Work Text:
Kakashi slings his briefcase over his shoulder before heading out on his short walk to work. There’s a slight chill to the air, a reminder that fall is right around the corner, and he buries his nose a little further into his scarf to ward off the cold. It’s not far to Konoha University’s campus, maybe 15 minutes from his apartment even at a leisurely pace, but it’s long enough for him to contemplate going back home and crawling into bed. He’s already dreading having to deal with all of the ‘first day of class’ nuisances, like learning the names of students (even those that will end up dropping the class), reviewing expectations, going over the syllabus, answering dumb questions that have answers listed in the syllabus…
Besides the stupid, seemingly never-ending questions, Kakashi has actually grown to like teaching over the past 5 years (at least a bit anyways). After graduating early with his bachelor’s degree at the age of 17, he generally preferred keeping to the research side of things as opposed to anything involving… well, other people. Teaching was never on his radar when he was younger, but after one of his graduate school professors had given him a job as an assistant for a year, followed by a Ph.D. program where he was required to lead a few discussion courses, he just fell into academia and never left.
When Kakashi arrives on campus, it’s already 9:05am. His class technically started at 9am, but he plans on keeping his students waiting in the lecture hall for a bit longer, just to make them squirm. Maybe it’s a bit of an underhanded scare tactic for the first day, but if they can’t be bothered to wait 15 minutes for him to show up for class, then how will they sit through a 3 hour introductory course on physics?
He stops by the university cafe for a quick coffee (black, two sugars), then strolls over towards the sciences building, plopping down on the stand-alone bench by the side entrance. At this point, it’s well past 9:15am, but instead of making for the lecture hall, he pulls down his scarf to sip on his coffee and cracks open the spine of his much beloved novel. He can justify claiming a few more minutes of peace before he’s forced to deal with his newest batch of wide-eyed freshman, 40% of which will likely flunk his course anyways.
Icha Icha is a happy distraction to pass the time, and also, an effective deterrent for any wayward souls who might be inclined to strike up a conversation. For the most part, one glance at the lewd illustration on the cover of the garishly colored paperback has people (correctly) doubting his social skills and maintaining a wide berth. (All except for Guy – apparently Guy will not be deterred by anything.)
A sharp screeching sound jolts him from the latest plot twist involving the pirate protagonist’s heroic rescue of the royal princess and her – ahem – enthusiastic thank you. Kakashi’s ears go slightly pink as he glances up to watch a white SUV with tinted windows swerve into an open parking spot a little ways ahead of where he’s sitting. Only the front end of the car is within the parking lines, with the rest of the car jutting out into the road, as if the driver is staking their claim before anyone else has a chance to drive by and snatch the space. Granted, it is a good spot, since street parking is generally hard to find in the area (and the alternative is the paid lot a few blocks over), but it still seems overzealous in his mind.
Kakashi continues watching, his interest in the spectacle in front of him momentarily superseding the intrigue of his book. The driver quickly backs out of the spot and then pulls in again at the same questionable angle. There’s hardly any visible improvement. The car is still horrendously crooked, completely out of the lines, and blocking any traffic that may happen to come down the road.
Gods, who gave this person a license? Every time they try to readjust the angle, it gets unfathomably worse and worse. It’s painful, like some sort of awful comedy sketch or re-enactment of that bumper scene in the Pink Panther movie. Kakashi is getting second-hand embarrassment just watching this track wreck. Er, car wreck. Figuratively, thank god. He lets out a low chuckle. At least they haven’t hit anyon–
Shit!
The car jerks to an abrupt stop just in time to avoid clipping a passing motorcyclist rushing behind them. Okay, that was a close one.
Kakashi sighs heavily, feeling another year being shaved off his life as the motorist swerves to give the SUV plenty of space. They lay on their horn and curse colorfully in the car’s direction while speeding away, fortunately unscathed. Disaster averted, but even so, what is this asshole thinking? He dearly hopes that the idiot in the car isn’t a student in one of his classes. (If they are, he’s definitely going to find a reason to give them an 'F' on their first assignment.)
The SUV pulls into the spot once more, the back of the car nowhere close to being within the lines of the parking space, but maybe slightly better? The car remains motionless for a few seconds longer, and then the engine switches off.
What.
The car is still crooked. Very incredibly, certainly dangerously, and definitely illegally crooked. What the hell are they thinking? Half the damn car is still sticking way out into the street! There’s no way the driver can be serious about leaving it like that… right? For once, Kakashi is contemplating the idea of sticking his nose into someone else’s business because that shit storm of a parking job is just asking for trouble.
