Chapter Fourteen
I look at you, and I sigh
They pretended it didn't happen.
No, pretend wasn't the right word for what they were doing, because there was no attempt to take the steps backwards to the moment before they crashed their lips together along with their relationship.
Or perhaps the derailing had begun earlier, on their date, on that afternoon when she watched him lick ice cream off his lips after she had seen him frozen in anguish the night before, at the edge of shattering in her hands. Perhaps further, on that red bridge when Sakura chose not to defect and dragged him along with her.
There was no pretending, no attempt to rewind back time, not in how Kakashi sulked in his self-pity and his guilt, and not in how Sakura sulked in her anger and her sexual frustration.
They left it unnamed and unspoken but very much there, like thick walls of ice set around each of them.
The moment she had stepped into their apartment and realised that Kakashi's approach to one single kiss and a few rubs would be sulking and definitely not talking, Sakura had let him, too annoyed to let it bother her.
It was his loss if he didn't want to fuck her or talk to her about it. Hers as well. But she could put herself in a pedestal where it didn't touch her, it didn't so much as graze her.
He had gone on a mission for two weeks and she had entertained herself with the box hidden under her bed. It hadn't been enough, not when it wasn't the touch of him, but it had been something, a slight waning of the edge right under her skin.
It helped that her audience with the Council for the clinic's project would be in three months. Sakura had been inevitably drowning in her work. There were too many things for her to worry about that took precedence over the overcomplicated and blown out of proportion issues inside Kakashi's head and that stopped her from fucking the brains out of him.
So what if every time she saw him Sakura's mind either built up scenarios of him fucking her into the nearest piece of furniture, or of the best ways to strangle him?
It also helped that he had pulled back on the touching. His sleep had grown into an attempt to be the human equivalent of an inanimate plank of wood laid out on the farthest corner of the bed.
She had even gained a new satisfaction in masturbating in their bed when Kakashi wasn't home so that he could smell the remnants of her scent in the air. The first time he had halted, hand still wrapped around the knob of their bedroom door. For too long seconds he had stood frozen in the threshold, then he took the step inside as if nothing had happened.
He could roll around in his guilt and sexual frustration for all she cared.
It wasn't the first time Sakura had dealt with an uncontrollable want, so it was all perfectly manageable. It was all perfectly fine.
Many times he had looked at her, lips moving and thoughts swirling behind his eyes, as if he was readying himself to say something solemn, something relevant that could unravel what was warring in his idiotic head and bare it to her.
In those moments, Sakura had swallowed her anger and invited a monk's serene patience into the lines of her face, only for Kakashi to settle for those eye-crinkled smiles that were faker than Sai's when he could barely distinguish between happy and sad.
The ice tension between them had soaked into the furniture of their apartment, even the ninken withdrew from long stays when they were both in the same room. And when Ino had realised her snappiness was rooted in Kakashi, she had very helpfully told her to fuck it out of their systems.
On a team dinner at their place, Naruto had caught onto the tension during the first ten minutes, which meant a normal person would have noticed at the first glance.
From the kitchen Sakura had heard Naruto's murmured words, "Did you also put Sakura's super special plate in the dishwasher? I don't think I've ever come closer to death than when I did that." She had decided to ignore it, as had Kakashi, but then he continued. "Or used one of her expensive textbooks as a coaster? Spilled cranberry juice on the couch?"
He had stopped relaying possible causes when a wooden spoon hit him on the back of the head with enough force to slit open a normal person's skull.
Sai had been the closest to the core of the issue, saying that according to one of his books there were signs of unfulfilled sexual tension, which had made Naruto let out a gagging sound and Tenzou turn a sunset's shade of red.
He had been the only one not imparting his wisdom on the matter. At the beginning of the evening, he had opened his lips with a comment only to halt at the threatening glare from his senpai. How Kakashi knew exactly what would come out of his mouth was a mystery to her, but thankfully it led to Tenzou's decision to keep his opinions to himself.
One entire month of this.
They were two perfectly mature and all around well-grounded adults.
A man-child and a woman-child.
"You're so little fun today, Sakura." Tsunade whined as she shoved her with her elbow. "Come on, drink a shot with us."
Sakura lifted the cup of sake her shishou had shoved into her hand with a tight smile and drowned it in one gulp to satisfy her.
