kakashi's lyric contest entry - astronomical
Fandom: Naruto
Title: Astronomical
Chapter: N/A; complete oneshot
Characters/Pairings: Kakashi, Sakura, Genma, Asuma, Ino; Kakashi/Sakura, implied Genma/Shizune, Ino/TenTen if you turn your head and squint really hard
Genre: Romance, Fluff
Rating: T
Word Count: ~3,000
Notes: I literally just finished this four minutes ago. It's horribly rushed, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Kakashi would never understand the jokes people who worked in offices made-like the ones about standing around the water cooler. He loved his job. He was good at it. It challenged him in ways nothing else really could.
Most would call astrophysics boring or too hard, but none of them really understood. They couldn’t wrap their minds around the concept. It wasn’t just about numbers or chemical interactions or anything like that. There was great risk to himself and others if he didn’t do his job right.
He handled rocket fuel and spacecraft of all sorts. The slightest miscalculation or mishandling of an element could result in catastrophe.
Once, in a moment of drunken neurosis, he’d admitted all this to Asuma and Genma. Asuma had thrown up in his lap and promptly passed out, looking green. The man smoked like a chimney, but give him one beer and he was sick as a dog for days.
Genma had lifted his beer out of the splatter zone and fixed Kakashi with a disgusted look. “You are way too high-strung, man,” he’d said, and then he’d grabbed Asuma by the hair, slapped him awake and dragged him to the bathroom to clean up.
Kakashi hadn’t been out drinking with Genma since and felt no real desire to. But the other man had managed to con him into agreeing to go Friday night. Which was how he found himself in a poorly-lit, smoky bar with Asuma already passed out (thankfully without puking this time) and Genma trying to get Kakashi hooked up with a random barfly. Any random barfly.
He was failing. Miserably.
“Come on, dude,” Genma moaned irritably. “I’m marrying Shizune in three months. Let me live vicariously through you, just a little.” He held up a hand, forefinger and thumb pinched closely together.
“I’m not having meaningless sex with a woman you picked out in a seedy bar,” Kakashi said drolly, swigging down the last of his beer and standing.
His friend scoffed behind him, but he ignored anything the other man said as he skirted the pool tables on his way out.
As Kakashi was rounding the last one, a cue shot out directly in front of him. He rapidly side-stepped and bumped into something solid that squeaked.
He turned to the squeak and found a sopping wet young woman holding glasses. Empty glasses. It was too dark in the bar to make out her coloring, but she was petite and well-figured, even though she seemed to be trying to hide it under a bulky sweater and jeans.
“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly.
The girl laughed, waving it off after setting the glasses on the sticky bar. “It’s alright,” she said lightly. “I’ve worn worse, trust me.”
His curiosity was piqued, but he had other things to worry about. Like the alcohol and fruit juice now soaking her nice sweater.
“Let me pay for that to be cleaned,” Kakashi offered.
The young woman came up short at that, looking a little irritated. The expression softened a second later, and she shook her head adamantly.
“No,” she said, sounding a bit short. “If you want to make it up to me, replace this round.” She eyed him for a moment and added, “And write your name and phone number down for me.” She produced a small notepad and pen from a pocket in her sweater and all but shoved them into his awkward hands.
She smiled encouragingly at him before turning to flag down the bartender. Utterly bewildered, Kakashi did as she’d said. When she turned back to him, she read his name from the paper.
“Hatake Kakashi,” she said, slowly. A warm smile lit her face, and then it turned mischievous. “I’ll call you sometime.”
“I don’t get to know your name?” he asked, confused. She was trying to flirt with him, and he didn’t do flirting well.
“You’ll get it when I call you,” the girl told him. “Money?”
Huh?
“Huh?”
She leaned in close. “For the drinks,” she whispered, directly in his ear. “You’re paying to replace them, remember?”
He could feel his ears burning. “Right,” he mumbled, trying to take a discreet step back. “Sorry.” He handed over a few bills and turned tail and ran. The girl called something in protest, but he didn’t look back.
[--]
The first thing he did when he got home was shower. He could feel the smoke and dirty bar air clinging to his skin. He’d turned off one of the taps and was reaching for the other when he heard the annoyingly cheerful jingle of his cell phone ringing through the empty silence of his apartment. Every time he heard it, he swore he’d change it, but ultimately it took too much effort-and Genma would just steal his phone and change it back.
