Chapter Text
You’d sensed him when his concentration broke and the genjutsu dropped.
With your arms full with a paper bag containing the food you’d bought from the market for dinner the next evening with Kakashi, you’d been extending your chakra to feel out the path in front of you. Knowing your clutzy nature, if you dropped the bag, you’d end up breaking the eggs for the fried rice. You were just happening to pass one of the alleys when your chakra felt out his, and you turned your head to tease him about his peculiar hiding spots, imagining him lingering in the shadows waiting to surprise you with an unexpected walk home, when you saw them.
She was pressed against the wall, Kakashi’s hand pushing against the plane of her bare stomach as he sensually started to pull her shirt off. Her hands were in his hair, on his shoulders, reaching down for his ass, across his front. He was kissing her, deeply, soft noises of pleasure reaching you at the mouth of the alley.
You sucked in a sharp breath – the brown bag hit the dirt at your feet.
They didn’t hear the choked noise that you made as you scrambled to collect your groceries, biting back the tears welling in your eyes. Your throat burned raw, and you gave up trying to gather the vegetables. You body-flickered without a second thought, collapsing on the tile of your apartment floor with a crash.
“(Y/N)?” you heard through the apartment.
You couldn’t hold back the cries. It was Rin.
“(Y/N)! (Y/N), what happened?” Rin demanded, dropping to the floor beside you and grabbing you by the shoulders. You sobbed into her shoulder, shaking as you clawed at the fabric of her shirt for a grip.
“Kakashi.” His name was a garbled mess of syllables. “Kaka-Kakashi,” you could hardly speak. “In an alley –” Your throat constricted, your voice rising octaves as you clung tighter to Rin.
“(Y/N),” Rin whispered, running a frantic hand through your hair, “What do you mean? Is Kakashi okay? Is he hurt?”
“No!” you forced out, fists clenching. “He’s – he’s,” you choked again and Rin stiffened.
“He’s with someone else,” Rin whispered softly, “isn’t he?”
Hearing what you saw was a twist on the knife buried to the hilt in your heart. Any reserve you had over yourself fractured and you fell entirely into Rin’s arms.
…
Obito guarded you valiantly.
You had cried yourself unconscious the night before in Rin’s arms and she’d held you close until she had sent a summons for Obito. He’d carried you to bed and Rin went about removing everything that she could find of Kakashi’s – including the shirt that you had been wearing. When you woke the next morning, you were wearing Rin’s shirt, and buried deep beneath your blankets. There was a note on the bed beside your head, and Obito was lounging in the chair nearby, snoring softly.
Went to work, Rin’s handwriting said. Be back around 1800. Obito will stay with you. Keep your chin up, (Y/N).
Your throat was dry, but your eyes welled up as you stared at the empty space in your closet. Rin hadn’t closed the door, and his clothes were gone.
You dropped your head into the pillow, a shudder passing through you as you cried into the bed. Obito was at your side in an instant, pulling your face up and pressing you against his shoulder. You held onto him as you cried.
“I’m so sorry,” Obito murmured over your sobs. “I’m so sorry – I knew he was a jerk, I always called him a jerk, but I didn’t think – didn’t know he could do something like this.” You just held onto him, shaking and sobbing.
“What did I do?” you asked into Obito’s shirt. “Why – what could I have done?”
“You didn’t do anything,” Obito replied fiercely. “Kakashi is just – just…” Just his best friend. “Just…stupid.” He tried to rub your arm comfortingly, but it only made you cry harder.
It had been nearly a year that you’d been seeing Kakashi. Nearly an entire year of secret kisses when your comrades and friends weren’t looking, taking each other out to dinner, lunch, and even breakfast, his clothes gradually migrating into your closet and yours into his, weeks spent waking up to each other and rolling in the sheets laughing. It was easy to love him, so, so easy, and Rin claimed that both Obito and Kakashi were the last of your friends to realize how much you cared for him. Obito for the obvious fact that he was oblivious to anything that didn’t involve Rin. Kakashi because he was, as Obito had claimed for years, stupid.
