With One Long Kiss

by the_road_I_know

Summary:

A kiss to avoid enemy detection during a covert mission sends Sakura spiraling into feelings she never thought possible. For Kakashi, of all people. Her friend, her teammate, and now the man she can't get out of her mind.

She can’t stop thinking about the kiss.
It replays without her permission. The sudden lift of his hand, the tug of the mask, the beauty of his face.
She can handle this. It was just a kiss. Sure, a great one, but still, just a kiss.
Yet when she closes her eyes, she swears she can feel his mouth on hers.

Notes:

an earth-tilting kiss, a peaceful border inn, and Kakashi being staggeringly, distractingly handsome

Chapter 1: the mission

Amegakure is heavy with humidity, its dark streets steaming from an earlier downpour. The red-light district pulses with neon signs and hushed, pleasured voices, a mix of hedonism and danger. Sakura keeps her pace steady, her senses sharp.

She and Kakashi are pursuing a target they can’t afford to lose, but engaging the enemy now would risk civilian casualties. They need to fall back, maintain their stealth.

Suddenly, Kakashi pulls her into a narrow alcove, her back meeting the cold concrete wall. He casts a glance around the corner. The full moon hangs high above, its light glinting off the wet pavement, but the alley remains obscured in shadow. The sound of distant footsteps grows louder.

Kakashi stands in front of her, one hand braced on the wall beside her head. There’s tension in his stance but no urgency in his movements, only a ready calm. He turns toward her, their eyes meeting.

His voice is low, measured. “Can I kiss you?”

Sakura stares, startled. Her mind scrambles for an answer in the sudden rush of adrenaline. “What?” It comes out sharper than intended.

Kakashi’s eyes scan the dimly lit alley again. “We need to blend in,” he says, his tone even. Sakura’s gaze flickers across the street, where a couple is crossing boundaries in plain sight. In another alcove further down, two people are tangled in a passionate embrace.

Understanding dawns on her. They’re in the middle of a seedy district. No one would blink at an act like this.

She swallows, her heart pounding. “Yeah, of course,” she manages to say.

Kakashi’s gray eyes hold hers for a second before he shifts his attention once again to the street. Then, without preamble, he reaches up and pulls his mask down.

Sakura’s breath catches. For the first time, she sees his whole face, and it’s staggering. He’s handsome, distractingly so. His features are sharp and defined. Her lips part in surprise.

Before she can fully process it, Kakashi steps closer. “Hold on to me,” he murmurs, his breath warm.

Sakura’s arms instinctively circle his neck as his hands slip beneath her thighs, lifting her effortlessly. She wraps her legs around his hips without thinking. Her pulse quickens. Her eyes flutter closed.

And then there's the soft press of his lips, and he’s kissing her, deep and unhurried.

Her mind blanks. The world outside their alcove fades beneath the overwhelming sensation of his kiss.

Sakura only vaguely registers when the enemy passes, the sound of footsteps fading away as her senses tingle with awareness. But as soon as the threat is gone, Kakashi pulls away. It’s sudden.

He sets her down, and his mask is back in place before Sakura can fully comprehend the movement. In the next fluid motion, he pulls a kunai from his pouch, his eyes scanning the area.

Sakura blinks, her breath shaky, but her chakra thrums beneath her skin, ready for action. The professional in her snaps back into place.

“Come on,” Kakashi says as he leads the way.

They move swiftly, their mission still at the forefront. But Sakura feels something shift inside her.

---

The mission ends without a hitch. Clean extraction of intel, no casualties. Successful by all parameters.

They slip out of the Land of Rain just as dawn turns the clouds a soft purple. When they cross into the Land of Fire and reach the small inn a few miles from the border, Sakura’s hair is damp from sweat, her uniform sticky against her skin, and her limbs ache with exhaustion. The first thing she does after shutting herself in her room is shower. The second is sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the wall.

She can’t stop thinking about the kiss.

It replays without her permission. The sudden lift of his hand, the tug of the mask, the beauty of his face. The warmth of his mouth and the weight of him between her legs. 

It had been a strategy. She knows that. He asked and she agreed. But gods, he’d kissed her like it wasn’t pretend.

Sakura lies back on the bed and stares up at the ceiling. She needs to press the memory down and keep it from spreading. It doesn’t matter that it had felt disorientingly real. It wasn’t.

Sakura groans and throws an arm over her eyes. She’s not interested in Kakashi. She’s never thought of him in that way. But now all she's thinking about is how his voice dipped when he told her to hang on to him. How his lips felt. How his tongue had pressed against hers, hot and slow, like they had all the time in the world.

How her heart had punched against her ribs.

She’s twenty. An adult. A shinobi, for gods' sake. She can handle this. It was just a kiss. Sure, a great one, but still, just a kiss.

Yet when she closes her eyes, she swears she can feel his mouth on hers.

---

They've been real friends for almost three years now. Not just teammates. Not just former teacher and student. Friends.

After the Fourth War, everything had changed, for the world, for Konoha, for them. Kakashi had struggled with the loss of his Sharingan, readjusting to suddenly having blind spots again, edges. She’d helped him recalibrate. It had taken patience and stubbornness, and more than a few bruises.

He’d done the same for her. He’d helped her navigate the bureaucracy surrounding her formation of the children’s clinic, taught her how to channel her frustration into winning council arguments.

It had made them equals in a way they hadn’t been before. She thinks of that now, lying in the small, quiet room, sunrise brightening the sky outside. How easily and steadily their friendship had grown.

And now… now she’s thinking about how he tasted.

She turns her head into the pillow and exhales sharply, as if she can breathe the thought out of her body. It doesn’t work.

---

Later, she finds Kakashi in the inn’s café. He's at a table by the window, where the ivy blocks the bright afternoon sun, one knee hooked over the other, book in his lap. There’s steam rising from his miso soup. It’s so normal it feels like a slap.

Sakura stands there for a second, watching him. Waiting, she realizes, for him to look up and pause. To give her a glance that says, Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it too.

But when he does look up, he gives her a lazy smile, his lips curving beneath his mask. It's the same smile he's given her a hundred times. A thousand.

"Sleep well?" he asks.

"Fine," Sakura says, taking the seat across from him.

And that’s it. He doesn’t seem awkward or different or even aware that anything out of the ordinary happened.

She waits through breakfast. Through the journey back to Konoha. Through the walk to the Hokage Tower. But the entire way, he's what he always is. Kakashi, calm and composed.

It shouldn’t matter. It had been a tactical decision. But when she agreed, she hadn’t known it would stay with her like this, echo in her blood. 

She says goodbye after their mission debrief in the Hokage’s office. “You did good,” he says lightly. “Go get some rest.”

And then he’s off. Turning up the road, posture relaxed.

Sakura stands there long after he’s out of sight, the ache inexplicable. Nothing changed in that alley. At least, not for Kakashi. But for Sakura, everything feels different.

Notes:

The title of this fic comes from Tennyson's Fatima. It's a gorgeous poem about desire and unrequited love that gripped my heart the first time I read it, and has never let go.

O Love, O fire! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul thro'
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.

Chapter 2: the spiral

Summary:

looking underneath the underneath, soy glaze where it should never be, and everything being Naruto's fault

How can that man kiss like that and have it mean nothing?

The question's been circling Sakura’s brain for days. How could he hold her against that wall with his body and take her apart so thoroughly with his mouth, just as indifferently as he might have adjusted her headband or shared food pills on a long journey?

But she knows the answer. She knows what Kakashi is. What’s likely been asked of him.

