The Window: Chapter 15 (part 1)...
Title: The Window
By: Silvershine
Pairing: KakaSaku
Rating: M/R/NC-17
Warnings: fans, shit, and the hitting of, etc
Window
Chapter Fifteen
When times became difficult, Kakashi had at least one person he could turn to. When things started unraveling at the seams and the same old mistakes were repeated again and again, there was at least one set of ears who would listen without passing judgment. A memory that could be confided in with utmost confidence.
The morning was windy and the sky was a dull white, and Kakashi stood before the cenotaph with his shoulders hunched and his head down against the blustering gales. A hundred or more names stared back at him, but only one was of any interest.
“I got another one killed,” Kakashi said quietly. “So soon you’ll probably have another friend down here. The list just keeps getting longer, doesn’t it? They’ll have to make a bigger memorial stone one day.”
He looked down at the blue sling wrapped around his arm, holding it suspended against his chest. Thoughtfully, he flexed his fingers. “I’m sleeping with my student.”
The words hung in the air like a bad joke. He closed his eyes, and though he was alone he felt as if the world had just gotten a little quieter and was looking his way. “Or I was, at least,” he said softly. “But that’s neither here nor there. The fact isn’t going to go away.”
He shifted his stance a little, resting his weight on the ankle that hadn’t been sprained in the fight yesterday. “I think I’m in trouble, Obito. Very serious trouble. I took a girl to bed who I shouldn’t have touched, and she’s not like the usual type. She’s young. She doesn’t know any better.” Then he chuckled. “She’s doing her best to get rid of me.”
Another gust of wind blew dust and dead, dried leaves in Kakashi’s face and he had to shield his eye. Perhaps it was Obito trying to register some kind of disgust?
“I couldn’t stop thinking about her for seven whole days. That’s not normal, is it? And when that girl was killed… all I could think about was that if things had been a little different, if she’d said yes, or if I’d pressured her more, or if I hadn’t failed her and made her fear this thing between us… my student would have died. My Sakura. I suppose this means I’m a very selfish man, but it’s the honest truth. And when I think about Sakura dying, I freeze. I couldn’t think about it then, and I still can’t think about it now. I’m not sure I could cope if that happened. It’s one death that doesn’t bear thinking about. When I saw her at the hospital she looked terrible, Obito. Her hair was all over the place, she stunk of sake and I don’t think she’d changed her clothes for a while. But I didn’t want to let go of her. And that’s not normal… is it, Obito?”
The clearing was silent. Even the breeze seemed to have died.
“What would you say to me now?” he said again, more quietly. “What should I do?”
“Shizune, what’s wrong with your lip? It’s all swollen. Have you been snacking on nuts again?”
“What? Oh, no, nothing, Tsunade-sama.” Shizune made a forcible attempt to stop chewing on her lip and concentrate on the paperwork before her.
“If it’s not the nuts, then something’s troubling you. And the size of your swelled lip is usually directly relative to the size of the trouble.” Tsunade looked up from her desk and peered at Shizune pointedly over the tops of her glasses, and at times like that it was easier to see the old formidable women in the young body. “I’d say this one is pretty big. Is there something I should know about, Shizune?”
“Um…” Shizune tucked her hair behind her ear. “It’s nothing, Tsunade-sama.”
“Has someone been fiddling the accounts?”
“No.”
“The loan sharks haven’t found me, have they?”
“Oh - no!”
“Has someone we know done something incredibly stupid?”
Shizune swallowed hard. Yes. “Of course not, Hokage-sama,” she said as evenly as possible. “My neighbors cat is just a bit sick lately.”
“Well, what the hell has that-”
“I’m quite fond of it, Hokage-sama.”
Tsunade sighed and rolled her eyes. To each their own, her shrug seemed to say. “I need you to take some samples down to the pathology lab,” she said after a moment. “Tell them I need them today and don’t stop pestering them until they comply.”
“Yes, Hokage-sama,” Shizune set down her pen and moved to accept the samples that Tsunade bundled off on her. As she battled to get the door open with her harms full, Tsunade’s voice cut through her effort. “Shizune,” she said slowly, as she scrutinized her work. “If I find you’re keeping anything from me, I’ll be very annoyed.”
A shiver ran down Shizune’s spine. “I understand,” she muttered and hurried out before she was bullied into blurting anything stupid out.
Because what point was there in raising a fuss when it was only a suspicion? So a pair of panties appeared to have dropped from Hatake Kakashi’s pocket, and those panties had borne the name of one Haruno Sakura, but what exactly did that prove anyone? Maybe it was a joke? Maybe there was some other Haruno Sakura in the village? Or maybe those panties hadn’t really dropped from Kakashi’s pocket at all and Sakura had left them there accidentally?
“Why me?” Shizune whimpered. Ignorance was surely bliss. If she hadn’t looked for that stupid ‘hanky’ she would not be in this moral dilemma right now.
She found the path lab three floors down and was greeted by the gnawingly shy Hyuuga girl. “Shizune-san,” she whispered with a blush. “May I help you?”
“The Hokage needs some tests done on these samples,” Shizune said as she handed them over. “The tests are on the sheet, those are the samples, and I’ve been told not to leave until you start the tests. Now.”
“Oh… uh… ok.” The poor girl looked positively stricken. “But we already have a lot of work-”
“Tsunade says to do these first,” Shizune said bluntly.
Hinata nodded, looking pale. “Ok… I-I’ll see what I can do. Wait here, please.”
She hurried off and disappeared out of sight into the lab. Shizune looked about the waiting room wearily, knowing it would take anywhere between ten minutes to half an hour to get the results. There were no magazines to read, no one to talk to, and no hanging pictures to look at. Shizune turned with a sigh and leaned against the wall. Outside in the corridor medics, nurses, and lost patients were hurrying past, constantly busy. Directly opposite was the door to the security lounge. It was open, and inside lay the dark room where vigilant operatives kept an eye on the entire hospital. There was a camera in every room these days, installed during the last war when every other patient had been a foreign spy. Nowadays the surveillance system was mostly used to identify who was stealing the puddings from the hospital cafeteria.
(Turned out it was Hari from pediatrics.)
Shizune also heard that hospital tapes were frequently distributed amongst Konoha’s sleazy underbelly. All aspects of life could be captured in a hospital; usually it was death, occasionally it was new life, but the sleazy underbelly was most interested in the sex. And despite it being common knowledge that the hospital was laced with surveillance, it didn’t deter some people at all. They either forgot about the ever watchful eye in the corner of the room or simply didn’t care.
Shizune spine snapped straight and she pushed away from the wall.
This was it! This was how she confirmed whether her suspicions about Sakura and Kakashi were true! They’d been alone together in that hospital room for at least a quarter of an hour. If something was going on between them, surely the camera would know?
Leaving the pathology lab, Shizune darted across the hall and peered into the security lounge. Only one man sat inside, his feet on the control board and a box of doughy treats laid out beside him that he was indulging in at his own pace. He was too busy watching what looked like a familial dispute on screen 6-F to notice the woman in the door.
“Ahem,” Shizune coughed, making the man snap upright. “Um… Watanabe wants you down in the foyer.”
The man stared at her. “Who’s Watanabe?”
“I don’t know. You can ask him yourself when you see him,” Shizune replied.
“I’m not supposed to leave my station,” he said hesitantly.
“He sounded pretty urgent. He said it’s about your mother.”
“My mother? Oh god… not again…” The man ran his hands through his hair despairingly. “Can you just stay here till I sort this out?”
“Of course,” Shizune nodded as the man rushed past her. “And if he’s not in the foyer, he says he’ll be in Radiology! Or the cafeteria!”
That would keep him busy for a while, Shizune thought as she slid into the vacated chair and immediately set about trying to figure out what the hell all these buttons meant. It took her a while to realize that the knob at the top selected the floor, and each of the many buttons below it corresponded with a screen on the wall before her. After a lot of random button-bashing she spotted the room where Kakashi had been held yesterday next to the Emergency Unit ward. She pressed the key that corresponded with the screen and it suddenly appeared on the larger screen in the middle. After more hunting and lip-biting, she found the control that rewound the recording.
With her heart pounding in her throat she worked her way backwards, watching nurses, cleaners, and patients zipping around the room in reverse at top speed. Patients were in and out of that room every couple of hours, and cleaners even more so.
And after one particular patient, Shizune realized she could have lived without seeing a man vomit in reverse.
Then bam! Shizune’s fingers fumbled on the controls and she hastily set the recording to normal speed again. There was Tsunade and Kakashi in the room in the middle of the night. Kakashi’s head was bowed and Tsunade was fixing him a sling for his injured arm. Shizune scowled and fast-forwarded through what looked like a very quiet and reserved conversation.
