Hello hello! I am alive but just barely! Spring and Summer are when my job gets really busy, so writing has been really hard. So there is a kind of season break between parts one and two, but I have this little chapter as a treat to tide you over!

Chapter Text

Kakashi had been drifting towards his retirement from ANBU when Inoichi had called with his Idol Assignment.
"We don't know yet what they want with her, but it's clear that this was the Akatsuki." The older blonde man said, his pale green eyes intense. Kakashi glanced over the photos in the file before him.
Two destroyed vehicles, blood and glass on concrete. As nasty a wreck as he'd seen.
The other pictures were of a strawberry haired woman he vaguely recognized from ads and billboards. He thought Rin and Obito had been fans of hers.
"Why me?" he asked, his eye sharp on his superior. It wasn't like he was in a rush to retire, he had nothing else, but occasionally the idea appealed to him. And at 32 years old, he wasn't old, but he'd had a long military career for his age, like everyone who'd been in the war, and civilian life might be calling. Or at least normal military service. He was, quite frankly, tired. Every day getting out of bed got harder. He'd been debating taking a job at the academy. Ha! Kakashi Hatake, teaching the youth. He would have to teach his replacement unit anyways. Obito would have laughed himself hoarse.
"Because you're the best, and Tsunade Senju requested the best." Inoichi rubbed at his forehead, a gesture often triggered when Tsunade's name was invoked. The woman was a saint and a demon; in the last three wars the heiress had lead initiatives in building hospitals for the injured, creating counseling programs for veterans, and getting medical supplies to the front line. She'd led the charge in humanitarian aid to civilians on both sides. She was also a supremely opinionated woman who got what she wanted, when she wanted, and she drank more than any soldier he'd ever met. Kakashi respected her a lot.
He made a face of agreement, though Inoichi could only see his eyebrows.
"You're our point man for the Akatsuki." He flinched as he said it, and Kakashi winced internally. Inoichi cleared his throat. "Besides, Sakura is friends with my daughter." The blonde man said. Ah, there it was. He was worried for his own famous brat. "This job will be like all of them, Hatake. You do whatever it takes. They've never seen your face or heard your name, so you'll be as good as invisible. If you do any investigating when you're not with the girl, you'll do it in a disguise. You know the drill." Kakashi knew the drill. Wig, contacts, fake name if he was going to be snooping around the Akatsuki. They had no idea what he really looked like, which allowed him to function in society, and he was going to keep it that way.
"If they want her so badly, why almost kill her?" Kakashi asked the older man. The medical records in the file indicated she was alive, but she'd been rushed into emergency surgery. Inoichi stared out the window beside his desk, watching the guards on the compound walk the walls.
"I think it was a mistake. And the punishment was already carried about for messing up- the driver was dead on impact."
"How convenient."
Inoichi grunted agreement.
Kakashi had accepted the assignment, despite the word 'indefinite' written in thick, black letters on the top of the paperwork. He was certain he was going to be bored out of his mind, watching over some spoiled kid. But what did he have to do that was better? The Akatsuki had taken from him; he would go through frozen, boring hell if it meant helping to take them down before he retired.
And the first three years had been boring, but only in the sense that the Akatsuki hadn't tried anything else. Whatever they had planned that had caused the car accident had clearly set them back, and they remained silent and invisible.
But there was nothing boring about Sakura Haruno.
She was a walking firecracker, an explosion of a woman, all light and sound. Lightning in porcelain skin. She was spoiled and sometimes childish, and she always got what she wanted, just like her boss.
Sakura was 19 when he had first appeared on her property. She'd already earned a trophy case full of awards, her band and solo careers bulletproof. She was a magnificent and terrible creature of natural talent and hard work. She was also very beautiful. Kakashi tried not to think about that, especially when she was constantly striding around nearly naked.
He would never tell her, but she charmed the pants off of him, she really did. He saw how resilient she was, how dedicated to her craft, and how soft she could be when she wasn't firing people for fucking up what should be simple jobs. She had her own orbit. She worked so hard he wasn't sure she slept.
