Chapter Text
She had snuck up on him like no other had before. He didn’t know when it happened, or how she’d managed it, but by the time he realized what was happening it was far too late. Now he was laid up in a bed that was far more comfortable than his own, with many more pillows, and much softer sheets. He promised himself this wouldn’t happen anymore. He thought he was stronger than this; but every time she came to him, he gave into her.
This was the last time. He would tell her no the next time.
He had been telling himself that for three months now.
Every time he said it, he knew he was lying. Every time he told himself he would get over this, he succumbed to it even further. It would pass eventually, on its own. But it hadn’t and it wouldn’t, and he knew that. So he lied to himself again, as he laid there with her bare skin pressed against his, and the smell of her everywhere.
Sometimes when they lay like this, he could convince himself this was the right thing to do. It was easy to think she was his when she was tucked into his body so tightly, when her skin was still marked up from his hands and mouth. He could still smell himself on her. It would only be there for awhile longer, he knew. He would have to enjoy it while he still could. Once the sun broke the horizon, she would step into the shower covered in him, and emerge a clean slate.
He wondered why she bothered, but he didn’t dare ask. Her husband wouldn’t notice one way or another. He hadn’t touched her since she’d had their daughter. Kakashi was certain he stopped bothering the moment he’d found out she was pregnant.
Kakashi was indebted to him. Without his negligence, he would never have wound up in her bed.
Or perhaps it was a curse. His mind changed depending on the time of day.
When he was inside her, it was a miracle. She was as much his as she ever would be and he would do everything in his power to make it count. Her body was his, and it was all too easy to think that having her body was the same as having all of her. The way she said his name in a prayer every night, some unholy angel sent to tempt him, was all the convincing he needed. If this was some divine test, he had failed spectacularly.
Maybe it was his punishment for his greed. He had tasted fruit that was never meant to be his. It had been too sweet to turn down, and now that he had had her, there was no putting her down. He knew come morning he would hate himself for it, but her breathing was shallower now, and her eyelashes were fluttering, and she was waking. She was ready for more of him, and he was all too willing to give her everything he had.
So he did. Again, and again, diving into her, giving her what she wanted, what she couldn’t get from her husband, hoping that one of these nights he would get so deep into her skin that she wouldn’t ask him to leave in the morning.
When the day broke, she was kissing him sweetly and bidding him goodbye from her window. She couldn’t risk her daughter catching them. He tried to kiss her a little more deeply, just a few more seconds to show her she needed him like he needed her. Just a few more minutes and she would feel what he felt.
She missed a mark on her chest, just above her breast. When she caught him staring at it she quickly healed it and shooed him away. See you tonight, she whispered before closing the window behind him.
This was the last time. He wouldn’t come to her tonight. He wouldn’t.
She was crying when he found her. He had staved off his craving for two hours before he caved. She didn’t come calling; she hadn’t said or done anything to indicate she was missing him, but he could see her crying through the window of the bedroom she was meant to share with her husband. The window was unlocked already.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” she said between her sniffling.
“I always come,” he said lowly, damning himself as he reached for her tear streaked face.
“He’s not coming home,” she said, looking up at him with watery eyes.
“I know.” He never came home. He wasn’t sure why she was still surprised when she received that news.
It was easy enough to wipe away the tears and the sadness, at least for the time being. Her tears dried as the rest of her became dewy and slick. Her sadness was washed away with ecstasy, a temporary replacement for the love she lacked. That wasn’t right, he thought. She had love, and plenty of it. Just not for him.
He left before the sun told him it was time. Was it worth it? To condemn himself to this life when all she would ever see him as was a placeholder for an absent husband? Someone to keep her bed warm and her body occupied until her husband decided to want her? What about what he wanted?
She came to him that night. She smelled of sake and perfume, and she was wearing heels that were too high, and a skirt that was too short. He fucked her in those heels. The dress was unsalvageable by the time he was done with her. Her voice was hoarse and her legs were wobbly, but she kept her shoes on. She never spent the night with him in his home, and it was far easier to make a getaway with her shoes on.
He watched her go the way she came, her tattered dress in her hands and one of his old standard issue sweaters covering her otherwise naked body. He wondered what she would do with it once she was home. Throw it away? Her husband probably would never know it was there, much less whom it belonged to. Still, Sakura was nothing if not meticulous.
He got his answer three nights later, when he arrived to her window to see her standing in front of the bathroom mirror, razor in hand while she finished shaving her legs. She was wearing his sweater. When he opened the window he could smell she hadn’t washed it yet. Her room smelled of him. She must have been wearing it to sleep, he realized, his heart twisting painfully in his chest.