She stopped at the point where Sakura burst into the room. Shizune knew that she herself had only been just outside the room, completely oblivious to the true implications of Sakura’s excessive concern for her sensei’s safety. Shizune had presumed that Sakura got typically worried over any of her teammates, but in retrospect, her behavior last night fit with Shizune’s ghastly suspicions.
Sakura was quickly shooed out and Shizune zipped quickly through the remainder of Tsunade and Kakashi’s conversation. The moment Tsunade left the room, Sakura re-entered, and Shizune resumed the recording at normal speed, watching with morbid curiosity.
Sakura hesitated by the door for a long moment. Was she speaking to him? Her back was to the camera so it was hard to say. Then she took a step forward and he looked up, and then his hand was being held out and she was suddenly surging forward to take it and then…
And then they were embracing. Not like friends. Not like a teacher and a student. They embraced like lovers.
Shizune sat back and looked away, feeling sick with fear and worry. But maybe she was wrong? Maybe Sakura was a more physically affectionate person than Shizune had realized and this really was just a platonic hug? She looked back at the screen, saw that Sakura had pulled back and their heads were now close together, petting each other. Students didn’t run their fingers their teacher’s hair in a platonic relationship, did they? And teachers didn’t touch their student’s hips like they had every right to.
Unable to watch anymore, she slammed the stop button and put her head in her hands.
“Oh god… why me?” Shizune whimpered.
Of course, now that her suspicions were as good as confirmed, the right thing would be to take the matter to the Hokage. Such a breach in the code of conduct as this would be call for a serious infraction. There could be court-martials, expulsions, possibly even house-arrests. Shizune hadn’t been joking when she’d said the last man to sleep with his student had been charged with execution. The law that prohibited fraternization between guardians and their wards was an old one that had remained unchanged since the old days when a young girl’s chastity was only her father’s business, and for any other male in a position of authority to ‘ruin’ that girl was one of the worst crimes that could be committed against another man’s property. The law hadn’t much been modified since those days because it rarely needed to be enforced.
But was this really any of her business? Sakura was a woman, not a child, and her father cared as much about his daughter’s chastity as he did about his daughter herself, which was to say, very little. What Sakura got up to and with whom she did it with was her own look-out. The law about students and teachers was outdated at best and absurdly archaic at worst.
But… how long had this been going on? A year? Two years? What if there were deeper, seedier implications behind this? Kakashi was a nice man and Shizune was very fond of him… but to take up with his own student? Shizune vehemently denied the idea that Kakashi would ever coerce or ‘groom’ his own student into a sexual relationship… but what if that was the case? He was a very eccentric man…
Struggling to think what to do, Shizune could only sit there and stare at the screen, looking at the way Sakura’s hands were splayed against Kakashi’s knees and she was leaning close to him. She didn’t look coerced or abused. She looked like a grown woman comforting a broken lover.
Perhaps it was as simple as that?
“Shizune-san, the test results are ready.”
Hinata was behind her.
Shizune nearly jumped out of her skin as she swiveled to face the girl and made a botched attempt to ‘casually’ cover the screen on the control panel. She’d forgotten that the Hinata had the byakugan, which could easily see through walls and locate her wherever she snuck to. Now Hinata was peering curiously around Shizune, wondering what it was that had made her jump so guiltily.
It was too late by then. Hinata’s eyes widened like saucers and she pointed a faint finger at the screen. “I-Isn’t that Sakura-san and Kakashi-sensei…?” she whispered.
Shizune sagged back in her chair. “Yes.”
Hinata was very quiet. “They look very close,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Um… are they normally th-this affectionate with each other?”
Maybe it was selfish, and maybe it was a bad idea, but Shizune didn’t want to carry this burden alone, and the urge to gossip was part of her feminine instinct that was hard to override. “I found these last night,” she said, digging into her pocket to pull out the pair of scanty underwear. “They fell out of Kakashi’s pocket. They belong to Sakura.”
Hinata’s face had turned the color of a beetroot. “B-But why would he-”
“Because look at them!” Shizune tapped the screen. “Look - at - them!”
Hinata looked, but she seemed torn. “Shizune-san, what’s going on?” she said quietly, as if she didn’t really want to know.
“I think,” she sighed, “that Sakura is having an affair with Kakashi. I think that’s what’s going on.”
Black and white monitors flickered and ticked over, blinking eyes in the dark room that stared light down on two quiet women. Hinata looked at the floor. “It sort of makes sense, Shizune-san. At the review, I noticed that when they were in the room together, they seemed unnaturally… well, their hearts were beating like crazy. I suppose if-”
“Oh no!” Shizune clamped her hands over her hand. “The review! Kakashi was Sakura’s examiner - and if he was with Sakura then… then… oh, goodness, this is bad.”
“Bad?” Hinata repeated, shocked. “H-How much trouble are they in?”
It was unknowable at this point, so Shizune could only shake her head and whisper, “A lot.”
And that’s when she made her decision.
Turning to Hinata, she took the shy girl’s hands in her own and looked her seriously in the eyes. “Hinata, we must promise to keep this to ourselves. We have very dangerous knowledge in our possession - the kind of knowledge that could ruin people. It must not get out.”
“But… it’s against the rules,” Hinata whispered. “I don’t want to tell on Sakura or Kakashi-sensei, but it’s the rules! We’ll get into so much trouble if we’re found out.”
“Whatever trouble we bring on ourselves it’ll be nothing compared to how much trouble those two will be in. I don’t think I can do that to them,” Shizune told her urgently. “Can you?”
Hinata gasped, on the verge of tears - possibly because Shizune was squeezing her hands far too tightly more than anything else. “No,” she murmured. “I don’t think I could.”
“Just pretend you never saw this and I never told you anything,” Shizune said, shoving the panties back into her pocket as she hunted for the ‘delete’ button on the panel. She found it after a moment and felt a sigh of relief escape her lips when the image of the intimate couple was replaced with an abrupt message of ‘recording deleted’.
“Shizune-san, I don’t feel well,” Hinata wheezed.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to tell the Hyuuga girl? Obviously her conscience would weigh on her even more than Shizune’s would, but hopefully this would remain between them.
“Just don’t say anything, whatever you do, Hinata,” she warned the girl.
“Don’t say what?”
She was quite possible the last person Shizune needed to see right then. Both she and Hinata swiveled around to face the doorway where the silhouette of a petit, strawberry-haired girl hung.
“S-Sakura!” Shizune said loudly. “Oh - uh - what are you doing down here?”
The other girl moved further into the room, and without the stark halo of light around her, her features became more visible; glowing and happy with just enough evenness and symmetry to her face to be pretty, bordering on beautiful. “Tsunade is wondering where her ‘tests’ are,” Sakura said. “I couldn’t find you in the path lab, but anyone can hear you two whispering three streets away. What’s the juicy gossip?”
She hunted over the screens, probably thinking they’d seen something note-worthy. And in a way, she was right.
“Oh, we were just, um, talking about this guy I like,” Shizune said, fidgeting with her sleeves as her inner-temperature rose. “I was just making sure Hinata swore secrecy.”
“That’s not fair!” Sakura drew back, hurt, with one fist against her hip. “I want to know who you have the hots for.”
Shizune pretended that Sakura had twisted her arm. “Well, if you must know, it’s Tenzou. The guy from ANBU.”
“And as I was, uh, saying,” Hinata added quietly. “Sakura already says she likes Yamato-taichou.”
Hinata was a better actress than Shizune had realized, and she quickly played along. “Yeah,” she said with a fake little laugh. “May the best girl win, Sakura.”
“You two are acting very strange,” Sakura narrowed her eyes at them, amused but still suspicious. “Why are you in here of all places? Where’s the security guard?”
“He popped out and asked me to watch his place,” Shizune said blithely, “But now that Hinata’s here, she can do that. Shall we go take those results back to Tsunade?”
“Sure,” Sakura shrugged and gave a friendly wave to Hinata who looked newly stricken at the duty Shizune had thrust upon her out of the blue. But at least Sakura suspected nothing. They left the security lounge and picked up the results from the lab before making their way back to Tsunade’s office together.
“So what are you doing this afternoon?” Shizune asked, keeping up the pleasant small-talk in a desperate clamor for normality. “Anything interesting?”
“Just training,” Sakura said dismissively.
“With Kakashi-sensei?”
Sakura turned large green eyes on her and for a moment Shizune could see the self-consciousness and doubt that must have been plaguing her for a while now. Do you know? those eyes seemed to say. But after a moment, Shizune’s schooled expression saved her and Sakura broke into a warm smile. “Yes. Why?”
