand rose to brush the back of his head, his eyes interested in a stain on the ceiling. "Sakura was never particularly eager as my student."
Ino snorted at his words, something she seemed to have in common with Sakura. "Maybe if you'd given her a drop of the attention you gave Sasuke." Her voice was soaked in the bitterness of resentment, something that even Sakura had never held onto concerning this.
Kakashi was many things but he had never been blind to his own faults, he knew he had neglected his other students in favour of Sasuke in a clear misguided even if well-meaning gesture.
But he had also shoved that particular failure into the general box of his failure to Team 7, years ago when Sasuke defected. Inside, it had turned into something vague and indistinct, merged with all the ways he had failed them, and Kakashi never had the courage to rummage around that sore spot and see exactly what it had meant for Naruto and Sakura.
Now, a decade later, Ino's words had suddenly ripped through the top of it and yanked it out into the open on some lost corridor of Torture and Interrogation.
"It's been worse after the war though." Kakashi lifted his eyes as Ino started talking again, her voice softer now. "Before Sakura respected her limits, now it seems it's her personal goal to completely ignore them."
"Mm." was all he wanted to give to Ino and her insatiable eyes. "Thanks."
He turned on his heel and left the building into the cooling streets of Konoha on an autumn night.
For the past years, Kakashi had been aware of Sakura's tendency to overwork but only now that they lived together did he realise just how serious it was. Between missions, the hospital, the children's clinic and healing her friends in the middle of the night, Sakura barely had time to think.
How hadn't he noticed it before? Kakashi thought that since the war their relationship had slowly started changing, fighting side by side and supporting each other in the field, while Sasuke and Naruto were off dealing with their enemies in god-level, had erased the last barriers of former student and sensei. Sakura had become his equal and that shift in his perspective had helped crumble some of the sturdier boundaries between them.
One day, Kakashi had suddenly looked at the woman, not the girl, laughing on the other side of a campfire, and realised Sakura had gently chipped at some of the layers around him and settled there, one of the people Kakashi was closest to, as if she belonged there.
And Sakura did belong there.
He had thought he had seen her as well as she saw him but now he realised that he had been more worried about his realisation that she was a grown woman than who she was and what she did as a grown woman. Work, seemed to be the answer. Sakura worked and gave everything and more while she did it, not saving enough for herself.
"Kakashi-kun!" A voice called, tearing him back from his whirling thoughts. He looked to the side at the old woman sweeping the entrance of her bookshop. "I don't know if you've noticed but you're bleeding."
His eyebrows shot up as if it was the first time he was seeing the blood soaking into his side. "What would I do without you, Mishida-san?"
"Die of stupidity or boredom. Now go get that healed, boy."
Enough of wallowing in his guilt. First he needed to go to the hospital and get his wound closed up. It was time he got used to the building, now that he decided, just as he took that first step inside of it, that he would start bringing Sakura lunch and make sure she at least enjoyed that small break.
The blood always helped diminish the waiting time. It was only a few minutes until he was laying down on his side without a shirt, Asahi's chakra piercing through his wound.
The sacrifices he was willing to endure for his wife.
"Could you be a little gentler?" Kakashi asked through clenched teeth.
Asahi only gave an unimpressed glance. "I'm a medic not a masseuse."
Probably because he had hands heavier than all the Akimichi.
Every muscle in Kakashi's body had turned to stone and the medic's touch made every inhale a shallow sip of breath that never reached his lungs. After thirty years of a shinobi life, he should have gotten used to it by now, but no amount of exposure to probing foreign touches was enough to make it any less excruciatingly uncomfortable.
The only saving grace was that Sakura would be pleased with him that for once in his lifetime he had gone to the hospital without being forced by others or by unconsciousness. Maybe it would even earn him a kiss on the cheek. The anticipation for its soft touch made everything more bearable.
"You're worse than the genin, Hatake-san." And he had more painful chakra than the Kyubi.
Asahi let out an offended huff and Kakashi realised he had vocalised his thoughts. What a shame.
Sakura said the same but this guy had none of her teasing bite, none of the underlying affection, and most of all her touch never made him want to run away to Suna. Kakashi held his whines back because it simply wasn't fun with him and still the medic seemed to be at the limit of his patience. Sakura sometimes lost her patience with him but her medical work never suffered from it.
