A/N: Heyy! At ao3 a small excerpt of this chapter troubled many readers because it's not strictly kakasaku, so I'll leave a WARNING here.
There's a memory from Sakura about how she once caught Kakashi having sex with a woman while on a mission, when she was 16. The description is from Sakura's pov and the most explicit parts are about Kakashi's body and movements, and her younger-self freaking out about feeling attracted to him.
I won't change anything because I believe it is important in showing her past development as a teenager and the evolution of her view of Kakashi throughout her life.
I hope you enjoy this chapter!
Chapter Nine
Masks
Her fingers tightened around the handle of the kunai. The apartment had settled into silence after the thud that had woken her up, her instinct shouting at her that there was an eerie misplaced piece in there. Sakura rounded the corner into the living room, ready to take on whatever and whomever she found there.
Standing beside the window was an unmoving tall figure, the light of the outside streetlamps catching in strands of silver hair, reflecting on the lacquered white of a mask.
"Kakashi?" Sakura called in a whispered voice.
Not one piece of him moved, he didn't even seem to recognise the sound of his own name. Sakura took a small step for him, her hand skimmed the back of the sofa and she let the kunai fall onto its cushion, muting the sound of clanging metal. Her hands raised to show that she was unarmed, her pyjamas too skimpy to hide any weapons between the fabric and her body.
The clouds parted to unveil the moon and a cold streak of light illuminated him through the window, unveiling the blood soaking into his clothes, the white vest tainted red and his pants with streaks of a darker shade of black.
Her heart sank in her chest, lump pressing like painful burning vines around her throat, but Sakura didn't falter in her slow steady steps, what Kakashi needed of her now was patience. Shinobi could snap at anyone in these moments and Kakashi would never forgive himself if he hurt her, or even came close to it. She couldn't add yet another burden concerning her to his heart.
He was standing on the edge of a razor, his muscles taut with tension, still and waiting for the trigger that would release the turmoil fevering right under his skin. Through the slits of the mask, he stared at her with each step she took, her own eyes pinned to his, both of them oversensitive to any change in the air.
Sakura stood a single step away from him and the only movement he had made was of his eyes, following her path with an unnerving intensity, like a predator stalking his prey. And still he was allowing her to be this close to him.
Her hands raised in the air between them, muscles slack, frame unthreatening.
"I need to access you with my healing chakra." She explained, voice a whisper that wouldn't break through the silence in the room and cut the tight rope around Kakashi's muscles.
He didn't say anything. His eyes never left her own, as the glow of her chakra flickered green light between them, wavering on the clear smooth surface of the mask and the dark shade of his eyes.
Her fingertips barely brushed his vest and Kakashi flinched back, his side hitting the edge of the windowsill. Adrenaline buzzed through her veins but she didn't let the jerk in her chest rise to her muscles.
For a breathless moment, Sakura waited for an explosive reaction but all he did was wrap a hand around the sill, knuckles jutting out from the dark glove, blood stains stamping down on the wood.
"I shouldn't be here." He let out in a breathless croak. "I don't know why I'm here."
"Of course you should, Kakashi." Sakura tried to reach to him through her eyes, earnest and understanding, a mirror of her own heart, more than her words. "I'm glad you're here, I'm glad you came to me."
His other fingers trembled as his arm fell limp against his side. The fingers of one of the most precise hands in the shinobi world, one of the most tightly controlled and perfectly trained. Sakura didn't think she had ever seen Kakashi's hand shake, not when they faced Uchiha Madara or a horned goddess back to life, not in any of their missions where they had almost died.
There had been fear in his eyes, the muscles of his shoulders tense and his spine straight, but his hands had always been the thing to hold on steady, always steady, trained for a lifetime into the reliable controlled weapons they were.
Of everything that made the sight of him now, the kitsune mask, the blood soaked into his clothes, the coiled tight muscles and the piercing intent gaze on her, his hands were what unnerved her most.
"You're injured." Sakura explained.
His voice was a hoarse rasp, "It's not mine."
It had been one of those missions. It was why ANBU had sent him so soon after his other mission, Kakashi was the one with the skill for it. The dread in his eyes as he told her of it before leaving hadn't been for the danger, it had been for what Konoha was demanding of him. These missions were the ones that broke shinobi into tiny pieces, more than any deadly injury and bleeding wound ever could.
It was always Kakashi. His genius, the one he had given all of himself to shape, was a gift and a curse. The village always turned to him for the unimaginable, always reduced him to a weapon to be wielded, used for their wishes. To kill, to die, to procreate. They asked of him everything, obedience and leadership, marriage and detachment, life and death.
And he accepted all of it. Out of duty.
Out of love.
"I need to make sure."
His head lowered barely an inch in a nod. Sakura worried the inside of her cheek with her teeth, had it been any other day Kakashi would have held his ground against healing, whined and re-enacted an entire dramatic scene out of a soap opera, now his only sign of discomfort was his rigid frame.
She took the final step forward, her hands hovered his stomach, no chakra in them. They rested feather lightly on his vest and at the whisper of a touch, his shoulders trembled. Only when the tension in him washed away slightly did Sakura let her chakra seep into his pathways, a slow gentle flow where he wouldn't know where her chakra started and his ended.
His muscles clamped up under the invasion but he didn't move, fingers curling into a fist and nails biting down on the wood of the sill.
Sakura only needed a few seconds to see that he was telling her the truth, there wasn't an inch of broken or injured flesh in him. Only his hand, singed from his purple lightning, the shape of those wounds familiar, routine – now they surged through her as a new more vicious wound.
Her hands dropped to her side and she tilted her head back to look at the white lacquer of the mask, a splash of blood tainting the side of it a dry brown red. Their only saving grace seemed to be that they protected from the venomous warm splash of another human's blood against their faces, there was nothing that scorched a shinobi's skin deeper than it. Then it was their hands and Kakashi's were soaked in them.
