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Kakashi had been raised a lonely boy. He struggled to connect with his peers due to his paternal albinism, often being referred to as a demon or a freak.
He had found his comfort in the Church in the Spring of 1937. His father took him every Sunday, gathered with strangers as they recited the Bible and worshipped God.
Where Kakashi could not find kindness in the world, he found faith. Daylight shining through the stained glass windows, painting the altar in a shimmering light; a gift of God from the Heavens.
He learned to love. He loved his father, his departed mother, those in church, and God.
He learned to forgive. Those who had wronged him, those who had wronged God, those who sinned.
When Kakashi was nine, in the Autumn of 1939, he learned loss. He awoke to the sound of a crash, and by rushing down the stairs he was greeted with the sight of his father on the kitchen floor, bloodied knife strewn across the tile from where he had cut his own throat.
Kakashi’s father doomed himself to hell, and he couldn’t understand why.
There where whispers.
He had been drafted, he killed himself to avoid the war. A coward’s death.
Kakashi had thrown himself to the church with all his might afterward, the Bible his only comfort as the matron settled him into the orphanage.
The Christian orphanage held frequent bible study. They sang symphonies and prayed before every meal. They taught the importance of gratefulness and appreciation. Kakashi learned of the seven heavenly virtues, and from then he vowed to keep himself pure, untainted from sin.
He would marry a beautiful, traditional Christian woman and she would provide him with a great many children.
It didn’t matter that the thought made him sick.
When Kakashi was fourteen, he learned the word homosexuality. Two boys in the orphanage, both two years his senior, had been found in the bathroom with their pants to their ankles, committing a sin as vile as buggery.
Kakashi could still hear their screams as the orphanage matrons whipped them until their blood stained the otherwise immaculate oak flooring.
Kakashi was fifteen when a visit from a councilman came and went.
The orphanage had been closed shortly after.
Things were changing in England, he recognised. The Church was not as popular as his small sleepy beach town made it seem. The further South he went, the more sin he saw litter the streets.
He had moved over four-hundred miles from his childhood home, his father was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere Kakashi would not be able to revisit for years.
On the third day of his stay at the new orphanage, the matron had permitted he go to the local church that morning, Kakashi would soon wish he never did.
It was the summer of 1945, a Thursday morning. The church was not frequented often, the locals often speaking of demolition plans and new and improved ice-cream parlour that would soon take its place.
Kakashi opened the creaking wooden doors of the Church, hoping to pray for God to save his place of worship, to beg mercy and forgiveness for his sinful father as he had done for the past six years.
Kakashi was instead met with Obito Uchiha, splayed over the chipped wooden altar like he belonged there, with a lit cigarette in his mouth.
At the sound of Kakashi’s gentle footsteps making his way to the pews, the boy rolled himself off the altar, and at the sight of him Kakashi’s stomach did something he didn’t recognise.
The boy was tall, at least 180 centimetres, shirt tight and leaving nothing to the imagination. His shoulders were broad, muscles rippling as he rolled them. His shirt rode up slightly from where he had been laid, giving Kakashi a peek of his defined V-line and sharp abs.
He ran his hand through his thick black hair, and Kakashi noticed light scarring on the left side of his face, enhancing every facial feature the man had. Judging from the look of him, he had to be around seventeen years old, and-
“What’re you doing here, pipsqueak?” the deep timbre of his voice rang out through the empty Church, and God that was something.
Kakashi finally recognised the feeling in his stomach. Desire.
“P-Praying,” he stuttered out, struggling to forgive himself for the carnal lust he felt at the sight of the man. Fifteen, and he had already broken his lifelong vow. Fifteen, and he was already committing one of the seven deadly sins.
“I’m Obito Uchiha,” he said, grabbing the wooden chair from the altar and dragging it down to where Kakashi sat at the pews. He put it directly in front of Kakashi, straddling the chair indecently, knees knocking against Kakashi’s own, “and you?”
“Uh- Kakashi,” he said dumbly, eyes darting from Obito’s chest, well-defined through the tight fabric, to his smirking face.
“Are you attracted to me?” Obito asked smugly, blowing cigarette smoke into Kakashi’s unblemished, porcelain face.
The silence spoke louder than his words ever could.
“Why are you here?” Kakashi asked, questioning why this sinner had come to Church, tainting the Holy Place as well as Kakashi himself.
