[fic post] Nevermore
Title: Nevermore
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Romance
Pairings or Characters: Kakashi/Sakura, Naruto/Sakura
Warnings: language, mentions of sex
Word Count: 2904
Summary: Naruto leaves and the village accepts his fate, but Sakura is having trouble coming to terms.
Author Notes: For kakasaku's Poe challenge, round three. SO. I WON LAST WEEK??? I don't even know how that happened but THANK YOU EVERYONE! I am honestly awed and honored and sdfklsdfj everyone who participates writes so much better than me, I'm just happy to make it to the next week, I hadn't expected to get the most votes. Good luck to everyone else this week, and I hope you enjoy. :)
Nevermore
"You ready?" Sakura asks, smiling gently up at Naruto.
"Of course," he beams. He shuffles awkwardly forward and presses a soft kiss to her cheek, not noticing how quickly she stiffens. When he pulls back, her face is carefully blank, raising a hand to her cheek, and he starts to blush. "Sorry, thought this might be my last shot."
He laughs, scratching the back of his neck and scuffing the dirt with his heel.
"Just come back in one piece," she says quietly, a small smile returning to her face. Naruto grins wide and nods.
"I promise, Sakura-chan."
Naruto turns on his heel and sets out at a run, dashing out of the city gates at full speed, leaving Sakura watching after him. There are others around, watching their golden boy disappear into the distance, but Sakura doesn't notice any of them, even if they'd all been staring at her moments before. A hand slides into hers and she starts, glancing down to see a familiar gloved hand before carefully folding their fingers together.
"You okay?" Kakashi asks.
Sakura's still staring off down the road as the gates close, Naruto already out of view.
"I guess," she answers with a shrug. His fingers squeeze hers, but this time she does notice the eyes staring at her and has to take her hand away, fiddling uncomfortably where she stands. He sighs and walks away, rubbing a hand in her hair as he passes. She grunts and combs it back to normal before glancing in his direction, but he's already gone.
She suddenly feels very alone.
~
"So what's this I hear about you making out with Naruto?" Ino drawls and Sakura spits out her drink.
"WHAT," she shouts, other restaurant goers turning around to stare widely at her, but Ino just rubs a finger in her ear and shrugs.
"It's the talk of the town, Forehead. Why are you trying to break my eardrums?"
"I did not make out with Naruto," Sakura hisses, slamming her glass down on the table, nearly breaking it. "He kissed me! On the cheek! Where the hell do you get this gossip from?"
"I can't break my confidence to my sources, but really, all he did was kiss you on the cheek? I thought he proposed to you last week," Ino probes, and Sakura is reminded of why she should never tell Ino anything ever.
"I turned him down. He knows I'm not interested."
"You aren't?"
"No," Sakura insists loudly. Ino gives her a doubtful look, but after a while, shrugs and takes a sip of her iced tea.
"I guess it's for the best, then," Ino sighs, twirling her straw around in her glass, "He's going on a suicide mission, anyway. Why get engaged when he's never going to come back?"
"He's going to come back," Sakura corrects, but she can't meet Ino's eyes as she says it.
"Sakura, he's trying to bring back Sasuke," Ino says quietly after a pause. The mission isn't secret -- in fact, Naruto had been quite loud about his plan for a while now -- but whenever anyone talks about Sasuke around Sakura, they lower their voice, like they're nervous he'll appear if they mention him too loudly. "He won't come back to Konoha until he does, and if he does manage to track down Sasuke, he'll be killed. Sasuke isn't... Sasuke is a monster now, worse than Madara. He may have lost interest in this village, but that doesn't mean he isn't dangerous."
Sakura glares down at her lap, biting her tongue. Ino isn't exaggerating and she knows full well what Sasuke has become, but she has never been able to admit to herself that there was no saving him. She and Naruto had that in common, but she at least had the common sense not to go chasing him down.
Ino reaches across the table and drags Sakura's hands up so she can hold them and squeeze, finally getting Sakura to glance back up at her.
"You know them better than I do, and I know you have a lot more faith in that dumbass than a lot of us, but you have to realize that this isn't going to end in happily ever after."