He scrambled for a towel, wrapping it around his waist hastily as he bolted from the bathroom in a near-panic. The only people who called this late were either drunk-dialers or work, but when he picked it up to check the caller, he didn’t recognise the number. He flipped it open.
“Hello?” he said slowly.
“You handed me far too much money before you fled,” a female voice informed him.
“S-Sorry?” he stuttered.
“For the round,” the voice told him.
Through the confusion, he realised it had to be the girl from the bar. He didn’t have anything to say that didn’t sound stupid even in his own head, so he just stayed silent.
“I can hear you breathing,” the girl said.
“What’s your name?” he blurted.
“What?” she exclaimed, and began laughing.
Kakashi was ever-so-slightly offended. “Your name,” he said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “You said you’d give it to me when you called. What is it?”
“My family name is Haruno,” she said after a moment. “You’ll get my name tomorrow afternoon when we have coffee. Two o’clock, Momo’s Café on the corner of First Street and Eighth Avenue.”
Luckily for her-for them both-Saturday was his day off.
“Alright,” he agreed. He wasn’t sure what it was about this girl that made him give in to her demands. He hadn’t been on a date in years and he’d felt no real need to date or have another person in his life.
“I’ll see you there, Hatake Kakashi,” Haruno told him, tone husky. Then she hung up.
Kakashi closed his phone and set it on the nightstand nearby while he pulled on his pajamas. He stood staring at it for a long time before turning off his lamp, collapsing onto his bed, and yanking the worn comforter over his head.
[--]
Momo’s Café was a dive in what was probably the worst neighborhood in Konoha City. If it wasn’t for the years of martial arts classes he’d taken in high school and college, Kakashi wouldn’t have even gone.
It was half past two, but he had a legitimate excuse: he’d gotten lost. The streets took on strange twists and turns downtown, and for someone who hadn’t ever spent much time there, it was confusing and a little intimidating-especially when punks loitered on every corner and his car was liable to break down at any minute, stranding him in the ghetto.
Finally, after a moment of white-knuckled panic at the thought of a strange woman waiting for him, Kakashi managed to pry his fingers off the steering wheel and get out of his car.
The brick façade of the place fit with his mental image: vinyl booths with sticky Formica tabletops, sticky particle board free-standing tables with rickety wooden chairs, and waitresses in ugly, ill-fitting pink dresses with frilly, impractical aprons and tired smiles. The place was almost empty, with only four other people sitting down.
One of them came up to him when he lingered a moment too long in the doorway. She had a long, blonde ponytail and dark blue eyes. Her name tag informed him that she was Ino.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m supposed to meet someone here,” he told her. “Well, I was. At two.”
“Hatake Kakashi?” Ino demanded, looking him up and down.
Taken aback that this stranger knew his name, he only looked at her.
Ino sighed. “She’s really pissed. She doesn’t like being here after her shift if she can help it,” she said. “Corner booth in the back,” she added, seeing Kakashi’s bemused look. “Come on.”
She started to walk away, clearly expecting him to follow. As he did so, he finally noticed legs sticking out of the booth in the far back of the diner.
“Hey, girl,” Ino said, pausing near the feet and smacking a calf. “He’s here. And he’s yummy.”
The young woman from the bar the night before sat up, frowning deeply at Ino. “Thanks,” she mumbled. The look darkened when she caught sight of Kakashi.
“I’m sorry,” he said instantly. “I got lost and-”
She waved a hand. “Whatever. You’re here now. Sit. Ino, two cups of coffee, please. With cream. Lots of cream.”
Ino walked away, grinning widely. Kakashi sat.
“Ignore her,” the girl ordered.
When was he going to learn this girl’s name? He glanced over her, noting that she was wearing the same dress as Ino, with an apron tossed at the end of the table, but her name tag was missing.
“It’s Sakura,” she said. “My name, I mean.”
Finally.
[--]
Kakashi learned a lot about Sakura in the next half-hour. First that she, along with her best friend Yamanaka Ino, was a waitress at Momo’s Café, one of her two jobs to help pay for medical school, where she was studying to become a trauma surgeon. Her other job was as an “associate” at a retail store, which basically meant she was a cashier and whipping post for unhappy customers.