She knows there are missions that require more than blades or jutsu. That for some shinobi, seduction tactics are just another weapon in their arsenal. Kakashi has probably used that mouth before, just like he uses a kunai. Sharp, deliberate, and precise. With experience honed on missions Sakura will never read about. He probably has mission logs of sultry encounters across the continent.

Sakura reminds herself that it was just another requirement of the job. Nothing more. Like the time they had to hide in a trench in the mountains of Iron Country, shivering against each other to prevent hypothermia. She hadn’t spent weeks obsessing over that. 

This shouldn’t be any different.

---

But what about the mask? That couldn’t have been nothing to him.

Kakashi has guarded that part of himself for as long as Sakura’s known him. Longer. As twelve-year-olds, she and Naruto had made it their unofficial side mission to uncover the secret beneath it.

Of course, Sakura's not surprised their artless scheming ended in failure. But even since then, through years of training and friendship, she’s never seen beneath the mask. Even when she’d treated his injuries over lengthy hospital stays, or when he’d dragged her away from the blast zone on the last day of the war, even when it might have been understandable, unavoidable, for him to let that barrier drop, he never had.

So why, in a grimy alley filled with smoke and perfume and neon light, had he pulled it down without hesitation? It hadn’t even been an S-rank mission, for gods’ sake.

It doesn’t make sense to her. The kiss, fine. Tactical decision. But the mask? That was Kakashi showing her something he never shows anyone. Something he’s deliberately withheld from her since the beginning.

How could he hand over something so protected, so personal, like a throwaway detail?

Maybe he hadn’t known she could see anything. Maybe he thought the alley was too dark, or the shadows cloaked him the same way they cloaked her. Maybe he didn’t realize the moonlight was behind her, spilling over her shoulder and casting his face in sharp relief.

But to believe that she’d have to forget who Kakashi is. A tactical genius. A master strategist. The kind of shinobi who builds entire attack formations based on things like wind speed and reflected light. She’s seen him direct a full-scale battle operation using the moon’s position and a handful of shadows. He once told her, offhandedly, that he never steps into a room without calculating where every light source is, and how to use them to his advantage if necessary.

Kakashi doesn’t forget where the moon is. Kakashi doesn’t miss things like angles.

Which means he knew the light was behind her. He knew his face would be visible and exactly how exposed he was. And he pulled the mask down anyway.

He could have leaned in, pressed the mask to her mouth, kept the illusion intact. It would’ve worked. She would’ve followed his lead. 

But he didn’t. He let her see him on purpose.  

But Sakura also knows that Kakashi doesn’t do big declarations. He never has. He’s the one who taught her to read the quiet between people’s words, to look underneath the underneath. Trust with Kakashi isn’t announced, it’s demonstrated.

And that, she realizes, is her answer. He trusts her. Enough to share that piece of himself he’s always guarded so fiercely.

She already knew he trusted her. They’ve been through enough together, grown past enough together, for it to be unquestioned. Still, this small, yet monumental, demonstration of it makes Sakura’s throat tighten.

---

It should put a rest to her spiraling. It should let her move on. But it doesn’t.

Because the fact remains that Kakashi should have known the kiss would have consequences for her. He knows how she feels things. Deep, stubborn, bone-deep. He knows that even if she’s professional, even if she can hold a scalpel steady in a warzone, she’s not the kind of person who lets go easily. She never has been. He knows how hard she hung on to Sasuke.

And still, he kissed her like it wouldn’t follow her home.

Kakashi plans ten steps ahead. He doesn’t make moves without calculating the fallout. Sakura wonders what his calculations looked like for this. Did he assume she had the experience to let it slide off her?

After all, experience makes a difference. She used to lose sleep over hurting someone, even when it was unavoidable. She still remembers one of her first Genin missions, the way her hands shook after she accidentally overturned that dango stand during a pursuit. She went back the next day and apologized three times. And then cried about it for two nights. She still goes back weekly.

But now she ends lives when she has to. She doesn’t linger over every decision. She doesn’t mourn what’s necessary.

Kakashi likely thought it would be the same with this. That she would have experience enough to allow a strategic kiss to be a non-event, the way so many things are. That it would register as a forgettable method barely noted in a report: Successfully lured enemy past civilian center by mimicking civilian behavior.

But then… Kakashi has intel on the most mundane things. He carries mental files on allies, enemies, and neutral parties alike.

He never goes into situations blind. Never makes a move without stacking the deck in his favor, even if it means digging into things that seem irrelevant. She’s teased him about it. “Why do you need to know the Daimyo’s favorite ramen topping?” And he’d shrugged. “You’d be surprised what can shift the odds.”

But Sakura also knows he’s miscalculated before. Made mistakes that cost people their lives. He’s told her about some of them, during late hours in hushed tones. Miscommunications, assumptions, too much faith placed in teammates who weren’t ready, or situations that changed too fast. Times when the intel didn’t line up and someone got hurt.

And it’s not like Kakashi would have intel on her kissing experience. There would be no reason for him not to assume she’d had all the typical milestones of a girl her age.  

She shouldn’t blame him. She knows that. Even if he had assumed, he still asked her before he did it. He still sought her consent. How can she blame him when she could’ve had the presence of mind to say something, anything, like “Not a real kiss though, just make it look like it.”

Sakura exhales, slow and uneven. It’s no one’s fault but her own. Kakashi couldn’t have foreseen that it would become a fault line.

He couldn’t have known it was her first kiss.

---

Sakura’s come to terms with it.

And hey, now she has a funny story to tell someday. “My first kiss? Oh, just my emotionally detached former mentor pinning me to a wall during a mission in the red-light district of Amegakure. It was cover for evasion. Totally romantic.”

Yeah. Hilarious.

Unfortunately, now that she’s finally gotten here, she realizes something her spiraling hadn’t taken into account. She’d spent years teasing Kakashi about the mask. She and Naruto had schemed relentlessly, cajoling and guessing and plotting elaborate setups to get it off of him.  

He had to have expected that she’d mention such an event. At the very least, he had to expect a joke. Some smug little smirk later that night as she said, “Hey, by the way, I’ve now got visual confirmation that you don’t have fish lips. I can finally collect on that bet I had going with Naruto.”

But she hadn’t said anything. And she now realizes with a sinking, horrible pit in her stomach how abnormal that must have seemed to Kakashi.

She can’t even hope he didn’t notice. He’s Kakashi. Of course he noticed. He would have immediately analyzed the gap where her laughter should have been, the joke she never made. If the kiss had meant nothing to her, Sakura would have absolutely brought it and the mask up at the first opportunity. Poked fun about it.

And oh gods. That means he knows she wasn’t as unaffected as he thought she would be. Kakashi’s not stupid. He’s observant, analytical, and far too good at picking apart silences.

Sakura buries her face in her hands, groaning into her palms. He can’t find out the extent of it. Or that she’s still thinking about it. Or that it lodged itself so deep inside her that she started to question how she feels about him.

She wonders if she should tease him about it the next time she sees him.

Wait, and how exactly is she supposed to do that? Just bring it up out of the blue? After a whole week of radio silence? Oh yeah. That won’t look suspicious at all. If she throws in a flippant comment now, it’ll only confirm that she’s been spiraling.

No, there's only one thing she can do. She decides, right then and there, that she’ll never mention it. It’ll be as if it never happened.

She just needs to act like a normal human being, not like someone who’s lost the plot entirely. And, despite recent evidence to the contrary, she is perfectly capable of doing that.

