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“I think the thing about you, Sasuke, is that your habit of pushing people away and distancing yourself is not natural for you. Many people develop these behaviours as a result of heavy trauma, much like yourself, but there is something specific about your situation which makes it evidently harder on your heart and your head,” his therapist tells him.
Sasuke furrows his brow. “And what is this specific thing you speak of?”
“Well, despite what most people seem to believe about you, you are not unemotional or inherently cold. It does not come easily to you, these things. Contrarily, I think you are perhaps the most emotional person I have met. It just manifests differently for you.”
“So, what should I do to change this—to make things easier for myself?” Sasuke asks.
“Well, it’s simple really,” she smiles gently at him. “You talk. Bare your heart. Stop allowing that deeply ingrained fear of getting hurt stop you from truly investing in relationships and friendships that are dear to you. Be open and honest.”
Be open and honest.
He thinks he can do that.
“I didn’t want to break up with her,” Sasuke says, slurping loudly on his noodles. “But I didn’t really have much of a choice, you know? I mean, long-distance relationships are hard. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”
Kakashi drags his hand over his masked mouth, eyes wide, as he tries to wrap his head around what in the goddamn hell Sasuke is talking about exactly.
Break up? Long-distance relationship? That’s what he heard?
Heard that from who?
“Of course, I felt bad. I mean, I left her outside on a cold bench all night. That was a real dick move.” He continues without pause, not noticing the increasingly concerned state of his two companions. Sasuke sighs. “It was hard but at the time, I felt it had to be done. How else was I supposed to pursue my revenge if I couldn’t do something as simple as break up with my girlfriend? I realised that if I wanted to become truly strong and succeed in killing my brother, then I had to break my bonds and become unattached. And that was never going to work if I was still head over heels in love with the girl from my team.”
Kakashi’s eyeballs bulge comically, looking as though they might fall out of his head completely. Next to him, Naruto chokes on his ramen that he inhaled too quickly, out of shock. Kakashi pats his back harshly while never taking his still-very-wide eyes off of his former student.
“To minimise the pain, I consumed myself even more so with my revenge, but even then…” he sighs, having stopped eating as though he can’t stomach anymore, and resorts to poking at his food moodily. “It wasn't long before she consumed my thoughts again. Nights were the worst. As soon as my head hit my pillow, she was the only thing on my brain.”
What started off as a sneaky attempt to try and get Sasuke to spill his guts about the very precarious relationship that slowly seemed to be blooming between Kakashi’s former students, very quickly and unexpectedly turned into a retelling of Sasuke and Sakura’s…break up?
Kakashi discreetly kicks Naruto under the table, shutting him up. Unsurprisingly, he has become utterly hysterical at this turn of events, practically peeing himself with silent laughter. But while Kakashi is endlessly confused, he is also unimaginably amused, curious and desperate to hear more.
“And this…girlfriend of yours,” Kakashi says slowly, watching his face carefully to gauge his reaction, “are you guys still broken up?”
Sasuke sends him a weirded out look, as if he is the one being strange right now. Brat.
“Why are you talking like you don’t know Sakura?” He says snootily, before sighing forlornly and answering his question. It all happens so quickly, Kakashi is surprised he didn’t get whiplash. “Yes, we’re still broken up. At least I think so. We haven’t really had the chance to…talk things out, you know, with all the war stuff, and everything after…”
“Uh…yeah. The war stuff. I totally get it…” Kakashi trails off slowly, throwing Naruto a look that practically screams ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON. IS HE ON DRUGS’.
Naruto, the unhelpful bastard he is, just continues to cackle silently. Kakashi kicks him again, somehow succeeding in sealing the blonde’s laughter. Miraculously, Naruto decides instead to ask his own queries, enjoying this situation far too much.
“Did Sakura-chan know that you two were…together?” Naruto asks, humouring his best friend. He is very much enjoying this turn of events; it’s not often that Sasuke’s the one to look like an absolute buffoon rather than himself.
“Yes…?” Sasuke replies, seemingly confused as to why that would even be a question. “Why would she not know?”
“That’s exactly why we’re asking, Sasuke-chan,” Kakashi preens next to him, eyes gleaming with so much amusement that Sasuke’s skin prickles. “Did you actually ask her to be your girlfriend? Or did you just assume?”
Sasuke flushes a bright red, staring at Kakashi indignantly, brows furrowed. “I didn’t need to. She used to always say that she’d marry me, anyway. Wouldn’t it be redundant to ask her to be my girlfriend when she’d already decided she’d be my wife one day?”
Naruto snorts. “Didn’t all the girls tell you they were gonna marry you?”
Sasuke shifts uncomfortably on his seat, twirling his chopsticks around the broth in his bowl. “Sakura’s…different,” he says, trying and failing to ignore the warmth creeping up the back of his neck and tainting his ears. “She always has been.”
“Why? Because she was actually serious about it?” came Naruto’s voice.