Then he found out that she was working a split shift at Momo’s, from ten in the morning to two that afternoon to cover the lunch rush, and then she would be back to work at four until eight to cover the dinner rush.
He also found out that her hair was pink-“It’s natural, I swear”-her eyes were green, she hated cherry-flavored and -scented anything after years of receiving cherry-flavored and -scented everything from well-meaning family members. She would be celebrating her twenty-second birthday in March, and she had two older brothers and a younger sister. She’d grown up with them in a suburb of Konoha City, but was currently living in a piece of crap apartment a few blocks away from Momo’s with three other girls who were also students at the university.
He also found himself talking-telling her about himself. That he was an astrophysicist at the Leaf Observatory, that Asuma and Genma were his closest friends, that his hair had always been that silver color-“It isn’t grey”-that he had no siblings and had also grown up in the suburbs. He also described his apartment, which filled all of two minutes.
By the time they were done, they’d sucked down a total of eight cups of coffee and three glasses of water between them and it was time for Sakura to go back to work.
He stuck around for dinner, and Sakura directed him to a two-seat table in the front of the café, because that was her section. The food was phenomenal, and he left her a generous tip. On his way out, he stopped to talk to her. Her section was clearing out, so she paused for a moment with a wide, happy grin.
“I’d like to…” he started, trailing away awkwardly. His ears burned red.
“I want to see you again,” Sakura said. “I had a good time, even if it was in this dump.”
“How about tonight?” He said it in a rush, trying not to sound like an idiot. He winced after the words were out. He’d sounded stupid anyway.
Sakura grimaced unhappily. “I have to study tonight,” she said apologetically. “I work all day tomorrow and there’s a test Monday-”
“Forehead, shut the hell up and go out with the dish,” Ino called from the waitress station. “You study anymore and that brain of yours is going to explode.”
Sakura’s eyes closed, her mouth pinched. “Pig…” she muttered threateningly.
Even though Ino couldn’t see it, she giggled merrily and sang, “I’ll get TenTen to help me lock you out!”
A delicate shudder rippled through Sakura’s body. Her eyes opened. “Tonight it is.” She smiled at him and nodded to a customer who’d flagged her. “Gotta run. See you here at eight?”
“Yep,” Kakashi answered in a squeak.
[--]
Because he hadn’t a clue where to take her after she got off work, Sakura ended up being the one who decided where to go.
“You haven’t done this in a while, have you?” she asked, her breath fogging in the freezing air.
“Uh, no,” he admitted.
So, without warning, she had his hand and was leading him down the street. “There’s a pond nearby in this park. It’s, like, the only one in this area, and it’s got this little shack where you can rent skates. It’ll be fun.”
He’d never ice-skated before, but he was afraid to tell her that. He paid for the skates and handed over his shoes. Sakura was already gliding around on the ice, but he lingered at the edge of the pond, wobbling a bit on the blades.
It took Sakura a few minutes to notice, but eventually she came to a graceful halt in front of him.
“Haven’t you ever gone skating before?” she said, sounding disbelieving.
“No,” he said.
“Okay, first,” Sakura instructed, “step out on the ice.” She held out a hand. “Come on.”
He did so. “Now relax,” she ordered in a gentle, soothing tone. “Close your eyes. Take my hand.”
Kakashi felt his hands being lifted in smaller, more delicate ones.
“Take a deep breath,” she said. “Let it out. Good. Now, open your eyes and follow me.”
She skated backwards, holding his hands and guiding him through the motions until he could do it on his own.
Sakura laughed delightedly as she let him go and began to skate beside him. It was a beautiful sound.
[--]
He walked her home that night and secured another date for next Saturday. It was dinner at a nicer restaurant. He drove her home and walked her to her door. He kissed her that night, after agreeing to a movie the following Wednesday.
Weeks passed, and Kakashi talked to, texted, and saw as much of Sakura as their schedules allowed. On their fourth date-another movie on a Friday night-they made out so much they missed nearly the entire thing. After their fifth date-a visit to a museum on a Sunday morning-they went back to Kakashi’s apartment and made love well into the night.
Kakashi was glad to know he hadn’t completely lost his touch.