“Just wondering if he can keep up with you kids with his arm,” she said cheerfully.
“Of course he can,” Sakura said, with a pink tinge to her cheeks and a wide smile on her face. “Kakashi-sensei’s tough as old boots.”
Spoken like a girl in love.
Shizune was going to suffer in hell.
“Oh jeez, he’s on time,” Naruto muttered as the trio sloped into the training grounds only ten minutes later than they should have. “I wonder who died?”
It may have sounded like a joke, but it wasn’t. Whenever Kakashi arrived at the training grounds before his team, it was only ever because his earlier visit to the cenotaph nearby had run on, and usually it meant someone had died or gone missing.
Sakura knew exactly who, but she kept her mouth shut.
He was leaning on the chain link fence at the edge of the grounds as they traipsed through the gate. “Yo,” he said, lifting his good hand in greeting. “Windy day, huh?”
As if to confirm this, a strong gust of wind blew past them, flipping Sakura’s white skirt up as it went. She squeaked and pushed it down, but not before earning a grin and a chuckle from Naruto and Kakashi respectively. Men, Sakura thought with a huff. But secretly she was pleased to hear Kakashi laugh, even briefly (and even if it was at her).
“We’ll practice taijutsu today,” he said, pushing away from the fence. “One kunai each, working in pairs. Let’s go.”
“Come on, Sasuke-bastard!”
As usual, Naruto and Sasuke paired off instantly and moved away to their own area, leaving Sakura alone with Kakashi. She looked at him, but he was looking at his sling. “Could you help me get this off, Sakura?” he asked sweetly, probably knowing perfectly well that as a medic she would be inclined to do no such thing.
“I’m inclined to do no such thing,” she said bluntly.
“But I can’t exactly spar with you without my hand free. It’s feeling much better, honestly, and I promise I won’t use it. I just need it for balance.”
She giving his a suspicious stare, to which he met with an equally auspicious wink. “Alright,” she sighed, giving in. “As long as you promise not to strain it.”
He beamed down at the top of her head as she moved close to start unfastening the complicated buttons and clasps holding the sling in place. “Sure, we’ll fight with our left hands only.”
“That’s not fair,” she protested. “You’re ambidextrous.”
“I wasn’t always.”
She gave him an exasperated sigh and carefully helped him ease the cast off. As she went to set it down on the dilapidated picnic table nearby, Kakashi flexed his arm experimentally. “It’s going straight back on afterwards,” she warned.
“I understand.”
When she turned back to him, he already had his kunai drawn. It twirled lazily around the index finger of his left hand, while far behind him Naruto and Sasuke were just blurs of movement that occasionally clashed with a ‘clang’ and a shower of sparks.
Sakura thought she’d better go easier on her opponent, what with him being a sickie. An elite genius of a sickie, but a sickie nonetheless.
She drew her own kunai and weighed its unfamiliar weight in her left hand. It didn’t feel right and she didn’t know quite how to stand, but she assumed the best position she could manage. Kakashi looked much more at ease with his own stance, and with a flick of his right hand he invited her to attack.
With a rough grunt she threw herself forward - missed by at least three-quarters of a mile - and staggered as Kakashi side-stepped her. She flung her arm wide at the last moment and her kunai caught his with a sharp ‘chink’. They retreated from each other again instantly, circling slowly.
This was the nature of shinobi fighting; little to no contact and plenty rumination. Opponents were usually too dangerous to fight in close-range for more than a scant few seconds, even the ones with sprained arms. In a way it almost paralleled the way a shinobi lived… with very few connections to others, but occasionally someone slipped close enough to break through the carefully guarded defenses to land a blow.
Kakashi made the next move, appearing suddenly at her side to thrust his kunai straight at her. Sakura moved quickly, letting his jab slice harmlessly through the air beside her ribs, but rather than let him get away she clamped her arm down over his, trapping it against her side. He was immobilized only briefly, but it was enough time to bring her knee up and catch him in the stomach. It wasn’t a hard strike. Just hard enough to let him know it could have been harder. His response was to catch her behind the knee before she could drop her leg, leaving her hanging precariously against him.
Sakura, now as immobilized as him, pointed her own kunai at his neck for lack of anything else to do.
“I’d break free,” she assured him, “But I don’t want to hurt your arm.”
He stared down at her. Sakura looked away, trying to give him in the hint that this position wasn’t entirely appropriate. Especially since Naruto and Sasuke were only a few hundred yards away.
Slowly he dropped her leg and they eased apart, smoothing ruffled feathers and needlessly straightening clothes and brushing imaginary lint off sleeves. “Another go?” he asked.
She nodded shortly and resumed her fighting stance. Once more he beckoned her forward and she flew at him, her kunai flashing as she lashed out - being careful to aim two centimeters short of her target lest she really gut him. But Kakashi as fast, and for every step he was forced back, he took two forward to strike at her own open flanks.
“You have a very unique fighting style,” he told her, slightly out of breath as they quickly retreated from one another once more. “I like it. It’s like a cat.”
Sakura blushed, flattered. “Really? You mean, like… graceful?”
“No,” he shook his head. “I mean, batshit angry and single-minded. Like a cat whose tail has been trodden on and intends to shred your shins to hell with its claws.”
Sakura’s face darkened with a scowl. “And you fight like a sloth. You’re so slow I can see the algae growing over you. And your arms are too long.”
“Touché.” He nodded, as if it was a reasonable criticism. “Again?”
Once more she went on the attack, slashing at him like the angry cat he’d compared her to, hissing when she missed. But Kakashi wasn’t so much a sloth as he was an irritatingly flexible contortionist. He avoided her jabs and swipes with easy grace that made it all look so easy, and compared to Sakura whose style was built upon striking hard and fast, his was about precise movements and using no more or less energy than was needed to avoid a blow - and about looking damn good as he did it.
Then he turned the tables, and in one blurred movement the kunai in her hand was knocked from her grip. The next thing she knew, Kakashi was behind her, arm wrapped gently around her neck and his own kunai pointed non-threateningly at her jugular.
“Concede?” he asked.
Not likely, Sakura thought. Taking a deep breath, she reached behind her to grab what she could, and with a shout of effort bent forward and threw him over her head.
He landed on his back with a dusty thump at her feet, the visible part of his face crumpled in pain. A choked moan caught in his throat as he clutched his right arm.
Too late, Sakura remembered his injury. “Oh - I’m so sorry, Kakashi-sensei!” she cried, falling to her knees beside him. “Here - let me!”
She coaxed him to let go of his own arm and let her press her healing jutsu against his elbow. “Damn… there’s me telling you not to strain yourself, and then I go slamming you into the ground. I’m really sorry.”
“You’re a fiery girl, and I wouldn’t change you for the world,” Kakashi ground out.
Sakura let her chakra gently numb the pain and heal what she could of any torn tissue. But because of the nature of the injury, she couldn’t do much else. “I think we should get you back in your sling.”
He sighed, but didn’t protest. She help him up like he was a feeble invalid and guided him to the picnic table where she began stuffing his arm back into its proper dressing. “There you go!” she said, patting his good arm encouragingly when she was finished. “All good?”
“All good,” he agreed, smiling at her.
But the moment he looked away from her, his smile faded, as if there was something else on his mind that she was not privy to. For the first time Sakura realized how close she was sitting to him… but she didn’t want to move.
She liked being close to Kakashi.
Even when he was… sad.
“Are you ok?” she asked more seriously.
He looked back at her and his automatic smile switched on again - the kind of smile he gave flirty shop assistants he wasn’t really interested on. It definitely wasn’t the one that shone warmth and awareness that he normally reserved for her. “I’m ok,” he said. But it wasn’t true.
Sakura didn’t know what else to do. She looked down at his remaining hand that rested lightly on his thigh. And even though she knew their relationship was over and that any reminder was a bad thing, she couldn’t stop herself from slipping her hand over his and lacing their fingers together. It just seemed like the right thing to do.
And even though Kakashi didn’t look at her or smile, she felt his fingers squeeze hers in return and she knew he was grateful.
They all went their separate ways by late afternoon. Sakura bumped into Ino and together they went in search of dinner - which wasn’t nearly as bad as Sakura had dreaded, because although Ino was her usual nosy self, she seemed to be losing interest in Sakura’s ‘mystery man’. She only asked after him twice.
