Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Icha Icha Sakura ❯ Chapter 6

Chapter 6

 

After overhearing Kakashi's conversation with Jiraiya, Sakura had slipped away before she could be found, her mind still reeling. She was having trouble thinking; it was as if her brain had completely stopped functioning. She closed herself up in an empty patient room to give herself some time to process everything she'd overheard. Back resting against the wall, she sat on the floor with her legs pulled up to her chest and let her mind consider what she'd heard.

Yes, she had feelings for Kakashi, but she was still unsure of them. It sounded like he was rather unsure of his emotions regarding her as well. She did know her feelings for him definitely weren't that of a student to her teacher, unless every student spent her time thinking about squeezing her teacher's ass. She groaned and rested her head on her bent knees.

It's all that stupid orange book's fault. No, strike that, it was all Jiraiya's fault. If she had thought she needed revenge for just appearing in his book, he would really get it for pulling this crap.

How many times in the last week had she found herself thinking about Kakashi even before he made an appearance in the book? And how many of them were at completely inappropriate times with some very dirty thoughts? Especially when she should be focusing on a patient instead.

He really did have a great body, fit and limber without an inch of fat on him. And she had wondered for years what that mask was hiding. Sasuke and Naruto had been convinced he was hiding some sort of disfigurement but she thought otherwise. Even if he did, it wouldn't matter. Physical appearance wasn't the real reason she liked him; it was just an added bonus. She liked his slightly cynical outlook and the quick subtle jokes he would make around her. He was the one who would wait with her for Naruto and Sasuke to finish beating the crap out of each other, sitting back to back or shoulder to shoulder with her, neither saying anything. Neither feeling the need to say anything.

But it wasn't just her thoughts during the past week. When she realized she and Sasuke had no romantic future, she had found herself turning to Kakashi for reassurance. He was the one who'd been there for her when Sasuke had left and when the only thing Naruto could think about was finding his best friend to drag him back to Konoha. In the past few years, when her skills as a ninja had suffered because of her intense focus on her medic skills, he was the one she trained with regularly, almost religiously to improve them.

What she felt for him was different from her feelings about Naruto or Sasuke. He'd been her teacher and he'd become her friend, and… now she wanted more. She'd seen his lean body while healing him from his numerous injuries, his dislike of hospitals forcing her to treat him in his home, giving her a good chance to admire the rest of his body, all of it perfectly toned under those too numerous scars.

She couldn't just walk up to him and tell him she had a crush on him, nor could she just accidentally let it slip out in the middle of sparring. Maybe she could just back him into a corner, rip his clothes off and screw him senseless. Mmmmm… she shook her head. No, no, no, as appealing as that last one sounded, (and it sounded really, really, really good) she didn't think it would work.

Wait, could this all just be because she's horny? That itch she needed scratching, was that all the only reason she was thinking of Kakashi? Could she merely be imagining those feelings, could she just be so desperate to find someone who cared for her that she would accept anyone who gave her a hit of emotions? Was this just another crush on a man who couldn't (or wouldn't) love her back.

She really needed to talk to him to figure this out. She needed to know where he stood. She would find a place she could talk to him easily, somewhere private, somewhere familiar. His apartment would work fairly well, after all, he needed to sleep sometime. She would wait for him there and talk to him when he returned.

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Sakura spent the entire night in his small apartment, waiting for him to come home. After a while, she had started to snoop around a little. Not a lot; it wasn't like she went through his drawers or anything, but she had taken a good look at the things lying out. He had a picture of the old team 7, probably taken right around the time of their first real mission. There was a similar picture sitting in a frame next to it. A man she recognized as the Yondaime stood with his own team of genins standing in front of him. A young Kakashi was easily identified by the mask and the spiky silver hair although she could see both eyes and they were black.

How odd. She knew that unlike Sasuke's Sharingan, Kakashi's eye was always working, meaning it was always red with the black tomoe. For a person born with the blood limit, like Sasuke and his now deceased brother Itachi, the eyes would remain completely black until activated. Of course, she knew Kakashi's was a transplant but this picture told her it was something that happened after he'd joined his first team.

The girl and boy in the picture looked nice. Whatever happened to them? They must have died or become missing-nins. He never talked about them, but then again, he never talked about his parents or other friends either.

She stared at the pictures for a good long time, her eyes always returning to her own team. What did he really think of her? Could what she had overheard be true or was she imagining it? She may be 22 years old but she was quite a bit younger than him, 14 years to be exact, would he really want a woman so much younger? She had been his student, could he ever care for her as a woman or would he constantly see only the things in her that needed improvement? What if she was purely imagining this, clutching at a bad idea conjured by one of Jiraiya's silly orange books.

It couldn't be that. No, please don't let it be that.