Sakura had thought her birthday would be spent with their apartment teeming with her friends. But the closer the day got, the more they trickled out of Konoha for missions, until there was not one single person left to make her company but the Hokage herself and her assistant.
It was one of those unlucky years and not the first one in her life, but tonight it felt especially cruel, especially aimed, a personal punishment from the universe. Kakashi had had the idea of postponing the preparations for the celebration of when – if, Sakura had corrected him – the children's clinic project was approved, just two months away from.
"I am sorry, you know." The corner of Tsunade's lips lifted in a smirk. "For dragging your husband away around your birthday."
Her words were meant mostly as a joke at their relationship's expense and Sakura couldn't muster the patience to answer them apart from a steady long gulp of her drink.
Would Kakashi even have been a good company today?
Her heart didn't seem to care. Good or bad, Sakura wanted him there. She missed him, she missed him so much she had spent her own birthday sulking. It was more pathetic than endearing.
Tsunade quickly drank herself into a frenzy and Shizune was understanding enough to let her slip away from her shishou's demanding eyes while she tilted her head back for a shot.
Sakura chose to follow the slow path home through the streets of Konoha.
Her lungs were soaked in the scent of cherry blossoms, stray petals littering the ground, but all her eyes could see were glimpses of the moon between branches blowing in the wind.
She saw Kakashi in the moonlight, pale skin and silver hair, his grey eyes the veil of the dark sky.
Had he remembered her today?
The rational part of her knew he must have, Kakashi always remembered her birthday even without them being married. But there was another trembling one at the corner of her heart that was terrified of the thought that he had forgotten her, hadn't cared to hold her in his thoughts, to look out into the cherry blossoms and see not them but only her.
(She never let the most terrifying of all possibilities materialise in her mind, the one that always loomed around her when he left for a mission. He hadn't remembered her because he was no longer there to remember.)
Sakura clenched her eyes closed, fighting back the prickle in them.
She really was pathetic, wasn't she?
Her gaze flickered up to their apartment in the distance. With a start, Sakura found light shining from their living room. She rushed through the street, up the side of the building, not bothering with the stairs.
Her mind had been brewing with words and apologies all the while he had been away, ready to spill them out when he returned.
One morning she had rolled towards his side and breathed in his pillow to realise his scent had started fading away. Sakura had almost broken down, her heart anticipating in it the possibility of him never again being there beside her. Of every fear surrounding their relationship that was what ran through her veins the coldest.
Her needs were no longer worth this distance between them and neither was her pride, making her act as if Kakashi owed her sex.
She slammed the window of their narrow balcony open and slipped inside.
The emptiness of the apartment crashed into her. Its bitter taste was familiar, like the cruelty of all those times when Sakura had thought she had caught an impossible hint of dark hair gliding out the corners of Konoha.
She slumped back against the cold glass with a self-deprecating chuckle, hand rubbing against her sternum.
She had always been pathetic in her pining.
Body curled into the side of the sofa, Sakura watched their soap opera but her heart wasn't really there, not without Kakashi to laugh, get annoyed and emotional over characters' decisions. Not even the ninken were there.
Her eyes were tired, heavy over her lids, still a slight buzz in her veins from the sake she had drunk on her birthday dinner.
She could clear it out from her body with her chakra, but tonight the haziness felt right.
It had been a long time since Sakura had felt this lonely. It settled as cold in her body, the blankets wrapped around her not enough to warm her. Neither would be the duvet of their bed, not without the heat and smell of his body to soak into the sheets, even when he was two arms away from her, right at the edge of the mattress.
Her eyes wandered from the television towards the window, searching for that glimpse of the moon where all she saw was him.
A puff of smoke sprung in front of her and Sakura jolted in her seat. Her arms came free from the blankets in case she had to defend herself from an attack.
The cloud vanished to reveal Pakkun's familiar shape, shaking his body to draw the water out, sprinkling droplets around her furniture and floor.
The ninken knew she hated when they did that inside the apartment and were forbidden from it, but Sakura was too impossibly glad to see his grumpy face and hear his grumbles over his dislike for rain to chastise him.
"Pakkun!" Sakura called as she fell onto her knees and brought him into her arms.
"Hey, Sakura-chan, happy birthday."
"Thank you." She whispered as she brought him with her to sit back on the sofa, Pakkun on her lap, fingers rubbing at the fur on his head. "So what brings you here? Is everything okay with Kakashi?"