Afterwards, Ino wanted to drag her down to one of the local clubs, but Sakura declined and extricated herself from her best friend/best rival’s company in order to head home. She didn’t want to miss the soap tonight. She’d missed the last episode thanks to Ikki, and last week it hadn’t even been aired because of the sumo. (And who in their right mind would want to watch two fat men grappling in a ring instead of a riveting portrayal of the sleazy and scandalous lives of the rich and famous? Sakura was going to write a very nasty letter to the network if that happened again.)
The moment she arrived home, Sakura jumped into the bathroom for a quick shower to wash away all the dirt and grime from her brief spar with Kakashi earlier, before she settled down in front of the TV with a towel around her head and her thick cotton dressing gown on. Everything was prepared - she had her hot chocolate on the table before her, as well as her remote control, and a nice comfy cushion to sit on. The adverts were counting down to the start of her show and the schedule seemed to be in perfect order. It was perfect.
Until there came a knock at her door.
Sakura rolled her eyes and debated whether or not to get up. She couldn’t really pretend she wasn’t in since the lights were on and the TV was going, but she didn’t want to get dragged away from her soap a second time. “Who is it?” she called.
There was a pause. “Kakashi.”
Sakura lurched onto her feet so fast she nearly knocked her hot chocolate everywhere. Why the hell is he here? Had she left something at the training field by accident? Was there some news? A mission? Maybe… maybe something else?
She patted down her dressing gown anxiously, making sure the knot was fastened tight at her waist since she hadn’t bothered to put on any clothes yet. She really was in no fit state to entertain guests… but it seemed sort of silly to be worried about her lack of clothing when Kakashi had pretty much seen, touched and tasted every inch of her body.
But that’s in the past now, she thought, things are supposed to go back to normal now.
So she took a deep breath and assumed an air of friendly nonchalance as she headed over to the door and opened it just wide enough to peer out. “Oh, hello!” she said brightly, clutching the front of her gown close against her collar. “Can I help you?” she asked, like he was simply a neighbor popping around for a cup of sugar.
His sling was gone, she noted, and his head was tilted down in a reserved manner. When he spoke, he seemed to be consulting the door. “May I come in?”
“Um…” Sakura looked back into her apartment, quickly making sure it was fit for viewing and that she hadn’t left any old underwear lying about the place. As far as she could see, it appeared presentable. “Sure. I guess.” She stepped back and allowed him inside before shutting the door. Then she regarded his back, twisting her hands together anxiously as she waited for him to state the purpose of his visit… but all he did was stand there and survey her small, box-like living area.
It was the first time he’d seen her apartment, she realized. He’d only come here once before, and that had been a year ago when one wild night out with Ino had led to the biggest case of oversleeping the history of her life, because if you overslept so late that even the Copy Ninja knocked on your door wondering where you were, you knew you had achieved something stupendous. But that time he had never actually entered the apartment, because the moment Sakura had opened the door and seen it was him, she had shrieked, slammed it again, and then emerged thirty seconds later fully dressed and apologizing profusely for her delinquency. She’d never actually invited this man inside before.
She hoped it reached some sort of expectation. It was small and modern and the complete antithesis to his larger, more traditional apartment, but at least it was tidy.
“Can I get you a drink or something?” she asked, trying to fill the silence. She skirted around him on her way to the kitchen. “I can get you water - tea - hot chocolate - I think I have some orange juice left if you prefer - or maybe some milk if you don’t mind that it’s probably gone off by now-?”
She came to an abrupt halt as a hand snagged the back of her sash and tugged her backward. Then with slow deliberation, Kakashi took her shoulders and turned her around. He was giving her every opportunity to move away and put him in his place… but when all she did was stare up at him apprehensively, he took down his own mask and kissed her.
It wasn’t playful or executed carefully like a way to showcase his skill and experience as it usually was. It wasn’t dominating or possessive, or intense like the ones he would give when they lay naked together and entangled in the thrall of passion.
It was needy. Consuming. An act of taking without giving. He held her head in his hands as if he wanted to pull her into him, and Sakura’s fingers hovered uncertainly in mid-air, uncertain of whether to push him away or hold on tight. Her lips responded to his, though, and her eyes slid shut as his mouth insistently rained down hard, plain kisses on hers.
When his hand moved down to slide under her dressing gown to touch her bare breast, Sakura broke the kiss. “N-no - wait,” she gasped and stepped back, a hand pressed to her mouth and another to her collar. She regarded Kakashi with wide eyes while his remained dark and hooded. She saw a touch of uncertainty there, but also something else… something that went beyond simple, primitive desire to a starker need.
Sakura glanced at the television set beside them. The opening sequence of her soap was rolling, and in a moment it would recap what had happened in the previous episode and she would once again be caught up with the complicated storyline.
Kakashi began to turn away, sensing a rejection.
“Don’t be silly,” she whispered, catching his arm and pulling him back. With a quick series of tugs she pulled the knot of her sash loose and her gown fell open.
But Kakashi’s gaze never left her face. She took his hands and sank down to the floor, pulling him gently after her. Beside them the television set told of a scandalous affair on the brink of discovery, unbeknownst to the lovers in question, but Sakura wasn’t listening. With the cushion under hips, she urged him over her, kissing him firmly and showing him the way.
He didn’t need much guidance. His weight settled hard between her legs and the evidence of his arousal was hard to ignore, though he did a good job distracting her with deep, probing kisses. His hips rocked once against hers and she broke her mouth from his with a sigh of, “Sensei…”
“Don’t,” he grunted, even as he reached down to fumble with his fly.
“Don’t, what?” she asked, bemused.
“Don’t call me that. Not now,” he panted. In moments he’d freed himself and a tingle of shock ran down her spine as she felt the heat of his erection press against her opening. “Just call me Kakashi,” he told her, half a second before he forced himself inside her.
Sakura bit off a cry of pain. She wasn’t ready, and the sting of discomfort was sharp. But pain mingled with pleasure and the result was nothing short of exquisite. “Kakashi,” she sighed.
He thrust again, hard, making her jolt and cling to him. “Say it again.”
“Kakashi,” she murmured, and slowly he began to move inside her.
It was unlike the other times. For a start they’d never done it on the floor with only a feather-stuffed cushion for relief from the hard matted floor. And where before Sakura was used to being driven delirious and drunk on her own lust before Kakashi so much as thought about entering her, now she was aware of everything with startling clarity. She heard the crackle and rustle of the cushion beneath her with ever rock of his hips, heard his panting against her hair and felt his hot breath against her neck. The florescent light on the ceiling hummed faintly above them, and wisps of steam still rose from the slowly cooling mug of hot chocolate on the table beside them. Drunken voices were stumbling around outside in the hall, but they were completely ignorant of what was taking place in this room… this hushed straining of bodies that filled the small living area with soft gasps and sighs.
She felt every tremor than ran through his frame and she partook in his pleasure as if it were her own. It was far too late for her, but neither of them seemed to care that her own need was being left behind. All Sakura cared about at that point was reveling in the feel of his body pressing down over hers and the feel of his hard length stroking deeply inside her. It didn’t matter that her pleasure was out of reach and forgotten. Knowing that it was her body that made him muffle his groans against her neck and had his hips surging harder against hers was a mental pleasure that couldn’t be topped.
She knew when he was nearing his end, because by now she knew the signs - like the way his breath grew shallow and his thrusts began to lose their steady rhythm. His fingers bit into the tatami mat beside her head and all of a sudden his body snapped taught against hers with a shudder. She clung to him tightly, hardly daring to breathe as she felt wetness of his release deep inside her and heard his soft groan in her ear.
He sank against her in the aftermath, spent and exhausted. Sakura remained holding him tight and stared up at the ceiling.
For anyone else, she would be inclined to think she had been used. Not two weeks ago had her last boyfriend done very much the same thing Kakashi had done tonight; stumble in through the door with one thing on his mind before proceeding to take her on the floor, taking his own selfish pleasure and leaving her high and dry.
But Kakashi was not just anyone else. He wouldn’t come to her to simply slack his lust unless he had good reason… and what’s more, Sakura wouldn’t let him unless she felt it was important.
Where before Ikki had left her angry and disappointed, now all she felt was a dangerous squeezing in her chest that felt an awful lot like affection. A lot of affection. The kind of affection that could drive people to do silly things. She swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the feeling without success, and moved her hands up to stroke Kakashi’s hair. “There’s a feather poking me in the ass,” she whispered romantically. “Should we relocate to the bedroom, maybe?”
He sighed. “You may have to carry me.”
“I’m too tired. But I can drag you, if you’d like?”
“…actually, I think I can manage.”
His weight lifted off her and he helped her up after him. She cast one last despairing glance to the television set - saw that she’d missed at least five minutes of her show now - before taking Kakashi’s hand and smiling as she led him away.