The smile on her face did nothing to remedy his mangled heart when she turned to see him. Her arms were around his neck and she held her body to his and kissed him like he was her husband, finally come home. He could hardly breathe under the weight of that embrace. He waited for her to tell him the news; her husband was coming home, or he had finally told her he loved and cherished her. Something that would wound him deeply enough to send him packing for good, but the news never came.
She was happy to see him. Not as a placeholder, but just as himself. He didn’t even have to fabricate it, she had told him herself. I missed you, Kakashi-sensei, she had teased before sinking down onto him. He didn’t ask how she’d missed him when it had been nary twelve hours since he’d been inside her last, because gods knew he missed her every moment of every day.
She was beautiful as she lay beside him, naked and on top of the covers, pink hair splayed around her head like a halo, an indication she was every bit the divine being he thought her to be. She flushed deeply when he told her as much. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had called her beautiful. He made it a point to tell her every night just what he thought of her after that.
She grew bolder, coming to his office in the middle of the day under the guise of some business with her hospital reform plan. The reform had been in good order for some time now, and had all the appropriate approvals, but the chunin outside his office didn’t know that, and so the two of them were locked away in his office doing business for some inordinate amount of time.
His assistant never asked Sakura’s reason for visiting after that first time. Kakashi was certain he had heard her crying for him as he recited her proposal between her thighs, but he didn’t care much. Maybe the news would get back to her husband and he would be the one to publicly end their farce of a marriage. Until that happened, though, Kakashi was resigned to pleasuring her this way.
He wondered who she thought of when she dreamt. Was it his face she saw before she fell asleep? When she looked at the wedding portrait on her daughter’s nightstand, did she think she had married the wrong man? Did her daughter realize what a miserable mess her mother had trapped herself in? Did either of them know he was dying to break them out of it?
Sarada’s first away mission had Kakashi laid up with Sakura for an entire weekend. He had never made it past her bedroom before then, and seeing the home she kept for her family—for her husband—sent shooting pains through his body. Pieces of the Uchiha clan were scattered about. They were even on her clothes, a claim staked by a man who never cared to claim her in any way outside of her image.
He tried to leave. He couldn’t stay in this house, in this mausoleum to a failed partnership, not when she had a better option lying next to her every night, but simply refused to see it. He had said goodbye, but she kissed him so enticingly, he’d wound up back in her bed, between her legs.
When he tried to leave without saying goodbye, she had woken too soon and stared after him in disappointment. He thought it was unfair of her to be so heartbroken at his departure when he was so heartbroken to stay. Still, he slinked back between her sheets.
“Hold me?” she begged, scooting closer to him, even though she was already half on top of him. He wrapped his arms around her, her silky skin feeling too familiar under his hands.
“Leave him, Sakura,” he whispered. She hummed sleepily in response and neither of them mentioned it again.
She didn’t stop him from leaving come morning, even though Sarada wasn’t due back until evening. He had likely overstepped the boundaries she had imposed on him. He was proud to have stayed away from her that night, and the next day she hadn’t appeared at his office or his home, and he thought that perhaps the curse had been broken.
Two more days went by and neither of them sought each other out. It was difficult to be so close to her, to know where she was every moment of the day and not seek her out. His stomach was in knots everywhere he went. Every time someone knocked on his door at the office, his breath caught. When he heard steps outside his door, he stared at it, waiting for her to come through it. But she never did.
He wondered if she was doing the same. Every time her window rattled, did she hope he was on the other side? He couldn’t allow himself to entertain ideas like that. He was a placeholder. For all he knew, she had found someone else to occupy his space.
It was Sarada who sought him out, to his surprise.
“My mum’s acting weird, and I think it’s your fault,” she said sternly, a perfect combination of Sasuke and Sakura. She blushed deeply as she bowed in deference. “Hokage-sama,” she added hastily. Better, he thought, though that wasn’t what had concerned him the most about her visit.
“What do I have to do with your mother’s behaviour?” he asked coolly, leaning back and scrutinizing her.
“I know you visit her sometimes,” Sarada said with a frown. “And she wears this old sweater sometimes. The same one you wear in her old Team Seven photo.”
“It could be hers,” he offered.
“Too big,” she waved off.
“Could be your father’s,” he added softly. The dubious, arched brow on her face told him everything he needed to know. She was her mother’s child.
“I’m not dumb,” she said needlessly. Kakashi could tell she was a very bright child. “I know she and my dad aren’t like…other parents.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Aren’t you her friend?”
He knocked at her window that night. She looked up at him in shock, and he could see she had been crying. For him, or for her husband, he had no idea, but she let him in and buried her head in his chest and cried for half the night.