The mask smiled at her, a thin eerie curve of red. It seemed to mock her, to sneer down at her and tease 'Ready to die?'. But through the slits there was a sliver of him peeking, Kakashi's eyes were still his own, their dark grey turned into a deep ink black, familiar under the low light of their apartment, half-lidded and yet piercingly sharp. Bottomless, haunted.
"Can I take the mask off?"
His only answer was a small bend of his neck as he leaned into her. It reminded her of the night of the 10th of October, when he had submitted himself to the same bareness before her, the same gesture of surrender. But this time she wouldn't fail him as she had then.
Sakura reached for the bottom of it, its touch cold and smooth under her fingertips, and carefully peeled it away from his face, before laying it down on the dining table.
The familiar sight of Kakashi with his fabric mask was a little more comforting, even if his spine was too straight, his expression too hollow.
"The gloves?"
Her fingers worked on the clasps of his armguards first, always careful not to make too much sound where it would grate shrilly against the silence settled around them. Her fingertips curled into the hem, his skin too cool against the back of her hand.
As she did his other arm, her eyes inevitably glued themselves to the red swirl of his tattoo, the symbol of the ANBU, of the sacrifices they made for their village under the ruthless secret division.
The last was his vest, the light grey colour hiding none of the blood soaked into it.
Sakura held Kakashi's rough hands on her own, too cold and against her best efforts still red with blood, smudges branded down on her own fingers. Her green healing chakra fluttered between them as she mended the burnt skin from his jutsu. They never stopped shuddering inside her hold.
She lifted them to her mouth, pressing a weightless kiss to the back of his fingers.
"You're home, Kakashi."
Her words seemed to be the first thing to carry any weight that night, the tightness in his frame easing slightly and a slow breath leaving through his mouth, almost a sigh.
Kakashi was still too unhinged for a shower and her sofa had seen enough blood from all the friends that stopped by when they didn't want to go to the hospital. Sakura led him there and coaxed him to sit down, whispering, "I'll make us some tea."
The back of her neck prickled the entire time she waited for the water to boil, Kakashi's gaze pinned to her, she couldn't be sure if because she was a touch stone out of his turmoil or because he believed she could spring an attack against him at any second.
With a smile, she rested the two cups on the coffee table and sat down beside him, careful in leaving a comfortable gap between them. His hand raised naturally to his face and he pulled his mask down before taking a sip. Sakura didn't let her surprise show, she hadn't expected him to bare the rest of his face so soon.
The lines around his mouth were carved deep, his skin ashen, and his lips, dry and cracked, had none of the pink colour Sakura had grown to know. He was a defeated man, crumbling down under the weight of all the blood, all the death stuck to his hands.
His eyes lifted from the cup to hers, the grey so intense it seemed to pierce right into her with the burning touch of his lightning chakra or the red sharpness of the sharingan.
But now Sakura knew it wasn't because he thought she could attack him, there was no wariness or distrust in his gaze.
Sakura had never seen him look at her like that, with the same desperation as her patients while they bled out on a stretcher and searched for the human touch in her eyes.
Kakashi looked at her as if her eyes were holding him to life.
Her heart ceased against her ribs for a small second and something fevered from it, spreading in her veins and rising up to her skin – fire. Sakura let the ruthless roar of it rise to her gestures as a small warm flame.
Her fingers raised to his face in a clear slow path between them. He didn't move away or flinched when her knuckles brushed the edge of his cheek gently. They slid down, unhurried and soft, to trace down his jaw, his short stubble prickling them, and then her palm as Sakura cupped the side of his face. She let her thumb touch the beauty spot at the corner of his mouth, finally fulfilling the wish to touch it since the moment she learnt it was there.
His face crumbled in something akin to pain at her soft caresses, a war clashing behind his clenched closed eyes. He didn't pull away, but his hand lifted to wrap around her wrist.
"Not so gentle." He strained out.
"Why not?"
A small puff of air spilled through his lips and Kakashi's forehead fell to her collarbone. She held onto him, hand pressing down to his still damp nape and arm around his back.
"Is there any good in me?"
Sakura shut her lids in a grimace at his whispered words, at the loathing that slithered through. Something prickled at the back of her eyes, smothering and demanding to burst out.
"So much good." She answered, the certainty of truth strong in her tone. "You're good, Kakashi, you're one of the best people I know."
She told him of so many good things in him. Kakashi had always been so timid in his gestures of kindness, always unassuming and hidden, that they passed by unnoticed.
That long forgotten need tore through her. A sliver of it had trembled in her just before Kakashi left for this mission, had trembled for the past years during their missions, but it was only a drop of the wave that devastated through her now.
A need to give, to give all until she was an empty and somehow still overflowing vessel, a need to care.
Sakura had always loved taking care of others, had always loved the idea of fixing a broken man, had always loved the idea of loving with a love so strong and burning, so fruitful and devoted, it could heal the deepest, most tattered of wounds.
It was a beautiful idea, it was as beautiful as it was unreal.
Sasuke was dead. He killed himself in his best friend's fist because of his love. Neither of their loves had been enough to mend the gaping hole in his chest, where his clan had been ripped out, his mother and father, his brother.
Kakashi was too much like Sasuke and it terrified her.
Still, Sakura held onto his head, her fingers combing through his mated hair gently as his breath puffed, hot and shallow, against her chest. Her forehead fell down to his crown, his stiff strands tickling her nose and she breathed his scent in, masculine, delicious, filthy with blood. She turned her head to rest her cheek on his head and let her lips pepper butterfly kisses on his hairline.
His fingers flexed where they grasped the cushions of the sofa. They released, his hand came to rest on her, so soft and hesitant, as it spanned the curve of her waist. His thumb slid under the hem of her shirt and pressed to her hipbone, not moving, simply there against it, as if it was enough to feel the warm touch of her skin.
Sakura would have let Kakashi take all of it, all of her. All and never enough.
Her heart shouldn't be able to carry both warmth and anguish, delight and sadness, but it did. It carried so many contradicting and ambiguous things, but most of all it was full, overflowing.