Sakura is spared from answering, Ino letting go of her hands, as the waitress shows ups and slides their dishes onto the table between them. They eat in silence before Ino turns the subject back to the mission she just got back from, but Sakura is unusually quiet for the rest of the meal.
~
Sakura spends the rest of the day trying to forget about everything -- Naruto and his promise, Ino and her gossip, Kakashi and his concern -- but it's hard to do when everyone, both at work and out in the street on her way home, is giving her pitying looks, recognizing her as the unofficial girlfriend of their shining pride and joy. She used to be angry at how everyone suddenly treated Naruto like the sun shined out his ass when they'd been so awful to him his entire life, but he took it in stride and encouraged her to forgive them, and it's impossible to argue with that stupid smile sometimes. Now she's just embarrassed that people, who only know her name because she's "the old teammate of Naruto and that Uchiha," are suddenly assuming she's dating Naruto.
She isn't, but there's no use correcting these strangers.
Sakura trudges from the hospital back to her apartment, ignoring looks and whispers from old women as she passes by. She bites her tongue to stop herself from yelling at them to stop staring at her, she's a ninja, she can hear you talking about her, and manages to get up the stairs to her place without any major incident.
The moment she shuts the door behind her, she hears a voice say, "How was your day?"
She tenses before sliding her shoes off and dropping her keys and bag on the coffee table as she walks by Kakashi, heading straight for the refrigerator.
"I found out all of Konoha thinks Naruto and I are an item. How do you think my day was?" Sakura snorts, slamming the fridge door shut after grabbing some left over pasta. She starts up the stove and rummages around through her drawers for a pan, ignoring Kakashi as he drifts casually from the wall to the counter.
"I heard about that."
"From who? Because depending on who you talk to, I'm either having a steamy affair with him, we're young lovebirds torn apart by duty, or I'm the heinous bitch tying him to me before he goes off to chase his true love," Sakura grumbles, dumping the noodles into the skillet.
Kakashi makes a small choking noise.
"Sasuke's his true love?"
"Some girls are into that kind of thing."
Kakashi coughs and changes the subject, "I overheard two old women talking about your tragic romance, having to deny his proposal of marriage before he set out on a perilous mission, while waiting in line to buy lunch today."
"Oh, well, at least they weren't calling me a whore like half of the village."
She really hated knowing Naruto sometimes. She didn't want to be a celebrity, especially not a badmouthed one. She had enough on her plate to deal with already.
"Did he really propose?"
Sakura's hands freeze over the stove for a moment before she resumes stirring her warmed up pasta.
"I only told Ino about that," she says, voice quiet.
"So it's true?" Kakashi asks, sounding calm, but Sakura can feel the annoyance radiating off of him.
"Yes, it's true, but come on, Kakashi, do you really think I'd say yes?"
Kakashi folds his arms over his chest and glares with his one visible eye.
"You haven't spoken to me since Naruto decided he was leaving, Sakura, how was I supposed to know you'd turn him down?"
Sakura shuts the stove off and stares down at her pasta, no longer hungry.
"If you're here to attack me, you can get out," she says coldly.
"I'm not attacking you," he replies quickly, uncrossing his arms to hold his hands up in surrender, "I was just curious why you'd started avoiding me, and why Naruto's leaving suddenly started all these rumors, which, oh, just happen to be true."
"They are not all true--" Sakura starts to protest, but Kakashi gives her a look and she gives up.
"Do you think he's going to come back?" she asks instead, taking the skillet and scraping her pasta into the trash.
"No."
"He promised me he would. He promised," she whispers, staring at the sink as she fills it with water.
"Even Naruto knows how to lie," Kakashi says flatly, and it makes her want to cry.
~
Sakura wakes up in the middle of the night, heart beating fast in her chest and body covered in sweat. She grabs at scraps of a dream, something that left her scared and anxious, but all she can remember is flashes of black and the faint sound of bird cries before losing it completely. She feels trapped and starts to kick off the sheets, only to find limbs pinning them around her and she pauses, taking a moment to recognize who they belong to.
Turning over, she sees Kakashi sleeping soundly, his arms and one of his legs sprawled over her. She can't fight back the giggles rising up in her throat at the sight and Kakashi opens his eyes with a snap. He glances at the clock over her shoulder and groans.
