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In his thirty-nine years, Kakashi could remember exactly one time he had been on vacation. He wasn't entirely sure it even counted, considering he'd been five, and all he could really remember about it was how overwhelmed by it all he had been.
The blinding sun, the deafening crash of the waves, the smell of salt in the air, the unbearable heat of the sand beneath his feet, and the sickly sweet taste of cheap, melting ice cream on his tongue.
It hadn’t been all bad. He remembered laughing. He remembered his father was badly sunburnt and had made a fruitless attempt to heal himself. But, mostly, he remembered laughing.
That vacation had lasted all of three days, as far as he could remember. Since then, the closest he had come to another was weeks laid up in a hospital bed, recovering from some life-threatening injury or another. Or, perhaps, a few hours lounging in a treetop, reading or eavesdropping on passersby.
That was the life he was used to. The bustle of a busy village, or the tension of a dangerous mission. But this? The nothingness of it was overbearing.
Overall, he was just not a vacation sort of person. He liked his time alone, yes, but there was always something coming. The next mission, the squabbling couple down the road, the top-secret scheme to overthrow the Hokage. Here…it was just the sun, the sand, the water, and this vanilla ice cream.
“Are you gonna finish that?”
He saw Sakura plop herself down in the sand beside him in the corner of his eye, legs splaying out in front of her, toes wiggling in the sand. Unlike him, vacation seemed to suit her beautifully. He handed the cone over to her wordlessly.
“This vacation is long overdue,” she said with a long, happy sigh, reclining back in the sand, her voice muffled as she went to town on his ice cream cone. A large drop of ice cream splattered onto her stomach. She cursed and wiped it up with her fingers.
He kept his eyes forward, trying to see what she found so relaxing about this place. It made him antsy. He spent his life being prepared, ready for the fray. The concept of relaxing—the idea that there was no need to be prepared—was unsettling. It was entirely counter-intuitive. But Sakura—she was so at home in the sand, with all her bizarre tan lines from the stringy scraps of nylon she called swimsuits, and her wide hat, and the sticky ice cream drying in the corner of her lips.
“Don’t you just love it here?”
“Your hat is stupid,” he informed her, finally looking in her direction.
“You’re wearing a mask at the beach and you’re criticizing my attire?” she asked in disbelief, staring at him as another drop plummeted from the cone to her skin. “Shoot,” she huffed, turning her attention back to mopping up ice cream with her fingers.
She wasn’t wrong, but neither was he. Her hat was stupid.
The brim was ridiculously wide, and kept getting caught in the wind. She spent half her time with her hand on top of her head to secure it, and the other half chasing it as it rolled away in the sand. Now, with her drippy cone, she was having a hard time managing. Either she sacrificed her hat and stayed clean, or she sacrificed her ice cream and kept her hat.
Kakashi found himself reclining onto his forearms in the sand, eased by the sound of her huffing and puffing, and her incoherent grumbling. Her pointed glares as she attempted to clean up the sticky mess on her skin were more calming than some stupid beach.
He'd been reluctant to come here, but it was Hokage’s orders, and he was certain Sakura would maim him if he cost her the opportunity, so he’d reluctantly agreed. His childhood memories weren’t all bad. He’d thought that, surely, he would find something to enjoy.
The sensory overload of it all was familiar, but a certain tightness had taken hold of his chest the moment he’d stepped onto the beach. Being alone in a place like this felt strange. It was different from being alone in the village, or on a mission.
But then Sakura, with her sandy toes and incessant chattering, sat down next to him, complaining about her swimsuit riding up, or the sand travelling to unmentionable places, or whatever other gripes she had, and the tightness loosened. He breathed a little easier. He found it remarkable that, even with all her grievances, she still felt at peace here. He wondered if being annoyed was part of her relaxation method.
It came as a great shock to him to find that, apparently, her annoyance was a central component to his own relaxation. The longer she moaned and groaned, the easier he found it to endure the salt spray in his face and sand in his trunks.
But then, her chittering faded away and the silence washed over him like an ice bath.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked, sparing her a quick glance. She was chomping down on the cone, now empty of ice cream, though her green bikini seemed to have had more than its fair share of it. She looked a little bashful, meeting his eye as she broke off a chunk of cone, her chewing far more demure than usual.
“Thought you’d appreciate some peace and quiet,” she said with a little shrug. “This is supposed to be relaxing for you, too.”
He considered her, nibbling away, cheeks pink despite her wide-brim hat, and sitting up in a ball instead of reclined in the sand as she’d previously been. He wondered if talking to him relaxed her as much as it relaxed him.
He lifted his hand to pluck at the string of her top, snapping it hard against her back. She yelped, the rest of her half-eaten cone flying off into the sand, seagulls immediately descending upon it.
“Aww,” she whined. “What was that for?” she demanded, smacking her hand lightly across his shoulder.
“Keep talking,” he demanded.
“Huh?” she deadpanned, staring at him like he had sprouted a third head.
Kakashi hesitated, but her confused pout was deepening and the silence between them was lengthening—
“Being at ease is not one of my fortes,” he blurted out, not missing the way her lips parted in surprise. “But you have a knack for annoying the tension right out of me so—” He sighed and smiled at her, his eyes creasing over his mask. “Please, keep talking.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, pouting in confusion and mild offense. “Go get me more ice cream, and maybe I will,” she suggested.
“I think your swimsuit has had enough,” he pointed out with a happy eye-crinkle.
“You are so rude,” she huffed, thus beginning another tirade. Kakashi laid back, half-listening to her and half-watching the sun set over the ocean. Maybe vacations weren’t so bad, after all.