A/N: For those who are still reading this, I hope you enjoy this chapter. It took about 80k to reach this point. This is my first try at fanfiction, so I know the pacing is terrible. I really hope this chapter makes up for some of my shortcomings. Thank you!

Written: 5/24/24

Word Count: 1,554

As we rehashed the same things again and again, I found my head falling onto an impressive bicep. The kittens curled between our thighs on the couch like glue connecting us together. Sintar was a vocal sleeper. She snortled every so often, twitching out one of her feet with full flex, until her little footsie transformed into a chicken's clawed talons. Watching these little movements, I was lulled against Kakashi's chest, breathing in his masculine scent that always smelled faintly wild like how I imagined the trees around the Hidden Leaf Village to be. His warmth beckoned something in me, and apparently you turned drunk when tired because all of my inhibitors checked out for the day.

The sheer coziness of it all was better than sleep. Was better than I imagined sex would be, but maybe I was biased in that regard. After years of feeling like an alien for being entirely uninterested in physical touch, I'd come to something of a realization.

Maybe I was...asexual.

Maybe there wasn't anything...wrong...with me. I was just unlovable.

Each time Kakashi breathed, his arm pillowing my head moved upwards just slightly. I felt like I was a baby being lulled to sleep by the vibrations of a car ride.

This. This was nice.

This was what I would miss when Kakashi was gone. Not the eye candy, not the uncomfortable, frightening feelings he gave me that turned my stomach inside out. Those things I didn't understand and didn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole.

I knew, without a doubt, I would never find this comfort with anyone ever again. It wasn't because I thought everyone was destined to meet one person, or even that soul mates existed. I didn't believe in romance in real life or had any grandiose ideas about love and marriage.

I just knew myself. At the end of the day, I knew myself. And if Kakashi wasn't there to pull me under his arm, to hold my hand, to cook me breakfast, I just wouldn't do those things again. I didn't fathom all these small things meant as much to Kakashi as they did to me. Of course not. I wasn't a fool.

But why would I ever want to do them with anyone else after I'd felt Kakashi's warmth?

Then, my phone rang, unearthing me from a beautiful, sweet dream. Flinching, I sat up quickly. Kakashi moved, too, steadying me.

My nose brushed his chin, his lips stopping right at the place between my eyes.

I sprang fully off my dark green couch, the move flinging one orange kitten one way and the gray kitten a different way.

It was Sam.

"W-What is it?" I answered, walking into my kitchen and hiding around the corner as my heart pumped louder than the voice echoing down the line.

Sam's sniffling voice tore at something in my chest. Precious heartstrings that had been drawn loosely across their fixtures split open at the teen's muffled tears.

"What's wrong?" I recovered my racing heartbeat, summoning the adult I knew sometimes took up residency inside my bones.

"Kiri's gone," Sam said, the "o" sound drawn out and twisted, giving her an accent from nowhere around here.

Gone. Kirishima was gone. Could it be?

"He was sent back?" I whispered into the line, my free hand clenching the edge of the countertop. A shadow solidified at my left. Glancing up, I shared the same look of careful neutrality with the shinobi. Did we dare to hope?

"No," Sam said, and my grasp on neutrality floundered. I randomly grabbed onto any shred of calm, despite being wracked with nothing but fear. "He—he left an hour ago. I—I don't know where he is."

Blowing out a long sigh, I asked, "Why did he leave?"

Silence puddled against the other side of the line, the quiet buzzing and filled with all the things I couldn't see. I waited, my apprehension building the longer she took to form words.

"We had a...an argument."

I tried slipping out of my kitchen, only to be barricaded by a body that took up the entire space. How was he over here, too? I couldn't even look at him.

"I'll go look for him, okay?" I said. "You just stay put. Agreed?"

"Y-Yeah."

Tapping the red circle on the bottom right corner of my screen, I hid the rectangle in my sweatpants. It wasn't comfortable, but at least I'd be able to tell if it fell out. Sometimes at work, I couldn't even tell my phone was falling out of my butt pockets before it dropped to the epoxy-coated concrete.