“‘Cause I’m a faggot,” was the quick response, “and I think you are too.”
Meeting Obito Uchiha had been a breath of fresh air, like he had woken up from a long dream.
Kakashi would come to the Church every morning to pray, and Obito would aggravate him while he did so. Teasing him, featherlight touches across his shoulders and back that burned hot like iron.
Obito was the sinner, yet Kakashi was the first to break the thin layer of tension, giving himself in to temptation.
He kissed Obito on a hot summer evening, the older boy‘s hands running under his shirt, the air thick with eager want. He hated himself for it, his brain screaming at him to stop while every nerve in his body was alit with a need for more.
His father had been a disgusting sinner, but the apple never does fall far from the tree.
One day, Kakashi had prayed to God and felt none of the mindless devotion than he had for years prior. Why? he asked, if you are so all-powerful and all-knowing, why did you handcraft me so full of sin?
Where Kakashi‘s faith was once an unyielding iron wall, it was now a wafer, just waiting for the right person to snap it.
“Is it wrong, to be doing this?”
“Does it feel wrong?”
“It feels like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
Obito had told him about his father then, how he had forced him to come to Church everyday to repent for his sins after he confessed to liking a boy in his classroom. Obito had been twelve then, he was beaten within an inch of his life. The stain on the Uchiha family.
He had told him that no matter how far he buries his desire, it always comes back with triple the force, red-hot and burning, as if scorning him for keeping it away.
Kakashi was as much as an escape for Obito as Obito was a realisation for Kakashi.
Summer turned Autumn, and the blazing hot sun of 1945 became bitter cold breeze with fallen leaves. The war ended, Kakashi turned sixteen, and Obito asked Kakashi to run away with him.
“We could go somewhere far away, in the countryside. I know a farm owned by a guy that will accept us, him and his wife. Like the parents I wish I had.”
Kakashi hadn’t responded.
Obito didn’t come to Church the next day.
The familiar feeling of dread pooled in his gut, but Kakashi convinced himself it was a one-off, that Obito would be back to repent the next morning.
He wasn’t.
In fact, he didn’t show for days. Days turned weeks, weeks turned months, and there was no sign of the other boy.
In the winter of 1945, three months following Obito‘s mysterious disappearance, Kakashi found a letter on the Church altar, addressed to him by name in the most intricate cursive.
Kakashi Hatake,
I’m terribly sorry for how my son has spread his unsavoury disease to someone as dedicated to His Holy Christ as yourself.
From a young age, he has expressed egregious tastes, but from now we will have his vulgar behaviours forcefully corrected.
You are a smart boy from what I have heard from your matrons at the orphanage, you would do well to forget my son and his degenerate, blasphemous acts towards you.
Find a loving wife,
Madara Uchiha
Kakashi had been heartbroken. He’d searched for a long time, prayed to God, begging for his mercy. He repented for his sins, asking God for a sign that he was out there, a sign that Obito was safe.
There was none, and Kakashi felt his faith snap in two.
Kakashi moved on.
It was difficult to adjust at first, life without Obito, life without God, but Kakashi was determined to live the life of freedom that Obito was not allowed to.
Years passed, Kakashi slept with some guys, dated and broke up with others. It was still hard, living the life of a homosexual in the ‘50s.
But sometimes, Kakashi found himself reminiscing.
Even now, all these years later, Kakashi had not managed to forget his one summer love. It was only right that they meet again.
Except the circumstances were different.
Kakashi watched from the entrance of the coffee shop as the sinful boy from Church drank a sweet tea, shared with a beautiful brunette woman.
She was pregnant, her eyes filled with all the love Obito could not give her, yet she dare not notice how her husband’s gaze lingered just a little too long on the passing barista.
When his eyes landed on Kakashi, his breath hitched, and for a moment they were back in that Church, sharing secret hidden touches, kissing where only the eyes of God could see.
Kakashi took a step forward, and the enchantment was all but broken. Obito tore his eyes away, scooping his wife’s hands in his own.
Maybe, there would have been a world where they could have been happy, where Kakashi’s self-hatred hadn’t gotten in the way, where Obito’s father hadn’t caught on to what exactly was happening in Church.
That world wasn’t this one.
Kakashi took Obito’s action for what it was; a dismissal, and walked out of the sullen coffee shop on the corner.
It was about time he moved back North to visit his dad, anyway.