Fic: "Three Things Kakashi Has Forgotten About War"

[redbrunja]

Title: Three Things Kakashi Has Forgotten About War
Author: redbrunja 
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: NC-17
Author's Note: Dedicated to nimblnymph , who provided me with VAST's "Too Young For Me" which I listened to obsessively writing this. And then went above and beyond in her beta-ing duties.
Characters: Kakashi, Sakura.
Summary: “There are things that Kakashi has forgotten about war."

There were things that Kakashi had forgotten about war.

There are missions that go dreadfully, horrifically, nightmarishly wrong even when no one he knows dies. It's almost comforting to relearn that.

This was one of those missions.

It ended with every member of the eight-man cell that had set out sans Sakura and himself dead.

He was leaning against the wall in Tsunade's office, filthy, dripping with water and so weary that his bones seemed liquid.

Sakura was relating information that meant that their allies couldn't be trusted, informing her shishou that their mission was a failure. Kakashi tuned the specifics out - he already knew the details and listening to the unusual huskiness of Sakura's voice was much more worrying than teammates he'd already failed to protect, whose names he couldn't remember.

Sakura trailed off, voice hitching, and Kakashi tried to remember the name of the ninja whose brains were in his hair.

Although, the gray matter that had been slipping down the side of his head a day and a half ago might be gone. It had been raining pretty hard. And then there had been the whole Sakura knocking him into that lake to avoid those flame jutsus.

Tsunade bent her head, her hands steepled before her. "I see," she said. "You may go."

Sakura nodded, bit her lip. "I'm sorry, shinshou," she whispered, eyes downcast.

"Don't apologize," Tsunade said sharply, and Sakura flinched. The Hokage sighed, and looked like she was about to explain, but her student was already limping out the door. Kakashi followed along like a wounded pet, flicking Tsunade a vacantly sympathetic look. If she'd apologized for coming back alive, he would have snapped at Sakura, too.

He didn't think as he walked through Konoha at Sakura's heels. It wasn't just that he'd been following her for days, half determined to herd her back home and half refusing to fall behind a seventeen-year-old jounin who brought strawberry chapstick on missions. He followed her because.... because she was Sakura; bright, emotional Sakura. Even when she was slouched in dejection the world was a better place when she was next to him.

He tromped up the stairs to her apartment after her, both of them sounding as subtle as diseased elephants. He couldn't even begin to care about the neighbors.

Sakura's apartment was dark and she didn't turn on a light, opting instead to stand in the entryway. He could hear her breathing too quickly, feel the heat of her body inches from his. She stood, and Kakashi shifted closer, his pulse mirroring hers in the same way that he used to match breaths with his assassination targets in the instant before he stuck. He could smell her: mud and girl-scent and bracken and fear-sweat and the faintest tang of her plum-blossom soap.

She reached for a lamp, and he wanted her to stop, wanted to keep this odd intimacy that was between them. Sakura paused. Instead of turning it on, she hurled the lamp across the room.

It hit the far wall, shattered, and Sakura whirled towards him, dropping her pack with a monolithic thud.

Kakashi shoved her back against the wall, hands in her hair, and ravaged her neck with his teeth, biting through his cotton mask to leave red, angry marks on her skin.

He fucked her with his mask up and her boots on.

He'd been in her apartment before and even while distracted with unbuckling her skirt he found his way to her bedroom as easy as a kunai piercing flesh.  She tripped as he yanked her shorts down, but the bed was there to catch her. She was fumbling with his zipper, biting her lip with concentration. Kakashi knocked his hitai-ate off, freed his erection from his pants, and then covered her, pinning her wrists down as he kneed her thighs apart. It wasn't until then, sliding into her, hot and deliciously tight, that the inexcusable wrongness of this situation hit him.