Both hands freed, I tried dodging Kakashi, who had somehow moved completely in my way, like he was a picket fence and not a human. Then, the kittens showed up, thinking they were being fed. Pigs. Little claws stretched out on my knee cap as Sintar used my leg as a post. Great. More obstacles.

"Gracie."

I nearly jumped straight out of my skin, but I tried to play it off as stretching out my shoulders. It was true they were a bit tight after falling near-comatose into such a weird position, but it, in no way, looked natural.

"Yeah?" I said to his socked feet.

A pause, before the chest in front of me deflated a bit in a quiet sigh. "You think the kid got himself in trouble?"

Despite my desire to run as far away from this man as I could, I couldn't help but smile. He really was always meant to be a teacher, wasn't he?

"I just want to make sure he doesn't get lost."

Kakashi leaned his hip against the counter, crossing his arms so I could see all those muscles. "I could do that."

"I know."

"You have to be up in about five hours."

"I know."

"I can come with y—"

"That's okay," I rushed, slipping through a gap in the barricade. My feet landed nimbly around the soft little claws scrabbling about asking Kakashi to pick them up and perusing their empty food bowl in disgruntled confusion. Goodness. I did not look forward to their jumping phase.

"Gracie," Kakashi called after me, his voice even and patient, but I stopped in my tracks all the same.

Stilling in front of my door, I responded, "Y-Yeah?"

Three steps took Kakashi to the edge of where the carpet met linoleum, mere feet behind me. I placed one shaky hand against the smooth edges of my door, feeling each pebbly, textured inch of the fake wood. There was a tingling in my legs like I'd just gotten done running. Sprinting, rather.

"I think I...no," Kakashi stopped, sidling up next to me, shoulder-to-shoulder. He looked down beneath his fallen fringe, and my breath up and left. Didn't leave a note, just vanished. "I've decided," he said.

My eyebrow twitched a bit. I hadn't expected him to say something like that. "About what?"

"I'm not going to ignore it anymore." He nodded, like we were both in on it. But we weren't.

What the hell was this beautiful man talking about now?

"Ignore what?"

"This thing." An ungloved hand gestured in the space between our shoulders.

"The...clothes?" I felt a deep furrow narrow my eyes, my mouth twisting on its own accord as I tried to puzzle out the clues he'd laid out before me. Was this one of his Yoda-sensei moments, and I was just too dumb to get it? "I told you to tell me if they didn't fit so I could swap out the right sizes."

"Pfff." Laughter shot straight out of him, a burst of both our eardrums as he tried to control more of it from spilling free. He bent at the waist, finally coming eye level with me. "Nah," he said.

Was he crying?

I'm not sure how big my eyes were, but as soon as he reached my eye line, more hacking laughs ate away at him. He covered his mouth with both hands, stepping away from me. I stood, one hand still on the door, completely at a loss.

Was he sleep deprived or something?

"I mean, the thing between us."

"You mean the Sinissippa witches? Yeah, I don't think we can ignore them anymore if we want you to get home."

The man full-on keeled over, falling onto my blue carpet like his bones suddenly melted to the soles of his feet.

"You can run away now," he said, somehow, speaking through his hands. I'd never seen his face so red before as tears dripped from his lashes. My god, what the hell was wrong with him?

Face burning, I slammed open my door, ricocheting it against my shoulder with a solid thud. Okay, ow.

"I'm not running," I told him as I casually walked out of my apartment, shutting the door softly behind me.

I pretended not to notice the echoing peals of new laughter following me as I briskly—briskly—maybe, possibly, a little bit, moved away from that door and that apartment and that man.

"I'm not running," I said, certain, as I took off to Sam's apartment building in the dead of night. And if my shadow could be seen moving quickly under the giant streetlamp in the drive, well, that's just because shadows moved in mysterious ways.