Why did she think about that sort of thing? It had hurt. It hurt to think she could be imagining all this, that he might not care for her, that he might not love her. She felt like she had lost a part of herself. It felt… lonely.

She reached out to pick up the old team 7 picture. Ignoring her younger self, Sasuke and Naruto, she studied the silver haired man. It had been almost ten years yet he looked the same. Her finger traced along his familiar features and she couldn't help but smile. Unlike the picture of his child self, he was smiling. Did she really love him or was it that she just admired a man who'd been in her life since she was twelve? A man she'd looked up to for all those years.

It sure felt like it was more than just admiration. Eventually she would figure it out, but it would help to know how he really felt about her, because if she was mistaken or had merely overheard a joking conversation and if he only thought of her as his student and a child, it would all be pointless. And that thought hurt. If he wasn't willing to give her a chance, then… none of her thoughts mattered.

So it all rested on him and his opinion of her, what he wanted from her. Then together they could figure out what they really felt. Later she could learn if she really did love him or if it was purely idolization.

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She awoke the next morning curled up on his bed, hugging his pillow and covered with his blanket. The bedding smelled like him and was a pleasant scent to wake up to. Slowly realizing where she was, that it was morning and she was alone, she jumped up and searched the apartment but found nothing out of place. There was no sign whatsoever that he had been home while she was there. Could he have come home, found her asleep on his bed and left before she woke up?

Wait! Perhaps he was away on a mission! He hadn't mentioned it, but that wouldn't be anything new and it could have been a last minute mission. Someone at jounin headquarters would know if he was out of the village. Carefully locking the door behind her, she raced over to headquarters and dashed into the common room to find Genma was the only person in the room.

“Genma, have you seen Kakashi?” She hurried past the silent man filling out paperwork at a nearby table and headed right for the scheduling board. Scanning the names and finding Kakashi's, she ran her finger across to the date to see he wasn't scheduled for any missions until tonight.

Genma was silent until she came to stand in front of him, slapping a hand down to cover his paperwork and get his attention. “Genma, have you seen Kakashi recently?”

With a quick look at her, he glanced around the empty room, as if checking for someone else. “No. And it's safer if I don't talk to you for awhile."

“What do you mean? I'm just looking for him.”

“I'm staying away from you and Kakashi for a while, at least until you two get sorted out.”

“You lost me again. Just tell me where Kakashi is.” The strength behind her voice convinced him to continue speaking.

“Probably returning from my escort mission.”

“If it's your mission, why are you sitting here?”

He raised an arm and gestured to the bandage still wrapping it. “Walking wounded, remember?” she had a slightly confused look on her face until she recalled seeing him a couple days before in the hospital. The events of the past twenty-four hours had pushed all thoughts of Genma out of her mind.

“That's right! I thought you would have been better by now. Are you not healing well?”

“Well enough to take Kakashi's mission tonight.”

“Oh, so you swapped! That's why it's not corrected on the board. It was good of him to switch with you.”

Genma snorted impolitely. “It was so nice of him to do that, wasn't it?” the sarcasm practically dripped off his words. “Damn straight it was good of him to take it seeing as he's the reason I was injured in the first place,” he grumbled. “And the second place.”

“What?”

“Kakashi's the one who beat the crap out of me! Like you didn't know…”

“I thought you said it was a jealous boyfriend?”

“It was. Why were you going to have a drink with me if you're dating him? And why the hell did you kiss me? I never thought you would stoop to using me to make him jealous.”

He stopped when he saw the surprised look on her face. “You aren't dating are you? Oh, crap.” He was silent for a moment as her confusion seemed to grow. “And he hasn't even talked to you about it, has he? Oh, shit. He's really going to kill me now,” Genma sighed.

She sat down, her hand still resting on the table and covering his paperwork. “Start from the beginning.”

“Right after I asked you out for a drink, Kakashi pulled me aside. I made a… um, gesture…” he mimicked squeezing two invisible round items in front of him with his hands that earned a scornful look from Sakura. “Which apparently pissed him off.”

“Serves you right, you pervert.”

“I'm not the one who reads all those dirty books. I only read the one's Jemna is in. Guess I should have been smarter, considering the ending of this last one. And I didn't make that gesture within your sight, just around him. He went crazy; dragged me out of there and beat the crap out of me. That's the reason I missed our date.” The senbon bounced on his lip as he spoke.

“He didn't say anything?”

“Just that he didn't want to catch me doing that again.” Genma rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

“There's something you're still not telling me.” She said with a glare.

“Calm down,” he said still sucking on his senbon. “I just haven't gotten that far. The next morning when I saw you in the hospital and after we kissed, I noticed he was coming up behind you. That's when I took off, but he caught me and warned me again to stay away from you. He then re-applied some of my injuries. I just assumed he finally talked to you about this after I saw him.”