By: Silvershine
Pairing: KakaSaku
Rating: M/R/NC-17
Warnings: fans, shit, and the hitting of, etc
Window
Chapter Fifteen
When times became difficult, Kakashi had at least one person he could turn to. When things started unraveling at the seams and the same old mistakes were repeated again and again, there was at least one set of ears who would listen without passing judgment. A memory that could be confided in with utmost confidence.
The morning was windy and the sky was a dull white, and Kakashi stood before the cenotaph with his shoulders hunched and his head down against the blustering gales. A hundred or more names stared back at him, but only one was of any interest.
“I got another one killed,” Kakashi said quietly. “So soon you’ll probably have another friend down here. The list just keeps getting longer, doesn’t it? They’ll have to make a bigger memorial stone one day.”
He looked down at the blue sling wrapped around his arm, holding it suspended against his chest. Thoughtfully, he flexed his fingers. “I’m sleeping with my student.”
The words hung in the air like a bad joke. He closed his eyes, and though he was alone he felt as if the world had just gotten a little quieter and was looking his way. “Or I was, at least,” he said softly. “But that’s neither here nor there. The fact isn’t going to go away.”
He shifted his stance a little, resting his weight on the ankle that hadn’t been sprained in the fight yesterday. “I think I’m in trouble, Obito. Very serious trouble. I took a girl to bed who I shouldn’t have touched, and she’s not like the usual type. She’s young. She doesn’t know any better.” Then he chuckled. “She’s doing her best to get rid of me.”
Another gust of wind blew dust and dead, dried leaves in Kakashi’s face and he had to shield his eye. Perhaps it was Obito trying to register some kind of disgust?
“I couldn’t stop thinking about her for seven whole days. That’s not normal, is it? And when that girl was killed… all I could think about was that if things had been a little different, if she’d said yes, or if I’d pressured her more, or if I hadn’t failed her and made her fear this thing between us… my student would have died. My Sakura. I suppose this means I’m a very selfish man, but it’s the honest truth. And when I think about Sakura dying, I freeze. I couldn’t think about it then, and I still can’t think about it now. I’m not sure I could cope if that happened. It’s one death that doesn’t bear thinking about. When I saw her at the hospital she looked terrible, Obito. Her hair was all over the place, she stunk of sake and I don’t think she’d changed her clothes for a while. But I didn’t want to let go of her. And that’s not normal… is it, Obito?”
The clearing was silent. Even the breeze seemed to have died.
“What would you say to me now?” he said again, more quietly. “What should I do?”
“Shizune, what’s wrong with your lip? It’s all swollen. Have you been snacking on nuts again?”
“What? Oh, no, nothing, Tsunade-sama.” Shizune made a forcible attempt to stop chewing on her lip and concentrate on the paperwork before her.
“If it’s not the nuts, then something’s troubling you. And the size of your swelled lip is usually directly relative to the size of the trouble.” Tsunade looked up from her desk and peered at Shizune pointedly over the tops of her glasses, and at times like that it was easier to see the old formidable women in the young body. “I’d say this one is pretty big. Is there something I should know about, Shizune?”
“Um…” Shizune tucked her hair behind her ear. “It’s nothing, Tsunade-sama.”
“Has someone been fiddling the accounts?”
“No.”
“The loan sharks haven’t found me, have they?”
“Oh - no!”
“Has someone we know done something incredibly stupid?”
Shizune swallowed hard. Yes. “Of course not, Hokage-sama,” she said as evenly as possible. “My neighbors cat is just a bit sick lately.”
“Well, what the hell has that-”
“I’m quite fond of it, Hokage-sama.”
Tsunade sighed and rolled her eyes. To each their own, her shrug seemed to say. “I need you to take some samples down to the pathology lab,” she said after a moment. “Tell them I need them today and don’t stop pestering them until they comply.”
“Yes, Hokage-sama,” Shizune set down her pen and moved to accept the samples that Tsunade bundled off on her. As she battled to get the door open with her harms full, Tsunade’s voice cut through her effort. “Shizune,” she said slowly, as she scrutinized her work. “If I find you’re keeping anything from me, I’ll be very annoyed.”
A shiver ran down Shizune’s spine. “I understand,” she muttered and hurried out before she was bullied into blurting anything stupid out.
Because what point was there in raising a fuss when it was only a suspicion? So a pair of panties appeared to have dropped from Hatake Kakashi’s pocket, and those panties had borne the name of one Haruno Sakura, but what exactly did that prove anyone? Maybe it was a joke? Maybe there was some other Haruno Sakura in the village? Or maybe those panties hadn’t really dropped from Kakashi’s pocket at all and Sakura had left them there accidentally?
“Why me?” Shizune whimpered. Ignorance was surely bliss. If she hadn’t looked for that stupid ‘hanky’ she would not be in this moral dilemma right now.
She found the path lab three floors down and was greeted by the gnawingly shy Hyuuga girl. “Shizune-san,” she whispered with a blush. “May I help you?”
“The Hokage needs some tests done on these samples,” Shizune said as she handed them over. “The tests are on the sheet, those are the samples, and I’ve been told not to leave until you start the tests. Now.”
“Oh… uh… ok.” The poor girl looked positively stricken. “But we already have a lot of work-”
“Tsunade says to do these first,” Shizune said bluntly.
Hinata nodded, looking pale. “Ok… I-I’ll see what I can do. Wait here, please.”
She hurried off and disappeared out of sight into the lab. Shizune looked about the waiting room wearily, knowing it would take anywhere between ten minutes to half an hour to get the results. There were no magazines to read, no one to talk to, and no hanging pictures to look at. Shizune turned with a sigh and leaned against the wall. Outside in the corridor medics, nurses, and lost patients were hurrying past, constantly busy. Directly opposite was the door to the security lounge. It was open, and inside lay the dark room where vigilant operatives kept an eye on the entire hospital. There was a camera in every room these days, installed during the last war when every other patient had been a foreign spy. Nowadays the surveillance system was mostly used to identify who was stealing the puddings from the hospital cafeteria.
(Turned out it was Hari from pediatrics.)
Shizune also heard that hospital tapes were frequently distributed amongst Konoha’s sleazy underbelly. All aspects of life could be captured in a hospital; usually it was death, occasionally it was new life, but the sleazy underbelly was most interested in the sex. And despite it being common knowledge that the hospital was laced with surveillance, it didn’t deter some people at all. They either forgot about the ever watchful eye in the corner of the room or simply didn’t care.
Shizune spine snapped straight and she pushed away from the wall.
This was it! This was how she confirmed whether her suspicions about Sakura and Kakashi were true! They’d been alone together in that hospital room for at least a quarter of an hour. If something was going on between them, surely the camera would know?
Leaving the pathology lab, Shizune darted across the hall and peered into the security lounge. Only one man sat inside, his feet on the control board and a box of doughy treats laid out beside him that he was indulging in at his own pace. He was too busy watching what looked like a familial dispute on screen 6-F to notice the woman in the door.
“Ahem,” Shizune coughed, making the man snap upright. “Um… Watanabe wants you down in the foyer.”
The man stared at her. “Who’s Watanabe?”
“I don’t know. You can ask him yourself when you see him,” Shizune replied.
“I’m not supposed to leave my station,” he said hesitantly.
“He sounded pretty urgent. He said it’s about your mother.”
“My mother? Oh god… not again…” The man ran his hands through his hair despairingly. “Can you just stay here till I sort this out?”
“Of course,” Shizune nodded as the man rushed past her. “And if he’s not in the foyer, he says he’ll be in Radiology! Or the cafeteria!”
That would keep him busy for a while, Shizune thought as she slid into the vacated chair and immediately set about trying to figure out what the hell all these buttons meant. It took her a while to realize that the knob at the top selected the floor, and each of the many buttons below it corresponded with a screen on the wall before her. After a lot of random button-bashing she spotted the room where Kakashi had been held yesterday next to the Emergency Unit ward. She pressed the key that corresponded with the screen and it suddenly appeared on the larger screen in the middle. After more hunting and lip-biting, she found the control that rewound the recording.
With her heart pounding in her throat she worked her way backwards, watching nurses, cleaners, and patients zipping around the room in reverse at top speed. Patients were in and out of that room every couple of hours, and cleaners even more so.
And after one particular patient, Shizune realized she could have lived without seeing a man vomit in reverse.
Then bam! Shizune’s fingers fumbled on the controls and she hastily set the recording to normal speed again. There was Tsunade and Kakashi in the room in the middle of the night. Kakashi’s head was bowed and Tsunade was fixing him a sling for his injured arm. Shizune scowled and fast-forwarded through what looked like a very quiet and reserved conversation.