Sure, it was her first kiss. But it doesn’t have to rewrite her reality. In time, it’ll settle. Eventually, it’ll just be a story.

---

She’s fine for a week.

It turns out that putting intestines back into a stupid genin who strayed into the Animal District on a dare is an incredibly effective way to snap out of romantic spirals. She doesn’t have time to think about kisses when someone’s just been gored by a badger the size of a wagon.

It also helps that she hasn’t seen Kakashi. He’s been off on a mission somewhere, doing whatever it is he does when Lady Tsunade needs a diplomatic hand that’s also capable of taking down a room full of enemy Anbu without ruining the furniture.

But at the end of the week, Kakashi returns. And what happens next is not Sakura’s fault.

Truly, if the thread were traced all the way back to the beginning, it would reveal clearly whose fault it is. Naruto's. Like nearly everything else chaotic in Sakura's life.

She and Naruto are eating dango. It’s her weekly ritual. The one she started after overturning the dango stand when she was twelve because Naruto was arguing with her at the time. The stand is just off the main path by Konoha’s front gates, shaded from the late morning sun, always smelling like sweet soy glaze.

Sakura is mid-bite, already one skewer deep, when Naruto starts telling this absurd story about Shikamaru and a diplomatic mission in the Mist. Something about a misunderstanding over eyeballs and pickled quail eggs. It’s hard to tell with Naruto. The point is, it’s disgusting. And hilarious.

She’s half grossed out, half fascinated, and somehow also half hysterical with laughter. Her face hurts. She’s choking down another bite when it happens.

Kakashi walks through the front gate. And everything goes to hell.

He’s got that look about him. Relaxed, sun-drenched, vaguely mythic. The kind of glow that belongs on divine statues or victory posters. The sun is right behind him, putting this stupid aura around his hair like he’s descended from the heavens instead of the Hokage’s errand list. His cloak is slung carelessly over one shoulder, and his shirt is tugged up at the hem from the weight of it. And those jōnin pants…

Had they always fit that snug? Sakura blinks. No, seriously, how had she never noticed that before?

He spots her. Their eyes meet. And then…

He winks.

Deliberately. Casually. Sexily, if she’s being honest. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

And Sakura? She does not respond with grace. Instead of a breezy smirk or a roll of her eyes or a cool head-tilt of acknowledgment, or anything else in the realm of normalcy, her mouth drops open in some sort of awed, shocked mix.

Her hand jerks, her fingers twitch, and the damn dango slips off the skewer and plummets down her shirt.

She yelps. Loudly. In the span of two seconds, she’s yanking at her shirt collar and hopping in place like a wasp had gotten lodged somewhere unspeakable. Flailing. Grabbing. Trying not to flash the entire street while simultaneously dislodging a rice dumpling from her cleavage.

By the time she manages to fish the sticky, soy-glazed tragedy out of her top, she’s breathless, disheveled, and half-covered in sauce.

And Kakashi? Gone.

Like he was never there. Like he didn’t just stroll back into the village and leave her convulsing in public like an idiot.

Naruto is laughing so hard that he’s slumped against the stand. “You okay, Sakura-chan?”

She glares at him, red-faced, hair stuck to her forehead. “You started this,” she mutters. “This is all your fault. It’s always your fault.”

---

Sakura must be going through five stages of embarrassment.

She’s definitely passed through denial. That was the ten-minute stretch immediately after it happened, where she stood frozen next to the dango stand, insisting, mostly to herself, that maybe Kakashi hadn’t actually seen anything. Maybe he hadn’t noticed the full-body flailing and the shirt-yanking.

Then came anger. Brief, white-hot, and Naruto-shaped. She nearly bludgeoned him with the remaining skewer before the vendor offered her a free replacement out of pity. Depression was the slow walk home, sticky and silent, as she contemplated whether she could move to Suna.

Which brings her to now. Bargaining. Oh gods, she’s definitely in bargaining. She’s currently pacing her apartment and coming up with some of the most unhinged ideas she’s ever entertained to reclaim her dignity.

Sakura groans. Why is it even bothering her?

Kakashi has done far more embarrassing things since she’s known him. Come on. This is the same man who unapologetically reads porn in public. 

Except smut-reading in public? That’s a choice, a statement. It’s iconic, really. It adds to the sexy man-of-mystery appeal. It fuels the legend.

Smearing dango down one’s shirt like a sticky, panicked raccoon? Not so much. That’s not mystique. That’s not sexy. That’s maybe vaguely appealing to a very niche subset of shinobi with food-related kink alignments, but broadly speaking, not ideal.

---

By the following day, Sakura has crossed into acceptance. The dango incident wasn’t really that big of a deal. And she knows embarrassing moments are always more vivid in the memory of the person who experienced them than they ever are in the minds of others.

Besides, the bimonthly council meeting is that afternoon, and it gives Sakura something more important to focus on. She’s proud to be a part of the council. To be in a room where life-critical decisions are made. Where they discuss international treaties, classified intelligence, and high-level shinobi movements.

Of course, they’re not currently doing any of that. Shikamaru is droning on about market stand parking reassignments, which is about as thrilling as watching paint dry.

But still. It’s a council meeting, and she’s trying to pay attention. While simultaneously trying not to pay attention to Kakashi. Without making it obvious.

So naturally, her gaze drifts to Naruto. See? Naruto’s fault again.

If she’d been focused, really focused, she might’ve realized the dango stand was on the damn agenda. Something about how it blocks the caravan lanes near the front gate, about rerouting market stalls for better flow of incoming goods. A completely reasonable topic. A topic she would have paid attention to on any other day.

But not today. Because today, while she’s making a concerted effort to appear effortlessly cool and collected, Kakashi opens his mouth and says, casually, smoothly, with an infuriating amount of composure, “Perhaps Sakura has some dango-related opinions?”

And smirks. She’s sure of it.

Yes, the mask is on. But the mask doesn’t hide everything. It clings too tightly to the curve of his mouth, hints at it, the way the corner lifts slightly, unmistakably. And besides, she knows that mouth. Knows it not just in theory, but in practice.

It’s how she ended up in this mental spiral to begin with.

She jerks in her seat so sharply she nearly upends her water. And Naruto, her supposed comrade, her battle-tested, life-long teammate, makes a sound she will carry to her grave.

It’s halfway between a snort and a buffalo call, like he’s trying to suppress laughter and failing in the most obnoxiously obvious way possible. She shoots him a look that could incinerate trees. He ducks his head, shoulders shaking, traitorously delighted.

She grits her teeth, forces herself upright, and speaks with all the dignity she can cobble together from the ruins of her self-respect.

“I have no strong opinions on dango stand placement,” she says through a tight smile. “Though I do believe any decisions should prioritize public safety.”

Naruto chokes. Kakashi’s smirk deepens. And Sakura silently vows to assassinate at least one of them before the next full moon.

Notes:

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
-from Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl’s Love Song

Chapter 3: the mortification

Summary:

bad advice, awkward flirting (and not-so-awkward flirting), and being a shinobi of decisive action

Sakura decides to talk to Ino.

She knows what kind of energy she’s inviting into her fractured emotional state, but after the dango embarrassment, Naruto’s buffalo betrayal, and Kakashi's public teasing, Sakura needs someone to scream with. And Ino is a friend who will scream with her, then distract her with hospital gossip and the latest in flower fragrance extraction methods.