"Everything is fine. Kakashi wanted to apologise for stealing all of us for himself, but we need to follow someone's track and it's been raining, so we need all the noses we can get."
"Oh." It was relieving to know he was alive and that there was a reason not concerning her for why the ninken were away. "Do you think you'll catch them?"
"Of course we'll catch them." Pakkun turned around in her lap, showing a wooden box tied around his back. "Kakashi also wanted to me wish you happy birthday and give you this."
"Oh."
She really was very pathetic. Of course Kakashi had remembered her.
Her fingers released the box, contemplating it for a long time as her heart sped inside her chest. Inside was a fan, she picked it up as if it could shatter in her fingers.
Her eyes had expected to see the familiar delicate pink of cherry blossoms painted into the folded fabric. The markets overflowed with themed trinkets and wares now that they were in bloom, and there was an easy connection between her hair, her name and the flowers.
Her own parents had always talked of being graced by the kami-sama after years of trying to conceive. Instead of being gifted a baby from a bamboo shoot, as the tale of the moon maiden, they had been gifted one from cherry blossoms.
As her fingers plucked the fan open, the fabric revealed a landscape of clouds hovering a whistling river and, peeking through the hues of silver, blue and grey, was a stain of red – the arch of a bridge, a mere glimpse.
At its corner, beside the artisan's stamp, were the flowing dark characters of a poem.
Haze rises
And the red-painted bridge
Is gone.
Sakura stilled, her heart in her throat, hands holding onto the gift as if it were the most precious thing in her life. In that moment it was. She had searched for this for so long, in free expressing words, in the shade of two grey eyes, in the absence and in the moonlight, and here it was.
In that moment she was holding the beating heart of Hatake Kakashi, hidden behind masked layers and cryptic wistful words, and yet gifted to her, bare, surrendered, present.
It seemed her own was also there, having fallen from her ribs, wounded, pining, and most of all scared.
Not only was Kakashi a man of duty, habit and familiarity, of passion, he was also a man of hidden romantic gestures when he was safe countries away not to see the reaction to them.
"Sakura?"
She startled, shoulders jumping at it, having forgotten that there was a pug sitting on her lap, patiently waiting for her reaction so he could later relay it to his contractor. Sakura closed the fan carefully and laid it back on its box, meeting the sad puppy eyes of Pakkun.
Perhaps he thought her silence meant Kakashi had failed the target. Perhaps he was finally realising that this was a complicated jumble of entangled things that weren't as simple as his thrown out 'Just be mates' at her when she had been venting out over her inability to understand Kakashi's deal and realising his ninken were as lost in the mysterious puzzle of him as she was. Perhaps it was none of those and only how his eyes normally looked.
Anyone might think it too melancholic for a birthday gift, but tonight it whispered at the same tune of her heartstrings.
"Charming bastard." Sakura mumbled with a smile.
It seemed enough to satisfy Pakkun, tail wiggling against her legs. Sakura brought him up into a hug, his soft furry body warm and always comforting, even if he was dampening her pyjamas and smelled like wet dog. A small surrogate for Kakashi.
"Tell him I love it and that he has my undying gratitude. And…" The words seemed caught in her throat. "And that I wish he was here with me."
"I'm staying with you, Sakura-chan."
Her fingers traced down the red string hanging from the fan. If only they could weave themselves together as simply as the artisan had weaved that braided thread.
The whisper of a lightning chakra made Sakura spring up from the dining table, papers scattering over with the rush of air her movement lifted, but she didn't linger to fix them back into their rightful place. There were more important things that needed tidying.
Her eyes glanced out the window to see what she had already felt, Kakashi.
Sakura hurried for the door, stopping only before the mirror to comb the strands of her hair down and wonder if she should pull it up in an attempt to control the frizzy halo of pink.
The muffled sound of the building door closing made her pull away from her own reflection and hover the door of their apartment. She didn't wait for Kakashi to open it himself, as she felt his chakra outside, her hand latched to the handle and tore it open.
"Oh." He let out, startled back by the violent swing and probably frantic looking woman that had come to greet him.
It was definitely not the most welcoming of sights, but he recovered quickly, while Sakura was still trying to move her tongue in her mouth, melted at the very real vision of him back home.
"Yo—"
"I don't want our relationship to be ruined over this." The words rushed out of her mouth in a wild and demanding flow, unlike anything that Sakura had rehearsed, which involved actually imparting some profundity and sentiment to a speech longer than a sentence.