“No. No, he didn't.” She said softly as she stood and left the room in a bit of a daze.

Leaning back in his chair, he called back to her retreating form, “Well, could you at least put in a good word for me with Hatake? I've got a date with this cute little piece from the café and I'd kinda like to survive the week!”

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Sakura left jounin headquarters in a fog. This pretty much cinched it for her. Or did it? She knew Genma must have made such gestures in Kakashi's presence before and Kakashi had never injured him for it so what set him off now? Was it really Icha Icha Confessions that spurred this? Would he be willing to admit he had feelings for her that weren't exactly those of a teacher to his student? He had pretty much admitted as much to Jiraiya, would he actually be willing to give her a chance?

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Kakashi took his time returning to Konoha to give himself the opportunity to think. Actually, this being a routine escort mission, he'd had almost the entire mission to think, he just hadn't come to a decision yet.

He knew Sakura was reading Icha Icha Confessions so it wouldn't be long before she approached him with questions. Questions he still didn't know the answers to. How long had he… loved her? It was probably time he could at least admit to himself he loved her, but how long had it been?

He'd found her attractive since… well, he'd really noticed her transformation into a woman after she'd passed the jounin exams. Before that, he'd been busy on a number of high ranked missions, making it back to Konoha from his last one just in time to see the exams. He hadn't even known she would be participating but was quite impressed with her performance. It would have been hard not to be after seeing what she did to that arena. Yamato had to spend a good deal of time reconstructing what had taken only seconds for her to she destroy. Not even Naruto had done that much damage during his exam. Yet again in his absence she had improved immeasurably and if one was to believe Jiraiya's word, she had become a med-nin to rival the Hokage herself and had created several new justsus for the medical field. She'd grown up. And grown up into quite a beautiful kunoichi as well.

But he was pretty sure it hadn't been that early. At least not the love part of it. At that time, he'd only noticed that she'd grown and she was pretty, but it was hard not to notice that. She had always been on the tall side, the top of her head now coming up to his nose and she'd let her hair grow long again, usually pulling it back into a messy bun held in place with a handful of senbon. Her figure had filled out slightly, still on the slim side but with noticeable curves in the right places. The swells of her breasts were what drew his eye most often - he always had been a breast man.

Sometimes during a sparring match, wisps of pale pink hair would fall and become stuck to her sweaty skin. Since she'd started wearing her hair up, Naruto had made a game out of stealing her senbons one by one until her hair fell. Whenever she caught him, she'd have her revenge, but he'd gotten much better over the years. It had become Kakashi's goal, when sparring, to get her to the point she would need to use those senbon and let her hair fall freely across her back. She knew of it and the little battle for the senbon had become something of a game for them. She was never angry with him like she was with Naruto, but then again Naruto never treated it like the game they did, he only stole the senbon to annoy her.

But when had he actually fallen for her? Perhaps it was last year when she'd managed to save all three of her teammates with her medic skills. Their team had been sent to retrieve a stolen scroll but it had been a setup, with a particularly tough and bloody fight. Even as exhausted as she was from fighting, she healed them all enough to survive, almost completely draining herself of all her chakra in the process. The only reason she lived was the extra chakra the Kyuubi let Naruto transfer into her before he went for reinforcements. She'd cared for the lives of her teammates more than her own, but then she'd always been like that.

That was probably when he first realized how much they all meant to her. When he'd awoken in the hospital, she was by his bed, scolding him for using his Mangekyo Sharingan and fussing over his comfort at the same time. She was still sporting a few bandages herself, not yet being completely healed. Sasuke had yet to awake and Naruto, who, after Kyuubi had restored him to perfect health, had been sent home because he was driving her crazy with his ceaseless and inane chatter. When Sasuke awoke she'd fussed over him as well, but it was then that Kakashi realized how much she cared for all of them.

She was the first thing he saw when he woke up in that hospital and it had made him smile. Somehow, she had even managed to keep him there for 2 days until he was well enough to escape but it had been rather nice to have someone care for him, worry about his well-being. He'd had people, mostly women, claim to care about him or even to love him, but he knew none of them really had. How could they when they never knew who he really was? He'd never been willing to let them get close enough to know him.

But Sakura… she may not love him, but she cared. And before he even knew it, he had let her slip behind his protective shell, that shell he created so many years ago that kept anyone from getting too close to him. The shell that kept anyone from hurting him. He had always been so careful, recalling the pain that came from letting others get close, but she had snuck behind it, showing affection for him and asking for nothing but his friendship.

He hadn't even realized Jiraiya's latest book was about Sakura and Genma until she had come to him for help finding an image of the Hokage in an Icha Icha book. And even then, he found it amusing; confident that her appearance in the book wouldn't bother him.