The door opens, and as the driver steps out of the car, the first thing that registers in his mind is pink. The driver, the woman driving that tank of an SUV, has pink hair. Why does she have pink hair? Is it some new trend? To be fair, it’s a rosy hue, closer to the soft shade of a flower petal rather than the artificial neon of a dye, but still... pink! Maybe he’s not in a position to judge since his hair is a silvery shade of white that’s uncommon in men under 60, but at least his is a real hair color.
When the woman turns in his direction, he notes that her eyes are a bright, jewel-colored green that completes the thoroughly fantastical element of her persona. Pink hair, green eyes… What’s next, world?
She’s wearing a high-necked black blouse, black pants and black boots, complete with a crimson blazer that somehow makes the whole ensemble look thoroughly modern and sleek. While she appears a bit younger than himself, she looks too professional for a student, and yet he doesn’t recognize her as another faculty member. A graduate student perhaps?
She walks to the front of the car, then circles around to the rear bumper, as if verifying that it’s still sticking out as much as she thought it was. (It is.) Throwing open the driver’s side door, she shucks off her blazer and tosses it into the car seat before tying up the pink strands into a loose ponytail. The shirt she’s wearing under the blazer is evidently sleeveless because whoa biceps. Although seemingly petite with pink hair, this woman clearly spends a lot of time doing something that has resulted in acutely toned muscles. If Guy were to ever arm wrestle with her, it would likely be a very interesting match up.
He stares, abandoning all pretenses of only paying half-attention at this point, as the pink-haired woman ambles over to the side of the car that’s parked at least a foot from the curb. She cracks her knuckles before crouching down, grabbing hold of the underside of the car, and –
What the actual fuck.
She pulls the rear end of the car into the spot as if it isn’t a three thousand pound hunk of metal.
(He’s the most infinitesimal, really hardly worth mentioning, tiniest bit turned on.)
She shimmies back and forth, the scent of rubber thick in the air and a sound like nails on a chalkboard making him wince as the car is dragged closer and closer to the curb. Finally, once it’s well inside the parking line, she lets go of the frame and stands up to assess her work. The vehicle’s back bumper is now significantly closer to the curb than the front one, and he wonders if he’ll be watching her shimmy the other side to even it out. She doesn’t, instead unfurling her spine and stretching her arms up high above her head, swaying back and forth like a tree in the wind. With the movement, he sees the edge of her shirt ride up a little, revealing a sliver of fair skin and lines of… tattoo ink? Most of the art is hidden by her clothes, and he knows it would be hard to see any clear details from this distance regardless, but he’s still faintly disappointed that he can’t make out the design. (He mindlessly rubs at his shoulder, curious if she has any others.)
Her neck cracks from side to side and she heaves a heavy exhale before reaching back into the car to grab her blazer and a bookbag.
As she’s moving to cross the street, an oddly familiar bright orange hatchback plastered in bumper stickers flies past her, stops, and then very recklessly (what the hell is with these people?) reverses back down the road until the orange monstrosity is door to door with the pink hulkette. From this angle, Kakashi can read the largest of the bumper stickers, a rainbow rectangle plastered directly to the right of the license plate that reads, ‘Gayest Ride Around ’ in flowy white font. Other stickers that he can read from where he’s sitting include ‘Adopt Don’t Shop’, ‘Just One More Plant,’ and… a cartoon of a giant frog?
“Sakura-chaaan!” The exuberant greeting is loudly projected from across the street at volumes that would be deafening in close quarters. “How are you?” the overenthusiastic male shouts gleefully.
Both of them are now out of his line of sight, but Kakashi would recognize that sunshine voice anywhere. It sounds like… Minato-sensei’s kid?
The woman (Sakura-chan, he thinks idly) confirms it a moment later, responding brightly, “Hey Naruto!”
Well, he muses, there’s not many people out there other than Kushina who would name their kid after a ramen topping. Now it makes sense why the car is recognizable too.
Huh, how about that. If she knows Minato-sensei’s son, does that put them around the same age then? Didn’t Naruto just turn 27… 28? And why does Naruto’s whiney shriek of Sakura-chan sound so – ohh. He grins to himself as a memory surfaces of Naruto going on and on about his pink-haired crush with an ironically fitting name. Apparently, she always helped him with his homework, but had a tendency to call him names whenever he confessed his ‘heartfelt love’ for her.