She stopped at the point where Sakura burst into the room. Shizune knew that she herself had only been just outside the room, completely oblivious to the true implications of Sakura’s excessive concern for her sensei’s safety. Shizune had presumed that Sakura got typically worried over any of her teammates, but in retrospect, her behavior last night fit with Shizune’s ghastly suspicions.
Sakura was quickly shooed out and Shizune zipped quickly through the remainder of Tsunade and Kakashi’s conversation. The moment Tsunade left the room, Sakura re-entered, and Shizune resumed the recording at normal speed, watching with morbid curiosity.
Sakura hesitated by the door for a long moment. Was she speaking to him? Her back was to the camera so it was hard to say. Then she took a step forward and he looked up, and then his hand was being held out and she was suddenly surging forward to take it and then…
And then they were embracing. Not like friends. Not like a teacher and a student. They embraced like lovers.
Shizune sat back and looked away, feeling sick with fear and worry. But maybe she was wrong? Maybe Sakura was a more physically affectionate person than Shizune had realized and this really was just a platonic hug? She looked back at the screen, saw that Sakura had pulled back and their heads were now close together, petting each other. Students didn’t run their fingers their teacher’s hair in a platonic relationship, did they? And teachers didn’t touch their student’s hips like they had every right to.
Unable to watch anymore, she slammed the stop button and put her head in her hands.
“Oh god… why me?” Shizune whimpered.
Of course, now that her suspicions were as good as confirmed, the right thing would be to take the matter to the Hokage. Such a breach in the code of conduct as this would be call for a serious infraction. There could be court-martials, expulsions, possibly even house-arrests. Shizune hadn’t been joking when she’d said the last man to sleep with his student had been charged with execution. The law that prohibited fraternization between guardians and their wards was an old one that had remained unchanged since the old days when a young girl’s chastity was only her father’s business, and for any other male in a position of authority to ‘ruin’ that girl was one of the worst crimes that could be committed against another man’s property. The law hadn’t much been modified since those days because it rarely needed to be enforced.
But was this really any of her business? Sakura was a woman, not a child, and her father cared as much about his daughter’s chastity as he did about his daughter herself, which was to say, very little. What Sakura got up to and with whom she did it with was her own look-out. The law about students and teachers was outdated at best and absurdly archaic at worst.
But… how long had this been going on? A year? Two years? What if there were deeper, seedier implications behind this? Kakashi was a nice man and Shizune was very fond of him… but to take up with his own student? Shizune vehemently denied the idea that Kakashi would ever coerce or ‘groom’ his own student into a sexual relationship… but what if that was the case? He was a very eccentric man…
Struggling to think what to do, Shizune could only sit there and stare at the screen, looking at the way Sakura’s hands were splayed against Kakashi’s knees and she was leaning close to him. She didn’t look coerced or abused. She looked like a grown woman comforting a broken lover.
Perhaps it was as simple as that?
“Shizune-san, the test results are ready.”
Hinata was behind her.
Shizune nearly jumped out of her skin as she swiveled to face the girl and made a botched attempt to ‘casually’ cover the screen on the control panel. She’d forgotten that the Hinata had the byakugan, which could easily see through walls and locate her wherever she snuck to. Now Hinata was peering curiously around Shizune, wondering what it was that had made her jump so guiltily.
It was too late by then. Hinata’s eyes widened like saucers and she pointed a faint finger at the screen. “I-Isn’t that Sakura-san and Kakashi-sensei…?” she whispered.
Shizune sagged back in her chair. “Yes.”
Hinata was very quiet. “They look very close,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Um… are they normally th-this affectionate with each other?”
Maybe it was selfish, and maybe it was a bad idea, but Shizune didn’t want to carry this burden alone, and the urge to gossip was part of her feminine instinct that was hard to override. “I found these last night,” she said, digging into her pocket to pull out the pair of scanty underwear. “They fell out of Kakashi’s pocket. They belong to Sakura.”
Hinata’s face had turned the color of a beetroot. “B-But why would he-”
“Because look at them!” Shizune tapped the screen. “Look - at - them!”
Hinata looked, but she seemed torn. “Shizune-san, what’s going on?” she said quietly, as if she didn’t really want to know.
“I think,” she sighed, “that Sakura is having an affair with Kakashi. I think that’s what’s going on.”
Black and white monitors flickered and ticked over, blinking eyes in the dark room that stared light down on two quiet women. Hinata looked at the floor. “It sort of makes sense, Shizune-san. At the review, I noticed that when they were in the room together, they seemed unnaturally… well, their hearts were beating like crazy. I suppose if-”
“Oh no!” Shizune clamped her hands over her hand. “The review! Kakashi was Sakura’s examiner - and if he was with Sakura then… then… oh, goodness, this is bad.”
“Bad?” Hinata repeated, shocked. “H-How much trouble are they in?”
It was unknowable at this point, so Shizune could only shake her head and whisper, “A lot.”
And that’s when she made her decision.
Turning to Hinata, she took the shy girl’s hands in her own and looked her seriously in the eyes. “Hinata, we must promise to keep this to ourselves. We have very dangerous knowledge in our possession - the kind of knowledge that could ruin people. It must not get out.”
“But… it’s against the rules,” Hinata whispered. “I don’t want to tell on Sakura or Kakashi-sensei, but it’s the rules! We’ll get into so much trouble if we’re found out.”
“Whatever trouble we bring on ourselves it’ll be nothing compared to how much trouble those two will be in. I don’t think I can do that to them,” Shizune told her urgently. “Can you?”
Hinata gasped, on the verge of tears - possibly because Shizune was squeezing her hands far too tightly more than anything else. “No,” she murmured. “I don’t think I could.”
“Just pretend you never saw this and I never told you anything,” Shizune said, shoving the panties back into her pocket as she hunted for the ‘delete’ button on the panel. She found it after a moment and felt a sigh of relief escape her lips when the image of the intimate couple was replaced with an abrupt message of ‘recording deleted’.
“Shizune-san, I don’t feel well,” Hinata wheezed.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to tell the Hyuuga girl? Obviously her conscience would weigh on her even more than Shizune’s would, but hopefully this would remain between them.
“Just don’t say anything, whatever you do, Hinata,” she warned the girl.
“Don’t say what?”
She was quite possible the last person Shizune needed to see right then. Both she and Hinata swiveled around to face the doorway where the silhouette of a petit, strawberry-haired girl hung.
“S-Sakura!” Shizune said loudly. “Oh - uh - what are you doing down here?”
The other girl moved further into the room, and without the stark halo of light around her, her features became more visible; glowing and happy with just enough evenness and symmetry to her face to be pretty, bordering on beautiful. “Tsunade is wondering where her ‘tests’ are,” Sakura said. “I couldn’t find you in the path lab, but anyone can hear you two whispering three streets away. What’s the juicy gossip?”
She hunted over the screens, probably thinking they’d seen something note-worthy. And in a way, she was right.
“Oh, we were just, um, talking about this guy I like,” Shizune said, fidgeting with her sleeves as her inner-temperature rose. “I was just making sure Hinata swore secrecy.”
“That’s not fair!” Sakura drew back, hurt, with one fist against her hip. “I want to know who you have the hots for.”
Shizune pretended that Sakura had twisted her arm. “Well, if you must know, it’s Tenzou. The guy from ANBU.”
“And as I was, uh, saying,” Hinata added quietly. “Sakura already says she likes Yamato-taichou.”
Hinata was a better actress than Shizune had realized, and she quickly played along. “Yeah,” she said with a fake little laugh. “May the best girl win, Sakura.”
“You two are acting very strange,” Sakura narrowed her eyes at them, amused but still suspicious. “Why are you in here of all places? Where’s the security guard?”
“He popped out and asked me to watch his place,” Shizune said blithely, “But now that Hinata’s here, she can do that. Shall we go take those results back to Tsunade?”
“Sure,” Sakura shrugged and gave a friendly wave to Hinata who looked newly stricken at the duty Shizune had thrust upon her out of the blue. But at least Sakura suspected nothing. They left the security lounge and picked up the results from the lab before making their way back to Tsunade’s office together.
“So what are you doing this afternoon?” Shizune asked, keeping up the pleasant small-talk in a desperate clamor for normality. “Anything interesting?”
“Just training,” Sakura said dismissively.
“With Kakashi-sensei?”
Sakura turned large green eyes on her and for a moment Shizune could see the self-consciousness and doubt that must have been plaguing her for a while now. Do you know? those eyes seemed to say. But after a moment, Shizune’s schooled expression saved her and Sakura broke into a warm smile. “Yes. Why?”