Kakashi was taken aback, his grey eyes slightly wide and attentive as they fixed on her face, trying to piece together the meaning of it.
"Good," He finally returned with an honest smile. "because I don't want it either."
Sakura smiled up at him as well. "Good, good."
She wasn't exactly sure where to go from there, awkwardness already lapping at their feet and threatening to ruin the possibility of their safe return back to where they were before.
Her throat cleared, stepping back to let him enter. "You can go take a shower while I finish dinner."
"Wait, Sakura." Before she could turn around, Kakashi's fingers reached for her elbow, hold careful around her, and even then his touch branded her. "I…I need time."
The lines around his eyes were carved deep, the plea spilling through his expression even when half his face was still covered with his mask. Sakura hated that Kakashi felt as if he was asking her the most unfair favour in the world, that she had made him feel that way.
"It's okay if you're not ready, Kakashi, that was never my issue. Yes, I was a little hurt when you pulled back, but what really pissed me off was that you didn't stay to talk and ran away from me."
"I'm sorry."
Her hand reached for his gloved one, slack against his side.
"Sometimes I'm afraid that this is all about my time, my needs, my wants, everything to make me comfortable. A part of me is glad that you're not just going with what you think will appease me the most. I want our relationship to go both ways."
Her eyes lifted from where they watched their fingers intertwined to his.
"But at the same time I'm afraid that this is just like all those times when you take the burden of a guilt for something that's not your fault."
She lifted his hand to her mouth, pressing a soft kiss to the back of it through the fabric of his glove. "Will you tell me?"
A rush of things she couldn't name warred behind his eyes, each movement of his thoughts bared to her, as his lips opened and closed against the mask.
"It does make me feel guilty and I don't like that. I don't want to feel guilt when I'm with you."
His words were careful, perfectly measured and she wondered what exactly he had left out of them, especially when Kakashi couldn't smother down the intensity in the dark shade of his eyes, almost pained.
The sound of his pack hitting the ground jerked through her. Kakashi took a step towards her, hand reaching out to her. For a breathless moment, flutters twisting in her stomach, Sakura thought he would kiss her.
His arm curled around her waist as he pressed her with a gentle hold to his chest, each of his touches hesitant. Sakura didn't let an instant pass before her arms wrapped around his neck. His own tightened around her as he felt her return the hug, hand rising to cradle the back of her head.
Kakashi's little sigh of contentment ruffled against her neck, it pulled a happy smile from her lips. And Sakura closed her eyes as his irresistible scent, biting after a day of running home, running home to her, filled her lungs once more.
"I missed you, Sakura." He breathed out, placing a shy faint kiss to her temple. "More than you can know."
"I missed you too." She whispered back, trying to make him know through the curl of her body, warm once again, into his that his presence in her life was essential.
A part of her couldn't believe that it had been this simple. What had seemed unbreakable just a few days ago had crumbled with a rushed out sentence and an eye-creased smile.
They wanted to be together and that needed to make the rest simple.
A chocked out gasp yanked him away from sleep.
Kakashi opened his eyes to see Sakura sitting at the edge of their bed, curled into herself, face hidden in her hands. A tremble shuddered through her shoulders. Was she crying?
She wasn't, in seven years Kakashi had seen Sakura cry once and only when his eyes had been darkening with death on some lost part of the Land of Grass, the glow of her chakra in the air between them.
She still had the fame of someone that wore her heart in her sleeve, but that only served to delude people that what they saw on the surface was a mirror of what moved inside of her. If anyone cared to look a little deeper, underneath the underneath, it was clear that there was a war of things swirling inside of her that she never let anyone, perhaps not even herself, see.
Kakashi had fallen into the same fault before their marriage, never grasping just how much of her pain had been tucked away. He had allowed it to slip past his eyes, attentive to other things, selfish things.
Now he wished he could peel back the layers around her and know what warred in her chest, in her mind, in her heart, so he could bear it.
"Hey…" He whispered into the quietness, afraid of shattering it and her, as his hand brushed down her bowed back. "Was it another nightmare?"
For the past two weeks, as the audience with the Council neared, they had been a constant presence in her sleep.
"Yeah." Sakura rasped, rubbing her face and combing back her hair. "It's the stress."
"We've combed through the project together dozens of times. If the Council doesn't pass it, then it's their problem, not your work's."