“I’m pretty sure all of them were serious about it,” is Kakashi’s very helpful response.
Sasuke exhales a huge breath. “Because I liked the sound of it.”
Naruto and Kakashi peer at him, curious. “Liked the sound of…” Naruto trails off, watching his best friend’s expression carefully, laughter evident in his voice.
“The sound of being with her. Marrying her,” Sasuke says before mumbling sheepishly, “Uchiha Sakura.”
Naruto guffaws. Kakashi cranes his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Good Lord,” he says to it.
Sasuke takes it the wrong way and immediately begins to (pathetically) plead his case.
“I know I fucked up. Big time. But just…I just want her to know that I’m sorry,” he tells them, face etched in despair.
“Didn’t you already tell her that?” Naruto asks, now thoroughly invested in the conversation. “Back at the Valley?”
“Well, yeah, but that apology was kind of shitty, no matter how sincere it was,” Sasuke replies, leaning his head on his palm. “I couldn’t really come up with anything better at the time because the blood loss was making me lightheaded and all I could think about was how pretty she looks even when cries.”
“Yeah, I felt like that too,” Naruto says. Sasuke shoots him a stony look and Naruto swiftly fixes his mistake. “About the blood loss thing! Not about her looking pretty. Well, she does look pretty when she cries but that’s not what—I’ll stop talking now.”
Rolling his eyes, Sasuke ignores Kakashi’s muffled laughter and instead bites his lip in anxious contemplation. “I miss her. I miss how she used to be with me when we were genin. She acts like a stranger now, not that I can blame her.” Sasuke groans dejectedly, leaning down to rest his forehead on the countertop. His voice comes out muffled when he speaks next. “I want my girlfriend back.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“That’s an incredibly broad question,” Sasuke mutters against oak wood before lifting his head to face Naruto. “But I’ll try to make it brief—”
“That was an absolutely rhetorical question,” the blonde cuts him off by shoving his head back against the counter with a cackle.
“I was such an idiot,” He groans again in anguish. “She told me she loves me, twice! And I just brushed it off like it didn’t affect me at all. Do you know how hard it was not to turn around and do something crazy and rash—like—I don’t know, kiss her? I couldn’t even look her in the face the first time around because I knew one glance at those eyes and I’d walk straight back into Konoha like I never meant to leave in the first place.”
“Wait, wait, wait, hold on,” Naruto interrupts his weirdly romantic spiel with raised hands, looking very much out of the loop. “What do you mean the first time round? When did this happen? Did you know anything about this?” The blonde accuses their lazy sensei as he shoots him a suspicious look with narrowed eyes.
“No, actually, I did not,” he replies with an eye smile, looking very much interested. His earlier shock has worn off, and now he’s just delighted—Sasuke thinks he and Sakura-chan used to be together. As in, dating. Boyfriend and girlfriend. How utterly, hilariously adorable. “Please, do enlighten us.”
Sasuke shoots them both a nasty glare. “I’m not sharing our personal matters with the likes of you.”
Naruto’s ‘I think it’s a little too late for that?’ gets drowned out by Kakashi’s own comment, “You’ve flown way past that line, buddy.”
The Uchiha’s ears flush red. “Well, my therapist says while I work on being more open and honest, I can still have my boundaries—”
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” Naruto cuts him off once more, hands raised in the air as if to physically stop his words right there. “Your therapist? Is that where this is all coming from?”
Sasuke suddenly looks very uncomfortable and Kakashi has pity on him.
“Alright, let’s respect his boundaries, now,” he says, rising from his chair. “Well, this has been terribly fun, however I am needed back at work. I shall see you two rascals soon.”
Naruto is about to yell at the hokage about how he was needed back at work two hours ago before Sasuke interrupts. “Wait, you’re not going to help me?”
Kakashi tilts his head much like a dog. “Help with what?”
“With winning Sakura back,” he says, desperate. Naruto snorts beside him.
“We’ll brainstorm some ideas another day,” he reassured him.
They all get up to leave, having finished their food and their business, when Kakashi stops him, Naruto already far out of hearing range.
“Hey, Sasuke.”
The raven haired man pauses, glancing back at his teacher with a raised brow.
Kakashi continues to keep that smile plastered on his face, eyes crinkled shut in a convincing display of nonchalance. But Sasuke isn’t stupid. There is a lot of venom hidden behind that smile and in between those words. Clapping a hand harshly on his left shoulder, Kakashi leans close and speaks in his ear, the menacingly low tone of his voice sending a rare shiver of fear up his spine.
“Break my little girl’s heart again and you’ll find yourself with no arms. Is that clear?”
Sasuke looks up at him with wide eyes before lowering them with a nervous gulp. “…Yeah.”
“Good! That’s good!” Kakashi says as he removes his tight grip and leans back, allowing Sasuke to breathe easily once again. The smile is still on his face, but now it’s more relaxed and less threatening. “Well, I’ll see you around, kiddo!”