The next day at work, Kakashi couldn’t stop thinking about her-the way she’d kissed him when he’d pressed her up against a wall, the little noise of protest she’d made as he’d lifted away from her to undress them both. The scratches down his back she’d left when he’d teased her opening and the way she’d moaned as he brought her to her peak.
He was so engrossed in thoughts of her, in fact, that he wasn’t quite paying attention when he was carrying a sample of a new, experimental rocket fuel to the lab.
Genma reminded him-loudly, when he nearly dropped the container.
And that was when he came to the conclusion that he couldn’t see her anymore. Not if she was going to affect him at work. He had to be more careful-he couldn’t do that if she was filling his brain.
[--]
She slapped him when he told her.
“You son of a bitch,” she snarled. “You’re afraid.”
“Of course I am,” he answered numbly. “You’re costing me vital concentration at work. I have to work with touchy formulas and calculations and handle volatile chemicals in the lab at work. It needs my entire focus-”
“You can’t control your own brain?” Sakura laughed derisively. “My apologies. Now get off my doorstep.”
[--]
Three days later, he was back on her doorstep. He’d forgotten a formula because of the guilt he felt, leaving out a number in a very important location. If his partner hadn’t caught it, it would have blown up the rocket.
“Kakashi,” Sakura said flatly when she saw him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Even now, I can’t… I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Still can’t control your own brain, huh?” she asked, a slight sneer marring her beautiful mouth. He wanted to kiss her.
“I miss you,” he said. “I’d rather be messing up at work because we’re together than because we’re apart.”
It was pathetic and sad, but she’d changed him. He wanted her, in all her strange, excitable glory. He’d just have to focus his brain.
“I’ve missed you, too,” Sakura admitted.
His heart soared.
“But before I let you in again, you have to apologise for blaming me because you can’t stop thinking about how much you want me,” she added. In a warning tone, she said, “You can’t do that again.” Her face was very serious.
Anything to be back with her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It won’t happen again. I haven’t really done this before…”
“I know,” Sakura whispered. “You can trust me. I won’t steer you wrong. Close your eyes. Take my hand.”
And he did.
[--]
Good luck to all the other contestants!
Title: Astronomical
Chapter: N/A; complete oneshot
Characters/Pairings: Kakashi, Sakura, Genma, Asuma, Ino; Kakashi/Sakura, implied Genma/Shizune, Ino/TenTen if you turn your head and squint really hard
Genre: Romance, Fluff
Rating: T
Word Count: ~3,000
Notes: I literally just finished this four minutes ago. It's horribly rushed, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Kakashi would never understand the jokes people who worked in offices made-like the ones about standing around the water cooler. He loved his job. He was good at it. It challenged him in ways nothing else really could.
Most would call astrophysics boring or too hard, but none of them really understood. They couldn’t wrap their minds around the concept. It wasn’t just about numbers or chemical interactions or anything like that. There was great risk to himself and others if he didn’t do his job right.
He handled rocket fuel and spacecraft of all sorts. The slightest miscalculation or mishandling of an element could result in catastrophe.
Once, in a moment of drunken neurosis, he’d admitted all this to Asuma and Genma. Asuma had thrown up in his lap and promptly passed out, looking green. The man smoked like a chimney, but give him one beer and he was sick as a dog for days.
Genma had lifted his beer out of the splatter zone and fixed Kakashi with a disgusted look. “You are way too high-strung, man,” he’d said, and then he’d grabbed Asuma by the hair, slapped him awake and dragged him to the bathroom to clean up.
Kakashi hadn’t been out drinking with Genma since and felt no real desire to. But the other man had managed to con him into agreeing to go Friday night. Which was how he found himself in a poorly-lit, smoky bar with Asuma already passed out (thankfully without puking this time) and Genma trying to get Kakashi hooked up with a random barfly. Any random barfly.
He was failing. Miserably.
“Come on, dude,” Genma moaned irritably. “I’m marrying Shizune in three months. Let me live vicariously through you, just a little.” He held up a hand, forefinger and thumb pinched closely together.
“I’m not having meaningless sex with a woman you picked out in a seedy bar,” Kakashi said drolly, swigging down the last of his beer and standing.
His friend scoffed behind him, but he ignored anything the other man said as he skirted the pool tables on his way out.