But it did. He continued to read it only he imagined himself in Genma's place. It was him fucking her against the wall, in a lake, on the balcony of her apartment and in the stairwell of the hospital. It was him she was touching and stroking and kissing. In his head, it was so real he could feel those touches, those kisses. He'd fall asleep thinking of these fantasies. But, he reminded himself, fantasies are different from reality and as long as he could keep his mind firmly in fantasy, he would be fine.

At least that's what he had thought.

It had really bothered him when she agreed to a date with Genma and then the man had the gall to make some lewd gestures in Kakashi's presence and he had finally snapped. He knew he'd injured Genma, nothing life threatening, but surely enough to deter him. Much to his annoyance, it hadn't. When he found Genma kissing Sakura in hospital, he felt the need to repeat the lesson. And he had.

It was jealousy, he needed to accept that fact and stop it. After their talk in the bar, he understood that Sakura just wanted to use Genma for sex, but it still hurt that he could never have a chance with her. If she really only wanted sex, couldn't she have come to him?

It was a stupid thought and rationally, he knew it, but in his heart it still hurt. Except they had a good friendship, they knew and understood each other and fought well together; something he didn't want to ruin. There were several missions just the two of them completed, assigned because they worked so well together. He didn't want to lose that rapport or her friendship just because he had a silly crush on her or because he was jealous of Genma for asking her out when he couldn't. Well, he could have asked her out, but she probably wouldn't take him seriously or, worse yet, would have called him a disgusting old man.

And that's what he was, wasn't he? He was 14 years older than she was and had been her teacher! He'd first met her when she was 12! He felt completely disgusted with himself when he had stroked her cheek in the bar and she had called him sensei. That one word had brought reality back to him and had luckily stopped him from displaying any more emotions for her. How could he even think that she could ever consider him for her lover? This girl was beautiful and smart and strong and the student of the Godaime. He had no business hitting on this child. He had no business considering how her lips would feel on his. He had no business imagining how beautiful she would look naked and spread across his bed, beckoning to him with a single finger, no matter how pleasing the image was. No matter how much he wanted her.

He also couldn't go around beating up the men who asked her out. She was strong and could choose a man for herself. It was no business of his unless the guy actually hurt her or it affected her work. If he said nothing, they could continue to be friends and teammates.

And he wouldn't risk losing her.

The afternoon he had to use his Sharingan to win their sparring match, he had been so distracted by Icha Icha Confessions and his thoughts of her that she actually managed to pin him against the tree. And while he hated to use it, his Sharingan was the only way out. Once used, he caught her as she fell and brought her over to the rock the team usually met at. Laying her down with her head on his lap and her hair falling over his legs, he hadn't even realized he had been stroking those pink strands until she awoke. He quickly stopped, but she said she liked it, so he allowed himself to continue running his fingers through it. It was a calm and relaxing moment he'd wished would never end.

It wasn't until he got home that he read the ending of Icha Icha Confessions. While annoyed with Jiraiya, he figured it could wait until the next day before talking with him and maybe he would no longer feel like killing him. All evening, he told himself he didn't love her and by writing such a lie, Jiraiya had cast suspicion about their relationship. Now, as he ran through the trees, he wondered how Jiraiya had really been able to recognize his feelings when he himself hadn't even been sure of them until the day before. Did he really look at Sakura with that much longing in his expression? Had she ever noticed? And could he prevent himself from doing it now that he realized he loved her?

How was he going to hide this from her? The more he thought about it, the more he realized they could never have the relationship he wanted, even if she was willing to take a chance with him. He'd spent the last 25 years of his life pushing people away, an automatic behavior that couldn't be turned off like a switch. He may trust her with his life but could he trust her with his heart? In all honesty, it was a rather fragile thing never given to anyone before and he was afraid rejection would crush it. Unlike Genma, the idea of being cheated upon or refused would send him back into his shell permanently.

It would be best if he loved her from afar, he could allow himself a fantasy world where he could be with her. That was all. That way, he could have things however he wanted them. When she came with questions, he would tell her she was being ridiculous and then he'd push her away. It was the safest this way and the best for both of them.

The rest of the way home he allowed his mind to wander, imagining what it would be like to come home from a mission to find her waiting for him in his apartment. Her desire for him barely allowing time to shut the door before she was in his arms, her face showing her pleasure at seeing him home safely. Holding him tightly as she struggled with his clothes. She'd rip down his mask and kiss him hard as she pulled him into the living room. Everything was dropped or pushed aside; his equipment, their clothing and his need for a shower all disappearing as his need for her took control. They wouldn't even make it out of the room before they were both naked and lying on the floor, her hands automatically searching his body and healing any recent wounds with the slightest touch, her body wet and willing, just waiting for him to fill her up. And when he looked into her eyes, he would see her love for him shining there.

Sigh. This was going to be harder than he thought.

TBC…