"It's four in the morning, Sakura. Why are you awake and staring at my face?"
"I just got overheated," she lies, tugging at the blankets. He eyes her carefully before moving his arms to help her kick the covers to the end of the bed.
"Go back to sleep," he grumbles, grabbing her by the waist and tugging her against him. She laughs softly, letting herself be tucked against his stomach and staring blankly into the dark. She can't go back to sleep, at least not for a while, but she slows her breathing and pretends.
"Are you thinking about Naruto?" Kakashi asks, startling her, and she silently curses his freakish ability to read her mind.
"I can't help it," she whispers.
"It's a little rude to be thinking about another guy at a time like this. Especially one that proposed to you," he points out, and she snorts.
"You know it's not like that. But, you and Ino, and everyone. No one believes Naruto will come back," she mumbles. He wraps an arm around her, reaching up and twining his fingers with hers, and she squeezes them.
"Do you?" he asks after a while.
And she can't answer. Because she wants to believe he will, but she's not an idiot. She can't bring herself to admit it, though, so she keeps silent, letting him rub her skin with his thumb until she falls asleep again.
~
Time passes eerily quickly, and it's easy to not miss Naruto as she sticks to her daily routine. Sakura rarely had time to see him before anyway, with him always away on missions and her busy training with Tsunade to take over as Hokage and helping at the hospital as they prepared for her departure. The rumors die down after the first month, too, which is a relief. Kakashi stops pouting and Ino gets bored teasing her, and people no longer recognize her as Naruto's girlfriend and start pointing her out as Hokage-to-be.
Things are nice. She'd even go so far as to say she's happy.
But with every day that passes, there's another day that Naruto hasn't returned. She's well aware that this mission wasn't one that would end quickly, but the longer it goes on without word from him, the harder it is to keep believing that he'll make it back at all.
To her credit, Ino doesn't mention Naruto, but with Sakura's steady decline in attitude, she does suggest she take a break from work, for at least a day or two.
"Come on, Forehead, you are working two extremely stressful jobs at the same time, because you are a freak or something, and you need a break before you fall apart," Ino instructs, pointing her fork at her over their lunch.
Sakura pokes disinterestedly at her sandwich and sighs.
"I guess... Tsunade might give me a day off. I haven't bungled any paperwork in a while."
"Good. Spend it getting all bendy and sweaty with your sensei," Ino smirks, and Sakura stares at her, horrified.
"INO," she hisses, turning bright red.
"What? It's not like it's a secret," Ino shrugs, but Sakura's pretty damn sure it was supposed to be. She stands up immediately, slamming her hands down on the table hard enough to leave palm-shaped indents in the metal, and storms off, leaving a blinking Ino and other startled bystanders staring after her.
~
"Kakashi," she shouts, slamming his apartment door open. He's only been back in Konoha for a few days, so they hadn't had a chance to see each other, but she knew he'd be at his place, avoiding his mission debriefing and post-mission health check at the hospital.
"Hey, Sakura," he greets warily from the couch, staring at her in the entryway, "What brings you here?"
"People know?"
He keeps still for about three seconds before sighing and standing up.
"Sakura, it's not--"
"What the fuck, Kakashi, this isn't-- we're not dating, you asshole, I thought you understood what this was! It's nobody else's business what we do, so who have you been telling?" she swears, waving her arms around angrily. She wants to hit him, she really does, but he's staying by the couch, staring at her hard with one gray eye.
"And why is that?" he asks, which stops her in her tracks.
"What?"
"We go on dates, we eat together, we stay over at each others' places, I've got things at your place and you have things here, and we have sex. A lot. All the time, all over the place--"
"I get it," she interrupts loudly, her face burning. He raises an eyebrow, but he's gotten his point across, so he backs down.
"What I don't understand is, despite all the dating behavior, despite all my effort, despite me telling you to your face that I love you, you refuse to acknowledge this as more than casual fucking."
The rage in her disappears in an instant, swallowed up by fear and panic as her heart threatens to burst out of her chest and her breathing turns fast and shallow.