Throughout middle school, it was always Sakura-chan this or Sakura-chan that, every single time that Kakashi went over to the Namikaze-Uzumaki house. In high school, the outbursts over Sakura gradually faded in frequency, and it switched to Sasuke-teme this and Sasuke-baka that, usually followed with a series of expletive insults. Then one day, during Naruto’s sophomore year of college, suddenly that evening’s announcement was, “Sasuke and I are dating”.
Kakashi zones back into the present when he realizes the self-proclaimed ‘Gayest Car Around’ has now fled the scene and the pink-haired woman is walking towards the university’s entrance, blazer thrown casually over her shoulder.
Wait, now she’s veering away from the entrance. She’s walking towards him. She’s walking towards him. Naruto’s Sakura-chan. Also known as the woman who is apparently incapable of parallel parking, but perfectly capable of dragging her car.
The rosette waves cheerfully in his direction, “Oh hi!”
Her cheeks are still flushed from her exertion and there’s a few darker strands of hair sticking to her neck. He gets distracted by a bead of sweat that slips from the side of her brow, watching as it trails a path down her neck, disappearing in the fabric of her shirt.
Gods, pay attention Hatake, she’s talking to you.
He blinks, refocusing to see her looking at him expectantly, “Sorry, what?”
She shakes her head as if finding the whole interaction amusing (a rather unusual reaction to his particular brand of nonsense).
“You’re Hatake, right? Professor Hatake?”
“Uh, yes?”
“I’m Dr. Haruno. Sakura,” she adds with a smile.
Seeing his still-puzzled expression, she elaborates, “The new professor for the Biology department?” She places a hand on her waist, hip cocked to the side.
“R-right. Yes, of course,” he stammers quickly as his brain boots into high gear. Genma had been talking nonstop, nonstop about the hot new professor joining Tsunade’s department. Apparently she was something of a legend in the world of medicine. Another young college graduate like himself who had sailed through school. Only, whereas he kept burying himself in more and more books, she ended up becoming a top surgeon, at one point working under Tsunade Senju herself at Konoha General.
She extends her right hand and he stares for a delayed moment before he reacts, reaching out to take her hand in his and shaking a few times. He notes that even though his hand swallows hers, her hands are equally calloused and her grip feels strong enough to easily crush his bones. (He gulps nervously, remembering the Herculean way she shifted the car.)
“It’s Kakashi,” he amends belatedly.
“Sakura,” she repeats with an upward turn of her lips before releasing his hand. “Nice to officially meet you.”
“Er…”
His brain latches onto the middle word in her statement. Officially? Have they seen each other at something in the past? He thinks he would have remembered meeting –
“I saw the interview that Physics Today did on you a few years back,” she clarifies in answer to his unspoken question. “And I’ve read some of your papers theorizing the way lightning strikes can affect permafrost in polar regions.”
“You like physics?” he blurts out without thinking. She beams, seeming to find him funny for some reason that he doesn’t understand, but he’ll take it.
“Mhm,” she responds with a head tilt. “I thought about majoring in it at one point but ended up liking medicine more.”
He stares at her, feeling wholly unraveled. It’s like his brain has turned into caveman mush. Smart. Pretty. Crazy buff. Likes physics.
Before he can think of something witty to respond with, she quips in a playful voice, “I see you’ve got a multidisciplinary interest too, huh?”
“What?” he asks dumbly, feeling entirely out of his element.
“Big into anatomy?” she prompts with a cheeky wink, pointedly eyeing his book.
The tips of his ears and his neck turn beet red, “Uh…”
She laughs, the sound sounding fairly melodic until he catches what he thinks is potentially a snort.
“I’m just messing with you, Kakashi,” she teases with a shit-eating grin, elongating the consonants of his name – damn it, why is she saying his name like that?
Something buzzes, and she pulls her phone out of her back pocket, frowning slightly as she glances at the time.
“Shoot,” she huffs under her breath. “I have to go get set up for my 10am class, but I’ll see you around, yeah?”
Her eyes snap up to meet his with a mischievous twinkle lurking behind the emerald and he can only nod awkwardly in response. She gives him another smile then walks away towards the front entrance. Stop staring at her ass, you pervert.
Right before she walks into the building, she turns and offers him a cheery wave. He crinkles his eyes, holding up his hand in a two-fingered salute. His arm is in the air long after she has disappeared into the building. Fuck, fuck, stupid, stupid brain. He should have said something smarter.
He should have asked for her number.