They're at the teahouse below Sakura's apartment, the scent of jasmine wafting from the cup clutched in her hands. She's nervous, hesitant, but the moment she says, "I kissed Kakashi," it's like unlocking a floodgate. Ino practically falls forward, hands splayed flat on the table, eyes gleaming with scandal-hungry intensity. “Oh. My. Gods. Start from the beginning. And don’t you dare skip a thing.”

Sakura tells her what she can. The alley. The kiss. The way she wrapped her legs around him, the pressure of his hands on her thighs. She doesn’t tell Ino about the little birthmark by his lip, or the faint line of an old scar on his jaw. She also doesn't admit how the feel of his mouth has stayed with her like a phantom, though she's sure Ino can figure that part out.

“I knew that man had talent,” Ino says, fanning herself with a menu like she’s reading erotic literature. “You can just tell by the way he moves. That smooth, I’m-good-at-everything-and-know-it posture? That’s the kind of man who knows how to fuck.”

Sakura chokes on her tea and looks around. “Dammit, Ino!” she splutters. "Can you keep your voice down?"

Ino rolls her eyes, unbothered. “Like you weren’t thinking it.” 

Sakura opens her mouth, closes it, and resorts to glaring.

“Exactly,” Ino continues, her smile smug. “So? What happened after the mission? What did you say to him about it?”

At this, Sakura puts her head in her hands. “Nothing,” she groans.

“Nothing?” Ino's eyes widen. “You know that makes it look like—”

“I know,” Sakura bemoans, dragging the last word out. “I should have said something at the time. But it's too late now, and you won’t believe what I've done since then.”

“Oh, I’m sure I will believe it, actually. Lay it on me.”

So Sakura confesses to the spiraling, the analysis, the resolution to act like the kiss never happened. And then she tells her about the dango incident and the council meeting embarrassment. Ino is valiantly trying to be supportive, but by the end of it, she’s wheezing into a napkin, barely a step from laughing directly in Sakura’s face.

Sakura folds her arms and scowls. “Glad my mortification brings you joy.”

“Well, forehead, you definitely have the awkward bumbling charm angle down. Thank the gods you came to me, because if you want to get pinned against another wall, you need a different tactic.”

“Ino!” Sakura says, shocked, “I don’t… what is wrong with you? That’s not at all…” But she can’t finish the sentence because her brain has snagged on the image of Kakashi’s mouth on hers, and her heart skips the way it did in that alley.

“Stop." Ino holds up a hand. "I can’t help you if you keep lying to yourself."

“I’m going to have an aneurysm,” Sakura mutters.

“Not before you make out with the hot, emotionally distant, future Hokage, you’re not.”

Sakura drops her head to the table with a soft thunk. Ino reaches across and pats her hair.

“Seriously, Ino,” Sakura says firmly, lifting her head and sitting up. “I don’t know what I feel. I don’t know if I want something more, or if all of this is just confusion because it was my first kiss. I mean, I never thought of him like this before.”

Ino's expression softens. "Then you need to figure it out."

With a deep exhale, Sakura says, “That’s the thing. I don’t even know how to start. Every time I see him now, it's like I don't know how to act. He's my friend. I shouldn't be all flustered around him all of a sudden." She shakes her head. "What is wrong with me? Honestly, I just want to get past it and forget about it.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean ‘why’?”

“Why forget it?” Ino presses.

“What's the alternative?" Sakura asks. "Even if I wanted something more, Kakashi would never think of me in that way.”

Ino is silent for a few moments, searching Sakura's face. It reminds her of Ino’s ability to get the truth out of people even without resorting to her mind-transfer jutsu. “Setting aside how wrong I think you are about his ability to see you that way, if all you want is to vent and forget about it, fine. I'll listen. But it’s clear you had your whole damn worldview rearranged in that alley, and I think you should figure out what it really means to you. Whether you act on it or not.”

Sakura sighs. Her tea’s gone cold. She stares into the cup like it might hold some answer she’s overlooked, some ancient, leaf-based wisdom that will explain how to unravel her own brain. "How, though? How am I supposed to figure it out?"  

Leaning back with a self-satisfied look that’s never a good sign, Ino says, "Easy. Make it happen again."

"Make what happen again?" Sakura asks, frowning.

"A kiss! Are you dense? The best way to know what you want is to get that man's body against yours again."

"Oh my gods, what is wrong with you?" Sakura asks, stunned. "Seriously, are you okay? That is the exact opposite of venting and getting over it, Ino."

With a shrug, Ino says, "So is stewing in your feelings for two weeks and freaking out over a wink."

Sakura groans and tips her face into her hands again. Her elbows press against the table, and she mutters, voice muffled, "Why do I talk to you?"

A completely unrepentant grin spreads across Ino's face. “Because I’m brilliant and you love me. And besides, we both know it's what you really want to do."

The look Sakura gives could wither flowers.

It has no effect on Ino, who lifts her teacup in a mock toast. “Listen, you’ve done what no one else in this entire village has managed, to my knowledge. You’ve actually kissed Hatake Kakashi. With tongue. That alone puts you in the upper echelon of shinobi accomplishment.”

Sakura narrows her eyes.

“So, the way I see it,” Ino continues, unfazed, “you owe it to Konoha to do further research. For science.”

Sakura's stare is flat, unimpressed. Ino looks back innocently and sips her tea. And Sakura can't help it. Against her will, a reluctant smile tugs at her lips. “I can't believe you," she says, the tension in her shoulders slipping.

“Remember, it's for historical documentation," Ino declares. "I fully expect a field report.”

“Alright then," Sakura says, folding her arms and raising an eyebrow.  "If you’re so brilliant, how exactly would you propose I make it happen?”

Ino's expression is victorious. “Glad you asked. You work to your strengths.”

“My strengths.”

“Exactly.” Ino grins. “Brute force. You can’t be trusted with subtlety. You need to be direct. So I suggest you just grab him by the vest and kiss him.” Ino gestures dramatically like she’s blocking a stage performance. “Be a shinobi of decisive action.”

“This is awful advice,” Sakura says.

Ino grins wider.

Sakura looks out of the window. At the sunny engawa, and the climbing wisteria, and the bluebirds twittering as if the world hasn't shifted on its axis. Ino is out of her mind. Trying for another kiss might only lead to more embarrassment and heartache.

Her frown deepens as she faces Ino again. “Seriously, aren’t you being a little irresponsible? Should you really be encouraging me to chase after another emotionally unavailable man?”

Ino’s expression sobers. She sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be. But did Sasuke ever kiss you once in all the years you threw yourself at him?”

“That’s irrelevant," Sakura says, her shoulders tightening. "It’s not like Kakashi kissed me because he wanted to. It was out of mission necessity.”

“On the surface, sure," Ino counters. "But we’ve all been on missions where things could’ve gone a hundred different ways. Where we need to make judgment calls. And you know there are always options we don’t even let ourselves consider, for some reason or another. Trust me, if there weren’t some part of him that wanted to kiss you, he wouldn’t have considered it an option on the table.”

“You don’t know him like I do,” Sakura says quietly. “He only considered it a possible option because he assumed it wouldn’t affect me. He didn't think it would mean anything. I really don’t think he had anything but the mission on his mind.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Ino says.

Sakura glances out the window again, this time without seeing the view. There’s no way she’s just going to grab him and kiss him. Kakashi is her friend. Her teammate. The idea of surprising him, putting her hands on him like she’s entitled to, isn’t what she wants. She wants something thoughtful, meaningful. Consensual.