Kakashi still wasn't sure if she liked healing him or if she liked him enough to bear healing him. All he was certain about was that he loved being healed by her.
"Finished."
A long sigh slipped through his mouth as he sank into the stretcher once Asahi's chakra left his body. Kakashi waited for him to leave the room before testing his mobility, noting the skin was a little tight.
Kakashi was certain he was limping more on his way out of the hospital than in.
"I'm home." Kakashi drawled out from the genkan with the enthusiasm of a clerk entering the office on a Monday morning.
The mission had lasted a few hours and it had still managed to get him in a mood.
"Welcome home, Kakashi." Sakura answered sweetly as he entered the room, her head lifting from the papers spread around the dining table. "There's leftovers from dinner."
Kakashi smiled at her, genuine enough despite his earlier tone.
He took a stiff step over Bisuke, splayed out on the floor, and Sakura sprang up from her sit in an instant. Years of practice and exposure had made her proficient in detecting all the minute telling signs of an injury in Kakashi's movements. Was he seriously trying to hide it from her when they would sleep on the same bed? They had enough missions together to know how poorly that ended for him.
Sakura stepped in front of him, barring his way. Her hand reached for his shirts, pulling both of them up to reveal his torso.
"I always did like women that just take what they want." Kakashi murmured at the top of her head.
"What's this?" Sakura pointed to the inflamed patch of skin the size of her palm, at the centre of it, a pink fresh scar.
"My rock-hard abs."
She pressed her hand to the already healed wound, even if it was difficult for Sakura to classify whatever she was staring at as an example of a medic's healing. She had seen Naruto make wounds stitched in a swamp look neater than this.
Her other hand pushed at the small of Kakashi's back, stopping him from fleeing as he hissed and startled away.
"I bet this is Asahi's work, all rushed and not careful enough not to leave a scar just because you're already a scarred veteran. The amount of times I tried to explain to his lazy ass that all patients deserve the best of cares. And damn, he's stupid enough to do it to my own husband. Did he seriously think I wouldn't notice?"
Her veins boiled with anger because nothing pinched at her temper deeper than sloppy medicine. People put their lives and allowed themselves to be vulnerable and weak in their hands and chakra. Disrespecting the trust between patient and medic because of carelessness went against everything that was their duty, their vocation.
"Your very own husband, huh?"
Asahi never seemed to grasp the profundity of it. What bothered her most was that he wasn't a bad medic, he wasn't truly incompetent and never put his patients at risk in his rush to get the job done, he just… wasn't whole in what he did. Even in the safety of the hospital and not out on the field, why couldn't he allow himself the time? The care?
Sakura liked to believe she gave everything to each individual patient. Even in her worst days, she allowed herself to slack off on paper-work, patience and niceness to the staff, but never the care she put in her patients. And she also liked to believe they valued that in her, that it was one of the reasons they sought her out and not simply because of her fame as Tsunade's apprentice.
Her eyes lifted up to Kakashi's crunched up face in his typical theatrics at being healed, the green glow of her chakra reflecting on his skin.
"Why didn't you come to me?" Her voice came out a little frailer than she had wanted it to be.
Sometimes it was hurtful that he hid his wounds to avoid having her heal him, but Sakura had learnt to understand that it was just one more of his quirks, more to do with him than with her. But knowing he had gone to the one place he hated most in Konoha instead of coming home, so he could be healed by someone else… it hurt deeper than it should, it shook her pride and it shook her heart.
"Because it was the middle of the night and I thought it was better to just go to the hospital."
"What a lovely idea." Sakura bit out, turning her eyes down to what she was doing, the anger covering the hurt.
"You're always telling me to go to the hospital, Sakura."
"Well… yes. But that's because I don't want you to neglect your wounds if I'm not around or it's too serious to treat here. Is this because of that night I healed Yamato? Or is it because I—"
"I'd be a hypocrite if I asked you to stop but still made you to do it for me."
"I don't care if you're a hypocrite, Kakashi." Sakura breathed out as she looked up at him. "I like being the one that heals you."
His eyebrows met in honest confusion. "Why?"