How long had it been since something had entered and settled in her, so deeply and completely, it was as if she was bottomless, as if she was infinite?
Seven years ago.
It was with anticipated regret – fear – that Sakura realised she had missed it, she missed it as if something lost in her had finally returned.
Sakura missed this feeling.
The clear light of the sun glinted in the white of the lacquer, a beacon cutting through the soft tones of their living room. The mask had remained there, forgotten and untouched, after Sakura peeled it from his flesh.
Her feet crossed the room with silent steps, as if it might disturb everything that lurked behind the lacquer, even when it lay useless and empty on a table and not against Kakashi's face.
It was the first time she lingered on the red paint around its eyes and the stretch of the fox's smile. Last night she had tried to see through it, not it.
Kitsune.
Her fingertip ran down the height of the smooth cold lacquer, over the dry blood still pasted there, tracing the red marks around empty slits.
It was like touching a piece of Kakashi. A piece that he tried to cut away from himself and slot back into place when Konoha asked that of him. Ruthless, deadly, a sacrifice born from his devotion.
"Does it disgust you?" Sakura heard his low voice ask from behind her, grave even through its emotionless, but she understood what he was really asking, 'do I disgust you?'.
She shifted slightly to look at him leaning on the wall that lead into the corridor, arms crossed and face so completely blank it was as if he was asking her what she would like for breakfast.
Sakura had almost forgotten the familiar sight of those lidded eyes, bored and concealing, the first layer that she had ever known of him. As a lame sensei made of surface alone, as a beloved comrade that was masks upon masks and a hidden core underneath the underneath, as a newlywed, a heavy deciding question hanging in the air between them, and spelling out measured, uncompromising words.
It had been too long since she had seen them, since Kakashi had felt the need to hide behind them.
"No." Sakura answered simply.
"It should."
Her eyes turned back to the mask, fingers tracing around the stains of blood. "Do you want me to clean it?"
"I don't even want you to touch it." He puffed out in exasperation.
A small smile twisted her lips. "But you're letting me."
"Against everything in me."
"Then you'll also let me clean it." Her voice was a demand and Kakashi knew better than to argue against this tone.
"Why?" Whatever mask he had put around himself cracked with his voice, the word leaving as a broken whisper.
Sakura turned to him fully and smiled. "Because I care about you."
She knew she couldn't peel the mask back completely from him, like singed skin and use her chakra soaked hands to heal it back into a healthy, smooth pink, as if it had never been broken.
All she could do was carry it with him, even if she didn't know all that it encompassed, the years and years of reducing himself into the sharpness of a weapon, lacquering his beating wounded heart into the cold marble husk of Kitsune. Most likely she never would know.
But Sakura wanted to carry this burden with him, to hold him as he shook, to clean him of the red crusted blood, to show all the good in him. She wanted it to taint her as it tainted him.
It was a new purpose of their marriage, a vision of meaning in it, of a place of her beside him.
They fell into a quiet breakfast, at the dining table this time. Kakashi's silence was stifling, drowned with hidden thoughts, as he sipped at his tea and let his toast cool, abandoned on the plate, his eyes unseeing on the wood of the table. Sometimes they lowered to stare down at his hands, a minute flex in his fingers, and Sakura could guess the blood he found there.
"I could have hurt you yesterday." He finally said, no emotion in his voice, gaze turned away from her.
Sakura took the last sip of her coffee, the mug resting on the table with a low thud.
"You didn't."
"I did once, to a teammate that didn't know he should keep himself away from me."
"Don't treat me like I'm weak, Kakashi. If you'd lash out, I'd have handled you perfectly fine."
His unyielding dark eyes turned to stare at her, and she watched him back with a challenge, daring him to argue against her words. He could be stubborn, but she was more, especially when she knew she was right.
He slumped against the chair and turned to look away, towards the window.
"I know, but… you should never have to defend yourself in your own home against your—"
His words halted, lips pressing together as he searched for the word that would describe what he was to her.
Roommate? Friend? Husband?
"Against me." He said instead, uncompromising.
Sakura stood up and hovered above him, but he didn't look at her. "If I know you came home like this and hid from me, you'll be the one having to defend yourself against me."
Her hand slipped into his cold one, the ragged burnt skin from years of forming a raikiri brushing over her own callouses, twin marks of their shinobi lives. A small startle trembled in his shoulders but her hold only tightened with her words.
"Let me handle you." She begged, even through the firm demand in her tone. "Let me… care for you."
Kakashi didn't answer, incredibly still as he sat, only the edge of his cheek visible to her under the unruly strands of his hair. She tugged him up to stand and simply gave him their plates, he accepted the work without words.
Once the kitchen was clean, she shoved a canvas bag into his hand.
It took some convincing on Sakura's part, mainly over how she didn't want to carry groceries all by herself, to have him accompany her to the market. She hated the idea of leaving him alone and inside all day to brood over the mission, to swirl down his self-loathing and the guilt that never dissipated from his eyes.
The winter sun washed over the village in a warm gentle glow, the sky clear of clouds and almost white. Sunday afternoons were the ones Sakura loved the most, the streets bustling with people, with families enjoying their rest day, children led by their parents hands, others running through the gaps in the crowd as they played with their friends, couples walking with laced arms.
These snippets of the full abundant life of Konoha were what reminded her of why she continued to endure the sacrifices of her shinobi life and most of all she found joy even through the pain.
Most civilians never realised the weight of it, never realised the suffering laid at the base of their peaceful lives, but Sakura liked it that way. She liked that she passed through them and they didn't see her, she liked that they didn't know of the anguish, the blood and the death of a shinobi life. It was for that obliviousness that she fought, the same that had once been casted over her own eyes.
She glanced over her shoulder at Kakashi following behind her, his eyes lowered and stuck to the book in his hand.
It was the first time she had asked him to come with her, the first time she shared this small piece of her life and routine, the one that had remained as hers alone, when all the others had been inevitably breeched.