Besides, it’s not her style anyway. She wants to do something decisive, yes, something that doesn’t leave her floundering in dango sauce, but still her. What that could be though? Her mind is blank.

---

Sakura doesn’t lack opportunity.

After all, she and Kakashi eat lunch together almost every day on the sun-warmed bench at the edge of the Hokage Tower courtyard. Unless he's out of the village, or she’s buried in hospital rotations, they typically see each other every day.

So it’s not like Sakura's waiting on some grand reunion or a lucky encounter. She has access. Which makes the whole thing worse.

Because she has no idea how to act in a situation like this. What to say. What to do with the fact that every time she’s beside him, her brain betrays her.

It’s too bad she can’t simply freeze in those moments. Stop herself before doing anything regrettable. But no, instead she finds herself trying things. Theoretically, smart, subtle things. But they never work the way she intends.

Like when she tried to thread a bit of innuendo into their conversation, something that might make him think of their kiss, something charming, sexy even. They were packing up after an early-morning workout, and she said, holding his gaze, “Good spar. I’m realizing there’s nothing you’re not good at.” The moment she said it, she inwardly cringed and wanted to sink through the ground. Kakashi lifted an eyebrow, slow and deliberate, and said, “You’re not getting out of paying for breakfast.”

Or the day she decided to look casually sexy at lunch. She’d gone out of her way to style her hair and wear lip gloss, and when she sat down on their bench, she hoped it gave the breezy allure she was going for. Based on his reaction, or rather, lack of reaction, Kakashi didn’t notice anything.

In keeping with the escalating chaos that was her life, though, Naruto had picked that exact moment to swing by. He paused mid-stride, and with his usual delicacy, said, “Oi, Sakura-chan, why are you dressed like that?” Before she could even respond, he squinted. “And what are you doing with your face? You look like you ate some bad ham.”

Sakura would have strangled him on the spot if she hadn’t been so preoccupied wishing for death. 

And then there was the evening after a long hospital shift, when she was clearly suffering from sleep deprivation and poor judgment, and she tried a suggestive lean as Kakashi walked her home. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The moon was out, the street quiet, and their pace unhurried. She thought she’d nailed the angle, brushing his arm slightly, her expression inviting.

Kakashi had glanced down at her, and said in his calm, thoughtful voice, “You should stretch before you go to bed. You’re walking like Genma after the last bar night.” Sakura nearly tripped over her own feet.

Yet every time she’s on the verge of letting it go, on the cusp of deciding the repeated mortification is unsustainable, ready to bury her feelings in silence and never make another awkward attempt at flirting, Kakashi does something. Usually something effortlessly sexy that reels her right back in.

Like when he leaned over to murmur a joke in her ear during a council meeting, and his breath ghosted across her neck. Or when his thigh grazed hers at lunch one day and he didn’t move it away. Or when he brushed a leaf from her hair and his fingers gently trailed across her cheek.  

Sakura is sure he's aware that the kiss affected her. If he wanted to send a message that it meant nothing to him, wouldn't he take care not to act in ways that could be misconstrued? Surely he wouldn't be touching her and whispering to her and winking at her. Granted, nothing he'd done was in itself much outside the ordinary for them, but still. Something in those small moments, something from him, feels different.

Sakura's starting to think that Ino’s method, half a bottle of sake, and the bold, no-backup plan of just kissing him, might have merit. Because if this keeps up, she might combust. And if she’s going to go down in flames, she’d rather be kissing him when it happens.

---

It all comes to a head on an otherwise ordinary afternoon at the training grounds.

She, Naruto, and Kakashi are finishing up a spar. Nothing intense, more cardio than combat. Naruto’s face is red, mostly from laughing at his own stupid jokes. Sakura is drenched in sweat, her gloves torn in two places, and holding a familiar line somewhere between exasperation and snorting laughter. And Kakashi is, as usual, taking full advantage of their knuckle-headedness to thoroughly pummel them as if he were out for a leisurely stroll.

When they’ve finally wrapped up, Sakura drops to one knee to re-tie her boot laces. She's tugging them tight and half-listening to Naruto beside her when he lets out an obnoxiously loud whistle.

“Damn, Kakashi-sensei,” he drawls. “You'd better be careful with that deadly weapon.”

Sakura frowns, still looking down. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Then she glances up. And nearly faints.

Kakashi has taken his shirt off.

It’s not like she’s never seen him shirtless. Of course she has. On missions. On battlefields. When wounds had to be dressed.

But those were different. On those occasions, he hadn’t been standing there, backlit by sunlight, sweat slicking down abs that looked like they were carved by a vengeful god, with those stupid jōnin pants slung low on his hips like he was trying to seduce a whole damn army.

Sakura’s brain simply… stops.

Naruto is still cackling beside her. “I’m just saying, if you’re gonna walk around like that, you'd better file it under Class A Weaponry.”

She doesn’t hear the rest. She's spiraling. Hard.

Kakashi is standing in the middle of the training grounds, casually glorious, pulling on a fresh shirt like it’s nothing. Like he’s not currently destroying her ability to form a coherent thought.

In a second, he’ll be covered again. In a second, her brain will restart. She can survive one more second.

But then he says it. With a damned smirk. Yes, she knows a smirk is under the mask when he looks right at her and says, “Sakura, my eyes are up here.”

And she just about dies.

No, actually. She would welcome death. Anything to get her out of this moment where her brain has short-circuited and all that exists in the universe is that smug look on Kakashi's face and the unbearable mortification of being caught ogling him.

She makes a sound. It’s meant to be a scoff, but it comes out as more of a strangled cough.

Kakashi pulls the shirt over his head, finally, thank every deity in existence. Meanwhile, Naruto is beside himself, howling. “Sakura-chan, your face!”

She wants to kill him. She wants to kill both of them. It's becoming a recurring wish.

Instead, she laces up her boot in silence, her fingers shaking slightly, and mutters something about needing to get back to the hospital. It’s a lie. She needs to go bury herself under six feet of dirt and never resurface.

---

Sakura is halfway to disappearing from society entirely, hospital-bound in name only, but really planning to go home and quietly suffocate under a blanket of shame, when the thought hits her.

This spiral is familiar. Its rhythm, its shape, its deep, dragging gravity. She lived in it for years over Sasuke, years of chasing someone who couldn’t or wouldn’t return her feelings, years of swallowing words, of deferring action, of hoping he’d reach for her if she just waited long enough. A decade of pining.

She won't do it again. She has to put an end to this before it gets worse. Forcefully. Like the cut that needs to be made before infection spreads.

Sakura’s feet come to a halt. Standing in the middle of the street, sweat-streaked and red-faced, she takes a deep breath before exhaling slowly. Like she’s prepping for surgery. Or a fight.

She and Kakashi have been through war together. Their friendship can survive a conversation.

Straightening her shoulders, Sakura pivots on her heel and heads for his apartment. She’ll finally be the shinobi of decisive action, as she should have been from the start. There’s no specific plan in her mind, only one sentence, running on repeat. “Kakashi, listen, I can’t get past that kiss, and I want to know what it meant to you.”

It won’t be a confession or declaration. She won't tell him she has feelings for him. She won't tell him she's falling for him. No, she’ll simply ask for clarity. For honesty. And whatever happens next, at least she’ll know.

Notes:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
-from Emily Dickinson's “Hope” is the thing with feathers

Chapter 4: the realization

Summary:

angst and friendship and Sakura being oblivious in more ways than one

Kakashi's apartment is on the second floor of a quiet building tucked near the edge of the village. Sakura's been there many times. After missions, before workouts, during holidays. Evenings when she'd brought him dinner because she knew he'd forgotten to go to the store again.