You’d thought he’d liked being with you too. You’d caught him staring at you when you hadn’t been speaking to him, and his eyes lingering on your face and body when you were beneath him in bed. He was astonishingly on time for most of the dinners that you had together, and occasionally paid here and there when you choice to go out for a meal. He held you from behind when you were standing over your desk studying paperwork, and was playful while you trained together.
What had you done?
You thought he had cared too.
There was a sudden thump on your windowsill and your blood ran cold as your eyes shot open. Obito stiffened and turned, trying to block your sight as you both felt Kakashi’s chakra unfurl through the room. He was through the window pane and standing on your carpet within seconds, brow furrowed and looking at you and Obito confusedly.
“What the fuck, Kakashi?” Obito snapped, standing up from the bed. You swallowed the alarm rising in your throat in favor of clutching the sheets in your hands. He was here – Kakashi was here. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?” Kakashi questioned, eyebrow rising. “What are you doing here?” His gaze dropped to you and something inside your chest ached when you met his eyes. “Are you upset with me?” You couldn’t stop the shudder of disbelief that passed through you.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve Kakashi,” Obito growled. The power of the Sharingan flooded the room, smothering Kakashi’s chakra. “Get out of here. Now. Before I make you.”
“Make me?” Kakashi repeated, eyes flicking back up at Obito and then to you again. You could not look away from him. Another woman had touched him, felt him against her and felt his passion. He wasn’t just yours anymore, and a very scared part of you wondered if he ever had been. A brief understanding passed across the visible part of his face. “You saw.”
“‘You saw?’” Obito echoed. “Seriously Kakashi? ‘You saw.’ That’s what you’re going to say first?”
Kakashi just stood by the window staring at you.
“Kakashi!” Obito snapped, “Get the hell out!”
You forced yourself to breathe. “Obito,” you mumbled quietly, making yourself look away from Kakashi, “it’s okay.”
He wheeled around to face you. His Sharingan was a brilliant shade of crimson, its pair no doubt responding to the surge in chakra from under Kakashi’s hia-ate. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “You don’t need to hear his bullshit, (Y/N), trust me. Nothing he says is what you’re going to want to hear.”
“I think that’s for (Y/N) to decide, Obito,” Kakashi interceded.
“Fuck off, Hatake,” Obito snapped.
“Tobi, please,” you asked quietly, voice wavering. “I need to hear what he wants to say.” Obito hesitated at the childhood nickname, and when you reached forward to grab his hand, his caved.
“Fine,” Obito seceded.
“Can you wait in the other room?” you asked him, squeezing his hand. He hesitated, eyes darting to the note Rin had left and back to Kakashi across the room.
“If you hurt her anymore than you already have, Kakashi, I swear to Kami that I will kill you and take that eye back,” Obito threatened. He gave your hand a tight squeeze and then let go, crossing your bedroom in a few strides. His glare remained on Kakashi the entire time.
When he shut the door behind him, a long moment of silent passed.
You couldn’t bring yourself to look at Kakashi and he didn’t seem to be able to look away from you.
He suddenly loosed a long breath and pulled his mask down around his neck. “I fucked up,” he spoke plainly.
Irritation, for the first time, spiked up from your gut. You watched him with careful eyes. You were still trembling, hiccups forming in the back of your throat. “You did a little more than fuck up,” you whispered hoarsely. He’d tried to hide behind a genjutsu, which you’d felt out and initially assumed he’d been using it surprise you. He’d been with another woman.
It was quiet again and then he started walking towards you. You scrambled up the bed, eyes wide as you pressed your back against the wall behind you. You didn’t want him anywhere nearer to you than he already was – never ever again. He stopped moving and then retreated back towards the window.
“What did I do?” you asked weakly. “I don’t understand what I did to make you – make you –” You couldn’t say it out loud. It was one thing to hear it from Rin’s mouth, but it was another coming from yours.