Sometimes he wondered—with his chest aching, his mouth tasting of blood that wasn't there—what it was like to create instead of destroy.
Contrary to the beliefs of her fan base, she was not perfect. She was not good at everything. She was a shit cook, for one, for a woman who cooked a lot. She was extremely picky about absolutely everything: food, clothing, makeup. She could sing, she could dance, she could act, she did a million hobbies—but ask her to draw, calculate a tip amount, handle a spider, play most ball sports, and she wasn't particularly talented. He'd seen her wake up with blemishes and go frantically to her dermatologist. She had no patience, either things got done or someone got fired, unless she was shopping or getting dressed or creating music. Then she had all the time in the world. She seemed to have zero self-preservation instincts.
She had also irritated him to every end. For the first year of her round-the-clock-security, she had dodged and ditched him at every chance. He had chased her across cities and country sides, impressed and enraged over her clever ability to evade her guard. Sakura had devised all-manner of complicated plans to rid herself of Kakashi's presence, specifically. It seemed to amuse her to ditch him as much as it irritated her to be found again.
She was an excellent strategist, one who made him want to quit but somehow also be closer to her.
He went to photoshoots and concerts, dance practices and filming locations. He became a part of her from the background. Watching her day and night left her imprinted in his brain even when he was sleeping. Especially when he was sleeping, when his logical brain couldn't shut down the baser parts of him.
He dreamed of her mouth and her sass, he dreamed of the curve where her neck met her shoulder. The 'V' of flesh visible on her backless gowns. The way she flicked her hair with her delicate wrists. The way she might look bent over, pink from head to toe and everywhere in between.
He kept his pining to himself, forced his gaze to be bored and distant. He had a harder time not touching her when he could get away with it; a hand on her lower back as they pushed through a crowd, a tap of fingertips on her shoulder as he went by, the brush of her hair against his chin when she stood close to him.
Kakashi was used to denying himself things. But oh, how she made him want, made him desperate with it. The greatest problem was that the physical part of the want was only a tiny percent. The majority of his want was simply her. God spare him, the way she glowed when she was happy, eyes alight like the lightning she reminded him of. He was caught in that tiny woman's gravity. The effect of her had even changed his favorite color.
The first night she was attacked at home and he wasn't there made him more angry than he had been in years. When he'd gotten the call, he'd shattered a vase on his bedside table. He had one job to do, and he had nearly failed.
He'd called in his friends out of retirement, needing the reassurance of knowing their skill sets, knowing she would be safe. Having her surrounded by a pack of lethal dogs.
And then, standing idly in her immigration appointment, cursing himself in his head, cursing Inoichi and Tsunade and the Akatsuki: "Hatake Kakashi," she'd declared him her fiancé to the official. His soul briefly left his body.
He'd called Inoichi on his way home to gather the dogs that evening. "Her immigration status-"He'd begun to explain.
"How she gets her green card is none of my concern. How you keep her safe and take out the target is also not my concern, as long as it's done. Fuck it, the closer, the better."
And that was that.
So Kakashi had moved in.
None of them had been allowed inside her house for any longer than it took to do their protective sweeps, and the sudden change was a strain on Kakashi. Specifically, the sudden constant nearness of Sakura. She was always near, but now sleeping in the same home, sometimes beside her, was a lot to adjust to. He'd had an alarming amount of opportunities to practice his self-control.
His focus in their marital arts lessons was ironclad, until he realized he was on top of Sakura, with his hand on her throat, and that look on her face. He'd locked every base instinct and thought in a bulletproof trap in the deepest, darkest corner of his being and focused on teaching her. Her survival was more important than his physiological reaction. For that, for her safety, he could be the cold soldier he was meant to be.
Or at least he tried his damnedest.
The night they had seen that car accident and Kakashi had been bold enough to massage her to sleep, he'd held onto his iron will, put her in bed, and left the room. She'd ended up in his bed anyway, and he'd moved her back again.
The way she'd kissed him the first time after that photoshoot, everything about her angelic and strawberry-flavored. A muscle in his quad had cramped from the strain of holding himself in check. Her skin was soft, her breasts perky and right in front of his face, her breath hot against his. That little garter on her thigh.