As she climbs the stairs, her mind is a jumble, the past few weeks replaying on a loop. How did she go from accepting that the kiss was nothing but a tactical decision, that it had affected only her, to this strange, almost-belief that it had come to mean something more to Kakashi too? How did she go from never having thought of Kakashi as more than a friend to daydreaming about his mouth on hers every day?

Sakura wonders if she's been imagining his feelings into existence. If she allowed Ino to goad her to this decision. But then she thinks about all the little moments over the past few weeks. The gentle touches, the whispered comments, the teasing.

Sure, Kakashi has teased her countless times in the past. Made quiet observations to her in dozens of council meetings after the war. Brushed leaves from her hair and tears from her cheeks over the years. Wiped dust and blood from her face.

But Kakashi is also thoughtful, careful. Sakura's sure he knows the kiss lingered with her. He probably had her figured out the moment she didn’t tease him that night. So if he felt nothing, and wanted to make that clear, why would he continue to treat her in those familiar ways? He wouldn't, right?

Although she supposes if he'd stopped, it would have hurt. She would have questioned what had changed between them.

It's that thought that makes Sakura hesitate at the top of the steps. If Kakashi knew she was affected by the kiss but didn't want anything to change about their friendship, what would he do to control that outcome? If he wanted to learn how much she was affected without asking and without leading her on, how would he act?

And standing there, outside his door, heart hammering in her throat, it hits her. Weeks of confusion and embarrassment and pining suddenly coalesce into one big picture.

Gods. Why hadn’t she seen it? It's so obvious now, like a blinking neon sign across her thoughts.

Sakura should have known she was in over her head. Kakashi doesn’t play checkers. He plays three-dimensional chess. While Sakura’s all about what is, Kakashi lives in the realm of what if. She’s brute force, he’s finesse. She pushes. He waits. She demands. He invites.

All this time, she’s been agonizing over how to force a moment, lamenting her clumsy attempts that never landed. And yet, all this time, she failed to consider what Kakashi would actually do if he were trying to gauge her feelings before planning his next move. If he wanted to stop those feelings from advancing without hurting her. 

Well, for one, he'd treat her no less friendly. He might even tease her a little more than normal to see how she reacted. And if it turned out she was feeling too much? He might keep the pressure on while ignoring her attempts at flirtation. Drive her to initiate a conversation without ever saying a word.

Sakura sucks in a breath. It means his disregard for her flirting had been intentional. That the wink and the shirt removal were calculated. 

She sees it. Every beat. Every slow, intentional move. The patience of it. The Kakashi-ness of it.

He knew she had developed feelings, but not whether it was a temporary infatuation that would pass on its own, or something more serious. So he’s been testing the hypothesis. Poking. Prodding. Laying the foundation to make her reveal herself without asking a single question. And gods, she’s been as transparent as glass, hasn’t she?

Nothing he’d said or done would have felt unusual before the kiss. And yet he’d turned her into a bumbling mess with each one. It’s suddenly so clear. He intends to tell her the kiss meant nothing. He means to let her down gently before her feelings have a chance to spread further.

What else could it be? A man open to more would never need such subterfuge. If Kakashi wanted something too, he would have responded to her flirting. Reached back. Done something to meet her in the middle.

But a man who realizes his friend, a friend he knows and cares about deeply, has developed a one-sided crush? Well, when the man is Kakashi, subterfuge is second nature. Kakashi must have understood that if he brought it up, Sakura would have laughed it off, denied it, tried to bury it. That nothing would be resolved, and it might hurt their friendship.

But if she brought it up herself? Then it would be hers. She’d be ready for the outcome. She wouldn’t feel ambushed, and she could say what she needed to say, get closure, and walk away with the friendship intact. 

Kakashi isn’t in line to be the next Hokage because he’s strong or respected, though he's both of those. It’s because he can read a battlefield and a person with equal precision, because he can move the world without raising his voice.

He’s a master of making people do what he needs them to do, while they believe they came to it entirely on their own. And she, Sakura Haruno, elite medical ninja, war veteran, and emotionally compromised dumbass, has walked into every trap he laid. Every teasing glance. Every gentle touch. Every ordinary action he knew would be interpreted differently by someone with feelings. Every provocation meant to lead her to this conversation.

And now she’s here, staring at the door, realizing she's been manipulated. Her skin prickles with the heat of it, her stomach twisting around the humiliation and anger. She wonders if he ever accounted for the possibility she might figure out his game.

Thank the gods she hadn’t knocked. She turns away from the door, eyes stinging with unshed tears, heart wrenching so tightly it feels like chakra recoil in her chest. It was all so foolish. The daydreaming, the ridiculous flirtation attempts she can’t think about without cringing, the belief that what she'd felt in that alley wasn't one-sided.

She’s ready to bury it. To bury everything she had the mortification to imagine could happen between them.

But then the door opens. And Sakura stops breathing.

Kakashi stands in the doorway, relaxed as ever. He doesn’t look surprised to see her, but there's no smugness in his expression either. He’s just there. Loose shirt, hand resting on the frame, his presence quiet and steady.

Sakura’s never been good at hiding her emotions, even when she wants to, and she certainly doesn't want to now. Whatever calm Kakashi opened the door with, whatever plan he had in mind to steer the moment toward some emotionally safe conversation, falters when their eyes meet. He must see it all plain on her face. The hurt, the fury, the realization.

He doesn't try to redirect. There's no smart, deflective quip. Sakura’s breath is shallow, and her vision blurs, tears tracing hot down her cheeks. She hates it, but they fall anyway.

If only she'd figured it out five minutes earlier. Then the embarrassment would have been contained. Kakashi would never know. He’d think she got past it on her own. He’d recognize the retreat in her behavior, make a quiet note to himself that there was no need to push anymore, and they could have gone back to being themselves again.

But more than that, Sakura wishes she had never let him kiss her in the first place. None of this would have happened if she’d had some gods-damned presence of mind in that alley.

Sakura supposes she’s being a child about it. Other people lose so much more to shinobi life. Families. Futures. Themselves. What is a kiss in the grand scheme of war and sacrifice?

But it’s hers. And she wishes with everything she is that it had been anyone else but Kakashi. Because now that her eyes have been opened, there’s no going back for her heart. She would have known how to forget anyone else.

Kakashi opens his mouth to speak. She can see the soft shift of his body, the gentle beginning of something kind and careful and measured.

“Sakura,” he starts. His voice is composed in a damage-control kind of way. Like he’s putting down pressure around a spreading wound before it bleeds too far.

But Sakura can’t let this hurt go unexplained. She meets his eyes squarely and says the only thing she can to explain why this has all unraveled the way it has.

“It was my first kiss, Kakashi.”

She doesn’t know how to explain the look that goes through his eyes. Something in them fractures. It’s subtle, as he’s too good at hiding, but it almost looks like anguish.

And it becomes clear that in all his likely speculations, all his presumed theories about why the kiss had stayed with her, Kakashi never landed on the entire truth. Maybe he’d suspected she was overly sentimental. Or wasn’t jaded enough to shrug off physical contact. But he’d never considered it was her first kiss.

Seeing the truth hit him, Sakura supposes she should take some satisfaction that she's one of the few people to surprise the great Kakashi Hatake. But it's not a feeling that can comfort. She sees the pain in his eyes. The realization that he took something meaningful from her.