It didn't bother her that he didn't find the same overflowing meaning in it as she did. His Konoha was shinobi first, his comrades and the battlefield were what ignited his fire to protect it.
The shinobi Konoha was different from the civilian one. Sakura had used to flicker between the two and the moment her parents left Konoha after Pain's attack was the moment she fell fully into the ninja side.
Sundays were also the day when Sakura could slip into an impractical dress and take off her hitai-ate as if she had never wrapped it around her head. A small sliver of her civilian roots, she missed them sometimes. A brief performance of what her life could have been had she never entered the Academy, or graduated into a genin, had she given up and not sought after Tsunade after Sasuke's defection, had she heeded her parents advice and moved with them to Otaru.
Sakura could never regret her choices, had it been truly hers or a path that built itself before her and she had taken it because it was there.
Still, there was always a drop of regret in her, rooted in the burden of being a shinobi, a drop that could grow into a devastating wave during the worst missions, the days the blood felt too thick and vicious, the days she stared into dead eyes and her useless hands still glowed green.
But that was nothing to the fire of her devotion to Konoha, to her duty, to her comrades, and the teeming gratitude from all the love and people she had met along the way.
Sakura glanced once more at the man following her, a smile inevitably blooming in her lips. Just the sight of Kakashi, bag around his shoulder, eggplants already peeking from the top of it, so entirely domestic, and that appalling book, mask and navy uniform he couldn't shed himself of, so entirely shinobi, made everything worthwhile.
They stopped by the food stalls first, with its bright colours from the vegetables, fruits and fish and its sweet, spicy and salty scents. Sakura would ask Kakashi his opinion on what they should buy for the week and as always he mostly shrugged and told her it was all the same to him.
If she hadn't been trying to cheer him up she would have bought everything for the sweetest, most fried meals he had ever tasted just to spite him, but instead she clenched her teeth and smiled at the clerk before asking for the salted fish. Kakashi could carry everything for all she cared.
Sakura spent the better part of the afternoon trying to tug smiles from his lips much to her complete failure.
Slowly Kakashi started to slip away from the dark rabbit hole in his mind, even if he didn't seem to be enjoying himself, more worried about skirting away from the brush of shoulders and reading his book.
Maybe it had been a mistake to ask him to come, the market was a bustling place and it could certainly overwhelm someone in a more fragile state of mind.
Her feet stopped as the food stalls started to give place to ones with clothes, jewellery and trinkets. Sakura loved flowing through the displayed products, most times flirting with one or another, but never actually surrendering to buying them.
She shared one last longing look with the multi-coloured fabrics that waved her goodbye in the wind. There was always next week.
Her eyes lifted to Kakashi's and she smiled. "Ready to go home?"
He swept his gaze away from hers to the crowded street behind her. "What about those?"
"I'm not buying anything there."
"We can still look."
"Do you want to?"
His eyes narrowed at her, a glint of a tease behind the gesture. "Don't you?" Before she could answer, Kakashi put his hand on her shoulder and dragged her along with him. "Come on, Sakura."
She let herself be dragged, if he really wanted to she wouldn't be the one to fight him on it. Perhaps he did, because Kakashi didn't show any impatience even with the amount of time she lingered in each stand, leaning down to simply contemplate the wares and talk with the sellers with whom she was already friendly.
Some of them asked after Kakashi and tried to get him to buy something for her, which was obviously a failed business attempt. In one of them, she ogled a turtle made with seashells and teased him about buying that for Guy instead. He became traumatised when the vendor assumed this Guy was Kakashi's, in his sly tone, 'very close friend'.
Sakura ended up buying it herself, there were still a few months until his birthday but that seemed to be the perfect present.
Her fingers brushed down a pastel pink cloth, silky soft under her rough fingertips. She looked over at Kakashi. "What do you think?"
He eyed it without interest. "It's very pink, isn't it?"
"Of course it is, Kakashi, it's a pink shawl. What's wrong with pink?" She ground out at him.
His hands raised in a placating gesture. "I love pink, adore it. Especially in your hair. It's my favourite colour." He grabbed a deep green shawl instead and raised it to her neck. "I just think this would look better."
"Oh yes, I must agree with your husband." The seller, an old woman with unassuming eyes, murmured with a smile and Sakura's answer was to narrow her own back, trying to piece together how she knew they were married.
Nothing about them spelled a close relationship built on mutual interest, Sakura would throw some questions and comments over her shoulder and Kakashi would hum back, then she would proceed to another stand, not looking back at him, and he would follow, nose in his book, a sheep with its shepherd.
"Since when do you know how to dress and match clothes?"
The fact that he, a man that dressed only with work attire and whose idea of fashion was boxers with dancing pugs, had chosen the colour that best fit her was most likely a stroke of luck.
"I don't," Kakashi shrugged. "but you wore a dress of the same colour to Naruto's wedding and I thought it looked good on you."
Her cheeks heated with a fierce blush and Sakura ripped her eyes away from his. She reached for the cloth pressed to her chest and lowered it back to its rightful place on the wooden stand before thanking the seller and moving into the crowd flowing down the street.
The flutter of her heartbeat was less over the casual compliment, even if Kakashi's sparse compliments were always a very welcomed even if embarrassing surprise, and more over how he remembered what she had worn for Naruto's wedding two years ago. Ino was probably the only person that did too.
Then she remembered, with a strange twinge in her chest, that in the shelf of her bookcase, in front of the medical books concerning chakra pathways, there was a photograph of their team with the bride and groom.
Of course, Sakura had once again let her idiotic mind run away with itself, why would Kakashi remember one dress she wore one time years ago? She was certain he barely remembered her favourite red shirt she took out of the closet almost every week.
"Come on," Kakashi started as he finally caught up to her, trying to hide her humiliation and dejection in the mess of people. He bumped his shoulder against hers. "let me get you something."
Her sandals scrapped against the pebbles of the unpaved street, another shoulder shoved against her side but Sakura barely noticed it, her attention solely on the masked man looming over her, eyebrows so high in her forehead they disappeared under her fringe.