"Is it because of Naruto?" he asks, eye narrowing, and she feels all the blood drain from her face.
"N-No, of course not," she mumbles, but her heart is beating even faster and she can hear her pulse pounding in her ears. With no warning, Kakashi is suddenly in front of her, reaching past her to shut the front door, and she stops breathing until he leans away again.
"I understood why you wanted to keep it quiet then. Naruto loves you, and you didn't want to flaunt something like this in his face, so we didn't say anything. I understood, Sakura. But I don't anymore. He's gone, and he's not coming back."
"But he promised," she protests weakly.
"He's broken his promises before."
She reaches her hand back and even though Kakashi sees it coming, she forces enough chakra into her wrist to break past his block and slap him, ripping part of his mask as her hand falls away. She's breathing hard and her heart is still beating out of control, but she feels something unclench in her stomach.
"I can't give up on him, Kakashi. I can't. I've lost too much already, and I won't give him up if I don't have to."
Kakashi stares down at her hard, bringing a hand up to rub at his face.
"Do you love him?"
"Yes," she answers, because it's the truth. But it isn't romantic, and it isn't familial. It's something more than that, something that she could only form with Naruto, and she doesn't expect anyone else to understand.
"Do you love me?" Kakashi asks, sounding defeated.
"Yes," she whispers, voice trembling, and he looks immediately confused.
"Then why?"
"I never asked for a relationship," she breathes, and he snaps, pressing her forward and slamming her back against the door, mask ripped away from his face as he kisses her roughly, biting at her lips and tongue. They stand there, biting and pushing against each other, hands digging into hair and trailing down sides to rest on hips, for several charged minutes before pulling away to stare at each other and collect themselves.
"So this is it? This is all you can give me?" Kakashi asks, breathing hard, "Only this and nothing more."
"Until he comes back, this is all I have to give," Sakura says, leaning her forehead on his chest.
"He's not coming back," Kakashi tells her, stubborn and angry, but he's already wrapping his arms around her, pulling her against him. Her fingers dig into his vest and tears sting her eyes.
"He'll come back," she insists, but she knows he won't be alive if his body ever comes back through Konoha's gates.
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Romance
Pairings or Characters: Kakashi/Sakura, Naruto/Sakura
Warnings: language, mentions of sex
Word Count: 2904
Summary: Naruto leaves and the village accepts his fate, but Sakura is having trouble coming to terms.
Author Notes: For kakasaku's Poe challenge, round three. SO. I WON LAST WEEK??? I don't even know how that happened but THANK YOU EVERYONE! I am honestly awed and honored and sdfklsdfj everyone who participates writes so much better than me, I'm just happy to make it to the next week, I hadn't expected to get the most votes. Good luck to everyone else this week, and I hope you enjoy. :)
Nevermore
"You ready?" Sakura asks, smiling gently up at Naruto.
"Of course," he beams. He shuffles awkwardly forward and presses a soft kiss to her cheek, not noticing how quickly she stiffens. When he pulls back, her face is carefully blank, raising a hand to her cheek, and he starts to blush. "Sorry, thought this might be my last shot."
He laughs, scratching the back of his neck and scuffing the dirt with his heel.
"Just come back in one piece," she says quietly, a small smile returning to her face. Naruto grins wide and nods.
"I promise, Sakura-chan."
Naruto turns on his heel and sets out at a run, dashing out of the city gates at full speed, leaving Sakura watching after him. There are others around, watching their golden boy disappear into the distance, but Sakura doesn't notice any of them, even if they'd all been staring at her moments before. A hand slides into hers and she starts, glancing down to see a familiar gloved hand before carefully folding their fingers together.
"You okay?" Kakashi asks.
Sakura's still staring off down the road as the gates close, Naruto already out of view.
"I guess," she answers with a shrug. His fingers squeeze hers, but this time she does notice the eyes staring at her and has to take her hand away, fiddling uncomfortably where she stands. He sighs and walks away, rubbing a hand in her hair as he passes. She grunts and combs it back to normal before glancing in his direction, but he's already gone.
She suddenly feels very alone.
~
"So what's this I hear about you making out with Naruto?" Ino drawls and Sakura spits out her drink.