“What about Sarada?” she asked as she lay beside him, finally acknowledging what he had said to her the last time they had been together. She was wearing his sweater, her arms were wrapped around him, and her lips were swollen with his kisses, but still she thought of her husband. Still, she didn’t see that he was here for her in a way her husband never would be.
He could tell her that Sarada knew. She knew about her failure of a marriage, she knew her mother was more comforted by Kakashi’s sweater than any of the Uchiha crest emblazoned trinkets and robes that were scattered in their home. She may have even known that Kakashi climbed through this window every night to keep Sakura company in a way her husband hadn’t in over twelve years.
Instead, he told her what she wanted to hear.
“I was just being selfish,” he said lowly. She didn’t believe him, but she didn’t challenge him. She was the selfish one, and they both knew it.
“Will you come again tomorrow?” she whispered.
“I always do.”
Her eyes were swimming with tears when she kissed him goodbye the next morning. She hadn’t asked him to leave this time, and he wished she had. It was much easier to understand the confines of this relationship when she set hard limits. Kissing him like she couldn’t wait to do it again only made him fall deeper into his delusions.
They were both painfully aware that he was in love with her. He thought she could love him back, if she would just let go, and in his really desperate moments he could even convince himself that she did love him. She just didn’t know it yet. That one of these nights, she would bring him in through the door, and he would wake up in the morning to have coffee with her in the kitchen, instead of stealing away like a bandit in the night.
After a few more weeks of the same, he was adamant again that he would not succumb to her. He would stay home, and endure the pains of withdrawal, because she was a drug and she would kill him one of these days, he just knew it. There was only so much one man could take, and all the dead friends in the world hadn’t prepared him for mourning the loss of someone who hadn’t actually gone anywhere.
He was piss drunk. He had come so close to going to her, knowing that he would find her laying in her bed, wearing his sweater, possibly crying but definitely ready to welcome him, arms and legs open. He drank so much that he could hardly tell up from down, and then he was tripping over his own feet and collapsing to the ground, alone in his apartment, because he was almost always alone these days. He wondered if he would just pass out there.
His angel came to his rescue. A vision of pink and red, and she smelled of sake herself, at least he thought she did. He was looking at her hair, and then he was making himself well acquainted with her shoes, unsure why she was standing on her head and spinning so, so quickly.
When he opened his eyes again, he was looking into the toilet bowl. Sakura was beside him, running cool fingers over his forehead, behaving like the benevolent creature he knew she could be. He tried to speak but all that escaped him was a pitiful moan and whatever liquids he had consumed. Sakura shushed him, and comforted him, and did everything a caring woman could do, except actually care about him. The sting of it was sobering enough for him to stand up and wash his face.
“Why you here?” he slurred, leaning heavily against the bathroom cabinet. She was kneeled before him, frowning delicately with a concern she had no right to feel for him.
“I…I wanted to see you,” she said softly as she rose to stand beside him. He flinched when she reached out for him, nearly sending himself toppling over.
“Mm,” he grunted with heavy nods. “You mean you came to fuck,” he said, staring down at her as coldly as he could while he swayed on his feet. “S’what you wanted, right?” She flinched when he leaned toward her, but she still caught him when he lost his balance.
“I…I just…” She stumbled over her words with about as much grace as Kakashi had.
“You just need a good fuck,” he said plainly. “Someone to fill your cunt for the night ‘cuz—‘cuz your husband won’t.” Sakura was staring at him like he’d physically struck her, but he was pretty sure physical blows would have collided with less impact.
“Don’t say that,” she said, trying to keep her voice strong but failing miserably. The last thing he needed was for her to cry, and make him feel like he could actually do something to help her. Like she actually wanted him for more than body heat.
“Why not? S’the truth,” he said with a careless shrug that set him off balance again. She caught and righted him. He hated that her hands were on him, and he hated that the felt like they belonged there. “Get someone else to fill you up for tonight, Sakura. I’m closed for business,” he spat out, hoping to shock her away from him. It worked.
“I’m not leaving you,” she warbled. He almost reached out to kiss her. Fuck. He was so weak.
“I don’t want you here,” he said, even though all he ever wanted was for her to always be around. “I don’t want you at all,” he continued, watching her conviction slowly begin to chip away finally. “It’s pathetic, y’know?” he said, though he was sure he was the pathetic one in this situation. “Your marriage, your home, you. Pathetic.” Her facade broke and the tears came.
She left at that. He was confident she wouldn’t return.
Sarada found him again, a week later. It had taken about that long for his hangover to pass. He could barely remember what he’d said to her, only that he’d woken up the next morning with a stone of regret weighing heavily in his stomach. He had seen her three days later, walking down the street, but when she saw him she turned on her heel and headed in the opposite direction.