Kakashi didn’t answer at first as you struggled to smother your gasps for air. You were trying so hard to not cry. You couldn’t cry again, not in front of him. You wouldn’t let yourself do it.
“It was the same thing,” Kakashi spoke after another moment.
Your brow furrowed, “Same thing?”
He shifted on his feet – the only indication of his discomfort. “It was the same thing all the time,” he explained. “It was…”
“Boring,” you supplied hollowly.
He hesitated before he nodded, gauging the way your chin fell. “Boring,” he agreed.
“So you,” you swallowed, “with another woman? You did that?”
“Yes.”
“Because you were bored.”
“Yes.”
You closed your eyes and forced yourself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out – you control slipped and you sobbed into your palm as your hand shot up to cover your mouth. You wouldn’t do it. You would not cry in front of him.
“Leave, Kakashi,” you whispered into your fingers.
He did not.
“I’m sorry,” he said. You couldn’t tell if he meant it or not.
“How many times?” you snapped, your temper slipping out from behind your sorrow. “How many times were you bored?” You spat the word. “How long were you going behind my back before I saw you yesterday?”
He did not look away. You broke the gaze first, shaking your head.
“I don’t want to know,” you muttered. “I don’t want to know.”
“Not as many times as you think,” Kakashi tried to say.
You shrieked, head snapping up, “‘Not as many times as I think’?” You were approaching hysteria. He needed to leave – for good. “One time is enough to break everything, Kakashi!” you screamed at him. “You ruined it! You ruined everything!”
You were throwing things at him as you climbed out of bed. Pillows, blankets, a glass of water that shattered against the wall behind him. You were crying as you flung your clothes at him, reaching for anything that you could hold.
“(Y/N)!” Kakashi snapped. “(Y/N)! Stop!”
He grabbed you by the wrists and you screamed, kicking at him.
“You ruined everything!” you kept screaming at him. “Everything, Kakashi!”
The Sharingan blurred across your vision and you felt your body instantly go slack in his grip. Your terror was muted as the chakra from his eye bled through your body – he had used the visual prowess to calm you.
Obito was storming the room, but Kakashi threw one of his hands back at him, stopping Obito in his tracks.
“I’m sorry,” Kakashi said again, pulling you to him as he lifted you off of the ground. Tears fell down your face as you stared up at him.
He set you down on your bed, sweeping the sheet flat. “I asked you…” you hiccupped, fingers wrapped limply in his shirt, “to not hurt me.” Your tears left your eyes in a steady current. “You hurt me – it hurts so badly.”
Kakashi let go of you, and you knew that it would be the last time he held you.
“Take care of her, Obito,” Kakashi said to the Uchiha has he crossed the room again. Obito’s jaw clenched, and he moved to your side as Kakashi climbed back out your window. He was gone between heartbeats.
“I can’t believe he used the Sharingan on you,” Obito scowled, grasping your hand in yours. “I heard everything.”
You closed your eyes and held tightly to his fingers. “I’m sorry it had to be with him,” you said quietly.
Obito’s thumb ran comfortingly across the back of your hand. “We can’t help who we love,” he replied, “but what we can help is how we love them.”
“I thought I did it right,” you mumbled, tears hot against your cheeks.
“You did, as far as I can tell,” Obito said. “He’s the one that doesn’t understand that.” He scoffed, “‘Boring.’ Who the hell does he think he is? He’s the boring one, always reading that Icha Icha porn shit.”
He kept rambling to you long after you slipped out of awareness, staring vacantly at the closet where Kakashi’s clothes had once been. You stayed that way for most of the day until Rin came back early, fuming and carrying to-go food.
“He’s in the market with a woman,” Rin had whispered furiously to Obito when she thought you weren’t listening. “He doesn’t look like he cares at all about what he did to (Y/N).”
Obito’s voice was gruff. “I’m going to kill him.”
You closed your eyes, staring at the still-open window. He was gone – really gone.