"WHAT," she shouts, other restaurant goers turning around to stare widely at her, but Ino just rubs a finger in her ear and shrugs.
"It's the talk of the town, Forehead. Why are you trying to break my eardrums?"
"I did not make out with Naruto," Sakura hisses, slamming her glass down on the table, nearly breaking it. "He kissed me! On the cheek! Where the hell do you get this gossip from?"
"I can't break my confidence to my sources, but really, all he did was kiss you on the cheek? I thought he proposed to you last week," Ino probes, and Sakura is reminded of why she should never tell Ino anything ever.
"I turned him down. He knows I'm not interested."
"You aren't?"
"No," Sakura insists loudly. Ino gives her a doubtful look, but after a while, shrugs and takes a sip of her iced tea.
"I guess it's for the best, then," Ino sighs, twirling her straw around in her glass, "He's going on a suicide mission, anyway. Why get engaged when he's never going to come back?"
"He's going to come back," Sakura corrects, but she can't meet Ino's eyes as she says it.
"Sakura, he's trying to bring back Sasuke," Ino says quietly after a pause. The mission isn't secret -- in fact, Naruto had been quite loud about his plan for a while now -- but whenever anyone talks about Sasuke around Sakura, they lower their voice, like they're nervous he'll appear if they mention him too loudly. "He won't come back to Konoha until he does, and if he does manage to track down Sasuke, he'll be killed. Sasuke isn't... Sasuke is a monster now, worse than Madara. He may have lost interest in this village, but that doesn't mean he isn't dangerous."
Sakura glares down at her lap, biting her tongue. Ino isn't exaggerating and she knows full well what Sasuke has become, but she has never been able to admit to herself that there was no saving him. She and Naruto had that in common, but she at least had the common sense not to go chasing him down.
Ino reaches across the table and drags Sakura's hands up so she can hold them and squeeze, finally getting Sakura to glance back up at her.
"You know them better than I do, and I know you have a lot more faith in that dumbass than a lot of us, but you have to realize that this isn't going to end in happily ever after."
Sakura is spared from answering, Ino letting go of her hands, as the waitress shows ups and slides their dishes onto the table between them. They eat in silence before Ino turns the subject back to the mission she just got back from, but Sakura is unusually quiet for the rest of the meal.
~
Sakura spends the rest of the day trying to forget about everything -- Naruto and his promise, Ino and her gossip, Kakashi and his concern -- but it's hard to do when everyone, both at work and out in the street on her way home, is giving her pitying looks, recognizing her as the unofficial girlfriend of their shining pride and joy. She used to be angry at how everyone suddenly treated Naruto like the sun shined out his ass when they'd been so awful to him his entire life, but he took it in stride and encouraged her to forgive them, and it's impossible to argue with that stupid smile sometimes. Now she's just embarrassed that people, who only know her name because she's "the old teammate of Naruto and that Uchiha," are suddenly assuming she's dating Naruto.
She isn't, but there's no use correcting these strangers.
Sakura trudges from the hospital back to her apartment, ignoring looks and whispers from old women as she passes by. She bites her tongue to stop herself from yelling at them to stop staring at her, she's a ninja, she can hear you talking about her, and manages to get up the stairs to her place without any major incident.
The moment she shuts the door behind her, she hears a voice say, "How was your day?"
She tenses before sliding her shoes off and dropping her keys and bag on the coffee table as she walks by Kakashi, heading straight for the refrigerator.
"I found out all of Konoha thinks Naruto and I are an item. How do you think my day was?" Sakura snorts, slamming the fridge door shut after grabbing some left over pasta. She starts up the stove and rummages around through her drawers for a pan, ignoring Kakashi as he drifts casually from the wall to the counter.
"I heard about that."
"From who? Because depending on who you talk to, I'm either having a steamy affair with him, we're young lovebirds torn apart by duty, or I'm the heinous bitch tying him to me before he goes off to chase his true love," Sakura grumbles, dumping the noodles into the skillet.
Kakashi makes a small choking noise.
"Sasuke's his true love?"
"Some girls are into that kind of thing."
Kakashi coughs and changes the subject, "I overheard two old women talking about your tragic romance, having to deny his proposal of marriage before he set out on a perilous mission, while waiting in line to buy lunch today."