"If it can't convince the Council then it is my work's problem, its purpose is to convince the Council."
But sometimes old clan hags could be too stubborn, too stuck in their own ways to see anything outside their hardened minds. And that was of their own responsibility, their own fault, not hers.
His arm wrapped around her stomach as he laid a kiss to her shoulder and let his cheek rest against her back.
Kakashi wished – he wished so many things concerning her but he could never make them be – it would be as simple as showing her that a rejection wouldn't be the end of the world, that she could always try to compromise with the Council or simply accept that they were the ones in the wrong and leave with a head held high.
But he had discovered just how deeply this project was intertwined with Sakura's self-worth. A rejection would feel as a shattering hit to everything she was. A rejection would crush her and, even if he was certain of the proposal's power, a part of him was terrified for it.
There was something else burning to spill from his mouth, something that he wanted to acknowledge between them, but Kakashi was scared she would scurry away from his hands and hide in a crevasse where he couldn't reach her.
"You call after him."
It was said, voiced, and there was a long expecting silence between them.
Sakura peeked at him through her messy strands, the glint of a sneer in her eyes. "Are you jealous that the woman you're married to calls after another man in her sleep?"
"Sakura." He said, blunt and unyielding.
It was a different type of running, she had deformed the meaning of his words into something else entirely.
Lesser men could have been jealous, perhaps someone outside of them three wouldn't understand it. The world had watched them as mad people for the years that they had ran after Sasuke and now his ghost haunted the three of them still, all in different ways.
"I'm doing this for him, you know. Isn't that pathetic?" Her voice was laced with bitterness, loathing. "That the purpose of my work is the first boy that I've loved and that always broke my heart?"
"You saw how the village, how the world failed him and you're trying to protect other children from going through the same. There's nothing pathetic about that, it's admirable."
Sakura only shook her head. "You don't understand."
His fingers brushed the hair away from her profile, tucking it on her ear, so he could see her. "Then help me understand, Sakura…"
She clenched her teeth, her jawbone jutting out with the force of it. Kakashi let his thumb trace it, as if his touch could sooth the tension there and reach the struggle that sipped deeper.
"Let's go back to sleep." She whispered, only a rasp against her throat.
There was a sting of sorrow that Sakura had pulled away from him, but he didn't demand anything more, tonight was not the moment for it.
Kakashi scooted himself onto his side of the bed, but a tug on his sleeve made look down at Sakura. Her eyes were uncertain as they watched him in a silent request.
There weren't words on her side, no vulnerable confessions of what hid in her chest, but he didn't need them. It was enough that Sakura was allowing him to comfort her, already a gesture of surrender, it was enough to know that he wasn't completely useless to her, that he could relieve at least a few drops of her disquiet.
He didn't hesitate, his arms opened and she wiggled into the nook of his body, face pressed to his throat, warm breath tingling the sensitive skin there.
"Your project is one of the most amazing things that can happen to Konoha. I could never thank you enough for it, Sakura. Never doubt its worth and its good, never doubt all the love you put into it. Never, Sakura."
Her voice was only a whisper. "It's also for you."
He had known of it already. Just as it was for Naruto, Sai, Tenzou, and all the people that she didn't know and for whom she still found an boundless space in her heart, for whom she gave this one immeasurable act of love.
His eyes glanced towards the fan displayed on their dresser, the one Kakashi had gifted her for her twenty-fifth birthday. His heart had jumped against his ribs the moment he arrived home and saw it there, replacing some of the picture frames with her friends.
For an entire day, he had stared at the wares in the bustling market of a town in southern Frost where he was staying for the mission. Kakashi had deliberated if he should choose the safe option and gift her the typical cherry blossom fan with a poem about their beauty. It would still have been very much sincere but not quite their own, especially when he had already spotted the evidence around their apartment of how many cherry blossom themed presents Sakura had received throughout the years.
In a bout of courage and madness, Kakashi had given into his impulse. The haiku was vague, its meaning made in his own heart and probably only revealing itself to him, but the artwork was a worthy enough present and the red bridge a significant token throughout the years of their ever-changing relationship.
Sakura never quite showed if she had caught a glimpse of the sense Kakashi had seen in it and wanted to share with her, the fear that the meaning their relationship had for him was only a delusion in his head, chaining her down to it.