As Kakashi was rounding the last one, a cue shot out directly in front of him. He rapidly side-stepped and bumped into something solid that squeaked.
He turned to the squeak and found a sopping wet young woman holding glasses. Empty glasses. It was too dark in the bar to make out her coloring, but she was petite and well-figured, even though she seemed to be trying to hide it under a bulky sweater and jeans.
“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly.
The girl laughed, waving it off after setting the glasses on the sticky bar. “It’s alright,” she said lightly. “I’ve worn worse, trust me.”
His curiosity was piqued, but he had other things to worry about. Like the alcohol and fruit juice now soaking her nice sweater.
“Let me pay for that to be cleaned,” Kakashi offered.
The young woman came up short at that, looking a little irritated. The expression softened a second later, and she shook her head adamantly.
“No,” she said, sounding a bit short. “If you want to make it up to me, replace this round.” She eyed him for a moment and added, “And write your name and phone number down for me.” She produced a small notepad and pen from a pocket in her sweater and all but shoved them into his awkward hands.
She smiled encouragingly at him before turning to flag down the bartender. Utterly bewildered, Kakashi did as she’d said. When she turned back to him, she read his name from the paper.
“Hatake Kakashi,” she said, slowly. A warm smile lit her face, and then it turned mischievous. “I’ll call you sometime.”
“I don’t get to know your name?” he asked, confused. She was trying to flirt with him, and he didn’t do flirting well.
“You’ll get it when I call you,” the girl told him. “Money?”
Huh?
“Huh?”
She leaned in close. “For the drinks,” she whispered, directly in his ear. “You’re paying to replace them, remember?”
He could feel his ears burning. “Right,” he mumbled, trying to take a discreet step back. “Sorry.” He handed over a few bills and turned tail and ran. The girl called something in protest, but he didn’t look back.
[--]
The first thing he did when he got home was shower. He could feel the smoke and dirty bar air clinging to his skin. He’d turned off one of the taps and was reaching for the other when he heard the annoyingly cheerful jingle of his cell phone ringing through the empty silence of his apartment. Every time he heard it, he swore he’d change it, but ultimately it took too much effort-and Genma would just steal his phone and change it back.
He scrambled for a towel, wrapping it around his waist hastily as he bolted from the bathroom in a near-panic. The only people who called this late were either drunk-dialers or work, but when he picked it up to check the caller, he didn’t recognise the number. He flipped it open.
“Hello?” he said slowly.
“You handed me far too much money before you fled,” a female voice informed him.
“S-Sorry?” he stuttered.
“For the round,” the voice told him.
Through the confusion, he realised it had to be the girl from the bar. He didn’t have anything to say that didn’t sound stupid even in his own head, so he just stayed silent.
“I can hear you breathing,” the girl said.
“What’s your name?” he blurted.
“What?” she exclaimed, and began laughing.
Kakashi was ever-so-slightly offended. “Your name,” he said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “You said you’d give it to me when you called. What is it?”
“My family name is Haruno,” she said after a moment. “You’ll get my name tomorrow afternoon when we have coffee. Two o’clock, Momo’s Café on the corner of First Street and Eighth Avenue.”
Luckily for her-for them both-Saturday was his day off.
“Alright,” he agreed. He wasn’t sure what it was about this girl that made him give in to her demands. He hadn’t been on a date in years and he’d felt no real need to date or have another person in his life.
“I’ll see you there, Hatake Kakashi,” Haruno told him, tone husky. Then she hung up.
Kakashi closed his phone and set it on the nightstand nearby while he pulled on his pajamas. He stood staring at it for a long time before turning off his lamp, collapsing onto his bed, and yanking the worn comforter over his head.
[--]
Momo’s Café was a dive in what was probably the worst neighborhood in Konoha City. If it wasn’t for the years of martial arts classes he’d taken in high school and college, Kakashi wouldn’t have even gone.
It was half past two, but he had a legitimate excuse: he’d gotten lost. The streets took on strange twists and turns downtown, and for someone who hadn’t ever spent much time there, it was confusing and a little intimidating-especially when punks loitered on every corner and his car was liable to break down at any minute, stranding him in the ghetto.