"Oh, well, at least they weren't calling me a whore like half of the village."
She really hated knowing Naruto sometimes. She didn't want to be a celebrity, especially not a badmouthed one. She had enough on her plate to deal with already.
"Did he really propose?"
Sakura's hands freeze over the stove for a moment before she resumes stirring her warmed up pasta.
"I only told Ino about that," she says, voice quiet.
"So it's true?" Kakashi asks, sounding calm, but Sakura can feel the annoyance radiating off of him.
"Yes, it's true, but come on, Kakashi, do you really think I'd say yes?"
Kakashi folds his arms over his chest and glares with his one visible eye.
"You haven't spoken to me since Naruto decided he was leaving, Sakura, how was I supposed to know you'd turn him down?"
Sakura shuts the stove off and stares down at her pasta, no longer hungry.
"If you're here to attack me, you can get out," she says coldly.
"I'm not attacking you," he replies quickly, uncrossing his arms to hold his hands up in surrender, "I was just curious why you'd started avoiding me, and why Naruto's leaving suddenly started all these rumors, which, oh, just happen to be true."
"They are not all true--" Sakura starts to protest, but Kakashi gives her a look and she gives up.
"Do you think he's going to come back?" she asks instead, taking the skillet and scraping her pasta into the trash.
"No."
"He promised me he would. He promised," she whispers, staring at the sink as she fills it with water.
"Even Naruto knows how to lie," Kakashi says flatly, and it makes her want to cry.
~
Sakura wakes up in the middle of the night, heart beating fast in her chest and body covered in sweat. She grabs at scraps of a dream, something that left her scared and anxious, but all she can remember is flashes of black and the faint sound of bird cries before losing it completely. She feels trapped and starts to kick off the sheets, only to find limbs pinning them around her and she pauses, taking a moment to recognize who they belong to.
Turning over, she sees Kakashi sleeping soundly, his arms and one of his legs sprawled over her. She can't fight back the giggles rising up in her throat at the sight and Kakashi opens his eyes with a snap. He glances at the clock over her shoulder and groans.
"It's four in the morning, Sakura. Why are you awake and staring at my face?"
"I just got overheated," she lies, tugging at the blankets. He eyes her carefully before moving his arms to help her kick the covers to the end of the bed.
"Go back to sleep," he grumbles, grabbing her by the waist and tugging her against him. She laughs softly, letting herself be tucked against his stomach and staring blankly into the dark. She can't go back to sleep, at least not for a while, but she slows her breathing and pretends.
"Are you thinking about Naruto?" Kakashi asks, startling her, and she silently curses his freakish ability to read her mind.
"I can't help it," she whispers.
"It's a little rude to be thinking about another guy at a time like this. Especially one that proposed to you," he points out, and she snorts.
"You know it's not like that. But, you and Ino, and everyone. No one believes Naruto will come back," she mumbles. He wraps an arm around her, reaching up and twining his fingers with hers, and she squeezes them.
"Do you?" he asks after a while.
And she can't answer. Because she wants to believe he will, but she's not an idiot. She can't bring herself to admit it, though, so she keeps silent, letting him rub her skin with his thumb until she falls asleep again.
~
Time passes eerily quickly, and it's easy to not miss Naruto as she sticks to her daily routine. Sakura rarely had time to see him before anyway, with him always away on missions and her busy training with Tsunade to take over as Hokage and helping at the hospital as they prepared for her departure. The rumors die down after the first month, too, which is a relief. Kakashi stops pouting and Ino gets bored teasing her, and people no longer recognize her as Naruto's girlfriend and start pointing her out as Hokage-to-be.
Things are nice. She'd even go so far as to say she's happy.
But with every day that passes, there's another day that Naruto hasn't returned. She's well aware that this mission wasn't one that would end quickly, but the longer it goes on without word from him, the harder it is to keep believing that he'll make it back at all.
To her credit, Ino doesn't mention Naruto, but with Sakura's steady decline in attitude, she does suggest she take a break from work, for at least a day or two.