Even through her anger though, she hopes Kakashi knows it's not his fault. He got her consent, as much as anyone could in a moment of fast-moving necessity, with tension high and lives potentially on the line. He hadn’t forced anything. But the regret in his expression is so raw Sakura has to look away for a moment.

He lifts a hand. Instinctively, she thinks. But then he drops it. It's for the best. Physical comfort from him is the last thing she needs right now.

“I’m sorry, Sakura,” he says. “I didn’t know.” His voice is low and full of regret.

She nods once, a sharp little motion that still takes effort. The question has already slipped past her lips before she can stop it. “Did it… did it mean anything more to you than a mission tactic?”

Kakashi doesn’t look away from her, but he doesn’t immediately answer, and Sakura knows he would never admit it, even if it did mean something to him. She doesn’t let him respond.

“It’s okay,” she says, her voice raw. “I know it was just for the mission. I know that.” She attempts a smile, sure it looks pained.  “I… I need to go. But I’ll see you around.”

She turns and leaves, the tears warm on her cheeks. She’ll get past this. They’ll get past this, and they’ll be fine. Eventually.

---

Sakura pays little attention to where she’s going until she’s already there, breath catching, hand knocking before she can think better of it. Ino opens the door with that wide, sharp-eyed expression that reads everything in an instant. She doesn’t ask what happened. She just pulls Sakura inside.

Five minutes later, she's curled on Ino's couch, a warm cup of tea clutched in her hands. Her eyes are puffy, her face blotchy from crying. She feels scraped raw from the inside out. “Am I just… unlovable or something?” Sakura asks, her voice small.

“No,” Ino says immediately. “You’re not unlovable. You leave heartbroken men behind you like it’s your damn profession.”

Sakura huffs. “Yeah, okay, if you say so.”

Ino lifts an eyebrow. “You think I'd lie about something like that just to cheer you up? You know me better than that. You're oblivious to them. How, I have no idea, but you are."

"Like who?" Sakura asks.

"Um, most recently? That guy from the poison research division. He's pined over you for a year.”

“Who?” Sakura has no idea who Ino is talking about.

“Exactly, forehead,” Ino says, exasperated. “Meanwhile, the poor man was gasping because you accidentally brushed his arm once and said ‘good work.’”

“Okay, fine,” Sakura mumbles. “So why do I only ever fall for the ones who can’t give anything back?”

Ino sighs, softer now. “Because you love people who don’t know how to love themselves, much less open themselves up to loving someone else.”

Sakura’s eyes sting.

“I mean, you fell for Sasuke, who had a generation of trauma by the time he was seven years old, and was fueled by revenge most of the time we've known him. And now Kakashi, who, don’t get me wrong, can be funny and caring, but that man has locked himself behind a lifetime of guilt-flavored barbed wire.”

Sakura lets out a long breath.

“You’re not the problem,” Ino continues. “You just have deeply questionable taste in men.”

Wiping her face, Sakura says, “So what do I do? I don't know how I'm going to face him after this.”

Ino leans over, bumping her shoulder. “It might be rough for a while,” she says. “But he's your friend. He's probably feeling pretty bad right now, too. And in the meantime," she tilts her head, eyes gleaming, "I can name at least five men who'd be thrilled to help you get over it."

"Oh my gods, please don't," Sakura says with a faint smile. "You make it sound like a threat."

"It's a public service," Ino says. "You're welcome."

Notes:

And yet love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury.
-from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 40

Chapter 5: the avoidance

Summary:

emotional support sweet buns, reckless snack missions, and monkeys with diplomatic immunity

Sakura, despite being able to reroute damaged chakra networks mid-battle, despite having the expertise to advise the Shinobi Union on medical policy and emergency response frameworks, is sorely lacking when it comes to handling the pain of disappointed love.

So, only having her experience with Sasuke to draw from, and determined not to repeat the humiliation of that saga, she does the next logical thing. She avoids Kakashi.

The man she’s seen almost every day for the last two years. The man she’s trained with, laughed beside, shared cups of tea and teasing lunches and silent companionship with.

He becomes someone Sakura ducks away from.

She hears his voice from down the corridor of the Academy and turns into a classroom. She sees him entering the mission assignment room and suddenly remembers a stack of reports she needs to review somewhere else. If she’s walking through the market and spots silver hair, she slips behind a produce stall.

She tells herself it’s not forever. Just until she can go one day without thinking about him when she closes her eyes. Just until her stomach doesn’t flip when she catches a glimpse of him. Just until she forgets the regret that flashed through his eyes when she told him it was her first kiss.

It’s temporary. She’ll recalibrate. But for now, she hides.

Naruto finds her one afternoon on the hospital rooftop. He drops down from somewhere behind her, landing in a crouch that sends a gust of air flapping through her hair.

“Hey,” he says, straightening.

“Hi,” she says without looking up from her lunch. He plops down beside her and she can feel his eyes boring into the side of her face. She doesn’t need to look at him to know he’s wearing that thoughtful, scrutinizing look he gets when he’s puzzling out something.

“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” he asks eventually.

Sakura stiffens. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“You suck at lying.”

She knows. It’s why she’s up here. Because she can’t pretend to be okay. “I’m not lying.”

“Oh, okay,” Naruto says brightly. “Then you just forgot how to smile, and you’ve been walking around with the same face you made when you lost that bet and had to eat raw squid for breakfast.”

“I’m fine,” she repeats.

“No, you’re not,” he says, gentler now. “You’ve been off. And not in a you’re overworked kind of way. In a something’s heavy way.”

Sakura sighs. Naruto’s more perceptive than anyone gives him credit for.

“And don’t say it’s stupid,” he adds. “Or that it’s nothing. If it matters to you, then it matters.”

She stays quiet, picking at her lunch with her chopsticks.

“Anyway, I brought you some emotional support sweet bean buns,” he says cheerfully, digging in his weapons pouch. A moment later, he pulls out a squashed paper-wrapped package. “Ah,” he admits, frowning, “they’re a bit squished.” He unwraps the paper and shoves one of the buns in his mouth, handing the other to Sakura. “Still good though,” he mumbles.

Sakura’s eyes sting suddenly as she takes the offered treat.

Naruto pauses mid-chew, his eyes widening when he notices her tears. “I promise, they weren’t squished when I put them in there.”

Sakura huffs a wet laugh and takes a bite of the bun. “I don’t care about that, silly.”

“Ah, good,” he says, relieved. And after a minute or so, “So, you gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” Sakura murmurs. “But I promise, it isn’t anything you need to worry about. I’ll be fine. It’s just something bothering me now.”

He nods, quiet for a beat. And then, his eyes squinting, “This isn’t about that intel guy, is it?”

“Who?” Sakura asks, eyebrows furrowing.

“That guy who’s been after you for months. Do I need to take care of him for you?”

Sakura has no idea who Naruto’s talking about. Is it the poison expert Ino mentioned? “Are you talking about the poison research guy?”

This time, it’s Naruto’s forehead that wrinkles in confusion. “Who?” he asks.

“No one, never mind,” Sakura says, shaking her head. “And no, this isn’t about someone from intel. I don’t know who you’re even talking about.”

“Ah, poor guy,” Naruto says.

“And what makes you think I couldn’t punch someone through a wall on my own?” she says, eyes narrowing.

Naruto raises both hands, palms facing out in conciliation. “I wasn’t suggesting you couldn’t! Just figured I’d offer backup if needed.”

With another deep sigh, Sakura finishes the last of the sweet bun. Then, bumping her shoulder against Naruto’s, she says, “I’m fine, really.”