“Just wondering if he can keep up with you kids with his arm,” she said cheerfully.
“Of course he can,” Sakura said, with a pink tinge to her cheeks and a wide smile on her face. “Kakashi-sensei’s tough as old boots.”
Spoken like a girl in love.
Shizune was going to suffer in hell.
“Oh jeez, he’s on time,” Naruto muttered as the trio sloped into the training grounds only ten minutes later than they should have. “I wonder who died?”
It may have sounded like a joke, but it wasn’t. Whenever Kakashi arrived at the training grounds before his team, it was only ever because his earlier visit to the cenotaph nearby had run on, and usually it meant someone had died or gone missing.
Sakura knew exactly who, but she kept her mouth shut.
He was leaning on the chain link fence at the edge of the grounds as they traipsed through the gate. “Yo,” he said, lifting his good hand in greeting. “Windy day, huh?”
As if to confirm this, a strong gust of wind blew past them, flipping Sakura’s white skirt up as it went. She squeaked and pushed it down, but not before earning a grin and a chuckle from Naruto and Kakashi respectively. Men, Sakura thought with a huff. But secretly she was pleased to hear Kakashi laugh, even briefly (and even if it was at her).
“We’ll practice taijutsu today,” he said, pushing away from the fence. “One kunai each, working in pairs. Let’s go.”
“Come on, Sasuke-bastard!”
As usual, Naruto and Sasuke paired off instantly and moved away to their own area, leaving Sakura alone with Kakashi. She looked at him, but he was looking at his sling. “Could you help me get this off, Sakura?” he asked sweetly, probably knowing perfectly well that as a medic she would be inclined to do no such thing.
“I’m inclined to do no such thing,” she said bluntly.
“But I can’t exactly spar with you without my hand free. It’s feeling much better, honestly, and I promise I won’t use it. I just need it for balance.”
She giving his a suspicious stare, to which he met with an equally auspicious wink. “Alright,” she sighed, giving in. “As long as you promise not to strain it.”
He beamed down at the top of her head as she moved close to start unfastening the complicated buttons and clasps holding the sling in place. “Sure, we’ll fight with our left hands only.”
“That’s not fair,” she protested. “You’re ambidextrous.”
“I wasn’t always.”
She gave him an exasperated sigh and carefully helped him ease the cast off. As she went to set it down on the dilapidated picnic table nearby, Kakashi flexed his arm experimentally. “It’s going straight back on afterwards,” she warned.
“I understand.”
When she turned back to him, he already had his kunai drawn. It twirled lazily around the index finger of his left hand, while far behind him Naruto and Sasuke were just blurs of movement that occasionally clashed with a ‘clang’ and a shower of sparks.
Sakura thought she’d better go easier on her opponent, what with him being a sickie. An elite genius of a sickie, but a sickie nonetheless.
She drew her own kunai and weighed its unfamiliar weight in her left hand. It didn’t feel right and she didn’t know quite how to stand, but she assumed the best position she could manage. Kakashi looked much more at ease with his own stance, and with a flick of his right hand he invited her to attack.
With a rough grunt she threw herself forward - missed by at least three-quarters of a mile - and staggered as Kakashi side-stepped her. She flung her arm wide at the last moment and her kunai caught his with a sharp ‘chink’. They retreated from each other again instantly, circling slowly.
This was the nature of shinobi fighting; little to no contact and plenty rumination. Opponents were usually too dangerous to fight in close-range for more than a scant few seconds, even the ones with sprained arms. In a way it almost paralleled the way a shinobi lived… with very few connections to others, but occasionally someone slipped close enough to break through the carefully guarded defenses to land a blow.
Kakashi made the next move, appearing suddenly at her side to thrust his kunai straight at her. Sakura moved quickly, letting his jab slice harmlessly through the air beside her ribs, but rather than let him get away she clamped her arm down over his, trapping it against her side. He was immobilized only briefly, but it was enough time to bring her knee up and catch him in the stomach. It wasn’t a hard strike. Just hard enough to let him know it could have been harder. His response was to catch her behind the knee before she could drop her leg, leaving her hanging precariously against him.
Sakura, now as immobilized as him, pointed her own kunai at his neck for lack of anything else to do.
“I’d break free,” she assured him, “But I don’t want to hurt your arm.”
He stared down at her. Sakura looked away, trying to give him in the hint that this position wasn’t entirely appropriate. Especially since Naruto and Sasuke were only a few hundred yards away.
Slowly he dropped her leg and they eased apart, smoothing ruffled feathers and needlessly straightening clothes and brushing imaginary lint off sleeves. “Another go?” he asked.
She nodded shortly and resumed her fighting stance. Once more he beckoned her forward and she flew at him, her kunai flashing as she lashed out - being careful to aim two centimeters short of her target lest she really gut him. But Kakashi as fast, and for every step he was forced back, he took two forward to strike at her own open flanks.
“You have a very unique fighting style,” he told her, slightly out of breath as they quickly retreated from one another once more. “I like it. It’s like a cat.”
Sakura blushed, flattered. “Really? You mean, like… graceful?”
“No,” he shook his head. “I mean, batshit angry and single-minded. Like a cat whose tail has been trodden on and intends to shred your shins to hell with its claws.”
Sakura’s face darkened with a scowl. “And you fight like a sloth. You’re so slow I can see the algae growing over you. And your arms are too long.”
“Touché.” He nodded, as if it was a reasonable criticism. “Again?”
Once more she went on the attack, slashing at him like the angry cat he’d compared her to, hissing when she missed. But Kakashi wasn’t so much a sloth as he was an irritatingly flexible contortionist. He avoided her jabs and swipes with easy grace that made it all look so easy, and compared to Sakura whose style was built upon striking hard and fast, his was about precise movements and using no more or less energy than was needed to avoid a blow - and about looking damn good as he did it.
Then he turned the tables, and in one blurred movement the kunai in her hand was knocked from her grip. The next thing she knew, Kakashi was behind her, arm wrapped gently around her neck and his own kunai pointed non-threateningly at her jugular.
“Concede?” he asked.
Not likely, Sakura thought. Taking a deep breath, she reached behind her to grab what she could, and with a shout of effort bent forward and threw him over her head.
He landed on his back with a dusty thump at her feet, the visible part of his face crumpled in pain. A choked moan caught in his throat as he clutched his right arm.
Too late, Sakura remembered his injury. “Oh - I’m so sorry, Kakashi-sensei!” she cried, falling to her knees beside him. “Here - let me!”
She coaxed him to let go of his own arm and let her press her healing jutsu against his elbow. “Damn… there’s me telling you not to strain yourself, and then I go slamming you into the ground. I’m really sorry.”
“You’re a fiery girl, and I wouldn’t change you for the world,” Kakashi ground out.
Sakura let her chakra gently numb the pain and heal what she could of any torn tissue. But because of the nature of the injury, she couldn’t do much else. “I think we should get you back in your sling.”
He sighed, but didn’t protest. She help him up like he was a feeble invalid and guided him to the picnic table where she began stuffing his arm back into its proper dressing. “There you go!” she said, patting his good arm encouragingly when she was finished. “All good?”
“All good,” he agreed, smiling at her.
But the moment he looked away from her, his smile faded, as if there was something else on his mind that she was not privy to. For the first time Sakura realized how close she was sitting to him… but she didn’t want to move.
She liked being close to Kakashi.
Even when he was… sad.
“Are you ok?” she asked more seriously.
He looked back at her and his automatic smile switched on again - the kind of smile he gave flirty shop assistants he wasn’t really interested on. It definitely wasn’t the one that shone warmth and awareness that he normally reserved for her. “I’m ok,” he said. But it wasn’t true.
Sakura didn’t know what else to do. She looked down at his remaining hand that rested lightly on his thigh. And even though she knew their relationship was over and that any reminder was a bad thing, she couldn’t stop herself from slipping her hand over his and lacing their fingers together. It just seemed like the right thing to do.
And even though Kakashi didn’t look at her or smile, she felt his fingers squeeze hers in return and she knew he was grateful.
They all went their separate ways by late afternoon. Sakura bumped into Ino and together they went in search of dinner - which wasn’t nearly as bad as Sakura had dreaded, because although Ino was her usual nosy self, she seemed to be losing interest in Sakura’s ‘mystery man’. She only asked after him twice.