Finally, after a moment of white-knuckled panic at the thought of a strange woman waiting for him, Kakashi managed to pry his fingers off the steering wheel and get out of his car.
The brick façade of the place fit with his mental image: vinyl booths with sticky Formica tabletops, sticky particle board free-standing tables with rickety wooden chairs, and waitresses in ugly, ill-fitting pink dresses with frilly, impractical aprons and tired smiles. The place was almost empty, with only four other people sitting down.
One of them came up to him when he lingered a moment too long in the doorway. She had a long, blonde ponytail and dark blue eyes. Her name tag informed him that she was Ino.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m supposed to meet someone here,” he told her. “Well, I was. At two.”
“Hatake Kakashi?” Ino demanded, looking him up and down.
Taken aback that this stranger knew his name, he only looked at her.
Ino sighed. “She’s really pissed. She doesn’t like being here after her shift if she can help it,” she said. “Corner booth in the back,” she added, seeing Kakashi’s bemused look. “Come on.”
She started to walk away, clearly expecting him to follow. As he did so, he finally noticed legs sticking out of the booth in the far back of the diner.
“Hey, girl,” Ino said, pausing near the feet and smacking a calf. “He’s here. And he’s yummy.”
The young woman from the bar the night before sat up, frowning deeply at Ino. “Thanks,” she mumbled. The look darkened when she caught sight of Kakashi.
“I’m sorry,” he said instantly. “I got lost and-”
She waved a hand. “Whatever. You’re here now. Sit. Ino, two cups of coffee, please. With cream. Lots of cream.”
Ino walked away, grinning widely. Kakashi sat.
“Ignore her,” the girl ordered.
When was he going to learn this girl’s name? He glanced over her, noting that she was wearing the same dress as Ino, with an apron tossed at the end of the table, but her name tag was missing.
“It’s Sakura,” she said. “My name, I mean.”
Finally.
[--]
Kakashi learned a lot about Sakura in the next half-hour. First that she, along with her best friend Yamanaka Ino, was a waitress at Momo’s Café, one of her two jobs to help pay for medical school, where she was studying to become a trauma surgeon. Her other job was as an “associate” at a retail store, which basically meant she was a cashier and whipping post for unhappy customers.
Then he found out that she was working a split shift at Momo’s, from ten in the morning to two that afternoon to cover the lunch rush, and then she would be back to work at four until eight to cover the dinner rush.
He also found out that her hair was pink-“It’s natural, I swear”-her eyes were green, she hated cherry-flavored and -scented anything after years of receiving cherry-flavored and -scented everything from well-meaning family members. She would be celebrating her twenty-second birthday in March, and she had two older brothers and a younger sister. She’d grown up with them in a suburb of Konoha City, but was currently living in a piece of crap apartment a few blocks away from Momo’s with three other girls who were also students at the university.
He also found himself talking-telling her about himself. That he was an astrophysicist at the Leaf Observatory, that Asuma and Genma were his closest friends, that his hair had always been that silver color-“It isn’t grey”-that he had no siblings and had also grown up in the suburbs. He also described his apartment, which filled all of two minutes.
By the time they were done, they’d sucked down a total of eight cups of coffee and three glasses of water between them and it was time for Sakura to go back to work.
He stuck around for dinner, and Sakura directed him to a two-seat table in the front of the café, because that was her section. The food was phenomenal, and he left her a generous tip. On his way out, he stopped to talk to her. Her section was clearing out, so she paused for a moment with a wide, happy grin.
“I’d like to…” he started, trailing away awkwardly. His ears burned red.
“I want to see you again,” Sakura said. “I had a good time, even if it was in this dump.”
“How about tonight?” He said it in a rush, trying not to sound like an idiot. He winced after the words were out. He’d sounded stupid anyway.
Sakura grimaced unhappily. “I have to study tonight,” she said apologetically. “I work all day tomorrow and there’s a test Monday-”
“Forehead, shut the hell up and go out with the dish,” Ino called from the waitress station. “You study anymore and that brain of yours is going to explode.”
Sakura’s eyes closed, her mouth pinched. “Pig…” she muttered threateningly.
Even though Ino couldn’t see it, she giggled merrily and sang, “I’ll get TenTen to help me lock you out!”