It was known lore of the hospital that Hatake Kakashi was one of the most infamous patients, and not for good reasons like his shinobi reputation and the lean muscled shape of his body. Between his tendency to rip IV's off his arms, jump out windows with healing bones, walk around with little care for modesty in hospital gowns, his ass out in the air for everyone to see and admire, and downright sulk like a man-child, he was considered a menace.
Unless it was one of the most frightening moments when he was too injured for protests.
"Because I know I'll do a good job."
And other reasons she didn't want to examine right now that maybe had to do with his so called rock-hard abs, now flexing under the soft brush of her hands. Or how unguarded he became when he gave himself to her chakra, trusting her enough to fix his wounds, to care for him. How it was his own way of saying that she was one of his precious people. Not even with Shizune did he lose the edge in his muscles.
"I don't want to be a burden to you." Kakashi confessed, his low voice quiet under the murmur of her healing chakra, gaze hidden away from her, set on her hand over his skin.
His words reached further than this small wound that she could have taken care of in a few minutes.
It reached into the heart of it and at the heart of it was the marriage.
Suddenly a veil was yanked away from the easy routine they had slotted themselves into. His sudden perfectionism over cleaning the apartment as she wanted when his own had been dustier than Naruto's, bringing with the move nothing but the bare essentials, his sneakiness that she had compared to a cat, moving out of her way, never touching anything that wasn't strictly his, staying mostly in his small little nook at the armchair.
They hadn't slotted themselves into a routine, Kakashi had moulded himself in a tiny corner of hers.
"You're never a burden to me, Kakashi."
Sakura showed as much firmness in her eyes as she could, her fingers pressing down on his back to mark her words into him. Still Kakashi didn't look entirely convinced, his eyes drooping with that guilt he always carried and only a few years back, during the war, had Sakura recognised it for what it was.
She caught sight of two long straight lines carved into his skin, crisscrossing in the middle of his stomach, a brand remaining from the Fourth War, a brand from Uchiha Obito. Her fingertips traced the point where the scars met as if the touch of them would tell her of all he hid inside his chest, never voicing a sliver of what fevered there, Obito and the overwhelming wave of things that name meant to him remaining unvoiced between them.
The little that she knew of it came from bits and pieces patched together during the war and through the next years where he had inevitably let some things slip out. It was not enough still, Sakura felt there was so much more to understand and know of him. And she desperately wanted to, Sakura desperately wanted to know all of Kakashi.
"What is it?" Kakashi asked.
"These scars." As she said it, Sakura touched the raised pale skin again and his belly rippled under her fingers. It was only when the role of medic stepped away from the forefront of her mind, that she allowed herself to notice and delight in all the little reactions his body had to her touch.
His hand held onto hers, stopping her caress and dragging it away from his warm skin. "They're definitely not the worse ones I have." His voice light with a smirk.
"But those were before me."
Kakashi brushed her bangs back to unveil her face, his a hand resting on her head. "What is it, Sakura?"
He knew it reached deeper than her pride as a medic and the need to make her patient's body immaculate. As she was healing him after the war, Kakashi had stopped her work and simply said 'Not that one.'. She had respected his wishes without a word, seeing as he had done a passable job at sewing the wound, barely even managing to see the full meaning of his request through her puffy eyes from crying herself to exhaustion over Sasuke's death and her barren shattered heart.
It was only a year later when she had seen it again, already scarred, that Sakura had understood Kakashi wanted it there as a mark in his body from Obito, the Obito he had known again and anew during the war. His wish had remained the same, not caring if the scars made the skin tight.
They were a touchable remembrance. Many times, especially when she caught sight of them on their missions or as she tended to him, Sakura worried that they were a new memorial stone branded into his very own flesh and flaring only an undeserved guilt, a gnawing damaging remorse. But she never had the courage to cross that one boundary between them, the one that circled around everything concerning Obito and his genin team, and simply ask.
"I just…" The words felt heavy in her tongue, still, Sakura tilted her head back to look up at him. "I just don't want them to be a new cenotaph."
She didn't need to explain more for Kakashi to understand, his eyes softening.
"They're not, Sakura. I've found peace over Obito, but… but I guess I still want to have something to make me remember that day we met again. A good type of remembering, one that sends me forward."