Afterwards, Ino wanted to drag her down to one of the local clubs, but Sakura declined and extricated herself from her best friend/best rival’s company in order to head home. She didn’t want to miss the soap tonight. She’d missed the last episode thanks to Ikki, and last week it hadn’t even been aired because of the sumo. (And who in their right mind would want to watch two fat men grappling in a ring instead of a riveting portrayal of the sleazy and scandalous lives of the rich and famous? Sakura was going to write a very nasty letter to the network if that happened again.)
The moment she arrived home, Sakura jumped into the bathroom for a quick shower to wash away all the dirt and grime from her brief spar with Kakashi earlier, before she settled down in front of the TV with a towel around her head and her thick cotton dressing gown on. Everything was prepared - she had her hot chocolate on the table before her, as well as her remote control, and a nice comfy cushion to sit on. The adverts were counting down to the start of her show and the schedule seemed to be in perfect order. It was perfect.
Until there came a knock at her door.
Sakura rolled her eyes and debated whether or not to get up. She couldn’t really pretend she wasn’t in since the lights were on and the TV was going, but she didn’t want to get dragged away from her soap a second time. “Who is it?” she called.
There was a pause. “Kakashi.”
Sakura lurched onto her feet so fast she nearly knocked her hot chocolate everywhere. Why the hell is he here? Had she left something at the training field by accident? Was there some news? A mission? Maybe… maybe something else?
She patted down her dressing gown anxiously, making sure the knot was fastened tight at her waist since she hadn’t bothered to put on any clothes yet. She really was in no fit state to entertain guests… but it seemed sort of silly to be worried about her lack of clothing when Kakashi had pretty much seen, touched and tasted every inch of her body.
But that’s in the past now, she thought, things are supposed to go back to normal now.
So she took a deep breath and assumed an air of friendly nonchalance as she headed over to the door and opened it just wide enough to peer out. “Oh, hello!” she said brightly, clutching the front of her gown close against her collar. “Can I help you?” she asked, like he was simply a neighbor popping around for a cup of sugar.
His sling was gone, she noted, and his head was tilted down in a reserved manner. When he spoke, he seemed to be consulting the door. “May I come in?”
“Um…” Sakura looked back into her apartment, quickly making sure it was fit for viewing and that she hadn’t left any old underwear lying about the place. As far as she could see, it appeared presentable. “Sure. I guess.” She stepped back and allowed him inside before shutting the door. Then she regarded his back, twisting her hands together anxiously as she waited for him to state the purpose of his visit… but all he did was stand there and survey her small, box-like living area.
It was the first time he’d seen her apartment, she realized. He’d only come here once before, and that had been a year ago when one wild night out with Ino had led to the biggest case of oversleeping the history of her life, because if you overslept so late that even the Copy Ninja knocked on your door wondering where you were, you knew you had achieved something stupendous. But that time he had never actually entered the apartment, because the moment Sakura had opened the door and seen it was him, she had shrieked, slammed it again, and then emerged thirty seconds later fully dressed and apologizing profusely for her delinquency. She’d never actually invited this man inside before.
She hoped it reached some sort of expectation. It was small and modern and the complete antithesis to his larger, more traditional apartment, but at least it was tidy.
“Can I get you a drink or something?” she asked, trying to fill the silence. She skirted around him on her way to the kitchen. “I can get you water - tea - hot chocolate - I think I have some orange juice left if you prefer - or maybe some milk if you don’t mind that it’s probably gone off by now-?”
She came to an abrupt halt as a hand snagged the back of her sash and tugged her backward. Then with slow deliberation, Kakashi took her shoulders and turned her around. He was giving her every opportunity to move away and put him in his place… but when all she did was stare up at him apprehensively, he took down his own mask and kissed her.
It wasn’t playful or executed carefully like a way to showcase his skill and experience as it usually was. It wasn’t dominating or possessive, or intense like the ones he would give when they lay naked together and entangled in the thrall of passion.
It was needy. Consuming. An act of taking without giving. He held her head in his hands as if he wanted to pull her into him, and Sakura’s fingers hovered uncertainly in mid-air, uncertain of whether to push him away or hold on tight. Her lips responded to his, though, and her eyes slid shut as his mouth insistently rained down hard, plain kisses on hers.
When his hand moved down to slide under her dressing gown to touch her bare breast, Sakura broke the kiss. “N-no - wait,” she gasped and stepped back, a hand pressed to her mouth and another to her collar. She regarded Kakashi with wide eyes while his remained dark and hooded. She saw a touch of uncertainty there, but also something else… something that went beyond simple, primitive desire to a starker need.
Sakura glanced at the television set beside them. The opening sequence of her soap was rolling, and in a moment it would recap what had happened in the previous episode and she would once again be caught up with the complicated storyline.
Kakashi began to turn away, sensing a rejection.
“Don’t be silly,” she whispered, catching his arm and pulling him back. With a quick series of tugs she pulled the knot of her sash loose and her gown fell open.
But Kakashi’s gaze never left her face. She took his hands and sank down to the floor, pulling him gently after her. Beside them the television set told of a scandalous affair on the brink of discovery, unbeknownst to the lovers in question, but Sakura wasn’t listening. With the cushion under hips, she urged him over her, kissing him firmly and showing him the way.
He didn’t need much guidance. His weight settled hard between her legs and the evidence of his arousal was hard to ignore, though he did a good job distracting her with deep, probing kisses. His hips rocked once against hers and she broke her mouth from his with a sigh of, “Sensei…”
“Don’t,” he grunted, even as he reached down to fumble with his fly.
“Don’t, what?” she asked, bemused.
“Don’t call me that. Not now,” he panted. In moments he’d freed himself and a tingle of shock ran down her spine as she felt the heat of his erection press against her opening. “Just call me Kakashi,” he told her, half a second before he forced himself inside her.
Sakura bit off a cry of pain. She wasn’t ready, and the sting of discomfort was sharp. But pain mingled with pleasure and the result was nothing short of exquisite. “Kakashi,” she sighed.
He thrust again, hard, making her jolt and cling to him. “Say it again.”
“Kakashi,” she murmured, and slowly he began to move inside her.
It was unlike the other times. For a start they’d never done it on the floor with only a feather-stuffed cushion for relief from the hard matted floor. And where before Sakura was used to being driven delirious and drunk on her own lust before Kakashi so much as thought about entering her, now she was aware of everything with startling clarity. She heard the crackle and rustle of the cushion beneath her with ever rock of his hips, heard his panting against her hair and felt his hot breath against her neck. The florescent light on the ceiling hummed faintly above them, and wisps of steam still rose from the slowly cooling mug of hot chocolate on the table beside them. Drunken voices were stumbling around outside in the hall, but they were completely ignorant of what was taking place in this room… this hushed straining of bodies that filled the small living area with soft gasps and sighs.
She felt every tremor than ran through his frame and she partook in his pleasure as if it were her own. It was far too late for her, but neither of them seemed to care that her own need was being left behind. All Sakura cared about at that point was reveling in the feel of his body pressing down over hers and the feel of his hard length stroking deeply inside her. It didn’t matter that her pleasure was out of reach and forgotten. Knowing that it was her body that made him muffle his groans against her neck and had his hips surging harder against hers was a mental pleasure that couldn’t be topped.
She knew when he was nearing his end, because by now she knew the signs - like the way his breath grew shallow and his thrusts began to lose their steady rhythm. His fingers bit into the tatami mat beside her head and all of a sudden his body snapped taught against hers with a shudder. She clung to him tightly, hardly daring to breathe as she felt wetness of his release deep inside her and heard his soft groan in her ear.
He sank against her in the aftermath, spent and exhausted. Sakura remained holding him tight and stared up at the ceiling.
For anyone else, she would be inclined to think she had been used. Not two weeks ago had her last boyfriend done very much the same thing Kakashi had done tonight; stumble in through the door with one thing on his mind before proceeding to take her on the floor, taking his own selfish pleasure and leaving her high and dry.
But Kakashi was not just anyone else. He wouldn’t come to her to simply slack his lust unless he had good reason… and what’s more, Sakura wouldn’t let him unless she felt it was important.
Where before Ikki had left her angry and disappointed, now all she felt was a dangerous squeezing in her chest that felt an awful lot like affection. A lot of affection. The kind of affection that could drive people to do silly things. She swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the feeling without success, and moved her hands up to stroke Kakashi’s hair. “There’s a feather poking me in the ass,” she whispered romantically. “Should we relocate to the bedroom, maybe?”
He sighed. “You may have to carry me.”
“I’m too tired. But I can drag you, if you’d like?”
“…actually, I think I can manage.”
His weight lifted off her and he helped her up after him. She cast one last despairing glance to the television set - saw that she’d missed at least five minutes of her show now - before taking Kakashi’s hand and smiling as she led him away.