A delicate shudder rippled through Sakura’s body. Her eyes opened. “Tonight it is.” She smiled at him and nodded to a customer who’d flagged her. “Gotta run. See you here at eight?”
“Yep,” Kakashi answered in a squeak.
[--]
Because he hadn’t a clue where to take her after she got off work, Sakura ended up being the one who decided where to go.
“You haven’t done this in a while, have you?” she asked, her breath fogging in the freezing air.
“Uh, no,” he admitted.
So, without warning, she had his hand and was leading him down the street. “There’s a pond nearby in this park. It’s, like, the only one in this area, and it’s got this little shack where you can rent skates. It’ll be fun.”
He’d never ice-skated before, but he was afraid to tell her that. He paid for the skates and handed over his shoes. Sakura was already gliding around on the ice, but he lingered at the edge of the pond, wobbling a bit on the blades.
It took Sakura a few minutes to notice, but eventually she came to a graceful halt in front of him.
“Haven’t you ever gone skating before?” she said, sounding disbelieving.
“No,” he said.
“Okay, first,” Sakura instructed, “step out on the ice.” She held out a hand. “Come on.”
He did so. “Now relax,” she ordered in a gentle, soothing tone. “Close your eyes. Take my hand.”
Kakashi felt his hands being lifted in smaller, more delicate ones.
“Take a deep breath,” she said. “Let it out. Good. Now, open your eyes and follow me.”
She skated backwards, holding his hands and guiding him through the motions until he could do it on his own.
Sakura laughed delightedly as she let him go and began to skate beside him. It was a beautiful sound.
[--]
He walked her home that night and secured another date for next Saturday. It was dinner at a nicer restaurant. He drove her home and walked her to her door. He kissed her that night, after agreeing to a movie the following Wednesday.
Weeks passed, and Kakashi talked to, texted, and saw as much of Sakura as their schedules allowed. On their fourth date-another movie on a Friday night-they made out so much they missed nearly the entire thing. After their fifth date-a visit to a museum on a Sunday morning-they went back to Kakashi’s apartment and made love well into the night.
Kakashi was glad to know he hadn’t completely lost his touch.
The next day at work, Kakashi couldn’t stop thinking about her-the way she’d kissed him when he’d pressed her up against a wall, the little noise of protest she’d made as he’d lifted away from her to undress them both. The scratches down his back she’d left when he’d teased her opening and the way she’d moaned as he brought her to her peak.
He was so engrossed in thoughts of her, in fact, that he wasn’t quite paying attention when he was carrying a sample of a new, experimental rocket fuel to the lab.
Genma reminded him-loudly, when he nearly dropped the container.
And that was when he came to the conclusion that he couldn’t see her anymore. Not if she was going to affect him at work. He had to be more careful-he couldn’t do that if she was filling his brain.
[--]
She slapped him when he told her.
“You son of a bitch,” she snarled. “You’re afraid.”
“Of course I am,” he answered numbly. “You’re costing me vital concentration at work. I have to work with touchy formulas and calculations and handle volatile chemicals in the lab at work. It needs my entire focus-”
“You can’t control your own brain?” Sakura laughed derisively. “My apologies. Now get off my doorstep.”
[--]
Three days later, he was back on her doorstep. He’d forgotten a formula because of the guilt he felt, leaving out a number in a very important location. If his partner hadn’t caught it, it would have blown up the rocket.
“Kakashi,” Sakura said flatly when she saw him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Even now, I can’t… I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Still can’t control your own brain, huh?” she asked, a slight sneer marring her beautiful mouth. He wanted to kiss her.
“I miss you,” he said. “I’d rather be messing up at work because we’re together than because we’re apart.”
It was pathetic and sad, but she’d changed him. He wanted her, in all her strange, excitable glory. He’d just have to focus his brain.
“I’ve missed you, too,” Sakura admitted.
His heart soared.
“But before I let you in again, you have to apologise for blaming me because you can’t stop thinking about how much you want me,” she added. In a warning tone, she said, “You can’t do that again.” Her face was very serious.
Anything to be back with her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It won’t happen again. I haven’t really done this before…”
“I know,” Sakura whispered. “You can trust me. I won’t steer you wrong. Close your eyes. Take my hand.”
And he did.
[--]
Good luck to all the other contestants!