“Well, if you change your mind and want to talk, just let me know, okay?”

She nods, throat tight. She can’t tell him though. Naruto would combust if he knew this was about Kakashi. But having him there beside her is comforting.

“Thanks,” she says quietly.

He smiles, big and warm and unshakable. “Anytime.”

---

Sakura thought she’d feel better by now. It’s been a month. A month since she stood at Kakashi’s door, told him it was okay, and then stopped talking to him.

She’d gotten over Sasuke, hadn’t she? With Sasuke, she’d spent years of pining, of hopeless devotion, of holding on to scraps of connection, before finally letting go. Getting over a crush she only felt for a few weeks should be simple.

But that’s the thing. It isn’t just a crush. If this last month has brought any clarity, it’s the simple, devastating truth that she loves Kakashi. His quiet patience, his dry wit, his fierce loyalty. The way he sees things no one else does, the way he never lets his pain stop him from caring or doing what he believes is right.

And it hasn’t only been a few weeks. The kiss was just the catalyst. The match dropped on something that had already been primed to burn. Sakura's loved him for longer than she realized at first, and her heart can’t unknow what it feels.

Besides the sadness of unrequited love, though, there's something simpler. She misses him. Terribly. An ache-in-her-chest kind of missing.

The kind of missing that hits her when she has to stop herself from adding extra of the umeboshi he likes to her lunch. The kind that tightens her throat when she reads a hilarious new C-rank mission scroll and wonders what sarcastic comment he’d scribble in the margin. The kind that guts her walking home in the evenings alone, past the bench where they’d share lunch and make wild speculations about the villagers passing by.

Sakura misses Kakashi like he’s gone. And he might as well be.

The first week she started avoiding him, she still saw glimpses. The silver of his hair turning the corner. His voice, floating down a hallway.

But now, she doesn’t see him at all. There’s no longer the need to duck into classrooms or behind market stands. The reason hit her a few days ago, hard and sickeningly clear. He’s also avoiding her now. Staying away from all the places their paths might cross, trying to make it easier on her, giving her the space her actions have made clear she wants.

Even if Kakashi misses her, and maybe he does, he’s not going to find her. Not if he believes she doesn’t want to see him.

Kakashi is a master of self-denial. He’ll never be the one who makes romantic declarations at someone’s door. Never the man who drops everything to chase someone into the rain. He won’t cross a line once he thinks it’s been drawn, even if it hurts him. Especially if it hurts someone else.

If she’s been avoiding him, then that’s the message he’s taken. And he’ll accept that. Silently. Without protest. He not a man who walks back into someone’s space once he thinks he’s no longer welcome. He certainly won’t track her down to declare feelings he’s never hinted at having.  

But Sakura can’t bear the idea of never having his presence in her life again. And that’s what will happen if she doesn’t get her head out of her ass. If she insists on staying away in some misguided hope that she’ll forget he’s the best man she's ever met.

---

So she stops. She decides she’s done with the grief, the circling thoughts, the hiding. It’s not like she’ll stop loving him, and she’d rather sit beside him than not.  

The next day, the sun bright overhead, Sakura walks up to their bench outside the Hokage tower. Kakashi is there, the breeze catching his hair, book in hand, posture relaxed.

She doesn’t greet him. She just sits down next to him and casually says, “That one’s definitely hiding forbidden scrolls in her sleeves. Either that, or she’s smuggling in about twenty sticks of jerky for a secret snack drawer in the Archives.”

Kakashi glances up at the innocent archivist walking by and murmurs, “She’s the one who broke the Hokage’s seal stamp last week. Tsunade almost had to sign twelve documents in crayon. I imagine she’s trying to stay fueled before her next disaster.”

Sakura hums thoughtfully. “High-risk snack mission, then.”

He nods once. “Reckless, but brave.”

Sakura finally looks over at him then, and it stops her short. The words she was about to say catch in her throat.

There are dark circles under his eyes, the kind that don’t just speak of a bad night’s sleep, but many, weeks, maybe. And he’s thinner. Not dramatically. But enough that she can tell.

It hits her, hard. She’s been punishing him. She hadn’t meant to hurt him when she avoided him in the name of self-preservation. She’d told herself he didn’t miss her. That it didn’t matter to him. That he was fine.

But she sees now that he wasn’t. And when their eyes meet, there’s something in his expression she didn’t expect to see.

Relief. His eyes soften. Like he’s been holding his breath for a month and only now dares to exhale. Like maybe he thought she’d never look at him again.

---

They fall back into their old routines, at least outwardly. It doesn’t happen all at once, but slowly, incrementally, like a muscle being stretched back into motion after disuse. It aches, but it remembers.

The lunches are the first to start again. There’s no announcement or invitation, just Sakura sitting down beside him again the next day and the next. Jokes return, too. Quiet ones at first, but there.

Still, Sakura can tell, in how seldom he touches her now and in how he chooses his words a little too carefully, that things haven’t entirely returned to normal. Maybe they never will.

When the next council meeting arrives, Sakura slips into the chair beside Kakashi without a word. Naruto and Shikamaru had returned the evening before from a diplomatic mission to the Land of Wind, and Naruto is at the end of some story about a sandstorm, complete with wild gesturing and a noise that sounds like a dying bird meant to mimic Shikamaru’s reaction to a scorpion.

“Oh! Sakura-chan,” Naruto says, eyes lighting up as she sits down. He leans forward across the table like he’s letting her in on something secret. “You’re gonna love this.”

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. “Yeah?”

“So,” he begins, drawing the word out dramatically, “Shikamaru insisted we travel through the Rivers pass. You know, that narrow, rocky, miserable place? He claimed it was the ‘most efficient route.’” He adds air quotes with his fingers. “Fine, whatever. I’m flexible.”

A quiet snort comes from Shikamaru. Naruto ignores him.

“Three hours in,” Naruto continues, “we’re surrounded. Not by enemy shinobi, mind you. But goats. Giant, angry goats that look like they escaped the Animal District.”

Kakashi's voice is mild. “Goats.”

“Like, herd-level angry,” Naruto says, nodding. “They came pouring out of the rocks. One of them chased Shikamaru up a tree.”

“I was looking for an advantageous location to activate shadow possession,” Shikamaru says flatly.

Naruto slams his hand on the table. “You climbed a tree!”

“For tactical reasons,” Shikamaru mutters, “which wouldn’t have been necessary if you didn’t provoke them.”

Naruto grins wider and barrels on, undeterred, each sentence more chaotic than the last. Shikamaru’s interjections get more pained, more sarcastic, and the story devolves into an absurd back-and-forth of contradictions and interruptions.

At some point later, a monkey enters the story, and there's something about a stolen scroll that may or may not have been a dessert menu. Shikamaru presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Why were you even on this mission?” he mutters.

Sakura glances at Kakashi. A wordless flicker of understanding passes between them when their eyes meet. They don’t speak. They don’t have to.

This is ridiculous.

The corner of Sakura’s mouth twitches. Kakashi’s brow lifts just slightly. And then she giggles. His eyes crinkle in amusement, and a breathy chuckle escapes him. Then she’s laughing, shoulders shaking, and Kakashi is looking at her in this warm kind of way, as Naruto tries to explain how the monkey had diplomatic immunity, and Shikamaru is absolutely done.

Notes:

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
-from [love is more thicker than forget] by e.e. cummings

I think Sakura might be wrong in her opinion that Kakashi wouldn't make romantic declarations at someone's door