Instead of clamping up as she had been so scared he would, Kakashi answered her, with an honest gentle expression and soothing words. She couldn't be sure that they were true, only hope and trust. Sakura understood, she had only one scar in her body, right at the centre of her stomach and a mirroring one on her back from Sasori's sword.
It was as she had realised in the night of the wedding, this thing could also bring good. Maybe she could try to lift some of Kakashi's burdens.
His lips curled into a playful smirk. "And they're pretty hot, don't you think?"
They were, but it was less about the scars and more about Kakashi. And this type of thinking should be left in a hidden crevasse deep inside her mind, not to rise again. She followed his attempt to shed away some of the heaviness of their conversation.
"Everyone knows your hottest is this one." Sakura answered back, pointing at his bisected eyelid.
Kakashi offered his agreement with a smug nod. His warm hand pulled away from her head, brushing through the dishevelled strands, his calloused fingertips grazing the skin of her temple with the gesture. Sakura's breathing caught in her throat at his touch, feather-light and still it seemed to brand into her.
A touch, an affectionate touch, her mind screamed, stuck on that one simple and earth-shattering loop.
He took a step away, but Sakura snapped out of her own stupor fast enough to grab a belt loop and drag him back to her.
"I'm not done with you, Kakashi."
His lips curled in a sensual smirk, voice falling into a low dulcet cadence. "You're very forward today."
Sakura rolled her eyes at him, even as a rebellious blush warmed her cheeks much to her pain. "Spare at least this thing from your perversions."
"My perversions? You're the one going around sniffing people's pillows."
Sakura stabbed her thumb into his newly healed wound and he lurched back with a whimper of pain, her finger wrapped around his belt loop not letting him go farther than a jerk.
"I thought your job was to heal not injure, Haruno-sensei." Kakashi let out through a wince and she tried not to allow herself the time to linger on his drawled suggestive tone of every time he used the honorific.
Her head dropped back, eyes watching him with innocent serenity. "Tell me you've never smelled my pillow."
"I've never smelled your pillow." Kakashi answered with complete trust in the honesty of his words. Someone that didn't know him might have believed the act.
Sakura raised herself in her tiptoes to near his face, the word rolling through her tongue in a whisper, "Liar."
Her gaze held his own, challenging him to contradict her. He didn't, Kakashi simply looked back, unfittingly impassive as if he couldn't feel the trill in the air between them. Most likely it was because he did, he always turned into a marble statue of indifference when things stepped over the limits of his borders and expectations.
She looked back down to his stomach, the tip of her finger rested over the remaining scar until there was nothing. Her hand draped around his hip and she brushed her pad over his warm soft skin, admiring her work, Kakashi's muscles twitched once more under her hand, through her chakra, Sakura could feel the fast hammering of his heart.
Her finger itched to do it again but she only pulled down his shirts and smoothed the fabric over his torso.
Sakura smiled up at him. "Much better, isn't it?"
His eyes closed in a crinkled smile as he nodded.
Sakura was ready to take a step back and away from him when his hand curled around her elbow softly, stilling her where she was. Kakashi leaned down towards her, too fast for her to realise what he was doing until his lips pressed to her cheek.
"Thank you."
Kakashi was still kissing her as he said it, his deep voice was soft murmur right beside her ear, his lips branded the shape of the words into her skin.
Somehow it felt more intense, more intimate, than when she had done it to him when they were still at the beginning of this thing. It was Sakura who blushed now, still trying to piece together a gesture that should be easily comprehensible had it been anyone else.
Kakashi stepped back himself, his hand leaving her with a brush, and twisted his torso from side to side to test the flexibility of the newly healed skin.
"Perfect as always." He said with a wink, turning around to crouch where some of his ninken were lounging on that hideous shuriken duvet, as if everything was perfectly normal, as if they hadn't spent the past minutes stepping around the boundaries of their relationship.
Sakura sat back towards the chair, her gaze falling on the article she had been reading before Kakashi arrived, not one word entering her mind.
Why did her stomach twirl and her heart flutter from one simple kiss on the cheek?
Hello there! Thank you for your feedback, which was unanimously for longer chapters. I'm glad because that's also what I prefer, hehe
So here's another even longer chapter. Let me know what you think!
As always, thank you for reading!