Pathetic. He remembered that much.
“Something’s wrong with my mum,” she said, worrying on her lip and staring up at him helplessly. “Hokage-sama,” she added as an afterthought.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asked, despite knowing that she was on the brink of a cavernous loneliness that he knew too well.
“I don’t know,” Sarada said after a long moment. “She’s different.” The little girl before him looked so heartbroken he was sure he was looking at Sakura herself.
“People get upset,” he offered.
“She’s not upset. I’ve seen her upset. Like when she shouts, or punches Naruto-ojisan,” Sarada said adamantly. He couldn’t argue with that. “She’s just…different.”
A long silence passed between them. Sarada continued chewing on her lip.
“Will you help her?” she asked with wide eyes that looked just like Sasuke’s but help all the emotion of her mother.
“I don’t think I can.”
“But you’re her friend!” she insisted. He wasn’t so sure about that either.
Sarada wasn’t wrong about one thing, though. Sakura was different, and he tried hard not to care, but he did. She was solemn, lifeless, and gaunt; words he never would have dreamed of using to describe the Sakura he knew. The Sakura he loved. Maybe she was gone now, he thought with a glimmer of hope. That would certainly make his life easier.
He found her in her office one day. She looked up at him disinterestedly until she realized who she was looking at. He watched her back go up as she stiffly regarded him from the other side of her desk. She wouldn’t speak, probably hoping he would change his mind and just leave. He heard her breathing grow shallow and ragged, like she was terrified of being in this room with him.
“Sarada’s worried about you,” he said finally. He had nothing else to offer her.
“You came here to talk to me about my daughter?” she asked in disbelief. A glimmer of herself returned for just a moment and he felt his throat close up.
“She came to me,” he said, pretending that he didn’t notice how tight his voice sounded.
“Why would she do that?” she asked, though he was sure it was a rhetorical question. He watched her slump into her seat, looking more tired than he’d ever seen her.
“She wanted me to help you,” he said softly. She laughed bitterly. It sounded wrong coming from her; it was far too jaded.
“You can’t,” she said with a shake of her head. She turned away from him, sorting through a stack of papers on her desk, probably indicating that she would have liked him to leave. He sighed and told himself he was doing this for Sarada.
“Look, I know—”
“You can’t,” she gritted out with a hard look. “Please go,” she said, turning her back to him fully. He didn’t move. They stayed like that, he wasn’t sure for how long, with her shuffling aimlessly though paperwork and him waiting until she was ready to face him. He circled her desk, reaching for her shoulders when she whirled on him.
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” she whispered, hands shaking and lip quivering as she stared at him. He had barely brushed his fingers against her wrist when she disappeared in a flurry of leaves.
He felt he should have been happy. He finally had what he had been chasing after. He was free from her. How silly, he realized, that all it had taken were some sloppy lies and deep-seated cruelty, and she had finally set him loose. Now, both of them had their lines cut, and they were sent adrift. He wondered if he had severed their lifelines. Perhaps they were meant to be bogged down together.
He had known this would be difficult, but he hadn’t anticipated anyone’s hardship but his own. Sakura was spiralling, Sarada was missing her mother, and Kakashi was drifting aimlessly. Was this better than where he had been? Was being estranged better than being her lover?
He nearly drank himself into a stupor again that night, stopped only by the memory of Sakura flinching away from him. She’d hardly been able to look at him, much less stand to have him touch her. His heart twisted just as badly now as it had when he was laid in her bed. When would this pass? He didn’t think he could take much more of it.
One day, the news came that Sasuke had returned. He hadn’t spoken to Sakura in nearly two months and Sarada had long since given up on recruiting his help. Either the little kunoichi had lost hope in her Hokage, or her mother had dissuaded her from speaking to him. Most of him just hoped that Sakura had taken a turn for the better, and Sarada had her mother back. The remaining fraction hoped that she was as miserable as he was.
Sasuke had come to see him before his family. The Hokage’s office was his first order of business. If it had been Kakashi, nothing would have stopped him from going home to his wife and daughter. He was embittered toward his former student, and he was certain it came across, though Sasuke did an excellent job in not caring one way or another.
Kakashi was stunned the next day to see them out as a family, enjoying a mild spring afternoon. Sakura looked every bit the dutiful wife, but something was missing. Sarada was regaling her father with the stories of her missions and teammates, and Sakura was following a step behind them, watching their feet as they walked about. She wasn’t smiling.
He realized he could no longer remember the last time he saw her smile. Maybe she saved them for when he couldn’t see them. Maybe he didn’t deserve to see them. He hoped that was true, but some part of him knew it wasn’t.