Now this was weird.
If there weren't a hint of self-satisfaction behind his eyes, Sakura would have wondered if the leisurely stroll and the most human contact he had suffered through in his life, or even the mission of yesterday, had made him mad.
"What?" Kakashi asked with perfected innocence.
"Don't 'what' me. You know perfectly well what you're doing." Though it was the why that she didn't understand, except perhaps a little fun from pulling the rug from under her feet.
"Just choose something, Sakura."
Through the gaps between people she spied the green shawl but her eyes quickly averted away for any other thing.
There had been a beautiful pair of earrings Sakura had almost flirted with if the price tag attached to them hadn't completely severed any chance of romance. It would have killed two birds with one stone, given her something she would never get for herself and messed with Kakashi for messing with her.
But expensive earrings were something men bought for their lovers not a former student they had been forced to marry for a breeding program.
"That." Sakura indicated with a flick of her head as her eyes watched the familiar cart.
"The tanto? I was thinking of something less work related, like a neckless or—"
"No," Her fingers held onto his masked jaw, secretly relishing in the strong shape of it, and corrected the direction of his stare. "that."
"Ice cream?" He asked with a slightly put off tone.
With her lingering hold, Sakura coaxed him to look back at her, as, with a smug grin, she chirped, "Yep."
"I offer to buy you anything you want from the market and you go for ice cream? Are you sure you were my smartest student?"
"You've never bought me food, Kakashi. Now it's my chance."
Her fingers pressed down on his cheeks, bunching them up above the hem of the mask, making him look too cute for her own good. Sakura was definitely enjoying this free reign over his face he was allowing her.
"And it's not just ice cream, it's expensive ice cream."
Her hand dropped, too much swooning was always bad for her health.
"All right," He sighed, putting on the act of an adult surrendering to the whims of a misguided child, but she was too pleased to let him bother her. "if that's what you want who am I to complain."
Sakura started for the stripped cart and didn't wait to find out if he was following her. The seller caught sight of her between the crowd right away and waved.
"Oh Sakura-chan, how good to see you, dear, I was beginning to think you wouldn't come today. The same as usual?"
Her lips spread into a warm smile as she looked up at the old woman. "Yes, Himori-baa-chan, and it's good to see you too."
Himori had been her own grandma's closest friend, her father's mother. Sakura's mother had never kept contact with her family after leaving her small village to come to Konoha with her father. She remembered coming to Himori's home for tea in the summer, led by grandma's hand, when school had ended but her father had still been working, her mother accompanying him on his trips.
It had never washed away even after almost two decades, the memory of her first spoonful of her and her husband's vanilla ice cream, sweet and cold in her mouth against the humid heat, on the engawa of the old couple, a few children playing with the hose on the backyard and Sakura too timid to leave her grandma's side. She had fallen in love with the ice cream, almost as hard as she had crushed for Sasuke the first moment as she saw his cool dark eyes at the Academy.
Himori had been there with a gentle brush to her head the day of her grandma's funeral. The old woman had gained the habit of inviting her to tea, but those had become fewer throughout the years, effectively non-existent after the war. Still, Sakura always enjoyed the chats they had over the counter every Sunday.
Her wrinkled eyes were turned down to her hands as she prepared the ice cream as she asked, "And who might this handsome young man be?"
Sakura spied said man from the corner of her eye and found him to be entirely too pleased at the two adjectives used to describe him. He raised a cocky eyebrow at her and she could guess the smirk under his mask, as if the comment had finally proven her wrong.
Her eyes rolled, Kakashi was the one that called himself old and, even if she never expressed her appreciation out loud, the way he sometimes caught her gaze lingering on his bare face said more about what she thought of his looks than any words could.
"Don't complement him too much, Baa-chan, it'll get to his head." Sakura quipped with playfully sharp eyes fixed on him before turning back to the old woman. "And he's my husband, Kakashi."
Her throat closed around a small gasp as her mind finally caught up to her mouth, it was too late however.
The words were out.
Himori's eyebrows shot up, mirroring Sakura's own surprise that she didn't dare show, and her lips turned into a sly smile. "Sakura-chan, you never told me you've married."
There was also no disappointment or hurt in her voice at being kept out of the loop and finally finding ruined her plans of setting Sakura up with her grandson. But ruining the old woman's hope of a good match hadn't been the reason she hadn't told Himori.
Because of course she hadn't, Sakura hadn't told anyone she was married, much less introduced Kakashi as her husband.
Why had her mouth suddenly betrayed her? She could have easily have introduced him as her teammate or her friend as she had done for the past years, even her former sensei.
"It was all very fast and recent, it's been a little over three months." Kakashi offered the excuse smoothly.
"Oh I see, still a young love, trying to keep each other all to yourselves." Himori-baa-chan let out a knowing laugh. "Count yourself a very lucky man, Kakashi-san."
"Every day." He answered without hesitation, voice low and serious, while accepting the cups of ice cream and a stick of dango, as if it was the most normal thing for him to admit to Himori.
Sakura pulled herself out of whatever stupor her mind had fallen into because of her own damn fault. So what did it matter that she had introduced Kakashi as her husband, he was her fucking husband. Why was she even making a big deal out of it?
He had started rummaging through his back pouch as he always did before regretfully announcing he had forgotten his wallet.
"Oh no, please, it's on the house, a small wedding gift." Himori-baa-chan said before either of them could touch their wallets.
"Any other day I would have gratefully accepted it but today I promised Sakura I'd buy her ice cream, so I insist on paying for it this time, please."
Kakashi was one charming bastard when he wanted to be and for some reason he had always enjoyed sprinkling his charm over the baa-chan of Konoha. Probably charming enough to have enchanted her own grandma out of the awareness that he was her former teacher and this was an ordered wedding.
"Maybe next week?"
"Of course, I understand perfectly, my husband always loved buying me things, I swear he took more joy in giving than I did in receiving them. Next week then."
