- FULL SUMMARY -
Sakura might be married to her job as a medic, but she can't stop thinking about her first loves: Genjutsu, and the man who once taught it to her. What will happen when she accidentally casts an experimental Genjutsu on HERSELF and manifests a sentient Kakashi double? The answer: Trouble. Only trouble.
In the mean time, she's busy with a hundred other things: Attending an international medical summit, dragging Shikamaru along for the ride, attempting to earn her Sensei's respect, all the while testing the boundaries of her new Jutsu and trying not to die in the process.
This fic follows the structure of a traditional novel broken up into 4 Arcs:
Arc 1: Yume-Kakashi - Genjutsu rules, Konoha heavy, setting the stage. Smutty wish fulfillment jutsu. Birthday shots.
Arc 2: Shikamaru - Distant lands, The medical summit, Friends to lovers tropes abound. Hot springs vacation.
Arc 3: Kakashi - Coming home to complications. Big adult feelings finally expressed. It gets worse before it gets better, but then it gets great. Halloween block party.
Arc 4: Enemies - Old ghosts, new dangers. Minor/Temporary character death. Sob fest, but happy tears too. HEA for all major characters.
CONTENT WARNING: Arc 4 contains graphic depictions of violence/battles. Please consume at your own risk.
CONTENT WARNING: Ch. 1 is a very vanilla lemon. It is helpful but not crucial to the plot if that is not for you.
- Linger -
It was days like today when the heat became unbearable. Heat that was long and unrelenting, that clung to her skin like it wanted something from her. The afternoon sunlight is warm and inviting, tinting her walls with a soft orange glow so pretty it almost makes the temperature bearable.
She has no motivation to work. No will to be productive. She's surrounded by a seductive heat that convinces her those mission papers can be filed tomorrow. Today, there is nothing is more important than staying home. Outside, whole village feels quiet. People are counteracting heat with stillness, making her feel like she'd only person in the world. Maybe that's what makes the giving in so easy. There's a safety to the idea that she's completely alone.
It's heat like this that makes Sakura unusually lazy, urgent matters quickly losing their urgency. For now, she's content to just sprawl shirtless in the shadows of her headboard, fingertips trailing up and down her side. This corner of her room is where all the cool air lingers, the hardwood floors a relief against her back.
It's times like this when she gives into the wanting. The warm air from her floor fan circulates between her legs. The memory of his touch is an invitation she can not refuse.
Once again, she wanted him.
Fingertips flutter down her collar bone, traversing the landscape of her ribs. Lips part in soft sighs, echoes of the noises she only makes in her head. It was a day for slow, and slowly she went. The pull of chakra is nearly automatic now. While her mind is busy spinning from her fingers, she spins her Gejutsu into a simple illusion. Though, Kakashi is anything but simple.
Still, it shows in the way his double simply walks into her bedroom. He smiles down at her through his mask like he's been expecting this call all along. Simple clothes, simple gaze, simple dark mask, no complications.
No risk to her fragile heart.
His bare feet make no sound as he pushes off her doorway to kneel beside her in the shelter of her bed. Some fingers intertwine with the hand above her head, others brush along her biceps. He follows the lines of her inner arm, igniting a heat between her legs. His touch pauses just above her hip, fingernails raking lightly over skin.
"I thought you were busy today." He murmurs, mismatched eyes hungry for the details of her. He stares at her openly in a way the real Kakashi never would.
"I am." She replies, pulling him down.
His head dips down, teeth tuck into the flesh of her jaw line. He's always aware of her impulsive wants and he's so good at giving them to her. Somehow she feels his tongue against her collarbone, even despite the imaginary mask. It makes sense in the nonsense way that dreams often do. He disobeys physics. He makes his own rules.
She tilts her chin, exposing more skin. Even though he isn't real, for now...he's real enough. There is just the giving up, the giving in and the breathy ohs that escape when she lets them. All the while, her body dances, writhing under his phantom touch. He parts her legs with a probing knee, every gesture agonizingly slow. His abhorrence for rushing is expressed in the slow drag of a silky tongue across her nipple. It's in the blowing of breath across her shoulder as if she were a birthday candle. It's in the maddening way he slips fingers inside her, the friction of it all making her senses sing.