She hissed in pain and then twisted her face away from him, trying to hide her reaction. Kakashi stilled and she smiled reassuringly at him but there were still lines of discomfort across her face and he could smell the coppery-sweet tang of fresh blood. She wrapped her legs around his waist, moved experimentally against him and he tightened his hold on her wrists. She shifted, tilted her hips, squirmed, and it took every drop of Kakashi's self-control to merely match her infinitesimal motions and not thrust into her hard and fast.

There was a burgeoning pleasure in her face. She gave him this brave little smile that was tremulous and terribly familiar. Kakashi reached between them and began stroking at her clit until she was blushing and grinding her hips against his and oh, her face.... He watched her self-consciousness strip away. "Oh, Kakashi, please," she gasped, her voice light and needy and free of pain. He let his fingers graze lower, touch the place where his body was sliding into her. He almost lost it then, drunk of the thought/sensation of being inside her, of her body taking his.

The thick soles of her boots were scraping at the backs of his thighs and he rolled his hips, hit a spot inside of her that made her nails bite harder, breaking the skin even through his shirt. He repeated that action, a possessive smirk behind his mask as her sex clenched around his.

She climaxed with a small cry and the threads of his self-control snapped. He sheathed himself in her, deep, lost in the way the after shocks of her orgasm seemed to stroke his cock as he moved. A double handful of thrusts and he was done, groaning in the back of his throat as he emptied into Sakura.

He disengaged, rolled onto his back.

After a moment, he stole a glance at her. She was staring at the ceiling, arms curled protectively around herself. Her fingers ticked, like she was counting something in her head.

Kakashi opened his mouth.

"I need to shower," Sakura said and got up, grabbing a throw to wrap around her hips. Her shirt was half undone. Kakashi didn't remember yanking it open, but he did have a tactile memory of her bud-like nipples under his palms.

The bathroom door closed horrifyingly softly.

Kakashi shoved himself back in his pants, zipped up, swore.

He still had blood under his nails.

He hadn't even kissed her.

When she came out of the bathroom, hair wet and clean, holding the neck of her robe closed with one hand, Kakashi wasn't in her bed.

He was twenty feet outside her window. She pressed her hands over her face as her shoulders began to shake and he was too much of a coward to go back and apologize.

He didn't think he was a good enough liar to make her believe him anyway after all the ethical lines he blatantly crossed tonight.

~~~~

"Well, Obito," Kakashi said to the cenotaph a bottle and a half of sake later. "I certainly fucked that one up."

~~~

There were things that Kakashi had forgotten about war.

Such as the fact that his superiors were not in the habit of giving him time to attempt to fix his personal screw ups before they sent him off on unranked missions. The mission itself was ugly, brutal, and a day at the bath house compared to returning to Kohona to find Sakura dating some civilian boy.

"You're dating him?" Kakashi said cooly, staring at the mop-haired boy who was currently across the market and looking at Sakura like he knew exactly how delicious her skin was.

"Why shouldn't I?" she asked, looking at him with an odd intensity in her eyes.

Kakashi ruffled his hair.

"He's not good enough for you," he said, and watched disappointment crawl across her face.

"He's nice," Sakura said cuttingly.

Kakashi made a noncommittal sound and later, when the street lamps were pools of golden light amid bruise-blue shadows, he wandered through the trees outside her apartment, watching that stupid civilian boy moving over her with the grace of a rutting dog.

He's selfish and oblivious and didn't get her off.

Sakura stared at the ceiling for a while before examining her manicure behind the back of the man currently inside her and Kakashi felt lust and shame and possession, all wrapped up in tight little spires of emotion he'd like to rip out of his body with his bare fingernails. He failed her so utterly, and he should be in her bed even now. He'd make her moan and move and come. Kakashi pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered what kind of sick bastard he is that Sakura naked and unhappy and being fucked by someone else still made him hard.

Two and a half hours after they had broken up, before Sakura could even mange to get drunk, Kakashi has her shoved up against the coatroom door of some shinobi bar, skirt around her waist, one leg over his shoulder as he licked at her clit, sliding his tongue along her slit into one slow stroke after another until she was muffling her cries in her hands.

