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Use the door.
There was a stiffness in the air today, and he didn’t like it.
Just use the door.
He didn’t like it.
Use the door like a normal human be
Heavy, heav
ing.
He could see pink knotted tufts creeping out from under the white comforter; the outline of her body, and the breaths that made her go: up, down, up,
down.
He let the image rest there a bit, daring not to move from his crouched position on the windowsill.
Here, it looked as if she were whole.
Here.
I thought only the afflicted were supposed to experience ghost limbs, he thought.
Kakashi felt like the pervert he was as he glanced down at her quiet, heavy body. Was it greedy of him to steal moments of her sorrow for himself, that he could and would never slip his hands up the crease of her knee, to let his fingers dance under the warmness there?
Yes, it was greedy.
"I’m sorry to see you got stuck with me, today of all days," Sakura said, finally releasing sleep from her body as her hands untangled themselves from beneath the bedsheets.
The corner of the bed buckled under Kakashi’s weight as he sat, but only slightly.
"Of all days?" He asked, finally peeking at her.
"It’s the fourteenth," Sakura managed, amidst a yawn. She attempted to shimmy herself upright, only to be greeted by Kakashi leaping from the bed to assist her.
"Leave it."
She gave him the meanest glare, and it worked, too, because he left it.
"It’s also 48 degrees outside," Kakashi said, sitting back down.
"What does that have to do with Valentine’s day?" Sakura asked.
"Oh. I thought we were just stating facts," Kakashi said, but there was a smile there, lost under a mask.
Sakura looked down towards her lap, and liked that his jokes were anxiety’s alchemy.
“So. What’s on the agenda for today?”
“I need to get dressed. Then change my sheets. Then tea. The chamomile, because I’m feeling stiff.” Her face didn’t warm while rattling off her tiny to-do list. These were Not Fun activities.
Kakashi went to her dresser and selected her usual attire.
“No,” she said. Then, adding quickly, “I want the pink one for today.”
He returned to the open drawer, sifting through musky scented clothing, until a pink dress slipped out from under a black shirt. He held it up for her to see, and she nodded.
Three strides was all it took to reach her.
“Lean towards me,” He reminded her, and she cringed while forcing her body forward. His hands slipped down her back, catching the white undershirt and lifting it up. Sakura noticed he was gentler today.
Absent of her shirt, Kakashi then proceeded to untangle the dress, lifting the open space up over her head. Her hands dipped inside the holes made especially for them, and linked her fingers back over the nape of his neck as he shimmied the dress down to her torso.
“Okay, ready?”
Sakura pressed her face into the misty crease his shoulder created when meeting his neck, nodding enough for him to feel it.
He began to lift her body up off the bed, but she stiffened in abrupt agitation.
“Please don’t look at them.”
“Sakura-”
“Please.”
“Okay.”
He lifted her up, and the dress fell over her torso, her hips, her bottom, down to her mid-thighs. She wrapped her half-legs around Kakashi as he traveled from the bed to a chair near a pair of prosthetic legs.
She didn’t like for him to look at the scars, still flushed pink in longing for their other halves.
-
He leaned down gently, and this is how it goes.
He had Wednesdays with her, mostly. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
She leaned up against the back of the metallic chair, feeling the coolness rest against her nape. She squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed that Kakashi’s sorrowful expression was not there.
What does wet grass feel like on bare feet?
She didn’t remember. She squeezed her eyes tighter, pressed harder back into the chair.
She could hear Kakashi shifting the prosthetic legs into position.
She squeezed her eyes so that they might be tempted to fall out the back of her skull.
She didn’t hear him moving anymore. She knew she had to open her eyes now.
There it was, that beautiful, sorrowful expression of his.
“I don’t need you to feel sorry for me.”
He looked down and began attaching foreign objects to stubs. “I don’t.”
“I can see it in that fucking piece of shit expression you have on your face.” I didn’t mean that, she thought, but she had said it.
Kakashi kept moving calculatedly. “You can’t even see my face, kunoichi.”
His hands were gentle and caressing as if handling a bomb offering an unlit fuse, but his mouth spit like fire.
“It’s the same expression they all have now,” Sakura said, and the bottom of her feet itched. She fucking hated that.
Kakashi sighed. “No one is giving you any kind of look.”
Sakura lurched forward, and yanked her hand back in one swift motion, swinging it down.
She slapped him, hard. Bare skin to-
“There. That one. That look.” She hit him thick once more. Hard. Hard.
His eyes hung wide in pure shock.
Did she hear it? Did she feel it? She must’ve-
On her third swing he caught her wrist, and his free hand reached for his mask to make sure it was still in its correct place.
He looked at her, then. Really looked at her.
Sakura’s face was wet, and her eyes were sad, but there was a small smile. She smiled like the last sentence of a novel. It hurt him to look at it, but it was a satisfied little grin. A smile of closure. One punctuation mark away from her completion. She closed her eyes next, only to herself now as the remaining tears completed their trajectory to the edge of her jaw.
He let go of her wrist, and it sashayed back to her waist like a forgotten tassel.
“I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s…” Sakura sighed. “Nothing but the ‘oh dear’ looks for months. I just needed to see someone look at me with a different expression. I just didn’t expect-”
“Didn’t expect what?” His words cut. He was a bit angry now. He liked his secrets. He held them against his chest like warm blankets.
“Can I see?” Sakura finally asked, forgoing caution and ignoring his acidic tone.
He sat there for a long moment, staring down at her half-knees (she didn’t even get mad) and at the metal that longed to connect. He sucked in more air. “Fine.” He reached for the edge of the cloth, but paused.
Their eyes locked. “This stays between us,” He said, and she nodded.
Kakashi pulled his mask down with an exhale, and for a moment, Sakura could picture him as a small boy. Moody. Childish.
Broken.
Sakura couldn’t help but to stare at what shone beneath the removed cloth.
His whole jaw was made up of a silvery substance, a metal that had stung her fingers when they had connected with his face. His eyes were the same; ashy, poignant. And the nose: pointed, direct. His lips, now revealed, dipped awfully close into the metal plated jaw that overtook his face. Thick, metallic blue wires snaked from somewhere under his chin comprising his neck, finally connecting to flesh and dipping below his shirt. Kakashi tilted his metallic cheek towards her, an open invitation.
A few moments passed until he felt her skin on his, but only the whisper of fingerpads against metallic jawline. She spread her fingers over his face, testing the line between human flesh and cold, dead, substance. Kakashi opened his eyelids.
“I’m jealous. You get to hide it from the world.” She said, tracing the cool metal from earlobe to the end of his chin.
His eyelids slid back shut. “Hiding comes at a cost.” There was sadness there.
He smirked against her cupped hand, enjoying a different kind of indulgence as he leaned in a little.
“Does it feel warm?” She whispered.
Kakashi’s eyes rolled open, landing on her. He grabbed her ankle, using his other hand to dust his fingers over the underbelly of her prosthetic foot. “Does it tickle?”
“Okay, okay. Smartass.”
They waited there, softly, broken into a crack absent of time and timely events. Sitting there, smiling down at their laps; and, for once, overlapping onto each other.
It was a place they had never experienced. A space, suspended.
He said one last thing before taking his leave.
“It gets easier. I promise.”
Sakura knew she might need to revisit here, but for now, it was full.