When he'd guided her through the haunted forest, her fear palpable until she'd realized it was him, it had taken him off guard when she'd kissed him on the cheek. He'd wanted to pull her back, pin her against the tree, and demand a real kiss.
They say that God tests men, and Kakashi was sure he was being tested. He suspected he was failing. He was certainly falling.
When she had had her bachelorette party, Asuma had texted him what she'd received as gifts while he was sitting at a dinner with Hanare. He'd innocently read the message, unsuspecting, and then had to sit through the rest of the meal with a painfully hard boner and images of Sakura floating around his mind. He hoped Hanare hadn't noticed that he was rushing to finish eating, to settle up the tab, to get into his truck.
He had been relieved when he arrived back at her house and she was still out. He was able to clean himself up without her seeing. If only he'd known she would come home and torture him with her drunken behavior. Him being shirtless around her, was of course, partially on purpose. He'd seen how she reacted to him physically. He knew she found him attractive. But he'd lost the round that night, his shirtlessness causing him greater pain than her. He'd felt the imprint of her mouth on his collarbones for days. Thank God Kakashi was an expert at remaining expressionless, or else he would be even more fucked than he already was.
Then she'd been attacked, again, while he was out. By the same psychopath he should've killed the first time. The look on her face as she'd been held by the knife, begging him to shoot. Every fiber of his own being begging him to shoot.
But he wasn't about to kill a man in front of her very eyes, so he'd shot for the shoulder instead of the forehead. He could've made that shot with half a though, clean between the eyebrows. If her skill lay in creation, his lay in the opposite. Kakashi dealt death as easily as a casino dealt cards.
He hadn't been able to help himself when she'd been in his house, glowing with happiness from the food he'd brought. He couldn't resist kissing the cut on her throat, a reminder of his fuck up. He couldn't resist kissing her lips in the dark, his hair dripping water down his chest, her eyes flashing in the dark like signs leading him home. She'd wanted more, but he'd stopped himself.
He would never forget the look on her face when she put together his true role in her life, when she realized he had done to her what her parents had done to her. Andromeda. And that scar on her hip, that mark the Akatsuki had left on her. He'd take that out of their flesh, plus interest. They'd scarred him in more ways than he could count, taken from him the people he loved. They would not harm another hair on Sakura's head. He meant what he'd told her.
He knew she believed him.
Every moment in his existence had been leading up to Sakura Haruno, standing in a temple in a gorgeous kimono, that ring on her finger—that ring—and he'd been slammed by a truck with the reminder that this was not real. Not. Real. She had a family that loved her, and she had a whole life ahead of her. Not. Real. But her following him out of that temple, telling him they didn't need a marriage based on love, but still believing they could build something, it had torn and rebirthed him.
He'd been struck again when she'd come out in that white dress, elegance embodied, every line of her made of music. The reception was filled with the blurry faces of friends and her family—only she was clear in his sight. In his arms as they danced. He tucked that memory tight and safe inside a corner of his heart, to keep even after the job and marriage ended. He would allow himself this happiness.
Kakashi had memorized every inch of her body that night, every centimeter of skin he hadn't seen before. All of her pink from head to toe and panting. Making those little noises that had his vision tunneling. Wrapped up in silky lingerie and thousand dollar heels. The wetness hiding between those perfect thighs.
Kakashi's self-control was legendary, his self-discipline second to none. But when she'd stepped out of her gown and confirmed that she wanted to be with him, he lost everything in his mind but her. He swore to himself he wouldn't let this development in their relationship get in the way of his job. It probably made him the worst kind of man, but he would take whatever she gave him, even if it was offered out of physical attraction and not love. And if she wanted him to teach her, touch her, fuck her, who was he to deny her? No one denied Sakura anything. He'd get on his knees for her.
Kakashi was well and truly ruined. The day Inoichi had handed him Sakura's file, Kakashi had been sent hurtling toward her with no brakes. He went gladly into the storm.