She was clearly happy with it, otherwise she wouldn't have put it on the special spot reserved for photos with her precious people. He had seen her hide the very well-meaning gift from Naruto – a rather large knickknack of a porcelain slug and frog – on the lower corner of their bookcase, where it wouldn't meet people's eyes.
It was only there, in its hidden display and not deep in a box of their closet, because it had been clearly an expensive hand-made commission. Unlike the fate of the rather flattering nude portrait of Kakashi, its proportions strangely accurate, Sai had decided was a good birthday gift for a newly wedded woman.
It depicted him lounging back, entirely naked, except for the lower half of his face, veiled behind his orange covered book, slumping from slack fingers and at the edge of falling down.
The accuracy of the portrait, from scars, to sizes and the manner of his poise would have unnerved him, if Kakashi didn't know that Sai's attention to detail was democratic and innocent, his gaze the dissecting one of an artist.
Sai's reasoning for the gift was that Sakura's husband was a fairly travelled man and this way she wouldn't have to rely on memory in her own solitude. Sometimes he was certain their teammate enjoyed playing the oblivious socially inept idiot to get away with mocking people.
Kakashi couldn't complain, not when it made Sakura stagger and blush so prettily.
She had yelled at him, asking how he could be so amused at the proof that Sai had been ogling him in the bathhouse, and he had only raised an eyebrow and returned the question, 'So you admit that it's accurate'.
Her entire body had entered a bright red stage of combustion. Naruto had yelped and Tenzou had choked on his sake, but no one was very surprised that she would know, they were married after all. It would shock them more to find that they hadn't slept together yet, had barely stumbled further than kissing.
Sometimes Sai could be a surprising ally, because Sakura admitting to the accuracy to Kakashi would mean that she had been ogling him during his annual check-up and that was definitely a much graver delict than Sai's bathhouse peeping.
Kakashi had suggested that the painting should sit at their genkan, welcoming their lovely guests to their home and reminding her to thank fate for her very blessed marriage. Sakura had snorted before throwing at him 'If you want people to run away with fear'. A hand to his chest, Kakashi answered with a genuine, 'You flatter me, wife."
Her hand had snapped for his, yanking him to her by the collar as she pierced him with a glare. Somehow her threat had washed away as she looked back at his eyes. He didn't miss them, breath stilled in his throat, the flicker of her gaze down to his lips, the twitch of her fingers against the fabric, the conflict in the tiny lean toward him and back.
Sakura had caught herself by pushing him away and against the wall, mumbling something about castration and solving all the problems in her life.
They might as well enjoy all the perks, Sakura had told him on that fatidic morning at the training ground, a hint of a sneer in her voice.
Kakashi didn't like that word – perk.
Was it only a perk to her? That in a senseless marriage they could at least fall into bed together.
That doubt constantly hammered in his mind, that he was waiting for a place that Sakura could never reach, not with him.
But no. If it were all a perk in the path she had been ordered to take, Sakura wouldn't have held back. She wouldn't have felt the need for tentative careful steps, for excuses on a long forgotten promise to a dying teammate just to kiss him. She would have thrown herself into it and not hesitate at the possible weight and gravity of every touch.
The same way that had it been any other woman, Kakashi would have seduced her at the first hint of want and would have fucked her without once wondering if her surrender to him bloomed free, bloomed deeper than the surface of her lust.
If it was all a perk Sakura wouldn't meet his gaze from the other side of their living room or their sofa or their bed and flood everything with the endless green of her eyes, striking him with a sense of beauty and hope, of inevitability, as if there was no other way for them to be and to become, together.
His head bowed down to hers, nose sinking into her pink hair. Kakashi could only fall asleep when Sakura's breathing eased and her heartbeat slowed into a languid rhythm against his chest.
"We have my aunt's support. Call it nepotism, but I call it common sense." Ino babbled on to Sakura, the cadence of her voice faster and timbre higher with nerves. "Shikaku is definitely a yes for us, then Tsunade, being a Senju and the Hokage it's already big help." Her blue eyes gave a sassy turn to land on him, as Ino crossed her arms. "Shame that the Hatake clan isn't very influential."
"My opinion is actually held in very high regard, they even want me to be Hokage." Kakashi answered with one of his crinkled smiles.
"Is it?" Arms still crossed, Ino raised a finger to point between him and Sakura. "Then why are you two married?"
His brain stopped, halted with the blow of her ruthless comeback. Beside him Sakura let out a small jingling laugh, hand curling around his arm. "Don't torment him, Ino."