His hand fished a few coins from his wallet in a gesture that was probably the first time Sakura witnessed outside of missions.
"So you do carry a wallet in that pouch of yours." She whispered in a tease.
"A mere fluke of nature this time, I'm afraid."
"Sure." Sakura bumped her shoulder against his with a little more force than he had done before and took her ice cream from his hand. "Goodbye, Baa-chan!"
"Goodbye, my dear, Kakashi-kun. And congratulations."
Sakura gave one last smile to Himori and turned around to face the crowded street. "Come on, let's go eat this somewhere else."
She couldn't resist taking small scoops on the way, each time the dessert melted in her mouth a sigh inevitably rumbled through her throat. She was as much in love as she had been on that summer afternoon, each spoon dissolving along with whatever worries she had.
They flopped down under a tree on secluded nook of the riverbank, the sun of early winter still warm enough against their skins. Her hands smoothed the skirt of her dress over her thighs as she leaned against the trunk, Kakashi had one leg bent, his wrist resting limply over his knee. Sakura dipped her dango in the ice cream and brought it to her mouth with a delighted long sigh that made Kakashi laugh beside her.
"You look happy." He commented, the first sign of true lightness in his voice. "Now I know what to get you every time I piss you off, wife."
"Then you need to piss me off more times."
As she finished her words, her tongue slid in a long swipe across the ice cream.
"Clearly." Kakashi murmured, his lids lowered as he watched mouth with daring openness, silver lashes curling against the warm rays of the sun, before his dark eyes lifted to meet her own. "Glad I can give you this much pleasure."
The rumbled innuendo in his voice settled in her stomach as a cool swirl.
"I'm sure there are other ways you can pleasure me even more," Her tone was particularly languid, as she added, "husband."
"Being ready on time being one of them?"
Hatake Kakashi could be a coward sometimes.
"One of them… yes."
Sakura glimpsed at him from the corner of her eye just in time to catch his gleaming lips wrapped around the wooden spoon as he slowly sucked it clean, leaving behind a speckle of green ice cream on his lower lip.
Oh fuck. That shouldn't have quivered in her belly.
Kakashi glanced at her with a raised eyebrow and she begged the universe her cheeks weren't the burning shade of red she felt they were.
"You have ice-cream." She commented with the most casual tone she could while pointing at her own mouth.
That had been a mistake.
His tongue swiped over his lips, leaving a glistening trail behind them that spurred the sudden image of that same tongue tracing the shape of her lips, pressing to the hammering pulse on her throat and flicking one pert—
"Is it gone?"
"Not really."
Kakashi decided all he needed to do was perfect his licking method instead of using the napkin between his fingers. He had to have been doing it as payback from her teasing.
It would be so easy to raise herself to her knees, lean down into him and kiss that lingering speckle of ice cream from his lower lip, her tongue pushing through the seam of his mouth to meet the cooled wet touch of his own.
Her hand darted for his face to spare herself the misery and she wiped his lip with her thumb, whispering a small 'there' when she lifted her decidedly wet pad and didn't find a meddling fleck of green under it. Never once did she let her eyes raise to his.
Her hand dropped to her lap with too much force and she rubbed the moisture on her own napkin as if it burned her, especially because there had been a sudden impulse of licking it off her thumb.
Sakura didn't even like matcha ice cream that much and she couldn't possibly know if she enjoyed Kakashi's taste.
Oh fuck.
Her head almost snapped away from her body with how fast it turned away from him and towards the curving bank of the river. There was no doubt that there was a raging blush running down her neck and chest, of mortification and the heat twirling in her belly.
Why was she making it weird? Her mother had done it a thousand times to her when she was little and she was certain she had done it too many times to Naruto for any person that called himself a grown man and in neither of those had it had a flicker of something sexual in it.
She willed her heart to calm down with a few quiet breaths and her skin to sooth the goose bumps, spurred by the aching awareness of Kakashi's body heat seeping into her side.
Sakura was overreacting, there wasn't the useful excuse of her grief-incited libido this time, but it wasn't even the first time she had felt a sudden moment of attraction to Kakashi and the earliest one had been when she was barely sixteen, freaking her out a lot more than this.
It was normal, he was an attractive man.
It had happened with Shikamaru one time when they were sparring and he had curled his shadows around her body and whispered 'Shadow possession success', right in front of her.
Or even Genma, much to her regret, one time they had been at the bar, her body wound with neediness and suddenly the movement of his lips as he played with his senbon and the teasing glimpses of his tongue twirling around the metal had seemed the most alluring motion in the world.
She had never let those moments hold more importance than they should have and that had allowed them to pass through her without lingering.
"Sakura…"
Why did he have to murmur her name like that?
"Hmm?" She didn't trust herself to say anything more.
"You know that you're… more than my wife, right?"
The unexpected question made her forget about the turmoil clashing through her just seconds before and she glanced at him with a tilted head, his eyes turned down to the hand hanging over his knee, a concerned frown between his eyebrows.
Sakura let her head fall back against the trunk as a loud careless laugh spilled from her mouth. "I'm perfectly aware of that, thank you, Kakashi."
"No, I mean—"
The dismissing approach hadn't been the right one. His frown only deepened, this must have been something he was battling with for some time now and not just because she had turned into a frozen statue when introducing him as her husband.
"I know what you mean." Sakura started in a softer tone. "Did it offend me that the Council ordered this? Very much, it still does, but I think it would have been different if they forbid me from living my normal life just to push out Hatake babies."
She could feel his frame tense beside her at her crude choice of words for their situation.
Sakura looked at him, a soft sad smile on her lips at seeing his worry for her. "Honestly, I don't think this was so much about the Council seeing me only as a fertile woman but of them seeing me as the only woman for you."
Kakashi was looking at the river, only his profile turned to her, and still she could see the dusting of pink peeking on his cheek and the fierce red of his ears.