There are seals over the door. The nothing-to-see-here genjutsus were tickling at his senses, impossible to pay attention to when Sakura's juices were on his lips and he could taste her in the back of his throat.

He knew he was going to be tasting her for days.

Sakura's head lolled back in the aftermath, and then she slid down to straddle him. She was wet and slick and still so delightfully snug around his cock that he lost his breath, especially when she started moving over him, rhythm fast and merciless.

When they were done, Kakashi traced a finger through the sweat slowly drying along the inside of her thigh. Her head was pillowed on his shoulder, and he could feel every exhalation.

"People are going to want their coats," she said, standing, starting to put herself back in order. "If you want we could...." she stopped herself.

Kakashi waited, wanting to hear her make the offer.

Instead she zips up her top and starts to peel the seals away from the door frame.

Kakashi slapped a hand over hers, his body pressed against her back.

"Don't," Sakura begged, "Please, I... I can't handle you leaving again."

"I won't," he told her, tilting her head and making her look at him. He smiled at her, leaned close, brushed her lips with his.

Sakura didn't respond.

"You bastard," she breathed after a moment. "How can you make me believe you after everything?"

"Sakura..."

"Please don't make this harder," she said and her nails ripped through the parchment keeping them concealed.

~~~~

Kakashi had forgotten that war makes people say yes to relationships they shouldn't.

This time, he was sitting one stool away when Naruto turned to Sakura and said, "Hey, Sakura-chan, how about we go to that festival tomorrow?" and she said "sure."

"Is this like a date?" Naruto pressed and then tensed, ready to duck.

"If you want," Sakura said, taking a bite of ramen.

Kakashi tested the tensile strength of his chopstick and debated which method of execution would hurt Naruto the most.

"You're going to break his heart," Kakashi told her when Naruto left.

"Stay out of it, sensei," Sakura responded.

They went to the festival together, and they looked delightful next to each other. They were a bright, happy couple for the next generation to follow and if Kakashi didn't look at her eyes, he would have believed it too. But her eyes were unhappy, even as her mouth smiled, and Kakashi didn't know what the right thing to do was. He'd lost all claim to being unbiased on the subject of Haruno Sakura.

He certainly knew what the wrong thing was; standing too close to her, stealing pseudo-innocent touches in the presence of other people, smiling at her with just that extra touch of heat. He does it anyway.

It was the only vengeance he would allow himself and scant repayment for having to smell Naruto's sweat on Sakura's skin.

"Hey, Sakura-chan, do you want to get married?" Naruto asked an excruciatingly long eight months later.

Sakura froze.

Kakashi wondered why Naruto felt the need to have these conversations at a ramen stand.

In public.

In front of him.

Sakura turned to look at Naruto, her neck moving as stiffly as an ill-maintained puppet.

Naruto flinched preemptively.

"Maybe," she said in an utterly flat voice.

Naruto looked ecstatic. "Really?"

"Yeah," Sakura confirmed. "I just need to think about it."

Kakashi considered killing himself with his chopsticks.

"You don't love him," he said after Naruto had gone to tell everyone in the entire village that Sakura had said maybe to his proposal.

"That's why it will work out," Sakura said, as logically as if she was answering an arithmetic question. "He loves me."

Kakashi reached out and brushed her hair back. He pulled down his mask, leaned over and kissed her like he should have before he took her to bed, sometime when they weren't both crazy with adrenaline and death. He started slow, sweet, softly pressing his lips against hers until she opened her mouth. He took his time, nipping at her bottom lip before sliding his tongue inside, deepening the kiss, until it changed from tentative and caring to dark, possessive.

"I'm sick of sharing you with worthless boys," he breathed into her mouth.

"You left."

"I should have stayed."

"But you didn't," Sakura's eyes were wide. "You didn't."