Already she is coming undone.
'More...' She thinks, eyes fluttering closed.
But he disobeys. He drags fingers away from slick heat, chuckling when she groans in frustration. She fists hands into the cotton of his shirt, pulling him back to her waiting mouth. She sighs deeply and he drinks in her breath like it's another way of knowing her. He kisses her like her lips could tell him everything about her he needs to know.
She's panting when he pulls away, giving and withholding in equal measures. He follows the curve of her sides with his knuckles, possessively gripping the backs of her knees. She wants his touch to leave butterfly bruises, to be manhandled in the best way.
He might be her fantasy, but he's the one in control here. He manipulates her body like he was made to do so, .
His mouth murmurs incoherencies down the plane of her belly, swirling his tongue into the crook of her hip. Suddenly, he's kissing her lower, dragging a moan from deep in her throat. His mouth surrounds her opening in ways that real tongues can not. She cries out, long and deep. Her body searches for words her mouth is too busy to make. Yes and Please and More and Thank you.
He releases her knees, dragging his hands under her hips. Her legs splay boneless off to the side. Her low back peels off the hardwood floor to meet him half way. She's embarrassed by the noises she's making now, guteral and growing louder. There's a slow building of sensation inside her, a mingling of chakra and raised blood pressure. Her circulating fan touches her skin everywhere he can't.
There's the washing of the full breadth of his tongue over her clit, the needing and needless way she covered her eyes with her wrist, Oh... She wants to let go.
'More…'
But something else is building inside her. Something she can't contain by biting her lip or fisting her fingers into his hair. He touches her like he can read her mind, knowing this desire or that need intrinsically.
He drags her hips roughly into his lap, drive his length inside her in a single thrust. He buries himself in her up to the hilt, stretching her in an impossible way. They rock together like members of the same body, all harmony and incoherence. Her high pitched moans collect in the corners of her ceiling, his throaty cries quickly joining them.
This was the secret inside her that begged for her attention. The things she wants Kakashi to do to her but knows deep down he never will.
But her Kakashi doesn't seem to like that thought. He plunges himself deep inside her, pressed their hips close like she's the one who will disappear when they are done. The girth of him burns in the best way as he rock, rock, rocks them towards completion. They share rapid breath and mutual nerve endings. Twin moans escape their lips, they cry out in ecstatic unison.
Her orgasm breaks over her hard, like she's feeling it for the both of them. He rides the wave of their shared climax, making noises she'll fantasize about for days. When he collapses boneless onto her chest, they are a tangle of open mouthed kisses and disjointed limbs. It's better than reality and it's more than a dream. It's summer sunlight and his possessive grip lightly pinning her at the base of her throat.
But in the coming down from the high of him, she remembers...none of this is real. He isn't Kakashi, he's a fantasy. All of this is just in her head.
It doesn't stop her from wishing he could stay, even while understanding who he isn't.
As if hearing her thoughts, her Kakashi sits up lazily, his member still thick and buried inside her. He makes no move to look away, just takes her in with both eyes wide. It's like he's memorizing her before he disappears, knowing that his time is up. She lifts a hand up to brush his cheek, thumb fingering a mask that is there but not.
It's times like these when the doubt betrays her. When she wonders if maybe this fantasy isn't what she wants after all. She knows that she will miss him long after his body heat has dissipated. That when she wakes, she will involuntarily search her apartment for a man who was never really there.
She knows this is a poison that will eventually kill her, but she chooses to drink it anyway.
He doesn't pull his face away from her touch. He stays still, and so does she. They both know that he has to leave, and yet...he doesn't want to. Can he even want, if he's just a dream?
'Yes.' A small voice whispers between them. She knows this the same way she knows her own thoughts, even if she doesn't understand how.
She wonders if life could ever be this simple. If someone could ever look at her the way her Kakashi is looking at her now- like the sun rises and sets with her, like she mattered.
Or is this just a dream that she can have, but not have forever.
She closes her eyes and lets him go, unspinning the illusion the same way it was made. When she inhales, Kakashi is gone. This is how she knows it's a Genjutsu, in the end. She never hears him leave.