"I'm being reduced to my ability of enduring masked weirdos that read porn in public," She teased light-heartedly, but Kakashi was still too grave and impossibly still. At her failure she reverted to seriousness. "Between the two of us, I think you're the one that's being more reduced to your genes and reproductive capability. The village has always asked too much of you."
"I think it's because some of them think I'm gay."
Another laugh broke through her chest but it quickly died down when she realised he wasn't joining her on the absurdity of it. This hadn't been one of his dry comments he sometimes threw into the air.
"Really? Huh. I guess it's not unthinkable. When we were genin we put that up as a possibility but then…" Sakura trailed off, the last thing she wanted was share with him that first moment she had felt attracted to him.
They had been on a mission in a bustling town in southern Fire, lingering for one last night now that the objective had been completed. Sakura and Naruto had agreed to go out and enjoy the afternoon with some sightseeing and then treat themselves to dinner.
They had failed at convincing their team leader to join them, even after Naruto offered to pay for all their meals. Kakashi had only yawned into his hand, half-lidded eye pinned to his book as he lounged on the futon, and said he was too tired from the mission.
They both rolled their eyes, knowing it was a clear excuse considering they had barely broken a sweat for the past couple of days. They decided to go by themselves, but not before throwing some insults about their poor old sensei that tired too easily, with his low stamina and lazy ass. As always, Kakashi had ignored them.
At the end of their dinner Naruto had opened his frog wallet to find only a few miserable coins at the bottom of it, brushing the back of his head while whispering that he could have sworn there had been more last time he had checked. If they hadn't been inside a restaurant with other patrons around them, Sakura would have punched him through the wall. Instead she resigned herself into stomping out of there to fetch her own wallet at the inn.
She had been putting the much needed money in her purse, when she heard a muffled groan coming from the room beside hers, Naruto and Kakashi's room. Her muscles had tensed with alertness, hand hovering above the kunai pouch on her thigh, and stilled, waiting. Then a thud sounded through the wall with another groan of pain.
Sakura hadn't hesitated in jumping out her window, feet glued to the wall with chakra and pacing for the one beside it. Careful in hiding her presence, she had peeked through the glass for the position of their enemy.
Sakura had found her sensei to find him pinning a woman to the wall, her brow furred and mouth opened in another long groan.
Her hand had darted for the window but stopped before she could touch it, her eyes widening in realisation.
Sakura had rolled away with a start, a jab stabbing through her stomach, the chakra keeping her secured faltering for a second before she pressed her back to the wall, hand clasped over her mouth, slack with shock, eyes wide with horror.
It had lasted little more than a second but the image had become forever imprinted into the back of her lids.
Kakashi hadn't been pinning the woman's hands above her head to stop her from attacking him and her expression hadn't been creased in pain. Instead of pushing him away, she had been drawing him closer in his steady ruthless rhythm with the legs wrapped around his hips.
The soft colour of the paper lamp had painted his naked body in the dips and raises of his muscles, from his strong back, flowing down to a slim waist, crisscrossed with scars and glistening with sweat, to the movement of his hips as he thrusted into the woman, thighs and ass flexing with the rocking.
Her legs had instinctively pressed together at the familiar tingling ache between her legs, only making the sensation spike through her veins.
Sakura had jumped onto the ground and away from the sounds coming from the room and she started into a run, as if that would have helped her escape from the turmoil raging in her belly, the arousal, the shame, the fear. From the sight of Kakashi's naked body as he rolled his hips in the most enticing movement she had ever seen a man do and how it seemed to have been forever imprinted into her body.
There had been nothing old or lazy about the muscles of his perfectly carved ass.
Her reaction to it had terrified her, seeing her sensei as a man with his own sexuality in a time Sakura had just begun peeling back the surface layers of her own. In a time when she hadn't even kissed a boy, and had only seen a few more risqué films, with thrill and fear in her veins, much less the real actual act in person. And, most of all, in a time when she had believed the only man she would ever want was Sasuke.
Everything had terrified her, ashamed her, made her blow it out of proportion, when a simple couple of years later Sakura would have received the accident with a blush, wet panties and a shrug. It had taken her a month to look Kakashi in the eye again.
Remembering it only made her realise how entirely ridiculous she had been as a teenager and how lucky she was to have grown out of it now.
That had been the first and last time Sakura ever found Kakashi in such a compromising position. To this day she still wondered if it had been because he had felt her presence out there and decided to never slack off on his usual careful self, the one that made nosy elite shinobi of the Council believe he was gay.
Perhaps that mission had been the fluke of a man bursting at the seams, Sakura was always stupidly indiscrete when horny.
That had also been the moment that had crushed her doubts over her sensei's lack of attraction to women into ash. There had been nothing gay about his grunts and how he thrust into the woman with desperate need.
Pity it had been her impressionable sixteen-year-old self witnessing it and not all of Konoha's Heads of Clan.
"So the Council is perfectly content with not only ordering me into a marriage, but also letting him be a gay man." Sakura let out in a light mocking tone.
But Kakashi only answered with a serious hesitant one, "There's that thing I told you before the wedding… I'm still okay with… If you have the need."
He was even less eloquent about it now than before they had been married. Her lightness died in her throat, how could she even answer something like that?
'Thank you but for now I'm perfectly content with my own hand and the little toy I use when you're out of town'. Or 'Thank you but even with how weird and confusing this thing is, I still respect the marriage vows and could never betray you like that'. Or the much deeper hidden part of her, 'How can you be okay with that? You're my husband.'.
"I don't." Sakura answered instead, a summary of all the options.
He seemed to be all for her taking a lover outside of their marriage, always the first to bring the option to the table perhaps because he wanted it there for himself. Sakura found that she had grown to dislike the idea of him needing, wanting another woman, she had grown to dislike it a lot.
"Do you have that need?" The words slipped out of her mouth unbidden. It was as ripping a kunai from her flesh, fast and very much necessary even if it would hurt her.
"No." His answer was quick, immediate. He didn't elaborate, he didn't look at her, all he let out was that small word that washed through her with a wave of relief.