A laugh was good, even if it had felt somewhat at his expense.
That morning Sakura's nervousness had translated into an anger and edginess that needed to cut through everything that grazed her. And the one thing settled at the perfect reach of her tirade was Kakashi himself. Every little thing he had done, including the light murmur of his breathing had served to piss her off, and he had settled into the role of punching bag without taking it as an offence.
It wasn't the first time and it certainly wouldn't be the last. Besides, Sakura always ended the apologising to him in the shape of his favourite meal and two big green eyes.
With the hand still on his arm, she guided him away from Ino, whose eyes followed their departure with cunning interested, and Sai, always deceitfully indifferent.
"Hey." Sakura whispered as her head tilted back to look up at him.
"Yo." He answered back, even if greetings seemed a little disingenuous after three hours of being in each other's presence.
"I'm glad you're here, Kakashi."
"Maa, I am a member of the Council, I'm obligated to be here."
A blow he didn't bother evading hit him in the stomach and Kakashi curled into himself with an exaggerated grimace of pain.
"Domestic violence is very frowned upon in Konoha. Don't let the Council catch sight of it."
"And if it's deserved?" Sakura asked, the corner of her mouth lifting in a small smile of amusement she couldn't quite hide.
"Of course I am." Kakashi answered simply.
He could add nothing more than the inevitability of him being there to support her. There wasn't any other place for him to be.
"And thank you for your help, Kakashi." Her hands lifted to press to his chest, eyes lowered to the point of contact as she continued, "I don't know how to show just how grateful I really am. For everything."
"Perfectly showed." He answered with a smile.
She smoothed down his flak jacket and his hand came to rest on the curve between her shoulder and neck. He had to fight against the impulse of letting his thumb press to the fast rise and fall of her pulse point.
Sakura had pinned her hair up, with a few pink strands falling to frame her face, and explained that it made her look more professional. All his eyes could see was the slope of her throat, his mouth begging to relearn the taste of her soft pale skin, slower this time, to enjoy it fully and not let the frantic barrage of his lust take over.
Her eyes lifted to his. They trembled, the doubts that had been veiled under their colour rising to the surface.
"What if I fail…?"
"You won't."
There wasn't a doubt in his mind that her and Ino's presentation would charm the pockets and moral compass out of the Council and Konoha's fund.
"I don't need you to reassure me that I won't, Kakashi." Sakura grounded, voice firm, a sliver of anger behind it. "I'm asking if I fail."
"Then you fail. And it's okay." His hand rose to cup her cheek, as if his touch could print his words into her heart and make her feel the reality of them. "Even if you do, when you walk through that door you'll be as amazing as before, even more because you tried, you gave it all you have. The most amazing person I know, Sakura… And I'll l…"
His fingers pressed down on her nape as his tongue melted in his mouth.
"I'll cherish you all the same."
"Kakashi…" His name trembled in her voice.
His fingers glided to cradle the back of her neck. He drew her closer to him, where he could press what he hoped was a soothing kiss right above her byakugou. As he leaned down to her, Sakura tilted her head back.
Their mouths met, his masked, hers always soft.
It was only a small brush of lips, something fleeting, something sweet, as a married couple would do every morning before leaving home for work.
It felt natural somehow, weightless, without the terrifying burden and guilt of all the kisses they shared or almost did before.
Sometimes it felt so simple and other times it felt like doom.
Before Sakura could pull away, Kakashi lowered his mask to his chin and pressed his mouth fuller to hers, letting their touch linger. He couldn't bear that the simplicity of it would fade away too soon, before he could relish in it, maybe never to return.
"Sakura!" Ino's voice shattered through the air and Sakura jerked at the sound of it. "Stop making out and come here, it's time."
Her green eyes rolled at her friend's presumption, even if she couldn't stop a blush from dusting over her cheeks. "She's such a child."
Before she could disentangle herself from him, Kakashi leaned in, his lips pressing to the purple diamond on her forehead.
"Blow them away, Sakura."
Her green eyes lifted to his, a glint of smugness in them. The sharpness of her expression trembled through him.
It was the same gaze that Sakura had pinned him with when she had unearthed him with her first.
Almost a decade ago and Kakashi hadn't forgotten that glare. Despite the shock of feeling the earth crumble around him, it had felt like a weight had dropped from his shoulders, the certainty that she had found her place in the shinobi world, her own worth.