"Come on, Forehead, you are working two extremely stressful jobs at the same time, because you are a freak or something, and you need a break before you fall apart," Ino instructs, pointing her fork at her over their lunch.
Sakura pokes disinterestedly at her sandwich and sighs.
"I guess... Tsunade might give me a day off. I haven't bungled any paperwork in a while."
"Good. Spend it getting all bendy and sweaty with your sensei," Ino smirks, and Sakura stares at her, horrified.
"INO," she hisses, turning bright red.
"What? It's not like it's a secret," Ino shrugs, but Sakura's pretty damn sure it was supposed to be. She stands up immediately, slamming her hands down on the table hard enough to leave palm-shaped indents in the metal, and storms off, leaving a blinking Ino and other startled bystanders staring after her.
~
"Kakashi," she shouts, slamming his apartment door open. He's only been back in Konoha for a few days, so they hadn't had a chance to see each other, but she knew he'd be at his place, avoiding his mission debriefing and post-mission health check at the hospital.
"Hey, Sakura," he greets warily from the couch, staring at her in the entryway, "What brings you here?"
"People know?"
He keeps still for about three seconds before sighing and standing up.
"Sakura, it's not--"
"What the fuck, Kakashi, this isn't-- we're not dating, you asshole, I thought you understood what this was! It's nobody else's business what we do, so who have you been telling?" she swears, waving her arms around angrily. She wants to hit him, she really does, but he's staying by the couch, staring at her hard with one gray eye.
"And why is that?" he asks, which stops her in her tracks.
"What?"
"We go on dates, we eat together, we stay over at each others' places, I've got things at your place and you have things here, and we have sex. A lot. All the time, all over the place--"
"I get it," she interrupts loudly, her face burning. He raises an eyebrow, but he's gotten his point across, so he backs down.
"What I don't understand is, despite all the dating behavior, despite all my effort, despite me telling you to your face that I love you, you refuse to acknowledge this as more than casual fucking."
The rage in her disappears in an instant, swallowed up by fear and panic as her heart threatens to burst out of her chest and her breathing turns fast and shallow.
"Is it because of Naruto?" he asks, eye narrowing, and she feels all the blood drain from her face.
"N-No, of course not," she mumbles, but her heart is beating even faster and she can hear her pulse pounding in her ears. With no warning, Kakashi is suddenly in front of her, reaching past her to shut the front door, and she stops breathing until he leans away again.
"I understood why you wanted to keep it quiet then. Naruto loves you, and you didn't want to flaunt something like this in his face, so we didn't say anything. I understood, Sakura. But I don't anymore. He's gone, and he's not coming back."
"But he promised," she protests weakly.
"He's broken his promises before."
She reaches her hand back and even though Kakashi sees it coming, she forces enough chakra into her wrist to break past his block and slap him, ripping part of his mask as her hand falls away. She's breathing hard and her heart is still beating out of control, but she feels something unclench in her stomach.
"I can't give up on him, Kakashi. I can't. I've lost too much already, and I won't give him up if I don't have to."
Kakashi stares down at her hard, bringing a hand up to rub at his face.
"Do you love him?"
"Yes," she answers, because it's the truth. But it isn't romantic, and it isn't familial. It's something more than that, something that she could only form with Naruto, and she doesn't expect anyone else to understand.
"Do you love me?" Kakashi asks, sounding defeated.
"Yes," she whispers, voice trembling, and he looks immediately confused.
"Then why?"
"I never asked for a relationship," she breathes, and he snaps, pressing her forward and slamming her back against the door, mask ripped away from his face as he kisses her roughly, biting at her lips and tongue. They stand there, biting and pushing against each other, hands digging into hair and trailing down sides to rest on hips, for several charged minutes before pulling away to stare at each other and collect themselves.
"So this is it? This is all you can give me?" Kakashi asks, breathing hard, "Only this and nothing more."
"Until he comes back, this is all I have to give," Sakura says, leaning her forehead on his chest.
"He's not coming back," Kakashi tells her, stubborn and angry, but he's already wrapping his arms around her, pulling her against him. Her fingers dig into his vest and tears sting her eyes.
"He'll come back," she insists, but she knows he won't be alive if his body ever comes back through Konoha's gates.