It shouldn't have surprised her. Kakashi was loyal to a fault and, just as Sakura, when he committed to something he never faltered, his sense of duty always equal to devotion. Despite all the troubles and unsaid matters between them, they had made a commitment to each other on that red bridge.
That things were said and open somehow only made the air between them suffocating with awkwardness. She wanted to bury herself deep in the earth, never to come out, but decided instead to shove the last ball of dango she had been saving up for later into her mouth, barely tasting it as she munched it with a vengeance greater than Sasuke's.
"And Sakura," Oh gods, what thing was going to leave that mouth of his now? "Thank you from bringing me along with you."
Her muscles sank back against the trunk and a saddened smile lifted the corners of her mouth, as she looked down at the empty cup on her hand. "You didn't seem to be enjoying it."
"I did, it just…" Kakashi drawled out as he raised his hand to brush the back of his neck. "maybe it was a little crowded for my taste."
Her body slumped forward as she brushed her fingers through the short loose strands of her hair. "I know, I'm sorry, Kakashi. I usually go early in the morning and walk back when it starts getting busy and I completely forgot about how hectic the afternoons can get."
"Don't apologise. I…" He cleared his throat and continued honestly, openly, even through the uncertainty in his voice, "I'd have spent the day feeling sorry for myself otherwise."
Hearing him say it broke her heart, especially with the demeaning way he worded it, but Sakura was glad Kakashi felt that he could share it with her. Bringing him to such a crowded place had been an enormous oversight on her part that fortunately hadn't ended up crumbling the steadiness he had built through the night. All because of her own selfish wish to share her Sunday routine with him.
Sakura always failed in this, always made damaging mistakes with the best of intentions, especially when this new old feeling smothered through her. She wrapped her arms around her knees, her chin resting over them.
The weight of Kakashi's warm hand came to rest at the top of her spine, one fingertip pressing above the collar of her dress to her bare skin.
"Don't make a big deal out of it. I didn't lie when I said I was glad you brought me, it was fine, really. Even if I usually prefer to do this thing from a rooftop."
She supported her cheek on her knee to face him. "What? Are there rooftop markets in the village?"
"No," He corrected with a small chuckle. "the watching Konoha thing."
"Oh."
Sakura hadn't realised that Kakashi had realised that was one of the main purposes of her visits to the market.
"I think I can understand why you like to immerse yourself in it. Maybe I can come next week. In the morning." Kakashi's tone balanced between a question and a statement.
"Of course." Sakura answered through a warm smile.
His hand rubbed her back once before falling to dangle over his bent knee again as he finally melted into the tree trunk, muscles lax and breathing unstrained, as he had always been proficient at doing. There was only one thing missing, a book held loosely between his fingers and it was then that Sakura realised she hadn't seen it since the shawl stand.
She straightened up, back pressing to the rough bark, the grass prickling her bare legs as she stretched them in front of her.
Her eyes came to rest on the naked branches shuddering in the breeze and reflected back on the glassy surface of the river. The musty scent of damp earth oozed from underneath them, the soil humid with the river that nurtured it. The noise from the market reached them as a quiet rumbling murmur and the waving branches printed streaks of shadow and light on their legs and ground.
Her head rolled against the trunk so she could look up at Kakashi, 'the handsome young man'.
There were already thin creases blooming at the corner of his eyes, certainly deepened by the eye-crinkles he liked to gift people. He wouldn't admit it out loud but she suspected that they made him feel self-conscious, having caught him glancing at them on her magnifying mirror, but Sakura loved them.
His head rolled against the trunk too so he could meet her gaze with a questioning raise of his eyebrow but she only smiled back.
Kakashi understood. Her fingers brushed away a few strands of silver hair that had fallen over his eyes, baring them to her. Veins of light grey glinted in the dark shade, and warmed as he smiled back, just a soft curve of his lips
There wasn't a trace of that haunted shadow remaining and the weight that had lingered in her heart since last night lifted, fleeing away with the gurgling current of the river.
Maybe later it would return but at least now Kakashi could rest, at least now he was at peace.
Everything was right where it belonged.
Her head came to rest against his shoulder.
Later Sakura would remind herself that it was pretend. It was a lie.
There was always a constant effort of reminding herself of it. Each new day brought longer stretches of forgetfulness, as she sank deeper and harder into this thing between them. It would drown her if she didn't remember to come up and breathe the cold reality and reason to why they were here.
They stayed there until the sun disappeared behind the mountains that surrounded Konoha and the cool air peppered goose bumps through Sakura's arms. Sometimes in silence, sometimes in idle talk, Kakashi's laughs looser than she had ever seen them before, his demeanour freer.
She told him of Himori-baa-chan and her grandmother, of lonely summers of when she had been a timid child and why she loved the ice cream, he told her he had been a lonely child too, reclusive, Guy the only kid that had seemed to take a genuine interest in him, and later Obito and Rin.
The streetlights were the only thing illuminating their path as they walked back to their apartment, Kakashi carrying the two canvas bags while Sakura swung the take-out they had bought along the way, back and forth with her steps.
She glanced at him, pondering if it was okay to share the thought lingering in her mind as they paced.
"I thought we were really good friends, but only now can I see how much you were pulling back."
"It's not easy for me." Kakashi answered matter-of-factly as he continued to watch the street in front of him.
"I know. I'm glad… I'm glad you're letting me in."
He smiled down at her, always gentle, but it faltered slightly. His hand held her own as he squeezed.
"I wish you'd let me in too."
He raised it to his mouth, warm masked lips pressing to the back of her hand with an eye-crinkle and promptly dropped it.
The gesture, the words… Sakura could only stare wide-eyed, stilling, as everything seemed to rage through her in a muddled wave, a cringe of her heart. Before she could decide on what emotion should rise up to her skin and what reaction she should push against him, Kakashi was already moving along, too many steps ahead so that Sakura could only keep up with a jog.
She hurried until she fell into step with him with a huff.