"I will."
Kakashi waited to see her walk through the door and slipped into the room through the side door that he used for all the times he was late. He took his spot in the bench among the other twenty heads of clan.
Presiding and at the front was Tsunade, as Hokage and the Senju leader, at her two sides Hyuga Hiashi and Sarutobi Kenji. These three clans had the most influential voices in Konoha and two of them happened to be the most demanding and unyielding of the entire Council. They had also been the two driving forces in sealing the program for the preservation of Konoha's dying clans and chaining Sakura to him.
While Ino and Sakura's relationship involved many moments of clashes between the two, they could also slot themselves together as two complementary pieces in a flawless machine. Where one faltered, the other filled in the blank, where one led the discussion into uncharted territory, the other followed through without hesitation, almost as if they shared the same mind.
He had heard her presentation and countered back through all their rehearsals. He had seen her mind work through boundless information and point at his own lack of understanding to form the perfect counter argument and defence.
And still Kakashi was in awe of her as Sakura juggled the most powerful people in Konoha in her hands, never letting a sliver of fragility crack through her pose, never yielding back her presence that drowned the room, that demanded authority onto herself.
She had always persevered in her convictions and not even the core of Konoha's ruling power could stand in her way.
Kakashi still couldn't believe he was married to this incredible person.
It had been nine months.
Every day that he met the familiar green colour of her eyes in the morning, puffy from sleep still, or heard the tender, painfully unreal and still so entirely said, 'welcome home' in her voice, there was always a jolt of surprise in him, something that jarred him from the core and up to his skin.
Some days, when they lounged on their sofa, his head resting on Sakura's thigh, her fingers oblivious as they combed through his hair, books in both their hands, he could almost pretend that his hands weren't soaked in blood and body carved with wars. He could pretend that all that made up his life was that stillness, that peace.
Kakashi was learning to allow himself to love it.
He had even started dabbling with some dark-coloured sweaters and a few non-issued shirts.
How long had it been since he had dressed civilian clothes because he simply felt like it? Most likely not since his father died.
He remember still that first morning alone – how could he forget it when it destroyed him and shaped him anew, a little boy made into a chaos of missing shards and a pool of blood soaking into floorboards? – when Kakashi had stared at his closet and his own clothes had looked foreign to him, unintelligible.
It was the piercing moment when he had realised he was entirely alone in the world.
He had hated his father for leaving without placing his clothes for each new day folded beside his bed, as he had always done when going away on missions. He had hated his father for not remembering him this time as he left forever. He had hated his father for dooming him to the absence of him, this time complete and unending.
Kakashi had pulled out the masked shirt he always wore at the Academy. It had seemed the only possible choice, the only thing that would fit, suit him, and no one would see the wasteland that had been made of him. Shinobi wear became his everyday clothes and he shaped himself into that surface alone.
That wool sweater Sakura first chose for him... only later did Kakashi realise just how deep it reached him, only later could he recognise the warm touch of her green chakra that had cradled his heart.
He didn't need to be battle ready all the time, he didn't need to have his shinobi-ness right at the surface of him.
And Sakura had no idea.
No idea at all of the good she brought to his life, no idea of how desperately he wanted to keep it, how terrified he was at the sliver of a possibility that it could all disappear, that he could ruin it in his blade hands.
Just as she seemed to have so little idea of the impact she had in the lives of Konoha's people.
Kakashi fell in love with Sakura all over again in that room. He knew that had the audience failed, he would have fallen in love with her all over again and all the same.
Loving Sakura was inevitable.
But it was never free, it was never only good. Even through this overwhelming wave of his affection, guilt also ruled, because their marriage hadn't been her choice.
His luck was her curse, his happiness her loss.
How could they ever be even?
When the audience ended, Sakura found his gaze once again to gift him another small smile. He returned it, a tender turn of his lips that she would see from the shape of his eyes.
"Ah," A hand fell heavily on his back, jolting Kakashi away from where he was watching her, to find Akimichi Chouza grinning down at him. "now isn't that the look of a proud husband."
"Maa, Chouza-san," He brushed the back of his head. "It definitely is."
And of a husband desperately in love.
Less sexy things happening in this chapter, but hopefully the next one will make it up to you :)
A very happy Christmas, dear people!
(ps: the haiku is by Natsume Sōseki.)